The Megyn Kelly Show - Dire Consequences of Biden's Policies, and Fetterman-Oz Deep Dive, with Charles C.W. Cooke and Salena Zito | Ep. 406

Episode Date: October 6, 2022

Megyn Kelly is joined by Charles C.W. Cooke, host of The Charles C.W. Cooke Podcast, to talk about a rare moment of unity between Biden and DeSantis, media trying to push climate change and to divide the country, 2022 predictions, the state of the economy, dire consequences of Biden's energy policies, Biden's lies and exaggerations, the illegal "student loan forgiveness" action, more Herschel Walker abortion story fallout, Trump's outrageous comments about McConnell and his wife, the woke and weak next generation and the NYU professor who was pushed out, and more. Then Salena Zito, reporter for the Washington Examiner and New York Post, joins to take a deep dive into the Pennsylvania senate race between John Fetterman and Dr. Mehmet Oz, discussing the key issues of crime and drugs, the real story about Fetterman's health, whether a debate will take place, the political issues in Oz's background, Fetterman's real background, the Mastriano-Shapiro governor race, and more.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. We are just about one month away, can you believe it, from the November midterms? And later today we're going to take our first deep dive into the key races happening in one of the swing states that everybody's watching. We're going to look at the Senate and gubernatorial races in Pennsylvania with Selena Zito, who knows the state better than just about anybody. But we're going to start today with Charles Cook, Charles C.W. Cook, who had President Biden down in his state of Florida, his home state, yesterday to survey the hurricane damage with Governor Ron DeSantis. And Mr. Biden used the opportunity to tell a local mayor

that no one Fs with a Biden. What? Did you see this headline? Sort of weird. Not sure what it's about. We're going to get into it. Plus the latest on Herschel Walker and the Georgia Senate race and what may be ahead for gas prices in this country, among many other things. Charles C.W. Cook is a senior writer at National Review and host of the brand new podcast called, conveniently, The Charles C.W. Cook Podcast. Charles, great to have you back on the show. How are you doing? I'm doing well. Thanks for having me.

I got to say, you're two episodes in, and I like it even better than I liked Mad Dogs and Englishmen. Oh, thank you. That's kind of you. And I'm glad you noted how creative the name I chose for the new podcast was. I'm in a glass house on that one, Charles. I will not be ripping that. It makes it very easy for people to find you,

which is why it makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Exactly. Right. So anyway, I love it all. I am interested to say what you don't know is here on our show, Behind the Scenes, we make some fun of you. We know we love you, but we make some fun of you on the editor's podcast because when Rich tosses to you to do the ads they are a minimum of three minutes long i didn't know that i didn't know that i try and i i have to do a minute i think that's in the contract so i'm obviously going way over the top yes i think on your own podcast you siphon like shorten just a little just it's a tiny bit i love our advertisers but you know you're they're probably not paying for three minutes of Charles C.W.

Okay. I want to start not with news of the day, but with something I heard you talk about yesterday and we talked about on this show yesterday, too, because it's really irritating me. And I could hear the irritation in your voice, too. And that is what happened to this NYU professor who got fired for making organic chemistry too hard for making his class too hard for but only for 82 whiners 82 out of 350 who apparently didn't like their grades filed a petition against the guy saying he wasn't being cognizant enough of their feelings and in the tone that he was using and that their grades really didn't reflect the effort that they'd put in. To me, this is an absolute absurdity. And the university caved to these whiners, fired the professor, like the professor in organic chemistry, literally wrote the book on organic chemistry, and took a knee to the whining mob.

And I just think this portends many bad things. We knew the campus craziness wasn't confined to campus anymore, but this isn't about being woke. This is about being weak. Yeah. So there's a tendency, and I'm guilty of it myself, to assume that the lunacy that we see in the arts can't really translate over to sciences because you can't get away with it. Now, I'm happy to admit, and I have done when talking about this, I'm not good at organic chemistry. It's not my skill. I would fail this class. I was more of an arts guy. I was an English literature, history, politics sort of guy. In English literature, history, and politics, especially in this literature, you can get away

with a bit of sort of fluffy thinking. You know, maybe you could eloquent your way out of it. Maybe you can argue your way out of it. But you can't do that when it comes to organic chemistry or engineering or physics or what you will. And I think for a while, I had sort of assumed that the locus of the craziness would therefore be the arts. But what this piece in the New York Times shows us is that that isn't true. At least it's not true anymore. And I don't know quite why students are signing petitions against their professors in the first place. Petitions really are a political tool.

But I especially don't know why they're signing a petition against this professor. So this is a guy, he's 84 years old. He taught organic chemistry at NYU. It's a pretty good school. And as you said, he wrote the book. The book's called Organic Chemistry. It's in its fifth edition. So it's not as if he wrote it and then the entire industry said, this is full of nonsense. He wrote it and then he wrote another one, another one, another one, another one, kept updating it. He's extremely well regarded. He won all sorts of teaching awards. And his crime here seems to have been failing people who weren't good at organic chemistry.

I wouldn't have been myself. And that really matters because as the Times points out, the reason people are frustrated with him for failing them in organic chemistry is because they want to go on to be doctors. And that's pretty important as a job. If I disappeared tomorrow, Megan, it wouldn't particularly matter. There would still be people to write about politics and history and so on. Doctors, yeah, you've got to get that right. People don't wake up on the operating table if you don't. So he should be failing people.

And the question that is asked over and over in this New York Times piece that just made me wince was, how hard should organic chemistry really be? It should be as hard as it is, because otherwise, people are going to die. Right. That's the problem when this coddle culture seeps its way into medicine, into the military, into pilot training, right? Like the messing of standards when it comes to our firemen, when it comes to our Navy SEALs, when it comes to, again, our pilots, which are now more worried about diversity than they are about just getting the best and most qualified candidates.

And now this is medicine. This is a precursor to medicine. Even lawyers, you can get away with having some lame ones. But doctors, people actually could die. There should be absolutely no lowering of the standards. And by the way, I understand it's the pandemic and all that. Too bad. Too bad medicine itself is a test of who can do well in the most trying and stressful of

circumstances. Who do they think was saving lives during the pandemic? Doctors. Right. And this is a misapplication of concepts. So there is a role, although not half as much as the one we've carved out. There is a role in history, in the arts, in politics, for a discussion of social constructs, for a discussion of our assumptions as a society. It is true that the way we think about our history

is conditioned by who's writing the books, who's in power. It's true that we're all affected by what's around us, the families we came from, the places we grew up in, and that we're going to apply that when we're in the voting booth or we're arguing about what's right and wrong. Now, again, I think it's gone far too far. And I think it's being filtered through some really quite horrible sort of racial and sexual immutable characteristics assumptions. But there's some truth to that. There is no truth to that whatsoever when it comes to hard sciences. There's no social construct that can change whether or not a bridge has structural integrity. There's no social construct that can change whether or not a bridge has structural integrity. There's no social construct that can change whether or not the right medicine has been recommended. There's no social construct that can change whether or not the airplane that's been built is going to fly or crash.

These are not presumptions that one can argue one's way in or out of. Now, you mentioned lawyers. I mean, it's true. You have to know the law, and the law is written down for a reason. But there's a little wiggle room. Even in those topics, you could get away with it. You can't get away with it here. And the idea that this is now being decided by petition, and the NYU caved when it saw this petition, I think is absolutely terrifying. Because what it tells me is that there are people out there, and worse, there are people in positions of authority who have completely abandoned the

idea of objective truth. My takeaway yesterday was do not go to a Gen Z doctor. Stick with the Gen Xers, maybe an older millennial, but do not go to a Gen Z doctor because if the standards are getting lower to accommodate their feelings, your likely feeling when cared for by that doctor will be pain and possibly death. It's just not an area in which we need to make these compromises. So I have an old doctor and I love him and he's amazing and he gives it to me straight. And it's very clear he's had a lot of his feelings hurt. And now he's a crusty old bastard, just like I want him. That's exactly what I want, my doctor.

All right. Speaking of crusty old bastard, Joe Biden. Thank you. Thank you. Enjoy the Clams Casino. Joe Biden goes down to Florida and he gets caught on tape in this weird moment talking to i think it was a democratic mayor of one of the cities down there and people sort of put their lip readers on it and everybody's determined that what he actually said in this following clip it's very short was

no one f's with a biden but he said the f word here it is is. Says that last line was, you can't argue with your brothers outside the house. What on earth? I don't know what's happening there. But to me, it's interesting. He's, you know, engaging in a machismo moment. He's trying to get his swagger on. Says something about where he's been mentally for the past couple days or weeks. That was honestly like a scene from a Martin Scorsese movie. The big boss goes down to Florida and, you know, meets up with another of the families and wants to make himself clear that it's very, very strange.

And look, the president's very, very strange. But I think he's done a good job here. And I think he should be praised for it. You know, this has been a good moment for America. And as a Floridian, I'm pleased by it. The governor of Florida- Yeah, people are shocked by the fact that they've been working together so well,

Biden and DeSantis. Yeah. You know, I've written a bunch about this because this has driven me crazy. And in fact, I wonder whether it's annoyed Biden because maybe that's what that clip's about. Maybe he's trying to get back his sense of control. But, you know, the way this has been covered in the press is really irritating to me. We have political disagreements because we're a free country. So people are going to disagree

profoundly with each other on fundamental questions. What should we do in the realm of war and peace? How high should taxes be? How much government spending should we have? What balance should there be between the federal and state governments? We're all going to disagree, and we should. But the idea that because people disagree, and in particular because Governor DeSantis, the governor of Florida, and President Biden, who's the executive within the federal government, disagree on ideological matters, that they shouldn't work together on hurricane relief, or that it's somehow hypocritical for them to work together on hurricane relief, or that it's surprising

for them to work together on hurricane relief, is really odd. Because there is no great ideological difference in this country when it comes to hurricanes. We're and there is a state role. And a functioning system, a system that is not a banana republic is one in which people who disagree with one another profoundly on a whole bunch of moral and political questions can work together. And it's really nice that that's what we've seen. I mean, to you know, to the extent that our politics have been put aside. Yesterday, we had dogs and cats living together. Joe Biden said that DeSantis had done a good job. And Donald Trump said DeSantis had done a good job.

And I think DeSantis has said that Biden has done a good job and he's got everything he needed from the federal government, which is how it should be. You know, so there's this weird reporting, whereas, wow, right up until the hurricane, DeSantis was pretty critical of Biden. Yeah, and I'm sure he will be afterwards as well. It's just completely irrelevant to dealing with Hurricane Ian.

It's a natural disaster. I mean, we've always come together in the wake of these and tried to put partisanship aside. And then if somebody falls down on the job, like Bush after Katrina, there will be a pile on. But that didn't happen here. So thankfully, the system's working as it was designed to work. And so as I've watched that happen, the media has tried to blame Lee County on DeSantis a bit. You didn't see it coming. He's like, no one saw it coming. The cone shifted. You, the media, weren't there either. But so as that fell apart, they've shifted to, well, it's your own votes against climate change that that made this happen like you put florida in

a worse position to battle all of this because you voted against big dough that would have helped fight climate change and what they mean in particular is the inflation reduction act the misno misnamed inflation reduction act and so on here's the new york times all right uh october 4th florida's gop leaders opposed climate aid. Now they're depending on it. All right. This is by Christopher Flavell and Jonathan Wiseman in the New York Times. Hurricane Ian's wrath made clear that Florida faces some of the most severe consequences of climate change anywhere in the country. Oh, it did? Oh, I'm sorry. I thought I saw the head of NOAA saying that's not at all what it shows and that there's been no increase in frequency or severity of hurricanes as a result of climate change. But the Times would like us to tell, like us to believe as a matter of fact, that the hurricane has made clear Florida faces some of the most severe consequences of climate change anywhere in the country. But the state's top elected leaders

opposed the most significant climate legislation to pass Congress, laws to help fortify states against and recover from climate disasters, going on to talk about, as I mentioned, the so-called Inflation Reduction Act and others. And then they hit DeSantis for blocking the state's pension fund from taking climate change into account when making investment decisions, because DeSantis took the position that politics should be absent from financial calculations. So because DeSantis doesn't want woke ideology to be the basis for state investments, he's getting hit as not in favor of climate change remedies. And therefore, the pain and suffering is still his fault.

This is extremely sloppy thinking from start to finish. I mean, even if you believe that the bills in question would have had a material effect on the strength of hurricanes, which I think is a stretch, they wouldn't have done it that quickly, would they? And if you look at the way that these examples are set up, the one that's doing the rounds at the moment is that Hurricane Ian is likely to be the most deadly to hit Florida since the 1930s, which should suggest that this is something that happens in this part of the country from time to time and has done for thousands, hundreds of thousands of years.

This is so petty. It's petty and irrational. The idea that Congress can micromanage the weather in this way is farcical. And I don't think one has to be completely dismissive of the idea that there is some climate change, and I'm not, to think that. It is a misallocation of responsibility. They're taking somebody who's been governor since 2018, they're taking bills that, if they had any effect at all, would have a marginal effect over a century,

and they're trying to draw a straight line. The most annoying one of these I've seen is the claim that DeSantis bears some responsibility for this hurricane because he voted against a climate bill when he was in Congress. After Superstorm Sandy in New York. Right. That bill was full of an extraordinary amount of pork. It was a bad bill. And I don't think that it is incumbent upon members of Congress to suck that up each and every time it's put in front of them. I don't think it is reasonable, and this is unfortunately a tendency we're increasingly seeing in our politics, to put worthwhile, valuable items inside another bill that is broadly opposed.

And then to say, because you voted against the overall package, you therefore must have disdained everything that was within it. But that's what's happening here. I think that's a game. I think it's a cynical game and I wish people would stop playing it. For the record, Michael Schellenberger tweeted this out the other day, citing Noah. The New York Times says climate change is making storms like Hurricane Ian more destructive. Going back to the article I just read, and it's been positing that for days now. He writes, but that's false.

There have been 15 cat four or stronger hurricanes that have made landfall in Florida since 1919. All right. Fifteen cat four or stronger since 1919. Ten occurred before 1960. Just five since then. But you wouldn't know it if you were to read The New York Times blaming all of this on manmade climate change and pinning the blame on Republicans like DeSantis for not doing more to get solar panels and so on into place to fight it. OK, the other big story in the news right now is the midterms were less than a month away, as I pointed out, and things appear to be tightening again, this time in the Republicans favor. In June, they were running away with it. Over the course of the summer, it got a lot tighter to the benefit of the Democrats. And now things are starting to look better for the Republicans again. There is a CNN, actually, CNN politics article talking about

how Republicans hold a near historic lead on a key midterm indicator, and they're citing Gallup. All right. So Gallup has for decades put the put the question to voters. What issue is most important to you? And then they say, which party can better handle that issue? Well, an overwhelming majority said it's the economy. Not not surprisingly. And 48 percent say the Republican Party is best equipped to handle it. Only 37 percent believe it's the Democratic Party. That 11 point Republican edge is one of the best Republicans have ever had. This is again from the CNN article looking at 20 midterm elections since 1946. When this question was asked only once has the GO party had a larger advantage on this question. And that was in 1946 when they had a 17 point lead. Okay, it's 11 points now,

17 point lead back then on the Democrats when they had the 17 point lead on this question. They saw a net gain of 55 House seats in 1946. So it's just a long sort of convoluted, but interesting look at how they're leading on things like this, of course, direction of the country, they're leading on economy inflation, they're leading on these things matter. And we're, we're about a month out. So it matters more right now than it has. Yeah. And to put that number you just read into context, you say 1946. So that was after the Democrats had been in charge of Washington, DC for 16 years. The 1929 crash happens, and then there is an immediate backlash against the Republican Party, which starts in 1930 in the midterms. 1932, you get the election of Franklin Roosevelt, massive super majorities in 1936. So by 1946, you would expect a backlash

on that scale. But Joe Biden's been in office for less than two years, and his party have been in control of Congress for nearly four years in the House and two in the Senate. months when imagining what's going to happen in November. I do think that the Dobbs decision probably had some effect. That effect was primarily to bring Democrats who had been disaffected by the economic situation back into the fold. But I don't think that the decision that the Supreme Court arrived at has alienated swing voters in quite the way that it was supposed to have. And I thought also over the summer that people were a little premature because we weren't really in a political cycle yet, that the ads hadn't started in earnest. I mean, I do because I work in this, you do, you work in this area. But most people are not in the middle of August saying,

what about those midterms? They tend to turn on late September, October. So it was always going to shift back a little bit. And it has. And the truth is that the fundamentals here are just not good for the Democratic Party. They have unified control of Washington, D.C., and they have had that control at the same time as we've seen two quarters of contraction, whether that's a recession or not, we can argue about inflation at its highest level since 1980, and then all the things that result from high inflation, the consequences of trying to fight high inflation, which tend to be the contraction of the economy, and high interest rates, which in turn lead to high mortgage rates and high car payment rates, and so on. And general grumpiness amongst the electorate. Right, right. Oh, and high gas prices, I should say as well. And Joe Biden and his party have just not signaled that they are serious about fighting this. It is not all their fault. Some of it really is their fault

because they just spent so much money and they sent out so many checks, but not all of it is their fault. But they haven't been serious about fighting it. They said it wasn't going to happen. Then they said it would go away quickly. Then when it didn't go away quickly, they said maybe we should do Build Back Better and add another three to six trillion dollars to it. Then when they realized that that wasn't going to happen, they kept looking at ways to spend money. Then they passed a bill called the Inflation Reduction Act that had absolutely nothing to do with inflation and that everybody knew had nothing to do with inflation. And now they're coming into October when it's far too late for Congress to do anything and far too late for the president to do anything. And the last thing he did, by the way, was unilaterally and illegally spend up to a trillion dollars on college students, which is

inflationary. And they're wondering why the message, hey, the economy is starting to turn around isn't resonating with people. And the reason for that is very simple, because the economy is not starting to turn around. There's no victory lap to take, because there's no victory. And the numbers that we're seeing for Congress are reflecting that. We, the news just gets worse and worse by the day for them economically, and the Fed's doing what it should do. But it was very late to this party to try to get control over the amount of money circulating in our economy. So people are feeling that pain, but they're feeling it at the gas pump

again. One year ago, the price of gas was 3.2. Now it's up to, I think, 3.87 as of today. I just took a look just because I know it was obviously lower under Trump. When Trump left office in January 2021, it was $2.40 a gallon. I mean, just think about that. You don't need an economist to walk you through that. You're already feeling it when you go and fill up your tank. So we're at almost back, you know, pretty close to $4 a gallon again. This, as I haven't heard you guys talk about this yet, but the OPEC embarrassment after we went on bended knee back to the Saudis after we were going to make pariahs out of them.

And instead we did a fist bump, right? Joe Biden goes there saying, I got this. Goes and does a fist bump to try to help get out oil from the Saudis. We have plenty here at home. And so we humbled ourselves in front of the so-called pariahs and got absolutely nothing. All right. They wouldn't even take Biden's call. So then finally, they have a fist bump moment. Biden comes back acting like some sort of a victor. And now we get the answer, which is not only are we not going to produce more, we're going to pull a couple million barrels from the current supply.

And Joe Biden saying, OK, maybe we'll just go to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve here in the United States. OK, but the point is, we have absolutely no heft internationally when it comes to our bargaining power. We've embarrassed ourselves. We have high gas prices and we're actually looking at a winter where they're now saying it's going to be way more expensive to heat your home than it's been. There's already been a 300% uptick, sorry, $300 uptick just from the 2021 winter. And it's expected to be $300 or more expensive this winter. What do you make of all that? Well, we don't have to be in this position. And again, some of this was inevitable and is not Joe Biden's fault. It's the product of our coming out of COVID, all of the supply chain issues that we saw. It's quite

difficult just to turn on energy production overnight and the increase in demand as it interacts with supply pushing up the price. But even if you accept that, which I do, you can judge the president on how he has responded to it. And he and his party are just not interested in taking advantage of the great blessings that the United States has with its natural resources. I mean, we have not taken advantage of the resources themselves, that's getting them out of the ground. And we haven't taken advantage of our ability to build refining capacity. A lot of the oil that we're pulling out of the ground in the United States, we're actually having to send to other places to refine. Now, that's a choice. It's a short-term choice and a long-term choice.

We do not need to be using the strategic petroleum reserves, not what it's for, to try to lower gas prices. We do not need to be going on bended knee to the Saudis or now to the Venezuelans. We don't need to be asking OPEC to help. In fact, if there's one thing we should have learned from the last 50 years, it's not to rely on OPEC after what happened in the 1970s. If we were an island nation with very few natural resources, then our calculation would be different. But we're not. We're an enormous, blessed continental nation that can, if it wants to be, be energy independent, fully energy independent.

We can pull out of the ground enough oil and refine it to keep cars going. And this is a slightly separate topic. But we can create enough domestic energy, including nuclear, we had the will to never have to ask Saudi Arabia for help ever again. And what I think this has shown is that whatever one's view is on the question of energy and climate, and the conservation of land, it is now abundantly clear, if it wasn't already, that the American public is not going to agree to go back in time or to forswear the Industrial Revolution.

People like their modern comforts. Much of them, that is necessary. Air conditioning is not optional. Heating is not optional. But the demand for gasoline and for other energy is not going to go down. So we're going to have to get it from somewhere. And it should be the United States. It seems absolutely crazy to me that we're in this position. And much of that, again, in the short term and in the long term is a choice.

And it's made at the very top. We were talking the other day about what consequence does the election of the president have? If you could have divided government, is gridlock enough to change, to stop the Democrat big government agenda? And, you know, this is a good example of how might not be enough. It's better than what we have right now, which is just far left spending and policies being implemented at every level. But, you know, whether we tap into our energy reserves, whether we spur big business in the energy industry into doing more and, you know, drilling domestically and so on. That really

is an executive level decision. So there's some things that would have to be undone before we could vote for gridlock. Charles, you're staying with us. Don't go anywhere. We'll be right back. Charles, you've been busy, clearly, maybe not as busy as Joe Biden, who not only had to deal with the aftermath of Hurricane Ian, but you may not know, spent some time with getting in touch with his Puerto Rican roots. No. story. Not long after claiming that he actually visited the Tree of Life synagogue after the horrific attack there that killed 11 people in 2018, when he said, I went there and I visited and spent time. And then they came out and said, no, you didn't. You never came here. He said, oh, I had a phone call. OK, so that happened. A couple of years later here, he is saying he was he's basically raised by Puerto Ricans, Delaware, which is less than one percent Puerto Rican, his home state, that he was raised by Puerto Ricans in Delaware. That's really what Delaware is all about. And there's a montage that I don't know who put it together, but it's brilliant of some of Biden's gaffes along these lines, because it wasn't just these two examples.

We'll play it for you. Watch here. I got raised in the black church. He knows I'm not kidding. I got my education for real in the black church. And that's not hyperbole. It's a fact. I probably went to school more than many of you did. You all think I'm kidding. You can tell you I'm not. I was sort of raised in the Puerto Rican community at home politically. Oh, my God. I mean, it just goes on.

It just shows he's such a panderer and, of liar he's always been like this though if you go back to the first time he ran for president in the 80s this this is what he's always done and he he has these stories about his father that are really really unconvincing apparently his father always said to him at the foot of his bed exactly what he would need in the future to be able to tell an audience his father said to him. Apparently, his father was the most forward-looking man in the history of the United States as well, you know, in Scranton. Everything that is currently fashionable, his father was into in 1952. This is who Joe Biden is. It's who Joe Biden has always been. He's always had a very casual relationship with the truth. And it's one

of the things, I think, that has made the tendency of people who didn't want to vote for Donald Trump, which I absolutely understand, to turn Biden into a hero rather than an alternative. So baffling to me. I comprehend why people said I'm voting for Biden, not Trump. I get it. I don't understand why people who did that feel the need to pretend or insist that Joe Biden is a good upstanding person, because he's not. He's always been a fabricator. Before Joe Biden ran for president, and I'll be honest, before I ever thought he would be president, when he was vice president, I wrote a piece at National Review comparing him to Prince Philip in Britain, because he always seemed to have a

gaffe. Now, he doesn't have the charm that Prince Philip had. But Prince Philip was absolutely notorious for saying things that were, let's say, politically incorrect, that were likely to make the people in there feel uncomfortable, that you would probably more associate with somebody in the 1950s than in the modern era. And Joe Biden is that guy. This is a guy who told a black man a few years ago, you know, if you don't vote for me, you ain't black. This is not a smooth man. And this is who he is. He sees an audience and he really wants to convince that audience that he is more like them than they are. And so he'll just have whatever it takes,

whatever it takes, he'll say it. And sometimes it's funny, but sometimes it's actually quite sinister. The clips that you played were funny in their own way. What he said about Mitt Romney wanting to put the audience back in chains was really very sinister and I think was a turning point in our politics. Not to mention the dark Brandon speech that we were all just subjected to. And then he goes out and he denies that he said any of the things the very next day, once again, like the inflation and the economy story, asking us not to believe our lying eyes. Now, it must be said on the other side from the election in 2020 and possibly in the election in 2024, we have Donald Trump, OK, who rather than sort of taking the high road and giving the

country an alternative to hold on to. And I mentioned the two dollars and 40 cents gas prices. OK, I get that. But sends out one of the just the most insane tweets, even by Trump standards the other day that I know it's not a tweet. It's on his truth social network. I don't know what's going on here, Charles, but I know it caught your attention, too. And I genuinely don't understand what Trump is doing with this. I know he doesn't like Mitch McConnell, but this seemed to come out of left field. And this is what he wrote. Is McConnell approving all of these trillions of dollars worth of Democrat sponsored bills without even the slightest bit of negotiation because he hates Donald J. Trump and he knows I am strongly opposed to them? Or is he doing it because he believes in the fake and highly destructive Green New Deal and is willing to take the country down with him? In any event, either reason is unacceptable. He has a, in all caps, death wish, must immediately seek help and advice from his China loving wife, Coco Chow.

Most of us didn't believe this was real. Even knowing Trump tweets or truth show, whatever, truths, extraordinary things. I didn't think this was real. It's real. That actually came from him. I don't know what he's doing. And I wonder, I know it's factually not correct either,

but what is he doing? I mean, where to start? It's grotesque. It's grotesque. It's not true. That is not true of Senator McConnell. McConnell was instrumental to the Trump presidency. Without McConnell, Trump wouldn't have got most of the things he got done. McConnell is not and has not been passing trillions of dollars of democratic spending to annoy Donald Trump was a private citizen. And then when we get to the end with the racial slur, and this is not only a woman who served in Trump's own cabinet.

It's Mitch McConnell's wife. And what he said about her, it's just gross. So you ask, what's he doing? I think Republican voters, including Republican voters who really like Trump, ought to ask themselves exactly the question that you just asked. There's a temptation to say, well, I don't care about mean tweets. But mean tweets are the symptom here. They're not the disease.

The disease is a total lack of control, self-control exhibited by Trump, and also a total lack of care, it seems, or interest in moving the ball forward. So the question I've been asking people is, let's strip that truth of its moral failings. Let's just ignore for a second what he said about Elaine Chao. And let's ignore that it contains a lie. What did it do for you? What did it do to advance the ball? Let's look at it amorally. Forget me, forget that I find it abhorrent, and I think less of Trump for it. Let's just look at it from the perspective of somebody who is worried about the direction of the country and wants it to approve.

What did that do? It diminished the man who will probably be the next Senate majority leader. It told Asian Americans that they are unwelcome. It told voters that Republicans are unserious and spend money that they have not, in fact, spent, most of which they've blocked when they could. And it did what? Did it repeal Obamacare? Did it change the nature of the judiciary? Did it fix the southern border? Did it change the nature of the judiciary? Did it fix the southern border?

Did it end the opioid crisis? Did it improve our economy? Did it lower gas prices? Did it help inflation? No, it did absolutely nothing. And I've just been struck by the side by sides. I have seen on the one hand, that truth. And on the other hand, the images of my governor running around the state, giving 11 press conferences a day, getting bridges fixed, and generally exhibiting competence and care of Governor Abbott in Texas on the southern border. I don't know how we can look at this as a movement and say, yes, that's what we need. We're not talking here about somebody who has been nominated for the presidency. We're not comparing or shouldn't be comparing that to Joe Biden. We're comparing that to basically everyone in the country.

And it should factor in to the decision that conservatives make when 2024 rolls around. Because what Donald Trump, in my view, is saying is, I'm not focused on what matters, and I'm not serious. It's just, it's like, with theans being dismissed as an entire group of racists and bigots and i think that reasonably taking umbrage at that how what is that how does this reflect on them on the trump exactly who don't have this in their heart who would never say china loving wife coco chow about elaineow, who served this country and Trump's administration faithfully. Like and by the way, we would not have a Justice Gorsuch if it weren't

for Mitch McConnell. Forget the other two who he helped shepherd through. But we really wouldn't have Gorsuch if it weren't for Mitch McConnell. So it's like, yes, he's opposed Trump. He's been critical of Trump on the election claims and didn't support the January 6th stuff that that seems to me where he really broke from him. He can't let it go. And he continues to say things like this that will only undermine his own chances, the chance of any Republican running for office from this point forward. You know, if I'm a Democrat media person, I'm bringing this up at the at the Senate, at the Senate race that I'm having between Oz and Fetterman. I'm saying, what's your response to this, Mehmet Oz? He said this. Do you stand behind that? I'm going to ask it of

every Republican. And so it's not helpful to himself or to the Republican Party or to any Republican running for office. And it shouldn't be defended even by the most ardent Trump lovers. And also, is that the person you want to be president when you have a choice? I mean, again, I understand binary choices. As I said, I understand the people who said, I don't want to vote for Trump, therefore I'm going for Biden. I also understand the people who said, no, I'm voting for Trump because Biden's wrong about this, that and the other. And, you know, he's pro-choice and he's against more energy production and all of the stuff

we've been talking about. I understand that. But at the moment, Donald Trump is a private citizen. In fact, all he has at the moment is mean tweets. What is it about that that could make anyone say that's the guy? That's the guy for 2024. It's just not helping anything. No, it's a good point.

I would be remiss if I didn't get you to respond to this because your big issue these past It's just not helping anything. to be impeached over it. Karine Jean-Pierre was asked about it. He's gotten hit with several lawsuits now, which is good because the lawsuits are going to bring down the program. I agree with you. It's completely extra legal what he's doing. So as that's happened, he's slowly tried to change it to the Department of Education.

Oh, we're going to do it a little differently to try to address the one lawsuit because he knows he's going to lose in that lane. And maybe we'll make another tweak to try to address another set of lawsuits that's gotten filed because he knows he's going to lose again. And Kareem Jean-Pierre was asked about the program. Here's what she that are trying to stop Americans from getting a little bit of a breathing room, a little bit of break. This is a commitment that the president has made. He made it during his campaign. And this is one of the one of the ways that the

president is going to continue to work for the American people, trying to find ways to give them a little bit of a break. Because I think it's six Republican states that have also sued. So she's accusing them of stopping the president in his efforts to give people a little bit of a break, Charles. I think the question here is, do we have a constitutional order or do we not? I'm not really interested in her sentiment. The Constitution of the United States gives lawmaking power exclusively to Congress. Congress has not passed a law that permits the president to do this. The 2003 Heroes Act that Biden claims allows him to do this does not. But even if it did, it would require there to be an emergency. Biden himself has said the pandemic is over.

And besides, what sort of emergency is only apparent 16, 17 months into a presidency at its lowest ebb, not its highest ebb? What Biden did was flatly, indisputably illegal. And he's making it worse by trying to parry the lawsuits that are coming in by changing his illegal order on the fly. Not only was his initial order illegal, he's now carving out exceptions in order to try and avoid the plaintiffs having standing in the eyes of the courts. I will ask this question here, as I have elsewhere. What about our political system would have been different in relation to the student loan order if we didn't have a Congress? If instead we just elected a president and allowed that president to determine what was good and just

and moral and right and legal. The order was put forth without Congress. Then when President Biden was sued, he said, don't worry, I've updated the website on which the order is being tracked. Then when he was sued again, he said, don't worry, I've exempted the people who were suing me so that there is no harm here. That's not how legislating works in this country. And even when Congress has given the president certain powers, even when we have had delegations of legislative authority from the legislature to the executive branch, we have a process. The Administrative Procedure Act is there to prevent this sort of capricious lawmaking. Biden just hasn't used it. He has bypassed it.

He has ignored it. And I think that Americans, irrespective of whether or not they like the idea of student loan transference, it's not forgiveness, it's transference. I think they should be deeply worried about this, because this is not really a question of the nature of the decision or whether or not one likes the president. It's a question of constitutional integrity. It's amazing. She makes it sound like they're helping the poor, the downtrodden, just give them a little bit of a break in these hard times. And what they're in fact doing is taking money from some of the most well-educated and likely to be financially rewarded professionals we have and making the people who are working class

pay off their loans. That's what this is. This isn't about heartstrings. This is about reverse Robin Hood. And don't forget, folks, tomorrow I'm going to be sending my next American News Minute. That's all the news you need in one minute or less, plus all the latest trouble my little Strudwick got into. He never disappoints. You can sign up now at megankelly.com. If you want to reach out to me directly, you can email me. That email is megan, M-E-G-Y-N, at megankelly.com. And I'll address some of those right here on the show. And don't forget, you can find The Megan Kelly Show live right here on Sirius XM Triumph Channel 111 every weekday at noon east. And the full video show and clips by subscribing to our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash megankelly. Download the podcast wherever

you get your podcasts for free. And we'll be right back. Let's talk politics down in Georgia for a minute, because the Herschel Walker story continues. And it's, you know, it's basically a dispute over what kind of a husband and father he was and what connection he has with the truth present day because he came out what initially happened was the daily beast which absolutely hates herschel walker and any republican came out with a hit piece was obviously an oppo research

you know november type surprise october surprise uh comes out saying he's got he paid for a woman to have an abortion back in 2009 and here's a card and a check from him in his with his handwriting for 700 then we have the woman uh we're going to keep her name anonymous but we know who it was and and he did it and this is a guy who's advocating for um he's a pro-lifer now and says i want an abortion ban with no exceptions not rape not incest nothing so they run the story he comes out and say it's a lie and told Fox. Not only is it a lie, I don't know this woman and I don't remember sending this woman any money.

I don't I don't know even know who this is. He went on. As for the rest of it, he went on Fox and Friends yesterday and said the following to explain away the man he used to be and the man he is today. This is SOT 8. I've been redeemed and I'm going to make this statement here. It's like they're trying to bring up my past to hurt me, but they don't know bringing up my past

only energizes me to go out and fight even harder. Well, then last night, the Daily Beast has a follow-up report saying, you definitely know the woman because you actually had another child with her. And gets the woman to go on record. And she says, yeah, you know, he did pay for my abortion and I had another child with him and he definitely knows who I am. And his son, Christian, who's a Trump supporter, like diehard Trump supporter, has been out there saying he's not a good man. He threatened my

mother. We had to move six times in six months to avoid his wrath. We were in danger. And it's causing a lot of consternation amongst Republicans who really want to take back the Senate, Charles, really want to take back the Senate. And yet, this must be grappled with. So how do you think about it? Well, from my perspective, the problem here will be if he's lying now if this did happen and he's saying it didn't happen if this report's accurate and he's saying it's false i think he threatened to sue the daily beast if it were part of his past i think it would be you know really fine depending on how he dealt with it now. Now, he has a lot of baggage.

He's been open about this. He says that he was a mess, that he struggled with mental health. He wrote a book about that, and that he's made all sorts of decisions that he really regrets, but that he found Jesus and he's saved by the grace of God. And, you know, irrespective of the religious component, I think redemption is a good quality to have in a society. And I think it would be an undesirable society in which someone like that couldn't change and then announced that he had changed. And that goes for paying for an abortion too. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with someone who is now pro-life having not been in the past. There's nothing wrong with somebody who's had an abortion or paid for an abortion saying these were the wrong decisions and I've changed.

But if he did it and he's now lying about it, then that is a contemporary problem. That is a current problem. And I think that really does speak to his character now, and should actually bring into question whether or not all of his talk of redemption is sincere. I don't know if this story is true or not. So I find it quite difficult to judge. But if it does turn out to be true, and if he does turn out to have been lied, then it will hurt him. And it should hurt him. Whether or not it will hurt him enough to lose the race, I don't know, because we're about to see new inflation news, we're seeing gas prices go up. It could just be, especially with how popular Brian Kemp, the gubernatorial candidate in Georgia seems to be, it could be that he makes it over the line anyway. If it's

a very close race, this could be enough to slough off enough people at the margins to hand the rest to his opponent. Think about it, you know, so and I should clarify the Daily Beast did not name the woman in the follow up reporting. They just said, we know who she is and we've gone back to her. And now here's a new detail. She was so well known to him that they conceived another child years after the abortion. And she continued on with that later pregnancy, though she claimed that Walker said it wasn't a really convenient time for him to have that baby either. But she decided to carry that baby to term and gave birth to him or her um i i it's an interesting question to me because if all of this is true if we assume the daily beast reporting is true and he did threaten to sue but then his lawyers when asked kind of walked it back right like well we're looking into it i predict there will be no lawsuit um do you want a man who you know is flawed in his former marriage, in his role as a man, and even in his connection to the truth about those behaviors? I would expect him to be embarrassed about this and to perhaps lean on the side of some dishonesty.

I would. It doesn't reflect well on him. Do you want that man, if he's going to be elected to the Senate and tip the balance in favor of Republicans at a time when so much rides in the balance? You know, if if we have another Supreme Court vacancy, Joe Biden's going to fill it in those last two years and then it's going to have to get Senate approval. And items that the House and potentially the Senate could stop or control over the next two years and beyond. You know, these senators get six year terms. So it's a long it's a long deal once you get somebody in there. Anyway, do you care or would you rather go with? I don't know. Raphael Warnock, he's got some stuff in his past, too.

He allegedly ran over his wife with a car. It's not great. He does. You know, so let's say he's squeaky clean. Let's pretend he's squeaky clean. You know, he's like this minister and he's going to be like God-fearing man in there. But he's going to vote for this totally crazy left-wing agenda, woke agenda. And against all these other things, like against due process for men on college campuses who are accused.

And he's going to vote for the most far-left justice could ever like it raises an interesting question no it does it does and and specifically on the question of abortion too i mean if the idea is that pro-life americans should look at this and and be horrified by it i understand but equally raf Warnock's views on abortion are much more likely to have a mass impact than Hershel Walker's because, you know, Warnock is in favor of federal preemption of abortion law. In other words, wiping out 50 states abortion laws. They call this codifying Roe. Which should you prefer? I think it's a very difficult question, and it's one that I've grappled with and struggled with myself. I wrote a piece just before the 2020 election about this as it related to Donald Trump.

I was under no illusions as to Trump's shortcomings, and I laid them out in the first five paragraphs. And then I said, the problem is I also don't like Biden. And there are a great deal of important issues at stake in our politics at the moment, issues that affect tens of millions of people. And where the line is between someone's character and how someone will vote is really difficult to discern. It's difficult to discern which you should prefer. And the way that I tend to look at this, the way that I always explain this to people if they ask how I view candidates is, as a rule, you should determine whether or not someone is so far beyond the pale that they've disqualified themselves and then vote for the person you agree with more. So for example, in Florida,

I've done this on your show, I've criticized Governor DeSantis for quite a few things, but I agree with him on more than I disagree with him on, and I agree with him on more than I agree with his opponent, Charlie Criston, and I don't think there is anything about him that is disqualifying. So I'm going to vote for Governor DeSantis. That's fairly easy. With Herschel Walker, that becomes much more difficult. Is this disqualifying, the lying that is? Do I agree with him more than his opponent? Yes, I almost certainly do. And how do I weigh that? And I haven't actually sat down and thought about that in great detail, in part because I don't live in Georgia, so I haven't actually had to.

But I agree with you. I think it is tough. And we'll get a lot of pieces about this from people on either side of this who will pretend that this is a very easy question and that anyone who disagrees with this doesn't care enough. It's just not true you know if you if you talk to people outside of the the the crucible of uh daily politics just normal americans who vote they really struggle with this too i can't count the number of letters and emails that i got after that piece i wrote about trump saying this is exactly what i'm trying to work out um as well and i would imagine the same thing's happening in Georgia. It's so like, I'm thinking about that Trump tweet versus the Herschel Walker allegations. Herschel Walker, what they've alleged about him is that he was not a good husband. He

was not a good man with respect to his obligations and the women he brought into his life, never mind the children. And now when potentially confronted by some of those acts alleged acts he may have lied about them and i again it's not great to lie but i would understand why this is a big race it's we're at the end he sees it as an oppo dump meant to get rid of him by the media and he's probably not wrong um and he's embarrassed if it's true he's embarrassed this is not good conduct but the trump thing is like act an active decision to tweet out something so weirdly i know this is a weird phrase but like unnecessarily racist against somebody who worked for him and was really loyal to him. She didn't like the January 6th thing either. Like, why? What's why just disparage yourself, your supporters in that way? You know,

it's going to be used against them. It's going to be used against all Republicans. It's an active decision to be reckless. And that's the thing about Trump. He can be just so reckless, not to mention the racial tones in the you know tones and that's a whole other matter. Herschel Walker's thing seems like he's got a serious weakness in the personal lane. Yeah, I don't know. To me, they're slightly different. I do think they're different. Yeah.

I also think that it's important for us to remember, just as a matter of elementary fact, that neither party has a monopoly on virtue in this area. Ted Kennedy was elected over and over and over again after what happened at Chappaquiddick because he had the right political views. And it was only after he died that people were prepared to say maybe that wasn't a great idea. Bill Clinton was more popular among Democrats after the Lewinsky scandal than he was before. And it was only after not just he had left office, but his wife had lost her presidential run, that we started to see columns saying maybe that was a mistake. And the famous one was, I believe, Juanita in the New York Times. And Republicans do the same thing. They did it with Trump. Most Republicans would have been absolutely horrified prior to 2015, 2016, to have someone like that representing their party.

Republicans like to see themselves as the party of character and morality and the stand up guy. And then Trump came along and people said, well, the Supreme Court's in the balance. And I don't think that's irrational. As I like, do you know how many people have accused Bill Clinton and of what? I mean, of actual rape and repeated sexual assault against women who worked for him over and over, who have women have gone on the record under oath and made these allegations. And Hillary Clinton actively worked to help cover it up and to defend him. And by the way, one of America's most respected anchors, George Stephanopoulos, created the war room meant to smear and destroy all of them. So it's like, can you spare me the moral high ground? Neither ticket has got perfect men connected to the office that would that would have in which they or their spouse want to assent. So to me, it's just frustrating because I said this yesterday, but you could get Mitt Romney, who I don't think is I don't think there'd ever be a story that Mitt Romney cheated on his wife or got anybody pregnant or pay for an abortion or sent out a racist tweet. But he's a nightmare.

Mitt Romney, I loved him back in the day. But now he's like, I don't even know what he is, but he's not a Republican that most Republicans would vote for over a real Republican. Right. So it's more so right now than ever, because we know so much about them. The day of social media, the day of like everything you've ever done is known. We really have to grapple with this stuff in a way we didn't. OK, let me shift gears for a second. Speaking of bad Democratic politicians, Governor Andrew Cuomo got booted out of office and we got stuck with some very stupid replacement, Kathy Hochul. And we'll see whether she wins. She looks like she's going to win, but she shouldn't. But his brother, Chris Cuomo, got booted for trying to help him smear the women who are accusing him from CNN. And now he's got over at News Nation, which is a network trying to be a little bit more in the middle, independent, and opened up last night saying he's going to,

or two nights ago, saying he's going to be the voice of reason. He's going to be the person who eschews hard partisanship. I mean, after how many years of doing exactly that on CNN, telling Republicans he hated them. And there was a question about how well will he do you know will there be an audience for that he's one day into it he literally got 8 000 viewers in the key advertising demo of 25 to 54 which is all they care about in cable news they don't care about the overall number was dreadful too it's like 149 000 um 8 000 i'll tell you having spent 17 years in cable news 8 000 in the demo means everyone left except for their cats. A few cats were at home with the television station still on, and they managed to give

you an 8,000 in the 25 to 54-year-old category. So what do you make of Chris Cuomo's attempt to reinvent himself over there? I don't know why we need a Chris Cuomo. I've written this. Why do we need a Chris Cuomo? If his last name was Smith, he wouldn't be on television. What is it about him that makes him think that he needs to go from place to place and try to resuscitate his career? What is it that he adds? He's not an expert in anything. He's been shown to have seriously poor moral and professional judgment, give someone else a chance. I don't understand this. It's not as if it's written in the Constitution that Chris Cuomo has to be on air in some way.

And if there's not the demand there, which is you're suggesting there's not, those numbers are pretty terrible, then isn't it just time he tried something else? Yeah. Honestly, I was at my friend's house in New York the other day. I'm like, your doorman has just opened the door for more people than watched that show. It's the truth. Not only that, but he went down from his lead-in, which is also a very bad sign when you're going up in the prime time, your numbers are supposed to go up respectively. So, yeah, I agree with you. There isn't there isn't a reason., boy, they get out of the Me Too cancellation jail like that. They don't have to spend any time at all in there. If your last name is Cuomo,

it's especially easy to get out of it. Not so for people who aren't hardcore Democrats or, God forbid, Republicans. Charles, it's been an absolute pleasure. It was a pleasure. Thank you for having me. All right, coming up next, we're going to get into, we went to Georgia politics and we talked about Walker. Next up, we're going to talk about Pennsylvania with Selena Zito. She is the reporter to talk to, and she's been following Fetterman and Oz all over the campaign trails.

We've got examples of how that's going, and she's going to give us an update on the tightening polls in a state that was said to be firmly in Fetterman's camp. Stay tuned. All eyes are on the state of Pennsylvania. I think it's a commonwealth, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. There are only three commonwealths in the U.S. Can you tell me which ones they are? Can you can you do it without Googling it? Email me, Megan at Megyn Kelly dot com. OK, but anyway, there's a very important Senate race there. As you know, this is one of the ones that could turn the balance. Right now we have a 50 50 Senate GOP versus Dem. And when that's the case, the sitting vice president gets to cast the

deciding vote. And she is a Democrat, as you know. So that's why for effective all of all effective purposes, the Democrats control the Senate. So every single seat matters, every single one. And one of the most important races that everybody's watching is in Pennsylvania. Now, at one point, the Democratic candidate, John Fetterman, there's the lieutenant governor was leading against his opponent, Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz of TV fame by almost double digits. But over the last few weeks, that gap has narrowed and the race has been dubbed a toss up now. All right. So I want to I want to just walk you through it before we bring in Selena. So Fetterman had a stroke last May, and it led to all sorts of health issues for him that the campaign clearly was not being honest about. All right. They they sort of said he had a stroke and then it came out that

the stroke was related to a heart issue and the heart issue had started five years earlier before he even ran for lieutenant governor and it was not disclosed. And now we can't get the current medical reports and there's been no doctor press conference or statement, et cetera. And we don't know how John Fetterman is doing, but we know he's struggling. He's struggling health wise. He went on just as an example, Chris Hayes' show on MSNBC a couple of weeks ago, and I'll play it for you. It's going to be soundbite 15, but listen to how he mixes up his words. He's confused in what was his first TV interview in months. Listen. First, I just wanted to check in and see how you're feeling and how you're doing.

I'm doing fantastic. And it's not about kicking balls in the authority or anything. It's not about kicking balls in the authority. What? I mean, I guess if it was, it's not about kicking authority in the balls. It's not really a saying, but at least it would make some sense, but he can't do it. And what we're being told now is he can't even do a Q and a without closed captioning sitting in front of him that basically translates the auditory version of words into written. Now, there are real questions about whether somebody who's in that condition should be representing Pennsylvania in the U.S. Senate, right? Who should be there listening to debates on the Senate floor, which are not closed captioned, and representing this state.

But we don't know whether that's required full time and so on because he won't speak about his health and we won't get updated about his health. And so far, he's refused to even even have a debate. Right now, he's sort of dragging his feet on the one that he was shamed into. Joining me now is Selena Zito. She writes for The Washington Examiner, the New York Post and the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. And she knows everything about Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania politics. Selena, welcome. Hey there. You are the person to talk to. And so this race is getting interesting because Oz was. He was losing and he was a disappointment to a lot of Republicans who weren't sure whether they should get behind him. Is he a real Republican? There was a sort of an interparty fight about him, but he became the nominee. And at that point, Republicans were like, OK, we'll get behind him. But the enthusiasm wasn't there. And on the Democratic side, they have this guy, Fetterman, who had a stroke. We have no idea what his physical condition was, but he was running away with the race. And then what happened? Because there's been a real tightening in the polls. The Democrat is still pulling ahead, according to most polls, I think all polls, but it's getting tighter. thing that a lot of journalists weren't covering, and that Oz had this sort of understanding that

he needed to get out in there in the public, you know, away from the television, away from Twitter, away from cable news, and spend his time getting to know the voters, understanding what their issues are. And I have spent thousands and thousands of miles following him on this trek this week of June, going not just to rural areas, not just to the Monongahela Valley, Philadelphia, Erie, and spent hours and hours with community leaders, black leaders, faith leaders, talking to them, and more importantly, listening to them about their concerns. And what has been really fascinating, and you see this sort of revelation on voters' faces, is that this guy has actually matured into a very good candidate. I would say he's more Tom Ridge or Tom Cotton style and

thoughtfulness and accessibility than maybe you would see with a more populist like J.D. Vance in Ohio. And I think that is the untold story about this race. He went out and did this sort of old-fashioned thing, the unglamorous thing. I've seen him dodge cow pies on farms. But also, you know, walking down bullet-ridden street, parade street in Erie, Pennsylvania, and doing the hard work it takes to earn a vote. You know, in Pennsylvania and in most states, voters want you to show up.

They want to kick the tires. They want you to hear them. They want you to listen to them. And he's demonstrated a willingness and a curiosity to do that. And I think that's what happened. It just happened at the same time where Fetterman has gone from sort of this celebrity progressive, right, based a large part upon what he looks like. However, as, as, as, you know, there's been a lot of great, big, you know, beautiful think pieces about him written, you know, magazine pieces, but, but a lot of it was books and what he said he was. And, and now other journalists are realizing that he's not exactly what he espoused to be. So he ran on being this sort of small town mayor from Braddock. Braddock is an old steel town of 1700, and that he brought it back. And the crime was diminished.

That's not true. Under his mayorship, they lost a cumulative amount of 40% of the population. The only two new businesses that came to town, one has already closed and the other one now has limited hours. The most important place in Braddock, Pennsylvania, Braddock Hospital, where for 20 years was the only place you could sit down and have a meal at the hospital cafeteria, was demolished. It was torn down. He did nothing to save it. And so this sort of image has not, the realities have not lived up to the image uh well there's there's the the

gop has also finally unleashed its some of its war chest against him there the spending has gone way up on the ads against fetterman um and they're attacking him on one of the most important issues certainly in pennsylvania also nationally, and that is crime and accusing him of being soft on it. We've got an example of one of those ads by this. Let me see if this is. Yeah, let's see. We've got a few. This one's by Dr. Oz, and it hits him on crime and drugs. It's not 17. John Fetterman supports decriminalizing dangerous drugs like fentanyl and heroin. And Fetterman supports creating heroin injection sites in our neighborhoods.

Fetterman's ideas are radical, deadly, and wrong. Giving addicts easy access to drugs is not the answer. I've worked in addiction for years. It hurts to see families, broken, promising young futures cut short. I'll crack down on the cartels, fund rehab centers and rescue as many lives as I can. So obviously a related issue, but the crime like that, he continues to hit it because Pennsylvania is suffering from this. And Fetterman, as I understand it, Selena was on or maybe still is on a parole board.

And it's like he's never seen a convicted felon who he wants to keep behind bars. Right. I mean, his position on the parole board caused such a consternation between him and Attorney General Josh Shapiro, who's now running for governor, that is that Fetterman threatened to run against Shapiro for governor over it. So he's at odds with a lot of the sort of more moderate Democrats and governing Democrats in the state. And, you know, and speaking of crime, crime has skyrocketed in Philadelphia. It also has in Pittsburgh and in Erie. So has the fentanyl overdoses.

You know, fentanyl was seen as sort of the drug of white Appalachian working class. Well, that has dramatically changed. Philadelphia is now one of the leading cities, or if not the leading city in overdose deaths in this country, and that is the minority-majority city. So crime and fentanyl are uppermost in the minds of voters as they go into the voting booth in November. And crime in his city, which he claims he reduced, he didn't. It went up. Violent crime went up. Theft went up. You know, it's it's unfortunately, he sort of his oxygen has been all the great stories written about people who parachuted in and out of of of Braddock and never wrote the real story and the other well it's like braddock is one thing but it's like as as a lieutenant governor and as somebody sitting on this parole board he's got another record and it's like murderer after murderer he's like yeah he should get out he should get out a lot of families upset about it and by the way i will get to his attacks on dr

oz and where what his messaging is in one second but the the second piece of the Fetterman problems and why we think this race is getting tighter and tighter, by the way, just to let you know, so a Suffolk University USA Today poll just from two days ago shows that Fetterman is up 46 to 40 over Oz, but it was it was way less tight than that just a couple of weeks ago. So and some and some polls have had them even tighter than that. So so the other thing is his health. As I said in the intro, we don't know how Fetterman is. I played that soundbite from him on Chris Hayes. You've been following him and I'm going to get your take on it.

But you've been following Fetterman to his, to work. It's incomprehensible. So what have you observed? Well, you know, I've been covering John Fetterman since 2005. I live in western Pennsylvania. And it is very, I will say it is very sad to I'm going to forget the whole phrase, but what it has to do with, as explained to me by an expert in this in Philadelphia, is that he can't process what people are saying to him. So therefore, when someone says something to him, when it comes back out, that is where he struggles. But I think, Megan, what is really important, and I don't think we've been paying enough attention to, is the heart condition is what caused the stroke. And the heart condition was diagnosed in 2017, a very serious heart condition, and he let it go for five years. He not only had a pacemaker put in, but he also had a defibrillator placed in.

Yeah, sorry. I struggled with that one. That's a tough one. That's a tough one. So we don't know the condition of his heart. We haven't talked to his cardiologist. And if someone is sitting back and saying, well, it's none of your business. Well, in my state of Pennsylvania, we have a very long tradition that if our elected officials are have a medical issue, they have come out shoulder to shoulder with the elected official and explain to the voters and to the reporters what is wrong. Think Arlen Specter. He had a brain aneurysm. He had triple bypass surgery.

He had skin cancer. I remember that one too. Yeah. And Hodgkin's disease. And Bob Casey, the former, the late governor, he had a liver and heart transplant. But we all knew what was happening minute by minute. The only thing we have from the Fetterman campaign is what they're saying. And because they've been so dishonest since the very beginning saying, you know, oh, it's just a blip and I'll be fine to to I almost died. The voters deserve to know the truth. Whether they decide to or not to vote for him is not the story the story is no this is crazy yes this is crazy and now we have well i don't know do we or do we

not have a debate scheduled for october 25th the the voting has already begun as of late september in pennsylvania via mail-in and i assume assume that's because of the change they did in the last election, Selena, to make mail-in voting just as easy as possible during the pandemic, which by the way is over. So they're already voting right now and there's been no debate. And usually there are at least two debates, but is it on or isn't it?

Well, it's technically on for Octoberober 25th um we shall we shall see that the chamber um the chamber of commerce uh um debate was supposed to be held this past this past week in in harrisburg and instead um um oz had 30 minutes to talk and and Josh Shapiro had 30 minutes to talk because Doug Mastriano was the Republican candidate for governor. He won't debate either. So and Donna Brazile was there and she was admonished Fetterman for for not for not debating. Mm hmm. Well, I mean, I don't even understand his excuse at this point. I know he said, I need to have closed captions to read what Oz would say in a debate. And Oz, as I understand it, said, great, you can have them. That's fine.

But the debate needs to go a little longer than 60 minutes. We're going to need 90 since your closed captioning system is going to significantly delay what we can get to. And Fetterman was like, no, I don't follow your rules. He doesn't want to do it. Such a baby. I mean, really, how do you act like such a brat? And want us to believe you're such a tough guy. Yeah. Well, absolutely. Exactly. And to the other point of his image of a tough guy, you know, he has tried to create this image of being just that. However, the entire time that he was mayor of Braddock, his parents supported him. I didn't realize the extent of that until I was preparing

for today. Oz hit him with saying, you've been on your parents' couch, like your parents have been paying for your life until you were 40 something years old. So don't criticize me, 49 years old. So don't criticize my mansions and all my wealth. I've been working my ass off, successful physician, Harvard educated, attending physician at I think New York Prez, like on and on. and not to mention his successful talk show host, his career as one. But can you just fill in the lines there on Fetterman on the parents couch? That's really fascinating. So he is being mayor of Braddock pays one hundred and fifty dollars a month. He has three kids and a fabulous house. I've actually been inside it right across from Steel Mill. His parents paid his salary every year that he was mayor of Braddock. So he lived off of his parents. did not pay, he went, I think it was, oh my gosh, it was in the 60s, the 60 instances of not paying the school tax. This is a guy who's run on funding the public schools and the public school system

in his district, in his town, is one of the poorest in the country. And he failed to pay the school tax, I think to the tune of $38,000. I don't have the amount in the country and he failed to play this pay the school tax i think to the tune of 38 000 i don't have the amount in front of me and it took six years for them to finally they had put liens on his property they had to take him to court and he just didn't pay so all right that's but he tried to uses that he uses that to his advantage by saying like i'm a man of the people you know you talk about his looks his looks. He looks like a Pittsburgh stealer. He looks like a tough guy, you know,

like somebody you might see on the gridiron. Um, so he just basically tries to say Mehmet Oz is not relatable. He's this feet, you know, ultra rich Oprah disciple. He doesn't get Pennsylvanians. Here's a little bit of how that's sounding in the ads against him.

Um, this is not 16. With my diet, a little bit of how that's sounding in the ads against him. This is SOT16. lose fat without diet or exercise, stubborn stomach fat instantly disappears. I recommend a slow, steady gorging process combined with acid horizontology. Garcinia cambogia extract, crystal sonic therapy, C. buckthorn. Okay, another line of attack by Fetterman against Oz suggesting he's a hack. He's a hack doctor who pushed questionable medical remedies during the 20 years hosting his show. So how's that playing, Selena? It means I've never even seen the ad, so I don't think it's playing well. I don't think it's penetrating. I haven't seen that ad. So I don't know. I don't think so. His cute little meme and his attacks about Crudite and New Jersey and calling him a quack and out of touch at first gathered a lot of attention on Twitter. However, as people have found out that that's the only thing that Fetterman is running on, they're sort of, you know, I don't know that they vote for Oz. I just don't know that they vote.

I've had several Democrats say exactly that to me. They're like, well, I'm going to vote for either of them. And these are Democrats who, I think the old phrase was yellow dog Democrat. And, you know, they wouldn't vote for anyone that wasn't a democrat but they are so unhappy with his lack of uh what the guy said the other day there's no there there uh and i think that's the struggle right now for democrats i think betterman's problem right now is gaining new voters right he has been at the same place the entire time. He's not gained or earned new voters. He's not losing. Oz is gaining. That's why it's getting tighter.

Right. Exactly. And Oz is, you know, I was very skeptical of him to begin with. His first event was kind of like glossy and staged. And I thought, oh, this is not going to fly in Pennsylvania. I mean, it's nice, but it's not going to fly. He has really changed. I have a story about that coming outosis that I didn't anticipate happening. Well, one of the things you wrote about that I thought was interesting was when you listen to Fetterman on the campaign trail, he can get the sentences out, maybe not perfectly, stumbles a lot, but he keeps saying the same three things. You know, he keeps hitting Oz. You mentioned the crudite thing,

just for the viewers who aren't aware. Oz, when he put out some video and he was walking through the vegetable department of what he called Wegner's, which is really Wegman's. And he used the term crudite, which is a term, but it's not really a man of the people term.

Most of us call it like a veggie tray. And he's been getting hit for that. By the way, here it is, in case you haven't seen it. It's Sat tray. And he's been getting hit for that. By the way, here it is in case you haven't seen it. It's not 10. So I do some grocery shopping. I'm at Wagner's and my wife wants some vegetables for crudite. Right. So here's a broccoli. That's two bucks. Not a ton of broccoli there. There's some asparagus. That's four dollars. All right. You get that. You get that. We already showed you the highlight. That's four more dollars. So anyway, that was the problem.

He used the word, which is a word, but it's an elite word. So you've been saying that Fetterman has been kind of just hitting the same few things, whereas Oz is like listening. He's talking about the crime rate. He's talking about the drugs. He's talking about things that are actually affecting people's lives. Yeah, that's exactly what I've been saying. I mean, you know, it's still 30 days out, I would say ask me in two weeks where this happening. But I will say right now, if I if I if I wanted to be one of the two men, I probably want to be

Oz, because he's moving in the right direction, or better men is not. It's like the racehorse at the last lap. Yeah, he sort of reminds me, I was thinking this sort of dawned on me the other day, and watching his crowd and the people that are attracted to his crowd, which are mostly middle-aged whites with varying degrees. Some have degrees, some don't. A sprinkling of young people, but not very many people of color. He has a problem with people of color. Are you talking about Fetterman or Oz? Pardon?

Are you talking about Fetterman right now or Oz? Fetterman. Yeah, Fetterman has a real... Yeah. It just reminds me of the Howard Dean campaign in 2004 for some reason, based if this had been a Republican who ever did this, they could kiss their electoral future goodbye. I think the Democrats would just kill them. But they've given Fetterman a total pass on this issue. Here's a bit of an ad from the Republican Jewish Coalition Victory Fund against Fetterman, SOT 18. They may have broken the law. They may have broken the law. That's what John Fetterman said after he chased down an unarmed, innocent Black man and held him at gunpoint.

Now this guy wants to be in the Senate? Are you serious? My message to Black voters, do your homework about John Fetterman. They may have broken the law. He didn't even apologize. And now he wants our vote? Not a chance.

Selena, he basically chased somebody with a gun for jogging while black. Yes, a shotgun and held it to him until the police arrived. And I just want to know why his shotgun was in the back of his truck. I mean, nobody's even asked that question. And, you know, that's not the only incident. You know, he also, there was a black nightclub in Braddock, or a black-owned nightclub in Braddock and our black owned nightclub in Braddock. I should mention that Braddock is majority black town, but he in the middle of the night was caught on the surveillance cameras.

I remember covering it back. I think it was 2010 where in the middle of the night, like two in the morning, he walked over and changed the sign on the um on the front door of the nightclub that was said it was opening soon and it's just something that said it's never opening uh got caught doing it and told reporters like yeah i did it they're a nuisance i you know i don't want them here like you just can't arbitrarily do that. You can't arbitrarily chase someone because you think and hold them at gunpoint. You also can't close down a business. be in charge of public safety and to be there for council votes. He missed the majority of council votes when he was mayor. But I think it's also important to know that there's an Associated

Press story that came out today that says he's missed a huge chunk of his duties as lieutenant governor, and that was before his stroke. Yeah, that's right. So we don't expect the health issue. But let's talk about the gubernatorial race. Josh Shapiro, Democrat versus Doug Mastriano, Republican. The Democrat is he's been polling way ahead. But it's like that. If he does crush, if Shap if shapiro crushes mastriano that's really going to help betterman you know you know how it is you get to the poll and you just go ddd all down the line or rrr all down the line it's very rare that uh you would switch it up or even think to switch it up unless you have really strong feelings about one person on the on the ticket so how does that factor in well actually pennsylvania has a great

history of of splitting our tickets i mean we split our ticket between al gore and rick santorum but also wow which is you know just think about that for a while um but we also split our vote in 2020 joe biden won narrowly but won. But you look at every race down ballot, two statewide row offices, all the state house seats, all the state Senate seats, not all of them, but Republicans won seats they weren't even trying to win in the state house, in the state Senate. They had no money for those statewide row offices, and yet they won in a very big way over the well-funded by Bloomberg Democrats and Eric Holder. And they

also kept two house seats in Dauphin County and in Bucks County that they were projected to lose by six points. That's amazing. So you agree that Mastriano is likely to go down, but if you had to put on on Oz versus Fetterman, who would you choose?

I think that if you ask me today how it and if it is how it went in today, I would say Josh Shapiro wins by eight percentage points and that Dr. Oz wins by about two. Wow. And do you think the debate will actually happen? I don't know. I go back and forth on that. I mean, I hope it does. It's got to happen, but I see if you're Fetterman in his camp, you're like, hell no.

We're still ahead. This can only hurt us. Let's blame the rules. Let's blame anything we can, but do not debate. I agree. I think that's their mindset. And what have they got to lose?

They got more to lose by doing a debate. That's right. And more to lose potentially by releasing his medical results. The people of Pennsylvania are the ones who are going to have to insist on both. Selena Zito will keep us updated. Thank you so much for coming on.

Thanks so much. If people want to find my stuff, just go to selenazito.com. It's free, it's fun, and it's not fattening. And it's factual. Okay, thank you. I want to tell you that tomorrow we're super excited to have Tom Bauer on. He's broken so many stories on the royal family. He has written the book, it's called Revenge on Meghan and Harry. And this is his first time on the show. I cannot wait to talk to him and reading his book. There's a lot to go over. They've been busy, this couple. In the meantime, download The Megyn Kelly Show on Apple, Pandora, Spotify, and Stitcher. Also go to youtube.com slash Megyn Kelly. And thanks for listening. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.