The Megyn Kelly Show - Final GOP Primary of 2024? Plus, Fani Willis Affair Drama, with Rich Lowry and Charles C.W. Cooke | Ep. 708

Episode Date: January 23, 2024

Megyn Kelly is joined by National Review's Rich Lowry and Charles C.W. Cooke to discuss Nikki Haley’s chances in the New Hampshire primary, her promise to “not drop out” of the race no matter what results there are, whether she might drop out by the end of the week and endorse Trump, what went wrong in the Ron DeSantis campaign, his personality versus his performance in Florida, the skills it takes to be president, new reporting about the possibility Michelle Obama runs for president, what would have to happen to Joe Biden for her to step in, the challenge for Biden with VP Kamala Harris as his next-in-line, the issue of illegal immigration and the border crisis in Texas, the Supreme Court ruling in which some of the conservatives supported the Biden administration over the state of Texas, Georgia DA Fani Willis affair drama and how some are now calling for her to be removed from the Trump case, Willis' involvement in her alleged "paramour"'s divorce case, how “political hacks” are taking over court proceedings involving Trump, and more. Get more from NR: https://www.nationalreview.com/nrplus-subscribe/ 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. The first in the nation primary is underway. It's officially underway as voters head to the polls in New Hampshire. We're finally making real progress here. Voting is actually happening. Nikki Haley hoping for a strong showing. Her messaging has gone from I'm going to win to a little more like strong showing, although she said to Fox News yesterday she is going to win. So we'll see. They're a little bit all over the board on it. A short time ago, she was asked about securing the first victory of the day, which she did. Six, as in six people, six votes to zero win over former President Trump in the tiny town of Dixville Notch. Right now, we'll take whatever we can take. It was

certainly a good start. It gave us some good energy and momentum, and I'm grateful to those six people. We're not promising that it's going to be 350,000 to zero. We're definitely on track for that. That was New Hampshire Governor Krista Nunez at the end, who has done more than anyone short of the candidate to actually get her elected or to at least get her a win in New Hampshire. We know that tonight is very well going to be do or die for Nikki Haley. We get to this and much, much more, plus tensions over the border crisis as the Supreme Court deals a defeat to Texas in its effort to stop illegal immigrants from crossing over. And we've got new developments as well in the Fannie Willis case. Going to get to all of that. Joining me now, two of our favorites for NR Day, National Review Day here at the Megyn Kelly Show.

Rich Lowry is editor-in-chief of National Review. Charles C.W. Cook is a senior writer for National Review and host of the Charles C.W. Cook podcast. You can find all of their work by becoming an NR Plus subscriber and you should do it today. I am one highly recommend it. I get the print edition. I get the online subscription. I avoid the ads and you get extra content too. If you actually subscribed rich Charles, welcome back to the show. Hey, thanks for having us. Thanks for having us. All right. So I haven't had the chance to talk to you guys yet, though. I did listen to the editors this on Tuesday and Thursday of last week. So Friday it was. Let's just start with your thoughts on whether there's any chance now that Nikki Haley pulls this out,

because looking at the latest polls going into today, it looks terrible for her. You know, it was tight according to a couple of polls, but the final New Hampshire tracking poll from Suffolk University, NBC, Boston Globe came out this morning showing Trump at 60% in New Hampshire, Haley at 38. So Rich, that's Trump plus 22, which is not exactly tight. Yeah. So New Hampshire, the polling can be squirrely. The methods of a lot of these polls, there's not like in Iowa, you have the Des Moines Register polls, the gold standard. Everyone believes it. You don't have a poll like that in New Hampshire. But every poll seems to be showing the same thing. And it's true in a lot of places, especially true in New Hampshire.

It's the momentum in the polling that matters a lot because oftentimes there's swings in New Hampshire because independents can vote in either primary. That polling doesn't pick up. But the momentum here, the margins with Trump, the momentum is with Trump. I mean, just the feel this thing already feels over is with Trump. So maybe there's some shocker where every independent New Hampshire floods into the Republican primary and puts Nikki Haley closer, even, you know, over the top. The chances of that very, very, very slim. Charlie, this feels fake, doesn't it? Like, you know, in past primaries, it's like it's it's exciting. It's primary day. People are going to the polls.

Who's going to win? Who's going to, even if she wins, we kind of know. She has no chance in any place other than New Hampshire in the coming days and weeks. So it feels like fake news to me. Well, I think it does now. I mean, in a sense, it has felt like that for months, but there was always the question of whether it was going to, It feels like fake news to me. Well, I think it does now. I mean, in a sense, it has felt like that for months,

but there was always the question of whether it was going to end up being a mirage. I were paid to that, on my part, hope. And now we're in a two-person race. The second person is not going to win the state she needs to win. Seems to me that it is almost inevitable that Trump will be the nominee. That said, he is going to find himself in and out of courtrooms a great deal in the next few months. I think Republican primary voters have forgotten or too heavily discounted this. And I just wonder whether there will be some surprise down the stretch, but it's not going to come from Donald Trump losing the primaries to Nikki Haley. She, as I said, I've listened to her and Sununu Rich change a little bit in their

messaging. You know, she was saying when I went to New Hampshire, then it kind of changed to like, she's going to have a strong showing there. The new news messaging has changed a little, but then here she is on Fox news yesterday, sounding very bullish. Take a listen to this in a sat 10. I'm running to win this race. And as much as everybody wants to talk about what I'm going to do at some point, y'all are going to realize that I won this race and you're going to have to accept when I say I told you so. I don't want anything else. I don't want anything else. I'm running to be president. I'm not going to pull out because somebody wants to be coordinated. I'm not going to pull out because they think that I shouldn't be there because I'm fighting for normal people.

And I'll always do that. What do you make of it? Just bravado, like the kind of closing messaging, like I'm a winner, get behind me? Or do you think she's seen some internal bulls that the rest of us haven't? Well, they're playing it really close to their chest, if that's true, because Sununu this morning was saying, it's going to be great. She's going to get to 40% or maybe above, which translates into basically a 20% loss. But as long as you're an active candidate, you got to say you're going to win. And you got to say you're never going to drop out, even if you know you might drop out in 12 hours. Now, I think she's, I mean, she's a dead woman walking right now. But if she loses, it's really over. I expect it to play out a little bit like

the DeSantis, the way DeSantis did. It's really hard. You've put your all into this. They work so incredibly hard. We, you know, as pundits, we're criticizing them all the time. It's incredibly hard work. You feel sick a lot. You know, you're exhausted the whole time. You got to smile and, you know, you get beaten up. You lose and you got to say you're going to win. It's not easy.

So it'll be hard for her the way it was for DeSantis to just instantly say, I'm out. You know, it's a consequential decision. So you think about it. But I would expect her to be out by the end of the week. I don't know why she'd lose New Hampshire, where, like DeSantis, DeSantis was not going to do better than Iowa. Iowa matched up for him politically, given the way he was running in the nomination fight. He had the endorsement of a popular governor.

He had endorsement of a really important conservative activist, both of whom were wholly on board with him. They weren't, you know, nominal endorsements. Same thing with Sununu. My understanding is usually he just says, oh, I endorse you. And then you never see him again. As you say, he's been out there actively campaigning. So if he doesn't win there, come really, really close there, where is he going to get better? And there are more primaries in the nomination fight that are open to independence than people think. They think it's New Hampshire, nowhere else. That's not true. But you can't win a nomination just by winning independence and losing Republicans to the frontrunner,

which is what she'll likely do tonight and what you do elsewhere. So it's just going to be impossible for her. And I would expect her to drop in fairly short order and also to endorse Trump in fairly short order. Charlie, it didn't happen for Ron DeSantis, your governor down in Florida and a great governor, I think by all three of our standards. I've listened to you over the past year, really hopeful that he could do it. You know, the audience knows you don't like or want Trump and then sort of wrestling with some of his failings on the campaign trail. And now, you know, it's like the five stages, right?

You get to acceptance. There's the bargaining. There's the denial. Now there's the acceptance. I think there are a lot of Republicans who are probably feeling what you're feeling right now. Just sadness and disappointment. Here we go again. We had this guy who probably would have been a great executive, but he didn't have the charm, the charisma or run the greatest campaign, let's be honest. So now having had the benefit of a few days after his announcement to look back on where he went wrong, if he went wrong, right, if it could be blamed on him at all, how are you seeing his campaign and how it ended?

Well, I should say up front, my primary objective in this campaign season was to see Donald Trump lose. Now, had the primaries come to Florida, I would have voted for DeSantis. We had a debate at National Review quite early on. Michael Brendan-Dowdy wrote a piece essentially saying we should put all of our chips in behind DeSantis. I was on the side of not doing that because you never quite know how people are going to pan out. That's one reason you have primaries. So you're right to say I think he's a very good governor of Florida, although I have been critical of him in some ways. It wasn't as if I was DeSantis or Bust. I'm anyone but Trump, really. But I think DeSantis made a couple of big mistakes, you know, leaving aside the elements

that he can't control, such as that he's short and isn't especially charismatic, doesn't really like campaigning. No, those things matter, right? I mean, they do. The taller candidate tends to win the presidency. It's been like this for a long time uh but but he made a couple of mistakes and the biggest mistake that he made in my view as a floridian is that he forgot how he's seen in florida and why he won so big he won so big in florida because he was not regarded as anything other than a normal politician in the country at large he was turned into this football, a pinata at times. But in Florida, that's just not how he's seen. He has a moderate record on the environment. He's really into cleaning up lakes and saving manatees and making sure the Everglades are still there in 100 years.

Although he has taken on the teachers' unions, he raised teachers' pay twice. He is really good at the bread and butter of politics in Florida, much of which was laid out for him beforehand. The state has no income tax. It has no tax on capital gains. There are constitutional prohibitions on raising fees. But he did all that really well, and he absolutely crushed the number one responsibility of a Florida governor,

which is hurricanes. I think it's the best hurricane response I've ever seen was Ron DeSantis' last year, actually two years ago now. And then he went on the campaign trail and he talked in this strange online language. Everything was about wokeism. Everything at his launch, which didn't work, the Twitter launch, he talked about Chevron deference. Very dear to my heart. Probably not the first thing you mentioned when you're running for president of the United States. And I think this was a big mistake. They're going to decide how big the administrative state should and can be.

Keep going. Right. And I just think that was a big mistake. Now, I think, as I've said many times, that he was probably not going to win because Trump distorts the electromagnetic field. He's just a remarkable figure, a sui generis figure within our politics. But I think DeSantis would have had a better chance if he had talked about things that most people care about, which is the economy and crime and yes, education, but did so in a less esoteric way or in less of a way than you would expect to see on Twitter. And I do think that was a mistake.

It's almost as if he saw himself becoming a cultural lightning rod and he saw himself regarded as sort of something outside of the American mainstream and he decided to run with that. But that's just not how he was seen in Florida and he won by 20 points here as a result. You know, there's been a debate now about whether he should have been touting the anti-woke thing.

Casey DeSantis's jacket, where woke goes to die, you know, Florida. You guys are not woke. I'm not woke. I count myself as an anti-woke warrior and loved everything he said. But I can see the question about whether that should have been the thing he ran on. You know, I mean, that, as you point out, Florida's thriving. And, you know, Trump had some tweets, Rich, about how, oh, well, you know, it's thriving under other governors, too. Jeb Bush is really the one who saved Florida, kind of runs itself now.

But Ron DeSantis really changed the voting patterns in Florida and for a good reason. So he had some things he could have bragged about on the economy, which is the number one thing people care about. Maybe woke plays a 20 percent role instead of an 80 percent role, which is how it felt. Yeah. So first of all, I think you just can't underestimate how the performance ability plays in national presidential politics. And there's just a, there's not one thing anyone can remember that Ron DeSantis said that was funny, the entire campaign, right? Maybe the closest I can remember, the CNN town hall he did with Caitlin Collins, and it was after Nikki Haley had messed up her name, called her Caitlin Clark,

who apparently is a fantastic college basketball player. So DeSantis came out with the Caitlin Clark jersey to give to Caitlin Collins, which was sort of light or funny, but it was making fun of Nikki Haley. It wasn't making fun of himself. You know, he had a lot of material to use for self-deprecating humor. Even after that horrible last debate, he goes with Anderson Cooper for the interview afterwards, and he seemed relaxed. I mean, it was actually like a transformative thing to see him relax. I don't know what was going on, but he talked at the end about his five-year-old kid being in the front row in the whole debate and making it to, you know, through the entirety of the thing awake. So why didn't he start that debate saying, you know, here's my son, I don't

know his name. She's sitting on Casey's lap. And this is the most important metric for me in this debate, whether I'm succeed or not, whether I can keep him awake or whether he's going to fall asleep on me. But he just, that's not his repertoire. He doesn't even think of doing it. And it's not, it's the most important quality of president. No, but it's really important quality for people to identify with the political candidate. Now, overemphasizing the woke stuff. Yeah, I think in retrospect he did. I don't think it was crazy what he was trying to do at the beginning. And it went to the big strategic theory of the campaign, which go to the middle of the party, not the middle ideologically, but the middle in terms of feelings towards Trump. MAGA people who are kind of soft on Trump and in theory persuadable to be moved away from him and convince them that DeSantis is pure and more of a fighter on this cultural stuff than Trump is. And, you know, Trump is not really into the trans thing.

You know, abortion, he's obviously been much, much weaker this time around. But it's just impossible to convince people that Trump is soft on cultural stuff because he's such a cultural symbol himself. And then you get the indictments. If these people are movable at all, maybe they just weren't. You get the indictments that bond them to Trump. And then his theory was, I'll get these people, these soft Trump voters, and then I'll establish such strength. All the non-Trump people, and they're not a majority, so I got to worry about these people first. The 20 to 25 percent never non-Trump people just come to me because they have to. All the other candidates are flaking away and dropping out. So then I have maybe a winning plurality. And that

works on paper, but he couldn't get the soft Trump voters. And then Nikki Haley vacuums up the non-Trump voters. And that's why you're 20% in your strongest state in Iowa and 5% to 10% everywhere else and just done. That's such insightful analysis. I totally agree. He he has a sense of humor. You know, when I went down there to interview him in Florida. He like the dinner itself that we had the night before is off the record, but I will tell you, he he was telling stories that had us rolling. There was an amazing story he told about a particular U.S. senator who went in front of Trump when Trump was in the Oval Office, which I'm not at liberty to repeat. But in telling the story, he, DeSantis, did an imitation

of Trump that was the best. I mean, it was among the best imitations I've heard. And he did it with gusto. You know, he didn't half-ass it. And it was great. I had a smile from ear to ear. I was genuinely entertained. And it got me thinking, you know smile from ear to ear. I was genuinely entertained. And it got me thinking, you know, you know how they used to in the law, they used to say, I'm sure you guys have heard this. You hire the A students from the top schools to write the appellate briefs and you hire like the C students at the second and third tier schools to actually get in front of a jury because those are people who were smart enough to get into law school and make it through law school, but they're, they're more likely to be people persons. And DeSantis has had this stellar resume career, right? With like the Yale and the Harvard law school and right. And, and then went right to the JAG Corps. I mean, he's been building the presidential resume from

the time he was, you know, 17. And I do think that probably makes you risk averse. If, if, if you're not a natural people person, your inclination would not be to press past your veneer. It would be like, everything I've done has gotten me what I've achieved so far. I should not let down any of these defenses, Rich. Yeah. So, so just a couple of things. I'm sure I probably have thoughts on this too, but it's hard to manage. There's only a certain level which you can manage a presidential candidate, but what they should have done every time you said something funny in private, that someone should have written it down and some material they can't use, right?

You're not going to mock Trump that way, or can't talk about the senator by name. And then have them try it out on the stump and stuff that's funny. You're a public performer, making you do speaking. Once you have a joke, you know, that's gold, right? People love that. It makes you more relaxed. If people laugh at something you say that's intended to be funny, it bonds people to you. It makes them think better of you. Just use that.

And then you have 10 things you can work in. But apparently it just, and this all goes to the top, he's just uninterested in it. And I'd never heard your theory, but I think that makes a lot of sense. And then last thing, that thing about doing something wrong and the ace student worried about the misstep because he'd never made one in his life. This was a key thing. One reason people associate Trump with strength is he's fearless. He's not calculating what he says. At least you can't feel the gears whirring around in his head, right? He'll say anything about a judge. He'll say anything about a clerk sitting next to the judge. He'll say anything about other candidates. He'll make up nicknames. But both Haley and DeSantis, you could

always feel they were calculating every line. That debate they had must have been the most rehearsed, non-spontaneous debate ever. I doubt any of them actually ever said anything they hadn't thought about beforehand or written down beforehand. And that feels weak. It feels insincere. It feels inauthentic. And this goes back to Charlie's point that DeSantis, he didn't run quite as DeSantis, right? He's a conservative and he believes all the anti-wealth stuff, but this isn't quite who he is. And people could feel that, I think, and that hurt as well. What do you make of it, Charlie? There's a paradox here within democracy itself in that we're all sitting around and we're describing his ability to perform. But the job he's running for is mostly not about performance.

If you look at DeSantis' record as governor, he's an exceptional executive. He's the sort of person you would want to be in charge of the federal government. I mean, leave aside for a moment. Sure, leave aside for a moment. Sure. Leave aside for a moment whether you agree with him or not. Just look at his executive ability.

If he had left wing politics, people on the left would, I think, be able to see that he is good at being an executive. But he's not really interested in the stuff that you need to do to be able to become the executive. And so he can't get there. And I don't think he was ever interested enough in changing that. And so he's probably not

going to take the next step. It's quite rare you do get both. And you have people who are really good at running for president. They're really good at the campaigning stuff, say Barack Obama. Not a great leader. You probably have to go back to Ronald Reagan, to someone who had both and who picked it up over years. And Rich said,

when you have a joke that lands, you keep it. Well, Reagan had 50 years. Since he was 10 years old, he'd been telling people jokes. He'd been through a job in your union he'd been the governor of california he'd been a spokesman for general electric he'd been an actor you know he had every joke at his disposal during that time he also managed uh to turn himself into a fantastic executive as well ron de santis had one in spades he didn't have the other it is a

bit strange, though, how much we prioritize the performance quality. I'm not saying that we're wrong, because clearly DeSantis didn't make it. He got 20 percent of the vote in his best state. But it's a bit frustrating, I must say, as someone who's lived in Florida and seen what DeSantis has delivered, to read piece after piece accurately describing what is wrong with him, none of which actually has to do with the core job description that he was seeking. Can I add two things? One, to emphasize the point you're making, Charlie, and one to add a caveat.

So just what you're saying made me think the two best communicators in Republican politics ever were Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan, both of whom were hilarious, who were funny, had an endless story, endless store of jokes and stories. Like for any circumstance, any situation, they could use it to deflect certain things when they're being pressed or to emphasize a point. So I think this humor is really important. And And Trump, not in that way, you know, Lincoln and Reagan did, but he's funny. You know, he's funny. And I'll just add, yeah, you need a good executive to be president. Obviously, it's hugely important,

but performance is important. I remember, at least in the element, you need to look sad the right times when you need to be sad, strong when you need to look strong, even if you're not feeling it. And George W. Bush, once we were meeting with him in the Oval Office, and he was talking about, there's a big thing. He doesn't read the newspapers every day. What's wrong with them?

You know, he's an idiot. He's not well-informed. He's like, I read that stuff and it upsets me. You know, it makes me feel under attack, you know? And if I do that, people, when I go out and do an event, they're going to I don't want to slouch out there. I don't want people to sense that about me. So there is an inherent performance part of the job. It's it's you're absolutely right. It's more of the campaign element than the presidency element, but doesn't totally go away when you're president. Sure. By the way, both of those presidents you you mentioned from the state of Illinois. I mean, Reagan was born there, Lincoln, Illinois. And you know what else? Guess who else of things about Illinois. It's not been on the brain. Um, I will say I've told a story long in the past, but when I was young in journalism, there was,

um, a fairly well-known female news anchor who said to me, you should never try to use humor on the air. It's very dangerous to try to use humor on the air. Like don't do it. And it, you know, I definitely have a goofy side and it is part of who I am to use humor. Sometimes it lands, sometimes it doesn't, but it's just, it's like an outlet. And I did use humor on the air. And I really think that it helped me whether it landed or it didn't. People can tell you're in earnest and they appreciate you kind of trying to make them, to entertain them and that you can see the levity in a situation and all the more so when you're running for president. And they get that you understand there can be wars and there

are people's lives and the economy's in your hands in some ways. But, you know, I think I was right in this debate with this news anchor who didn't go on to do very well. And I think Ron DeSantis, he's got the side. That's what's frustrating. If he didn't have it, you guys, I'd be like, well, he doesn't have it. But he has it. He just didn't. He didn't let it out. Maybe he'll learn.

All right. Here's Nikki Haley, who I think she tried to use humor she had an interesting exchange here uh on the campaign trail that my team teed up take a look at it in and you look at what's happening in this election yes are you to vote for me? Get out of here. He says he's voting for Trump. Get out of here. Nice.

Nicely done. Could have been like a more poisonous moment. But I asked this of my panel earlier this week. There is a like the core MAGA base has come to hate her hate. And I don't think when she throws in the towel in a couple of days, they're going to do what they're doing now with DeSantis. I mean, there's some infighting still. I forget it. You didn't support Trump. You're out. But for the most part, I think MAGA is like, yeah, welcome to the party, to the DeSantis supporters. I just don't think I'm not sure Nikki Haley has any sort of a future in Republican politics. Am I wrong? I think you're probably right. I think

there will be some Veep consideration because by traditional standards, she checks every single box. I mean, it's insane. She'll be the second runner up, the last candidate standing against the nominee. She has a different base in the party and a base that Trump needs a lot of if he's going to win in November to come home. She could help with that, help with the demographic weakness, you know, women in the suburbs. And she's performed at a high level. This campaign, she's overperformed in this campaign, you know. Definitely. And DeSantis is drastically underperformed. She overperformed. So she's not

going to wilt under pressure. She's been a governor. She's been a UN ambassador. She could be president on day one, all that. But the MAGA hates her. Trump, he can't forgive anything. I mean, he holds incredible grudges, but if it's in his interest to forgive, or if you say something nice about him, he will forgive. It's very transactional. But I think the chances are against her being selected. And then we talked about this in the podcast an episode or two ago. Both DeSantis and Haley, 28, it's so long. And DeSantis will have the advantage. He's a sitting governor. And so he recently left office. So he'd still have a kind of currency. But Nikki Haley will have been 2028, he will have left office within the, within the past two years. Yeah. Whereas Haley, you know, it's really kind of yesterday's news, her service. And, um, you know, she's out of sympathy where

the party currently is. I think the, I'm not a huge fan, but the level of hatred is, is off the charts and uncalled for, but it's because the MAGA people say, you know, not unreasonably, she represents the old party. Don't pick her for Veep, you know, because you're giving the old party this foothold when we've waged this revolution and taken it over. So why are you going to give it to her? But that's, you know, there are many reasons they hate her. But the main one is that they associate her with the old guard. But, you know, I heard you guys talking about that. It was kind of depressing to think, you know, I'd love to see Ron DeSantis have an act, too, in presidential politics.

But why couldn't it happen, Charlie? Because when in twenty twenty eight, he'll have been out of it. Yes. OK. The four years of the next presidency. But and of course, from, I don't know, from now until, when does his term expire? It will be in 26, right? 26, right? His term expires in Florida.

So anyway, he'll be, he'll have been out of office for two years. But Nikki Haley left UN ambassador in 2018. What's she been doing all this? She's been working for Boeing and earning, like she's been in the private sector and she'd made a good run of it. So why, why, why so pessimistic on Ron DeSantis' ability to resurface as a real contender in 28? Well, I'm pessimistic because, and again,

leaving aside the problems that won't go away, as his height and uh like charisma he is keeps uh harping i've come to this view reluctantly because i think it is so silly and the guy who wrote the constitution james madison was five foot I think it is so silly. And the guy who wrote the Constitution, James Madison, was five foot three. But it is true. Just look at the statistics. America elects tall people. Thankfully, I'm unable to become president, so you can't draft me just because I'm tall.

But no, look, I think that DeSantis is going to be in a difficult position, whatever happens, in that if Trump wins, then DeSantis was the guy who didn't do well against Trump. And the Trump candidacy will have been ratified, in a sense, by the American public. If Trump loses, then Joe Biden is going to be president of the United States again, perhaps succeeded within his second term by Kamala Harris. And there's going to be a great deal of upset on the right at what Joe Biden and or Kamala Harris try to do. And there's going to be someone who becomes the face of the resistance. Now, in the first Biden term, that happened to be Ron DeSantis. He had the perfect issue. COVID obviously spanned both

presidencies, but Donald Trump was a private citizen living in Mar-a-Lago by the time that Biden was really kicking into gear. Ron DeSantis was not. He was the governor of Florida, the third most populous state, and he filed all sorts of suits. And he was the guy on the national stage saying, we're not going to stand for this. And he became the face of the conservative opposition to Biden. I suspect someone else will be that in 2027, 2028, right when they need to be ahead of the next set of primaries. And I don't think that DeSantis' success, such as it was in Iowa, followed by his dropping out, is going to be enough to persuade voters who at that point should be livid, Democrats having in that scenario won

four of the last five elections, to go back to that well. And on Nikki Haley, I just think Nikki Haley, although she's done really well and far, far better than anyone anticipated, including myself, I think Nikki Haley's success is the product of Donald Trump being the main character. In other words, she provides a foil to Trump. If Donald Trump tomorrow were abducted by aliens and we never saw him again, I can't quite see what role Nikki Haley would play in a 2028 primary. Why would anyone, and this is no disrespect to her,

she's accomplished, but why would anyone say at that point, you know who we really need? We need the former governor of South Carolina, former UN ambassador who hasn't been in office by that point for more than 10 years. And to your point, that poll I mentioned when we started asked her voters, is your vote going to be for Haley or against Donald Trump? And it was basically 50, 50, evenly split 46 and 46 for Haley versus for, uh, against Trump. Whereas with the Trump voters, 84% said, I'm going to vote for him because I want him. I'm there to support him. Only 10% said, I'm going to go. Cause I don't

like Nikki Haley. That's just what's happening with the Republican Party. They love him there. You know, they're under the spell. They they love the man. They love his personality. They they see the problems with it, the temperament and all that. But they've learned to love that, too, because it's indicative of other characteristics, I think, that they value. And the lawfare and all that is so much the better for them. I mean, they see the fighter that they love fight even harder. He seems indestructible. His chest gets bigger. His shoulders get broader.

He never backs down. He gets in the face of the judges who try to silence him. Just he cannot be controlled, which is another thing Republicans want to see. They don't want anybody who can be controlled by anyone. That's Trump and so on. And yet I know our mutual friend, Annie McCarthy, is saying over and over, as are many, this is the whole plan. This is the Democrats' plan, working to perfection, that they wanted to get exactly the results they're probably going to

get tonight in New Hampshire, they got last week in Iowa, and they have been holding their fire. And it's about to unleash, and it's going to be ugly. And if you think Trump's not going to lose his status as the front runner in those swing state polls really quickly, then you don't understand the Democrats war machine. That's where we will pick it up right after this quick, quick break from your commercial sponsor. I've been indicted. I've been indicted more than Al Capone, and he got indicted less than me. That's not right.

No, these people are crazy. These people are crazy. It's weaponization. It's going after your political opponent. Nobody's ever done this before in the history of our country. They do it in third world nations, but they don't do it here. And I have a feeling maybe it's going to be the last time

because people are going to see it at the polls. And somebody said, don't indict him anymore. Please, you're killing us. You're going to indict him right into the White House. We don't want to have that. I guess today are Rich Lowry and Charles C.W. Cook. You know, guys, we were all together for National Review last spring on the day of the first indictment. And we talked, I remember about, you know, how this was just going to send the poll numbers through the roof for him that remember that he should be on his hands and knees praying for that Trump should for an indictment. Lo and behold, it came and, you know, look at us now for indictments later. However, however, as to part two of the Democrats plan, if indeed this on a case by case basis,

they see outrageous things and they say, oh, that that one, too, that one, too, as opposed to like the master plan. Anyway, there's a poll out today, Pennsylvania interactive polls showing now Biden up eight over Trump in Pennsylvania, which was one of the states, one of the critical swing states that we've been watching where Trump had actually gone up over Biden by a couple of points. Now already he's down by eight, at least in this poll. And there were already some DeSantis supporters online saying, we're doing the wrong thing. Get used to it because we're going to get a lot more polls like this. And the air and the sale of Trump and his supporters is about to die a slow and painful death, Rich. Do you think so? Yeah. So by the way, this is, again, talking about what went wrong in

the primary. The two main things that hurt DeSantis that were exogenous to his campaign, the indictments and the polling showing Trump beating Biden, which destroyed the electability argument, which was going to be one of the main props of DeSantis' case against Trump. So I'm more bullish about Trump's chances than Andy is. He mentioned earlier, or than Charlie is, as we'll hear in a minute. I think it's probably going to be a 50-50 proposition in November, and Trump easily could win. But the case you couldn't make, which I think is true, is that this polling showing you slightly ahead of Joe Biden, given his enfeebled state in every

single sense, physically, mentally, and politically, the weakest incumbent running for reelection since George H.W. Bush and or Jimmy Carter, that's not great. Just being a little bit ahead is not great. Before they've started the onslaught, before trials might start, and before you might get a conviction, and a lot depends on how accurate polling is on a conviction. Now it's catastrophic. You know, basically says everyone would leave Trump or be less likely to vote for him. I kind of wonder if there'll be like the Access Hollywood tape and for three weeks be the biggest thing ever and for three weeks be

the biggest thing ever and destroy his campaign and everyone absorbs it and forgets about it and we go on. But Trump obviously is the riskiest candidate. He's obviously the candidate Democrats want to run against. They think correctly. They beat him once before. And just a last thing on these trials, whether there's a conspiracy or they're actively talking about this. I don't know. I kind of doubt it. But I am certain that if the polling showed the opposite and three-quarters of people would be more likely to vote for Trump if he were tried and convicted of a felony, these would all go away.

They'd find some reason for them to go away. Oh, it's inappropriate to do it so close to election. Oh, this legal theory we're advancing is a little too adventurous. The Supreme Court has been kind of down on it lately. We're not going to do that. Whatever it would be, they would find a reason. So does Jack Smith hate Trump? Sincerely, yes. Does Jack Smith think that Trump should be nailed to the wall for January 6th? Yes, totally sincerely. But he would find a reason not to do it if he thought by doing this, he would actually help Trump get elected. Of course, he knows, and everyone on the other side thinks that it will hurt Trump's chances. And that's why they

want to do it. And just the last thing, I think it's a total distortion of the legal process. I think it's disgraceful and will give Trump, if he loses, if he's convicted and loses, the excuse, the rationale to say it was rigged once again and he made it all up. Not all, but most of it up, the lion's share of it, most important parts of it up in 2020. But this will be a significant distortion of our process that he'll have legitimate claim to to scream bloody murder about if he's convicted and he loses in the aftermath. Yeah, I was just having a friend, a talk with a friend, a woman who was saying no matter what before November, we have to make sure to be armed because she's really scared that if Trump wins, the Democrats are going to riot, you know, are going to see Antifa everywhere plus and that if Trump loses, his core supporters are going to be so outraged at the lawfare and it having had an effect that they too will take to the streets. Having said that,

in general, putting January 6th to the side, Republicans don't normally go out there and riot politically. That hasn't been their thing. It's been more of the Democrats thing. But you never know, Charlie, because tempers are going to be so charged going into this next election. He's right. It's helping him for now. What do you make of Pennsylvania? And do you think these other swing states are likely to go move from that Trump into that Biden column as the Democrats really unleash what they're capable of unleashing politically and advertising and so on, speaking. Yeah. I have been encouraging people for months to step back for a moment outside of the bubble that the three of us inhabit and say out loud the sentence. And of course, once Trump had been indicted multiple times, his nomination was guaranteed. And just think about it in any normal circumstance. It's preposterous. I'm not saying it's not true within the highly politicized bubble that we occupy, in which Trump is a star, that Republican primary voters and influencers live in. But it is crazy to most people. So I don't know whether this was some grand plan or whether it's various prosecutors or groups acting on their own volition

or whether there's a little bit of contact, whatever it is, you cannot force the Republican primary electorate to nominate someone. They chose to do that. Again, I think that is what happened. But there's no mechanism that guarantees that outcome. People in Iowa and today in New Hampshire, and if the primary continues, subsequently in South Carolina and Nevada and everywhere else, have to acquiesce to the impetus that they have been given. They have chosen of their own free will to pick the guy who lied when he lost last time around, whose candidates flamed out in 2022 and wasted what should have been a much better year for Republicans, who is only marginally

winning when he is winning against Joe Biden, who is effectively dead in 2024, and who is very, very likely, whether it's legitimate or not, this is a fact, who is very, very likely to be indicted and prosecuted for crimes, as well as the civil suits, that will carry punishments of some sort. Republicans knew that this was coming, and they were privy to the polls that showed, as Rich says, that if Trump is convicted, his support in the middle among moderates, independents, and suburban voters who turn out, falls off a cliff. They made this choice. One of the reasons, Megan, that I'm a conservative is that I try to live in the real world. I like reality. I like to take the evidence that is in front of me as it is, not as I wish it were. And I see no sign that Republican primary voters

have done that over the last year. They just assume it's all going to be okay. They are so convinced that Joe Biden is weak and beatable, which in a vacuum he is, that they can't imagine any other outcome than a loss. So yeah, I think we're about to see the ramping up of the Democrat media industrial complex. I think we're about to see the fruits of those court cases yielding consequences that Republicans will not like and bleeding out into the real world where no one actually cares how you became president. They just care whether or not you've taken the oath and are able to exercise the powers

that are vested in you. And we're all going to have to live with the results of it. Well, that's the risk, of course, is that I think the Republican base will stay motivated. I do believe the indictments motivate them in a special way. They're so angry that the law system is being used in this punitive way. But the independents are less diehard when it comes to Trump. They're already a little iffy on Trump. And they're saying right now to the pollsters, the big question is whether they mean it, that they won't vote for him if he gets convicted before November. They are saying that. The only real question we have, again, is do they mean it when push comes to shove after a year of, yes, the Democrats unleashing their best when it comes to ads in the media,

but the Republicans will be out there too. And Joe Biden, you guys know as well as I do, he could fall. He's going to have more verbal gaffes at the end with an open border. And we'll get to what's happening in Texas where the feds are not only allowing complete chaos at the end with an open border and we'll get to what's happening in Texas where the feds are not only allowing complete chaos at the border, but they're fighting the efforts states like Texas are making to try to protect the citizenry. Could they actually say, I'm voting for this guy? I'm going to vote for Joe Biden instead? Or might they stay home when it comes down to animated Republicans and semi-animated Democrats? Rich, they do hate Trump on the Dem side, but they don't love Biden. And already we're seeing that lack of enthusiasm show up in places like the black vote.

Yeah. So as a colleague of mine pointed out a while ago, if Trump had just said after the 2020 election, I hate this. I don't think it was fair, I think it was wrong. In fact, I think it was stolen from me. But I understand I'm never going to be able to prove that to the satisfaction of any legal or political authorities that matter. So I'll see you in 2024. See you in 2024. He'd be a heavy favorite in this race, or at least a favorite. But he obviously didn't do that. He disgraced himself, helped bring disgrace on the country on January 6th. And this is the main vulnerability, the stop the steal stuff, which they haven't really started using. On the legal case, just another thought here. And again, I'm relying on Andy McCarthy's

thinking here, but the Alvin Bragg thing may never get to trial. It's so ridiculous. Fannie Walsh, that case is also a real stretch. Classified documents, the timing is not going to work. So this January 6th case is the main thing. And there are signs that that is not going to get off on the dime. And actually, it may be delayed into July or August if they wait for a Supreme Court decision that's highly relevant to about half the case on the meaning of the obstruction statutes. So is she going to start that case in July or August and go into September or October? I mean, that's really brazen. So there's a chance he tiptoes through the raindrops the way Trump always assumes he can, and doesn't, these trials actually don't come off before the election. But the feeble state of Joe Biden, the economic numbers, they're just horrible.

And 75% of people not thinking that he's suited to be president again or can serve as president is a huge X factor. They can try to disqualify Trump, and they did it in 2020. But then there's that huge thing about people thinking he's disqualified too. So that's why I think it's a jump ball. Look who's over there. Well, that's actually where we're going to pick it up right after this. I want to get to what's happening in Texas and the Supreme Court ruling, but I, there's a very interesting bit in the New York Post today about Michelle Obama and a possible switcheroo. We'll start there and we come right back. Don't go away, guys.

So guys, we saw Michelle Obama surface for what seemed to me to be a totally pointless interview on a podcast the other week in the past two weeks. And she's not promoting anything. It was real question about why she got out there. She mentioned she's terrified at the prospect of Trump being reelected. And on the heels of that, the New York Post through Cindy Adams reporting today, and this is following up on another report that she had about a few days ago, that there is a plan to replace Joe Biden with Michelle Obama. What she says is reportedly I'm being told that Obama has pulled donors. This is Barack Obama for his wife and that the plan is around May. Joe Biden announces he's not running. And this this will that allow the August convention for Michelle to get nominated at the August convention, that they don't want to do it any earlier than May because it would make Joe Biden a lame duck. But sometime between May

and August, their thought is that Mrs. Obama will become the nominee, that she will be subbed in, and that her team has already sent a survey to the top heavy duty donors asking how they would feel about her as the candidate. Now, I can't imagine an answer from top Democratic donors to that question other than, we feel great about that. Please, please have her do that. I mean, it would be a total game changer, Rich. It would be a total game changer. Yeah, I'm not a fan of Michelle Obama, but I have huge respect for her political skills, which she developed. You can see her growing as a communicator and speech giver. During her time in office, she is not going to fall down, right? She can speak cogently, but I'd be shocked if she wants to do it. She's been there. She's a world celebrity. Why know, why would you want to go through this? And I just don't believe in the switcheroo scenario. Yes. If Biden suffers, something terrible happens to Biden. Yes. And that's not there is some serious risk to that. Right. He could have a terrible fall at any time. But he spent his whole adult life wanting this, thinking about how to get there, trying to get there, usually failing.

And then he caught his break in 2020. There's no way he's going to give it up voluntarily unless he and Jill really take a serious look and realize he's not up for it physically or mentally. There's no sign they're going to do that. And if he doesn't want to do it, doesn't want to go, there's no way to leverage him out. Because I was talking to a Democrat about this a while ago. They said you can send Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, James Clyburn, you know, who made him as a 2020 candidate or resurrected his campaign and say, Joe, great job. You know, you saved democracy. You've transformed our economy. You're going to save the planet through your electric car initiatives. But it's time to go. And you just say, no, no, make me. How are you going to make me? And their option at that point would be to go out and at a press conference say he's not fit to be president anymore and he has to go.

Are they going to do that? Because he could still not go. And now you've fundamentally damaged him and he's going to lose to Trump. No, they're not going to do it. So the way to switch by now would have been to run someone serious against him. They weren't going to do that. They never had any interest in doing that. And now they're stuck with him and may, you know, even though I think they're aware of his weaknesses, may think there's no good alternative because Michelle Obama is not going to do it. So maybe Kamala Harris is going to do it if you're going to switch him out. Is that really an improvement? And what would this convention look like unless you have a consensus candidate? It'd be a huge risk, hugely complicated. At a time when he's

running against this guy, they consider a threat to democracy. So I think they're in with him and into the end for better or worse. If it's true, Charlie, that the Obamas are polling big money donors on whether they would like to see Michelle run, then it does telegraph some interest. If it's true, we don't know. This is what the Post is reporting. Then it does telegraph some interest by the Obamas, which I do think many Democrats, if not most, would see as a huge lifeline. I don't know. I don't see Joe Biden voluntarily ceding power either. I've said that all along. But if you have a scenario in which the New York Times, the Washington Post,

NBC, MSNBC, CNN are all piling on with he has to go save America, your final patriotic duty, cede the mantle to the next generation. And also it's anti-black if you don't. They'll add that in too. I could see a scenario in which he gets effectively forced out. Well, I can't. I think that the Democrats are in a difficult position here because Joe Biden is weak and senile and regarded by the vast majority of the electorate as too old to be president. In fact, majorities say that they suspect he will die in the second term, which is a situation voters haven't been asked to contend with since at least Franklin Roosevelt. But the alternative is not necessarily better. And that's because the

Republican coalition is a mess and the Democratic coalition is a mess. The Democratic coalition, in some sense, is more of a mess than the Republican coalition. It makes less sense. The Democrats have done okay in recent years, but they've done okay with a hodgepodge of voters that consists of extremely educated, increasingly woke, upper middle class white people, and poorer people, and minorities who don't have that much in common, except that they don't like Republicans. Now, if you are running against Donald Trump as a party, not liking Republicans and not liking Donald Trump in particular might be enough. If you are holding a convention to decide who should replace the one guy you could

find to satisfy the coalition in 2020, you've got a bit of a problem on your hands, especially when to get to Michelle Obama, if indeed she wants to be president, which I doubt, but you said, suppose it's true, to get to Michelle Obama, you have to remove Kamala Harris. You have to get rid of her. You have to tell her she's not allowed to be president. That inspiring story of hers only goes so far. Michelle Obama is going to be appealing to some parts of the Democratic coalition, but not to others.

So is Kamala Harris. So is Pete Buttigieg. So is anyone you can think of. Joe Biden's actually their best candidate, paradoxically. That's how much of a mess the party is in. It's why it is, in my view, so irresponsible of Republicans to put up their weakest candidate against him. But it's true nevertheless. Joe Biden is their best shot. That's why he's there.

And that's why he's probably going to stay there. Now, if he were to, say, have a terrible public, undeniable fall, something that you just could not spin away in the press. Something that everybody saw and agreed was enough to prompt him to step down. Well, at that point, the situation I've just described becomes inevitable. And maybe it is true that Michelle Obama wonders whether she would make a good candidate. And maybe she declares, and maybe she tries to get enough people on her side. But I don't think there are going to be too many people in the Democratic Party who are going to try and bring that about in January 2024, because the unknown is potentially much more alarming than the known. They're banking right now on the lawfare. They're banking on Jack Smith, Fannie Willis, who I will get to as well in one sec. Let's talk about Texas, because

what's happening at the southern border is absolutely dreadful. And there was a very disturbing, but I can see the legal positioning for it, ruling out of the Supreme Court yesterday, in which Texas, because we really are facing a true crisis at the southern border and Texas is dealing with the brunt of it, just fed up, fed up with the total true crisis at the southern border and Texas is dealing with the brunt of it, just fed up, fed up at the total inaction at the feds. I mean, inaction would probably be a blessing. It's more like action to invite people in. So they decide to launch this operation. It included busing the illegals to sanctuary cities all over the country. That's working out very well. I think it's making the point

brilliantly. But it also included trying to fortify the border to the extent Texas can. They put up razor wire. They put out sort of a barricade, these sort of big flotilla things in the water down there, which remain up. And then rather than just leave well enough alone, rather than say, you know, this is a win for us at the federal level, Texas is going to take on this burden and we don't have to get it through Congress and we don't have to say it was us. The Biden administration goes in and sues them. They sued them over it, saying you got to take them down, take down the razor wire, take down the flotilla. Allegedly, we can't perform our duties of getting to the illegal immigrants as they're coming across the border. Three died

recently, but there's been testimony that they had died long before the feds ever could have gotten to them. In any event, they're trying to exploit it. And the Fifth Circuit, which is a more conservative federal court of appeals, voted in favor of Texas. And then and that's playing out. They've they've now Texas or the government has now appealed to the Supreme Court. But while the appeal is pending, the government asked the Supreme Court to to say the feds could take down the razor wire, that the razor wire had to come down, that these measures had to come down while they're litigating. And the Supreme Court just agreed. They just agreed five for the three libs. Chief Justice

Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett voted together to say, yeah, you can take down those things while the case pens. Now, Texas could still win on the merits when this thing gets heard this term. But there's no question it was a blow and it doesn't bode well for Texas that Barrett and Roberts voted this way, Rich. Yeah, I don't see this as a politically good thing for Joe Biden at all, but it's just so far beyond the politics of it. I mean, really, the country's changing by the second. And there are there's already a crisis in city after city that's affecting kids. They're not doing anything about it. Yeah, so on the legalities here, I need to read the circuit not doing anything about it. Yeah. So on the legalities here, I need to read the circuit opinion. I have it. But to the extent I follow this, the Supreme Court has been pretty adamant and pretty clear that

just the federal government has total authority in the area of immigration enforcement. Now, what's perverse, right, is this is immigration non-enforcement or active lack of enforcement. But the federal government be able to make the case, you know, what do they say? Like these barbed wires obstructing our Border Patrol agents. And whether that's BS or not, I think that if the federal government says that, the court is likely to accept it. But going back to the scenario that we're talking about with Biden, you know, for the good of the party, if they were a clear successor, if Michelle Obama was willing to run, he should step aside. If he thinks the country's system of government is at stake in this election, he should do everything he can to defeat Trump. And the first thing should be

removing himself from the equation. But he's not going to do that. The second thing he should do is enforce the border, right? This is a yawning political vulnerability that he totally created out of discretion when he first came to office by removing all the Trump controls, and he could reinstate them, right? Or at least say, yeah, you know what, it is a crisis, and we're going to deal with it. And his poll numbers on immigration, which are totally in the toilet, understandably, and is the main issue for Trump or one of the main issues. And according to polling, it was the biggest issue in the Iowa caucus

and the biggest issue in the New Hampshire primary coming up here today. It would at least minimize the political vulnerability, but he won't do it. Now, there are some indications and numbers have been going down because the Mexicans have been discouraging people from coming over, apparently in reaction to talks that the Biden folks had with them in December. So that I mean, that's better than the alternative. But why not do it yourself? You're in the United States government. This is what you're signed up to do. You took an oath of office to do. It's wrong, one, not to enforce the law. Two, it's straining jurisdictions all across the country. And it never should have just been on Texas. Yeah, Chicago should have part of this burden, and New York and Washington, D.C. Why not? It's a national problem. And three,

there's a political element. So everything says enforce it, you know, do your duty, but is not. The problem is where the feds have legislated, the states aren't allowed to. I mean, it's basically a matter of federalism. And the feds are saying, we're trying to enforce this. This is how they're arguing it. The Solicitor General went in there and said, we're trying to perform our duties. We're trying to get to the illegal migrants as they're in the waters. And these fences and other barriers are stopping us from performing our federal duties.

So you can't have a Texas law that creates a barrier between us and our federal responsibilities. And in the abstract, that's true. It just ignores the realities, Charlie, of what's actually happening at the southern border, which is, in all honesty, almost nothing from the feds. The Border Patrol would like to do more, but they don't have the go ahead from Joe Biden. In fact, the Biden administration is all but given a green light for people to run across the borders as long as they scream asylum, asylum. Well, I think it's slightly more perverse than that. You mentioned

legislation. It is true under our system of government that the federal government in this area trumps the states. That's a foundational principle within this area, which is covered by an enumerated power. But the executive branch is not following the law that Congress has written. And so what the executive branch is asking the states to do is not follow the law as it has been determined by the federal legislature, but follow the law as it is being interpreted, and it might be misinterpreted or not enforced by the executive branch. That's a really weird problem to grapple with. It's a problem that starts in the White House, that is also to some extent on Congress's shoulders, because if Congress grew a pair, it could start to deprive the executive branch of things that it wants in exchange for enforcement.

I'm actually less critical of the Supreme Court on this than others, especially of Amy Coney Barrett. I've seen a great deal of slings and arrows lobbed her way. I think they're premature. As you noted, this is not a decision on the merits. The merits were never reached. The question here is what happens before the merits are reached. I know that Amy Coney Barrett has criticized what she calls the shadow docket and the changing of policy without any explanation.

We don't actually know what it is that she thinks or John Roberts thinks or the conservative justices on the other side think. Yeah, if it is the case that they ignore the law and give carte blanche to the Biden administration, I'll be disappointed. But until that happens, I think we just have to wait and see and reserve our opprobrium to where it belongs, which is Joe Biden, who, as Rich said, came into office and explicitly decided that he was going to open up a border that had been

largely closed and that has not been dissuaded from this course of action by anything, including inexplicably his own self-interest. It's obviously from this course of action by anything, including inexplicably his own self-interest. It's obviously in the interest of the Biden administration politically to fix this. The public hates Joe Biden on immigration and the broader Democratic Party on immigration. It's not just a presidential election year. It's also an election year in the Senate in many places. Texas has a Senate election. Arizona has a Senate election. If you look at the last round of House races in 2022, Republicans did pretty well in California. If they do pretty well in California again in 2024, it will be more difficult for

Democrats to take back the House. This is one of those examples of where fringe ideology has captured the Democratic Party to such an extent that it just can't act in its own interests. It can't get out of its own way. I blame Joe Biden for that. To a slightly lesser extent, I blame Congress. I'm not ready yet to blame the Supreme Court. Here's the problem. You can't have what's happening now in some pockets of the Republican Party, which is folks like Chip Roy saying, ignore it, ignore the Supreme Court ruling. And even Governor Governor Abbott of Texas saying he's suggesting to me, you tell me how you read this, that he's not going to follow it. He posted on his ex account, this is not over. Texas's razor wire is an effective deterrent.

I will continue to defend Texas's constitutional authority to secure the border and prevent the Biden administration from destroying our property. Now, I don't know exactly what he's saying there, but if the feds, the way I understand it is the feds have just been given the green light to go destroy their property, to go get those fences down while this case is pending until we have a Supreme Court final decision. And as much as I understand how important this issue is to Republicans. You can't have individual governors or lawmakers saying to the U.S. Supreme Court, this is an extremely slippery slope. Rich, this is what the Democrats have been threatening to do since Dobbs. Yep. You know, we just have to place our faith in the laws and court decisions, even if we hate them and want to argue against

them, all that's fine. But what's going to happen? Are the Texas Rangers going to fight, you know, actively federal forces over this barbed wire? Yeah, it is a slippery slip. You don't want to go there. I think Greg Abbott has done a great job on this. If nothing else, just highlighting it for the entire country and making all these Democratic mayors squawk. And my understanding, you know, these buses and flights, people are asked, do you want to go to Michigan? Migrants are asked, do you want to go to Chicago? Do you want to go to New York? They say, yes, there they go. And if they want to go there, they're going to make it there anyway. In New York, at least, and I assume this is true of other cities, the number of illegal immigrants who are coming in through buses and plane flights from Texas are a minuscule percentage of the overall flow of illegal

immigrants because it's a great destination for illegal immigrants. It's always been a destination for illegal immigrants. New York has always welcomed them and said more. And then now you have, you know, numbers showing up that strain the system. And all of a sudden, wow, illegal immigration isn't such a great thing. Illegal immigrants should go someplace else or stay in Texas. Charlie, the Texas Department of Public Safety also weighed in. The spokesperson saying the state of Texas will maintain its current posture in deterring illegal border crossings by utilizing effective border security measures, reinforced concertina wire and anti-climb barriers along the rio grande the logical concern should be why the federal government continues to hinder texas's ability

to protect its border correct on that second part and i get it i mean i get it i understand you can feel the republican ire right now saying f yes texas don't comply but But if we start blowing off Supreme Court decisions, like it's just kind of up to us whether those will be the rule of the land, we're not going to like the country we'll be living in in about four or five years. I couldn't agree more. I'm for the law. And so must be anyone who's taken a nurse. I don't quite know what those messages mean. They are somewhat ambiguous. I'd feel a lot more comfortable with them if they ended with, but of course, we will respect the decision of the Supreme Court. Until such time as Texas does anything, it's okay. You're allowed to talk about ignoring court decisions or pretend that you're going to

ignore court decisions, but you shouldn't. I don't think that we want to go down this road. Just to interject quickly, there's nobody better on guns than you are. Think of what the Democrats will do in the wake of the next Supreme Court decision on guns. If you can just blow off the order, the ones you don't like, where do you think this is going to go? Right. And look, the institutional right has been really good about following bad Supreme Court decisions. And pro-lifers believe, as I do, that killing unborn children is tantamount to murder. That law obtained for 50 years. And although it was challenged and a movement was built to overturn it, it was followed. There was no insurrection against it. So if that's possible, then it's possible to weather this storm. You really do

not want to destroy your constitutional order over a bad decision, especially when, as I'll say again, that bad decision is not forthcoming yet. We have a not on the merits decision that deals with what happens until a ruling comes down. It's temporary bad news. It's temporary bad news. It's temporary bad news. And no, if the decision is bad, then you also have to follow the law. But you especially don't want to be talking about ignoring the law when there is no law yet.

Right. What a principle to sacrifice for the next six months. I mean, we're going to have a decision by June. You got to hold the line on following the law. The Republicans have had the moral high ground when it comes to this for the very reasons you point out. We haven't had the Supreme Court in conservative control for the better part of my lifetime. And it's now is not the time to start saying you can ignore Supreme Court decisions just as there is a conservative majority.

Just wait. Just hold the line. I don't know what those statements mean either. I can read the Chip Roy one pretty clearly. Don't comply means don't comply, though. So far as you point out, no one's no one's done anything. Here's the thing that is pretty galling about all of this, Rich. The Biden administration, you know, Biden came out and he was just asked, is the border secure? And he said, no, it's not secure. And I've been saying for 10 years, it's not secure. Karine Jean-Pierre was asked about it this week too. Is it, you know, is it secure? And her messaging is, you know, it's just such a problem. And like those Republicans, they just, they won't do anything. They just, you know, we've proposed deal after deal and they just, they won't do anything. And it's really unfortunate that

we don't have willing partners. I'm actually doing a pretty good imitation of her right now. And, uh, The Santas would be laughing at your impression, Megan. When you run for president, that one's going to kill. I'll make sure you guys are in the audience. So this is what they're going to start. They're going to do more of this. It's all the Republicans fault. The Republicans control the house right now. You know, they wouldn't do anything about it. And and already they're trying to tie it to this border bandaid that was tacked on by Republicans to the demand for

aid, 60 billion to Ukraine and 11 billion to Israel. And in response to that, the House Republicans said, well, give us something. We don't want to give you any of that, really. But how about some border security if you want us to agree to that? And they got some agreements, which really aren't going to do much, but they got something. And now Karine Jean-Pierre is basically like, look at us. We have a border plan and these losers are kind of stopping it. So what do you make of this effort and will it work politically? Yes, they've been saying this all along, right?

They've been blaming Trump when Trump controlled it and the genius and cleverness of what the Trump people did. And there are a couple of things where the Trump administration was really creative. This would be one, Abraham Accords, which totally blew up the conventional thinking about the Middle East. Another, Operation Warp Speed, which no one wants to take credit for anymore, was another one. But what they figured out was you look at the laws and the authorities existed to actually implement programs that would really end this problem. And that's how you get returned to remain in Mexico, because the name of the game is not letting them in the country in the first place, because once they claim asylum and get in, they're not going to show up for all their hearings. They're certainly not going to show up for a deportation hearing.

They'd be morons to do that. So once they're here, they stay, and everyone knows that. So you've got to keep them out. That's the point of remain in Mexico, safe third-party agreements. You know, if you're really being politically persecuted, which is supposed to be the standard in Guatemala and Honduras, as soon as you walk into another country, you're not going to be politically persecuted in that country. So you're supposed to claim asylum there, not walk through three or four countries and

come here for some reason to claim asylum, which is politically you want a job here. So they figured all that out, had a system that worked. And, you know, Title 42 played a role, obviously, but arguably not necessarily the most important. And they blew it up. They ripped it up. They don't need Congress to tell them to do it. They don't need Congress to give them more money to do it. They could do it, right? They could do it right now. And they don't want to. And that's, Charlie got to this. They've become ideologically extreme on this question. Bill Clinton used to be anti illegal immigrant immigration. You know, Barack Obama kind of BS. But their deportation numbers that were supposedly really high because they changed the accounting on them to make them seem high. it because a de facto open border has become democratic orthodoxy, like being pro-choice on abortion or pro-affirmative action. It's something that you just don't want to cross the left on, at least Joe Biden does it. So this whole idea that Trump messed it up or it's been

a problem for 20 years, no, Trump figured out a way to fix it. They ripped it up. They don't need permission from Congress or anything from Congress, they could drastically alleviate this problem on their own and they don't want to do it. This is like this is like where they tried to say that Republicans were the ones who wanted to defund police. This is not going to work. Yeah, right. Yeah. It's that level of argument. Reality is too in your face, no matter where you are, for people to buy this lie that this is a Trump problem. Just look at the numbers of crossings and people are experiencing it in a personal level now at their schools, in their towns.

You know, you look at this Brooklyn school where they kicked out the students for a night so that the illegals could be moved in. They're just feeling it. You got the governor of Illinois begging for mercy now, even though he's a sanctuary guy. Like, no, there'll be no mercy. There's no mercy until Texas gets no mercy. There's no mercy

until Texas gets some mercy. How about the southern border states? And Bill Malujan of Fox News has been doing a great job with all of his reporting on it. And he's he's bringing home the reality of, yes, of course, the fentanyl deaths, which is not it's largely illegals, but it's also American citizens. But the problem is the border wide open and being smuggled in. And then you've got the crimes. This was just one example he tweeted last week about Virginia, a Honduran illegal immigrant charged with the sexual abuse and quote, carnal knowledge of a child in Virginia. The guy was caught and then released from a Fairfax County, Virginia jail without notice to the feds

because it's a sanctuary jurisdiction. They ignored the ICE detainer request on this child molester because being a sanctuary city is more important to them. So they released this guy who likes to rape little children back into the community. I mean, that's insane. Not the only one, of course. Actually, Peter Doocy asked Karine Jean-Pierre about this case on Monday. Let's take a listen to that. It's at 14. They released an illegal immigrant from Honduras who was charged with sexually assaulting a Virginia minor and production of sexual abuse material. Doesn't that go to show that as record numbers of people appear at the border, you guys have no idea what kind of people are coming into this country?

Let me just say, first of all, this is why the president is having negotiations with the Senate senators, Republicans and Democrats, right, for the past couple of weeks to deal with what's going on at the border security, right, as it relates to border security. This is why the president on day one put forward a comprehensive immigration plan that more than three years now Congress didn't do anything about. There's more work to do. There's more work to do. We understand that. We have said that. You've heard that from the president on Friday. We understand that there's more work to do. We need more resources. We need more funding. There's more work to do. You're talking about the rape of a child. OK, no one wants to hear you're stupid. There's more work to do. Right. Right.

There's like a lot of and there's another report. This is Bill plus Daily Wire, an illegal immigrant from Haiti charged with raping a developmentally disabled person in Boston, released from the jail, back into the community because it's a sanctuary jurisdiction that will not cooperate with ICE. So they do not honor ICE's detainer notification saying this is a criminal. Let us know when this person gets they won't honor it. And these are the cities that are begging for mercy. Now it's a, no, you'll get no mercy. Why should we have mercy on them? This is becoming an issue that people understand on a gut level, rich. I just think they're playing with fire right now. Yeah. I mean, releasing someone like that, sexually abusing a developmentally disabled person, I mean, it's infernal.

You can smell the sulfur. What's wrong with these people? It's disgusting. And you're right. As we talked about, it's been felt in every community. And there's a sense community, people feel invested in their community, right? We've seen really moving statements from African-Americans in Chicago. That's our community community, right? We've seen really moving statements from African Americans in Chicago. That's our community center, right? Now, are they hateful people

because they feel a sense of ownership about it? Are they hateful because they think their neighborhood in some sense belongs to them? No, that's a deeply human instinct. And everyone feels wronged if you think the community belongs to you and your community has problems and it's you know trying to take care of itself and people from who don't belong here who violate every rule to get here all of a sudden are bussed in and it's given to them that that's just deeply offensive to people naturally right and people are going to feel that in Martha's Vineyard they're going to feel it in the south side of Chicago. And this is not just, it's been a border problem for a long time and not just a border problem. You know, these legal immigrants, they go to, you know, other

places in California, New York and big cities, but it's been felt immediately in numbers that are impossible to ignore such that you have sanctuary city mayors and governors saying, no mosque, no more. We can't handle this, which goes to the point that there's a cost to illegal immigration, right, which is what immigration hawks or restrictionists, the argument they made for a very long time. You got to pay for the medical care. You got to educate their kids. They have more kids when they're here. They're eligible for welfare. So the cost to all this, and they've been considered also hateful people and wrongheaded people for pointing that out. But now all these progressives are feeling it in real time. Plus, Charlie, she didn't answer the question. His question was, doesn't this show you don't know who's coming in? Yeah, we don't know

who's coming in. Then we set them off under the community. And then when they commit additional crimes, these sanctuary cities don't cooperate with federal authorities who would like to actually potentially deport them. So the whole system is meant to endanger. That's how it looks, meant to endanger actual Americans. Yeah, you know what I don't understand about this?

Just strategically, strip out for a second the moral questions and just look at it purely apolitically. I don't understand why they can't even concede that. So the sanctuary city setup is the product of a Supreme Court decision from the 1990s called Prince versus United States. It was actually about guns. The question in that case was, do local or state authorities have to enforce federal law? In other words, can Washington, D.C. say that the state of Florida police officers

have to enforce federal gun laws? And the answer to that question in that case that was written by Justice Scalia was no. He said, if you look at the structure of our constitution, although the federal government can enforce federal law in the states, the states don't have to help them do it with their own treasure and personnel. And so what became a gun case has also been used

to justify sanctuary cities. Now, I don't think there's anything wrong with that decision. But the decision didn't say that the states can't help. I mean, if the states want to help the federal government, they're allowed to do it. And I don't understand why, even if you have some weirdo ideological reason for not wanting to help enforce the immigration laws, I don't understand why jurisdictions that have in their possession a rapist or a murderer don't say, all right, but in this case, we're going to help the federal government. We're going to have this guy over to ICE.

And I don't understand why when she's asked about it from the White House podium, Karine Jean-Pierre, even if she is completely in hock to that same weirdo ideology, can't say, do you know what? This is a good example of the sort of immigration enforcement that we really need. Why can't she concede that? To me, it makes them look so zealous that I just don't trust them on anything. Yeah, you shouldn't. I agree with you. All right, stand makes them look so zealous that I just don't trust them on anything. Yeah, you shouldn't. I agree with you. All right, stand by. We're going to take a break, and then we're going to come back and talk about the latest with Fannie Willis, because there have been a couple of developments in that case. Fascinating. She's in a lot of trouble. Stand by. I'm Megyn Kelly, host of The Megyn Kelly Show on Sirius XM. 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 Megan Kelly Show on Triumph, a Sirius XM 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, Megan Kelly. You can stream The Megan 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 MK show to subscribe and get three months free. That's SiriusXM.com slash MK show and get three months free. Offer details apply. All right, guys. So an update in this Fannie Willis investigation. She's the D.A. prosecuting

Trump for alleged RICO violations in the Atlanta area. And she's under fire herself now for allegedly hiring a special prosecutor with whom she was sleeping. Her quote, Paramore, is the allegation in legal papers and paying him more than she's paying the other special prosecutors. That's the allegation. And then going to places like Aruba, Jamaica. Oh, I want to take it. And he allegedly did. He took her, took her to Aruba and to Napa and to Miami. And they cruised Royal Caribbean and some other line. And on and on it goes. All while he was getting paid by the taxpayers, thanks to her, and getting paid a lot, a lot more. I mean, $650,000 so far in the same time that she was earning only $200,000. So the allegation is that it's a sort of like a vendor kickback scheme where I hire this vendor and I give him a pretty paycheck.

And then before you know it, he's giving me extras that let me go to Aruba when I normally couldn't afford that on my DA's salary. So they had a hearing yesterday in which the judge did unseal the marital divorce records that Nathan Wade, the special prosecutor, is going through right now. As far as I can tell so far, though, not all of it has come out. Nothing new was learned. We already had received the headlines from the credit card receipts that his soon-to-be ex-wife released to the public, showing him buying the tickets for Fannie Willis to Aruba on Royal. I mean, it's pretty, as evidence goes of an affair, it's pretty dead to rights. Doesn't actually show them sleeping together, but it's as close as you can get. And neither Fannie nor Nathan Wade has denied an affair. Now, all of this, as you get even the New

York Times weighing in with a report pointing out Fannie Willis ran for D.A. with the slogan integrity matters, frequently pummeling the incumbent, her former boss, with accusations of ethical lapses. In a letter to Fannie Willis just this past Friday, the county commissioner, quoting here from The Times, Bob Ellis demanded documents from her in an effort to determine whether county funds paid to Nathan Wade were converted to your personal gain in the form of subsidized travel or other gifts. On Saturday morning, Norman Eisen, special counsel for the House Judiciary Committee during the first Trump impeachment, who's been vocal in supporting this Georgia prosecution, called on Mr. Wade to step down, saying this

whole thing has become a distraction. And the New York Times adding, at the very least, the revelations have raised questions about Ms. Willis's motivation for hiring Mr. Wade, a legal generalist who appears to act as a sort of player manager for the prosecution's team. A review of his more than two decades as a lawyer by the New York Times also raises the issue of his qualifications. And they go through page after page of how he's never tried a RICO case. He's never been a prosecutor pushing felony cases. He's been a criminal defense lawyer. They have real questions about what he's doing on this team besides the fact that he appears to have been stooping Fannie Willis. So ask a different legal expert and you'll get a different answer. But I'll tell you, they started with Stephen Gillers, who's the god of

legal ethics, Rich. And he's the one who said, if all of this is true, she's in a world of hurt and trouble. So I don't know that she's in a world of hurt and trouble. So I don't know that she's committed a crime. I don't know that the case against Trump or the others falls apart. But I really don't see a way in which Fannie Willis stays as the prosecuting attorney on this case. Yeah, I mean, obviously, I don't know the legal niceties, but it's grotesquely unethical on its face. Right. And another Trump enemy bites the dust who's been celebrated. Maybe she wasn't celebrated at the level of Robert Mueller or Michael Avenatti, but it's that sort of flame out. Robert Mueller knew everything. You couldn't mess with Robert Mueller. We don't know what Robert Mueller has that hasn't been revealed yet. He's going to nail Trump to the wall. The

walls are closing in. Then you get his congressional testimony. It's like, this is an old, confused man. There's no way he was making the decisions here. He doesn't understand the intricacies of his own investigation. Avenatti, of course, wall to wall on CNN. No one knows how to combat Trump. You know, like Michael Avenatti, he's in Trump's head, you know, that this case could bring Trump down. And then, you know, he's in jail. And I don't know whether Fannie Wills is going to go to jail, but what an embarrassment, what a clown and a moron she is. And, you know, does the case collapse because of this? I don't know, maybe not, but it should never have been broad. I mean, this thing is a sprawling stretch of this RICO statute,

which is broad, I think ridiculously broad. But you shouldn't be taking advantage of the law and trying to stretch it to nail one guy. And in this case, obviously, it's more than one guy. But it's all at the end of the day about one guy. And that's what we're seeing. I think the classified documents case, they have Trump dead to rights. Maybe you don't get him on the documents, possessing the documents themselves, because Hillary did it, and Joe Biden did it, and others have done it. But the obstruction related to that, if any of us did that, you'd be in big trouble. So that's

totally fair game. But you bring that, it's a complicated case, and it's going to happen after the election, right? Instead, there's a rush to be the hero, to be the one that brings Trump down and nails him to the wall. And that's just not how the law is supposed to work. And now we're learning there are other ways in which the law is not supposed to work, but it has in her office. No, a prosecutor under the ethical guidelines that govern us all as lawyers is supposed to behave in a way that avoids even the appearance of impropriety, even the appearance. She's clearly violated that legal ethic and more given the kickback scheme. I mean, just just bringing in a special prosecutor with whom you're having a sexual relationship would violate the appearance of impropriety. And even she ran

for office saying she wouldn't do that. And that doesn't even count the money that she's been paying him as compared to the other prosecutors and him giving her what appear to be kickbacks with all these trips, Charlie. Just one other detail that I wanted to offer. They want to take her deposition in this divorce case, Fannie's. She's saying that's an attempt to oppress me. I am oppressed by your motion to take my deposition. The court has said, look, you haven't taken Nathan Wade's deposition in this divorce case and he's the husband. So let's do that first. And if Fannie Willis has particular information she can bring to or add to what we get from him, then I'll, I'll handle that then. And there's just an interesting detail, an attorney for the, for Jocelyn Wade, who's going to be the ex-wife,

took issue with the fact that now they are Willis's team, Fannie Willis's team submitted in a recent court filing. They don't want her to be deposed. Um, saying Wade's marriage was irretrievably broken long before Fannie Willis entered the picture, suggesting his estranged wife quote, confessed to her own adulterous relationship. And this is so Fannie Willis is the first one to raise this in Nathan Wade's divorce case, not Nathan Wade. And the lawyer for Jocelyn Wade came out and said, this is the first this has been raised after 783 days that this case has been pending. Fannie Willis is the first to raise it. Quote, I have questions. It's all getting very unseemly. Doesn't reflect well on Fannie.

But is it anything more than interesting grist for the GOP media mill? Well, Trump is certainly very lucky with his enemies, many of whom start behaving like him. This is the great story of this Trump saga, is how many of the people who go after Trump end up picking up his worst habits and traits and exhibiting them themselves. She is not, in my view, getting very far with her defenses. I think Ruth Marcus ripped her apart in the Washington Post today. Fannie Worth tried to play the race car, didn't really make a great deal of sense. She said that she was being oppressed. If so, I'm in favor of oppressing her.

It sounds fairly routine. Well, don't you always think that? It's like when you get told that if you don't want to have a sexual relationship with a trans person, that's transphobic. Fine, well, I'm transphobic then. What am I supposed to say to that? Okay, I'll do it. I mean, if normal legal procedures are oppression, then I'm for oppression. But she's not going to get very far with it,

because it's just so transparently grotesque. Now, does it end up derailing the legal proceedings? I don't know. I do think there's a bit of hope here from the Trump people that it will work like offsetting penalties do in the NFL, that the referee will end up saying, well, Trump did what he's been accused of. Fannie Willis is also bad. Those penalties are set. No yardage lost. That's not what's going to happen. Politically, though, it's going to help. I mean, again, I'm not defending Trump here. I think that it's a disaster that Trump's going to be the nominee. And I think Trump's done a lot of what he's been accused of. But you do not want to be in a position as a government or as a Democratic Party pointing to these allegations where the guy who has been in trouble can say, look at the person

who is going after me. She did all of these terrible things. That is politically disastrous. And it actually, oddly enough, plays into Trump's central conceit, which is that everyone in America is on the take. Everyone in America is corrupt. He's just the guy who will say it out loud be able to say, no, that isn't true. Look at the person who is in charge of this process. They are cleaner than clean. She's not. She's clearly extremely corrupt. She's got skin in the game now. And I don't think this is a case of her taking on Trump's bad. It's the reverse. The reason she went, she came up with this cockamamie prosecution is because she appears to be a bad person who will act on her politics. Rich, I listen to you and Andy every Friday discuss Jack Smith, how he's got the pedal to the metal on every motion,

totally unnecessary for just trying a normal criminal case. These are partisan hacks trying to disguise themselves as objective prosecutors just trying to uphold the law. Yeah. So just on the timing, routine January 6th cases have taken much longer from indictment to trial date than Jack Smith wants to do with this hugely complicated novel case that actually might not pass Supreme Court muster at the end of the day. It makes no sense unless he's looking at a political calendar. And of course, he's looking at a political calendar, which he's not supposed to do. There's no reason to be rushing all the motions that he's rushing, the appeals that he's rushing,

unless your only goal is to get Trump and get him quickly, make sure he's got a conviction before November that these are not good people. This is not how a normal prosecutor behaves. And they're showing their true colors. Guys, thank you so much for showing yours as well. It's always a pleasure to see them here.

It's like two beautiful peacocks right here on the Megyn Kelly show. I love hearing. First time we've been called peacocks. We've been called a lot of other things, but never peacocks. First time I've been called beautifulocks. We've been caught a lot of other things, but never be first time. I'd be called beautiful as well. Great to see you.

See you soon over on the editors. Okay. Don't forget. We'll follow New Hampshire tonight. We'll have full analysis for you tomorrow with a team of all stars. Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.