The Megyn Kelly Show - Disgusting Media Lies About Florida Curriculum, and Harms of Trans Extremism, with Oli London, Charles C.W. Cooke and William Allen | Ep. 594

Episode Date: July 25, 2023

Megyn Kelly is joined by Dr. William B. Allen, a member of Florida's African American History Standards Workgroup, to talk about the backlash Florida is receiving for developing curriculum showing the resilience of those who were slaves in America, lies by Vice President Kamala Harris and so many others on the left and right, how it’s important to listen to stories of those who have overcome slavery in the past, absurd attacks from the teacher's unions, and more. Then National Review's Charles C.W. Cooke joins to discuss the corporate media's disgusting lies and dishonesty about the Florida slavery curriculum, political reasoning behind the attacks on DeSantis, how this is a logical fallacy of the left, what we're learning about how President Joe Biden may have discussed Hunter Biden's business dealings with him, the key way the White House is now shifting its messaging that may reveal something huge, the possibilities of Biden being impeached if these allegations were proven true, and more. Then Oli London, author of "Gender Madness," joins to discuss his journey and struggle with identity in woke culture, how society affirms these thoughts and the damaging side effects, the bullying he endured that led him to want to go through dangerous surgeries, the effects of social media, how gender surgery can be a form of self-harm, Dr. Phil's great advice that he didn't take at the time, how rediscovering church and God helped him stop pursuing his radical gender surgeries, how he wants to be a positive influence for his followers, a trans Democratic New Hampshire representative arrested over inappropriate pictures of toddlers, a Mr. Beast co-star publicly "transitioning" recently, and more.Cooke: https://charlescwcooke.comLondon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1510778063?ref_=cm_sw_r_mwn_dp_YNRR7MBX971ZJ6MKX2D2 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. Oh, we have the perfect show today. A mix of breaking political news and an in-depth interview with a fascinating individual and somebody who I love following on Twitter. Later, I'm going to meet, and hopefully you will meet, if not for the first time, then for me the first time, Olly London. You hear me say his name often on this show because this guy has been an absolute leader in the fight against the trans extremist ideology in our culture. And it comes to him honestly, because he is somebody who tried to transition into being a trans woman only to realize he'd been sold a bill of goods, that this was nonsense. He found faith. He rejected the surgeries on that front and now has made it his mission to

stop others from going down that lane without eyes wide open. It's an interview you don't want to miss. But we begin today with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who remains under crazy intense fire right now. My God, can you open up the internet without seeing this controversy? Democrat politicians, even some fellow Republicans, the NAACP, the teachers union, Randy Weingarten, legacy media, all accusing him of whitewashing history regarding Florida's new curriculum on African-American history and slavery in America. But Dr. William B. Allen calls these accusations categorically false. And he should know since he helped develop it as a member of Florida's African-American History Standards Workgroup. Dr. Allen is a former

chairman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, a professor emeritus at Michigan State University, and editor of the book, The State of Black America. And he joins me now. Dr. Allen, thank you so much for being here. We appreciate it. Let me just ask you first your reaction to the intense backlash you've seen after your 13 person group. I understand it's, I think, six minorities, six whites, one unknown. That's what we were told on the racial makeup. But a diverse group of professionals gets together to come up with this thoughtful curriculum. And it's to the point where you have the vice president of the United States making an

emergency trip down to Jacksonville, Florida to condemn it. My reaction was incredulousness. The very idea that the sentence that was being quoted refutes the charge being made against it, should make it unnecessary for anyone to have to speak out about it. Grammar, for people of basic literacy, sufficiently refutes the charge. So I was incredulous. I couldn't believe. But then I came to understand, this really had nothing to do with the standards. It has everything to do with the larger agenda, starting with the teachers' union and their allies, and of course, carrying it to the level of the vice presidency in order to give it heft. So this agenda is not just to affect the teaching of African American history, but to continue to impose a mantle on the entire country that accounts for slavery as the soul of America and discounts the accomplishments of America.

That's what it's about. So I was incredulous. I spoke up, of course, immediately, because as you rightly cited, it is categorically false to say that we adopted, embraced the positive good school of slavery. Nothing could be further from the truth. But that was the allegation, as if we were John C. Calhoun and Roger B. Taney. It was absolutely false. And just so we get the audience up to speed, the agenda for students learning history in Florida, including about slavery, mentioned slavery repeatedly talks that it requires that the horrors of slavery are fully explored and taught. left is one line. I'll read the preceding part and then I'll read what's caused the controversy. It reads, this is SS.68.AA2.3. Examine the various duties and trades performed by slaves, e.g. agricultural work, painting, carpentry, tailoring, domestic service, blacksmithing,

transportation. Not controversial. Then what is added as a clarification is instruction includes how slaves develop skills, which in some instances could be applied for their personal benefit. Now that seems a truism. That doesn't seem to me at all controversial. I remember taking a very interesting, it was a book class on like an extracurricular sort of book club at my children's school in New York City, a very woke, private left wing school. And we were talking about African-American history and they the African-American people in the group thought it was very important to make sure that we talked about the accomplishments of black people in America's history, including and especially during the time of slavery,

as a testament to their spirit, as a testament to their resilience. So when I saw this, I said, I get it. I see exactly what they're doing. And that was the left saying that. But now it's a very different message. And just to give people a flavor, here is the vice president of the United States criticizing this line. Extremists pass book bans to prevent them from learning our true history. They push forward

revisionist history. They decided middle school students will be taught that enslaved people benefited from slavery. They insult us in an attempt to gaslight us, and we will not stand for it. They want to replace history with lies. They dare to push propaganda to our children. This is the United States of America. We're not supposed to do that. Let us not be distracted by what they're trying to do, which is to create unnecessary debates to divide our country. How do you respond to the charge you want to replace history with lies? Well, let me first make an observation that helps us think through this.

We know the vice president well, and we know that when she speaks spontaneously, she has an unavoidable cackle. But when she's speaking from a script, she's very grave and very serious. So we know she's following a script here. And the script is that she has to reject what is common sense in the name of an ideological agenda. It's as simple as that. So my reaction is straightforward, and I think this would be true of anyone who participated in this process, namely that Booker T. Washington titled his autobiography Up from Slavery. That's his story, not our story. He told it. Frederick Douglass told the story of the mistress of his slave master teaching him to read, beginning that until she was shut down by the

slave master. She pulled back the curtain just a bit so a beam of light shone through. And that was enough for him to take that beam and turn it through his own efforts into a flame of illumination that benefited him and his country. And these stories are legend. The people who lived the histories told the stories. The curriculum is about allowing the people who live the histories to speak in their own names for themselves to tell their own stories. Lying? No. The lie is that we should make up a story about them rather than listening to the stories they told on their own authority. Well said. The reaction, though, is so over the top. I've got to stay on it for a minute. Here is the state's largest teachers union in Florida, the Florida Education Association, calling this a disservice and a big step backward. Evidently, quote, in an attempt to protect

students from wokeness, these new standards will make sure that through the fourth grade elementary school students knowledge of African American history does not extend beyond being able to know who a famous African American is when they see them. That's the teachers union saying you're trying to reduce knowledge of history and African Americans to, oh, there's LeBron James. Cool. This is, of all the dishonest statements, doctor, this has got to be at the top of the list. You know it is because, look, the African American History Work Group deliberated in public. The sessions were open to the public. It was widely disseminated. The teachers' union was invited to attend, to listen, and to contribute. They remained silent through the

entire process, contributed zero, zero, until it was all done and then surfaced like snakes in the grass to take pot shots. Now, tell me that that's not a deliberate design. Oh, my goodness. I didn't know that. Did they bother to show up or did they blow the whole thing off? They blew it off to all practical purposes. One person who had some affiliation attended some of the sessions, but largely the sessions were empty, devoid of any presence from the teachers union,

whether online or in person. Oh, that's stunning, but I guess nothing is. Randy Weingarten weighs in calling this disgusting and calling this a grievously racist notion that you've gotten behind. So that's for those keeping track at home, a white woman calling you a black man, a grievous racist, pushing grievously racist notions about slavery. You know, they're sort of losing touch with reality. Here's a couple of more examples. Politician Representative Eric Swalwell says this proves that Ron DeSantis is pro-slavery. I know. And CNN commentator Ashley Allison says, in Florida, you have a governor who wants to ban Rosa Parks. I mean, can you believe this? And of course, Rosa Parks is written into the curriculum standards, as so many other things are.

But here's another way to think about this. This is my story, not just the story of Booker T. Washington, Ida B. Wells, Frederick Douglass, William Wells Brown, and so many figures whose documented histories we have and we're sharing with students. But it's my story and many other people's story. My great-grandfather was lured to this country under fraudulent pretext, only to discover towards the end of the 1850s when he arrived that he was another slave. But he had the pluck to seek out opportunity, and while being seduced by falsehoods, he nevertheless made the commitment

to build his family's life in this country. That characteristic, that pluck, that initiative, the resourcefulness, was not suffocated by slavery. That's my story. The family that he engendered was a family that indeed became accomplished in many ways, and he himself. So that no matter how you look at it, whether you're looking at stories large or stories small, the reality is the truth is in the stories that the people who live the stories will tell. And we have asked that children be taught those stories and not somebody's interpretation of them. And so just to bottom line it for people at home, what are you hoping the children take away after having learned of the atrocities of slavery and then this other piece of it, the resilience of some of those who were put through it. That's exactly what we want them to take away, that they can be proud that they are either themselves as descendants or as fellow citizens, heirs to a tradition, which was described

by Frederick Douglass and Ida B. Wells in 1893 as representing not only the accomplishments of American Blacks post-slavery, but the accomplishments of American principles. That's what we want the students to learn. The criticism, I must point out, did not only come from the left, and I agree that's agenda driven. Some from the right, including in particular a Republican candidate for president who is not very well known, former congressman named Will Hurd, who happens to be black. Now, this person, too,

has political reasons to be taking shots at Ron DeSantis. But I'll play you a little bit of what he said on CNN, another critic of it yesterday. There was no upside to slavery. Slavery was not a jobs program. Ron DeSantis just showed his lack of leadership by acting like it was somebody else's fault. If you're going to talk about how African-Americans, despite being treated like property, despite having zero freedoms or zero rights, that they still had a tremendous impact on our country. If you want to talk about that, that's great. But to imply that there was an upside, it is unacceptable. And what he should have done is say, listen, that was worded wrong. We're going to fix that. There is no upside to slavery. A real leader would have solved this problem, not letting this continue to fester.

What's your reaction to listening to him? It's so easy to react to that. I've done it before. I mentioned it in my response to the vice president. Someone who survives an avalanche through resourcefulness and intelligence benefits from resourcefulness and intelligence. That person doesn't turn around and say thanks to the avalanche. Just as someone who gains strength after a long period of grief doesn't turn around and say thanks for the loss, but nevertheless recognizes the strength gained, recognizes survival in an avalanche, recognizes overcoming. The people who learn to sing,

we shall overcome, may also learn to sing, we did overcome. Right. It could be a source of inspiration. I mean, there are books out there from Holocaust survivors talking about the love they found in concentration camps. I mean, you could go down the list or what they learned about their own courage and strength going through that hideous. It's in no way an excuse for the horrific conditions that were imposed upon them. Precisely. That is my sense. And I would wish Mr. Hurd would pay due attention to his own remarks and recognize that nobody's attributing to slavery the positive influences. They're attributing to the humanity of people enslaved the strength to survive. I don't know if you've seen the Tampa Bay Times

went a layer deeper and said, oh, well, nearly half of the 16 historic figures highlighted by the state were never even enslaved. And they cited Georgetown University postdoctoral fellow Joshua Stein to say that James Fortin and Louis Latimer, two of the examples in the curriculum, that they were born into slavery. One, Latimer was born into slavery in 1848 and freed four years later. So he was four when he was freed and said Fortin was a shoemaker born into slavery in 1766, who escaped in 1784 and went on to take issue with whether these folks really did learn their skills in slavery or prior to being enslaved or after the slavery. I mean, what do you make of sort of the piece by piece dissection now by the Tampa Bay Times and postdoctoral fellows on the men that you've chosen to highlight?

How many angels do dance on the head of a pin? That's the kind of argument that's being made, and anyone should laugh it out of court. Obviously, people who were enslaved brought skills with them, developed skills while enslaved, developed skills subsequently. I like to use the example of Isaac Burns Murphy. He was only born in 1861 and therefore only a slave for four or five years. But he became, in the years after Liberty, a jockey who rode three Kentucky Derby winners and was the first jockey of all jockeys inducted into National Jockey Hall of Fame. One may cite Burns Murphy as an example of accomplishment without regard to the question of whether he were tutored in horse riding by a slave master.

That is not the point. It never was the point. The point is people demonstrated their capacities and their accomplishments. And that's a story that must be told. And we mustn't allow, and I want to emphasize this, we mustn't allow people's stories to be erased by ideological mantras. That's what Ron DeSantis has been saying and been fighting in his position as governor down there and been demonized at every turn for it. Can I ask you two things? One, do you believe you have his support in this? And two, is there any chance you're going to change their curriculum or back down on the wording? Two things. One, the African American History Work Group was a volunteer group whose task was to deliberate and draft. We concluded that at the end of April and turned our product over to the Florida Department of Education. We no longer exist. We have nothing more to do with it. I haven't met Governor DeSantis. I have had no direct contact with him. I'm happy that he

leads a stake that will undertake this initiative for the first time to have a standalone strand in African-American history. But the question of what its fate will be or how he will react to it, I must leave it to the hands of those competent authorities in Florida. I grew up in Floridian. I'm proud of my past in Florida. But I don't live in Florida. I live in Maryland. And I therefore don't take a direct hand in Florida politics. And certainly, I'm involved in no one's campaign. And would you want them to change anything? Would you want them to back down on this? I don't think anybody could intellectually or morally justify changing what has been established in this case, for the clarity is irresistible. As I said before,

the grammar refutes the argument against it, so one doesn't need rhetoric to accomplish that purpose. Wow. Dr. William B. Allen, thank you so much for your clarity and for coming on to set the record straight. We appreciate it. You're very welcome. I enjoy to be with you. Likewise. Wow.

Incredible, right? What a great guest and what a smart, thoughtful person. I want someone like that thinking about my own children's curriculum and what they should be learning. After keeping the doors open to everybody to weigh in on this, and as he said, snakes in the grass, lying there waiting to strike. So well said. We have much, much more as Charles C.W. Cook of National Review, who's been writing all about this. He, too, is a Floridian who was one of the first to say this is nonsense. This argument is a lie. Do not believe it. Who took a hard look at all of it? He's here to weigh in on that piece of it and the politics of it all next.

Joining us now for more on the educational debate in Florida and the latest breaking news on Hunter and Joe Biden and possible impeachment proceedings. Charles C.W. Cook, senior writer at National Review and host of the Charles C.W. Cook podcast, one of the last honest men in journalism who did the just bold thing and actually took a look at the standards, the DOE standards that had been getting bandied about as this racist trope that eliminates the teaching of Rosa Parks, that bans Rosa Parks, as CNN actually claimed because of this one line and said, this is a lie. Don't believe it. Don't believe the vice president. Don't believe any of this nonsense. Now you hear Dr. Howell. I mean, he was unbelievable, right? And yet it won't dissuade anyone on the left, Charles, from continuing these lies,

least of all the sitting vice president. I think the main reason for that is that the people who are spreading this seem genuinely to believe that Florida and its government and those who voted for it want to downplay the history of slavery or even worse. I think in your last segment, you cited someone who had said that the governor of Florida is pro-slavery. Swalwell. This is absurd. Look, I live here and I care about this not because of Governor DeSantis, but because this is the curriculum for the state in which my children go to school. You can look up, and I would encourage anyone listening to this to do so, what I have written about the racial history of the United States over the last 12 years since I moved here.

I've been unequivocal about it in print, on the radio, and in my book. It was a monstrous tyranny. I think that word is the right one. George III did not really present a tyranny. I'm glad the revolution happened. The tyranny in the United States was slavery and segregation. I have a great interest in this being taught accurately. The reason I'm so irritated by Kamala Harris is that she's lying about this course, and she's making it seem as if Florida is downplaying slavery, or even making slavery look as if it was a net positive, when the course does nothing of the sort. This is what I call control F politics. They search for a word, that word being benefit, in one line out of the 191 references to slaves, slavery, abolition, and so on in the curriculum. They took it out of context, and they're using that to pretend that Florida is doing something that it is not. If Florida were doing what Kamala Harris alleges, that would be truly evil. It would be evil to insist that slavery was a net good or that it didn't matter

a great deal to the slaves or that slaves benefited from it. But it's not. This is a comprehensive course that makes it abundantly clear that slavery was a moral wrong, that it led to death and destruction and oppression, that slaves tried to escape from it, that southern states, including Florida, tried to stop them, and that the racial discrimination that had caused it and that flowed from it carried on for a long time throughout Jim Crow, ending up, as the course does, with the integration of the University of Florida. This is just flatly false. And yet you will not hear that on the mainstream news today or this week. The reason I agree with Dr. Allen is politics. But this is the messaging. It's a butted sound

bite of a bunch of lefties and those in the media trying to put their spin on what actually is happening according to them in Florida because of this one line. Take a listen. How dare you? Shame on you people in Florida.

How dare you try to whitewash slavery? This is happening in Florida. This is happening in a Florida, in a Florida where you have a governor who has an anti-woke bill, who has a don't say gay bill, who wants to ban DEI programs, who wants to ban Rosa Parks. This would be like teaching the Holocaust,

saying that there were some good things that Jewish brothers and sisters picked up in those death camps that should they survive would be helpful for them to make their way in life. My rule in writing columns has always been never compare anything to the Holocaust and never compare anything to American slavery because they were both unique horrors and these standards break that rule. And for this man, Ron DeSantis, who's apparently his only skill that he has acquired is lying and creating culture wars

that he thinks are going to make him president. The dishonesty is stomach-turning. It's astonishing. I mean, there's two problems here. The first one is that this line has been extracted and miscast from a sea of appropriate instruction. The second problem is that progressives have inverted their usual attitude toward the teaching of this sort of history. And Dr. Allen touched on this in the

previous segment. When I was at Oxford studying history, I had a professor who was a progressive, probably more Marxist, you might even say. He was an open-minded guy. I liked him a great deal. And one of the things that he used to say to me was, Abraham Lincoln was not the only man with agency you know. I can hear him saying it now in a Scottish accent. The point that he was making was that while people under slavery and under the Holocaust, for that matter, were, of course, victims, they were not only victims, that they were also people, and that it does a great disservice to treat them as some inhuman,

undifferentiated mass of widgets. That, of course, this was a massive historical disgrace, but that that doesn't mean that you don't tell the stories of the people who lived within it. It is not in any way to endorse slavery to point out that some slaves developed skills that they subsequently used for their own benefit, either to purchase or achieve their manumission, or after the Civil War, when slavery was mercifully ended. That is a logical fallacy. And in most other contexts, it would be self-evidently a logical fallacy. For example, our modern triage procedures that we use in hospitals originated from the Crimean War. We made massive advancements in medical technology in the First World War. Is to acknowledge that, to propose that those two wars were worthwhile?

Of course it's not. There was a piece in the New York Post a couple of years ago by a couple who met in a concentration camp and had been married ever since. Do we take from that that they are pleased that they were put in a concentration camp? That the Holocaust was a good thing?

This is such silly, anti-intellectual, demagogic thinking that no one truly believes, least of all the people who I think quite rightly have spent a lot of time within the history profession making it clear that we ought to treat humans as humans and to ascribe agency to people, even in the most difficult and tyrannical of circumstances. So even on its own merits, the idea that that one line that has been plucked out in some way endorses or whitewashes slavery is absolutely ridiculous. Steve Krakauer, our executive producer, told us that when he was in Hebrew school, he was taught in Hebrew school that the Holocaust taught Jews resilience. I mean, so the horror of Eugene Robinson saying you just never bring, you know, that you wouldn't ever say something like, well, yeah, you might. And these education standards don't violate his rule of comparing slavery to anything.

It's an honest exploration of slavery by, as Dr. Allen pointed out, someone who has a stake in this, who's got a family history connected to it, who's got real reason and making sure the truth is taught. When my kids were at their, again, far left New York City private schools, I complained, Charles, that my son, my eldest, but at the time he was in like second or third grade, came home. They were studying the American Revolution. And he could tell me 12 slaves who made a meaningful difference in the American Revolution. But he didn't they didn't hear anything about General George Washington. So they they bent over backwards in these liberal woke schools to tell you all the great things the slaves are managing to doing during slavery. But once it comes out of Florida, which happens to have Ron DeSantis as its governor, all of that is now grievously racist, according to Randy Weingarten. And look at the Civil War. I mean, one of the objections that I have heard to the way in which Americans have been taught the Civil War, predominantly from the left, is that it often

treats the slaves as people who needed to be rescued by whites, that the Civil War is a white savior narrative. Of course, it is actually predominantly true that the vast majority of people who fought in the Civil War were white, but not all of them were white. Some of them were black, and many of them were slaves. And those people's contributions, quite obviously, should be acknowledged and celebrated, as I should say, the Florida curriculum does. There's a whole section on that. Now, are we to assume that anyone in the United States who has said at any point what I just did, which was that we should celebrate those slaves who fought alongside and within the Union Army

for their own manumission, that celebrating them is an endorsement of slavery, that you're pleased that slavery happened. Of course you're not. As I say, this is a silly, logical fallacy that in almost any other circumstance would be immediately recognized as such. The politics of it are obvious. I played the soundbite from Will Hurd, who was attacking

Ron DeSantis because he's running for president, right? So he sees an opportunity and has repeated something I've heard in other corners about DeSantis allegedly failing here, saying, oh, DeSantis showed his lack of leadership by acting like it was somebody else's fault. Right. I played that in part in the soundbite. And what he's talking about is yesterday, Ron DeSantis was asked about this. And in one of his answers, he said, I didn't do it. It wasn't me. And now that's getting plucked out by his detractors to say, oh, he's shirking responsibility. Oh, who me? Well, we pulled the longer exchange, including the question that was asked of Ron DeSantis in response to which he said that. Here it is. Your clarification on one thing within the policy, it says instruction includes how slaves develop skills, which in some instances could be applied for their personal benefit.

Could you just explain? Well, you should talk to them about it. I mean, I didn't do it. I wasn't involved in it. But I think what they're doing is I think that they're probably going to show some of the folks that eventually parlayed, you know, being a blacksmith into doing things later in life. But the reality is all of that is rooted in whatever is factual. These were scholars who put that together. It was not anything that was done politically. So she says to him, could you just explain it? Explain that. Well, he wasn't on the 13 person commission. He's saying I wasn't there, but this is my understanding of it. And now you've got his political detractors, even on the right that's a particularly good answer, given the attack.

Just as a political matter, I would have liked to have seen the sort of Ron DeSantis answer that we saw during COVID, where he set the context and was a master of the detail. It is, of course, true that he didn't contrive this curriculum. The curriculum was built by people such as your last guest. But Ronald Reagan would have answered that question a lot better. I suspect this caught him off guard. I suspect he hadn't expected the question or looked into it too deeply. But I understand those who say this was not DeSantis' finest moment. I'm among them.

Certainly, I think Will Hurd's objection is silly and opportunistic and driven by his wanting to be the Republican nominee. The fact that the question was asked at all, though, shows you the sheer power that the left still has within the press and within academia. I have to say, and I'm sure this sounds naive, I have been somewhat astonished that they have managed to put this into the ether and communicate it as widely as they have overnight. I mean, this was contrived out of whole cloth. And now it is a major topic of conversation that you and I are discussing

and I've written about three times. And that all sorts of people who don't follow the news closely are going to believe. I mean, I have absolutely no time for any of the people that you played in those clips reiterating this. They are being indignant for applause and clicks.

They should have taken the time to look at the curriculum, as I did when I first learned about this before they commented on it. But there are tens of millions of people out there who follow the news passively. Maybe they're sitting in a bar and they see a chyron at the bottom. Maybe they just see a headline. Maybe someone tells them, a third party or a friend, and they don't look into this because they trust the media to tell them the truth. And in this case, the media simply has not told them the truth. And I think that is an enormous shame. You see the vice president making the emergency trip to Florida. You say,

what is it? Why is she doing that? And the outrage of Anna Navarro, you think, oh, she's really angry. What did he do? And it's on the heels of them Navarro, you think, oh, she's really angry. What's what did he do? And it's on the heels of them saying they're banning books in Florida without telling you. It shows, you know, a young boy getting fellated. Like, we don't need that in our children's. You don't want your children going into grade school and seeing that they and it's not banned. You can get it on Amazon if you want that in front of your child.

You're a sicko if you do. But you certainly shouldn't want it in K through 12 education. So this is a narrative they're building about him. If I were Ron DeSantis, I have to tell you, Charles, I would be thrilled this is happening to me. It's earned media. It's exactly how Trump became president. Yet another controversy that keeps you in the news. No one in the GOP field can get any oxygen past the Trump indictments. Enter Ron DeSantis with a controversy he didn't even create. He should be like he did when he was a little league slugger hitting it out of the park. He should be batting the balls at an alarming rate, welcoming this fight at every, a fight with Kamala Harris, the least popular politician in America.

I mean, if his team is not telling him to get out in front of every single microphone and sing from the rafters about how wrong she is and dishonest, then they're failing him. Yes. And hopefully next time he talks about this, he does so comprehensively and pugnaciously. And I think probably with some context, I do think it's really important to say when you're discussing this issue, look, slavery was a great evil in this country, and it stained this country's history. And that's why we're teaching it properly in Florida. As I say, I would be really upset if this were true. It's one of the reasons that I immediately looked up the whole course and read the entire thing and actually printed out the entire thing at National Review so that people could see it, is because this would be a big problem if it were true. And I think DeSantis should say that. I think his next answer ought to be better. That said, it's not his fault that Kamala Harris has

done this. It's not his fault that having been told that she was wrong, she flew down to Florida and repeated the lie. It's not his fault that the press has picked up on this and broadcast it around the world. It's not his fault that Ana Navarro behaves like that. That is on the media. And it's a disgrace. I mean, how does this help the country? How does this help the country? If this were true, it would be something to point to.

But it's not. So what are they doing? They are once again, as with the lies about book banning and so forth, they are once again diminishing the conception of 20 million of their fellow citizens, Floridians, in the imaginations of the rest of the country. They are dividing people by race on the basis of a falsehood. And they are subordinating their role, which is to convey information to the public, to their political preferences in an attempt to get at a presidential candidate. And I'm just so sick of it. I'm so tired of it. I didn't start writing about this because I want to defend Ron DeSantis. I started writing about this, as I often do,

because I'm a Floridian. And this really annoys me. It annoys me when Florida was lied about during COVID and high profile people within the media started saying Floridiots. It annoys me when they lied about the so-called don't say gay bill. It annoyed me when they've lied about these so-called book bans that are in almost every case, nothing of the sort. And this annoys me as well, because I don't spend my days doing this about people in New York or Michigan or Wyoming. It just seems to come in one direction. You don't need to lie to point out their insanity. You don't need to. The left will give you plenty of actual examples from which you can work. So I agree. It's not Ron DeSantis's fault, but it is his chance to show us the fighter that many of us

fell in love with when he was fighting those battles back during COVID and to set the record straight against, again, one of the least likable politicians in America, Kamala Harris, who has made him and Florida schoolchildren her target. So fair game. Let's go at it. By the way, I'm interviewing him this week. It airs on Friday. You can bet this is going to come up. Let's shift gears because speaking of dishonesty in the press, there's been a near total blackout of the allegations against Hunter Biden and Joe Biden. It's not just Hunter Biden. It's also whether Joe Biden was involved, possibly took a bribe as the sitting vice president, as this FBI form suggests, may have happened. We do not do not know whether that's true. But an investigative press would want

to get to the bottom of it. We don't have a curious investigative press anymore. And yesterday, there was a big development in the White House messaging on just how involved Joe may have been in Hunter's business affairs. Miranda Devine has been saying it wasn't Joe involved in Hunter's business affairs. It was Joe's business affairs that he used Hunter to execute on an important distinction and a possibility people need to keep in mind. All along from when he was running for president, he said, I have never talked to my son or anyone in my family about their business dealings. And then yesterday, a shift, a shift in how the White House discussed this issue. And it was an important one. We've put together a montage of the previous statements. The last statement in here will be Karine Jean-Pierre yesterday changing the wording in a way that's

going to prove important. Watch. I have never discussed with my son or my brother or anyone else ending him in their businesses, period. I've never spoken to my son about his overseas business. Do you stand by your statement that you did not discuss any of your son's overseas business? Yes, I stand by that statement. I don't discuss business with my son. I never discussed a single thing with my son about anything having to do with Ukraine. The president was never in business with his son. In business with, in business with. And that wasn't the question.

And she prefaced it, Charles, with I've answered this a million times. The answer is not going to change. And then she changed it materially from he's never discussed business with his son to he's never been in business with his son, which is an important distinction. I believe it's also a lie. But the White House won't allow us to actually inquire. They won't appoint a special counsel on this. And the press is only to to overstate it, mildly interested in the story. I don't think the press is only to overstate it, mildly interested in the story. I don't think the press is interested in the story at all. I have been astonished by the total radio silence that we have seen on this issue. And I have grown tired of having to say,

as I will say once again, that I don't know whether this is true or not, but there's an awful lot of smoke. Why is it that I have been given the same answer on this as the smoke has piled up into the sky for months? Because the press doesn't care. It's a slightly different topic. There was an astonishing incident last week when two IRS whistleblowers spoke in Congress about Hunter Biden, and the press didn't cover it. The Washington Post did not report on it at all. It wasn't that it was buried at the back. It wasn't that they spun the issue. They simply refused to report on it. Meanwhile, you see endless stories about a Supreme

Court Christmas party with three or four bylines on them. The time has come for the institutions in this country that have resources and expertise in investigative reporting to look into this properly, to assign 4, 5, 10, 15 people to determine whether or not the allegations that we have heard and the evidence that we have seen amount to something serious. If I were President Biden, I would want that. I would want my name to be cleared if this weren't true. Certainly, as a citizen who admitted he does not like President Biden at seem to be connected to something larger. It's not looking good, is it? No, it's not. And just to expand on that last comment by Karine Jean-Pierre, the question from Fox's Jillian Turner was curious if the White House and president

still stand behind his comment that he's never been involved and has never even spoken to his son about his business. And she goes on to say, I've been asked a million times. The answer is not going to change. The president was never in business with his son. Amazingly, so many in the media bite. They're too lazy, too dumb to actually understand. That's a whole new deflection by the White House that

is different from all the ones we've heard before. Mediaite is a website that covers the media. This is their headline. KJP, Korean Jean-Pierre, definitively states that President Biden, was never in business with his son. Hello, that's not the headline. That's not the significance of what just happened there. As any honest reporter would tell you, even Peter Baker, I must say of the New York Times, pointed it out. He noticed it and actually tweeted about it. So good for him. But you have other reporters who will just phone it in and go wherever the little doggy treat leads them. You know, it's just like my Strudwick, you know, wherever the doggy treat is, that's where he will go. He will not pause to think about the fact that he might be going off a cliff. Sweet Stradwick. I'll make sure that doesn't happen to him. So you've got now as the smoke starts to get thicker and thicker. Kevin McCarthy, who is speaker of the House Republican controlled going on Hannity last night and saying, I think we have time for it, the following, Sat 8. If you're sitting in our position today, we would know none of this if Republicans had

not taken the majority. We've only followed where the information has taken us. But this is rising to the level of impeachment inquiry, which provides Congress the strongest power to get the rest of the knowledge and information needed. I believe we will follow this all the way to the end. And this is going to rise to an impeachment inquiry the way the Constitution tells us to do this. And we have to get the answers to these questions. You use the I word. What do you make of that?

Well, he said impeachment inquiry. I would caution Republicans from getting ahead of themselves. But if the worst version of the allegations here is true, then of course, the president would have to resign or be impeached. It's possible that we've seen nefarious activity or immoral activity that doesn't rise to that level. But if indeed this was a pay for play scheme and government policy was changed or a position was abused in exchange for money and that that money was funneled through all manner of shell accounts and family members. Yeah, this would be an impeachment level offense. So I hope they focus as much on the inquiry as the impeachment bit and make sure that it's in that order. Yeah, because if he actually did take a bribe to change U.S. policy toward Ukraine while the sitting vice president, impeachment is the least of his problems. He's going to jail. He might be in prison.

Trying to do worse than Watergate. Yeah, by far. Right now, this is what you got. You got the White House doing this. For the listening audience, my arm is stiff and in front of me. You got the White House doing that. You got the press doing that.

And there's so much smoke that I do have to believe that even the dishonest press, the press that wants to run cover for him, is going to have to do more about this. They're going to have to because even they must worry, what if we don't do it and something comes out closer to the election and we're stuck with her. We're stuck with her. She will lose to anybody. My sweet Strudwick could beat Kamala Harris. Charles C.W. Cook, thank you for your honesty and your hard work and your commentary. Great to see you. My next guest's Twitter account is one of my favorite follows. At least it used to be called Twitter. Now it's called X. He chronicles some of the gender madness that has taken over our culture. And boy,

he finds just the best clips that really bring it home. I did not know anything about his backstory, but it's fascinating. From a shy British teenager who was badly bullied to K-pop and Korean culture superfan, a singer turned influencer who has had his own battles with identity. Now he's out with a new book about his life, detailing why he's turned into such a vocal critic of transgender ideology and what an effective one he is, having lived it firsthand. The book is called Gender Madness, One Man's Devastating Struggle with Woke Ideology and His Battle to Protect Children. It is set for release next month. It is available now for pre-order. Get it to support Olly London, who is fighting the good fight against, as it's called, gender madness. Olly, welcome to the show. Great to be here. Thank you so much for that introduction, Megan.

Of course. So I did, I mean, like, Ali, I tick off a couple of these things from your bio, just so people understand the amount that you've been through, including recently, this is not ancient history, and how you got to this place before you found faith, which has been a lifesaver for so many, that you were badly bullied. You were more feminine as a child, eventually realized you were gay, but then decided maybe it's non-binary, switched to they, them, then came out as a trans woman, started to go through procedures, became addicted to plastic surgery, 32 plastic surgery procedures, then declared yourself Korean because you developed a fixation with Korean culture. They called you a cultural appropriator.

They did not call you a female appropriator. That was fine. You could cross over into the female lane, but you couldn't cross over into the Korean lane. And right before they were about to do these dramatic, irreversible procedures on you, surgeries on you to make you, quote, appear more female, you stopped. I mean, you did the thing nobody does. You stopped. You went into a church and everything changed. So that's just the broad brush overview of what brought you here today. Thank you for being so honest about all this, because that's got to be very traumatic just to hear me listing it all like that. It is. But, you know, I think it's important to speak about it because, you know, I have been for

a crazy time and I recognize that, you know, I acknowledge what I've been through. But no, I think it's more of a microcosm to what we've got, what's going on in the world right now with so many people questioning their identity and struggling and never feeling good enough. And I always had that feeling of never feeling good enough, never feeling that I looked good, always struggling with my sexuality, my identity, the way I looked. And I projected that onto the world because we live in a world where people can change their identities all the time. And at the time, I wasn't in a good headspace, so I thought this was a totally normal thing to do. And I didn't realize I was, you know, perhaps a bad role model, you know, projecting these insecurities onto the world. Because you were having mental health issues. And eventually,

like is happening so often in today's day and age, you got sucked into the gender, onto the gender train. And it was very easy to just blame it all on that. And then, of course, that was about to create more problems for you, not less. Yeah, I mean, I don't like to blame things on other people. You know, I take responsibility for myself, my own actions. But I do think society does push and indoctrinate people into believing that they can just suddenly wake up and change their identity. And, you know, I was heavily using TikTok. I was heavily using social media. You know, I was surrounded by people, you know, doctors that would just say yes to me. And even the craziest things, you know,

I've had three eye surgeries, I've had my jawbone shaved, I've got screws in my face, you know, I've done some really crazy things. And, you know, all these people around you, they affirm your identity. They think, you know, it's great, you're unique, you're different, you're changing yourself. But really, you know, I wish at the time I would have realized, you know, that this was very unhealthy and damaging to me and, you know, other people around me. You had some issues growing up that were real. Your dad abandoned you and prior to that was very emotionally abusive toward you, made you feel completely less than was not at all accepting of the fact that you were more effeminate and were probably just on your way to becoming a gay man, which he didn't want any part of. So like we've seen that pattern happen quite a few times in

the trans community, where if you would just let a little boy be more effeminate and play with Barbies and if he wants to put on a dress every once in a while, it doesn't mean he's trans. It could just mean he's a normal, a little bit more effeminate, non-gender conforming boy, but he tried, he didn't want it. And that plus the bullying you went through in school really left you in a

dark place. Yeah. I mean, that was one of the triggers because basically, you know, he always wants me to be masculine and a boy and no go out camping, hiking, mountain climbing and going to forests and stuff. And I really rejected that. and, you know, go out camping, hiking, mountain climbing and going to forests and stuff.

And I really rejected that. And, you know, if I didn't go, he would shout at me and be mean to me. He would scream at me in the car and stuff because I was always feminine. I didn't want to do things he wanted to do. So I had a really time struggling with that. And I think, you know, to have a functioning family unit is so important and if we look at the cases of many people that you know become non-binary or trans they do have um difficulties within their family unit you know whether that's with the father or the mother and um you know other issues and i think that's a real driving force so you know i think protecting the family unit is a very important thing in this fight to protect kids from gender ideology. But also, you know, when I had a parent like that was just constantly putting me down, making me feel worthless. You know, it made me

want to change. It made me want to become more like my mother, more feminine, more like a girl, because I didn't want to be reminded of this person. No, look how sweet you were. Look at this beautiful, these pictures of you as a little boy. And, you know, I understand that when you got into the middle school and high school years, you had a condition. Is it called gynomastia? Is that what it is? Yeah, gynocomastia, basically male breast tissue. Okay. And this is not all that uncommon. I mean, on certain men where you look like you have sort of breast buds as a man, which, you know,

you can get corrected surgically and eventually you did. But, you know, a kid going through that in the middle school, high school swim sessions during P.E. has got to be its own kind of torture. Kids are mean. You write about how you had bad acne. I could relate to that 100 percent. People always say, oh, your skin's so nice. You know what? It was not always this way. And the years where it was really bad were traumatic. And I didn't have any of those other issues that you just mentioned. So I really, my heart goes out to you on that bullying. How bad was that? I mean, it was really horrific. And I go into, you know, very detailed, big detail in the book because it was something that scarred me for life. And I think, you know, very detailed, big detail in the book, because it was something that scarred me for life.

And I think, you know, that is really the reason why I was traumatized and underwent all of these procedures and tried to completely erase my identity, because I wanted to prove these bullies wrong. You know, when I'd go to swim class, like you said, I had gynecomastia, which a lot of boys do have its fatty tissue around the chest, so it appears like breasts. So I would always be called a girl. I'd be told I was pregnant because I had, you know, a chubby stomach. And, you know, people would say I had breasts or I would try to forget my swim kit so I wouldn't have to go to class. And then the teachers would find a spare one. So I'd still have to do it and be humiliated.

You know, all of those kids laughing at me and calling me a woman or saying that I had man boobs, it scarred me for life. So, you know, when I became an adult, I completely cut off my chest and I'm left with some very bad scars and cut off all that fat, cut off my nipples and, you know, nearly died during that procedure in Armenia. So it was a tough time. And, you know, those things stay with you for life. But it's about, you know, dealing with those issues head on. And, you know, I'm not running from those traumas anymore. I'm addressing them head on and trying to deal with them to try and become a better person. Well, I list it and I think you listed it in your book to try to give people a foundation to understand, you know, these were some of your issues going into the point at which you were told by the Internet and ultimately told yourself that you were actually the real problem was you were a woman trapped in a man's body. And it's in so many cases we've seen if the person had just gotten an honest therapist

who helped them explore their childhood trauma, they may have made a different choice than to add on more trauma, right, with all these devastating procedures. I mean, that's the real issue. I mean, if we look at studies about kids with gender dysphoria, you know, the vast majority of them have pre-existing conditions like autism, some have bipolar, some have severe depression. So the doctors aren't treating the real issue. They're instead going down this fast track that, oh, you've got issues. It must be because you're trans, you know, giving them hormones. And it's very profitable for these clinics. So, you know, all of these corners are cut and kids aren't really supported and diagnosed.

You know, imagine struggling, you know, on the spectrum of autism as a teen. And it's a very confusing time. Then you're going through puberty and you might be getting bullied at school. And if you think there's a way out of that pain and suffering, the doctor tells you you can escape this by just taking a few hormones. You're going to do it. You're going to listen to that person in authority. So I think that's the real issue here. And, you know, if I would have just addressed it head on and spoke to a therapist and spoke about my issues, you know, perhaps I wouldn't have gone down such an extreme route.

Perhaps I would have, you know, got that mental health support and not mutilated my body and face. The surgeries, the plastic surgeries were not all designed toward becoming a woman. As I mentioned in the intro, there were many, many procedures designed to, you write in the book, erase all resemblance to your father. And, you know, you were trying to scrub his imprint on you, out of you in any way you could. And then came the fixation just that you had body dysmorphia. And so you wanted to change so many things about the way you look to your face and your body and then came the Korean thing so can we talk about the Korean thing because that's an that's an interesting twist that you don't see in you know all these cases yes and I was definitely cancelled for that by all these trans activists because you know apparently you can't identify

as that um so really what it was I was really trying to erase the person I was I was trying to escape and run away from me you know I didn't want to be the person I was I was trying to escape and run away from me no I didn't want to be reminded myself so when I'd look in the mirror I hated it so I wanted to change myself so irreversibly that I wouldn't recognize myself and other people wouldn't recognize me so that's where the career thing came in because I actually moved to Korea in 2013 I did English teaching for a year which is an amazing experience um there's also an experience where I was in this culture which is, it promotes plastic surgery absolutely everywhere you have on the subway system, billboards, you have TV adverts, all the K-pop stars promoting

surgery. So you can't escape it. So when I saw that I was surrounded by this culture of, you know, beautiful people that seem so happy and successful, I thought, no, this is the solution, just have some surgery and all of my problems will go away. And no, as many people do with surgery, once you start, you don't really stop. And it became a snowball effect, which I talk about in the book that it was unstoppable, and it became an addiction. So I was trying to have this Korean K-pop look, because I thought that would make me feel beautiful, like a Korean pop star. And then it wasn't enough. So then the gender dysphoria came back into my life. And I thought that was a star. And then it wasn't enough. So then the gender dysphoria came back into my life. And I thought that was a solution. And it was just, you know,

running from my problems instead of addressing them. And was it were you rejected by surgeons? You know, if you said like, I don't know what specifically you were asking them to do, maybe you could tell us. But did anybody say, Ollie, no, this is not we're not I'm not doing that. Yeah, so that's actually why I didn't have any surgery in the UK because they're pretty strict I mean they won't even do revision rhinoplasty which is a second nose job a lot of surgeons won't do that in the UK because they don't want to risk it

so they don't take risks so I was willing to take a risk and sacrifice my life in this pursuit of vanity so I went to some countries I went to Poland which really messed up my nose and I still have cartilage coming out of my nose to this day um when I went to Armenia for the gynecomastia the male chest reduction I almost died um I was in hospital for days I couldn't even move an inch in the bed the nurses weren't coming in they couldn't speak English I couldn't call them it a real struggle. And then the day when I had my bandages and stitches removed, the doctor actually pulled metal drains

filled with blood out of my nipples without warning. And I wasn't on any medication. And I was it was agony. It was I literally thought I was going to die. And you know, it was horrific. But you know, I did it all in the pursuit of vanity. And I was risking, you know, my life with that. Did you on the Korean transformation I mean did you have like an eye surgery like I read about the you considered having something done to your genitals because apparently the Koreans are known for not having like enormous genitals and you you wanted to actually change yours to be more in line with this ideal um well that was actually because at the time i was so struggling with this gender dysphoria i was you

know wasn't sure what gender i was so i was actually considering you know having the surgery to have the vaginoplasty and you know then i was also thinking about having a breast surgery in the future so you know it was really that gender dysphoria and you know i said some crazy things back then I take accountability for that and you know in regards to eye surgery I did actually have three eye surgeries and you know after those surgeries I couldn't even open my eyes for three days you know and it was really tough imagine having your eyes stitched closed um and it was tough but again at the time I didn't care I didn't care if I died I didn't care about my well-being or my. I simply thought in this kind of narrow tunnel vision that this is my only option. If I don't do this, I'm never going to be happy. Well, the reason I mentioned the one about, you know, the manhood surgery is to me,

that's self-harm. I mean, that's obvious self-harm, you know, the other procedures are too, but that one's just obvious. Any, any man who wants to take inches out of his penis is, you know, struggling, struggling with something and, and, you know, it didn't happen, but I heard you say something recently that really caught my attention, which was it was about self-harm and, and that is, it's, it's almost like a tell, like you said, you likened the surgeries to like one long exercise in self-harm, to like cutting, you know? And if you were just cutting, anybody from the outside would look at you and say, oh, Ali, you need help, right? But instead, what you have now is person after person who applauds it, or you find doctors, maybe not in the UK, but elsewhere, in plenty of other countries, who will actually do the cutting to you.

Yeah, I mean, it was self-harm. I mean, I speak about that in the book as well. You know, imagine cutting your nose off six times and cutting your eyes up three times and your jaw and your cheeks. There's no other word for it other than self-harm. You know, it was not just about, you know, I need to fix my nose because it's too big. It was a constant addiction and harming myself. And I enjoyed that process. I enjoyed not being able to open my eyes for three days. I enjoyed not being able to eat, lying in bed, covering with bandages, because it made me feel, you know, I felt worthless. And it made me feel better about myself that I'm finally going to be beautiful. And I think that's the problem. A lot of young people feel they're struggling with

other conditions like a severe depression, they might be being bullied. So they think that, you know, by changing their body or having body parts cut off, that is, you know, self harming them to make themselves somehow feel better. And it's really not the solution. If only the young people out there would just focus on their mental health and get help with a therapist rather than going down this self harm route, which I've been through. And, you know, that's why I'm very raw and honest with the book, because I want people to know that, you know, this shouldn't be the solution for young people. It shouldn't be the solution to help self-harm and cut yourself and have surgeries. The solution should be to try and find support elsewhere and learn to love yourself. Right. And the body dysmorphia that you were undergoing should have been a clue. It should have been a clue, not something that people just kept addressing the way we wouldn't starve an anorexic.

They were feeding right into your mental issues by doing. And by the way, I should add a respect for Korean men. I have no idea what the actual size of Korean men is. I'm just going based on your book and what you said, the reasons you said you were contemplating this move. But yeah, so no one was helping you. No one was helping you. So it's a miracle that somehow you helped yourself, you, despite all that damage and all of these problematic choices that were adding to your troubles. How, Ali, how? Because I think there are a lot of parents out there struggling with a young child who's in their 18 to 22-year-old range thinking, I missed the window.

I have no idea how to help my child now. But you are at least one example of the fact that actually, maybe there's a window. You know, there's hope for everyone. And I encourage all parents out there, you know, never give up on your child, no matter what struggles they might be going through, no matter how difficult your relationship, never give up because they are all worth loving. They are all worth protecting. And, you know, I got to this stage where I was doing such extremes that I lost the sense of reality. And, you know, I was projecting this online on my TikToks and YouTubes

and my music videos. And, you know, I realized at one point that this is unhealthy. You know, everybody for years, you know, my family have been telling me this is bad. This is unhealthy. My mom, my sister, and, you know, they were really upset with me. And there were times when I wouldn't even speak to my family for weeks on end because they were traumatized by what I was putting them through with the surgery. And it was selfishness at the time. And I didn't see it because I was so obsessed with this, perfecting my image and my identity. And it was tough. But, you know, never give up on someone. And there's always hope. And I think, you know, when you get to such an extreme in life, there's always a chance to go back. No matter how lost you might be, no matter how far you may have

gone down the line, whether it's being trans or something else, you know, never give up on yourself because you can turn back and you can get back to the real you. And what really helped with me was rediscovering my childhood. So, you know, retracing, going back to my old town and, you know, going to the old church where I used to go at school and, you know, retracing your childhood steps, remembering things from your past, you know, because I blocked the old me out of my life, you know, 10 plus years, I didn't even remember things. So it's about rekindling that connection to your childhood, you know, and trying to focus on that. Wow. I guess I should spend before we go right to the Robert Frost poem and the moment for you,

I should spend a little time talking about your music career because that it seems like actually that was pretty successful that you got into sort of this K-pop. You were into that and made some videos that look pretty good. There was one there's one perfection. And then there's another one. Plastic is fantastic. We'll play a little bit of both.

Let's play soundbite 12. I mean, it's a catchy tune. And then here's another offering of you in your singing plastic is fantastic. believe you can do anything you want you can do everything you need oh that's not bad so what happened with the music career and you know is that something was that related to any of what we're discussing yeah it was definitely related i mean you know sorry to um deafen your ears with all that auto-tune because i'm not the best singer in the world but you know i i used to make my music videos fun you know I tried to make them fun and you know music is meant to be enjoyable so you know I had comedy in there I'd make some of the videos a little bit

crazy and you know I knew I wasn't the best singer but I was taking you know the mick out of myself and just enjoying myself you know making these songs but you know the lyrics if you listen you know perfection plastic is fantastic it's all all about looking perfect. So looking back on that, it's pretty meaningless. It's not a song with substance. So no, I don't listen to my old music anymore. But it was kind of the time when I was struggling with that image. And I was obsessed with looking a certain way. Plastic is fantastic, perfection.

And I was projecting that onto the world. But yeah, I don't think I'd ever go back to my music. I'm not the best singer. But you're, I mean, an entertaining performer, which is I mean, the people out there are not great singers. They're just performers who find the auto tune. You did develop this obsession with the Korean band, BTS, and in particular with the lead singer. And I know I should know his name, but please tell me what's his name? How could you not know his name, but please tell me what's his name. How could you not know his name? Megan, it's Jim in. I know I'm so clueless. I mean, I once thought that the very hit band known as Flo Rida was Florida. I'm like, Oh, I love Florida. I'm so at it. I'm so not hip.

So you developed an obsession with him. And in particular, you wanted to look like him to the point where, you know, you had surgeries and so on, but you actually went on Dr. Phil and talked about this in an extraordinary exchange where Dr. Phil, who I love, tried to bring home a dose of reality to you on how this isn't really what he looks like either. You're chasing sort of a dream. Here is Salma. Yes. You're wanting to be a clone or a replica of someone else, which is an insult to you. No, I think it's a tribute to Jimin, actually. It's showing my appreciation for Jimin

because I'm so in love with him, I'm so obsessed. It's my appreciation for Jimin. So I don't think it reflects badly. I'm not losing who I am. I'm still the same person underneath. No, you're not. You're dressed like him. Right, right. You're wearing losing my, who I am. I'm still the same person underneath. Well, you know, you're not, you're, you're dressed like him. Right. Wearing silver, you're wearing silver. This is the new look, right?

This is my new look, the blonde hair, the plastic surgery. And I'm, I'm happy. Like, if you look at the pictures of me and Jimin, it's, we're identical. Now that was just 2021. So that, that was not ancient history. So where are you on your feelings about Jimin and the Korean thing? Well, you know, at the time on Dr. Phil, I wasn't ready to listen to him. You know, I didn't take any of his advice. And I should have at the time, because, you know, after that show, I did a lot more surgery, a lot more invasive surgery in my face and, you know, changed my face multiple times. So I wasn't in a position at that time to listen and you know the obsession with Jimin was just because you know I lived in Korea and I thought you know

I want to be like someone that I idolize you know a bit like someone that might idolize someone like Angelina Jolie you know I thought I want to idolize this person I want to look like this person I thought you know it was generally possible that's how deluded I was at the time it was generally possible to have surgery to look like another person. And now I realize it was very creepy and weird. And, you know, Dr. Phil actually asked Jimin to come on the show and they turned it down so I can see why. But, you know, I just think it was, again, me projecting my insecurities. I was really trying to raise myself to the point where I wanted to become another person. That's very toxic. He got into that a little bit here's another

soundbite from your appearance in side 11 i think beneath it all you're a pretty nice guy thank you a pretty decent guy and secondly i think you're really selling yourself short you're not being your own best friend i don't know. It just makes me happy. It's like a facade. Deep down, I feel sad about myself. I'm always trying to change myself, and I never feel good enough. When I look in the mirror, I never feel beautiful. I never feel good, and I get so much hate online as well, and it just kind of adds to that feeling. So it just makes me feel better about myself. Do you realize that you've basically taken over for the bullies? What do you mean?

They quit and you took over for them. The bullies bullied you, then they went away, but you said, okay, bye, I got this, I'll bully Oliver. Oh, so good. Is that true? Well, he hit the nail on the head because I was bullying myself because again, you know, self-harming myself, mutilating myself, trying to change my identity and going for all these crazy identities. It was a form of bullying myself. And, you know, I really had taken over

from the bullies and I wasn't ready to listen to his advice at the time, but I took over from the bullies because I became them. You know, I started hurting myself. I started putting myself down, telling myself I'm never good enough. I'm not beautiful. You know, I'm ugly. You know, I started hurting myself. I started putting myself down, telling myself I'm never good enough. I'm not beautiful. You know, I'm ugly. You know, all these bullies are right. So I really did take over from those bullies. So in August of last year,

so almost, you know, it was 11 months ago, there was an NBC headline that said you apologized for undergoing operations to appear like BTS star Jimin, saying it was wrong of me to try to do that. But then you added that you still do identify as Korean, adding that's never going to change. Is that still the case?

And are you still getting blowback for that, right? Because they won't let you, you can call yourself a woman all day long, but if you want to call yourself black or Korean when you're actually a white guy from England, it's a hard no. It's a hard no from those trans LGBT activists, you know, so inclusive apart from that. But no, I'm actually back, you know, I found myself, I'm actually back to just being me and just trying to live my authentic self and rediscover the old me. So, you know,

just back to being me. But, you know, at the time of that NBC NBC article I was starting to realize that my behaviors were harmful um so you know that's the reason I issued that apology because I was reflecting you know over a period of time and thinking you know this is wrong this is bad so that was the first step but I wasn't ready to you know quit my identity at the time you know the Korean identity because I still felt you know what if I abandon this identity you know, what if I abandon this identity? No, who am I? I have no identity. I'm just, you know, just ugly old me, you know. So I thought if I can hold on to that identity for as long as I can, it's going to keep me feeling good about myself, keep me feeling beautiful. But, you know, several months later, I was willing to accept that, you know, that was harmful and you can't change your identity like that. And, you know, it just wasn't good.

The real you is brilliant. The real you is an important public servant. I mean, honestly, I fell in love with you via Twitter and your thoughts and what you paid attention to and the quick arguments you would make in response to a clip. I'm like, who is this person? He is brilliant. And to learn this backstory was shocking to me. Like, I had no idea that you'd been through any of this. So please let me validate that instinct of sticking with the real you. You've become such an important voice in these culture wars. I don't know what we'd do without you. I don't want Jim in. I didn't even know who that was, Ollie. Who cares about him? Now you do. Yeah, go ahead. Sorry. I was just going to say, you know know it's all about um you know i was trapped in

that woke ideology that woke cult you know it wasn't until i left that you know identity behind the trans identity the korean identity i woke up and realized what is actually going on in the world and the fact that these identities are being used to take away women's rights parental rights and to harm children so it was only after i had that awakening that I saw these things. And that's why I've become kind of an activist for that. You post these videos and you offer insights on them that, you know, one could only have from, you know, having almost crossed over to the other side and had a foot in the other camp. You know, you were on your way toward becoming, quote, a woman, a trans woman, and had this moment. And we'll get to actually that sort of awakening and some of the stuff that you post and your thoughts on it right after this very quick break. Olly London stays with us,

author of the new book, Gender Madness, an incredible exposition of this gender ideology and of Olly's own backstory. He knows of which he speaks. So, Ali, you're on the path. The doctors, nobody has any questions at all. They're like, oh, sure, you want us to, you know, chop off your genitals and completely, you know, quote, make you a woman? We'll do it. Now, you point out I was an adult. It wasn't like I was a child, but still like the it wasn't exactly like they said, let's make sure that this is real for you. They just were fast tracking you into it. And what happened with the church and the Robert Frost poem? Well, so I've been going through this surgery. I had facial feminization surgery last

year, which involved 11 procedures in one day. So that was an eye surgery, jaw, neck, literally every single part of my face, even had my forehead bone shaved down to make it look more feminine. So that had happened. And then about six months down the line after all of that surgery, I was considering more surgery, Megan. So I was actually considering going to Thailand. I consulted with doctors about having a breast augmentation. So that would be putting silicone implants. I wasn't quite ready for the vaginoplasty, but I was ready for the breast surgery. And thankfully, I got to a point where I was like, this is a really big step.

Do I want to do this? And I started to question it. Then that's when the Robert Frost poem, which I remember reading at university when I studied English. And I remember you have two roads in a wood and you can choose different paths. You can choose the path that you're already going on that's easy you know what's at the end of the path or you can take a risk go down a different path and you know

I was at that point where I was so unhappy with myself and I thought you know it's now or never I either change now or it's never going to happen so you know I took the path and the road less traveled by and that has made all the difference and that helped me go to church one day and just, you know, sit there and reflect on my actions and, you know, consult with the priest and then start going to some of the congregations, you know, and just participating in the from my reality. And, you know, over a period of time going to this church, you know, it was a lovely community, very inclusive, very welcoming. Nobody judged me. And, you know, I just felt like, you know, maybe I should reverse course now before it's too late, before I do any more harm to myself. And, you know, then I started to really think about my actions and then started to try and think, you know, I'm actually being a really bad role model for all these kids that follow me on TikTok and YouTube. And I need to actually be a positive influence for these people. Were you raised in any particular faith or as a religious person? So when I went to elementary school, I actually went to a Church of England school. So we did have to go to church every week with the school. But

I always had very fond memories. It was always very pleasant and, you know, a lovely time. And as a teenager, I actually became an atheist, you know, just wasn't interested. And a lot of teens sadly become like that these days because, you know, too busy on the phone. They're not interested in going to church and connecting with God. So, you know, I kind of lost faith completely until the moment when I really needed some guidance and some light. And it was, you know, at that pivotal moment when these two roads and paths were in front of me that I just decided I need to find another solution to my

problems and I need to try and find God again and rediscover that. You've talked a lot about TikTok and what a negative influence it is when it comes to this gender radicalism. Can you spend a minute on that? Because I think there'll be a lot about TikTok and what a negative influence it is when it comes to this gender radicalism. Can you spend a minute on that? Because I think there'll be a lot of parents out there wondering, what do I need to know, Ali? What do I need to know to protect my kids? So I've got two very in-depth chapters about TikTok and how harmful this is. And TikTok came about around the same time as the pandemic. You know, it's owned by China. And if you look at the differences between Chinese TikTok, which is called Douyin, all of the videos

are patriotic, it's promoting skills, education, teaching languages and other things. And when you look at the American westernized TikTok, you know, it's people sharing their pronouns, their identities, injecting themselves with testosterone and estrogen. And no, that's really harmful. So it seems very obvious that China has an agenda to corrupt and demoralize Western society and break down the family unit. And, you know, there's no better way of them achieving that goal than using TikTok and, you know, targeting these kids.

And, you know, kids on TikTok, you know, you have 13-year-olds on there, you have younger kids that are going on there and they're seeing people transitioning and sharing their stories of how easy it is, how easy it is to get, you know, a chest binder, how easy it is to get hormones. And, you know, they're falling victim to this because they see these influences that are becoming popular. They get likes, they get praise. You're so stunning. You're so brave. And those kids that are struggling with themselves, they're struggling

with their identity. They see that as an escape, as an opportunity to feel validated. And that's what's really harmful. This is so problematic, the way it gets applauded and held up as like an example, the way we used to hold up the Marines. That's how they're now holding up people who are part of the trans community. And I'm sorry, it's not to say that they're all, you know, pedophiles or all the sexual assaulters, or criminals. But there's an unhealthy proportion in that community that is one of those things. I mean, just today, there's a story in the news, absolutely dark and disturbing. Hold on a second. It's I don't know if you saw this. Oh, yeah, you tweeted it. You tweeted it. Transgender Democrats child porn charges draw conservative

outrage. Oh, sure. That's the highlight. It's that the conservatives are mad that this trans person turned out to be a pedophile. This is a Democratic lawmaker, no longer in office, transgender, quote, woman. So it's a man masquerading as a woman facing charges now over allegedly colluding with a daycare center center employee who was his partner to obtain child pornography of the children in the daycare. This is as sick as it gets. This man goes by the name Stacey Marie Lawton, 39 of Nashville, New Hampshire, arrested and charged with the sexual exploitation of children and aiding and abetting. This is a person who was setting policy for those who live in New Hampshire when it comes to these and other issues.

And now we find out that he was secretly colluding with his partner who worked in a daycare to to allegedly take pictures, explicit pictures of those poor children between the ages of two and five in the daycare center. So the two of them could get off on them. I mean, it's stomach turning. It's so disgusting. And this is the kind of story that you've been calling attention to. This is the kind of thing that we see at every turn. Let me pause that there because I want to stay on social media. TikTok, you mentioned. YouTube's another one. And there's no bigger, more popular show in all of YouTube than that of Mr. Beast. My kids watch it. I mean, millions, hundreds of millions watch it around the world. His goal is to get a billion subscribers. I heard him say that myself. And his right hand man has just declared he's not a man. He's a woman.

The guy's married to a woman. They have a baby. He's been flirting with it. He's obviously been on some sort of hormones because he's starting to look more and more sort of female, quote unquote. And now he comes out with it explicitly. Chris Tyson, who was C-H-R-I-S Tyson, is now Chrissy Tyson with a K. And in an interview with podcast host Anthony Padilla says the following. You've had a lot of people speculating on your gender, you know, just you growing out your hair. I mean, today you showed up fully

presenting as a woman. I did because I am a woman. Oh, shit. She heard. You've never said that before, right? I've never said that publicly, no. But I've been fully confident in that decision for over a year now.

Okay. You are not a woman. You're a man who's going through something. Heart goes out to you, but you're not a woman. And don't confuse the young children watching Mr. Beast that you're a woman because he's presenting now as a woman on Mr. Beast. And these young kids who are just trying to tune in to see Mr. Beast, you know, like clean up the oceans or have somebody try to, he did a funny thing where they're trying to like assassinate me, not for real, but you know, hire a real assassin. They want to see the fun antics. Now I have to watch this guy who yesterday was a man

masquerade around as a woman and everybody's just pretending nothing weird has happened, Dolly. Yeah. And it's incredibly harmful because the majority of the audience for Mr. Beast are young kids. You know, young kids idolize this YouTube channel. They want to become like Mr. Beast. They want to become like Chris Tyson. So when you have millions of kids looking at this person that is openly declaring, I am a woman, she, her, and they're also tweeting about taking hormones and how it saved their life and they're encouraging their young audience to try HRT hormone replacement therapy, that is incredibly harmful. You know, it's one thing to be struggling with your identity and to try HRT hormone replacement therapy, that is incredibly harmful. You know, it's one thing to be struggling with your identity and to try and deal with that and find happiness. But

it's another thing to project that onto kids. I think that's really harmful. And you know, I feel for his wife and the baby, because I mean, if you look at him just a year ago, completely different person, what has changed in a year that has made him feel the need to do this and declare himself as a woman, you know, I think it's going to be harmful if he continues to be in the videos talking about these things that he's a woman and about hormones and things, you know, it should just be about these fun videos, you know, that kids love, kids enjoy, shouldn't be anything to do with trans ideology. But sadly, I think a lot of kids are going to be, you know, indoctrinated by this and want to become just like Chris or Chrissy or whatever he's called now. Right, right. And on TikTok, it's even worse. I know you call attention to this video of this

surgeon just talking about this sort of cross gender surgery, like, you know, it's nothing. It's super fun. Here's according. This is where you found it. Doctor, is it Sidab Gallagher talking about silicone testicles. Look at this. So typically when we're creating the testicles for transmasculine bottom surgery, we use implants to do it. There's two main types available on the market. There's the saline implants, which I tend not to use because I find patients don't tolerate them as well. And then there's these guys. These are squishy silicone implants. They feel really natural. They're available in different sizes. You decide what your doc,

what the right size is for you. And there it is. I, I, that is, it's literally nauseating to me that she's just out there. Like it's so easy. Look at it. So soft and squishy. So fun. You two could cut up your vagina and have me insert these. And as you pretend to have testicles that you will never actually have. Yeah. And she has hundreds of thousands of followers on TikTok and all of her videos are targeting kids. And now a lot of her customers, they find her from TikTok and she has claimed before that she operates on several under 18s every single month. So she's operating on minors, cutting off healthy girls breasts every single month. She performs around 500 gender surgeries every single year. And I just think, you know, the fact that she's

using these dirty marketing tactics to go on TikTok, where 30% plus the audience are under the age of 18. You have, you know, kids, eight year old kids on there as well, you know, nine year old kids, they're looking at this, they think, Oh, this woman, she's an expert. I've seen her on TikTok. Let me book this surgery. I'm starting to question myself. This is what I need to do. And it's so wrong. I mean, people like that should not have a medical license. They're abusing kids. And you know, doing this to a child, targeting a child like this is abuse. This is why you're so important. You're like libs of TikTok. You know, doing this to a child, targeting a child like this is abuse. This is why you're so important. You're like Libs of TikTok. You know, you're immersed in this place and you find these videos and you can see how controversial they are and you call our attention to them.

Whereas, you know, most of us, we're not on TikTok. I'm not. And I wouldn't know where to go to find this stuff, even if I were. But you're using your prior pain and experiences for good. Another one was these Democrats who walked out of the hearing last week. The House Republicans are trying to have hearings on the amount of federal funds that are going to help these so-called cross-gender medical procedures. And when they tried to offer real testimony about what's being done to children and by whom and exactly how it is being done. The Democrats got up and walked out. Let's start with SOT 19.

For the sake of clarity, really, I'd like to show a video, a brief interview that was conducted by an expert in gender reassignment surgeries from Oregon's health care system. Madam Chair. Madam Chair. I object. I move that the committee adjourn. This has turned into a circus. Ms. Kamik controls the time. She gets her five minutes and then we'll move the vote on the motion to adjourn. Madam Chair. We don't want to be held hostage by whatever it is that you guys are doing. MADAM CHAIR. WE DON'T WANT TO BE HELD HOSTAGE BY WHATEVER IT IS THAT YOU GUYS ARE DOING. THE COMMITTEE WILL COME TO ORDER. MS. CAMMICK CONTROLS THE TIME.

AS YOU CLAIM, IF WE DO NOT UNDERSTAND HOW THIS SURGERY WORKS, I WOULD LIKE TO SHOW A VIDEO THAT ARTICULATES HOW THESE SURGERIES ARE CONDUCTED. COMMITTEE STANDS AT RECESS WHILE THE MINORITY GETS TO to look at the video. We will watch the video. Okay. But no, what happened was many Democrats got up, walked out, refused to listen to the testimonial about what they're doing to our children. For those of you who didn't see it play out on C-SPAN, here's a little bit of what the doctor said in the video that Representative Kat Kamik played. She serves Florida's third congressional district. Listen, it's hot 20. As a specialty, those of us that do a fairly high volume of genital gender affirming surgery,

you know, we've maybe done a couple, a handful of pubertally suppressed adolescents as a field and no one's published on it yet. OHSU is, we're just putting our first series together as we're kind of learning and figuring out what works. But it's really changing things because you don't have enough tissue to line the vaginal canal. So you either have to pick a skin graft or take skin from elsewhere or use an artificial product. How do you spend your days immersed in this, Ali, and not emerge and like emerge bitter, you know, sick to your stomach? I keep saying that works. That's how I feel.

How do you how do you do that? Well, it really it really is stomach churning. sick to your stomach. I keep saying that works. That's how I feel. How do you how do you do that? Well, it really it really is stomach churning. I mean, the fact that that guy is talking about performing the gynoplasty on little kids is just absolutely sickening. And the fact that the Democrats wouldn't even watch this video to see the horrors. And this is a typical tactic of particularly Democrat politicians and trans activists, LGBT activists. They do not like to have a discussion about this. They'd rather shut you down, call you a transphobe and move on so they can continue doing this to kids. But it's horrific. You know, I research these videos, these stories on TikTok, on social media. And, you know, it's horrific. But if I don't expose it, you know, people aren't going to know this is happening.

So that's why I think it's so important that we use our voices and our platforms. No matter if you have one follower or a million followers, if we can share what's going on and stop turning a blind eye, we can help make a difference. Because just like these Democrats, they're trying to hide what's going on. We need to expose it and keep exposing the truth because we owe it to every single child and every single parent. Oh, they they're not just trying to indoctrinate our children. It starts, I mean, in the cradle, in the cradle. You called attention to this video of a mother trying to do trying to let her infant signal which gender the infant was. It's not 17.

What is Riley? What are you? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. are you a boy are you a girl yeah are you both both both okay that's fine you can be both if you want to oh my god this is a trans parent trying to indoctrinate. It looks like, I guess it's a mother.

Her child. I mean, the child can't inform words. And she's trying to pretend that this is some sort of a gender selection, Ali. This is sick. It's sick, Megan. And they do this in schools as well.

So you now see kindergartens teaching about pronouns, about gender and being trans. And, you know, know we even have sex books there was a book in Australia that went viral recently and this was a book age 11 plus and they were talking about anal sex and fingering and you know this is a celebrated LGBT author and anyone that criticizes her it's called a trans vote so you know it really is sick when they're pushing this on kids and the fact that that parent is pushing this on the kid that kid kid has no chance. By the time they get to 11, they're going to be on puberty blockers and hormones. They're going to have no chance to

discover who they are on their own. And I think that's really, really harmful. This is one of the things that's upsetting to me because you have people, even the Republican Asa Hutchinson, saying things like this is a matter of parental rights. And, you know, we trust the parents to make good decisions. Well, I don't trust that mother. And in fact, if you listen to how that mother responded to the criticism that came her way, I doubly don't trust her. Here's SOT 18. Do you hold every single person who posts anything about their child on social media to the same standard? Or are you holding me to a higher standard because you do not agree with my parenting style or my queerness at the end of the day i make all legal decisions

for riley right i'm the parent i'm the one who shit the fucker out i'm the one who takes care of them by myself right and i know that you've done absolutely no research into my parenting style, but with gender creative parenting, people who practice it effectively have chosen as a parenting style, as many people choose different parenting styles, to not take the extra time to teach their child a false reality to then have to reteach it later the correct way. I mean, I want Division of Child and Family Services to go in there and rescue that child. This is why you do need state intervention on certain things. Like you will not touch that child's genitals or anything to sterilize that child before he hits age 18. The state will stop you. How is that push going, Ali, in the laws? Well, thankfully, this year there's been a real pushback. There's now over 20 states that have banned gender affirming care, although you do have some states which are

being challenged by judges and the federal and state courts trying to block these laws. So, you know, Tennessee had an issue with that, but now it's gone through. So, you know, there is progress, but we need every single state and every single country in the world to ban gender affirming care for minors, because whatever the argument these people like to use, a child cannot consent. If a child can't get a tattoo or smoke or drive a car, a child certainly can't make the decision to cut off their breasts. Ali London, you're a gift. All my best to you. Thank you.

Thank you so much for being here. Thank you, Megan. The book is Gender Madness. Well, well worth your time, as is the follow on any social media. If you're going to get on there at all, follow Ali and you'll learn some horrors that you need to know about.

Before we go, I want to tell you quickly, tomorrow we have my friend Gad Saad here. Later this week, as I mentioned, I'll be traveling down to Florida to interview Governor Ron DeSantis. We were worried he was a report that he got in a car accident today. Thank goodness he's OK. So the interview's on. And more importantly, he's well. And if you have thoughts on what you would like to hear me ask the governor, email me Megan, M-E-G-Y-N at Megan megankelly.com. Should be fun. We'll see you tomorrow.

Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.