The Megyn Kelly Show - Charlie Kirk "Curse," ABC Affiliates vs. Kimmel, and Kamala's Disastrous Book Tour Begins, with Mark Halperin | Ep. 1155
Episode Date: September 23, 2025Megyn Kelly begins the show by talking about the outrageous Jezebel article describing how they placed a curse on Charlie Kirk published days before his assassination, what Erika Kirk personally told... her about how she was shaken by it, and more. Then Mark Halperin, host of "Next Up with Mark Halperin," joins to talk about the vile leftist commentary about Charlie Kirk we're still seeing, the effect of the left ignoring the truth about how MAGA supporters haven't been violent, Jimmy Kimmel’s return to ABC after a brief suspension, some affiliate groups holding strong and refusing to air the show still, why conservatives are pushing for corporate media punishment over Jimmy Kimmel, Kamala Harris beginning her book tour on Maddow, her rambling incoherently about joy and optimism, Democrats like Pete Buttigieg and Josh Shapiro attacking her, Kamala's embarrassing interview on "The View," her nonstop focus on America's supposed racism and sexism, and more. Subscribe to Mark's show Next Up:Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/next-up-with-mark-halperin/id1810218232Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2f0n8G4xqUo8aGxbbbtRjHYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@nextuphalperin?sub_confirmation=1 Firecracker Farm: Visit https://firecracker.FARM & enter code MK at checkout for a special discount!Riverbend Ranch: Visit https://riverbendranch.com/ | Use promo code MEGYN for $20 off your first order.Cozy Earth: Luxury shouldn't be out of reach. Go to https://cozyearth.com/MEGYN for up to 40% off.Tax Network USA: Call 1-800-958-1000 or visit https://TNUSA.com/MEGYNto speak with a strategist for FREE today 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 Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at noon east.
Hey, everyone, I'm Megan Kelly. Welcome to the Megan Kelly show. There is big news breaking right now around the Jimmy Kimmel saga. We've had both Sinclair and Nextar, who own one-third of the affiliates, TV affiliates in this country airing ABC.
have both now said, we don't really care that Disney wants to put him back on the air.
We're in charge of our affiliate programming, and we're not airing him.
So it's just gotten very interesting, and that is where we're going to kick it off in about,
well, just a few minutes with Mark Halpern, who's standing by.
But first, I have a sort of out-of-left-field story to bring to you, and then I want to start with it.
I've been wrestling with whether to bring you this story for a few days now.
I've been wrestling because I find it so vile and off and odd.
I wasn't even sure where to go with it.
But I decided that I had to do it because the groups who did this deserve public censure.
I learned when I was out in Arizona last week that two weeks before Charlie Kirk was assassinated,
the far-left website Jezebel declared that it had a mission to cast bad luck.
or a curse on Charlie.
They wanted to hurt him in some way.
They declared, quote,
if the far-right misogynist with a bad haircut
wants to villainize independent women,
Jezebel is more than happy to be the hag of his nightmares.
And they went on to the website Etsy,
yes, Etsy, to quote,
cast a curse on him.
Yes, this is actually a thing.
Etsy, the website known for making arts and crafts on demand,
will happily cast a hex through its witches, who you can hire, on someone if you ask them to.
The Jezebel crew was delighted to discover, quote,
it's not uncommon for the so-called witches on Etsy to channel their energy toward thwarting Republicans.
There's even a subreddit devoted to casting nightly hexes on Trump.
Jezebel decided Charlie Kirk, who they repeatedly described as far right,
the founder of the right-wing conspiracy theory factory, Turning Point USA, is, quote, more irritating than most, and asked its audience if they were, quote, interested in punishing Kirk for years of regressive rhetoric with a curse, with a hex on him.
After all, they told readers, he's basically a fake news vending machine.
The article notably does not list the name of any particular author, but simply uses its company name.
as the byline. So we don't know exactly which writer or staffer at Jezebel, which has long been
a disgusting publication, came up with the idea. But since they're attributing it to all of them,
so will we in terms of our blame. It was, in fact, the brainchild of one writer, however,
because it is written in the first person, a female. The writer explains, now,
Is it ethical to curse a man I've never met? Probably not. But is it unethical to let him keep
talking? Yes. Now comes the obligatory ass covering paragraph in the piece, just to stave off any
negative publicity for Jezebel. Quote, I want to make it clear, I'm not calling on dark forces
to cause him harm. I just want him to wake up every morning with an inexplicable zit.
I want his podcast microphone to malfunction every time he hits record. I want his blue blaze
to suddenly all be one size too small. I want one of his socks to always be sliding down his
foot. I want his thumb to grow too big to tweet. To ruin his day with the collective feminist power
of the Etsy Coven would be my life's greatest joy. So even in her ass covering, she was asking for
Charlie to be rendered less attractive, to not be able to use his microphone and silence his voice,
to have discomfort foisted upon him, to stop his ability to tweet or spread his message, and to
quote, ruin his day. Got it? That's the nice part of the job.
Jezebel article. She tells the reader she placed her first spell on Etsy, and it was, quote, in all
caps, make everyone hate him. And she wondered aloud, how long would it take to kick in?
The witch, servicing Jezebel on Etsy, contacted the writer and asked if she would like to, quote,
amplify the energetic support of the spell for an extra 50 bucks. She did it. She goes on for the
powerful hex spell, I had to provide Kirk's date of birth for accuracy. The witch
informed her that she, the witch, had performed the hex, and that it was successful.
Jezebel wanted to know when they were getting results on their curse. And while their article
about all of this hit, it was published on Monday, September 8th, it makes clear that the writer
contracted for the curse in late August. She says she wanted it to line up with the new moon in
Virgo, which this year meant August 23rd.
That tracks, because she points out in the piece, that by August 24th, she was waiting
impatiently for results.
The witch, they reveal, promised on August 23rd that, quote, you will see the first results
within two to three weeks.
This was 18 days before Charlie was killed.
Not satisfied with this curse, the amped up one alone, Jezebel reached out to a, quote,
third witch, priestess Lillen.
Jezebel opined, if enough people cursed a single person, would the results be stronger?
Quote, when I asked her if she'd noticed more political figures being targeted these days, she said yes.
The next day, Lillan sent the Jezebel writer proof of the hex she had cast, quote, a photograph in flames,
the edges slowly curling inward, engulfing Charlie's ridiculous scrunched-up little face.
She whispered, I imagine, writes to the Jezebel reporter. Trust the unseen. Chills, writes
Jezebel. Sunday, August 24th past, writes the author, and nothing. Monday, August 25th, still nothing. Tuesday, August 26th, nothing.
But then she writes, she reminded herself, this is witchcraft, not Amazon. The forces operate on their own schedule.
The Jezebel writer ends the piece as follows. So, did my Etsy curse's work? Time will tell. The forces move in mysterious ways. And as the priestess Lillen reminded me, spellwork is a collaboration between the castor, the client, and the universe itself. For now, we can only trust in the timing of the great unknown. To you, Mr. Kirk, may the rash come swiftly.
Two and a half weeks after those curses were requested and cast two days after Jezebel published that article, Charlie was killed by an assassin's bullet.
I know what you're thinking. This is a bullshit Etsy curse. Why are we spending time on this? I'm going to get to that in a minute. Stay with me for now.
After the shooting, Jezebel took down the article, quote, on the recommendation of our lawyers.
They underscored that the piece was meant to be humorous, intended as satire,
and that they made clear they wished Charlie, quote, no physical harm, which is not the full
story now, is it?
At the same time, they said of the article, quote, we stand by every word, which means they did
want him cursed, they wanted everyone to hate him, they wanted it to be powerful, and they
wanted Charlie, quote, punished for years of regressive rhetoric.
They also made clear that taking down the article was, quote,
driven by an abundance of caution for our staff. In other words, they were worried about violence
against them by Charlie Kirk supporters. They also, they wrote, wished, quote, to avoid the
peace being misused in a tense and volatile environment. There was not, they made clear any change
in their editorial judgment. In fact, they emphasized, quote, we may republish at a later date. They then
rambled odd about the country's gun problem and the heated political divide in the country
and free speech noting they do not actually condone political violence. Now again, you may be
saying to yourself, why are we talking about Etsy curses? None of this is real. Well,
two things. First of all, Christians are opposed to casting spells or trying to contact the
spirit world. Not only because they believe there's only one God, but because they acknowledge
the existence of the devil and evil spirits.
Here is father, Mike Schmidt.
He was on the day Charlie died,
helping us through that as well.
But he came on our show first time a couple of years ago,
and here he is discussing this very subject.
The motivation behind the Ouija board
is actually something where I'm trying to contact spirits.
And someone could say,
well, I'm trying to contact nice spirits or good spirits.
And the unfortunate thing we know about is that, yes, when God created angels, you created angels.
They're good. They're beautiful. They're in harmony with them. But also we know that a number of those said no to God.
A person who's reasonable would say, but I'm just playing. And I would say, I completely understand that.
And then I would say at the same time, at the same time. You remember the movie The Exorcist?
Of course.
Yeah. How can you forget it? So that story is based on.
off of two true stories. And one of the true stories is, I believe, about if I can get the details
right, is about a young man who was at, you know, kind of like a birthday party, some kind of
celebration of some sort with kids. And they just busted out the Ouija board and just played for
fun. But that was an entry point for what ultimately became a possession.
In other words, you're playing with fire messing with this stuff. There actually are demons
in this world. Calling up the spirit world, in particular the devil's spirit world,
can actually have real world consequences. It's not something to mess with. Many Christians
believe this. This is dangerous. It's not a game. It's literally evil. Second, this is what I really
want you all and the people at Jezebel and Etsy to know. Erica and Charlie Kirk heard
about these curses. And that news genuinely rattled Erica in particular. She knew Christian
teaching on this subject. She loved Charlie, absolutely. And she was scared when she heard of the
curses Jezebel had called up. So much so that she and Charlie contacted a friend who I believe she
said was a Catholic priest, but definitely a friend, and asked him to come over and pray.
with them over Charlie the night before he was murdered.
She eventually worked it through, and so did Charlie, that as she later told me,
weapons will form but not prosper, that Satan and those witches have no power.
Of course, God's will is the one that matters, and his blessing over Charlie was real
and palpable.
All you had to do is spend time with Charlie to know that.
But why torture a family like this?
Christian believing family. Why do this vile thing to a young couple? Parents to two babies
living in accordance with the gospel, deeply in love. Yes, political, but doing nothing other
than speaking publicly about their views and their desires to make other people's lives
better. Who would do such a vile thing? Jezebel, that's who? And unbelievably, Etsy.
And the people behind this evil, they should be called out.
That's why I'm talking about it as our lead.
They should be called out.
Jezebel should be forced to identify the woman who wrote this and did this.
Jezebel should close, frankly.
It has zero redeeming virtues or value.
Etsy should stop this practice immediately and get back to arts and crafts and jewelry.
And both entities should issue an immediate, full-throated apology to Erica Kirk
for introducing this awfulness into her beautiful family
and causing her or Charlie any distress whatsoever in what would be the waning hours of his life.
It's not easy to contact them.
Etsy's easier than Jezebel.
Etsy, you can email them.
Press at ETSY.com.
Press at ETSY.com.
Jezebel intentionally makes it difficult for you to reach out to them, though we did for comment on this piece and ask them whether they will indeed republish this article and other questions as well.
They didn't get back to us, but here's how you do it if you are so inclined.
You go to their website, you click on contact, and then you submit your comment.
Joining me now is Mark Halpern. He's host of Next Up with Mark Halperin on the MK Media
podcast network. You can go and subscribe to it right now on Apple, Spotify, YouTube. It's called
Next Up with Mark Halperin. Mark was also at Charlie Kirk's memorial service on Sunday.
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I'm just, I'm upset by it, Mark.
I'm upset by it.
And I realize I can easily dismiss this as like, what?
But I saw Erica Kirk.
And when I talked to Erica last week, she was so strong.
She was so composed.
But in 30 minutes together, 20 minutes together,
she literally never stopped having tears come out of her eyes.
Like at no point did the tears stop flowing.
She was able to talk and express herself beautifully,
but she is literally in constant pain.
and I have her permission to share that this is one of the things we talked about.
She did not ask me to come and publish it.
I've been thinking about it ever since, and I asked her for permission, and I received it.
And she also wanted me to emphasize the second part of what I said, which is that they had gotten to the point of realizing that the devil had no power over Charlie, that these witches had no power over Charlie.
But obviously for Christians, for deep believing Christians, this kind of thing actually really can rattle your cage.
And it, to me, it stood out that it was one of the things still on her mind, you know, in the days after Charlie had died, it's fucking vile. It's just, we've crossed some decency bridge that we didn't use to cross. And even now hearing this, I have zero hope that Jezebel or Etsy actually will apologize to Erica Kirk. Because they really are missing that fundamental human decency. Your thoughts on it.
Well, since Jezebel has been around, they've made their living off of a lack of fundamental human decency.
And you and I throughout our careers have railed against such things.
But this is different, right?
This is different.
This is the real world.
And I think it's of a piece with what you hear from some in even the quote unquote respectable media and from some Democrats who treat this like the assassination of such a beautiful man as just another thing.
to write about and make fun of and and these people who make their lives writing and I'd say the
same thing about some of the media writers who are so irresponsible with a coarseness and a lack of
appreciation for the real lives of real people who participate on the National Town Square
and for that get condemned to mockery cancellation threats it's it's if if anything comes
out of this it's good this would be a good one for these places to
to be shut down, not through boycott, not through government censorship, but through the market
speaking that in the United States of America, we just don't want this level of coarseness about
such a tragedy and in everyday life. People shouldn't be subjected to this regardless of
whether they're assassinated or not. The nerve of them saying they took down this piece
about their casting spells on Charlie
to protect their writers
because they were worried about violence
from Charlie's supporters against them.
We've seen this repeatedly,
you know, that the left now, of course,
refusing to acknowledge the political leanings
of the actual shooter
of trying to both sides it,
like, of trying to pretend that the MAGA wing
is violent when here we are,
you know, 12 days after, 13 days after Charlie was killed.
and there's been no right-wing violence in response to an assassination of one of their most
important figures, nothing. It's a narrative that gets pushed by the left about MAGA in
particular. It's, and it too is vile.
I wish everybody in the country could have been in Arizona to experience the level of love
and warmth and tolerance that existed throughout that.
specifically and and in the sharpest relief embodied by Erica Kirk but to to
take a assassination and for her to forgive the alleged killer and for people to
meet hate with love so that's a great example and and these places on the
internet on social media that make their livings from hate they just they
have to they'll have to just use this opportunity I hope in this case and in
general to recognize that this isn't this isn't the way to make a living. There's just there's just
no sense in making a living this way. It's not good for your soul. And I hope it's not good for
your business long term of people who make their living like this. What did you make of the
memorial bar? Because all day, you know, in the lead up to the actual beginning of the ceremony,
and then once the ceremony began, we were listening to Christian music. You had people with their arms
up, you know, as Christians will do in a revival sense to the music, already that's being
spun as Nazi salutes already on X. It's so predictable. Christians, when they hear music preaching
the gospel or with Christ's word, will often put one or both hands up like that. Like you're touching
God. You're sending your positive feelings and reactions to what you're hearing up to those singing the
words on stage. This is, this has been going on since I was a child. I don't remember a time
when we weren't doing this. And already we have people on X. It's, the Nazi salute was at
Charlie Kirk's memorial and just ignoring what is happening in the moment, like the beauty
that was in that arena. It was beautiful and uplifting and consistent. And although there were
some remarks that were a little bit political, I watched closely.
And this is how I've made my living in my life, is being able to read a crowd,
being able to get a sense of the mood of the crowd.
And the most enthusiastic, intense, and loud moments were when people talked about Charlie's
relationship with Jesus and the importance of faith and understanding.
This was an event unlike anything else I've ever covered.
and in its scale and its spirit.
And that is both not a coincidence.
And it's something that the people who are still eager to express public hostility to Charlie Kirk, they should try to read into.
They should try to understand.
They should try to respect.
In particular, we heard Erica Kirk trying to appeal to the young men of this country.
Same group Charlie tried to appeal to.
And Charlie, you know, told me more than once, that was his base concern.
constituency, you know, that young men in America were the ones liking the Charlie Kirk videos showing up for the most part at his campus revivals. There were women, too. But he understood his core constituency was young men. And he loved to get, he used to say, young women present an opportunity. You know, as they say to you now at your children's parent-teacher meetings, there's never like, this is a problem. It's an opportunity that we can work on. So he used to say young women present an opportunity. But Erica Kirk doubled.
down on that. This is what she said on Sunday at his memorial at Sot 3.
To all the men watching around the world, accept Charlie's challenge and embrace true
manhood. Be strong and courageous for your families. Love your wives and lead them.
Love your children and protect them.
Be the spiritual head of your home.
But please be a leader worth following.
Your wife is not your servant.
Your wife is not your servant.
is not your employee.
Your wife is not your slave.
She is your helper.
You are not rivals.
You are one flesh working together
for the glory of God.
Mark, what did you make of the, her remarks there
and in general at the memorial,
appealing to young men,
and also to the region.
action we've seen from young men, I mean black, white, brown, across X in the past two weeks
openly declaring, I am a conservative, I am a conservative, I never realized it. I've seen so many
young black men post, I had no idea. I was thought, I was a Democrat. I was told you have to
vote Democrat. You know, I'm black, we vote Democrat. So that's what I did. And now,
listening to these Charlie Kirk videos, I realize I'm not a Democrat. I'm a Republican. I'm a
conservative, and I'm registering accordingly?
Well, first of all, what strength and moral clarity from her?
Just as I said, I've never seen an event like that.
I've never seen a public presentation like that.
And that's not even accounting for the circumstances.
We've all been struck by the same notion that how could she possibly have done that?
And part of it was, again, her strength and inner strength and her faith, but also the
partnership she had with Charlie.
And, of course, the irony of the fact that he was apparently.
killed by a young man of the very type that he was so concerned about someone who, through social
media and messed up things in our society, had moved to a place that could allow him to do
something so monstrous. I think that I'm not sure the impact this will have on the movement,
the turning point movement, the MAGA movement more broadly and the efforts to reach young men.
But I think anyone who rules out that this is going to be more than a turning point, more than a
more than a watershed.
This could be something that sweeps up tens of millions of people in politics, in their real
lives, in reclamation of the broken system that's left us with so many young men who
don't live lives the way life should be lived.
Lack purpose, lack moral clarity, lack respect for others, including especially women.
I think it could have that effect.
It's going to require more than's been done so far.
but her words, I think, will ring through history because of their clarity, their intellectual
clarity, and their moral clarity, and because of the circumstances under which they were delivered.
Yes. She's got the thing Charlie had, which is she makes you want to be a better person.
Yeah.
I mean, she makes you want to be a better person. She appeals to your better angels, and it's very
attractive. It's like a, it's a magnetic force that she has. So I think, notwithstanding the fact,
that Eric is a woman, Charlie was a man, she can lead this organization and appeal to exactly the
same people and then some. I mean, she's actually an extra threat because she really will appeal
to young women who haven't seen that much of her. She was with Charlie a lot on the trail.
I saw her myself behind the scenes at a turning point event when we first met. But, I mean,
now she's front and center and she provides a whole new opportunity, truly, for those young women.
And here is just a little sampling of what I've been seeing all over Axe Watch.
Charlie Kirk got shy in a fucking neck.
That was the last bastion.
I can't be a liberal no fucking more.
You see the fucking comments?
I hope the gun is okay.
The same fucking people asking for moral decency.
I cannot in good faith align myself with you guys anymore.
My name is John.
I have practically no online presence.
And the reason for that is because I am scared to post things
that I believe yesterday, a man died, presumably because he believed the same things that I believe
in. I am a conservative, and more importantly, I'm a Christian. I know that in the great
in the scheme of things I don't really matter. No one knows or even cares who I am, but if there's
even one person who sees this and gains the courage to speak up themselves, that's why I'm
making this, just so that everybody knows that we're not alone.
I have officially left the Democratic Party a few days ago. The reason I did it was because
I cannot be linked and affiliated with a party that has members in it that would do exactly
what happened to Charlie Kirk.
I didn't know Charlie Kirk never met that guy before in my life.
And something else that I've never done before in my life is believing God.
It feels to me, Mark, like there is a sea change underfoot that we are not going to realize
the full extent of perhaps until the midterms.
I mean, I just can't imagine this doesn't have electoral consequences.
Your thoughts?
Well, I think we will know in full force from a political point of view by the midterms, as you said, but I think we may see it in the Virginia governor's race or the New Jersey governor's race.
I think we'll see it in the fundraising totals from a turning point.
I think we'll see it in social media the way you just described it.
There's no doubt in my mind this will cause a big change.
The question is, what's the scale of it?
And those videos match up a lot of what I'm hearing and seeing.
But at the same time, you can't dismiss the manifestations of things like the Jezebel thing or like Democratic members of Congress literally on the day of the service for Charlie going on TV and trashing him.
You can't underestimate the degree to which the other side's not just going to give up or change their ways.
So this will remain a battle of cultures, a battle of red and blue, a battle of believers versus nonbelievers to some extent.
And I think it hangs in the balance.
As I said, just how big it changed, how fundamental it changed this will cause.
And hearts and minds of those, particularly young men who weren't engaged before on this great debate.
And it's branding.
I mean, it's like the Democrats have branded themselves as this hateful party.
And that's what I'm seeing.
Separate and apart, like, look, once Charlie was killed, they had an opportunity just to act as humans.
That's it.
Like, it was a leftist who murdered Charlie.
There's no question about that.
But this didn't have to be a smear of the entire left.
If they had come out and acted like decent humans universally, maybe have one fringe
person here or there who says something vile.
But we have had reams of leftists come out and celebrate Charlie's murder, showing truly
the same inhumanity that led them to not stand for DJ Daniel at that.
the state of the union, you know, the little boy with cancer, you know, to not clap for the people
who'd been suffering, the war veterans. Like, there's something happening on the leftist side
that is repelling members of their own party. And they don't seem able to get it together, Mark.
Yeah. So I don't always like to do the thought experiment of saying, what if this had been
on the other side? What if a 31-year-old, charismatic young person who had helped Barack Obama get
elected? What if that person had been assassinated by someone on the right? And what if many people
in the wake of that assassination on the right had gone on TV to criticize the person who'd been
killed? Okay. So what would happen then? The press would condemn it and the coverage would be about
what a crisis in our society this is. But every Republican elected a Republican, prominent Republican,
would be asked to condemn those words.
Yes.
You know, has anyone asked Hakeem Jeffries or Chuck Schumer to condemn what's been said,
not just by fringe people, but by members of their fellow members of Congress?
This is a failure of the press.
It's a failure of the Democrats.
And again, it's a reflection of a mindset that was not altered even for 12 hours after
Charlie Kirk was assassinated.
You're so right.
What we have instead is, ill on.
Omar out there
crapping all over Charlie.
I'm going to show you two sots.
And then I'll show you how she's being treated
as a result. Here's SOT 29 with her.
You called Kirk a quote,
hateful man, and you had reposted a video
that I'm sure you've seen you've taken criticism for.
It's a video that called him
a reprehensible human being and said
Kirk was Dr. Frankenstein
and his monster shot him through the neck.
Because there were a lot of things in the video
that I did agree with.
Obviously, we share videos.
We don't have to agree with every single word.
But I do believe he was a reprehensible, hateful man.
What I find jarring is that there are so many people willing to excuse the most reprehensible things that he said, that they agree with that, that they're willing to have monuments for him, that they want to create a day to honor him.
And it is one thing to care about his life because obviously so many people loved him, including his children and wife.
But I am not going to sit here and be judged for not wanting to honor any legacy this man has left behind.
That should be in the dustpin of history.
And we should hopefully move on and forget the hate that he spewed every single day.
How's your brother? How's your brother, husband? Let us know. Get back to us.
Caitlin Collins forgot that question. Just a word. What she did there at the top was to pull a Jimmy Kimmel.
He was Dr. Frankenstein and his monster, his monster shot him.
In other words, the one he created, so someone in his image.
So she's doing a Jimmy Kimmel there that some maga created monster is the one who took
Charlie's life.
That's a lie.
Again, totally unchallenged by Caitlin Collins.
Here is how it then went when Ilan Omar went on MSNBC.
In the interim, Trump had posted a not kind tweet about Ilan Omar.
Here's what happened.
But also I want to ask how you are doing.
You've been attacked by the president by a colleague whose office is right next door to yours,
Congressman Nancy Mace.
I know that you have received messages and voicemails from people threatening you.
How are you holding up first?
Oh, my Lord.
You know, I've been here before.
I've been the target of the president in the most violent.
bigoted racist ways that you could imagine.
And I've had to have full police detail because of that.
Okay.
That is nothing but a turnoff to most normal people sitting at home.
Mark, how does this help anyone on Team Blue?
I've watched that interview that you showed with Kayling Collins and I played part of it on Next Up this week.
And, you know, I'm very forgiving of people saying things on live TV.
that you know they don't really mean or they don't they didn't express perfectly because it happens
but that was such a i say this in air quotes thoughtful sustained denunciation of a man who'd been
assassinated and there's lots of rhetoric on both sides i'm not saying she's the sole defender
but i don't really understand how she could have said that sustained attack on charlie kirk
just just man just been assassinated and and a throwaway lino i feel bad for his
family. I don't. I really don't understand it. I don't understand where someone has a heart like that
or a head like that who could say such things about a man who'd just been assassinated. And to do it so
openly, to do it full-throated, unembarrassed, defiant, I don't understand that. And for people like
President Obama, who says, well, they're grieving, give them a moment. I'd give him more than a moment,
not just for his family, but for the tens of millions of people who are deeply upset and
understandably so. I just, I don't understand it. I, I, I am at a loss to explain how anyone,
let alone someone in a position of a public authority as an elected official, could say those
things.
And meanwhile, here is another leftist, very popular substack star, Heather Richardson Cox.
on September
Sorry, Cox Richardson.
Spreading on September 17th.
Okay, 17th.
Charlie was killed on the 10th.
By the 17th, we knew everything.
We knew about the trans stuff and the furry stuff
and the left-wing ideology
and he had too much hate, allegedly,
and what was on the bullet casings.
And she goes on the bulwark podcast.
This is another organization
dedicated to hating Trump
and says the following,
SOT 32.
Text messages do make it appear
like he was motivated
because he didn't like
the things that Charlie Kirk said about trans people
will know more eventually.
Yeah, but you even can't say that
because until it gets to a court of law
and we actually have evidence that is introduced
and that, you know, and witnesses and stuff,
it's what I said right after the shooting itself
and everybody was making assumptions about who had done it
before they caught Robinson.
From the bullet casings.
You just don't know.
It certainly looks one way.
but it could be somebody he cut off in traffic for all you know until it's actually been tested.
She's an idiot. Is this where leftists are getting their news and opinion from? I mean,
it would explain a lot. Yeah. Just as so many people on the left continue to ask me,
oh, I didn't really know much about the importance of Charlie Kirk. I think a lot of people
on the right may not know the importance of Heather Cox Richardson. She's not there, Charlie Kirk,
because her contributions are not as broad and varied.
direct as his work but she's extremely powerful extremely influential on the left through her
substack through appearances like that so this is not just some random let person of the left this is
a very influential she's kind of in some ways more influential now than rachel maddow and she
has been on this since the first day where she wants to indignantly deny the available information
about the the alleged killer and again i go back to what i said about congressman omar i don't
understand that mentality to try to create a different reality than the evidence suggests
for whatever purpose I do not understand all right so that sort of denialism by the way this woman
has 2.6 million subscribers so you're not wrong um speaking of being in denial this morning I was
listening to I do it so you don't have to NPR's up first morning podcast
I always like to hear what the left is saying.
I know, it's painful, but I do it out of love for the audience,
not because it's important or objective.
And they were getting into the Kimmel controversy,
which we're going to turn to now.
And they needed to tee up, as any good report will do,
how this got started.
Why are we talking about Jimmy Kimmel?
What was his alleged offense on the airwaves
that caused him to be pulled off the air for a week?
And here was their summer.
I mean, I know this audience knows, but just to be clear, he was thrown off the air for a week because he decided to suggest that the shooter of Charlie Kirk was MAGA, and that MAGA had been trying to cover for him because he was one of their own.
But here is how the NPR audience heard about Kimmel's offense.
Jimmy Kimmel Live will be back on the air tonight, nearly a week after the late night show was pulled off the air.
During his monologue last week, Kimmel made.
fun of Trump's reaction to the Charlie Kirk killing and accused Maga of using his death
to score political points.
Made fun of Trump and accused Maga of using his death to score political points. Zero about what Kimmel
actually said, Mark. And that is by design. It is a willful misleading of the audience.
And they elide the most difficult points of what they're dealing with over there on the leftist
team because they're trying to run cover for one of their own.
Yeah, you know, I still hear from people who say, oh, you're wrong.
The media is not liberally biased.
They're corporate biased or whatever.
I mean, that is one example of many.
And I've read, obsessively read the New York Times in Washington Post coverage of the assassination.
They just will not drop the same mindset that caused them to participate in an attempted cover-up of Joe Biden's cognitive.
decline or to cover everything Donald Trump does with hostility. This is, this is unfortunately
par for the course in those who thought, as maybe I did for 20 seconds, that the assassination
of Charlie Kirk would cause a consciousness raising. They're just not, they're just not
willing to change their ways just because a man was assassinated. Just for the record,
here's SOT 20. We hit some new lows over the weekend with the Maga Gang desperately trying
characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and
everything they can to score political points from it.
Yeah, just so we're all clear on what he actually said.
So he's coming back now, Mark, but not everywhere.
It's actually gotten very interesting.
Just before we came to air, we found out last night we knew that Sinclair, which owns
some, I don't know what the number is on Sinclair, a large number.
Is it 38 affiliate groups or, you know, state?
said, we don't care what you say, Disney. We're not airing Jimmy Kimmel, and it's up to us,
something they were empowered to say by Brendan Carr of the FCC. He didn't make them do whatever
they did, but he made clear to them, you know, you do have independent authority. You actually
do have a right to protect the public interest. And if you don't want to air Jimmy Kimmel,
you don't have to. So Sinclair, notwithstanding the fact that Disney said, we're bringing
him back. Disney held the line for five episodes and then said, oh, wait, we got a nasty letter
from Jimmy Kimmel supporting celebrities. Okay, we're out. He's back on. So Sinclair said, no,
we're not airing him. And then this morning, just as we came to air, next star, too, said,
us either. We're not airing him either. So now you've got some one-third of the ABC affiliates
out there airing something else. I think it's going to be alternate news programming is the option right now.
And that's interesting because now we're in the same position we were in yesterday and the day
before, Mark, those are the two station groups, station owners who said, we're not airing Kimmel.
So where are we today, in your view, just in terms of this fight?
Well, once upon a time, the relationship between the networks and the station groups were
even more intense, and the networks were even more dependent on the stations.
They can put it on Hulu.
They could put it on YouTube.
So they can distribute more easily in the digitalation without the stations.
But make no mistake, they're still very dependent on those affiliate relationships.
And these two big station owners have the right, and I'm sure they think the responsibility to not bring Kimmel back.
I suspect Disney will try to change their minds.
Or perhaps this will be the spur to cancel a show that I don't know if it makes money or not, but it's not as popular as it once was.
This is how the market should work, right?
Disney can do what it wants, and these station owners can do what they want.
And in the end, and almost certainly the consumers will decide.
But as you pointed out, liberals are really up in arms about this.
And they wanted Kimmel back on.
And amongst the parts of Bob Eager's job is running the Walt Disney Company.
And the ABC Network is keeping talent happy.
And most of the talent is extremely liberal.
So who's winning?
Well, I don't think we know.
I think we'll have to see if these stations continue to not run the show.
If the show gets canceled, if Disney finds some other.
way to distribute it. I mean, the reality is, if they put it on YouTube and Hulu, they may get a
bigger audience than they get and they may be able to monetize that more than they do on the ABC
television network. So commercially, it's too soon to say who's winning. And I think in terms of
the political or ideological fight, I think it's good that the market can decide and that these
stations can stand up and do what they think is right for their constituencies and for their
personal views. See, I think it's great that Nextar and Sinclair are standing up for their
audiences. My team tells me that they comprise a total of 22% of U.S. households that,
according to the Wall Street Journal, combined, they own and operate more than 60 ABC affiliates
that reach 22% of U.S. households. So it's a pretty good chunk of the ABC audience,
which means, you know, Kimball's ratings will be inflated because of the controversy, no question.
I don't know whether we'll see that, given the fact that these two affiliate owners are not going to air his show.
But this is like, to me, this is great because finally conservatives fought back.
And the station group owners who are not coastal elites.
I mean, they represent an heir to people who are not coastal elites.
They're not on Bob Eiger's yacht.
They're not in Beverly Hills being controlled.
by celebrities. They're across flyover country. And those are their audiences and constituents
who are complaining about Jimmy Kimmel. And up until now, they just had to take it. They just had
to swallow his BS and pretend there was nothing they could do about it. And to me, that is what
Brendan Carr telegraphed to these station groups last week. You actually do have power to say no
to Disney. And that would be the easy way of making your upset clear. That would be the easy way of
you turning around to Disney and saying, we're not airing this crap. The hard way, he explained
yesterday at a public appearance, would be people start filing complaints against Disney and the
affiliate groups. And then the FCC has to look into the complaints and it becomes a more
tricky, sticky matter. We didn't get there.
Yeah. Before Charlie was assassinated, and before Chairman Carr raised this, there were two points that are germane, but have been a little bit overtaken and overlooked. One is, I think most sensible people in the left and the right don't think the system where the government, the FCC, polices these entities, is sensible. It existed once upon a time when there was so little media that it was important that the public interest be represented. But I don't think, I don't think, I think this is an anachronism that.
the FCC has oversight over these kind of communications. And then second, these stations in their
news coverage and in their late night comedy shows, these networks, have been distributing biased
programs, culturally, politically biased programs for a very long time. And so while Sinclair and
Nexstar chose to act in this instance, they could have, and many would argue should have long
before, to use the same economic power, the same leverage they have, to say, why should
every late-night comedian be hostile to Donald Trump and hostile to Republicans. Why shouldn't the
broadcast networks have something that's either not political or equal opportunity offender?
The Saturday Night Live actually has been relatively bound, not equal, but they did jokes
during the Biden years, for instance, about Joe Biden. These other programs, they are just
propaganda arms to the Democratic Party. And I don't know why Sinclair and X-Star didn't act sooner.
but they've acted belated in response to one particular thing with the same principle, which is they have economic power and they're going to serve, as you said, their viewers and their constituencies, as opposed to the corporate masters in Burbank.
What a remarkable new model. I mean, I just don't remember this ever happening, Mark. I don't remember, in all my time in television, I don't remember affiliates doing this.
Yeah, it's happened. I think it's happened with programming. I think it may have happened with an episode of Roseanne or of
Ellen, that some stations in the South didn't want a program that dealt with what we would call
sensitive subject matter. I think it happened around then, but not in this high profile a way
and obviously not in a way responding to something that's so emotional for so many.
I mean, to me, look, we've said for a long time that one of the greatest gifts President Trump
gave the Republican Party was a roadmap on how to fight. To me, more than anything, that would be
Trump's lasting legacy. He showed Republicans how to fight. And what Brendan Carr did last week was
telegraph to the affiliates, how to fight, that they have a permission slip to fight. They actually
do have a responsibility to fight. And they did. So to me, it wasn't government interference and
actually stopping any program from airing. It was him saying to these affiliates, you're empowered.
I don't have to do this. You actually will not get hassled by me. If you exercise the independent judgment,
you have and that you haven't been exercising in decades. You answer to your constituents. Do it. Go
ahead. Follow your conscience. And they did. They did it last week. And they did it again,
even now under what's presumably some pressure from Disney not to. And Next Star waited a whole day
before they made that announcement. So presumably it's been thought through. There's more to discuss
on this. Like, what should we expect from Kimmel tonight? We'll pick it up after this break.
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We absolutely have to keep talking. It's more important now than ever.
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although some of them are already sold out or about to sell out, so don't waste any more time, okay?
Megan Kelly.com. Go now. Mark, welcome back.
All right, so we were on the subject of Kimmel. So tonight, he goes back on the air. And even though I think it's called Jimmy Kimmel live, it's not live. He pre-tapes it.
And so, because at first I was thinking maybe he's going to do something like dramatic, you know, like he worked out some statement with Disney that will be somewhat conciliatory to the right.
but then when he gets in front of the cameras, he'll throw it out and, you know, say,
MAGA and all the things.
But that can't happen because it's pre-taped.
That's my understanding anyway.
So what do you expect to hear from him tonight?
And do you think it will include an apology?
Apology or apology-like that it will be-
Wait, can you start again?
We miss the top of your statement.
Yeah.
My guess is that if you take the part that will be either an apology or,
apology-like, that it will be quite thoughtful, that it will represent an acknowledgement
that he was factually wrong and that what his words hurt people. But then, just as a student
of Jimmy Kimmel and the Walt Disney Company, then I think he'll lay into MAGA, would be my guess.
Yes, I don't think it will be an apology light. I think he's going to maintain the position
that he never said the guy was MAGA, you know, that people misinterpreted, right? That
I don't know if he'll use the word, twisted his words, but I do think he's going to sort of say,
like, I'm sorry that we didn't bring the temperature down, or we should all bring the temperature down.
I predict 100%.
I predict both sides of them.
100%.
Yeah, I agree with that.
But I just again, Bob Auger used to be my boss.
I don't think Bob would put him back on the air unless he apologized for his words.
Again, maybe he won't say, I'm sorry.
But I think he might say I shouldn't have.
said that, and there was no evidence of what I said. That's my prediction, just because, because, you know,
we still don't really know why Bob made the decision to pull him off the air. The statement that they
belatedly put out in announcing his return said, I forget the exact characterization, but it was
mildly rebuking the language. And I think they're really courting disaster if they put him back
on the air. And he doesn't do more than just say, everybody needs to bring the temperature down.
I really do think he's going to have to take some responsibility for his words.
And again, maybe I'll be wrong, but I predict he will.
So now, who is this a win for?
Because we kind of touched on this before the break, but this is a different way of framing it.
Because the left was enjoying his martyrdom.
They didn't want him off the air, but they were enjoying his martyrdom.
And the right, who wanted him off the air, was starting to wonder whether they should have just kept their mouths shut or Brendan Carr should have kept his mouth shut and let Dism.
Disney do its thing and pull them off the air on its own, on its own. But I would suggest to you,
I don't know. I mean, Disney was getting tons of calls. I know that. Like, I'm not sure exactly
what Disney would have done had the affiliates not said were not airing him. But I do think
there was enough pressure to make them do it privately. Anyway, I'm not sure. So is this a loss in
some way for those who really just wanted Jimmy Kimmel to be a martyr? They were actually
comparing the loss of his show to the loss of Charlie Kirk on the right. It's certainly got a lot
more airtime and ink in the papers.
So there's got to be some sense of regret over there that they no longer get to use him
as their martyr.
Yeah.
I mean, you framed it well.
You know, there's winning by losing.
I am more in the Ted Cruz school of the chairman.
I think he's been a fascinating figure over there.
And I think using the power of the FCC to create more balance in the public airways,
I think has been good.
But I'm not a fan of what he did in this case in the language he used, like Senator Cruz, like the Wall Street Journal editorial board.
I think it is, whether it is a long-term win for one side or the other, I think will depend to a large extent on how his return then plays out.
Does the show survive?
And what are the lessons that people draw from it?
And that's two categories.
One is, who raises more money off of it?
Who builds more enthusiasm in our politics and for the midterms?
But then what do real people think about it?
The casual voter, the people who aren't immersed in every minute of this,
how do they feel about the lessons of this?
And I think it's far too soon.
We'll have to see how Kimmel returns and how long he stays on the air.
This is an interesting list.
So Carr was on an event yesterday and was asked about all this
before we had the news that they were bringing Kimmel back.
And he went into a list of what the FCC has been doing under Joe Biden.
and in recent years. And I'm just going to tick off a couple of things he said. In 2018,
a dozen Democrat senators, including Cantwell, Markey, Blumenthal, Sanders, and Wyden,
wrote the FCC and called on the agency to investigate Sinclair for a newsroom decision
and to take action up to and including license revocation. So you've got a dozen Democratic
senators under the Trump administration time writing the FCC and demanding them to investigate Sinclair
for its editorial bent.
Okay, and which was conservative. I remember this. No problem. The left had no problem whatsoever
with Democrats pressuring the FCC to pressure Sinclair into stopping its programming choices.
During the Biden years, Democrats at the FCC took the unprecedented step of not renewing dozens
of routine Sinclair license renewals. They stopped them from getting their license, which means they
cannot broadcast. Okay. No problem. Democrats, all these same people preaching free speech,
Loved it. They were totally in support. In 2023, the FCC determined it would be in the public interest to move forward with a petition that sought to revoke a local Fox broadcast TV stations license because of content that aired on Fox News, a cable channel, which the FCC does not regulate. They don't regulate social media. They don't regulate any cable channels. They only regulate broadcast. And they determined FCC, in 2023 under Biden, it would be in the public interest to move forward with a petition seeking to revoke
a local Fox broadcast TV stations license because of content on Fox News Cable.
In 2021, Democrats in Congress launched a campaign to pressure cable companies to drop Fox,
to drop Newsmax, to drop OAN on the grounds that they were, quote, right wing.
That's Democrats in Congress trying to pressure cable companies to drop Fox, OAN, and Newsmax
from their lineups, and it worked.
Cable companies did drop some of them.
Two Democratic members of Congress sent letters to direct TV.
This is my own research and other providers questioning their carriage of channels that spread misinformation, including OAN.
Direct TV dropped OAN and Newsmax in response.
Democratic members of Congress sent letters to direct TV, urging them to drop OAN and Newsmax, and they did it.
This is the same side now grasping its pearls about any Democratic interference in program.
decisions. In 2021, Democratic lawmakers pressured the FCC to block the sale of a Spanish
language radio station in South Florida to what they viewed as a conservative buyer, arguing that
doing so would matter to their odds in the 2022 midterms. The sale did not go through.
This is Dems pressuring the FCC to act in a way that was beneficial to them, and indeed,
they got their way. During the Biden years, Democrats inside the administration engaged in a
multi-month campaign to pressure social media companies into censoring political speech. In too
many cases it worked. We all know that's true. And in 2021, a Democrat prosecutor in Baltimore
filed a formal complaint asking the FCC to censor a broadcast TV station's newsroom for
their coverage of her allegedly unlawful conduct. This is all Democrats, exerting government
influence to get programming the way they wanted, either through the FCC or directly on
cable companies or other broadcasters. They have zero problem with involving the government
in censoring speech, including the FCC.
The only thing that changed here under Brendan Carr was he actually tried to use it for Republicans.
And without actually doing anything, just with his words saying, we can do this the hard way or we can do this the easy way.
But there is a public interest requirement for affiliates airing this content.
That's all he did in response to that entire nightmare of lists I just went through.
there is no equivalence between the left and the right on this issue, which is why I remain in
the place of good for Brendan Carr. I'm 110% on his side.
Well, he's done other stuff. And again, I'm generally against the government for whatever
party of doing it. Of course. We both are. The question is tactics in putting a stop to it.
But here's the asymmetry that I think matters to a ton of people. And I hear this on two-way all
the time. Both sides are hypocrites. Both sides want to use the government for their own
ideology. The difference is the so-called balanced fair media is completely one-sided. And so you look at
the coverage of two of our favorite media reporters, Brian Stelter and Oliver Darcy, their coverage
of that litany of Democratic moves that you read is go, you go. Great. Get those evil Sinclair people
off the air. Take away their licenses. Their coverage of what Carr has done is the exact opposite.
It's, oh, my goodness, the specter of big government.
So the problem for so many people, and it's ironic because, of course, it involves media
reporters who are supposed to be the fairest reporters.
The irony is and the unfairness and the imbalance is when the left does it, it's cheered on
by the so-called objective media.
When the right does it, it's seen as villainous.
And that imbalance matters because that's part of what shapes the public dialogue about
these similar things that are done with different purposes and get different.
coverage. To me, it's just like the lawfare. They won't stop unless we give them a taste of their
own medicine. Taking the high road has not worked. It hasn't stopped them and it won't stop them.
I'm sorry, but they need to suffer the consequences of their own behavior in order for them to
stop it. It's a matter of tactics. And that's why I don't want to indict anybody who hasn't
committed a crime, but I'm perfectly fine kicking the tires of Letitia James's mortgage practices.
Adam shifts as well. Lisa Cooks as well, totally in favor of it. By the way, there's a news
report that Comey is about to get charged. We'll see whether that's true for his role in the whole
Russia Gate, et cetera. So we'll see. But this is a similar thing. What I don't think Kimmel necessarily
would have been pulled off the air had Brendan Carr not rattled the cage a bit. And they needed to feel
that. So now great, we have them all on record that they're in favor of free speech and they don't
want government interference. Great. That's a win. We've got that now in our pocket. And that's
something. It's something more than we had five days ago to go into the next administration or the one
after that. One of them eventually is going to be Democrat. I'll say some of the smartest and
most principled people I know, including some former Democrats, agree wholeheartedly with you,
that this is the only solution to root out decades of injustice.
And I hear the point of view from very smart, principled people.
I worry about what it means for the country because then the cycle doesn't end.
But I get it and I see it manifested every day.
I think the cycle does end.
That's why you're not in favor of the tactic because you think the cycle won't end.
I think the cycle will end.
And the only way to end it is by making them suffer.
Yeah.
I would prefer that they pay a price and that they get their comeuppance through different tactics in some cases.
But like I said, I hear what you're saying all the time.
I just, the only way the cycle ends is if people start to play by rules that are equal.
And that includes the press.
And unfortunately, I just don't think this is going to have that effect.
Well, we'll see.
I think this is a Republican win.
I really do.
I applaud Nextar.
I applaud Sinclair.
they've got stones. It's great what they're doing. And I just don't remember ever seeing
Republicans stand up like this in this way before. Here, on the other hand, is your friend Joe Scarborough
with the most inane, empty, absurd warning that I think I've ever heard from a leftist. Here it is,
Sat 22. And what Republicans did, what some Republicans did seem to understand, Ted Cruz
certainly understood it that, yes, right now this is being used against speech.
that Republicans don't like. But, Willie, Republicans aren't going to be in the White House forever.
So they understood Ted Cruz warned about it. Others warned about it. What we're doing to them right now,
they will do to us when a Democrat, this is short-sighted. It makes no sense.
Oh, my God. Acting like the world began last Wednesday. I mean, that's truly just a blizzard.
late, excuse me, failure to acknowledge how we got here.
Well, I know, because Joe's my friend, I've talked to me, he knows how we got here.
I wish he'd, I wish he'd given the history, but he knows how we got here.
And he, like so many others, again, is so guided by his view of Trump that it just,
it just divides the country.
There's a, there's a limit of what some people can and will say when they're guided by
Trump and their feelings about the president and what he's done.
You've got one of the more reasonable Democrats, in quotes, reasonable Democrats, David Axelrod, of course, a former Obama guy, who sees the Jimmy Kimmel saga very differently than I do.
I'll say that for the record.
Here's what he is saying.
This is CNN last night, top 23.
Good for Jimmy Kimmel.
He kept his silence and he kept his principles and he said, I'm not going to homogenize my words.
I think what he said, he probably could have said better.
I don't think he lied or meant to imply what his, what the detractors said.
Okay.
Kept his principles by not apologizing for a clear lie, Mark.
Yeah, again, David Axelon has Trump derangement syndrome.
And he may be proven wrong if I'm, if my prediction is right.
And Kimmel does apologize tonight.
But again, they have spent pre-assassination of Charlie.
They spent a decade as apologists for anyone who did something negative to Donald Trump.
That's just their orientation.
That's their reflex.
The fact that they didn't drop the reflex after a young man was assassinated is testament
to the strength of Trump derangement syndrome, and their orientation remains the same.
If Trump's for it, they're against it.
If Trump's like someone, that person must be a bad person.
If someone goes on TV and lies on behalf of Donald Trump, I mean, this is a group of people
who continued to say that Donald Trump said there were good people on both sides referring to white supremacists.
It's a group of people continue to say Jim Crow on steroids.
It's a group of people who continue to believe anything that General Kelly would say about Donald Trump.
So I had hoped for about 20 minutes that their spell would be broken by the assassination of a 31-year-old man.
with a pure heart. But no, it's the same orientation. So I get the outrage about it and the new
examples are interesting from a human point of view, but it's the same old story. We were a decade
into it. It's the same old story. If someone attacks Donald Trump, regardless of whether they do it
truthfully or not, they're a hero to the left. Well, you're so right, because this is all, this scandal
doesn't stand independently. It's actually linked to Charlie Kirk's assassination because that's
what Kimmel was commenting on. That's one of the reasons why tempers were so flared.
And he tried to blame this murder on MAGA, which was what was so incendiary and deeply wrong
and immoral about his comments. But it was also bigger because the left wanted to use it to pivot
away from Charlie's assassination and gallingly to try to make themselves look like the bigger
victims of events of the past couple of weeks versus the right half of the country and Charlie's
fans and friends. I totally agree. And to me, the biggest example so far was that Charlie's name was
not uttered at the Emmys. I just, I just, I still can't believe it. I still cannot believe that they
did not honor him at the Emmys. It's just, is staggering to me. And that's of a piece with what you
showed David Axorod saying, it's of a piece with ABC not firing Kimmel and ABC bringing him back,
because they just, they don't have appreciation for what this means. They just, they just,
don't. No, they don't understand and they don't want to understand the right half of the
country, which is the majority. You know, check the polls. They don't, they don't want to
understand. Again, that's why it's better to have affiliates and their ownership groups
making these decisions because they actually do have a better understanding of so-called
flyover country and what the standards of decency are, what, you know, this public interest
actually looks like. Here is this TikToker. His name is Isaiah L. Carter, and he gets it just
about as right as anybody I've heard. It's Sot 28.
You think because you yell
pretty fucking loud about some late night talk show host, you think that's supposed
to affect, you think that's supposed to win hearts and minds?
After we saw you,
after we saw what you, you celebrated the shedding of innocent blood.
And now you want to pretend like nobody,
now you want to pretend like nobody sees you.
God sees you.
You have literally operated at the privilege of the state.
You have operated with the, you have operated with the impunity that being on the side of all of the institutions and being on the side of the state gets you.
You have enjoyed that privilege and now that privilege is gone.
and you're losing, you lost the culture war.
There's a body involved now.
You don't get to act sanctimonious.
Y'all don't get to act sanctimonious anymore.
You got a 31-year-old man killed.
All right, here's what I love about that, everything.
But also, Isaiah and others like him, who are, you know, maybe recent Charlie fans
coming to like the wisdom of Charlie Kirk by watching the videos and so on are now experiencing
what it's like to be a conservative. Right? Like even your wins are short-lived and will be completely
misrepresented by the media. You know, Jimmy Kimmel's going to get a hero's welcome tonight.
All the media will celebrate whatever he says. And the left will turn this around like,
oh my God, it's part of Trump's authoritarianism. And I do think these new converts to
conservatism, to Charlie Kirkism, whatever it is that's happening right now,
it's good that they're getting a dose of what it's like to be one of us.
Because even to have a minor victory, it for us is like a big W, but it too will be
shat upon. It will be minimized. It will be reduced to, you know, a nub because that's
what the left wants. And the left controls media and Hollywood and all the institutions
that are going to drive narrative around this. Well, again, it's a tragedy.
that this is what it would take
for some number of people to see the light.
But that's what's happening.
It's, it's, it's a, it's a testament to
the Democratic Party's determination
to maintain the exact orientation they had
before Charlie was killed.
And the media's desire to not learn anything.
Now, the media continues to not own up
to the attempted cover up of Joe Biden's cognitive decline.
And on next up, we hear from a,
A woman from the Chicago area who draws a through line between those two events.
No consciousness raising, no acknowledgement of professional misconduct after the Biden acuity cover-up was exposed for the world to see in the sharpest relief possible with the debate.
And now no acknowledgement that the nature of how people like Charlie Kirk, and there's no one really was like him, but conservatives who worked like Donald Trump, their treatment by the.
press continues with barely a pause even though he was assassinated because they do not want
their consciousness raised but because of TikTok because of Instagram because of YouTube more people
will see the truth and have a place to go to hear their their instincts validated I don't
know what the numbers will be but it ain't nothing it is some number of people because of the
horror of what happened and and the reaction just playing right back to type
There are problems on the right, and I get why some people on the left say this is not the time to change.
We're still at battle stations, but for so many, this is just a watershed moment, and a moment at which the asymmetry in the press coverage is just, it's too much for some people to bear.
I do want to show this.
I wasn't sure where I'd bring it up, but this is a good place because speaking of learning to fight and the right understanding, like the stakes are extremely high.
We're just not going to allow it.
We're just not going to allow the bastardization of Charlie's memory.
We are not going to allow this thing to be blamed on MAGA when we know who shot Charlie Kirk and what the motives were.
I mean, we know the uniform public statements that have been made, at least, by the authorities in charge and his family.
Last night, Michael Knowles spoke for Charlie in Minnesota at one of these campus events, which was great.
Yours truly will be doing it tomorrow night in Virginia.
And Charlie and I were supposed to do that together, and I'm still going.
So Michael Knowles shows up.
And I think Michael, he was on the show yesterday, you know, didn't know exactly what to expect, but was determined to go.
He's been very brave.
I mean, his whole adult life, he's incredibly courageous in his commentary, et cetera.
So he shows up and outside of the event, you have the Trantifa types who are transed up
and trying to chant terrible slogans about Charlie, et cetera.
And you know what happened, Mark?
Let's look at it.
U.S.A! U.S.A! U.S.
a bunch of counter-protesters showed up.
Yes. A bunch of regular folks, men, men, etc., showed up and chanted USA, USA, USA over the protesters. They were not having it. And then, on the inside of the event, here is what happened.
Charlie, Charlie, Charlie, Charlie, Charlie, Charlie, Charlie. I mean, I don't know how many people were there, but it was standing room only. They showed up in droves to listen to Michael, chanting Charlie's name. They've just, they've had it, Mark.
Yeah. One of the sentiments most often expressed on Sunday in Arizona was that in his death, Charlie's movement,
will grow even larger and more powerful.
And I understand the passion that people say that with,
and it might be true.
But I'm not sure.
Because ironically, and again, paradoxically,
replacing him is going to be a challenge,
as talented as Erica is and other people are.
He's singular.
But here are two things that I think will definitely be true.
And you saw that with Michael yesterday.
One is the number of people dedicated to changing campuses,
right the ability of conservatives to be on campuses the number of those people will grow and their
comfort with going out in public and fighting for that principle will be much higher people will be
more comfortable more protected greater strength than numbers and i think you're going to see on
many college campuses including some liberal campuses you're going to see a real change that will
apply not just to whatever whatever was included in charlie's agenda but more broadly i believe that
his death, one of the monuments to his death will be, many campuses now will be more balanced
in the public square rhetoric because of the dynamic that you saw in that video from last night
with Michael Knowles.
It's great.
It's very heartening.
I love to see it.
I mean, it's just they're leaning in.
They don't care who knows it.
They're proud patriots.
They love this country.
Many of them are faithful people.
And they've found a new way of talking about both.
That's Charlie's legacy.
And the best liberals like Bernie Sanders and Roe-Kana are welcoming this.
They're welcoming university campuses having more pluralistic.
I wish other Democrats would follow their example.
And that's not lip service.
It's not saying in the heat in the moment in the aftermath of assassination.
There are some Democrats who say, thank goodness now that one of the enduring legacies will be
more pluralistic thought on campuses.
And like I said, I hope all of the Democrats follow that because that,
could be some good that comes out of this.
Now, normally, I would take a break at this point, and then we would start the Kamala Harris
discussion later. But her sound bites are so rambling and difficult to comprehend. I think we need
to break it up. Otherwise, people are going to be upset. And it's good because I'm hungry.
I'm hungry. I could use some salad. I've got it for you right here. Okay? That's where I wanted to
start, actually. She was on Maddow last night promoting her book. Maddow raised with her the statement
in the book that she wanted to raise with Joe Biden the fact that he was not the right candidate
for this job, but she couldn't really because she was the VP and it would have been seen as
self-serving. But in retrospect, it was really recklessness to allow him to make the decision.
It shouldn't have been a personal call. Matt, I was trying to say, okay, so this is why,
you know, you didn't actually raise this with him, but you would have liked to. And here is how
that answer went. Sautin. You said to President Biden that you did not think you should run it.
Yeah, or even that he should question whether it's a good idea.
But I think that, you know, one of the reasons I wrote this book, Rachel, is there are actually a number of reasons.
One is one that it is unprecedented, right, to your point of what you said in your opening, we had a president of the United States running for re-election, three and a half months from the election, decides not to run.
The sitting vice president enters the race against a former president of the United States
who's been running for 10 years with 107 days to go.
And it ended up being the closest presidential election in the 21st century.
And there was so much about those 107 days that for me, and this is really a behind the scenes
look at those 107 days, was about seeing people who seemingly had nothing in common coming together
by the thousands.
Oh, my God.
With a level of optimism and dare I say joy.
Oh, my Lord.
About the possibilities for America.
And I hope to remind people about that light that people brought to it
and to remind people that that light is still there.
The light.
And we can't let that be extinguished by an election or the individual who's in the office right now.
She still got it.
still got it no one's better at the word salad please i would like a light vinaigrette um
you know i watch i've watched the interviews knowing i was coming on to talk to you and uh it wasn't
difficult for me to anticipate which sound bites you would pick and and her failure to stand up to
the parts of the book that actually were honest or provocative and to just go with as you said
just a bunch of filler it is it's like whatever the opposite of book selling 101 is that's what
this is. She's like, she's not even trying to sell the book anymore. She's trying to go back to
as if she was just a candidate and just run out the clock with words out. Yes. That's so well said.
That's a great point. Because it's like what Matt I was asking her was about a point that
Rachel had read in the book, the one I just reiterated. Like, you know, gee, we shouldn't
let it be a personal decision. The stakes were too high. It was reckless. And she's saying,
you know, you wish you had to said that to President Biden. And Kamala Harris goes off on how
it was an unprecedented time. We only had three months. Dare I say.
Joy, need to remind people of the light. It was light. Carol Ann, go turn the light.
Here's my soundbite. It's as if it wasn't a book that she had to get, she tried to get published.
It's as if it were her private journal that is leaked out. And she's trying to change the subject.
Oh, no, they know what I wrote. No, she purposely published the words. And now she's pretending like it didn't happen.
It's the, it is a weird way to sell a book. Okay. On that same front,
Maddow, who is openly gay, asked her about her comments in the book about why she didn't
choose Pete Buttigieg as her running mate, in which the book, you know, she says, because he's
gay. And the country, in her view, isn't ready for somebody like her to be running with somebody
like him. And here's how that went. You know, you're the first woman elected vice president.
You're a black woman and a South Asian woman elected that high office, very nearly elected
president to say that he couldn't be on the ticket effectively because he was gay. It's hard to hear.
No, no, no, that's not what I said, that that's, that he couldn't get on the ticket because he is gay.
Exactly.
My point, as I write in the book, is that I was clear that in 107 days in one of the most hotly contested elections for President of the United States against someone like Donald Trump who knows no floor to be a black woman running for President of the United States.
You can do it, Kamala.
Like Donald Trump, who knows no floor to be a black woman running for president of United States.
And as a vice presidential running mate, a gay man, with the stakes being so high, it made me very sad.
But I also realized it would be a real risk.
So I didn't say that except I said that exactly.
Right.
Yeah.
I mean, I don't know how much of it's been the blowback from the stuff leaking out.
I'll also say, again, it was a weird decision to put all the stuff out, to be attacked.
Maybe they thought that would sell books.
But then it's just, it's confusing to like a potential book buyer.
And it certainly doesn't make Pete Buttigieg, I think, feel any better to go out and not actually say, yeah, you're not saying what you put in the book.
It's just, it's of a piece with the kind of communication strategy and image.
maintenance, she demonstrated as a vice president and as a presidential candidate.
Like, how did she not know that was going to come up?
Maddow is a lesbian.
Obviously, this is going to be on the nose.
She's going to raise it.
And there's a no, I didn't, I didn't say that.
Not because he's gay.
I was clear.
That's always a tell with her.
She's about to do one of her non-clear answers.
I was clear.
It's Donald Trump's fault.
Donald Trump knows no floor.
That's the problem.
Black, gay man, uh-uh.
Stakes too high.
But I was sad about it, Rachel.
I was sad. So now you mentioned my favorite piece of the whole story, which is she took out her
Howard Sir. She pointed at Josh Shapiro. She pointed to Pete Buttigieg. She pointed to Team
Biden. And they are all annihilating her in response. Here's Buttigieg in Sot 16.
I was surprised when I read that. I just believe in giving Americans more credit than that.
My experience in politics has been that the way that you earn trust with voters is based mostly on what
they think you're going to do for their lives, not on categories.
And then the Josh Shapiro remark, where she said, well, I was going to choose Josh Shapiro,
governor of Pennsylvania, swing state, but he seemed too vain, basically, is what she was saying.
He was more focused on how he's going to decorate the VP's office and what artwork he could get in there
than he wasn't actually sharing responsibility.
And now here's Shapiro fighting back.
I mean, look, I haven't read the former vice president's book.
and she's going to have to answer to how she was in the room
and yet never said anything publicly.
I can tell you that I wasn't in the room,
but when I was confronted with engagement
with the former president,
in looking at it simply from the perspective of
how's he doing in Pennsylvania?
Could he win Pennsylvania?
And I was very vocal with him privately
and extremely vocal with his staff
about my concerns, about his fitness to be able to run for another term.
I believe in talking directly to the individuals, not running around and talking to the media.
Okay, so that's two, Mark.
Yeah.
You know, the irony of this part is the stuff she reported about Shapiro matches my reporting exactly,
which was she wanted to pick him, and I think led his team to believe he was going to be picked.
But he was super demanding.
And his view was, I'm not going to accept a life-changing job with someone I don't know that well without more answers.
And her attitude was, I don't have time.
So that part's all correct.
But I love the fact that he comes back at her not on the points she raised, but he comes back on her and says,
you have to explain why he didn't point out to Joe Biden had cognitive decline and couldn't be president.
So the people who haven't come back in full force yet are the Bidens.
And there's stuff in the book that hasn't come up in the interviews so far,
a negative thing she says about the Bidens that I think Hunter or somebody else will come back
at her.
And what we did here was this from, we heard from Biden AIDS to Axios the following.
Vice President Harris was simply not good at the job.
She had basically zero substantive role in any of the administration's key work streams
and instead would just dive bomb in for stilted photo ops that exposed how out of depth
she was.
This is what we've been waiting for.
We deserve this news cycle.
We've been waiting for this since November.
It's coming on camera.
And part of their indignation is they did more to try to help her than any vice president
has ever been helped.
They went out of their way to get her meetings and briefings and to protect her public
image.
And again, it hasn't come up now, though it leaked out early.
She claims, oh, they undermine me.
They didn't try to protect me when I was attacked.
They didn't defend me.
Instead, under orders from her boss, the president, they spent unprecedented amount of time,
trying to avoid her being treated negatively.
but it didn't stick because she was not able to do certain parts of the job.
Because she was genuinely terrible.
All right, now she's also trying to be a tough guy around Trump.
That's another piece of her narrative that we will pick up on the opposite side of this break.
More with Mark Halperin, host of Next Up with Mark Halperin right after this.
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We absolutely have to keep talking. It's more important now than ever. This fall, Megan Kelly is
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We're going to make it safe for me.
We're going to make it safe for my team and my guests and you and do something really important,
which is say what's true and what's real.
And I would love for you to join me.
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offer details apply with me today mark halpern he's the host of next up with mark halpern on the mk media
podcast network all you have to do is go to your little podcast app on your phone type in mark halperin
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Mark, this just hit this morning.
Google is now vowing to offer YouTube accounts that were permanently banned for political speech during the Biden administration and COVID, the ability to be reinstated.
Fox News breaking this this morning from the Fox article.
Google detained its remarkable shift in a document first obtained by Fox News Digital that a lawyer for the company provided to the House Judiciary Committee.
The new policy from Google, also known by its parent company, Alphabet, could affect both average users and well-known figures like FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, White House Counterterrorism Chief Sebastian Gorka, and War Room podcast host Steve Bannon, all of whom were permanently banned in recent years for COVID-19 or election-related content.
That's just three who got banned.
We could be here all day if we went through the list.
Okay, that's what conservatives have been subjected to over the past.
past seven plus years. And Britt Hume is online, your former boss and mine, saying, quote,
meanwhile, CNN's Jake Tapper is on late night TV. He was on Seth Myers last night, saying the
temporary suspension of Jimmy Kimmel is, quote, the most direct infringement by the government
on free speech he's ever seen. We know that YouTube and Google did that because the government
was insisting that they cracked down on these fringe voices all over YouTube.
This is absurd the turnaround in this narrative over Kimmel to having five days off.
One of the 23 books I currently want to write is the history of the tech platforms coinciding
with the rise of Donald Trump, colluding with the Biden administration and the media, particularly
the media reporters, the ones who cover the media, to censor conservative thought, to take
shut down accounts to suppress information.
The Hunter Biden laptops the most prominent.
But this is an incredible story that these platforms, which claim to be wide open and
available to anyone and not content concerned, but rather just concerned with creating
the distribution, they actively and ideologically conspired to suppress conservative
thought, diversity of thought.
And it's one thing if they say, well, this is a Nazi or this is someone with dangerous
thoughts. But these were just people espousing different points of view that happen to be
conservative or belong to conservatives. And it's an incredible story about American history
that's never been written. And I would love to write it. It would take a lot of reporting,
but I'd love to do it. And of course, as you suggest now, when there are things like Kimmel
and it's about speech against Donald Trump as opposed to speech against the Democrats or for
Donald Trump, people in the media who claim to be objective just have a totally different point
of view about it. I don't know if they even understand how hypocritical that looks.
So unbelievable. I mean, what a news item to hit as the left is crying at its soup over
the five days. And by the way, you know, that news about, I don't know when Seth Myers tapes
a show, but that news about Jimmy Kimmel happened relatively early in the day. He probably
knew. I haven't watched the whole thing. I haven't watched any of it. I have to get back
to Kamala because she went on the view this morning. And it's amazing. It's amazing. It's amazing.
You know, like, leftists are going to leftist.
Here is SOT 52.
A lot of people, I'm included, and President Biden also,
think that a lot of it is about racism and sexism,
and those are the reasons that you really lost,
not because of the time thing.
What do you say to that?
Do you think this country will ever elect a woman in the president
in my lifetime, probably not?
I beg to differ.
I believe that we will.
And listen, you know this,
and I've been honored to be on this show many times
and talk with this esteemed group.
Every office I've held, I've been the first.
Yeah.
Oh, God.
Usually the first woman, and then often the first woman
and the first person of color.
The only time actually I was the second
when I was the second black woman ever elected
to the United States Senate in its hundreds of years history.
So I'm not naive, race and gender.
do play a factor in some people's minds about how they vote.
Back to me, if we could just bring it back to me,
I was the first year and the first day.
I was the second there, but then I was the third,
then I was the first, and then I almost became the first this,
but I was, like, this is how leftists think.
It's like, I would be humiliated.
I really would.
If I were common Harris, I'd be like, look,
there was a time in this country when that was at the forefront of people's minds,
we're past that time. Look at my stellar resume. Thanks to this great country. I've achieved all. No,
she can't do it. I was first and then it's second. Then I was first again. And then I will.
Like, this is how they think. Well, so Joyce, the premise of Joyce question was it wasn't that
you only had 107 days. It's racism and sexism. And I would say what I've said from the beginning,
the minute we learned the book title, if you didn't think you could win in 107 days, you shouldn't
have run. There were other people who would have run who would be happy to take on the responsibility
and the challenge of doing that. And if you're not someone who is good at making difficult decisions
under pressure, you also shouldn't run. Those were the reasons she lost. She's never been good
at making difficult decisions under pressure, and she wasn't able to run a campaign in 107 days.
The other things raised, the fact that it was too short a period of time and race and gender,
I have no doubt they were not absent from the consideration, but her friend Barack Obama got
elected president with the middle name Hussein as a black man.
So, I mean, it's not impossible to get elected president as a black person.
Now, sexism.
She was elected vice president with all those same characteristics.
Yeah, yeah.
And again, there is sexism.
But if you think there's too much sexism to win and you think 107 days is too short,
Don't tell your party. Put me and coach. Let someone else do it.
Exactly right. Well, the reason she couldn't do that is because the threat was too big.
You know, she just, she understood she had, she had to rise to the occasion because the threat was too big.
Here she is back on Maddow talking about the evil Trump, Sot 8.
Right now we are dealing with, as I called him at my speech on the ellipse, a tyrant.
we used to compare
the strength of our democracy
to communist dictators
that's what we're dealing with right now in Donald Trump
and these titans of industry
are not speaking up
and
perhaps it is because
his threats
and the way he has used the weight
of the federal government
to take out vengeance
on his critics
is something that they fear and I get that.
I understand why they do. We've seen the demonstration of it.
Okay. Communist dictator. I guess we're not lightening up on the rhetoric at all.
Same program in which she endorsed Mondami for mayor of New York. Actual communist.
Right. Good point. She, but you see, she's been going through a lot, Mark. You have to give her some slack. Cut her some slack because she's been going.
through election. There's been like a grieving process. Back to the view. She spoke a bit
about that. Just a bit. It's SOT 50. Here it is.
Doug and I, my husband, it wasn't until I was writing that chapter that we had ever talked
about election night. I grieved in a way that I have not since my mother died.
And it was, I was, the pain was, it was not at all about losing a race.
I knew what it was going to mean for the country.
I was going to say for the family.
And that's how I felt for the country.
I knew what it was going to mean.
But I knew.
And all I could say over and over again is, my God, my God, my God.
It was very difficult.
I mean, I know everyone, many people experienced it in different ways.
Okay, I have to say something.
It may surprise people.
I accept that statement because had she won, I would have had those exact feelings about her.
I would have said, my God, my God, my God, and I would have grieved from my country.
I just don't happen to believe it in her case.
I think she actually was grieving for herself.
She just doesn't have the self-confidence to admit it.
I think you could go out there and say, like, Trump, he would actually be like, yeah, I was very mad.
Well, he'd be like, I didn't lose.
That's what he would say.
But I accept that she was genuinely scared that Trump.
one because I would be if she did.
Well, this mythology that she and some others try to propagate that she ran a good race,
she didn't. I actually think given how close it was, if she'd run a good race, she probably
would have won. So all this grieving for the country rather than, and this is the criticism
I hear most from Democrats privately, she's not taking responsibility. She's saying it's horrible
Trump won and it's horrible how the Biden people treated me and it's horrible I only had 107
days rather than, oops, I maybe wasn't the right person to do this.
but I was the first black woman and the first Southeast Asian woman and I was the first
in a woman who'd had an affair with Willie Brown and I was the first we could be here all day
like this is crazy talk I love listening to the shore I'm totally in favor of the tour
favor of Mark Halper on next up as well which you should enjoy by subscribing on YouTube and on
podcast Mark thank you thank you great to see you have a great day you too all right we're back
tomorrow, and this is a great one, I really hope you'll join us. It's an in-depth sit-down with
actor Matthew McConaughey. Did not know what to expect, was blown away by what a thoughtful,
curious, interesting, substantive person he was. I think you guys are really going to enjoy this.
In fact, I guarantee you will. We'll see you then.
Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.
Thank you.