The Megyn Kelly Show - CBS Cancels Colbert, WSJ's Epstein-Trump Nothingburger, and Barbara Walters' Complicated Legacy, with Maureen Callahan | Ep. 1111

Episode Date: July 18, 2025

Megyn Kelly is joined by Maureen Callahan, host of "The Nerve," to discuss the nothingburger from the Wall Street Journal on President Trump and Jeffrey Epstein about his supposed bawdy birthday doodle, the ridiculous supposed dialogue Trump wrote, the failed attempts to tie Trump to Epstein, CBS canceling Stephen Colbert's unfunny late night show, claims it has to do with his politics but the reality that he's losing millions for the company, the decline of legacy media overall, new embarrassing details about the married CEO caught cuddling with his HR chief at a Coldplay concert, the potential lawsuits that might come next, Barbara Walters’ complicated legacy and truly vicious questions towards women including Elizabeth Taylor and Bette Midler, Walters' skills as an interviewer, Walters abandoned her family in pursuit of fame and fortune, Walters' relentless desire for success in her career but at the expense of raising a family, the inside scoop about Barbara Walters’ intense rivalry and envy towards Diane Sawyer, her jealousy and disdain for other women, deep insecurities about her appearance, the truth about how Katie Couric has treated women, Barack Obama showing up on Michelle's podcast to claim their marriage is fine, the awkward body language in the interview, Barack Obama showing up on Michelle's podcast to claim their marriage is fine, the awkward body language in the interview, and more. Subscribe to Maureen's show The Nerve: https://TheNerveShow.com/Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-nerve-with-maureen-callahan/id1808684702Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4kR07GQGQAJaMNtLc9Cg2oYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thenerveshow Tax Network USA: Call 1-800-958-1000 or visit https://TNUSA.com/MEGYN to speak with a strategist for FREE todayHome Title Lock: Go to https://hometitlelock.com/megynkelly and use promo code MEGYN to get a FREE title history report and a FREE TRIAL of their Triple Lock Protection! For details visit https://hometitlelock.com/warrantyByrna: Go to https://Byrna.com or your local Sportsman's Warehouse today.Paleo Valley: Visit https://paleovalley.com and use code MEGYN at checkout to get 15% off your first order 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 SiriusXM Channel 111 every weekday at noon East. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to Megyn Kelly Show and happy Friday. I mean, this is a lot to go over. Before we get to it, and Maureen Callahan, who's our guest today, I want to tell you about Monday. I'm leaving the Jersey Shore to go back to New York City and the Sirius XM HQ for a live interview with Rahm Emanuel, the long-time Democratic political operative, former mayor of Chicago, congressman, and high-level aide to Presidents Clinton and Obama.

I have never interviewed him before, but reports are that he is seriously considering running for president in the Democrat nomination in 2028. Could he be the type of candidate that gets the Democratic party back on track? We've talked about him a lot on this show. He's strong, he's no nonsense, he's a fighter. He's more centrist than certainly where the party is going right now,

AOC and Bernie and Mamdani. So what does he think about what's happened to his party? And how will he sound? Will he sound more centrist? Do we think he can go the distance? Those are some of the things I'll be looking for when I speak to him on Monday. And you know what else would be interesting?

He knows that this audience is not a left-wing audience. I have a lot of centrist watching this show and I have some center lefties and I have a lot of center righties and righties. But, so he wants you guys to hear from him. He wants you to listen to him. So will he tailor his message to you? Will he try to win you over?

Is this going to be somebody who's actually trying to reach out to people who aren't necessarily knee-jerk lifelong Democrats? Really looking forward to the whole thing for many reasons. Okay. But first we got a lot of news to get to today. It was the Jeffrey Epstein bombshell that wasn't. It was really just a bomb. We told you yesterday that the Wall Street Journal

was preparing a big article about Trump's relationship with the disgraced financier. Well, they published it. And this is how the text chain went amongst the MK show producers. Is this it? Is this all? There's nothing more? This this it? Is this all? There's nothing more?

This is it? Oh God. That's really how my team and I reacted when we saw it. We'll get to that in one second. Plus CBS News canceling, CBS I guess, canceling the late show with Stephen Colbert. Thank God. Single tear I mean, super sad for him.

Hearts and prayers. There's a new documentary about Barbara Walters, and I cannot wait to dig into this with Maureen. She mentioned Barbara and this documentary on her show a couple of weeks ago, The Nerve, and I've got a lot of thoughts on the documentary on Barbara Walters, who you may not care that much about if you're under 35 or even under know under 45 maybe I don't know but she's a very interesting figure for a lot of reasons and there are a

lot of parallels to What's happening right now when it comes to women? Personally and professionally and there's a big debate amongst women and working women and family and I got my own thoughts that I'm Looking forward to discussing with all of you and with Maureen. Here to break it all down, the host of the new hit show on the MK Media Podcast Network, The Nerve with Maureen Callahan. If you're stressed about back taxes,

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Take the pressure off yourself. Let Tax Network USA handle your tax issues. Maureen, welcome back. Thank you for having me, Megan. Okay, and not only do I love the nerve and feel like I get extra time with you when I listen to it, but I also am now two thirds of the way through the book you recommended on one of your shows a couple of weeks ago.

The guest I'm listening to on my audio. Yeah. Hold on a second. Yeah. The guest by Emma Klein. It's delicious. I can't wait to see how it ends. It's so great.

Yeah. It's a super fun song to read. I'm so happy. It really is. I actually had to slow myself down while reading it because it was going, it's such a great easy read, but it's literary. And I really, I didn't want it to end. And I was really, I was dying to know just as the writer in me, like how's she going to land the plane? You know? Yeah. Because it's really more character driven than like plot driven, but in my opinion, she does it beautifully. Oh, well, I can't wait. I've got one third left to go. So there you go. Maureen Callahan's book

recommendation. You're welcome. Okay. There's a lot, a lot to get to. I can't wait to dig our teeth into the barber thing, but we have to start with actual news. And this bomb of an attack on President Trump, it was a joke. I'm sorry, it was a joke. And take it from me, I've done thousands of like exposes on people or covered them or Me Too stories. This is a nothing burger.

It's an absolute nothing burger. I laughed when I saw it. The big shock piece the journal's been working on that's gotten all this buzz amongst journos in the days leading up to it is that Trump allegedly, he denies it and is now suing over this allegation, in 2003 wrote Jeffrey Epstein a letter as part of a group of letters that came from people like Alan Dershowitz and many others for Jeffrey's 50th birthday party. And the big, big sin of the letter is that it apparently appears in the sketch of a woman's

body. The implication is that Trump drew it and then it signed Donald so he drew a woman with breasts in like a figure And with a marker and then inside want us to believe that Donald Trump wrote the following Okay, they said Here we go hold on Voice-over he writes the words he allegedly writes the words voiceover. There must be more to life than having everything. Donald, he's like a script.

Yes, there is, but I won't tell you what it is. Jeffrey, nor will I, since I also know what it is. Donald, we have certain things in common, Jeffrey. Jeffrey, yes, we do come to think of it. Donald, enigmas never age. Have you noticed that? Jeffrey, as a matter of fact, it was clear to me the last time I saw you.

Donald, a pal is a wonderful thing. Happy birthday and may every day be another wonderful secret. That's it. It's terrible dialogue and it does not sound like Donald J. Trump. I mean, several things. The fact that that is allegedly typewritten, that note, it feels to me the way like you, like in any crime story, you know a suicide is a murder if the suicide note is typewritten, right? That's true. Secondly, why did the Washington, what, sorry, the journal not reprint the actual document? Like I want to see the physical document, right? Because who has a more

distinctive signature than Donald Trump? His signature looks like skyscrapers. has a more distinctive signature than Donald Trump. His signature looks like skyscrapers. It's totally. So, you know, and thirdly, I just don't believe it. To me, it feels like remember when the Mueller report was finally published and Rachel Maddow took to the airwaves for an hour to self-soothe and convince herself and her viewers that there must be something in it. We got to find it. It's just there. You know, It all just feels like, again, you and your guests have said it many times over the past week or so. If there was a smoking gun involving Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, we would have known it by now. Mm-hmm. That's right. We wouldn't be waiting for the Wall Street

Journal to break it mid-President Trump's second term as president. It's absurd. So we don't know whether even the Journal has seen the original letter. We know that they say they've seen documents. They said that Maxwell collected all these letters for this birthday gift Epstein got in 2003, put it in a birthday album. They say according to documents reviewed by the Wall Street Journal. Well, which documents? Have you seen the letter? Trump's team is saying they did not hand the letter over to team Trump when they went to

him for comment. So it's unclear whether the journal has laid eyes on the actual alleged letter. But I have to say, and Trump says this is fake and people online are doing a word search amongst everything Donald Trump has ever said. And apparently they haven't found like any uses of the word enigma. I guess it's not one of his favorites, not like China. So I have no idea whether it's real.

Trump is mad enough saying it's fake and it sounds fake. It does sound fake to me. It doesn't sound like anything that Donald Trump has ever said or written, but I almost don't care. That's like, to me, this could be, if it really does exist, because it could be a fake that somebody put into a document to make them look bad after the fact.

Or if it was actually in this book or whatever it is, it could just be Trump said, like this is what happens with Abby, my assistant, and me a lot. They want you to submit a quote about so-and-so into some retrospective. These are the three they've proposed for you. And it's like, okay, I'll take number one, right?

It's like, sometimes you're just trying to do somebody a solid and you're like, okay, that sounds good, let's go with that. I'll guarantee you if this is actually Trump's participation, which he denies, it's that. Like, Ghislaine wrote this thing up for you to sign. Is it cool? Everybody's doing like a body funny thing. And this was the one she had for you. And Trump, the celebrity was like, fine, I don't care. And maybe he doesn't remember it or genuinely it could be a total fake. Either way, I don't care. Because

I said nothing, Burger. It's a body stupid letter that is totally meaningless. This is not some, it's Trump with a 12 year old, which is really where the Dems were going with this. nothing burger. It's a body stupid letter that is totally meaningless. This is not some, it's Trump with a 12 year old, which is really where the Dems were going with this. I love this theory. And you know, I just, I love how these conversations happen in silos. So we're, we're all theorizing or supposedly theorizing about Donald Trump and the authenticity of said letter. And does this go to a larger collusion with Jeffrey Epstein and the abuse of young girls? And Bill Clinton's name never comes up.

Bill Clinton was on the flight logs as well. And, you know, they're apparently, allegedly, depending on who you talk to, sightings on the island, who knows? But the other thing about this, Megan, that I love is people online trying to figure out if the wording matches up with anything Donald Trump has said or written in the many decades we've known him. And we're more sophisticated now with AI. It reminds me, remember when Primary Colors came out and it was anonymously written and

it was like the inside scoop on the scandalous behind the the scenes going on with the Clintons. And within like a week, Drudge had it, it was Joe Klein, and some professor shot it through a computer and it did like a match up of words and they nailed him. First try. That's incredible. I forgot that. No, I didn't. Well, it's like, look, I'm sure Trump has used the word enigma here or there, but it's like people are parsing this and people I know who know President Trump very well say, this is by the way, like if Trump's going to write something, he's going to write it himself. He's not going to type write anything out. He might dictate a note and then sign it.

But like this doesn't have the sort of fingerprints of the normal Donald Trump note at all. The most, like Trump has sent me many notes over the year, at years, many, and 99% of the time, it's a newspaper article about him or me, that he wants me to see, and he signs it in that Donald Trump, you know, sort of straight up and down, like you say, skyscraper signature.

Um, no one having submitted a alleged draft of what, uh, this fake drawn woman looks like Phil Holloway attorney and frequent guest of the Megan Kelly show submitted this last night on X, which I got a genuine kick out of. submitted this last night on X, which I got a genuine kick out of. It's, it's. And he writes, they finally got him. It looks like what a three-year-old would draw with a stick figure of a woman

with just two circles for the boobs. And then this very elementary DJ T at the bottom. This is where our minds have to go, Maureen, because there's no proof. There's no proof that he wrote anything at all. Who past 1971 is using a typewriter? Who? Donald Trump is taking the time to typewrite.

Secondly, he does not strike me as a doodler, let alone a sketch artist. He doesn't seem to type. Apparently, he doodles. But to your Well, apparently he doodles, apparently he doodles, but to your point, you're gonna find this interesting. He like, everything he doodles, all the doodles that, you know, sometimes they ask you as a public figure for a doodle. And honestly, I'm like a 13 year old girl with mine,

and mine are all like hearts upside down and right side up and sideways and connected. He doodles the skyline of Manhattan. There's a, there are pictures online now of like, when they've asked Donald Trump for some of he doodles the skyline of Manhattan. There are pictures online now of like, when they've asked Donald Trump for some of his doodles, every single time, look at, there's one. Every single time it's a skyline of Manhattan.

So I don't think he really is a doodler when it comes to, and by the way, his statement says, first he writes, I never wrote a picture in my life. I don't draw pictures of women. It's not my language, it's not my words, which is interesting. Like if you find a doodle of hearts arranged in like a kaleidoscope type design,

and then you see Megyn Kelly in the middle, it might be mine, it might be mine. But he knows his doodles, and they're of the Manhattan skyline. And he's saying, I don't doodle pictures of women. And it's not my language or my words. In any event, back to my original point, which is who gives a shit, even if it were Trump, it says nothing. I guess we're going with the fact that he says, may every day be another wonderful secret. And the suggestion is what Trump was totally in on the fact that at that point, Jeffrey Epstein was a serial abuser. Okay. He was one of the only

ones who knew in 2003 because the charges weren't brought against him until 2006. And it was an explosive piece of news when it hit the public airwaves. Agreed. Just to get back to the art for a second, again, like those skyscrapers make total sense to me. Trump does not strike me as an abstract artist. He doesn't strike me as an abstract thinker. He thinks in very concrete linear terms. Linear. I just don't see him like Matisse, you know, trying to make some sort of female figure. And secondly, yeah, you know, it's all sort of meant to suggest that he was in on the trafficking and the grooming and the using and all of that. And I just think if you want to approach this thing logically, Trump is nothing but a self-preservationist.

He gets one whiff of what's going on with Jeffrey Epstein and that sweetheart deal, and he's keeping his distance. Well, the thing is, so now Trump says he's gonna sue Murdoch, the Wall Street Journal, and maybe other individuals, but I don't know that that will go anywhere. I really don't. It's very, very hard for a public figure to sue for defamation. It was easy in the Stephanopoulos case

because he said something that was factually wrong. It was very clear he said it over and over, and there was evidence that he was told by his producers it was wrong and he said it anyway. So all of that would suggest actual malice suggesting that he could lose, that Stephanopoulos and ABC were gonna lose in a courtroom saying he raped somebody when he didn't.

But this is a lot harder because how is Trump gonna prove he didn't write it? Like it's very hard to prove a negative that you didn't write it. And even if he didn't write it? Like it's very hard to prove a negative that you didn't write it. And even if he didn't write it, you'd have to prove knowledge of falsity on the journal's part, which is gonna be tough because the journal, while he denied it,

will have somebody testify, I didn't believe his denial. And here are the reasons why I thought it was real. So it's just the standard is so high for a public figure to claim he's been defamed. I don't know whether he could ever recover, but we've seen news organization after news organization fold when Trump comes after them because they've just chosen not to be on his bad side

and they don't wanna go through the hassle. I think that's why CBS folded and because it's trying to get a merger approved by Trump's government. In any event, he's pissed. And here's the other thing, Maureen, we all know if you're going to take a shot at the king, you best not miss. And that's really what the journal just did. Right. And you've talked about this a lot too. Does the journal, let's say he's, because he does

say this all the time, like, I'm going to see you and people think he's not going to do it. And he does it even if it seems not that strident or strong a case. And sometimes these organizations just don't want to go through discovery. They don't want to have to turn over those internal conversations via email or whatever. Maybe somebody was listening on the line when Trump went to Murdoch and said, this is a lie. And you print it, I'm going to sue you. You know, I mean, who knows the enmity between those two. I love it. I can't wait for the book someday. Yeah. The Trump Murdoch war. Well, you heard, uh, Tucker recently had an interview, made headlines where he, he told his guests, Tucker made news on his own show about himself, um, and his relationship with

the, with Fox and the Murdochs. And he said the Murdochs don't like Trump. He said they hate Trump and that they asked me, Tucker, to run for president after they fired me or canceled his show and me to stop Trump. Now, like I have no idea how the Murdochs feel about Trump, but the Wall Street Journal is owned by Rupert Murdoch and Trump is saying he spoke to Rupert. In fact, Trump tweeted out,

I told Rupert Murdoch and Trump is saying he spoke to Rupert. In fact, Trump tweeted out, I told Rupert not to not to print this. And I think he said he said he was going to stop it. I guess he didn't have the power, he says. And now he says he's going to see Rupert, the journal, et cetera. Look, I don't know. I think this is much to do about nothing, but it did lead to a different disclosure. Trump last night promising that in light of the amount of publicity around Jeffrey Epstein, he's gonna have Pam Bondi move to unseal the grand jury proceedings. That's a reference to the grand jury proceedings

that led to the Jeffrey Epstein indictment and the one that led to the Ghislaine Maxwell indictment, which I think is something, but not really. I mean, first of all, the judge can easily say no. It's not really up to the attorney general. Like the judge can just say no, because those are secret for a reason. Defense, like Jeffrey Epstein in that case,

Galane Maxwell and Hergay, they never got to see the grand jury proceedings. They, those are really secret for a reason. So I just, like even the defendant doesn't get to find out usually what happened in the proceeding. So the judge could easily say no. And I think people are looking for a universe of documents outside of what the limited field that was actually used to indict, which it would be a much more narrow slice of documents. But listen, like I said yesterday, no amount of disclosures at this point is really going to satisfy President Trump's worst critics. I would love to see more disclosure on Epstein.

I don't think the grand jury thing is gonna do it, but I don't know what would do it. And frankly, Maureen, now that it's turned into like this Democrat bloodbath into like, let's get him, all these fakers who claim that they care about this, I'm really kinda out. I just feel like, all right, you know what? There's never gonna be enough disclosure.

We're never really gonna know what happened on Epstein. And the Democrats are making such a mountain out of all this, trying to pin it on Donald Trump like he's, you know, Jeffrey Epstein 2.0. F them. Yeah. I mean, truly, when I heard that thing about the missing minute, a video footage from inside the prison and how that is allegedly just a thing, that like there's always that missing minute from 1159 to midnight. It just defies common sense and belief. There's so much about that famous coroner Mark Bodden, I think if I'm saying his name correctly, has said that-

Dr. Bodden, yeah. Michael. Yeah, that Michael Bodden, excuse me, thank you, that the injuries to Epstein's neck were not consistent with a hanging suicide. And we'll never know. We're never going to know. Frankly, the theory that's been floated on your show seems to make the most sense to me that he was an agent of Mossad and or the CIA. Yeah, an agent or asset in some way. Makes perfect sense to me too. Right, like that somebody decided he needed to go

or they were gonna help him go or they got somebody in the prison to help him along. But even, you know, Mike Francesi, he was a former mobster, great guy, he's got a very successful YouTube show, he's been on this program, I kind of love this guy. He was out there saying on News Nation this week, that can't happen, it's like virtually impossible.

He'd been in this prison. He's like, for a guy to actually successfully hang himself in a prison cell is near impossible. And there's no way this like effete, you know, soft-handed little billionaire financier guy had skills that like my people, Mike is saying, don't have and managed to get her done. So look, I just think it's a big mystery,

but I'm getting very irritated that this is turning into like a left-wing desire to say Trump is Epstein 2.0. Bullshit. That's such bull— there's such fucking dishonest cretins. The scandal, if there is one, is that there's probably more to know about Epstein and that Trump's attorney general has been promising there's more and she would deliver it. And then instead of saying, I was wrong, issued the two page memo in the dark of night. That's the story.

The story is not Trump is Epstein, Trump likes minors, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump. And I just feel like I'm out. It's been turned into a Democrat led scandal about Trump being an Epstein type. That's bullshit. I refuse to participate or fuel that fire. So we'll see. We'll see

what, if anything, they disclose, but it's crossed over to the point of absurd now. Okay. There's more to discuss. There's a lot more to discuss. Like Stephen Colbert's show has been canceled. That's like, it's great. Great news, is it not? This is incredible on so many levels. And I'm going to call them on this for the mail. So I was reading, this is such a New York Times way to cover it. So they talked to this guy in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, who was out having dinner and got the alert on his phone that the Colbert show has been canceled. And he sprung up like he was Batman getting the bat signal

and got on the subway and rode it right up to the Ed Sullivan Theater to mourn with Colbert's like three other fans up there. It's amazing. It says everything about the irrelevance of this show. That is amazing. And let me tell you something else. This just hit from reporter Matt Bellany,

founding partner of Puck News and formerly Hollywood reporter. The timing and optics, he says, are terrible for the Colbert cancellation. Not true, not true, not true. The timing and optics are perfect. Only leftists think that the timing and optics are terrible because they think somehow this was retaliatory because Stephen Colbert was ripping on CBS for entering into that $16 million settlement with Donald Trump who was suing them over the 60 minutes Kamala Harris interview and the edited clips claiming it was a deceptive practice under Texas law.

So they settled the case for 16 million bucks because frankly it's obvious, they have a merger going on right now where their parent company Paramount is trying to sell itself to Skydance. And they need approval by Trump's FCC. And the belief is that they just paid what to them is a drop in the bucket to make Trump go away

on this lawsuit. Okay, fine. Well, Colbert went out there and cried. Do we have him ripping on it? I don't think we have that. But anyway Colbert went out there and cried. Do we have him ripping on it? I don't think we have that. But anyway, he went on there recently and he ripped on his own employer for this settlement. And that's why the left is like,

oh, the optics are terrible. Like this is clearly just like, they fired Colbert to satisfy Trump. Number one, if that's true, you can put another feather in Trump's cap for doing something great and making America great again. Okay. Number two, there's zero proof to that effect whatsoever and Sherry Redstone, who is the head of CBS,

has known that Colbert is a chief Trump antagonist and that Trump hates Colbert since the beginning of Colbert and Trump as dual public figures and has not fired Colbert, has renewed him time and time again, including recently for a three-year deal when she must've known this merger was in the works. So like, it doesn't make sense to me,

but here's why I raised the Matt Bellany report here. It's not for his prelude with which I disagree. He says, but he says, Colbert's show costs more than $100 million a year to produce and is losing more than $40 million a year. That's unbelievable. So net-net it takes in about 60. It's losing $40 million a year.

He writes CBS execs had been mulling for a long time whether to pull the plug. This is amazing for so many reasons, but culturally it's so indicative of, it's another nail in the coffin for legacy media. And it's not just that they're canceling Colbert, they're killing the show altogether. Now late night talk shows have been in America's living rooms basically since the birth of television. We've been hearing rumblings over at ABC that they're none too pleased with Jimmy Kimmel's performance and he's the next one to go. Jimmy Fallon is down to four days a night, and there have been rumors that his show is on the chopping block. Seth Meyers,

who is in the 1230 slot at NBC, had to fire his band as a cost-cutting measure. Ellen DeGeneres lost her show. She's out of the country. Oprah has become a joke in the culture. Kelly Clarkson, who was the last remaining monocultural daytime talk show, is losing her mind over there. That show is apparently, whether it's the jab plus the schedule, she is in a meltdown for the ages. She just canceled her Las Vegas residency Adele Style, like a minute before she was supposed to take the stage. Yeah.

So it's just, it's a dying format. It's a dying art form. People are going to YouTube, to the digital lane, elsewhere. Finally, with Stephen Colbert, I mean, he is such a school marm. He is such a hectoring, humorless lecturer. Hardworking people at the end of their night do not want to be lectured by the likes of a bespectacled Stephen Colbert projecting from his diaphragm. They want some laughs. They want some stuff to go down easy and they want to be lulled to sleep. He's

not the guy. No, here's a sample of what his show looked like in recent months. And this, I would submit to you, is why Stephen Colbert's show is no more. It's not fine. What's going on in LA reminds us that as citizens, it is crucial to speak out against Trump's fascist impulses, his rampant corruption,

and his egregious violations of our norms and our laws. The last time a president bypassed a governor to send in the National Guard was 1965, when LBJ used troops to protect civil rights demonstrators in Alabama. So we've come full circle. Troops were deployed to protect protesters by Lyndon B. Johnson, And now they're being used to threaten protesters by Donald B. Dick. Today we learned that U.S. intelligence has determined Iran's stockpile of enriched uranium was not destroyed and their centrifuges are largely intact.

Oops-a-nookie. So less Operation Midnight Hammer and more Operation MC Hammer. Oh, I got so dumb. Marina's a writer. That is a terrible joke. $100 million to produce that? Are you kidding me? He should take a meeting over at MSNBC and see if he can get Jen Psaki's failing slot.

That seems like more the natural environment for him. That's what he wants. He doesn't want laughs. He wants applause for political hit pieces, which he really loves to do. So great, why don't we just acknowledge that and stop pretending he's a comedian

who is in the business of being funny? He isn't. And then he puts on politicians, he doesn't cross examine them in any way, you know, he doesn't hold his own or hold his salt against people like Kamala Harris by bringing up things that are diametrically opposed to what he's being told. So I don't know. I mean, so he will fit in perfectly on MS, by the way.

I mentioned that the left is freaking out. Not just like the normal left. I'm talking about like, political people are weighing in. Elizabeth Warren's having a meltdown, Stacey Abrams having a meltdown right now on X, because they think this was punishment for I mentioned this bit where he ripped down the Paramount settlement with Trump.

Here he was on Monday, Sat one. While I was on vacation, my parent corporation, Paramount paid Donald Trump a $16 million settlement over his 60-minutes lawsuit. Now I believe that this kind of complicated financial settlement with a sitting government official has a technical name in legal circles. It's Big Fat Bribe. Because this all comes as Paramount's owners are trying to get the Trump administration

to approve the sale of our network to a new owner, Skydance. Not the music I was expecting? Okay. That was me dancing in the sky. And some of the TV typers out there are blogging that once Skydance gets CBS, the new owner's desire to please Trump could put pressure on late night host and frequent Trump critic Stephen Colbert. Okay, okay, but how are they gonna put pressure on Stephen Colbert if they can't

find him? Oh my god, it's not it's not funny. It's not clever. It also just goes to the sheer hubris. He thinks he's bigger than his bosses. He thinks he's bigger than CBS and Paramount and this merger that they've been trying to make happen forever with Skydance and they're going to get it done. It seems like they are determined to get this done. He goes on there and he's like, look at me, I'm such a rebel. You can't silence me.

You won't find me. Again, like who is he serving other than the ego of Stephen Colbert? And I'm so glad he brought up that Kamala interview too. Sorry, but like remember she went on, it was like days before the election, maybe a week. And you could see him having the realization in real time, this woman's a moron. I can't get her to complete a thought.

He was trying to spoon feed her some rhetoric and she wouldn't take it. She wouldn't take it. She was doing some of her fake accents at the time. He was probably taking it back by the who he was dealing with. Is Jamaican Kamala here? Is Latina Kamala? We have no idea. No, he was trying to get her like back off of what she said on The View about not disowning any Joe Biden's positions and she wouldn't take the bait. It was just, look, he's a terrible man.

I really think he's just not a good guy. I mean, he completely took that show, which was a great sort of platform in nighttime television and the Ed Sullivan Theater and completely drove it into the ground. He had originally been at Comedy Central where he was more comedy. And when he moved over to CBS, he decided to be more pundit.

He desperately wanted to be Keith Olbermann. And guess what? Keith Olbermann is a failure and now so are you Stephen Colbert. And they were paying him $15 million a year for that nonsense that we just witnessed, for him to dance around with vaccine needles during the COVID pandemic,

which we all knew was controversial, but no, the left had decided that they were some sort of Eucharist. And for $15 million a year on a show that's losing $40 million a year, he had to see the writing on the wall. In fact, you could make a good argument that he went out there on that Monday and did that so he would have something to point back to as why he got fired

when he knew all along his ratings were totally shitty and he didn't know how to book for late night. His guest the last night he was on Maureen. This is late night television. You get a Tom Cruise, right? You get The Rock. You get Julia Roberts or Sidney Sweeney. That is how you do late night TV.

Look who he led with his last night on the air. Watch. Ever since I led his first impeachment, he's threatened me with jail and prosecution. He called me a traitor, accused me of treason, blah, blah, blah. He coerced Republicans into sentencing me in the House, and now the latest attack on me. So I just want to direct this, if this is the right camera, or maybe that's the right camera.

That's the right camera right there. Donald, piss off. Oh, oh. But, I, uh, I, I, wait, wait, wait. Um, there's no horizon there, I'm not getting there. But, I, wait Donald, before you piss off, would you release the Epstein files? Amazing. That didn't work. Such secondhand embarrassment watching that for everyone involved, but especially these

milk toast guys who try to like sound so cool and edgy and telling the sitting president of the United States. Imagine if anyone on the right had done that on late night when Obama was president. I mean, the outrage we'd be hearing, you know, that kind of rhetoric. Adam Schiff, I mean, I guarantee you like most people who are schlepping their way through an airport or a hospital waiting room would be like, who's that guy again? Who's that guy? That's like a Sunday morning show guest, you know, like a meet the press or something. It's not a late night, sizzly, exciting, sexy guest.

Oh, and the other great thing I meant to... He what? He was the lead. It's one thing if you put him on third, in a longer lineup where you have an actual star leading it. People don't want to tune in to see the lead guess is Adam Schiff. It's his nightmare. Oh my God. The other great thing I just read before the show was that apparently Stephen Colbert was informed by his bosses that he was getting the axe just the night before. And that to me sounds like a real humiliation. And that

to me sounds like those bosses wanted to really stick it to him because they'd had it with him and his attitude. I would bet behind the scenes, he is a nightmare monster. I would bet. Yeah. Oh, here he is actually speaking to that in SOT2 where he announced on Thursday night's program that the show had been canceled, watch. Before we start the show, I wanna let you know something that I found out

just last night. Next year will be our last season. The network will be ending the Late Show in May. And... Oh! Yeah, I share your feelings. And... Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!

Oh! Yeah, I share your feelings. It's not just the end of our show, but it's the end of the Late Show on CBS. I'm not being replaced. This is all just going away. That's how bad you were. I do wanna say,

I do wanna say that the folks at CBS have been great partners. I'm so grateful to the Tiffany Network for giving me this chair and this beautiful theater to call home. And of course, I'm grateful to you, the audience, who have joined us. Okay, let me tell you something, Maureen. His numbers were 2.42 million viewers in the overall. And that put him slightly ahead of Jimmy Kimmel,

who is at 1.77. And The Tonight Show was in third at 1.19 million. Jimmy, I mean, yeah, Jimmy Fallon has no viewers. I mean, my God, I can't believe he's drawing a million. Guaranteed, he's gonna be fired. Those numbers are not sustainable because all these shows cost close to $100 million. They are not cheap to produce.

There's zero chance that lasts. But then you look at the 18 to 49 demo where Kimmel was now beating Colbert. It was close. He was at 220,000, but that's a pittance. 220,000 in the 18 to 49 year old demo. And Colbert had 219,000. Fallon bringing up a distant rear at 157,000.

And let me just tell you what Greg Gutfeld is getting over on Fox, where if the budget for that show is 10 million, it's a lot. Excluding Greg's salary, which I'm gonna guess is better than that. But in any event, 3.29 million, Greg Gutfeld gets 3.29 million. Any of these other guys would beg for 3.29 million. And in the 18 to 49 year old demo,

an average of 238,000, higher than all of them for a fraction of the cost because, yes, Greg gets political, but he never forgets the number one rule is to make people laugh. Exactly. The interesting thing about Fallon having the lowest ratings is that he's the most apolitical of them all. If anything, his show is just watching him kiss ass. That's also really embarrassing and difficult to watch. It's really painful. And then he plays these idiotic games with them. The whole thing, it just feels old. It feels philosophically, spiritually, contextually for the modern age wherein it just feels old. All of these guys, they're just whistling past their own graveyards.

It's a matter of time before they all get pulled. That's so exactly right. I've watched some Kimmel. I mean, sorry, I don't watch Kimmel. I can't stand him. The best thing I can say about Jimmy Kimmel is that he's friends with Adam Carolla, who's a truly decent, honorable, great guy. But Kimmel doesn't strike me that way. But Fallon is not a bad guy.

Fallon is a sweetheart. But Fallon's schtick is completely empty and has lost all sense of entertainment. I take him out of the three of them any day of the week. But Fallon's programming, forgive me, it's not smart, in no way is it intellectually engaging. And while he used to be genuinely funny, like when he first got on,

I think he was hungrier or something, maybe he had better writers, I don't know. But now it just seems completely phoned in. He's not that funny in the moment. I hate to say it, because I really think he's a sweet guy. And I knew him at NBC a bit, and he was one of the highlights there. Because he's not a bad guy,

unlike Kimmel and certainly unlike Colbert, but that doesn't work. And you mentioned Oprah, it really is the same thing. In the same way these guys are doing the same thing they were doing 15 years ago and it's just not working anymore. She's still out there thinking she's just as relevant as she was in 1994, trying to like think she, she thinks she can drive a presidential election. You

know, she thinks she's the answer to Kamala Harris's problems. She still thinks she's going to be the one who does like the big sit down on this that the other thing, ozempic, whatever it is, and she'll be the leader of the national. No one gives two shits what Oprah thinks about anything anymore. They don't. And in fact, Oprah has completely destroyed her own branch through her own making over at the nerve. We're like dedicated to hitting her good and hard at least once a month. She deserves it. Thank you. But I don't know if you happen to see this photo for,

I mean, it says everything to me. I was like, these are the three horsewomen of the apocalypse. We've got Gail, who was last seen tying Oprah's shoelaces literally at the Bezos-Sanchez wedding. Amazing photo, Backrid took it. So Gail and Oprah's on the right and in the center is one Chris Jenner, and they are modeling $228 designer caftans, a collaboration I believe between Roberto Cavalli and Skim's Kim K's brand, Chris's. So this is what they're spending their cultural currency on,

hanging around the likes of Chris Jenner and going into space with Lauren Sanchez and just be fouling Venice at that obscenity of a wedding. And then Oprah's gonna turn around and come back to the United States and tell us how to live our lives, our best lives, and how to be arbiters of moral rectitude. I mean, F off. And then her failure of a friend, Gayle. Like Gayle is obviously in the host position at CBS News in the morning because she's Oprah's

best friend. Everybody knows that. Nobody knows what Gayle has accomplished on her own. She was a newswoman in Baltimore when Oprah was and they became best friends lifelong. And that's why you see her at the Jeff Bezos wedding because she's Oprah's plus one. You never see Stedman.

It's always Gail, Gail, Gail, Gail, who gloms onto Oprah's, you know, coattails and gets herself on the David Geffen yacht and has used that to sort of get access to celebrities and celebrity interviews so that she can have a career. Now, Gail is just as, I mean, she's in a star effort. That's what Gail is. That's why she said yes to go to Lauren Sanchez's wedding.

They don't know Lauren Sanchez. Neither one of them knows Lauren Sanchez. She got invited to go up in Blue Origin, undoubtedly because they thought that would lead CBS News to cover it. Gail, as we all know, I mean, those of us who have been in particular know, she humiliated herself.

She insisted people start calling her an astronaut and acknowledge how inspirational she was. And she's circling the drain now too in the ratings over at CBS. So CBS has got a lot of problems up and down its lineup. As you point out, Colbert chief among them. And if they really want any sort of a future in the very limited time there is left for broadcast TV,

then they really will have to change their approach across the board. They will. I hope that the Colbert firing augurs the inevitable and hopefully undistinguished embarrassing firing of Gayle King. I mean, to your point about Stedman, I think it's time to do a wellness check on Stedman. I think it's possible that Gayle and Oprah have buried the body on the estate in Montecito. We have not seen him in months.

It's kind of like David Miscovich, the head of Scientology, like the, we're Sherry movement. We're Shelley. Like, nobody's seen the, Shelley, nobody's seen the wife in like 15 years. Yeah. It's true, Shelley's with Stedman.

We don't know where. Like, it's like when you're talking. All right, now we're gonna have a couple of minutes before the break. Let me try to squeeze this in because I do wanna get to Barbara when we come back. Did you see the Kiss Cam disaster at the Coldplay concert? As I said to your producer, Steve,

it's the most interesting thing Coldplay has ever done. Yeah. So noted. So it turns out, okay, this is the head of this company called Astronomer, which I guess is an AI company with the head of his HR, oh, the irony, clearly having what looks like an affair and caught on the kiss cam inadvertently

at the Coldplay concert. I didn't realize the reason it went viral is because one of the Coldplay fans was filming the kiss cam moment and put it out on her social media and it caught on. So it was really a civilian who wound up drawing all those attention to them. And reportedly this guy is not well liked at his own company. There's a former employee who's out there online.

He could be disgruntled. We don't know the circumstances under which he left, but he says his chat chat chain with all the employees at Astronomer, they're laughing their asses off, enjoying what's happening to this CEO, whose wife has reportedly now dropped her married name on her Facebook page and left comments open and seems like she understands exactly what we understood

taking a look at those too. Why is this so viral? I wonder if it just taps into the fear. We live in a surveillance state. We really do. Any one of us at any given time could be caught doing something either in politic or morally dubious and the world suddenly knows about it. And, you know, there's a great author named John Ronson who wrote a book about this. There was like, do you remember the publicist from New York who tweeted out before she boarded a flight, I'm going to Africa, hope I don't get AIDS. And then she turned her phone off. And when she landed in Africa, she had been canceled and lost her job and her life was over. And I think that this is that writ large kind of, you know, but you're on the kiss cam and your marriage is just blown up

and your job is over and life is over. You know, it's like, it's that you're right. It's surveillance state. And it's also just like everyone's nightmare about their spouse. You know, it's like right there in full technicolor in front of you, unsuspecting, but like very PDA. You know, it's like, that's how everybody's commenting. Like if you're going to have an affair, why would you go to the Coldplay concert?

Like an affair is for a hotel room late at night in like dark corners. It's not at the Coldplay concert. By the way, there is a statement circulating online that people are saying is his, our information is it's fake. So we're not going to report it or go there. But yeah, affairs, I mean, by definition are sort of meant to be hidden and the boldness of this guy and yet still the shame when caught. I don't even think it was shame. I think it was, oh, shh. You're like, oh, oh, oh, like there's no getting around this. There's no lie I can tell. Like you can't lie your way

out of video. You can't, you know, it's, it's right there in real time. And they both knew their lives in that moment had blown up. And I think for everyone who has ever worked for or is still in corporate America, just the deliciousness of this happening to an HR exec is unparalleled. It's true. We all hate HR. That's why we don't have HR here at the Megyn Kelly show. But yeah, the nerve of this woman to come in, you look back, I have to say it like his, oh God, do I have it here? Do I have time? I know we're up against the clock. So when he hired her, they put out like a press release

and I have to tell you, maybe I'm crazy, but the like words that were used to celebrate her arrival at the firm were kind of weird. I'm just gonna say they jumped out at me. He was like, she's exceptional, deep expertise, such employee engagement. She's got passion for fostering diverse, such employee engagement. She's got passion for fostering diverse, collaborative workplaces.

Certainly doesn't look collaborative. She's a perfect fit for astronomer. I don't, maybe I'm just a pervert, but as I read it, he's like, she's a perfect fit. She's energized. She has passion and engagement, deep expertise, exceptional. I'm like, he was telling us something.

If he just had to read what he said to astronomers. He hired her. My question as the wife would be, when did it start? And also as the person who lost out on the top HR job, when did it start? Did it happen before you brought her in for the top job here or after? Because she hasn't been there very long. Yeah. And you know, the other thing that's really refreshing about this story is seeing the wife immediately drop the husband's surname and leave her comments on and make it very clear that there is no path back. There is no sort of, you know, we live in this world of like my truth and like my version

and like it's not, you know, and she, she, she saw what she saw and she's like, that's it. And if you look at the wife, she's much more attractive than the affair partner. Just saying. She's very attractive. And she's the mother of his two children. Back right away, Maureen's with us for the full show. Don't go anywhere. If you are a homeowner, listen to this.

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All right, let's go on Barbara Walters. Let's do this thing. There is a new documentary out on Hulu about Barbara and it is called, Tell Me Everything. Barbara Walters tell me everything here is the trailer are you sorry you didn't burn the tapes did you ever order anyone killed no please do not interrupt me I don't care if I'm shiny I care more about this interview whether it's her looks or her voice just

the fact that she was a woman there were people that just didn't believe in her. And she loved proving them wrong. OK, let's go. Her job was the love of her life. But are you afraid of sharing emotions? There's certain things I just don't enjoy sharing. What's there to know? You would drive me nuts, and I would drive you crazy,

because I would be saying, but you know. Well, we could try it and see if it worked out. I could try it and see if it worked out. I think we'll stop and reload. Right now, ladies and gentlemen, I introduce to you one of America's top news correspondents whose provocative interviews have riveted television viewers. Would you welcome Barbara Walters?

Okay, first of all, they stole that song from Bombshell, which is a movie I'm familiar with. Really? Yes. So that was not the greatest choice. But second of all, okay, the reason I really want to get into this is because I heard you talk about Barbara Walters in this show, on your show. And I agree with everything you said. And I want to talk that. But I also wanna talk about like the full picture of this woman because she's a very interesting figure in our culture was, but her legacy remains. And it's very complex in some ways.

And it's like, this is a person who I admired in some ways and whom I'll be honest, I judged in some other harsh ways, who I know some things about behind the scenes that I'll share with you today. And whose decision making I think was understandable, but very controversial, very controversial, especially when you look at it through a 2025 lens and all we've learned about the choices women make.

So anyway, that's where I'm coming in on this. But let's kick it off with where you were on your show and you were spot on talking about how when you look back through a 2025 lens at the questions that really made Barbara Walters a star, in part, it was these questions that she would ask that nobody else would ask. You realize she was kind of an asshole.

The questions were very nasty all the time. Like often she said it with a smile and sort of the velvet glove, but they weren't nice. You called attention to this one. I'll play it here. It's her with Bette Midler, SOT32. What do you think of the way you look? I think I look great.

No, no kidding. Why do I say no kidding? Yeah, hey. Because. Hey, hey, get out of my house. I asked you, would you say that to Bo Derek? Because everything that I've read about you, you always talk about how when you were a kid,

you thought you were so ugly. Right, you really think you're just. I think I look great. Just to put just a plea for sympathy. So you should always get the crowd on your side. You know, you think you're sexy on the scale of one to ten. What do you do? What am I on a scale of one to ten?

Oh, I I think I'm about a fifty five. I don't know. I think I'm a happening girl. I mean, good for bad for laughing it off and handling it very well. I have to say, you got to give her a tap at the tip of the hat. But wow. It's so mean. And you see this as a threat. I mean, I'm so happy we're talking about this. I really was dying to talk to you about it because she, as threat. I mean, I'm so happy we're talking about this. I really was dying to talk to you about it because as you said, it's so complicated because I too grew up watching Barbara Walters and those prime time celebrity and political interviews she did. I'm looking at her

like it was her and Mary Tyler Moore. I could do this someday If she could do it. And you see when you watch these back, the dark thread of cruelty and meanness, it's especially directed at women she's interviewing who you sense she is deeply envious of for one reason or another. She did the same thing to Elizabeth Taylor. It's in the documentary. One of the greatest beauties of the 20th century. And she got Liz when Liz was very vulnerable. We have it, 1977, SOT 35.

You take it on the back end. Are you worried about putting on weight? No. Does it matter to you? No, it doesn't because I'm so happy and I enjoy eating. I like to cook and I enjoy eating and I rather… You wouldn't care if you got fat? I am fat.

Now? God, yeah. I didn't want to say it. I can hardly get into any of my… I didn't want to say it. Yeah, she did. She did. And I love Liz for that.

I love Liz Taylor for so many reasons, but she was one of the most vulnerable, raw celebrities, public figures. She would cop to so much. She really went through it. And she was the first real voice out there when AIDS exploded. She was the first celebrity with the guts to say, let's not stigmatize gay men. This is bullshit. Anyway, Barbara did it again to Liz who's sitting there with the Senator John Warner, who Barbara dated before Liz married him and

then who Barbara went back to after Liz divorced him. So there's all this kind of real psychological darkness. And what I wish I had touched on the interview she did with Dolly Parton, again, one of the most beloved women in America, a great beauty at the height of her beauty, youth power. She says to Dolly, you know where I come from Dolly, we would call people like you and your family hellbillies. What do you have to say to that? That's right on Brand. And Dolly handles her like a pro,

you know she handles her like a pro and she said, you know we have a lot of pride, I'm sorry. No, no, we have a little montage of some of her more controversial questions and exchanges. I think that's in there. Let's watch it, Top 30. What do you think of the way you look? Do you think you're sexy? I know I'm sexy, but on the scale of one to ten, what are you?

Brooke, what are your measurements? Do you have any secrets from your mother? Dolly, where I come from, what I have called you a hillbilly, is it all you? Did you think you were good looking? No. Why didn't you have your nose fixed? Everybody must have said to you, have your nose fixed. How did you know it was going to be right?

Are you happy with your wife? Martha, why do so many people hate you? Each and every one of us has people that love us and people that hate us. No, not everybody has people who hate them. You know you could stop these rumors you could say as many artists have. Yes, I am gay or you could say no, I'm not or you could leave it as you are

ambiguous little overweight more than a little. Why do you try to die. There are people who say that you couldn't be president because you're so happy you don't want to talk about guys and I want to push it, but how you can find anybody you don't really act you don't sing you don't dance you don't have any. To give me any town. Sorry that was the Kardashians.

I'll give her that last one. But you are sensing a theme. You are sensing a theme. And it's amazing how she got away with that. And it's amazing the celebrities who sort of, you know, because she had this MO, she would ramp up to it. You know, it was all softballs and we're just having drinks. It's the girls chatting, chatting, chatting.

And then bam, she whams you. You don't think you're ugly? To an original talent like Bette Midler, who probably heard it from a million casting executives, or Barbara Streisand. You know why she didn't want to fix her nose, Barbara? Because she had a one in a generation voice and she probably didn't want to mess with it. She didn't want to risk losing her gift.

Are you kidding? She would never have survived in the social media age where just people will not have it. She would have gotten it from the rest of us for being so darn mean. Yeah. I mean, it was what, ironically, it was one of the things we all kind of liked about her interviews because you didn't know

where they were gonna go. She would ask the forbidden question and you were like, oh, and then you watched it. And sometimes it led to gold. I mean, I don't take it with a grain of salt the way I'm saying it, but I'm gonna show you an interview where her willingness to ask the impertinent question really unearthed something big

that turned into a huge story. And it was when she sat down with Mike Tyson and his then wife, Robin Given. Here's a little bit of that, Givens, top 34. Does he hit you? He shakes, he pushes, he swings. He, sometimes I think he's trying to scare me. There were times when it happened when I thought I could handle it, you know.

And just recently I've become afraid. I mean very, very much afraid. I wanted to do this interview with the two of you together. I could have talked to Robin outside and you outside, but I wanted you to hear this because I wanted people to understand. And you're sitting here and listening to this. This is a situation in which I'm dealing with my illness. Mm hmm. So like her powers could could be used for good, you know, like, just that willingness to go anywhere and be sort of fearless in asking these questions.

It was part of a more complete package that worked on television. It did. You know, I was reminded by somebody, because I remember that interview so vividly, it made, of course, it made tons of headlines. This was long before Tyson was arrested, tried, and convicted of rape. In the aftermath of that interview, the person who was really vilified was Robin Givens. It was Robin Givens who caught a lot of flack for, like, how dare you try to imply that this poor guy from an underprivileged background who clawed his way out and is a prize fighter,

but maybe not as smart as you, how dare you try to destroy his reputation with these baseless claims that... She really walked right up to saying, he beats me. He beats me. And again, there's so much of that, the way it would play out today would be completely different. Barbara, I believe just left with her camera crew

and that night, apparently Given's called 911 because of course Tyson was infuriated by that line of questioning. So there's so much about it that's just so fascinating to look back and think, you know, where she went right in the culture and what she gave us and where she she went so so very wrong. They talk about how like the thing about Barbara that I respected, and I knew her a bit, was she came up 100% in a man's world. It was a male dominated industry, news entirely, and they did not want her. She started off as a lighter features reporter on the Today Show where she'd been a writer

and she was a good writer. And so they gave her a chance on camera and they point out in the documentary, they weren't hiring women who she says look like me. That's what she says at that time. They wanted models. That's what the Today Show was doing at that time. But Barbara didn't look like a model. And she got on because she could write and she was scrappy and she was willing to do the job. And then she started proving herself and she definitely had talent in front of a lens. And as she worked her way up and became a star, I mean, it was like sheer star power because she was talented and she worked hard and made a name for herself at a time when

it was very hard to do. She was resented, you know, and they put her into the evening news slot and her co-host hated her, hated her guts when she left NBC, the Today Show, went over to ABC, and she thought it was the opportunity of a lifetime. It wasn't. She said it was the most unhappy period of her life because her co-host, I'm forgetting his name right now, couldn't stand her and treated her absolutely terribly.

And the entire staff hated her because they were more with him. And a woman in the evening news slot was unthinkable to anybody, even though everybody in the country loved Barbara Walters until they put her in that slot, which was for men, not for her. And then ABC got smart and kind of catapulted her to these specials and to 2020 with Hugh Downs.

And that's where she really sort of got into the sweet spot of what she could do. You know, like great interviewing, great gets. But the thing about Barbara Walters that I just have never been able to get past, having read her autobiography, Audition, when it first came out, I think it was 2007 or eight, is that it was all she had. The news, her pursuit of stardom,

and those who knew her, and they say this in the documentary, money, power, that was it. That was all she had. Yes, she had a daughter with whom she did not have a good relationship. And her quotes about her daughter, both in this documentary where they clearly got her obviously on tape before she passed.

This is her daughter, Jackie, who she named after her sister, Jackie, are really kind of devastating. She clearly didn't get along with her. I don't think she had much use for her. I don't think she did a lot of mothering of her. And she came from sort of a messed up family. She had her older sister who she talks about hating because she was special needs.

And frankly, it was a, I mean, it's kind of a courageous admission for her to say, I hated that she was special needs because it kind of ruined my life, my childhood in a way. And then her father had, he made and lost several fortunes, she wrote in her book. He basically was running something that looked like Ziegfeld Follies. He started it in Boston. It was very, very popular. He brought it to Times Square and elsewhere and it really took off the dancers and the feathers.

She grew up seeing all these celebrities behind the scenes and that's how she got comfortable with them and realized they're just like everybody else. I'm not intimidated by them. They've got interesting stories to tell and you shouldn't put them up in a pedestal. But her father lost fortunes, got in trouble with the law and she had to work to help support the family, which she also resented. She also says she doesn't know if her mother ever loved her father.

So that's a home she came from and the home she created where she had, I think, three husbands and one adopted daughter who she never spent time with, who went to a special like home for kids or like school for troubled kids. And I'm going to elaborate on this in a moment. But to me, that's the real tragedy, Maureen, because I think if you look at Oprah and Barbara in this regard, I have to give it to Oprah, who I think realized she would not have been a good mother. She could not be

a mother to children. And instead, and she talks about having followed Barbara's lead, like to just go full bore in the journalism industry instead. The difference is Barbara did have a child. She adopted a little girl and from all accounts, completely neglected her entirely. And that's what's so sad. When she died, all the tributes poured in, and people who hadn't read her memoir or didn't know that much about her, just kept praising what a wonderful journalist she was.

And all I could think as both the journalist and my mom myself was, it's only half the story. It's only half the story. And it's okay to talk about the other half. I think Barbara Walters would be okay with talking about the most important thing she ever undertook in her life she completely failed at. You know, Megan, this is such a great point and I was really horrified by the way she would talk about her daughter. She would talk about her often on The View, the way she would allow the story to be framed

in the mainstream media. How interesting would it have been to interview Barbara Walters in 2025 and ask her the tough questions, the uncomfortable questions that she was so willing to ask other famous women such as, do you think you were a good mother? Do you think you did all you could to be there for your daughter as she navigated, not just growing up as an adopted child, which is in itself a trauma. It's a very little discussed one in the culture, but you come to a home knowing that your birth parents, your birth mother at least, has given you away.

That is a deep abiding trauma. And Barbara, I theorize, felt like this was the done thing. You were a woman, you had a kid, She adopted a kid. She left that child with the governess. Cynthia McFadden helpfully tells us, by the way, this documentary has not one true friend of Barbara Walters in it because I don't think she had a single true friend. I think she was so laser focused on becoming famous. And I think it's all wrapped up in this Freudian notion of her father who was probably cheating on her mother with these beautiful show girls

and preferred to be in nightclubs with celebrities rather at home with his own children. And when she would get on The View, she would name drop like crazy while saying she didn't care about celebrities. And I noted that, so there were two things she would always do on The View. One is she would always do on The View. One is she

would talk about how every year she shared a birthday with Michael. I mean, every year, of course, they would go to dinner because she, Michael Douglas, and Catherine Zeta-Jones, his wife, all shared the same birthday. Those two are nowhere to be seen in this documentary, nor is her daughter Jackie, who every summer, the hosts of The View would sit around and talk about their summer plans and then they would say to Barbara, oh, Barbara, are you going to see Jackie this summer? And Barbara would always say, well, you know, Jackie's very, very busy and I don't want to be in position. So of course, if she has the time, you know, her daughter clearly wanted

nothing to do with her. Barbara sent her packing. Her daughter developed a drug dependency, which makes total sense because this poor kid is left to fend for herself while her mother is out chasing celebrities and exclusives and she's lonely and she feels unloved and she self-medicates. And then Barbara sends her packing to one of those homes for like emotionally troubled youth. And we all know what goes on in a lot of those homes. And then Barbara goes to the media and she says, poor me, poor me with a drug addicted daughter. How am I supposed to abide this? I've done everything. You know, it was just so disgusting. And it just sort of went to this notion that like, disgusting. And it just sort of went to this notion that like, it was a hollow person inside. It was an underdeveloped, hollow person inside who prioritized all of the wrong things and

who could only really see the world and even her very troubled dying for parental love daughter through the lens of her own ultimate narcissism. Mm-hmm, yes, yes, because she writes in the book about how Jackie, the daughter, wound up at this school for troubled youth, and she seems in her book to be mystified about how this happened. Like, I don't understand. I did everything I could.

You know, when she started showing behavioral problems, I did everything I could. No, you didn't, you didn't. You were with Fidel Castro. You were with Clint Eastwood. You did everything I could. No, you didn't, you didn't. You were with Fidel Castro. You were with Clint Eastwood. You were with Tom Cruise. You were with Taylor Swift. Like that's, when you have a troubled child,

you have to step away from, it's a balancing act for every working mom. And most of the working moms out there are working because they must. There's some collection that do it because they love their work. I happen to count myself thankfully among them, but there are vast more people who do it because they have to.

They have, it's a tough economy and they needed to figure salary or some women don't even have a partner and they have to support their children. So they have to work, but then when the shit hits the fan with your kid, you have no choice, but to spend more time with them. And it was the thing she didn't do.

There's this quote I've mentioned on this show before from her book, I pulled it for today. She's talking about her daughter. Well, she's all over the world flitting about doing these interviews. "'I telephoned whenever I could, "'told Jackie I missed her and loved her dearly and asked Zell the nanny to turn on the Today Show before Jackie went off

to nursery school so she could see her mommy in the strange land called China. Then I hung up the phone, felt even lonelier and went back to work. Now, that I think is real, her putting the daughter in front of the television to spend time with mom while she's away. What I don't really think is real

is that she felt bad about it. I don't think Barbara did feel bad about it, and I'll tell you why. And this is not going to appear in the documentary. Someone I know, this is a first hand account, told me that on The View, they used to make a big deal out of Barbara's birthdays every year.

And one year they had a big birthday party. I believe this was on the air. I haven't got back to check this, but I have no reason to doubt it. They had a big birthday party, yay, yay, yay, you turned whatever it was. And they wheel They had a big birthday party, yay, yay, yay, you turned whatever it was, and they wheeled out a big cake. And in the cake, surprise, was her daughter.

And on the air, I guess, you know, she was, she played it off, of course, like, oh, my daughter, wow, wow, wow. And this person told me after the show, she was livid with the producers and scolded them to high heaven for bringing her daughter in without asking her because she had plans that weekend and she did not want to have to deal with her pain in the ass daughter suddenly there and wanting to spend time with her.

I know that this is, this was told to me by somebody who was there and again, who I had total trust in. And I've never been able to look at her the same. And when she died, there were all the tributes worrying about what a wonderful journalist she was, how like she was a pioneer for women. You know, she did, she paved the path. And I acknowledge that I am somebody in some ways she paved the path for,

but I have this other knowledge of her that I find deeply disturbing. And now that we're coming to grips in 2025 America with what it means to be a working woman, I have the same recoiling feeling when I watched the documentary, the whole story has to be told. The whole story of what it means when you make this choice

to both work and have children should be told and how some women have navigated it well and some women haven't. And this, I think Barbara Walters was never cut out to be a mother and she should have done the Oprah thing. She should have said, this one's not for me. Mm-hmm. It's not for, yeah. I mean, that story is horrific. That story, she's a monster. She's a monster. You know, it probably took a lot for Jackie to even agree to that because

you know she's got, I believe, really, really, really complicated feelings towards her mother. What struck me in the doc as well, they make it a point to show Barbara's last episode of The View. I believe she had to be gently pushed off that stage because all she lived for was the television camera. That was it. That was where her life began and ended. To say put my kid in front of the TV so they can see, oh my God. But, you know, they brought out all of these women who all these journalists to say, look at the legacy. This is Barbara's legacy. These are in effect her professional daughters, you know, the Katie Couric's of the world and the Elizabeth Vargas' and they all came out and it was like confetti

and rainbows and stuff. They asked me to be there. Jackie was not there. They did? They asked me to be there. They did? They asked me to be there. Yeah, I didn't go. I was traveling, I couldn't go. But I didn't know Barbara and I thought this is weird. Like why am I getting invited? And it's the Sidney Sweeney invitation

to the Sanchez Bezos wedding. You know, like let's just populate the stage with like someone who who's interesting or relevant on television right now and make it look like this is a Barbara mentee and somebody to whom Barbara meant everything, which wasn't true at all. I was gonna be the Sidney Sweeney of the Barbara farewell without the boobs.

I'm glad you said it. Likewise. Yeah, no. And that's such a selfish ask on her part or her team's part as well because that's asking for your endorsement, like your blind endorsement of her and you didn't know her. And she could have been a monster. And in many ways, I think she was a monster. And I remember reading the reports about her life in the years between her leaving the view and her death. And it was always reported as an extremely lonely life. The

transactional relationships she had with those celebrities, they were no longer interested in her because she had nothing to offer anymore. Those were the kinds of people she forged relationships with. She didn't forge deep, private, abiding relationships. You could tell she kept nobody's secrets, right? Do you think she kept anybody's secrets? Yeah. This guy in the piece, Peter Gethers, who is editor of the autobiography, said the following,

she was obsessed with three things. She was obsessed with money, fame, and power. She did not have the strongest moral compass. A lot of the relationships she developed were career moves and she was a pretty transactional person. That's amazing. Somebody, oh, here's Cindy Adams, former gossip columnist who says in the documentary,

she loved being important to a man. She didn't have patience for somebody who's stupid. She didn't love you if you were a nobody. You had to be somebody. On top of all that, you have Sage Steele, who if you don't get along with Sage Steele, it's you. She's truly one of the most lovely, luminous, delightful, thoughtful people you'll ever have

the good fortune to meet in your life. She went on The View, and she has been on the show repeatedly, but one time she was on, she told us the following story about Barbara Walters and Sage backstage, watch. If I don't ask you about Barbara Walters, she attacked you, wait, what?

It was right after that segment with the Obama segment and went in the back. And so it was Barbara whooping in myself in the dark green room off the side. It was probably about four feet from the wall and the trash can. And Barbara was standing over here in front of me. And she just started to back up towards me and looked at me and got close and elbowed me. And it pushed me back into the wall and the trash can. I was like, what did this just do to me?

This 140-year-old woman just tried to tackle me. What is happening right now? Some of the producers saw it, Whoopi saw it, and Whoopi was like, come here, and she was great. She pulled me aside in her little area and she's like, don't you let her do it. I'm like, am I in a movie right now?

One of the legends in this industry just tried to beat me up. Pretty, pretty extraordinary. It's the metaphor for Barbara's entire existence. Get out of my way. I am the star. Who are you? You're nobody to me. You're nothing." Again, she could never do that now, ever, in a post-Woke, post-George Floyd America. It's funny because I've heard that story too from someone else that similar experience at The View as a guest, Barbara was being a complete bitch to her and it was Whoopi who would intervene and come over and say, come here. Don't worry. That's how she is. We all deal with it.

It's not personal. Wow. I mean, think about it. All I can guess is that she had different politics from Sage and she was threatened by her because she's truly luminous. I've seen Sage in person many times and truly like it's intimidating. She's so beautiful.

Like you're kind of like knocked on your heels. Like, oh my God, all you can do is just stare at her beautiful face. And I'm sure Barbara Walters felt intimidated by that as opposed to like inspired or in admiration of it, because they talk about how she was deeply insecure. And the thing about the looks, like what she said to Bette Midler is a recurring theme in her life. And it is reflected in this piece. There's a soundbite from Katie Couric. You mentioned this on the nerve. Here it is.

This says a lot, SOT24. She often told me, oh, we're so alike. Neither of us is that attractive. It's like, thanks. But I think what she meant is our looks were secondary. I mean, who says that to another person? Very mean, bitter, unhappy woman. You know, I mean, again, as I said on the show, I am no fan of Katie Couric, but that floored me. I found the cruelty of it so breathtaking. In the beginning of the doc, they talk about how Barbara really hated her looks. I'm looking at these pictures of her as a very young woman starting out and I'm like, she's actually very attractive. She was pretty. If she had bought into her own beauty, I think she would have

aged completely differently. That's just because she would have had self-esteem. But they do say at a certain point, your outsides begin to match your insides. And with her, she just literally turned into this like, I don't mean to sound really too brutal, but she really did kind of age into this like withered old crone. And she would get her mitts on like these younger, more beautiful starlets or figures in the culture. And she would weaponize this sort of faux maternal, like the Monica Lewinsky interview, which I believe she threw Diane Sawyer in front of oncoming traffic to steal. She's using this kind of faux maternal instinct to sort of lure Monica into

answering the question. Like, well, it was something like, you know, did you get on your knees? They said you brought the presidential knee pads. Like stuff like that, where a journalist who had a little bit more, you know, she had been around the block. She understood how all of this worked. Monica Lewinsky was a girl who found herself thrust into the national spotlight. And this was really Barbara, you know, that was just another carcass to feast upon. And she, so she, you know, that was just another carcass to feast upon. And she, so she, yeah, yeah. And if you read the book, one of the other themes that comes out is probably related to the deep insecurity on the looks front is she is constantly bragging that allegedly everyone wanted to sleep with her in that trailer.

They show like a saucy exchange between Barbara and Clint Eastwood. I guarantee you Clint Eastwood did not want to sleep with Barbara Walters, but was being fun and flirtatious because the cameras were rolling and he knew it would make a fun moment. But if you read her book, I think you would walk away with the impression she thought she could have slept with Clint Eastwood.

There were rumors that she might've slept with Fidel Castro. She definitely dated Alan Greenspan and considered that a feather in the calf. I'm not sure if it is. But there was an ongoing obsession in the book about all the men she'd loved before and how many really, really loved her. And I don't know, she was famous and she had money, so maybe she did attract more than

her fair share, but to me, it seemed like a cover for her deep insecurity. I want to play this. I haven't taken a break. My team's yelling at me. We've taken no breaks, do you realize? We took one break, but I haven't read any ads, which we need to do. But here is the thing back on the children

and the Oprah versus Barbara thing. Listen to this from the documentary. This is Oprah in Tell Me Everything, a Hulu documentary about Barbara Walters, stock 28. She had a charged complex relationship with her daughter. And you know, I can see why. It's one of the reasons why I never had children. I remember her telling me once

that there's nothing more fulfilling than having children and you should really think about it. And I was like, okay, but I'm looking at you. So no, you are a pioneer in your field and you are trying to break the mold for yourself and for women who are gonna follow you then something's gonna have to give for that and that is why I did not have children. I knew I could not do both well. Both are sacrifices, sacrifice to do the work

and it's also sacrifice to be the mother and to say, no, let somebody else have that. And at no time have I ever heard a story, read a story. And based on what I know of Barbara Walters, at no time has Barbara Walters ever said, no, let someone else take that story. No. She's not wrong about that, Maureen.

She's not. She's not a stopped clock. Oprah is telling a lot of truth there. And I love her reaction to being told by Barbara Walters that nothing is more fulfilling than motherhood. And Oprah's like, yeah, well, I'm looking at you. And basically telling us Barbara found no fulfillment in motherhood. If anything, what this documentary makes clear, and I'm not personalizing this to Jackie, it could have been any child Barbara had. Barbara was not going to find any fulfillment in motherhood. And she couldn't be honest with herself about it. find any fulfillment in motherhood and she couldn't be honest with herself about it. And instead the motherhood and the troubled child and the single motherdom, it's like it just became another part of Barbara's press packet.

And to your point about, I read Audition when it came out as well and I remember, God, because she flogged that book every day on The View for like two months. And I remember reading the stuff about her sister who had developmental delays or learning disabilities and with special needs. And I agree with you, it is a very gutsy thing to admit that as a child, you felt less than because there was a sibling who needed more attention and a father who was never in the home and a mother who was not in love with the father, all of that. But I would think there would come a point when you are an urbane, sophisticated woman who moves in very rarefied circles and not for nothing lives in Manhattan and has

access to the best psychotherapists, where you can work through that and come out the other side and say, oh my God, my life has been such a blessing. I have all this money and fame and power and everything I worked so hard for, and my sister could never have achieved that no matter what. And I can make my peace with my childhood now. And I wonder how much of that unresolved trauma really sort of was some of the fundamental roots of her real ever present rage, which we would see come out in these interviews. I have so much I want to say on this because the connection between how she was with the sister and how she was with the daughter, who she named Jackie after the sister. I have

a lot on that. I have to take a break. We're going to keep this going. Stand by. Let's be honest. America can still be a dangerous place and you cannot afford to wait for help. Sure, you could use a firearm, but in today's America, defending yourself with deadly force could have legal consequences. According to FBI data, 99.9% of all altercations actually don't require lethal force. And that's exactly why many are turning to Berna. Berna is proudly American, hand assembled in Fort Wayne, Indiana. These less lethal self-defense launchers are trusted by hundreds of government agencies,

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that most Americans want to know about you. Are you happy? I've had many happy moments in my life, yes. I don't think happiness, being happy is a perpetual state that anyone can be in. No, life isn't that way. But I suppose I have a certain peace of mind, yes. And my children give me a great deal of happiness. Princess Grace of Monaco, American actress turned princess, sitting with Barbara Walters.

Welcome back to the Megyn Kelly Show here with me, Maureen Callahan, host of The Nerve with Maureen Callahan. Go ahead and subscribe right now while I have your attention. Just click follow and subscribe on YouTube and on podcasts wherever you get yours for free. That was a good example of Barbara Walters. And as I sit here as sort of somebody who benefited from the path that she did forge, Maureen,

I think to myself, how is it that someone like me came and was able to actually to, yes, have it all? I know that's an overused and actually controversial phrase, but I feel like I do. And how is it that I managed it? Well, I came up in a different time. And I have to admit in thanks, in large part thanks to women like Barbara Walters,

who she's right. She couldn't have done both when she was coming up. And they make the point in the documentary, Tell Me Everything on Hulu, that if she had tried to bring Jackie to the office back then in the 1960s, she would have been laughed all the way out of the, I mean, just the fact that she was a woman

and there was a problem for a lot of the folks around her, nevermind someone is bringing their child in or like leaving the office early or asking for flex time or any of that stuff. You know, and so there were a lot of strong women like Barbara who made those, I mean, honestly, like very controversial sacrifices just to get women considered in these roles. And I, I've benefited from that. But I thank God every day that I didn't make the same choices and that I didn't have to.

You know, that in today's day and age, I really hope the path I'm forging for people coming up behind me is the actual appreciation of family meaning more. And I love, love, love my career. I love it. I would do this job for free. I said that the day Roger Ailes hired me.

But it doesn't compare to the love I have for my family, my children. And the women who do wanna do both have to choose a job that has flexibility first and foremost. And my new career has, hers didn't for the reasons we've been discussing. They have to choose ideally a partner who is an active father and also has flexibility.

And thankfully, I have that too. And the third thing is some means, you know, some means. It's very hard to do both well when you still have to do all the housework and all the cooking and all the driving with the kids. So I totally feel for women who are not in that spot. And all that has to be factored in before we just tell these young women, you can have it all.

Because the reality is, you probably can't have it all at the same time. And unless you really thread the needle, you know, it's hard, it's very hard. So anyway, I just wanna acknowledge my humility on this because it's easy for it's very hard. So anyway, I just wanna acknowledge my humility on this because it's easy for me to be like, she was a shitty mother when she just came up

at a different time, Maureen. She came at an entirely different time. I do think she never should have adopted that daughter. Here's what she said on the record. This is in the documentary, Tell Me Everything, about her regrets on her motherhood, on her daughter Jackie, SOT 31.

Do you have any regrets when it comes to Jackie? Oh, sorry, this is not from the documentary. I look back and I think, I wish I had been with her more. I was so busy with the career. It's the age old problem. And you know, on your deathbed, are you going to say, I wish I'd spent more time in the office? No, you'll say, I wish I spent more time with my family. And I do feel that way.

I wish I had spent more time with my Jackie. Again, I'm not sure I believe her. And I also think, Maureen, there's a very realization, there's a very real place for women who say, motherhood is not for me. I don't think I'd be a good mom or I don't think I'd enjoy being a mom. Not the crazy leftist stuff that we're seeing,

like you can't have children because it's bad for the environment, but like it doesn't align with me and my talents and I don't wanna do that to a child. That's okay too. She didn't do that. No, she didn't. I mean, to your point, I don't think she knew herself very well and I think what she did know of herself, she didn't quite like. When Anthony Bourdain died, I thought about this a lot. A guy who by design, his schedule, again, by his own architecture, has him running around the globe for 360 days

out of the year. It's running from something very deep and very profound. And I think the same was true for Barbara Walters forever chasing that next big interview. That point you made, which I hadn't put together until you said it, naming the daughter after the sister she resented. I mean, a Freudian shrink would have a field day with that. Right. And that clip you just showed, just to finish this thought, it reminds me of that Harry Chapin song, Cats in the Cradle, you know, which is told from the point of view of a father. He's singing from the point of view of the son who's like, dad, when are you

going to come home to play with me and hang out with me? And the father's always saying, I'll be so soon, soon and soon never comes. And then when the child becomes an adult and the father says, son, I'd love to see you, the son says, sometime soon. And that to me is what's going on there. Just give me the chills. Just give me the chills with that. That song is so devastating and such a good reminder, like don't wait. The fact that she named the daughter Jackie when she admits that she hated the sister

is very, very telling and it is disturbing. And this is a passage from the book about when her sister Jackie died. Barbara was all Jackie had in the world. You know, their parents had long since passed and Jackie had a devastating illness. She had ovarian cancer and she was in the hospital. And Barbara went to be with her for the day of the surgery

and I guess a day or two after, and then she left. And you can hear, she talks about having taken her in in her house and she resented, very much resented it. Did not like having a charge in the house. Forgive me, because I'm not totally sure, it's been many years, whether that was her mother or her sister, but one of them lived in her house for a time and she resented the hell out of it.

And she writes in audition about when Jackie died. She writes, okay, she was recovering from ovarian cancer surgery, and she had an aneurysm and passed away. On that day, Barbara was hundreds of miles away in Milwaukee. Okay, here's what she writes, quote, "'I went down with her when she had the operation

"'and I left because I had to make a speech "'for heaven's sakes.'" She's feeling defensive. "'I left her two days after the operation "'and I said, I'll be back. "'I went to Milwaukee to make this speech for ABC. I mean, it wasn't a speech for money, but I was auditioning. I was being perfect.

Just before she was scheduled to go on stage, someone came into her dressing room and told her the terrible news. They said, you're on. And I went out and made the most awful speech, she says. I wasn't there when she died. To this day, Barbara says she has regrets. She regrets that her decision to leave meant her sister died alone. I also know in a way am grateful it happened that way. She was in no pain. So she left the sister after the operation when the sister after the operation

when the sister had no one else there because she had to give a speech, not paid she wants us to know, but for ABC. And then when she was told, she wants us to applaud the fact that she gave the speech instead of breaking down. She put that in her own autobiography about how I went out there and I gave that speech.

I don't know, I think I can understand to playing through pain. You know, you have to when you have an outwardly facing job. But it was like she had just been told her sister died. And she had just been with a sister days earlier and she wanted pats on the back for going out there on the stage and just giving this barn burner of a speech and all I could think was that is the coldest like most callous thing how where was the breakdown what where why is it not a lifelong regret

that you didn't stay three days so that you would have been with her when she actually died and she was as opposed to her dying alone. So this is the real ugly part of this that I think is true and that even Barbara knew was so ugly, but it's very human that she would not admit in the pages of her book. She was probably very relieved. This problem was gone. This needy sibling who took up all the oxygen in the room and what little love their parents had to offer was gone. The sister dying after Barbara left, they often say, I mean, there's no way of proving this but they often say that there are two things that tend to happen when one is near death. They either

hang on for their loved ones to get there and say a final goodbye, or they wait for the loved one to leave the room and then they allow themselves to slip away. And I got to wonder if the latter isn't the case with Barbara's sister. Yeah. Wow, you're right. That is true. And I do kind of believe that. I feel like I know people who've experienced that. The film does a good job of documenting the fierce rivalry between Barbara and Diane Sawyer. Because I think what we see in the book and the movie is Barbara had real issues with women, with women. And you know, the relationship with the mother is not,

that if memory serves, again, this came out like, oh, seven or oh eight, she doesn't go that into depth about the mother. But I think she had some real issues there because she clearly, she says, I hated my sister. I told you what I know about her with the daughter. And some of that has also exposed publicly. We saw her with Bette Midler and we saw her, you know, Katie Couric's account of what happened and with Taylor and the Monica

Lewinsky interview was controversial too. Like she didn't seem to give many of these women the benefit of the doubt. That's fine, you know, if you're equally skeptical with everyone, then you're just probably just a good journalist. But she was much more flirtatious with the men. She didn't seem to be as skeptical of them. And she did have serious issues about like her insecurities and her looks. I'm going to play something that gets to that first. And then we're going to talk about the Diane Sawyer thing because it's a Friday.

And why not? Here she is on a little bit about herself in first let's play Sot23 and go right into 23B. I was never beautiful if I'd been a dog I mean maybe they wouldn't have put me on television but I mean nobody ever put me on because I was beautiful or glamorous. I don't think that I was very good at marriage. It may be that my career was just too important. It may have been that I was a difficult person to be married to and I wasn't willing perhaps to give that much.

But through it all, there was this career that I felt I needed to have, and I loved it. So she was insecure. She couldn't keep a man. She was distant from her family, her sister, her daughter, and then Diane Sawyer walked into that buzzsaw. I mean, Buzzsaw. I mean, Houston, Houston. Their rivalry was legendary, Maureen. They couldn't stand each other. No kidding. Now, this is fascinating because you're so right about the mother. Again, I read the book when it came out, so a lot is lost to memory, but I don't remember her fleshing out the mother very much. And I would bet there's a real mother wound there, which is that she was neglected. I mean,

that's basically what she's telling us with resenting the sister. And it's probably a little bit easier to resent the sister than to really resent the mother because then you have to dial into that feeling of rejection. My mom rejected me. I think there's nothing more painful as a child than feeling the rejection of a mother. Diane is so fascinating. Well, the marriage stuff is interesting too because I do think Barbara was just a narcissist. And I think someone says this in the doc, like her real true love was her career. But she was such a limited person. She couldn't expand outside of that in any meaningful way and forge any human relationships that had nothing to do with what somebody could

offer her other than the true things that animate a real friendship, like a kinship, things in common, someone you can share your pains, your sorrows, your joys with. someone you can share your pains, your sorrows, your joys with. It's a real tragedy. And Diane, I think, was the horror show version of a sister, like, who hadn't been born with learning disabilities, right? Now, that's, is that the other sister you want? The beauty? The homecoming queen? The one who, like, presidents and Hollywood stars are all fighting over? Is that because like, I think that's where she really redirected a lot of her rage. It went right towards Diane. Diane Sawyer is still beautiful, but back in the day, she was absolutely stunning. I

mean, when she was younger, she absolutely could have been a model on the cover of any magazine. She worked for Nixon for a time and then wound up in news and was a star really from the beginning. You can see now given all this setup that we've done, how Barbara Walters would have reacted very negatively to sharing a newsroom with her. And here is ABC's Cynthia McFadden on some of that in SOT27 from the movie, Tell Me Everything. She was certainly

dogged by Diane's very existence. She often said Diane was the perfect woman. Yes, I'm ready. She used the word a blonde goddess, this ideal woman, and that she, Barbara, couldn't compete with that. She could work harder, she could know more people, but she couldn't compete with that. The blonde goddess. She couldn't tolerate with that. The blonde goddess.

She couldn't tolerate having Diane Sawyer rise in what she saw as a direct challenge to what she had accomplished. What a sadness. Talk about the death of joy. Cindy McFadden is no dope. I know her a bit. She's smart. She knew it. She played it on

the line. I believe every word of that. I do too. And you know, aside from fixating on Diane Sawyer's looks, and you know, again, Barbara when she began, she was not on a try. I thought she was like, she was a pretty woman who could have really leaned into that and cultivated that. The other thing that Diane seemed to have, which at least came through the screen for me that Barbara did not, was like joy. She really seemed to love her job and you see her there prepping for camera and she's laughing.

And she's like, she seems like she might be actually a fun time. And Barbara does not. She's married to Mike Nichols for all those years. I know. And Barbara Walters is having all sorts of problems. Yeah. Diane's up on the vineyard partying with Mike Nichols and Jackie Onassis and no shortage of players. And you know, Barbara is like grinding it out, just wanting America to love her, but while slinging insults at the likes of Elizabeth Taylor, go figure. It's so true. Yeah, no, Diane Sawyer is quite luminous and, and also talented for sure. I mean, this, a story that I, I always think about when I think of news and Diane was 9-11

when she was on the air with Charlie Gibson and they were there, they were live when the towers fell. And Charlie Gibson, who was such so professorial and holier than thou in the way he approached the news, said he always regretted how he responded in the moment. And forgive me, I'm going to botch it, but he wasn't, I'm not quoting him exactly here, but it was, it was like a newsman. You know, it was like the building appears to have collapsed and you know, it appears there will be a massive loss of life, you know, and this is him recounting it. Diane Sawyer responded with, Oh my God.

You know, she was a person before she was a news anchor. She was a real, she is, she's still here, but she, I'm talking about on the air in that moment, she was a real flesh and blood human and possibly religious human, I think Diane actually is, with a connection to something bigger than herself who understood exactly what everybody at home was feeling. And Charlie didn't.

And Barbara, although she could sort of feign the I care thing enough to get people to cry in her interviews, I think lacked the gene too. I think also was more of the Charlie Gibson style. I think you're so right. And that actually, you hit on something. So it was a pathology with her. She's got to make her interview subject cry. She's got to find your most tender wound and she's going to put her fingers in there and she's going to just spread out and

like mangle your guts with her bare hand and you're going to cry on camera. You're going to give her that money shot. And when you think about it, it's like, why would you be so intense on making these otherwise powerful people who are interesting movers in the culture, who have something to offer us and we want to get like a sense of who they are behind the scenes. She was a pioneer. We talked about too on the show, I think she was among the first to go into these celebrities homes. It predates cribs and we could see how these people were living. And it really gave you a whole other insight into people and it humanized them a bit, no matter how lavish their lifestyles.

Everybody has a kitchen counter. But she was really like, she was like a hammerhead shark that way with the tears. Yeah, yes. And that's another thing Oprah stole from Barbara. That became Oprah's signature. It wasn't an Oprah interview unless you cried in it, which is like, how is that your goal?

If you just have like heartfelt conversations that lead to tears or happen to you, that's fine. But yes, it seemed to be an obvious goal for both of them. Here's one more on her and Diane Sawyer and Catherine Hepburn from the movie, on Hulu, Tell Me Everything, Sat 26. It was just a competitive space to live in. Barbara could be very wily and she wasn't above dirty tricks

and tactics that were in my experience beneath some of her competitors, in particular Diane Sawyer. And now the one and only Katherine Hepburn. Diane had booked fair and square, Katherine Hepburn. And Barbara, who square Katherine Hepburn and Barbara who knew Katherine Hepburn put a lot of pressure on Kate to unbook and go with her. You know, Kate said, no, no, I promised Diane and I will do it with her. How's that for a statement?

And she did. If I showed up on Mars, she would have a note there with the Barbara Walters stationery, just requesting an interview with anybody who might happen to show. Wow. Okay, there are two amazing things. That reminds me, by the way, when Barbara did get her sit down with Kate, that led to the, it was a meme before memes were a thing. If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be? Which passed into urban lore. I don't think

it was exactly that, but that became like the Barbara. And of course there was the Gilda Radner impersonation of Baba Wawa because she could never pronounce a ahs and Barbara was so offended by that. I mean, thirdly, this is the kind of like, I wish the morning show on Apple TV was more like this. I would watch a period piece about these two antagonists going at it and the stakes are so high. It's like, who's gonna land that interview with the aging movie star? Like, you know, it's wild.

Yes, I know. It's amazing to watch and I'm sure it was absolutely cutthroat. And I believe she called Kate and tried to get her to bail and good for Katharine Hepburn for not doing it. I will say, you know, that sort of dumping on the new girl thing, which is something I have never, ever done.

I've only tried to help girls, young women coming up behind me. But Katie Couric is guilty of it too, because truly one of the nicest people in news, she might be number one nicest in all of news is Ashley Banfield. She's Canadian, they're nice people. Anyway, she worked at NBC and was a rising star

back to 9-11. She's the reason, one of the main reasons I went into journalism. I was a disaffected lawyer sitting at home on 9-11 like the rest of the country watching the horrors from my couch. And Ashley Banfield was on TV nonstop for NBC and was such a pro.

She handled herself so well. And she was in it, man. She was right in front of the towers, kept her composure, kept her cool, stayed factual, like in a good way. And I was like, look at her, this is a real public service. And it wasn't, Ashley's beautiful, but it wasn't because it was like, oh, look how gorgeous she is, or she's like a star. I can see like her star power.

It was just like shoe leather professional reporting under fire, you know, grace under fire. And I really, really admire her to this day. Anyway, her career got cut short over at NBC by Katie Hurick, who felt threatened by her and even admitted in her own memoir that she felt threatened by Ashley and far from giving a hand up, was happy to see her head out.

And I don't think Ashley Banfield's career ever fully rebounded from that. I actually asked her about it one time. We were on the air together. It was happening either on her show at News Nation or on one of my shows. And she was too nice to even complain about it. She was like something that said something to the effect

of like, oh yeah, well that wasn't very nice. That was as much as Ashley would say about it. But who doesn't help up that? Like TV news, especially with these bitches, can be a fucking snake pit. It can be a snake pit. It's not always the women. Trust me, I've gotten it from some men too. But man, it's interesting they've got Katie Couric commenting on that.

Like, I wonder if they asked her about her own experience in that lane. I thought the same exact thing. And this is why I can never be a fan of Katie Couric. The Ashley Banfield part of her memoir stuck out to me so, like it was, the anger and the rate, the idea that you would go out of your way to strangle someone else who was trying to come up, their career in the crib because you they're a threat to you because of it. And I believe it was solely the way Ashley looked. I don't even think Katie knew enough about her professional capabilities or potentialities. It was just like this woman look is prettier than I am. I don't know. Maybe Barbara was

onto something when she made that comment about their looks. But the other thing about Katie that I loathe and I think goes to this really poisonous relationship she has with other women, in her book, she writes about how much she still loves Matt Lauer and how when all those stories broke, he allegedly put a woman in the hospital after raping her in his office. know, he allegedly put a woman in the hospital after raping her in his office. He had the rape button on his desk, allegedly. And she reprints these text messages she's sending him, like, I love you and I will always love you no matter what and I am here for you, you know, and he's ignoring her. But she's waxing on and on. I mean, to the point where I really think something probably went on between the two of them, either that or it was unrequited on Katie's part. But the point being she is no friend to women because any friend to women

would have known what was going on over there. Or those younger women on that set would have felt like Katie is somebody I could go to in a crisis. She is the truth. She sets the tone. She's a leader. I could go to in a crisis. She is the truth. She sets the tone. She's a leader. I could go to her. That's another person I know a little socially. And you know, I've always gotten along with Katie outside of the news business, but inside of her shop, she admits to this behavior.

And I don't understand the, I just forgive Matt Lauer. We pretend that he just like had an extramarital affair or something, you can, you know, whatever the affairs of the heart are complicated. But he serially exploited virtually every young ingenue to come through NBC News when he was the $25 million a year man back when nobody was making those salaries, the biggest star in news and 40 something years old with these 19 year old girls who were showing up there on their college summer internship,

promising to make them stars and believing that, them believing that he could or that he would ruin them if they didn't go along to get along. I've talked to some of them. So there's no, for me, there's no forgiving Matt Lauer. I don't, when someone shows you that they're genuinely a fucking dirt bag, you accept that and you move on.

You don't linger. She has a longer relationship with him, but I mean, even that would have been very revealing to me as somebody who had a long relationship with him. And I would have said, that's it, I'm moving on. It's a matter of quality control. This person is no longer gonna be in my life. All right, I gotta leave it at that.

I gotta ask you before we go about one additional thing. You gotta go and so do I, but we'll be remiss if we do not do at least one clip from the Barack Michelle Obama appearance, the podcast, because everybody thinks they're getting a divorce. And let's face it, they probably are. She dragged him onto her show with brother Craig and the following took place.

Here's how it started in South 36. Barack Obama. Can you, can you join us on? Wait, you guys like each other? Oh, yeah, really. Huh? The rumor mill. It's my husband, y'all.

She took me back. Hey. Now, don't start. I can't. It was touch and go for a while. It's so nice to have you both in the same room together. I know, because when we aren't, folks think we're divorced. These are the kinds of things that I just miss, right?

So I don't even know this stuff's going on. And then somebody will mention it to me and I'm all like, what are you talking about? People think that they're on the outs because they're not always in the same room together, Maureen. That's what she would like people to believe. She had what?

One or two public appearances without him, and that's what led to the divorce speculation. That's not quite it, my dear. It's one of the things. Oh, your words. It's your words that led us to believe you can't stand him. When he walks in, by the way, it's like anybody who just listened to the pod, they got to watch it because first of all, we're taking this thing apart tomorrow on the mini-nerve. He's got more chemistry with and affection for brother Craig than his own wife, if you

look at the way they greet each other. And then my favorite thing is the staging now because we all know that politics is about optics and stagecraft. Michelle's at this end of the table, Obama's all the way over here at this end, and brother Craig is between them like a mediator, like a marriage counselor. If they're really still in love and together and not getting a divorce, why aren't they seated next to each other? It's true.

And like why the instant affectation, you know, like, oh, my man. And like, she goes, she doubles down in the following clip. It's just over the top. And here it is, 37. There hasn't been one moment in our marriage where I thought about quitting my man. And we've had some really hard times.

So we had a lot of fun times, a lot of adventures, and I have become a better person because of the man I'm married to. Okay. Don't make me cry now. Right at the beginning of the show. Awww. Isn't that sweet? don't make me cry You can take the hard stuff but when I start talking about the sweet stuff you're like stop no, I can't do it

Enjoying it Okay There ain't been one minute when I thought about quitting my man. She doesn't talk like that Right, who does she think she's getting is quitting like it has no T's or G my man. She doesn't talk like that. Who does she think she's kidding? It's Quitten, like it has no T's or G, my man. Okay, she's like, there's something going on there where she's really acting in order to be like down home and I love my man and trust me. And like the whole thing to me looked like a complete affectation.

It's such a poor performance. It reminds me when Oprah had her show, she would code switch like that too. Sometimes she would talk like a rural black woman and then she'd be Oprah. And then the other thing is, okay, Michelle told us, and I think you and I talked about this on your show that remember she said more than once there was a good decade, solid decade of their marriage that she hated him. Hated him. So you're going to then turn around and tell us you never once thought about, I mean, again,

I would love the lawyer in you to parse quit and pause, and then the addition of alma man, and that's not her husband. So is there another man? What is it? Is it the dog? What is it? It's not her husband. So is there another man? What is it? Is it the dog? What is it? It's a good point. No, she's on the record.

They can pretend all they want that it's just tabloid fodder that has led people to think they're on the outs. That, oh yes, he appeared without her, you know, here or there and people, no. Okay, first of all, she didn't go to the Trump inauguration. She didn't go to the Jimmy Carter funeral.

He's been spotted out at basketball games and out to dinner with their daughters repeatedly without her. You'd be hard pressed to find a recent picture of the two of them together. So they clearly did it to try to tamp down the rumors, but the greatest indictment of the state of their relationship

all comes from her, from her own statements about how awful marriage and motherhood are. It's like, we don't have to make it up. You led us right to that water, Michelle. And it's amazing too, because like Obama, you watch his body language in this thing and it's like his arms are crossed, his legs are crossed, he's torqued away towards the camera or towards brother Craig. He seems as fearful of her and it just is like diffuse, diffuse, deflect, diffuse as brother Craig does.

Those two are like trauma bonding over here while Michelle's trying to get her shivs and her digs in. It's wild. Trauma bonding. By the way, Barack Obama has no socks on, which I really don't like. Can we just bring Barack the sock? Where are your socks? Do you think he's wearing those sockless socks? The ones that you can't see? Either way, I object. I feel like a man should have socks on. Women can do what they want. That's just the way it is on the sock rule.

I think Obama strikes me, I kind of dig the naked ankle look. He's got nice ankles. I believe he's a hygienic individual. Sorry, okay, we disagree. Sadly, we have to leave it on a disagreement. Yeah, I don't know. Plus he's too old.

Maybe you can pull that off if you're 22, but he's not and it's not working. It's not working. Nothing about the segment is working. You're right. Poor brother Craig stuck in the middle. Oh, oh, he's fraught with peril. Anyway, there's more to hear about that interview and you can do that on Maureen's mini-nerve. She drops him on weekends, tomorrow, Saturday. Check it out. Thank you so much. It's always wonderful having you here. Oh my God. Thank you so much, Megan, for having me.

What a conversation. I could go on forever with you. I know. Gosh. It was same, honestly. There's nobody I talk to this way, and I hope the audience, I know the audience loves it too, because it's just that there's so many subjects that you want to delve into that like, this is another reason why cable's dead.

You could never, we talked for an hour and 30 minutes about Barbara Walters. What? But it was great. It was so great. It's like, it's like, I love talking psychology with you and minutia and why people behave the way they do and the public face versus like, it's endlessly fascinating. And you're like the best person to talk to about it. Oh, right back at you. All right. Well, I'll be listening tomorrow. All of you should too. Check

out The Nerve with Maureen Callahan and just a programming note don't forget on Monday we're live from Series XM Triumph with Rahm Emanuel. I mean that's going to be pretty interesting. Actually if you have a question you would like me to ask Rahm Emanuel, email it to me. megan at megankelly.com. Have a great weekend. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.