The Megyn Kelly Show - Fraud Crockett's Defeat, Michelle Obama's New Racial Complaints, and Trump's Iran "War" Question, with Glenn Greenwald | Ep. 1265

Episode Date: March 4, 2026

Megyn Kelly discusses Jasmine Crockett’s defeat in the Democratic Texas Senate primary, her absurd persona that didn't convince voters, how secretly extreme primary winner James Talarico really is, and more. Then Glenn Greenwald, host of “System Update” on Substack, joins to discuss Jasmine Crockett’s fraudulent backstory and political irrelevance, soft-spoken white guy James Talarico’s actually very extreme views and woke past comments,  the new Atlantic profile fawning over Pete Buttigieg, talking about his new beard and establishment cred, Michelle Obama’s new interview with Conan O'Brien, her latest complaints about race and Donald Trump, the latest messaging from the Trump administration about the strikes in Iran, the questions about whether it's actually a "war," Israel's involvement in driving this decision by the U.S., the bizarre social media effort to falsely label Megyn an “anti-semite,” her long support of Israel and pro-Jewish history, and more.   More from Greenwald- https://greenwald.substack.com/   Birch Gold: Text MK to 989898 and get your free info kit on gold ARMRA: go to https://tryarmra.com/MEGYNto get 30% off your first subscription order DailyLook: https://dailylook.com to take your style quiz and use code MEGYN for 50% off your first order. SimpliSafe: Visit https://simplisafe.com/MEGYN to claim 50% off any new system!     Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKelly Twitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShow Instagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShow Facebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow  Find out more information at:https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East. Hey, everyone, I'm Megan Kelly. Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show. We have major developments to update you on in America's bombing campaign against Iran as debate over whether we're actually, quote, at war or not becomes a new talking point. But first, a glimpse at the future of the Democratic Party. If you've been watching any left-wing media of late, you have probably noticed that they were excited about both. of the major candidates who ran in the primary to be the Democrats nominee for Senate in Texas. James Talariko, a Texas state rep who is a Christian minister in training, faced off against Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, who, as viewers of this show know, is well known for making some of the wildest claims of anyone in the Democratic Party and also appears to be a ridiculous diva who has her staff carry her bag around for her. carry her little pillow around for her, stuffing it behind her back so she's seated just so while

she's on the hill, acting like she's there as, you know, Queen Elizabeth as opposed to a duly elected House representative. Also, somebody who goes from sounding like a normal American from Texas when she gives her interviews when she first gets elected to someone who sounds like she's from the street, when she's in front of a certain camera set with the eyelashes and the fake nails. Okay, so there's absolutely nothing genuine about this person. And it turns out Texans knew it.

For the folks on MS now, you're thinking about these two, Tala RICO and Jasmine Crockett, well, they could not decide who they loved more. Watch. Especially by Crockett and Tala Rico. They're two of the most effective communicators in the entire Democratic Party right now.

Yeah, when we're seeing the leaderboard there, you see them on your screen right now. They look like a great pair of running mates. You know what I mean? Can this, can one of you just be vice senator? Can we do that? Who would actually watch that for entertainment? I mean, truly, like, who is sitting down at night after a hard day at the office saying, I want to spend time with Nicole Wallace and Rachel Maddow?

Like, I would have to have a lobotomy. in order for that to be my choice. Well, unfortunately, Rachel, there's no such thing as a vice senator, and only one could win. And last night, despite Jasmine Crockett whining about election fraud and pulling a last-minute legal challenge out of her hat, Tala Rico prevailed. Crocett's role on the national stage is likely over, at least for now. And I have to say, she will be missed.

Who else is going to give us moments like these? We are going to be in your face We are going to be on your asses We are going to look like Donald Trump is a piece of shit Okay, we know that When I first became a public defender I had no criminal defense experience

And I walked in and I told my boss Charlie I said listen you should hire me He said why I said because I'm black So I had to go around the country And educate people about What immigrants do for this country The fact is ain't none of y'all Trying to go and farm right now

You're not We done picking cotton. If someone on this committee then starts talking about somebody's bleached blonde, bad-built, butch body that would not be engaging in personalities, correct?

I know that there was a time and a place and if they could, they would throw me back in chains. If you could tell Donald Trump anything tonight, what would you tell him? Stop being Putin's home.

Now, I am tired of the white tears. You could speak directly to Elon Musk. What would you say? Fuck off. But if somebody who understands history, when I see ICE, I see slave patrols. Violence doesn't come from Democrats, just to be clear. I mean, obviously anyone can be a criminal, but it is MAGA. They expect Democrats to kind of be the nice guys that we are. Well, I am here to tell you, not only are we going to punch back, but we're about to beat you down. I've got to be honest. She's about five minutes away from getting a show on the weekend at MSNBC. That's clearly where. life is going now. Her house seat was basically all but eliminated, but she left it anyway,

so it's no longer hers. And she didn't make it in the Democrat primary. It's not like she lost in the general. She couldn't even get through the Democrat primary in her home state of Texas. So that's done. So yeah, I'm thinking given the love that was espoused for her on the set by Rachel and Nicole, you know, maybe one of them will be willing to give up their spot for a black woman in America? Isn't that what you're supposed to do? White privilege, ladies, move aside. Jasmine Crockett needs a job. Or maybe they'll just give her Tiffany Cross's old show, which I think ran on the weekend. Tiffany Cross then later got fired or let go for either misstating her finances on her accounting or just being a general racist. Same with Joy Reid. The latter was the

explanation in her case, quite obviously. And so they're looking for somebody. And why not Jasmine Crockett? Let's see what happens there. Now, Tala Rico is a white Christian male. Nothing wrong with that, but Democrats, it is. There is something wrong with that if you're a Democrat. However, they were willing to take the risk because they apparently thought that this was their best chance to win in Red Texas. Get a white guy. Somebody said, oh, and Christian, Okay, that'll do it. That's all you need. White Christian man, we're going to win. But I'm not sure how comments like this one are going to play in the Lone Star State. Take a listen to Tala Rico in January of this year. So what I've said is that our southern border should be like our front porch. There should be a giant welcome mat out front and a lock on the door. We can welcome immigrants who want to live the American dream. We can build a pathway to citizenship. for those neighbors who have been here making us richer and stronger,

and we can keep out people who mean to do us harm. He's in trouble. And his interpretation of scripture? I mean, it might not connect with your average Texas voter. Check out this one from 2021. The first two lines of the Bible, the first two lines in Genesis, use two different Hebrew words to describe God.

One is the masculine Hebrew noun for divinity. The second is the feminine Hebrew noun for spirit. God is both masculine and feminine and everything in between. God is non-binary. Oh, my Lord. Tala Rica will take on either incumbent Senator John Cornyn or Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. who are headed for a runoff to be decided on May 26th.

Tala Rico is not the only baby-faced white dude Democrat in the news today, however. President Joe Biden's Transportation Secretary, Pete Buttigieg, is profiled now in the Atlantic with the title, Pete Buttigieg in the wilderness. Quote, he has a beard, a splitting mall, which I had to look up. It's like a tool that actually is. is used for splitting wood or attacking people, and a house in Michigan. Is that enough to convince America that he's a man of the people? Okay, we're going to go with a big fat no there, because all I see when I see Pete Buttigieg is I remember Tucker Carlson's joke about him breastfeeding his babies.

It was a joke. He was making fun of just how much feminine energy Pete Buttigieg has. And that's a reference to him being gay. It's a reference to him being femme and soft and just kind of a P-word. Like, I'm sorry, but that's kind of what he projects, not tough guy, more like elite, liberal, effete, Democrat, notwithstanding his beard now and his splitting mall. It's one of the many challenges he's going to be up against. But these are the men that Democrats fall in love with. I mean, truly, this is their ideal when it comes to what a real man is. I mean, in Texas, you're going to go with a guy who says the border should be like the front porch. What?

In Texas, you're going to go with a guy who says non-binary for God, that God is non-binary. Like, I don't know how much it's going to take for them to learn. But I'm certainly going to enjoy watching as they do. Here to react to all this and more is the first guest in the history of the MK show. Glenn Greenwald, our official godfather. He is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist. That's right. And host of system update, which can now be found on substack at greenwold.substack.com, along with his written work.

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How are you? Hi, Megan. Good to see you as always. See, your living proof one can be a gay man and not project effete feminine energy. I don't get that off of you. And that's the problem with Pete Buttigieg beard and splitting mall or not. Well, I mean, this is basically like Pete Buttigieg is living in the dead, in the, in the, in the woods or whatever is basically Tim Walts's camouflage hat.

And I think, you know, all of this, there's a lot to say here, but this really, everything you just went over, I think illustrates the core problem of the Democratic Party. Before Trump, the ideal Democratic politician was somebody who went through Harvard and then Yale Law School and then worked at Goldman Sachs and then moved to McKinsey, like Pete Buttigieg basically did, most sort of amalgam of everything I just said. And they were just these very kind of a feat, you know, cosmopol. people who oozed East Coast values and just grew increasingly separate from the ordinary American. And then you have Trump comes along who, although he grew up very wealthy and became a

billionaire and has lived a very kind of, you know, flamboyant life, he always had this kind of resentment against the elites, partly from growing up in Queens and being looked down on by Manhattan elites, even once he was building the largest buildings, that always made him a man the people like even in his tabloid days in New York he really resonated with i remember at one time he was always you know in the news and i remember him saying when i lived in new york at the time it was like in the late 80s early 90s he said yeah i go to the construction sites and the guys who recognized me that i'm really happiest about are like the construction guys that's what real fame is like he always wanted that kind of a connection that's what he most valued maybe because

that's what he found easiest and democrats are now in this situation where they're trying so hard to replicate it. But all they know how to do is like mimic it like a monkey. You know, like they curse more. Like Chuck Schumer goes on. He's like the bastards, you know, which like they told him to do. Sometimes he like pretends to almost curse and he's like, God, excuse me, God darn it. And he pretends like he's so angry that he just can't control himself. So true. And this is what, this is why they think Jasmine Crockett is appealing because they think she is what Trump is. The problem is among many, The one of the main problems is that it's all vapid when these Democrats are doing it. Like, what does Pete Buttigieg stand for, right?

Trump came in with this whole, you know, very aggressive, assertive, huge personality, didn't abide by any of the comportmental limits or rules that politicians used to be forced to abide by. But he had a very clear set of political beliefs. Love them or hate them, immigration, trade, U.S. foreign policy, war, the unfairness of how America is treated by other countries. It was a very tough on crime. These were things that were like the bedrock of his worldview. Tell me what Jasmine Crockett or Pete Buttigieg believe in that's even remotely on the same level of conviction, aside from social issues, like culture work. Themselves.

Yeah. And this is, I'm sorry. I'm so much to say when you've talked about people who are Jason Crockett and James Tomarico and Democrats. Yes. So let me just add one more point, which is this is very much similar to AOC, by the way. And I just want to say, like, one of the things that Marjorie Telle Green first said, I've always liked Marjorie Telle Green. I always thought Marjorie Telle Green still do think she's very smart and of course, she's very smart. I've always thought she was very smart. And one of the things Marjorie Telle Green used to always say about AOC, because she served in the house with her all those years, she didn't attack AOC the way most people on the right did. Oh, she's a communist. She's a socialist. She's a radical. That's not giving too much credit to AOC. That suggests that AOC has these like bedrock. convictions that are immovable. She's a hardcore ideologue.

She's not. She's a careerist. And so Marjorie Taylor Green would always attack AOC, not by calling her a communist, but by saying she's a fraud and a tool of the establishment and a conniver and a climber, and a climber, which is exactly what AOC is. She's become, she went from, we're going to do a revolution against the Democratic Party to the most valuable weapon the Democratic Party has. And I think that's true of like Jasmine Crockett, this perception that she's on the left.

It's really not true. She had a lot of APAC money. She came out of the crypto industry. Banks love her. Everything is a fraud with these people. It's like an inch deep. Same with Pete Buttigieg. They are the byproduct of this very elite East Coast kind of culture that they know now they have to distance themselves from.

But it's in their blood and bones. You don't extract that. No matter how, what accent you use or what kind of ghetto talk you try and pretend you have or you dress up and like plaid shirts and go out into the woods. It just oozes out of you. And people can smell that. authenticity. That's one thing you cannot fool Americans about. That, speaking of the fake accent in Jasmine Crockett, we've got to play this, that her miraculous turnaround.

Normally, if you grow up, you know, talking street, most people who would run for federal office might aspire to, like, get rid of that accent and just speak with a regular accent. And she went the opposite way in order to up her cool factor and wound up making a fool out of herself. Jasmine Crockett before and after, SOT 6. My mind, I'm thinking, I just got to Austin. And I had to be five people to get here. I don't know about this. Y'all don't know what white privilege looks like, but I'm going to show you a little bit of something. It's a huge responsibility. You know, the congressional seat is over four times as large as my

house seat. I'm trying to get clarification. Look it. Calm down. Calm down. No, no, no, no, because this is what you all do. And I was just starting to get into the rhythm of doing conservative. They send them to Texas. They send them to Florida. Every deplorable state that we can think about, they usually come in out of y'all's think tank. There was someone that talked to me and said, in fact, a former ambassador and the Clinton administration. Don't tell me to calm down. Calm down. Because y'all talk noise and then you're out of control.

He said, Jasmine, what you have to realize is that if you are really going to make change, it's not going to be in the Texas house. He said, you did a great job playing defense, but you have a chance to play often. Someone on this committee then starts talking about somebody's bleached blind, bad-built, butch body. Okay. So she's a fraud. And it didn't take much for even the Texas Democrats, who are real Democrats, to see right through her, Glenn. And she got that seat running as the girl in the red velvet.

velvet jacket there, who was just sort of sweet sounding, normal, had gone to law school, had been a public defender, and was trying to represent her hometown community. And then she turned into this sort of wannabe rap star with the way she spoke and what she said and some sort of badass street fighter. And they bounced her ass right out of there. Yeah, that is one thing I actually disagreed with you about in your intro when you said you thought her she was headed toward an MS now show. I actually think she's headed to like some Housewise franchise on Bravo. Like that's always what she's most reminded me of.

You know, it's the way she just like, she is good at attracting attention by turning herself into kind of like a freak show. And so cable news loves her, can't get enough of her, eats her up. She's interesting. Like even in the, you know, you talk about her more than you would just like the average Democrat. You have to give her that. But it's, they're all negative traits, right?

Like if I go onto the street and start stabbing my eyes out with a fork, a lot of people are going to look at me more than like the people walking to their office. It doesn't mean it's a positive thing, but it is true. I'll talk more attention. She's figured out that game. And that's the thing, Megan, you know, like Donald Trump proved more than anybody and understood more than anybody. Media attention and fame and just having attention always being on you is an incredible political asset. She had that advantage a zillion times over James Tolariko because she did get. catapulted by the CNNs and MSNBCs, now into this national figure.

And her rate and name recognition was 40 points higher. But the more they looked at her and the more they heard from James Tolariko, they're like, it isn't even just an electability issue where they thought James Tala riko is more electable. It's just that they turned away from her. And her campaign matched that diva behavior that you were describing. They were aggressive with reporters, kicking reporters out who wrote negatively about her, barely even campaigning, not doing any of the things that they barely had a campaign. It was just a disorganized mess that she thought she was going to win on the strength of her personality,

the more Texan soft for South Texas Democrats. We covered this last year that she's lazy, that she wasn't showing up to Capitol Hill for the hearing. She didn't want to do her job. She wanted to work from home. She wanted to be driven around in fancy cars and make sure somebody opens the door for her and be treated like, you know, the queen she thinks she is. Like, that doesn't get you anywhere. I'm sorry, but like if you're not willing to work hard, especially as a young person, my God, like, that's when we have energy, you know, like the 32-year-old me had a lot more energy than I have today. I still have decent energy. But my point is simply, if you're out of it when you're still in your 30s, forget about it.

Plus, she's just a liar. Like, she wanted us to believe over and over that she had some, like, hard scrabble background, and she really climbed her way up, just like an AOC. And these were lies. Benny Johnson went to her hometown and actually figured out what her real background was in an amazing clip. Here is it, here it is again, SOT 7. We played it when he first hit with it about six months ago. Watch. It is rough. It is tough. It is hood and it is foul. Just like Jasmine Crockett. That's the whole persona. She's a fraud. This is where Jasmine says she's from, but this is where Jasmine's Willie from. Welcome to St. Louis, specifically the Republican suburbs of St. Louis with the mansions, country clubs, and private schools. This is where

Jasmine Crockett was raised. We're talking quiet suburbs, manicured lawns, college brochures in the mailbox. And this is where Jasmine Crockett went to school. It's called the Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School. It's one of the most prestigious institutions in the entire country, also one of the most expensive. Did your high school have its own private Wimbledon?

Did your high school have its own aquatic center on site? Did your high school have its own private dock and pond teaming with colorful fish and wildlife? I think not. Well done, Benny Johnson. Mine didn't. I went to public school in upstate New York. My parents paid taxes and they had to take me. How about yours, Glenn?

I went to public school as well. We definitely did not have a pond with exotic fish nor a bull on Wimbledon or anything even remotely similar to that. It's like the way Megan that AOC tries to pretend that she's from the Bronx when in reality she's from Westchester. And I wanted to make this point about, you know, Jasmine Crockett, it's like if somebody grows up in the inner city or, you know, in a predominantly black neighborhood where in the south or wherever where people do speak that way, and then they kind of learn when they enter professional context to speak a little bit differently. I think we all do that, right? We speak differently with our childhood friends or our family and differently in a public context. That would be one thing. But what she's doing is almost like a minstrel show.

That's not how she speaks. And as you said, when she ran for office, that wasn't how she spoke. She was, yes, she was a public defender, but she was also a corporate lawyer. This is what I'm saying. Like, she is a very, I think a lot of people look at black Democrats, especially like black women. And if they're particularly boisterous, even more so like a Maxine Waters or whatever, and they say, oh, they must be like super left wing. The reality is often they're not. Even mostly, they're like funded by APEC.

They're funded by Wall Street. Maxine Waters was the chair of the Finance Services, Financial Services Committee. for years and all the bankers loved her. These are, you know, people who go and make themselves, as Marjorie Heldgren said about AOC, establishment tools. And that's what makes it extra offensive that Jasmine Crockett pretends to be this. Because if it'll like, you know, Jesse Jackson would speak like that. But Jesse Jackson grew up like that.

That was his politics. That was authentic. Totally different. And no one ever commented on it when it was obviously authentic. It's only when it's an obvious affect that you make. it a thing that it's fair game. Yeah, it becomes patronizing. You know, like, who is this for?

I mean, it's probably mostly for white liberals, to be honest. I think that's really her big fan base. That's why Rachel's so enamored. By the way, Megan, just one thing, like, I was amazed. Like, I'm always amazed by this. I don't know if you are, but like, when you said, like, oh, listen to these MS. Now liberals saying how great both Jackson, Crockett and James Taylor-Ricor, and the first voice is Nicole Wallace, I'm, I still, like, Nicole Wallace, 20 years of

ago was George Bush and Dick Cheney's communications director defending the Iraq war, defending every one of those conservative policies. And she supposedly just got alienated from up against because she didn't like Trump. But she had a complete transformation and turned into an overnight liberal for her career talking about frauds. But in any event, yeah, I mean, the idea that like these two are the future of the Democratic Party, and notice it's all surface stuff. It's all surface.

It has nothing to do with like the agenda. Let's check in on another James Talariko sought to see if he's the future of the Democrat Party and is going to fly as a statewide choice in Texas. Here he is in November, 2022 at his home church. Before we go further, I want to acknowledge that our trans community needs abortion care too. Defending trans Texas is something we have to do every day at the state capitol. And you better believe I'll be giving sermons on that too. So when I use the word woman, it should not be understood as an exhaustive term, but rather as a lens through which to understand, examine, and interrogate patriarchy. Similar to how we specify anti-black racism when talking about police violence, sometimes it's helpful to locate a particular moment within a particular movement.

Okay. Those clips are going to be on loop until we get to the general election, whether it's Tala Riego. versus Paxton or Talarico versus Cornyn. And frankly, I think it's going to be Paxton. I feel like Texans have had enough of the neocon Cornyn. Like, they're ready for something new. Paxton's got his own baggage. But he seems pretty beloved and he's Trumpian, which is, you know, all the rage, very in for obvious reasons.

So we'll see. But can you imagine this guy versus Ken Paxton in a race club? He's going to get eaten alive. You know, well, just for a while, like, it is interesting. Christianity can have kind of a left-wing tinge, like in Latin America, for example. Yes, it can. It can. But not by calling God non-binary and saying the Bible says that trans people needs abortions,

it's usually like a left-wing populist economic populism, like, you know, Jesus taught us to. Or immigration. Or immigration. In my church. In my church. Catholic church. Absolutely. Absolutely.

And yeah, I mean, the Pope has, you know, against the death penalty. You know, always against wars, condemning aggression. So you can make a, you can definitely construct a very Christian, like genuinely Christian, argument for like left wing or liberal economic populism and foreign policy, non-interventionism, for sure. But that stuff, I don't know, maybe it was 2021. I don't know if he's from an extremely liberal district. It was like right in the wake of the Black Lives Matter and all the like obligatory speech

where they all started talking that way. It just aged so poorly. And I don't think that, by the way, that most voters vote on trans stuff. But if there's a perception that somebody's so far afield, like sounding is like, he's not just saying like, hey, let's be kind and, you know, decent and tolerant to our trans neighbors. He's saying the Bible teaches that trans people have to get abortions too. Like, it just that stuff sounds so extremist that even though that isn't their main issue or close to it, it just makes them seem, again, like very distant from their everyday lives and what they think. about how they speak. Yes. Especially when he's saying God is non-binary. Like all of it is going to make wonderful campaign ads. I know the Democrats today, some of them are heaving a sigh of relief

that he prevailed over Crockett, who many did not believe had a chance at statewide office in Texas. And they think this guy is sort of the kinder, gentler, you know, more sellable candidate. Maybe he is versus Crockett. But I'm not entirely sure of that, to be honest. because he's pretty radical in his policies as we've been playing in the first 26 minutes here. And it's just going to get shoved down his throat no matter who the Republican candidate is. It's just another example, as far as I'm concerned, of Democrats not understanding the constituency. Before we leave Jasmine Crockett, because we may be leaving her forever, depending on, you know, what happens with her. Unless we cover, let's see a podcast together about Bravo shows, in which case we might have the opportunity to cover her.

Well, when you're ever you're on, we do that at the, toward the end. And today we do have more Michelle Obama for you, Glenn Greenwald. But let's not leave before Jasmine before showing Benny's comparison of Jasmine Crockett's district in South Dallas with her hometown. Here's what your average street looks like in South Dallas where Jasmine Crockett represents. Best part about Jasmine Crockett's district is free public bathrooms. And here's what your average street looks like in St. Louis in the suburbs where Jasmine Crockett's from. Here's an elementary school in the heart of Jasmine Crockett's district. Let's go ahead and check on the environment in which these kids are learning.

You have burned down buildings in every direction. Nothing's open. FDJT has been tagged on this building. Here's the walkway to school in Crockett's District. This is what the children have to walk through every single day. I don't know how many booze bottles there are, how many beer cans. and how much junk. And here's what a school looks like in St. Louis.

And here's what stores and shopping centers look like in South Dallas. And here's what stores and shopping centers look like in St. Louis. Get the point? Yeah. He did such a great job in that whole thing. That she parachuted in. She said, oh, I'm one of you. She got elected.

She started talking street like she was from the Bronx or whatever the equivalent is in Texas. this. And it was all lies. I think even though you're right, she attracts attention for doing some of this stuff, there's a shelf life for people like this, you know? Because to your point as well, it's one thing if it's authentic and you're Trump and you have the Brooklyn accent because it's, you know, you came by honestly, you're born in Queens, the Queens accent. I guess there is a slight difference. My dad's from Brooklyn or was. In any event, it's one thing if it's authentic. And it's another if it's an affectation and it really doesn't take much to see the difference. Yeah, I mean, I think basically the two things that most, that are most destructive for a political candidate are number one feeling, seeming like they're tied to the establishment.

I do think that was Kamala Harris's biggest problem. I think I've said before on your show, my impression of her is always that she had just walked out of like a board of directors meeting of Aetna where they were doing like actuary tables and she was like the general counsel. I love it every time. Yeah, I mean, that is what she just gives me so much. And I think that's what people got from her. And she tried a little bit of that like, code switching in the way she spoke to, and it was even less convincing. Oh, yeah. But any kind of a reeking of establishment. Exactly, exactly. And she used to have an Indian action when she first ran in California as well. That completely disappeared.

But yeah, so that's one thing is, and that's what Pete, that's Putin judge's problem. You know, he can wear as many, like, camouflage hats as he wants. He's never going to escape what he really is. And as you said at the beginning, it's very a feat. It's not because he's gay or anything else. He's just, like, very, he wanted to go and just, like, work with. numbers in an office and just like be a very kind of rule abiding, you know, conform it. This is a very weak behavior.

And then the other problem is when people think that you're fake, you know, when people think that you are inauthentic when you're when you're trying to calm them or snow them. And good politicians can con people. Like Bill Clinton was very good at that. Obama was good at that. Trump has that too. But at the core, you need to be authentic because as I said before, especially more so now where there's so much exposure, you know, they don't just go on like Sunday shows or

a presidential debate twice a year. there's constant exposure. If you're fake, people are going to sniff it out. Well, it's funny how all these Democrats are trying to figure out how to make themselves have mass appeal are growing facial hair from Ezra Klein to Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut to now Pete Buttigieg.

Like, I'm going to start looking like Paul Bunyan, and that will make me sellable to the larger electorate. So the Atlantic bought it, hook, line and sinker and sitting with Buttigieg, and they write, The title of the piece, as I mentioned, is Pete Buttigieg in the wilderness. I quoted the line. He has a beard, a splitting mall, and a house in Michigan.

Is that enough to convince America that he's a man of the people? This is the big setup piece for his presidential campaign. This is like, this is how he's kicking it off. Make no mistake about it. 2028 is right around the corner. We're already at 26. It's on. And this is Pete Buttigieg getting it off with the Atlantic, getting it off to a start.

Lead line of the article. In May 2001, at Hubbard, Harvard's Institute of Politics. A 19-year-old freshman named Peter Buttigieg asked David Gergen, a Harvard professor and horse whisperer to five presidents, a question that he might have reserved for himself a couple of decades later. Peter, who had not yet transformed into Pete, let alone Mayor Pete, said he loved the West Wing, but could feel the idealism reflected in the show slipping away from politics in real life. Quote, the presidency has now devolved into what's called the MBA White House or the corporate model, he said,

with the plaintive tone of a child asking about the spirit of Christmas. Quote, is that magic really gone forever? Worse than being underused, they go on to talk about him, is being used in a campaign to destined for failure. And they talk about Kamala Harris and how she considered Pete Buttigieg, but then overruled him, and talked about how he felt about this. They say, okay, we were already asking a lot of America.

She wrote in her memoir and a lack of grace. Buttigieg has never thanked her for that slight. Being passed over has left him the most prominent Biden stalwart to remain viable as a candidate for the Democratic nomination in 2028. Okay, so they're setting it all up. Like, see how she left him the most prominent Biden stalwart. So he's still got the establishment Dems. He's viable as a candidate for the Democratic.

Democratic nomination. And here he was wistfully talking about the West Wing. Oh, and he went to Harvard. Did we mention he was at Harvard's Institute of Politics and idealistic. And he has a beard and a splitting wall. So you see it all. It's not even subtle, Glenn. No, this is exactly what I mean, Megan. So I don't know what you were like at 19. I think I have some ideas. I know what I was like at 19. I was not. Picture very, very bad, blonde bleached hair. Speaking of bleached hair out of a box, because I was poor. And that's how you had to do it. Right. And like, I don't know. I just, I wasn't at Harvard like tugging on the coattails of David Gergen, like trying to form cement. I don't know for people who don't know. David Gergen is like the ultimate Washington insider was like the whisper to multiple presidents and both parties like the Supreme Washington establishment centrist or moderate or whatever. Then he went, we was on CNN, like one of the wise men of Washington. And that is who people who is. It was who he was since he was very young. Like this is the this is the core of somebody. that cannot change. You can change how they dress. You can change whether they have facial hair.

You can change what kind of hat they wear. But like, who you are is who you are. And you can evolve and grow and all that. But you cannot escape that core personality that is clearly still Pete Buttigieg. And that is who he is. Harvard and David Gergen and McKinsey. And also like this electoral success, you know, you know how many votes he got when he won to be mayor of South Bend? The maximum, like, in both times, was like 8,000 people, 8,000 people. Eight thousand. votes. Oh, wow. And he, the whole thing is like built on a fake artifice, like a total house of cards. Well, here, so the Atlantic loves it. I mean, like I said, he's line and sinker. He sounds like the younger member of the old Democratic Party, the one that flourished

before Trump, brainy, credentialed, and elite, liberal, but not progressive and personable, but this might be key, frightfully boring. Budajedges, technocry. made flesh. Who could be safer than a politician who has had his card punched at all the great meritocratic institutions and who has followed the modern cursus honorum, some sort of Latin honorum, from local office to national. And who could be less Trumpian? He's unashamed of technical competence, even when it makes him sound dwebish. Without embarrassment, he bragged to me during his days as a management consultant, he had worked with data sets, quote, too big for Excel to handle.

Ha, ha, ha. And then they go on to say the following. Hold on. Buckle up. Buttigieg's critics seem to fault him for the vaguest reasons, many of which come down to, he's too perfect, Glenn. I'm quoting for the piece. He's too perfect.

That's the problem with Pete Buttigieg. Now he gets to it. He's not authentic. He's not a man of the people. It's an odd line of attack. Is it possible to be too perfect? Is perfection a flaw? This is unbelievable. I'm sure J.D. Vance is going to get exactly this treatment in the Atlantic. Social psychology has documented something known as the Pretfall effect. The distrust of people deemed too perfect. It turns out that people like smart charismatic types, but they really

like smart charismatic types who screw up now and then and do not just ace every test and land every joke. This, it's the interview question. What are some of your flaws? Exactly. I work too hard. I'm a perfectionist. And this writer, hook, line and sinker, as I said, Graham Wood, who teaches at Yale and is

a member of the Council on Foreign Relations was like, I'm in love. No, but you know what's so funny, Megan, is when I was just describing why Pete Buttigieg is such a pathetically weak candidate, why he'll never have this, like, compelling appeal. I actually sounded almost identical to the, to the Atlantic article, at least until I got to the part about how he's too perfect, that he is, like, from a different political era, like, from the Obama era where people wanted technocrats and, like, very kind of cold, you know, people who came out of establishment institutions, the authority and credibility of all those institutions are in collapse.

And the more you have to do with them, the more you smell like them, the more you seem like you're a byproduct of them, the weaker you are. So yeah, maybe he would have been a good, like, candidate in, like, the Democratic Party of Barack Obama in 2012 or 2008. Trump destroyed all of that, that political era, that whole political appeal. And you see, like, smarter politicians like Gavin Newsom, who realize that and are also trying to show that they're just kind of, like, regular guys who speak and regular speak. Pete Buttigieg doesn't have it in him. And the Atlantic is like ground zero for political establishment. And so, of course, they still think those are appealing traits when in reality they're fatal.

Yes. So, and by the way, Newsom was another person lying about his origin story. And one other excerpt from this piece, he never spoke more slowly or sounded more rehearsed than when I asked him about the issue he will be most harshly critiqued on if he runs. his silence during Biden's cognitive decline. Quote, we all saw what we saw that he was old, he said. I never saw a decision that was different or worse because he was old. And quote, and as long as the decision making was sound,

Buttigieg had no duty to pull a senility alarm. Well, this will be a problem for Pete Buttigieg, among other Democrats running. Why didn't they say anything about Biden's, He was part of the administration, said nothing. Gavin Newsom wasn't part of the administration, but he's also going to get questioned about it because he was such a huge Gavin Newsom, sorry, well, yeah, Gavin Newsom backer, but Joe Biden backer. The Emerson poll that was most recent on Democratic presidential possibilities hit February 26th, says the following. Newsom leads the PAC at 20%.

Buttigieg is second at 16. Harris is third at third. 13. AOC is fourth at nine. Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro has 7% Kentucky Governor Andy Bashir at 5%. 24% are undecided. So it right now, if you were to go by today, it's Newsom versus Buttigieg for this contest. And they are very different. I mean, I'm not going to lie, every woman I talk to when you sit, you know, I'm constantly like, Gavin Newsom. And every woman, Even the Republican ones are like, he is hot. It doesn't hurt in politics to be very good looking. Pete Buttigieg is not.

You don't look at him and think hot, but he's trying to get, like, cooler with the beard and the plaid, right? The equivalent of the camo hat. We'll see whether that works on anybody. I mean, no woman is fantasizing look at Pete Buttigieg because we know he's gay. So, like, I guess you can't really complete. That's not the only reason. That's not the only reason. Even if he were totally straight, you still wouldn't be. No, my God. Who would want that on top of them? I mean, gay or straight or whatever, male or female. It's a no. Okay. Speaking of Gavin Newsom, he sat down with Mark Halperin. And, you know, he is now in that famous clip where he's talking to the mixed audience, but a lot of black people in it saying, I'm like you. I can't read. I got a 960 on the SAT. I mean, just absolutely devastating.

But what he's saying is I'm like you, dumb. That's how I relate to you, black people. I, too, am dumb. Can't read. Ridiculous. But, okay. So he sat down with Mark Halper, who asked him, you know, are you actually dyslexic? Can you read? And here's how that went. Sot 12. Can you read? Can you read a book? I can't read. I just have to underline it. I can't read. That's why I can't read a speech, Mark, because spatially I'll lose the line. So I'll literally, and I mean, I wish I had a book here. Yeah. If you ever lend me a book. That's why I don't go to library because I can never return the book. I have to underline and then what I'll do is I'll take what's underlined and then I'll put it out and this is literally an actual example. I'll just put in pieces of paper, everything underlined and then I'll do that for hours and hours and hours and then eventually I'll put it on a little yellow card which will have just quick notes and then it's in my head. But that's the process. That's why everything online I have to print out. So I take what's online, print out your blog or something, and then underline it and then put it in here. So it's a process. So you can't,

you can't read on a phone, you can't read on a phone or an iPad? I can. I just get, I start daydreaming. I start drifting off. And so it's, so if you're, so it's the key. I might also be dyslexic. Look at me. I have to underline all my things too. Like, I don't know. I actually don't doubt him that he's got some sort of a learning disability because Yashar Ali, who worked in his office, has said online, This has long been known about him. It's fine, okay? But what you actually said to the audience was, I'm like you, I can't read. I got a 960 on the SAT.

So this dyslexic or not, he's not saved by this. This is all a crutch to get out of what was an offensive comment in the way it was delivered to this particular audience in my view. Your thoughts. Well, also, he's been in public life for 20 years. And why now? Why was this suddenly thrust forward as something we have to hear about Gavin Newsom from Gavin Newsom? It just seems very exploitative. And then when you listen to him describe what the issue is to Mark Halperin, I kind of believe it too, mostly because who cares?

Like, yeah, I'm sure it's not, it's just something, I don't know, like his attention wanders. Does your attention wander sometimes if you're reading a book? Mine does. Yeah, yeah, right, right. You know, I think it's very much like, oh, you know what? You know what'll make me seem relatable is if I have, if I talk about my disability. And, you know, he's supposed to have. No, and he's digging himself out of the hole that he created.

Right, but why did he create that whole? In front of that largely black audience. Right. But why did he create that whole? Because he was trying to be relatable. Like, yes, I know I, when I was, you know, 18 or 20, I was best friends with his billionaire family that financed my businesses and financed my political career. But don't worry.

I'm like you. because I can't read and got poor scores on my SAT. I mean, the way it was said was very offensive, but also the impulse was, and again, it's like monkey behavior. They think they're imitating Trump, although Trump would never talk about his disabilities, but it's like a way of trying to be open and vulnerable,

kind of like, I don't know, the Oprah error or something. It just seems very off to me. You know, like he's been in public life for more than two decades, and now suddenly we have to hear about his dyslexia. Like, who cares? You know, and it's part of the same thing that you're right that has them out there. Like, you know, single mom, mac and cheese. Meanwhile, his dad was a judge and he was getting boatloads of dough from the Getty family.

The Getty family. It was featured in a magazine article with the Getty kids, Gavin front and center with the caption, Children of the Rich. Like, okay. Again, back to the Benny Johnson thing. Did you get featured in a magazine, Glenn, growing. up as child of the rich. Me neither. Megan, did you have best friends who were billionaires, the Gettys? Were you like best friends with like the Morgan and the forms? Hell, I didn't even know

any doctors or lawyers. Yeah, I know. We never met a judge. Like that was a huge thing, like to find that out. I mean, when I went to law school at Albany law school, a fine pedestrian law school, it was great if you want to go to practice law in New York. But beyond that's not well known. I thought I had finally made it, Glenn. I, I was like, now people are going to have to take me seriously because I'm going to be a lawyer. I was so impressed with like the possibility of getting a law degree. We didn't know anybody who had an advanced degree like that. Like, do I run around reminding my audience of my humble beginnings every day?

No, I don't. This is like a uniquely weird politician thing. He'd be better off just polling a Trump. Like, yeah, I was so lucky. the Gettys took such good care of me, you know? Like, and I was born to like a really smart dad who was a judge and a mom who was loving and worked hard. Just fucking own your actual history. That's what authentic looks and sounds like.

Yeah, yeah. I remember when they would bring up Trump's bankruptcies and he'd be like, yeah, bankruptcy is a great tool in the law. Maybe it shouldn't be there. Maybe it should be, but it's there. And I'm a businessman. I'm going to use all the tools. And exactly, you know, when he was asked about things like his father's wealth and the opportunities, He didn't say, no, I grew up very, you know, exactly what you said.

Like, and it, and it, and it does give the impression that Trump always is willing to tell the truth. Like, he doesn't have this shield. Now, Trump lies a lot, like every president, every political leader. I don't mean that. I mean that when he talks about himself and just kind of like being conversant, he, like, almost lacks that filter that politicians have where you calculate what you're going to say to, to, like, calibrate it for the best effect on the audience.

many, many times that Trump speaks, he just simply lacks it. Or he doesn't care enough. And that is a political dream. It was the moment with Hillary Clinton, right, at the one debate. Like, you didn't pay your taxes. You paid zero taxes. And he was like, that makes me smart. Exactly.

Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Here's another fact for you. Pete Buttigieg lives in Traverse City, which has become the Hamptons of Michigan. I mean, like, it is a joke that he lives in the wilderness of Michigan, according to are Michigan sources. So that too is not true. And as for Gavin Newsom, Gordon and Ann Getty paid about $233,000 toward his first wedding reception. His 30th birthday party given by the Gettys was

Great Gatsby themed down to the flappers and Charleston's. And per the San Francisco Chronicle in 2003, in 10 of Gavin Newsom's first 11 businesses, the primary money came from, you guessed it, the Getty family. Once again, Glenn, did you have some billionaire family, like the Aster's, or the Rockefellers, or the Vanderbiltz, or the Gettys, paying for anything in your life?

No, no one did. Other than this guy who's trying to convince us, he's a man of the people. You know, when you, that is amazing. Like, he was basically, like, an honorary Getty. I don't, like, they really took a gigantic interest in, like, every aspect of us. funding his wedding and throwing birthday parties for him and investing in 10 of his business.

I mean, that connection, he didn't just know the Gettys. It was an extremely deep and intricate relationship. Who knows why? Maybe they saw that he was a striver. Who takes $23,000 from someone who's not their family for their wedding? 30 years ago. So that was like, you know, seven or almost a million dollars now, right, $100,000 or whatever. That's exactly right.

And that was to our pal, Kimberly Giff, oil. All right. Quick break. We're right back with Glenn. Don't go away. feeling sluggish, bloated, not quite like yourself, life constantly bombards us with silent threats, processed foods, artificial light, nonstop stress, all of which can disrupt gut health, drain energy, and weaken immune health. When that happens, it's not that your body is broken, it's that it

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order. That's Armrr.com. slash Megan. Welcome back to the Megan Kelly Show. Glenn Greenwald is back with me. He is back on Substack as well. Go to greenwold.substack.com to find all of his work. You will be smarter for having done it. All right. Before we move on to Iran and there's plenty to discuss, there was a press writer of the Pentagon this morning. I have got to run this Michelle Obama sound bite by you, Glenn. It's Michelle Obama Day for you. She sat down with Conan O'Brien and you're going to be shocked, shocked to learn. She feels that there's a double standard when it comes to first families,

depending on skin color. Watch. I could tell when you and I took a trip once to visit a big, giant military base in the Middle East, you and your team were being so careful that everything is done by the book. You know, there's no perks. There's no, I was really impressed with that. And it occurred to me then, oh, I see, everyone feels we need to be so, so, so far beyond. It wasn't even a feeling. It was the truth. It's the truth. You know, I mean, there's absolutely no way that the behavior in this current administration would have been accepted by the first black family in the White House.

You don't get here without being damn near perfect. Yeah. We don't get to fail. two, three, five, seven times. We don't get to file bankruptcy over and over again and still be considered a successful business person. Right. You know, we don't get to not be at the top of the class.

You know, every eye has to be dotted. Every T has to be crossed. Okay. So she behaved on her best at a military base because she's black and she couldn't fall below the standard. That's why she had to behave so well while visiting troops serving in the military on their territory. It's because she's black. That's why she had to act so well, Glenn.

I mean, that was a hard clip to get through me. So you know anything for you, I will do it. But that was not easy because it wasn't just her. Like the whole thing was set up by Conan being the good white progressive ally. Basically saying he was, it was his thesis. He was like, so first of all, it was. It was very funny because he was basically saying what the Atlantic said about Pete Buttigieg. You were, you were like perfect to a fault.

You know, everything about it. Totally. So perfect. And he's like, and then I realized like, that's because you're black. And she's like, absolutely. And this, you know, this grievance is from her is, I don't understand. Is there nobody near her who says, you know, Michelle, you're one of the richest and most famous women in the world.

You spend your time traveling around the world on like Richard Branson's yacht and And with Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos in the most luxurious places, you have a gigantic estate in Martha's Vineyard in a bigger mansion or a big huge mansion, multi-million dollar mansion in Washington, you were the first lady, your husband was the president of the United States. Every door is open for you. Maybe like just tuned down a little bit on the constant grievance because you're not really like a major figure of sympathy. But she can't.

She can't. Americans twice voted for them. You know, they went in there, they were in the White House for eight years. Before that, he was elected senator out of nowhere by the state of Illinois. And you would think that, you know, she spent the first half of our life, like under Jim Crow or in change or something. Yes. The way she speaks. And it's really resentment producing.

She's like, oh, you know, we have to get perfect grades in order to be acceptable. It's the truth is exactly the opposite. And we all know that. affirmative action is there to help black Americans like Michelle Obama, who didn't get perfect grades, wind up at Princeton. That's what happened in her case, and she knows it. She did not have to get perfect grades. In fact, this system bent over backward to help her get into our most elite institutions, despite the fact that she failed to do that. Trump and his bankruptcies happened because he spent his life for decades as a businessman, taking massive risks in real estate,

one of the most volatile industries we have. And he played the system just like all people in that business do. Something she would know nothing about because she'd done nothing prior to becoming first lady. She spent a few years at a white shoe law firm in Chicago. Okay, sorry. Look, I've done that. I've done that literally the exact same thing. It's fine. It's a respectable way to spend your living, your life. But you're not a woman of the world coming out of that. You haven't taken big risks like President Trump did when he was a private citizen. So she would know nothing about filing for bankruptcy as a corporate tool to take care of debt

and so on. She has no idea what she's talking about. Everything for her reduces to a racial grievance. Yeah. I mean, it's just, it's so tiresome. And, you know, I heard Obama himself talking the other day about his library and he was talking about how there's going to be a whole thing. whole wing of the library for what people really want to see, which were Michelle's dresses.

She spent, you know, eight years. It wasn't like she innovated the position of First Lady and took on, you know, she did some stuff on like children eating well, which is fine. It's a good cause, like not to be obese and to exercise. But it wasn't like she was some driving force or intellectual pioneer in that position. She really was most known for her, her love of fashion, you know, and her relationship with the world of fashion. That's really what she most became known for. And also, the Obama presidency was far, far, far from perfect. They bailed out the banks. They let huge millions and millions of people go underwater, get expelled from their evicted from their home because of their inability to pay mortgage. They had a gigantic fund. All those drone attacks

and wars overseas, they destroyed Libya. And he got reelected. So where is this, this framework that if you're black, you have to be perfect in order to succeed when her own husband is a living, breathing testament of the falsity of that. The other piece of it is, Glenn, like you would think his first lady, all these years later, if somebody says to you, you know, I remember I was at a military base with you. And so both of these two, what Conan O'Brien, I was waiting for him to say was maybe you are so great with the troops. The way you guys interacted, it seems so authentic to me, like how much you loved them.

Or could you believe how badass those guys were? You know, they were huge and they were badass MFers. or for her even not having it teed up that way to go there. Like that's the normal instinct by most patriots to make it about the guys and the gals who you saw at the military base. But both of them were determined to make it about her and not just her, but about racial grievance again with some slips and some digs at Trump. It's just she's so small-minded.

This is the only lens through which she sees her experience as first-lating. there's no gratitude, not even for the troops, not a word about how tough they were or amazing they were or how selfless they were in their sacrifice. Just her sacrifice in having to be first lady for eight years and deal with the abject racism of the country. I've had it with this bitch. I'm sorry, but like, I am done listening to her fucking line with the help of, as you point out, little white liberals who are begging for her to pat them on the head. It's an I don't about you, Megan, but I kind of do actually, and I can say for myself, like, whatever I have in this world, I'm constantly grateful for it.

Like, I'm aware of how blessed I am. Like, I know that I have things that other people don't. And the idea that I would go around like, not just complaining to myself or in my private realm, but like demanding that the public listen to me as I complain about the unfairness of my life, You know, it's like, if you're poor, if you are downtrodden, you've had a lot of tragedy in your life, I get it. Like, I understand why people like that are angry. You can't have a more blessed life than the one that she's had. And yet she, as you say, she's, she's, there's no gratitude, there's no humility.

Yet she can't even pretend to like remember that visit to the base being about her being impressed with overseas troops and the sacrifices they make and the courage they make. It's like politics 101. No, it's about how unfair it was that she had to be. so regimented because she was black. That is, I mean, malignant narcissism doesn't even capture that at all. It's something way beyond. Truly, truly. Like, I've visited military bases. You go, you do walk away thinking, oh, m.g. I don't know how they do it. I mean, that's been my number one impression. Just, oh, my God, they're so strong. They're so dedicated. The stories they tell you, if you're inquisitive, Michelle, if you actually bother to speak with the troops about their experiences,

you might learn about what they've had to deal with, about like, just I remember one guy talking to me about the teradactyl-style-sized mosquitoes that they had to deal with when they were out on their morning 5K in some of the deployments, like just things you wouldn't think of. You know, you think of the enemy. You think of gunfire. You don't think of things like that, like teradactyl-sized mosquitoes. In any event, she's always about herself. She reduces everything to race.

I'm sick of her schick. That was her podcast today. I mean, this is like, to this day, it's 2026 and she's still bitching about her time as First Lady. Get over it for the love of God. Okay, let's keep going. You mentioned Barack Obama droning people. And that brings us to warfare and Iran.

We had a briefing from Pentagon Chief Pete Hegsa, Secretary of War, along with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Dan Raisin. came this morning. And here was a bit of how that sounded 13. Thus far, Operation Epic Fury has delivered twice the air power of shock and awe of Iraq in 2003, minus Paul Bremer and the nation building. We are just getting started. We are accelerating, not decelerating. The Iranian Air Force is no more built for 1996, destroyed in 2026. The Iranian Navy rests at the bottom of the Persian Gulf. Combat ineffective, decimated, destroyed, the combination of U.S. and Israeli intelligence and combat power will control Iran.

We've taken control of Iran's airspace and waterways without boots on the ground. We control their fate. Though the president says we are likely to be there for another four to five weeks. this is what B.B. Netanyahu said on Hannity the other night. Sot 26. I said it could be quick and decisive. It may take some time, but it's not going to take years. It's not an endless war. In fact, it's an effort right now to achieve the peace that we all yearn and pray for. It may take some time as far as he went, the president saying four to five weeks, we really don't know. It's not going to be quick, and it doesn't seem like they're leaning toward taking.

the out that a lot of MAGA has been begging them to take, Glenn, which is just say it's a success right now. You took out the Ayatollah. You took out 39 or 40 other top members of the regime. You've put the Navy at the bottom of the ocean. You've gotten control of the airspace. You've done a lot of damage to their top missile sites and so on. Can we just declare it a win right now and leave and do the thing that should have been done in Iraq? After the shock and awe, he made a reference to the shock. Just do that. Just say it's a win right now and leave, but we're not prepared to do that. It's going to get worse and we're still told that the full unleashing is yet to come. So your thoughts on where we are now on day five, five. Yeah. Okay. First of all,

this is exactly what we heard, not just before the Iraq war, but into the Iraq war. It's only a matter of weeks, maybe a couple months at the most. This is not going to be a prolonged war. We have total dominance over the Iraqi military. They're dispersed. They're destroyed. their military is destroyed. As you know, of course, President Bush made that, Georgia W. Bush made that notorious trip with the gigantic mission accomplished banner behind him, which, I mean, I understand from the military perspective, they did what they were at first told to do. But as we know, that accomplished nothing.

We did end up being sucked in to Iraq. On top of that, even Tony Blair, one of the primary decision makers that led to the Iraq war, that advocated it admits in retrospect that the power vacuum that we created is what gave rise to ISIS, that extremism and all. all kinds of terrorism can emerge when you take out a government and crush the civil society. So that's one thing. We heard this whole thing before. Yes, they can just say, okay, we're done. But then the question is, what did that accomplish? Remember, the whole thing was justified at first on the grounds that the Iranian government is, you know, slaughtering all of its citizens,

killed however many protesters, the number constantly changes, but they killed a lot. And we were so concerned about that. We wanted to change the government, liberate the Iranian people. If we're going to do that, it's obviously going to take months and years of nation building, which is what Pete has Pete says is scorning. But if we don't do that, what if we achieve? We're going to smash this country, leave it in a kind of Syria or Libya-like state where we bombed all their police stations. There's no more police. There's going to be anarchy. There's going to be balkanization. There's going to be a power vacuum who knows who will fill it. For what? How does that make the United States safer? It doesn't, just like the Iraq War didn't.

President Trump doesn't seem to have a clear plan in mind when it comes to the Ayatollah succession plan, like who's likely to be elevated? He said to the media the other day, you know, we had a couple of people in mind, but now they're all dead. It looks like they may have elected Khomeini's son to be the next Supreme leader. Not totally clear to me whether that's a done deal or whether it's just heading in that direction right now. but by some accounts he's even more hard line than the old man was. And there's a question now about, are we already headed to a place where the new boss is worse than the old boss?

And was this thought through? First of all, this does seem very similar in a way. And I think a lot of people in Maga are hoping it ends up similar to what happened in Venezuela, which is where we heard for weeks and months about Maduro and all the evils of the Maduro government. It was a communist regime that destroyed liberty and destroyed. the country. And that was the original impetus for the war in a lot of people's minds. And then Trump goes in, takes out Maduro, doesn't do much else, blew up some boats, and left the entire rest of the government in place, which I'm glad about. I'm glad we didn't destroy the Venezuelan government

in the nation built of Venezuela. But the question then is like, what did that achieve? We were able to run Venezuela, which we're basically doing. But so what is it in Iran? Are we going to just go in and say, okay, we killed the Ayatollah, we killed some senior leadership? And now the country, we're just going to leave it as is, governed the way it was before. He was asked specifically about the Shah of Iran, which is what all these Iranian exiles want, is the Shah of Iran's son to go be reinstalled. And when they asked Trump about it, he sounded exactly like when he sounded when they asked if Maria Machado was going to go and rule that as well. He was like, yeah, he's a nice guy, but I prefer somebody who's actually in the country, who's popular in the country. I don't think

Trump wants a radical change in the governance. The problem, Megan, is that once you start a war like this, you can't control what the other side does. If they do things that require escalation, require retaliation, other countries get involved. That's a very volatile region. And that's what scares me the most. It's not that Trump wants endless war. He doesn't want to be there for years. But sometimes when you start a war like this, you have no choice. Bush didn't intend to be in Iraq for years either or in Afghanistan for 20 years. And yet we were. The reporting today is from Reuters that because there's a report that we're, we're running low on our interceptors for these missiles at our outposts and domestically.

We've given so many to Ukraine. We've already given a bunch to Israel in the wars that they've been involved in. And we've been using them in our combat with the Houthis. We use them when we bomb Nigeria over Christmas. So like there's a question about whether we have enough interceptors, which are very, very expensive. We're told reportedly 12 million. I've heard as low as 4 million, but, I mean, the official said 12 million. And you can be using them to take out a $30,000 drone. So it's like it's a very, the ratio is not great for us because they've got a lot of drones, the Iranians do, and they have missiles, and we need these interceptors for both.

So now there's a report today from Reuters, per five people familiar with the plan, that the Trump administration plans to meet with executives from the biggest U.S. defense contractors at the White House on Friday to discuss accelerating weapons production as the federal Pentagon works to replenish supplies. Got Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, all the usual suspects to talk about things like Tomahawk missiles that Raytheon makes and a new agreement with the Pentagon. At the same time that Reuters, again, reports the White House meeting is coming as deputy defense secretary Stephen Feinberg has been leading Pentagon work in recent days on a supplemental

budget request of around $50 billion that could be released as soon as Friday. The new money would pay for replacing the weapons used in recent costs. conflicts, including those in the Middle East. $50 billion is a huge, huge number, Glenn. It's especially huge in advance of midterms when people are having difficulty paying their rent and their mortgage and their number one complaint, according to the polls, is the economy. I mean, this is everything Trump ran on, not doing. I mean, that is the reality.

You can say he changes his mind. You can say whatever. Conditions change. This is exactly what Trump told people he would not do, was pursue foreign wars that didn't have a direct threat to the United States. States and use our resources for Raytheon and Boeing and general dynamics instead of renewing their communities with infrastructure and with health care and with the kinds of things that Americans should have just to live a decent middle class life. It's a total violation

of what he told Americans. I'm so glad you brought up, if I can, just quickly, about this issue about depleting our stockpiles, especially our anti-missile defenses, which are crucial to how we've been defending Israel. Dan Caldwell is, I think, one of the smartest people on this question. I interviewed him a lot. I've talked to him a lot. He used to be a very high-ranking official And yeah, he's fantastic. In the Pentagon got booted out in sort of a power play. But he knows as much about, if not more, about this and anything. And he talks about how during the 12-day war, the U.S. and Israel had to end that war because,

as Trump said, Israel was getting pumbled hard by ballistic missiles and they were running out. What Iran has done in this instance is they're not just sending them to Israel. They're sending them to all of the Persian Gulf states on which the United States rely, Saudi Arabia, but especially the Emirates and Bahrain and Saudi Jordan, all these states are getting hit, and they don't have very many anti-missile defenses at all. And this idea that we're going to just ramp up production, these are extremely complex systems. They track missiles. They take missiles out of the sky. There's no such thing is ramping up production in a way that's going to be ready in a few weeks or even a couple months. These are years-long processes to produce them. That's why we ran

out last year. We were using them in Yemen. We gave them to Israel. We gave them to Ukraine. We use it to defend Israel. And we still don't have very many because of how long it takes and how intricate the process is to rebuild and replenish the stock. That is a major, major issue. Yeah. And reportedly, it's one of the reasons why we waited to even launch this thing because we were considering doing it a few weeks ago when all those protesters were on the streets of Iran. But we didn't because we realized we needed to reposition our military assets and we needed to shore up some of these interceptors for the expected missile attacks, both at the U.S. U.S. bases and with our friends. And now it sounds like we're spread thin, although the good news,

if you, you know, if you're looking for good news here, appears to be that at least for now, the number of missiles being launched out of Iran has gone down. Here's General Jack Keene on Fox News yesterday. Yeah, Tuesday, Sout 31. Where we are, it exceeds a lot of expectations here. Yesterday after two days, we have reduced attacks by 50%. Today, after three days, we've reduced the attacks by 75%. Not only that, this is from ballistic missiles now. And not only that, but the Iranians had, through their own intelligence and communication with each other, and obviously we have a capability to understand what they're communicating,

what they're putting, what orders they're putting out. Their own expectation was salvos, Martha, 25 to 50 salvos. And the reason for that is if you shoot all those missiles at the same time, you're going to overwhelm the Israeli defense systems and overwhelm the U.S. defense systems at our bases. Well, they haven't been able to do that. So what do you make of it? Well, I'm not privy to the intelligence I would need to be to say for certain if that's true or not.

I would put the very strong note of caution that the government and the military in every war, not just our own, but every country's lie to the population, always tell them that we're winning, whether we are or not, this is a very common thing. But let's just assume that that's true, because there is this theory that they've been using their primitive missiles on purpose. They're primitive just to exhaust the anti-missile capabilities, and that they're really hypersonic and more advanced ones are ones that they're going to use once those defenses are eroded. But let's assume they're running out of missiles, we're bombing their missile, facilities, making the whole point of what happened in the Iraq war between Ukraine and, sorry, the Ukraine war between Ukraine and Russia is that this has been a war that wasn't determined by

these big, gigantic, technologically sophisticated missile systems, but by very cheap drones. That's what's doing all the damage on the battlefield. And a lot of this supply that Russia has been using has been coming from Iran. That's the thing is you don't need ballistic missiles to do huge damage. As you were just describing, you need like $20,000, $30,000 drones that you can, you shoot huge amounts of even if you don't have a lot of ballistic missiles left and do a ton of damage, especially if you're eroding the anti-missile capability, not just of the U.S. and Israel, but again, the Persian Gulf countries that are going to start demanding that the U.S.

stop because their populations are being exposed to attack. And I think there's a lot of complications here that aren't being, you know, it's day five. The other thing I'll quickly add is, you know, Pete Hexas said, we totally dominate them. We have control of their air, their Navy, the waters, the Navy, we determine their fate. If we can totally dominate Iran in five days after five days of war, how is it possible at the same time to say that this was some grave power that was threatening the United States when apparently, according to Pete Heggseth, it just all completely crumbled. They have like 30-year-old systems, he said. And it's hard to reconcile those claims with the claim that Iran is some sophisticated

grave power that can do great damage to Americans at home. Well, the president was out there yesterday trying to do some cleanup in aisle seven. after Marco Rubio appears to have told the truth to the gang of eight and then was kind of forced to say it to reporters because he'd already said it to the gang of eight, which is the reason why we launched this attack when we did. That's the most charitable interpretation at the time. The statement was just about timing. But Marco Rubio very clearly told reporters that we did it because we knew that there was going to be Israeli action and that there would be a retaliatory strike by Iran against us. And we preferred to hit them first. But that BB was in there.

saying, we're doing it, Israel, and that we made a calculation, we better join with them because we're going to take incoming from Iran in response to that, and we don't want to be hit after, like we don't want to be hit before we've hit. Here was that comment from Rubio on Monday, SOT 16. It was abundantly clear that if Iran came under attack by anyone, the United States or Israel or anyone, they were going to respond and respond against the United States. We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action. We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn't preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties. There absolutely was an imminent threat. And the

imminent threat was that we knew that if Iran was attacked, and we believe they would be attacked, that they would immediately come after us. Okay, then there was a follow-up by a reporter on site saying, like, basically, wait, did you just say that we did this because of Israel? Watch this. It's not 17. The U.S. was forced to strike because of an impending Israeli action? No, first, well, let me, two things I would say. One is, no matter what, ultimately this operation needed to happen. That's the question of why now. But this operation needed to happen.

Because Iran in about a year or a year and a half would cross the line of immunity, meaning they would have so many short-range missiles, so many drones, that no one could do anything about it. Obviously, we were aware of Israeli intentions and understood what that would mean for us, and we had to be prepared to act as a result of it. But this had to happen no matter what. So that's him saying, ultimately, at some point we were going to have to hit them. But we had to do it now because of Israel, which is like sort of his...

It's the same thing as what he said in the first soundbite, which is we had to do this because of Israel. And the reporter basically said, did you say we had to do because of Israel? And he said, no, eventually it was going to have to happen, but we did it because of Israel. And then yesterday, Rubio went out and spoke to reporters and took umbrage at the fact that they were saying, hey, you said yesterday, we had to do it now because of Israel. And he said, oh, no, I didn't. Go back and look. Well, we did. We went back. I looked at the entire transcript. And I love Rubio. I'd vote for him in a heartbeat for president. But he was not taken out of college. He did say that. He said it over and over and over. If you watch the whole oppressor, you read the whole transcript, he said it repeatedly, the thing about Israel. And you tell me what's really going on here, Glenn. Because for me, I got to be honest, I'm confused. Because the obvious response, if Israel was in there, Bibi, saying, we're going to go now. The Ayatollah's having a meeting. We've got to take them out.

We're doing it with or without you. If we did not want that, would have been to say, no, we're the senior partner. Everybody knows that. Trump could have stopped Bibi. If we were worried about retaliatory strikes or we're not ready yet. And we didn't do that. We clearly wanted to do that. So is this Israeli inspired? Is it for Israel or isn't it? Well, one thing that I know for sure, and Netanyahu has said it many times in the past several weeks, is that this has been his number one wish for 40 years, just to lower the United States into a regime change war or a very serious war with Israel's main adversary in the Middle East, which is Iran.

You can literally go back 40 years to Netanyahu advocating this. And now he says, this has long been my number one wish list. This is then the wish list of Israel loyalists and neocons in the United States. They planned to do it after Iraq but got tied down in Iraq that you can go find 2004 articles where like now we're on to Tehran. But the problem that Rubio has. And by the way, other people said exactly what Rubio said and including Tom Cotton and others. Because if you think about it.

And Speaker Johnson. And Mike Johnson, exactly. So the problem is making- And members of the gang of eight have come out and said that's what they were told. But when they got briefed over the weekend as well. I mean, in every comment, they said we had to. because Israel was going to do this, and we had no choice but to go along. Exactly.

And the reason for it is because the reason why, you know, Mark Rub is a very competent speaker, very quick on his feet. But the reason it was so difficult is because you have to say that this was a preventative war. Otherwise, the war has no basis. Like, why did you just go and attack Iran if they weren't going to attack us? So they have to say, oh, no, they were going to attack us and we wanted to attack first. Nobody believes that Iran was just going to out of the blue, attack the United States, and provoke a war that they obviously have been working very hard to prevent.

nobody was going to believe that. So then the question is, why would they attack us? And the only cogent, sensible answer that Mark Rubio could have given was, oh, they were going to attack us because Israel was going to attack them, meaning we were forced into this war by what Israel was going to do. Go look at how Donald Trump talks to Europe and the leverage he knows he has by virtue of the fact that we spend so much on their defense and he's constantly badgering them and telling them what they can and can't do.

Israel is a thousand times more dependent on the United States, on our finances. We finance that country. We arm them. We go to war for them. we diplomatically protect them. Trump could have, in theory, just told Netanyahu, we're not ready for a war with Iran. We don't want a war with Iran. So no, you cannot attack them because that will put our troops in harm's way, which is exactly what happened.

Six of them died in the first 24 hours. So the question is, why didn't Trump do that? And there's a lot of theories about it. But clearly he is somebody who is beholden to Netanyahu and Mary Madelson and this whole crew that has become dominant. The New Year hits and suddenly you might want new. everything, including a new wardrobe. Does that resonate, ladies? Well, our sponsor Daily Look makes that wardrobe upgrade way too easy. Daily Look is the number one rated premium personal styling service for women. With Daily Look, you get your own dedicated personal stylist to

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Simpliceaf has consistently been recognized for excellence. They were named the best home security system of 2020, by U.S. News and World Report, and their customer service has been ranked the best in the industry. That's why so many homeowners feel safer and more secure with SimplySafe in their lives. Right now, you can get 50% off their new SimpliSafe system at Simplysafe.com slash Megan. That's Simplysafe.com slash Megan. There's no safe like Simply safe. Hey, everyone. It's me, Megan Kelly. I've got some exciting news. I now have my very own channel on Sirius XM. It's called the Megan Kelly channel, and it is where

you will hear the truth unfiltered with no agenda and no apologies. Along with the Megan Kelly show, you're going to hear from people like Mark Halperin, Link Lauren, Maureen Callahan, Emily Dysh, Jesse Kelly, real clear politics, and many more. It's bold, no BS news only on the Megan Kelly channel, Sirius XM 11 and on the Sirius XM app. The last thing I just want to quickly add, Megan, is Mark Ruby is saying this was something we had to do. We had to eventually go to war with Iran. If that were true, why didn't Donald Trump? throughout 2024 when he was running for president,

let the American people know, hey, by the way, we're going to have to go to war with Iran at some point. He said the opposite. He did say we can't allow them to have a nuclear weapon, but a major war like this, sinking their navy, shattering their city, if everybody knew Trump had to do that, why was that hidden from the American people

when he was running for president? That should have been something that should have been part of the plank of the Republican party. The IAEA, which does the inspections of the Iranian nuclear program, the Defense Intelligence Agency here in America, reportedly both had been saying Iran is not anywhere near getting a nuclear weapon or is not shorter than 10 years away

from getting a ballistic missile that could hit the United States. So the intelligence that President Trump was getting was saying there is not an imminent attack. There is not a rebuilding of the nuclear program. There is only an ambition. There's a desire by the Iranians to do it. That's, I don't know when we're,

we've ever launched a war based on desire, like an unfulfilled esoteric desire. This is why it's also extraordinary. And yet it seems to me that they saw an opportunity to take out the Ayatollah, who was a bad guy and Israel hated. And Bibi Netanyahu made no very clear for those 40 years. And during his seven visits to the White House, this is undisputed, that he wanted to launch a war against Iran and that he was pressuring President Trump to help. He wanted the United States to help, and he knew he couldn't do it without our blessing.

And we decided to go along with it pretty late in the game. according to all the reports. So to me, that's why all of it makes very clear this was a Netanyahu inspired action. He wanted it. And he talked our president into it. Because let's face it, Iran's not been warm and fuzzy towards the United States. And they've committed multiple sins against us and our troops in Iraq and elsewhere. And we're kind of pissed. We don't fucking like Iran. And the Ayatollah's killed a lot of Americans. So it's like there's been simmering, building resentment for years. That's not normally why you launch a hot war out of the blue when you run a not launching worse. That's how I see it. Two months before the last attack on Iran by the United States and

Israel last year in June of 2025, two months before that, Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, the person whose job it is to understand and coordinate and and summarize the intelligence for President Trump, went before the Senate and testified under oath that the consensus at the intelligence agencies is that the Iranian government had not made any decision to quiet, acquire a nuclear weapon. That's the first thing. That was the intelligence. And then when they asked Trump about it, he was like, I don't care what she says. Very similar to how Dick Cheney was told by the CIA that Iraq, that Saddam Hussein doesn't have that WMD. And he just said, I don't care what you say and created his own kind of alternative world that justified the war. And then the

second thing is, you know, why would Iran want a nuclear weapon? The reason making is, is like, look at the countries we attack and look at the countries we don't attack. We've been told forever that North Korea is run by crazy, insane fanatical people. We don't go and attack them. Why not? Because they have nuclear weapons. Countries with nuclear weapons don't get messed with. We've created a world where people understand if you don't have nuclear weapons, you're liable at any moment to get attacked by the United States or Israel. If you have nuclear weapons, you're all safe and secure. We've created a world where every rational country is incentivized to get them, and that is a dangerous signal to send to the world.

Well, just yesterday we saw an announcement from Poland that they are now going to be pursuing a nuclear weapon. And so, you know, it is kind of scary to think, we're allies with Poland, obviously, in their NATO. But the question is, how many more are now going to say, I'm getting one. I don't care what you think. Mark Levin, very, very happy, almost as happy as Lindsey Graham over this whole thing. And taking issue with the remarks, I made them, many other people made them, that we're angry about those six dead American service men and women. We're angry. And we don't feel that they needed to die, and that they died in a war that was for Israel, not for us. This is a war that was for Israel.

It was at Israel's behest, which was unnecessary. This was not a defensive action. Iran was not attacking us. You know, it was not like when we went after the Taliban, after 9-11, and al-Qaeda. I mean, we had been attacked. It was a massive provocation, and no one would reasonably dispute that we had the right to defend ourselves, which is why so many countries came to fight with us. plus the NATO obligation.

Anyway, here's Mark Levin yesterday. But the battle against the Iranian regime, the purpose is to protect the American people, protect our armed forces, protect the homeland, help our allies, protect tens of thousands of people from being slaughtered, who've been slaughtered, and yes, retribution to make it clear that you don't get to do this to us for half a century

without any effective response. So, of course, if we lose heroes and we lost three, and there may be born, the president says likely so, because it's a mass of military operation. It's a terrible thing. They gave their lives, they gave their lives for a great cause. A great cause. Frank Gaffney was on with Steve Bannon two days ago saying,

it's basically cost-free. He's like, I know some sort of. service personnel died, but this is basically cost-free to us. So great cause, cost-free, your thoughts. You know, for a long time, it was taboo to talk about the fact that U.S. foreign policy is driven by Israel and people who in the United States view Israel as their most sacred cause, even though presidents in private have long said that. I mean, there's tapes of Richard Nixon going back, and Barry Goldwater said it, and you go on and on. But in public, nobody was allowed to say it. And so the problem was, is that we created this climate where a major fact.

fact about our foreign policy and about the wars we fight was banned, basically because you would be stand accused of bigotry and racism and anti-Semitism if you said that. Thankfully, that taboo is now broken, though they're desperately trying to maintain it. And I think the main reason is, of course they are. They're desperate. But it's done. I mean, they don't, there's too much because of independent media, too many sources of information.

And, you know, it's like the left found out. If you overuse the racism accusation or misogyny or homophobia, you drive it into the point of meaninglessness. and nobody cares anymore. And that's the same as they found with anti-Semitism. If everybody is anti-Semitism, it basically now means nothing. They've trivialized the term.

The reality is that Israel pours huge amounts of money into our political system. Right now, they're spending, you know, tens of millions of dollars from Mary Madelson on down to remove Thomas Massey from the Congress in a one single Kentucky district, congressional district, because of his opposition to the U.S. financing and arming Israel. They've succeeded in doing that to many other.

people, people are petrified at the Israel lobby, and that has been a major reason why we've been so willing to send our troops into the Middle East to die for Israel. In fact, you know, Megan, during the bombardment of Gaza and then there were some exchange of missiles, we deployed our own troops to go defend Israel. And there were people in military bases who died, American soldiers during that time. They definitely died for Israel. And we were supposed to get out of the Middle East for so long. The U.S. security state was saying, we need to pivot. to Asia. We no longer have vital interest in the Middle East. What are our vital interest in the Middle East? Oil, we have so much oil. Those countries will happily provide us oil. We control

Venezuelan's oil. Oil is not a vital interest. We've long been told China's our main adversary pivot to Asia, and yet we can't extricate ourselves from the Middle East. And the reason is for Israel. And as we're spending billions and billions and billions on these wars, look at what China is doing. They don't fight wars. They haven't fought a war since 1979, because they know how self-destructive they are. Yeah, but I'm sure. sure they're building up their interceptors and their military assets, quietly, steadily, throwing money at that problem while we're over here, expending all of ours for a war that benefits a foreign country, a country of 9 million people, not the country of 350 million people.

I mean, that's why the Daily Mail has a poll out today talking about where the president's numbers are right now in the wake of this, and it's not good. And this is just months before we have the midterms, where you've got, it shows President Trump down four points just since Friday. They say that he's at 44% down four points since Friday, marking the lowest rating recorded in Daily Mail tracking to date. Only 24% of voters believe killing Iran's Supreme Leader will make Americans safer. Fifty-five percent claim the risk of terror attacks on U.S. soil has gone up because of these strikes. 40% of voters say their view of Trump has become more negative in the last week compared to 26 percent. Their opinion of him has improved.

and obviously, when asked what the main reason was, their view had worsened. 59% sided the war with Iran. Prices are too high, and now he started a war, said one respondent. So, I mean, that's the real thing. Like, to me, I just, it's amazing to me. I've gone through this whole crazy thing in the past, you know, I don't know, since last July. Since last July when I made one comment about whether Epstein might have been an asset for the Mossad. And people started calling me an anti-Semite after,

being ardently pro-Israel. I'm very, very defensive as I remain of American Jews. And I was like, what's happened here? What, why? Whoa. Like, they know I'm not an anti-Semitism. They know that. I'm not for sure. They know that. So why are they unleashing that term against me? And then Charlie was murdered. And the discussion came up about what his feelings were on Israel, and you weren't allowed to even raise that. And I had had a conversation with Charlie in August that the month before he was killed. I hope people go watch that. People should go watch that if you haven't seen it.

It was an incredible 30-minute exchange we had that wasn't even on the agenda. You know, when you're coming on the show, we'll give you a couple of, like, a little outline, like we'll probably hit these five topics if you want to bone up. And we had done that for Charlie, too, and we had not given Charlie anything about Israel. It just, it was still resonating with me. We were both still reeling because we were both called anti-Semites. And he was so pro-Israel, too. And we were both pissed.

It was like, what the fuck? This is bullshit. And we had a long talk about it. And then from that point forward, it's just been nonstop with like you're an anti-Semite. You have to defriend Tucker. You have to speak out about this person or that person in their commentary. And I've been saying all along, I'm responsible for my own commentary. I don't, I have no obligation to defriend anyone.

And by the way, I don't believe Tucker's an anti-Semite. And I'm responsible for the words that come out of my mouth. And that's it, period. it's been nonstop. And now, honestly, Glenn, I can barely go on X because I get trolled so heavily by the pro-Israel crowd and the Israel first crowd. And then the bots, there are many, many bots on X that are part of an operation. And then there are many, many live humans on X who actually get $7,000 a tweet.

People have come out and admitted it from the Israelis to troll anybody who deviates from the party line. And so, like, I want the. audience to understand that this is happening and it's an effort by a foreign country to silence the views of American about American foreign policy. That is fucked up. That's not okay. It's one thing to have regular Americans say, I disagree with you on this. That's fine. We should all be doing that. It's quite another to have a foreign country actively interfering online to silence American voices about its interference in our affairs. And

the lives of our American service personnel. You know, Megan, I grew up in, like, overwhelmingly Jewish, like, subculture. Every one of my family is Jewish, you know, friends, et cetera. I went to Jewish camp every year for the summer. There is anti-Semitism in the world, like there's racism, like there is everything else, and it has manifested in dangerous ways. But you can smell it. You can, you can sense it.

I know Tucker extremely well, hours and hours and hours in front of the camera, out of the camera, talking to him, I know you very well. And when you see people who you know aren't even, I mean, Megan, you and I have fought on this very show where you were defending Israel or more so like the expulsion of anti-Israel protesters on the grounds of anti-Semitism. And this is like, you for forever, you know, have been a stalwart defender of Israel. And simply, and so was Charlie. But simply because you both started asking questions about, wait a minute, is this war really in our interest, is this really Israel, exerting undue influence, they don't tolerate that debate, and they start shutting it down by calling you a bigot and a racist. And when you have the self-possession

to know you're not that, you will not be, you know, bullied by it. You will not be told that you can't speak about your own country and our government's policies. And by doing that, they really have trivialized anti-Semitism, which has long been one of the big dangers because it's supposed to pack a punch. Like, you're supposed to not want to be called an anti-Semite publicly, but they've so cynically exploited it into a weapon to force you to pledge loyalty to Israel, just like the left in with the racism accusation, as I said, that it's completely drained it of all its meaning, and they've done more than anybody else now, not just to open up what has long been necessary, which is this very serious debate about how much we do for Israel and why, but also they've

opened up this world where, you know, people don't care anymore about standing accused of that accusation because people see how cynically it's wielded against people who so blatantly are far, far from anything that is recognizable as anti-Semitism. Now, you know, I'm so relieved to see you and Tucker and Charlie before he was murdered and a lot of other people on the right, Thomas Massey, Martin, Roger Charlie Green. This is a, you're right. Benjamin Dentana who says controlling the message on social media, combating anti-Israel sentiment on social media is one of the most important battles that the Israelis have in their war.

and they've done a lot to regain control of social media, including taking TikTok away and giving it to the Ellison family, and doing a lot on X as well. But it's so much, as somebody who's been criticizing Israel and arguing about this for a long time, it's so much better now than it ever has been that finally we get to have this debate out in the open to the point where there's a New York Times article this morning

saying that Trump battles the perception of his own base that this war was for Israel. That was unthinkable even five years ago. I will say this. in real life, which is not X, I have so many people stop me, Jewish Americans saying, this is such bullshit. We know you're not an anti-Semi. Please don't listen to these rabid, you know, folks online. They don't speak for us, and I know that. But it is amazing to me just to watch the bullying happen, you know, where like they all pile on. And I've even noticed

that if I put out a tweet that's critical of Israel or even mildly, you know, or like, whatever, Lindsay Graham, I'll get completely trolled on my tweet. But if somebody who's not, considered an Israeli ally, you know, who's been more open in their criticisms of Israel. If they retweet the tweet, it's a very different response. Like, they're not, they're not, I don't know if you are or not, but like a lot of the people who would retweet something, I would tweet along these lines, they're not actively getting trolled anymore, or maybe they never were. Maybe there are people like me who they considered a strong ally, who they think might be waffling. They reserve a particular ire for people like that in the same way that, like,

if you were a Democrat and you turn on the Democrats, they really pile on you. You know what I mean? Like you've betrayed them. You're supposed to be on their team and you didn't. You aren't any longer. And I'll tell you what, it's like, I'm allowed to have questions about Israel. I haven't been ardently defensive of Israel, you know, for my career. But in general, I mean, as you and I've talked about before, I'm not like huge on foreign policy. Right. Right. And, you know, I'm mildly supportive of Israel in general and certainly after 10-7, very defensive of Israel's right to defend itself fully, and really just didn't pay that much attention to the day-to-day conduct of the war, although I saw the terrible headlines. My biggest struggle over the past couple of years

has been, who do I trust on information, on the death toll, on who's getting, you know what I mean? It's like, there's so, Hamas is a propaganda artist. And now what I see is so is Israel. So is Israel. Like, they are absolutely working and paying to manipulate public opinion in the United States as we speak. And so I no longer trust them when it comes to message. either, and I will not be silenced by bullies of any kind, whether it's BLM bullies, whether it's leftist bullies, whether it's, you know, the people who tried to cancel me after Trump and I had that debate bullies, whether it's Vladimir Putin, I will not be silenced by these bullies. I don't care. I will continue going on. You warn them ahead of time. You said if you think this is

going to silence me, it's going to have the opposite effect. Charlie said the same thing. Yeah, I didn't mean to suggest you were some like hardcore Israel crusader. Just that, you know, on foreign policy, you worked at Fox. I think you were generally supportive of the war on 10. hair mindset with a question. You were never somebody, I guess I just mean that you were never somebody who was like an Israel critic. And even after October 7th, as you just recounted, and I know for this personally, you were somebody who was mostly sympathizing with Israel. They had been attacked with your view and these protests were anti-Semitic. And to watch them basically pick you up and Charlie up and Tucker as well. And basically turn you into anti-Semites just simply

for expressing some questions or doubts, would you have every, not just the right, but the obligation to do as American journalists, as American citizens. It's disgusting. It's as despicable to me as what the left did when they accuse people of being racist or otherwise bigoted without any basis whatsoever. And it's creating the same backlash. It's exactly the same mentality. It's exactly the same tactic. Thankfully, I have experience there, too. And I was swept up in that as well. Like, I've been called all the things. So I'm used to being called the things. It's not pleasant, but you can't let it silence you. I worry more about like regular citizens who,

are having the same doubts I am and experiences kind of blowback in their own personal lives and don't maybe have a platform and don't have like a daily reassurance in terms of whatever. There's their ability to go out there and keep doing their job that they're secure. And so this, like it has to stop and we have to speak out about it. I still support President Trump fully. I am completely rooting for our success in what is clearly a war. I am 100% rooting for our troops. But I'd like it to end.

I'd like it to end ASAP. so we can minimize the loss of human life and go back to worrying about our own citizens. Glenn Greenwald, thank you. Thank you for always being. Always great to see you. I love having you on. We're back tomorrow with the pastor who was interrupted by Don Lemon. Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.