The Megyn Kelly Show - Censorship Mob Blasts Rogan, Biden's NYPD No-Show, and Putin's Next Move, with Clay Travis and Ric Grenell | Ep. 251

Episode Date: January 31, 2022

Megyn Kelly is joined by Clay Travis, founder of Outkick and co-host of The Clay and Buck Show, and former Ambassador Ric Grenell to talk about the left's push to censor and cancel Joe Rogan, Rogan's "apology," the truth about COVID "science" and "experts," why Rogan is truly uncancellable, following the science, tech censorship, the powerful NYPD response to the death of two of their own, Biden's NYPD no-show, consequences of "defund the police" policies, alarming attacks on police in America, Canadian truckers boycotting vaccine mandates, Tom Brady maybe retiring, what Vladimir Putin's next move will be, the Biden administration's response to Russia (compared to the Trump administration's), what's behind Russia's Ukraine border build-up, the truth about NATO and Russia, Biden's SCOTUS pick, the need for "diplomacy with muscle," D.C. elites and Biden's SCOTUS parameters, D.C. vs. the rest of America, and more.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey, everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and happy Monday. We have a great lineup for you today. Really great. Next hour, we're going to be joined by former Ambassador Rick Grinnell to talk about the latest on Russia and Ukraine and Joe Biden's Supreme Court pick or the outlines of the pick as set forth. There's new polling on what the American people really want. And is he meeting their desires? But first, we are joined by Clay Travis, founder of OutKick and co-host of The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Clay, so great to have you back. How are you? I'm excellent, Megan. Appreciate you having me. I hope you're having a good start to

the week. I'm ready for the Super Bowl and everything else. I am. I mean, even I, Clay, understood there were some big games yesterday and they were tight, tight, tight and very exciting. Yeah. Six straight games. Basically, if you're an NFL fan. It came down to the absolute wire, essentially. So congrats to the Rams and also crazily to the Cincinnati Bengals, who have not been in this game in a very, very long time. Well, it was exciting to watch. My husband had it on and the kids are watching. I was kind of making some dinner thinking, even I care what's happening over there.

And then we'll get to Tom Brady and whether he's really leaving the NFL in a minute. But let's start with this. The Joe Rogan story is the most fascinating story to me. I couldn't get enough of it this weekend. And the reason I can't get enough of it is, I mean, I can't put it better than Glenn Greenwald, who wrote a great, great sub stack piece on it over the weekend. But it's really the left and its censorship machine, its mob, is now truly out of control. Like you, you cannot platform anyone who they think engages in, quote, disinformation or misinformation. It's gone beyond hate speech. Now it's any misinformation they now feel is out there that's uncorrected. And the person needs to be entirely deplatformed, which is what they want from Joe Rogan, who's now had,

I mean, it's Joni Mitchell. She pulled her music. First, it was Neil Young, then Joni Mitchell, singer Liza Minnelli. That was a tough one, Clay. The guy who, a guitarist, used to play with Springsteen's band. And now Joe Rogan's actually issuing a statement, which I'll get to in one second. But let's just start with the crazy push to have him kicked off of Spotify. So there are so many different angles to this story, Megan. And I think they're so intriguing to play out. So let's start here. This is the natural extension of the COVID insanity that has taken over our country over the

last two years. Because really what is trying to be argued is that science has one side. Let's just take a step back and think about this. We were told initially, and you know this, Megan, you couldn't even discuss where COVID came from. If you attempted to say, hey, you know, it's awfully convenient that COVID seems to have emerged next to a virology lab in Wuhan, maybe it escaped from there, you were shot down across all of the social media platforms. If early in the days of the vaccine, you looked at some of the data out of Israel and out of England who were ahead of us in terms of their rates of vaccination. You said, wait a minute, their overall case numbers are continuing to increase. It's beginning to look like this COVID vaccine may not prevent you from

spreading COVID or from getting COVID yourself. Remember when breakthrough cases were rare? That was the argument. You weren't even allowed to question in any way the efficacy of the vaccine. And so you start to stack up all of these things surrounding COVID. You weren't allowed to talk about the potential of therapeutics associated with when you got COVID, what drugs you could take, what might make sense for you. All of these things were banned. You couldn't question in any way, wait a minute, I'm not sure that kids wearing cloth masks is going to protect them in the event that they have COVID circulating in the classroom.

You couldn't even question whether schools should be shut down or not. You couldn't question whether kids should be shut down or not. You couldn't question whether kids should be wearing masks in schools. All of these things, as the data has come out and we have learned that many of those things, I see a great meme regularly on the internet, Megan, that the distance between a conspiracy and the truth is about six months. And so there is a great deal of people who just question. And that's ultimately what science is all about, right? It's a scientific method is about questioning everything. And so this idea that the experts out there were only allowing one information source, we're only allowing one thing to be shared, I think has been fundamentally rejected

by the vast majority of the American public. And shows like yours, like mine, like Joe Rogan, so many different places out there that are willing to look at data and ask difficult questions have come at times under fire for asking those difficult questions. And so one, the big battleground here is what is allowed to be said and who can say it. That is the larger scope here, particularly when you are employed by a major media company like Spotify. OK, the bigger question to me, and I'm trying to unpack this and you can dive in and tell me what you're thinking. I kind of had a Twitter thread last night. Censorship to me, Megan, is not a sign of strength. It's a sign of weakness, ultimately. And so when I look at what Spotify is trying to do to Joe Rogan, if I were Joe Rogan waking up this morning, I would be hoping that Spotify fires me. Because if Spotify fires him,

they're probably going to have to pay out most of the money that is owed on his contract, because I would imagine that he has a great deal of creative freedom in any deal that he signed. And therefore, it's unlikely that they're going to fire him for cause. And then he would be able to go out and create his own media company. And I believe his audience, Megan, is portable, as many audiences are in today's digital space. So this balance of power, I think Joe Rogan is more powerful than Spotify is here. And it can be rattling, I'm sure, to him to be challenged as he is being challenged. But ultimately, all of the people trying to cancel him are the best advertisement that his show could ever have., as well as anyone, people are going

to tune in more as they hear how controversial he is. I think we're poised for a great disruption of many of these tech companies because their power, as they become more censorious, is actually on the wane and the overall power of individual talent that is authentically trusted by their audience continues to grow. The antidote to me to cancel culture is the loyalty of your own audience. That's right. You know, to me, it's it's so crazy because you've got people like Harry and Meghan weighing in on this. Who the hell wants to hear from those two on Joe Rogan? They've literally done one podcast on Spotify.

That would be, I'd listen to that, wouldn't you, if he had them on and actually grilled about their background. And instead of Oprah sort of the soft light interview, he actually dove into some of the claims that they have made. I mean, I would watch that. and instead of Oprah sort of the soft light interview, he actually dove into some of the claims that they have made. I mean, I would watch that. That's probably the most engaging Spotify episode they can have.

They won't do it, but I'd watch it. But no, I can't say yes to that. I need to do it. No offense to Joe Rogan, but I can do a better job of that one. I would love to see you grill here. They won't do it, right? Because we live in this era

of everybody wanting to be protected and they want to be questioned by people who are going to not really probe any of their questions. I would love to hear. I mean, I watch the interview, although I still want Fauci more than I want anybody. So those two losers are coming out like saying, oh, we've expressed our concerns to Spotify about the all too real consequences of COVID-19 misinformation on its platform. And they want Spotify to, quote, meet this moment, Clay, but are committed to continuing our work together as it does. In other words, you better keep paying us our $50 million because we're not that concerned. And by the way, how easy is it to do a podcast? The fact that the two of them have been unable to get a podcast done, we're not talking about making Jurassic Park, right? I mean, there's not a massive amount of behind-the-scenes work that needs to be done. The podcast universe is not wildly complicated. I mean, that's why there's a billion podcasts right now. The fact that they can't get this podcast off and rolling is really crazy. Telling. Okay, but they're not my favorite. My favorite is Chelsea Clinton. And she sends out

a tweet ripping on the fact that, well, this is she's upset about Substack facilitating science denialists ability to profit from destructive lies. She's actually because Substack's getting it, too. Right. They're in trouble for platforming people like Alex Berenson, Dr. Joseph Merkula and so on. So she decides to weigh in because you got Spotify, you got Substack coming under the crosshairs of especially corporate media because they're a threat to them. And and people like Chelsea Clinton, the established left. So she comes after them saying anti-vaxxers making at least $2.5 million a year from publishing on Substack. And she's like the ability to profit from destructive lies talking about grift. So Glenn goes after her like no one else can. He says,

OK, hold on. I want to get the exact quote. OK. Apparently, this political heiress, who is one of the world's richest individuals by virtue of winning the birth lottery of being born to rich and powerful parents, who in turn enriched themselves by cashing in on their political influence in exchange for $750,000 paychecks from Goldman Sachs for 45 minute speeches and who herself somehow was showered with a six hundred thousand dollar annual contract from NBC News, despite no qualifications, believes she is in a position to accuse others of grifting. That's exactly it. Who the hell wants to hear what she thinks about anything? Never mind grift.

Well, the grifting angle is so crazy because the best way to grift was to be anti-Trump for five years, right? Like this idea that people on the right are uniquely profiting off of the larger media environment. But the big issue here is this disappointing, I think, because she's well-educated. What all of this presupposes, Megan, is that science is fixed. And I would think that if you have paid any attention at all to COVID, what we have needed is more robust debate, not less. Right. I mean, if anything, the idea that kids are still wearing masks or God forbid that there are still so many kids out there that are right now having to go through remote learning because the teacher and remote learning is an oxymoron, right? That phrase, the fact that it even exists to me is a

fundamental failure of our society. But we need more, more discussion, more debate. And so this idea, science should be questioned. Everything should be questioned. People in positions of power should be questioned. The conspiracy theory, in my mind, Megan, does not come because you question authority or question the consensus opinion. It comes when you are not allowed to do that, which is what has been forcing so many people, whether it's your grandma or whether it's somebody with an audience on social media who is looking at the data and asking questions and saying, hey, this just doesn't add up to me. Particularly when you're trying to mandate behavior and even worse when you're trying to mandate behavior for some people, for their kids. That's a good point, Clay. That's a very good point. So it's worse in the context of them trying to force something on us and our children and then tell us we're not allowed to question the, ask him questions, follow up. I would be respectful, but there's very little

actual questioning of Fauci that is anything other than sort of presupposing and genuflecting at his altar of scientific genius when there are so many questions that need to be asked. And when he, even in these interviews, is saying things like, I am the science. I mean, I am the science is a megalomaniacal statement to make. But again, it presumes that science, particularly with a novel virus like this, is set in stone when if you go back, they're constantly shifting the analysis and then making people feel like, hey, you're crazy. They're like, oh, we never said that if you got the vaccine, you wouldn't get it or you wouldn't spread it. Yeah, you did. Yeah, you did. Like, typically, the argument you made. Yes. And so science is

constantly evolving, particularly with diseases that we have never confronted before. And we're still learning about it. And by the way, the virus is mutating itself. So, you know, the thing about Rogan, though, it's disturbing because if in Spotify is standing behind him right now, of course they are. He's their most profitable host. I mean, they're not going to pay Joe. They pay these rappers like 10 million bucks a year to be over there. They pay Joe Rogan 10 times that.

He's their biggest draw right now. And there's no way they're going to abandon him unless, I mean, everyone would have to leave Spotify. So good on Spotify for standing behind him. Substack is also withstanding these calls. But the scary thing about Joe Rogan is if they went another way, if he could be deplatformed, if Spotify didn't back him, anyone could be. I mean, because he's by far the most powerful person in this alternative media world. And so you do have to watch it because the left starts to drool when they sense they might have another neck on the chopping board. They don't have the normal human response to seeing someone struggling or the thoughts of taking away someone's career. They enjoy it. They would love to deplatform him. And so I like the fact that they're standing

behind him. But right now, I thought it was interesting. Last night, he came out, Rogan, posted a video late Sunday. We'll throw in a clip. But right now, what he said is, I promise to do my best in the future to balance things out. Reiterated a couple of times his promise to have more opinions on his show, to research the topics more closely and to have the pertinent fact to hand. And I will say something to you. Oh, we have it.

Okay, let's listen. The podcast has been accused of spreading dangerous misinformation, specifically about two episodes, a little bit about some other ones, but specifically about two. One with Dr. Peter McCullough and one with Dr. Robert Malone. Dr. Peter McCullough is a cardiologist and he is the most published physician in his

field in history. Dr. Robert Malone owns nine patents on the creation of mRNA vaccine technology and is at least partially responsible for the creation of the technology that led to mRNA vaccines. Both these people are very highly credentialed, very intelligent, very accomplished people, and they have an opinion that's different from the mainstream narrative. I wanted to hear what their opinion is. The problem I have with the term misinformation, especially today, is that many of the things that we thought of as misinformation just a short while ago are now accepted as fact.

Like, for instance, eight months ago, if you said, if you get vaccinated, you can still catch COVID and you can still spread COVID, you would be removed from social media. They would ban you from certain platforms. Now that's accepted as fact. I'm just a person who sits down and incredibly successful show and he built it himself. He just started having conversations with his friends and it blew up into the most powerful show in the world, really. I mean, there's nobody who gets better ratings than he does between YouTube and what he gets in downloads. And he's not a journalist. He does really great interviews and has really great conversations. But I have watched some of his interviews, in particular of some of these guys, and thought he should be pressing them with other facts. He should be challenging. Here's what the other side says on that, because the audience gets more out

of it. But that's my style. That's not his style. He's not a journalist. He just extracts opinions and information. And so I actually can see some of the criticisms of him. He's not beyond criticism, right? Like he could do a better job in my view of preparing and of pressing and of confronting with the other facts. It's not what he does. That doesn't mean he gets deplatformed. We generally in this country, we leave it up to the audience to figure out how trustworthy a source is and to compile the information they feel they need to make decisions on these issues. No doubt. And Megan, to your point, what I like about the conversations and the conversation that

we're having right now is you're not editing it and I'm not editing it. And you know this, having done a lot of network news interviews back in the day, you can talk to somebody for two hours and use eight minutes of that two-hour conversation. I've always said, I would rather read the transcript. And this is maybe the lawyer in me too. But when somebody is talking, I'm always like, well, is there a transcript attached? I started doing this with sports when I would cover sports because I wanted to know. I didn't trust that the right stories got taken out of a press conference with a coach or with a player. And they would publish the transcript and I would go in and I would look and I'd say, okay, what's the most interesting part of this overall conversation?

And lots of times Meg and I found that the way the media covered it was not representative and also not reflective of even the most interesting thing that people were saying. And so the fact that he has these relatively unedited, long form conversations to me is part and parcel of being as honest with your audience as you can be. Because if you listen to somebody talk for an hour, that's one of the last legacy audio. It's one of the real advantages. I know there's video versions too, but time, the ability to see somebody in context in full allows that authenticity to come through in a way that frankly, I do not believe exists in much of modern media where a minute or two is all you get. And so, yeah, is he above criticism? No, of course not. Everybody is worthy that has a big audience is worthy worthy of being analyzed, and you can like

or dislike something. But the marketplace is responding in a very favorable way because what he is providing is something that is not being provided enough, right? That ultimately, the marketplace, I'm a big believer in business-based, market-based capitalism. And I think Joe Rogan is serving his audience well. That's exactly right. And as his willingness to do that demonstrates, there is a market for it, and his power grows. And that's what drives the left insane. Just to note, Chelsea Clinton

also tried to have me fired after I interviewed Alex Jones while I was at NBC. And it was a very tough interview and it didn't go particularly well for Alex Jones, but she wanted me fired just for having the interview. And for NBC, of course, Chelsea Clinton, her little stint at NBC didn't work out so well because she's talentless. But I did think it was amazing because I told the story before, but Brian Stelter of CNN came up to me at an event shortly thereafter or in the midst of it all and said, Chelsea Clinton, she's pushing for you. She doesn't want any guests to go on your show ever again. And he's like, do you think you'll be able to get her? Do you think you'll be able to interview Chelsea Clinton?

And I said, Brian, I said, I have never once asked to interview Chelsea Clinton, and I do not intend to spoil my perfect record. By the way, Megan, because this happened to us with with the radio show, I interviewed Buck and I did Senator Senator Rand Paul. And I read this. Yeah. And YouTube refused to allow our interview to be posted. Now, to me, I think this is significant. I don't think this gets enough attention. We interviewed him. We did not say the answers to his questions, right?

He is a sitting senator. He is a doctor. He is running for reelection right now in Kentucky. And the same thing, by the way, with your point with Alex Jones or with Joe Rogan in the interviews that he is doing. Why are you responsible as an interviewer for what your interviewee says? Right. Like that is to me next level.

You can say, oh, push back whatever arguments you want to have. But the conversation, to me, we're expanding the scope of cancel culture when we're saying not only are you responsible, which I understand if I say something that people don't like and they want to write about it from this interview, that's my words. They can use them as they see fit, right? But attacking someone for having a conversation with someone else expands the scope of what is cancelable. And if I'm running YouTube, the guy is Rand Paul, a senator running for reelection. And also the whole purpose of the marketplace of ideas is voters should be able to see all of the opinions of elected officials to better understand whether they want to support them or not. So to me, YouTube is doing a disservice for

the Kentucky Senate election. When he comes on our show for 15 minutes, we put up all of his comments and all of his opinions and voters are not able to see it. Not just Kentucky voters, by the way, Megan, somebody might decide whether or not they want to donate money to him or donate money to his opponent. We should have more opportunity to hear the all of the opinions of our elected officials. That was wild to me. What if he says something truly kooky? What if he says something truly out there and YouTube doesn't allow it to air? I'm sure his opponent will be like, what the hell? Put it up there. Let the voters decide, warts and all. Let the viewers decide what's true. And the real truth is the more you ban, the more people want

to see. And you don't suppress the appetite for information by banning people. You only stoke it. All right, stand by. I'm going to squeeze in a quick break and more with Clay Travis after this. We're going to talk about a powerful moment from the widow of a fallen NYPD officer and the response she got. If you have not seen the pictures of what happened in New York on Friday, you must. Stand by. So, Clay, that the funeral of Officer Jason Rivera in New York. Oh, my God. The pictures of just the blue. I mean, across the sidewalks in New York, you couldn't there wasn't a space of sidewalk that you could see from the overheads. It was incredibly moving. And the messaging from

the NYPD standing in solidarity, keeping the watch in the wake of his death. I mean, if you guys go look at this on YouTube later, you'll see these pictures we're showing where it just looks, it almost just looks like a forest of trees where you can't see any ground. But those are cops. You can't see anything. It's crazy the number of people who showed up. It's wonderful to see-old, a 26-year-old guy who went to effect an arrest on the call of this suspect's mother. Suspect was 44 years old in Harlem. They went into the house, the apartment. They walked down the hall with a third guy who was a rookie. And the suspect came out shooting, killing two of them. And the rookie wound up shooting the suspect in the head, killing him too, the suspect. That is these two young cops were killed. And the widow, the young widow of Jason Rivera, she spoke at the funeral. And keep in mind the

D.A. Alvin Bragg, the new soft on crime D.A. who has removed, among other things, the death penalty for people who kill police officers in New York with a with a swoop, a swoop of his pen. He's made himself the new Congress, the new governor of New York. He's decided that's no longer a thing, was sitting there. And here is what the widow, Dominique Luzuriaga, had to say. You have the whole nation on gridlock. The system continues to fail us. We are not safe anymore. Not even the members of the service. I know you were tired of these laws, especially the ones from the new DA.

I hope he's watching you speak through me right now. So powerful. And it went on. But will it affect change? Your thoughts? I think it will. And I believe if you look at Joe Biden's overall perusal ratings, Megan, and you look at the numbers of murders that are occurring all over this nation, what you learn is being concerned that you are too hard on criminals is a luxury of a low crime environment. And we are not in a low crime environment right now. And moms and dads and grandmas and grandpas and so many people out there are worried about the safety of their families. And if you look at the data, the people who have overwhelmingly been bearing the brunt of the anti-police movement, the defund the police movement, have been poor and minority people in inner city neighborhoods. There are thousands of people today who are dead because of the defund the police movement, because in the wake of George Floyd, and I think I'm speaking same for you, Megan, that look, when

police officers commit crimes, they should be put in front of juries and they should be held accountable. But the idea that what Derek Chauvin did was representative of what the vast majority of police do on any given day, I think is one of the colossal failures of the media. They took a viral video that was an outlier of police behavior on a daily basis and used it to tar and feather police officers all over the country. And as a result, the police were unable to do their job. They pulled back from being able to aggressively protect and serve the people in their communities. And we are reaping the whirlwind of what I believe is the single most disastrous political argument of the 21st century, which is defund the police.

And I believe that any politician who argued in favor of defund the police, first of all, should be held accountable for it. Because now what you see is everybody is running as fast as they can and arguing. Oh, I never said defund the police. But I don't believe you should be able to represent people in this country if you were dumb enough to argue in favor of defund the police. And so my hope is that we are going to quickly spin. Remember, Megan, they took cops off television. They talked about whether or not the Paw Patrol character that is a police officer should continue to be allowed to be a police officer. And I think what's going to happen is you saw that police officer funeral on and you saw Fifth Avenue filled up with police officers, is we're going to quickly

spin back to police officers are heroic. They are protecting us in a time of great danger. We need to enable them to do their job more in order to protect more of us and combat what is surging crime rates. I mean, we had cities all over America, Megan, in 2021 hitting all-time crime rates. Philadelphia, I believe, Austin, Texas. I don't want to name them off the top of my head, but I remember those two. Record number of homicides in Chicago, which has not been short on homicides over the past 20 years. New York, same thing on and on. And it's not just civilians who are getting killed. It's cops. It's not just these two cops who got killed, but cops are getting shot every day now. In fact, 2021 was the most lethal year for cops in 20

years. And why is that? Because people have created an environment, the left, BLM, the wokesters have created an environment that is ripe for danger. It's ripe for danger. And so these cops, that's what she's talking about. It's Alvin Bragg. It's the narrative that all cops are bad. It's this belief by some that they're out there executing, looking for for young male, female, et cetera. Ten million arrests a year by cops. Ten million. OK, four, four unarmed black men were shot and killed by police last year. Four. So the numbers are. So it's like the narrative is out of control. And then the DA's create policy based on the false narrative. And then the cops are the ones. And just to give you a couple of stats, Clay, just last week, two cops were shot in St. Louis. A Milwaukee deputy was shot several times at a traffic stop. Three cops were shot in Houston. I could go on. Not to mention these

two guys in New York who were shot and killed. And you can see the blue has had it. Yeah. Look, and Megan, to your point on police officer shootings, I share this stat and people refuse to believe it. Seventy five percent of people shot by police are white, Asian, or Hispanic. 75%. Now, you can argue that Black people represent 12% of the overall population are being shot at a higher level, but it's important to recognize that most police officer interactions occur with violent criminal backgrounds. It's not as if your average grandma is getting pulled over on a regular basis and hassled or, and this blows people's mind when they say, hey, you know, these are racially discriminatory actions being undertaken by police. I always fire back with,

well, how come you never say they're sexist, right? Men are overwhelmingly shot by police. We don't ever argue, oh, the reason why the police are shooting men is because of sexism. That's because men commit far more in excess violent crime than the 50% of our population would suggest that we would, right? And it's not all men, by the way. It's not mostly grandpas. It's men between the ages of about 16 and 40, right? That's where the overall rate of violence, white, black, Asian, Hispanic, whoever you are, it's both male and it's overwhelmingly regularly young men. And so it's funny when people say, oh, the police are super racist. So how come you don't argue that they're also super sexist?

The police are trying to protect us from the people who are engaging most often in violent crime. This is like a stat that you're not allowed to share, Megan. Well, it's a real stat. I mean, 50% of the violent crime in our major cities is committed by people who happen to be black. Yeah, that's right. And over half of all murders are committed by black men, right? And so if you look at the data, around 6% of the population is black male, and they're committing over half of all murders. By the way, the vast majority, I think it's 93% or 94% of those victims also black male because most race crime, right, is not cross race. You tend to, for better or worse, inflict damage upon people of your own race. And, you know,

look at every Lifetime movie. If you're a woman and you end up being, unfortunately, a victim of violent crime, you know this, Megan, who is by far the most likely person to do that violent crime to you, your boyfriend or your husband, right? Unfortunately, that's why every Lifetime movie, it feels like that deals with a murder mystery. The husband or the boyfriend is almost always the bad guy because the one who is most likely statistically going to do harm. It's not so random. If anything were to happen to me, I think you should look into Chelsea Clinton. Well, if anything happens, definitely look into my wife first. All right, let me ask you about some of the absurd, absurd reaction to the funeral, to the cops. Still, even in this moment, you get people who

want to double down on the cops. And so I'll play you a couple of the reactions. But before I get to that, just to pick up on a point you made yesterday, the people who are now claiming I never said defund the police. My staff put together just a list of some of these folks who are trying now in the wake of these deaths to say like, Oh, no, I'm pro cop. What do you mean? I'm just going to tick off a couple for you. OK, state attorney general Tish James here in New York back in April. We've got to talk about the history of policing, which is embedded in racism, going back to the slave trade, the slave code, black code, et cetera. Right. That's going to help. Sure. That's going to help the cops. Friday night. All of New York State is in mourning tonight. We pray for the

safety of our police. All right. Comptroller Brad Lander, June of 2020. It is time to defund the police. Friday night. Our hearts are with the police, are with the loved ones and colleagues of this 22 year old police officer. Council member Shahana Hanif, the Democrat from Brooklyn. January 2020. More police won't keep us safe. Saturday morning. Heartbroken by last night's shooting. Assembly member Robert Carroll, D. Brooklyn. June 2020. Our streets have been over-policed and black and brown Americans over-criminalized. Saturday morning. Rest in peace, Officer Rivera. Your service will not be forgotten. As New Yorkers, we need to come together as one. Council member Christian Richardson, Jordan, Democrat, Manhattan, January 2022.

NYPD, January 2022. You got it earlier this month. NYPD is still the biggest gang in New York City. Friday night, I am saddened. A loss of one is a loss to the whole as it creates ripples and ripples of pain. I stand with the families of the fallen. Are you kidding? Are you kidding me? Where's Kamala Harris and Joe Biden on attending some of these funerals for police officers? I mean, just think about it. You know, if instead of being a victim here of being killed by a violent perpetrator, if someone had been shot by a police officer, then they would have shown up for those funerals. Yep.

Right? I mean, how about just a very, I don't know what Kamala does all day anyway. The answer is they don't want to have attention drawn to the, as you pointed out, the fact that we're right now dealing with a 20 year high going all the way back to 9-11. 2021 was the first year since 9-11 that we've had this many

deaths. The police are under siege. But yes, like that is what should happen. You should be held accountable for awful decisions that are made in terms of demonizing police. It's not a coincidence that that demonization has real consequences for police officers all over the country who are now under siege in a level they haven't been in a generation. Yes, they created this environment and it has to be dissembled. People need to know the true facts. And you don't like police, no problem. But you can't engage in misinformation about them over and over and then say, oh, I'm so sad about what happened to them.

No, your lies help create an environment that makes it more dangerous for these guys to do an already dangerous job. All right. So now the misinformation about cops does have a real effect. And case in point, here's just an example. Here is this moron actress who no one's ever heard of. It's just a story because it reflects the attitudes of so many. Her name is apparently Jacqueline Guzman. She's an actress, and she had thoughts about the difficult traffic situation thanks to these funerals, this funeral on Friday. Listen to this moron. Do not need to shut down most of lower Manhattan because one cop died for probably doing his job incorrectly they kill people who are under 22 every single day

for no good reason and we don't shut down the city for them so like this is fucking ridiculous this is fucking ridiculous what if somebody's having a heart attack in this area nobody can get to them because it's all blocked off for one fucking cop. She's been fired. She wasn't really working anyway from what I can tell. She had some acting company called Face to Face Films, which is apparently

no longer associated with her, but nobody's ever heard of her. But her attitude is indicative of a lot of people, especially here in New York. Yeah, and again, it also, what you feel comfortable saying, you know, we talk about in terms of the larger speech codes that are being being enforced.

She obviously spiraled out of the out of the acceptable level of criticism. But what's interesting, Megan, is if she had made those comments anti-police and not connected them towards the individual death that she was complaining about in particular, if instead she had been on a video talking about how awful police are and the fact that they kill people all the time and she hates them and everything else, that wouldn't have gotten her in any way a great deal. They put her on CNN. Yeah, that would be the standard talking points. What she said was just unacceptable to say in this particular point in time. And frankly, I hope that there is going to be more because to your point, we when you create the environment that makes police officers the

victims that they have become at a generational high, you are putting the targets on their back, right? The defund the police movement created the idea that you can delegitimize the authority that are that exist in police. And I don't know if you've had these conversations with your kids, but I've had them with my own. I've got boys. One of them's a teenager. And I said, look, if a police officer ever tells you to do something, you do it. Because if you go back and watch all of these videos that lead to violent acts, either with police officers as the victim or with the citizen as the victim, if the citizen had complied with officer instructions, the moment those interactions began, they never would have turned. And I said, look, you're a lawyer. I'm a lawyer. If a police officer is violating your constitutional rights, we can have a lawsuit. We can get the evidence tossed out. We can do all of the things procedurally

that lawyers are able to do to ensure that every American's right is protected. But what we can't do is dial back a violent incident that came because you refuse to comply with the authority of a police officer. That's right. Imagine how things would look, Megan, if every athlete and actor and celebrity had gone with that presumption, presume that an officer is doing his job or her job and that you're going to listen to them, the number of violent interactions that we would have in America would be at a minimal level. All of them spiral from the citizen almost exclusively refusing to comply with officer

instructions. And then it eventually leads to violence. That's another thing that this D.A. in New York has has basically decriminalized. He's saying he's not going to arrest people for resisting arrest. How's that going to not going to arrest people for resisting arrest. How's that going to go for the cops? I'm sure. I mean, now they have the criminals have nothing to lose by trying to make a run for it, by trying to resist the handcuffs, by trying to nothing to lose whatsoever. He's not going to go after them. As for my own kids, I will eventually have a talk like that.

They're still too little. They're only 10, 12 and eight. But I will make sure they know, Clay, to your point, I can be a hell of a lot meaner in a courtroom than any cop could be to you in the moment. Trust me, just as mean as any cop is to you on the street. I will be 10 times as mean in a court or a lawyer I hire will be. So we'll get we'll get our justice. And everyone should be saying that, because especially in this environment, you go into court, doesn't matter race, doesn't matter gender, and you allege that a cop has hurt you. And most of them have body cameras now. You're not going to find many sympathetic juries for the cop. Things are turning on that front.

That's not a bad thing. That's not a bad thing. But encouraging people to resist arrest is insane. And that's only going to lead to more, not fewer incidents. All right, standby. We're going to come back. We're going to talk about whether Tom Brady really is retiring, among other things, with the one and only Clay Travis. And remember, you can find The Megyn Kelly Show live on Sirius XM Triumph Channel 111 every weekday at noon east, and the full video show and clips by subscribing to our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash

Megyn Kelly. If you like the audio version, you can subscribe and download our podcast on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts for free. And there you'll find our full archives. More than 250 shows now, including the first time Clay was on, way back on episode 22. Wow, way back. A lot has happened since then. You'll love it. Go check it out.

So before we get to Tom Brady, let's talk about Canada and the great freedom convoy of these truckers who just will not be ordered around by Justin Trudeau. They've got, what is it, over 90 percent vaccination rate in Canada. Never enough. Now they're saying these truckers who spend all day in their trucks by themselves, that they have to get vaccinated or they can't cross the border into the United States. And they fought back, creating this convoy of trucks going into Ottawa, the nation's capital up there. And Trudeau ran true to form. He ran, Clay. He's at an undisclosed location because, of course, he's not man enough to stand up and defend his policy. Well, I mean, first of all, great for these truckers. And I applaud them to the high heavens. I've been waiting and begging and hoping that we were going to see people finally rise up against what I believe are these draconian vaccine mandates.

If you want to get vaccinated for COVID, more power to you. But the idea that you should be deciding whether or not people can have jobs based on whether they're vaccinated or not. It doesn't make sense. In the world of sports, Megan, we can see that it doesn't really change anything. 100% of NHL players, 97% NBA, 95% NFL. The NFL finally just decided to stop testing. Nobody's testing positive for COVID now as the playoffs have gotten underway. And many of these leagues are finally saying, you know what, we can't test. But what those prove is this idea that Biden has been selling. And I think that Canada proves the same thing. And certainly, England and Israel do as well.

You can't vaccinate your way out of COVID. The vaccines are not eliminating COVID like we were told that they would. And so once you get to that point, I think we need to allow people to make the personal autonomy a decision. I've had COVID twice. I had it in August of 2020. And then I had the COVID remix version with Omicron a couple of weeks ago. I was fortunately fine both times. But there's a huge percentage of people that got the COVID vaccine, got the booster and still got Omicron too. And so this idea that it's going anywhere is a fundamental failure. And I hope that we're going to start to get some more rational public policy decisions made as we move into spring and summer. Well, here's what's great. Justin Trudeau, almost always wrong about

everything. I mean, it must be said, almost always wrong, said these truckers like this little convoy. It's just a small fringe minority. So listen, I'll play you the sound of him. And you keep in mind that the convoy wound up being hundreds of vehicles. It was and then it grew to 45 miles long, 45 miles long. But here's how Justin Trudeau described it. The small fringe minority of people who are on their way to Ottawa or who are holding unacceptable views that they're expressing do not represent the views of Canadians who have been there for each other, who know that following the science and stepping up to protect each other is the best way to continue to ensure our freedoms, our truckers came. Small fringe minority. I have never seen somebody who is attractive to the eye and gets incredibly ugly as soon as they open their mouth as much as Justin Trudeau. What about this consensus now that happens all the time? I mean, the fringe minority is obviously not true. There's a lot of people who have these beliefs that are shared by the truckers. But the idea of-

He says they're unacceptable views. Unacceptable opinions. That's just, I'm so much more troubled by a leader saying what is and what is not acceptable for purposes of public debate than I am by any opinions that might exist for a citizen group, right? Like, again, I'm old school in that I believe in the First Amendment and the marketplace of ideas. And when you are telling me that a marketplace is not willing to accept an argument, by the way, of whether or not that this vaccine should be mandatory, that's the very essence of what the marketplace of ideas, Megan, should exist for.

Right. We should be aggressively debating this instead of trying to artificially constrict the sphere of debate in that country or in our country or around the world. Frankly, unacceptable views. What? Not wrong. Not not backed by science. Just the view is unacceptable. I don't want to hear it. All right. Last but not least, Tom Brady in or out. So weird. You know, ESPN said he's retiring. Then apparently his own company sent out a tweet, Tom's own company saying he was retiring. Then they deleted that tweet. Then his manager came out or his agent said it's he'll let you know. But what the hell's going on in or out? I think he's out, Megan. I think he wants to control the way that he leaves.

And he wasn't happy that that information leaked to me. This week would be perfect because you've got a week off before the Superbowl week. And so you respect a lot of times. It's kind of a quiet week as we get ready for the frenzy that will be next week for the biggest sporting event of the year. And so he's been so great on social media, so great with videos and sharing his life, particularly since he left the Patriots and joined the Tampa Bay Buccaneers down in Florida, that I believe he wants to control the messaging. I don't know if you watch Curb Your Enthusiasm or

not, but there's an entire season where Larry David got mad at the coffee shop and decided to open the Spite coffee shop next door. Brady seems like the kind of guy who could decide to play another year just to spite people over the way the message came out about how he might retire. I hope that's true because it's fun to watch him. My other favorite observation was immediately people blame Gisele. Of course, the woman's always got to be thrown under the bus. If he decides to go, I'm sure it'll be his own decision. He's a big boy. Clay, so fun talking to you.

All the best. And we'll listen to you later today on the Clay and Buck Show. Up next, Rick Grinnell on the potential threat from Russia and the Supreme Court and Joe Biden's plan for naming the Breyer replacement. The U.N. Security Council is meeting today to discuss the Russian troop buildup along Ukraine's border. Russia has denied that it is planning to invade, but Western nations remain on edge, threatening sanctions and more if Russia makes one false move. Rick Grinnell is the former U.S. ambassador to Germany, intimately involved in all of this.

Germany is. He served as acting director of national intelligence as well and was a special presidential envoy for Serbia and Kosovo peace negotiations. Rick, great to have you back. How are you? I'm doing great. Thanks for having me back. Love the show, by the way. Can I just say it's like it's it's mandatory. Oh, thank you. Well, you're the perfect person for this. I mean, since this whole thing started, I'm like, let's get back on the show because you understand this region. You understand Germany's role in all of this, which is critical, better than most people. And unlike most people, you've actually negotiated for peace and for sort of stand downs on tough issues before. So let's just start broad brush. Let's let's assume the audience knows very little about Russia and Ukraine, because most people don't pay that much attention.

It's like, what are they doing? They're saber rattling again. Our president misstepped and said something stupid again. OK, are we going to Russia? Are we going to war with Russia or not? Probably not. But there is a lot to watch and follow. So let's just start with this. Why is Russia on Ukraine's border right now? Why does it have 100,000 troops sitting there in a threatening way and has captured the attention of the world? I think really the basic answer is that they want to break up NATO. They don't like NATO, which, as you know, was literally created and designed to keep Russia from entering into Europe and to not rolling over Eastern Europe. And so what's been happening under the Trump administration is that we've been strengthening NATO. It's so crazy, Megan, because the narrative from the media was that Donald Trump was undermining NATO. And I would really argue, and I could go toe to toe with anyone to say, if you care about an organization that is adrift, do you ignore it and let it be adrift? Or do you actually go in, talk about the problems and try to fix it?

Let's give the analogy of a marriage. If your marriage is not going well, do you try to fix it or do you ignore it and eventually say, you know what, this is over? I actually believe that we're in that relationship right now with the UN, for instance. It's not going well. It's wasting money. We're ignoring it. That's not good. It's eventually going to come to the point where we say it's useless. But with NATO, Donald Trump was annoyed that NATO was adrift. And so he engaged. He tried to get members to do more. I think the Russians have seen under Donald Trump more money going into NATO, us talking about reforming NATO. Clearly, there's conversations about who should become NATO. And that has become a NATO member.

And that has been scaring the Russians. The Russians then see Joe Biden take over, they see, and I think this is an incredibly important point, a disastrous Afghanistan pullout, which signaled to the world that we were really in terrible leadership positions here in the United States. We had a weak leadership team at the State Department, the Pentagon, and the White House, the NSC. And so like Putin did under the Obama-Biden regime, when he grabbed parts of the Ukraine, this area called Crimea, just went in and grabbed it, and it was over quickly. By the way, he did that right after the Olympics. Now what we're seeing is the Russians saber rattling. I think that's a good description. And now they're all around the Ukraine border threatening to take over or cause some sort of conflict

destabilization campaign inside Ukraine. That's where we are. I think it's all signaling from a weak Biden administration. There is no possible way Putin would be doing this under a Donald Trump administration. They do not, the Russians, want Ukraine to become a part of NATO. And right now we've sort of given them a special status. It's like you're our little special friend. You're NATO adjacent, but you're not in NATO. But they really want us to say explicitly they're not in NATO and they will never be in NATO. And then they want us to make all sorts of promises about

not expanding NATO further and not having certain military installations or certain weapons around Russia or, you know, in these European countries. They basically ask for everything. You know, Putin, in response to our demands of, you know, what are you looking for, has given us the kitchen sink of Russia's wish list. And we're basically saying, yeah, you're not getting all of that. But is it all about the fact that Ukraine had been getting closer and closer to Western countries and getting more and more NATO adjacent than it even had been? And Putin's fear because he sees NATO as really an extension. I mean, he sees Ukraine as an extension of Russia. And is this really about just stopping at bottom Ukraine from becoming part of NATO? Well, first of all, I have to say, can I start using NATO adjacent?

And do I have to credit you? Because that is brilliant. I love carte blanche. Okay. Look, I think it's all about NATO strength. The Russians have always hated NATO, although they do have an office there in Brussels and trying to coordinate because we want to make sure that we don't just all of a sudden miscommunicate and talking so it's it's definitely a problem i think it is all about nato membership um certainly uh we have other countries that have talked about joining nato um who are nato adjacent and they've wanted to move into the status like finland and suddenly there is a uh an uproar from from the russians they don't want to see this. They certainly don't like their former satellite countries or areas becoming closer to NATO. They don't like NATO on their doorstep. And so I do believe that this is a signal and a negotiations tactic to say, look what we can do if you start talking more about putting Ukraine into NATO.

Now, we have said apparently that that's a non-starter. We've repeatedly said that any guarantees that Ukraine will never be a part of NATO is a non-starter, not negotiable. And the Russians are saying, you know, too bad. That's our core demand. They also want, here's a list of what the Kremlin had reportedly apparently Putin apparently had a conversation with Macron in France and said I'm mad because so far no one's taking account of key Russian concerns like the one we just discussed Ukraine also we just don't want NATO expansion at all and we want the non-deployment of strike weapons systems near Russian borders, and we want NATO to return its military potential and infrastructure in Europe to positions existing in 1997. Again, we've called all of those things non-starters. But can you explain points two and three,

non-deployment of strike weapons systems near Russian borders, and then returning NATO's military potential and infrastructure back to what it was in 97. So first of all, let's start from the fact that I'm going to say something that immediately everybody's going to jump on and say, oh my God, he's pro-Putin. This is a terrible guy. We don't want to stick our finger in the eye of Russia or Putin. That shouldn't be our goal. And I think what, it was so brilliant when Donald Trump would say, you know, we're going to put tough sanctions, we're going to try to change the behavior, we're going to shut down the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, but I want to get along with Russia. And the left would go crazy to say, why are you saying that?

And I think that it's important to say upfront, especially as a diplomat, I've been at the State Department for 11 years, we don't want to not get along with any country. We should look to try to find ways, but we should have absolutes. So let me start by saying that. But I do believe that the demands of Russia to not put any hardware, and what they're really saying is don't move strike force capability. Don't move mobile missile launchers. Don't move people. Don't make it look like you're threatening us on our borders. So don't move it closer to us through your NATO countries or through countries in Central

or Eastern Europe. And the Russian point of view is don't threaten us by moving weaponry closer to us. I get it. But our point of view is you don't tell us what to do. We're America. And when you start threatening people, we have to react. So it is a little bit of a chicken and an egg thing. We want to make sure that we don't take anything off the table. That's important in negotiations. But I think we've had terrible negotiators, because we should be able to sit across the table and say, look, we don't want war. Our people are tired of war. We're bringing home troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. Well,

now Biden is adding troops in Syria. So he is trying to start wars. But under Trump, we certainly didn't. And I think that it's really important when we boil this down, that the audience understands we did not have this problem when Donald Trump was saying we have sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which is a huge, not only moneymaker for Russia, but it is a pipeline of influence into Europe. And when we had sanctions and when we talked about shutting down that pipeline, it never came online. And technically, it's still not online. We could do the diplomatic thing and say we're shutting down this pipeline, and I think Russian behavior would change. But this would have never happened if we had a president who didn't back down and give a pipeline to the Germans and immediately the Russians smell weakness. I mean, I could go on.

There's other parts of the world. Look at the Houthis and the UAE. I'm so outraged about what's going on there, Megan. It's unbelievable. We have Abu Dhabi, a commerce hub in the Middle East, a peaceful nation, an ally. We have a lot of Americans in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. The Houthis who were taken off the terrorist list by Joe Biden were immediately sending rockets, launching rockets into Abu Dhabi. What is going on? Everyone around the world is smelling weakness with Joe Biden. So let's talk about the pipeline because that's a big part of this. Joe Biden had a different view of it, as you point out, than Donald Trump did. And this is a critical pipeline for Russia, because not only does it allow them to fuel companies or countries like Germany, which got rid of its nuclear power plants, which we're starting to do in more and

more states here in the US, even though it's an incredibly efficient, clean way of manufacturing energy. So they got rid of their nukes, their power plants, and now they're dependent on other countries for their energy because their little renewables aren't quite cutting it. So Russia, enter Russia, was like, we got you. We got tons of natural resources here. We got this pipeline. We're going to send you what you need. And Trump said, oh, no, no, you're not. We're going to sanction that. We're not going to allow that to happen. And Biden had a different view. And not only does that put Germany now in the position of not really being able to be in solidarity with the other NATO countries on shutting down Russia's behavior, but it emboldens Russia because they make a ton of money off of this, right? And that's kind of what Joe Biden was saying. He was like, well, Russia is not going to do anything with Ukraine because they can't have additional sanctions. They need that pipeline. He was like, I love how he references his grandma or his dad with sayings that we've all heard a thousand times. He pretends like it came from

Joe Biden's dad, like, as my dad used to say, that'd be cutting off your nose to spite your face. It's like, OK, everyone says that. It's like Russia won't do it because I'd be cutting off the nose to spite the face. OK, so your general thoughts on on the pipeline and how important that is and how important Joe Biden's policies are with respect to it. Well, first of all, let's talk about why America and the rest of the European Union doesn't want the Russian gas energy into Germany. I think most people would say, well, let them trade. Who cares? Let them trade. The policy of America, and it's been a bipartisan policy for decades, and the policy of the European Union is that no country that's an ally of ours or within

the EU should get too much of their energy from one place, because then you know you can be bribed. It's a real problem if one country, especially Russia, if you're a member of NATO, is giving you too much energy. It's important to note that Nord Stream 1, we believe, the United States policy is Nord Stream 1, should be a part of the overall diversification of energy. Nord Stream 1 is okay. Why not have some Russian gas, Russian energy into the mix? That should be fine. Our position is that Nord Stream 2, the second pipeline, goes too far. It's too much energy.

Germany is dependent upon Russia. And let me just tell you, as former U.S. Ambassador to Germany, Germany depends on Russia. They don't want to pick a fight. They need to be Switzerland when it comes to Russia because of that energy. We've already seen the Russians play games in politics with turning down or turning off energy as making energy a weapon. We know they do that. And here's the other thing that I would remind my friends on the other side of the aisle here in America. Look at the rest of Europe, because Germany is an outlier. The rest of Europe,an parliament has said no to the nordstrom 2 pipeline they've tried to shut it down but germany is a big player in the eu they're the largest economy in all of europe so they get to do what they want there is this thing called germany first economic model

where germany sells cars to china germany sells cars to anybody who wants to buy it they love their money in germany they have a budget surplus think about that every year they have a budget surplus and yet they refuse to pay their nato obligations so a couple of facts on the pipeline um the nordstrom 2 pipeline runs from russia to germany it uh is 760 miles took five years to build, costs roughly 11 billion, designed to double Russia's gas exports to Germany, runs under the Baltic Sea, has not started operating. As regulators said in November, it doesn't comply with German law. They suspended approval, but it could be. And now now we're saying this is from U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price to NPR on Thursday that we, the United States, will try to halt the opening of it if Russia invades Ukraine. And it's you know, we don't control everything Germany does. But he said we will work with Germany to ensure it does not move forward. And this is the thing they keep going back to, Rick. We're going to sanction them. We're going to make it too painful for Russia

to do anything to Ukraine. And you've got people like Victoria Nuland saying, fear not. I do want to get you started. Fear not. We're going to sanction Russia out of its bad behavior. Oh, where do I begin? This is such a mess. First of all, let me... I follow your tweets. I'm going to be very careful not to give away intelligence here. So let me just speak in facts. But when I started as U.S. ambassador to Germany in 2018, I was told the pipeline was weeks away from coming online. And that was the argument from the Russians to say, back off. It's at the end. And the Germans, what are you doing?

You know, it's almost near the end. It's too late, too late, too late. It wasn't true. It wasn't true then. Now what we're being told is we're weeks away. We're weeks away from starting. Not true. We can still shut this pipeline down. We did not bring it online in the Trump administration, and still the Biden administration could use diplomacy and sanction. There was a sanction bill in the Senate just a couple of weeks ago brought forward Ted Cruz, to say, let's sanction this. Look what the Russians are doing. They're making moves. They're undermining NATO. Let's sanction the pipeline. Let's bring these sanctions back online that Biden took away. The German ambassador and the Germans went on a lobbying campaign to lobby the Democrats to not do that, the Biden administration joined them.

We had the National Security Advisor and the Deputy Secretary of State going to Democrats in Congress, in the Senate, saying, don't put sanctions on. Now, that doesn't make any sense. The Democratic Party is speaking on both sides of their mouth. They're saying we need to do something about Russia diplomatically, but they're not putting sanctions on the number one project that Russia and Putin care about. Putin has Google. He sees what's going on. He sees that the Senate is so weak and that the Democrats and the Germans are working together to not put sanctions on his pipeline. So he pockets that and he moves forward. So I really believe that if you want to avoid a war, you should put sanctions back on.

You should do diplomacy. Do it right now. now, I don't understand when you move Russian troops to the border of Ukraine and you have belligerent talk and actions, why aren't we immediately sanctioning this pipeline? And when we talk about sanctions, it's about the companies that are helping to finish and build this project. Those companies do worldwide work. So for instance, there's one company that is a deep water pipe layer. There's very few companies.

I think there's only two or three in the whole world that do that. They also work in the Gulf of Mexico. They work with American companies. If they're sanctioned on this one project, they're not going to risk the rest of their business. They're going to shut it down. So we do have tools. We absolutely have tools, but we haven't been able to utilize that. When I was DNI, I watched this closely. I had

every single day, I asked for a briefing on the pipeline because I knew it wasn't too late and that there was more that we could do. And I would try to educate senators to say, read your intel. Don't listen to the German or the Russian spin. Read your intel and react. Obviously, a lot of them didn't. It's funny because at that disastrous press conference, President Biden kept saying, it's totally up to Russia. It's totally up to Vladimir Putin. What comes next? You know, it's completely his decision whether he's going to launch basically World War Three, but by starting this, and a lot of people were saying, well, why are we allowing that? Why wouldn't we you know, it's not like we're some meek little player with no international heft. Why wouldn't we come out and say, no, it's not totally up to

Vladimir Putin will make it so painful for him to actually do this and create this conflict that he will have no choice but to back down. And I guess sanctions is our most effective means of doing it. The only answer I seem to glean from grandpa at the presser was it'll hurt us, too, economically. Look, I think it's really important. We could do a whole show on this next point. But Washington isats who don't know how to negotiate. They know how to write reports about what's going on in a political situation. But we need diplomacy with muscle. I mean, look, let's be honest. I was mocked. A whole bunch of other people were mocked for being undiplomatic or whatever. When, you know, I'm the nicest guy in the world. I was never rude to anyone, but I was firm. And I would say to Chancellor Merkel, no, you know, it doesn't make sense. And the American people don't understand when you have a budget surplus and you're not paying your NATO bill, it doesn't make sense. Why are you doing that?

You know what she once said to me? The reason why it really riles up the media in Germany when I say that, and the reason why the political people attack me, and the reason she doesn't like it, it's because it's true. She literally said that to me. She knows it doesn't look good. But they have all sorts of reasons why nobody wants another powerful military in Germany, which is not true, but that's one of their excuses. And so we've got to get around that. And the way to get around that is diplomacy with muscle, training our State Department diplomats to understand when you're sitting at the table, you've got to solve this problem.

You've got to be tough. You've got to come up with creative ideas, because if you fail, you take that file and you transfer it over to the Pentagon. They don't negotiate. And what Washington right now is trapped in is immediately sending troops into every situation, immediately saying, oh, what's the military option? And so instead of diplomacy with muscle, we've pushed the State Department aside. I mean, you got Blinken, who is a disaster at negotiating. He sends in Wendy Sherman, who is, you know, basically her nickname is What Do You Want, Wendy? She sits at the table and gives everything away. She's done that in North Korea. She's done it in Iran. Now she's doing it with

Russia. It's like a drive by shooting for them. They go in, they watch everything that's happened. They sit at the table, they they issue a statement, they, we had a meeting. I'm so tired of the State Department pretending like a meeting is action. A meeting is a tactic. A meeting is like we get there and now what? A meeting is nothing. You got to have action. And so I believe that when you go in as a State Department diplomat, you better be there with muscle. Because if you fail, you got war coming behind you. I also will just finish with this. I don't want to see diplomats talking about true presence and war.

You can talk about the possibility that the Pentagon will come in if we fail. But I don't believe that a diplomat should be there saying, you know, war, war, war. And we have too many diplomats, even on our side of the aisle, that talk about war. Instead of it being a backstop, it just seems to me that they keep using it as a tool. And I want to see diplomats that go in, get creative, and who are there until the end so that we don't have war, so that we can avoid it. But you got to be tough if you're going to do that. The current crop of diplomats that we have, honestly, too many of them are not cutting it. How did that change the stakes now? We've pulled the people out of our embassy. Was that necessary? Obviously, war wasn't imminent when we did it. But, you know, after what happened in Afghanistan, were we wrong to do it early?

That's up next. And then we'll talk about President Biden's SCOTUS requirements, Supreme Court requirements, and how the American people feel about it. Don't go away. The Biden press conference earlier this month, I mean, left and right has been condemned as a disaster. The comment about minor incursion possibly being OK in Ukraine. I'm fascinated to know your thoughts on what has where has that gotten us? How much of what we're saying right now and what Putin's thinking right now is linked? I'll just play it for the audience. It's only 14 seconds to this comment by Joe Biden at that presser on what it does. It's one thing if it's a minor incursion and then we end up having to fight about what to do and not do, etc. And so that was just a short bit. But that's he's that's one thing. And then he spent the rest of the week and Jen Psaki did, too, trying to clean it up.

Look, we need to understand that the disastrous Afghanistan pullout is really the basis for what we're talking about. It shocked the world. And Joe Biden went out and said, hey, we got 90% of the people out, which was real terrible because it was an admittance that the United States was going to leave 10% behind and that was okay. That was literally a earth shattering moment for our allies to understand maybe we can't rely on the United States. Maybe this is the United States that's moving in a different direction. It was really groundbreaking. I actually believe, I said this before about the Houthis, but I actually believe that moment,

the Houthis thought, well, now's the time that we can start attacking others in this region. They were taken off the terrorist list by Biden. Biden clearly thinks we're doing okay. Let's up our game. And so then you come back to this press conference and you have the minor incursion, really a delineation between how much can Russia go in and take over a country. That was heard very loudly by Ukraine. And look, this last phone call that Joe Biden had with President Zelensky was also not a very good phone call because what my sources are telling me, and I trust my sources, I can tell you they're absolute, that Zelensky was told, President Zelensky was told by President Biden that Ukraine should expect no more hardware, no more military help from the United States, and no more sanctions unless Russia goes in, to which President Zelensky was very upset. And he said, this is the worst of both worlds for us, Mr. President. You don't understand. It's the worst of both worlds. You're not stopping the Russians at all. They continue

to march forward. And you're ruining our economy because you're scaring the heck out of people. Now, if one country would be the country that would not want to downplay war and maybe arguably overplay the threat it would be ukraine but the ukraine government is from top to bottom is telling everybody don't panic we don't see a war coming right and and i don't think it's just about their economy i think they would be prepared. And so when the United States is the first country to say evacuate the embassy, no other country did that, Megan. We don't have an ambassador there, by the way. So this is an important point. Let me just tell you the way embassies work. With no ambassador there, everybody's a foreign service officer beholden to Washington to get a promotion and to get a good report on their annual employment survey. No one is going to do anything unless Wendy Sherman and Anthony Blinken tell them to do this.

And so this decision was a Washington based decision. Evacuate. You know, they started with non-essential personnel, to which my reaction was, why are we paying for people who are non-essential? We should have a lean, mean diplomatic core of only essential people. Why are we paying people that really don't matter? But anyway, we started with non-essential.

We moved to everybody, evacuated the embassy. The first, America was first to evacuate. Nobody followed. No other country followed. It's embarrassing. So it's embarrassing. So it was unnecessary. We were the first to tuck tail.

I mean, to your point of leave no man behind, right as Afghanistan was happening, we had on Marcus Luttrell and his twin brother, Morgan. And, you know, the whole movie in the book, Lone Survivor, are all about how we we don't leave anyone behind. It doesn't matter how dangerous it is. We go back in and we find find our guys. And they were just so stunned that we had just made this decision to just pull up stakes and shrug our shoulders about those who remained. So but is this a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation for Biden? Now he says, let's get them all out. Yeah, that's such a great question because my only reaction to that, and I've gotten that

question a lot of like, oh, it doesn't matter what you really did. You were going to always be criticized. Here's my reaction. We have to be able to use intelligence to inform our decisions. We cannot let emotion or misinformation get involved in our decisions. Our decisions should not be political. I actually believe that because of the criticism in Afghanistan, the disaster that we had in leaving people behind, Jake Sullivan and the entire NSC apparatus became political. And they said, we got to lean forward and remove our people proactively. Because of Afghanistan, let's be emotional about Ukraine and let's get our people out. It's a double whammy. You missed the information last time and then you overestimated this time.

Intelligence is an estimate. Sometimes you get it right. Sometimes you get it wrong. But clearly what this administration is doing is letting misinformation and emotion get into our intelligence decisions. With that estimate, sometimes you underestimate and sometimes you overestimate. They did both. So now what? How do you see this ending? We're

not going to meet Putin's demands. And indeed, you know, analysts are saying he's being intentionally, you know, he's asking for the moon intentionally, knowing that we're never going to meet these demands. And so why is he doing that? Right. Like, where does he want to land it? And what do you see happening? I see that Putin has already won. He's wanted to scare member states and NATO to not expand. We're going to have a reluctance to talk about expansion. And by the way, let me just say, separate from this, you know, people are going to quote me in years to come on this next statement. But separate from all of the drama that's happening, I don't believe that we should be adding members to NATO until everybody is paying their bill and everybody is

doing 2% and doing everything that they're obligated to do. Why are we talking about making the membership bigger when the current membership are not pulling their weight? So I want to make that very clear. But the reality is, is that what the Russians and what Putin specifically want is no more discussions about NATO expansion and certainly no more, you know, aggressive NATO, a successful NATO. He doesn't want that he wants us trapped into talking about obligations and pay and back pay and you know all sorts of uh misinformation about this the strategy that we're going to do on cyber which is what you know nato is trapped in right now of where are we going to go and how active are we going to be in with cyber attacks so the the

reality is is with putin winning and getting us to uh get off our game on a unified nato and i blame the germans largely their move towards switzerland foreign policy is so evident they want to sell cars to everybody and they don't want to make tough decisions. They're really undermining NATO. And as the largest economy in Europe to undermine NATO, you know, Putin wins. He loves his relationship with Germany right now and the Germans need him. And so I actually pray and hope that he doesn't invade. And I think the signs are that he's already won. He's threatened us. But again, I think we got to be prepared because the last time he took over Crimea was right after the Olympics. And I'm sure, I'm quite sure that Chinese President Xi has called Putin to say,

can you at least give me good news at the Olympics? Don't start a war before. Well, if you're going to do something, do it afterwards. There's no question about that. So what about can I just ask you, is there a lot of people who are I don't know, I don't know how I describe them, but who criticize the expansion of NATO anyway, who say NATO was something we came up with after World War Two to prevent aggression from Russia. And here we are, you know, 80 years after that. Like, do we really need the expansion? Why are we expanding this organization that was formed to counter a threat that it's still there, but it's not exactly what it used to be?

You're hitting on all the right questions, and we need to really rethink NATO. And I would argue, Megan, that Donald Trump really, even though he boiled it down to pay your fair share, Germany is not paying its fair share. I have been in lots of discussions with him about NATO, and his frustration is that NATO is not up to date in terms of what the current threats are. And that's why I brought up cyber. We need to rethink NATO. We need to rethink how a membership is done. We need to think about the current threats. You know, there are members of NATO that do not share the same threat assessment that we do. And so there needs to be a discussion about that. I think we need to have a real

discussion about Turkey's membership in NATO. And I'm not suggesting to kick them out. I'm not. What I am suggesting is that we need to have a more thoughtful strategy about why are they in NATO, what they can do to help, what are the current threats. We can't just think of the threats as Russia taking over Ukraine, so we've got to roll tanks into Eastern Europe. I do believe that if we had an assessment of what are today's threats, we would have a much better strategy of what it's going to take to be a NATO member and how to make NATO current membership stronger. Hmm. OK. This is a good transition soundbite. So it's not going particularly well for Joe Biden, domestically or abroad, from Afghanistan to this debacle where you can see he's not that

well respected on the world stage. And we we more importantly, the United States is not that well respected at the moment. Not according to Donna Brazile. Here was my old pal Donna Brazile, who cheated at a presidential debate and then made the mistake of sitting for an interview with me and denied it. Meanwhile, we already had her emails. I love that. She had already. I love that. That was one of the best interviews ever. She was like getting indignant with me. I was like, ma'am, you already admitted it. It's too late for this routine. Anyway, Ben Fox News made her an employee. It's OK. And now this week she was on the Sunday shows. And this is how she described Joe Biden's current position. You know, Joe Biden's number one priority is the health, safety and well-being of the American people, which means crime prevention, which means jobs creation, which means making sure that we can go home

to safe neighborhoods and have clean drinking water. He's a good president. He might be at 40 percent or 30 percent, but you know what? He's doing everything right. Your thoughts on that, Rick? I mean, this is such the Washington way to have these recycled people that just stick to the lines. And I don't understand why ABC, CBS and NBC have these, you know, characters. I mean, they literally work for ABC now. Yeah, it's like Baghdad Bob, you know, they say something that is not based in reality. And only in Washington, DC, do people go along with it. I mean, the rest of us on the outside look at it as a circus. But but in Washington, D.C. do people go along with it. I mean, the rest of us on the outside look at it as a circus.

But in Washington, there's this group think and group mentality. And they say, oh, Donna Brazile, everybody knows her. And, you know, she's got this history. She's the first woman to run a presidential. And so they give her the ability to just go out and say anything. And meanwhile, it's like, you know, propaganda from the ruling party. And so I believe, Megan, we really no longer have a fight between Republicans and Democrats in this country. Really, the problem is Washington, D.C. and the rest of America. What works in Washington doesn't work outside.

People go there and get really taken. And this is not a criticism of just Democrats. There are a whole bunch of Republicans who are there 20, 30 years, and they just love the place. Their social life is there. Their church is there. They never want to tear it down. We've got to stop asking reporters who live there and wear the hats of the sports teams and their kids go to school there. We have to stop asking them to make Washington, D.C. less powerful with a smaller budget. They're never going to do that. We got to send people there that are on the outside. I'll just finish with this one point, and I believe this really strongly. If you're listening to this podcast and you're about to vote in an election in your state for

senator or congressman. Look at the person you've never heard of and look at their background. Because the whole idea of sending somebody new means you haven't heard of them before. If you've heard of these people, it's because they've run for office three or four times. Don't just vote for the name because you're comfortable hearing the name. Look at the outsider. Look at the person you've never heard of and look at their background. We want business people, people from all walks of life, the Jeffersonian principle, to go to Washington, make the laws while they're there, and then leave the place,

come home and live under those laws. I get the whole idea of term limits are not good in theory because you deny my ability to vote for who I want. I get all that. But the theory isn't working anymore. The reality is, is that name ID keeps getting reelected. And I think we should have term limits. I really I believe that that it would reset if we had term limits for the bureaucrats who also work for the politicians. Well, tell it to Nancy Pelosi, who said last time around she wouldn't run again. And now at 81, she's going to she cannot separate herself from power, even though it certainly appears the American people are about to do that for her. She's not she's not going to be. Let me make a prediction

next year. Let me make a prediction. She runs for reelection. She gets reelected. The Republicans take over the House. She then gives up her seat and we have to have a special election. She's already got this in her mind. And the state of California has to pay for a special election. Somebody, some real reporter, some real journalist in Washington should ask her, are you committing to not give up your seat for two years to have a special election, a costly special election? Wait, why would she do that? Because she can see just the same as the rest of us that the House is likely to go red. I mean, it's predictable. These these politicians in Washington stick to the line until the very end. You know, they always they they they ignore reality. And so she's going to do that because she doesn't want to signal that the Democrats are losing. You know, they still believe

that there's a chance. And you've got Donna Brazile saying, you know, Joe Biden is doing great. So, you know, the people who believe in Washington, the rhetoric of the ruling party are going to stick to that. So she doesn't want to signal that somehow there's a problem. She will say, I'm running and I'm going to be the speaker again. And then when she loses, she'll give it up. That's my. OK, now let's talk about the Supreme Court, because that's another area in which there seems to be a divide between the this administration and the American people. Joe Biden has has come out and made very clear that he's got really just two criteria, two main criteria for who's going to be the Supreme Court justice. I'll let I'll let him say it. This is soundbite seven. I've made no decision except one. The person I will nominate will be someone with extraordinary qualifications, character, experience, and integrity. And that person will be the first black woman ever nominated to the United States Supreme Court. Okay. So there was a poll, ABC News, Ipsos, over the last couple of days, and 76% of the American people do not want this. It's not that they have anything against a black woman as a Supreme Court

justice. They just want him to consider all possible nominees. They don't want identity politics controlling the next Supreme Court pick. Only 23 percent believe he should consider exclusively black women for the nomination. He's hell bent on doing it. He's fallen almost 20 percent in terms of 20 percentage points with the black voters in the past few months. So you tell me whether it's all about that or whether he's on the right track. What do you think? Where to even begin with this disastrous announcement? I mean, you know, what I heard immediately were Asians, Hispanics and gays were not going to be considered. And that's outrageous. Men are not going to be considered. Whites are not going to be considered.

This is not what Dr. King envisioned. This is, you know, look, Joe Biden voted against the first, the second black person, the first black conservative, to sit on the Supreme Court. He roughed him up. Now he's making this outrageous demand that the only people he, he are, the only people he's going to consider are Black women. I don't even think Black women are going to go along with this because the reality is whoever gets the nomination is going to have an asterisk next to their name. They weren't in a pool of being considered as the best. And that's sad because there are a lot of black women who are very qualified,

who should be considered in the larger pool. This is also just politically stupid. Why didn't he just give us a list of everybody he's going to consider and do what he does best, which is, you know, you put somebody handicapped on there, you put a gay on there, you put a Hispanic and an Asian and and then you pick and he could have picked whoever he wanted. And I think that what he has done is really undermined the Supreme Court and this specific nominee to always be the one that wasn't considered with everyone else. The same as he did to Kamala Harris. The same thing.

Just handicap them a little going into the next phase in a way that's totally unnecessary. But he wanted the bounce in the polls that came from saying, I'm going to find a black running mate. Or in this case, I'm going to find a black woman. He got the bounce from the Washington DC newsrooms. He didn't get the bounce from the American people. The American people look at this and they say, oh, gosh, I hate this. This is not what Dr. King envisioned. And again, I go back to, you know, there are a whole bunch of qualified Asian women, Hispanic women, lesbians. They weren't even considered, Megan. I know it's it's embarrassing because honestly, you see these distinguished jurists up there. You will when one of them is named and accepts the nomination and then has to sit before the Senate for the confirmation.

And you're thinking about pigmentation and vaginas. Honestly, it's like I don't want to have to think about that when I see the choice. I want to think about what's between her ears. That's it. It's because of him that I won't be. Look, you know, you didn't get your job because you're a woman. And I find it really condescending. The Democrats always send out press releases when they hire a gay person. And I think it's just it's not good for the nominee or the person that you pick to somehow make an irrelevant characteristic as the reason they're getting the job.

Look, as somebody who's had to fight within the Republican Party to actually even get an interview for the job. Right. You know, I didn't get a leg up. I certainly didn't get any help. I had another barrier to get over. But it makes you better. It makes you stronger. And I think that's what we want in America, is people who get their job on merit, not on skin color, not on gender, not on sexual orientation. You know, it would be amazing if one of the women, let's say he, whatever, I don't know who he's going to choose, but let's say he chooses this one woman on the DC court of appeals. If she publicly says, I decline because I will not be an affirmative action appointee to the U.S. Supreme Court. You get back to me or some other future president. Get back to me when what you're

looking for is the most talented jurist. Then I'll consider you consider me in the larger pool of everyone. Yeah, that would be amazing. Oh, my gosh. I hope she does it. Whoever it is, I hope she does it because then he's going to come back begging on his hands and knees. You're still going to get the job. It's just you're going to have the love of the American people and remove all the doubts he has created about you before we even know who you are. It's not good for the Supreme Court pick. As somebody who's broken a lot of barriers, I appreciate your perspective on it. You you've fought a lot of fights and you almost always win them, which is also amazing.

It's a pleasure. Thank you for your expertise. Always a pleasure. Thanks, Megan. All right, to be continued. And coming up, we're going to take some of your questions. Don't go away. Now it's time for Asked and Answered. This is a feature where listeners submit their questions via email to questions at devilmaycaremedia.com. And we do our best to answer them. My executive producer, Steve Krakauer, joins me now with the question part of the feature. Steve, what's on the docket here? Hey, Megan. Yeah, we are checking that email inbox. So keep those questions coming. We're going to get to more of those this year. And we also checked from Instagram. This one came to us from Kim, who wants to know what advice do you have for first time moms? Oh, Kim, a lot. I have a lot of thoughts on that. For me, that was not my favorite time of motherhood. I actually right now is my favorite time of motherhood. They're

12, 10 and 8. And it's awesome. And so what I really tell first time mothers, people who are pregnant, expecting their first baby is to set the expectations low. Because if you're anything like I was, I expected myself to be in a white flowing dress, looking beautiful on a couch, like the like the Brett commercial. If you're as old as I am, you'll know that reference. And, you know, having it all together with my beautiful baby there at my side, and I'm going to have everything, you know, worked out. And of course, the reality was so much different. I look disgusting. Of course, your body is just completely out of control from having carried a baby for nine months. Your breasts are killing you. Breastfeeding was so painful in the beginning. I mean, bloody and awful and excruciating. Sorry to gross you out, guys. And it's hard. The baby cries a

lot. It needs you every hour. You can't get any sleep. You're under rested, which is the number one thing that causes bad moods and stress. And so I think if you go into it knowing all that's going to happen, that you're going to be stressed out, that you may not be enjoying it, that you may even be looking at this little baby like, oh my God, I ruined my life. You will have a shot of enjoying it more. If you happen to be one of those mothers to whom it all comes so naturally, great. No problem with setting lower expectations. But if you're somebody like me who realizes upon birth that like, oh my God, this is so hard, so much harder than I ever expected. Am I a bad mother? Does it make me a bad mother that I'm not enjoying it? Remember

stories like mine? No, it doesn't. And it gets so much easier and so much better. And by the way, so does the breastfeeding. So if you can hang in there, it gets so much easier. And by the time you're like six, seven, eight months, that baby's taking like five to 800 calories off of you a day. It's worth it for that reason alone. All right. Don't miss the show tomorrow. We've got a great little culture segment with Emily Jasinski and Eliana Johnson. And in the meantime, download the show and go to youtube.com slash Megyn Kelly to subscribe. Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear. you