The Megyn Kelly Show - DeSantis, Vivek, Haley, Scott - A Megyn Kelly Show Look at Past Interviews With GOP Candidates | Ep. 626

Episode Date: September 13, 2023

In this Megyn Kelly Show special episode, we look back at past Megyn Kelly interviews with GOP candidates - ahead of tomorrow's interview with GOP frontrunner former President Donald Trump. Included are highlights from past interviews with Gov. Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy, Nikki Haley, and Sen. Tim Scott. Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. With the GOP primary in full swing, we're going to take a look at a few of the contenders making waves. My sit-down with Governor Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy's recent appearance on the show, plus some highlights of Nikki Haley and Tim Scott's appearances on this program. And then tomorrow, the 800 pound gorilla. As I like to say, my interview with Donald Trump, the first we've done in seven years, will air. We're going to have a lot to talk about after that. But today we begin with

my interview of Governor Ron DeSantis from July and episode 597. We got into everything, including a spirited back and forth about his positions on Disney and whether he's punishing the company for exercising their free speech rights. Is it government overreach? Conservatives tend not to like big government. Is he leaning in? Plus, we got into the trans sport issue and abortion. Take a look. I'll tell you who the unsung heroes of COVID are, the frontline workers, of course. But what about those business owners who hung in there and paid their employees? If you're one of them and you paid your people, you could be eligible for up to $26000 bucks per employee at covidtaxrelief.org.

This is not alone. These are government funds that don't have to be paid back. All types of businesses, including nonprofits and churches, can be eligible. You need to apply now, however, because Congress may pull the funds. Covidtaxrelief.org has helped tens of thousands of businesses just like yours and secured over 500 million bucks. Unlike others, they charge nothing up front. They do all the work, share a percentage of the cash they get you. You did the tough thing for your employees. Now let COVIDtaxrelief.org help you get up to 26 grand per employee. COVIDtaxrelief.org, COVIDtaxrelief.org, COVIDtaxrelief.org. I saw you on CNN recently. Now you're sitting with me. I'm a right-leaning independent. So is this a change in your media strategy? And are we going to be seeing more of you out there?

Well, what I've typically done is, you know, I do media availabilities all the time. I've probably done more press conferences as governor than any governor in history. And all these people can come and ask me questions. And so we're going to continue to do that on the campaign trail. You know, we may sit down for some more interviews as we continue to go. I think it's good. I mean, I think people like to hear directly. But the idea that I was not engaging with hostile media, that's just not been true. In fact, that's kind of how I got known in Florida. As governor, you did. As governor, you were fighting the COVID wars and all that. Yes,

but since you've actually declared, it seems like you've been in a conservative bunker. Well, we have a traveling press. We do the media availabilities. We're gonna continue to do that and probably do more as time goes by. Don't you think that would help you? Don't you think having a viral moment with somebody in the far left who hates you is going to be helpful to you? It could. I mean, it definitely has helped me in the past.

And I think a lot of times they are in their own cocoon. And so they're trying to propagate narratives. But these narratives are easy to deconstruct. And so if you just know your stuff, you can handle that very easily. All right, now one of the criticisms I hear about you from people who watch and listen to my show is he's too establishment, right? You've heard Trump say globalist, the rhino, but he's too establishment. They think that you're too close to the Paul Ryan, Karl Rove wing of the party, and that if they elect you, you'll be too beholden to the big money donors inside the Republican Party. The numbers on that- The evidence for that is what? Well, I mean, this is what my listeners feel,

but I'll give you one. Only 17% of your donations second quarter came from small dollar donors. 82% of Trump's did. So you can see why they're worried that you're going to be beholden to these GOP elites and not worried about the grassroots concerns. So first of all, I have not spoken to Paul Ryan since I've been governor. So that's many, many years. I've met Karl Rove once. That's all just totally fabricated out of whole cloth. I also have a record as governor of Florida. I beat Disney on the parents' rights. They're a pretty powerful financial institution in the state of Florida. We stood up to the global elites, not just national establishment, international establishment

against the COVID lockdowns. We stood up, I mean, I've restored the Everglades in Florida. I had to stand up against the big sugar companies who had dominated Florida for a long time. We stood up, I mean, I've restored the Everglades in Florida. I had to stand up against the big sugar companies who had dominated Florida for a long time. We've stood up to big pharma, not just by trying to get cheaper prescription drugs. I actually have a grand jury impaneled to investigate misrepresentations that they made about the COVID-19 vaccine. So I've stood up to these people more than anybody else has done. How many establishment Republicans would have sent illegal aliens to Martha's Vineyard? They just wouldn't have done it. So I think a lot of that is fabricated. And look,

I have the second best small dollar operation in Republican politics. I mean, Trump was president for so many, of course, he's gonna have a better operation, but ours is growing and growing. best small dollar operation in Republican politics. I mean, Trump was president for, so I mean, of course he's gonna have a better operation, but ours is growing and growing. And if you look at the new donors, these smaller ones, 30% of ours never donated to Republican politics before they came to me. So we're bringing more people in and we're gonna continue to do well with that. The other question about Trump, and then I'll move on to some more substantive issues. He says this is a disloyal act. And I know you've spoken to that before, but he says specifically that you got elected governor because of him, that you were dead in

the race, and that you, quote, came over and begged him for an endorsement with tears coming down from your eyes. And do you believe that? Is it true? Do you believe that? You tell me. I mean, come on. This was public. I think we were on Air Force One. I said, hey, I'm thinking about running. Will you support me? Will you tweet for me? And he's like, yeah, I'll tweet for you. And that was it. And that was all that. But here's the thing. Politicians have to earn support. Nobody's entitled to support. I'm loyal to my family. I'm loyal to our Constitution. And I'm loyal to my family, I'm loyal to our constitution and I'm loyal to God. That is where my loyalty goes. I'll work with politicians to try to advance what I believe is in the best

interests of Florida and the country. But at the end of the day, it's about who can get the job done and that's how I view it. And it's interesting, he doesn't say that about his own vice president running against him. He doesn't say that about his ambassador to the UN running against him. He doesn't say that about other people he endorsed in the past who are now running against him. He only says it about me because I think he construes me as the only threat to his winning the nomination. What about to the people who say

it's not your turn, it's still his turn. He got screwed out of his first term by Russiagate and the impeachment. He got an unfair shot at it second time around because of all the election shenanigans. And that he deserves to have this next go at it. We're a republic. We're not a monarchy. It's nobody's turn. You have every right to put yourself forward. I believe at this point in history, 2024 is make or break for this country.

I'm not running to be president. I'm running to do something as president for this country. I'm not running to be president. I'm running to do something as president for the country. I think I'm the guy that can win the primary, win the general election, and then deliver on all of these things and do it for two terms, which I think is really important. Because if you look, Trump's first term, he did a lot of good things. Biden reversed almost everything on day one. I think you do need two terms for this stuff to really, really stick. And so I think that I'm the only guy that fits that bill. So I have a responsibility to step up and offer myself for service. Let's talk about Florida for one minute. The Department of Education is in the news this week. They issued new guidelines when it comes to teaching

things like slavery. They are teaching its innumerable horrors, that's clear. But they are also requiring teachers to instruct that, quote, slaves develop skills, which in some instances could be used for personal benefit. As you know, the vice president made an emergency trip down here to Florida to say you were whitewashing history, that these are lies. Even GOP presidential candidate Will Hurd, who is black, weighed in saying slavery was not a jobs program. What's your response to all this? Well, those standards were developed by African-American history scholars. Many of them themselves were black. And the point about developing skills was those skills were developed in spite of slavery, not because of slavery. And that's what they're doing. And then they're saying they had skills postbellum,

then they would use those skills as freedmen. And that's exactly what happened. And there's actually been other courses. So the AP African American history. So we had a kerfuffle on that earlier this year because there was a lot of the course was good, but then they had part of it that was like Marxist studies. And we said, no, we don't want the indoctrination. So we got attacked because we stood up against that. You won that.

We won it. But in that course, they had the same basic teaching point about the skills that were developed. And this is not something that was just made up out of whole cloth by our working group. This is something that people have been talking about. And this was all done in public. It wasn't political. We didn't tell them what to do. We said, we're not doing critical race.

We're not doing a political agenda. Just do the facts. And they did a very thorough job. I mean, if you look at all the things they're talking about- I did. But what do you think of Kamala Harris coming down here and trying to tell everybody that you're lying, that you've decided to lie to the American public about slavery? Well, the White House has been obsessed with us in Florida from the time they took office. Clearly, view us as a threat and so anything that they can do to try to ding us. But I think in this case, people looked at it and they could tell she was lying and she was demagoguing it. I mean, this stuff was vetted. This was all public. People could do comments. Everyone was praising what a thorough job they did.

Then all of a sudden they cherry pick something, take it out of context and then try to demagogue it. Because if you look at the entire standards, there is no way you can view those standards and not come to any other conclusion that they are very, very honest about the injustice of slavery. And that's time and time again, you see through that. So I think the thing that's instructive though is, is, okay, you have Harris doing this in Biden's White House. Corporate media, if they're really truth tellers, if they're about holding the powerful accountable, they would have pushed back on this. They would have said, wait a minute, that's not true. They would have had Dr. Allen on to shoot it down. And instead, they try to concoct the narrative even further and push it. So I think people like Harris do it because they know they can get away with it with a

lot of our corporate press. We had Dr. Allen on and he said the teachers union was sitting there, lying there like snakes in the grass at these meetings, not saying anything, not objecting to any of this until after it became a controversy. All right, let's shift and talk about Disney. You mentioned them just a bit. You, in my view, are pretty quick to use the power of the state against certain corporations who you don't like, these woke corporations. Disney, after it attacked your Parental Rights and Education Act,

Anheuser-Busch recently for hurting the pension investments you said of Floridians with the whole Bud Light debacle. Much as the base is angry at these woke corporations, and I get it, I know you get it, aren't you doing the very thing to these companies that conservatives are mad at left-wing leaders for doing, using government to punish citizens for political wrong think? No, not at all. So take Ian Heiser Bush. I mean, we're not punishing them. They departed from business practices by indulging in social activism. That has caused a huge problem for their company and their stock price has gone down. Well, our pension fund in Florida holds Anheuser-Busch InBev stock. So it's actually hurt teachers, it's hurt cops, it hurts firefighters who depend on

that pension fund. And so- Didn't you support the boycott against them? No, I did, but that's just as a personal thing. But I mean, we didn't have the state government necessarily putting power about it. But as an American, I said, I'm not doing Anheuser, I'm not doing Bud Light. But for this, we're defending the people that are beneficiaries of the pension. When you go, look, the wokeness, yes, it's annoying. Yes, when they're trying to throw an agenda down your throat, you don't like it.

But it does have an impact on the economy. It has an impact on people who hold stock. And that's not just rich people. That's those people. So with InBev, they departed from their fiduciary duty. And so we're investigating. How can you say they departed? I'm not in favor of the Bud Light thing at all.

But how can you say they departed from their fiduciary duty? They sent a beer can to this very controversial person, which upset the consumers and the consumers had their say. But how is that a departure from there? And how does the state get involved in that? How is that something that is helping their shareholders or helping their companies value? But how is that for you to weigh in on? Because I have people in Florida that were injured by the company's decline as a result of that. These are people that rely on the pension. Disney is a different issue than this. But we have to say companies should do their job. If they depart from that and they harm people, then you have an opportunity to potentially have recourse.

Now, Disney was an issue where they came after the state of Florida when we were doing fortifying parental rights, saying at that time it was K through three, no gender ideology or any of that in the schools. And to me, that was not a huge leap. I mean, that's common sense. Why would you want to tell a second grader that they may have been born in the wrong body? That is happening around this country. And we said in Florida, we're not. So they came in against us and they're very powerful in Florida. They usually get whatever they want. So we stood up and we said, no, we're gonna do what's best for students and parents. We're not gonna tout out of Disney. Then after I signed the bill,

they put out a statement saying they were gonna make it a mission to see that the bill was repealed or overturned in court. So they said they were taking their corporate resources to basically attack parents' rights in Florida and overturn, of course, state policy. So we had to then make a decision, and the legislature started saying, well, wait a minute. Disney is getting these benefits that they've had for a long time. Maybe we should reevaluate it. And then when you looked at what they got, unbelievable arrangement that they had that no other individual or no other company in the entire state enjoyed. So Florida, for many decades ago, was joined at the hip with this one

company. They started going down the road of sexualizing children. We just could not be joined at the hip with a company that was doing that. That's antithetical to our values in Florida. So what we said is, you don't get to control your own government. You don't get to be exempt from laws and taxes. You're gonna live under the same laws as everybody else. You're gonna be treated like SeaWorld. You're gonna be treated like Universal. So that's actually good policy. That's taking away corporate welfare and putting everybody on a level playing field. But we could not be, I mean, I couldn't look in the mirror as a parent of a six,

five and three year old knowing that this company was getting benefits from. These are not benefits, I gave them this as many, many decades ago that they were doing that given the direction that they're going with kids. I draw the line at protecting kids. We are going to protect our kids and we will take on big corporations to do so. So are you suggesting you would have done this irrespective of them criticizing and fighting your Parents and Education Act? I mean, that this had nothing to do with their stance on your law? Well, obviously, they're supporting sexualizing kids in Florida schools. I mean, they were putting their corporate weight behind ensuring that that could happen. So, of course, that was a factor.

But another factor. That's an admission that they were punished by you, in part, by the state for their political viewpoint. It's not a punishment. So that was part of it. Then they had the Zoom videos that were put out where these Disney executives were acknowledging that they wanted to inject the sexualization into their program. Yes, I understand that's different and that's less controversial. But that was part of the decision where the legislature, the support to maintain this arrangement just collapsed. And we were in a situation where he said, okay, this is a company that's pursuing this direction with respect to children.

That is fundamentally hostile to the state of Florida's policy. a company that's pursuing this direction with respect to children. That is fundamentally hostile to the state of Florida's policy. Okay, but how is it not viewpoint discrimination? We talked about 303 Creative, you and I privately, about the US Supreme Court case that just came down. They held in that case, they reminded us that citizens in this country are free to speak as they wish and not as the government demands. So why can't Disney oppose your law? They can the government demands. So why can't Disney oppose

your law? They can. And why can't they promote this agenda in their viewpoint? They can. Without being punished by the state. They're not being punished. We're just simply removing special benefits that they have had that really weren't. They were worse off when it was done than they were before they spoke out. Well, no, I mean, it was, first of all, we didn't actually do anything to Disney. There was a government that had been in place that they had effectively corrupted, which was not the way it was supposed to be, by the way, if you look at how this started in 68. So we changed the governing structure, which really didn't even impact them directly. They're just indirectly, they don't like it because they don't get to call the shots anymore.

But they are not entitled to corporate welfare. You do not have a constitutional right to corporate welfare. I know that, but it's not about an entitlement. It's not about entitlement. If I go to my boss and I say, you sexually harassed me, and then suddenly he reduces my salary from $200,000 to $100,000, that's retaliation. I am worse off. And it's not a defense to say, well, everybody else at the company was getting 100,000. You've reduced my certainty. You've punished me. No, but that's an employer-employee

relationship. I think that that's much different. But this is the state taking away a benefit. But your position is basically that Florida should be forced to subsidize Disney regardless of how it's gonna use those subsidies so that they can weaponize the subsidies they get from the state and turn it against state policy. Why would we wanna subsidize that behavior? Why should Florida taxpayers have to underwrite that? But I don't want a President Gavin Newsom doing this to conservative companies or companies who have a more conservative viewpoint. Well, here's what I would say. I don't think there's any arrangement in America that mirrored the arrangement Disney

had in Florida for many, many decades. I mean, I think it was a unique situation where we just could not justify how could you be exempt from laws that every other company in business has to follow an individual? How could you be exempt from taxes? How could you rack up municipal debt on your own when they didn't have it? So they had powers to build their own nuclear power plant. They had extraterritorial eminent domain. I get it, I get it. They had a lot of that. If you lived in a subdivision outside of Disney, they actually had the right to seize your

property if they wanted to expand beyond the district. So this was something that was just totally, totally unjustifiable. But it lived on in Florida for many, many decades because they were just so powerful. But take apart all of the stuff with the sexualization of children, all that. Just on the merits, was this an arrangement that was justifiable? And the answer is no, but no one really questioned it in the legislature because they enjoyed a lot of political sway. Let's move on. What's your plan to protect women and girls from men who claim they are trans trying to get into our spaces and our sports?

Well, in Florida, we've done all of that. So girls sports, women's sports is protected. Men can't be injecting themselves into those competitions. It takes away opportunities for girls and for women athletes. And we did that years ago here as governor. We've also protected the locker rooms and the bathrooms so that men are not going into women's very sensitive places. And I think that that should be the rule period.

We will look within the constitutional authority of the federal government. We'll look to do the same for women's sports and those issues nationally. Title IX? Yeah, I think so. There was an ad recently released that was controversial online that portrayed you as a warrior against certain of these LGBTQ issues and Trump is soft on them. The New York Times reports that you were actually behind that ad, your campaign. You definitely promoted it and defended it. Do you think that Trump is soft on this issue, the issue of trans rights versus women's rights? Well, I think that what was pointed out there was he had been a pioneer in injecting men into women's competitions because he was doing that with beauty pageants way, way back in the day, 10 years ago or whatnot.

And then he's also opposed things like protecting locker rooms and bathrooms when he was running. He said North Carolina shouldn't have done that when they did it. So that I think is not where our voters are on that. I think our voters believe that standing up for women and girls means protecting their right to compete with integrity and protecting things like bathrooms and locker rooms. And so he just had been very clear on that issue. And I don't think that's where our voters are. Do you think he may have changed? I mean, 15 versus now is a lifetime on the issue of the trans rights thing.

I don't know. I mean, I think that it wasn't know, he had kind of a flippant opinion on it. I mean, you know, he was really one of the leaders in making this a big issue culturally and nationally. Speaking of that campaign ad, one of the complaints I've heard about the DeSantis team is they're too online. There was the Twitter spaces launch. Yes, but it was it's more about the petty Twitter squabbles that we see some connected with your campaign having that will take up three days of the news cycle that don't really amount to anything substantive for the voters in Iowa and elsewhere. Is that a fair point? So look, we have people that are doing this rapid response. I'm not putting my time into it at all.

I mean, they're going and going back and forth. There's kind of a battle that does online. I am not somebody who's following that very closely. It's just not my cup of tea. And so I'm following more about what's happening. Commander. No, I get it. But I mean, but we have people shooting at us too online every single day. I mean, the fact that you asked about people like Paul Ryan,

that's all a manufactured online controversy instead of attacks that have no basis in reality. And so there is need to kind of push back on some of this stuff. So I wouldn't say it's too online. I think that there's a place for that. But ultimately, the people in Iowa and New Hampshire, they're not following the latest Twitter war. They're following what's going on in their lives. And I'm very cognizant of that. You recently signed a six-week abortion ban in Florida. That is popular with Republican voters. The majority support that. But you haven't yet said whether you would support doing that at the federal level. Will you say so now? So our bill in Florida protects unborn when there's a detectable heartbeat. The heartbeat bill is something that is rooted in science and medicine.

And this is the most significant pro-life protections that we've ever done in the state of Florida in the modern history. So I've been a pro-life governor. I'll be a pro-life president. And I will come down on the side of life. We are running on doing things that I know I can accomplish. So we're gonna end the abortion tourism that is in the military. It's an egregious waste of taxpayer dollars, no funding for abortion. We're gonna ensure that the Supreme Court remains so

that Dobbs is not overturned. And I'm gonna be a leader with the bully pulpit to help local communities and states advance the cause of life. But I really believe right now in our society, it's really a bottom-up movement. And that's where we've had most success, Iowa, South Carolina, Florida. And I think you're gonna continue to see a lot of good battles there. So you're not in support of a federal law? I'll always come down on the side of life. And I'm proud to be pro-life, and I'll be a pro-life president. But if you do that, I mean, if you sign a federal law, making a six-week standard,

the law across the country, aren't we just then gonna get a Democrat administration with Democrat Congress that reverses or that codifies Roe and back and forth? Why isn't it just a state's rights issue? Well, clearly the states have, I mean, I think the states have the primary jurisdiction over it. I do think they do. But if there's a federal law, that's going to change. I think there is a federal interest, but I think the reality is that the country's divided on it. You're not going to see Wisconsin mimic what Texas has. Which is an argument against a federal law. You're not going to see Pennsylvania mimic what Georgia has. Well, but I mean, we're divided. I mean, are these things like on the potential thing? I haven't seen Congress move that. I don't have much confidence that Congress is gonna do anything meaningful in this regard.

And so in a federalist system, you have different opinions and that stuff gets filtered out. But clearly, right now, you are going to see different states go in different directions. And I understand that. Again, you can find the full show on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. It's episode 597. We'll be right back. Guess what costs Americans about $11 billion a year? The flu season, which is right now. Kids get sick and miss school. Parents miss work and then get sick too. And now you can add in COVID variant 10,000 to the mix on all of this. That is why you should consider checking out EnviroCleanse for your home, the new science in home air purification. EnviroCleanse works to capture and destroy flu and COVID viruses from your home.

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Now, Nikki Haley, who is having a bit of a moment in the GOP primary right now I mean we really we know the guerrillas first but she's having a moment amongst the b-tier by most polls she has gained the most ground after the first debate she came on this program in July episode 586 in this part of the interview we talked through NATO and Ukraine and other foreign policy stories, as well as parental rights. Take a look. Let's talk about NATO and Ukraine, because this has become an issue. Should should Ukraine join NATO? This is, of course, been the thing Vladimir Putin has been pushing against now for decades. He doesn't want the expansion of NATO at all, and he certainly doesn't want Ukraine in it. And Joe Biden said it's not time. I mean, I think everybody agrees right now in the midst of a war, it's not time. But Joe Biden was saying

they're not ready. And I heard you on Cavuto yesterday saying there's no reason Ukraine should not be part of NATO. And this, of course, makes you more hawkish on this issue than some of your competitors in the GOP race, because the pushback on it, as you know, Ambassador, would be World War Three, right? That it's extremely provocative to Vladimir Putin, even more so than we have been to actually make them a part of Ukraine, a part of NATO. We would have no obligation or no choice but to defend them in further provocations down the line if they got into further skirmishes with Putin. And it could literally lead to World War Three with a nuclear power. Actually, I think it's the opposite. This is about preventing war

and the way you and this is also about ending this war quickly. We don't need this to drag out. And the problem is, and I dealt with the Russians at the United Nations, they love to intimidate. They love to scare and they hope that that helps them get what they want. Let's be clear. Article five, if you were to allow Ukraine into NATO, we would not have to do anything more than we're already doing. You don't have to put troops on the ground. You don't have to give them cash. We are already working with our allies to give them equipment and ammunition. And not only that, it sends a message to Putin. NATO is a 70-year success story in the fact that Russia has never invaded a country that is a member of NATO. The only countries that Russia has invaded, Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine, they are not

members of NATO. He's not going to do that because he doesn't want the wrath of NATO. Actually saying, yes, we're going to continue to defend Ukraine, and yes, we're going to allow them in NATO, would get him to see that he better figure out a way out now and would get him to realize he's got to find an exit strategy. That's what we want for Putin. Because keep in mind, this war is not about Ukraine. This is about the fact that Russia invaded a free country. And so one, it's a win that we got Finland and Sweden in there. But look at Ukraine. Ukraine has shown that they are a force when it comes to military, when it comes to will, when it comes to might and when it comes to strategy. And so you look back at where we are, Russia had gained 27% of Ukraine's territory. Now Ukraine has got it

back down to 12%. We know Putin's hit rock bottom when he's getting drones from Iran and missiles from North Korea. They've raised the draft age in Russia to 65. And then this monster of a military that he created with the Wagner group, you know, now suddenly turned on the guy that thought he was invincible. And now he realizes he's actually vulnerable. The strength of NATO and those countries to say, you know what, we do want Ukraine to be a part of this, would have sent a massive red flag to Putin that, oh, no, now they're going in there, too. There's nothing he fears more than the alliance that is NATO. And we have to you know, I think that it was a missed opportunity altogether,

because we actually could have worked on ending this war quicker had they gone and been strong on. Yes, we're going to want Ukraine into NATO. They've shown that they deserve to be there and that they have the will to defend freedom in this country, in their country. Prior to that announcement by the Biden administration, it sounds like you think they've been handling this war well. That Ukraine has been handling it well. That Joe Biden has been doing the making the right moves when it comes to Ukraine from your own description that you just said.

I don't think he's done it well. I actually don't think we would have gone to war had Biden done what he was supposed to. Keep in mind, Russia surrounded Ukraine a whole year before they invaded, Biden pulled that because he didn't want to provoke Putin. There again, you missed the opportunity. What they should have done was shown that we were going to have the backs of Ukraine so that it would prevent Putin from doing that. But the biggest mistake that Biden made was none of this, whether it's Iran building a bomb, North Korea testing ballistic missiles, whether it's Russia invading Ukraine, whether it's China on the march, none of that would have happened had we not had that debacle in Afghanistan. My husband's a combat veteran. He deployed to Afghanistan. The idea that he and his military brothers and sisters had to

watch America leave Bagram Air Force Base in the middle of the night without telling our allies who stood shoulder to shoulder with us for decades because we asked them to be there. Think about what that told our friends. But more importantly, think about what that told our enemies. It was after that that Russia went on aggression with Ukraine. It was after that that China started really getting aggressive with Taiwan. It was after that. But I'm trying to get to what would you do differently if you became president instead of Joe Biden? What would you do differently with respect to Ukraine? Because all those rollbacks of the Russian, you know, advancement advancement in Ukraine happened

under Biden's watch. And so what kind of differences would we see toward Ukraine if you were to become president? First, I wouldn't send any cash straight out to Ukraine. I don't think you should do that to any country. We should know exactly how the money's being spent and do it accountability. That's the first thing. The second thing is I would commit that we don't need to put troops on the ground. And the third thing is I would work more closely with our allies to make sure we finish this. And that is making sure they all step up. They give equipment. They give ammunition that we have strategy and that we focus on more than just NATO. Keep in mind, Saudi Arabia just sent Ukraine money to defend themselves. We need to bring in more allies than just NATO. And the biggest thing is we need to

make sure that through all of that, we never forget that China is watching every single ounce of this. And they said before the Olympics, when they held hands with Putin, that they were unlimited partners. They showed up after the Russian plane hit the U.S. drone by showing back up in Russia. We need to remember a win for Russia is a win for China. China has watched every company that left Russia. They've watched every country that's helped Ukraine. They've watched what equipment and ammunition we've sent. It is strength, Megan, that goes in there. And so I

would make sure everybody is pulling their weight. Everybody's paying their defense dues and everybody understands this is a war that we have to finish. This is not the time to take the foot off the gas. This is the time to keep the foot on the gas. Republicans don't feel that way. In March of 2022, 51 percent of Republicans deemed Russians invasion a major threat to U.S. interests. Today, it's only 28 percent of Republicans, according to a recent pupil, who see this as a major threat to our interests. So the Republican Party is turning on this war. This as the Biden administration sends cluster munitions to Ukraine, which have been banned by over 100 countries, including very close American allies like the UK, like Canada. They don't like these cluster munitions that basically open up a bunch of grenades on a on a country that could

then explode later when children are playing in the field, children are playing in the field and so on. Do you support cluster munitions, despite the fact that Republicans are waning in their support for this war? Well, first, I want to answer the first premise you said about Republicans. You know, keep in mind that dictators always tell you exactly what they're going to do. You know, China said they were going to invade Hong Kong and or China said they were going to take Hong Kong. They did. Russia said they were going to invade Ukraine. We watched them. China said that Taiwan is next. We better believe them. Russia said that after they take Ukraine, that Poland and the Baltics are next. And that is World War Three. That is

what we are trying to prevent. And so this is not about what politics is saying. This is about the fact that that same mentality of us saying we shouldn't defend Ukraine is the exact same mentality that the Europeans had when they talked about letting Nord Stream 2 go through, when Germany got really close and allowed themselves to get close to Russia. You can never let an enemy advance at all, because if you're naive and you think, oh, but we're going to provoke them, that's the wrong mentality because they will go and pull the rug out from under you. And we can't be so naive that this isn't going to happen later. The biggest issue with Russia winning is China's aggression. And China has been preparing for war with America forever. We see that in their infiltration. We see that people tend to be concerned about them is because cluster munitions can have like duds to them and those can, you know, if messed with, can go and explode later. But Russia is using cluster munitions on Ukraine and has been this

entire time. If Ukraine says that they want cluster munitions, they have shown that they do whatever they have to to protect the Ukrainian people. And if they feel like that's going to help them advance, then, you know, I have no problem with them getting cluster munitions. On the subject of naivete, President Trump said he would settle the Ukraine-Russia conflict in 24 hours. Is he being naive? Oh, I just don't think it's being realistic. I mean, the only way you settle it in 24 hours is if you give Putin something that he wants. And it's not realistic even to do that. Let's be clear. This war, if we wanted to end it today, all you have to do is Russia has to get out. Russia has to get out. Ukraine didn't do anything. Russia went into this freedom loving country.

So, no, I don't think it's realistic to say that you can settle this in 24 hours. But I will tell you what would have settled this really quickly is if the if the U.S. and Biden and NATO would have been stronger on the fact that, yes, they are going to let Ukraine into into NATO, because one, that would have encouraged Zelensky to start being able to say to his people, look, we're going to be able to defend ourselves going forward. And he would start looking at an exit strategy. And Putin would have started looking at an exit strategy. We are trying to end this. We're not doing that right now. And we're trying to prevent further war. That's the focus. Let's talk about China for one second. Our Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen was over there meeting with senior Chinese officials and she bowed repeatedly.

She bowed repeatedly. Independent protocol experts. I mean, the Democratic university professors who studied this for a living said we don't do that. What does she do? What is she doing, Ambassador? And what did you make of the bowing? It was it was just again, we look weak. I mean, you look Blinken went hat in hand to China. They said it was a great meeting, which means China got something out of it. You've got, you know, Janet Yellen goes and says, oh, we should get closer to China. So they roll out the red carpet and then they go and say, oh, but we scolded China because she said this shouldn't be a winner take all scenario. This should be a situation where we can play by fair rules. This should be a situation where we see each other as competitors. That right there shows that you don't understand China. China lives by winner-take-all scenario.

They've never played by fair rules. They don't see us as a competitor. They see us as an enemy. And if you want to know how, look at how they have already infiltrated our country and how the lack of any sort of response to this has been. They have bought up 400,000 acres of U.S. soil, most recently near Grand Forks Air Force Base, where our most sensitive drone technology is. They have continued to send fentanyl to the cartels. They know exactly what they're doing as Americans get killed. They are infiltrating our universities by sending millions of dollars as they go through that. They have Chinese front companies lobbying our Congress on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party. There are items, sensitive technology items, that we should not be sending China because it helps them build up their military.

But instead, Commerce Department has that list. But Biden approved 70 percent of those requests to go to China last year. Then you go and you look at their military. Here's the question. Should she have bowed? And do you think it's indicative of the Biden administration's approach towards China writ large? No. And I don't think Biden has handled China well at all. Well, no, she shouldn't have bowed. No, you go at a position of strength. She should have asked about all the infiltration they're doing in our country and asking them what they're going to do about it, made them answer for that. But none of the Biden administration has made them accountable for anything from COVID to fentanyl, to stealing our intellectual property,

to a spy center going off the coast of Florida where they will soon send military troops. We can't have this happen. And they have not handled this well at all. Yes. The spy balloon was just one of the most prominent visible examples of all that. All right. Let's talk. It was embarrassing. And some GOP politics. This jumped out at me. You were being asked about Ron DeSantis's approach to the indoctrination of children in schools with sexual talk and gender talk and so on. And he's basically said with the misnamed don't say gay bill. We're not having that. We're not going to talk about sexuality. We're not going to talk about gender ideology at the young grades.

It was originally till third grade and then the lawmakers down there expanded it through 12th. You said before that you would go further than DeSantis. What would you have done? So I was saying prior to when it was only at third grade that I didn't think it went far enough. You know, we should not be talking to our children. You should not have school bureaucrats talking to our children about gender, period. You know, when I was in school, you didn't have sex ed until seventh grade. And even when you had it, you had to have a parent's permission for them to even be able to talk to you about that. And my parents wouldn't sign it. So I was the uncool kid in the classroom next door. This is not the job of schools to educate our kids on gender. That is

what the parents should do. So what I was saying is he didn't go far enough when they did it in third grade. They shouldn't be talking about gender at all in schools. Let the parents handle that. Education should be about math, science, history, civics, those types of things. I mean, you can look at how our terrible education scores and realize the last thing we need to be talking about gender. When you've got 67 percent of eighth graders prior to COVID that were not proficient in reading or math, you had 80 plus percent two weeks ago that said they're not proficient in history or civics. And now last week, they say our 13 year olds are at the lowest levels of reading and math that we've seen in decades. And you want to talk to them about gender? I mean, that's just not what American parents want. We have one job. That's not the

job we want schools to do. What can we do? What can be done about that from the White House? First of all, I think that, you know, as president, what I will do is governors should have more control. And the best way to deal with it is presidents typically meet with their governors once a year. I will meet with our governors once a quarter, Republican and Democrat, with the sole goal of sending as much as we can down to the states

when it comes to education, when it comes to healthcare, when it comes to benefits. I know as a governor that what I needed in South Carolina was different than what someone needed in Florida or New Hampshire or anything else. When we go and we allow the people to have better control, let the states decide these things. That way, you reduce the size of the Department of Education, you reduce the size of the federal

government as a whole, and you empower the people. And that's what we should be doing, what everybody doesn't realize. We still have 90% of our kids undergoing critical race theory, which if a little girl goes into kindergarten, if she's white, you're telling her she's bad. If she's brown or black, you're telling her she's never going to be good enough. She's always going to be a victim. These governors need to know you don't have to take that money. What the Department of Education says is, if you teach this, we'll give you this much money. You teach critical race theory, we'll give you this much money. We will empower the governors to know don't take the money. You don't have to do that. And let's block grant. Let's send them the funds down because I think we need to put vocational

classes back in our high school so that we start building things again. The vocational classes in South Carolina, where we make a lot of things things is going to be very different than the vocational classes in another state. And so I'm all about empowering the people and empowering the states and reducing the size of the federal government and getting that power out of D.C. DeSantis has taken some political fire for the fight with Disney. Disney rose up in response to this law and said, we're going to fight it. We're going to try to get it reversed. We're going to march. We're going to do all these things. And then he got into this battle where he's trying to change the tax laws. And it's ongoing between DeSantis and Disney. A lot of Republicans love this because it just shows that

he's willing to fight. They're sick of these woke corporations running roughshod over Republicans in particular and certainly Republican lawmakers. You've said in the past, you would have just picked up the phone and called Disney that you're not particularly in favor of the way DeSantis has been handling it. But realistically, Disney wasn't going to back down in response in response to a phone call. They're under so much pressure from so many different constituencies to fight these fights. And that woke ideology has risen up from within and from outside and their ESG scores and all of that. So, I mean, how honestly could a phone call have avoided this battle? So it's not just that a phone call would have

avoided the battle. I mean, what I am saying is, look, I agree with DeSantis on the fact that gender should not be talked about in schools. I've said that. I said when it was only in third grade, I didn't think it went far enough and he needed to go further on that. I also know that Disney's been woke for a long time. They didn't wake up and suddenly become woke. I remember them hitting Trump on immigration and they've hit on a lot of things. And we've got tons of woke companies. What I was saying is as a governor, when I always partnered with my businesses, there were times my businesses wanted to, they disagreed with me on things.

I would go pick up the phone and I'd call them and say, look, this is where I am. I'm not moving. You can say what you want to say, but this is why I think what I think. But I never believed in one pressuring what they say because they can do whatever they want to do. But I more importantly, don't think you spend taxpayer dollars in a fight against a woke company. I think, you know, I hold, I'm an accountant. I think taxpayer dollars should be spent making sure that we, you know,

do what government's supposed to do, which is just protect the rights and freedoms of the people, not be all things to all people. And I just think if he wants to get into a lawsuit back and forth using taxpayer dollars, he has the right to do that. It's just not what I would have done. 2024, you are pulling behind, as you know, I've respectfully referred to Trump as the gorilla because he's the 800 pound gorilla in the race who, you know, nobody seems to get past used to work for him. And I know that you've said, look, you know, it's early and that these polls don't tend to settle until after Labor Day. But we went back and just looked for one year. What happened after Labor Day in 2015 when he was the leader? He was never not the leader in the real clear politics national

average from prior from early that summer to the day he won the presidency. So what exactly do you expect to change this time around? Because I'll tell you right now, nationally, he's beating you by 49 points in Iowa by 44 points in New Hampshire by 40 points, even in your home state of South Carolina by 29 points. I'm very comfortable with where we are. We had a few benchmarks that we had to overcome. We wanted to have a good announcement. We had thousands of people show up in Charleston, South Carolina, which sent us on our way. We wanted to be well-received in Iowa and New Hampshire. I was just in the North country of New Hampshire. We've done 39 events in New Hampshire, 25 in Iowa. I'm

getting ready to go back to Iowa again. And we wanted to show financial strength. And our campaign and our supporting organizations have raised over $34 million. We've had 160,000 donations from all 50 states. We will be on that debate stage, which I guess will be, which my guess will be with five or six other people. And so we're very comfortable. The reason you're not seeing my polls move is we're not spending any money. You know, the other candidates are spending millions of dollars. This is not the time to do that. People are not paying attention. What we're doing is making sure the ground game is there. And what I'll tell you, going into Iowa in 2015, you can go back and look. Ted Cruz going into Iowa in July of 2015 had 4%. In November of 2015, he had 10%. In January, he won it outright, the Iowa caucuses at 28%.

You look at Scott Walker. Scott Walker was Teflon Scott. The media loved him and said he was going to be the next president. He had above 20% in July of 2015. He never made it to Iowa. This is a marathon. It's not a sprint. And I'll tell you this, Megan, when I first got into politics, I ran against the longest serving legislator in a primary. He had been there 30 years and people laughed at me and I got to work and I earned their support and I won. When I ran for governor, I ran against a Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General, a very popular Congressman and a state Senator. I was Nikki who? I had 3% in the polls. I had the least amount of money. And I worked South Carolina like no one else.

And I won. When I went to the United Nations, they said I didn't have enough experience. And I got to work and I took the kick me sign off of our backs at the UN. I have been underestimated in everything I've ever done. And it's a blessing because it makes me scrappy. No one's going to outwork me in this. No one's going to outsmart me in this. So people can look at those polls all they want. I will tell you debates start in August. I can't wait.

I will tell you that things are going to move past Labor Day. And it doesn't matter to me what anybody says. I know that we've got a country to save and I'm going to do everything I can to go and show everybody that we deserve better. And I'm going to make sure that happens. I hear I hear I like scrappy, but I mean, 40 points is 40 points. And I mean, it's never 40 points in July of in July of 2020. But he's held it. It's never happened that a candidate has had 40 point advantages over his opponents for months and months and months on end and then completely crumbled. I mean, if you have a different example, let me hear it. So what I will tell you,

there needs to be a plan to get rid of him. What's your plan to get past Trump and his enormous advantage? Well, I have my strategy in place and you will see that play out through the fall. But also remind you, Republicans have lost the last seven out of eight popular votes for president. That's nothing to be proud of. We should want to win the majority of Americans. And I will tell you right now, we cannot afford a President Kamala Harris. So what I will tell all your viewers right now, don't complain about what you get in a general election if you don't play in this primary. We have to have a new generational leader. We've got to leave the drama, the chaos, and everything behind. We've got too

many threats coming at America from the outside and too many threats in America from the inside. We've got a country to save. And so I will say it doesn't matter to me that he has 40 points. What America needs to say is, do you think he's going to beat Joe Biden? Because Joe Biden's begging for Donald Trump to be his opponent. There's a reason for that. And I'm not going to allow President Kamala Harris to happen to this country. Coming up, the GOP candidate getting the most attention these days besides Trump, Vivek Ramaswamy. We'll be right back. Vivek Ramaswamy has been on the program four times since we launched, including a fun debate

with David Sachs about bailing out Silicon Valley Bank. Remember that? That was back in episode 510. But in this clip from episode 539, it is after he had declared for president in April of this year. We talk about his media strategy, including maybe being the final straw in Don Lemon's time at CNN. That's reason enough to vote for Vivek, as well as how his woke ink message was resonating with voters, particularly after the Bud Light debacle. So you went on CNN because you've said very openly, you'll go on anywhere you're running for president. You'll talk to anybody. And it didn't go particularly well. Here's a little bit about you challenge of Don challenging you on your appearance at the NRA. And Don Lemon takes issue

with your opinions on this issue because you're not a black man. You said something about American history and race. And I guess you're not allowed to opine on that unless you have black skin, according to Don Lemon. Here was a bit of that. Your telling of history is wrong. You're what you're saying. History was wrong? The Civil War was fought. You're making people think that the Civil War was fought for black people, only for black people to get guns and for black people to have rights. The Civil War was fought for black people in this country to get freedoms, a noble mission. Black people secured their freedoms after the Civil War. It is a historical fact, Don. Just study it. Only after their Second Amendment

rights were secured. You are discounting the reconstruction. You're discounting a whole host of things that happened after the Civil War when it comes to African-Americans, including the whole reason that the civil rights movement happened is because black people did not secure their freedoms after the Civil War and that things turned around. People would try to change the freedoms that were supposed to. And you know how they got it? They got their Second Amendment rights and they actually got the NRA played a big role

in that. But today, down the NRA did not play a big role in that. But today, down the fine line. The NRA did not play a big role in that. Absolutely, they trained black Americans how to use firearms. That's a lie. That's not. The NRA did not play a big role in that.

This is just historical fact. It's not a historical fact. We didn't even include the best part where he basically says, you know, he basically suggests he has a higher claim to the argument because of skin color. And went on to diminish you. I don't know

what kind of race you are. I don't know what your back. I mean, it was actually really offensive the way he ended that interview with you. And then his colleague came on. Actually, we have this cut to his colleague came on to try to give you a nice goodbye. And that upset him, too. Here's more. The part that I find insulting is when you say today, black Americans don't have those rights after we have gone through civil rights revolution. You are sitting here telling an African-American about the rights and what you find insulting about the way I live, the skin I live in every day. Here's where you and I have a different point of view. Black and white that black people don't have in this country and that black people

do have. Well, here's where you and I have a different point of view. I think we should be able to express our views regardless of the color of our skin. We should have this debate without me regarding you as a black man, but me regarding you as a fellow citizen. That's what I think we should say. Whatever ethnicity you are explaining to me about what it's like to be black in America, I'm sorry. Whatever ethnicity I am, I'll tell you what I am. I'm an Indian American. I'm proud of it. But I think we should have this debate. Black, white doesn't matter. I think we should have this on the content of the idea. You should do it in an honest way and in a fair way. And what you're doing is not an honest and fair way. We appreciate you coming

on. With due respect, I look forward to continuing that conversation. Thank you. The conversation. Thank you so much. Thank you, Papa. That you are explaining what it's like to be black in America. That's not what happened. You were not trying to speak on behalf of black people. You were talking about America's history. And the reason I go through that exercise, Vivek, is there are several reports out today that that was the last straw for CNN management. If you watch the longer clip go on, you will see Poppy Harlow trying to give you a nice goodbye, saying, we'll talk about China the next time you come on. We'll get more into depth into your policies.

And Don Lemon clearly wanted to move right on, saying, and goodbye. It's over. You know, move on. So what do you make of the fact that you may have had a role in CNN's ultimate decision to get rid of him? I think I did. And I think that that's a net positive. Look, I actually want to be really clear about this.

It all comes down to what the mission of your organization is. If CNN's mission is to advance a woke progressive orthodoxy, Don Lemon is a perfectly fine host to have on air to cut off guests, to tell people they can't speak based on the color of their skin, because that does represent a worldview that exists in the country. So if that's aligned with your mission as an organization, that's a perfectly sensible decision to keep that person. But what Chris Licht, the new CEO of CNN, who I've met, who I've had an open exchange and dialogue with a number of weeks or months ago, if he means what he says, and it sounds like he does, that they want to be

moved towards being a more open platform for diverse views, then I don't think that type of host actually makes sense in that organization. So to me, it's not just about cancel culture in the other direction and saying that, hey, Don Lemon, it's a good thing he's fired. The question is, what's your purpose as an organization? And if CNN's purpose is to air multiple different perspectives on air, then I think that you can't have TV hosts who tell guests, whoever they are, that they can't speak or express an idea about post-Civil War reconstruction history in America without thinking about what their skin color or race is first.

The good thing about me, Megan, is I didn't take particular offense to that exchange. I actually found it really useful. I'm glad we did it. It was a little bit awkward to be on set in the Larry David sense of awkward, but that's okay. I can handle that. That's not a problem for me. I think it's actually really important that we surface some of these dogmas and unspoken expectations that have otherwise been simmering beneath the surface of American discourse. I'm all in favor of actually speaking those hard truths. Let those boil over. I think we need to do that as part of our, let's just say, national self-therapy to get to a place where it's not the way that other guests might have approached it to say that, well, because Don Lemon is black and we're talking about a sensitive issue relating to the history of African-Americans in this country, I'm going to tread around that differently. I did not. I spoke to Don Lemon the same way I would have if he were white or any other race.

It doesn't matter. But what was amazing was he had the nerve to call you out on that as though it were improper, that you as a brown skin man didn't have a working knowledge of U.S. history when it comes to American black people enough to opine on it while sitting across from a black man. I mean, that there was some sort of racial hierarchy that would have required you to defer to his opinions about America's history, about historical fact. So that is what the theory of intersectionality, as you well know, is all about. There's a hierarchy of whether you're an oppressor or whether you're oppressed. And if you're lower on that hierarchy, according to that set of rules, you have to either step up and stand up and speak or step back, as they say in their language of the woke movement, to step back and not speak to give the person of the lower rung on that ladder the chance to speak. I reject that worldview. I think we're all co-equal citizens. Everyone's voice and vote counts equally in the open debate and marketplace of ideas.

But in the case of Don Lemon, I was on set with him, Megan. I can tell you what I actually saw happening was that his head exploded a little bit when there were two conflicting ideas that I brought to the fore. And I didn't want to talk about the NRA speech particularly. They're the ones who brought it up. They put an excerpt of my speech up, asked me to respond to it. So I did. The two conflicting ideas were one, if you're in Don Lemon's headspace, civil rights are a good thing. Second Amendment rights are a bad thing. That's just an ossified worldview. And part of what I taught him, it's part of history. It's part of American history.

We just got to go study it. Is that actually the civil rights of black Americans were never secured until they actually enjoyed Second Amendment protections. In fact, part of the black codes that were passed in the Reconstruction era were designed to take guns and gun ownership rights away from black Americans. That's not an accident. The Dred Scott decision, which preceded the Civil War, Chief Justice Taney famously and ignominiously said

that part of the reason black people couldn't be citizens in this country is because it would give them the right to own guns. So this is fundamental stuff, even in Supreme Court doctrine. So I was exposing that history, but that made Don Lemon's head explode because to him, Second Amendment bad, civil rights good, and I'm committing some sort of cardinal sin by mixing the two together when it's just a fact of history that actually one was fundamental to securing the other. And the audience should know that Vivek went to, in addition to his success on Wall Street and so on, went to Yale Law School. I mean, he graduated from Yale Law School.

So, you know, the law, you were prepared for a debate or a discussion on that. But the irony is, if he actually expected you to cede the arguments to him because he's a black man and you're not, he shouldn't have had you on the show. He should have just looked into the camera and offered his own opinions on all these matters. He invited you to be interviewed on his program and then got upset when you actually offered your view and explained why you made the claims about gun rights and so on. And so his intersectionality approach doesn't work. If you want that, go be a pundit. Don't be an interviewer on a national cable show. Yeah, I tend to agree with you on that, Megan. And my whole point is I actually go to these forums precisely because right now there's two alternatives. I present a third. Alternative number one is you go on there, but you have to actually follow the orthodoxy. You have to effectively bend the knee quietly without saying it. Acknowledge that when you're talking about

certain subjects to people of a certain race that you have to tread around it. I don't do that. Option number two is you do that and you come out looking like a villain, which is how they're ready to portray you. I pick a third path. Let's be dignified. Let's actually stick to our arguments without compromising on our principles, but do it unapologetically in a way that surfaces the actual tension underneath that implicit assumption that other people don't talk about. And I think it would be a mistake here to just focus on Don Lemon. I mean, he's, I think, look, I think there's better models for how to succeed in your career as a journalist in staying close to the truth than following Don Lemon's path. But it's not all about him.

He's representing a worldview. I mean, take Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley of the squad. She's not a journalist. She's in Congress. But she basically said the same thing, even more concisely than Don Lemon did a couple of years ago, when she said, we don't want any more black faces that don't want to be a black voice. We don't want any more brown faces that don't want to be a brown voice. That's an exact quote. I don't fit her description of what counts as a brown voice because I reject the premise that your skin color ought to predict anything about the content of the ideas you're allowed to espouse. That is true racism. That is definitional racism to say that I can predict something about the content of your ideas based on the color of your skin. And yet that's become

quietly accepted in much of mainstream culture in America. I will say, Megan, though, I'm optimistic. I think the fact that we're having this conversation on the back of CNN making the decision to actually remove Don Lemon from air, hopefully replace him with somebody who's a more thoughtful journalist. I do think, I'm actually quite optimistic that we're a domino effect, a hair's trigger away from a national revival that rejects this woke orthodoxy that's been an assault on American excellence. You saw it from Netflix about a year ago after the Dave Chappelle controversy. I think this is a good move that Chris Licht has taken at CNN. I think if we keep our optimism alive, right, I think a lot of that woke, woke-ism that has infected institutions over the last several

years, people are hungry for something new. I think it's up to conservatives in this country. This is why I feel called to do it, to lead the way with an affirmative vision of our own, not just being victimized by the victimhood culture, but by actually leading the way with our own vision. Well, we've heard people like Joy Reid explicitly say about black people in America who have heterodox views on this whole wokeism. They're skinfolk, but not kinfolk. That's how they dismiss anybody who sees things the way you do, but happens to be a black man or a black woman. It's absolutely disrespectful and it's racist. I do want to ask you, first of all, did you have that conversation with Chris Licht, the new head of CNN, took over for Jeff Zucker after that

exchange with Don Lemon on the air? It was before. It was beforehand. I thought it was my place to leave them be. I think there was a lot of discomfort after that and they were very respectful of the people who had booked me right after I was off air, but I left that to them.

Well, let me show you the ending. Let me show the audience the very, very last part where Poppy tried to save it. I mean, this is what you do when you're a co-anchor. I've been there when something tense happens.

You try to diffuse the tension a little, keep things nice with the guest before they leave and say nice goodbye, which she attempted to do. And he was clearly irritated by her. And he always lets his irritation show. This is one of the reasons why that morning show is a disaster. They have record low ratings. And his co-hosts very clearly can't stand him. But here was his last parting remark in the whole exchange to Poppy. We appreciate you coming on. With due respect, Don, I look forward to continuing that conversation.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Poppy. We'll talk about China. Yes, next time you come back. Oh, thank you. Much to say on declaring independence from China. Something you can add on now, Okay. Thank you. Thank you. So we can move on now, please. And so the reports are that they'd had it between his reported diva moments and his sexist remarks, the Nikki Haley thing. There's a report this morning, I think it's in the Daily Mail talking about how so many staffers at CNN were actually really ticked off and offended by saying, you know, Nikki Haley's pastor prime, sorry, a woman's pastor prime when she's out of her twenties, thirties, maybe at age 40 and on and on. There's lots of examples, John Lemon,

not liking women. He doesn't, doesn't like women. That's my opinion. It seems pretty clear. He blames everything on women. Anything goes wrong on the set interruption. It's the woman's fault. Trust me, that's his MO blame theame the woman. And so I do wonder. Megan, there's a funny connection there, just to briefly draw it. So he's a man who feels particularly totally free to talk about when women are or are not in their prime and to criticize women for being women, but somehow believes that if you're not black, you can't actually even make a comment about post-war history. So there's a certain rich irony in that if you observe it. That's how the woke are. They have a weird hierarchy that you

really have to be immersed in it to totally understand it. So after that moment when they said goodbye to you, Vivek, what was that? What was it like? It's always kind of fun to get a behind the scenes, you know, wrap up of what happened on set after something like that. Yes. So I had a nice exchange with Poppy. I felt bad for her, to be honest, because I think she had been sidelined in the conversation. She was trying her best. So I told her, look, we have a conversation in China later on. I walked off. I went out of my way to really be thankful to the producers

and those who were on set as well. I think it was awkward for everyone there. So I tried to do my part to bring a lighthearted tone and say they're doing great work and to keep up the beautiful set. That's what I think I told them, which is a nice looking set, I guess. And then I left. And they were very decent about it afterwards. I think they reached out to my people who did the scheduling to effectively apologize for that interaction. But I don't need apologies. I think that this is good, actually, for our country to be able to air this kind of underlying tension in our discourse.

It's just so crazy. It shows the craziness. It's like somebody saying to me, like, women didn't actually, they got the right to vote in 1920, but they didn't actually get their power until 1970. And me saying, no, actually the data show that in the 1960s, they were really coming of age. And somebody being like, no, actually the data show

that in 1974, that's when it started. And me being like, you're a man. I'm a woman. Shut up. People do woman. Shut up. People do that. Shut up. People who say that kind of stuff. It's ridiculous. Thank you for calling it out and giving us a good example of how they operate. Now, you mentioned something because crusading against these woke, you know, pushes in corporate media, in corporate America and so on has been a big issue for you. This is one of the reasons why I love what you're doing. There's an update in the whole Bud Light disaster today, which is just, I think, spectacular. So of course, their stock price fell in the wake of the boycott after they

partner with trans activist or trans person Dylan Mulvaney. And their core audience and core purchasers revolted across America saying, what are you doing? We don't want you dabbling in this stuff. Just serve us our beer. For the love of God, shut up and serve us the beer. And they tried to be quiet. It failed. Their stock price was dwindling and their sales were dwindling.

Then their stock price went a little back up. And the people who are against you on the woke stuff, Vivek, said, oh, it went back up. Ha ha ha. But the real question was, how about the sales? How about the sales? The stock's going to do what the stock's going to do. How are they doing on the sales of Bud Light? Well, now we have an answer to that. And by the way, they saw these numbers before we did, the people at Bud Light. Reading from the New York Post today, Bud Light has suffered a staggering sales hit following its disastrous marketing tie-up with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney. The latest data showing a 17% drop in sales. 17. It only went down, I think, 8% or 6% in the first week after

the controversy. And now it's almost triple that, the drop in sales, and probably going to go up even more. They've now put the woman who made the decision, we're told, Alyssa, on leave of absence, though it was clearly not her idea, and I don't think she's ever coming back, as well as her boss, also on a leave of absence. And I think this is a huge victory. I'd like to see them fired. I think they're fired. So I'm taking the W. However, I think this is an inflection point in these in the battle that you've been fighting and yours truly as well, to a lesser extent, to get these

corporations to stay in their lane and just do their thing. Sell your beer, sell your facial cream, but stop trying to wokeify America. That's what makes America great, is that we have a system of capitalism that is insulated, or at least historically has been, from partisan politics. First of all, that makes companies more successful. Bud Light's just one example among many. Megan, that's what the whole book is about, the Capitalist Punishment book that's out today. That is about why companies are more successful when they are not encumbered by these environmental and social

agendas. But there's something even more fundamental than that, Megan, which is that actually Tocqueville, Alexis de Tocqueville, he made this observation about America. We're a diverse, divided democratic society. We're not supposed to last for more than a couple of generations unless there are these apolitical spaces that bind us together, that literally bring us together. Bud Light is liquid fuel that brings people together at football games, at parties across the country. It's uniting. When that itself becomes politicized, that's really the beginning of the end of the American experiment, if we lose those apolitical sanctuaries that are supposed to hold us together.

And Tocqueville said that back then, too, is America requires what he calls these intermediate institutions. Capitalism is the biggest of those. And so for me, on a personal level, it's not just because I think it makes companies less successful, though that's definitely true. And we see that example on display here. It's that it makes America and our constitutional republic itself less successful. It won't survive if we don't have those spaces where we can come together across the divides of identity politics or partisan politics. I'm with you, Megan. I think

that we are at a potential turning point here. I think people, you know, the woke movement, what it did is the analogy I sometimes have used is it's like when young people are hungry for a cause. They tell them you satisfy your moral hunger by going to Ben and Jerry's and ordering a cup of ice cream with some social justice sprinkles on the side. I mean, effectively, that's been the culture for the last several years. I think that you don't satisfy a moral hunger with fast food. You sort of get that hit initially, but then that starts to fade away and you still realize you're still hungry, hungry for something more substantial, purpose that you derive from something other than corporate virtue signaling. And that's the opportunity in front of us for the conservative

movement. Can we fill that void with a vision of American identity that's actually more powerful, that dilutes the woke agenda to irrelevance? That's a question of American identity that's actually more powerful, that dilutes the woke agenda to irrelevance. That's a question of whether the conservative movement can rise to that occasion or not. That's why I'm in this presidential race. The way it used to be in this country. The way it can be. And the way it can be. How, how, how, how, how? That's the problem. Like I'm with you, 100% with you, but how on earth are we going to get these young people to get back to that? I mean, yeah, teaching civics, what we're going to force them to go back to church. That's up to their parents. The Americans are moving away from religion, away from more children, away from civics. It's depressing. But how can a president

push us back in that direction? Look, I think part of this is there are many hats to wear here. One is a policymaking hat, and I can come to that. But some of this is through the kind of leadership and national character that you set. I don't think we have had a president in this country since Reagan who tied the what, what we're doing, the motions we're going through, to the why, to the principles that actually set the country into motion. And I reject this political worldview that both parties seem to espouse, that human beings are somehow just these biological automatons walking around and we're supposed to bean count them to see how they'll vote. I believe in the power of persuasion. I think people are, especially young people,

Megan, are hungry to be led. I went to, you know, we've done these bus tours for the last few days. I was in New Hampshire on a bus tour. I was in Iowa on a bus tour. South Carolina's a bus tour later this week. We stop at college campuses on these bus tours. I went to one, New England College in New Hampshire, where I was told that other Republican candidates didn't wanna show up at some of these college campuses. Well, you wanna know why? It's because they're gonna get the kinds of questions

that I got, which aren't that different than interaction with Don Lemon on set. But the thing about, unlike Don Lemon, who's making, you know, was making millions of dollars while claiming to be a victim, the difference with young people on these college campuses, they don't really believe the stuff they're fed and spewing back. They're hungry. They're lost. And I think if we can fill that void with even a sense of leadership, talking about understanding that our worst hypocrisies

as a nation are actually our best evidence that we have ideals at all, because to be a hypocrite, you at least had to have those ideals. I think we bring these people along, Megan, because here's the other thing about being 21 years old or 19 years old. You want to stick it to the man. You want to stand up to the system and be a hippie and be countercultural. That's what made the woke movement popular in the first place is that that was sticking it to the system of the people who were in power. Well, now we've come full circle where what began as a challenge to the system of the people who are in power. Well, now we've come full circle where what began as a challenge to the system has become the system. I think we can actually tap into young people's desire

to be heterodox. You don't wanna be heterodox? Call yourself a religious conservative on a college campus. See what that does to you. And I think it takes a certain voice. And I think it takes us, I'm 37. I'm the first millennial to ever run for president as a Republican.

But I wanna use these attributes to reach that next generation. I'm actually optimistic that that opportunity sitting in front of us just through persuasion alone on policy, I could give you a lot of my ideas on how to do it. But actually, I think this other cultural character is almost more important than the policies just follow naturally from that. I'm gleaning. It's almost like you don't feel our current president has this ability. But Vivek, perhaps it's because you have not seen his announcement rally that he held today with thousands of people cheering him on. So, oh, wait, that didn't happen. He announced that he's running for reelection on videotape. And the message was, well, I'll let you react. Here's a bit of it.

All around the country, MAGA extremists are lining up to take on those bedrock freedoms, cutting social security that you paid for your entire life while cutting taxes for the very wealthy, dictating what health care decisions women can make, banning books and telling people who they can love, all while making it more difficult for you to be able to vote. When I ran for president four years ago, I said we're in a battle for the soul of America. And we still are.

I feel uplifted and optimistic about America. How about you? Well, that really sounds like a man who says he wants to deliver national unity by labeling his opponents, people disagree with him as MAGA extremists. Joe Biden said he wanted to run on a vision of national unity. If he was going to deliver it, it would have happened already. By the way, the single most unifying, he had his chance. It was teed up for him. He had his chance to unify this country. You know how he could have done it?

Is when Donald Trump was arrested and indicted by Alvin Bragg, a member of Joe Biden's political party. If Joe Biden had said what I said at that same time, as somebody who was also running against Trump, that this is a politicized prosecution, it's persecution. And even though you shouldn't elect Trump, you know what, this is wrong and we should not arrest our political opponents.

That was his moment for national unity. I don't think he cares about that. But here's the thing that's deeper, Megan. I think it's the joke and the farce in all of this that we may as well call out. Joe Biden's not really the one running for president. Let's just call that for what it is, right? He's over twice my age and then some, but it's not even the age thing. It's his cognitive deficits. They're not a bug. They're a feature for the managerial class who would rather have a hollowed out husk in the White House. They're almost needling the American people. They're almost needling the citizens of this country, laughing, saying, you know how much we rule you as the managerial class, the three-letter acronymists, bureaucratic soup in Washington,

D.C. We can put that guy up, barely mentally competent, present even as a human being. That's who we can put up, and we're still going to run the show for you. That's what this really is. And so when I see myself running against Joe Biden in this race, I'm not running against Biden. I'm running against a puppet, like the Wizard of Oz, the front man for a managerial class that's behind it. That's really the heart of what's going on. And we might as well see that for what it is. And it's also why the DNC, by the way, doesn't want to have debates because they want to make sure the front man for that managerial class isn't subjected to debate from the likes of RFK or Marianne Williamson or anybody else. And so I think it's worth seeing through the farce that somehow this is about Biden and his failure. He's just the stooge who's the front man at the end of it. Vivek is definitely someone we're going to keep an eye on in the months ahead. When we come back, Senator Tim Scott.

Now my interview with Senator Tim Scott from August of last year and episode 370. We talked about his life story, the promise of America, and yes, is now opponent in the GOP primary, Donald Trump. I have to tell you, Tim Scott wasn't that great at the debate. I thought, I'm just being honest, great in this interview. Take a listen. You know, I've always said about Trump, I'm not, I'm not under his spell, but I'm not suffering from Trump derangement syndrome either. So I feel like I'm in a unique position. And I feel like the same is true of you. You've been critical of the president at times.

You've been extremely supportive of him at times. You have beautiful stories in your book about his treatment of people like your mom. So I feel like you're able to criticize him when he's done wrong. But what's happening here really feels like persecution. recoveries and one of the most inclusive economies. But at the same time, he sat down with victims, families whose loved ones lost their lives at the hand of police, and he listened. He was patient, deferential. And what I hope from Lady Justice is when the blindfold is on, the scales are balanced. And what I'm looking at today, I question whether or not there's a thumb or a foot on this scale when it comes to certain people in certain places that we just don't like. That's not America. It's not American.

It's not justice. We as Americans fought for the last 246 years to come to the place where every single person should be judged based on what they do, not who they are, not whether or not we like them. And that's what's so stunning and concerning about the current predicament that we see our Justice Department in. And remember, last week in the Judiciary Committee, Christopher Wray was testifying about inconsistencies in the FBI. So this is not simply about yesterday. The precursor to yesterday was this inconsistent application of justice for a very long time. And now it's heading to the most powerful regions of this country. What does that say to the average person in this nation?

They can't stop going after Donald Trump. They love nothing more than to pursue him criminally, whether it's in the U.S. Senate, trying to get a conviction on the impeachment. And as I mentioned, the New York prosecutors, which that D.A. was under enormous pressure. And to his credit, he said, I'm not doing that one, that we don't have it. And I could go down the list. And the Democrats are ratcheting up the pressure now on Merrick Garland. They want and I'm sure they'd love to see Trump behind bars. They would love that. But what they really don't want is for him to run again and, God forbid, in their view, to win again. I believe in my core that's what this is about. You were on Capitol Hill on January 6th.

You write openly in the book about how scary that was, having to run in the private room with the chaplain praying. Yes. It's not like you didn't get that it was a serious, dangerous day. A terrible day. But this ongoing obsession with pinning it entirely on Donald Trump and slapping criminal charges on him. That's what this is about. What do you think of it? Well, Megan, there's no doubt. I've done a lot of interviews this week trying to make sure that people understand and appreciate what I believe is the future of America and that's us getting along together. That's one of the reasons why America Redemption

Story is so important. And in the book, I talk specifically about January the 6th, and I put the blame exactly where it needs to be, on the shoulders and in the hearts of those entering the Capitol. I put it right where it needs to be as I'm finding an escape route. Those pursuing me should be held responsible for their bad and disgusting decisions at times to come out and come against people like me and other senators. I think through that day, and the one thing that a lot of media refuses to accept, is that the responsibility for individuals is the person in the mirror. Not somebody at 1600 Pennsylvania, but literally the person in the mirror is the one that I must hold accountable for hunting me. What do you mean? Expand on that. Well, as opposed to suggesting that President Trump somehow persuaded these folks to show up with weapons in hand or guns in their sacks to

look for a way to overturn the election, I think that the best thing that I can do is to look at the folks coming down the hallway and hold those individuals responsible for their actions. It's like my mama used to say when I was a youngster, if your friends jump off the bridge, are you jumping off the bridge too? I love your mom's advice, by the way. And I love your grandma's advice too, like pass down generation to generation and how all the top three rules are basically the same rule.

Yes. And it's about personal responsibility. That's been my experience. There's no doubt about it that the more personally responsible we are, the more liberty we will experience. The less we give our lives over to some central control, central command, we'll have a caste system in this nation, and those at the bottom will be stuck there. And that's what I don't know why we don't see clearly into the future under this current drive where the application of justice is inconsistent, where the rules are changed based on who's on the field. That is exactly what we fought against.

It's exactly why I thought this was the time to write a book about hope and unity, forged together through hard work, discipline, perseverance, and tenacity. Those characteristics lead us in the right direction, but blaming somebody else, victimhood, those are the things that lead us in the wrong direction. You know, I listened to you on CBS this morning with Gayle King, and she was all about, is Donald Trump really the best representative of the Republican Party right now? He's crushing in all the polls. As much as the Republicans love Ron DeSantis and he's been a leader on fighting back on some of the woke nonsense. Trump's crushing. I mean, he was the U.S. president just a couple of years ago. So he's going to remain in the lead unless something catastrophic happens, like he goes behind bars. But she was very pressing on,

is he the right representative? I find it fascinating because it exposes her view, the liberal media's view. They hate him. They see him as a devil. They don't understand that there could possibly be a good man in there who actually cares about the country. They see him as entirely narcissistic, selfish, that he doesn't care about the country even a little, that he only cares about getting his name in lights. And this is part of the problem because they're willing to do anything to stop such a man from resuming in power. Megan, there's no doubt when you think about what you just said, and it's so powerful,

clear, and succinct. One of the things I do in the books, I walk people through the Donald Trump when the cameras are off. I walk people through this experience that I had when President Trump calls my mother on her 70th, I'm sorry, I shouldn't say my mother's age out loud, I apologize, 75th birthday though. And it was an unexpected call at an unexpected time, but it was perfectly timed. And literally for 10 or 15 minutes, my mama said for five minutes,

oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. And President Trump was so patient. And then they had a conversation for 10 minutes after two minutes, oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God. And President Trump was so patient. And then they had a conversation for 10 minutes after two minutes of, oh, my God. Why people refuse to see that there's a human under the caricature of Donald Trump, I don't understand. Why people want to judge others by their actions and we judge ourselves by our intentions, it just doesn't make a lot of sense, especially in the echo chambers of justice. I want the echo in our country to sound like fairness. I want the view that the average person coming from the poorest neighborhoods have that in America, the rules are set. And I'm going to judge everybody by the same yardstick, that the same value system that I want

for you is the same value system I'm willing to live under. And your opening monologue was so important in establishing the inconsistencies that we are seeing in this justice department and the way that justice is being applied to one of the most powerful figures of our time. They get away with it because they've convinced their base he's truly evil and must be stopped. He's a uniquely evil force. Yes. And it brings me to two stories in your book, which I found illuminating. One, speaking about your mom, was the trip that you and Donald Trump gave her, the special

trip. I'd love to hear about that. Yes. And then we'll get to Opportunity Zones. But let's talk first about your mom and the special surprise you and Donald Trump arranged for her. Well, Megan, I was talking to the president one day and he said, anything I can ever do, you know, President Trump. President Trump's always saying, you know, whatever in the world you ever want, please give me a call. I'll be happy to help. And I know he means well, but I don't always ask for anything. Usually I don't. And this time I decided to say, you know what, President,

I want my mother to have a once in a lifetime experience. Air Force One would be a once in a lifetime experience. I said that I never followed up on it. It's probably more than a year later. I can't remember exactly how long it was. I get a call. President Trump is inviting my mom on Air Force One. And I will tell you what, I have the pictures to prove it, that it was one amazing experience with a, thank you, a thrilling experience. My mother was so ecstatic about the experience. And President Trump's pulling his chair out for her. And once again, there are no cameras except for the ones taking the pictures. There's no TV show to watch. This was literally a private exchange with the President of the United States on Air Force One

with someone who's been demonized from the day before he took the office, the day before he took the oath. There were already headlines about impeaching President Trump. And yet we don't see the humanity of the individual. And I have been critical of the president when necessary. And so I'm not coming with a lady justice blinders on my eyes. I actually see just fine. And the truth is that I am thankful to live in a country where there is a blindfold on justice. I just want us not to the thing that got me and chatted her up. He said they were laughing so hard. It was hilarious to look back and peek in on a lot of people in his position, even before he was president, even when he was just a big celebrity, would have said, oh, nice to meet you, glad handing and then moved on and didn't wouldn't want to spend an entire air flight, you know, talking to a stranger who's in

her 70s. That I mean, that's just the reality. But he did. He's in his 70s, too. You know, he did and really seemed to want her to have a great time. I mean, I do think that speaks well of him. You acknowledge the abrasive language. We all know President Trump is not perfect. Yes. But to those who think the man's not even human, he's just this monster who's looking who's like drunk on power, wanting to hurt people. It isn't true. There's another side to him. He's human just like the rest of us.

Totally agree. And the fact of the matter is when you think about his response in almost every situation where he and I disagreed, he gave me deference. He gave me enough margin to make my case. And he didn't agree with me all the time, frankly. But he always said, is there an alternative? He gave me the pivot, the opportunity to pivot. And that's such an important quality in the leader of the free world to say to someone that he doesn't have to, I hear you, I see you. Now show me a better way for the nation, not for those who supported me,

because as we talk about opportunities zones in a few minutes, the one thing you'll hear is that the voters that he was helping, the constituents that he helped in that decision, were the ones that he offended. So he wasn't looking for a way to get them back on the team. That may never happen, but he literally went out of his way to hear the painful story and the provocative history of race in this country. And at the same time, respond by saying, let's do something that brings opportunities into the most fragile economic communities in this nation. It was a stunning experience. It's a great story because you write in the book about how you were not happy with the president's comments, you know, in total after Charlottesville. And he had said, you know, in total in after Charlottesville. And he had said, you know, the good people on both sides. And he had said that he condemned the white supremacists. But a lot of people,

especially people in communities of color, were like too close, didn't like it, offended. The messaging should have been really clear. And they didn't think it was. So you made a comment about that publicly and he called you up and said, let's have a meeting. And you write in the book about how you're like, oh boy. You know, I feel how I feel, but I know what it's like, what's going to come my way. I'm in his crosshairs now and he doesn't really lose fights. And so this could be highly unpleasant. So you go, you sit down in the Oval Office with him, and something remarkable happened.

For 20 minutes, what did he do? Listen. Literally listened. I was stunned. I was looking forward to the lecture and hopefully only a 40% drop in my approval ratings at home. But that's not what happened. He actually did what people say he never does. And frankly, I've seen him do it almost every time I've been with him.

He actually, Megan, he listened. And he didn't just listen waiting for his turn to talk. He listened to the pain and the misery that so many African Americans have had to endure over generations, over a century. And as I talked through my grandfather's life and all the pain and the misery and the misdeeds that came his way, President Trump was silent. And when we finished, he did not embrace necessarily my entire view of race or equality, but he didn't reject it either. He simply said, help me help those I've offended. Now, that's amazing. For the president of the United States who catches more Hades than the law allows to say and said, let me tell you what we're going to do.

Instead of doing that, he simply said, show me the way. And I offered him something that he understood, which was let's create by redeveloping poor communities. And he said, I'm a developer. I understand incentives. And literally we were off to the races. And without his support, we would not have seen in 2019, $29 billion from the private sector invested into the poorest communities across America that led to the lowest level of poverty ever recorded in America and only a 4% gentrification rate in those communities. It's a stunning success story that he gets so little credit for, especially when it comes to the important topic of race and fairness in America.

Well, he and you, because you've been trying to sell that for a long, long time. And you had no takers in the Oval Office prior to President Trump. Truth. It was sort of divine right order, right? Because it's like you point out his, suddenly without even realizing it, you were talking his language, development. This is his business, right? So he was like, yes, I get it. Let's do tax incentives for these big corporations to want to build in these opportunity zones,

which tend to be largely minority, these inner city pockets that have dealt with more blight than they have opportunity. And that's what happened. He made it happen. It was stunning. And frankly, when I think about even in my little state of South Carolina, the greatest state in all of the nation, the one thing I can tell you without any question is you go to a rural part of South Carolina called Hampton County. They haven't seen a hundred jobs created probably in the last five years because of opportunity zones. There's this new thing called an Agricultural Tech Center being developed in rural South Carolina, $300 million investment, 1,500 new jobs, permanent jobs, plus construction jobs, all because President Trump and I got

together in the Oval Office after an obstacle, and we turned that obstacle into opportunities. And that's why I'm so convinced that America's greatest days are ahead of her. When two people who disagree on something can do it without being disagreeable, we can see the most remarkable things happen in the greatest country on earth. And when you read America, a redemption story, you'll hear more of those stories where the success of this nation came right after of those stories where the success of this nation came right after a failure, where the obstacles that we have all had to endure as a country presented the best opportunities. And the pain of our past has become the promise of our

amazing future. I think it's so insightful because I do think that, you know, to see them go after Trump again, it's like he's already had to deal with the ruination attempted of his first term. Yes. You know, with the Russiagate, which did not hold up, to put it mildly. Zero. Right. Two impeachments, the criminal prosecutions, the going after his family, his close advisors. You know, half of his administration has now been publicly embarrassed by Merrick Garland's DOJ and cuffs and, you know, prosecuting people for contempt of Congress when they never did that under Democratic organizations or representation. In any event, I think people have had it like this is a bridge too far what they're doing to him. He he he's rough around the edges. I have all people know that. And he can do the mean tweets and all

that. But there's a bigger story about President Trump. And it's exactly that Opportunity Zone story. It's what he did, what he made up for in sort of finesse, I guess, for lack of a better word, what he lacked in finesse, he made up for in policy that actually changed lives. I could tell you the same story about women, you know, in the anti-sex trafficking act, which they could not get through with any other president. But then Donald J. Trump, despite his some of his language about women and some of the accusations that have been made against him, he's the one who got it through. Right. So it's like these Democrats have been told a story that is agenda driven by the MSNBCs of the world. And the consequences of that are in the news every day.

This is just the latest example. Well, Megan, you said it right. And one of the most important things that you've said is how exhausted Americans are with all the division, with all the sniping back and forth. It's one thing to target someone, but to target them for every single day of their administration and every single day after they've left, it's exhausting to watch. And whether you're Republican or Democrat, whether you are conservative or progressive, the one thing we should all want is a consistent standard of justice applied to all Americans. And the one thing that we're seeing today is the contrast between justice for those we like and justice for those we don't like. And frankly, we know that if there are two standards,

there's only injustice. There is no justice. And one of the things I struggle with through the book was the injustices that I felt that I was a victim of. And my grandfather walked into me one day and said, you're never a victim. You may have been victimized in your life, but you have to choose today. Are you a victim or are you going to be victorious? There's only one road ahead. If you're going to be a victim, you will always be a victim. And if you're going to be victorious, you will have to overcome the challenges that present themselves in your face. And I'm thinking to myself, my grandfather born in 1921 in Sally, South Carolina, in the deep South, stepping off of a sidewalk if a white person was coming.

This is the guy that's telling me not to be bitter and to never be a victim. The man that was forced to stop his education in the third grade who never learned to read is telling me, don't let what people call you decide what you answer to. This is a man whose wisdom was beyond my years and his years combined, but it was a man who had so much faith in America that somehow, some way, his children and his grandchildren would experience a very different America. And I am so thankful that I am. I'm experiencing in many ways the best of what America is. And as you look at my grandfather, you look at my mother, you just know that the scars that they bear, I am now able to use that

scar tissue to make it easier for the next generation. It shouldn't be about those of us in elected office. It shouldn't be about a swamp in Washington. It shouldn't be about those of us in elected office. It shouldn't be about a swamp in Washington. It shouldn't be about the capitals in the nations, the capitals around the country. It should be about the people. The people are our greatest blessing, not those who are in government. The whole book has this same tone in that you could easily look back at your grandfather's life, your dad's experience, your mom's experience and say, this is a racist country and there is no redemption. And instead, you see it very differently. You see it as, yes, there's racism. There always has been, but we are making steady progress. We appeal to our better angels. We've been going in the

direction of the angels steadily for the past hundred years plus. And my grandfather's story and my family's story is evidence of that. One of the stories that stood out to me is, you know, you point out that the guy who held your Senate seat for, I don't know how many years, a couple of generations ago. Yes. Cottonhead. Yes. Can you tell us? Make that point, because I was like, my God, that's very illuminating. So Cottonhead, I believe it was what we called him, had my seat, gosh, two generations ago. And he was an avowed racist

who literally was undeniably wanting blacks out of the country and certainly out of any leadership positions. And one of the stories I tell there is that I now have that man's seat because it was never his seat. Like, it's not my seat. The seat always belongs to the American people or in South Carolina to the Gamecock fans and I guess the Tiger fans as well. But the truth is that in America, political seats continues to evolve. Thanks for joining us today. I want to remind you that tomorrow will be my lengthy sit down with former President Donald Trump. Don't miss it. If you'd like to hear it live for the very first time, tune in at noon east on Sirius XM Triumph Channel 111. And then all

video platforms like YouTube, Rumble, and Facebook, and all audio platforms, including Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, Pandora, all of it, will have it shortly after the show airs live, per usual. See you then. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.