The Megyn Kelly Show - Failed Attempt to Destroy Tucker Carlson, and Supreme Court Leaker Latest, with James O'Keefe and Sen. Mike Lee | Ep. 542

Episode Date: May 3, 2023

Megyn Kelly begins the show today by addressing the latest attempts to smear Tucker Carlson in the press through leaked texts and videos, how the campaign against him by Fox News isn't working, whether Tucker's fans will eventually return to Fox, and more. Then James O'Keefe, founder of O'Keefe Media Group, joins to discuss the ethics of releasing private text messages, the pros and cons to the capitalist incentive in the media, what really happened at Project Veritas that led to his recent ouster, his exclusive reporting on what's happening inside female prisons with male inmates claiming to be trans, his confrontation with Dylan Mulvaney and the ethics of ambush journalism, Bud Light's failing sales, and more. Then GOP Sen. Mike Lee of Utah joins to talk about new bombshell details about the Supreme Court leaker's identity, hypocrisy by the Biden Department of Justice in protecting the Supreme Court justices, nonstop attacks on Justice Clarence Thomas, the sham hearing in the Senate yesterday, and more. O'Keefe: https://www.okeefemediagroup.comLee: https://www.lee.senate.gov 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. So the orchestrated campaign to absolutely ruin Tucker Carlson continues. It wasn't enough to fire their number one star. In my opinion, Fox News seems determined to absolutely ruin him, to ruin his reputation, to make him unemployable, and ideally, in their view, to make his audience turn on him so that they won't follow him wherever he goes next. Fox News is suffering what could fairly be called a bloodbath at eight o'clock.

And now their entire prime time is suffering as a result of it. As viewers anger escalates to exponential levels in the wake of this unfair treatment of their number one star. OK, right now, the latest ratings we have are from Monday because the ratings come out the next day. So we've gotten the Tuesday afternoon results. We'll get Tuesday nights today at four 30. So I have Mondays on Monday night, the 7.00 PM hosted by Jesse waters that in the Kia advertising demo of 25 to 54, which is the number they care about beat the 8.00 PM, the 9.00 PM, the 10.00 PM, and even Greg Gutfeld at 11. He beat them all. Why is that? Because

people are still in love with Jesse. I like Jesse. This is not a hit on Jesse, but no, that's not what's happening. Jesse's getting kind of the number he was getting a little lower. There's he's suffering a bit too, but it's off a cliff off a cliff at 8 PM. They have left in droves and then they don't recover. They are not coming back for Hannity. They're not coming back for Ingram. They're not coming back for Gutfeld. It is a devastating event from 8 p.m. forward now on Fox News. They lost in both the demo and the overall to MSNBC. The only reason they're not losing every night to CNN is because they have two viewers. So it's like Brian Stelter still tunes in.

And I think Don Lemon might be the other one. I hate watching. That's the only reason. So Fox News is truly in an existential crisis right now. And their solution to their massive error of firing their number one star is to try to ruin him. Why are they doing this? I was having a private conversation with a frequent

guest of the show who's friends with Tucker, as am I, today. And I said, it's two reasons. Number one, omerta. You don't leave the cult. You don't leave voluntarily like I did with a hug, goodbye, on supposedly good terms. And you certainly don't leave when they've decided to fire you on good terms. Hell no. Fire and destroy. That's how it goes. Why? Because if they fire the number one star, he could hurt them. He still has a very massive audience. So he has to be destroyed, you see. Otherwise, somebody could employ him. His audience is mad. We have to make the audience see. We fired Bill O'Reilly because he had paid $69 million in sexual harassment settlements. You have to understand that audience. You have

to forgive us. And the audience did. The audience isn't a bunch of unreasonable people. They said, oh, I miss Bill, but okay, I'll give him another chance. And Tucker took off in the eight o'clock because people were open-minded. They're not a bunch of assholes at home. Like I don't get my favorite. I don't watch. They were never given an explanation for Tucker. The rug was pulled under him, out from under him, out from under the audience with no explanation. And so now the destroy mission has to happen so that you, the audience members, realize you just were too stupid to understand how evil Tucker was. You see, that's what I believe is clearly happening here. And the latest offering is once again, via the New York times, the new found favorite publication, apparently of Fox

news. Um, they've gone to the same reporters who leaked the earlier stuff about his allegedly horrifying text messages and the, the horrifying outtakes. I'm referring to them as outtakes, but really what they are is the anchor sitting on the set during the commercial break, making small talk with either the guest or with the staff and the producers, whoever. There's only one way to have that. You could be sitting there on the satellite feed. If you have access, if you're at a competing news channel and watching every second of Tucker, looking for him to say something and hold onto all the tapes and then release it after he got fired to make them look bad. That's not what happened. Or you could be somebody internally who's got a grudge against him, who now on direction of the bosses, it's part of the ruined Tucker plan is going back,

calling over all those tapes, looking for any moment that looks and makes them look bad. So the New York times earlier reports, he had a moment where he called a woman yummy. Then he later said he was kidding in the same segment, not reported by the New York times, the I'm kidding part. They reported that somehow they got their hands on the tapes the magical tapes secondly uh they had a making a reference to his post-menopausal audience well then a couple days after that media matters for america this far left group it was a hillary clinton backed uh entity at one point david brock this craziness, what they've printed over there. They printed, they got a hold of the videos.

We showed them to you yesterday. Oh, it's amazing how the New York Times and Media Matters have exactly the same sourcing. Who could it be? Whoever, whomever could it be? Today, we get yet another installment. Media Matters dropped another video yesterday which we showed you on our on our program and now uh today we have another media matters release and we have a new new york times release this is absurd okay this is absurd this is a destruction

campaign and the media is going along with it without without one thought for how they're participating in what is an internal work dispute, allowing themselves to be used as tools of Irina Briganti, who runs the Fox evil communications department, and her bosses, who are clearly allowing all of this. The New York Times, Carlson's text that alarmed Fox leaders, colon, it's not how white men fight. The discovery of the text message contributed to a chain of events. Notice the ambiguity. They can't say this is what caused it. At some point, these people could find themselves under oath in a lawsuit brought by Tucker.

And they're clearly not prepared to say that this is actually what did it because it obviously didn't. But it contributed to a chain of events that ultimately led to Carlson's firing. The New York Times goes on. A text message sent by Tucker Carlson that set off a panic at the highest levels of Fox on the eve of its billion dollar defamation trial showed its most popular host sharing his private, private, inflammatory views about violence and race. The discovery of the message contributed to a chain of events that ultimately led to his firing. In the message sent to one of his producers in the hours after violent Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan 6, Mr. Carlson described how he had recently watched a video of a group of men, Trump supporters, he said, violently attacking, quote, an Antifa kid.

It was three against one, at least, he wrote. And then he expressed a sense of dismay that the attackers, like him, were white. Quote, jumping a guy like that is dishonorable, obviously, he wrote. Quote, it's not how white men fight, he said. But he said he found himself for a moment wanting the group to kill the person he had described as the Antifa kid. Now I will get into the full text that is printed here. Let me start with this. The Times acknowledges we are not supposed to be seeing this text. Why? Because it was produced by Tucker and or his producer in the context of the Dominion lawsuit, which is good. They complied with their discovery obligations. He didn't hide it. They

turned it over to it would be the general counsel of the company asking him for responsive documents. I guarantee you there would have been an assurance to Tucker that this would be would stay private, that his private correspondence would stay private, and that this would stay private, that his private correspondence would stay private, and that this would not be relevant to the Dominion litigation. In my view, I don't know that this should have been produced. I don't see how this is relevant to the Dominion litigation. It's one thing to produce it and have it come up in a deposition

where basically they had cast a wide net, but there was no way this was going to be allowed in against Tucker at trial on a cross-examination. What does this have to do with lies about Dominion? He's talking about a beatdown he saw on the street a couple weeks earlier. So it was kept out. It wound up in a Dominion filing. Of course, they wanted to embarrass Fox and Tucker.

And Fox managed to get it blacked out of Dominion's filing from the public eye for all the reasons I just stated. Well, miraculously now someone has come up with it and leaked it to the New York Times. Whomever could it be? Who would have had the motive to keep it protected before, but now out it? Dominion? Oh, they have their $800 million. Why would they now be leaking texts about Tucker Carlson? Why would they do anything to risk their $800 million? Could it be perhaps Fox, which has been, in my view, again, leaking to the New York Times day by day with little bits and pieces that would hurt Tucker? And here we go again with this long text. So it's been released from a redacted court filing that we

are not supposed to see. The New York Times right now, I believe, is one of three news organizations they are suing in this courtroom to get the redacted portions of these briefs unredacted. There's a process in place for the news media that's curious about what's behind these blackouts to find out someone has jumped the gun. Someone in possession of the Tucker texts has jumped the gun and flouted the court order. Hmm. Whomever could it be? Such a mystery. So Tucker's text. A couple of weeks ago, I was watching video of people fighting on the street in Washington. A group of Trump guys surrounded an Antifa kid and started pounding the living shit out of him. It was three against one, at least. Jumping a guy like that is dishonorable, obviously. It's not how white men fight. Yet suddenly I found myself rooting for the mob against the man, hoping they would hit

him hard or kill him. I really wanted them to hurt the kid. I could taste it. Then somewhere deep in my brain, an alarm went off. This isn't good for me. I'm becoming something I don't want to be. The Antifa creep is a human being. Much as I despise what he says and does, much as I'm sure I'd hate him personally if I knew him, I shouldn't gloat over his suffering. I should be bothered by it. I should remember that somewhere, somebody probably loves this kid and would be crushed if he was killed. If I don't care about those things, if I reduce people to their politics, how am I better than he is? First of all, I think it's extraordinary that Tucker is being this introspective in a casual text exchange with a producer on his show. That's who he is. He's

constantly talking like this and thinking about himself in these ways and challenging himself when he falls down emotionally or mentally or intellectually to do better. You've seen it a million times and so have I. So they pluck this one phrase out where he says, it's not how white men fight to try to make him look like a demon. Now, I don't know what Tucker meant by that. I will say for whatever it's worth, that to me, it appears like he is describing a group jumping a kid and then they start pounding the living shit out of him. It sounds like gang violence to me. I think he's observing what looks very much like gang violence. And if you look at the stats on gangs in America and in New York City in particular, where Fox is headquartered, literally it's 99% non-white. I looked it up just to see.

Juvenile Justice Information says New York City gangs are 99% people of color. The National Youth Gang Survey, 81% people of color in gangs in America, right? Only 11% white on a national basis. So if Tucker's responding to what looks like gang violence, it is not accurate. It is not inaccurate to say it's not typically a group of white people doing that. Um, was it the most artful sentence? No, it wasn't. But as the times acknowledge, acknowledges, it was a private communication, never meant to see the light of day. I'm sure had he articulated it on his show, it would have been said a little differently. But you're supposed to not see that. You're supposed to hold it against him. And you're supposed to feel like a racist

if you're not offended by Tucker's messaging. You see, that's the game. Only racists watch Tucker or would excuse that kind of behavior. Then we get into the long discussion at the board. This alarmed the Fox board. Sure it did. Did they watch Tucker's show? Because he wasn't the most ginger on the topic of race ever. Okay?

So spare me your false indignation. They saw the message a day before Fox was set to defend itself against Dominion. The board grew concerned the message could become public at trial when Carlson was on the stand, creating a sensational and damaging moment that would raise broader questions about the company. Sure, Jan. Sure. Once again, sure. Who believes that? Then they go on to say that this was one of the reasons they settled the case. Oh, I see. You were so determined not to let the public see that message. You paid $800 million. You didn't want to embarrass Tucker. You didn't want to embarrass the company. So you pay $800 million.

And then what'd you do after you paid the $800 million? You embarrassed Tucker and you embarrassed the company anyway. What sense does that make? This was not the straw that broke the camel's back. This is an attempt to destroy the man because of Omerta. You leave the mob. The mob leaves you. of Omerta. You leave the mob. The mob leaves you. You're dead.

You must be destroyed. And because he's a threat, you fire your number one host. He can hurt you unless you convince potential employers and his audience. He's bad. He's worse than you knew. That leads me to the Media Matters video today, which is absolutely hysterical. I have no idea why they're doing this. This offends nobody, not even arguably, but here it is, the latest in the death by a thousand cuts scheme.

Well, that was a week, I'll say. Holy shit. Ten hours. That slimy little motherfucker sitting across from me. Oh, you're the best. And I wasn't talking about you. It's just the opposite. You're scaring me accomplished. No, I'm not. What do you mean?

Because you've never been this affirmed in your life? I bet. Thank you, Alex. Have a happy weekend. See you, Alex. Have a happy weekend. See you, man. The amount, it was so unhealthy, the hate. Thank you, Teresa. The hate that I felt for that.

I mean, thank you, Todd. How could you not? Well, I never feel that way, you know, because I don't want to feel that way. It's not bad. It's totally bad for you to feel that way. But that guy, I mean, he triggered the shit out of me. Where are you now? Where do you live?

The amount of times I had, first of all, fuck you on my lips was like, it was unbelievable. Suggesting that I was cheating on my taxes. Really? Oh, absolutely. Oh, absolutely. So what's where you domicile? Where are you now? Do you own a home there?

I was like, no, I do not own a home in Maine, which I don't. And. First of all, Tucker looks like a perfect gentleman in that exchange. He's's thanking the guy the a2 who's taking the mic off of him he's thanking the makeup artist he's thanking every member of his production staff who's helping him get off the things that help you be on tv i mean i guarantee you 90 of news anchors don't do that they just let the people take the things off and go on their merry way he's wiping the makeup off of his face. For those of you who are just listening, I have to say, one of the things that jumped out at me is how good men look even without the TV makeup shit. It would not be that way for some of us. Um, and he's talking about being deposed by the dominion lawyer that day, which surprise wasn't pleasant. He was supposed to love the Dominion

lawyer taking his deposition. He's supposed to love the implications that impugn his character and suggest he's a criminal tax cheat based on where he lives. I mean, who are they kidding? Who is this supposed to actually convince that Tucker sucks? I mean, truly, they're desperate. They're desperate inside of Fox. And you know, one of the things that really bothers me is, look, I think back at my time at NBC and it ended badly there, as you know, but I can't say I was totally surprised because trust me, there had been some indications internally that let's just say I wasn't totally surprised. Okay. Tucker was the number one show. Tucker got them through the Trump era, which was incredibly challenging for Fox and for all news organizations. Tucker found the voice of the people in a way nobody else at Fox did or could or has since. Tucker took slings and arrows every night.

Tucker's called a white supremacist by the New York Times on the front page, and they keep retweeting it. Tucker's a man. He's a human. He is subject to stressors and unhappiness like any of us, but he bore it for you, for the audience, for Fox. And he was on tape yesterday in the one saying, oh, this is an organization of good people. No, it isn't. No, it isn't. This isn't what good people do. You don't want him anymore. Tell him why. Just tell him. He still doesn't know why. Even Tucker doesn't know why. His lawyer doesn't know why. They won't tell him. They won't tell the audience. They just want to ruin him. The man has a soul. He has a heart. He has a family. He has a career he's worked really hard for.

And this is wrong. This is wrong. Do you want to let him go? Let him go. Tell him why. Tell the audience why. Be a gentleman about it. Be a classy person about it.

Don't be a complete douchebag like this. You know, send a message to the rest of the Fox employees that if they do well for you, they put points on the board. If they develop the number one show against all odds in the wake of Bill O'Reilly leaving their biggest star, that you'll be loyal to them, that you won't treat them like shit. We won't try to ruin their career. He didn't leave you.

You you fired him. The whole thing is so undignified and it's kind of triggering. You know, I said the other day, CNN is not doing this toignified and it's kind of triggering. You know, I said the other day, CNN is not doing this to Don Lemon because he's not a threat. They're doing this to Tucker at Fox because he's a threat and it must have been greenlit from the very top of the company. Meanwhile,

it's not settled. They don't have a deal. Why not? Because he needs to be silenced. While Fox tries to rebuild that disappearing audience. They are banking on you coming back to them. They've got a debate in August. You can't resist. You'll go. You'll forgive everything. They're banking on it. DeSantis is likely to announce this month, you're going to turn on Fox News. You can't go to CNN.

You're not going to go to Newsmax. You're not going to go to digital media. You're going to turn on Fox News. You can't go to CNN. You're not going to go to Newsmax. You're not going to go to digital media. You're going to tune in to the Fox News primetime. You lapdogs. It's what you always do. It's how they have billions. That's what's happening here. Keep him silent on the sidelines for as long as possible, unable to use his voice on any of these things, on Fox, on politics, on anything. And we will win in the end like we always do. Or will they? We'll be right back with James O'Keefe. Joining me now, James O'Keefe, founder and CEO of a new media company called O'Keefe Media Group, Cleverly OMG for short. James, great to see you again.

How are you doing? Great to be with you, Megan. Yeah, you've been busy since the last time we saw each other. We can talk about that in just a bit. But let me just start with you two have been targeted by the New York Times, which we believe coordinated in your case with the government after it sicked the FBI on you. And then suddenly it appeared in the New York Times. So I'm sure you've got some empathy for what Tucker's going through here. What are your thoughts on it? Yeah, I'm going to respond

to your monologue. I mean, these are the times that try men's souls, Megan. And it seems like a ripping of the fabric of what it means to be an American. I saw your monologue there and they're releasing on camera breaks of Tucker being human, nothing I think that's really that outrageous. But I suggest we level the playing field and release the text message of New York Times reporters. It may sound like a little bit of whataboutism, but the reality is Tucker was removed from Fox News. I was removed from the company that I founded two months ago. And anybody who thinks differently or exposes the people in the administrative state or exposes the three-letter agencies are targeted, smeared. They try to humiliate you.

So we're human beings. And nobody's perfect. You put anybody under a magnifying glass, anybody, any human being in the world, you're going to find something, I guess, maybe slightly embarrassing. The question is, does the public have a right to know it? And people like Tucker or people like me, I suppose that's our cross to bear, that any text message we've ever sent in our entire life, we put on the front page of the New York Times. Okay.

By the way, I'm okay with that. I signed up for that. I signed up for that. I'm not complaining for that. I signed up for that. I'm not complaining about that. But, but if that's the world that we choose to live in, which we do, we live in America and the public has a right to know, then why aren't we putting the New York Times' text message? Or what about Irina Briganti's? Let's see her text messages. I'm sure they're absolutely lovely. Although I know firsthand she tries to do all her business by phone so that her fingerprints

won't be everywhere. That's why it's very difficult for Irina to file a defamation lawsuit because we'd actually start subpoenaing everybody she talks to and they'd have to give up the goods. Right now, I guarantee you Fox is threatening people if they write stories about me accusing Irina Briganti because she hates to see her name in print. The people who come for you in this way, James, they're cowards. They're happy to smear you. But as soon as you turn the tables and start talking about them by name and their misdeeds, totally different story. This is a, if you would have said this to me two years ago, I would have thought you were a little cuckoo. This is a spiritual, um, good versus evil paradigm that we're now in. When I started in

my journalism career 15 years ago, it was sort of injustice and balancing like truth versus false. But now it's become a bit of right versus wrong. And the line that separates good and evil runs through every single person, whether you're a good person or bad person. We all have things that we do that we're not proud of. And I struggle with the ethics of what I do as an undercover journalist. A few years ago, I wrote a book about it. I wrote a chapter called Privacy. You have to balance the harm done to the human being with the public's right to know the information.

But where we're so off, okay? And I want to read something real quick, Megan, just as response to your monologue, because I think it's really on point. A journalist in the 1990s committed suicide. Gary Webb was his name. He wrote a book called To Kill a Messenger. To Kill a Messenger. Sound familiar? And he was going after, I think his investigative reporting was on the CIA. He said, quote, I was winning awards, getting raises, lecturing college classes, appearing on TV shows. And then I wrote some stories that made me realize how sadly misplaced my bliss had been. The reason I'd enjoyed such smooth sailing for so long hadn't been because I was good at my job.

The truth was I'd never written anything important enough to suppress. And now we have the decentralization of journalism. We have Twitter, thanks to Elon Musk. I'm back on Twitter. Broke a store on Pfizer two months ago. That wouldn't have happened had Elon Musk not let me back on that platform. And you have the decentralization of information. I think something's changed since Bill O'Reilly left Fox and since Beck was canned from Fox. This dynamic has now changed. People are waking up and they're desperate and they're targeting people like Tucker.

They're targeting people like me. And I just want to say that I'm okay with anything I've ever posted to any person I've ever sent being aired. You want to do that? Go ahead. But you know what? If that's the world we want to live in, let's go after the people in the government now and air their dirty laundry in journalism, if that's the world we're going to live in. Yeah, let's all live in it. It's just such a betrayal by your own company that you trust, that you're loyal to, that you work hard for. I mean, it's not totally dissimilar from your case where I read the allegations they were

making about you, James. And to me, the bottom line was, okay, they say financial improprieties. They say he didn't spend the money that people were investing wisely and he wasn't careful and he was kind of mean sometimes to employees. It was your company. There's no Project Veritas without James O'Keefe. And my feeling was, even if it's all true, the solution to this is to remedy whatever has gone wrong and find a way to save the company because there is no Project Veritas without you. You are the person we trust on the reporting. And even if all of it is true, what does it tell us?

You're a flawed man who needs to shore up some areas and do better. But how does the company go on without the man who built it, who conceived of it, who built it? I know a lot of people feel just as I did. Well, what were your thoughts when they were accusing you of such things? I mean, I have a lot of thoughts. They made some bizarre allegations about I take black cars around to meetings. I have too many meetings. I was raising $25 million a year, responsible for much of the revenue. I was working as hard as I possibly could while also being the on-camera talent and the chief executive officer.

It was truly bizarre. I think it's indicative of the times that we live in. Perhaps people feel very entitled. They're perhaps envious or they want to tear down excellence and hard work. I, it was very bizarre, Megan. And I,

I gave a 45 minute speech, which I can, you know, which when I left, when I left, when I was terminated, that, that have all my thoughts in it.

I learned a lot of things, Megan, about human nature, about good versus evil. It was very painful. It was very, very, very painful. Sure. Because I spent 15 years building this thing and building the credibility of this thing. And I've always tried to do the right thing. I think it's getting harder in our world to do the right thing. And I learned a lot about board management. Frankly, I never paid attention to

who was on my board. I know that Fox has a board. You should look at who's on their board. It's very interesting, private equity funds and so forth and so on. And in terms of media ownership, I was the CEO and chairman of a nonprofit, but a nonprofit is not owned. It's not owned by me. It's the board directors. And I never really paid much attention to that part of it. Lesson learned, I'll do a better job now. And OMG, the organization I found that doesn't even have a board. No, I have no board either. I'm the board. Good. As a journalist, I've always tried to do the right thing and to operate without, as they say, without fear or favor. I never make decisions based upon economics, which is very rare because if you're an investigative reporter, sometimes I've,

I spent a million dollars to do a story and I didn't really care. I just wanted to get the story. That was my model. I, I, whatever I got to do to get this story, however much it costs, it's philanthropic. So I was working as hard as I possibly could. Um, I think they made a statement when I took a helicopter ride and stuff like that. Well, when you're running around having seven meetings a day and you're trying to raise $100,000 a day to keep the only thing about me that was different, I'm the same guy I've been for 15 years, perhaps less intense than I used to be as I learned how to be an executive and learn how to deal with people, which is not an easy thing to do, by the way, if you're a leader. The only thing that changed in 14 years of doing that was we broke a story on Pfizer. And then four days later, this all happened. So the timing was very bizarre.

I could say a lot more about it, but I would say mostly what I've learned, it's a spiritual journey and it's a fight of good versus evil now. As people like me and anybody who challenges those in power are under attack on land, air, and sea. I did look this up earlier, just to answer your question. The Fox Board of Directors is made up of Rupert Murdoch, chairman, Lachlan Murdoch, executive chairman and CEO, William Burke, who looks like co-managing partner of the law firm,

Quinn Emanuel, Chase Carey, he's been at Fox forever. He's an internal guy. Anne Diaz, who is founder and chief executive officer of Aragon Global Management and Investment Group, focused on global media. Roland Hernandez, who is the funding principal and CEO of Hernandez Media Ventures, a company engaged in the acquisition and management of media assets.

Again, so another, this is a big money group. Jacques Nesser, who is, he's from Private Equity, advisor to the Private Equity firm, One Equity Partners, LLP. And then Paul Ryan. And everybody knows who he was, former speaker. So are any of those people journalists? And now he's with Private Equity. Are any of those institutions or individuals?

I mean, the Murdochs. Okay. I don't know about the others. But, I mean, I learned early on in my career that I had to be, in order for me to do what I do, I have to effectively be the final decision maker. And as you, and this is a very important point, the deeper I go, the deeper we go, we're going to have some powerful people here. Like the Pentagon and Pfizer and Google. I just broke a story this morning about the Department of Justice, the prison system. There is no area that I won't go.

The FBI raided me. I mean, I've had a whistleblower in the FBI. I have more coming out on that probably tomorrow. And just as an aside, we had Matt Taibbi on the other day. He got served by the IRS during his congressional testimony. And now he's being threatened with jail time for allegedly lying to Congress about his Twitter. I mean, so it's not just you. This is a pattern.

Keep going. But it wasn't Tucker's, the subjects of his inquiry and investigation that hurt Tucker. It was Tucker's own colleagues. It was Tucker's bosses. It was Tucker's associates that made the decision to remove Tucker, not whoever he was talking about on his show. So my point is, we certainly think, I mean, I will say there was a report that both Murdoch's I just mentioned had a conference call with Zelensky. And of course, Tucker was not a supporter of the war in Ukraine, um, of our involvement on behalf of Ukraine and the funding. And, um, but the reports are that there was no evidence whatsoever that they even discussed Tucker Carlson. But I mean, certainly there are people out there who

believe that maybe Zelensky pushed Rick. Nevertheless, that, that, that may be that even if that's true, nevertheless, it's the people around you that have to be very strong if you're going to do this. And it reveals the strength or weakness in even if you you do everything right but if but if but if the pressure from the outside forces is so great it'll make an otherwise decent person crack under the pressure i think when you have the most powerful i mean zlansky's a powerful guy i mean right i mean the things that tucker he's he effective. It was probably the most effective individual in media. It makes people around you crack under that pressure. And therefore, you have to surround yourself with incredibly strong people, both loyal to you and also loyal to the cause, such that when you have the whole world coming down on you, you don't you don't, you don't betray for lack of a better word, your colleagues, because it's easier for you to betray your colleagues than do the right thing.

This is a little difficult thing for me to explain, but it's something that I've learned in the last year and a half that we have to find strong people who are courageous and it's going to get worse. Um, or the easier thing is just don't tell the truth. Just don't do, don't do's going to get worse. Or the easier thing is just don't tell the truth. Just don't do, don't do the story. Yeah, absolutely. It's the easier thing to do. Frankly, it's much, much more. You have to be a sort of sadist, perhaps a masochist to do what I do. There's no, there's no, there's no profit in it necessarily. Right. My God, James, it's, it's, it's the worst of a lot of worlds. There's no profit in it necessarily. Right. My God, James, it's the worst of a lot of worlds. There's no profit.

There's a lot of hassle. You could get arrested and wind up in jail. You could have the FBI visiting you in the middle of the night. I mean, I sued the New York Times. I sued the New York Times and that was very expensive. It was probably, I probably spent a million, a million five a year. I don't make that type of money. Lawyers are making that money.

Okay, that's fine. So I have to run around the country raising money to pay these lawyers. In order to do that, I have to have a secure vehicle by which to run around the country and raise money to pay these lawyers because I'm on the phone with confidential sources. That was weaponized against me.

James O'Keefe is taking too many meetings to too many. Well, what do you want me to do? In order to raise the money to pay the lawyers, I have to run around in vehicles to do that. So, I mean, maybe this is just we're living in bizarre times. It's a spiritual. There's a spiritual dimension to it. But I promised you and I promised your audience I will always do what I think is right. I started OMG. I have no board. We have a lot of sources.

Frankly, Megan, more sources are coming to me than before this happened because they trust me more. And I think they probably trust Tucker more. I think they trust you more. They trust people who stick by their guns. The Pfizer whistleblower, a woman by the name of Debbie Bernal, after what happened to me, went public with me. She did not go public before, but she chose to go public with me on stage in early March after what happened to me. And I think when when these when the whether it's the D.A. indicting Trump separate issue, whether it's Fox kicking out Tucker or whether it's Project Veritas removing me, people for some reason trust me more now, perhaps because you have the scars to prove what you've been through and people will come to you as a result of that. No, I was saying, you know, I had a conversation with Glenn Greenwald, who's on the opposite side, too. You know, he left the Intercept, the company he created. Sounds familiar. But he left voluntarily because they were editing his honest reporting about Joe Biden. It was like, no, do you know me at all? And he walked out of there. Barry Weiss left the New York Times under similar circumstances.

But I was talking to Glenn and I was saying, not for anything. Fox, any of these, they could offer me $200 million to go back and I wouldn't do it. I'd rather work for pennies than go back. What we're doing over here, I'm not saying it's perfect. Of course, it's got challenges of its own, but it's honest. And there's a purity to it. There's a, there's a purity of what we're doing where nobody owns me. I'm, I have a direct relationship with the audience and I have promised them to tell

the truth and that, and I have a proven history of doing it. And if they, if I don't uphold that promise, they'll leave me. And if I do, they won't. That's, that's pure. That's something I can be proud of. I don't have to go to bed at night wondering whether I'm somehow furthering an agenda I don't really believe in just to line somebody's pockets, whether it's at Fox or NBC or any of these entities. They have very clear agendas, all these guys. And usually it's just to line their pockets.

It's just increasing the bottom line. I think it's just to line their pockets. It's just line increasing the bottom line. I think it's the commercial imperative. And if you're a capitalist, which many of you are, this is the thing about that, Megan, you tell me what you think, but in journalism, it seems like the commercial imperative is incompatible with truth telling sometimes. I mean, advertising, I mean, that's the bread and butter of journalism. The point you made about Pfizer. Right. Brought to you by Pfizer.

Brought to you by Pfizer. And we grow up with it. I mean, I was a young man. I was born in the mid-80s. You just listen to all this commercial stuff and you sort of become used to it. But if I put in my videos who it was brought by, like a NASCAR driver with patches all over myself, no one would believe me, rightfully so. I never took advertising money. No one ever told me what to do.

But the more, Megan, the more successful I became at my job, the more people resented the fact that nobody told me what to do. It's almost like, Megan, someone told me recently, James, everybody wants to control you. The bigger that you get as a presence, the more everyone, especially in politics, it's almost like they resent the fact that you're not controllable. They resent that and they wish to control you. They want you to do what they want you to do. And my job, and I'm speaking again as a journalist here, is not to be controlled. It's to operate unafraid and impartial and to follow the source wherever the story goes, however the facts lead me. That's my only imperative.

It's not commercial, by the way. If I make money, it is fine. If I don't, we'll see. But that's the only variable in my mind as the owner of OMG moving forward. Well, listen, I love that you picked yourself up, dusted yourself off and reinvented again, that you did not let anybody keep you down and that you just kept going. Half of life is just keep going. Can you keep going? You know, when, when you fall, when somebody pushes you, however

you get down, do you get back up? That's really, that's more than half the game. People respect it. I respect what you're doing. And I don't know how we'd be without a James O'Keefe muckraker out there. Is it muckraker or wrecker? I know his name is in your book. An advisor told me, I won't tell you who, but I had some really amazing people helping me through this. Hardest thing I've ever been through in my life. You know, I was, I was, it was, it was painful.

But someone said to me, James, you get knocked down in a boxing ring. You have whatever it is to count 10 count to get back up. He said, even though you're wounded, he said, you get the F back up right now because people need you and people believe in you. It was very hard. But within three weeks, we started a new organization. It's a subscription-based news organization, and we had a very successful launch, incredibly successful. Thank you to everyone who subscribed to O'KeefeMediaGroup.com to sponsor these cameras that now we're shipping to – we have over 1,000 people that we've sent these cameras to. And a lot of people, Megan, were just buying the cameras on Amazon themselves. They weren't even on my payroll. And we have, I don't know, dozens and dozens of stories right now that are in the pipeline. So you're right.

Getting back up was the hardest thing. I had to fight everything inside myself to not, I mean, I don't really think I'm constitutionally capable of giving up per se, but it was so disillusioning and discouraging. And I think that I've always been a relatively naive person to do what I do, because if you think about the fear, if you think about the government, if you think about the FBI, it'll drive you nuts. Okay. And I try not to, um, I try to focus on the good people. And what I drew from this process was that there are a lot of really great people. Some of them may be rather quiet, but, uh, there are a lot of good people in the world and, and let's focus on telling their

stories. You have such a huge fan base. I mean, I think virtually everybody I saw online commenting on your separation from project Veritas was like, there's no project Veritas without James O'Keefe period. Sorry. And they can keep going in whatever form. It's not like I wish these people, people ill will, but you are the brand. Like you're the reason we want to see the videos. We trust the way you're going to do it. You know, I mean, I, I've seen enough of you over the years that I know what I'm going to get. And I know your critics are going to say it's all bullshit and it's going to wind up being legit. Like that's a pattern with you is like you upset everybody, all the right people. Then they try to say this is fake or improperly edited. Then they

never actually went in their lawsuits against you and you get proven, right. It's happened time and time again. And you cover things that nobody else is like the stuff you did with the teachers that we covered last fall, you know, with like, and, and some of those are gone now. Thankfully, some of America's school children no longer have to deal with these crazy ass biased teachers who hate white boys. Like the one woman on the Upper West Side, I think it was the Trinity School. Thanks to you, you know, in today's day and age, this makes you very controversial. You're it was the Trinity School. Thanks to you. In today's day and age,

this makes you very controversial. You're a lightning rod, whatever. You got to keep going. All right. So that leads me to your next- We hold a mirror up to people. That's the video camera, right? And oftentimes it's a hidden camera and they don't like what they see in themselves. So's i'm not a psychologist but there's all types of projection and gas lighting and you doctored the tape in the beginning of my career megan people were saying that i actually use cgi to make the lips move of the subjects anything any explanation but what what they're watching is real and i was so young and broke that the notion i knew how to do that with the lips i mean i could barely use final cut seven. I mean, but people will do anything to rationalize their own

understanding of the world around them. And, and they, they are in this sort of disinformation bubble. So the role, my role is to shake them away by, by, by revealing something that makes them, because you have to do deep inner work when you're looking at something that makes you question your own views on the world around you so they tend to project and accuse and accuse and accuse me of that which they're guilty of like they doctor tapes they doctor tapes um you know you you you you lie to your audience well you you lie to your audience. Well, you lie to your audience. And it would make an otherwise reasonable man question his own perceptions of reality. So you really have to be strong and you have to surround yourself with very strong people who also have a firm constitution. All right. Well, let's talk about some of the stuff you're doing at OMG because it's great and it's really fun to watch.

Like exposing what's happening in prisons right now. some of the stuff you're doing at OMG because it's great and it's really fun to watch like exposing what's happening in prisons right now. What's happening there is not fun, but I appreciate the exposure because too few people are talking about what's happening to the female prisoners who are literally forced to live their lives with sex offenders who have declared themselves female two minutes ago. We're now coming into the prisons and raping these women. I think people ignore this because they're like, oh, they're prisoners, they're criminals. Okay, whatever.

It's sad, but move on. No, these women, I saw a lawyer arguing and she convinced me that this is an eighth amendment violation of cruel and unusual punishment. You take a woman who committed a crime and these aren't always violent crimes that these women commit. Usually they're not. Um, maybe it's a drug crime, something like that. They have to go behind bars and then you make them share a cell with a male sex offender. Who's convinced the authorities in places like Washington state, where you did your

expose that they're actually female and then they get raped and no one seems to care. So tell us about, we're going to play some clips, but tell us kind of what you've, what you've done here. Well, this is a breaking story today. The department of justice official is saying that Merrick Garland attorney general is rolling over on this transgender policy called million dollar baby. So that means that men who are pretending to be women are going to female jails in order to, according to our sources, have sex with women. Men are, you know, they keep their male genitalia and keep their testosterone, but say that they're women in order to intentionally impregnate females in a prison. So this is highly, I mean, this is in many cases, rape, in most cases, rape.

And, and they are, they are then suing for a million dollars. And according to this department of justice official who did not know that she was being videotaped, we released today, she said, this is wrong. And Merrick Garland is sort of rolling over on this. Now, we don't know what the solution is to this public policy issue, but maybe it's separate prisons for transgender people. Maybe it's keeping people in the biological prison that they were born with. So, you know, so this is a big story. And we went to Washington state where a lot of these inmates are in this prison in Tacoma. We we obtained footage of some of these women pleading through the plexiglass on these video recordings, pleading for help. And the prison, Megan, the video I released today, I went there actually on Sunday with my microphone and my cameras, and the prison officials drove onto the public area where I was standing across, and they said,

you can't be here. I said, well, I'm a journalist. I could stand here. So this was a product of a source who came to us with video recordings to OMG, and she's very scared for her life and terrified of retaliation. This is another situation in which the comfort of biological men takes precedence over the comfort and safety of women. These trans women, quote unquote, trying to get into the women's prisons are men. They're biological men. And so as not to hurt the feelings of these biological men, they force the women who have no choice about where they go to live with them. And some of

these guys are sex offenders. It's absolutely outrageous. We reached out to this Washington prison and we have a statement, which I'll get to in a second. The long and the short of it is they're not sorry. They're not backing down. They prize equity overall. But here's just before we get to that, some of the setup. So here's James. This is one of the women, an actual woman in the Washington prison. Now we've disguised, well, not we, but James has disguised the voices to protect their privacy. Can you imagine the shit storm that could be created for them if they're on camera there? So they're a little hard to understand. For the watching audience, we've verbated it on the screen so you can see.

For the listening audience, I think you can understand it. Take a listen. So we have men rapists, men murderers, child rapists, men who have killed women and are in prison for raping and killing women who get put in our room. Imagine coming to your room one day and you're in close custody and you turn around and there's a man standing up peeing in the toilet. Some of these men know that they're men. They're not trying to be a woman.

They just say that to come here to have sex with women during their prison sentence. I've heard some of these men talk about how they would want to get a girl pregnant so that the girl could form a lawsuit against WCCW

and say that he raped her and he's willing to go along with it. All right. And just for the listening audience who didn't get it, this is two different inmates, but the first one saying we have men rapists, men murderers, child rapists, men who have killed women and who have killed women and are in prison for raping and killing women who get put in our rooms and goes on to say some of those men know they're men. They're not trying to be a woman. They just say that to come here and have sex with women during the prison sentences. And the last bit was some of these men talk about how they'd want to get a girl pregnant. So the

girl could file a lawsuit against the prison and say she was raped. And the guy too is willing to go along with it so that they can get a payout. And that is sort of where you're reporting advanced to James, where you sat with an official at the federal DOJ, a woman, her name is Linda Noel, a school psychologist, uh, on the education and the education branch of the DOJ. And is she going to play this clip, but is she qualified to be opining on what policy is when it comes to the prisons in Merrick Garland? I don't understand school psychologist knowing about that. Yeah, we believe so. I mean, she's an official with the department, the federal department of justice and, and the state prison, this, these inmates are transferred from all over the country. Um, and we believe that the federal government is involved and the Department of Justice is involved because these lawsuits are federal.

They're filing federal lawsuits and they're getting what the so-called million dollar baby, million dollar settlements because they're impregnated. So there needs to be a fix here. But in her words, Merrick Garland, the attorney general, is rolling over. He's there's no backbone. And it's so we believe that the public has a right to know what this federal official who's involved in the prison system has to say about it. All right. And here's a bit of that. You'll hear her speaking with one of james's uh reporters and i believe at one point here you'll hear interspersed a clip of a prisoner with a disguised voice listen a man right is in on it where he's trying to like basically get part of the lawsuit that's going on like because well they all want to see after this one yeah like how does it actually work it's like the woman

basically is raped or says she's raped whether it's potential or not a girl pregnant so that the girl could form a lawsuit against WCCW and say that he raped her and he's willing to go along with it. So the slang word that they're calling it is Million Dollar Baby. And then they go through ACLU and ACLU sues the DOJ. And the DOJ, unfortunately, under Merrick Garland, if your call is over, it doesn't want to go through the courts. It will just pay too far. That's the bad thing. So the DOJ won't fight because it's easier just to pay people off because the Biden administration favors this. What's that? The Biden administration favors this with the, with the women being subjected. Well, it's I don't know if they favor it. I think that they're they're they're rolling over there.

They're there. It's a it's a horribly complicated area that needs reform. And rather than actually address the issues, I'm curious to see your statement because I didn't even get a statement. So I'm anxious to hear what what the women's prison said. First of all, they start with we're big fans of James O'Keefe. No, that's not, that's not what I thought you were serious for a minute. No, it says, um, the Washington state department of corrections strongly emphasizes the importance of inclusion and representation by recognizing the unique challenges that non-binary and transgender incarcerated people face. Uh, DOC takes allegations of crime seriously and any person incarcerated here suspected of committing a crime is subject to the

same laws and investigations regardless of where they were housed or their gender. It's our position that a person's right to safe and humane treatment does not change based on their gender identity. DOC continues to actively work with community outreach organizations to identify and address possible systemic issues regarding housing, mental health, and medical

services for people who identify as transgender. We remain committed to the health and safety of all people in our custody. They go on to say, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, pointing to a policy that reads, if people self-identify as transgender, intersex, and or gender non-binary, the policy provides detailed guidance on placement and programming. And they go on to say, we have a team of people who will make the final placement determination after evaluating a healthcare assessment, a mental health assessment to figure out whether this person belongs in the man's or the woman's prison. Finally, for good measure, a common myth perpetuated about people who are transgender is that they will commit crimes of assault against vulnerable

populations. This is not the case. So we should not believe the women who say they've been raped by trans prisoners because it's a myth, James. It sounds like a desperate statement. By the way, if you or your producer could send that to me my team is is blowing up interested in that statement to get that out um yeah my i in the piece i published um i spoke to multiple sources i even recorded one of the sources and this is a new source an actual prison official now not one of the mates who said they are on defense james they are scared to death of you this is what this guy was saying i blurred his voice um but it's we stand by reporting megan this is happening women are getting raped and there's million dollar lawsuits after they're impregnated so are they saying that's not happening are we okay with that in society i mean some megan some people have told

me not many but a small percentage of mine, why do we care about these prisoners? They already broke the law. First of all, they're women and the eighth amendment of the constitution prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. Women should not be being raped by men in their prisons, period. It's wrong. In their cells where they cannot leave. I mean, which they cannot leave. It's deeply immoral what they're doing. And why do they do it? Because they're worried again about equity. They say we strongly emphasize the importance of inclusion and representation by recognizing the unique challenges that non-binary and transgender incarcerated people

face. I don't care. I don't care. Well, I'm not worried about the importance of inclusion and representation and the challenges the transgender people in prison face. I'm worried about the women. So the Eighth Amendment's right to no cruel, unusual punishment and the so-called equity inclusion are right now at odds with each other. So somebody in Congress, I know Matt Gaetz and Ted, not Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio have looked at this report by OMG. What's the solution?

I don't know, but that's not going to fly. You can't get raped. Your right not to get raped is paramount here. And first of all, we stand by reporting this is actually happening. These inmates have child porn convictions. These are men, biological men with male genitalia. Yeah. Most of whom are not gender dysphoric at all.

They are using it as an excuse to get a free pass into the women's prison. That's obvious to anybody. Get out. You don't belong in the women's prison. You're not a woman. You're not. I don't care why you feel uncomfortable. Should have thought of that before you broke the law. Sorry. You're going to have to stay in the man's prison because that's what you are. That's another reason for you not to commit crime. You have enough problems if you're trans. All right. You don't have to add criminal to your list

and then prison rapist to it. So I don't really have a lot of empathy for the position that these guys are in. I have a lot of empathy for the women who are subjected to this. This was not part of the punishment. This is not an okay sentence for someone who's female, who commits a crime and has to go to jail. Stand by. There's much, much more to get to. Got to squeeze in a break.

James O'Keefe stays with us when we come back. Speaking of the women who are being raped in prison by men declaring themselves trans you recently had a run-in with dylan mulvaney and you were trying to get dylan to comment on this from right my memory and some people it was a mixed reaction to this video some people even who weren't fans of dylan were like ah leave dylan alone don't don't do this and other people were like go for it dylan's never seen a camera. Dylan doesn't like Dylan's brought this on themselves, but I'll show a little bit of the clip and get you, get your thoughts on it. Do you have a comment on the story here, uh, of the women being raped by the men claiming to

be transgender? James O'Keefe, OMG News. Do you what do you think about the women who are being raped by the men who are transgender? Do you have a comment about that? Please don't come in the elevator. What do you think about what is your comment to the women are being raped by men claiming to be transgender, Dylan? Which is the absurdity of Dylan parading around like Audrey Hepburn. I mean, this is a man. This is a biological man.

Yes. Trying to pretend. Second person to say she looked like Audrey Hepburn. That's what she's obviously going for that. Listen, I mean, what is the ethics of confronting people? First of all, she's a leader. She's a represent. She's representing a movement.

Right. And in a world, you started your program where Tucker's personal text messages to colleagues were aired before the world to see. This is a public figure in a public place. And Mike Wallace at 60 Minutes stopped doing this sort of thing in, I believe, it was the mid-'80s. His rationale, which I a was a silly argument, was that these sorts of ambushes don't really bring any light. They're just heat. But I think they do bring light. I think they hold people accountable. I think I think we need accountability and getting a microphone in someone's face is a really important thing. I'm not invading their privacy. I'm not filming them covertly in their home. I'm in a four seasons hotel. And I think we need more people chasing people around with cameras. And in fact, if you're

watching this program and that resonates with you, I'm going to DC to chase a bunch of people around this weekend. And I want thousands of people with microphones. Go to our website, o'keefemediagroup.com and send me a little note there and I'll equip you to do that. Well, it's an interesting point because Dylan will, of course, sit with Drew Barrymore while Drew's literally on her knees praying at the trans altar. But Dylan won't subject Dylan's self. I can't do I'm sorry, I'm not doing she for Dylan. Dylan won't subject himself to a reporter who might challenge dylan on these issues that we're discussing like dylan said i couldn't tell if it

was a joke or if it real but if it was real it should be illegal to not use the proper pronoun for me well it's not right we're still in america dylan and what is legal is for these trans women quote unquote to go into female prisons and, and attack these women. No one seems to care. And so we're like, it is interesting. Like Dylan, if you're going to be the spokesperson for the trans community, what do you think of that? No one has asked you because you won't subject yourself to those interviewers. Which he inserted himself as the spokesperson. He no doubt wants to be the leader of a movement, whether it be through the Bud Light situation. And by the way, that organization lost billions

in revenue, whether it be through his public, you know, persona and his interviews. So yeah, you subject yourself to the public like that, you're going to, you should be held accountable. And I actually think it's more than that, Megan. I think if there was any justice in this world, you know, in a world where my personal attorney client privilege documents, the FBI raids me at gunpoint. Remind your audience, I was raided by the FBI over the Ashley Biden diary, which as a reporter, I have a right to receive from a source in that world. And then the New York Times works in concert with the FBI to like leak things and, and shame me through anonymous sources. Although there's nothing that I've done that's illegal. Well, in that world, it's perfectly

acceptable and necessary for for for us as citizens to go into the streets and to ambush these people with microphones and cameras and ask them really uncomfortable questions. It's not even, it's not even, it's not even a question about whether we should do that. We need to do that 10,000 times to everybody. Dylan should have said, I'm against that.

It was kind of a no brainer. Like, no women who go into prison should be safe and protected, but obviously Dylan doesn't feel that way because otherwise he would have given you an honest answer. Dylan Mulvaney is somebody who tried to make it as a star as a man, couldn't make it, decided to come over into our lane because he knew that he would get sponsorships. And people jumped right on board the Dylan train. And that is why I don't believe Dylan's transition is real. I think he's exploiting the trans movement and women and our compassionate spirit to

make money. And by the way, you mentioned Bud Light. For the week ending April 22, the brand's in-store sales plummeted more than 26%. That's per Bump Williams Consulting, a firm that specializes in the alcoholic beverage industry. They have not stopped the downward spiral. The week before that, sales dropped by 21%. The week before that, it was only 11%. So they are on a downward trajectory at Bud Light that is rivaling the downward trajectory of the 8 p.m. on the Fox News channel right now.

Yeah, I think the pendulum is swinging. I think people, individuals, citizens have more power than they ever have, and the institutions are losing power. People follow people. That's just what people do, and people will follow Tucker. In a way, they haven't followed the previous um uh individuals who've left that network for example and way back when i think people really really trust the trust is waning in institutions and it's so important for us to decentralize information gathering that's that's my mission at omg i i think we can decentralize journalism we to. We can't trust big behemoth corporations to tell us the truth, obviously. And that's through no fault of their own. They have a commercial imperative. Their pursuit is profit. So that's fine. But if you want to be an investigative a lot of people to tell those sorts of stories, whether it be in an elevator with Dylan Mulvaney or women's prison in Seattle.

I want like people on the ground, if this resonates with you, like go to my website and I'll send you a camera. They're very expensive cameras, but we've had a lot of subscribers help us out. We have many, many, many, many stories to come. And when the government does come after me or you or whoever, we as Americans have to understand that it's directly proportional to your effectiveness on doing the right thing. I think people get that. Even after Trump was indicted in New York, his popularity has seemed to surge and people that were skeptical of him seem to be less so. It's like, you know, it used to be the case when the government went after you. It was like, well, we must have done something wrong. Now it's like, well, gee,

he, you know, he must be doing something right. I know it's true. So it's, it's amazing, isn't it? Yeah. You mentioned the Trump surge just to bring people up to date on that. The latest real clear politics average shows Trump at 52.1%. DeSantis is in the second position with 22.9%. The average is Trump up 29 points over DeSantis, who is his nearest competitor. The latest polls, because that's the average, the latest show him up 58 over DeSantis' 22 and 62 over DeSantis' 16. Before that was 153 over 21. I mean, it's just, and that is all posted. And Robert F. Kennedy is a junior in the Democratic.

I know you interviewed him and I watched your interview. I thought it was well done. He's now at 20% in the Democratic population. And if you add in Marianne Williamson, you're looking at 30% of Democrats who want someone other than the sitting president of the United States. And RFK and Trump have some things in common. I have some things in common with both of them. Not everything, but some things. This is the decentralization of power and the corporate citizens to take it upon themselves to be truth tellers and exposers. An army of exposers is what we need.

We knew they were going to come after people like me and Tucker and you and whoever. They're going to come after anybody who questions them. But in response, they can take down one man. They can't take down an army of individuals. And that's what they're scared of, Megan, in my opinion. Well, that's what's amazing about Tucker is that everything I've seen, you know, all of his outtakes, it's the man we all know. He's exactly the same off camera, maybe with some saltier language, as he is on camera. That's why this campaign is failing.

The best thing they've released against him was this thing in the New York Times today. And I honestly don't think anybody's going to believe that's why Fox News fired him. All right. That's that offended literally no one in the Fox News management and their attempts to pretend otherwise are going to fail. James, thank you for being here. Good luck with the new company. And it's great to see you. Thank you, Megan. See you soon. All the best. Senate Democrats stooping to new lows in their ongoing efforts to undermine public trust in the U.S. Supreme Court. This days after Justice Alito went so far as to write an op ed in the journal saying we are in danger. We were protected, but our lives have been threatened. We've been facing assassination

attempts and people need to take a seat. They need to take a step back. And what are the Democrats do? They lean in to the hateful rhetoric rhetoric against our justices. Why? Because now it's a conservative Supreme Court and they can't handle it. Things were all fine when the liberals were lean in to the hateful rhetoric rhetoric against our justices. Why? Because now it's a it's a conservative Supreme Court and they can't handle it. Things were all fine when the liberals were in control. But now that we had three justices appointed by President Trump and the court leans right, this is what we have to deal with. Senator Mike Lee of Utah once clerked for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito and knows the high court very well. Senator, great to have you on the show. How are you?

Doing great. Thanks so much, Megan. And congratulations on having a million subscribers. That's a great milestone and look forward to the next two and three million after that. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. So what this is actually kind of nuts with the Democrats did yesterday. I mean, right on the heels of what Sam Alito wrote, talking about how they really are in danger now, more so than in the past. They are protected, but they are in danger. And I want to get to what we saw at this hearing yesterday. But let's just spend a minute on what Justice Alito was sounding the alarm on, because, you know, you know the court better than I do. But I did cover it for three years as a young reporter and I practiced law for a decade. I've never seen a justice write something like this.

He seemed ticked off. He seemed, I don't want to say emotional, but definitely it was emotionally charged. And the biggest headline out of it was he thinks he knows who the Supreme Court leaker is. Do you do you think you know who the Supreme Court leaker is. Do you think you know who the Supreme Court leaker is? I think he has a really good idea as to who the Supreme Court leaker is. And I also think that anyone who knew the law clerks and the justices, the other court personnel at the time, or even had access to interview each and every one of them, could reasonably have figured it out in relatively short order. For whatever reason, the Supreme Court marshal wasn't given enough resources to do that the first time around.

I think they could reasonably ascertain that now. And yes, it was somewhat emotionally charged when he gave that interview and those statements, because it's an emotionally charged thing when you think someone is either trying to have you killed or trying to have you at least believe and fear that you might be killed if you go through with a particular Supreme Court opinion. So he has every right to feel strongly about this. And we all should, because this is a full-blown attack on the Supreme Court itself, on the institution, setting aside one's ideological viewpoints on how Supreme Court cases ought to be decided. This is an attack on an institution. And the Democrats are behind it. They're fanning the flames. And we've got to

bring this back under control, lest we do irreparable damage. He writes in the journal, the threats are the leak of the draft Dobbs opinion, quote, made us targets of assassination. He said it created an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust. We worked through it. And last year, we got our work done. This year, I think we're trying to get back to normal operations as much as we can. But it was damaging. He writes, I personally have a pretty good idea of who's responsible, but that's different from the level of proof that's needed to name somebody. And then he goes on to say explicitly, this was a campaign, the leak, to try to intimidate the court. Those of us who were thought to be in the majority thought to have approved my draft opinion were really targets of assassination. It was rational for people to

believe that they might be able to stop the decision in Dobbs by killing one of us. He goes on to say that these folks who believed the leaker was on the conservative side, whether the justices themselves or people who worked for them, this is infuriating to me, he writes. Look, this made us targets of assassination. Why would I do that to myself? Would the five of us have done that to ourselves it's quite implausible interesting he says five instead of six because the chief justice concurred with the conservative justices he didn't want to overturn roe versus wade though um so he's clearly not counting roberts in this would we have done this to ourselves i don't feel physically unsafe but that's because now we have a lot of protection

being driven around and basically a tank so this is the state of affairs right now for our justices. And before I move on from his opinion piece, is there anything left to be done, Senator, on unveiling who was behind this? It would not take much at all. There are things left to be done. And you're right, it wouldn't take much to unveil it. All that needs to happen is that the marshal of the US Supreme Court needs to be authorized to conduct a new investigation and enlist the help of deputized members of the US Marshal

Service to help conduct that interview, that investigation. They need to interview each and every law clerk and any other Supreme Court personnel who had close access to the circulating draft opinions. I'm confident they can do that as they interview them, as they review their phone records and as they follow up on those interviews and the document reviews. They can find the leaker. I'm quite confident of that. And this does need to happen. Look, this is no exaggeration to say that this put their lives at risk. I remember exactly where I was one year ago yesterday when the leak was announced. I immediately my concern was for the welfare of the Supreme Court justices, particularly those whose names were attached to the then leaked draft of the Dobbs opinion. Very concerned. I got on the phone immediately and made phone calls to make sure that the Supreme Court was taking adequate precautions as far as their personal

safety. Everyone knew, everyone understood immediately the natural ramifications this would have. And it was of its very nature, the kind of thing that could threaten them, intimidate them, and subject them to a risk of physical violence. And it's unacceptable that over a year later, we still don't know who it was. Well, some of your colleagues in the government had very different reactions, because we now know that Merrick Garland, our attorney general, was specifically advising those who were on scene there to protect the justices at their homes when people were protesting in the wake of the release of the draft leak and the actual opinion when they were most

vulnerable, when, as he points out, it would have been rational to think if you assassinated one of the five, you could stop the reversal. Merrick Garland was essentially telling these cops, stand down, don't do not arrest the protesters, even though if you protest as an attempt to interfere with the carrying out of justice with the conclusion of an opinion, you are breaking the law. You're breaking the law. You're committing a crime under 18 U.S.C. Section 1507. You're breaking the law if you show up at the home of a Supreme Court justice in order to protest or demonstrate, trying to influence that justice in some way. This is a crime. And based on these documents that were unearthed by a whistleblower and through my colleague from Alabama, Senator Katie Britt, we discovered that the U.S. Marshals Service has issued these

training guidelines saying that when you're at the home of a Supreme Court justice, don't make arrests under Section 1507 without prior approval from the U.S. Attorney's Office, which makes it all but impossible that it's going to occur. And then they added additional elements onto the crime, elements that do not exist in the statute. They have to be criminal threats. There has to be some indication of violence under the circumstances. Those are not elements of Section 1507. And so not surprisingly, not a single, not one arrest under 1507 has been made at the home of a Supreme Court justice in the last year since this Dobbs leak occurred, even though ever since then we've had protests at their homes. They followed them to home, to their favorite vacation spots,

in some cases to their churches, and yet not a single arrest is made. That's absolutely unconscionable. It's unforgivable. And what you said about how Merrick Garland said, oh, you know, they have full authority. The marshals have full authority on site to do whatever they want on the site. And what you're telling me now is that these leaks that your fellow senator got show exactly the opposite. They were being told, don't arrest the people unless they cross these additional lines that we've imposed that aren't in the actual law. But he looked you in the face and said something very different. That's right. About two months ago, he was in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, on which I sit, for an oversight hearing. I asked him about arrests under 1507. He told me they have full authority to arrest. But we now know that's not true because a month later, in a different hearing in front of a different committee,

Senator Katie Bray from Alabama had unearthed these these training materials showing that they were telling them not to arrest. And then a few weeks after that, I interviewed the deputy attorney general at another hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee and got almost no response as to why this was happening, other than that she refuted my suggestion that they had added elements to the offense of Section 1507 and that they had made it all but impossible by adding those elements and requiring prior approval for an arrest by the U.S. Attorney's Office. She's dead wrong in suggesting that this makes it all but impossible for them to arrest. And that's borne out by the facts, as evidenced by the fact that notwithstanding the fact that dozens, if not scores, if not hundreds of these protests have been carried out at the

homes of Supreme Court justices over the last year and not one arrest under Section 1507. This, by the way, is the whole reason why Brett Kavanaugh almost got murdered. I mean, this is real. This is not hypothetical. It made it a lot harder for them to detect him, to figure out what he was doing, by virtue of the fact that they don't arrest these people. Meanwhile, is there any doubt that if it had been a protest outside of the home of Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, or eventually Katonji Brown Jackson, and the draft opinion had included the three of them, let's say Katonji Brown Jackson was on the court by that point, saying we uphold Roe and they had the votes, They were in a five person majority to uphold Roe.

But the conservative protesters were outside of the homes of those three women chanting and threatening and menacing that Merrick Garland would have fully empowered those marshals to arrest those protesters and clear the premises like that. One can easily imagine that that would have been the outcome. Now, that didn't happen. So there's no clear way to prove that. Although I will point out that for nearly 50 years, that was the status quo. And yet you didn't see conservatives or pro-life Americans showing up at the homes of Supreme Court justices who supported Roe versus Wade and its progeny, protesting in front of their homes.

If that happened, it certainly wasn't a regular thing that I'm aware of. And one can imagine that if this had erupted in the scenario you described, that there would have been arrests, as there are constantly arrests made for people interfering with access to the entrance of an abortion clinic under the FACE Act. Dozens and dozens of these prosecutions are being brought for those, even though the FACE Act also protects churches, places of worship from similar activities and acts of vandalism. Overwhelmingly, the Justice Department errs on the side of prosecuting the abortion clinic crimes, but not the crimes against churches. That tells us something about what they might have done had this opinion gone the other way.

Right. Or even the centers that help pregnant women looking for an alternative to abortion. Pregnancy crisis centers also covered. So what have these women done? You're mad at them because they've chosen to have their baby. That's if they need to be, their clinics need to be bombed. What's happened in the wake of Dobbs, which overruled Roe, notwithstanding these pressures, is a almost uniform attempt on the left to delegitimize the court, to endanger the court, as we've just discussed, and to delegitimize the court. Now, I think you tell me, but I think the latest attacks on Justice Thomas fall in that lane to try to go after him as some sort of unethical man for not having reported certain trips he took that were paid

for by a rich friend of his, Harlan Crowe, even though any independent expert you talk to will tell you he had no obligation to do that. He did not have to disclose those trips that he took because Harlan Crowe wasn't in front of him on the Supreme Court. So then they found one case in which Harlan Crowe's company was the parent company of a litigant that was trying to get an appeal at the U.S. Supreme Court. All of the justices rejected that appeal, as they do in 99% of the cases. And now they're turning around and saying, gotcha. It was the parent company that didn't, as I understand, even own a majority interest in the lower company. And that lower company was trying to get an appeal and all the justices said no,

but he didn't recuse himself. So gotcha. These are beyond frivolous attacks. Look, this is a character assassination campaign that's been going on for decades. I mean, literally for 31 and a half years, they've been going after Justice Thomas. And look, whether you agree with him or not, I happen to agree with him very, very frequently. And I have enormous respect for him. But even if I didn't agree with him, you can't look at the life of Justice Clarence Thomas without having profound respect for him. But even if I didn't agree with him, you can't look at the life of Justice Clarence Thomas without having profound respect for him. This is a man who was born into poverty in the segregated South and has risen to a pinnacle of success in his profession and in the leadership of our nation's government. Now one of the longest serving Supreme Court justices in

history, not to mention one of the more influential American jurists this country has ever known. He is a deeply principled, deeply ethical man. And yet they attack him nonetheless and have been continuously for 31 years because he has the audacity to be a conservative jurist and also happens to be black the left can't handle that and they're attacking him as a result they're using that then as a springboard and in tandem with the assault on dobbs with the refusal to make arrests under section 1507 they're trying to delegitimize the court to destabilize it. That is extremely dangerous, and we can't let that happen. So the Democrats remain in control of the Senate as a result of the disappointing midterms for the GOP. And they decided to hold hearings on this Thomas

allegation and whether the Supreme Court needs to be reined in by its co-equal branch of government over in the legislature. And look, you guys can pass laws all day long that, you know, affect citizens. Um, it's a different matter when you're trying to impose new ethics on the Supreme court and pressure them into doing it themselves. It's, it's a co-equal branch of government. So, uh, the Democrats don't totally seem to understand that and decided to hold hearings. They tried to get chief justice Roberts to attend. And he said, you can pound sand by, um. I don't answer to you. But they went ahead with it, and their chief witness was this guy, is it Kedrick? K-E-D-R-I-C.

Kedrick Payne of the Campaign Legal Center, which my understanding is pretty much like a left-wing money group, who decides to offer testimony about the ethics at the Supreme Court. And your friend, Senator Ted Cruz, got a hold of Mr. Payne and had some questions about some alleged hypocrisy when it comes to enforcing the rules against the conservative justices, but maybe not so much the liberals. Here's a little bit of that. Well, if that's the standard going and traveling and being paid for by others, then guess what? Just about every Supreme Court justice has done so. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was appointed in 1993, two years later. And the time she was on the court, she took 157 trips. Mr. Payne, yes or no? Do you think Ruth Bader Ginsburg was corrupt? No. Nor do I. Ruth Bader Ginsburg was not alone. Justice Stephen Breyer appointed the year later in 1994, took 233 reported trips.

Again, yes or no, Mr. Payne, do you think Stephen Breyer was corrupt? No. Nor do I. I would point out Justice Kagan has done the same thing. Justice Sotomayor has done the same thing. And yet none of my Democrat colleagues care because this is a political attack directed at a justice they hate. Pretty powerful moment. And I have to say, in no way was Ted Cruz being unfair. All those are honest statements. Can I tell you, Senator Lee, even Nina Totenberg of NPR, which is no right-wing organization, was defending Justice Thomas and the high court yesterday. That's how far the Democrats are reaching here. And Megan, they reached so far that by the end of it, I believe my Democratic colleagues on that

committee were seriously regretting holding that hearing to begin with. It backfired spectacularly because it allowed us to focus for two, three hours on the deficiencies of their claims, on the absurdity of the accusations against Justice Thomas, and on the fact that they're trying to make something out of nothing by comparing him to a standard that did not yet exist on what was reportable and what wasn't. He complied. He complied in each and every instance with the law. Now, if you really want to drill down into this, we can identify things that other justices have done that probably were not in compliance. We're not focusing that other justices have done that probably were not in compliance. We're not focusing on that because we don't think it makes them corrupt. We think those

were at best minor instances. But if you really want to drill down on this and make any minor infraction into something, this is not going to end well for the Democrats because many of their heroes arguably failed to comply, at least to the extent that they claimed Justice Thomas didn't comply. This guy Payne, our friend Comfortably Smug over part of the Ruthless podcast, pointed out his group took money from Sam Bankman free to the tune of $760,000. He also appears to have misled you guys while under oath yesterday. Your colleague, Senator Kennedy, was asking Mr. Payne about his bias against the conservatives on the court,

trying to figure out whether he personally insulted Chief Justice Roberts. And the guy wiggled and wiggled. We'll show you the exchange and then we'll tell you the update. Watch. He retweeted this out. John Roberts is a disgrace. No, I disagree with with with with Justice Roberts. Well, you didn't call him Chief Justice Roberts. You called him John Roberts. No, this is you retweeted this. No, Senator, I did not retweet that.

Yes, you did right here. I will need to see. I will. Can you provide a copy to me now? senator i did not retweet that yes sir you did right here i will need to see i will can you provide a copy to me now but i did not can you tell me why you think chief justice roberts is a disgrace i did not say that did not retweet that okay maybe maybe twitter got it wrong twitter didn't get it wrong. Mr. Payne was not being I'll give to him the courtesy of saying he was incorrect, though you could argue it was a lie. He had to clarify his testimony just now, acknowledging that he did, in fact, retweeted somebody else's tweets by Norm Ornstein calling John Roberts like he's your neighbor and not the chief justice of the United States, quote, a disgrace. So this is the best the Democrats could do in their smear campaign. And the reason I raise it, Senator, is because we're really talking about life and death here. Back to the Alito letter, you know, where he

outlined the extraordinary steps they're now having to take in order to protect their lives. And these Democrats are on a campaign from what Chuck Schumer said outside the Supreme Court to what Maxine Waters said and to what Lori Lightfoot in Chicago said about the Supreme Court's coming for us and it's time to take up arms. And the left doesn't seem to care. When Chuck Schumer went onto the steps of the Supreme Court of the United States and said, you've unleashed the whirlwind and you will pay the price, that was a threat. And it's a threat every time they try to accuse someone of doing something that they didn't do on the Supreme Court. It's perpetuating and encouraging threats when they say nothing about the non-enforcement

of criminal statutes being violated as the lives of Supreme Court justices are being imperiled. And make no mistake, Megan, this is motivated by a sincere desire to erode the reputation of the court, which has taken a hit because of this campaign, a campaign, the flames of which are aggressively banned by the mainstream media establishment, which almost never tells the full story, not with respect to Dobbs, not with respect to these protests, not with respect to the scurrilous allegations against Justice Thomas and other Republican appointees serving on the Supreme Court of the United States. So it's leaving a mark. They want to delegitimize it.

And I think they're trying to drive out the justices they don't like. I think they're trying to make life so miserable for Justice Thomas that he decides to step down early, perhaps early enough to allow President Biden to replace him with some progressive jurist of their choice. Well, first of all, on that latter point, if they think that's going to succeed, they don't know Justice Thomas, as I do. That's not going to happen. But what they're doing is wrong. And what they're doing is also leading towards something else. They desperately want to finish the job that FDR started back in 1937 and pack the Supreme Court. We cannot ever let that happen. Here's an example. We've talked about the Schumer soundbite many times. Here's just an example of some of the

other attempts to delegitimize these justices, something that this is historically unprecedented. This didn't used to be the way. It's not three. It was three justices named by one president, Donald Trump. This morning, the radical Supreme Court is eviscerating Americans' rights. Extreme ideology. I am spitting mad over this. We have six extremist justices on the United States Supreme Court who have decided that their moral and religious views should be imposed on the rest of America. Radical Republicans are charging ahead with their crusade to criminalize health freedom. Judges who promised to follow the law but wink, wink, nod, nod, were cleared in order to get where they got today.

The conservative majority of the Supreme Court shows how extreme it is. A woman's fundamental health decisions are her own to make, not some right-wing politicians that Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell packed the court with. But this decision must not be the final word. It's pretty remarkable, Senator, especially, I'll just give you this last thing from Alito's op-ed. He writes this. These types of attacks are new during my lifetime. We're being hammered daily and I think quite unfairly in a lot of instances. And nobody, practically nobody is defending us. The idea has always been that judges are not supposed to respond to criticisms. But if the courts are being unfairly attacked, the organized bar will come to their defense. Instead, if anything, they've participated to some degree in these attacks. And he finishes here after Justice Kavanaugh was accused of being a rapist

during his Senate confirmation hearings. He made an impassioned speech, made an impassioned scene, and he was criticized because it was supposedly not judicious, not the proper behavior for a judge to speak in those terms. I don't know if somebody calls you a rapist, we're being bombarded with this. And then those who are attacking us say, look how unpopular they are. Look how low their approval rating has sunk. Well, yeah. What do you expect when day in, day out?

They're illegitimate. They're engaging in all sorts of unethical conduct. They're doing this. They're doing that. It's one thing to say the court is wrong, he says. It's another to say it's an illegitimate institution. Fair points? Not only fair points, but this emphasizes why I have such enormous respect for my former employer, Justice Alito. This is a decent, good man and a first-rate jurist, one of the best ever to serve on our nation's highest court.

He, along with Justice Thomas, have been dragged through the mud, through the dirt, mercilessly by people who are not concerned about the facts because they have only one objective, which is to delegitimize the court. Liberal Democrats understand that they can no longer rely on the Supreme Court to adopt policy and impose it on an unwilling public, the American people, because the far left's policies are so unacceptable to the American people that sane electorates don't elect politicians willing and able to bring those policies about. So the Supreme Court has made clear it's not going to do their bidding. And for that, they're furious. For that, they're trying to delegitimize the court so they can pack it. I wrote a book about this, a book that's about to come out on paperback on June 6th called Saving Nine. And in Saving Nine, I explain this long standing campaign to try to delegitimize the court so they can remake it in their own image. And as I explained in Saving Nine, you can't undo this. Once they flip the switch, if they were to pack the Supreme

Court, it'll go tit for tat, depending on who's in control of Congress and the White House, until before you know it, you add two here, you add three there, you add four there, because you can't remove those justices once they've been put in place. It becomes a one-way ratchet. Before long, instead of a nine-justice impartial tribunal, you will have a highly politicized, enormous body, more resembling the intergalactic Senate in the Star Wars movies than any judicial body ever could appear. This is high-stakes poker they're playing. They've got to be called out on it. And that's why I'm so grateful that you're willing to speak the truth on this topic.

Well, I'm disgusted by what they're doing. I mean, I remember the day when every justice, so long as they were truly qualified in their credentials, would get a 99, 98% approval out of the Senate because we didn't partizize everything, politicize. That's what I'm looking for. Politicize everything. Not everything was about partisanship. And now not only have we gone tribal, but we're actually endangering these nine people who could be making millions in private practice, but have chosen to serve.

We're lucky to have all nine of them, even though I know you and I disagree with some of them. I respect them. I don't want anything to happen to them when they're in the majority deciding things against people who are more aligned with the federalist Society like you and I might be. And I can't stand that they're getting away with doing it to these conservatives. It's outrageous. Thank you for fighting the good fight. Again, the book is called Saving Nine, the fight against the left's audacious plan to pack the Supreme Court and destroy American liberty.

All the best to you, Senator Lee. Thanks so much, Megan. And thank all of you for joining us today and all week. More and more of you are finding the show on YouTube. We're on fire right now over on YouTube, youtube.com slash Megan Kelly. If you would like to join the fun, check out the shorties. So my mom calls them, um, and go ahead and subscribe to the podcast too, that we can can consume the show at your leisure if you happen to miss it when we're live on Sirius XM Triumph Channel 111. Welcome, and we will keep bringing you the truth. Tomorrow, the guys from Ruthless.

Love those guys. You'll love it too. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.