The Megyn Kelly Show - Disturbing Chicago Violence Excused by Politicians, and Media Salivates Over Fox News Trial, with the Fifth Column Hosts | Ep. 531

Episode Date: April 18, 2023

Megyn Kelly is joined by the hosts of The Fifth Column podcasts, Kmele Foster, Michael Moynihan and Matt Welch, to talk about Chicago's violence and lawlessness and the way it's being excused by politicians and the left, the Fox News - Dominion lawsuit, the corporate media salivating over the case but not understanding it, the chilling effect a ruling against Fox News could have on freedom of the press more broadly, what Fox personalities and GOP politicians say about Trump in private vs. in public, Elon Musk cracking Tucker Carlson up over his reason for not needing 80% of the staff at Twitter, what Chris Cuomo is up to now on his weird little self-help podcast, the tragic story of the shooting of teenager Ralph Yarl and the competing narratives, latest on the boycott of Bud Light and Dylan Mulvaney's partnership, Lia Thomas speaking out about Biden's Title IX plans and "fairness" in sports, and more. More from the guys: https://wethefifth.substack.com/ 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 and happy Tuesday. The Fox News Dominion trial is officially underway in Delaware. It appears to be a go. And this is crack for the media reporters. My God, it's Brian Stelter's Super Bowl. He's so excited. It's the nerd Super Bowl for those people obsessed with Tucker Carlson. I've got some thoughts on this trial. I have to say, I was really hoping it would settle. Unlike the lunatics who just hate Fox News and want to see Dominion emerge with a huge judgment against them, that could defamation case. Dominion saying Fox defame them by platforming people like Sidney Powell with her election lies. And, um, they're, they're now

saying that if Dominion doesn't win, it's defamation case, uh, that no one will ever be able to win a defamation case, uh, if they are a public figure because of that actual malice standard set up by New York times versus Sullivan all those years ago. This would be proof that the actual malice standard is just too high to ever overcome, and therefore we need to revisit it. I don't think that's true at all. I don't think that's true at all. I think Dominion's got a shot. They've definitely got a shot. The odds are against them. Know that. They're against Dominion. They are, in most of these defamation cases, brought against a public figure, which Dominion is. And in most of these defamation cases brought against a public figure, which Dominion is. And I know they've got all these problematic statements by Fox executives

and the Fox News brain room, which is the fact checking center. They are saying this is all bullshit. Sidney Powell's a lunatic. There's absolutely no proof. I mean, they do have all of that in writing from Rupert to Suzanne Scott, who's the CEO, to other top executives, to producers on all the primetime shows and so on, and even some anchors. speakers at issue. There is no Maria Bartiromo text saying this is bullshit and I know it. Now we'd be getting there. You knew it was untrue and you platformed and you didn't push back and you didn't telegraph to the audience. There's reason to doubt. Now we're getting there. They don't have that. Um, so anyway, don't believe the mainstream obsession with Fox, those people who hate Fox, that this is a slam dunk for Dominion. It's anything but. This could go their way for sure. It's a Delaware jury. They're not going to,

more than likely, it's not going to be a bunch of Fox News lovers. But also don't underestimate the power of celebrity. You know, if Sean Hannity takes the stand, if Tucker Carlson takes the stand, notwithstanding what you may read in the New York Times, they're very charming guys. They actually are. They're self-deprecating. They're funny. They know how to work an audience. And I would expect the jury to wind up really liking those guys. I really do. I think that they will. I think once they see who they are, apart from this caricature painted about them by the mainstream media, by the Times that, the times that writes about Tucker like every week. Don't underestimate their power to connect with the jury and convince them that while this was a tough assignment as a journalist, how are they supposed to ignore these claims being made by the

president and his lawyers? How are they supposed to go out there and say definitively we know none of it's true? That's what they have to prove. Just as an FYI, the judge gave Dominion a very favorable ruling in the summary judgment phase and said, you don't have to prove falsity of these statements. That's already been proven. Fox cannot take the stand and try to claim that you were created by the Venezuelans or all this other nonsense. Like, oh, that's BS and we know it. You don't have to prove that what they were saying was false. We know it's false. We're going to tell the jury it was false. But you do have to prove that they did it with actual malice. And that means either knowledge of the falsity of the statements or reckless disregard for the

truth or the falsity. And then you have to back up your $1.6 billion damages claim, which is another weakness for Dominion. So the actual malice is what it really comes down to. And can you impute the knowledge of one person saying this is bullshit to the brain of an anchor sitting on set, platforming the claims who doesn't believe it's bullshit? Just one of the many questions here. All right. It's expected to be a six week trial. This is day one. Um, and we'll get into it with our panel. Meantime, we're getting disturbing video out of Chicago of the violence and lawlessness over the weekend and the statements from the mayor and the mayor-elect, good God, this guy, do not inspire confidence.

I lived in this city for five years. I'm so sad about what's happening and it's absolutely pathetic, pathetic that the leaders of that city continue to be feckless when it comes to crime, when it comes to gang violence and when something like this happens, when it comes to gang violence. And when something like this happens, the knee-jerk instinct is, well, don't be too hard on the violent ones. Don't be so nasty to the people committing the beatdowns and the murders.

They're people too. Always love it when our friends from the Fifth Column Podcast join the show and they are here today. Camille Foster, Michael Moynihan, and Matt Welsh. And you can find more of them at their sub stack, wethefifth.substack.com. Guys, welcome back to the show. Hi, Megan. So let's spend a minute on Dominion just because I was just talking about it. It's an interesting case. I mean, legally, it really is nerd prom there outside of that courtroom. It's like Brian Stelter, Eric Wemple, Brian Steinberg of a right.

They're all there. Like, Oh, they're not allowed in the courtroom, but they're there. They're in their media. What a party. That sounds amazing.

Right. Can you imagine? It's Stelter. Apparently Stelter is doing a podcast about this, a column. And for a column for Vanity Fair. Andy's writing a book about it. Thank God for Stelter that they didn't settle. What would he be doing?

It's the same thing. He'd still be doing Fox all the time. But if you read the mainstream coverage of this, they are salivating over the thought that fox news could lose and they're so dumb their next conclusion is this will be the end of fox it will be the end of the fox news credentials at the white house at congress at any polite society event it will be the end of fox being distributed on your local cable channel because we can turn to them as consumers and say, they lie. They were found guilty of lying by a Delaware jury. And I mean, to talk about delusions of grandeur as to the power of a jury, but in any

event, what do you make of the media coverage of the biggest media dispute we've seen in this country in decades? I think that your take at the beginning is one that I've been waiting for anyone to give. And occasionally you'll see it in the op-ed pages of the New York Times or somewhere else. But generally that if Dominion wins, that could be a bad thing for the First Amendment and for people who work in the First Amendment business. It would mean that the standard for being able to sue people and show a malice as a legal standard is more achievable than it was previously. That is something that is a future that not everybody should be cheering on. I think you have 30 years worth of this feeling among people who work in the non-Fox journalism business.

I've been waiting for this great comeuppance. Like, finally, we're going to show them that they've been, that the fair and balanced wasn't fair and balanced after all, and that they're slaves to their audience. You know, there might be an argument that there's definitely some audience capture happening, not just there, but at every cable news outfit. But there's so much invested in Fox getting its comeuppance that people are being kind of short-sighted about what it means. I, too, hope that they settle rather than it goes fully to trial, except the part of me, the little devil part of me, that wants all the chaos and wants all the discovery because it's fascinating. It is

super fascinating to look under the hood, I think. It will be fun to see them take a stand. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of an adjunct point to that, is that, yeah, I mean, it's kind of adjunct point to that is that, yeah, I mean, it's very, very similar to what happened with Trump, Russia and with Trump in this indictment is that people are over their skis quite a bit because they're too excited about the potential fallout. Like we're going to get this guy finally. Well, don't you sound a bit like conservatives and Republicans in 1950s saying everybody works for Russia, everyone is somehow involved in this kind of massive conspiracy? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We don't really have it nailed down yet, but let's go full court press ahead with it.

And they don't realize the consequences of that for their reputation and for the country as a whole. And it seems like something similar is happening here is that whatever we can do to take these guys down, because there's been Robert Greenwald documentaries, there's been advertising campaigns, there's been protests, there've been, you know, target Glenn Beck's advertisers, et cetera. And, you know, in fairness to Roger, which Roger Ailes, which is not something I'm likely to say very often, but he did actually fire him when he was the top rated show on the network. So there was some standards there at the time, but they've been trying to do this for a very long time. And it seems like it's another way of like, can we just cheat and kind of get the result we want? And, you know, maybe it'll have some kind of knock on effects in the

first amendment. Yeah, but whatever, we're going to get Fox on this one. That's what I find kind of amazing and disturbing about the coverage. I don't have a legal opinion, Megan, you are a lawyer, I am not, about, you know, whether this stuff rises to the level of actual malice. It rises to me as just watching this and as Matt said, the discovery is fascinating, as like kind of sleazy and, you know, saying like, well, this is what our viewers want. Maybe we should give it to them in kind of a, you know, half-assed way. That kind of is disturbing to me. You know, and I just to interject, that is true of the executives. If you look at the executives, they were all like, it's bullshit, but we're losing our audience after that Arizona call and we have to throw them a bone. And that they started to get upset by reporters who were fact

checking claims made on the air on certain shows that supported the Trump line. If it's stolen election, the Sidney Powell stuff, and they'd say like, no, tell her not to do that. You know, we're losing our audience. This is bloodbath. Okay. So that's one thing. But when you go down to the host level, it gets a lot tougher for dominion. I, again, I'm waiting. Show me the Lou Dobbs text where he says, I know this is a lie. It doesn't exist. Show, the Maria Bartiromo one, right? Could she have pushed back harder on Sidney Powell? Duh, of course. Yes, she could have. But that to me is not necessarily actual malice proof. Yes, it's a journalistic fall down, for sure. But if that's proof of actual malice. And if you can use what's in Rupert's

head against Maria, that'd be like me. And I covered these election claims at the time. I did have the podcast. We hadn't yet launched video. That'd be like Steve Krakauer, my executive producer, being like, OK, this is bullshit. It's not true. And me being like, I hear you. I have a different opinion. I neither of us knows whether it's true or not. Did you go down to figure out whether there was any vote manipulation? Have you checked all 50 states? Are you able to definitively say that? It's our job as journalists to probe, to ask. We don't actually have to be the finders of fact. We have to ask questions of the people making the claims. And I definitely would have platformed Sidney Powell and I would have given her a very hard time. But if you get to the place where it's like the journalist must take a position and that position must reflect the objections coming into them from the party

they're covering, you know, just because Dominion wrote the letters saying these are lies that Fox had to go with. These are lies. We as journalists are in a very sketchy place because I guarantee you Anthony Fauci would take out his little pen and be writing to everybody. And then what? We're required to do what he says? Go ahead, Camille. Yeah, no, I would concur with most of what's been said. Moynihan, a moment ago when you were describing the situation and the fact that so many people are salivating at the opportunity to see their political enemies done away with and the network's finished, that they don't realize that these bad outcomes could happen. Or don't care. They don't care. Yeah, that's right.

They're completely interested in the possibility that, you know, norms are being eroded and all of these changes. I'm giving them credit, Commissioner. Yes, I hear you. I'm a little hungover, so I'm being generous today. At other times, in recent history, there's been a great deal of concern about the erosion of norms that Donald Trump and his administration might might portend. And the fact that all of these legal cases that are happening right now and all of the in some cases, again, confusing, nuanced, somewhat contradictory pieces of evidence that we are actually sorting through, trying to figure out whether or not there's any there there. There's very little interest in the nuance on the part of the mainstream press. And I think it is once again, another example of them impugning their own credibility and ignoring the very real potential fallout that could happen

from this sort of inquiry. I think the fact that it's proceeding at all is actually potentially dangerous. But certainly, I think a conviction that looks overly politicized, whether it be in the Trump-Stormy Daniels case or in the Dominion case, is something that would almost certainly be detrimental to the country in some respects. So one hopes that to the extent that these things are proceeding, that it's all on the up and up and that it's some point these journalists at major media publications, like actually get their acts together and develop a little bit of curiosity.

I would say one thing to what something Megan said, and it is a plea to all of us to not fall for the language tricks that have come upon us since 2016. Megan said something, you know, you're using the language because this is what they're using in the lawsuit. As you said, you absolutely would platform Sidney Powell. No, you wouldn't. You would interview her. Platforming isn't a thing. That's what we do as journalists. We interview people. And you, and I think I've mentioned this on the show before you, Megan got a lot of shit for something I didn't get any shit for. And 2016, um, right before the election, I spent some time in Texas with Alex Jones at his studio. I think I was the first one to film in the studio for the

HBO show. And we had a combative interview. We had a funny interview. It was all over the place. And people were like, Oh, this is a guy who just had a call with Donald Trump. Donald Trump had just come on to InfoWars. And they got a look at this kind of thing. And what he was all about, I pushed back on him. And, you know, I let him talk, too, because the whole thing is not about, you know, a knockout blow. It's to say, what is this guy all about? Because he has a lot of fans. And after that, no one said anything. But when, Megan, you did it because you had a platform on NBC and people said you shouldn't be doing this stuff on NBC, that's around the time disinformation started becoming a word that people used in platforming. And I just, you know, my skin crawls when I hear the word, even when I use it in a kind of

sarcastic way, because that's what we do. How do you know Sidney Powell is crazy? Because someone quote unquote platformed her. And she's actually involved in this. She's working with Donald Trump. This is the man that was the president from 2017 to 2020. What are you doing? We have to know what she thinks and what kind of advice she is giving him. Who are you going to trust? We'll put her on the air and let's talk to her. We tried to interview her many times. We reached out and asked for her to come on many times. And I would submit there is a reason she said no. I know exactly what she said now.

Yeah. It's one thing for someone to be absent from the public eye and from mainstream press coverage because they refuse to talk. It is another thing entirely for us to be told that person is bad. We are not going to talk to them at all. Like this actually can create this illusion that person is bad. We are not going to talk to them at all. Like this actually can create this illusion that there is some mysterious truth that is being suppressed. Yes. And that is also dangerous. That's exactly right.

They undermine themselves and their credibility so many times in so many different ways with so many very important stories. And again, they may be doing it here as well once the Dominion case proceeds and people see that things are a little bit more complicated. I'm curious about your perspective, Megan, on some of the phone conversations that we've heard recently from the case where people are actually, hey, I want to know whether or not this is true. Can you bring this particular evidence? Hey, it sounds like this might not be true. I don't want to present anything that isn't true. I mean, you have recordings that in some cases kind of make your skin crawl because it seems like people are more skeptical than they are presenting it, or at least than certain people

are presenting it. But it's also somewhat exculpatory because it suggests that there is a genuine interest in figuring out whether or not certain things are true and whether or not certain things are false or perhaps someplace in the realm of just general uncertainty. The thing that I can't get past in the case is if Suzanne Scott, who was an executive when I was there too, she wasn't CEO, Roger was, and then Bill Shine went and then I left and Suzanne took over once Bill Shine got the boot. But Suzanne Scott's belief about the news does not dictate how I do the news, especially at Fox News. At Fox News, the anchors are in charge of their programming. They don't answer to their producer. Now, the producer and the booking department and the PR lunatics can definitely say it's a hard pass on Moynihan. Moynihan is not coming on Fox News. And there's nothing you can do about that. Usually Matt Wells, by the way, that they've banned 15 times. They can definitely do that. But no one, and certainly when Roger was there, he could, he could chastise you if you went too far on an issue. And, you know, I've told the

story before, but when I interviewed Dick Cheney, who's sitting next to Liz Cheney, and that morning he had claimed that the Iraq war was the fault of Barack Obama. So we were supposed to be talking about something else. That's why the daughter was there doing some initiative. And I'm like, oh my God, he dropped this op-ed in the wall street journalist morning. I'm going to have to club him like a harp seal, which is what happened. And it was awkward. And honestly, it was like the only interview of my career where I got like dry mouth. My heart started to really beat. I was like, holy dick, Cheney is scary. And I know I have to go after him. But Roger, after that interview, did not like that interview. And he said, the way he phrased it was, you can go after the guy, but when he's sitting next to his daughter,

it doesn't look good. And I'm like, well, that's a package they arrived in. What was I supposed to do? But in any event, so he could push back on things like that and would help. But my point is no one since Roger could look at an anchor and say, this is the way you will cover it. Trust me when I tell you Suzanne Scott would be laughed at by Sean Hannity. He's way more powerful than she is. Way more powerful. She has no control over him. Zero. Everybody there respects Sean's news judgment more than they

respect Suzanne Scott's who used to run hair and makeup. I mean, I'm not saying she knows nothing about news, but Sean had been anchoring that show when Suzanne was literally in charge of hair and makeup. He is not going to listen to her period. So we do have to look at his state of mind. We have to look at the speaker state of mind and not just what Suzanne Scott thought. Now, one other point, the brain room to me is a different story. The brain room is our internal fact checker at Fox news, the brain room. They literally hire those people to keep us factual and honest. And there's a reason that they put them in that room and give that room that name. And where there's uncertainty, you're supposed to go to the brain room.

And they did. The brain room offered a hard fact check on the claims being made by Powell and Trump. And all of them came out against Powell and Trump and Giuliani. And that seems to have been utterly discarded. Now, whether that knowledge is imputable, right, to the anchors like you disregard, reckless disregard for the truth will also get you to actual malice. Now we're on more fertile ground to me as a lawyer and a former insider at Fox News. Yeah, I think the case lies there and the case lies with individual producers like Lou Dobbs' producer saying,

hey, this this sounds pretty squirrely. And then Lou saying whatever Lou says at night, making some some kind of bold accusations out there. I would just modify your point a little bit, Megan, that it is absolutely true that anchors, especially on the main network at Fox, have the power. They have more power, I think, I would guess, without really knowing a lot about what's going on in the building. Just that Roger Ailes was a totemic figure in the development of cable news. And in but on a daily managerial level, do you think? They don't get involved at that level. That's the problem. They had their opinions. But trust me, I was also there when Rupert and Lachlan were in control.

And they are not micromanagers like that. They had their opinions. They might say like, hey, make sure the audience knows we hear them. That's not the same as saying, you know, support everything Sidney Powell's doing. That's just not the same. I just don't, I think the media loves to blow up a random Rupert quote or a random Lachlan quote because whatever, it makes them sound like they got it. They knew Trump was full of bullshit, but that doesn't, legally, that doesn't get them there. It's also true that if Rupert was micromanaging things, he owns the Times in the UK, Sky, Sky in Australia, newspapers in Australia.

I mean, he's accused everywhere he goes of micromanaging all of those publications. He's an old guy. He doesn't have enough time in the day. He's got a lot of romantic life. Yes, he's got, you know, Jerry Hall's a problem. So, you know, you said something that I find interesting, particularly from, you know, with a law background. I'm interested in your perspective on this. And sorry to do the thing where we're interviewing you, but you worked at Fox. Come on. So you said at the beginning that this is a tough case for Dominion to win. That seems to be seems to be true. In the past couple of days, we've seen a lot of reporting about 11th hour committees between lawyers talking about settling and a lot of reporting on this.

And it seems from Wall Street Journal, I mean, all over the place. Why would Fox, if you if you suspect they have such an airtight case here and a First Amendment case to airtight strong? Yes. But, you know, a very good case here. Why would they be in talks to settle? Well, because I'm sure they want to spare their stars and their top executives the considerable emotional burden of taking the stand and being cross-examined. Now, there's no cameras in this courtroom. And again, nerd prom is right outside of the courtroom. They're not even allowed in. But this is not a pleasant experience for anybody. Even a deposition is unpleasant.

Never mind to actually take a stand. Then they got two unfavorable rulings by this judge last week who accused them of withholding these tapes that this disgruntled producer who worked for Maria. And at one point, I think Tucker had on her phone, she says, I told the Fox lawyers when discovery came around, I had this second phone that it was dead, but that they should fix it and find my recorded conversations with Maria Bartiromo and Giuliani on there. And they never did it. So she said, so finally I did it. And here's the evidence. And the judge was very unhappy that Fox had not done that and had not turned it over, which is indeed an obligation of Fox's. Fox, forgive the legal term, shat the bed. And the judge was understandably very displeased. That is an oh shit moment as a lawyer when you realize, oh my God, my client didn't give me all the information. We're at trial. We're on the eve of trial. This is a massively on point recording that we never gave to the other side. The only reason they know about it now is

because one of my employees at my company got disgruntled and sued us and it came out from her directly. So that's one. Two, the judge got very upset that they had misstated Rupert's corporate role. They had downplayed the oversight and the role he had at Fox News Channel, as I understand it. And the other side, Fox said, that's all public. But in this case, they had misrepresented it, according to the pleadings. So they're getting some bad rulings. The judge doesn't like them. It's very clear. He doesn't think Maria's fair. There were some open quotes about, oh, sure, she's neutral. Maria was not neutral on this question. He's not wrong. I happen to like Maria, but I understand why she's an opinion. She's an opinion person. Exactly. So he you could tell he doesn't like them. So if you're the lawyer, you're saying you're in Delaware, by the way, you are not in Texas with Fox News personalities taking a stand. You're in Delaware, by the way. You are not in Texas with Fox News personalities taking a stand. You're in Delaware.

They probably can't find one person who watches Fox there for likable, you know, other than hate watching. And so they're up against it. Now, I think they like their odds on appeal. You know, they're going to argue some of these issues that we're discussing on appeal, but much better to not get the verdict against you. I think this is total speculation, but I think the reason they didn't settle, notwithstanding those incentives for Fox to do so, is Dominion's got dollar signs in its eyeballs. Dominion really wants that $1.6 billion, which is some huge exponential amount more than Dominion, the company is worth. But Dominion can get punitives. And if you get punitives, God knows what the number is, right? That just means you don't have to limit me to my actual damages that I suffered. You can give me damages to make Fox suffer, members of the jury. And that could be billions.

And having said all that, Rupert has more money than God. Rupert can afford 1.6 billion and then some. But Rupert's also like a fighter. He's probably like, fuck off. I mean, that's who he is. Like I was watching Succession last night and I was thinking, Logan Roy is a little pussycat compared to Rupert. Rupert's way scarier and tougher and more of a ball buster. And just he's just unafraid.

And I don't know if i mean that as a compliment or criticism but that's it's just true so i'm sure he's like i can afford all of this you don't scare me i'll take the stand in front of the jury i'll say everything i said in deposition you won't touch me and by the way look at the latest polls on how our viewers feel about fox that the trust in fox news has gone up not down so piss off yeah yeah the idea and you reference this at the top megan that this is going to be finally the thing that breaks the bond between fox and its audience like are you crazy have you paid attention to either either fox's audience or just uh conservatives uh and their relationship with media and conservative figures, just like with Donald Trump.

If you're going to throw some flimsy case at him in lower Manhattan, you're going to rally support for Trump by people who are sick of the media and sick of the institutions that are allegedly neutral. Going all in and grabbing on any possible little shred of evidence is something to whack someone over the head with. So I can't imagine this is going to happen. I mean, that said, you know, if I'm a discerning viewer and I'm watching Tucker Carlson every night and I'm reading these transcripts, I'd be pissed off at Tucker Carlson for Tucker's one of the ones who got it and actually said on the air, Sidney Powell's a loon. Don't believe her.

Yeah, so that was pretty credulous. and actually said on the air, Sidney Powell's a loon, don't believe her. Yeah. Also, that was pretty credulous. And to this day now, his big claim is that the election in 2020 was the most sort of corrupt or most, it's very superlative in how it was rigged and wrong. But Matt, but let's just be clear because it's a legal case.

We have to be clear in language. He's not about dominion. He's mad about what they did in Pennsylvania. He's he's mad about like the last minute of the voting changes, the mail in balloting, the Harvard, the ballots, Harvard. That's the stuff. So but that's so that's his opinion. But that's not legally actionable. That's not an issue in this lawsuit. Absolutely correct. What I'm saying is that if there's going to be a break in the bond between viewer and Fox, it would be stuff that came out. I don't think it would be what Lou Dobbs said about Dominion that was crazy, which is probably everything that Lou Dobbs ever said about Dominion on air. Because Dobbs is a bit touched if we're talking about. Honestly, I don't think any Fox viewer is going to be mad or surprised by any of that. The surprise would be when someone that they trust says at different points, including in November, makes sort of like says openly, we can't say this because it's going to hurt the feelings of our audience. You know, makes the expression that they feel reticent about saying factual things because our audience isn't ready to accept that. I would consider that as not in spur with that, but everybody in the media is camped out

in front of this lawsuit and rubbing their hands with glee. I think that people are not going to hold it against Tucker Carlson for more than a half a second. They're not. I will say this. I don't agree with your last points there, Matt. You faded in and out, but I got enough of them to hear you. Because the Fox executives, while in my view, they did not do the right thing journalistically, I would have followed the Fox News brain room. I would have. And I would have taken the scorn of the audience. But you know what? I would have understood because I was at Fox for 17 years. The audience comes back around. They will forgive you. They could be mad. They'll go watch Newsmax temporarily, but they will come back because Fox News has very

compelling programming and there's a very solid relationship between the hosts and the audience. And it takes temporary hits. It has for all the years I was there, but they always come back. So you're playing a long-term game. So I don't think they did the right things journalistically. However, the business panic reflected by the executives in that text after the Arizona call was correct. That's the shit that was going to cause a rift between them and their audience. Like, none of this will touch the relationship between them and their audience. The audience does not care if the behind-the-scenes musings match up with the coverage. They do care if you're calling Arizona too soon. If you see, if all your news people seem totally anti-Trump, if, you know,

none of the coverage allowed for even the possibility that Trump's claims, you know, were true, did, did like a fulsome exploration of the claims. That's the stuff the audience will hold against you. So I'm just saying like their instincts that that's going to cause a rift between us and the audience, I think those were correct. This lawsuit, uh-uh. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's ultimately right. I mean, I just, I'm the one, the things that disappoint me and particularly, you know, I've known Tucker Carlson for many years. You know, the Tucker Carlson thing is not even about the election. It's about the two kind of the Janus face Tucker Carlson when it's talking about Trump.

But it's funny. I mean, it bothered Trump enough that they had a call about it. Explain why you're talking about his hatred. Explain in case the audience doesn't know. I mean, yeah, Tucker's saying that I don't like this guy. I think he's poisonous. And I'm obviously not quoting him directly. He's done nothing for us. And he's done nothing for us.

The phrasing was something along the lines of we can stop pretending that he's accomplished something. Yes, he's accomplished nothing. Perhaps he doesn't actually mean it in that way, in that moment. And he's just angry. But either way, to be saying that in private, to be saying the things he was saying in public, that is a pretty extraordinary disconnect, which is interesting, Matt. I mean, I don't know if it actually has to come out in order for him to lose credibility. Well, I disagree with that, too. I disagree with that, too. If you could hear my private thoughts and a lot of the people I have to cover, you'd be horrified.

I don't it's it's not my responsibility. Suspicions would be confirmed. It's not appropriate for me to just go out there and go off on the people I have a personal disgust for as the news anchor, as the anchor of the show, even if you're an opinion person, you, you do need to be respectful of your audience's opinions and understand that many of them may love this person, especially if it's a president, you can be critical of the person or you can, you if it's a president. You can be critical of the person or you can run cover for him if you think the news media writ large is being too critical

of him. But your personal opinions about the guy should not drive the way you cover him. But what if you're an opinion journalist? The expectation is that we're getting your legitimate opinion. And I'm talking specifically about Tucker, by the way. I mean, I do have, I was going to make the point that it does upset me that, you know, after the Arizona call, that Fox, this is, I think, a problem that they fire Bill Salmon and Chris Steyerwald. Hate it. Hate it. Agree. Very, very interesting people. We've had Chris on the show. He's a brilliant guy. Honest, smart journalists. Yeah. And Bill Salmon, by the way, if you want a conservative journalist, I mean, Bill Salmon was at the Washington Examiner, the Washington Times for years.

He's not anybody's liberal. And I think that was a huge mistake. But your point on Tucker is that, I mean, I get the point if you're if you're a bread bearer, but, you know, Tucker's out there, you know, telling you what he believes about everything. And my my issue is that it just seems that those are two very different things that you're getting from Tucker about Trump privately and publicly. Okay.

So I think that there – I know people mock that, oh, there's no difference between analysis and opinion. I actually think that we're kind of getting to where there is a difference between analysis and personal opinion. If you had asked me my personal opinion of Donald Trump in the midst of him attacking me and teaching my daughter the word bimbo, you would not have heard nice things. Not at all. But if you had asked me for my analysis, let's say, you know, a year later when he was actually president, um, I absolutely could have said positive things about him, about his agenda, about how even the morning after I've the morning after he won, I went on with Kelly Ripa. Go back and look at the tape. And I said, the positives here are that a huge swath of Americans feel like they have been heard when they were ignored for too long under Barack Obama.

And so I was able to provide that analysis, whether I was one of them or not. That doesn't make my analysis dishonest. It makes me able to check my most strong personal opinions that are my own business between me, my husband, my therapist, whoever, away from my ability to bring my audience fair coverage, something I pride myself on even now that I'm more like a hybrid. I'm a journalist, but I also offer my opinion. And I think it's an important thing to be able to do. I wasn't surprised by the Tucker's smart. There's no way Tucker is enjoying Trump's antics. There's no way he's not somebody he loves America too much to be like, yeah, so fun, you know, to have this guy so divisive at the helm all the time and have the news coverage revolve around his narcissistic

tendencies. But he's also smart enough to see how he resonated and the good that he was bringing, you know, on certain policy initiatives into this group of Americans that, as I said, felt hurt. Fair and reasonable points. It's your show, Megan. But also fair and reasonable. I'm joking. It was a articulated argument. Yeah. I mean, it's a hard thing to tell sometimes to tucker of what is analysis and what is his own personal um opinions animosities and everything i mean it kind of it blurs and you know i mean i would also make the argument that tucker does reporting too by having sydney powell on and you know beating her up he did a great service that you know one would assume everybody knows this hearing this woman talk that she's a bit a bit off. But Tucker, you know, could have played to the audience in that moment and didn't.

So I didn't have her on. He did not. If I'm not mistaken, he didn't have her on. He just went off on her saying she's a liar. And I have that's right. Yes. And said and said we repeatedly gone to them asking for evidence of these. And they wouldn't come back. Yes. And we can't find any of that evidence. Yes. That's what he said. But yeah, I mean, that moment, whether she was on or not, this, you know, this blur together at a certain point, that he did take her on, which I probably think if it was like OAN

or one of these networks that is just all red meat, no news whatsoever, that wouldn't have happened. So, I mean, I give him credit in certain points, but, you know, it is a hard thing, this kind of what is opinion, what is analysis? It's it's tricky. But, you know, the job of a journalist is tricky and there are all sorts of tradeoffs you have to make. And you do have to be honest with your audience. You know, it's like at the end of the day, you need to give them honest analysis about the facts.

And when it comes to your own personal opinion, are you able to have them and keep them privately and still do straight analysis? I think so. I think I've been doing it for years and I feel totally comfortable with that. One small final point is that the number of people I've talked to on Capitol Hill and going up there and shooting who are Republicans who say nobody talks positively about Donald Trump behind closed doors, and everybody does publicly, because that's just part of the horse trading. And, you know, I would always push back and say, don't your constituents, you know, want to know that when you see how the sausage is being made, what kind of disgust you about it? And they're like, well, you know, and, you know, some people that come on the show, former Representative Peter

Meyer, had said the same thing to us, is that, you know, 99% of Republicans he talks to say very different things about Trump in private. I mean, Trump was attacking Mick Mulvaney the other day. I was at Frank Luntz's house before the election, and he was on a speakerphone call with Mick Mulvaney. We filmed it, so it was okay. And Mick Mulvaney was just tearing trump apart and this is before before the election of 2016 and then he goes and works for him kind of temporary chief of staff acting chief of staff and now he's back in trump's you know bad graces again and it's just been this unique thing with trump of people who have worked for him who have denounced him who have worked with him and then denounced him and people who him but positive things from the but and that's when you see this Dominion stuff. It's like, I'm just used to that

with politicians. And so the nuance of Tucker, I get your point, but I've seen a lot of this over time. It's not unique to Trump, almost certainly. It's not unique to Trump. Biden with his age, I mean, Democrats who come out and publicly talk about how competent he is and how strong and virile. I mean, are you kidding? You don't believe it. I also say that pre-Trump, there was a longstanding problem on the right of establishment Republicans being terrified of the Republican base and pivoting really insincerely during primary elections. The greatest example of this is when one of the few

times John McCain looked like he might get primaried in Arizona as a senator. That's when he filmed the absolutely cringe inducing complete the dang fence. He like walks with a guy on the border and like, what do we got to plan? And and it's really insincere because John McCain spent the rest of his career trying to put together bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform. Like he's the opposite of the guy he was in that ad, but he felt scared by the Republican base. And so pivoted really, really hard in this direction as a really lifelong establishment figure. You see this constantly. And I think there's something disreputable about that when you can't speak honestly. And this is a wide swath of people among Republicans. And yes, it's happening among Democrats, too. But I think that the gap between the establishment Republicans and the fear of the

base and what to do with that is this weird, longstanding relationship. And the Fox Dominion thing definitely brings this up like this. That is different. The politicians owe us their actual opinions because they're going to be the decision makers. A journalist does not owe you his or her personal private opinion. I'll give you an example. I have never once in this job, in NBC, Fox, ever said my own personal opinions when it comes to the issue of abortion. I have never done it. Try to go back and find it because there are certain lines that I don't have to cross. But if you went back and looked at my coverage, you would say she's fair. She's fair. She understands where both sides are coming from this. So I, you don't, you, you know, somebody who wanted to get me might try to find my personal opinion. If they found a diary of mine or an old friend of mine and then compare it to my news coverage and say she's a liar she's a liar like no that you're not a liar just because you do the good business management principle of being a journalist and

check your personal opinion try not to let it color your coverage on something extremely controversial like abortion like trump you know like Trump, you know, like presidential politics. You know, maybe you love the one guy and you hate the other guy. You shouldn't let that show to your audience. You should try to be more respectful of the process, especially if you're at Fox News, you're talking about a Republican primary, you know who your audience is, or you're talking about the president of the United States who's making these extraordinary claims and you don't know whether they're true. You doubt them. You have a strong doubt. But you don't know.

Right? So who are you to put yourself in the position of these are lies until you know? That's what's bothering me. I don't know if we're going to know. We know enough now. But in the moment, I hadn't checked the Dominion machines. I hadn't even heard of Dominion. It was like, what's it going to require?

A lot of work for me to figure out whether this is all bullshit. Sidney Powell's a respected appellate lawyer. Anyway, OK, I got to go because I got to get a break in and there's much more to discuss. I want to get to Chicago. But that was fun. I'm enjoying my conversation with the guys. It's fun to disagree. Before we get to Chicago, I don't want to leave the Tucker subject without showing you a little bit of his interview with Elon Musk last night.

I don't know if you caught any of this, but this was the soundbite making the rounds on Twitter, and it's a good one. It's about the downsizing, shall we say, that Elon's done at Twitter since taking over. Listen here. What percentage of your staff did you fire at Twitter? One of the great business stories of the year. I think we're about 20% of the original size. So 80% left. Yes. It turns out you don't need all that many people to run Twitter.

But 80%? That's a lot. Yes. I mean, if you're not trying to run some sort of uh glorified activist organization uh and you don't care that much about censorship then uh you can really let go of a lot of people turns out that was funny i love that tucker laughed it was funny and people are like he laughed at the layoffs at twitter okay yeah a lot of those people just left actually which yeah yeah circumstance that made them want to leave i suppose which i suspect was probably strategic um but yeah they kind of left but it's also crazy because i saw the i don't actually the

first time i've seen the clip i've read it this morning and I saw it last night being mentioned and Tucker evilly laughing about these layoffs. And it's because it's Elon, like no one has said much about the fact that Facebook has fired, what, 23,000 people in the past year? Yes.

11,000 in the last round, 12,000, something like that. These companies are famously bloated. They're bloated. And there were these kids, you see these videos on TikTok of people doing their days. Like,

I work at Facebook and I just go get my smoothie and then I go get a back rub and it's like, does this woman work? And then they had a video of the same person and she was like,

I got fired today. This is so horrible. I was like, you just made a video and now you don't do anything. Are you kidding me? It's like, I would laugh at you.

I was laughing at the first video and I was crying at the second one. Crying laughing. You were begging to be fired. You were begging to be fired. Yeah, but it's Twitter. How much do they need? How many people do they need to run that thing? Apparently, many, many fewer.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know what? This is the problem with overstaffing. I remember seeing this at NBC. There were too many people for too few responsibilities. And it leads to backbiting. It leads to nastiness. People have too much time to twiddle their thumbs and go on Twitter and write nasty things and generate little campaigns against one another. At Fox News, that shit never happened because we were always undermanned. I've heard Peter Scheele talk about these

leading tech companies and how rather than being these hubs of innovation, plenty of them are pretty much just like financial institutions to the extent you invested in them and you're looking for a return. It's sort of like a bank. Like it's a safe place to park your money. But for the most part, like glorified activist organizations,

whether or not that's the best description, I don't know. I think it's probably right. But in a lot of respects, yeah, kind of. Hubs of narcissism. Now Elon's tenure at Twitter has been very interesting to watch. I remember early on, not necessarily being of the belief that he's going to save free speech online, but certainly thinking in. And the reality is that he actually hasn't managed to deliver on some of those things. And in other cases has made a lot of,

if not kind of outright overt acts of censorship, like the most recent dust up with sub stack. That was just kind of at a minimum, like a bizarre self-owned. And Matt Taibbi, who, you know, you provide access to these Twitter files.

And then. And Barry. I think both of these weird falling outs, which were completely unnecessary. And I think I have so much respect for Elon as an entrepreneur. And even that is perhaps a controversial opinion. But Tesla and SpaceX are sort of remarkable. They're amazing companies. That's what he said.

Camille, he was saying, he goes, running Twitter is not hard. Twitter is not hard. Building cars is hard. Getting to space is hard. This isn't that hard. I don't miss the 80%. And so it's like, exactly right. He's not looking for perfection. He did say to Tucker, I want to make Twitter the least bad place on the internet. Something like that. The least untrustworthy place on the internet. like that go ahead matt just a little bit better it's uh what will be hard is making that 44 billion dollars pay yeah i have a really hard time believing that there's a there's a sense of the place that it's not nearly as fun as it was and actually uh so the substack started its own little kind of social media ish thing this is what caused the the beef Elon Musk called Notes. And it's funny to watch all these people who contributed

to making Twitter an intolerable place come over to Substack Notes and start doing the same thing. Yes. They're trying to mouth-mouth the people who run Substack. Name names, Matt. To be more censorious.

Name names, you coward. That's the thing, though, is that when he says that I'm going to make this the least bad place on the internet and you see what Substack has done with Notes, and by the thing, though, is that when when he says that I'm going to make this the least bad place on the Internet and you see what Substack has done with notes. And by the way, we're not promoting the our dear, lovely overlords at Substack. It's just a thing they have. I don't really try to yet. But you realize that there is no way to make anything the least bad place on the Internet.

Yeah, because everybody is horrible. My theory of people are terrible. My theory of online. This is true of blogging, this is true of Twitter, as soon as the journalists find it, then it's ruined. It's ruined within six months. Oh my God, you've just set me up perfectly

for the thing I want to ask you about with Chris Cuomo. We got to take a break. We got to do Chicago. But when we come back, I am going to lead with Chris Cuomo and why the internet is a force for good. Stand by. Not at all. Not even a little. And don't forget, folks, you can find the Megyn Kelly show live on Sirius XM Triumph Channel 111 every weekday at noon east. It's fun to listen to it live. I'm reading all the, all of your emails, by the way, folks are writing into me.

You want to email me? It's Megan, M E G Y N at Megan Kelly.com. And, um, I love your emails. My God, they're so thoughtful. And a lot of folks do listen to us live and serious. And I appreciate that. You can also check us out on YouTube and via podcast, wherever you get your podcast for free. So I know you were wondering what Chris Cuomo is up to. And I have an update for you. So literally, he tweeted this out on Thursday. And I was like, oh, my God. So this is what he tweeted.

Just stopped at a light in New York City. And guy next to me was listening to the Chris Cuomo Project podcast. Funny. Okay. That's not true. Right? Correct. Yeah. So the responses, I was tweeting, I was texting about it with my pal Janice Dean and I said there is zero chance this happened.

Literally no one is listening to that. And she started forwarding me the responses of the people online who are, this is why the internet is a force for good. I give you some man named Jordan, some man named Jordan, I think is a man who tweeted out in response of all the things that never happened. This never happened the most. Jordan, you're an american hero that is true yeah wait here's another guy uh howard finkelstein tweets out sir you pulled up next to an office building's mirrored window it's so it's just he's just the same he's ever been, full of hubris and dishonesty. Yes. And this false, like, self-deprecating, funny, it's funny how people love me.

Yeah. It's just so, so amusing. It reminds me of those tweets that people did during the Black Lives Matter protest. It was mostly from, like, Brooklyn moms. They're like, my kid just said, and it's just like a long W.E.B. Du Bois quote, and it's like, my five-year-old just went on this amazing jag about racial inequality. And I was like, your five-year-old just like peed his pants. You're lying. And there was just a series of these that happened all the time. And I would just flag them and be like, here's another lie. Here's another lie. And it's

funny because when I was trying to find this, your producer sent it over and said, you know, maybe talk about this Chris Cuomo thing. And I was like, what the hell is this? So I'm trying to find it. And I swear to God, I found nothing. I did a Google news search. And the only stories were the utter collapse of people listening to the Chris Cuomo podcast. There's nobody.

The first week. People were like curious. I'm like, is he going to talk about how he's like, kind of a scumbag and was helping his brother, et cetera. And then they were like, I guess he's not. And then it just totally fell off a cliff and that's all I could find. So it makes me even less likely. I mean, we keep an eye on news podcasts just to see, and he is never in the top 200 of news podcasts. I mean, he's not, he doesn't even touch the top

200. By the way, our show is consistently in the top five and the ones who precede us are the behemoths, you know, like the New York times, The Daily, that's got like 10 million a day. You know, huge pockets. Our show is actually doing well. But to suggest that just randos in New York City, you just happen to pull up next to them and they're listening. Okay, Chris. I love that they're cranking it, too. Like it's like rap music or something.

It's like, put it up. Turn it up. It's Cuomo. He's got some. Shut up. Turn it up. It's Cuomo. He's got some. Shut up. Everybody shut up. I hear people going down the street cranking music. I heard a guy cranking on his little motorbike scooter.

Yeah, yeah. Scooter is absolutely like blasting Uptown Girl. Yeah. Singing along. Very weird. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not Cuomo. I've never heard of Cuomo.

Why would you crank a podcast? Yeah. It's like, yeah. It's not Cuomo. I've never heard of Cuomo. Why would you crank a podcast? Yeah. It's like, I'm going to crank Sam Harris. I'm just going to do that. Well, at least people listen to Sam Harris. We know that people listen to Sam Harris. Chris Cuomo is just talking to himself in the basement, waiting to come out of COVID. The sound of a man licking his own face.

This is not the way, Chris. This is not the way to advertise for your show. And by the way, so Steve Krakauer, the executive producer of this show, you guys may not know that he has weird habits. Like he actually, I don't know where he found this little ditty. Where did you find this? YouTube is from the Chris Cuomo YouTube show. Now it's his business. It's his business to know what's happening. And he decided we needed to get a sampling of what Chris Cuomo is doing over on YouTube, where he does not even have a hundred000 followers. Here's a little bit of what he's doing. Time for a walk and talk,

and I don't want to be here. It is cold. None of us does. So why am I doing it? Because nobody wants to do this right now. But helps me as a catalyst for desired change. Have you ever done a personal inventory? Work's going to be the easiest, by the way. So many years, so many reps. What is it? It's a catalyst for desired change. I love to film my mental breakdowns in the woods.

Just walk in the woods so I can lose my mind. What wants to be here? Yeah. I am Michael Moynihan. I got to say that I love more than anything. Steve Krakauer, your amazing producer. He's got a great new book.

I should buy it. His newsletter is incredible, but I tell you what, Steve, you're listening. If that shit comes up on the, I'm unsubscribing. I don't need this guy walking through the jungle.

Is he mic'd up too? Because a very good audio quality. He says he's doing a whole expose just for you. Inside. Is he getting into self-help now? Is that going to be his new lane? He's going to go like the, like the Gwyneth Paltrow route.

I don't like, we're going to get vagina candles from him next. I don't get, I'm not sure what's happening. First of all, it's the most disgusting thing I've ever heard with christian it's man i could see that definitely man goop yeah restore i'm not just saying man group for the hell of it man part i don't know i think the third time you did just say it for the i did i did i did because it's disgusting does any do you remember megan we we had a we used to play that all the time and talk about it all the time, when his wife was bathing in Clorox.

Yes. We're talking about medical misinformation. Chris Cuomo was like, you know, my wife is in the basement bathing in Clorox, so we don't in Hampton get Clorox. That's a lie. And then remember his fake emergence from the basement? Remember how he staged him emerging from the basement, which was a lie. We already knew he had hit the paper. He'd been out. He'd been riding his bike, all this stuff. It's just it's it's it's just totally consistent. That's why I said on the tease. Nothing has what's happened in Chicago. This is just dark, dark. Chicago. Okay, a couple of stats for you.

All right, this is from City Journal. From 2020 to 2022, more than 2,000 people were murdered within Chicago's city limits. 2,000. That's huge. The 2021 figure of nearly 800 was about 60% higher than it had been just two years earlier. So they had a 60% rise in their murder rate in two years. But the Chicago PD made less than half the number of arrests in 2021 as it did two years earlier. So the murder rate's up by 60%, but the arrests are down more than 50%. It's down more than 50% because the cops all left after George Floyd. They got beat up on by the mayor, by the town, by the leftist activists, and the police force

shrunk by 8% in less than half a decade, which makes a difference in a city like Chicago. And they had a mayor, Lori Lightfoot, and the new mayor, Brandon Johnson, doesn't seem that interested in enforcing crime either, enforcing the laws against crime. So here's what happened. You had, on Friday night, hundreds out on 31st street beach, nice area running around lighting fires, chasing cop cars, smashing windows on a squad car. 14 year old was shot 14 Saturday night, hundreds went to Chicago's loop, which was previously a nice area. It was, it's a business hub. People go there for cocktails after work, whatever. You didn't have to worry if you're in the loop, Not to mention Michigan Avenue, where all the top stores are. Here's video. Look at this. Look at this. Michigan Avenue is the nicest area of Chicago. It's where you go when you're a tourist there.

You got the Intercontinental. You got all the nice department stores, the Bloomingdale's Mall. It's beautiful. Jumped on cars, a CTA bus. One woman told Fox 32 Chicago that people jumped on her windshield. They smashed it, then attacked her husband as he sat inside the vehicle. The police were unable to handle the crowd. Two teenagers were shot that night. 14 year old the night before two teenagers shot that night. Six juveniles arrested, nine adults as well. And then there's this video. And I want to give you the appropriate disclaimer on it. We found it. It was all over the internet from CWB Chicago, which is a Twitter account covering public safety on Chicago's north side. They say they were created in 2013 by five Chicagoans who had grown disheartened with inaccurate information being provided at a local community policing meetings.

So they wanted to bring truth to what was really happening and provide original public safety reporting. They say this happened during this past week on Saturday night. so they wanted to bring truth to what was really happening and provide original public safety reporting. They say this happened during this past week on Saturday night at 129 North Wabash, which is, again, a very nice area. I lived there for five years, as I say. So they say this is from this past week and we haven't been able to independently confirm that. Here's the video. It's about 20 seconds.

I'll describe it for the listening audience once it's horrifying that what you see is a she looks to me like she's in her 20s young woman trying to go into her apartment building she's she's by herself and then this mob grabs her some guy gets her a headlock and then they just start punching and stomping on her. We don't know her condition. She easily could have been killed. And what's the little moniker on there? Yay. We got active. Yay. Yay. So fun. We beat the living daylights out of some innocent woman just trying to go into her apartment building. In this particular video, the victim is white. Her attackers are black. I mention it because had it been the other way around, this would be getting covered by every single news agency in the country, right? Had it been a bunch of white people picking on one black woman trying to go into her apartment but no um it's it's the other way around so it gets ignored and the elect the the mayor-elect brandon johnson puts out the following statement in no way

do i condone the destructive activity we saw on the loop in the lakefront this weekend it's unacceptable and has no place in our city however it is not constructive to demonize youth who have otherwise been starved of opportunities in their own communities. Our city must work together to create spaces for youth to gather safely and responsibly under adult guidance and supervision. It goes on from there. So that is that the problem? They have no safe spaces to gather under adult guidance. Therefore, they beat the living shit out of innocent civilians, shoot teenagers, and set fire to cop cars. Is that an accurate assessment of where we are? I doubt that they have adult guidance in the home. That's my guess. And

if one looks at numbers, you would see that that is also true. I remember when I read that statement, I was waiting for that however, and good God, did it come leaping out at you and say, I'm going to do a lot of work right now. And it reminded me of an old Chris Rock bit from the late 1990s. Do you remember Bill Clinton's midnight basketball program? Chris Rock had a funny bit about this when he's like, yeah, thank God I have this basketball in my hand or if I wouldn't, I'd be killing somebody right now. Like this used to be laughable stuff that we would, you know, I just need to be distracted by something else because otherwise these instincts will take over me and I will just beat a random woman half to death. And God knows, I mean, what kind of condition she's in. It doesn't seem like anybody in the media is trying to follow up on her condition. I haven't seen anything about that. I could be missing something.

I am also presuming, because I saw this video online too, Megan, I'm assuming that it is from this week or whatever. It doesn't really make a difference because it's so horrifying either way. But the funny thing is, I looked this up. I saw this headline this morning. This is the response you're getting from the mayor-elect. This is a random headline this morning from a Chicago, I think, a common headline. It's a feature. It's a series. Chicago shootings today. 35. That is outrageous. And by the way, if you want to make a case for the Second Amendment in Chicago, which, as we know, has limited access to firearms, and you see the response to this in the Heller case, if I were living in Chicago and I were living in the loop, I living on Wabash, I would be at the store right now trying to protect myself or myself. I don't want to be in a situation where I'm being mobbed by people. I don't feel that way. I've never felt that way where I live. So I've never had to avail myself of these things. But if this is so outrageous in the response is so despicable that, you know, you should say we need to flood the streets with people. And by the way, it's the it's the George Floyd thing. And it's also like, how do you get into these situations? How do you get criticized as a cop? And the George Floyd thing, obviously, the guy went to jail. He should have been criticized. He should have been prosecuted, in my opinion. But you're going to have to use your weapon. And there was a case last year in Chicago when the video came out. There's a guy that was shot against the fence. Do you remember this thing? And he points.

I mean, it was this person was crying, this cop crying on the ground, captured on somebody else's body cam. He was dragged through the public as this is maybe the next George Floyd. And the guy was protecting himself. Like, why do you want for it for a meager salary to be in a position where there are 35 shootings a night? You're going to have to use your weapon pretty frequently, I'd imagine. Yeah, you're drawing your gun every day. Yeah, you're drawing your gun a lot. It's like there's nothing good in that for you. It's not just the however in that statement.

For me, it is in no way do I condone. Let's imagine you're the mayor of Los Angeles. There's an earthquake. In no way do I condone. Let's imagine you're the mayor of Los Angeles. There's an earthquake. In no way do I condone the earthquake. What kind of response? It doesn't make any sense. Why would you condone the horrible thing? Nobody condoning it.

You don't have to say that you don't condone the horrible action. In no way do I condone 9-11. You have to say that because your next statement is so shitty. Well, this is it. Because their entire approach to the problem of crime in the city of Chicago and in various other places as well is it's centered on the criminals. And it's not centered on the victims. In which case, yes, it is very important for there to be a preamble when you're addressing the suffering of the victims.

And whatever the province of this particular video with this woman, which I at this point cannot watch. It is disturbing. I have family that lives in Chicago. That woman looks like someone who I love and care about who lives in the city. And every time I see it, I imagine something terrible happening to her. She's already been attacked physically in the city. A random act of violence, a person, a young person who had already been previously arrested, but never incarcerated for this and was not prosecuted again after this attack. So I've

got a bit of trauma related to this, to use a word that's somewhat loaded now. There's so many disturbing attributes of this story that I think are important to pay attention to. The increase in violent crime in Chicago is happening in a very small area. It is largely impacting particular communities. The people who live in these communities live in a literal war zone. The statistics, when you pay attention to the number of shootings and the number of fatalities, rival what happens in a place in the Middle East where there's an active ongoing conflict. And most of the people who live in these communities are decent, hardworking people who

go to work, who care about their families, and are trying desperately to make a life for themselves. They are also victims of the predators who wantonly prey on their neighbors. In many cases, these are young people. In many cases, these are young people. In many cases, these are young people who live in homes that aren't necessarily able to give them the kind of support that one would hope kids get. Either way, that there should be consequences for perpetrating violent acts,

that we should generally hold people to account and have an expectation that you will behave yourself in a civilized way. It's entirely reasonable to have that expectation. And I can't think of anything more disgustingly racist than the insinuation that when these particular people like do something wrong, we can't hold them accountable. I mean, what do you expect from them? This is who they are. This is what they are. It is an outrageous perspective. And it is so detestable to see this from Chicago's elected leadership. It's a city that I care about a great deal. I love Chicago. People are friendly on the street in a bizarre sort of way. It's a big city where

you're walking down the street and someone will say hello to you. Yeah, in certain places, in the nice places where I'd want to be. But the city is in huge trouble. And it is it is so sad to see the political the political leadership of that city, not just abdicating their responsibility, like actively doing things and saying things in public that make me think that they are going to cause further pain and harm to the citizens of that city. You just raised a good point. Can I tell you? So I, I lived in Chicago for five years. As I said, I've also lived in Baltimore. I was just down in Washington, DC. Um, all those cities have one thing in common. They're very diverse. You, you will not live in those cities for any length of time without having a multiracial set of friends. Um, all of whom are law abiding citizens who feel as you do, who feel as I do, who would be horrified

by this, but to try to excuse this violence, right? Because I don't know that he'd be excusing this violence, as I said at the top, if this was a bunch of white kids who were hurting a black girl. I think his instinct is he's got to excuse the behavior of these kids, black kids who came from the South side of Chicago to cause trouble inside the city. It is absolutely an insult to the black communities in these cities who the vast majority of whom are law abiding and are as appalled by this as we are. So what does that say about Brandon Johnson? What does it also say about the way that Brandon Johnson won his recent mayoral race against Paul Vallis. Paul Vallis, lifelong Democrat, also a school reform type guy. That's his big issue. He was demonized

as was Rick Caruso in the mayoral race in Los Angeles against Karen Bass as being a Republican. That was sufficient. And literally the next day headline in the New York Times was Paul Vallis just couldn't get beyond the reputation that he was a Republican, although Republican with close ties to the police. He's actually a Democrat. Oh, he's been a Democrat. He's critical of the way that Chicago has mismanaged schools. And Chicago is among the worst in the country at mismanaging schools. They have gone on strike. They went on strike during covid. They were closed as much as any school place in the country. The teachers union called parents who wanted to reopen the schools racist openly, like said, this racist is rooted in white supremacy. And there's a famous problem with all the murdering in Chicago as well. It's it's I think the 13th highest murder rate overall of the top 75 cities, the second highest among the top 20 cities. It's the murder capital by a raw number. These are problems of dysfunction. There are no Republicans in Chicago. The city council has

50 members. Zero are Republicans. It's been run by Democrats as mayors for nearly a century. I wrote about this recently in the context of Chicago being chosen by the Democratic National Committee as the place to hold the Democratic Convention in 2024, it seemed kind of obvious to me that that's kind of a bad decision because it's going to remind people of what happens when you have one party Democratic governance in a place. It's not governed well on a bunch of different things. The pensions are completely shoddy. They're losing population and there's crime and problems with the schools. The people can console themselves by saying we at least are not Republicans. People are congratulating themselves to death in this country. And it's not just Democrats who are doing it.

Republicans do it in their own way in different places. But in the specifics of Los Angeles and in Chicago and California, when the Gavin Newsom recall, you could portray anyone being legitimately critical of legitimate government failure as in, well, you're giving succor to Republicans. And so therefore we will run successfully against you and people will high five each other and they will blame whatever dysfunction they have on. Well, there's there's Republicans in Indiana. That's why there's so many guns here. It's because Republicans did this and that. It's a level of self-delusion and an inability and unwillingness to sit there and say, hmm, maybe our team isn't governing well and we should look at that. It's something also that Republicans would be advised on a national level in 2024 to run on, which would be things like San Francisco and Chicago. But one thing I just want to advise listeners and people who pay attention to the media, we do a podcast about the media. I've been in the media and paying attention and critical of the media for a very long time, is that what you see in that statement, just to go back to it quickly, is the very familiar narrative recasting, right? So we saw that, obviously, in the shootings in Atlanta,

the massage parlor once was Asian hate. It was not Asian hate. But it's still, people still report it and talk about it that way, because it fit the dominant narrative and the one that people wanted to go out with. When you say, well, you know, the situation that these kids are in, it, of course, reminds me of the much later recasting of the L.A. riots to the L.A. uprising. You see this all the time now. You're like literally breaking into windows and stealing stuff. One of my favorite Onion headlines of all time, the 1992 joking one with a kid carrying a TV out and it said, it has the wonderful use of the headline comma, it's a rioters demand justice comma tape decks. And they're running out of time. And that's sort of it, right? I mean, if you want to recast this, let's make everybody a Black Panther. Let's make everybody, you know, somebody who has an ideological idea.

And you look at these people. What is the ideology behind beating that woman in her doorway? What is the ideology behind one of the most amazing things? It's an active protest. It's an active protest. Well, I love this sub-protest here because, quote unquote, protest, because there's a video, and your listeners can find this, of a kid stealing a very large Mac computer running out the store and then being beaten up. And he's trying to hold onto the Mac, and people are stealing the Mac from the kid who stole it. It's like this, I mean, it's infinite regress of bad behavior. And it's an incredible thing when people try to recast that narrative,

recasting that this is for a political reason rather than kids who fail out of school at a remarkable rate. And presumably when they're doing that, they're not somebody who's like, you know, reading, you know, Bayard Rustin or something. These are not kids that are thinking about that. They see an opportunity to, you know, go and steal things and they have a, they enjoy, you can see the joy in their face of everyone trying to get a punch in. I mean, this is not a political uprising. And that is what's, what's contained in that statement is that that's why if they had a place to go, they would just be sitting there doing, you know, a pottery or weaving. Right. If only we had like a local arcade that they could go to instead of beating

the hell out of people and actually murdering. I mean, truly, just to read it again. However, it is not constructive to demonize youth who have otherwise

been starved of opportunities in their own communities. Well, I will demonize the youth. I will. I'm demonizing. I'm demonizing. Demonizing the people

who did that thing to that girl. Yes. You're demonizing criminals and I'm demonizing criminals. Nobody's demonizing youth. Youth, that's a thing that I'm demonizing. But is he telling me I shouldn't pass judgment on those, on those, those kids who grabbed that girl and really could have murdered her. I have no idea whether she survived that or what condition she is in. This is like similar thing back on Fox. I saw something like this years ago and I was like, these are thugs.

And people said, that's racist. How is it racist? White, black, Asian, I don't give a damn. Hispanic, you're a thug if you do that to an innocent person, right? You're injecting race into it if you think that's just a term that we use for people who are criminals who happen to be black. That's thuggish behavior. I will demonize, right, not youth at writ large but those criminals why isn't he that's the real question and you're you're dead on about the dnc matt because i was

seeing like they're gonna have chicago as their backdrop with this with the 2 000 people dead over the over in two years like that is like joe biden having the instead the dnc like bagram air base in afghanistan or chris christie doing it in front of that bridge or i mean john trump like Joe Biden having the instead the DNC like Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan or Chris Christie doing it in front of that bridge or I mean, Donald Trump could do it on the steps of the Capitol. Like, let's just bring back all the worst memories. My absolute lowest moment as a politician or us as a party. God's ears. Oh, my God. So bizarre. Yeah. Well, you know, it's not racist. I don't think I would be so outraged by the attempt to inject some conversation and discussion about the importance of empathy and acknowledging

complexity with respect to how crime occurs and happens and the pathologies related to it. I'm interested in having those conversations. And I might even respect the people who are suggesting that we should have these conversations in the midst of the turmoil. I might respect it if they were consistent. But I think, as you pointed out, Megan, and there are so many stories that bear this out. I think we just had another story recently with a young man who was shot when he arrived at the wrong house. I'm getting to that next ralph yarrow so like we we've seen this so many times where the race of the of the person who was shot is in the headline in one instance and in another instance it's it's mysteriously it's not there at all we don't talk about it um if they could be consistent in this i might respect them but they haven't been consistent in this there is an obvious political agenda and all of this is occurring at the expense, at the expense of the actual safety and well-being of people who live in these communities. Ralph Yarl and his shooter is everywhere. It's everywhere. A 16 year old,

again, named Ralph Yarl, Kansas city, Missouri rang the wrong doorbell. That is what the authorities are saying in searching for trying to go and pick up his younger brothers and just got the house wrong is what the authorities are saying. And this old guy,

84 year old opens the door and starts shooting. Um, they say this state, Missouri does have, it's one of 30 with a stand your ground law, but which would allow you to use deadly force in self-defense. But the prosecutor is saying this was not in self-defense. He just shot this kid. The kid was at the door trying to open like the exterior door from the sound of it, you know, like the storm door handle. And, uh, the man said he thought he was trying to break in now the 16 year old was black the shooter was white um and they're saying now though i don't know why they haven't revealed that race is an element they say the ap reports quote racial component in shooting of ralph yarrow who went to wrong house, says prosecutor.

Racial component. Well, what does that mean? Because the charging documents do not explain anything other than the man, the shooter was white and the victim was black. Thankfully, Ralph survived and hopefully will continue to do well. He got shot once in the head and once in the arm. But to your point, Camille, like that story is everywhere. Unlike the one I just showed you

that we discussed at Chicago with the white girl being beaten down. And the race of the perpetrators is everywhere, the perpetrator and the victim. It's a similar story, actually, out of New York that I just saw that's been making the rounds about a young woman who was in her early 20s

who is driving in a car with a friend who turns down the wrong driveway and this is a very similar situation where someone is not expecting this person to come and just starts firing and kills this woman and by the way this is not you finding this this happened yesterday yeah this just happened there both of these stories are in the news only one of them is is kind of news. The other one is sort of percolating, but not nearly in the same way. And there certainly isn't this broader kind of moral veneer that is being placed around the story to help us understand why this needs to be discussed. Perhaps some people will talk about guns and the prevalence of them in American society,

but it is certainly the case that I've seen no one talk about this with respect to race and the unfair treatment that is meted out to white women. I don't know the race of the person who perpetrated the shooting. He's a white guy. But a very similar last name to me, unfortunately. But this is the situation. Like one doesn't know because it wasn't necessarily in the headlines. Well, we might see some information. You're right.

Yeah, yeah, Monahan. She was white and he was white. What's up with these trigger-happy people, though? I mean, truly, what's going on with these trigger-happy people in their house? Like a car pulls up in your driveway that doesn't belong and you start shooting? Or a young man comes to your door and opens your storm door and you start shooting? What's happening? And it looks like there was a standoff

too with the police who responded and and the woman died yeah in new york and the woman died because there was no cell phone coverage it took them you know five miles to get somewhere where they could actually call somebody and um you know the situations are pretty interesting because i don't know and i looked and i was trying to find to say is there a racial component beyond the fact the shooter is white and the young kid who seems to be like a lovely, super accomplished kid, 16, is an unbelievable tragedy. And thank God he's alive. And I'm going to get to that in one half a second because it's relevant, is that what happens here is I don't know. This guy could be racist.

He could be. He's 84, 85 years old. He might have dementia. Who knows what is going on here? You know, we've learned that we don't trust the initial version of anything. We wait and see before we say that this is a racial crisis, even though it pretended it did. And I, I, I'm, it's completely possible that it was racial. I, you know, it still doesn't happen very much. Let's just be honest about that. But there's something that I, that I was completely stunned by. And I sent this to you guys this morning. And it's back to this narrative pushing. This kid's, I guess, aunt

gave an interview and told people that he went to three houses in which people wouldn't respond to him after he'd been shot. And finally, the person that tended to him forced him to keep his hands up while he was bleeding out. Now, that was from her. And that was in all the coverage a day and a half ago. This morning, NBC had a story about the hero. And it seems by all accounts, this guy is a hero who heard someone screaming out that he'd been shot, runs out of his door, hops a fence, puts, because he was an Eagle Scout, looks like he saved his life. This guy, because this guy, and apparently other neighbors came out with blanket,

with towels and tourniquets and things. And to me, it's like, I couldn't believe that at the very beginning, we're trying to establish not only that this was a racist shooting, which it very well might be, that everyone around is so high on white supremacy that they almost allowed a kid to bleed out and die. And that appears not to be true. That is. And the man we should point out, the man who ran in to save him

was white. So, I mean, yes, he was. Yeah. The previous neighbors were, too. Yeah. I mean, to your point, Megan, I my dad is 84 year old, 84 years old. Thank God he doesn't have a gun or never really did. And he doesn't no longer live with himself in a house. But there is something absolutely strange and weird and wrong by the itchy trigger finger that we have in this country. We have too much violence just in general. Always have, still do, too much gun violence. Guns are great messengers of violence. And there is something problematic. We haven't figured out a way to talk to each other without having these kind of horrifying conflicts. And yeah, it's the kind of thing where you read the news in the morning and you feel a bit alienated from your own country.

Like, what the hell is wrong with us? you should be able to resolve a wrong door dispute without shooting somebody twice stay inside your stay inside go over there and turn the deadbolt like what who comes out shooting but i will say this to your point uh it depends on the person because while your dad probably never had like a formal weapons training, does anybody doubt that Dana Lash and her husband, Chris Lash, who I mean, those two are like serious Second Amendment people. They are amazing shots. When they are 200, they're going to be able to get anybody. So like, I feel like I'd be confident with them at 84. Do not mess with the Lash family.

They keep inviting us to go down there and hunt wild boar and be a helicopter. And Doug and I are like, do you want to go to the cricket club? Sailing is preferable. It's a little more. You know, I'm from Connecticut. I don't. Fine. One more.

I just want to add one more thing that we haven't mentioned, which is the politicization of this, which, again, I want to be very clear about this could be political. We don't have all the facts. No. And we should find out who also somebody who doesn't know President Biden, who called the kid, which I think is a great thing to do because he's a 16 year old who's been gunned down. And he seems like incredibly bright, promising you know scholarships all lined up just a really interesting uh kid and then i believe they invited him to the white house um you know the shooting at the school in tennessee nashville yeah no one showed up no one showed up i mean kamala harris showed up for the for the protest for the quote-unquote tennessee three and you know they're calling this kid and they're, I mean, again, this is a narrative thing.

It's like they're not going to call that woman who was beaten probably within an inch of her life in Chicago. No, because there's no politics in it. It's not a humanity thing. I would give Joe Biden credit for calling this kid. Cause I, if I saw this, I would give the kid money. I would help the kid. I would donate to his thing, but you know, that's not why he's doing this. There's a political narrative thing and narrative casting I find endlessly frustrating.

You know, I couldn't agree more. He's exploiting that kid's injury to help himself. That's what's happening. It's disgusting. We all know it, too. It's like, yeah. And so Kamala Harris goes down to Nashville and she calls her people, call the families who are grieving after that school shooting at the Christian school. And she says, if you want to come to me, you know, we can have a meet and greet families like we're, we're in the middle of burying our relatives. So thanks, but no thanks. So thoughtful. You're, you know, her priorities are exactly in the right place. Let's go, let's go stand up for these two, you know, martyrs who got up there on the house floor and tried to hijack the debate from people who are actually trying to fortify the schools and had listened to them and rejected their opinions. But those people got her full attention, whereas the families of the victims get up, maybe just a phone call saying you come to me or there'll be no meeting.

And as far as I know, Joe Biden did not call the families at all. Okay, stand by because there's much, much more to get to, including Leah Thomas has decided we need to hear from Leah on the latest revisions to Title IX that the Biden administration is putting out. Leah Thomas wants to make sure sports remain super fair. Leah Thomas, 555th in the men's races, number one as a woman, is really concerned about fairness in athletics. We'll show you that next. Before I get to Leah Thomas, Governor Ron DeSantis has weighed in on the boycott of Bud Light, which is happening organically, I mean, nationwide now because it featured Dylan Mulvaney on its beer cans and sent Dylan these commemorative or whatever celebratory beer cans. And Dylan Mulvaney on its beer cans and sent Dylan these commemorative or whatever celebratory beer cans. And Dylan Mulvaney spends Dylan's career mocking women. I mean, truly,

Dylan Mulvaney thinks that some bizarre caricature of women represents us and keeps getting away with it. It's offensive. It's absurd. And it's one of the reasons why so many of us are upset, especially at companies like Tampax and oil of Olay. But Bud Light has a customer base. Yes. They're partnering. Yes. Yes.

Moynihan Tampax is also using Dylan. It is. It is. They sent Dylan all this free Tampax, but Dylan has a penis. You see, so no one knows where the Tampax goes. Okay.

Wow. Can we get Glenn Kessler to get some Pinocchios on this one? Because that can't be real. That's not right. This is all an elaborate way to get Megan to say bleeding. Well, no. I mean, this might be great. Dylan is bleeding out of nowhere.

Nowhere. Nowhere. There's 101 uses for Tampax that I was unaware of. Yeah. Who knows? See? Wow. It's working.

It's just good business. People are mad. And they're mad at Bud Light because Bud Light's customer base is, you know, men. Men who drink beer at sporting events and so on and really not the people who would be celebrating Dylan. So, fail. Ron DeSantis, speaking in his car the other day about this, forgive me, I'll get the name of the reporter, says as follows. Why would you want to drink Bud Light? I mean, like, honestly,

that's like them rubbing our faces in it. And it's like these companies that do this, if they never have any response, they're just going to keep doing it. If you don't have conservative beer drinkers, you're going to feel that. And so, you know, I think it's a righteous. I think it's a righteous thing. Will we ever see you drinking a Bud Light again? No, I don't think so. Benny Johnson. Yeah. So he's he's in on the boycott, which is a very different message than we heard from Team Trump or Donald Trump Jr. was decrying the boycott because, according to him, Anheuser-Busch donates to Republicans more than Democrats, and therefore it's not a woke brand that should be targeted. So already we're seeing political lines drawn around this battle. And we'll see more, I'm sure.

What do you guys make of it? I just want to die. Is that a fair response? That's terrible. Ron DeSantis, you know he's fist pumping on this one. Yeah, I get to show that I'm in favor of Bud Light against the Trump. No, just stop. No, it's just, stop. No, no, no.

The fact that this is our politics in 2023, I feel like I need people to blame, so I'll just blame all of them since I don't vote for any of these people who end up winning, that this will be like a salient political thing, that there's a beef between the Trump boys and Team DeSantis,

and all the people, all the conservatives that have gone from Trump to DeSantis and are working for DeSantis now. Like, aha, we got him. It's a wedge issue that we can get with Trump. On Bud Light commercials that went straight to Instagram. I would really like to opt out of this timeline. Well, there were no commercials, by the way. I think they just sent Dylan the beer, which, by the way, could be problematic for Dylan.

There are all sorts of rules. My audience members have been telling me this via email who are in marketing. There are all sorts of rules if you're going to advertise a beer. And it appears that Dylan violated every single one of them. The audience you target has to be majority over the age of 18. And you have to have all these disclaimers on there and all this stuff. But I mean, I will be honest, Matt. I'm one of the people you should be mad at because I do find this very irritating. And I am team DeSantis on this all the way. Go ahead, Matt.

Or Michael. I mean, whoever. Oh, yeah. No, I was just going to say that, look, I understand the reaction to this, the negative reaction to this. And it doesn't even matter what the issue is. Honestly, it doesn honestly. It matters, actually, the political direction of the issue, because this is a very strange thing that has been happening, not in our politics. It's kind of infiltrated our politics in a way. But in our culture, for so long, and no one has said anything, and it's a minority position that everyone is pushing on the majority, and the majority says nothing. So post the know, post the black square. I had a friend, you know, this was on Instagram

after the George Floyd thing. You had to post a black square that said, I don't know, you don't like violence. I mean, I guess that was the fault, I thought. And we had listeners. I had friends that were criticized for not posting the square. Like literally just like you didn't do it.

What's going on? It reminded me of that Seinfeld of kramer wing not wearing the ribbon you know and it was like that in this point like you know i opened i used to send you guys screenshots this all the time i'd open like the amazon app to get like you know uh paper towels delivered and it was like do you know this paper towels are uh a dominican? I'm like, I don't know. What's the, do I have to pay shipping? What is the, I don't care. Don't politicize my life.

And like, you know what? We have to push back. And then it's not even a political thing. It's not about the trans stuff. It's not about anything in particular. It's like when you start saying like, we need, and this woman who is the head of marketing was like, we need to change our customer base, which is a fratty image. It's like, you just did it.

Congratulations. I hope that worked out for you. They lost like $5 billion in a week. So true. I hope they keep losing. If the goal was to try to push into new markets or to try to sort of like to blend people, if there was actually a goal of true tolerance it would be here is this beloved person that we know that our beer drinkers our customers like um uh but who also happens to be trans let's say it's rupaul or something i don't know if rupaul would qualify but it's someone

who's a beloved figure there and like have some kind of fun a handshake but that's not the spirit of this at all yeah i think this is another think this was another bad idea, Welsh. Another bad idea. I disagree again. Well, actually, I'm curious about this. My thinking was that there was probably there would probably be very little controversy

if RuPaul were to appear. Yeah, I think that's probably right. RuPaul has been a fixture in American culture since the 1990s. Like, hugely popular show. His hit songs are like 1993. he's had this show that's

been on the air better work in america right now if they used one of those songs in a prominent beer commercial no like absent any other political nonsense i suspect that everyone would just be okay so what i do think the selection of this particular person is deeply problematic. I talked about this the other day. That's the case. And that seems to me to be worth sort of differentiating between. Although I do worry a little bit about some of the reactionary backlash to some of these things. and the degree to which I see people getting animated in a way that feels more kind of vehemently like anti those people, anti that thing.

When I do, I can definitely respect like being averse to people pushing a political agenda on you through various products. I get a little less, I'm less sympathetic towards the shooting and hostility towards the Kansai. Which feels very much like the vehement hostility that's projected from certain activists

who say, if you won't say that I am a woman, then you are a monster. Well, no, you don't get to dictate my perspectives. And I don't get to dictate yours. And that's part of what is supposed to make this country of ours. We don't have enough time for this discussion because I, there are definitely, I've got

thoughts on this myself, which is like, but we're standing up for something else. Like it's not about the individuals in Dylan's case. It's a little about the individual, but like in general, it's about woman face. I mean, that's what it's, it You don't get to put on a dress and claim you're a woman. You don't. You're not. You're a man. And you can't turn into a woman. If you have an issue with gender dysphoria and you want to parade around like a woman, I will let you do that without interfering in your life or taking away rights for you to work at a particular place, all that stuff I get. But I'm not going to say you're a woman because you're not. You're still a dude. Sorry, you can't switch into my lane just by putting on fake boobs and a dress.

It's not possible. Um, that leads me to Leah Thomas, who I've got to get to before we leave. You know, I'm right. Leah Thomas is worried, very, very, very worried about fairness in sport and has changed Leah's hair as well. Take a look at this. My name is Leah Thomas. I'm a transgender woman, a former college swimmer, and the first trans athlete to be named Division I NCAA champion. That's why it breaks my heart to see trans kids across the country lose out on these opportunities.

This rule would prohibit blanket bans on transgender kids. However, it would not prohibit discrimination against trans kids in the high school and college levels under the guise of competitive fairness. We have a 30-day period to urge the Biden administration to amend the rule and grant equal protection for all transgender kids, because all trans kids deserve the opportunity to compete and play in the sports they love. Then create your own league. Get out of women's sports, Leah, because you already stole enough medals

from people like Riley Gaines. That's what Leah's worried about, college and high school athletics, whereas I don't have to tell the three men sitting here, you've already matured into your man body. And your man body is very different from our women body. See, Talking Boy's number one. Don't be so sure of that.

Matt in particular. I mean, he's wrong about a lot of things and he hasn't got his man body yet. He's a grown boy. By the way, Leah Thomas should never be a spokesman for anything. That looked like an Al Kahn hostage video. That was like,

I am holding a newspaper, a sign of life. But yeah, the thing is, is that this is the one that no one should ever, the hill that nobody on this issue should ever die on because no one on earth disagrees with the position that you were 555th and then you were champion. That's like me. I am the boxing champion of the 15 year old girl league. I'm amazing. No, you actually were the worst. You get knocked out every time you're in the room

yeah but now I'm fighting people that are smaller than me it's a little different now I'm super tough but like that people just don't like it ask anyone most people aren't political most people are not following this stuff if you say should this person who's developed into a man be able to swim again so everyone says no I mean the

numbers on this are out there you can see the poll numbers it's just like no the Biden administration is very foolish politically to actually get on the side of like Leah Thomas or Thompson. I can even see at the elementary school level, all the experts say you haven't changed yet. The little boys and little girls in third grade, they're the same physically. But at the middle school level, and I've got two middle schoolers, right? Two out of my three in middle. The bodies are so different. You gotta be crazy.

An eight-year-old, I mean, an eighth grade boy versus an eighth grade girl, very, very different. It's not safe. And this rule would make sure that you can't ban that, which is not okay.

It would make sure that you cannot have state bans at the higher levels either, which is not okay. All right, I gotta go. It's been a pleasure as always. Matt, you'll work on it. You'll come back. You'll do better the next time. Thank you. See you soon. Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.