The Megyn Kelly Show - Failures of Elite Media, and Hypocrisy of Left on Mob Behavior, with Bari Weiss and Nellie Bowles | Ep. 788

Episode Date: May 10, 2024

Megyn Kelly is joined by Bari Weiss, founder and CEO of The Free Press, and Nellie Bowles, author of the new book "Morning After The Revolution," to talk about the New York Times proudly not covering important stories like the Hunter Biden laptop, the dumpster fire Slack channels at elite institutions, corporate media being "late to the party" giving independent media a two year window to cover interesting stories, the mob harming the janitors at Columbia University's Hamilton Hall, the privileged protesters pretending to be victims, the left hypocritically refusing to come to the defense of workers and condemning mob behavior, radicalism rising in America and Jews "not counting," protesters who go for the vibe, the insane anti-Israel letter from the National Lawyers Guild Columbia University chapter, the NYPD's mic drop response, where the hateful campus protest chaos goes next, the power of simply being "normal" in today's culture, the need for alternatives to the craziness and a reality-based media, the woke movement against what is "knowable," what happens next regarding support of Israel by the left and right, their marriage and parenthood, Bowles falling in love with Weiss while both were at the New York Times, how it taught her the true values of the left and legacy media, the push to join a cancel mob but the need to resist it, how "the gays have won," and more.Weiss- https://www.thefp.com/Bowles- https://www.amazon.com/Morning-After-Revolution-2020-That/dp/0593420144 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, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at noon east. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and happy Friday. The anti-Israel and in some cases anti-American campus protests that began a few weeks ago have continued as finals and graduation approaches. It's happening in big cities like New York, but also throughout the country. And just wait until these brats go home for the summer and the 2024 campaign really heats up. They're going to be so sad. No more attention. Back to us. The Free Press has been doing some great reporting on all of this, which we will get to in a minute. But first, joining me now is Nellie Bowles, author of the brand new book, Morning After the Revolution, Dispatches from the Wrong Side of History.

Great title. And it actually really conveys what the book is about. It comes out next week. You can go pre-order it right now. Nellie is also a reporter with the Free Press and the head of strategy for the Upstart Media Company, which was founded by our pal Barry Weiss, happens to be the wife of our guest today. And she's going to be joining us in a minute. Welcome back to the show. It's a pleasure to be here. It's a pleasure to be here in person. I know. It's so fun. I came out here for the Mr. Burcham premiere and now I'm spanning it into two days of shows. That's so fun. We'll stay in LA. It's a good town. I don't understand what you and Barry are doing in LA. Like why? I don't get it. Everybody who's not a far lefty seems to have moved to Texas or Tennessee.

I'm long on California. I think there's problems here. There's issues. I write about some of those in the book. But I think to give up on California, I mean, it's like to seed the most beautiful land in America. It's to seed the most beautiful land in America. That is true. To seed all this ground? No way. This is stunning. Just driving around, once you get past all the homeless people in the tents, you just think, why doesn't everybody live here? And then the next thought is, don't ever let your children to come here. Otherwise, they'll never leave.

Like, I need them to be East Coasters. But it is gorgeous. And I would say it's better than the lifestyle of Manhattan. Like when we were living in the Upper West Side and the stress of 2020 and all the intensity of the New York media world was happening, getting out of that scrum. I mean, California, for all of its eccentric politics, it's also just like a less – politics are not like the center of your life here. Or the media world is not the center of your life here, or the media world's not the center of the universe here in a way that's very relaxing.

What is that like? Walk me through that. It's wonderful. What happens at dinner? We just cook. We hang out. We've got a deck. We sit out there. You and Barry don't talk about other things, but when you have guests over. Yeah. We have other conversations, all sorts of stuff. Do you have to know about Hollywoodwood is it one of those things you're like no it's great

that we don't we're sort of on the outside of that too so it's all just sort of light they still like you even though you can't do anything for them well maybe as like entertainment as sort of their local entertainers who are here and we bring like a headline or two along with us and like talk about a news story and then move on to, I don't know, Botox anecdotes. Yeah. Okay. I'm into that too. See, I can- Not that I've had any, but I'm thinking it's probably soon time. I can spam both worlds. So I might be able to last for a week out here. All right. So why did you write the book? Wow. That's a good question.

I wrote it because I had been a reporter at the Times and I'd been a features reporter who'd been given a lot of autonomy to write features. And then 2020 came and there were all these amazing stories and the world was kind of spinning into this wildness, into what you could describe as insanity, but it was definitely a revolution. And I wanted to cover it. And it was becoming very hard to do that within the confines of a paper that for a while decided not to cover those most interesting stories. Now I think they're trying to pivot, but that's another conversation. But I wanted to write about it all. I wanted to write about

what was happening in Seattle and Portland and what was going on on the streets. And I ended up quitting the paper and writing this book. It's crazy. It kind of gave me an excuse to cover the revolution. Well, because you wanted to write about it in an honest way. You didn't want to go cheerlead it necessarily. You want to just report what you found on the ground. Yeah. But that wasn't exactly what they wanted. I think, and again, there's a small correction that you're starting to see happen. But for a long time, it was very explicit within mainstream American publications that we were not covering what was happening. And it started around in 2019, but really 2020, it was said out loud. NPR put out a statement saying, we are not reporting on Hunter Biden's

laptop. That is the rule of the newsroom. That is stated explicitly. It wasn't subtly said. It was proudly said. And I think within the times, within every mainstream American liberal media institution, it was quite proudly stated, we are not going to cover the most interesting stories. And that was really frustrating as a reporter who was curious about the world. And I didn't go to write propaganda. I wrote to cover things with curiosity and open mind and a sense of humor. And I just couldn't help myself. Yeah, they weren't in the market for that. Yeah, there wasn't a market for that.

Did they send you to Chaz? Did they send you to San Francisco? Because, you know, the book is replete with these stories of what you found there. So they did eventually send you, but... So a couple of the first chapters and a little bit in the beginning of the reporting, I managed to kind of eke that through. And then that became untenable. It basically became impossible within the world of the paper. I mean, most of this was done sort of socially. It was done kind of by colleagues. It wasn't a top-down thing. The editors of all these

institutions, the leaders of all these institutions don't want this kind of closing of the journalist's mind. They want the old values. But the closing was a kind of communal effort of the staffers. What's the line of command? Because wouldn't it just be your boss, you go to your editor, your assignment editor, and they say, this is what you're doing, Nellie. How does somebody who's lateral to you shut down your reporting? Well, there's a couple of reasons, but I think the big, really interesting one that happened was the creation of these huge Slack rooms that all staffers were in. The infamous New York Times Slack room.

But I think every single one of these institutions- Where all bullies go. Yeah, where they all go. Do not create a Slack channel at the free press. No, absolutely not. So I know we have like a tiny one and I was like, watch that Slack. No, don't do it.

No, if people want to complain at my show, they have to text me. Perfect. It's as it should be. But it flattened the hierarchy. So you had like a 3,000 person Slack channel where someone like a junior editor on the wire cutter section could be like just reaming a top politics reporter. And that

politics reporter would then have to respond. That's annoying. And it was like, that's not good. Crazy flattening of the hierarchy. That's bad. We want hierarchies. They work. Yeah. Hierarchies are useful. Especially now that you're at the top of it. Don't you see? Now I'm like, we need you should have asked my permission to even post anything in Slack. It's like these idiot White House interns who think they're going to set Israel policy. Shut up and get the coffee. No one gives a shit what you think about the Mideast. They won't even put their names on it. It's like if you're releasing a public letter, you got to you got to name yourself. And otherwise, you know what? You know what your thoughts where they go? They go in your journal. Dear diary, I'm so angry about the evil Israel. That's fine. You can have that face as a kid.

You can't try to hijack the White House and demand policy change. Anyway, this is why I'm against Slack channels. I'm with you. I don't mind. Like, I don't mind if my staff complains about me or policy at the show. That's part of, you know, being a corporate person. Right. You got to vent. I mean, I don't begrudge anybody that. But allowing a forum where they can go and do it publicly foments insurrection, you might say. And that's bad. Anyway, so the problem at the time time Slack channel is infamous for leading to this kind of problem. Complete flattening of hierarchy, complete flattening. And then basically the 5% of loudest, craziest voices get to decide editorial policy because you don't want to be yelled at by a thousand people in a Slack room. And I mean, it's, it's a little, maybe you do. And, and yeah. Depends on the person. But I think in think within these leftist circles, it does matter. You know, they're still obsessed with reputation and standing. And certainly, I'm sure, at the Times, even more so.

And prestige and goodness and the appearance of good. And writing this book and, like, doing this reporting and going to these places required giving up a little bit of my need for prestige and good standing and being good in the eyes of people who I'd spent most of my life trying to be good in the eyes of. Yeah. And that's very honest. That was really jarring. But at the same time, it was so fun to report these stories and it was so fun to do this. I mean, a lot of it is such low hanging fruit. Like we joke at the free press about the idea of like time laundering, which is this notion that the mainstream media waits about two years before something is sort of koshered to write about. And so let's say puberty blockers for adolescents and the side effects those might have. The sort of sub stack, free press, all of the independent media outlets get a full two years to report on that before the mainstream media decides it's safe to touch it. Pretty great. Or the lab leak. You get two years. So you really

get a big head start on a lot of these stories. The laptop, exactly. You get a big head start. So in a lot of ways, it's very fun as a reporter because there's so many stories that the old institutions are scared to touch. Well, let me ask you a question on that. And I could bring this up when Barry comes too. So there's a piece of that that is fun because you have a corner on the market. Then there's another piece.

I really like Bill Ackman and I love what he's doing on X Now, and I love watching his awakening, this billionaire investor who's realizing how pernicious DEI is. But I would be lying if I didn't say there's a piece of me that is also slightly like, all right, Bill, you're a little late to the party. Welcome. But the way people write about it, he's, finally, Bill Ackman is going to bring down. It's like, a lot of us have been fighting this fight a very long time and we're called a bunch of names for it yeah like fine that you're here now okay but you're a little late but a lot of people i'm late to the party a lot of people are late about you no no you should you could it's like i don't it it But you want more people at the party.

Yes. I don't know. This reminds me of when, sorry, just a one-off. No. Charlize Theron. Yeah, love her. She played me in a movie and it was about sexual harassment. Yeah, the Me Too movement. And when she went on her media tour to promote the movie, people said to her something about like,

well, Megyn Kelly wasn't first, you know, she, she had been harassed by him years earlier and she didn't come out with it until years later. And she had the nerve to say, Megyn Kelly was late to the party. She had no questions. She would, bitch, you weren't even at the party. You never fucking came forward with any allegations. I'm sure you were harassed, but you're too pussy footed to say anything about it. So take a seat. All right. I don't want to hear about the fucking but there was no party for Fox News and then The New York Times exposing Harvey Weinstein. So I was like so pissed about it. So I have like some tolerance for people like you who are legitimately on the other side of just liberalism and like sort of with those people and of those beliefs who then were open-minded

enough to see, wait a minute, I have questions. Wait, this, I may not be on the factual side of this particular issue. And I have that same tolerance for Bill Ackman. I just don't like the lionization of people like Bill. Cause it's like, no, of course, of course. Yeah. And I mean, it's fair, but at the same time, like I of it in terms of seeing evidence and responding to evidence. I was always any which way, although, of course, the progressive movement doesn't allow any questioning, so they would consider me as having done so. But it's more like the chapter about San Francisco. If you live in San Francisco and you still believe that drug legalization, which I believe for many years, that drug legalization is a good idea after walking for years along the streets and seeing people dying on the streets as you're walking around. And that being the ideal progressive outcome where it's the freedom people have to just do drugs,

die on the streets, be given cash every month to just sort of continue to live there. If you look at that and say, this is working and my ideas here were right and I shouldn't change my mind on this, you're fooling yourself. I mean, it's almost religious at that point. It's not based in reality. You're not an evidence-based person. Yeah. And emotionally, I want to say drugs should be legal because I'm like, the government should get out of as much of people's lives as possible. And if people want to do drugs, whatever. But the lived experience, the reality you see on the streets, you're like, you know what? This isn't working. Harm reduction's not working.

You write about how you walk around San Francisco these days and you realize that this is what it's like to be in a failed city, a dying city. Is it because of that, because of the open air drug use? I think that plays a huge part. The crime? Yeah, I think it's a bunch of factors. One is the open air drug use. I think that plays a huge part. The crime. Yeah, I think I think it's a bunch of factors. One is the open air drug use. And San Francisco is a good example of there's a reformation happening there legitimately right now. So it's pretty interesting. I mean, it's there's an awakening. Yeah. By the formerly woke. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, you've got the open air

drug use. You've got the crime because of the policies around petty crime basically not being prosecuted. You have the destruction of the public school system through basically the belief system that any standardized testing is white supremacy and any, let's say, accelerated math. This is the thing that really lit the city on fire, that offering accelerated math class is racist. And so that kind of got gutted, although now is starting to be reformed. And then you have the housing policy, which is sort of the progressive movement is actually also very anti-building housing. Oh. Because it's always about like butterflies in backyards and chicken coops and things like this. And building an apartment complex doesn't sound very like green and lovely, even though it, of course, is green and lovely. But so the housing costs have gotten crazy. So you don't have a middle class in San Francisco

anymore. So it's kind of a vortex of all the wackiest ideas. But I think you can look at San Francisco as maybe five years ahead of the rest of the country in terms of, no, but I mean this in a good way, actually, because now you're seeing the reformation and the waking up of people who are saying, this isn't working. And so I write about that, about the recalls that you saw in the city for the first time in decades, where the citizens stood up and said, this is enough. This is insane. It was amazing. And it was amazing. And so I think you could see that in other liberal spaces. In San Francisco, there's a fair share of Asians in American, you know, Asian descent. And they tend to be very hardworking. You know, stereotypically, they would be a very hardworking group and who believe in merit.

So I wonder, will it happen in other cities that are more full of like the Upper West Side where I live for 17 years, which is not a bunch of Asians. It's a bunch of woke leftist women in Lululemon. I don't have as high hopes for them. Well, you're right that San Francisco, the revolution, the moderate reforms that happened there very much were driven by the Asian community getting very galvanized and getting pretty pissed off. Yeah.

Because some of the school board members were basically calling them like white supremacists, whatever. Longer story. Right. I think, I mean, for the Lululemon ladies who you live among, I would say the person who best describes that is a Rob Henderson with the idea of luxury beliefs, which is this concept of people advocating for politics that have nothing to, that don't impact their lives, but that sound really nice to them. So like, let's say you live in a doorman building. Defund the police.

You live in a doorman building, but you want to abolish the police. Well, that sounds very nice for you. Yeah. But for the rest of us who don't have a doorman, it's more of an issue. Yeah. And it's a perfect example of what you were saying before, which is like, oh, you know, I care. I care about the people. So I don't want to see them arrested for drug use. I just want to see them die in the street so I can step over them. I want to bypass

their corpse on the way to my multimillion dollar townhome. And in the Upper West Side, it's the same thing where we have to defund. We have to defund. The police are evil. And they'll go home to their door man building on the Upper West or the Upper East. And they'll be police, not less. We want them in the vestibules. We want them everywhere. But if the money's not there because they listen to these rich ladies in the Lulus who are having liquid munches, but they feel really good about themselves, folks. I imagine you just wandering around the Upper West Side glaring at the Lulu ladies. Oh, my God. Probably also wearing Lulus. Nellie, I would be walking down the streets there and people would be like, we signed

this for Greenpeace. We signed it for Planned Parenthood. I'm like, do you watch the news? Do you have any idea? Like, no, I know. I don't want to. I walked around Fox with my first child, you know, Fox News onesie. And I felt like a revolutionary. I really did. I mean, I was like I felt like a Navy SEAL. I was like, bring it. Fox News crazies. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. The abolishment of the police is a good luxury belief example. All the sort of public school faux reforms that actually make the school worse when the people who are pushing for them tend to send their kids to private school.

Yes. These are the classic hypocrisies of the moment. One of the other things you have in the book is a little journey to Chaz, which remember when the left thought that would be a great idea? Yeah. Now we're seeing it every college campus in America. Yes. It is mini Chaz's. Mini Chaz's. No one's been shot so far, but if this is allowed to continue. No, they're just doing hunger strikes and complaining a lot about missing lunch. Did you see, like there's been a couple of soundbites of these students saying, they're checking our vitals regularly. Oh my God. I shouldn't be laughing. In two minutes, you could have Chipotle here. Just stop it. Oh, we have it. Okay. Let's play that one. Here we go.

You know, we have people regularly checking our vitals. We have people, you know, constantly worried about us. We have people donating stuff all the time, like rain boots, you know, all the stuff that we need to stay warm. The currency doesn't actually care about, you know, doing good or being altruistic. What they care about is if they look bad. So let's make them look bad. Oh, sweetheart. They're not the ones who look bad. I mean, they also look bad, but this is the absurdity of this. So in Chaz, that was an autonomous zone that was created in Seattle by, autonomous zone, sorry, a group of anti-fascists called Antifa, written about by Andy Ngo very beautifully,

took over a neighborhood in Seattle. They actually took over the gayborhood. The gayborhood. The gayborhood. The gay neighborhood. The nerf. The nerf. And they declared it an autonomous zone and wouldn't let police in, ambulances in. And I think there's a lot that was interesting about what happened in that moment and in that time when they had that. The city of Seattle embraced it. The mayor said it was like a beautiful, it was like summer of love. Obviously there were shootings. Obviously people died. Till all the murders. Yeah. And then it was less lovey. But I think that the thing that lasted from that moment and that we're seeing now is Antifa believes that violence and the threat of violence is a very acceptable part of a political

conversation in America. And there was a lot of work at the time to pretend like Antifa wasn't part of the BLM movement and just pretend like these two groups were totally separate, but they were working together for a while. And you saw it very clearly in the autonomous zones in Chaz because there were guys with guns wandering around, guarding those new borders. And I think now with what we're seeing on college campuses and with the comfort around, let's say, chanting for intifada or chanting for violence, you're seeing that kind of anti-fascist notion of like, let's bring the threat and the frisson of a little violence back into the American conversation in a way that I don't think we've seen for a while. And so that's become quite widespread and quite acceptable. violence back into the American conversation in a way that I don't think we've seen for a while. And so that's become quite widespread and quite acceptable. We've got a bit on the latest with this young, the Columbia chapter of the Lawyers Guild and their latest ridiculous accusations against the NYPD. And by the way, we have an exclusive

statement from the NYPD responding and it's on fire. We'll get to it in a minute. But you are seeing the parallels there, too. They're calling for more violence. They don't care. Yeah. They would like to see some bodies hurt. It's described as an anti-war movement, but it's very much a pro-war movement, which you can be pro-war, but just say what you are. And the mainstream press ought to describe you as what you actually are. And also, I don't really want to send Plan B pills or dental dams to your war effort. I should know what I'm getting. First, soon you're going to need Chipotle and pizzas and also condoms and HIV tests. Literally, they're asking for that.

All right, but wait, I want to talk a little bit more about the book because you also talk in there about Barry. And I've talked to both of you about this separately, but this is sort of a piece of your awakening on where you were working, what your own values were, and whether these people who were so accepting of so many things and people were in fact accepting of you. They couldn't have cared less that you were a lesbian. That's, of course, big. No, cared less that you were a lesbian. That's, of course, big. No, it was a good thing. Yeah, that's big, big on the left. But I think the right's fine with it now. Oh, yeah. For the most part. No, the gays have won. They won. The gays

have won. That's why they had to move on to the weird trans stuff and abandon the gays. And now there's the divide. But anyway, it was the fact that she is not a hard lefty. She's more heterodox in her approach to issues. Very controversial. She was a Biden voter who never voted Bernie or never wanted Bernie. It was really, you know, she's within the New York Times community. She was considered a radical right winger. Yeah. So. I don't know. Basically, in tandem with reporting on some of the stuff that was happening, I also fell in love with someone who was on the wrong side of the movement. And I, for a while, was a little naive about it. I didn't think it would be an issue because I was sort of like, I still believe in these core beliefs. I still, I'm like, I'm still pro-choice. I still want universal health care. These are the things that matter.

This is what defines politics, right? But no, because the political movement is a social movement. It's not a checklist of policies. And by falling in love with someone outside of it, I had violated kind of the social contract of it. And I just, I mean, I couldn't, I couldn't change that reality. I just. So this other reality changed you? Yeah, a little bit. I think it just was a wake up call for me to realize that pleasing this movement and pleasing this

really increasingly tight, increasingly strict group was not going to make for a happy life. And it was an impossible ask of myself and a miserable ask of myself to, to squelch curiosity as a reporter. And then to, to, to not love someone who is just a fraction of the way politically different from this movement. It was, it seemed ridiculous and I just couldn't go along with it. And yeah, then I ended up marrying her. So I don't know. It all kind of worked out in the end. So did people fall away? Oh, yeah. People who surprised you? Yeah, of course. Of course. I been through controversies in my own past. And for me, when the people fall away, you don't realize it immediately.

It's like. Some of them told me right away. Oh, they did. Okay. It's like several months went by or a year or two. And I'm like, oh, whatever happened to that person? And then you realize, oh yeah, fuck them. The main thing when I really, there was no like, I was never was never canceled I'm not I don't have like a

sob story to tell like I feel very empowered by my life and even leaving the times I left and then we started Bear had started a amazing at the time very little newsletter and I joined and it was growing and so like things didn't feel I don't feel like I'm like here with my violin, but there was the one moment when there was a real sort of fracture was when everyone on staff at the Times was supposed to tweet about this one young editor who had somehow contributed to the Tom Cotton op-ed that ended up getting all, you know, the opinion editor fired and all of this. And we were all supposed to tweet that this op-ed puts our Black colleagues in danger. And basically, we were all supposed to kind of join a call to get this young guy fired. Was this the guy who wrote the piece coming out with how they made him choose the Starburst? Exactly. And I just wouldn't send the tweet. What's his name?

Adam Rubenstein. He's amazing. He's fabulous. I just couldn't send the tweet. I couldn't do it. I just didn't believe, I just didn't want to cancel him. And I had been part of canceling people before, so I wasn't opposed to the idea. But I just couldn't do it. I was too weak, I think. I was too soft at that point. Whatever the word.

Maybe too strong. And by not doing that, then I got, people in my life wrote me basically saying, by not doing this, you are endorsing violence against black people. Oh, my Lord. Yeah, no, seriously. I'm dead serious. I'm dead serious. And so I write about it. And I write about it in one of the last, in I think the last chapter.

And it, yeah. last in i think the last chapter and it yeah i mean at a certain point you just no anything i say sound i make myself sound like too like heroic in this i'm not i say what you're gonna say the audience will decide if you're a hero most of the book is not flattering of me i think and and i think rightly so i'm i'm implicated in a lot of it. But at a certain point, you have to say, like, enough is enough. And I'm not just going to go along with what my friends are doing, even if I really love these people, because it's a frenzy. It's not reasonable. It's not rational. It's lying about what it is. It's lying about what its intentions are. And you just have to few fallouts who are like, maybe she just really likes the moon. I don't, I'm not sure that she makes fire with like sticks. It's not a thing. It's fine. But it's good. I mean, net, net, I think you're right. It's good. Again, I want the audience to know the name of the book is Morning After the Revolution. That's a good name. I hope you're right that the revolution has kind of closed to the point where we are the morning after. I know you're the morning after.

Well, I would say that the revolution, like the intensity, the loudness, the city's burning part has passed largely. Although let's see what these college kids do, but I don't think they're going to be. Or it's on pause. But it's only because it's now in the institution so fully, it doesn't need to be so loud. So you don't need to scream so loud. If to be hired at a university, you have to write a DEI statement. And that actually is the only criteria that's considered for the first. They just stopped that at MIT. It's starting to be slowed down. But these things completely imbued themselves within

institutions to an extent where you didn't need protesters. When you have like Raytheon doing Robin DiAngelo-inspired trainings, you don't need to be breaking the windows anymore. You won. So it won. And I think quite fully. And one thing I try to do in the book is to write about the movement from the movement's perspective and to help explain why it won. Because you can't just say, oh, it's dumb. Oh, it's bad. Because that doesn't explain why it won. It won the day. And so, yeah, I try to wrestle with that and help explain part of the appeal of it. I just think it's so fragile, though, because have you really won when what you've really done is force the hostages to their knees with a gun to their head? And so making a smart move of like,

okay, I'm either going to die or I have to get to my knees right now and say the words, most human beings would comply. But have you really won when it's not willing? Their hearts aren't in it. Your hostages are doing what you've told them to, but they're not really on your side. Does anyone really think Raytheon cares about DEI or making people issue these statements? I believe the universities are in, but corporate America, I don't know, the random Americans who felt like you did, not necessarily about James Bennett and that piece with Tom Cotton once an institution is changed, it's very hard to change it again. Inertia is powerful. I also think that it has won so fully in our education system that those kids are being raised to be true, true believers in really the most eccentric versions of these ideas and these politics.

It's very scary. Now you, may I call attention to your condition? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm super pregnant. For radio listeners, I'm super pregnant. It took an inch of makeup to hide the melasma. Welcome to my world. So I think about this sometimes.

I mean, I think about it because my kids are older, 14, 13, and 10. But, you know, you and Barry at some point are going to have to direct your children on, okay, it's time to choose a college. Do you encourage college? College is not the way it was when we went. It's not four years of, well, yes, fun, but intellectual stimulation and learning how to think, not what to think, and having your ideas challenged and learning some of the classics. As you well know, well know, it's not about that anymore. So do you encourage them to go and where? If so, where? Well, given that we have some time, I think that by the time this one is 18, there should be new institutions. I mean, one of the things that has happened with the kind of collapse of the old institutions and with the hollowing out of our old media empires and whatnot is that there's been a blossoming of new stuff and cool new stuff. Obviously, we see it at the free press with

the growth of a little newsletter into a media company, but I think you're going to start seeing it in higher ed. You're going to start seeing it in a lot of places in American life where just new things are going to be built to stand up some of those old values. So I'm hopeful that one of those will be great around then. Yeah. I have less time than you do. I don't know. But I'm really, like, I look at it all the time

because I think there's no way our eldest has such a beautiful mind, and there's no way I'm going to let one of these institutions start to corrupt it, even though he's been inoculated. I can imagine. I can imagine. Yeah, but no way. Why would I put this beautiful person in their clutches? I just won't. And so millions of Americans feel as I do, and we are going to find other institutions, whether it's non-college or it's a different institution that I look at the University of

Florida run by Ben Sasse, which just seems like it's on a great course. But there are a lot of universities that are stepping up. And I think those really might be the future recruiting centers for the biggest and most successful companies in America. Prestige is a thing that can be lost. And I think we'll see that. And I think we're starting to see that. Not to say that Harvard's going to be a name that never means anything, but it will be a name that means something different. Yeah. And it already is. And that's okay.

If I ran a university, if I ran the University of Chicago, I would make clear there are zero race-based admissions. You get no extra points for being, and not just race, but for being a woman, for being trans, for being black, for being Hispanic, zero, none, not in our hiring of professors and not in our admissions for students. And then if I were a young black or lesbian or woman, whatever, somebody in any protected group, I would make sure I got in there. And then I would run around the country saying, I went to the University of Chicago. That's where I graduated from. And you know what that means. Yeah. I didn't get the plus. I got in based on my own. We're putting people in minority groups in this impossible situation now where if they are completely talented and qualified to get into a Harvard or Yale or

Stanford on the merits and would have gotten in had they not checked any box, they'll always be looked at like, you did. I know how you got in there. You're not a white man. We're completely undermining them. And there's a huge selection of folks in those categories who don't give a shit. They're like, fine, just give me the fancy degree and I'll work it. And then I'll work all these same advantages, racial, demographic, gender at my next job, too. You know, I'll get my straight A's at Harvard because that's what they give. And then I'll parlay that in the medical school. They've intentionally turned into pass fail institutions.

And now I'll do it in medical school. The average GPA is now, but that's for all kids. And then when I kill some people out as a doctor, I'll just claim you're a racist for saying it was my incompetence. This is the game right now. It's insane. All right, stand by. We're going to take a pause. Don't forget to order the book, okay?

It's called Morning After the Revolution. A lot of deep thinking in there, and it's kind of interesting, right, to see the process of the light bulb coming on. A lot of Americans have been through this exact same journey over the past few years. I think you'll find it very enriching. Morning After the Revolution by Nellie Bowles. And Nellie's wife, Barry Weiss, is up next. Don't go away. Welcome back to The Megyn Kelly Show. Back with me now, Nellie Bowles, and joining the two of us, Barry Weiss, founder, CEO, and editor of The Free Press, and the host of Honestly with Barry Weiss, a great podcast. Welcome. Hello.

I'm so excited. Aw. How'd she do? She did well, didn't she? She did great. I get so nervous. She gets nervous. She can roar like a dragon.

Oh, I roared plenty she crushed it okay okay here's the thing because i'm the ultimate wife guy and because i know how brilliant she is and how brilliant this book is i am just gonna say that for anyone looking around at the world and wondering how the hell everyone supposedly who is smart and intelligent descended into total and utter madness and has capitulated to insanity. This is the book you need to read. And I think the morning after the revolution, and I think the thing to say the name, yeah, the morning after the revolution dispatches from the wrong side of history by my wife, Nellie Bowles, who's also seven and a half months pregnant as she is doing this book. Looking gorgeous. There's nothing she can't do. And I think the thing that came through and is maybe kind of still evolving is like she

was a part of, she was part of it just naturally. Like she's a San Francisco lesbian. So like those were the waters she was swimming in. At the New York Times. My God. But I think one of the things that's really unique about this book is how vulnerable it is. I don't think you're going to find there's a lot of excellent reporting out there from a lot of our friends, Megan, on what's going on and how it all came to this. There's not a lot of voices out there who are like, I saw it from the inside.

And in some ways, speaking for Nellie, like I was swept along by it. And here's what got me to wake up. And it's very, very vulnerable and true. And I'm just enormously proud of her. And now we can talk about the news. Well, no, but I think there has to be that journey and then that reckoning about one's journey in order for everyone to work together. Right? Because I do think there's resentment on the right. I see it. I'm sure you see it too

online for some people who are like, you know what? I mean, I've seen it in the wake of the Israel Hamas thing, right? Where there are some on the right who are like, where were you? Where were you? I mean, you asked Nellie about that, right? And Nell said like I was late to the party and compared to you know I remember so clearly when our friend Abigail Schreier um I said to her at a dinner like I didn't defend you early enough now if she were here she would generally generously say that I did and I was you know loudly sort of proudly standing up with her but I told her and I've said in public, I was scared to do so. So like everyone has someone. It was only 2020. I don't remember that, Barry. That wasn't that long ago. You were still enough on the other side that Abigail's book was. It's just that I

knew the social and reputational ramifications that I might suffer. And so it's easy for anyone to sort of look to someone slightly to their left, let's call it that, for the sake of this conversation and say, you were late. I suffered the ramifications. Like I ran like I like, you know, broke down the wall so you could walk or whatever the right metaphor is. And I but I do think that that resentment is understandable, but it kind of doesn't get you anywhere. It's counterproductive. It's really counterproductive. And I really think the right response to anyone at any stage,

especially those who say, I got it wrong. I mean, Bill Ackman, we were talking about him before. He has said, I got it wrong. That is a very rare thing for people to say right now. The right response is welcome. Exactly. Great to have you. It's coalition building.

What I was trying to say is, I pause at, and you're our new leader. Right. Yeah. The fetishization of the newcomer who still has a little bit of the sheen of the old prestige. Yes. Right. Totally get that. You said it much, much better.

Because you're like, I haven't been battered. You haven't been damaged by the movement yet. You haven't been. Exactly. Where are your war wounds? You know, it's like, where are all your stabbings and your jousting scars? I don't see any yet. Yeah, I know.

And then I like Ackman, but I do think he got very, very focused on the plagiarism allegations against his wife in a weird way. It was like kind of off mission, like care about the wife, but not that much. Kind of care about the main mission more. That's fine. Go, Belle. So let's talk about the news. Let's not criticize wife guys.

I will say, when I see him there and going to the barricades for his wife, I'm like, yes! I do like that quality in a person. I had a different response to that. I feel like Doug would do that for you. I wouldn't let Doug do that for me. But if he was on Twitter, isn't he on Twitter?

Doug's on Twitter a million times. Doug's like, I'm going to hit this person. I'm like, don't you dare. Because I really feel it's important to fight my own battles. And as much as he would love to. And I realize Bill has a much bigger platform than his wife does. But she's also a very powerful person in her own right. And had it been me, I would not have let my husband fight my battle.

I would have been out there fucking scalping people. And standing up for myself. And I don't like, like, there's just whatever in me. That's like a little like you back her up, but let her lead the way or, or just don't let her, Hey, yo, you lead the way. Yeah. That'd be fun. I would watch that. They should, they should do it. Maybe they will. I mean, I'm in there. I'm in their camp. I think it'd be great. All right. So, um, on the college campus front, we've had so much craziness and I want to, and you guys have been breaking all sorts of news at the free press. You got the custodian and now there's more than one custodian who was held hostage by the lunatics at Columbia. The one

that came out today. Um, there were two more that, uh, our wonderful reporter, Francesca Block has been breaking this story. First, she got more Torres, who was in that viral photo. And it's the perfect encapsulation of this movement, because on the one hand, you have a 40-year-old self-described anarchist that lives in a brownstone in Brooklyn, or at least owns it, worth more than $2 million. His parents own one worth more than three. Up against a custodian who has two children aged five and seven. And the average janitor at Columbia, our average facilities worker, makes $19 an hour. Right. Who's who's the victim in this photo? And it's kind of a really, really moving interview, I felt, where he talks about being scared to go back on

campus because the mob is still there at the gates and now being fearful that Columbia is going to retaliate against him. And today, two more spoke on the record to Franny, our reporter, and one of them said that he was scared he was going to get killed in the building. And this is in Hamilton Hall. Exactly. We have a little bit of Mario. Let me run this out. We have just an excerpt. Let's watch. I was on the third floor. Initially, I thought

it was about five or six students and I was just trying to kick them out. When I look back, they just multiplied. They came from, you know, both sides of the staircases. They came through the elevators

and they were just rushing. You see people with bags with duct tape and zip ties. And then they put tables and chairs to block it. They stuffed that elevator. I was freaking out. How was I going to get out? Through the window? No. It's just scary just thinking that you're locked in with a bunch of crazies. We don't expect to go to the work and get swarmed by an angry mob with rope and duct tape and masks and gloves. Wow. And this is unlike on January 6th, where we saw the left super empathetic for the cops who had to deal with that mob. And I felt it too. They're not speaking out about Mario. They don't care.

This is not a problem. They're on the side of the mob. I mean, just before I came on here, I was looking at, there's like a internal Columbia app. It's almost like Slack, but for Columbia students. Don't get me started.

I won't. You have to have a.edu email to be on it. So it's like an internal columbia conversation and they shared this story and you know what the response is on the part of the students i was saying the columbia custodians need to grow a pair no yeah he's unarmed how's that for worker solidarity and all of the other things that the kids in the encampment this guy is not even a cop i would i wouldn't like it any better if you were but i certainly don't like it when he's unarmed. And these he's not lying about all the ropes. And we've seen them request more on that of those same supplies. Right. This is not a mostly peaceful

crowd. I don't know what they were doing behind closed doors, but I certainly wouldn't want to have to fight them one handed like this guy did. Right. And it's it's just again, I just think it's such a powerful litmus test of, you know, theold anarchist who seems to be LARPing as some kind of barricading themselves in buildings, who broke glass to get in there and are shouting, you know, shouting in praise of the Intifada. Right. And beyond. I mean, death to America. So we've heard all of it. If I were that guy, I would sue Columbia University to within an inch of its time. So I think the news broke. I think the New York Post broke this story. I don't know if it was today or yesterday. I've really lost track of time since October 7th, I have to say. But they are organizing a lawsuit, the Union of Custodial Workers at Columbia.

So that'll be very interesting to see how it plays out. I hope it's a beaut. Violence and the threat of violence and like we were talking about earlier, the frisson of violence is part of what this movement wants to bring. So the fact that he was scared, of course, the Columbia chat isn't apologetic about that. That's sort of proof that they're doing a good job. They're not bringing zip ties in for peace, duct tape, rope and zip ties. Maybe they just broke some of those tables, Nellie, and they want to put them back together. They're saying they want violent armed revolution. They're saying intifada. And they're saying, don't feel bad about it. We actually read them say, we need more violence.

We shouldn't feel bad about it. This is part of the revolution. And also, whatever the cause du jour is becomes the only priority. So whatever was the old cause of labor rights or whatever is washed away. Now it's just this pro-war movement, whatever you want to call it, pro-Palestine, pro-Hamas. It's just whatever's good for that. So you see this in the way that like Zadie Smith is now, she wrote a somewhat complex, really interesting essay about the movement. And she's had been sort of celebrated on the left as an amazing writer, black woman, like kind of held up as an aspirational figure. I still think of her as that. And now she's completely thrown to the side and hated because she goes against the most extremes on this one movement. So whatever the cause du jour is becomes the only cause.

And you see it time and again. You see it with Defund the Police. You see it with each of these movements. It becomes the only thing. I think the other thing that's really important to pay attention to is just this kind of breathtaking double standard, right? When we see the people marching in Charlottesville with tiki torches shouting, Jews will not replace us. Everyone respectable, everyone in intelligent society in the chattering class says, take them seriously. Take what they say seriously. And by the way, I agree with that. We should take them seriously. That was the mentality that drove the neo-Nazi into Tree of Life, the synagogue where I became bat mitzvah and

murder 11 of my Jewish neighbors in Pittsburgh. But by the exact same logic, take what these young revolutionaries, I don't know what else to call them, are saying seriously. They are saying globalize the intifada. You know what's hard about it is there's so much video of them being absolutely pathetic. You know, I mean, truly, like the guy with the midriff exposed the other day and his little, of course, as Joseph Massey called him, Osama bin Osama non-binary. Right. I mean, it's hard to feel threatened by that. When they're doing like their interpretive dancing and talking about their gluten-free bread and how they need their melatonin gummies.

Yes. But there is a hard... And let's just say, let's call it 80% of the people that are going along with it are there for the vibes. They're there for the fun. They're there to sleep in a tent one night and go along with the cause. Sell my envy. For sure. But for the hardcore group, and I include a lot of professors in this group, that are shouting from the river to the sea, that are shouting, globalize the Intifada. What do they think Intifada means?

I lived in Israel in 2002. Oh, wow. During the Intifada. I know what that means. Yeah. That's not vibes. No, I remember watching Jennifer Griffin reporting from Israel through all of that. It was terrifying.

She was there with her flak helmet on and the flak jacket, and the reports were more and more dire by the day. It's just— They have no knowledge of the history. It's been honest. It's like they're calling for war. Some of the people who repeat that slogan are clueless. But there are— what did you say? Midriff guy looked very strong.

No, he did not. No, he, that was, that guy could fight. That is your compromised state of pregnancy target. You would be an easy target. I, you know, I wouldn't want to take him on. Osama non-binary is not going to hurt anyone. He is the one who is going to get hurt as soon as he gets home to his friends in Palestine and Hamas.

Some people, I agree with you, Megan, just to give them the benefit of the doubt. Some people are saying it, are saying it in the same way that they said every other thing. It rhymes. Every other current thing. For sure. They have the best slogans ever. Let's be real. But some of the people saying it know exactly what they mean. And somehow there is a unbelievable pass being given

to the students saying those things as if they are righteous. When, if you said them about, I'll give you just one example, because I really like this example killed me. Do you remember in 2021, there was a Native American student at Yale named Trent Colbert, who invited his fellow students to a Constitution Day bash in his trap house. OK, this was his sin. Oh, yeah. Oh, I do. Do you remember this? Yeah. Yeah. Amy Chua got involved within 12 hours. He had been like, she's involved. She's involved. I love her. Within 12 hours, he had been hauled into a disciplinary meeting. I believe the Dean of Yale had put out a statement. He was like pressured to a for trap house in an email after 12 hours for using the term for using the term. Yeah. OK. And now like where all of the people who had all of their sensitivity sessions about like offensive Halloween costumes and bad tacos.

Barry, you came out, we just referenced it. After I first launched the show, we didn't have video. You remember this was early 2020. Well, I launched the show in September of 2020. So it was- I remember where I was sitting actually. I remember where I was too. I remember like this is our first real conversation on the air.

And you said, we talked about antisemitism back then. And you said, and I've quoted you many times on it, Jews don't count. We don't quote rate. We're not factored in. And I know you've fought very hard and continue to right now saying the solution is not to make us part of your DEI crowd. We don't want into your weird little cult. We want you to just recognize when we actually are being threatened and not to be excluded because we don't count. That's right. It's been very obvious for the past six months. Yes. I mean, to me, it's really simple.

The radical proposition of America and the thing that has allowed for the Jewish community to flourish in this country, unlike we have in any other diaspora in all of history, is because of the things that are found in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. And the solution is not for Jews at this moment to argue for a slightly better status in this new caste system, really, ideological caste system in which victimhood points get you more status and, frankly, more protection. It's to go back to a world in which we follow the law, in which the law and social mores, frankly, are, especially when you think about these campuses, the codes of conduct are enforced equally and not less so for Jews as they are in this moment. And to get back to a world, frankly, in which we judge people based on their individual merit and not based on whether or not they're part of a particular group or not.

I'll give you just one example that like really brought this home for me. Abigail Schreier wrote about it brilliantly in our pages, which was, you know, one of the leaders of the encampment at Columbia, Hamani James is his name, four months ago took part in a disciplinary hearing at columbia in which he said in which he openly fantasized you're lucky i'm not going out and murdering zionists okay you're lucky i'm not going and murdering zionists which is with rare exception basically a synonym for jew and the mask is falling more and more every day nothing happened to this student until it went viral. Right. Because he was proud. He was proud of it. Like the school itself didn't do anything about it. Now, imagine if someone until. Yeah. And then and then they did.

Then they make a slap on the wrist. He hasn't been expelled. But it only happened because it went public. So you have a bureaucracy right now at one of the most prestigious schools in the country, supposedly, where a student is saying that to the administration of the university and nothing is happening. I feel for what they're going through, but I do feel like their parents, I hope are having a big wake up call right now because it was a dumb, dumb thing to send your child to Columbia. It was, if you were anything other than a member of one of these groups who are hard left or weird, you knew what you were going to get. As weird people. No, no. We're not weird. We're weird. Okay. I'm sorry. You saw my bit. Why are they all so unattractive? They're either unattractive or they're dumb. I don't make the rules.

I just report on what I see. But if you are one of these families that's in any way normal and you're sending your kid to Columbia, even within the past four years, you knew what you were getting. They're insane there. Or Berkeley. Don't go there. But let's, let's steel man it. Right. Why are they doing it? Because they want the prestige of a Columbia

degree. That's right. And I really believe that like part of what needs to happen. And we talk about this all the time over dinner, like part of the, if we're really honest, like the difficulty of leaving a place like the New York times, you know, is that you're giving that up. Okay. Like you're giving up the, at least in our circles, the cool thing to say at the dinner party. Totally get it. Right. You're giving up like being with the beautiful people and at the right party. David Zweig has talked about that too. Beautiful people. I'm not sure. No, you're right. The beautiful people are definitely in Florida at state school. They're way hotter. But giving up the prestige is really hard.

Yes. Yeah. It's like breaking an addiction. absolutely incumbent, though, upon anyone who wants to, I'll say it, like save the country to like, like, give it up. But that too is not your fault, right? It's a society that's indoctrinated generations into believing those are the right circles to be in. Yeah. Like that, those are the right elbows to rub. And there's fair fights also between the ideas of abandoning ship, like us leaving the Times. Or fight for it. Or fight for it,

like us being in California right now and trying to, you know. I'm sorry to tell you that's going to go the same way. You think we're all going to end up in Texas? Megan, you are talking

to a seventh generation Californian. She will go down by next. It's beautiful, but wait until your kids get told they're secretly boys when they're girls when they're boys. I think a lot of these people genuinely

think, well, if we all leave, like a lot of the donors, if we pull out our money and lose our seat at the table, then I won't have sway over this direction. I personally think that they're too far gone, these institutions. Money or no money, they have no sway. It's not insane, even if the result is sort of self-harming and sort of putting their

kids in positions to be kind of tortured by these institutions, by these professors, by these colleagues, these classmates. Yeah. Everything's a risk-benefit. I mean, when we were in New York and thinking, do we stay or do we go with all the school craziness? I actually made several phone calls to several billionaires in New York who I knew were not woke. They were either reformed leftists on this issue or these, you know, you know, social issues, or they were on the right already. And to a man, they said, it's not winnable.

You know, I was like, well, Doug and I, you know, we've donated. It's like, oh my God, these people have donated a hundred million dollars. You know, it's like they won't listen to them. They are too busy on their mission. So we reached the conclusion. It's not, it's not winnable. Right. And I think that's why, you know, we're spending all of our waking hours trying desperately to build something new. Like that's that's the alternative pathway. That's the whole name of the game right now. You know, and I'm on the board of this new university in Austin. I always screw up its name. What's it called again? It's hard. It's just like another university. That's right. Yeah. There's the University of Texas at Austin. This is the University of Austin. That's in Texas. But we call it UATX. We'll work on it. It will work on it. But the thing itself, I mean, it started off with a meeting with me,

Joe Lonsdale, Neil Ferguson, Pano Kanellis from St. John's. Arthur Brooks was there. This was like two and a half years ago now. And then it was like a July boiling hot. I thought to myself, this is really important. Now, I'm like, this is of civilizational importance that this succeeds. Yeah. It really is because it was really simple. Like we looked at our daughter and we were like, we're not. Like I'm saying, where are you going to send her to school? Not everyone can go to Hillsdale. It's not big enough. Like we need alternatives. We're not crazy. And who aren't going to try to indoctrinate us against like so so offensive. Right. Because most of us, we don't we don't need them to indoctrinate them in right wing thinking. I know we speak for you, too, when I say that and do math. Like, yeah, like it's not, we don't, we don't want politics at all, actually. Yeah. How about some debate? I love in our new school, our son is just finishing fourth grade. And this year, first of all, they say the pledge in the morning in the lower school, throughout the school. Love that. And second of all, he spent

the whole year studying the formation formation of the country the american revolution and you know the various players all the founding fathers the documents um they've done you know in in science they're doing like the solar system they're doing normal things they did a whole play on the american revolution the 50 states the capitals right like this is okay like we joke a lot about like just be normal. Like, yeah, that's it. It's really simple. It's just be normal. Yeah. And that's no, it's like when I think about like how how's the free press succeeding? It's like we're the just be normal people. Yeah, that's right. That's it.

Like we're for reality. And, you know, it's it's it's amazing. Like there's such a market for that because everyone else seems to have given up on reality and normalcy. If you started a new school that was like, we're just going to teach math and history and... It's like old math. Radical old math. Yeah, like actual math. Where the numbers add up to what they've always added up to. Right.

Non-indigenous math. Where you can help yourself to your taxes a little bit and, like, function in the world well. Like, that would be very successful like that people still want that they're thirsty for it they're very thirsty are they calling the the two plus two equals five indigenous math oh is that what they there was something that came up recently you would know more because you write about all of these things well the math wars are amazing i mean speaking, speaking of San Francisco. Math is the thing that upsets this movement more than anything. Math classes,

because it's so measurable and so it's very upsetting. It's knowable. And teachers don't like these things because they don't want their work measured and whatever. It's like the Craig T. Nelson line

from The Incredibles. They changed math? Right. Why did they change math? Right. Right? When they went to whatever new method.

But now they've really abandoned math is what they've done. I'm Megyn Kelly, host of The Megyn Kelly Show on SiriusXM. It's your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations with the most interesting and important political, legal, and cultural figures today. You can catch The Megyn Kelly Show on Triumph, a SiriusXM channel featuring lots of hosts you may know and probably love. Great people like Dr. Laura, Glenn Beck, Nancy Grace, Dave Ramsey, and yours truly, Megyn Kelly. You can stream The Megyn Kelly Show on SiriusXM at home or anywhere you are, no car required. I do it all the time. I love the SiriusXM app. It has ad-free music coverage of every major sport, comedy, talk, podcast, and more.

Subscribe now. Get your first three months for free. Go to SiriusXM.com slash MKShow to subscribe and get three months free. That's SiriusXM.com slash MKShow and get three months free. Offer details apply. All right. I've got to get to this because it's just too good a story. All right. Here's the thing. So there's this group at Columbia and it is the Columbia. It's like the young lawyers. It's the legal law guild. And they have written the following insane letter that I want to read you because the cops gave us a statement back. But these

are not honest brokers. Okay. I have so many papers and so little desk. Okay. It's the National Lawyers Guild, but it's the Columbia Law chapter of them. And these people are, to say far left, would be very generous. They are complaining about the cops going into Hamilton Hall and reclaiming the hall that belongs to Columbia University and not these nutcases who are there. And they write as follows. I'm going to give you some highlights. Our team of legal observers tried to enter campus repeatedly. We remain stuck outside, facing a wall of riot police unable to bear witness to the violence that was about to unfold. Hello, that's the situation of Jews on the campus of Columbia, not of your weird lawyer guild people.

We felt a deep dread knowing that without any witness, the police could do whatever they pleased. This moment eerily echoed the telecommunications blackouts Israel has imposed on Gaza. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. That's exactly what it is. Yes. You're kidding. No.

Oh, they really went full Hamas. The police unleashed violence upon the unarmed students. One was thrown down a staircase and knocked unconscious. At least one cop fired his gun inside. All protesters were arrested. In prison, some had their hijabs ripped off by cops. Many were denied water. Some have been hospitalized. The letter goes after the trope of the outside agitator calling it beyond tired. I'm going to get to the NYPD's response

to law professors. Tenured Columbia law professors enjoy some of the greatest job security in the world. Their response has been overwhelming, deafening silence to those professors. You have forfeited the respect of your students. Denounce your virulently genocidal colleagues. Do something. They go on to say on the safety of Jews. You guys are the problem. In case you have mental. Oh, we know. We have repeated to the point of exhaustion that the protection of Jewish students and faculty is a dangerous, flimsy pretext for Columbia's violence. Any Jew speaking out against genocide, Israel or the U.S. war machine is not safe. To Jewish students, faculty and trustees blocking divestment and urging the violent crackdowns on campus, you threaten everyone's safety. Yet you continue to claim to speak for all Jews. Keep our names out your damn mouths.

It says that? They didn't say damn. Yeah, it does say keep our names out of your mouths. No Jew is safe until everyone is safe and no Jew is free until Palestine is free. These people are off their rocker. These are not well. I haven't read that before. It's crazy. And so the NYPD decided to respond to this, giving us an exclusive statement. All right, hold on. It's very long and we're going to post it, but I'll read you the highlights. Let's discuss the facts. The allegations outlined by this Columbia Law student group are scurrilous, deceitful and have absolutely no basis in reality. The writers are in league with the unruly mob that broke into

Hamilton Hall doing all the bad things. The protesters illegally locked themselves inside, securing the doors with clamps, heavy duty bike locks, chains. They disabled interior surveillance cameras so that their criminality could not be documented. I'm just giving you highlights here. Every police officer on the scene that night had a working body worn camera and everything was recorded. Also recorded a protester dramatically rolling himself down the wide front steps. His flop of a performance was worth a minimum, a yellow card from a professional soccer referee or at most a gold statue from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. At the end of the night, no injuries had been seen or reported. What we learned a long time ago is that reversing the roles between offender and victim is a tactic often employed by professional demonstrators and their sympathizers.

The same method exploited by sex offenders and perpetrators of domestic violence. It is an insidious form of psychological manipulation, gaslighting. And one plain fact remains. Those arrested at Hamilton Hall were not victims. And despite their urging, their urgent imploring to the contrary, they never will be. Boom, NYPD. That's the way it's done. How great is the NYPD? And then they say, keep our names out your mouth.

Damn. Can you believe that? That letter is bone chilling. That letter. Go back to the letter for a second. The letter says that no Jew, I just want to make sure I understand that unless you were a Jew that denounces Israel, you will not be safe. Yes. No Jew is safe until Palestine is safe or until Palestine is free. Also that. Yes. Hold on. I'm pulling it back up. It's just so unbelievable. You know what's not good when you're starting a sentence, no Jew is safe. Just stop what you're writing when you're starting a sentence? No Jew is safe. Just stop what you're writing. They're exhausted of saying that the protection of Jewish students and faculty is a dangerous, flimsy pretext for Columbia's violence. Columbia is now committing the violence. Any Jew speaking out against genocide, Israel or the U.S. war machine is not

safe because they're saying like all the Jews are on our side is what they're saying. If you're a Jew, like Jewish voices for peace, which we all know is not really Jewish nor for peace, that those people are not safe because, you know, to the Jewish students, faculty and trustees blocking divestment and urging the violent crackdowns, you threaten everyone's safety. So if you don't want to divest, this you're the predicate to violence, if you want to end the crackdown, if you want to end the campus encampments, then you threaten everyone's safety. Exactly. That's what they say. fundamental part of 95, let's even be conservative, 90% of Jews' identity, which is a connection to forgetting the two-state solution, forgetting all the modern politics. Jewish identity is fundamentally tied to the land of Israel. That's like basic. Anyone that denies that is a historical revisionist. We could have another two hours about all of that. They're basically saying that unless you cut off an absolutely essential part of your religious,

ethnic, peoplehood identity, you yourself are a threat to humanity and to peace. Haven't we heard that? Haven't we heard that before? I mean, the historical echo of this is just, it's just so scary to hear that in 2024 because it's, again, it's just a predicate to violence. They're justifying their revolutionary violence by saying that in order to stop this thing that we have declared a genocide, which is actually a just war that was started by Hamas, the way that we solve that problem and make the world safe is by essentially a modern forcible conversion of Jews out of Zionism. And so the very same bargain that was put to Jews in other times and places, right, where back then there was no state of Israel. So it was, hey, you want to remain a Jew and safe in the Soviet Union?

No problem. We're a communist society. You have to renounce God and your religiosity. Now it's you want to be safe and be a Jew in progressive 21st century America? No problem. You just have to denounce the state of Israel. It's the exact same bargain. Again, it's just the terms of it are different. So let me add this. The original post from the Columbia Group was first reported, as far as we

know, by National Review's Buckley fellow, Zach Kessel. That's how we found it, to give credit to the news sources. So where does this go, you guys? I mean, we're going to go into the summer. Where does it go now? The summer's coming. They have to get off campus. Summers are usually when things quiet down.

You're joking. Right. We got a DNC coming up. So where does it go? Because it doesn't look like Israel's exactly ending things soon. Right. With Rafa happening, although hopefully that will lead to an end. And I do. I don't know. I feel I'm a little worried because I've seen the polls. I realize America is still overwhelmingly pro-Israel. And this isn't I'm not asking you how the war ends. But I do feel like there's a real risk on the right, too, of this whole thing. And I include what's happening on the campuses and the anti-Semitism looking like Ukraine. Like, we're done. You know, we're not really into it.

It's not our problem. I'm a little worried. I know you're worried, too. That vibe already exists strongly in major precincts of the online right, which basically goes from a sort of like neutral isolationist position to a out and out sort of very old school anti-Semitic position that is now like masks have fully come off on a lot of hard to find online at all right and they're talking openly about you know the jews killing g i mean like the oldest tropes in the in the world really over that well we're really fighting over jesus now yeah that's what that's as if they're finally coming to realize that jews do not believe jesus is christ we know we but megan go where it. Explain a little bit more what you mean about how, like draw that out for us of like how it will look like Ukraine. Well, I'm worried that, you know, in the horseshoe principle of like sort of the hard right is going

to come together with a hard left and be like, yeah, we don't care about the Jews. And to the extent we do care, we don't like them. And not support Israel the way at least the right always has. You know, the left, I think large sections of it have, but the right has always been very pro-Israel. And leave it to itself, possibly not support with, you know, arms and other support. And here domestically, not really do anything about these protesters and actually start to side more and more with them and start to both sides it.

Yeah, I think that that is probably what's going to happen. I think that's already happening. So what's next? What comes of that? That's what I'm asking. I think what comes next is more of what we're seeing in Europe, which is kind of a full movement to overthrow local governance. I mean, I think we'll see some of these folks become elected officials. We'll see the revolution here start to win more.

What do we do with that? Because Jews are not, it's not a big number. No. I think the threat of violence is going to continue and grow. Like, I don't feel super optimistic about this topic right now. I know. I wish I could, like, be the counter to you guys on this. I don't feel super optimistic. And I think now it's kind of latching into a broader movement to hate America, to overthrow America.

You're seeing a lot of that rhetoric become part of it, that Gaza is lighting the fire to overthrow the empire, the empire being American empire. And I take that as a serious part of the aspiration here to do away with our value system, to do away with Western liberalism and the idea that that maybe is tired and old. And I think there's a lot of people on the right who also think Western liberalism

is tired and old and played out and who are willing to toss it to the side. And so I think, yes, you'll see a horseshoe. It's like we're seeing the beginning of it right now. Yeah. I don't know how to stop it. Well, we have to stop it. We have to. I regard this as the fight of our lives. I don't know. I think for most people going about their lives, they might look at what's happening on campus as crazy campus kids, or they might hear about something that happened where, you know, a Jewish store gets vandalized, or, you know, oh, that's unfortunate. And they go about their day because they're not Jewish,

or, you know, the Jews are such a small minority, and no, they're fine anyway. They have a lot of money or they're so successful or they're smart. I guess I would just implore those people. And I think this case needs to be made much more articulately. Perhaps the best person doing it right now on the scene, maybe in the world, is Douglas Murray. He's the best. He's the best at everything. We're seeing him for Shabbat dinner on Friday night. Not Jewish. He's the best he's the best he's the best at everything we're seeing him for shabbat dinner on friday night um not jewish he's the best at talking he's the best but he's the best he's the best at explaining how the fate of this tiny minority 100 of the time for all of recorded history is bound up with the fate of a civilization.

And that is why this should matter to everybody. Because if the Jews are not, however you want to phrase it, if we're going down, it is simply a sign that the society is deeply, deeply diseased and dying. That's why this matters. Like the Jews here right now seem like they're the main character. America is the main character. Like what is at stake here is do we believe that this country remains exceptional? Would we rather live here than Putin's Russia or Hamas's Gaza? Like, that's what I think needs, that's the framing I think that's really necessary and important in this moment. And when I see people on the right, I mean, we have an excellent story

today in the Free Press by Peter Savodnik about the American men on the right. It's a handful, but it's really interesting and emblematic, I think, moving to Russia to pursue the American dream. In other words, they've so given up on America and they so think that, you know, what's happening in terms of some of the madness we've been talking about is so impossible to sort of restore normalcy that they've had it all the way to live under Putin's regime. And you see the same phenomenon sort of on the left of, as Nellie just said, like the turn against America, I think is what this is about. The turn toward nihilism, whether on the left that wants to burn it all down or on the right that's glorifying right-wing authoritarianism, where there are none of the liberties that we to burn it all down or on the right that's glorifying right wing authoritarianism

where there are none of the liberties that we get to enjoy here. And for those of us whose entire lives, like look at our life, not possible anywhere else in the world to have the kind of freedoms we have, you know, that's what this is all about in the end. And I think a lot of the times Nellie and I are looking at each other and we're like, we get called conservative, like, or we're conservative. It's like, no, we're just trying to like conserve liberalism. We're trying to. That's a good thing we got going here. Yeah. Like this is really good. It's not hard to imagine. It doesn't get better. No. It's actually more surprising that fundamentalist Islam has aligned with sort of Western progressivism because it's very easy to imagine the American right, the Western right aligning with fundamentalist Islam. The values are quite easy to see as compatible in a lot of ways.

You're talking about that weird slice on the right. Yes. Yes. I'm not talking about the moderate conservatives. I'm talking about that. Because you are one now. I'm talking about the faction of the online right that we're talking about who's turned. So this sort of alliance against Western liberalism is not hard to imagine. It's already there. It's already there. I hate to make it so dark, but I mean, this is the reality.

And on my own show, we focused on Israel when the attack happened for a while. But I've always since the beginning been much more interested in what's happening here. Like, how are we reacting? And very poorly in many ways. And it's not limited to left or right. I just it's unlike anything I've seen before. I've been covering Israel for a long time as a journalist. I've never seen the right start to turn on Israel the way I'm starting to see. And I don't know where, I'm asking genuinely because I'm searching on where does it end? How does it look in 10 years? I've had Jewish friends of mine actually say, yeah, we think we'll eventually be pushed out of the United States.

Oh yeah, that's an open conversation. To steal me on the right on this a little bit with this, I think some'll eventually be pushed out of the United States. Oh, yeah. That's our history. That's an open conversation. To steal me on the right on this a little bit with this, I think some people are looking at the last couple decades of American wars and thinking that didn't really work. Look at Afghanistan. The Taliban's running it again. Look at Iraq. That's true.

And so they're thinking, we don't exactly have American success stories in the Middle East. And why do we think it'd be different? Now, I think, obviously, Israel is a lot different than Afghanistan and Iraq. But the difference in those cases is there's no American soldiers being asked to do anything at all. Obviously, of course. But to steel man that argument, I don't think it all comes from just... I don't think it's all necessarily like antithematic or hateful.

I think some of it is from people who are just exhausted with- Well, and I make a distinction between the more isolationist, right? Yeah. Who they don't want involvement in any foreign conflict, and I get that entirely. I think that's a real- But they're like, we've talked on the show before about the Nick Fuenteses of the world.

Oh, well that's- No, but he is rising in popularity. Very much. Not only did he have to sit down with Trump, but people I follow on Twitter and who follow me regularly retweet him and they'll slide like a video into your mentions. So you've got to watch this. I have zero interest in hearing anything he has to say other than to respond with scorn. But I rarely try to mention him on the show because he deserves to be ignored. However, he's rising in popularity. He's not waning. And there's a reason for that. You know, and people I formerly knew, like at Fox News, like one woman in particular I work with very closely is like now an open groiper like I

I don't I just I don't know where it ends I don't like where we are I will say that I think I think one of the important principles here is like it's really easy for people on the left to look at,

he's a Nazi, look at Nick Fuentes, a Nazi, and say, aha, the problem's on the right. And it's so easy for someone on the right to look at what's going on on the left and look at Ilhan Omar and say, aha, the problem's on the left. And I think it's really important for those of us who care about the future of the country, not just like our Jewish friend, like the literal future of the country to like police your own side of the street. And I find that the incentives to do that are just very low. And it's so easy to point to the other side and say the problem's there. And I have been, I would say heartbroken by the lack of that impulse. Like, you know, I, I have sent personal notes to people saying, you know, the guys that run the Babylon Bee, I saw how much,

I've never met them. I saw how much shit they were taking online for standing up against anti-Semitism from the right. And I just wrote them a note saying like, thank you. They've been awesome. But I can count the people that have been awesome. And that's what really worries me on both the right and the left. And most people are just sort of like going along with it. If I'm honest, because I obviously have nothing against the right, I do have my issues with the left. My own perception is this is overwhelmingly a leftist problem. And there is a smaller percentage on the far right that's titillated by it, interested with it, starting to kick it around more, starting to make it more like some sort of a, well, aren't we technically against the Jews

because of the whole Jesus thing? No, no, we're not. Look at Candace Owens. This is not where this comes in. You know, I have. She's not no one. No, she's not. She's not no one. So there are people at. But let me ask you about Candace, because I she's been on the show. I don't know her personally, but she definitely had some criticisms of Israel, which you would defend. Right. Like, of course, you don't agree with them, but you would defend the criticism of Israel. So I actually went and looked like, what are the specific tweets? And there was that one where she clicked the tweet on like drinking Jewish blood, right? I was like, okay, that's what got her in all the trouble. That's one of the things, but that was the biggest thing. And I can under, I was like, oh, that's bad. But then when I looked at it more, she seemed to be defending herself saying that wasn't what I was liking. I was liking the oh, that's bad. But then when I looked at it more, she seemed to be defending herself, saying that wasn't what I was liking. I was liking the fact that this guy was defending me on a previous argument that didn't get circulated. I didn't take a deep dive into it.

I just think I really I want the bar to be high before we dismiss somebody as an anti-Semite. Here's what I'll say. is a 100% correlation, pretty much, between people that seem to be, or minds that seem to be vulnerable to conspiracy-minded thinking, and the line between that and open anti-Semitism. And sometimes that path takes a while to get to, but it always gets there. That is so interesting, Barry. You're not wrong about that. That is, those two things do tend to go hand in hand. Well, there's a reason for that. It's because anti-Semitism is the oldest conspiracy in the world. Like the cabal of powerful Jews controlling everything. Sure. And now it's, you know, the, you know, the Jewish state instead of the Jew themselves

standing in for that exact same thing. But it's, you know, if you are openly talking about how Bridget, is her name Brigitte Macron? Yeah. Yeah. How Brigitte Macron is a man. Okay. Okay. I'm like, okay, it'll, it'll be, I don't know when it will get there. So those are the indicators to you that someone's going down that line. Alex Jones is a great example. Right. I don't think I've never met Alex Jones. Don't watch him that much, but notice some things he's been saying recently. Is he starting to? Oh, yeah. And it's like, well, yeah, like, like, look at look at the look at the pattern.

Like, it was only amount of time before that. that like it's again. I will never attempt to get into someone else's mind or psychology. I will just say that there is a very clear there's a very clear pattern at play, which is that when you start to make yourself susceptible and it's easy in a moment where everyone's lost trust in everything. Yes. Like I get how it's happening. Right. I have some questions about the fluoride in our water. Alex Jones has been railing about that for a long time. So I'm just.

I don't know. No. What do you. Really? Can I tell you? Not for nothing. But when I went down to interview Alex Jones, I've told the story before, but he said all this crazy stuff.

I'm like, oh, my God. And you guys got out to water quality. I mean, you were like, I'm there with you. I mean, clearly, you know, there were some that were very serious and I pressed him very hard on those. And, you know, he's later apologized for some of those positions. But when we ran the fact check at NBC and NBC's fact check is no joke, you know, when they really want to do it on something that's not political, where they've got a thumb on the scale, they'll, they have a team that's very good that will actually figure out whether somebody's got the basis for what they're saying.

He was all coming back as supported. It was like, there is a goat that has a human face and there is a problem. Okay, no, here's what I'm saying. I was like, oh my God. I think as, and there are aliens in the, as the mainstream. No, there is a goat with a human face, I'm telling you.

Maybe it's a pig, I can't remember. One of those two. The old gatekeepers have lost so much credibility and so much power that's right because of that and and it's really in this situation it becomes very sad that they've lost that power because so many things that the old gatekeepers now declare as conspiracies aren't conspiracies, right? So like- How do you figure out? Like the lab leak theory is not a conspiracy theory. That's a really, really fair thing to talk about. And for years that was called a conspiracy. Obviously, we've all talked about this ad nauseum, but it's true. And it's really interesting. And by losing the credibility to say

this goes beyond the pale, Brigitte Macron is a man, conspiracies, those gatekeepers, the mainstream media, there's no like Walter Cronkite, there's no sort of confident voice who can- Set the record straight. Set the record straight that we all trust. There's no central trust in American society anymore. I really think that- It's been lost. It's been lost, willfully lost, proudly, happily lost. Of this. COVID didn't help people locked inside in small, isolated pockets of America and just spending hours on the internet. That's not a healthy thing. But I do at its core blame the collapse of the media for most of this. Yeah. Yes. It was important to have an Uncle Walter. And it's not to say he shared the

politics of most people over on my side of the aisle, but he played it straight. And there were, we could go back and pick apart his coverage for sure. But it was important to have a news media that in general was earnest in its effort to chase facts instead of agendas. That's gone. It's gone. And people don't know where to turn. They've been so burned by that media that hated them, that told them their gut instincts. They were deplorable and conspiracy theorists, and now they're understandably rushing into the arms of... Yeah, of course. Yeah, they've been right about so much, and they don't know where to turn for information. It's like Reddit or some guy on Twitter. Reddit is my OB-gyn i know it's a problem it's a or it's an issue or nick flint i mean it's yeah so what do you i mean

and all the old terms have lost all their power right like terms like racist terms like sexist terms like yeah transphobic and so then when a real bigot walks out of the scene there's like how do you know? He's got to pass. He's like, oh, they always use that word. Exactly. Yes. So that's why all of this always mattered.

The weapons are weakened. That's how we got to where we are. Yeah. So what do you think? I think we should go get a drink. Yeah, I know that. Yeah, they're good. That's the way you left.

It's two in the afternoon here in LA. What the hell are we going to do? Reddit says it's fine. I can have a margarita. Yeah, you're good. So I'm going to go to? Reddit says it's fine. I can have a margarita. Yeah, you're good. You just want to go to state school. It's fine. Like me.

Well, no, not really. I don't have the solution. Thankfully, I am not in the business of providing solutions. I'm just in the business of shining the light on the problems and having honest discussions about them, which eventually leads us to the right place. I do think we have to rebuild some

sort of media center. You know, you guys are doing it at the Free Press. Independent journalists are doing it in the digital lane, and that's working. I do think we have to be careful about building up, whether it's like me as a host or you guys at the Free Press, people who have become untethered. I agree. And, you know, I have certain people on that list who are, you know, people who I become untethered. I agree. And, you know, I'll, I have certain people on that list who are, you know, people who I care about, but I don't have to be promotional of the product. Right. Um, and then at night, honestly, I pray, I pray, I pray for all of them. And I pray for the country and I pray for the wisdom to know what to do and how to handle it and how to check my own

hubris on whether I'm the wrong one. Not about like Jews being evil, but like, am I being too judgmental? Am I being too harsh? Let me listen to their arguments. Don't come into it as a know-it-all thinking you are better or you know better. Like hear them out. Have a kindness and a generosity of heart, which is number one, if you want to convince somebody to come over to your side anyway, right? Like whether they're right or I'm right, I'm not going to get them if I'm the right one by being nasty to them and judgmental of them. I am sometimes, I'm not perfect at this. And I don't know, Barry and Nellie, I think part of it also goes back to just foundational values

of spending more time with your family, having a family, having kids, believing in the future of America, believing in each other, having true love, nurturing it, like just turning away from this device for large amounts of the day, just having dinner together, holding each other, watching a stupid movie together, having dumb ass laughs over some stupid comedy. I think those things are really important and they're integral to fixing everything. We have some dinners. Yes, good. Who's the chef?

It's not Barry. Bear's the chef. No, she is. She's a really good chef. I'm like a line cook. I'm sorry, but God is a bear god, and he wouldn't give her that many gifts. No, no, no.

She's really good. I mean, I'm going to be honest. Her sister Susie is better. My sister is better. I love Susie Weiss. Susie Weiss is the best chef in the family. She's like a professional chef. She's really good.

I need to talk to her more. But Bear is very good. Wow, I'm good. There's nothing those Weiss parents the best step in the family. She's like a professional. She's really good. I need to talk to her more. But Bear is very good. Wow. I'm good. There's nothing those Weiss parents didn't give you. No, that's not true at all. Are you kidding? I see a number and my mind goes blank.

I do our home economics. Yeah, everything. 100% of it. I don't even know how to log on to our bank. I keep our house. No, she really doesn't. It's right for fraud. No, yeah. don't say that I

yeah I agree with everything you just said and I just I don't know having kids I think has clarified everything for us yeah I do think you know how these far leftists are like no kids we're gonna save the environment part of the problem you were at a dinner party where oh god well yeah this is this is very common I mean it's not just Oh, God. Well, yeah, this is very common. I mean, it's not just one. Yeah, this is a very common idea. Yeah. That we shouldn't have kids and it's irresponsible.

It's irresponsible, the argument goes, for the child. Like you're putting a child into a worse world because it's a very pessimistic worldview. And it's irresponsible in terms of the environment. That one kid is, you know, X number of carbon units. Well, you're doing the right thing. That's certainly how we look at our daughter. We need to have more children.

If I were a younger woman, I'd be doing what we're doing right now. I wish Doug and I could have had five or six, but... Three is a good... You did a good contribution.

Time stops for no woman. Three is very good. For no woman's ovaries. It's been a pleasure. Let me hold up the book. That's the money shot, baby. Morning after the revolution. And the revolution is ongoing.

Please join our side and help. It's by Nellie Bowles. Well worth your time. And it's available for pre-order right now. Go get your copy today. Have a great weekend. And we'll see you guys Monday. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show.

No BS, no agenda, and no fear.