The Megyn Kelly Show - Did Comey Leak to NYT, Leftists Want More DC Crime, and Fixing CA, with John Solomon, Steve Hilton, Rich Lowry, and Charles Cooke

Episode Date: August 13, 2025

Megyn Kelly is joined by John Solomon, founder of "Just The News," to discuss new documents revealing classified info leaks between former FBI Director James Comey and the New York Times, why the previous DOJ refused to bring charges, what we know about the intermediary between Comey and the media, what we know about how the FBI spun the media, the New York Times and Washington Post winning Pulitzers for false Russiagate reporting, and more. Then Rich Lowry and Charles C.W. Cooke of National Review join to discuss how Trump’s push to make DC safer is enraging the left, Judge Jeanine Pirro’s fiery response to the claims that crime is down, MSNBC’s Symone Sanders arguing that more police makes black people feel less safe, how the left is fighting Trump by keeping homeless people on the streets, handing out “help” whistles as resistance to a “fascist” regime, how Monica Lewinsky is comparing her past paparazzi experience to illegal migrants and “feeling hunted,” how she continues to focus on her past experience at the White House in everything she talks about, the left's nonstop victimhood, and more. Then Steve Hilton, candidate for California governor, joins to discuss how Gavin Newsom destroyed the state, Newsom's focus on himself over helping the people, the ongoing homeless problem, how the hundreds of millions raised after the wildfires haven't gone to help the residents, the hope for a return to normalcy in California, and more. Solomon- https://justthenews.com/Cooke- https://twitter.com/charlescwcookeLowry- https://www.nationalreview.com/Hilton- https://stevehiltonforgovernor.com/ Pique: Get 20% off your order plus a FREE frother & glass beaker with this exclusive link: https://piquelife.com/MEGYNByrna: Go to https://Byrna.com or your local Sportsman's Warehouse today.CHEF iQ: Visit https://CHEFIQ.com and use code MK for 15% off sitewide.Tax Network USA: Call 1-800-958-1000 or visit https://TNUSA.com/MEGYNto speak with a strategist for FREE today Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms:YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at:https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow 

Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at noon east. Hey, everyone, I'm Megan Kelly. Welcome to the Megan Kelly show. We've got new reporting today on the intelligence leaks aimed at undermining President Trump before and during his first term in office and the complete lack of care, or so it would seem, by the intelligence community. Yesterday, we began the show with just the new. news is John Solomon. Today we're going to do the same as he's got yet another big piece on his website this morning. This one involves newly declassified intelligence from FBI director Cash Patel that squarely points the finger at former FBI director James Comey. Both men in the same job, one fully transparent, one quite the opposite. I mean, Comey wanted a message out there, that's for sure. He did want to communicate with the press. He just wanted to do it behind the scenes and with classified information and through intermediaries so his fingerprints weren't on it, as opposed to Cash Patel, who just calls up random reporters and says, here, take this or has a press conference saying, here, look at everything. This latest piece is about how James Comey, while the FBI director, used a friend at Columbia University to help craft his image as he pushed up. false misleading and classified information. It appears the intermediary says he can't be sure.

He doesn't think he, he doesn't think he passed on class of information, but it certainly appears he did, to the New York Times. And in particular, to the reporter over there, Michael Schmidt, who went on to win Pulitzer Prizes for his Russiagate reporting. And while some of this was known before, we are now filling in some major details on exactly how this shit went down. Joining me here to break it down. What's new, what's old, and where it could lead is John Solomon of Just the News. John's the founder of Just the News. Afternoons can be rough. Energy fades, cravings kick in, focus goes out the window. The quick fix, another coffee, but that can lead to jitters or a crash later or can interfere with sleep. Peaks, Sun Goddess, Macha, is another

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to try it for yourself. Again, that's P-I-Q-U-E-Life.com slash Megan. John, great to see you again. So you mentioned that you thought this was going to hit last night. It did hit last night. And explained to us what exactly you are reporting that's new, because I think we knew prior to last night that Comey was leaking through a Columbia University professor friend of his to the New York Times. Yeah, we've known for about four years now, five years, that he used Richmond to leak some memos after he was fired by President Trump that related what Comey's side of these alleged conversations with the president. None of those were deemed, at least the things that Richmond provided the media were deemed to have classified information in them. What we now learn is that the FBI look, and we learned that from the Inspector General, the Justice Department, so administrative expenditure general investigation, which, by the way, severely criticized Comey for not following the rules and requirements of being FBI director, not even following his non-disclosure agreement and the way he leaked information.

What we didn't know until the last 24 hours when Cash Patel transmitted these documents to Congress and Justin News got a set of them is that the FBI looked at Richmond and at least two other top lieutenants of James Comey for leaking possible classified information. And for the first time, we get a very detailed response of how Mr. Richmond, a Columbia University law professor who was put on the taxpayer's payroll, so he could burnish James Comey's image. What he said his motive was, what he was doing with the New York Times, and how he addressed the leak, a question of whether he leaked confidential information. Let me just have you there.

I want to start this discussion, the same place we started it yesterday, which is the FBI cares very, very deeply about the leak of classified information. We know that because they indicted a president for doing it. They indicted a former president who has the ability to declassify information with really the wave of his hand,

the stroke of a pen. in Donald Trump. So they went after him for having classified information at Maralago. They accused him of waving it around in a document, allegedly showing it off. That's bad. That's bad. We have to have the rule of law, they told us. So he got indicted down in Palm Beach County, Florida by Jack Smith in a federal prosecution after an FBI raid of Maralago looking for said classified documents because it's very,

very wrong to have classified information or to leak classified information that you shouldn't. And yet the FBI, the same organization, when confronted with the reality that its director, James Comey, was running classified information through his Columbia University pal to the New York Times, didn't seem to give two figs, John. Well, I want to be fair to the FBI. The FBI agents themselves seemed to give quite a few figs. They were working hard to solve this. What they couldn't do was get the Justice Department, other under Donald Trump or under Joe Biden to bring any charges. But they did a pretty good job of figuring out who they thought the leakers were. And I think one of the great moments, and that's why they land on Richmond, right? Let's walk through one of the episodes that the memo lays up.

Combe is still FBI director at this point. Richmond meets with Comey. Richmond's on the taxpayer's payroll. This is interesting. He's an outside lawyer. He's brought in as a special government in play, which means you and I are paying his salary. And his goal is to work around the press office that we all already pay for for the FBI and who's trained and how to handle these issues. And Comey gets him a top secret security

clearance so that he can access all the information that Comey wants to leak. That's right. He basically has the same level of security clearance as Comey, high level up to SCI. That's especially compartmental intelligence. So he's being treated like a guy. He's an insider of the FBI. He's not. He's working around the press office that you and I also pay for him. And his goal, isn't specifically to do the work of the FBI. He says his goal was to burnish James Comey's tattered or hammered. I think he uses the word hammered image and to set future narratives, i.e. Russia collusion, i.e. Donald Trump is a Russian steward who should be indicted and that he tried to obstruct his friend James Comey. So we now know that's what he told the

FBI under penalty of being charged with lying to the FBI if you don't tell the truth. And then he's in a meeting he gets access to very sensitive highly classified information and the and then a short while later he has a conversation with mike smith who then eventually writes a story based on that classified information and this gentleman mr richmond says oh yeah we talked about it he seemed to already know about it i don't think i confirmed it and i'm sure with a discount i'm sure quote, comma, with a discount, comma. I didn't give him the information. Now, who needs a discount on truth when you're denying whether you leak something?

This is like one of the great non-denial answers in American history. Sort of like when Bill Clinton said in his grand jury testimony, I don't think I lied on Monica Lewinsky, because it really depends on what the meaning of the word is, is. It was once considered to be one of the greatest dodges in a grand jury testimony. Here he's talking to the FBI, and he qualifies his denial by saying, I'm sure with a discount, meaning you better give me some cut on this, I didn't leak. That's the dead end that the FBI found itself.

And they believed and went to the Justice Department. And the Justice Department said, no, we're not going to prosecute him. Just like they said, no, we're not going to look at Adam Schiff. And this was this, which Justice Department and which Attorney General? There are, they occur, they make multiple inquiries in the U.S. Attorney's Office of Washington, 17, 18, 19, and 20. I think the case memo eventually closes in late 19 or 20. At that time, I think Bill Barr would most likely have been Attorney General or coming on as Attorney General. So this is a Trump declination, though obviously at the career level. I doubt it got to the top levels of the political

appointees. And why would the DOJ decline to go after him, Comey? And let's go back to what we discussed yesterday, the high-level congressional staffer who said Adam Schiff said he was going to leak classified information and that he could get away with it because he was going to say the speech and debate clause was going to protect him. So why would under the Trump administration, these DOJ officials have repeatedly said we're not interested? Yeah. The answer is they didn't fail like they could prove with 100% certainty given the denial or the non-denial or the qualified denial that mr richmond said denial with a discount yeah the denial with the discount one will remember for a long time i think um and in every and by the way there turns out in yes in this

morning story there are literally six code name classified leak investigations the fbi opened six criminal um investigations they all had fun code names like arctic frost or christmas something they had all these weird names but in all of them the same result occurred the justice Department declined prosecution and people will say okay and then they go after Donald Trump but then when they find Joe Biden's classified documents they don't prosecute him what you see in this history when you take everything from Richmond and some other lieutenants of the FBI I want to get to that in a second something Pan Bondi's Justice Department did that probably has to be

reversed you see that if it's a Democrat Hillary Clinton our classified emails on the server or if If it's a friend of Democrats, James Comey, you're not going to get indicted. They'll make up some explanation from why they've decided it's too hard to prosecute you. But if you're Donald Trump, and even though you might have the declassifying power, we're going to raid your home with a show of force, we're going to go through your drawers, and then we're going to indict you. And I think when you look at that track record, it is an undeniable track record that people are treated different

in almost the identical circumstances. And it's very troubling. They don't want to go after anybody with power. And you can see why maybe even people at the top of Trump's DOJ, potentially at the 1.0 we're talking about, and or FBI, didn't have the appetite to go after the former FBI director, a person who's in an equally powerful position to the one that they hold now or the identical position of the one that they were holding then.

But those rules don't apply for Donald Trump, right? And you're hearing it right now as people are saying, how dare they discuss Barack Obama facing criminal indictment? How dare they talk about indicting a former president? The clueless, John, given that they're the ones who set all these new standards that we are going to do all that. Well, listen, the cluelessness, the greatest aider in the betters of the last 10 years of misery that this country has been put through through false scandals and false stories

and false narratives and weaponization is the co-conspirators that these actors had in the media. When you look at what Mr. Richmond, Daniel Richmond's talking about when he's dealing with Michael Schmidt in the New York Times, he admits he had a motive. My motive wasn't to give a complete story to the New York Times. It was to make sure that James Comey looked better than he had looked and to set narratives that were going to be out there. We now know those narratives. Because why does he need access to classified information if all he needs to do is make James Comey look like a good man? It's a great question, right? These are really important questions that didn't get fully addressed.

I mean, the inspector general says, hey, it was really a bad thing. James Comey's a bad guy, did a lot of bad things. Okay, but there's no penalty. We got fired, and I guess he lost his job, but at the end of the day, is that enough consequence to create deterrence so that this system doesn't go on? And I think we're at that moment of wrecking. And I think Pam Bondi is going to be the question we all have in our minds. Will this matter?

Will these disclosures matter compared to all the other ones we've gotten out in the last 10 years? It's going to come down to two very important people in the administration, the Attorney General Pam Bondi. Can she break the track record of failure prior AGs to create punishments to people who engage this, Barr, Sessions, Rosenstein, and Garland? And then can Tulsi Gabbard, as the chief of the intelligence community, restructure, rewire an intelligence community that has gone from being neutral defenders against terrorism and counterintelligence threats to political, hacks trying to carry out political dirty tricks on the American people. The future of this country on those two questions are probably going to be decided by those two very important cabinet secretaries, and I don't know which way it's going to go. We're going to have to watch. Okay, before we get back to Bondi, let's just spend another minute on the Comey reveal and his use of this guy, Daniel Richmond.

Now, first of all, can we just, the level of vanity that this man has, really, I mean, for many years, Unknown. When Comey first came on the scene, like early Donald Trump before, you know, like, let's say late in the last administration, Comey was very well respected. He seemed like, you know, regular Joe Friday, like, you know, you're a classic FBI man. I think I actually once compared him to Chief Justice John Roberts, who I've joked many times, was born in his little cradle with his black robot. You know, it just seems like somebody who was born for this role from birth. Yeah, for the role. You right? Central casting. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, seemed totally squeaky clean, kind of like a Robert. Boy, were we wrong.

I asked my team to pull this shot of Comey. And the reveal on him has been slow, but very, very telling. Before he sat down with George Stephanopoulos a couple years ago for his big interview with, it was before he dropped his book. And he posted a picture of himself under the Kleege lights with the ABC News cameras, like, set up. And look, he's like so excited. Who posts this? I actually can't read the caption, but it was him anticipating and teasing and how he was so excited to sit

down with Stephanopoulos. So this man who posted that is reflected perfectly in the documents you posted last night with this Daniel Richmond, the image burnisher. Yeah. Listen, there's an earlier episode where I kind of ran into Comey. It was an AP reporter back in 03 and and 4, and there's a moment where they need to renew the Patriot Act. And John Ashcroft, the then Attorney General, is about to go in for a medical procedure.

And they're trying to get him while he's basically under the anesthetic to sign off of the Patriot Act. And Comey kind of portrays himself as a white horse hero there in some of the leaks that occurred around that time. And I think that that was the first clue that this guy was more than just your classic law enforcement. Most of him, my dad was caught for 46 years. He just didn't talk to the media. And he didn't care what people thought about him. He cared about what people thought of the work they did every day. Did we do it right?

That's what most people who come cops do. In James Comey's case, I think how people looked at him was just as important about whether he did the job right. That's why he gallops out with absolutely no legal authority and decides on July 5th, 2016. He's going to wave a magic wand that's not his to wave and say, I've decided, because I'm better than Loretta Lynch. I'm clearing Hillary Clinton of wrongdoing in the email case. And at the moment, he's done that. What makes that even more extraordinary is the stuff we just learned. from the classified annex that Chuck Grassley and President Trump got released.

We know the FBI just got a batch of new documents, five thumb drives of some of the missing emails, and they decided not to look at it, even though that is perhaps one of the biggest leads in the case. They don't look at it. James Comey just goes out and says, I'm going to be God, prosecutor, judge, and FBI director, and I'm clearing her, even in the face of new evidence that needed to be investigated.

I think that's the James Comey that history will see. Do we know, actually, because what, you know, I haven't been anywhere near as close to the story as you have over the past few years, but what jumped out of me with the Tulsi reveals was in the documents, there was a correspondent showing that Loretta Lynch had been told by the FBI, hey, it's, the Russians have emails and documentation showing that you assured the Hillary Clinton team. that the investigation we, the FBI, are pursuing under her emails, won't go, quote, too far. So you need to be aware that it's out there that you have reassured the Hillary team that you've given us that directive. And on the heels of that, Comey runs to the cameras

and says, we're not going to indict Hillary. And my only thought in watching it was, is that, and reading this last week was, was that his attempt to be like, I'm not influenced, do you see? Like, I, Loretta didn't. tell me. She didn't tell me to drop this. I just dropped it. Like he had to get ahead of it before she got too crooked and actually gave him the explicit order. I really don't know.

But why did he do that? You know, I've heard a lot of people say that's a God complex because no FBI director, no, every FBI director knows they don't have the authority to make prosecuting decisions. It wasn't his decision to make. No, they're the investigators. The DOJ, the lawyers are the ones who try the case. Yeah. Yeah, there's a separation between the FBI. FBI investigates justice decides charging decisions, and he didn't let the Justice Department do it. And whether his motive was good or not, and I think later we'll determine he had a lot of other motives that don't look good. So let's see where that goes. It wasn't his call to make. And I think what you're going to learn in the next 24 or 48 hours, Megan,

something I've been working on for a long time. I finally think we'll be getting these documents in the next few hours. You're going to see on James Comey's watch a direct political interference, both from Comey's team and from the Obama Justice Department shutting down three, two or three criminal cases looking at Hillary Clinton, not on the emails, which is what we've all been focused on for the last decade, but on possible bribery and political corruption related to the Clinton Foundation. And you're going to know the names of the people. Say it ain't so. Chelsea Clinton assures me on X that it is an above board organization, John, and my suspicions of it are totally unfounded. I'm sure that I've heard that same thing from the listen she took over at a later time so maybe she gets to claim that going forward after she took over things were clean but the FBI had three two or three separate investigations going on we'll get that ironed out in the next hour

or two but and each time you see a political hand sometimes from the justice department the one he's allegedly trying to protect his bureau from and sometimes from his own team his own leadership team telling agents, I know you got a predicated case, shut it down. I think we're going to find out whether this guy really always operated by these moral standards or not based on what we learn in this next batch of documents. But, you know, I think history is going to look at Comey as one of the darker errors in the history of the FBI. And by the way, the FBI has some dark errors. There's some periods during the Jay Edgar Hoover era that aren't great. But I think the Comey error is going to be looked at as a dark time in the history of federal law enforcement.

Wow. I mean, no wonder he was so worried about burnishing his good guy image, right? It's always the ones who are terrible who give that any thought. It's like, then you have Donald Trump out there who's like, he doesn't care what you hear about him. He doesn't care what the papers print about him. Like he may gripe about it, but he's certainly not out there trying to like secretly burnish his image. He doesn't care. He'll speak to the cameras directly and let you decide who he is. Wait, on the Comey leak and using. Daniel Richmond and all this. Let's talk for a minute about to whom we believe they were leaking. And that's Michael Schmidt of the New York Times, the guy who won Pulitzer Prizes for his Russia Gate reporting. Just today. And some other reporting, too, in fairness to him. It wasn't all Russia. You won a second. Yeah, I think you won two Pulitzer's in one year, something for something else. But yeah, he's one of the members of that team that President Trump is suing over that Pulitzer right now. So just today, the New York Times' Daily podcast, The Daily, took on the Russia gate, or as Molly Hemingway is calling it, Obamagate stories that have broken since Tulsi started

making these releases. She's right. She's totally right. So they finally got around to covering it over the, on the New York Times. Like, is this a story or isn't it? I mean, I'll give you one guess what they concluded. But guess who they bring on to tell us all there's no there there. No one did anything wrong. This is all made up. And we don't need to be looking into this really any further. Michael Schmidt. Yeah. Who's named. It's all over your documents.

You're reporting. Molly's reporting. Michael Schmidt was used by the administration as their stenographer, the Obama administration, as their stenographer, to get these stories out there, this guy Daniel Richmond was talking to Schmidt for Comey. And yet, I didn't hear a word about any of that when Michael Schmidt was on today's New York Times podcast. Here's how he sounded instead, John Solomon. Listen to this. In the aftermath of Trump winning the 2016 election, it was widely understood that Russia had meddled in the campaign. And they find that Putin tried to hurt Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump.

But for Trump, this document, this assessment, was the original sin. Because what it did was cast doubt on his victory. What Gabbard is starting to do is declassified documents that she claims irrefutable. prove that not only is the assessment a bunch of nonsense, but it's at the heart of a criminal conspiracy. So she releases a classified report that Putin was not trying to help Trump and hurt Hillary Clinton. There's nothing in that report,

like an email from Obama to his intelligence community saying, I don't care what the evidence shows, we need to get Donald Trump. She is making this out like the smoking gun. When it comes to Russia, Trump will always be the victim and he will always be the hero. With his supporters, he says. And he dismisses that House intelligence report that she just declassified, the one that was found in the safe at the CIA's headquarters,

as that was all Republicans. You can't put any stock in that. That's right. And this is all BS. None of these allegations has been sustained. Michael Schmidt's comments don't reflect the New York Times the way they would have reported a story in the 1980s or 1990s when I was coming up as a reporter.

And I want to tell you a story because it's out there in the form of the Columbia Journalism Review and another great reporter who worked at the New York Times for three decades, one multiple political. as I recall, Jeff Gertz. He did a reevaluation of how the New York Times and Washington Post got snookered on Russia. And it was done in the Columbia Journalism Review,

which is painful because the Columbia Journalism View sits right alongside of the Columbia Pulitzer Prize Committee, where it is there. But he laid bare some of the most extraordinary moments in the failures of reporting in the New York Times. Yeah, they got a Pulitzer, but did they really cover a scandal? Did they really do the public a favor? There's a very important episode,

and I have personal experience. with it, so I want to hone in on it because it's how I see myself different from Mike Schmidt. A lot of people said to me early on, John, why didn't you do a lot of reporting in October, November, December, January, and February of 17, you only click in in March and start raising questions about this. And the short answer is, I did do some reporting. I had gotten some intelligence pushed to me by people close to the Clintons. And I went to the New York Times, I'm sorry, I went to the FBI's press office, not Daniel Richmond, but the career people who are trained to tell the media what they're allowed to tell the media about FBI matters.

And they told me flat out, John, yeah, we're looking at this, but right now there's no there ironically. That's the same line that Pete Strzok would later use in his text message, no big there there. And listen, we looked at some of this stuff. We think the alpha bank things are pings, and we think that the other stuff might just have some political election stuff tied to it. So I stood down. Just to be clear, this is somebody trying to get you to report that Trump is a Russian

asset or there's some sort of collusion and Russia and Trump are colluding to win the election. And the FBI originally is telling you, there's no, there, John. Okay. October 31st, 2016, the FBI tells the New York Times the exact same story. They write a story basically saying this stuff isn't true. And then somehow it magically becomes true. over the next six months in the New York Times. And I ask myself, you know, hey, it is possible that the career people I talked to and the FBI lied to me, but I don't think so.

And the reason I don't think so is every time I would call back and check with them in January, in February, March, because I'm starting to see the hyperventilation of the Washington Post in the New York Times, the career people inside the FBI. The people trained to know what the FBI is doing and to try to give the most accurate answer they can to the media without violating the law. keep saying, John, our answer stands to you from October. It's not true. Alpha Bank's not true. We don't think the steel dossier is uncorroborated. We looked at it. It's uncrowded. It's unfortunate that BuzzFeed put it out there. So I have to ask myself, was Michael Schmidt and the New York Times talking to the same people I was? Because history showed those people were right, and the New York Times and its breathless coverage are wrong. And there's one story

that bothers me. The most early seminal moment in my career as an AP reporter was at the very beginning of the Internet era when the Wall Street Journal in the middle of the Bill Clinton, Monica Lewinsky scandal, broke a story off cycle. They weren't going on print edition. They did something on the Internet. It might have been the first time. We're talking like 1997-98. Really early. We weren't used to the Internet then. Most newspapers had a 24 cycle, or you just did it once a day. So they break a story. in the middle of day saying that a steward told the grand jury, Ken Starr's Whitewater Prosecutor of Grand Jury,

that President Bill Clinton was found in a compromising position with Monica Lewinsky in the White House theater, I believe it was, a bowling alley or theater. And, you know, I'm at the AP. My job is, you better get that fast to match at Solomon. Everyone tells me, it's wrong, it's wrong, it's wrong. To my credit, my boss is a great newsleader named Sandy Johnson. and she stood by her reporters and didn't make us report it.

We eventually wrote a story saying it's been knocked down. It's not true. The Wall Street Journal withdrew that story. On its front page, they retracted a story that they'd put out wrong on the Internet. The New York Times in February 17 writes a story basically to the effective that the U.S. intelligence has proof that Donald Trump's campaign was talking to U.S. Russian intelligence campaign about hijacking the 2016 election. that story has, is, and never will be true.

It has never been retracted. In fact, James Comey even said the story wasn't true in some testimony after he left as director. The New York Times has never retracted that story. Yeah, they've written stories having people criticizing it, but history has shown that story's wrong. It should be retracted. Those are the differences between the way you and I practice journalism and the way they continue to practice journalism today.

The other reporter whose name has come up time and time again is this Ellen Nakashima, who is with the Washington Post, and she appears to have been on the receiving end of these same leaks or related leaks. She was all over the news during the relevant time frame pushing her BS reporting. Here's just a sample of that. The topic of the Kremlin's influence operations has a particular resonance for me. because in June of 2016, I broke the story of the Russian hack of the Democratic National Committee. And I distinctly remember at the time that this was a big front page story, sort of Watergate, you know, the Watergate break in all over again, but in the information age. It's not just the Russians that exploit all of this. We have internal domestic actors that put out divisive messages from the left, from the right,

and Russia amplified those messages. When I talk to people inside the government, the sources, it's not even per se to have someone, oh, please leak me something classified. No, it's more this, it's the value I get as a national security reporter is in the relationship built up over time, one of trust in which I find I have developed, You know, a relationship with someone I consider to be authoritative and knowledgeable and well-meaning and who, if they have trust in me, can explain some things in terms of context, history, significance, not so much an actual, you know, operation or something really highly classified, but rather the history behind things.

So what about her, John? Do we believe she was also on the receiving end of the Jim Comey? leaks or possibly the Adam Schiff leaks or where? In disclosure, I worked with Ellen when I was at the Washington Post. I didn't find her anything but a professional reporter in the newsroom. The documents I saw yesterday show that she published classified information and they couldn't determine who the provider of that information was. Now, I want to point something out in the documents I published this morning, which are the ones

that went to the Capitol Hill. And you will see that there's large blacked-out sections of some of these memos, large blacked-out section. In fact, the most tantalizing one is something to the effect of Mr. Richmond told us, James Comey told them not to leak, but, and then it's all blacked-out, the but. And you're like, what is there? I think I know what might be there. And unfortunately, the Trump Justice Department, Trump 2.0 Justice Department, made some redactions to these documents. they may have a legitimate reason. We're trying to press through and negotiate and see if there's some way for the American

public to see this. But I believe in some of these blacked out areas, there are two more lieutenants of James Comey, not named Daniel Richmond, who may also have acknowledged their role in the leaking campaigns. And I think we should wait and see if we can get that information released by Pam Bondi or the Justice Department. If it can be lawfully released, I think it will create a more 360-degree stereo look at how Comey operated and how some of these leaks operated over time. Again, just because a reporter got a classified leak doesn't mean they're a bad person. I once got one of the most classified

stories in the history of this country. No, getting the leak doesn't. Getting the leak doesn't. Getting the story wrong and never correcting it does. That's right. That's exactly the thing here. And I haven't done an evaluation of Ellen Nakashima's reporting yet. I certainly am going to now based on these new documents, because she's a new sort of figure in this, I will point out something about the Washington Post. And for a period of time when my old Associated Press colleague, Sally Busby, was there, I think they tried to clean up some of their Russia reporting. They did about 12 or 13 appendages and corrections to stories,

and Sally, I worked with at the AP. She was trained, I think, like you and I were, which is we stick to the facts, and when we get it wrong, we admit it. There's nothing wrong. The only thing it wrong is not admitting you were wrong when you are. And so there was a period where the Washington Post cleaned up some of its reporting. But about four months ago, I obtained a document under, I believe it's under FOIA. I got it.

And it is the confidential interview of the NSA director, Mike Rogers, saying that one of the Washington Post Pulitzer winning stories that claimed that Donald Trump said something to Mike Rogers during their meeting that was incriminating, Mike Rogers said was, quote, wrong. The story is wrong. And he debunks it in detail in an FBI interview, which means he probably wasn't the source of the Washington Post story because he was pretty critical of it. I went to the Washington Post. Sally Busby is no longer there, and I got crickets when I asked them, are you going to correct this story? I check back every few weeks.

I haven't seen a correction. That is a problem, just like the New York Times story from February of 2017 is a problem. And I think you've, I don't know if that's an Ellen Shore. I have to look. I don't think it was. But your point is right. when you don't correct when you're wrong, you've really deserved the public. Alan's stories are about, for example, the Russians hacking the Democratic National Committee,

which now it appears is wrong. It does not appear that they were necessarily behind that league, or at least now we have information that it wasn't down on that particular league. I really want to address that because it does get, even in the conservative media, it gets gabbled up a little bit. Everybody I've talked to, critics, and believe. in the Intelligence Committee believe that John Podesta's emails, which were not the DNC emails, were hacked. And there's pretty good reason for that. And the FBI had prime of face the access

to the evidence. They could actually see what happened with John Podesta's email. So the Russians were involved in that. That's an influence operation. By the way, not uncommon. The Russians are famous for this. So are the Qatar. Many countries do this. The DNC hack is much more problematic for several reasons. On James Comey's watch, the FBI never demanded to get the service from the Democratic National Guimity. Instead, they used its former cybersecurity chief and his company to evaluate the service for the FBI and give them an analysis. And then that analysis was put out to the American public saying, based on what crowd strike, this vendor hired by the DNC gave us, we believe there was a hack of the DNC servers. About three years ago, four years ago, as Bill

Barr was leaving, we were able to get the actual interviews that CrowdStrikes people did with the FBI. And in that interview, they said something very profound that has never been disputed since, which is the Russians gained access to the insurers. They did some probing. They did some escalations of credentials meeting. I hacked my way in. I could get myself to administrator level. But what CrowdStrike said that I think is so important for all of us understand. That is a form of hacking. If you get to credential level, you've hacked yourself in. But what CrowdStrike said is they could never prove there was no evidence of exfiltration, meaning that the Russians, after they got their permissions on the servers,

they didn't pull the data off and get the emails and leak them out. Now, that is a very important qualification. There was some hacking. They got into the system. But CrowdStrike is very specific that we couldn't prove exfiltration occurred. Now, compare that to what the Washington Post in New York Times and others report, it. And it's a little muddled. And I think that that's one of the stories we've got to get fixed in the next few months. Well, she also did the reporting on Carter Page. And what it

appears to me, John, is that she and Schmidt and a lot of these others, okay, it's fine. I agree with you. It's not wrong to get a classified leak. I mean, that's on the person who's breaching the classified protections. Ellen has no oath that she's taken to protect that information. as a reporter, you can report and reveal stolen documents so long as you didn't orchestrate the theft. So in any event, but, especially when it comes to leaks from three-letter agencies, you must make sure you're not being used. That's a, I mean, every reporter knows when one of those people reaches out to you, all hackles should be up. The likelihood of you getting used is very, very high, which I've said this before, but that's why generally news

organizations will put someone who is a cynical mofo in that position, like at Fox, Catherine Hairich, who likes no one, which is good. That's good. That's exactly who you should have in that role, who cannot be charmed or wooed into writing what you want her to write. That's right. And instead, what it appears to have been is people like Ellen, people like Michael Schmidt, heard all the things they already believed about Donald Trump from a source they trusted like a Schiff or a Comey or a Brennan. And with glee, ran to their keyboards. Yeah, Megan, you just did. That was like the perfect description of what our obligations are and what we often

fail to do in our industry. There's a moment in my career where I went through this. Probably one of the biggest scoops I ever had in my career was at the Associated Press when I got the interrogation reports of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9-11, and we learned from those interrogation reports that he actually planned to do 10 planes on two coast and then bin Laden scaled it down. It was a worldwide exclusive. But we had that document for seven or eight days from our source.

And we did lots of reports because you didn't know if someone was trying to make somebody look good or this was only one of 30 interrogations. And we did a lot of work before we pulled the trigger on writing that story. And that's important because we all know that people have motives when they give us something. And we have to take those motives into account and rule out that we haven't been misled before we pull the trigger. And too often in the Internet era, that idea that I was trained on and that you were probably, trained on, has been lost in the internet era where the moment, I can get a click now if I go out with this is the only reward you get. And I think that being right or wrong has been less important than getting that click. And I think it's so important that journalism take a deep

breath at some point and wind ourselves back to let's find out the motives. Let's make sure we haven't been misled before we report something. John, before I let you go, have you been following the difference of opinion on these reveals that have been coming out between, say, on the one camp, you, Matt Taibi, Molly Hemingway, and others, Aaron Monta, Glenn Greenwald. And on the other, many in the so-called mainstream, yes, of course, who I don't really listen to. But I do listen to Andy McCarthy over at National Review and respect his opinion. And he did write a whole book about Rushagate. But he still is just not, well, he hasn't written about it in a while because he's been on vacation. But he did not think there was any there there on the initial

reveals here. And he really thought this was a nothing burger. Like, what Tulsi was revealing. So have you been following that difference and do you have a thought on it? Yeah, listen, I try not to evaluate whether something's nothing going to. I try to just give people facts that they can make up their own mind. My goal, now he obviously writes op-ed, so his goal is to help people come to conclusions. I've tried throughout my career to just give people data points and let them make up their own mind. I do think that, you know, what you do see and what we've learned is that inside the intelligence community, the roles of the intelligence community were broken to come up with a story that Putin helped Trump, even though the evidence said otherwise.

The most damning evidence from all the intelligence experts I talked from, I derive my knowledge from people who are professionals. I'm not an intel professional, is that the intelligence community's belief that Putin didn't try to help Trump was based on the most significant moment in October of 2016, which is Russia ended its active measures and did not try to interfere in the election in October 16. Why is that important? Everybody knows, including Russian intelligence, most Americans make up their mind in the last few weeks of the election. Russia had all sorts of dirt. They could have dropped on Hillary Clinton to possibly take them out, and they didn't do that.

That is what we call a passive decision, meaning intelligence community saw them having the capability to do something to damage a candidate and deciding not to do it. That's a very powerful piece of evidence in the Intelligence Committee assessment. And it's why Congress on November 29, 16, is bringing. that there was no preferred candidate. That's a pretty good reason to believe that. You have to look at what happens after November 29 to realize how badly the community was hijacked. Maybe Andy's looking at it from a prosecutor.

Could I prosecute someone from what happened here? No, but from an integrity standpoint in our country on how we're going to protect ourselves about the future of this country from counterintelligence threats, from counterterrorism threats, the ability to take good intelligence in terms of intelligence and turn it into a bad conclusion affects all of our safety. And I think from that perspective, there is a reason why we should be reporting on this.

Whether someone gets prosecuted or not, I don't know, I've been hearing about prosecutions for 10 years, haven't seen a whole lot of them. So I'm pretty jaded in expectation. But I do think these things matter for you and on my safety. When those two intelligence officers came to my driveway in March of 17, which set me on my path to unravel this story, the first thing they said to me when I asked them, Why are you coming forward to me? Why me?

And what are you trying to me to do? You gave us these tools after 9-11 to protect you from terrorists and from counterintelligence threats. And if we lose them because we've abused them the way we do, you will not be as safe at night as you are, have been the last 10 years. That's what drove those two whistleblowers to come to my drive at 11 o'clock at night in the spring of 2017. I think the professionals know that the abuse of these tolls risk them being taken from them or being corrupted. and we're all less safe. And that's a matter of public interest that goes beyond prosecution.

John, as I listen to your talk, all I can think is we need a full episode of John Solomon and your background and your stories because even just in that brief recitation, I learned facts about you. I didn't know. What a fascinating guy you are. I love to do that, like just you.

And we'll talk for a couple of hours. Listen, I don't listen to many podcasts. I listen to you often. You do such a great job and you inform the public with such integrity. So anytime I'm there. Oh, thank you. Thank you so much. All right. To be continued, we'll stay on it. We'll continue refreshing just the news.

Coming up next, our friends from National Review, speaking of National Review, Rich Lowry's here, along with Charles C.W. Cook. Let's be honest. America can still be a dangerous place, and you cannot afford to wait for help. Sure, you could use a firearm, but in today's America, defending yourself with deadly force could have legal consequences. According to FBI data, 99.9% of all altercations do not require lethal force. And that's exactly why many are turning to Burna. Burna is proudly American, hand-assembled in Fort Wayne, Indiana. These less lethal self-defense launchers are trusted by hundreds of government agencies, law enforcement departments, and private security companies.

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That's B.YRNA.com or your local sportsman's warehouse. Visit now and be prepared to defend. Joining me now, Rich Lowry and Charles C.W. Cook of National Review. all of their work by becoming an NR Plus subscriber today. We will get Andy McCarthy on to talk about his views on Rushagate once he's back and well-rested and ready to talk again. He's been on vacation at exactly the wrong time, Rich Lowry. But in any event, let me ask you this, because I want to pick up on the media angle that

we were discussing with John Solomon. Interesting fact. The New York Times, Michael Schmidt, who we just discussed, who won a Pulitzer for his Russiagate reporting. And now, of course, is downplaying all the latest revelations by Tulsi Gabbard is married to the woman whose soundbite, I am about to run for you. And you'll be shocked, shocked to hear that she also doesn't seem to think there's much to the latest Russiagate allegations. Play soft five. Some more news breaking this hour to tell you about.

Attorney General Pam Bondi has ordered a grand jury investigation. into the so-called Russia gate conspiracy allegations made by the Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. These are unsubstantiated and largely debunked allegations by the Trump administration that former President Barack Obama and his aides in the intelligence community ordered a probe into the 2016 Trump campaign's connections to Russia to ruin his chances of becoming president. We'll stay on top of that story. Thank you for letting us into your homes.

We are always so grateful. That's MSNBC's Nicole Wallace, who constantly sounds as though she's just getting over a three-week battle with the flu, and she's been forced to do the broadcast from her near-deathbed. She constantly, she sounds so sick, and that's unsubstantiated, but I will tell you this, Rich Lowry, you run a news organization. If I ran MSNBC, there is no way I would let the wife of the journalist who received the classified leaks at issue report in any way, shape, or form. on this controversy. What say you? I was just going to say this is one of the big problems with the media, right? The media, a lot of it, Democratic operatives, and certain people in the so-called deep state are the same. They're married to one another. They're dating one another. They go to the same

cocktail parties. They are the same blob. And this is just an indication of that. And also, it's highly irritating to have her say, this is much ado about nothing. When she was, besides Rachel Maddow was perhaps the person with the biggest media platform plying all this nonsense for years about the walls closing in and it was going to be established or had already been established that Trump had colluded with Russia with zero remorse afterwards, never any one moment of modesty. Oh, I got caught up my partisan passions. I should have been a little more careful. None of that. Now she's still lecturing to us about the matter. It's a good point, Charlie. I mean, who, if Nicole Wallace weren't allowed to report on these allegations, what unstained reporter could they find at MS to replace her?

Yeah, I call it the Rachel Maddow extended universe, because there is this whole world of essentially untrue ideas that is believed by MSNBC viewers. I think the straw that they're clutching onto is that Tulsi Gabbard has made some implications that aren't true. For example, that Barack Obama is going to end up being criminally punished for his role in this. But to take that hyperbole and then to conclude that all of the unraveling of Russiagate is illegitimate is ridiculous. We lived through this for a couple of years. The aim was at first to prevent Trump from becoming president. And then it was to waste his presidency. You'll remember, if you look back, it was fairly common, including on MSNBC at the time,

to hear people say that he should not allow to be used, to use his presidential powers while he was under investigation and so on. So I think what they're doing is they're taking the hyperbole around the edges of, of this and they're trying to discredit the rest of it, which simply will not and should not work. I'll tell you what, she has a literally a vested interest in upholding this reporting thanks to the things she has said, but also the things that her husband has written that were award winning. And there is really no question that she should not be allowed to sit in that chair in opine on whether these are legitimate or not legitimate allegations that directly involve her husband now and the veracity of his reporting and his reputation. The National Guard troops

that President Trump dispatched to Washington, D.C., arrived yesterday. They showed up in droves. And I guess, you know, to say that the Democrats are not grateful would be an understatement. The mayor has waffled between kind of being grateful and saying, you know, you know, you can say crimes down, try telling that to the victim's family members and getting pushed by her fellow leftists into saying, but he's authoritarian. And, you know, of course we hate him. But the troops, they're not such a terrible idea. In any event, they've arrived. And Judge Janine Piro, who's the U.S. attorney now for the district of D.C., was asked yesterday about the troops and the allegedly falling crime rate. Here's how that went.

What this makes clear to me is that there is a whole community that is suffering because of the violent crime in this district. All members of the minority community here. I am here today to tell you that on behalf of all of these victims, all of these families, that they're going to be accountable, that we are going to make a difference. And I guarantee you that every one of these individuals was shot and killed by someone who felt that they were. were never going to be caught. And I want to send a message that we are going to catch you. You said it's guns on the street that's causing this problem. Are you concerned that the DOJ's funding cuts to gun violence prevention programs undermine the effort? We are putting all kinds of resources onto this street.

It's failing the dropping crime rates at the end of it. What change? It's never enough. This changed. This changed. It's never enough. You tell the families, crime has dropped. You tell the mother of the intern who was shot going out from McDonald's near the Washington Convention Center, oh, crime is down. You tell the kid who was just beat the hell and back with a severe concussion and a broken nose, crime is down. No, that falls on deaf ears, and my ears are deaf to that, and that's why I fight the fight. Thank you. Boom. And she dropped the mic. Not literally, but she should have. Rich, well done by Janine Piro. And there really are some horrific stories. I suppose you could find them in any large metropolitan area. But D.C. in particular, has got some awful ones like that one about the intern. I think it was 19 years old. They're doing an internship in Washington. It's like a kid's dream going out to get a McDonald's and gets killed. We could spend all day going through these. She had the pictures of a lot of those young victims in particular up on those boards. it's right up in the face of those reporters saying,

how dare you? It's never enough. Don't tell me, don't tell the family members of these dead people. Crimes down so we don't need more law enforcement. Yeah, I'll say a couple things. One, I have no use for Mario Bowser. And she has vacillate a little bit here. But I think basically, though, from where she's coming from, a fairly constructive attitude, right?

She's saying, crimes down. We don't need this. But if we're getting more federal assets, let's use them to reduce crime. And if that had been the message by Democratic mayors all around the country about ICE, you know, saying, oh, I don't like these tactics. I don't think it's really necessary. Maybe you're going too far.

But yes, thank you for coming and getting the criminals off our streets. I think that debate would be in a much better place. And I don't think the National Guard troops make much of a difference. They basically guard federal buildings. Maybe they free up some police resources to do other stuff. But certainly the sheer presence. If you're a young woman jogging on the streets of D.C., you're going to enjoy seeing those guys.

You're going to feel a little safe for seeing those guys and men and women in camouflage staying there. But I think the key thing is the driver of most of the gun violence, very small group of guys who've already been involved in the engaged in the criminal justice system, have long rap sheets, have probably been in prison already, and are largely known to authorities. Can you working with the local police with additional DEA and FBI resources really in this 30-day period, try to move the needle and are. arresting more of those guys and making them worry about consequences. That's huge. And then the carjackings, which are so awful, you know, they're 14-year-olds carrying these things out. So you need, as Janine was saying, you need them to believe they're going to be consequences. That involves, I think, changing the laws. Congress has a role here. The D.C. City Council probably can't be done in 30 days, but you can move the needle. And I hope there's an incentive created here for D.C. to say,

no, we don't need this federal intervention. We're doing fine because we're going to get tough in these you know, in ways X, Y, and Z. That would be a very constructive outcome. The cops have been super grateful for it, Charlie. The cops union came out and said, thank God, we need help. We actually cannot handle this on our own, which went unreported by the New York Times's daily podcast yesterday when they took their deep dive into local reaction. They forgot to mention that the police are really grateful for it and say it's necessary.

But here's just another example of what was on the two boards. She was showing pictures of victims. She said, look at these 45 victims, all 19 and under. all killed by gunfire in the last 18 months in D.C., and you tell me crime is down. Two of the victims, Charlie, were at three years old. One little girl's name was honestly Cheatel. It happened last month via the local NBC. Police arrested a man who they say fired shots that killed a three-year-old girl

as she sat in a car with her family after 4th of July fireworks. They believe the shooter intentionally targeted the family's car. She was taken to a hospital and died. days later. And then just today, I retweeted someone named Maddie Karen, not to be confused with Maddie Kern, who says as follows, I was called into court, she's a D.C. resident, to give a statement about a man who had exposed himself to me on the metro. He had over 200 charges to date. Court was delayed four hours for him to, quote, calm down after calling the judge the C-word. Once he had, she dismissed the new charges and let him go.

That is what so many crime victims have faced if the police do arrest the perpetrator and charge with the right charge as opposed to a downplayed charge, which is what is allegedly happening within the D.C. police, they're downplaying the charges so that they can make it look like crime is down. But if they get charged adequately and then get into the court system, you run into a judge like this, who's really not particularly impressed, maybe unless you've actually murdered a three-year-old and even then questionable. Yeah, I haven't heard a good argument against this move yet. It may be true that crime is down.

Perhaps a lot of that's the artifact of reporting, but it may be true. It's irrelevant, though, because crime is still very high. If you look through the reports, it is at an unacceptable level. I am not a fan of the idea that we can make paradise on Earth. Sometimes when you hear the phrase, for example, if it saves one life, I think, well, no, we live in a free country. You cannot completely eradicate bad things happening. But that's not what we're discussing here. We're discussing a city that is a mess, a city in which people are assaulted and killed and victimized all the time.

And the fact that it may or may not be relatively down from its absolute high a few years ago is immaterial. The question is, is it acceptable? And the answer is that it's not. and that it's not is largely a choice. We're not talking here about a hurricane or a tornado or an earthquake. We're talking here about government policies that don't work. You mentioned one of them, which is letting people off. Another is treating crime as if it's some sort of charming foible of the city.

You sometimes hear this in discussions of New York. Oh, do you remember back when? It's as if it was some sort of, you know, fun thing you would do. in the 1970s between seeing Led Zeppelin and going to watch Star Wars, you get a knife in the back, but a charming knife. That's nonsense. People hate crime, and there's no reason they should be subject to it. And the arguments made in its favor are ridiculous. The other bad argument is that crime is worse elsewhere. First off, that's irrelevant too. But you hear this while it's worse in New Orleans or it's worse in St. Louis, maybe. Those are cities and states, though.

And under our system, the burden is much higher for the federal government to get involved. But Washington, D.C. is a federal district. The district clause in the Constitution gives plenary power to the federal government to take care of it. If it wants to, it can delegate some of that power out to a city council or a mayor or whatever apparatus it desires. But it doesn't have to. And if it is the case, as it clearly is here, that the delegated authoritative, is just not doing a very good job, then it's entirely reasonable for the federal government,

which runs the federal district, which, incidentally, is the capital of the United States. There is an interest here in making sure that it's not a hellhole. It's embarrassing that D.C. is the way that it is, to step in. And there's nothing that Trump has done thus far that has violated the law,

and there's nothing he's done thus far that would require Congress to act, although Congress probably should take control back. So I don't see any good arguments here that don't amount to either that it's not so bad, it is, or crime isn't too much of a problem anyway, it is, or this is racist, it's not, or this is an overreach from the federal government, which is ridiculous, given that we're talking about Washington, D.C., which is run by the federal government.

All good points. You've got morons like Eric Swalwell. Well, that's really my only point. You do have the end of it. Yeah. But in this particular instance, he decided. to try to make a thing out of a recent crime event where a man, according to NBC4 Washington, they posted a man is dead after a shooting in D.C.'s Logan Circle neighborhood officers looking for a suspect. This moron, Swalwell, tweets it out, Trump owns it. So now every crime that happens in D.C. is Trump's fault because he's tried to supplement the law enforcement. I mean,

Maybe we'll give it 30 seconds. Who which of you would like to take it? I can see both of you, actually. I mean, what does that even mean, Megan? Like, if somebody takes over custody of a child whose parents are unfit to look after them, and then the child falls over and scrapes her knee, you wouldn't say, ah, well, there you go. That just proves that the custody change.

I mean, obviously, that's not what's. at stake here and if even maybe 10 years you had the same people running things and there was no improvement sure point that out but that is just that's that's actually i need to 30 seconds but just give me a moment that that actually is why i say that there are some people who are functionally in favor of crime because either they have some ideological opposition to fighting crime that they believe is rooted um in history and is usually completely incomprehensible or they are so polarized against those who don't like crime, that they end up effectively siding with crime.

And we've seen a lot of that over the last week. A lot of the coverage here has just been, Trump wants to do it, therefore it's bad. Trump wants to fight crime. Therefore, crime must have something going for it. And it doesn't. It doesn't have something going for it. I think the average person watching this thinks it's lunacy.

That's so well said. All right, wait, I've got a couple of examples of that teed up for you guys. Here's Simone Sanders, who undoubtedly is earning millions. over at MSNBC where she co-hosts one of the primetime hours. I think it's the one vacated by Joy Reid. And she appeared on Morning Joe with Scarborough and had the following exchange, SOT 10. You don't think more police make streets safer?

No, Joe. I'm a black woman in America. I do not always think that more police make streets safer. When you walk down the streets of Georgetown, you don't see a police officer on every corner, but you don't feel unsafe. So what is it about talking about places like southeast, DC, right, Ward 8, if you will, that people say, well, we need more officers to make us safe. I think we have to rethink what safety means in America.

Rich? Rethink what safety means? What is he? Ron, does anyone not know what safety is, right? It's being able to walk down the street without looking over your shoulder or let your kid go out and play without worry about him or her being harassed or shot. It's very basic. And if you showed that clip to the average resonant.

of a dangerous neighborhood in southeast D.C., they would think she's crazy, right? That's only, that's a luxury belief right there in that famous phrase. She can say that because she safely goes from green room to green room and from Democratic fundraiser, Democrat fundraiser, or whatever else it is, and doesn't have to worry about crime. And, you know, the counterargument that, look, we shouldn't do this because violent crime is down 25% in D.C. or whatever it is, talk to anyone who lives in D.C. and ask them how.

they feel. Actually, I give Joe Scarborough credit. He's been reading these anonymous missives from Democrats who know, we're saying, why didn't this happen sooner? I don't feel safe in the city. We talked on the editor's podcast with our reporter Audrey Fulberg, is down there in D.C. says routinely harassed and menaced on the metro and that everyone knows someone who's mugged or gotten hurt. That is totally unacceptable. ABC anchor just the other day, right? said that she was mugged outside the ABC's studio. Yeah, not a, not a, what shouldn't be a dangerous part of town, kind of near Jupon Circle, right, right across the street from a luxury hotel. I forget the name, it might be the Mayflower, I forget, but should, you go there and

you're like, is this really dangerous? But it is if you're there at the wrong, wrong, a place of the wrong time with the Willard, I think she said, the person. The Willard, yeah. So everyone knows, even if the numbers have gone down, it's still not a place where you, you feel safe. And Simone, it doesn't matter what Simone Sanders says. Everyone knows that. It's a little bit trying to, spinning crimes, a little bit trying to, like, spin the economy. It doesn't matter what you say. People know what their pocketbook is. And people know what safety is. So could we just take, Simone is a joke, Charlie. She, she, she, this woman 100% rides to, to and from work in a Lincoln town car, driven by a driver. When she gets to MSNBC, there is

security there waiting for her. She gets escorted into the building. I know withinger two about working in cable news for her to be like, I feel totally safe, except when I see a cop, because I'm a black woman in America, is a lie. Keep going. Well, sorry, we don't even have to assume. Can we just take a second to focus in on her argument? The actual logical chain that she offered up there was policing doesn't improve things in areas with crime, because in areas without crime, there aren't many police. What kind of argument is that? That's

like saying that food doesn't help people who are hungry because people who already have lots of food don't need any more. Like, yes, obviously there aren't police all over Georgetown. It's a relatively wealthy, safe area.

What the hell does that have to do with people who don't live in Georgetown? I mean, that is, she said that you said she makes millions of dollars a year. She said that on television, Megan. What kind of argument is that? That's what I'm talking about, the fetishization of crime, the defense of crime. And she says as a black woman in America, what does that mean?

Does she have any real arguments? But she is pro-crime, not in the sense that people use that in a sort of archie bunker way, but she would rather have more crime than fix it for whatever ideological reasons that she has come up with. She's willing to go on television and say, well, it's fine for me in Georgetown. Come on. She's not the only one. I don't know if you're aware of Anand Gehry Dardis.

He's a professor at NYU. Yeah. And he goes on MSNBC all the time. And he's got the following concerns. Sot 9. I think it's really important to be clear about what is going on here. and a relatively small crime problem is being used for specific authoritarian purposes that we know and understand. So let's be clear about D.C. does have one really big crime problem,

which was the January 6th insurrection incited by the current President of the United States, and his first act in coming back was pardoning all the people who tried to overturn constitutional republic order in Washington, D.C. When I go to D.C., I'm not afraid of losing my wallet so much as I'm afraid of losing my vote. I'm not afraid of losing my wallet so much as I'm afraid that my children's freedom to breathe will be stolen in a world where climate change policy is non-existent. Rich, you're in D.C. a lot. Is that what you feel that your children's right to breathe is being stolen second by second? And that's what you worry about when you walk down the streets of D.C. and midnight? Again, it's very easy to say up until the time you get mugged, right? And I didn't like January 6th.

I think people committed crimes, holding police officers, don't like sweeping pardons, but that doesn't mean that people should be unsafe in D.C. And what constitutes a small crime problem and a big crime problem to him? Again, this is something where I give Muriel Bowser credit. She said, oh, the numbers are going down. Maybe she's right. Maybe she's wrong. But she said, it doesn't matter to you if you're the victim of crime, right?

There's the fourth highest homicide rate in the nation. Yeah, higher or stayed higher than in the other state. And you see it in public places, right? We talked again on the editors yesterday about Union Station just feels like a blasted-out barren zone because homeless people took it over. So you couldn't have one place to sit because a homeless person would build a mini encampment there, right? And the authorities gave in to the homeless. So I think this is another thing that could happen actually in 30 days.

The homeless encampments are getting cleared up. And they are going to homeless people now. That's where you're wrong, my friend. That is where you are wrong. You, that's your luxury belief that the homeless are going away, thanks to law enforcement. Because here's what's actually happening. The resistance is fighting back to keep the homeless in Union Station. And I'm not even making this up.

We have videotape here in a soundbite of a liberal woman who is taking that problem on herself. She does not want the homeless removed from Union Station. She does not want your damn benches back, Rich Lowry. You can stand. And here is her plan to stop those guard troops from doing it in SOT 11. It's August 11th. I am outside Union Station in D.C., where folks on the ground are telling me that they are about to start rounding up unhoused people tonight.

The folks here at the encampment from Union Station are handing out these whistles to give to unhoused folks. That way, they have a way to call for help if they are kidnapped by federal law enforcement. So if you're in the area and able to swing by right in front of the Union Station, they have tons of these, bring them back to folks in your community. So they have a way to call for help because this is how a fascist authoritarian regime starts. So the homeless people are going to blow into the whistles. They love whistles. Well, what people love whistles for some reason?

Who is going to come? Who is going to respond? And where are they going to take them so that they don't? have to leave. Go ahead, Charlie. I know I'm a little obsessed with these arguments that people are making, but we've just heard three arguments in a row, two from the MSNBC guess, one from her that inspire the follow-up question, and then what? Yes, right. Right on. Look, I am a big critic of January 6th. You've heard me said a million times. I don't need to rehearse it for you in your audience. Including right

after January 6th on this show. But January 6 was bad, right? So if January 6 was bad, what would more crime be? I mean, what is the argument there that because Trump did January 6th, we can't also not have other crimes? And then the unspoken argument from the same guy and then from her about authoritarianism,

what does that look like? Like, what is the next step? So we clear out homeless people from public places where they're not supposed to be. And then what? America becomes a dictatorship, I don't understand what is supposed to happen next

here. It's never said. It's just implied. It's floated out there as if we all understand. But that's not authoritarianism. There's no authoritarianism inherent in cleaning up a city or stopping people being criminals.

If anything, the greater threat of chaos and anarchy and destruction of freedom and ordered liberty comes from crime. So I never quite know what it is that these people want or think is about to happen, and they never explain it. Okay, but the other question raised by her whistle plan, and for the listening audience, it's a bunch of plastic whistles in neon colors, is what happens, forget, like, she's arguing leave the homeless alone. What happens if they, if she does the whistle plan,

and the homeless do what they're supposed to do, and they blow into her little neon pink whistle, Then what? Who's coming? That 19-year-old girl with the blonde braid? She's going to stop the National Guard. And then what is she going to take them back home for dinner? She's going to take these homeless people back to her house because it doesn't seem to be a big appetite in D.C. to have these people move in to the domestic housing. So what's her plan then? Like she's going to fight the National Guard so that they can have the corner of Union Station that they've staked out. Ah, it's a win. You sit there. That's your corner. so that they can defecate all over the floor of Union Station, which is what your reporter was talking about stepping in the other day, Rich. Like, what is the plan? How is it a win to get the homeless, like rose on the door at the end of Titanic to blow their little whistles, come back, come back, or go away, go away.

It drives me crazy because they think they're being compassionate to homeless people by letting people who are seriously, mentally ill, and not getting treatment, or have substance abuse problems, or some of them just kind of perversely like the lifestyle, sleep on grapes at night, right? And someone crapping in union stations, terrible fraudulent union station, it's not great for that person either.

And given the amount of money that D.C. spends on homelessness, if there's not enough shelter for these people, that's a scandal on its own. So they should be roused it out of public places. The ones are mentally ill or have substance abuse problems. You try to get them help, but they shouldn't be sleeping outdoors. They shouldn't be out of their minds harassing people or attacking them.

It's bad for everyone. And they just can't get their heads around this. And they think they're doing the right thing. They think giving a schizophrenic a whistle so they can sleep in a dirty, you know, blanket in the corner of union station is a good thing. It's, it's infuriating. It's amazing. All right. So I want to ask about something else now.

So Caroline Levitt, the press secretary at the White House, tweeted out earlier today, for the third straight month, there were zero illegal aliens released into the country. Under President Trump, the border is the most secure it's ever been in American history. I think that's objectively true, at least in modern American history. And he's continuing to try to get the illegals who are in the country out of the country bit by bit. And they're making some progress on that, although clearly not as much as we would like. nonetheless, the leftist narrative is that it is a day and night struggle for those who are here illegally to get through their days as they cower in fear of Tom Homan.

I don't know whether that's true or not. I doubt it. But even if it is, I don't care. You're here illegally. The immigrants who are here legally have nothing to worry about and the ones who are here illegally need to go home. And there was data released just this week showing that the number of people living in the country who are illegal, who are here illegally, has gone down by 2.2 million since January. And the belief is that they are self-deporting because they are worried about Tom Homan. So that is something, I think, to be celebrated. We're still up, I think it's $8 million over where we were back in 2019 under or 20, whatever, under the Joe Biden years. So we're still net up almost like $8 million. Okay, my point is simply you would think most people would say, all right, well, that's, you know, it's a good thing. Enter John Oliver and Monica Lewinsky.

Monica Lewinsky decided to weigh in on the illegal immigrants and what they must be going through and how she can relate. Take a listen to Sotwell. I have to remind myself now with all these stories going on. I mean, it's so hard. It brings something out of it. Yeah. Like it's there that anxiety that I thought I'd moved past that day that I got my citizenship. I thought it would be gone then.

It didn't feel that. Yeah. The relief didn't feel enough. I've had a sense of understanding a tiny, tiny bit that I empathize with the immigrants who are going through the crisis right now, right? Ice fuckers. Yep. Yeah. And just of feeling hunted.

like a feeling unsafe of like something could happen at any moment. Now, for me, the hunting was the consequences of that were nowhere near with their suffering. I see what you mean. But I've had that of, you know, whether it's being recognized or a paparazzi or there's something, a feeling of unsafe wherever you are. And probably a lot of women feel that in general. I'm not sure I'm making sense right now. No, I think you're making total sense. I think that idea of attention being weaponized, it feels like there's a lot of crossover there.

God. Okay. Ice fuckers, she says. Okay, so there's only one person involved in this story on that set or in the topic that's known as a fucker and it's not ice. It is you, madam. That's how you got famous. And you've never stopped trying to parlay some sort of a career out of that moment. She hasn't moved past it. If God forbid this ever happened to me, if I were a 19 year old girl, I made a very stupid mistake and had an affair with the president of the United States was married. And the odds of it were coming out or pretty much guaranteed. I would take my humiliation, I would express public regret for a terrible decision I'd made, and then I would go, become a lawyer or an interior designer or a writer, and I would never talk about it again, because it would be the biggest shame of my life. It's like when Doug and I and the family went to, I can't remember whether we were, I think we were in Sweden, and we were in this museum, and it was the construct of this huge ship, which they were very, very proud of 100 years ago, and they set it afloat, and it sank. And they had reconstructed it and put it in this museum, and they were making the comment that Japanese tourists would go through and be like, you made a monument to your greatest failure?

Like, in our culture, we get ashamed about our failures and we try to move past them and never talk of them again. This, Monica Lewinsky needs to be more like the Japanese. Instead, she's tried to create an entire adult existence out of her blowjobs to the sitting president of the United States, Bill Clinton, who is married. So now she would like to parlay that experience into expertise on what it's like to be an illegal immigrant who feels hunted because she's had the paparazzi following her around. And if memory serves, she's from a very well-to-do family. She's got a nice set of parents and income. She's been writing for Vanity Fair nine times out of ten. It's about her experience or some related thing.

So now it's crossed over to she's calling ICE a bunch of. fuckers. She empathizes with the immigrants feeling hunted because she's a woman, because you know, you're hunted as a woman in America, and she's had photographers who want to take her picture, Charles. And by the way, that's not even to say anything about John Oliver, who's more in your circumstance, Charles, who came legally and then legally became a United States citizen. Yeah, I mean, that was all nonsense. I am a legal immigrant and naturalized citizen. I came from the same place, asked John Oliver, I think I like America a lot more than John Oliver, but we went through the same process. I have never felt for a second as if I'm about to be

deported because I'm a legal immigrant and naturalized citizen. No anxiety? Like he says he had? No, I don't. But I also don't feel that it is a problem if people who are here illegally feel that they might be discovered and deported, because that is the law. We have a system in place. So one thing I did feel before I was a citizen was that I didn't want to break any laws, not deliberately but inadvertently because I really didn't want to be deported, which I could have.

I actually, I won't bore you with the whole story, but I called up the IRS because they sent me too much of a refund and I sent them back $450. And the lady on the phone said to me, you're the only person in my 30-year career at the IRS who has ever called up and offered money to us. And the reason for it was I thought, oh, no, if I get this wrong and they discover,

they'll never let me become a citizen. But I think that feeling of wanting to do the right thing is good. It's not bad. It's not a problem. It's not the occasion for expletives. More broadly, you said at the beginning that the border is probably more secure than it's ever been in American history. That's probably true.

And that is a choice. You can't perfect this area. But the difference is night and day because the last president, Joe Biden, did not want to enforce the border. And the current president, Donald Trump, does. And I was put in mind of this over the weekend. I was away on a trip and I drove back to Florida. And the freeway was closed because of an accident.

So I had to take this sort of back road. And I came through into Florida from Georgia in this tiny town. There can't have been more than 180 people who lived in this town. And the sign said, welcome to Florida. And then 100 feet after it, the sign said, in Florida we use e-verify. That is a choice. That wasn't on the freeway. that was on the entrance to Florida from Georgia in this tiny town.

That's a choice. Florida has decided that they're going to try to make it more difficult for illegal immigrants to stay in the country. And when you do that, you don't get rid of all of them, but you get rid of a lot of them and you enforce your laws. And the fact that this is being compared to the Gestapo that Monica Lewinsky says that she feels that these people are being hunted, that John Oliver says that he doesn't feel secure in his own citizenship is complete lunacy in the eyes of 70, 80, 90 percent of the

public, which has been radicalized on this question of deportations because the government has refused to do the basic things that it can do. So I think that was an insane clip, but it almost feels like that was a missive from another world, you know, 10 months ago before things changed. The part of it that rings true to me, Rich, is him saying like, and her saying, like they feel anxious over what these illegals must be going through because this is what leftists do, right? They try to take on other people's problems and pretend that they're happening to them. Remember that video of Selena Gomez, like, my people, like this multi, multi, probably 100 millionaire. Like would you stop, right?

Like this is what they do. They see a problem out there and they try to get you to feel sorry for them because they're so upset this is happening. Yeah, that. And they also, they just love the idea. They love the thrill of being threatened by fascism or supposed an incipient fascism, right? So the National Guard in D.C. is a classic example of this. What did the National Guard do in L.A.? You know, they showed up.

They stood in front of the federal building, and then when they calm down, they mostly left, right? They'll do the same thing in D.C. It affects no one. They're not arresting dissidents or seeing what you say or believe about Donald Trump and harassing on the basis. None of that. They're standing in front of federal buildings, right? But they love the idea.

they love the word, they love the anxiety, makes them feel important, makes them feel alive, and this is another example of this. They're not going after John Oliver, Monica Lewinsky's experience had nothing to do with this. And I will have to say these numbers about the number of illegals that seem to be leaving are really heartening and surprising me on the upside. You know, I was a little critical. They need to do more. You know, you just can't pick off the criminal aliens. Yes, you should try to do that. You need to go broader. But if you do have this, and it feels harsh to say, but if you do have a certain level of anxiety among the legal immigrants in this country, maybe my job's not secure, maybe I could get deported,

maybe it's easier to go home. That's the golden ticket to really moving the needle. And this trend continues. I mean, we're going to see the first large scale negative movement of people out of the United States instead of any of the United States since, I don't know, Eisenhower. I mean, it'll be a historic accomplishment on top of what he's doing at the border. I was critical of Christy Noem and her photo op at that El Salvadoran prison, but I mean, the deterrent effect may be legit and real. And Tom Homan making himself available to any news outlet that asks and being unapologetic about his efforts, all so helpful.

Like, all the people see these things and they have an effect. All right. Last topic, because we're on the subject of these, you know, these privileged beliefs, right? These luxury beliefs, Rich, as you put it, which is. is a term. That brings me to, and this is like, this, this hits on a particular sweet spot for me, but it brings me to actress Christine Baranski, who I happen to love. She's very funny. I fell in love with her when Sybil Shepard had her own eponymous show called Sybil, and she was quoted in, like, in this show where she had to give advice to an unborn baby.

And everybody who was giving advice to the baby said things like, be a good person, be nice to others, do on to others, et cetera. And they get to her, and she was already playing this sort of snooty character. And Christine Boranski looks at the unborn baby and she says, when you're sitting on the airplane in first class and the coach passengers get on, try not to make eye contact. So I think she is hilarious. It was a character thing.

But anyway, she's very funny. So she's in an HBO show called The Gilded Age, and she was doing a promo interview for it. And she, this is a risk for anybody in Hollywood, given how powerful Jeff Bezos is. Okay. She took a risk when she, when the topic of everyone's favorite astronaut, Gail King, and her fellow blue origin astronauts came up. Listen to this in SOT 19. One of the reasons I'd love this show to continue is because I think there is such an exploration to be done in terms of the corruption that goes on, the buying of government influence, which is happening now, excuse me, and the, you know, grotesque displays of wealth sending women into a spaceship for what, so they can, you know, do their makeup? What the fuck? Don't get to me.

started. I'm going Please do get her started. It had the same effect on her, Ridge, as it had on all of us. And I would submit to you that it's one of the reasons why Gail King is reportedly not going to get her contract reviewed at CBS. The thing was an unmitigated disaster on many levels for many people.

Yeah, totally a luxury trip, right? How's this advancing space travel, exploration, science, anything. It's just a joyride for a favorite group of people who can pretend that, you know, this was a groundbreaking and historic event, right? What Elon Musk is doing in space is really going to make a difference. And it may be something that's talked about 100 years from now. This is just buttering up celebrities. Yeah. And it just to me, it taps into something people are feeling in the country, Charles. You know, some people feel it and they're going to vote for Zora and Mandani. Some people feel it.

and they applaud the murder of a health care executive. So there are lunatics who are reacting to this so-called income inequality and these out-of-touch gazillionaires in very negative ways. But do they have to add fuel to the fire? Does Jeff Bezos have to send his vapid fiancé to space with Gail King, who then insists that we call her an astronaut and tells us how inspirational we are? Like, those people really are part of the problem. And those of us who have absolutely no problem with billionaires and actually may think it's wonderful that we live in a country where if you come up with a great idea and you can execute on it, you can become one, I think a lot of us would still like them not to be so absurdly out of touch by going on what would be a $300,000, a person, quote, space flight.

And then when they come back and tell us they're an inspirational astronaut and we say no, not respond by saying, well, have you been? No, literally no one's been. It costs $300,000 for a seat. Yeah, I think you were more upset about this than I am, although I do agree with you that the calling themselves astronauts part is completely visible. I'm very pro-gilded age, not the HBO show, although it's fine, but the actual gilded age.

I think we have a totally unreasonable historical view of it that has been corrupted by the left, which has decided that the gilded age. age was bad and they call the people who are in charge of it robber barons. I actually love the gilded age. It was a period of great American entrepreneurship and industry and explosion of art and everyone got much richer, including people right at the bottom. So if I ever write a book, Megan, I think about history, I think I'm going to write a book defending the the gilded age. So I don't particularly care about what Bezos did there.

I do find the people who went on the trip quite annoying and the way that they've treated it afterwards. I think that the disconnect is less between Bezos and me. Obviously, he has lots of money. You can do what he wants with it. He wants to burn it. It's fine with me. And more with the people who went up in that spaceship

who don't seem to realize that they were the playthings and beneficiaries of a billionaire, that they are not astronauts, that they were not doing anything groundbreaking, and that they looked rather silly. That, to me, is the big disconnect. It's not with Jeff Bezos. We've always had these eccentric billionaires in our country who do things that we find extraordinary.

Some of them are ostentatious with their wealth. Some are not. But whatever. I love that Christine Beranski had the nerve to say it. I have to say, like, it took guts because, you know, Jeff Bezos is one of the main. Justine Bateman gave a very interesting interview the other day, talking about how, you know, the studio system is basically down to the way. a few billionaires now, like Tim Cook, who runs Apple, and Jeff Bezos, who runs Amazon,

and that the movies are all secondary, that the main castle is their tech business, and that the moat around the castle to keep it protected is their movies on Netflix or on Apple or on Amazon that, like, kind of keep people interested and they fund, you know, different projects that will keep them interested in an Amazon or in an Apple or in technology. But those are all just secondary to their main. business and it's dangerous. She had a good point. In any event, it's dangerous to criticize Jeff Bezos for someone like Christine Baranski who makes her living, acting on stage. So I give her credit. Once again, she's done a very strong, interesting, amusing thing. Guys, thank you both so much

for being here. Thank you so much. Always fun. Go now, subscribe it NR Plus so you can get all their content. And if you sign it for NR Plus, you really do get almost no ads. I love it. And I listen. National Review has my favorite feature on any news site. Very few have it. The Wall Street Journal has it. National Review has it. Sometimes the New York Times has it in some of their articles where it says listen to this article. And you press listen, and then you can do whatever you want.

And National Review has a very nice AI voice over there. And you can listen to your news piece by piece. And I do it all the time. I'll just do like a running tally of the NR articles in the morning. Very, very helpful stuff. Okay, coming up next, Steve Hilton. Our old pal Steve Hilton is running for governor of California. wait until you hear where he is in the polls. It's kind of stunning. Do you have cooking and

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whatever your preference. Everyone can get what they want. Then you sit back and relax and it sends you real-time updates. It tells you when to flip, take it off, even how long to let it rest after a completely. out of the oven. It's like having a culinary coach in your pocket, like a little mini Gordon Ramsey. No more guessing, no more lid lifting,

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promo code MK. If you are stressed about back taxes, maybe you miss that April deadline or your books a mess, don't wait. The IRS is cracking down. Penalties add up fast, 5% per month, up to 25% just for not filing. But there is help. Tax Network USA can take the burden off your shoulders and stop the spiral before it gets worse. They have helped thousands of Americans, whether you're an employee, a small business owner, or haven't filed in years. Messy books, it's not a problem. They've seen it all. Tax Network USA has direct access to powerful IRS programs and expert

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Subscribe now, get your first three months for free. Go to SiriusXM.com slash MK Show to subscribe and get three months free. That's SiriusXM.com slash MK Show and get three months free. Offer details apply. When Kamala Harris announced last month that she would not be running for governor of California, the conventional wisdom was that it was opening up an opportunity for another Democrat to lead the nation's largest state.

But could a Republican, I said it, actually take the reins of the golden state for the first time since Arnold Schwarzenegger left Sacramento in January of 2011? Stephen. Steve Hilton, who is running on a campaign to make California golden again, is trying to make that happen. And a new poll from Emerson has him currently in second place behind former Democratic representative, Katie Porter. She's at 18. He's at 12. All the others are down by like four or five. My God, what's happening? Steve joins me now. Steve, what is happening? And Katie Porter's got a long list of problems. So, like, I feel like you could close that gap. Yeah, exactly. It's great to be with you, Megan. I'm very excited about closing the gap. There was another poll, actually, that our campaign did to full disclosure, but actually had me leading. So whichever way you look at it, we have this ridiculous top two system in California. Don't get me started on that. But you've got to get the two candidates. There's not a Democrat primary or Republican primary. The top two candidates in next June's primary go forward to the general election and all the polls so far showing that it's me and Katie Porter. So there you go.

By the way, can I just say one thing, Megan? You've had back-to-back naturalized citizens today on the show. And I can confirm that I also don't feel anxious. I'm walking around. You didn't run around and feeling anxiety about whether you're swearing in what happened or not and whether you'd get hunted. It's insane. So by the way, one thing, I actually, I hadn't really thought,

I don't think I've spoken about this publicly before, but it just brings it to mind. I got my citizenship 2021. So we moved here, my wife and my two sons in 2012. It took quite a while to get through it. 2021 got my citizenship. The first time I went back to the UK afterwards, I guess out of habit, I had my British passport, and I used it in those electronic gates. We went back to Christmas time to see friends and family, and it didn't work.

So I thought, wow, it's really happened. I got out my US passport. It worked. I sailed through. and I thought that was the end of it and my British citizenship had been cancelled. Turns out you actually have to proactively do that and renounce

as a sort of paperwork process you have to go through, which I'm in the middle of doing right now. So very soon, I will be 100% proudly American. So Tom Homan might be watching this. He might come get you if it's not, it's not been no renouncing. No.

Exactly. So I think it's very bold of you because California is a high, mess and they don't really like Republicans, although they like them more than we knew. In the wake of this redistricting battle that's happening in Texas, and now Gavin Newsom's threatening to retaliate, it's come out that there's actually a significant portion of the state that is Republican. They're just not reflected in the congressional districts because of gerrymandering, because of the very thing Gavin Newsom is being so hard on Governor Abbott in Texas for what he says he's doing.

exactly i mean this is a point i've been making for years and it's highly relevant now um everyone talks about including gavin us and well we have an independent uh districting process in california it's true that in 2008 and then in 2010 the voters chose an independent system they chose to take the power to draw the maps away from the politicians and put it in the hands of this commission but classic california the democrat machine got hold of the process and um said you know, we're going to do what we can to favor Democrats. So as you say, and pretty much constantly for the last 20 years or so, there's been a 40% or so Republican vote in California, 40%. But in terms of the congressional representation, it's 17%. And it's the same sort of pattern

to the state legislature. That's what I've said, when I'm governor, we're going to restore the integrity of the system. And if Gavin Newsom goes ahead with his scheme to steal even more seats, I announced last week that I'm going to be filing a lawsuit to block him because he hasn't thought through all the legal obstacles. And I just don't think he can do it. Yeah, they've tried to tie his hands from doing it with this legislation that you mentioned, which was passed. And he's going to have to live up to that. So his threats do sound a little empty. Just for the record, Gavin Newsom can't run again because there are term limits in California. So this really is going to be an open seat, which leaves a big, big opportunity for you.

So he's been trying to, like, get his swagger going over this whole redistricting battle and act like a tough guy because he obviously wants to be president. And that's where his eyes are focused. So he's been sending out these bizarre tweets. First, he just started threatening. Like, if you do this in Texas, which, by the way, they did have to do. We went back and actually looked at it more seriously. The districts in Texas had resulted, these few that they're targeting, as a result of racial lines being drawn unfairly, to try to group blacks and Hispanics together and exclude whites.

And the DOJ said, that's illegal. You have to redo them. So they're redoing them. And we are going to wind up with five net new seats in Texas. And that state will reflect its voting block appropriately as a result of this. California already has an imbalance in favor of Democrats where it has almost no Democratic representatives and Gavin Newsom is acting like a spoiled child

because he needs attention. He wants to look tough. So here, but I just want to read a couple of the tweets because he's getting weird. All right, so he tweets this out and he signed it GN. So this one came from him. Donald Taco Trump, as many call him, that taco, according to the leftist, stands for,

Trump always chickens out, Iran, if that's true, missed the deadline. Now, by the deadline, he means his own declared deadline for Donald Trump to back down in Texas. Gavin Newsom said, you have till Tuesday to stop it. And Trump blew him off like the flee that he is. He missed the deadline. California will now draw new, more beautiful maps. They will be historic as they will end the Trump presidency. Dems take back the House. This is in all caps with an exclamation point. Big press conference this week with powerful Dems and Gavin Newsom, your favorite governor that will be devastating for MAGA. Thank you for your attention to this matter. G.N. An obvious attempt to sound like Trump in Trump's truth social posts

and totally missing the reality, Steve, that there's only one Donald Trump and he cannot be copied. I know. It's so embarrassing. I mean, it's, I mean, you know, as my teenage sons would put it, cringe, of the highest order. What is he doing? And this has been going on for a while now, actually. They've been using that account with these ridiculous parody posts. And it's not funny. I mean, we'll get into it.

I mean, especially when you think about all the problems, the real problems, like it is the worst run state in America, California. He's got a lot to deal with right here in California, the fact that we have the highest unemployment rate in the country, the highest poverty rate, the highest cost for everything that matters. housing, gas, electricity, water, you name it, the worst business climate in America. Like, everything is a disaster. I mean, never mind, homelessness and crime and not everything else.

And then he's doing this kind of thing. Exactly as you say, this idea that Texas started it is ridiculous. If you just look at the raw numbers and you say, what would it look like? If we did have fair representation in California, just on the congressional districts, we would have from California an extra 12 house seats for Republicans, 12. So they've already taken 12. Now he wants another 5 or 6. I mean, it's just completely ridiculous.

And he's running around doing this kind of thing on social media. It is utterly pathetic. I'm on the road the whole time since launching my campaign at the end of April. People are so angry and fed up with the way things are going. They're fed up with a struggle, the cost of everything, the hassle of everything. honestly believe we right of course you know I'm not saying it's going to be easy to win at all it's going to be very difficult their machine is very powerful they got the unions all of that but I really think we've got our best shot in at least 20 years people are desperate for change

and you know that's the plan I mean we got to deal with these real problems you mentioned the homeless problem in California I've experienced it myself I've been out to LA a few times over the past couple of years you literally have to step over the homeless encampets like tense and, like, just to get from A to B, it's so ubiquitous there. It's really seriously problematic. You toured a homeless encampment near the San Jose Airport, and this is some video you posted to your ex account on Monday. Here it is.

It's out 41. Just here right by the San Jose International Airport, and you get off the plane. It's, oh, the capital of Silicon Valley. They brag about this being the world's fourth biggest to come. I mean, there, look. This is what you get. This is what you get. This is what you get from Democrat one-party rule.

It's an absolute disgrace. How have we allowed this to go on for so long? Tent after tent after tent. Just from garbage. I mean, as far as you can see. And let's go across here. Yeah. Just look.

It's unbelievable. Just walk down here a bit. This is Gavin Newsom's California. This is Democrat-run, California. It stinks of piss and shit. Unbelievable. So that, what were those trailers and the second, like, were those campers, Steve, like parking out?

What was that in part two? It's a permanent encampment. I mean, I described it as the kind of third world slum conditions. It's not the favelas in Rio de Janeiro. It's San Jose. They brag about being the capital of Silicon Valley. It is so shameful. And this has been there for years and years and years.

And it's right across the state. And it doesn't even have to be like when I went to the premiere of Mr. Bircham, which was my fun little cartoon I did with Adam Carolla, which was at this like swanky place where there, you know, it's like a very nice neighborhood. Same. It looked the same as that. So you don't have to go out like very far to find this.

100%. It's everywhere. And the smell is a real. That's why I always make this point. I was covering the protests in L.A. when you were the ice stuff going on and the riots and all of that, I was right there reporting on that and talking to people and making the case. Let's not get into the specific argument about what was going on. But there too.

I mean, we saw the chaos and the crime and the lawlessness and setting cars on fire, all of that. But throughout it all and days afterwards and all of everything else had been gone, you were left with the stink. In L.A., our second city about to host the Olympics. Everywhere you walk in downtown Los Angeles, it stinks of piss and shit. That's the truth. And it is so shameful. It's been like this for years, and they've done nothing about it. And these are the people, these Democrats who go on and on about lecturing everyone about equity and social justice and how compassionate they are.

It's just beyond belief. On a light of note, though, I do, I have to say, I'm very happy that you showed us the whistle lady earlier. because now I think maybe with the, you know, the Californians are sitting around thinking there's this audit a few months ago saying $24 billion of our money spent on homelessness. No one can track where it went. The problem just got worse.

I think we know now. They bought whistles. Neon whistle. Yes, right. Plastic and neon. Very cute. Very cute. I'm telling my 12-year-old would love that. But not to much speaking of money disappearing.

We just did a story on AM update earlier this week on the California wildfires. All these big stars came out to raise money and made promises that the money would go directly, go directly to the Californians whose homes had burned. It didn't. We're trying to track down $100 million now, which appears, according to the reporting that we did, based on some local sources, to have gone to a combination of like immigration groups, random leftist causes as opposed to to rebuild homes. And you see these aerial shots of what's been rebuilt in the Palisades. And nothing. The answer is nothing.

Absolutely nothing has been rebuilt. And Gavin Newsom is worried about doing parodies of Trump tweets online. It's exactly right. I mean, it really illustrates so many of the deep problems of California. I'm there often. I was in the alter dina the other week. Palisades, I was there for the six-month anniversary. On the same day that Gavin Newsom at a press conference was bragging about this being the fastest recovery effort

in history, historic speed of recovery he was talking about. I did my press conference standing in front of a pile of rubble in the middle of Pacific Palisades that was kind of flowing out onto the street and onto the road. He couldn't even clear the sidewalk. He promised six months ago a, I mean, this is classic Newsom. He runs around saying things, nothing happens. He promised a Marshall plan to rebuild palisades. It's just a joke. But the point about the missing money is very, very deep, actually, because this is exactly the serious answer to where the $24 billion of homeless taxpayer money has gone is exactly where the fire aid money has gone. This unbelievably corrupt network of non-profits and charities, so-called, and all these groups

and activist organizations that form part of this system, the Democrat industrial complex, I call it, because that's the same story for everything. This is why we pay the highest taxes in the country, but have some of the worst outcomes on everything, because the money just gets funneled into this Democrat machine. There's something that's rarely discussed, which is something called VMT, vehicle miles traveled, which is this thing they came up with, part of their extreme climate agenda. Talk about luxury beliefs. The climate extremism is a classic example of that. And they just put this fictional amount of charge for the amount of miles that are traveled for any new road project or housing project, anything you want to build.

They put this allowance in for vehicle miles traveled, how much traffic is going to be generated. And then they charge taxes on that. Guess where the taxes go? It's called mitigation for climate impacts. And it goes right back to the NGOs and the climate activists and all these organizations. This is what goes on in California. This is what you get with 20 years nearly of one-party rule, this kind of corruption. There was news on that just today on California's extreme climate measures, which is just over the top.

But we all need to worry because it's true that as California goes, so goes the nation when it comes to that stuff. They adopt these very restrictive carbon emissions requirements. And lo and behold, the Biden administration was adopting the same ones. Now it's all being undone by Trump. But there was news in Politico today, which the headline is as follows. another one of California's Trump-proofing planks just broke. And what they had tried to do in the Biden administration before Joe Biden left was to try to get truckers out there, heavy-duty truck manufacturers and their trade associations to promise that they would continue meeting the state's zero

emissions sales targets. And so it was like no matter what Trump does, you've promised that you're going to do it so that he's strong-armed them into doing it. And the federal trade Commission under Trump just declared those agreements unenforceable. So now these groups are free to, yeah, there's going to be some emissions, there's going to be jobs, there's going to be purchases of, you know, these kinds of vehicles and they're going to be used and more efficiently and it's going to get done. In any event, it's not working. Biden's last minute attempt to get wind through everywhere that we're going to have a full report on that, this with the trucks in California. But they're so focused on, you know, everything's got to be green, green, green, green,

green, green, green, you know what kind of a damage people suffered to their lungs and their health as a result of those wildfires? Because there wasn't adequate planning, Steve. They didn't have competent administrators. Everything. Look, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, because of all these policies it makes housing more expensive, gas, electricity, everything. Highest in the country. That's why people can't afford to pay their bills. You can't afford to buy a house in California dream has been destroyed, that dream of owning your own home and building your life that used to represent better than anywhere else, the American dream. It's the climate extremism more than anything else that is destroying that. That's why I've pledged to reverse it.

And so I've said also that it's not enough, I think, for us to, I mean, of course it's great that we have a federal administration that's pushing back on all this, but we can't just rely on the federal government to save us in California. We have to fight and stand up for ourselves and get this common sense change that we need in California. And that's what my plan is all about is to lower people's cost, reduce the hassle of doing anything, whether that's, you know, running your life, running your business, whatever it is. It's just endless, bloated, nanny state bureaucracy, making everything so complicated and costly right across the board. That's what we've got to get rid of. And that's why I think it's not just that I can, you know,

lay out the policies. I mean, people may know me from Fox, but before I did. that, you know, I taught at Stanford and I started a business here. I was a policy advisor, senior advisor to the prime minister back in the day in the UK, David Cameron. I've done this, right? I've been there at the heart of a government, you know, fighting the bureaucracy, not with the kind of success I would have liked. I wasn't the boss. I wasn't in charge, but I know what it's like to take on a bureaucratic system. And that's why I'm doing this, because I really know that we can get this done. We just need, you talked about, competence and just people who know what they're doing for so long in California.

We've had these machine politicians. Their only skill is navigating the party machine and getting support from all the, exactly. You were talking about it just last week. I really thought of this when you were talking about Kamala Harris and all these people, but they're all the same, Newsom, Karen Bass, whatever. We're sick of it. The results are so painful for people. And we've just got to get in there and shake it.

all up and get the other thing that really reminded me when you're talking about you know Sydney sweet I know it sounds of course it's a different topic but you that reminded that returning to normalcy right that that's true in the cultural arena but in California it's also needed in the policy arena we've got these crazy extreme ideological policies that are just making everything ridiculously expensive and complicated the answers to these things are not complicated. It's just normal basic, competent government that focuses on the politicians. It requires boldness by the voters when, you know, the actual voting day comes along. I do want to show the audience you out there in front of the fires, well, in front of the spot where the fires were and what you

found. This was posted on July 7th. It's not 43. Hi, everyone. Thank you for coming today. I've just been listening to Gavin Newsom, bragging about the response. Yeah. Of his administration to the devastating wildfires we saw here six months ago to this day. I'm quoting him now. The fastest response in terms of debris removal in modern history. Six months. And this is still here.

Gesturing behind you for the listening audience, it looked like, it looked akin to 9-11. I mean, the devastation behind you. That hasn't even been removed, never mind rebuilt. Look, this is everything that we're talking about. The luxury relieves climate policies, the incompetence, the inability to really do anything, the sort of promises that never get delivered. It's all because you've got, these are not serious people. They don't understand how to get anything done. They assume they're not going to get a chance. They assume they're not going to get a challenge from the other party that they're so arrogant. All they care about is saying the right things to, you know, pander to the activists and the unions who fund their campaigns and so on.

And that's why we have this massive mess in California. And that's what we've got to get away from, this kind of attitude that you just say things to pander to the internal audience of our party instead of just focusing on what. Is it possible, Steve, you know, because my feeling way over here on the East Coast is these Californians are never going to do it. They love feeling like a good little liberal. They're never going to actually, when voting day comes, put a Republican governor back here, back in there. It's a long time since 2011 in Schwarzenegger.

But it's a lot worse. It's a lot worse for people. I mean, just, you know, I'm on the road, as I said, the whole time. And the word that captures what I'm feeling from people. You know, we do hundreds of events, thousands of people, and you just see it in their eyes. And I feel it so strongly. The word that represents better than anything else what's going on is struggle, just the struggle, the pain of just existing, of trying to feed your family and pay the bills or run your restaurant. You know, I ran a restaurant back in the day in England.

I know what it's like to start and run a small business and the pain that people are going through. And so I think it is part of what I'm trying to do. And I'm running a very active, energetic campaign. And some people are saying they haven't really seen anything like that so early. But the reason that I'm doing it is because we've got to give people hope. It doesn't have to be like this. That is the message like we don't have to live like this. It's a choice.

And you can choose common sense. We're not even talking about the cultural issues. And California has gone so radically left on that. I don't care what he told Charlie Kirk on his, you know, it's a question of fairness man when it comes to boys and girls sports. It was a lie. He doesn't believe it. Just today in the news, there's an article this is week, I guess I should say, that this one trans athlete, which means a boy participating in girls sports, who won all these events like the high jump and the long jump at the state championships in June, he was honored. He was honored by

California lawmakers, including California State Senator Sabrina Cervantes, who thought it would be great to honor this young man, A.B. Hernandez, not the women, not the girls who competed against him, who were forced to and found it, you know, tested their medal and actually got out there and did it. Him, he's the only one who got the honors, and I'll give you a feel for how their celebration of this guy sounded in SOT. I think it's 16. This says certificate of achievement presented to A.B. Hernandez. The Harupa Valley City Council is pleased to recognize A.B. Hernandez for winning CIF state track and field championships. Your preservation and dedication are a testament to your motivation to succeed.

So congratulations on this outstanding accomplishment. And just wanted to take a moment this evening to recognize A.B. Hernandez for their grit, their passion, and their dedication to the sport. We have two certificates of recognition on behalf of the California State Senate for your CIF Championship for second place in the long jump and first place in the high jump and triple jump. I am just so proud to know that you continue to prevail despite all the noise out there and you're focused on your goals and your dreams and your aspirations. We know how difficult it is to get to that level, to be an athlete at that level. Oh, my God. Your dedication and passion is an inspiration to so many. Oh, my God.

So that was Cervantes. The mayor was the first one there. The nerve to talk about his first place and how hard it was to get there. Yeah, for the girls. For the girls, Steve. Okay, so let me just, I was there. I went there to the championships in June to announce what I would do to end this obscenity. By the way, I'm just, I'm going to show you.

People won't be able to see you aren't watching. Here's a bracelet. protect girl sports, save girl sports, which I've been wearing ever since that day, it was given to me by a brave campaigner that I stood there with to announce that's what I'm going to do. And just to be really clear why this is happening. This all goes back to it. It's not even the competition. In a way, it's, you know, it's everything. I mean, you've talked about this so much and been such a powerful voice. But it's the, it's the locker rooms. And it's the, you know, even field trips. It's just girls, their spaces being invaded. There was a,

there's a story that made me so anguish for a few months before these championships in the central coast of California. You may have seen it, the teenage girl telling the story in front of a school board about how she was in the locker room with her friends and a male walked in, and as she described it, started completely naked, completely intact. That was her word, and she described what she saw with her friends, like just right next to her. She complained about it, she was punished. She was punished for calling it out. And then she went to the school board to tell the story and the school board silenced her and gavled her out and said, you can't say that. So it all goes back to a law that was passed, AB 1266, passed in 2013. And so how about outrage

we are, we got to know, we got to realize the law is the law. So I immediately said, it's not enough just to be outraged. What can I do about it as governor? And I, one of my team is actually Governor Pete Wilson's legal advisor who did great work with Governor Wilson. I said, look, we've got to change this. How can I do this? Because the legislature won't overturn that bill. Well, actually, as the governor, you have the power to challenge legislation that you think violates the California Constitution.

And we think that this bill does in two particular areas, Section 28, which guarantees safe schools and Section 31, which bars gender discrimination. What is this if it's not discrimination against girls? So my plan very clearly, and I said it there, at those track and field finals, will be to overturn this obscene legislation. And I mean, as you say, that's just one of many of these unbelievable extreme cultural things that they do. It's another one that just popped up, AB495, which allows any adult stranger to take custody of somebody else's child just by signing a few forms of that, any background. unchecked. It's just unbelievable. That's coming up for a vote. That's on the illegal immigration front, right? Am I wrong? Like if somebody's about to get deported, they basically let anybody step in and be like,

I'll watch her. I'll take the child. But it's like, that's part of how we got into this mess. Yeah, take custody because we already are doing that with unaccompanied minors who crossed the border, not under Trump, but under Biden, giving them to unknown people who have maybe no connection with them. And it's come out in the news. Many of these people turn out to be child molesters. who are, of course, the ones who are going to line up to take an unaccompanied child. The vetting system was piss poor under Biden. He didn't care.

And so now you're saying California's got a law that's basically going to allow the same kind of thing with very little screening to happen out there. To anyone, not just anyone who's been involved in the immigration system, all children, all parents. It's a state law. I mean, it hasn't been voted on yet. There's a big pastor, Jack Gibbs,

who's a good friend of mine and one of my supporters, you know, was rallying supporters to try and get them to vote this down. Because it's just you, but just when you think they can't get more extreme, they come out with something like this, that any adult can take custody of anybody's child? It is just unbelievable. But this is part of the, this is again, I come back to it all the time

because this is what happens with one party rule. They get so arrogant, they get so inward looking, they get so captured by their own ideology. and they just forget about regular, normal people who see this kind of thing, and say, you've got to be kidding me. So that's why I think we're going to win next year because, I mean, look, I used to do a show on Fox News. It was called The Next Revolution.

I always say, next year we're going to have the California Revolution. That's what it's going to feel like. But actually, it's just regular people saying, please, can we just end this far left insanity? Well, I mean, the governor race, the presidential race, those are still. areas in which Californians can be heard. California Republicans can be heard. You may not get the congressional reputation or representation that you deserve, but you can make your voice heard on a statewide level or the national level, and you should. Steve, we'll have you on many times between now and then. Good luck. You know, we're rooting for you.

Oh, well, that, Judge, can I just say one last thing? I've got to say to you. Do we have a minute? Yeah, go ahead. So we've talked a lot about California, but there's one other place that I have to mention when I'm on with it. I've been saving it up. because you will understand this better than anyone. And the minute I say the word, you'll know where I'm going with this. Sussex. Sussex. So as we discussed, I am now proud American, naturalized.

My parents were Hungarian immigrants. I grew up in England, born in London, when I was very young, they moved down to a town called Brighton. That's where I was born and raised. It is on the south coast, in the county of Sussex, East Sussex. So when I see your favorite jam company founder running around calling herself the Duchess of Sussex, no, not my Duchess. It's got to really, it's got to really irk you. It irks me too.

And her royal stationary, even though she's not a working royal, constantly requiring people to call her, you know, the right titles. Do you believe that King Charles or possibly more realistically in the future, King Willis? should strip them of their royal titles. This could make or break you as the governor. I don't know what I can do about it, but what are you talking about? You trashed the royal family. You ruin the great queen's last month

with your ridiculous evil assaults on her character and integrity in the family. And you do everything you can say, we don't want this. And then you run off to American. So, by the way, yeah, we do want it if it helps us make money. Unbelievable.

Yeah. And no, she is not my duchess. The biggest grifters in California, and that's saying something in a state that has Hollywood as one of its hubs. Steve, a pleasure. Thanks so much for coming on. Of course, Megan. See you soon.

Thank you. All right. And we're back tomorrow with Stu Bergier. And we'll see all of you then. Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear. Thank you.