The Megyn Kelly Show - Don Lemon's Misogyny, Trans Activists Attack NYT, and Murdaugh Latest, with Jim Geraghty, Michael Brendan Dougherty, and Peter Tragos | Ep. 495

Episode Date: February 16, 2023

Megyn Kelly is joined by Jim Geraghty and Michael Brendan Dougherty of National Review, to discuss Don Lemon's sexist comments about women and Nikki Haley being "past their prime," his pattern of misogynistic outbursts, Chris Cuomo saying he wanted to "kill everyone and himself" after he got fired, the network’s downward spiral, President Biden's latest racially-insensitive comment, trans activists attacking the New York Times over its somewhat fair coverage of trans issues, the WHO abandoning its investigation into the origins of COVID, South Park roasting Harry and Meghan, and more. Then Peter Tragos, host of the "Lawyer You Know" YouTube show, joins to discuss the latest news out of the Alex Murdaugh trial, points for the prosecution and defense this week, and more.Geraghty/MBD: https://www.nationalreview.com/nrplus-subscribe/Tragos: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxAHSAOfe4wZozc2jYK9NAw 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, live again on day two from Las Vegas, Nevada. President Biden is undergoing a physical as questions swirl about candidate age and fitness for office. We expect to get the results of the president's exam later today. Could come at any point. If it comes during the show, we will bring it to you. Meantime, Don Lemon has stepped in it yet again, this time going after Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley over her age. She's 51. You cannot make this up. We've got a jam-packed show for you. Today, it is National Review Day here on the MK Show. Joining me now are senior political

correspondent Jim Garrity, the co-host of the Three Martini Lunch podcast, and Michael Brendan Doherty, a senior writer at National Review. You can find their work and much, much more by becoming an NR Plus subscriber. Highly recommend it. I do it. You get extra content and you don't have to deal with the ads. Jim, Michael, great to have you back. How are you doing? Great to be here. Doing great. All right. We've got to start with Don Lemon. I'm sorry, but we do. So he has been stepping in it time and time again over at his new fledgling, failing CNN morning show. And the latest comment that he has made, I would submit to you, is just the latest in a series of truly sexist comments by this guy. I don't know how much longer CNN can allow this to go on. But here was him, here was Don Lemon

reacting to Nikki Haley, suggesting that if you're over 75 and you want to be in political office, you might need to do a competency test. And here was Don Lemon reacting to that on CNN. This whole talk about age makes me uncomfortable. I think that I think it's the wrong road to go down. She says people, you know, politicians or something are not in their prime. Nikki Haley is in her prime. Sorry. When a woman is considered to be in her prime in her 20s and 30s and maybe 40s. That's not according to me. Prime for what? It depends. It's just like prime.

If you look it up, if you Google when is a woman in her prime, it'll say 20s, 30s, and 40s. I don't necessarily agree with that. So I think she has to be careful about saying that politicians aren't in their prime. I think they need their prime. Are you talking about prime for like child caring?

Don't shoot the message. I'm just saying what the facts are. Google it. Everybody at home. When is a woman in her prime? It says 20s, 30s, and 40s. And I'm just saying Nikki Haley should be careful about saying that politicians are not in their prime and they need to be in their prime when they serve because she wouldn't be in her prime according to Google or whatever it is. Okay. So if you don't shoot the messenger,

if you Google it, Google tells you a woman is past her prime when she's after 2030, maybe 40, he says. If you Google CNN, it comes up as the most trusted news source. So we can't always rely on Google, Don. And I have to tell you, I'm so irritated by this guy and honestly, his misogyny. And I don't use that word about a lot of people, but there's a pattern with him. The absurdity of suggesting that a woman is past her prime when she is 51 years old, like Nikki Haley. I just pulled just for fun, just for kicks, because you guys are both historians. Some of the best known women on earth in modern history. Margaret Thatcher, she was 54 when she became prime minister of Great Britain. Nancy Pelosi became speaker of the House for the first time when she was 67.

Pastor Prime, sorry, Nance. Kamala Harris was 55 when she became the vice president of the United States. Katonji Brown Jackson is 52, newly placed on the U.S. Supreme Court. While we're on the subject of Supreme Court, Eleni Kagan was 50 when she was confirmed. Sona Sotomayor, 55 when she was confirmed. Mary Barra, CEO of GM, was 53 when she took over that role. She's now 61, but passed her prime. Suzanne Scott over at Fox News became CEO of Fox when she was 51. Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube, she's 54. I could keep going. And by the way, what an insult to people like Dana Bash, who's 51, and his colleague at CNN.

Sorry, past your due date. What does he mean by prime? The co-anchor had an instinct that this was offensive, but frankly, wasn't effective enough to actually shove it down his throat. And recognize, are you referring to childbearing years? Because that is something women can mostly only do in their 20s, 30s, and 40s. And he wouldn't even sign on to that. But just childbearing is not what determines whether a woman is in her prime. What an ancient, anachronistic, stupid way of evaluating a woman's worth. The truth is all those women I just mentioned, most of them did have kids when they were in their 20s and their 30s and their 40s. And then they went on to achieve huge professional success

after they did all of the things that women are capable of doing, raising families, having babies, which only we can do, right? And instead of getting credit for that, for doing it all and achieving huge career heights in their 50s, they get reduced to you're a nothing. You're post your due date, you're stale, you're over because you're not at the age where you could service a man in having a baby. This is blatant sexism and shame on him for doing this on the air. And frankly, those other women on set with him were pathetic and weak in calling him out. He deserved a more robust response. He deserves it now from the colleagues at CNN. He deserves it from the colleagues in the news industry and the bosses at CNN.

And it's not the first time. It was a couple of months ago that S.E. Cupp was on the set with Don Lemon and forgot her words not long after having a baby. And this is how he handled it. 13% of Republicans want a total ban on abortion. 70% of Republicans. You lose your train of thought. I do it all the time. Is it fair to say this? Because I'm not a mommy, but is it mommy brain? No, I forget what I'm talking about all the time. No, you ass. It has nothing to do with her mommy brain.

People forget their words, male and female. This is a pattern with him. Remember when he asked whether a Bill Cosby female rape victim who said she'd been forced to perform oral sex, she should have just gotten out of it by biting down. What an idiot. He doesn't understand anything about women, about America, about prime. He's 56, by the way. I guess he'd be the first to tell you he's still in his prime. But the Internet says that we women, we're well past our prime.

So we ought to be put out to pasture. I'm sorry. This is absurd. I've had it with this guy. OK, I'm done with my rant. Well, he can't be trusted with a microphone. I mean, he's live on television and he doesn't seem to understand that Nikki Haley is running for president, not the hundred yard dash in the Olympics, right? I mean, that's something where

prime age might be between 18 and 40. She's running to be an executive and he must he he deals with executives and female executives at cnn i'm sure of it does he think they're they're past their prime that they shouldn't be in those jobs that that uh they can't raise questions about 80 year olds in the job it's it is so far beyond the pale. I think he knew he stuck his foot in it a little bit, but you're right. No one really pushed back. And yeah,

his authority on it was Google. Just Google. I know. Hang on guys. I think we should give Don Lemon a little bit of credit. We should recognize that if there's anybody on earth who knows what it means to not be in prime time anymore, it's Don Lemon, now that he's hosting The Morning Show. You do kind of wonder how much...

Look, there's new management at CNN. He used to be in prime time. Now he's in The Morning Show. He's not even kind of the lead anchor here. I did love the body language of the two women co-anchoring with him, that you kind of see them backing away, almost as if he had set off some sort of radioactive self-cancellation dirty bomb right there on set. They didn't even want to be that close. It was like one step short of Mike Myers when Kanye West said that George Bush doesn't care about black people. That kind of sense of like, this is a moment that's going to get viral and I don't want to be in the shot. I don't want to be too close to him. You kind of wonder though, like, if you really like working at CNN and if you like your coworkers and if you like women and if you

like people above age 40, do you say things like that? Or are you in some sort of effort to not be working at CNN as quickly as possible? Because I'm trying to imagine what else you could say that would be more likely to make the executive sit up and say, oh, oh, we've got a maniac at our morning show. This statement probably would be what does it. It is part of a pattern, and it ties in with the allegations that have been made against him recently, that he was screaming at his co-host, Caitlin Collins, because she had the temerity to interrupt him and he was annoyed. It's hard to be demoted from the primetime solo anchor to the morning show co-anchor having to

share your set with these annoying women. Thank God they're in their prime. At least he wasn't subjected to that indignity. And so he was screaming at her to the point where the cast or the crew was uncomfortable and Caitlin Collins reportedly ran out of the studio. Then he had another meltdown with his colleagues the other morning where he staved off going to break because he was upset that his female colleague didn't excoriate a congressman for mentioning the New York Post as a reliable source. He was upset that that had been referenced as a reliable news organization and staved off break because he needed to get out the fact that it's not in his

view. This is over the Hunter Biden reporting, of course, which his own news network later confirmed. So this is a pattern of him diminishing. I'm telling you, look into it. If any reporter worth their salt would actually do some digging, call CNN, do it. Call their H.R. right now. Find out whether he's got a history of harassing his female colleagues. I dare any reporter out there to do it. All right. I'll do it myself. I'll do it today after the show and I'll get back to you on what they say.

But this is a pattern with this guy. He does not respect women. He does not see women as equals. He views women who are over the age of 40 as past their due date. And this is who they have covering Nikki Haley. How's that going to go? Right. How how how are we supposed to look at him as viewers and take anything he has to say about female politicians, never mind Republicans? Seriously. There's also a larger problem, a cultural problem at CNN, I think. I mean, we had, you know, I think the story of what Mary Catherine Hamm was just a few months ago where she was suspended because she had made negative comments about a man who unfurled himself on a Zoom meeting and got suspended for it.

And then they thought she was too sensitive because she was pregnant at the time and couldn't handle the news that she'd been suspended. It's ridiculous. Um, did you say unfurled himself? That's I've never heard the situation. I just, it's quite generous.

Actually, it's a, it's a family show. So I don't know how else to, uh, is it for furling and unfurling something you do with like a sail on a boat? Masturbation described. He let it fly.

I'm just saying. He certainly did. No, you're right. You're right. CNN has got to do something about this. Megan, you've spent a lot of time in the world of cable news and network news. I've only been there as a guest, and the vast majority of people I've interacted with seemed sane at the time. Perhaps they went off and did crazy things afterwards.

But in my presence, they did not seem like lunatics. But you look at the history. You look at all the events of Me Too, the infamous stories about Matt Lauer. Michael referred to Jeffrey Toobin, the man who lived down to his surname. And you just have this bizarre sense. I know it's a high pressure environment. I know there's a lot of stress, a lot of changing, rapid changes and moving parts and all that. But I kind of wonder if this is an environment where someone who's a few fries short of a happy meal, as they say, necessarily stands out or gets noticed.

It's almost an environment where someone who is not the sharpest knife in the drawer and who has this kind of intense emotional outbursts and inappropriate treatment of others, sometimes those people seem to thrive in that kind of environment. Now, again, you spent a lot more time there, so I'm sure you can talk, you know, I'm sure you have horrible war stories to tell. But it does seem weird that we keep seeing this coming up in an environment that's always all smiles and more with this after the break kind of, you know, friendly, jovial, everyone's having a nice time type environment. Well, I mean, television news is a toxic industry and it's not just cable. Trust me, because I worked at the broadcast channels, too. It's toxic. And it is there's something very disgusting about large elements of it. It's

not to say there's no nobility left in media and including in broadcast journalism. There is. But it's largely overshadowed by these personalities that get drunk on their own wine and then get this permission slip to run roughshod over the workforce, over their colleagues. The egos get out of control, right? And you, like at Fox at least, let's take Bill O'Reilly. He had a huge ego and wound up being a problem in some ways, but the guy was extremely talented and was the number one rated show in cable for many, many years. Like you could see why they tried to put up with him, right? I mean, Bill's got talent. There's no denying that. That woman has no talent. Why are they

doing this? Why are they allowing this over and over? It's because literally as he went out and reminded them when there was the shift in management, he's a black gay man. He went on the air when Chris Licht took over and reminded him and everyone, I'm black and I'm gay. And Jeff Zucker was the first man to put me in primetime. And don't forget it. And this can be used in newsrooms now as a threat, right? Like if you try to fire me or demote me or do something that I'm really going to find upsetting, I'm going to go public with how you dislike people like me. And you need a boss who's got a pair to say, go ahead and do it.

Fine. Go ahead and do it because you've embarrassed yourself. You've embarrassed your colleagues. You've embarrassed this network long enough that people will believe me that it was your performance, not your skin color and not your sexual orientation that led to this. Yeah, I'm realizing we've talked this long and we haven't even mentioned the name Chris Cuomo. Oh. And the glaring problem of having the brother of the New York governor being the primary

interviewer of the New York governor during that pandemic and all the inappropriate stuff. Look, I mean, a lot of this traces back to Zucker and the mentality that he had his guys or his gals. Zucker had his own issues with co-workers, as I'm sure people remember the news reports about. And so it kind of turned into almost mafia-esque that for a certain level, you were a made man. You were protected. You could get away with anything. And when that signal is sent down from on high, we probably shouldn't be all that surprised that people start thinking, I'm a made man. I can do whatever I want. I can talk to anybody however I want.

I can treat my colleagues. I can treat my staffers that way. You know, this is unfortunately, you're a big enough name well then not only does it you know make other people who are big names say okay i can do that it makes everybody want to be one of those big names so they're no longer accountable for you know acting terribly no you mentioned chris cuomo who's in the news yesterday michael because he um he gave an interview on Scaramucci's new podcast. And in this interview, he is indignant about the fact that he was canned from CNN. He is still very angry and is blaming everyone other than himself and came out with a bizarre comment saying after it happened,

he wanted to kill a bunch of people, then said, including himself. I have learned to accept that I had to accept because I was going to kill everybody, including myself. Things can consume you. Italians are so passionate. And I really had to fight against that. I mean, I can understand a little bit being angry after a forced separation from a job that you feel is unjust. But you want to kill people? You want to go out and kill people? Like, OK, could be just tongue in cheek. But when you hear it in context, he's really pissed off about being separated from CNN as a result of his own behavior.

He doesn't take responsibility. Don Lemon doesn't take responsibility. And now he's just sitting there in a pit of his own bitterness. He not only doesn't take responsibility. And now he's just sitting there in a pit of his own bitterness. He not only doesn't take responsibility for that, he didn't even take responsibility for that bizarre statement that he wanted to kill everyone and himself. Because he immediately attributed that statement to his Italian-ness, quote unquote. Right? He said, maybe I'm passionate because I'm Italian, but this is how I felt. And it's like, OK, so this is again, you're seeing in Cuomo and Lemon this really crude casting couch stereotype understanding of themselves and everyone else around them.

Right. of themselves and everyone else around them right like they view it as like well the script calls for a gay a gay black man a passionate italian because all italians have to be passionate and um you know and then the women are totally replaceable you know once they turn 30 just get a new one because there's a million on the bus on the way here and none of them are worth what they're what the work they actually do um it's it's incredibly i mean it's it's totally repellent right i mean it's it's repellent i think to the audience the audience picks up on this kind of contemptuous understanding of the audience that's at play when people understand themselves this way and the contempt they have for each other when they understand themselves this way. So it's not a surprise that CNN just keeps sinking. Yeah, no, you're right. And by the way, this just off the presses,

Nikki Haley just responded. She launched a presidential campaign yesterday. This is, that was the context in which this came up because she was saying, look, it's time for a new generation of leaders and so on. And these 75, the competency test and Don Lemon thought that was an appropriate time to say she's past her prime. She's a 51 year old woman, so she should be careful talking about age. Really? OK, she just responded in a tweet that reads as follows. Liberals can't stand the idea of having competency tests for older politicians to make sure they can do the job. By the way, it's always the liberals who are the most sexist. And she included the video of Don

Lemon just to remove any doubt about what she was referring to. It's always the liberals who are the most sexist. So you tell me whether he will get a pass on this, which I, as I pointed out, is part of a series of comments for this guy. It's not a one-off. Whether he will get a pass or whether he will be forced to address it, he will be forced to get out of CNN, as he should have been a long time ago, or whether this will just go off into the ether of the Internet. I'm sure right now... Go ahead, Michael. I predict he'll address it on the air in a kind of slimy way of, I didn't mean to offend anyone, and just kind of try to end the story in a two-sentence non-apology. That's what will happen.

But because of the pattern of behavior, he will explode himself on a landmine eventually. I mean, when he, you know, if you go back just to December, you know, liberals started to show their lack of patience with him when he mansplained. So they said, why female athletes get paid less than male athletes. So I think, you know, the knives are starting to sharpen, but he'll get out of this one just with a, you a whiff of an apology i'm just still stuck on the fact jim that what kind of a man you guys are married you have families what kind of a man looks at a woman and says you've got these three decades to be in your prime you got your 20s you got your 30s really it's two because he was like maybe 40 that's what he said that's it then you past your prime. You will service me a man by having a baby. And by the way, he's a gay man, so not him, but a man you will service me by having a baby or several babies.

And that's what will make you valuable. You see, that's how you should think about yourself and how you matter. And when you're no longer capable of doing that, you're past your prime. So truly, why don't you just take up knitting, go sit in a field and think about your glory days when you were servicing me as a wife or as a mom, only, only, only if you're capable of having a child. And by all of you women out there who didn't have a child, screw you, because you never had a prime. You have nothing.

You didn't even use your uterus the way God intended. It's absolutely outrageous if you think about what he's actually saying. And he's so stupid, he can't even articulate it. He's just got to say, well, the Google says so. The Google, the Google. Go ahead, Jim. Megan, I'm glad you pointed that out because I was going to say I'm pretty sure Don Lemon and Michael and I see women pretty differently. Look, he has been in a situation where he's been able to play this card of being a minority. And that has worked as a get out of controversy, get out of consequences free card enough times in the past. I do think that card is probably reaching its expiration

date. I suspect right now at CNN, they're probably having meetings of do we want the headache of the reaction from women viewers of having our anchor spout off about these things? Or do we want the headache of letting Don Lemon go? And he will inevitably accuse us of being racist and homophobic and things like that. And it couldn't possibly be that he's turned into this walking controversy machine. By the way, when Michael was talking about Chris Cuomo's comments and how he said, ah, you know, my desire to kill everyone and myself was just my Italian-ness. I was reminded about when Andrew Cuomo was accused of sexual harassment. One of the unofficial slogans was,

I'm not perverted, I'm just Italian. The idea that he was very hands-on and very touchy-feely and that this was a cultural expression and that some way too sensitive women were taking offense or responding and just not understanding this was a cultural tradition of his. Now, obviously, both of them seem eager to live down to the stereotypes of Italian Americans. I'll let you insert the Chris Cromo Fredo joke wherever you like somewhere in here. And I just kind of observe that they really are hot-tempered and threatening to kill people

and touching people inappropriately. Look, first of all, I think a lot of Italian-Americans would say, no, that's not what we are. But simply, just wouldn't it be nice if everyone could be as even-tempered, calm, and rational as Irish-Americans like us?

Life would be so much easier. We're famously not even-tempered and calm and rational and all of that. But I'm half and half. I'm Italian and Irish and therefore so is my brother. And he's never touched anybody inappropriately or chalked any of it up to any bad behavior up to that. Right. Like if you're Irish, if you're Italian, you're fiery. That's generally how it works. You're not running around touching people's genitals inappropriately. That's not the thing as Andrew Cuomo was accused of doing. And Chris Cuomo did not, uh, defended it and worked to smear the women behind the scenes while he lied about it to his audience. That's why he got fired. And then he was accused by a couple of women of his own me too situation,

uh, situations. And so, and we had a woman on our show who accused him of Me Too-ing her, Shelly Ross, who accused him of grabbing her ass in a public place, who was his executive producer. And so look, that was Chris Cuomo, not the brother Andrew. I could go down the list. And none of this is to say that anybody shouldn't have a mistake or a moment where they fall down and they do something stupid and they come out and say, sorry, I'm human. We all get that. We don't want to live in a world in which that's not possible. But this guy is an abusive, sexist jerk and it's time for him to go. And, you know, CNN is really saying something to America if they stick by him after this. But we'll see. We'll see how new management feels about this kind of behavior. All right, let's move on to Nikki Haley.

She's more interesting than Don Lemon. She came she came out yesterday. First she did this video, which was, I thought it was kind of lame. I gotta be honest. But then she did a better job. I thought of her rally, you know, she had the flags and people were waving and there was more energy and she sort of made her point, um, about wanting to run and how it's time to move on. Um, she did. I was happy to see a dress like her, her video said like, and it's so much better when you do it in stilettos. And I was like, come on, you know, like you're not running as a Democrat. Stop, like Republicans don't want to hear that nonsense. They're over all this BS about like, I'll be tougher because I'm a woman. Like, okay, come on. And she did better on that.

And she kind of made the following point, which I think was well done. This is SOT5. As I set out on this new journey, I will simply say this. May the best woman win. All kidding aside, this is not about identity politics. I don't believe in that. And I don't believe in glass ceilings either. Then she went on to say, well, we have it. Here's thought six right in the back end. Take it from me, the first minority female governor in history. America is not a racist country. So I thought that was a good parlay of like instead of buying into identity politics, sort of using her diversity to say,

no, this democratic narrative about our country is BS. And it was a much stronger foot forward overall, just the whole message, I thought, when she got live in front of the crowd. But what do you guys make of Nikki Haley's official entrance into this race, Jim? Look, there's no getting around the fact that she has an uphill climb, right? That, you know, Donald Trump is the 800 pound gorilla in the room. Ron DeSantis has been the challenger that has climbed up in the polls most frequently. But I don't think Nikki Haley should be dismissed. I think she brings a really unique set and combination of experience to the role. I think your point is a good one, which is that, look, we know she's a woman.

We're looking right at her. We know she's Indian American. We're looking right at her. We know she's Indian American. We can see that. That's never been kind of the centerpiece of her political rise through power. Certainly not the way Kamala Harris has emphasized being a minority and being a woman in her political career out in California. So I think the best argument for the Nikki Haley is like, look, you're talking about someone who has both domestic experience of being

governor, being a state legislature, and also taking on her own party when she thought there was a old boys network that was protecting wasteful spending. Didn't want to have recorded votes in the state legislature for a whole bunch of years. She fought a long, hard fight over that one. Then she went to the United Nations and, Nations. And under President Trump, a lot of folks, people thought she would have difficulty working under him. Managed to get quite a bit done. Managed to get rave reviews from folks like the New York Times editorial board, folks who you would not think would be giving any credit to anybody under the Trump administration. And then you point out the fact that her husband was in Afghanistan for years. She's been in a military family. She served on the board of Boeing and then stepped down from

the board when she thought it was taking too much in COVID relief money. She's on the board of trustees of Clemson University. It's a really wide ranging experience in life that I think will be very helpful if she ends up becoming the president. But there's a long, long road ahead. Michael, she was on Hannity last night and he was trying to get her to say, how how are you going to be different from President Trump when it comes to policy? Like, why would you be a better choice than the guy who already has the huge base and support and so on? There's a little bit of that. It was a bunch of dodging here. What specific policy areas would you say part with Donald Trump? What I am saying is I don't kick sideways. I'm kicking forward. Joe Biden is the president. He's the one I'm running against. You said that if former President Trump was going to run,

you wouldn't run. It's been reported that a couple weeks ago you call your former boss, you ask for his blessing to run, and he said that you called him the greatest president. If that's true, then why run against him? I'm going to keep that phone call personal. I didn't ask. I told that I thought that we needed to go in a new direction. But when I first said I wouldn't run against him, Afghanistan hadn't fallen. We didn't see the rise in inflation like we've seen. We didn't see what was happening in our schools the way it was. And we didn't see the results of the midterms that we just had. It is time for a new generation of leaders. You shouldn't have to be 80 years old to get to Washington. Hmm. What do you make of it, Mike?

Yeah, I don't think she wants to make the policy contrast yet. I don't because I don't think she wants to alienate Trump's voters in a strong way yet. I don't think she wants to attack the boss. Right. I mean, when she was, you know, at the UN, she made a big deal in almost all of her public speeches about how the the white house itself that were leaking Donald Trump to death during his administration. And, you know, had Maggie Haberman on speed dial. She was saying, I know who's boss and I know the order here. So I think she's always been careful about, uh, raising Donald Trump's iron. I think she wants Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis to duke it out and for her to be the person who doesn't get bruised in that fight. And if she doesn't want the campaign talk, I think, though, she has a problem in that if she doesn't want her campaign talk to be about her identity as a woman or as an Indian American, she actually has to run on policies, right? And it's just not true

that she's only running against Joe Biden. Donald Trump already declared his intention to run in this race. And now she's declaring she is running against Donald Trump. So she has to make a case against him. And, you know, she could if she wanted to. I mean, if I were advising her, I would say that she should flip around the script that she had when she was working for him and say, one of the things the chief executive has to do is discipline the people who are leaking him to death, is exert control and take control of the office. And then that was a persistent problem with Donald Trump's administration, that he never quite got control of his own White House.

And it had to depend on the extraordinary loyalty of servants like her to get through the ship unscathed or without sinking. If she doesn't make that case, then all the talk is just going to be about how she's a woman and she's a minority. And this is a different take on America, but it will be the identity politics that she said she doesn't want to get into. Yeah. If anything, she should play that stuff down and just say, let's move on. Yes, clearly I'm a woman. Next. I mean, that would be the most effective way of handling it. But she, you know, there are no unique situations. She, DeSantis, anybody else who's thinking about running. Because normally you don't run against a guy who was already president for the nomination. It's just such a unique situation for these GOPers

where, to the dynamic you just said, MBD, she's got to be careful because he does have a huge piece of the Republican base already with him who would be somewhat offended if you go after him too hard. It's not like 2015, where they were all running and they were all equals. And I think at this point in the contest, Donald Trump had like single digit support in 2015 at this point. And Jeb Bush was the favorite at that, right? Remember those days? Jeb Bush. And look how that got turned around. So it's a tricky maneuver for anybody coming into it. She's first. Well, John Bolton technically declared on Good Morning Britain, but she's the first real one to have to navigate it.

Yeah. And one of the oddities is that you'll have not just a former president running for another term. Trump conceivably could be running against maybe three former cabinet officials. Haley, as you mentioned, John Bolton, if he chooses to run, he's kind of been hinting, but not before. And Mike Pompeo certainly looks and sounds like a man who's interested in running for president, which puts all of them in this odd situation where if any of the three say, you shouldn't vote for Trump because of X, people would say, well, wait a second, why did you go work for the guy? And if Trump goes out and says, ah, you know, Nikki, she was the worst, or Bolton, you know, as Trump has at certain points in social media,

ripped into Bolton, et cetera. The question would be, well, why did you hire them? You know, that this is this bizarre situation. All these people who were former teammates would be in a situation in which they have to say, no, I'm a better choice than that person. I think there was a subtle criticism, or maybe not so subtle criticism of Trump in the age points. He would point out that he would qualify for that cognitive test that she was calling for. Clearly it was aimed at Biden, but also he's old enough to qualify for it. And all of the comments about how we can't win the challenges of the 21st century by going with leadership of the 20th century, that probably would apply for Trump also. He's only a couple of years younger than Joe Biden is. So there's this, probably I think the easiest argument against Trump for a Republican Party that is, in most cases, voted for him twice and is still at least open to the possibility of voting for him again, is to say, it's time for a fresh, it's time to thank him for his service. It's time for a fresh face. It's we can't, you know,

we've already run that candidate and lost a race in 2020. Although there's some Republicans who insist he didn't lose. And just to say, why do we want to rerun this? It's time for something new. It's time for something fresh. It's time for Trumpism without Donald Trump himself. Well, it's kind of exciting to see it start to happen. You know, here we are, February. It's underway. I mean, 2024 is officially underway. The Trump announcement was so early, it was a little odd.

Now she's announcing Tim Scott is at some 2024 group gathering where, you know, there's potential donors. Bolton, as I mentioned. Mike Pence is definitely sniffing around it. So this is in the next couple of months, we're going to have a much better feel for who exactly is in or about to declare that they're in. All right, let me take a quick break. And on the opposite side of this, we're going to talk about Joe Biden making a comment many have deemed racist. It's not the first time. Jim and Michael, stay with us. OK, so, guys, Joe Biden has got a long history of making racist comments.

Right. Remember, Barack Obama is the first clean, articulate black. What? It's amazing this guy became president and Barack Obama's vice president after saying stuff like that. And it could go on. Right. Put you all back in chains and blah, blah, blah. So now he comes out and he made a comment about Maryland's new governor, who is black, Wes Moore. And here is how that went. And you got a hell of a new governor, Wes Moore, I tell you. He's the real deal. And the boy looked like he could still play. He got some guns on him. Did you hear that? The boy, the boy looked like he could still play. Now, if Donald Trump did this, it would be the lead on every cable news show in America, including definitely Don Lemon's. Bub kiss, though, right? So far, no problem. By the way, it's not the first time that Joe

Biden is referred to a black man as boy. So what do we make of it? Well, this is actually there's a funny read on this. I mean, he's done this forever. I mean, in 2006, he said something like you cannot even go to a 7-11 or dunkin donuts unless you have a slight indian accent um he plays with stereotypes these way outdated ones and and actually i i hate to say this i actually think it works to his advantage somewhat um it's it's disrespectful in my view, but it actually is one of the reasons why the woke brand doesn't stick to him, right? It is, his administration may be doing everything it can to promote wokeness in education,

higher education in, you know, in employment through civil rights, uh, you know, title seven, uh, litigation, et cetera. Uh, but he is obviously one of these old school politicians who thinks that the way to, to get to office is to flatter ethnic stereotypes, wherever you find them and no matter how crude they are. And it's not going to change because of his age but i actually i i weirdly think this plays to his advantage people you know no one ends up actually taking offense except republicans who think like if we had said this we'd never get away with it but he does i mean like he said all those crazy things um about black americans and yet black americans were

his strongest constituency in the the primaries that led to his nomination um possibly because they too are attached to kind of an older cultural politics um so i i think this is a weird double edged sword for him like i, I can't believe it. Like, my jaw hits the floor just like everyone else. But there's this weird way where, you know, people let him get away with it, partly because he's a decrepit old man, right? Like, what else do you expect from him? Also because most of this wokeness is performative, Jim Garrity. Like, they only use it to hurt people they want to hurt. And generally, it's somebody across the political aisle. Most of it is an act used to

punish one's enemies as opposed to genuine indignation over a comment. That's why these woke leftists are not going to say anything about him referring to a black governor as boy. Yeah, look, many folks on the right have observed accurately, in my opinion, that once you have that D after your name, you have this magic shield that protects you from all the consequences of your actions and things that you say. Michael mentioned that rather infamous one during his 2008 campaign where he talked about you cannot go into a 7-Eleven unless you have a slight Indian accent. I'd urge people to go back and watch the C-SPAN clip of this because it's not like the Indian American gentleman he's speaking to brought up his heritage or ethnicity

or anything like that. He just has a Biden sign and he clearly just wants to talk to Biden. And the first thing out of Biden's mouth is 7-11. Yeah, it really is kind of this like hideously stereotype, like you can only imagine how that guy must have felt that he's meeting Joe Biden and clearly wants to talk to him about something related to politics in the campaign. And Biden wants to talk to him about convenience stores. It's really kind of this, you know, obnoxiously condescending thing. But I think that the common thread that runs through all of Biden's comments that are at minimum racially insensitive and tin-eared and others would argue racist is that Joe Biden walks around convinced other people just love him, just adore him, can't get enough of him and that everything he says is golden. And so that's why

he can say to Charlemagne Tha God, who was during that infamous interview during the most recent presidential campaign, that radio host was saying, you know, you really haven't answered all my questions. I'd really like to have you back on the show so we can discuss this further. And that's when Biden unloads the, if you ain't voting for me, you ain't black. And Biden is just convinced he can get away. We're all buddies. I can decide who's black and who isn't. Me, Randy Segrio, extraordinarily white Joe Biden.

And that's why I suspect why Jill Biden can give speeches where she talks about Mexican-Americans as burritos or something like that. They're really little tacos. And they can get away with anything because of that. It's crazy. Well, while we're on the topic of sort of woke agenda items, I'm interested in what's happening with the New York Times and this trans pushback. I don't know if you guys saw this, but all these groups like GLAAD and all these trans activist groups wrote this scathing letter to the New York Times. They're very angry that the Times is making an attempt at sort of fair and balanced coverage on the trans issues,

in particular, transitioning children. They've done a couple of pieces that come close to being fair. That's as generous as I could be because I read the pieces. And the activists are angry and demanding action. They think that the Times has gone bigoted. They want real change. They want them, of course, to appoint a bunch of trans writers at the New York Times. This is always the solution. Like we demand you hire five trans people and so on. They say things like this. Plenty of reporters at the Times cover trans issues fairly. Their work is eclipsed, however, by what one journalist has calculated is over 15,000 words of front page Times coverage debating the propriety of medical care for trans children published in the last eight months alone. We won't stand for the Times platforming lies, bias, fringe theories, and dangerous

inaccuracies. We demand fair coverage. We demand the Times platform trans voices as both sources and full-time writers and editors. And we demand a meeting between Times leadership and the transgender community. So what is the Times going to do? Right? I mean, I feel like if this happened at NBC, they'd be on the knee doing exactly what was demanded of them but interesting and the times may yet do that but interestingly the times was it today yes this this thursday in a piece from pamela paul in the op-ed section uh supports jk rolling so i mean you could read this as a middle finger to the activists because what did they do in response to their, in the critique that they're too fair on these

issues? They got even fairer and put Pamela Paul in there talking about, I'll give you a segment from it. They said, she writes, if more people stood up for J.K. Rowling, they would not only be doing right by her, they'd also be standing up for human rights, specifically women's rights, gay rights, and yes, transgender rights. They'd be standing up for the truth. Wow. All right. So what is this telling us? I was going to say, I'd also note that late last night, apparently the New York Times PR department issued a short statement that basically amounted to, we're proud of our reporting. We hear you, we sympathize, but there was no retraction or apology or anything like that. I think my favorite part of the complaint, Megan, is that they had identified

a terrible, anti-trans, dangerous right-wing extremist who had recently joined the New York Times. And that, of course, is the former colleague of Michael and myself, David French. And as we all know, when you think right-wing extremism, when you think hate, when you think frothing at the mouth, furious denunciations, and no empathy whatsoever, you think of David French. Now, perhaps there's- No, it's like Alex Jones and David French.

That's what you think. Yeah, well, you know, David French is, has he written things that I'm sure trans activists disagree with strongly? Yes. Does he hold opinions activists disagree with strongly? Yes. Does he hold opinions that they disagree with? Yes. Do I agree with everything David French has ever written? No. But the idea that, you know, the New York Times is going to turn into some sort of, you know, dangerous right wing propaganda stirring up hate crimes because of the presence of David French is probably one of the most absurd claims they possibly could have

made. And I think it gives away the game, which is that they're not interested in having a debate or discussion on this. They really think that the account of the argument or other perspectives should not be heard and should not be seen. The New York Times is their territory, not anybody else's. And that anybody who disagrees with the party line must be expunged and driven out as quickly as possible. But it seems like, Michael, this is an important moment for the Times, and so far they're handling it pretty well. Yeah, this is interesting. I think the letter itself was evidence that something had changed at the Times. Because previously, in the last big controversy, which was the Tom Cotton op-ed sending the National Guard to stop the rioting during 2020, that controversy began as an internal revolt on the internal chat rooms of the New York Times, then leaked out as a series of organized tweeting by New York Times employees. And it resulted in the firing of the New York Times opinion editor, James Bennett,

after a day-long struggle session in front of the entire staff. And, you know, then it led swiftly to Barry Weiss leaving the New York Times. A couple of other conservatives that were involved in the op-ed page left as well. This looks like an internal revolt already failed. And so the New York Times staffers went outside, recruited as many outside contributors as possible, and went to GLAAD, an outside activist organization. And this was a mistake that the Times, you know, institutionalists really took advantage of by saying, well, GLAAD is an advocacy organization. And this was a mistake that the Times, you know, institutionalists really took advantage of by saying, well, GLAAD is an advocacy organization. We're a news organization. In fact, the Times rebels, I think, handed an easy victory to the old school New York Times

staff that still wants to retain some legitimacy as a news organization. And we have to be honest, the two or three stories that these activists are complaining about are really milquetoast stuff. I mean, it just, you know, just raising questions, just giving examples of a detransitioner in one space or a parent who was deceived by their school district in another case. But the activists can't see it and they can't imagine themselves being wrong in the issue, right? They just don't, you know, one of the arguments they give is that, well, gender transition surgery and drugs have been accepted for decades.

Well, one, it's not true that this has been accepted for decades, especially puberty blockers. That's entirely why we're having this controversy. It's because this is new. And two, just two decades of evidence would have said, if you were just going by that, you'd say that we should still be doing lumbotomies, you know, 50 years after we stopped doing Modern medicine has advanced. All right, let me pause you right there. I actually want to continue this, but we're going to squeeze in a quick break.

I find this a very hopeful sign that maybe some of the pushback on what we're doing to these children is starting to take hold. It's starting to work. So a note of optimism. All right, guys. So just a final question

on the New York Times thing. As Rich Lowry would put it, exit question to you. Does this signal a new era in the Times' coverage, at least of the trans issue? Because the way that a paper like that covers this issue when it comes to children is important. The people we need to convince that what they're doing to these kids is insane are Times readers. They're not Wall Street Journal readers. So does this signal a new era? Go ahead, Michael. It does. Three years ago, the Times basically went on a pro-trans campaign and did hundreds of stories mainstreaming the issue. And now I think we're seeing the blowback and we're seeing a lot of

center-right and center-left people, you know, suburban people confronting madness at their local public school level. And they're demanding some way of understanding it. And the Times basically is meeting that demand with some sympathetic reporting that maybe this is getting out of hand, that gender clinics are underregulated, that the studies purporting to justify puberty blockers or surgeries on minors are basically junk or non-existent, and that European countries have moved away from this. So I think it is a change in times, but I do think it's demand-driven more than driven by the decision-makers' sudden growth of a conscience. I think the Times is being dragged here by their readers, not dragging the readers themselves.

And of course, Jim Garrity, there'll be no accountability for the damage already done. No, I doubt that. I do think Michael's observation about the contrast between the way the New York Times is handling this criticism versus the criticism of the Tom Cotton piece is a very sharp and useful one. I always kind of wonder, and I've been thinking this back since, you know, when the Atlantic magazine under Jeffrey Goldberg decided that Kevin Williamson was too shocking and dangerous to have on their staff. Who wants to run an organization where your employees can form a mob and force you to change your decisions? I thought the whole point you wanted to climb the ladder and run an organization was you wanted to be the person in charge.

You wanted to climb the ladder and run an organization was you wanted to be the person in charge. You wanted to set the direction. And if the New York Times wants to put out a more even-handed coverage of young people who choose to transition, that's their right. And it's not, you know, this is not going to have, it's not GLAAD's job to run the New York Times. It's not these outside activists. And it's not some, you know, entry-level copy editor's job either. The New York Times is going to cover this issue the way it feels like it. So I do kind of feel like, I wonder if there's this reassertion of authority and to say, well, you're free to feel that way and we hope you appreciate our coverage, but we're not going to change for you and we're not going to bend over backwards just because you've written an angry letter to us. We've seen it happen. The Wall Street

Journal did it when a bunch of their employees got upset about Heather McDonald op-eds, which were spot on factually. Even at the Journal, there was a threatened walkout, etc. And the Journal said what you just said, basically. We understand you object. Bye. You don't have to work here. Take care. And then we saw Netflix reverse itself, saying we are going to cover, we're going to take content from people you may find controversial, people like Dave Chappelle. And if you don't like it, bye. Spotify stood by Joe Rogan, even though those morons, Harry and Meghan, tried to threaten them into pulling him because of his COVID coverage. They decided to be the arbiters of what was disinformation on COVID, these two morons.

Anyway, Spotify stood up to them. Little by little, we're seeing these left-leaning media organizations push back. They're finally getting it. It's like a little light bulb moment. It's like shoots of promise, right? That's how I'm feeling after all these years of this crazy ass wokeness that's driving us all insane. And people like you guys out there fighting the good battle all the time, and me too. It's nice to see some of these people coming over. It's like the point is to win. It's not to keep the fight going. The point is to win. And I see signs of winning. So I like that. Okay. Let's shift gears because one thing we did not win on is restoring sanity when it comes to

the CDC, the WHO. These organizations have taken a massive hit to their credibility. And it's really damaging because when we do have another pandemic in which we do need to listen to them, we won't, right? Who would listen to Rochelle Walensky on anything other than how to panic in a crisis? I would listen to her on that. How do I do it? How do I work myself up into tears when giving congressional testimony? So we learned this week that the WHO is abandoning its investigation into how COVID started. Basically, as I understand it, the Chinese weren't cooperating. So bye, it's done. They're going to give up. Like what we know is what we know.

Peace out. Enjoy your next pandemic. So, Michael, I'm thinking this is going to be unsatisfactory to people like you, but no one's going to really complain much. Listen, this was always going to be an uphill challenge. I think right from the beginning, when Jim and I both began to suspect that a lab leak was at least possible, a possible origin of COVID, if not the probable one, I started writing, it'll be hard for big institutions to accept that something so globally disastrous, whether the disease itself or the lockdowns that followed from it, the authoritarian health policies that came in its wake, it'll be hard for people to

accept that this could be the fault of a handful of people whose names we could discover. It's very rare in history for a handful of people to be the cause of death of, you know, potentially millions of people globally and the cause of misery for billions more. So it was always going to be uphill to get people to take the idea of a human cause seriously. And, but the fact is China has almost made it obvious that it's human caused with

the way they've covered up and bumbled they couldn't have had a more sympathetic world health organization china basically had appointed the president tedros who investigated them the first time with the intent of clearing them and found that he couldn't but now you know the who still can't get there. And they're still referring back to the original sin of COVID, which is we won't offend the Chinese, right? In the first weeks of the outbreak in Wuhan, the World Health Organization refused to declare it a public health emergency, refused to look at the evidence that the virus was airborne, which was already abundant. And they did so because they were trying not to offend China, right? Basically, China's bullying of international institutions is accepted by international institutions. And what we see then is total dysfunction. I mean, the World Health Organization is now worthless as an organization.

That's and we need them. I mean, that's the problem, Jim, is that much as we like to think COVID was the last pandemic, there's going to be another one. It could be intentional, could be unintentional. But we no longer have public health authorities in this country who the majority of the country trusts. I was going to say, Megan, in the last two, three years, you see the likes of Bill Gates come out and say, well, we need a better early warning system for pandemic outbreaks. Well, we already

have it. I mean, most doctors are pretty quick to share information when they say, hey, I've got a patient with these strange symptoms. It's not matching anything I'm familiar with. What do you guys think this is? The difference is this one was in China. If COVID-19 had first jumped into a human being in France or Canada or Brazil or almost anywhere else on earth, the reaction would have been faster and better. And we were basically held back by both first a local government in Wuhan and then a larger national Chinese government that wanted to insist it wasn't that bad. And depending on when the first infection occurred, anywhere from three weeks to six weeks insisting this is not contagious. There's no evidence of human to human spread, even while doctors were catching it from their patients.

Right now, if you're going to try to stop a pandemic, you got to do it as early as possible. The more it spreads, the harder it gets. And oh, by the way, China did not restrict travel. It had kept having international travel, flights leaving from Wuhan all around the world for the first couple of weeks of this pandemic. We didn't have a chance because the Chinese government was too secretive.

And that's even assuming this was a natural outbreak from a animal at a wet market to a person instead of a lab leak. Now, look, I want to point out way back when Michael sent me this video, this guy who was speculating about Wuhan being the home of not one, but two national laboratories that happened to be researching coronaviruses found in bats. And oh, by the way, we now know that they were doing gain ofof-function research, which is where you take naturally existing coronaviruses found in bats and try to make them more virulent and more contagious. Not one, but two. That's pretty astounding coincidence there. And most of us look at this. And from day one, we're like, well,

God, that's an amazing coincidence. The first outbreak was just down the road. What are the odds of that happening? Now, we basically spent, and from the very beginning, the World Health Organization, that first investigation spent like an hour or two in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. They spent like a day or two in there. They said that even during this, the Chinese scientists and virologists were extraordinarily combative, extraordinarily uncooperative. There are still reams of data that the Chinese have not turned over to the WHO's request. I mean, in my mind, that's effectively a guilty plea. That's basically saying we have something to hide. I suppose it's possible that it's some other factor that like what was going on at the Wuhan Institute of Virology was somehow connected to biological weapons research or something like that. That's not to say that COVID-19 was a biological weapon,

but the idea that there was something going on inside that laboratory that they did not want the rest of the world to see. But in the end, from the moment the US intelligence community under Biden was directed to find the origins and came back with a report that basically said, nah, we don't know. We looked at it. You give us a billion dollars a year. We have unprecedented signals intercepts ability. We have unprecedented experts. We have the best technology in the whole wide world. We just can't figure it out. The whole wide world's going to have to just accept it as a mystery. There was a letter to the editor from someone early in the controversy who basically said that you have to stop Trump saying this could be a lab leak because this will lead to war with China.

And I suppose if you believe that the inevitable... Imagine we found the smoking gun. Imagine you found incontrovertible evidence, the memo from one virologist to another at the Wuhan Institute that said, oh, geez, I dropped a vial. I inhaled it. I coughed on my wife. I went to the market. I was touching everything. I probably started a pandemic. Let's imagine we found that kind of smoking gun evidence. Then, yeah, there'd be a heck of a lot of rage around the world at the Chinese government, deservedly so. And maybe that rage would turn violent. Maybe you'd see protests outside embassies or something that would really get ugly and could lead to open conflict between China and the rest of the world. I don't know something that's likely it would lead to all out war, but it would get,

you know, it would be bad. I think there are some people who believe that the lie is easier, that the lie is better, that the lie is better, that the lie is safer. This is a perfect segue. This is a perfect segue. Because the question I have now is, are we doing the same thing on Balloon Gate? Right? Because the latest reporting on Balloon Gate, first, there was the Chinese balloon that we eventually shot down over the ocean off of South Carolina.

And we had three more, which may or may not have been balloons, but they're definitely unmanned aerial objects. Shot three of them down over the past week. Four things shot out of the sky over the past week. No word from the president at all. And now today, the reporting takes a turn. Well, it came out Tuesday in the Washington Post saying, not to worry. We tracked that spy balloon, the first one, the big one from China, from its launch. We were on it, guys. Fear not. America was on it. We tracked it for nearly a week before it reached U.S. airspace and suggesting that the flight path, it was meant to go over Guam. It was headed for Guam. Fear not.

Not United States, not Montana and the nuclear site. It was meant to go over Guam, but it took an unexpected northern turn. And now the U.S. is looking into the possibility that China never intended for it to fly over the continental United States. It may have just been pushed by strong winds. It was definitely not going over the Minuteman III launch facilities in Montana, where we have intercontinental ballistic missiles stored over 13,800 square miles of central Montana, making it the biggest new complex of nuclear arms in the Western Hemisphere. It wasn't that. And when I read this, I think we don't want to have a fight. We're afraid of China. We were already involved in Ukraine. We can't have another big fight.

We can let the proxy war with Russia. We don't have the bandwidth for this right now. And so it was a weather balloon. It was meant for Guam. We're good. Pay no attention to the three additional balloons that came over. We have no idea where those came from either. We don't hear from the president. Just be the mushroom. Let us feed you the shit in the basement. Take it and grow. I mean, it's a preposterous story because we saw the balloon. We already had reporting that officials saw the balloon as it was headed toward the Aleutian Islands. So they had ample time where this was known about, at least by the military. And if that's true, then either the military didn't report this all the way up the chain to the commander in chief, or the plan was we're just going to let this thing traverse the entire continental United States and send Tony Blinken, our secretary of state, to his meeting with the Chinese. As if nothing had happened, except shoot, someone actually saw and photographed the balloon over Billings, Montana.

Well, now people are calling for us to shoot it down. shoot, someone actually saw and photographed the balloon over Billings, Montana. Well, now people are calling for us to shoot it down. So finally, we're going to shoot it down. And it is the most backwards, fearful. I mean, you can detect the sweat off of administration officials when they're talking about this they don't know what to say to us because they're they are obviously intending not to give us the whole truth uh and you know and by the way it does not look good if now they're saying these three other objects probably aren't foreign in origin they're probably not chinese anything there's some kind of

other non-threatening balloon so you're saying that now we're just going up and shooting $400,000 missiles at what? Garbage in the atmosphere? Science projects? I mean, yeah. It's like this is absolutely backwards. And it's already caused the diplomatic incident you know the the trip was already canceled with china china's already starting to shoot its own you know things out of the sky just to prove that it can do the same thing that we can do uh but the administration

looks like fools and unless they come out with a better explanation uh yeah i'm i'm absolutely fearful that they're just trying to like hide mess under a rug, because you're right, they don't have the bandwidth for it right now. They're overwhelmed with what's happening in Europe. And we're almost out that we're not even prepared to defend our own airspace from some chinese experimental airship i mean that's a huge problem i mean that's like a that is a cold war level problem a sputnik level event you know i was joking the other day that the best case scenario for us all right now on these balloons or whatever they are is, you know, the scene in Jaws where they see the fin and they

send everybody, Chief Brody sends the boat out there and it turns out to be the two teenagers like playing a joke. That's our best case scenario now that it is a kid's science project. Some kids, some teenagers who are really smart in science are just messing with us now in the wake of the first balloon. But it doesn't appear to be because when you listen to the pilot, there's actually released the audio over the weekend of the pilots encountering the objects. And here's the one. It's kind of interesting. Just short clip of the pilot describing when he saw this object over Lake Huron, which was the fourth of four that got shot down. Listen to this. This is baffling the pilots, Jim Garrity, which is disconcerting. And you've been pointing out,

I think better than anybody, wouldn't it be great to hear from the president? Wouldn't it be nice to get some sort of an update from him? Yes. Reportedly, President Biden will be addressing the country on these matters in the near future, next day or so. And hopefully he'll stay on topic and not bring up any old stories about corn pop. What I do, by the way, that audio- Wait, I lost you there. Not bring up any old what? Corn pop, you know, and any old stories of, you know, my dad used to tell me, you know. That audio from the pilots does sound like the first act of a sci-fi invasion movie, right? You know, we're not sure what that is. That's, you know, a little bit unnerving.

Kind of echoing what Michael said, I'm not, if the Billings Gazette had not had a photographer in the right place at the right time, it's entirely possible these past two weeks would have proceeded completely differently. And I do think this is something of a mini Sputnik moment. We are used to being protected by not only a, you know, what we believe is the finest military in the world, the most technologically advanced military in the world, NORAD, which does more than track Santa every Christmas, and two large oceans. We're not used to knowing, oh, there's a hostile foreign country spy surveillance device floating over your heads, America, nothing to worry about. It certainly seems like the administration plan

was not to tell anyone as this was occurring. And now this claim that this, oh, it was really aimed for Guam. It's amazing how the air currents took it over the Illusion Islands, which is where we have one of our most strategic located airfields and bases for dealing with a threat from the Pacific. The only missile defense facility in eastern Alaska, which is our only shot to shoot down an ICBM from North Korea or, say, any other country in Asia that has a nuclear weapon. Then it went down through, as you mentioned, the ICBMs in Montana, then went down to Missouri, which is where the B-2 bombers are, and then finally back out across the... It's amazing how it just happened to go near all of these key U.S. military facilities

that the Chinese might be interested in. You know, it's just remarkable. It's a really lucky break for the Chinese on that one. Right, exactly. They should have more errant balloons. This is a, look, for the last six years during the Trump administration, Russia was the root of all evil. Everybody was secretly an agent of the Russian government and all that stuff.

And then Biden takes office and all of a sudden he starts talking about he wants a stable and predictable relationship with Russia. It almost turned on a dime. All of a sudden we were not eager to, you know, there was a little bit of we're going to enact more sanctions and all that stuff. But Biden had his summit with Putin and talked about how they wanted stability and predictability and how Biden said he believed Putin really understood and wanted the same thing. And then Putin invaded Ukraine. Go figure. The octogenarian did not accurately assess the intentions of the former KGB colonel. So I think with China, again, Biden likes to talk a tough game. But when push comes to shove, I mean, like, think about it, that balloon or that spy craft was over our territory.

And until it was photographed, the plan was for the Secretary of State to go and have a summit in Beijing. And I think that in the end, the cancellation of that summit was out of the fear that this is going to all break while Blinken was over in Beijing and it was going to look very bad. Now, the interesting question will be, when is Blinken going to go back? This subsequent messaging, it just got blown off course. We're not even sure the Chinese meant to do this. Sounds to me like, boy, we'd really like to have that summit again. We'd really like to have normal relationships with China, even though on front after front, it's very clear China's not that interested in having normal relationships with us. Yeah. Guam, Guam. By the way, I've got to ask you, did you see this soundbite speaking of NORAD

from Karine Jean-Pierre earlier this week? This is the soundbite of the week, bar none. Listen. Why is why is the American military shooting something out of the sky over canada because it's part of a norad there is a the norad is part of like a part of uh it's a it's a what you call a coalition of course exactly and so that's why we were able to do that again we didn't do it on our own we did it in in uh in uh clearly in in in step with uh canadia i mean yeah the the nor in norad is for north america uh it would be not possible for us to have an effective air defense system that only protected america and we said to the canadians you guys have hockey sticks you guys have poutine you guys are on your own. We're not going to, obviously for reasons of geography

and the longstanding. The NORAD. The NORAD. We worked in conjunction with Canadia, which I said the other day, sounds like a bad disease you get when you're in college and you're a little too free and footloose. You know the White House has had a bad week when Justin Trudeau looks like the firmest, most stand-up and toughest leader in the Western world. I mean, he's the one

who kind of came out right away when that object was shot down and explained that he won't tolerate any violation of Canada's sovereign airspace. And probably not Canadians either. So right now, it's the best thing.

I'm only referring to it as Canada from now on. While we're on the subject of people, not necessarily from Canada, but who have lived in Canada, you don't get to discuss fun topics like Harry and Megan on the National Review podcast, The Editors, which is well worth everybody's time. I love it. I listen to it every week. It comes out twice a week. I would like more. But Meghan and Harry, we've all been wondering, how did their PR tour go? How did the spare autobiography help Harry's approval rating? How did the Netflix documentary do for them?

Well, you know it's bad when your PR tour lands you a little skit, a great skit on South Park, which did the following bit on those two. You can hear their fake voices in this little skit, which I have to show you some of. Watch this. It has been several months now since our beloved queen has died. All Canadians are finding it hard to go on. All Canadians, that is, except for our first guest, the prince and his wife. We want privacy! We want privacy! All right, thanks for having us on the show.

It's so awesome to be here. It's great. So let me start with you, Sam. You've lived a life with the royal family. You've had everything handed to you, but you say your life has been hard, and now you've written all about it me start with you, Sam. You've lived a life with the royal family, you've had everything handed to you, but you say your life has been hard, and now you've written all about it in your new book, Win. Yes, that's right, friend. You say my wife and I are totally like, you should write a book, because your family's like stupid and then so are like journalists.

So you hate journalists. That's right. And now you wrote a book that reports on the lives of the royal family. Right. So you're a journalist. Well, I just think some people might say that your Instagram loving bitch wife actually doesn't want her privacy. How dare you, sir? My Instagram loving bitch wife has always wanted her privacy. And you know what else? To signs with them going through all these countries saying

privacy, privacy, and everybody just the disdain for them. They've jumped the shark. Garrity, I saw you laughing during the bit. You tell me, is it over for them in terms of their hopes for being the next Barack and Michelle Obama or political leaders or influencers here in the United States? All right, Megan, this country was founded by men who were willing to shoot other people in the head so that they wouldn't have to care about what the British Royal family was doing. So you're right, we don't talk about the British

Royals very much on the editors or write about them at all. I do see them as roughly akin to the 1980s game War Games because they desperately want attention that even if you denounce them, you're giving them the attention that they want. So much like that talk about nuclear war, the only way to win is not to play. So I try not to think about it as much as possible. I am pleased to see that more and more of the public, not just here, but apparently around the world is coming around to my position. I feel this is a pronouncement, MBD, that they have jumped the shark, they are not beloved, and her hopes of running for president,

reported hopes, are all but dashed. That's not happening. When South Park turns on you, there's no recovering. Right. There was a moment where it seemed like Harry and Meghan were going to become the latest thing that Americans polarize over, where all conservatives are critical of them, and so all liberals have to embrace them. But now it's like they're just so cringeworthy and so unsympathetic in a fundamental way that they're of no use to anyone, but they're overpaid publicists. Right. I mean, and, and the kind of grifters trying to sell, you know, kitsch attached to their names. Um, you know, the whole, the whole result of their giant publicity campaign has been to raise the popularity of Prince William and Kate in the United Kingdom. Right.

I mean, they didn't, they, you know, they may do, you know, some tiny bit of damage to Charles, but I think even his popularity has gone up in the United Kingdom as his coronation is coming up soon because people feel, feel bad for him that, right. That this, this child and her, his monster wife get to say whatever they like about the Royal family and the royal family has all sorts of restrictions formal and informal about how much they can fire back and defend themselves and by being quiet they are subtly subtly winning the game and it's amazing that harry and markel and whoever is advising them can't figure this out yet um yeah but they they

can't and i'm sure you know there's too much money to be made by the agents and other publicists for Harry and Markle to shut up. I mean, Harry is already talking about coming out with another book. But what does he have to say other than poor me? Right. Only stories about the royal family do well for them. It's just their connection to the royals that makes them interesting. Nothing beyond that, which is yet another reason why King Charles should not include them at the coronation. Can you imagine sidling up to them at the coronation? If you're a member of the royal family, you wouldn't want to say anything. You'd be terrified that that pen sticking out of the pocket is recording you live,

a little flower coming out of the dress. No, right? You know that the whole thing is a recon mission for the next book and the next Netflix project. And by the way, they've insulted at least half of the British people by saying everybody who voted for Brexit is racist. So just out of protection for his fellow countrymen, King Charles should not allow this, but he's going to, according to the reports, we'll see. They'll go too. They've never seen a camera they don't want to be in front of. It was a mistake. I've said it before. I'll say it again. I'll be there, not necessarily physically, but I'll be booing from whatever spot. See, you don't get to see Rich Lowry. He leaves such goodness on the floor. Look at these interesting comments you guys are able to make on pop culture and figures in it.

Markle will be there. She wants the drama. I mean, she wants the big fight with the royal family. And, you know, in some way, she's going to get it. This is going to be what they do for the rest of their lives. And maybe every five or 10 years, the media will turn back and, you know, kind of dip in and see if made, I think, the big payday that they're going to make until the divorce, right? I mean, until the emotional divorce when she has, you know, she's separated him from all the traditions of his family, separated him from his family. And he's going to increasingly have less interest to her over time unless the drama is kept up so money's been turned off and the royal connection is going to be turned off and well done mbd both starting and ending the segment on a lemon we appreciate that that's that's why you're a professional guys so fun to talk to you thank you so much for being here jim garrity michael brendan doherty you guys are the best go check out NR Plus. It is well worth the time. Coming up next, we get to the latest from the Alec Murdoch

trial with somebody who's been following it very, very closely. Massive ruling against the prosecution yesterday. This is a big one. The state is expected to rest its case this week in the double murder trial of disgraced South Carolina attorney Alec Murdoch. Murdoch is accused of killing his wife, Maggie, and their youngest son, Paul, who was 22 at the time, at their home on June 7th, 2021. If convicted, Murdoch faces 30 years to life in prison. Last week, testimony of Alec's financial crimes was allowed to be brought into evidence as potential motive for the killings. His life was imploding. He was under enormous stress. And the belief by the prosecutors is he killed his family, two members of his family, in order to create sympathy for him.

This week brought additional bombshell evidence, including an interview from August of 2021, in which Alec Murdoch is confronted and asked point blank if he committed the murders. It's very clear he thought he was manipulating the police in the days and weeks after the murders. And now we are learning very clearly the police were onto him and were not being manipulated at all. Joining us now to discuss the latest is Peter Tragos. Peter's been listening to the trial every day. He's been covering it closely on his YouTube show called The Lawyer You Know. He's also a managing partner of a law firm in Florida. Peter, thanks for being here.

Hey, thanks for having me. Okay, so can we start with yesterday, the judge issued a devastating ruling toward the prosecution. I mean, look, they still have a good case. But this bizarre thing happened with Alec Murdoch after the prosecution. I mean, look, they still have a good case. But this bizarre thing happened with Alec Murdoch after the murders in which somebody shot him on the side of the road when he was allegedly pulled over, like fixing a car. But the person only skimmed his head and he didn't die. It turned out this was allegedly his drug dealer, an employee, and longtime contact. And Alec Murdoch has admitted that this was arranged by Alec.

He claims because he wanted his surviving son, Buster, to get an insurance payout. Many believe this was just yet another scheme to create sympathy for him and lead people to believe that there was this mass killer on the loose trying to kill off Murdoch's. And he came within an inch of his life. In any event, he's now admitted he was behind it. But the jury, the judge ruled, will never hear about that because it would be too prejudicial and it doesn't really go to motive. And it really just kind of makes him look bad as opposed to makes it more likely he committed the murders or not. And yet there was a glimmer of light for the prosecution on this. I don't know if it was late in the day yesterday, but I think it was, where

there's a question about whether after getting this great ruling, the defense, they opened the door by touching on this subject, which would be a massive error. So can you get us up to speed on what's going down here? Sure. I mean, this case has so many different angles to it that make it just more than they would even write in a movie because it's so unbelievable. And this side of the road incident might take the cake, setting it up with your drug dealer, getting shot, making up a story, talking to a sketch artist, and then eventually not very long after just admitting you made the whole thing up. And that was not going to come in, which I think would have been great for the defense, because when you realize that he's capable of doing something like this and lying straight to

law enforcement's face, then you're probably going to think he's very likely going to do that in other cases where someone may have died at his hands potentially. And the judge said it was a bridge too far. The financial stuff came in as potential motive for the murders. This was a bridge too far until the defense did in fact open the door. The judge clarified his order this morning. That door is open. How far the prosecution is going to walk through that door, we still don't know as they haven't called the witnesses to that case. And I've heard they're not going to call Curtis Eddie Smith, who is the person involved, the drug dealer who apparently Alec Murdoch was paying $50,000 a month for pills. But instead, they're going to try to get it in through the law enforcement

officer who did multiple interviews, did that investigation, and who eventually Alec Murdoch admitted that he lied about the entire thing too. Seems like the defense and the prosecution are working together to try to streamline this story, but it is going to come in front of the jury in more ways than kind of the cryptic way it already has through Maggie's sister and through the last agent Owen, the lead investigator on the case. They both kind of mentioned and talked about it, but it was kind of vague. And the judge said in order for the jury to not be misled and to get the whole story, the prosecution now is allowed to talk about it. And I got to be honest, the defense didn't look that upset about it. So maybe they are going to try to use this to their advantage as they have with a lot of the other

prosecution evidence. How, how would this be? I thought it was a massive ruling for them, the defense and getting this kept out. I mean, I hear if I'm a juror and I hear not only did he allegedly kill his wife and his son, but a couple of months later, he tried to arrange his own bogus, you know, alleged killing on the side of the road. This is what he does. He gets in trouble and he tries to create sympathy for himself. Only when it comes to his life, he protects it. You know, he's quickly quick to take the life of family members in order to preserve himself. But this is obviously orchestrated to just look like an attempt on his life. And his story about I was just going to get the suicide. I was going to I was going to get the

insurance policy for my son is obvious BS, because if this guy wanted to kill him, he would have fired a second shot. It was very clear to the shooter that Alec Murdoch was not dead. So it's like that that whole story of, oh, I was being this altruistic guy trying to get Buster an insurance policy that's never going to fly. So this was a devastating ruling for the prosecution. It wasn't a good ruling for them. Why would the defense open the door? What did they do? What did they say in front of the jury that led the judge to think about reversing this? So the very clear intent, I think the defense has to potentially open the door based on their questions yesterday, crossing agenten is to provide an alternate

killer uh eddie was apparently skimming the money that alec was giving him for the drugs and this is all according to the defense attorneys testifying during cross-examination which they're allowed to do so that's fair game but they have asked very pointed questions about certain drug gangs and drug deals and skimming the money and how they're a very dangerous gang and how Alec Murdoch has even prosecuted this gang and how Eddie was stealing money without Alec Murdoch knowing. And Alec Murdoch was the one that they were going to come after. And they weren't worried because they knew they were going to get paid because everybody knows the Murdoch name, apparently in this small town, really statewide, probably. And that seems to be their intent.

Let me ask you something, Peter. Didn't Murdoch admit, he's already admitted that he set this up, right? The suicide. Yeah. Yes. But they're saying those gang members came and killed Maggie and Paul, Alex's wife and son. They're trying to point the finger at the drug dealers as potential killers for the Moselle incident that he's on trial for now, the murder trial. I know it can be hard to keep track. What are we here on trial for? We've heard about a boat case. We've heard about financial crimes. We're going to hear about a side of the road incident. And we've also, of course, heard a little bit about a murder that

took place at Moselle. So you're saying it helps, it potentially helps the defense to have the testimonial come in about the drug dealer who he hired to allegedly shoot him. It helps Alec Murdoch because even though it will come in that Alec arranged that whole thing, it introduces this sketchy character into the jury's narrative who was connected with drugs and potentially bad guys. And so it's good for the defense, even though Alec did this ridiculous thing and they're going to know Alec put him up to it. It shows Alec was connected with nefarious characters. That's I think their goal. And you and I sit here and we think how wild this is and what a liar he is and how bad he seems to be of a guy. The defense is basically willing to stipulate that he's a

liar. They even said it yesterday in court. You want us to stipulate that he's a liar and not go through all this? And the prosecution was like, oh, that sounds good if you'll stipulate that he's a liar. But they want to go into this evidence just to hear how horrible it actually was and how he was able to do it with a straight face and no issue. And again, the defense is also going to argue right after this fake suicide incident, he went to rehab. That's when he came to. That's when stuff started changing for him. But I mean, it definitely does not look good for him in this case at all with all of these other bad acts coming in. What do you think was the biggest testimony we got this week? I know they introduced some police interrogation tapes that we had never

seen before. It definitely seemed like the cops knew early on he had changed outfits on the day of the murder and that he wasn't necessarily being forthcoming about that. They showed him the Snapchat video. His son, Paul, a murder victim, one of the two, had taken in which you can hear Alec's voice. They seem to know Alec was guilty or at least a suspect early on. But what stood out to you as like the most interesting piece of evidence introduced this week? So we're you as like the most interesting piece of evidence introduced this week? So we're talking this week, the biggest piece of evidence is definitely that video that puts him at the scene at 844, which is right around when the murders occurred. But this week to me, and I'm on an island a little bit talking about this case, because, you know, as a

lawyer looking at our criminal justice system, beyond a reasonable doubt is important and prosecutors need to be held to that standard. And this was one of the worst investigations I've ever seen for SLED. Now, why that happened, who knows? Alex Connections, was it a good old boys club? Were they trying not to let it happen or did they just drop the ball? I don't know. But the most important evidence this week was from the lead investigator. I think Owen was his last name. And during the cross-examination, they basically went through the entire defense's theory of the case how they really didn't do anything that they were supposed to in this case they didn't protect the crime scene people were walking through it there was law enforcement uh

bloody footsteps throughout they didn't search the house appropriately they just kind of walked through and didn't gather any real evidence they didn't search the mom's house which was his entire alibi he said he was at the mom's house when the murders occurred. They never searched it. And he was letting them do, he was cooperating fully with them. They had this video where you mentioned he had different clothes on. That seems really important to you or I, right? So it would be important to try to find those clothes, right? We find out they never did anything to try to find those clothes. They never asked where those clothes were. They never looked for those clothes. Yeah, they never found them, but that's because they never looked for them. And when we talk about the missing weapons, they didn't walk the 16 minute drive from Moselle where the murders

occurred to the mom's house in Alameda. They dropped the ball left and right. And even so far as to say, they thought the white shirt that we all know now has no blood basically and no DNA on it. An expert said there was blood spatter. The chief lead investigator told the grand jury there was blood spatter to indict Alec Murdoch. Now we know confirmed by state witnesses, there was no blood spatter on that shirt, which is why it seems like they've kind of switched their angle to he must have changed because for a long time in this investigation, they thought that white shirt he was wearing that looked so clean to the naked eye had blood spatter on it to prove that he must have changed because for a long time in this investigation, they thought that white shirt he was wearing that looked so clean to the naked eye had blood spatter on it to prove that he must have been close enough to pull the trigger to get the blood or biological material on his

shirt. The investigation was, was pretty piss poor. If you ask me, I, this, this sled, uh, maintenance of the murder scene in the wake of the crime was absolutely abhorrent. They've done a good job of bringing that out, even through the state's witnesses. And you raise a good question about why. Why is that? Because Alec Murdoch is a very, very well-connected man. His family basically ran this town for a century. And there might have been a, oh, you know, let's take care of him and not suspecting him. But soon they got onto his trail. And we're hearing some of that in the examinations of Alex Murdoch hasn't taken the stand, but he did give interviews. And this one was from August 11th, 2021. That's two months after

the murders where they're asking him about the Snapchat video that his son took that he, Alec clearly did not know that his son had taken this Snapchat video of him. There's two videos. There's one in which Alec is, uh, I'm sorry, Paul, the murder victim is handling dogs. And you can clearly hear Alec in the background. It places Alec at the dog kennels where the murders took place, something Alec denied he'd ever went to on the day of the murder. And, and then there's a Snapchat video that shows, um, it shows Alec Murdoch with his son on scene the day of the murder in a different outfit from the one that he would later be talking to police in. So here they are, the cops on August 11th, asking Murdoch about the Snapchat video and his change of clothes.

It's SOT 18. There was a video on Paul's phone of you and him on the phone that night, and you were in khaki pants and a dress shirt. You were playing with a tree. But the question in that is, when I met you that night, you were in shorts and a T-shirt. At what point in that evening did you change clothes? I'm not sure. You know, it would have been...

Before dinner or after dinner? No, it would have been... What time of day was that? I would have thought I had already changed. There's not a time, but I want to say it looks to be about dusk. So that would have been 7, 8 o'clock. I guess I changed when I got back to the house.

That change of clothes is going to be important. He's clearly, there was a change of clothes. His defense is going to argue what? It was hot. It's South Carolina. He was doing yard work. He changed, but you could see he's on his heels there. He didn't realize there was a video showing the change of clothing. We've had testimony, but the housekeeper finding the shower and the wet towel in the house and those clothes are the first, the first clothes have never been found. And you say the prosecution, you know, they should have introduced something about it. They're a burden of proof, but you know, the truth is for us, if he's really innocent, why wouldn't he just go find those clothes and say, here they are, they have no blood on them.

He doesn't have the burden of proof, but you and I know as commentators, if he had those clean clothes with no blood on them, we'd be seeing them. Yeah. And some other stuff has come out that potentially could be good for them that's coming out during the trial with some of his GM data on his car. And I believe you're right about that. But this was an exact question asked to Agent Owens in, I think, redirect where he said, they didn't tell you to go search Alameda, which was where he was during his alibi, the mother's house. They didn't give you the clothes, things like that. And then on recross, the defense attorney made a good point. Is it the suspect's job to do this investigation for you?

And I think in closing argument, we've made closing arguments like this in cases where we've defended in criminal defense cases where they can sit there and point the finger at us all day. But if they didn't do their job and prove the case, the law says you've got to come back with not guilty. If you have reasonable doubt based on that. And that's the big issue in this case. We can sit here and he's going to prison for the rest of his life. We have seen the financial crimes evidence entered into this case, slam dunk, absolutely beyond a reasonable doubt. He's going to get convicted for those. So he's going to prison forever. I'm just not so sure they can prove he did this. You also have the testimony of Maggie's sister who got up there and said he lured her back to the house. They were not living

together. She was at another location. He lured her back saying, please come with me to go see my father. And then she gets there. He doesn't even take her to go to the father. She was emotional. She was powerful. She had encouraged her sister to go. She didn't, Maggie did not want to go back to him. And she's like, you should go. It's his, you know, parent. It was like the prosecution needs a very solid closing right now because they put in enough evidence to sew this story together. But the jury's, it's been very disjointed. And so the jury's heard, as you point out, stories about a lot of different events. They need a very strong closing to to lead them right to the water and the defense even more so. So right now, if you had to handicap it, Peter, would you say that this is going to be a guilty verdict or not?

I would say, yeah, I would put it stronger on the guilty side, mostly because of the other bad acts more than what they can actually prove with the murder. But I think the prosecution needs to pick a theory that the evidence actually points to and proves and not possibilities or maybe happen and just stick to that one theory and go with it and say, you know, they're going to get up and put up a dog and pony show for you. But we know he did this and we know why and go through all the financial crimes and things like that. Peter, thank you so much. We'll be back tomorrow. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.