The Megyn Kelly Show - Clay Travis on American Sports and China, Hunter Biden, and Dealing with Bullies | Ep. 88

Episode Date: April 12, 2021

Megyn Kelly is joined by Clay Travis of Fox Sports and Outkick to talk about the state of the media, American sports and China, MLB moving the All-Star Game out of Georgia, the Deshaun Watson scandal ...and why the sports media isn't covering it much, Hunter Biden, the 60 Minutes piece on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Big Tech hypocrisy and crackdowns on right-leaning media, parenting and dealing with bullies, Tiger Woods, Britney Spears, and fame, the future of Outkick and more.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms:Twitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShowFind out more information at:https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 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. Today we've got Clay Travis. You may know him as the founder of Outkick.com, which is, I think, sort of the anti-ESPN, we could say. It's the non-woke place for sports, which means most of the country loves him because most of the country is not woke. And ESPN has been sneaking its wokeness into virtually every aspect of its coverage. And we'll get into exactly how that happened when Clay joins us. He's very smart. I first met him because I went on his podcast, Winners and Losers. Oh, there's a winner. I think. Anyway, we had a great talk. And I'm not really a sports person, as you know, but I love the way he talks about sports because he makes it sort of
Starting point is 00:00:58 wider access. And even I can understand it. We get into the latest crazy 60 Minutes response as this controversy gets even worse for them. Now, the Palm Beach Democratic mayor is killing them and the Democratic mayor, I say. And they're sticking to their stupid story on Ron DeSantis. We're going to get into that. We're going to get into Hunter Biden's media tour and the love fest that we're seeing and the hard news and soft news alike for him. And the biggest sports story of today that no one is covering and why. So we'll do that with Clay in just one minute.
Starting point is 00:01:31 But first, this. Seems like things are going well with the podcast. They are. I'm relieved to say it's working. And therefore, my stint in my children's playroom will continue. Yes. I'm living the dream right now. Yeah. I mean, I've got a home television, radio. I mean, I've got everything in my house.
Starting point is 00:01:53 So my wife complains that I never leave, but I've just kind of got the ability to do everything. It's true. Between COVID and working from home, you really do find out whether you're truly in love with your spouse. Yes. And I don't think my wife loves me. So other than that, everything's great. It's just glory. Let's start on 60 Minutes and Governor DeSantis, because I've been noticing you tweet about this story. And I know you think these guys owe an apology to Ron DeSantis. They're going a different way. Instead of rescinding this story, and just to get the audience up to speed, 60 Minutes offered this report on DeSantis suggesting that he was guilty of a pay for play type scheme with Publix, the big grocery store down there, saying, here's a direct quote from the report. Why did Governor DeSantis choose Publix to help roll out the vaccines?
Starting point is 00:02:47 Well, they say Publix donated 100,000 to DeSantis weeks before he let them distribute the vaccine. So it's a clear hit on him, right? Like they paid 100,000 bucks to him and suddenly Publix was the chosen one. And then the report goes on to quote a guy in the piece saying, well, that hurt minorities because Publix wasn't in the right neighborhoods to help them. And basically, it was a long hit piece on him. Well, now everybody from Pointer, I mean, Pointer used to be this sort of objective news watchdog that would call out bias on both sides. Now it's a complete left wing mouthpiece. They've called that 60 Minutes. PolitiFact, I can say the same stuff about them. They've called that 60 minutes.
Starting point is 00:03:28 Democrat politicians, Democratic politicians in Florida, they're calling out 60 minutes saying this is a lie. You've misled. It wasn't pay to play. There's a very good reason why it rolled out the way it did. And DeSantis tried to explain it to 60 Minutes reporters himself at a press conference and 60 Minutes deceptively edited the soundbite. I'm just a long wind up to get you to comment on this, but I just want people to understand because it's a little confusing. So I'm just before we get into the meat of it, Clay, let's let's just play the the 60 Minutes exchange, the misleading exchange first, and then we'll get to DeSantis' explanation that was cut. Publix, as you know, donated $100,000 to your campaign, and then you rewarded
Starting point is 00:04:12 them with the exclusive rights to distribute the vaccination in Palm Beach. So first of all, what you're saying is wrong. How is that not pay to play? That's a fake narrative. I met with the county mayor. I met with the administrator. I met with all the folks at Palm Beach County. And I said, here's some of the options. We can do more drive through sites. We can give more to hospitals. We can do the publics. And they said, we think that would be the easiest thing for our residents. OK, and then here's the next one where this is the longer actual exchange between the two of them that was on camera because this is at a press conference, which apparently 60 Minutes forgot.
Starting point is 00:04:46 Here. As we got into January, we wanted to expand the distribution points. So yes, you had the counties, you had some drive-thru sites, you had hospitals that were doing a lot, but we wanted to get it into communities more. So we reached out to other retail pharmacies, Publix, Walmart. Obviously, CVS and Walgreens had to finish that mission. And we said, we're going to use you as soon as you're done with that. For the Publix, they were the first one to raise their hand, say they were ready to go, and you know what? We did it on a trial basis.
Starting point is 00:05:14 I had three counties. I actually showed up that weekend and talked to seniors across four different Publix. How was the experience? Is this good? Should you think this is the way to go? And it was 100% positive, so we expanded it it and then folks liked it. And I can tell you, if you look at a place like Palm Beach County, they were kind of struggling at first in terms of the senior numbers. I went, I met with the county mayor, I met with the administrator, I met with all the folks at Palm Beach County. And I said, here's some of the options. We can do more drive through sites. We can give more to hospitals. We can do the Publix. We can do this. They calculated that 90 percent of their seniors live within a mile and a half of a Publix. And they said, we think that would be the easiest thing for our residents. It's crazy, Clay. And now 60 Minutes
Starting point is 00:06:01 is saying, well, you know, our report was really about the racial disparities of the vaccine distribution, and we stand by it 100%. This is, I think, and you, let me take a step back. I think sometimes you need to be able to see both sides of the media equation to really understand what's going on right now. And I know you have seen both sides because we're in the media. And what I have done now, and I would say this to anybody out there that's ever being written about or talked about at all, I won't do an interview unless I am recording the entire thing on my end as well. And I almost feel like that's where we all have to be because selective editing of stories, the narrative that wants to be told, you know how a story like that works. They've decided what their story is
Starting point is 00:06:52 and they want to get a quote from Ron DeSantis to allow them to say, well, we asked him for a comment and this is what the comment was. But then they go in and they take small segments of the answer to justify what they believed the story already was. In other words, they already know what the story is by the time they talk to the person. The Washington Post recently did a few thousand words where they ripped me. I don't remember the exact number, but I think there were 2,500 words they wrote about me. I talked to them for an hour. I think they used something,500 words they wrote about me. I talked to them for an hour, and I think they used something like 100 words that I gave them in the 2,300-word piece. Well, what was the point of me talking to you for an hour? By the way, they misquoted me
Starting point is 00:07:34 in that they pulled partial answers out of full answers. It's just fundamentally artificial. I think we have the technology. I suspect much of it has always been that way, but I think now we have the technology and the ability to see the inartificiality of, or the artificiality and the inauthentic nature by which these stories are created. This was a hit piece. Somebody pitched to 60 Minutes, Ron DeSantis, who I think, Megan, I don't know if you've started to look at it, but I think in 2024, one of the big stories is going to be how did America respond to COVID? And I think we're going to spend the next few years unpacking how we responded. And I think there is great nervousness that Ron DeSantis, on the part of Democrats, that Ron DeSantis is going
Starting point is 00:08:22 to have the best resume of any governor in America when it comes to how did you respond to COVID. The death rate is nearly identical in California. Every student in Florida has stayed in school, in person, gone to school. The state unemployment rate is half of what it is in California. Gavin Newsom and Andrew Cuomo were initially lionized for their response. And if you look at big state governors, Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis, Texas and Florida, have done much better. And so I really think this is a calculated attempt to tear down Ron DeSantis and create uncertainty about his management of the state of Florida. Because he argued early on, lockdowns aren't going to work. We have to continue with normal life.
Starting point is 00:09:04 And I think he's been validated by all of the data and all the numbers. And I think that is threatening to so many people who screamed, listen to the experts. He's listened to the right experts. And I think the result has been that his people in his state have done better than anybody else in any big state in the country. Oh, you just hit the nail right on the head. I totally agree with what you just said. And so now 60 Minutes, they're interested in him in tearing him down. Let's make him look corrupt. Let's make it look like because Publix donated 100,000 bucks to him a few weeks before this, he gave them the right to distribute the vaccine, which is lucrative for the
Starting point is 00:09:41 distributors. They get paid like 40 bucks a shot from the feds. And he walked the reporter right through the truth. He said, no, Walgreens had it. CVS had it. We decided to test Publix because it's so ubiquitous. See if it would work. See if it would get to the seniors. I went to local officials in all the biggest counties and said, what do you think? Here are the many options. It's not just Publix I'm giving you to choose. You tell me what's going to work for you. And the local officials said to me, Publix makes sense. And their vaccination rates are super high because it did make sense. And so he walked them through. And then the local Democratic officials have come forward to say, that's exactly right. And they called out 60 Minutes for the falsehood. I think I still have it on
Starting point is 00:10:22 my phone. I mean, to me, it's a huge story. By the way, New York Times hasn't covered it. Washington Post hasn't covered it. One of my guys made a 60 Minutes of Lies t-shirt with the OutKick logo on it. And Ron DeSantis tweeted out that he had bought them, and he actually did. And so if he wears one, which I hope he does, I mean, he's smart about the way that social media will play, but I'm reading directly. This is the statement, by the way, Megan, from Mayor Dave Kerner on Sunday night's 60 Minutes segment on vaccines in Florida. I believe he's Palm Beach County's mayor. He met with a very well-known Democratic mayor. Yeah. And so he wrote, I'll read the whole thing if you want to hear it, because I do think it's interesting. It's relatively short. I watched the 60-minute segment on Palm Beach County last night and feel compelled to issue this statement.
Starting point is 00:11:09 The reporting was not just based on bad information. It was intentionally false. I know this because I offered to provide my insight into Palm Beach County's vaccination efforts and 60 minutes declined. They know that the governor came to Palm Beach County and met with me and the county administrator, and in his words in italics, we asked to expand the state's partnership with Publix to Palm Beach County. We also discussed our own local plans to expand mass vaccination centers throughout the county, which the governor has been incredibly supportive. We asked and he delivered. They had that information and they left it out because it kneecaps their narrative. We have confronted this pandemic for over a year. Our residents, like all Americans, are tired and the media is making it worse. They
Starting point is 00:11:54 are hell-bent on dividing us for cheap views and clicks. 60 Minutes should be ashamed. I thank the governor for supporting the residents of Palm Beach County because of his efforts working in coordination with Palm Beach County officials. Over 275,000 seniors in our county, which is over 75% of the total senior population, have been vaccinated. I am proud of how our county and state leadership have executed on this important mission, and the results speak for themselves. Again, that's Dave Kernan, county mayor of Palm Beach, Palm Beach County, Democrat, calling out the report 60 Minutes ran on Florida and Governor Ron DeSantis. Wow. Wow. If this had happened the opposite way, Fox News doing a hit piece that was totally unfounded
Starting point is 00:12:42 on a Democrat. Can you imagine? And Republican local leaders came forward to say Fox had it wrong. Fox is misleading. Can you imagine the amount of play this would be getting on CNN and MSNBC and see all of them, all of them would be covering this wall to wall. It's a huge yawn. No one in the mainstream media cares about 60 minutes being as humiliated here or close to it as with the Dan Rather reporting. Yeah, that's immediately what I thought of, Megan. Yes. What's scary about this, Megan, to me is, and this also ties in with Hunter Biden and the laptop and everything else,
Starting point is 00:13:18 we have created a system. And this is my big picture issue. And I know we've kind of texted about this, I think, before. We have allowed big tech media in many ways to create our own Chinese wall in America, right? Where China can decide, hey, the government can. Our people are going to see X, but they're not going to see Y. And it creates a broken system, right? They have the Chinese wall effectively up. They only allow the internet to be distributed, the stories that they really want to see, and they block other things. Big tech is doing that, Megan. And so you and I are talking about this, and probably a lot of your listeners and my listeners who end up listening to this will know, oh, that Ron DeSantis
Starting point is 00:13:59 60 Minutes story was totally fake. But that story goes out and gets watched by 10 or 12 million people on CBS. What percentage of those people ever become aware that that is a story founded on lies? A huge percentage of people never do. And then that colors their interpretations of Florida and of Ron DeSantis. And that to me is what is so terrifying. We are allowing the restriction of the truth from a large segment of the this can't go on, you know, that they really have become these big tech giants, like a public utility, like a like a telephone line, like a railroad. And you can't, you know, in the same way AT&T doesn't end your conversation, if they hear you talking about did did Biden really win? That doesn't happen. His point is, you know, you we can't have it such that Amazon or Twitter or Facebook can cut off the conversation just because they hear something they decide in their infinite wisdom to deem
Starting point is 00:15:10 nonfactual and was saying Congress needs to pass a law. Now this Congress, they're not going to pass such a law, but it's looking pretty good at this point for the Republicans in 2022. And I do think this is going to be a big issue. But wait, I want to just back up and say one thing on the 60 minutes suggestion that the vaccine was distributed in a racially disparate way down in Florida. You know what? There are also racial disparities in the distribution of the vaccine in New York, in Pennsylvania, in Connecticut and Maryland. Where are those reports? 60. Why was 60 so late to the problems that Andrew Cuomo had in New York State? Janice Dean was jumping up about about this up and down. Like, why?
Starting point is 00:15:47 Why aren't you reporting on this? They finally got around to doing this milquetoast piece on it. And Janice is too nice to say this publicly, but I'm going to say it. Nora O'Donnell privately DM'd her like, we did cover it, Janice. And Janice is like, like nine months into the controversy. Right. And she kept trying to get Janice to stand down on the attacks against Sixty, but she wouldn't because she's like a dog with a bone. As you know, Clay, this is not the first time Sixty has humiliated itself.
Starting point is 00:16:14 Just a couple of months ago, right before the election, Trump did an interview with Leslie Stahl. Yes. And to your point, he tape recorded it on his own and they were rip shit mad when they found out. And he released it in advance because he saw the teases that they were offering and he didn't like actually, no, it was because he didn't like the way it went. And Leslie Stahl got embarrassed on those tapes because to the point about Hunter and the crackdown by Facebook, by Twitter, on the New York Post reporting on Hunter Biden and his laptop and the crackdown by Facebook, by Twitter, on the New York Post reporting on Hunter Biden and his laptop and the criminality alleged thereon, she dismissed it out
Starting point is 00:16:52 of hand. She was like, it's not a story. And he was like, what are you talking about? Anyway, here's the clip from Trump's tape of that interview. This story about Hunter and his laptop. Some repair shop found it. The source is Steve Bannon and Rudy Giuliani. I don't know anything about that. I just know it's a laptop and they haven't. And you're making this
Starting point is 00:17:13 one of the hottest, most important issues in your rallies. I don't know about the two gentlemen you mentioned. This is the most important issue in the country. It's a very important issue
Starting point is 00:17:22 to find out whether or not a man's corrupt who's running for president, who's accepted money from China and from Ukraine and from Russia. Yeah, I think that's an important issue. It's incredible the way you can try and say this and sit there and look me in the eye and say it. He accepted money, his family, from Russia, from Ukraine, from China, and from other places. His brother, who didn't have experience, became a big builder in Iraq without experience.
Starting point is 00:17:54 Take a look at what's going on, Leslie. And then you say that shouldn't be discussed. It's the biggest scandal out there, Leslie. And you think it's the biggest issue to campaign on? I think it's this I think it's one of the biggest scandals I've ever seen. And you don't cover it. You want to talk about it? Well, because it can't be verified.
Starting point is 00:18:13 You want to talk about insignificant things? I'm telling you, of course it can be verified. Excuse me. They found the laptop. Leslie, Leslie. Verified. OK, so number one, the laptop allegations have been investigated and discredited. Okay. Discredited. And the laptop information cannot be verified according to Leslie Stahl. Why?
Starting point is 00:18:36 Because they just can't be, she says. They can't be verified because they can't be verified. And now that same guy, so the actual reporting of the laptop, which we now know has been has been verified. It's been credited, not discredited, even though 60 ignored it and everybody else ignored it and actually stopped it from circulating. Now, the very man behind the laptop, Hunter Biden, is on a book tour and it's infuriating me, Clay. No one, no one is probing. CBS's attempt was like, is it your laptop? I don't know. It could be. Could be the Russians hacked it. That's as much as we've seen. I'm with you. I mean, so much, it's infuriating to me in the same way that I know it's infuriating to you. And I imagine a lot of people who are listening to us right now because I believe that the media's ultimate job is to ask hard questions,
Starting point is 00:19:26 right? It's not to be an arm of public relations, which is a lot of what media has become these days. But it's as if there are talking points that go out, Megan. You look at that and she it's like the idea that this laptop, which, again, is basically 100 percent validated at this point. Right. I mean, it would be the greatest disinformation campaign of all time for all of the photos and videos of Hunter Biden that were on this laptop to somehow be grabbed by Russia and relocated to a new lab. I mean, it's virtually impossible to happen. It's literally unbelievable. Yes. And Trump is 100% right with everything that he said in that clip with 60 minutes. And good for them that they were actually running their own cameras to have a version
Starting point is 00:20:18 of that conversation, which was not going to run on 60 minutes. But it goes to the essence of everything that I think is terrifying about this current universe that we're in, which is the New York Post, remember, they locked their account on Twitter and refused to allow that story to be spread. And I'm writing about this right now for Friday for my website. But I think there's a strong argument to be made, Megan, that if that story had been allowed to circulate as it normally would, and if it had been covered as a fair and impartial journalistic universe would actually cover it, Donald Trump would be president just based on that story because he lost by 40,000 votes.
Starting point is 00:20:57 If you go count 20,000, I think it was, in Wisconsin, 10,000 in Georgia, 10,000 in Arizona. If 40,000 votes are different, he would have won the election tied 269 to 269 in the House of Representatives, and he would be president right now. That means only 20,000 people needed to change their vote in order for the presidency to be flipped. Trump is right. That story goes to the very essence of what Joe Biden is running on, which is, you can trust me. I'm honest. Trump is right I mean that story goes to the very essence of what Joe Biden is running on which is you can trust me I'm honest Trump is corrupt I'm not my family will restore honor to the White House that is 100% not true and Joe Biden lied in the debates when he got actually asked about it he said it was Russian disinformation he knew that was not true his
Starting point is 00:21:43 entire campaign knew that that was not true and the media even now is not holding his feet to the fire on this, even though, Megan, Hunter Biden wrote a book and is doing interviews everywhere. It's not like they're hiding him and he's going to disappear. It's incredible. He finally came out. He finally came out of the basement where, his other basement, all the Bidens have been in a basement. And he finally comes out. And can you imagine as a reporter how you'd be salivating over the opportunity to finally get to ask him? And this instead, and by the way, Mr. Jimmy Kimmel, you know, Mr. I'm funny, I'm a funny man, but I'm also a serious man who's going to take serious positions on orange man bad and terrible policies because I'm somehow important to listen to.
Starting point is 00:22:25 This is how Jimmy Kimmel handled Hunter and the laptop. Listen. When they ask you if that was your laptop, you say you don't know, which is hard to believe unless you read the book. And then it's kind of like, I'm surprised you have shoes on. Yeah. I made it. I it i made it today pants were the problem pants for the problem pants are always the problem really yeah no you know look i really don't know and the fact of the matter is it's a red herring it is absolutely red herring but i am absolutely um i think within my my rights to question anything that comes from the desk of Rudy Giuliani. And so I don't know is the answer.
Starting point is 00:23:11 Do you ever wish you'd had AppleCare? Yeah, that would have been a good one. So he's a liar. He's a liar. I don't know is a lie. He knows very well that it's his laptop and it's being investigated by the FBI and by congressional investigators right now because that laptop, which by the way, has now been verified by the Daily Mail. They hired a firm, former FBI agents.
Starting point is 00:23:37 It's just out on Friday, verifying that it's Hunter's, that it wasn't hacked, that it's not Russian disinformation. They found 103,000 texts, 15, one hundred and fifty four thousand emails, two thousand photos. The guy's immersed in some weird, dark porn life with hookers. He loves to film himself having sex with two hookers at a time and then posting it on Pornhub and then loves to watch it. He films himself watching him, his own sex acts. Something wrong with this guy, his disgusting meth teeth, begging his dad to run for president to salvage his own sex acts. There's something wrong with this guy. His disgusting meth teeth, begging his dad to run for president to salvage his own reputation.
Starting point is 00:24:09 It shows that he was being guarded by a Secret Service agent while on a drug and hook or binge in Hollywood, despite the fact that he wasn't entitled to Secret Service protection at that time. So that's a legitimate media story. Dodging police action against him,
Starting point is 00:24:21 despite his many drug dealer and prostitute encounters and run-ins with the law. All of this, if this had been Donald Trump Jr. It would be unbelievable. Megan, that's the essence of it. Look, and this is where I feel like this is, you know, I always like to say every now and then you put your lawyer hat on and lady justice is blind for a reason, right? And I think this will resonate with you as well. The goal of I think anyone who does what we do, maybe I'm rare in this, but I want there to be a precedent where everything adds up for my opinions. can't just go willy-nilly, and a good judge anyway, can't go willy-nilly ruling one way on one case and then the exact opposite on the other case. To me, there needs to be a consistent precedent that you apply, regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, religion, or politics, right? Like, whatever you believe in, the rules should apply consistently, and we don't have that,
Starting point is 00:25:21 right? Like, Me Too, for Brett Brett Kavanaugh is no way he could ever be a Supreme Court justice. Better allegations, more significant, I should say, more credible allegations are made against Joe Biden of a far more egregious sexual assault, and the story disappears. I don't understand how a reasonable person can be making many of the arguments that the media are making. And your point is a perfect one. Donald Trump Jr. meets with some Russian agent for like 15 minutes in Trump Tower, and we spent four years investigating it like it's the height of the huge complicity between Russia and the United States as it pertains to the 2016- 2016 election. And meanwhile, everything is going on with the
Starting point is 00:26:07 Bidens. And it's like it doesn't even exist. It blows my mind. It's so transparently dishonest. All right. And let's let's be nice. Let's give Jimmy Kimmel a pass because he is just a cartoon, right? I'll take him at his word. Let's put aside as many, many public stances on gun control. I know he can't stand it for Republicans and doesn't care if they don't watch his show on healthcare, Obamacare. And so, okay, right. He's apparently when it's Hunter Biden, he's incapable of asking political questions or taking a stance. Let's give him a pass. CBS, CBS News can do a whole 60 Minutes report on that's fake about Governor DeSantis. But they can't find in in an interview that they had.
Starting point is 00:26:48 They had him first, Hunter Biden. He was on CBS this morning and CBS Sunday morning. Can't find a way to ask him. Forget forget whether the laptop the question about whether it's real and it's yours. Right. Because that she did ask him that. And he's like, well, I don't know. It could it could it could have been. By the way, Megan, if somebody ever says, I don't know, it means it's true.
Starting point is 00:27:08 Right? That's right. Absolutely. Imagine you went to your spouse and you're like, hey, who's this naked photo of somebody that's not me on your phone? And he was like, I don't know. I don't know how that got there. Yeah. You would be like, yeah, I don't know.
Starting point is 00:27:23 Is this your phone? Because it has somebody's picture. You've been texting with somebody who's not me. And if your spouse said, I don't know, you would be like, yeah, you are cheating on me. Right? Like, I don't know. It's like Austin Powers. Vanessa, that's not mine.
Starting point is 00:27:39 That's not mine. Or Shaggy back in the day. It wasn't me. Like, you know, if you are saying, I don't know, it means it's real, right? Like, if somebody said to you, Megan, like, hey, I think I've got Megan Kelly's old laptop. And they were like, everything that you could possibly imagine that is offensive to your character is on there. Would you be like, I don't know, it might be mine? Or would you be like, God, no, that isn't mine. I didn't do any of that. Like this is like, if somebody was alleging that you were into the stuff that Hunter Biden is into,
Starting point is 00:28:14 according to the Daily Mail reports and everything else that's coming out, and you didn't do it, you would be screaming from the laptop, the from the rooftops that it's not your laptop i don't know is as close to a acknowledgement as you can possibly get and you can't use the fact that you were an insane drug addict to defend from the fact that you don't remember like for 10 years what was going on in your life that's right and this was dropped off this this laptop was dropped off at the repairman the legally blind repairman which is just a fact that I love about the whole story, in April of 2019. It's not like it was 20 years ago. It was April of 2019.
Starting point is 00:28:53 And so here's the point I'm trying to get to, though, that the reporter, okay, you blow past Vanessa, right? You blow past that, right? I don't know if that's not mine. And then this is what a real reporter would do. Well, let's talk about what's on the laptop reportedly, okay? Let's talk about the scandals that were alleged as a result in part of what we learned in the New York Post that got access to its contents. We know you did sit on the board of a Ukrainian oil and gas company called Burisma. We know you did that while your father was vice president and was the point man for anti-corruption efforts in the Ukraine at the very same time. We know even two
Starting point is 00:29:28 Obama administration officials raised concerns about a conflict of interest in you doing that. Did anybody ask you about that? Did you ever think that it might pose a conflict of interest? Did you ever talk to your dad about Burisma? Did you know that the number three executive at Burisma visited your dad at the White House? Let's go on to the relationship with the Chinese, right? That happened after Biden left office. Did you have a relationship with this guy, Mr. Yee, whose China Energy Company was his business partner, Hunters? It was all on the up and up. Why did he send you a 2.8 karat diamond? Did you receive that? What'd you do with the diamond? Didn't you have that strike? He was a little funky. By the way, Mr. Yee has now been disappeared by
Starting point is 00:30:01 the Chinese government. How about Tony Bobulinski, right? Who was all over the news, Tucker and other people. He says that there was a business deal between you and your uncle James and 10% of the dough with this Chinese company is supposed to go for quote, the big guy, your dad. Was your dad the big guy? Did you have such a communication? Do you think this could be relevant to blackmail against your dad? Ask him about the facts. You don't have to stay stopped on his denial, his lame ass denial about the laptop. Get into the facts and get answers or at least try. I would pay a ton of money, Megan, to see you interview Hunter Biden on pay-per-view. I'd give anything.
Starting point is 00:30:37 I'd give anything. I mean, he's obviously not going to talk to somebody like you who's asking questions that are legitimate that anybody in journalism should ask, but you are just running through like somebody who is doing a good legal deposition would do in a case such as this. And you would eviscerate that guy. And anybody who watched or listened to that audio or video would know by the end of that interview that he was lying. Here's one of the challenges, Megan. You know who would see that? The people who already know that he's lying.
Starting point is 00:31:11 The people who it would be disappeared in some way, thanks to big tech, if you put it up, right? I mean, it's just, that's what's so incredibly terrifying, I think, about the era that we're in right now is Hunter Biden is a liar. And all of those stories that the big tech companies disappeared and did not allow to circulate in October of 2020, right before one of the most important elections of our lives, that may well have swung the election in favor of Donald Trump, which changes everything that's going on right now and certainly changes the trajectory of the country in many different ways. And maybe you're correct. In 2022, we're going to recalibrate and that's going to change. And 2024, God knows, is going to be a
Starting point is 00:31:55 monster election as well. But the kid gloves, Jimmy Kimmel, I know and like because I work with his cousin on daily shows so personally i like him i don't watch a lot of television elsewhere but you mentioned jimmy kimmel remember what the media did to jimmy fallon when he treated donald trump as most people get treated on late night talk shows as a decent human being and not as an awful representative of all that's evil in the world. Jimmy Fallon got destroyed. Do you remember that? That was by the media for the way that he treated Donald Trump. Well, that goes to my point on standards. If your standard is,
Starting point is 00:32:35 we're going to go pretty easy on late night talk shows, it's not what 60 Minutes should be. It's not Megyn Kelly peering over and just absolutely eviscerating you, which I would love to watch again. But the standard should be the same for the treatment that Hunter Biden gets, or that Donald Trump gets, or that Joe Biden gets, or that Barack Obama gets. If you're going to go light on someone because it's relatively effervescent, not very serious television, then the standard should apply evenly everywhere. Jimmy Fallon shouldn't get destroyed because he went light on Trump because it's not exactly like that's the job of the show. Well, and you are somebody in a similar way to we saw Parler get shut down and Trump get banned from Twitter. You didn't get shut down or banned,
Starting point is 00:33:21 but you did get information you had after you interviewed President Trump on Outkick dot com where you posted you suffered suppression at the hands of Facebook. Something you mentioned when you were asked to testify before Congress recently, and it was a barn burner of a presentation. I tweeted out because I loved the way you put everything and explained it so simply. But they did it to you. And you're not some crazy right-wing hyper-partisan guy. You had an interview with the sitting president. Yeah. And again, I mean, I think it's illuminating in a big way. And so to give backstory for that, we had the president on a couple of times on my radio show live. The first time was in August, right before there was a big debate going on
Starting point is 00:34:03 about whether or not college football should play or not. And I was fighting as hard as I possibly could to have a college football season happen. All of the what I call Corona Bros out there, many of whom are in sports media, were saying there's no way we can play college football or any college athletics safely. Coaches will die. Players will die. And I just said, hey, let's look at the data. College athletes are going to be fine. Oh, by the way, the safest place they could probably be is
Starting point is 00:34:29 on campus because they're getting tested every day, which means the moment they test positive for COVID, they'll get immediate medical treatment. These are young, healthy people. The data reflects that you're actually, as a college kid, more likely to die driving to and from the campus than you are from COVID, right? You're certainly more likely on average to die from seasonal flu, for instance, all right? So that was the background. We're trying to get college football to be played and college athletics in general. So he comes on, comes out strongly, correctly, as it turned out. The data has now all reflected now that we finished March Madness, zero health-related
Starting point is 00:35:02 conditions for any college athletes in any sport who were able to play. And thank God they were able to because it has been important, I think, to returning some semblance of normalcy to college and high school, which followed the leads very often of what colleges were doing, high schools played in many parts of the country. And so we wrote about it. We put up a bunch of articles. Donald Trump is in favor of college football. Donald Trump comes out, you know, like up a bunch of articles. Donald Trump, it said, in favor of college football. Donald Trump comes out. You know, like all these different sports-related Donald Trump perspectives that he had on my show. Our Facebook traffic disappeared.
Starting point is 00:35:38 Overnight, our Facebook traffic vanished. So you weren't banned. They didn't pull the post, but it just went away? Nobody could see it. They disappeared us. What do you mean? So the post was still up just went away? Nobody could see it. They disappeared us. What do you mean? So the post was still up? Post would go up, but the ability for... So what I always say is the Facebooks of the world will come back and say, well, our algorithms determine whether or not your content is shared and seen, right? And they say, oh, it's not a person. But I'm
Starting point is 00:36:05 like, the person designs the algorithm. And we had our tech team look at it, Megan, and people can go back and watch my testimony. I don't have the exact data in front of me right now, so I don't want to screw it up. But it was somewhere around 80% of our Facebook traffic vanished for about two weeks in the wake of Donald Trump coming on and us saying positive things about him being in favor of playing sports. And the lesson was pretty straightforward. The same thing happened later. The Wall Street Journal had a great piece from a, I believe his name's Dr. Macri, and I might be mispronouncing his last name, is a Johns Hopkins high-end scientist doctor who was analyzing herd immunity. And he wrote a piece saying, hey, it's likely that we will have
Starting point is 00:36:51 substantial herd immunity in this country. I think his argument was by the end of April, based on the number of people who have had COVID and also the rapidity with which we are allowing others to be vaccinated, we're not talking about this in an intelligent fashion like we should be. By May 1st, basically, his argument was many of the restrictions that exist now are going to be not necessary. And by the way, so far, the numbers seem to be reflecting that he is true. We shared that Wall Street Journal editorial on OutKick and wrote an analysis also one of my writers did. Facebook flagged it as disinformation. And first of all, it's an opinion piece. So the difference between fact and opinion is pretty
Starting point is 00:37:31 substantial, right? He's not claiming this is factual. He's looking at the data and saying, projecting, hey, based on the data right now, here's what I think we're going to be at the end of April. And Facebook destroyed our traffic for 17 days, I believe it was. I think we're going to be at the end of April. And Facebook destroyed our traffic for 17 days, I believe it was. I think we tracked it. Each time we get flagged by Facebook, for about 16 or 17 days, our traffic disappears. And that has real world consequences for a business like mine, Megan. It cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars in advertising revenue. And maybe more importantly, because thankfully we've got a good business going right now, maybe more importantly, it doesn't allow the marketplace of ideas to flourish in a truly honest way. And so hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people that would have otherwise
Starting point is 00:38:17 seen those stories and been able to consider them as a part of their overall opinions, they never see them. Macri, or I guess it's pronounced McCary, but he's actually going to be on our show next episode. But first of all, that's not good for your Facebook, by the way. Good luck there. You know what? I predict they're not going to suppress us. I don't know. I could be wrong, but I predict they won't. But I mean, who knows? You know, they suppress Laura Trump's interview with her own father-in-law from Facebook wouldn't let the voice of Donald Trump. How about soundbites Facebook? And maybe play former soundbites when he was the president of the United States. Anyway, it's insane. But so I don't know that the Hunter Biden story in and of
Starting point is 00:38:58 itself would have changed the results of the election. I will never know. But I think I've tweeted this out. If you look at the overall suppression by these tech giants of any news that might hurt their team, which is 100 percent the liberals, you can make a very strong case about it. Like, look at this. So your story with Trump gets suppressed and news about a covid vaccine possibly coming or any good news about covid under Trump gets suppressed. Meanwhile, today, we know we've got Amazon booting books that don't say quite the right things when it comes to transgender issues, right?
Starting point is 00:39:30 Yes. And on and on it goes. So it's like, it's this massive organism that is working to stifle stories about Hunter Biden and others that they think are gonna be bad for their team and elevate stories that they think are gonna be good for you.
Starting point is 00:39:43 Like, get out the vote, get out the vote. You had all the Democrat messages on that. In my industry, every athlete that is embracing left-wing politics is lionized as if they are the modern-day Muhammad Ali, and they are vastly overcovered as if they are heroes. Yeah. Now, that has an effect. The net of that is rigging. It is. It's rig has an effect. That, the net net of that is rigging.
Starting point is 00:40:05 It is. It's rigging an election. That's, the conservatives are rightly very focused on that and want to make sure that every legal vote counts. They don't, I know it's all about, they want to suppress. No, it's that every legal vote must count. And no one can reasonably argue with that. So this is what has people so up in arms and that we feel powerless to change it. And that's why the Clarence Thomas concurrence and that opinion was so encouraging.
Starting point is 00:40:29 It's like, OK, so if you can get the the right minded people into Congress, perhaps we could pass a law to rein in some of this insanity and make sure that viewpoints are not being silenced based on content, which is totally anti-American. Coming up next with Clay, we're going to talk about Major League Baseball and how it hates Georgia but loves China. And then we're going to talk about the Olympics and whether we should be pulling the United States athletes from the 2022 games, which are scheduled to be held in Beijing. And by the way, Clay's got information I hadn't heard yet on what they're going to let American athletes, what we've decided American
Starting point is 00:41:05 athletes can do if they find themselves on the podiums there. Stay tuned. First, this though. Let me ask you about the biggest story on that, which is MLB pulling its all-star game out of Atlanta, Georgia. And I've got to ask you about the latest, which is President Biden doing a pretty clear 180. He's really the reason this happened. He caused this mess by saying that Georgia's new voter ID law was Jim Crow 2.0. And then they pulled it. They pulled the game from a state that's 52 percent black and moved it to a city that's 52 percent black and moved it to a city that's 9 percent black. 30 percent of the businesses in Atlanta, black owned. Too bad. They're screwed. They're going to lose 100 million dollars over this. Anyway, here's Biden then and now.
Starting point is 00:41:58 So, Mr. President, what do you think about the possibility that baseball decides to move their all star game out of Atlanta because of this political issue? I think today's professional athletes are acting incredibly responsibly. I would strongly support them doing that. Mr. President, do you think the Masters golf tournament should be moved out of Georgia? I think that's up to the Masters golf tournament should be moved out of Georgia? I think that's up to the Masters. Look, you know, it is reassuring
Starting point is 00:42:35 to see that for-profit operations and businesses are speaking up about how these new Jim Crow laws are just antithetical to who we are. There's another side to it, too. The other side to it, too, is when they, in fact, move out of Georgia, the people who need the help the most, people who are making hourly wages, sometimes get hurt the most. Yeah, thanks to you, who before we had that soundbite asking you to react to the decision by MLB, you were the one encouraging them to do it in the first place.
Starting point is 00:43:17 Oh, I mean, this is I hope that this is like across the Rubicon moment for many people. For a long time, I have argued that sports should be, I haven't argued that like conservative athletes should be arguing for their political beliefs. Most people who have moderate, medium, you know, 75, 80% of I would say sports fans, we're not arguing for opposite positions from left wing sports to be advocated in sports. We're arguing for sports as a place where you can kick back, have a beer, and enjoy a game and not have to think about politics for the three hours the game is taking place. And I feel like Major League Baseball's decision to move the All-Star game has been a grab the pitchfork, screw it, we're going to have a full-on fight now. Because there are so many people who are pointing out the illogical nature of this way that this entire story took place. First of all, Joe Biden has been being elected from Delaware for whatever it is, 40
Starting point is 00:44:16 years now. And the state of Delaware has infinitely more restrictive voting policies than the state of Georgia. Major League Baseball is based in New York State, where I believe you live as well. New York State has far more restrictive voting policies than the state of Georgia does. So what's so ridiculous about this Jim Crow argument in general is this is a fundamental untruth that was allowed to become a story that people took as a truthful one, focused on the state of Georgia. People like Rob Manfred, who should be smarter, I think he's a Harvard-trained lawyer, are so afraid of what might be said about them online that they don't recognize that all of these stories last for 24 or 48 hours, and then they're gone. what he's done is, and you don't add anybody.
Starting point is 00:45:06 Here's what I would say about these, these companies that are making decisions to be quote unquote woke. You're not adding any fans to your product. Major league baseball didn't add anybody who was like, Oh, I was not a major league baseball fan before, but then they moved the all star game out of Atlanta. And now I'm going to watch every game and sign up for extra innings and make sure that I never miss a game. No, no. They are alienating their base while adding no one, which is ultimately the worst possible decision any business could make, which is why I say the slogan, get woke, go broke, applies to so many of these companies. It's happened to ESPN. It has happened to the NBA, which I know you talked about with Mark Cuban, and they try to
Starting point is 00:45:43 avoid it. But here's a stat for you, Megan, that just came out. Monday, the national title game between Baylor and Gonzaga was watched by roughly 17 million people. College basketball national title game. The average NBA finals game, which is the lowest ever on record, averaged right around 7 million viewers. So 10 million more people were willing to watch a college basketball game featuring two, by the way, religious private institutions that are not particularly well-known, Baylor and Gonzaga.
Starting point is 00:46:14 It's not like it was Duke, Kentucky, or Kansas, North Carolina, like these big blue blood programs that everybody has an opinion on. And the Mark Cubans of the world in the NBA, they won't acknowledge that they have destroyed their brand, but that's an easy kind of corollary to draw there. 17 million people, they like basketball. They're willing to watch college basketball. 7 million people watch the
Starting point is 00:46:35 Lakers and LeBron James because they've so alienated a massive portion of their audience. And I'm afraid Major League Baseball has done the same. What do you make of this? Because the reporting on it has been, I read the other day that there was a group, like a diversity group within Major League Baseball of players and some 50-odd members of it, which apparently is not that many, were complaining and demanding that MLB do this. So Manfred was, number one, responding to some faction of the minority players. And then there was another report saying that he made the decision to pull this game after extensive, quote, extensive discussions with a vote with voting rights groups associated with LeBron James, Stacey Abrams and wait for it, Al Sharpton. So if if it's the if it's the players, though, because this is what some have been suggesting, he didn't have any choice.
Starting point is 00:47:29 Like they were going to take it on the chin for like individual boycotts if he didn't do this and he didn't want two months of coverage of that. So he's like, I'll take the bullet for you. That's what his defenders are saying. Yeah, I think they're wrong because I look, if individual players don't want to play, that's a one day story because nobody really cares about all-star games, right? I mean, if somebody doesn't show up, it doesn't want to play in the all-star game. So what? Right. I mean, like that's their right. People decide not to play in the NFL pro bowl all the time because they just don't want to travel to Hawaii or because where they usually have the pro bowl or because they're tired because their season just ended and they bring in
Starting point is 00:48:08 replacements all the time. So I understand. Look, if somebody decides that because they, by the way, they're actually not reading the bill or they're just buying into the hype, right? But whatever. If they want to buy into the hype and they don't want to participate in the All-Star game because it's being played in Atlanta, that's fine. But by the way, the Braves are still playing 81 games in the state of Georgia. So are you willing to play in a regular season game, but you're not willing to play in the all-star game? That's what I would say to Rob Manfred. If he had come to me and said, Clay, let's talk about this privately, I'd be like, okay, some guys may not show up for the all-Star game.
Starting point is 00:48:49 Are they also not going to show up and travel to the state of Georgia to play for the Atlanta Braves? Because they got 81 home games there. You understand? Or to your point, because I noticed you've been making the point that MLB just struck a deal with this Chinese to air their games in China. And it's like, okay, so why would you play in a single game then? You shouldn't play even one game if you really want to take a position on human rights. Barack Obama went to Cuba and watched a Major League Baseball game there.
Starting point is 00:49:13 Cuba! You know, I mean, like, if you're willing to play a game in Cuba, I think you could probably play a game in Atlanta. Just tossing it out there, right? The president of the United States at the time, Barack Obama, went to Cuba. Now, the argument was, and we can agree or disagree about whether that's a valid one. It's the same argument that I think we've lost in China. It has been that American commerce is going to win the day in those countries. And once you give them a taste of freedom, they're going to want more of it. And that's the argument for why we interact with Cuba in that
Starting point is 00:49:44 vein, right? And I think it's an intriguing argument. Are you legitimizing the government that is restricting freedom, or are you engendering a growth in freedom by interacting with them in the first place? In other words, what is the appropriate way to interact with countries that we disagree with? I think that's a fascinating question. But if you're Major League Baseball and you've made the decision, hey, the way to change things is by bringing our product to Cuba. Maybe the way to change things is by bringing your product to Atlanta and allowing people who disagree with the decisions made in the state of Georgia to voice those opinions and then go play ball. I mean, that seems like totally different logic. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:50:21 Now, what do you make of – because now Joe Biden know, he's going to take such a principled stance. We'll see suggested that the United States may actually boycott the 2022 Winter Olympics in the United States for free and fair countries, Canada, United States, Western Europe, other countries, Australia, certainly, that are willing to stand up to China. Because what I believe, Megan, and this is something that I keep hammering home to my audience is, sports is being used as propaganda to advance the Chinese interest. And most people still haven't realized. We're so busy in America throwing punches at each other, arguing about stupid things like where the Major League Baseball All-Star Game is, that we don't realize China is punching us in the back of the head over and over and over again. And oh, by the way, the social media apps that they won't allow their people to use in America, they are manipulating in our own country to make us more divided than we otherwise would be because it uplifts China. And so before I get to 2022, 2021 is coming up in Japan, and the United States has now said, well, players and athletes, when they're on the medal stand or being introduced or whatever,
Starting point is 00:51:32 they can kneel for the national anthem. And our American sports media is going to try to turn those people who do that, and there will be many, into heroes. What they don't realize is China is going to take that footage, and they are going to use it all over the world. And they are going to say, see, this is what American democracy is. It doesn't work. They're racist. They don't treat people fairly. America shouldn't lead in the 21st century. The way to follow and lead is with China. So these American athletes are not sophisticated enough, I don't think, the Megan Rapinos, the LeBron Jameses of the world, to recognize that they are being used as propaganda
Starting point is 00:52:10 pieces by America's enemies. I didn't know that, that it's going to be okay for our athletes to take a knee if they win the medals. I see that as something very different than the football players kneeling on the sidelines, which I don't because I don't like it. I wouldn't. Yeah, I wouldn't do it. But I do support the right of Americans to protest our American policies, even if I don't support what their, you know, their actual position. I do think the right to protest is something uniquely beautiful in our country. So I understand what the consequences of that decision have been, and I wouldn't kneel myself. But it's very – then you know what? Then you don't represent our country because you don't go abroad and embarrass your own country on the world stage.'s going to be praised in America, I don't think the athletes are recognizing that they are making things worse for American values that they claim to represent.
Starting point is 00:53:10 Megan Rapinoe is a great example, by the way. Because when the U.S. won the Women's World Cup in 2018, she chose the opportunity. She refused to go meet with Donald Trump. The whole U.S. women's team didn't. They then just recently went to go with Joe Biden in office. But if you look, and Megan, you'll be fascinated by this, and I don't think it gets enough attention. If you look at the Women's World Cup every year, you can pick the winner of almost every match solely by analyzing women's freedoms in that country. I'm not kidding about this. When
Starting point is 00:53:38 the bracket comes out, you don't need to know a single player on any team. You can look at the overall freedom that women have in those countries and you can pick the winner. Why is that? Because think about it. If you have to play soccer wearing a hijab and you can't wear pants or you have to wear pants because you can't wear shorts, the idea that women's athletes are going to be empowered and able to train at a high level is virtually zero. And so if Megan Rapinoe had used the opportunity of America winning in 2018 to argue not against America, but to argue to the rest of the world, the reason why American women kick ass in soccer is because of American values, which allow female athletes to transcend onto a level that doesn't exist anywhere else in the world. Women's soccer dominates in America, not because our women are much better than the rest of the women around the world, but because they have the resources and the ability to compete in a way that the vast majority of women around the world don't. That's an incredible story and platform that Megan Rapinoe had. Instead, she denigrated American values while overseas and criticized and ripped our country when, to me, what would be so impressive to so many women
Starting point is 00:54:58 around the world is for them to look at what America is, which is a shining beacon of opportunity for female athletes. This is what your women could accomplish if they had the same fundamental rights that American women have. And so that's so frustrating about her platform is so valid and valuable. And instead of building up the world, she tears down America. And the thought of a female athlete in China where they're forcing sterilization on the Uyghurs, the Chinese Muslims. They're against their will, obviously. They're rounding them up and putting them in concentration. And forced sterilization on everybody for like 50 years, right?
Starting point is 00:55:35 You couldn't have more than one kid. Exactly. But now it's an actual genocide. They're rounding up people. We've seen the satellite images and torturing them, forcing them into labor camps, forced sterilization on the women, separation from children. And in that country, you're going to kneel because you don't respect America's approach to human rights.
Starting point is 00:55:57 Get off the team, get up and get off that stage. You don't represent this country. That is not how most Americans would represent the USA abroad. Propaganda, right? Because China takes that and they share it all over the world. And they say, this is the problem with America. See, America's not great. You need to follow China. And so my answer would be, we can't go to Beijing because of COVID, because of the genocide, the Uyghur population, Xinjiang, everything that's going there. By the way, I'm afraid they're going to invade Taiwan and try to take it over just like they did Hong Kong, which is another connection with the NBA where American sports failed to celebrate basic human rights around the world and democracy.
Starting point is 00:56:34 I think we have the 2022 Winter Olympics, our own version in the United States, and we invite all of the democratic countries around the world to come here. Maybe we share it with Canada in some form or fashion. We've obviously done it at Park City in recent history. They did it in Vancouver for the Winter Olympics recently. I don't think we can legitimize Chinese governance by allowing our people to go there and basically kneel at the altar of an authoritarian communist Chinese government. I think it's the wrong call. Interesting. It would be a hell of a statement. So we'll see. I mean, you always have to think about these poor athletes. But I like it's sort of like when the bitchy girl in high school is having the big party and she treats everyone so
Starting point is 00:57:11 awfully and you decide not to go. I'm just not going to go. I'm going to have my own party with the nice girls. Canada, Great Britain. And by the way, we win all of the, us and Canada win all the medals anyway. So whatever gold medals are won in 2022 China without the United States and Canada and all the Western democracies there. I mean, the real champs will be occurring in our country or in Canada. To me, that's a solution that would avoid the punishment going to the athletes not being able to represent their country. One of my teammates just texted me, Canada will still be shut down. Sadly, that might be true. Coming up in one second, the biggest sports story you haven't heard and why. First, though, this.
Starting point is 00:57:57 Did not even know until I read the packet that my team prepared for this interview that this guy, who's a major NFL quarterback, a four-year deal at $156 million, is in a massive world of trouble with the law in civil lawsuits. And you tell me why most people, including me, have not heard that Deshaun Watson has been massively accused of sexual misconduct. All right, so here's what's going on right now. I'll give you like a two or three sentence. He's been, 22 civil lawsuits have been filed by 22 different masseuses alleging that he sexually assaulted them. So in three different states, I believe right now,
Starting point is 00:58:40 mostly in Texas, which is where he lives, also in Georgia, and I believe in California, but 22 different masseuses have alleged that he sexually assaulted them, civil lawsuits. There are also pending criminal investigations into that behavior. As we speak today, there has not yet been any criminal charge filed, but may well happen in the near future. Deshaun Watson, of course, has denied it. I believe, so this is my angle on why that story has not crossed over because there's a possibility, right? I always like to think, and as a lawyer, you know this too, I always like to think probabilistically. Best case scenario for
Starting point is 00:59:18 Deshaun Watson, he pays tens of millions of dollars in settlements, probably comes out and says he doesn't believe he committed a crime, but he understands he made people uncomfortable. And he apologizes for that. And he gets suspended for most of the 2021 season for the NFL. If worst case scenario, he could be the NFL's version of Jeffrey Epstein or Bill Cosby, and he could never play the sport again. I mean, he could end up in prison. So we don't know. That's a wide range of potential outcomes. None of them are good for Watson,
Starting point is 00:59:49 but obviously there's a wide range of potential outcomes. Here's what I believe happens, Megan. I think this is where sports has become so much like the political universe in general. You have two different victimization ideologies conflicting. And the sports media, which I'm a part of, has no idea how to cover it because they're terrified that they're going to end up a target in either direction. Either you argue that these 22 women, which is pretty difficult to argue, I think, for most people out there, 22 different women are all lying and colluding against Deshaun Watson in an effort to get money from him. And he did not actually behave in an inappropriate manner or sexually assault any of them.
Starting point is 01:00:30 In which case, you are calling 22 women, the majority of whom, by the way, are minority women, liars. Or you come out and you say what I said, this guy could be Jeffrey Epstein and Bill Cosby, and you are attacking a black quarterback, which right now he is at the pinnacle of the athlete victimization scale. You cannot say a bad thing about a black quarterback in America, sports today, without somebody saying, oh, that's racist because of historical discrimination against black quarterbacks years and years into the past, right? When they didn't get necessarily the same opportunity as white quarterbacks. And so you have two different identity cultures colliding against each other. And people are paralyzed with fear because on the one hand, they're going to have BLM after them if they say anything negative about Deshaun Watson. And on the other hand, they have Me Too after them if they say anything negative about Deshaun Watson. And on the other hand, they have Me Too after them if they say anything negative about the 22 women.
Starting point is 01:01:30 And so there is a paralysis which has kept the media, because there isn't an easy villain here. If this were a white quarterback who was accused of sexually assaulting 22 different majority minority masseuses, it would be everywhere, right? It would be like, oh my God, this is hashtag white privilege. This is what happens. But because Deshaun Watson, black quarterback, 22 minority-majority masseuses, nobody knows how to handle it. And it has not transferred over into what I would call the larger universe
Starting point is 01:02:03 where people like you might expect to see it in the news story. Outkick is one of the few places in the entire sports media that's been covering this aggressively. And to my point, my argument is, hey, we cover athletes, star quarterbacks with issues with the law because it's a massive story that could impact their ability to continue to play. And I think people are terrified to touch it because you got two different third rails on either side. Well, and I saw you make the point and you have to explain this one too. I vaguely recall this, but you were saying, think about the way Peyton Manning's alleged mooning was covered. Who did he moon and when? So this is unbelievable racial politics. So in the wake, this is probably been four years ago or so. I think it was the 2017, if I'm not mistaken, Super Bowl. The Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning played against the Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton. White quarterback, black quarterback. without shaking hands, and then flipped out during his post-game interview and refused to
Starting point is 01:03:07 answer any more questions. And it turned into a big story. Peyton Manning's team won, by the way, the Denver Broncos. And so in the days that followed, Cam Newton was getting criticized. And you may know this ridiculous, I think he's a white guy who's pretending to be black activist online, Sean King. Oh, he's the worst. Yeah, I call him Talcum X. But so he decides that the reason why Cam Newton is being criticized is not because he stormed out of his press conference and not because they lost the game and he didn't have a good game. It's because he's black. And so he goes back into a 20-year-old civil lawsuit that was filed against Peyton Manning and says, look at Peyton Manning. He's been protected for all these years.
Starting point is 01:03:54 So when Peyton Manning was in college at the University of Tennessee, this is in the 1990s, he was in a training room and he allegedly mooned. There's like uncertainty exactly what happened, but he was in the training room. There were other people there and he didn't like this trainer that was there. And like, she was working on his ankle. And when she looked up, he had pulled down his pants and he mooned her. And like, she complained about it and, uh, and said like, I'm so uncomfortable about what Peyton Manning did. And they ended up paying her like a, uh, like several hundred
Starting point is 01:04:30 thousand dollars as a settlement, whatever, like, because she was like, this is sexual harassment, whatever else. Right. That's basically the whole story of it. And it was covered quite a bit when he was in college, like this mooning incident. And then they covered it like 20 years later after the Superbowl ESPN covered it like 20 years later after the Super Bowl, ESPN covered it like it was freaking Watergate. I mean, they had multiple guys researching it. It was a lead story. It was a massive discussion like, hey, did Peyton Manning receive preferential treatment? It was like 20 years ago. He's a college kid before you even know that he's going to end up being one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time. And it was a racial animus related story that came out of Sean King arguing because he
Starting point is 01:05:11 was upset about the way that Cam Newton was treated. And so my argument has just been, usually when a quarterback, especially a good quarterback, has any sort of legal proceeding involving them, whether it's Jameis Winston, Ben Roethlisberger, you may remember the Michael Vick dogfighting incident. Those guys are so famous that they are covered with a fine-tooth comb, yet there is an incredible reticence. I think ESPN has one person who's not even that prominent of a reporter covering this Deshaun Watson story. And I think it's because you've got identities colliding. I believe fundamentally, if there were a 25-year-old white quarterback who was a star quarterback, it would be covered in a rigorous fashion. But I think because it's a black quarterback,
Starting point is 01:05:56 they're afraid. And if the accusers were mostly minority, 100%, the person probably would have already been suspended. I mean, it's Duke lacrosse, right? Yeah, exactly right. It would have been a totally different situation. But the reason this isn't getting coverage is because it doesn't fit the narrative, right? It's not a white guy doing this to minority women. It's a black guy doing this to minority women. And I don't understand why. Why wouldn't you care about the minority women? If you care about the minority player, you know, the black player, why don't you care about the black women who are making the complaint? That's the that's the argument. That's the argument that I made.
Starting point is 01:06:29 And I think you hit on it. We have identity politics narratives, right? I mean, the shooter in Colorado looks like a white guy. Everybody loses their mind in the in the grocery store. Turns out that he's a Syrian. I believe his family immigrated a recent history. They did. Syrian, and he's Muslim, and the story disappears. You know, just up at the Capitol recently.
Starting point is 01:06:50 This is a sports connection because the guy drove a car, killed a Capitol police officer, got out of the car, I believe armed with a knife, and they shot and killed him. It turns out that he's a Louis Farrakhan follower, according to his social media profiles. Former college football player.
Starting point is 01:07:06 Story disappears, right? We just happened. Former NFL player, black guy, kills five white people in Rock Hill, South Carolina. I don't know what the reason why he did it is. It's an awful story in Rock Hill, South Carolina, a doctor, his grandchildren, I think a five-year-old and a nine-year-old former black football player kills five white Rock Hill, South Carolina natives, story disappears. If you flip the narratives there, if you flip the switch, if it's a white shooter in Colorado, we're still talking about it. If it were a white former football player in the NFL who had killed a, a black family of five.
Starting point is 01:07:46 It's a lead story everywhere. And if it had been a Trump supporter who drives his car and hits somebody and kills that police officer and then gets out, uh, that would still be a lead story. I mean, they still talk Megan about the guy in Charlottesville who drove the car and killed that one protester. Uh, we still hear obviously about the quote unquote insurrection surrounding the Capitol all of the time. If it's the right narrative, it never disappears. If it's the wrong narrative, it ceases to exist almost instantaneously. The murder of those five family members is only being covered for the gun control angle. Like if they'll find their one thing that they like and they'll exploit that. But they're not. We've seen more and more of this lately. You know, the 65 year old Asian woman who was violently kicked, caught on camera
Starting point is 01:08:28 by a black man, 38 year old guy just paroled after having been serving time for killing his own mother. That's not a story we've seen over and over on loop like we would if that had been a white guy. And by the way, I went after that. The New York Times. I don't know if you saw this. The New York Times had a front page for journalists' bylined piece. They didn't mention the race of the guy who beat up the Asian woman. I'm sure it would have been the same
Starting point is 01:08:54 had he been white, right? And now, here's what you're getting instead. The opening paragraph would have been as a, I mean, look at the shooting that happened at the massage parlors. I mean, we don't know.
Starting point is 01:09:03 I mean, that guy seems like a loony bin guy, right? But I mean, it seems like he was motivated not by race, but by the fact that he couldn't control his sexual desires and kept going to these massage parlors. That at least seems to be the storyline so far as I've seen. The New York Times front page story for bylined writers,
Starting point is 01:09:20 they actually mentioned in the article, Megan, that police, this was before they had caught the guy, police are seeking the suspect and asking for help in identifying him. And they don't actually identify the suspect or identify the suspect in the entire article. That's such a calculated decision. If a white guy had beaten a 65-year-old Asian woman in Manhattan like it happened, the opening paragraph would have been, you know, white man attacks Asian woman. So here's what you're getting now. OK, this is posted on Yahoo News on April 8th. Here's the headline. White supremacy is the root of all race related violence in the U.S. Jennifer Ho, professor of Asian American studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, would like us
Starting point is 01:10:05 all to know she understands that some black people are attacking Asian Americans. All right. That there's been a disturbing rise in attacks on Asian Americans since March 2020. And she wants us to know, and I quote, that anti-Asian racism has the same source as anti-black racism, white supremacy. This is still quoting. So when a black person attacks an Asian person, the encounter is fueled perhaps by racism, but very specifically by white supremacy. White supremacy does not require a white person to perpetuate it. She goes on. The dehumanization of Asian people by U.S. society is driven by white supremacy and not by any black person
Starting point is 01:10:46 who may or may not hate Asians. If I could choose one thing in the world to change, Megan, and I mean this in all honesty, and I shouldn't say in the world because there's obviously a lot of worse things that go on than what exists in America today by far, right? But I should say in America, it would be this sentence, if it could just be adopted by the media in particular, white, black, Asian, and Hispanic people can all be racist. If that were the operating guidepost, which I think almost everybody out there would acknowledge, right? There are racist white people, there are racist black people, there are racist Hispanic people, and there are racist Asian people. If we began with that as the jumping off point, then I think a conversation about racism in this country would be far more interesting and probably far more productive. in America today as if it is perpetually 1964 in Birmingham, Alabama, you are not advancing
Starting point is 01:11:47 and recognizing the evolution of this country. And you are not advancing and evolving as a country in the way that we talk about race. And so using the legal perspective, what happened to Emmett Till is a function of racism, right? Historically, if you study our legal system, there is no doubt that racism was embedded in many of the decisions that existed in American life for much of American history, right? But the way to solve racism in our court system is not by embracing more racism, right? So what I've argued before, and I think you'll think this is fascinating because I'm sure you were paying a lot of attention to OJ Simpson trial like I was. OJ got off. He was guilty of murdering two white people, right? Ronald Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson. He killed them. He got off because he argued the exact opposite of what Emmett Till argued. He argued he was innocent because he was black, where Emmett Till was guilty because he was black.
Starting point is 01:12:51 And so the way to solve American racism is not by adding more racism, right? I mean, it's really fascinating if you look at the O.J. Simpson trial through that prism. The L.A LA police were racist. He was using the history, the legacy of racism in America to justify his double murder and avoid responsibility for his own actions based on the sins of the American judicial system from earlier before OJ became a rich multimillionaire. And so he's cashing a check on the legacy of Emmett Till. And that is where we are right now. That's like Robert Shapiro, one of the lawyers on the O.J. case, said about Johnny Cochran.
Starting point is 01:13:32 He played the race card and he did it from the bottom of the deck. And that's, you know, we've just seen, we've seen a lot of that. You know, I want to shift gears a little bit with you because we're talking about athletes, big athletes in the news. And I'm really interested in Tiger Woods. I watched that documentary on him and I was really moved by it and just felt for the guy. It's such a quintessential American story, right? Kid from nothing special of a background, has his dad invest everything he has in him, mostly time and energy and effort, builds this amazing athlete unlike any other.
Starting point is 01:14:05 The American media, American media eats him alive, right? We build them up and then we tear them down. It's what we do. It's like as soon as you get built up too high, too big, you should start to get scared because there's no way the media will let you stay there. And so his life imploded after it came out. He was a serial cheater and all the stuff with the hookers and, you know, went on and on. And then he was getting his life back
Starting point is 01:14:29 together. And he came back. It was a huge victory. He won, I guess, the Masters, whatever it was, one of those big ones. Yeah, Masters. Yeah, he won at the Masters. Yeah. And then just when you're like, okay, that's also part of our American story. You know, the redemption, like coming back, the comeback. We love that. We build you, we kill you. Then we'd root for you to come back. And then we'll tend to, we'll just leave you alone and let you live your life. But Tiger had that big crash not long ago. Now they've just released the cause. It was everyone speculating, like, could it be drugs? Could it be something untoward? Because they won't tell us what it was. And now he's waived his right to privacy, which is weird because I don't think the rest of us get a right to privacy when we have a car accident. That's how they described it. And it
Starting point is 01:15:08 says the cause was he was going between 84 and 87 miles per hour in a 45 mile an hour zone. No, no signs of impairment. He was wearing a seatbelt and this, we already knew he had several emergency surgeries on his right leg, both bones in the lower right leg broken with open fractures, like compound fractures. The doctors are predicting a very difficult recovery. So what do you make of Tiger, his story, and whether he's got yet another round in him? His body is broken, and not just from this accident, but in general, the amount of surgeries that he has had to have over the years was what made it so remarkable for him to win at Augusta. I think what he has is an indomitable will, Megan. And so I wouldn't bet against him being
Starting point is 01:15:53 able to return to a golf course at some point in time and play again at a decent level. But presumably, as he ages, every golfer gets substantially worse. And his chronological age is probably lower than his body age because of all the injuries that he's put himself through and had to recover from. I find Tiger much like Britney Spears. I don't know if you watched that documentary. I did. I see kind of a connection between the two of them. I'm always fascinated, Megan, by the idea. Everybody thinks that if they became young and famous, that you would be fine, right? Everybody out there is like,
Starting point is 01:16:34 I'd be able to handle it and it wouldn't really impact me in any way. But actually, that's rare, right? Most 18 and 19-year-olds and even younger, certainly in the case of Tiger Woods and Britney Spears are not prepared for that level of fame and that level of adulation. And I do think it restricts in many ways, your ability to develop as a healthy and functional adult, because your world is abnormal and you don't have a sense for what the real world is like. I think that's where Tiger has found himself. It's interesting in the world of sports, Megan, a lot of times the guys that I find that are the most normal are the guys that never anticipated that they were going to be pro athletes. Some guys know that they're incredible at the age of seven and eight.
Starting point is 01:17:20 Sometimes it's crazy to think, but these kids get pulled out and put on pedestals. Sometimes before almost they even hit puberty, you can tell who the great 12-year-olds are going to be, particularly men's athletics. And then there's other guys out there who never really are aware of how good they are, and they just continue to get better. And those people tend to be far more well-rounded because they weren't put on these pedestals. And Tiger, to me, seems like, in many ways, a guy who never fully developed, if that makes sense. Yeah. And I think the same thing is true of Britney Spears and many other people. They're almost frozen in a perpetual adolescence because there is this universe that immediately descends upon them and needs them to exist.
Starting point is 01:18:04 You know, they have all these people that are parasites kind upon them and needs them to exist. They have all these people that are parasites feeding off of them. It's much like politicians. I think you have to be careful with them because they get this entire cottage industry surrounding them and it exacerbates your foibles because so many people need you to be unique in order for them to have a job. Whatever little idiosyncrasies you might have, there's somebody who is catering to those, right? Like, oh, this guy, he only drinks Fiji water. Why in the world would you have a Dasani on the table, right? There's somebody who is in that, they owe their job to exacerbating those idiosyncrasies. And then it becomes increasingly
Starting point is 01:18:44 difficult to connect with everybody. And so that to me is what's so fascinating about both Tiger and Brittany. And I think about it now maybe a lot more because I'm a parent. And getting your child to adulthood in this universe that we have created today of social media and everything else without them being totally space cadets, I think has become incredibly difficult. Certainly COVID has made that more challenging. And how do you do it so that your kids can be well-rounded, understand the world, but also be confident enough to speak their mind? I think it's one of the great challenges
Starting point is 01:19:19 that every parent has. And you look at Tiger, as you mentioned, his dad was completely devoted to him. He was the youngest child. And in many ways, he seems frozen in amber to me, always like that 16 or 17 year old kid. Yeah. Frozen in amber. Well said. That brings the image right home. As you were talking, it made me want to ask you about a conversation I had last night at dinner. So I went out with some of my friends, my girlfriends here in New York, and I, we were talking about raising our kids and I have two boys and a girl and my boys are sweet. They're, they're kind, you know, they're sort of built to be sort of kind and sweet. They're not like ramming their heads into everything. And, you know, I'm not, I'm not getting like reports back that, you know, they've assaulted another kid at school. They're not they're not like that.
Starting point is 01:20:08 And even kids who are like that, you know, maybe going through a phase and everybody's different. So I'm not saying kids who are like that are bad, but mine are sweet. And I said the other day when Chris DiStefano was on the show, really funny comedian from Brooklyn, he was talking about how his dad is a criminal, his grandpa was in the mafia, and his family used to beat the shit out of him. And he's like, there are two types of people in the world, people, those who have been punched in the face and those who haven't. And you kind of need to learn how to take a punch, rhetorical or otherwise. And I said to him and said to my friends the other night that we would, of course, never tell our boys or our daughter to throw a punch at anybody. That's not how you resolve conflict. But we do tell them if you get punched, you may punch back. Like you're not going
Starting point is 01:20:50 to get in trouble with us if you defend yourself. And my, my gal pals here in New York, the one in particular who I love, she's definitely progressive, um, was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. She's like, your boys are sweet and you want them to stay sweet. And the answer to sort of bad behavior in life is not to like surrender to those who behave like complete jerks and be a jerk yourself. And I was like, well, that wouldn't be a jerk move. That would be a just move. And she was sort of saying, well, how would you handle it today? I'm like, well, I don't know. I'd probably take the high road, but I think it's different. I hate to be sexist. I think it's different for boys. You know, I, I just think there'd be some demoralization on the part of a young boy. If he didn't throw the punch back after getting punched in the face, but you're in this world,
Starting point is 01:21:37 you're in the sports world. You're a man, you've got children. What do you think? I would tell him to throw a punch back. And I have. You would. Yeah. And I understand the argument on the other side. I mean, I certainly understand the, for lack of a better way to phrase it, progressive argument. And I do think there's a difference between boys and girls. I don't have girls, right? So I've got three boys, a 13, a 10, and a six-year-old. And I've said this a lot on my radio show before. I said, look, I just turned 42 this week. So I said, if I ever end up in a fight at the age of 42, then my family or my life better be threatened in a substantial way.
Starting point is 01:22:20 Right? Like, I'm not going to be the guy who's out at a bar and somebody's like, Hey, you suck clay. And I'll be like, Oh, I've got to go confront this person and have a conversation with them. Yeah. I'm not going to be Chris Cuomo, right? Like I'm not going to be in any way, like boat up Chris Cuomo going over and getting into an argument with somebody about whether or not I suck. Right. Like, first of all, most people, I don't know about your experience, but you know, on social media, people are like, Oh, if I ever saw people, I don't know about your experience, but on social media, people are like, oh, if I ever saw you, I would punch you in the face. I get that every now and then. I occasionally will respond back, no, you wouldn't. You would come up and ask for a picture
Starting point is 01:22:53 because Twitter is not real life. It is not. When I'm out, I've never had anybody come up to me and like legitimately be angry about any opinions that I've shared. Everybody who comes up to me is all positive, right? So that's why I always say like carnival is a, I mean, Twitter is a carnival funhouse mirror. And one of the things that I think is frustrating about America is we try to adjust policy based on what people say on Twitter. And it would be like trying to diet based on standing in front of a carnival funhouse mirror. You'd be like, oh my God, I'm so fat today. No, I mean like, no, you're not, right? Like it just depends on what mirror you're standing in front of in that day. Like it's not a reliable representation
Starting point is 01:23:33 of public policy. And I think all these companies get in trouble because they think it's real life and it's not. But I think it's important for boys in particular to understand that they have to be able to defend themselves. It's funny. My wife is pretty tough. And so we have a boxing instructor come out. This is a stupid rich thing that we do. But we have a boxing instructor come out to our house twice a week. And we do nine rounds with the boxing instructor. Um, and, uh, and it is, uh, an incredible workout, right? Uh, but it's also, I think just kind of,
Starting point is 01:24:14 there's so many punches being thrown every day. You don't really get an opportunity to exercise that aggression in many ways. And so I love it, but I've had that conversation with my boys and I do think it's different for boys and girls. So when I said, I don't have a daughter, I don't know that I would encourage a daughter to get into a fistfight with another girl, um, in the same way that I would a guy and I wouldn't encourage it. But if somebody punches you, I mean, I think the idea that you're just going to, you know, kind of wipe your, your lip off and turn around and walk away, I don't think that's the way that you stand up to bullies. I think that can go into global foreign policy. If China walks up and just slaps America in the face, which they did with Hong Kong, which they are doing, I think, in many
Starting point is 01:25:00 ways in the South China Sea and which they may try to do with Taiwan, I don't think bullies respect the idea of decency in the world. I don't think Kim Jong-un is going to be like, hey, I'm threatening to blow up things with these missiles that we're developing in North Korea. I don't think he's going to be like when he slaps somebody in the face. If we're like, hey, can we sit and talk about this? I don't think that bullies respond that way. And I think at some point you have to stand up to a bully. I think he's going to be like, that was really classy. That was a really classy way of- Yeah, he's not going to be like, hey, can we talk about why you slapped me in the face? Are people mean to you at your house? Was your- I'm starting to see the light.
Starting point is 01:25:39 Yeah. You're not going to psychoanalyze somebody away from violence in my experience. And so I think sometimes you have to respond to violence with violence. You know, I, um, I was thinking about it because I actually, I, I have had a couple of actual fistfights in my life. And I don't, I was, um, when I was in sixth grade and the other one I was in, I think I want to say ninth grade, ninth or 10th. So post-puberty, you had a post-puberty girl fight. Oh, I mean, Clay, it was like something out of one of those Hunter Biden porn hub things. Cause it was, I was in a cheerleading uniform rolling around on the floor. So Hunter Biden might come on your show.
Starting point is 01:26:20 Actually, if you, if you tell him that you got in a, in a fight and a cheerleading costume, that might, you might actually win him over. Then we can watch it together. That's his thing. Look how good I was there. So why were you fighting? So this girl, her name was Connie. She was older than I was.
Starting point is 01:26:35 She was a year or two older. Do you have any idea what Connie does now? No clue whatsoever. But she wore a ton of eyeliner. It was the 80s, and she had big old permed hair. I also did, but hers was rather severe. I remember that. And she just didn't like me for, I didn't even really know her, but she did not like me. And, and she had been sort of making snide comments about me and
Starting point is 01:26:55 talking about me behind my back. And finally, one day we were in gym and I was running up and down the gym court playing basketball with the, playing basketball with the rest of the class. And she was on the sidelines and she was literally growling at me. She was growling at me. So we go back into the locker room after the thing's over. And she says, she calls me a bitch. And I'm like, what did you say? And she goes, bitch. And I said, if you say that to me one more time, you're going to regret it. And she goes, bitch. So I punched her.
Starting point is 01:27:32 And the next thing you knew, we were rolling around on the ground and we were punching each other. I mean, it wasn't just pulling hair. It was full on punching, you know, the skirt up with the little briefs covering my, you know, and I mean, just to top it all off, just for the perfect Pornhub ending, my lesbian gym teacher came out to break it up.
Starting point is 01:27:51 Miss Smith, who I love. I confess I'm speculating about her sexuality, but I have a pretty good idea. And you know what? She never bothered me again. And I didn't for one second feel bad about the way I handled it. I would do it all over again. And I think that's the point. So was there any consequences for your behavior? Did they do anything to you? I did, yes. I had to go for two weeks internal suspension. I was the only girl in the cheerleading uniform in there.
Starting point is 01:28:19 That's really funny. Oh, let me tell you, like an X-rated, so as long as we're in the Pornhub world, I'll give you the X-rated epilogue to this story. So I literally was like the only one in there with my little cheerleading uniform. And on Fridays, we'd hand out carnations to the boys at my little carnations in there. And I was the captain of the cheerleading squad. And in my school, it was like something out of a John Hughes movie because we had different groups. We had the creamies, we had the dirties, we had the swelts. And I could go on and the jocks and I was a swell, which is basically kind of like a popular kid who tried to stay out of trouble. Um, the dirties were like the ones who smoked pot and were in the hacky sack section at
Starting point is 01:28:52 lunchtime anyway. So it was all dirties in there with me. And I got up to walk out of internal suspension one day and this guy, his name was Todd is walking behind me and he says the following. OK, forgive me. He says long and thin may get it in, but short and thick makes better. Like that is. Yes. Don't belong here. That is that is amazing. Hunter Biden, if he hears this clip, I mean, he's going to be like, first of all, like, first of all, they're going to have to take a new laptop away from him probably. There's no telling what he's going to create. I'll tell you a fight story that I think you'll enjoy.
Starting point is 01:29:35 I was in a bar and somebody shoved my then girlfriend. There was a big line. This guy cut the line and went into the girl's bathroom. Right. And then he shoved my wife, then girlfriend. That was in my twenties. And, and so she came out and she told me about it. So I went to go talk to him and we, like, he was friends with the bar owners or something like that. And then later on that night, we're out on the, in the front of the bar and he just comes up behind me and punches me in the back of the head out of nowhere. Right. Didn't see him like just straight back of the head punch. And, you know, then turn around and he catches me again in the face and, and, you know, hits me in the nose.
Starting point is 01:30:21 And so my nose starts bleeding. And then I get, you know, maybe a couple of punches in or whatever we end up, we're rolling around on the ground. And at that point, my nose is just gushing blood. Right. And, uh, and, um, and there's a huge pile of people, right. It's out in the street, uh, and people are trying to pull us off and everything else. And I was so mad, but also logically thinking. And, uh, and so like, I've got him in a headlock and, you know, like we're kind of rolling around and, uh, and he was like, get him off of me, you know, trying to yell and I'm trying to get him in a chokehold or whatever else. And, uh, and then, um, like I just whispered into his ear, I've got AIDS. I swear to God,
Starting point is 01:31:01 because he had my blood all over him and Iotional warfare. He had my blood all over him. And I was like, oh my God, this guy is going to be for the next months of his life. I don't know. I have no idea who the guy is. Never seen him again. But for the next months of his life, he's going to be like, I'm going to die. Right? Like this is, you know.
Starting point is 01:31:21 And so anyway. That's next level. That is next level. Like I thought like to come up with that while you're at a headlock, like rolling around on the ground with the guy. By the way, I don't have AIDS, but thankfully, but that's science. But yeah, like I thought like that's probably like Navy SEAL level trash talk because I don't know.
Starting point is 01:31:39 This is why you shouldn't pick a fight with a guy who went to Vanderbilt Law School, which now is considered one of the best law schools in the United States. It was a pretty decent, I mean, I definitely think that guy was probably emotionally scarred for a long time, worried that he was going to get AIDS from me. What if he's listening to this story right now and he's like, that was Clay Travis, I love him.
Starting point is 01:31:57 Shit. Yeah, that would be really funny if he's a big fan now. And he's like, I remember that. That was 25 years ago or whatever the heck it was now. I don't think it's any accident that you and I are both recovering lawyers, and we both chose at least an equally pugilistic profession, right? You got to be built a certain way to exist in media, but certainly in any sort of media that's contrarian, right? That's going
Starting point is 01:32:21 to push back on the narrative that gets you accolades and awards and kudos. Yeah. I think you also, so what I always say is, first of all, my wife says that my gift to the extent that I have a gift is I don't, the noise of negativity, I remember the positive, not the negative. And she's like, you know, somebody, so you can have 10 people say awful things to you and somehow you remember the nice thing that somebody said. And so it is an interesting point, I think in the social media universe, because there's so much constant negativity sort of raining down on you that, uh, that it's easy to, I think, just kind of get lost in that, in that, uh, in that, oh, it's like the, I watch all these old eights movies with my kids now remember in ghostbusters too like they have that uh that goo like the pink goo that like gets on people and like it makes everybody super mad i feel like that's social media we kind of live in that pink goo universe
Starting point is 01:33:15 or people who remember ghostbusters too uh and i remember the positive and then the other thing i would say is i take my opinions seriously but i don't take myself very seriously. And that to me is, I think, kind of an important distinction because it really legitimately doesn't bother me if somebody thinks that I'm the most awful human being on the planet. My wife asked me the other day, she was like, what do you think your approval rating is among sports fans? And I was like, I don't know, 35%. And she was like, that means 65% of people hate you. And she was like, how do you live like that? And I was like, well, you know, you get elected president with like 50% plus one now. So, you know, we live in a 50-50 culture.
Starting point is 01:33:56 And when I said 65% of people don't like me, I was like, but the 35% who like me, like love me, they would dive in front of a bullet if somebody was trying to fire at me. And a lot of that negativity is just kind of an amorphous negativity without actually listening or reading to what's said. And so it just doesn't really impact me. And I would imagine in some ways you have to be tough. And what, and to your credit, what I find often in the world of sports is, uh, it's so hard, I think, for people to be willing to say what they really think. And I think it's even harder for women because there's a cosmetic element to what we do too, right? It's amazing to me how often people rip me for what I'm wearing or what I look like or whatever else. That doesn't strike me as much because I don't think, like, I can't tell you right now while we're talking this is 100% true I can't tell you what t-shirt I'm wearing and what uh what pants I'm
Starting point is 01:34:50 wearing like if I don't look down I do have pants on by the way I don't want to get too excited I legitimately can't tell you what I'm what I'm wearing and when I go out to dinner tonight uh with my wife if I'm sitting down at the table and I don't look down and look at what I'm wearing, I will have already forgotten about what I wear. In other words, cosmetic aspects are not really in the back of my mind ever. I don't think about them. I do think that social media, people try to go to what they think your ultimate weakness is, much like a bully in school. If you actually get wrapped up in it, you can lose sight of what you believe and also sort of your personal self-worth because you're allowing somebody else to define you. Well, can I tell you, like, yes, there's
Starting point is 01:35:33 certainly a physical aspect. And that's that's actually been one of the delights of doing, you know, audio, working in audio is I've always said, even when I was when I was very young at Fox News, I wasn't that young, but I was at Fox news. There was a young, very beautiful young reporter whose name people would know, but I'm not going to repeat here who, um, she was gorgeous. And she was, they gave her like a bunch of papers and she to study up and you could see she was totally flustered and she didn't understand the news. And the makeup artist is so, so funny. He was like, yeah, sweetheart, you put those papers over there. You don't look through the papers anymore. You just go out there and you be you, right?
Starting point is 01:36:08 Like read the glass. Just read the glass. Just read the glass. Yeah. Very clear to this gal that she was expected to look pretty. And that's the job she wanted to fulfill. And I remember talking to her later and saying, it's just something to think about. You know, the greatest compliment is to get people to listen to you and not just look at you, not just want to look at you. And that's, that's one
Starting point is 01:36:29 of the great things about audio, but I will say you can't, this is for your wife who sounds smart. Um, but, but this is for her. If you look, if you wanted to look at like the approval rating of Jennifer Aniston, it probably would be 98%. Um, she's not in our business. We are in the business of talking about the most controversial things on earth, the most. So you're not going to find really any news person who takes any risks. And I will say one way or the other, left or right, who takes any risks whatsoever. And I speak not of like a Lester Holt, right? Like he's not there taking a lot of risks. He's trying to keep it straight, even though we know the content and, you know, it's pretty biased at NBC. Anyway, who's going
Starting point is 01:37:13 to have a big approval rating. But to your point, when people feel validated, when you will say the things nobody else will say, because you know, they're true. I do think it creates a special relationship with your audience. I think you're 100% right. And the other thing is, and I'm sure you found this with the podcast, and I certainly find it with my radio show and the Outkick website that we run, there are so many people carrying around so much of a burden on their shoulders because they don't think they can say what they actually believe right now. Because for fear of losing their job, right? And so people say, like, talk about stress. Stress is being a guy who makes, you know, $50,000, $60,000 a year, has got a couple of kids that you're trying to help get through college,
Starting point is 01:37:58 and you have a job that you know at any moment could disappear, and you have virtually no safety net. Do I want to be, if I'm that guy, do I want to be on, or girl, do I want to be on Facebook saying what I think about the latest, whatever it is, right? The latest story du jour. The answer is no. And so, so many of those people are desperate to find people who will say what they wish they could say. And I feel incredibly fortunate that I found it OutKick and that I have a lifestyle where at the end of the day, I don't carry around a burden, right? I say exactly what I think.
Starting point is 01:38:35 My wife says the reason I don't need therapy is because every day live on the radio is my therapy. I say exactly what I think. People can agree or disagree with it. And when I hang up the phone, basically, or take off my headset, I should say, for the end of the show, I feel light as a feather, Megan. I don't feel like there's any angst that I have been unable to address. And I feel like for you, I'm sure you've found this with the podcast, with people that you hear from, and certainly from the television show and everything else
Starting point is 01:39:04 that you've done. And I feel the same way. I feel like I speak for a lot of people who don't feel as if they can speak. And I think that's a very, I don't want to say noble, but it's a very gratifying feeling to know that that is occurring. And I really feel like in the world of sports, if OutKick didn't exist, nobody would be making the arguments that we make, Megan, regardless of whether you agree or disagree with them. There is no other side. I mean,
Starting point is 01:39:33 everybody else is on the opposite side. It's so crazy how woke sports have gotten. It's so upsetting because as you pointed out, it's taking away such a huge pleasure for millions of Americans who used it as an escape. Now they can't escape anywhere. Now it's kneeling before the game and it's messages on the jerseys and all across the basketball court. And you can't even go to the game now because they've moved it from your city for a law that's nowhere near as restrictive as others. And it's commercial breaks, Megan. You can't even watch it. It used to be beer companies tried to entertain you, right? Like, you right? They were like, hey, we're going to have two good-looking, remember the Coors-like
Starting point is 01:40:10 twin girls, they would say, and twins. You go back and watch old school beer commercials used to make you laugh. Now you watch a football game and halfway through, in addition to all of the messages that are coming out political during the game like every commercial is some woke screed about, you know, like the Energizer, like the Energizer doesn't exist anymore. It's like they SNL, I remember had a skit, like making fun of woke divism. It's really taken over. Like you can't watch a television commercial now. No, it's true. It, it, it is everywhere and it's depressing. And in sports, like I how did it happen? Did it just creep up on us? I mean, I realize that sports there's a there's a large African-American population. So once people started to get, you know, more committed to social justice causes and so on and own them openly and then the pressure ramped up for everybody to sort of say, yes, I'm a social justice warrior. I think not fully understanding what you're saying when you're saying that. We saw more of it. But like, how did ESPN go woke? It's such a fascinating question. One, and I don't think this gets enough attention, the sports media. You know, a lot of discussion, I think, goes around the political media. But
Starting point is 01:41:19 Fox News exists, right? Like there is a Fox News for media in general as it pertains to politics and just covering of the news. Sports media is basically MSNBC even further left wing. The journalists who cover sports are insanely left wing. And so I believe what happened is they started to recognize that athletes were saying things that they agreed with. And so they elevated those athletes, which further encouraged those athletes to speak out. So the Colin Kaepernicks, the LeBron Jameses, coaches too, like Greg Popovich and Steve Kerr, they get almost universal praise from the sports media whenever they would come out and say something negative about Donald Trump or something bad about America. And so those sports media
Starting point is 01:42:13 members may not be able to share their exact feelings, but they can make sure that the stories that show up on the front page of an ESPN.com or on a sports center validate the opinions of the athletes that have the most left-wing opinions, which is how Megan Rapinoe and Colin Kaepernick and LeBron James come to exist, is they are being praised for those opinions, which encourages them do it more. And I also think that there was a sort of, I think the Kaepernick kneeling put everything on steroids, right? And from there, it just, it is spiraled into a universe where I think ultimately what happened is it used to be somebody scores and your team wins. Like you can turn around and give a high five. You don't think about the race, gender, ethnicity, religion, or sexuality, certainly, of somebody who's rooting for your same team.
Starting point is 01:43:12 Now I think it's almost inescapable. And the argument I made the moment Colin Kaepernick started to kneel, Megan, which I think is a good one and very few people picked up on, what is the reaction? So many people wanted to say, oh, I support his First Amendment rights, whatever they may be, for his protest. Imagine the reaction if he had taken a knee during the national anthem to protest gay marriage being legal as a member of the San Francisco 49ers. That's a very good point. Immediately, the same people that are like, it's so great that he's speaking out and using his First Amendment opinions, they would say he shouldn't be allowed to play in the NFL anymore. Right. And that would actually make sense because if you're kneeling during the
Starting point is 01:43:50 national anthem, well, the Supreme court has said that gay marriage is legal, by the way, I'm fine with it. Right. Like, it's not like I'm like some social, you know, like I'm not driven insane by that or whatever. I'm not, I don't think a culture warrior in many of the traditional concept of like what people fight about. But my opinion would have been the same. And by the way, you could say the same thing if he had taken a knee because he opposes, you know, gun control or is for gun control or is pro-choice or is, you know, like, you know, whatever it is, right? It would all be bad because those are issues that immediately divide us, whereas loving sports is something that brings us together. That's what I think is the worst, which is why my most recent book was
Starting point is 01:44:32 called Republicans Buy Sneakers Too, which was a Michael Jordan quote. He admitted that he said it when people said, hey, how come you're not super political? And Michael Jordan's shoes and Michael Jordan as an athlete to this day are still wildly popular. Tiger Woods followed his lead. And now there's an entire group of athletes that want to try to be LeBron James. And my argument has been LeBron James became LeBron James as a marketing tactic
Starting point is 01:44:58 because he realized he was never going to be as popular as Michael Jordan. So he's pivoted and tried to become an activist so that that prolongs his relevance once his athletic career is over. So a couple of points. Number one, Colin Kaepernick is such a hypocrite. You know, he tweets about how awful the United States is and capitalism sucks and we're racist and white supremacist to the core. Meanwhile, he's like, celebrate my new Nike deal with me. He's making so much bank off of ripping on America. No one has ever made more money off of saying how awful America is than Colin Kaepernick. And by the way, to the point about China earlier, there's no
Starting point is 01:45:34 Chinese version of Colin Kaepernick. They disappear you, right? You aren't allowed to, not only do you not become wealthy, you and your family cease to exist as free citizens. Just ask Mr. Yee, who did business with our back to our friend Hunter. Maybe he's in Pornhub right now. He wound up there. But no, you're right. One hundred percent. So he's a he's a hypocrite.
Starting point is 01:45:55 And I will say, you know, I like people who like I would say Fox News fans who know me, they don't like the protesting at the football game. They certainly don't like kneeling in the national anthem. And I don't like it either. I wish they weren't doing it. But I have from the beginning, and I said this when I was on NBC at the time, I do support their right to do it. And then I support the right of the people to walk the hell out of there and not support them if that's how they feel. But I felt the same about the guy who wouldn't bake the gay wedding cake in Washington State. And he won his case, it's not the same as refusing to do business with gay people entirely. Making a wedding cake
Starting point is 01:46:28 is different. So you're right to point out the hypocrisy, your, your commitment to free speech, to protest, to the ability to have individual thoughts and feelings about a matter and express them. It has to be respected no matter what the cause is. If that's what's, that's what makes you truly American and understanding the American ideal. It has to be applied universally. The other analogy I love, Megan, is imagine, so Colin Kaepernick protested in uniform at work. I think that's, in general, a bad idea. Imagine, take it outside of the world of athletics. If you walked into McDonald's and you walked up to McDonald's and you said, hey,
Starting point is 01:47:05 I'd like to get a Big Mac. And the cashier said, well, meat is murder. Why don't you get a salad instead? She would get fired or he would get fired. Right. And nobody would be like, well, that cashier believes that meat is murder. It's important for them to be able to share their opinion in uniform at work. Everybody would be like, you work at McDonald's. People want a hamburger. Give them a hamburger. Colin Kaepernick works in football. People want football. Give them football. It doesn't matter about the politics. I just think from a business perspective, it's a bad example. And the other analogy, I'm like, yeah, but if you drive a truck for UPS or FedEx, if you put a Trump sticker or a Biden sticker on the FedEx or the UPS truck,
Starting point is 01:47:48 that's not allowed. That's a really bad idea. But if you pull up to get into your business, get into the truck that you drive, and you've got a bumper sticker on your car, that's different. To me, in uniform at work, unless you are in a directly political job, I don't want any of my employees, if I have a business that's forward-facing, whether it's McDonald's or the San Francisco 49ers, in uniform at work alienating any of my audience. That's a very good point. And we're seeing it in schools too, right? Like you couldn't wear a MAGA shirt in a school right now. They would definitely crack down on you.
Starting point is 01:48:24 But you can wear a BLM shirt, no problem. Oh, no doubt. In the spring, when everything was breaking with George Floyd and so on, and now, of course, we're learning so many new facts about the George Floyd case, which just proves it again. Which is fascinating. How much of that have you watched, by the way? A lot. We've been covering it in depth.
Starting point is 01:48:41 There were teachers who, on all these Zooms, I saw some of this online and I experienced some of it too, to be honest, teachers who were teaching the class virtually with the BLM background, virtual background that just said BLM. It's like, you don't know what you're supporting and you don't know who you're alienating. And you don't know, I remember saying at the time, sending notes to my kids' school saying, my kids have an uncle who is a police officer. And I expect you to respect that in whatever you say in these classes. Right. I don't want to hear messages that degrade police writ large because you're taking up some political cause. That's not your job. Right. This is the whole thing is so.
Starting point is 01:49:19 And also, by the way, it's amazing how quickly that's spinning back with, as you know, and anybody who has a functional brain knew, when you denigrate police officers, what happens? The murder rate skyrockets. Who are most of the people who are victims of murder? Minorities in inner city neighborhoods, right? That's the reality of what the data reflects. And the most recent number I saw was that, what, murders in 34 biggest cities, I believe, were up 30 percent in 2020, one of the biggest increases in American history. When you delegitimize the police, what do you do? You legitimize the criminal element.
Starting point is 01:49:54 That's the natural reality, whether people want to recognize it or not. And that criminal element takes advantage of a police that doesn't have the same moral legitimacy to take advantage of their communities. And that's why the murder rate skyrockets. I mean, this is the defund the police argument to me and the fact that the media supported it is another example of just a fund. We did the exact opposite to what we should have done, right?
Starting point is 01:50:17 And that's what's so frustrating to me about so many of these stories. And you can predict exactly how they're going to end, which is what? With the refund the police movement. Where people are like, wait a minute, we need police. Yes. Yes. That was, it's, it, it underscores the point I was trying to raise earlier too, which is
Starting point is 01:50:32 like, I understand that there is a narrative out there that it is dangerous just to be a black man in America. If you come into the presence of police, I don't agree with that, but I understand that's a narrative. It isn't true. It isn't. But I understand that there's, that that's a narrative. It isn't true. It isn't. But I understand that there's that that's the narrative. But what about and so it's like against police,
Starting point is 01:50:50 defund police, remove police. Doesn't anybody care about the black women in these communities who have said every poll says they don't want the police taken away like they are the ones who get victimized and black men, too, frankly, black people as a whole do not support removing police. Everyone, every race and ethnicity, it's like 80% of people don't want to defund the police. It's not a racial gap, right? White, black, Asian, Hispanic, it's everybody. And what I always like to respond, you know, when people say like, oh, there's a lot of racism in policing. How come no one ever points out that there would be a lot of sexism in policing too, right? Like women get arrested a lot less than men. Is that
Starting point is 01:51:31 because police are sexist? Or is it because police in general are going after people who are breaking the law? Men overwhelmingly, and I'm obviously a man, we break the law way more than women do. And we frequently break the law way more violently than women do. It's not sexist that 90 some odd percent of people who are arrested are male, right? That's what's so frustrating is when you look at the data and we have such an anecdote driven media now, whatever you believe, whatever you believe, there is a video on the internet that can support it. It doesn't matter what it is. It can be as outlandish as you can possibly imagine. There is a viral video that you can use to justify your belief. It doesn't mean that it's
Starting point is 01:52:15 representative. It doesn't mean that it's part of a larger contextual problem, but it can be an individual incident. And to me, the George Floyd case represented that on steroids because it is that tangible moment all on video that for many people they believe crystallized a larger issue. I don't believe the data reflects that that larger issue is actually there, but that video allows the argument to be made. And the narrative, well, I mean, the tape is the tape, but even what we think we're seeing in that tape, that the truth is coming out, that the different angles that you see with the body cams show a different story. And certainly
Starting point is 01:52:55 everything we're learning about George Floyd. Well, even the fuller version, you know, the fact that, I mean, I think it's such a fascinating case on so many different levels. But the bigger issue to me, regardless of what happens with the George Floyd case, is we as a society are quick to use non-representative anecdotal evidence as if it is representative of a larger contextual problem that happens all the time, when in reality, often what goes viral on the internet is going viral because it is so uncommon, not because it is so common. And I think a lot of people miss that. Well, also because it feeds the narrative, right? Like they, during an election year,
Starting point is 01:53:38 George Floyd and Derek Chauvin, every time is going to be an issue. And believe me, there have been killings of black men by white cops since George Floyd that don't get anywhere near the publicity. Why? Because it's not an election year. That's the truth. The percentages reflect that I think, and again, I don't have the data right in front of me, but I've written about this, that I believe it's 74% of all people shot and killed
Starting point is 01:54:01 by police are white, Asian or Hispanic. 74%, nearly three out of four. Now, the black population is around 12 or 13%, so it is more common. But again, it goes to the numbers of arrest and interaction with police. Women almost never get shot by police. It's not because police are sexist. It's because the number of crimes committed by women is tiny. 60% of violent crime in the major cities is committed by African-American men. So, I mean, that's just the truth. We have to wrestle with it.
Starting point is 01:54:29 We can talk all day long about why, but that is a fact, and that is why they have more interactions with police. And frankly, Megan, most people won't even share that fact because they're afraid of getting called racist by just sharing the fact, right? I know. I was like, well, I don't care what you call me. It's fine. I'm going to speak the truth, and that's one great liberating fact
Starting point is 01:54:44 of having been called everything. Now, listen, I know't care what you call me. It's fine. I'm going to speak the truth. And that's one great liberating fact of having been called everything. Now, listen, I know I've been very generous with your time, but I do have to ask you about Outkick before I let you go. So I love it. I love what you're doing. I had Ben Shapiro on recently, and he mentioned you as like something he was interested in in terms of the future of The Daily Wire. And, you know, The Daily Wire is very successful.
Starting point is 01:55:10 And Ben is actively trying to create different lanes for people who push back against mainstream narratives. And I wonder if you can shed any light on the possibility of that partnership. Well, so I did Candace Owens, who I think is super talented. I did her show. Ben is super smart and fearless. And I don't know about you, Megan, but as I have aged, the two qualities that I respect the most are, and I always respected intelligence, but fearlessness is so high on my list of qualities that I respect in any person. And there are relatively few people who are fearless. Uh, I think you are fearless. I think Ben is. Um, and one of the things that we try to do at Outkick is be fearless. And that's what I tell our writers. That's what I tell our staff. Like, you know, we want to be smart, original, funny, and authentic. Uh, but undergirding all
Starting point is 01:56:01 that needs to be fearlessness because most people in media are not fearless today. And so as OutKick has grown, yeah, I just – as OutKick has grown, we're having conversations. One of the things like I kind of hinted at with the Facebook, one of the things that I worry about candidly is if your ability to reach your audience gets turned off. After the parlor mess and after the banning of Donald Trump and everything else, I went on Twitter and I said, hey, what I would hope is if you like what we do at OutKick, that you just add us as one of the websites that you go visit every day regardless. I may or may not post the link that you like, but I wish you would come directly to us every single day. One of the things that I worry about and think about all the time, and it honestly sometimes keeps me up at night, there are millions and millions of people, and I'm sure you feel the same way, Megan,
Starting point is 01:56:54 that would love your content that have no idea you exist. Right? I think they know I exist, but they may not know the podcast exists. I bet that that is not even true. So reaching that audience, I think about so much. And if big tech has the ability to cut off your ability to reach that audience, I think you need as big and as strong and as vibrant of partnerships as you can possibly have. What exactly that looks like going forward for OutKick, I'm not sure. But that is something that I spend a lot of time thinking about. I think we need jet fuel in order to influence as many people as we possibly can.
Starting point is 01:57:38 And I think the Daily Wire, I think there are a lot of different brands out there that are doing a good job that fortunately would correspond with what we do. And there could be some sort of ways to work together going forward, I guess is an easy way to put it. Well, I'm rooting for it because I think I'm loving Ben's mission and his partner, Jeremy Boring. He's amazing, too. And I just think- They're based here in Nashville where we are. That's right. So they moved recently from LA. The stronger the coalition, the more strength we have.
Starting point is 01:58:13 2022 and 2024 are going to be massive. Because I think I told you this before. I think without COVID, I think that Donald Trump would have destroyed Joe Biden. Oh, 100%. I mean, I think it would have been a destruction. Bloodbath. And sometimes losing is constructive because it makes you realize it's like a sporting event. You have to go back and redo a new game plan because the one that you were executing wasn't working.
Starting point is 01:58:36 And I think what Democrats realized or would have realized if they had gotten destroyed was identity politics and cancel culture is not the way to win. Unfortunately, I think with winning with Joe Biden, what has happened is a lot of people said, oh, identity politics, cancel culture, it'll get better without Trump. I think you've seen it's gotten worse. And so I think that's the biggest. Those are the two twin pillars of evil I legitimately believe exist in America today. And I think they have to be defeated. And I think that's a battle we're in right now. I want you to tell your wife I'm in the 35%. She will listen to this. She's a fan. So she drives around in her car and listens to a lot of podcasts. She's a fan of your show. So that will potentially help to alleviate her concerns. But look, we met at Vanderbilt Law School. She is super smart, smarter than me.
Starting point is 01:59:33 And she just, I think sometimes just rolls her eyes at the fact, like she says all the time, you can't say that on the radio because I don't think the conversations that you would hear on my radio show, or frankly, the conversation that you're hearing right now, listening to us is any different than what I would sound like in my house with her. And she just, uh, I think lives in fear. Um, I imagine like a lot of spouses do, I bet your husband sometimes sits around and thinks about this and you've had to go through it. Um, you know, of people coming after me or you or anybody else out there that makes their living. Um, and, uh, I imagine it's a challenging position for a spouse to be in because I can control what I do. I can't control what other people do and certainly she's got to sit back and watch and see some of the feedback. Yeah, and take the shrapnel when it comes to. It's true. Our spouses don't get
Starting point is 02:00:16 enough credit for sort of standing shoulder to shoulder and supporting the mission of free speech and saying controversial things even if you know they're controversial, they're going to upset some people, but you have to have the temerity to do it. I do think about that with Doug a lot and I'm very lucky. I wouldn't have had any of it. Well, I would have had some, but I wouldn't have had as much success in my life. I told my mom, Megan. If I didn't have a strong partner. Amen. I told my mom when I first started writing online like 15 years ago,
Starting point is 02:00:41 she would get in the comments and fight with people and be like, he's a good dad. He's a good, yeah. And I was like, mom, you know, like I'm not, you know, our audience is not that big right now, but I was like, you cannot, you know, get in the comments and argue with people. Uh, and I think about that in the context of, you know, when people that know you well and that love you and, uh, and, and know you as a full, you know, three-dimensional person, as opposed to whatever caricature exists, which is i think true for anybody in public eye like we all have like 20 foot tall uh representations that are often an inch deep right like there's not a lot of substance sometimes to the caricature um and i do think that's tough for people who uh who who have to see that caricature and know that it's not
Starting point is 02:01:21 representative and it's just i mean sometimes funny i think about it from my mom's perspective who obviously like any mom thinks her son or daughter is like the greatest thing on the planet. And then you see them just getting constantly attacked. It is, I think, very humanizing in some ways to think about. It reminds me of after I left NBC, you may recall that there was a bit of a pile on. There's a bit of a story. On the set of the Today Show, though. I mean, my own colleagues came after me very publicly. It's interesting because I don't remember them ever going after all the many other people who actually wore blackface on NBC.
Starting point is 02:01:56 Yes. Actually, okay, but they did. And my mom found out that Al Roker owned restaurants in upstate New York, which is where we live. I grew up and she lives there still. And my mom's like, I'm going to go to that restaurant and I'm going to talk to him. I'm going to tell him how disappointed I am. I'm like, oh, I don't think so, mom. That is so great. That's a vintage mom though, right? That is. And I think one thing, certainly with your story and all of these other stories that are kind of continue to spiral and grow, I think that ultimately the American public as a whole has a great bullshit detector. Right. I really do believe that. media right now is complete bullshit. And I think we are headed for a massive, uh, a massive return
Starting point is 02:02:48 and, uh, you know, like swinging back in the other direction, if that makes sense. Um, and I don't know what the exact opposite of bullshit is. Uh, but I feel like there is this desperate, um, craving. And I think once COVID is over and you know, the, the fear porn, as I've called it, like that storyline dissipates, I think a lot of people are suddenly going to realize, wait a minute, much of what we've been told is just not true. And I do think there's going to be a great awakening of sorts. Maybe that's the opposite of bullshit, is a great awakening. And I'm hoping that that's going to happen in the next couple of years. And this perpetual McCarthy moment that we basically found ourselves in is going to end.
Starting point is 02:03:30 I just thought of the New York post headline for when we officially have herd immunity. It's cover. That's not bad. That's not bad. Listen, thank you for, for fighting the good fight and having, having the courage of which you speak. Cause I I've seen you live it. It's great to talk to you, Clay. Hey, Megan, whenever we end up in the same city, you need to grab a beer. I'd like to get our spouses together, too. I'm sure they could have a good conversation at our expense.
Starting point is 02:03:54 You're on. See you soon. All right. Sounds good. I appreciate it. Don't forget to tune into the show on Wednesday because we're going to round back to COVID. And we're going to talk to, as I mentioned, Dr. Marty McCary, who has been out there about whether we've achieved herd immunity. Are we there yet? He said it would happen in April.
Starting point is 02:04:16 Are we there yet? Like the kids say in the back of the car. We'll find out and we'll find out what he thinks about if not now, then when. And we're also going to be joined by Josh Rogan, who's a columnist at the Washington Post, who doesn't really sound like a Washington Post columnist. He's been writing pretty bravely about COVID and whether this thing was actually released from a Wuhan lab. So he's got real answers for us on that.
Starting point is 02:04:40 And he is also coming on. Don't miss those guys. That's next show on Wednesday. So in the meantime, go ahead and subscribe so you don't miss it. Download, rate and review. I'll take your five stars. Thank you very much.
Starting point is 02:04:51 And I would love a review telling me what you thought of today's episode and Clay. I'm a big fan, as you can tell. All right, we'll see you Wednesday. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear. The Megyn Kelly Show is a Devil May Care media production in collaboration with Red Seat Ventures.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.