The Megyn Kelly Show - Glenn Greenwald on Trump and the media, MSNBC, and Edward Snowden | Ep. 1

Episode Date: September 28, 2020

Megyn Kelly is joined by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and The Intercept co-founder Glenn Greenwald for the premiere episode of The Megyn Kelly Show. Glenn and Megyn talk about "Resistance Journalism" and the decline of the media in the Trump Era, reveal some inside details about MSNBC, talk about Edward Snowden and how Greenwald came to that giant story, NBC and the media’s hypocrisy on the issue of blackface, counterproductive coercive tactics when it comes to social progress in 2020 and a lot more.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms:Twitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShowFind out more information at:https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey everybody, I'm Megyn Kelly and welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. So glad you're here with me, so glad you're listening. We're doing audio for now, we may add some video at some point. You know, the audio is kind of more intimate just to start with. And I thought I'd just start by telling you why I'm here, right? Like, what am I doing here? And the reason really is I am deeply concerned. I'm concerned about what's happening to our country, to our media, and to us. You know, the press of which I've been a part for many years now is unlike anything I've ever

seen before. I feel like it has abandoned any semblance of objectivity. And just having the luxury of being just a consumer for the past couple of years, it's as plain as the nose on your face. And it's really frustrating. You know, I feel like the COVID pandemic really brought it home. Because like you, I was sitting at my house thinking, oh, wow, you know, like, I feel like the COVID pandemic really brought it home because like you, I was sitting at my house thinking, oh, wow, you know, like I really need to have honest information about this. And oh, wait, I trust no one. You know, the truth is I didn't trust Trump to give it to me straight. And I didn't trust the media to give it to me straight either. And I actually sent out a tweet saying something like that in some of the sort of mainstream elite journalists who I know DMed me saying, what are you saying? How could you possibly

say that? Why would you not trust the media? Which I just laughed at. What do you mean, how can I not trust the media? Well, I don't. Because most of the media today expresses fealty to one side or the other, to Trump or to destroying Trump, right? And now it's fealty to the toxic religion of wokeness, you know, policing people's words and their thoughts. And I just thought, you know what? I need to get back out there. I need to create a show that I control in which my only fealty will be to the audience and

to the truth. So that's why I'm here. You know, I'm sick and tired of the news today. And I hope to be a place that you can come for information that you trust, right? That you know I'm not in the bag for either side or for anybody and a place in which opinions, even heterodox opinions, can be expressed freely. And we can debate ideas, any ideas, right? And that you guys are sophisticated enough and smart enough to handle it. So we are not about the silencing of viewpoints here at this show. And we hope you'll stay along with us for the ride. So we are not about the silencing of viewpoints here at this show.

And we hope you'll stay along with us for the ride. This is the part of the show where I have to read an ad or two. And it's the reason you get to get the show for free. So you have to stick with me through this. And it's the very first time I've ever done it. So you should really stay tuned. My executive producer, Steve Krakauer, is with me. And so, so you know we'll see how it goes steve i could completely screw it up no this is exciting let's let's let's pay the bills right okay and

you know we only selected ad companies that we actually believed in uh and we rejected a bunch we didn't so you know that you know it's legit uh and the very first smart advertiser uh who we decided to partner with is listen to this pure talk, Pure Talk. Have you heard of them? So here's the question. Who is your wireless provider? Do you even know? AT&T? Is it Verizon? Is it T-Mobile? So what if I told you that you could be saving over 400 bucks a year without having to sacrifice your service, your coverage, or anything? You got to sign up with Pure Talk. It's on the exact same network as one of the big carriers. It gives you the same bars and same service, but it is half the price.

Now, I got to be honest, Steve Krakauer, I had not heard of Pure Talk before this. No, it's awesome. They share, I think, our vision of no corporate BS, which is cool. Well, exactly. Because when I was looking into them, it says that they don't play the same games as like all the big carriers who have to sell you all the quote unlimited data, as though this is going to be the greatest thing you've ever seen when you don't really need that much, right? Like you want to be in charge of how much you get. So these guys, Pure Talk, they give you unlimited talk, unlimited text, two gigs of data for 20 bucks a month. No, it's a great deal. That's no fluff.

That's actually good. Also, their customer service is right here in the United States. Now, we all love that, right? You're going to be able to get through. You're going to be able to have a good conversation. And it is second to none. You look at Consumer Affairs, Pure Talk, number one, number one rated wireless company. And the best part of all, their CEO is a vet, a US veteran who gets what it means to serve

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It's a great deal. And now without further ado, our very first guest here on The Megyn Kelly Show, Glenn Greenwald. You may or may not know him, but he is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and a really interesting guy. He came from the left, right? Like he was more aligned, I would say, with progressives.

And then through a series of life events, started to realize maybe he wasn't where he thought he was. He's been fearless in his reporting, and he will take on anybody on any charge. And I think you're going to find him and his discussion about the media in 2020 really interesting. Glenn Greenwald, thank you so much for being here. Hey, it's great to be with you, Megan. You first splashed onto the scene in my world when you broke one of the biggest stories of the past decade. You were working for The Guardian and you broke the story of the NSA spying scandal, the whole Edward Snowden. And are they listening to us? And it turned into, well, we're only collecting the metadata of people's phone calls.

We're not actually listening to the phone calls. And so people, you know, maybe don't remember the whole thing. But you were the guy who broke that story for which Edward Snowden is basically still on the run. He fled to Russia. And I just want to go back because I wonder when you get a scoop as big as that and he's coming to you and sort of saying, this is what I'd like you to do. Was it exciting? Were you scared?

What do you remember feeling? Yeah, it was all of those things. 2012, I had spent two or three years or even a little longer maybe working as a journalist, columnist, blogger, concerned about the NSA, writing a lot about the NSA, what not a lot of people were. And it was very difficult work because it was so opaque. There was very little we knew about what was happening within this agency. And the little tidbits we were getting were making me very concerned as somebody very devoted to privacy rights and limited government um that probably the invasiveness was much greater than we knew

but it was impossible to demonstrate that so when he came to me as somebody who said not only do i have the only top secret documents ever to leak from this agency. I have an enormous number of them, you know, hundreds of thousands, if not more. I knew on the one hand, it was going to be this unique journalistic opportunity, kind of like the story of a generation, be able to shine light on the most secretive agency within the world's most powerful government. But I also knew that precisely for that reason that there had never been a leak like this, probably going back to the Pentagon Papers, but because it was from the NSA, this was even more sensitive.

And because of my position in the media ecosystem, right? I was with The Guardian, but I was kind of like a columnist of The Guardian only for about eight months. I wasn't at The New York Times or The Post. It was a riskier position to be in, to do a story this sensitive and this threatening to the U.S. government. And then Snowden, the first thing he wanted before he was really willing to do anything was for me to fly halfway across the world to Hong Kong, where he had gone in order

to safely work with journalists, which had a lot of intrigue to it, had a lot of tension involved. We didn't know what the U.S. government knew. We didn't know what the Chinese government or the local Hong Kong authorities knew about what he was doing or why he was there. So everything was under cloak and dagger. And obviously, when you're getting hundreds of thousands of toxic documents from a military agency within the U.S. government, it's a very risky thing to do. So sure, I was definitely tense and anxious. But also, you know, that's why I went into journalism in the first place, was to do those So sure, I was definitely tense and anxious, but also, you know, that's why I went into journalism in the first place, was to do those kind of stories. He's with Putin now in Russia, but I'm sure would like to come back and is pushing for a pardon, would like a pardon. And

Trump actually just said he'll consider it. You know, what happened this month was the Ninth Circuit ruled that program to be illegal. I mean, Snowden was effectively justified or vindicated in some sense because the program was ruled illegal and his conduct was discussed favorably by the court. But, you know, I don't know if they're just all neocons or what, but the people who really are still upset with him,

like my old pal Mark Thiessen of the Washington Post and AEI would say, you know, he endangered people. He's not a whistleblower because he should have taken it to lawmakers. You know, he hurt people who are helping the United States, our allies. And this all boiled down to us after 9-11 needing to see where the terrorists and who the terrorists were calling. And, you know, they looked at the metadata only. They didn't look at your private phone calls, which doesn't hurt anybody if they just see what numbers are out there. Right. I mean, first of all, I think there's this very interesting split on the right

that just reveals of people who kind of started off as 9-11 war on terror warriors and remained that. But there's a big part of the Republican Party, obviously led by Trump, right? When he ran in 2016, he ran in opposition to the war in Iraq and to like general notions of imperialism. Snowden's biggest advocates right now aren't just the ACLU, but Senator Rand Paul and Congressman Matt Gaetz, people, Thomas Massey, who are saying that he deserves a pardon, that he's a hero. So I think there's this split on the right that recognizes that we allow the government to get too big.

I mean, one of the philosophies of right-wing politics in the United States has always been, we need to protect individual liberty from incursions by a powerful central government that can invade our lives in too extreme of a way. And having them even, let's set aside the debate about whether they're really listening to our calls, because there's a lot of evidence that they are.

But even if they're only listening to, quote, just our metadata, think how much that reveals about you if people know who you call, right? Like you're a woman and you're considering an abortion, you call an abortion clinic. You don't really need to know what you say on that call. You just need to know that you called that abortion clinic or you call a drug counseling hotline, or a suicide hotline, or an HIV specialist, or you're talking to someone who's not your spouse late at night, metadata is incredibly revealing to create a picture about who you are. Why should the government know that about us? Unless we're doing something that a court says justifies them being suspicious about us, that was never supposed to be the role of the government. That's why the

Fourth Amendment exists, right? So it's one of those kind of controversies, Megan, where it's very unique in that a lot of the support we got came from the right and then came from the left. But there was also a lot of the opposition came from the part of the right that you described, but then also part of the left that was angry that we were making President Obama look bad. It was one of the least partisan controversies that has existed in years. And you see that to this very day. A lot of liberals hate Snowden. They think he's a Kremlin agent or whatever. Whereas it's a lot of conservatives who care about individual rights and limited government who are his biggest proponents. Well, I think people can understand that they're in a way

is a sliding scale. You know, when you're within a year or two of a massive terrorist attack on domestic soil, I think most people are willing to shift the balance a bit on their civil liberties to letting the government have more power and do what it needs to do to stop another attack. But then, you know, the more time that passes, the less tolerant I think the American people will be because it's not necessarily the solution long term. And so, you know, I think now is a good time to have the debate about

how we feel about this guy and what should happen, you know, with him. I don't know. I think certainly Republicans are willing to have that that debate now. I think the biggest objection will be what what message does it send to others if he gets a pardon? You know, other. I mean, the reality, though, you know, he has been punished, right? Like he's been he didn't choose to be in Russia. He was trying to transit through Russia on his way to Latin America. And they, you know, the Obama State Department invalidated his passport. He couldn't leave.

So he chose to be in Russia. It's a country with whom with which he has no connection, doesn't speak the language. He's been separated from his family for seven years from his own country um that's a pretty big price to pay you know seven years of exile so even if you think that he should be punished notwithstanding that he exposed illegal and unconstitutional acts on the part of the government which seems like a weird thing to say about somebody who did but even if you think he should be punished it kind of has been because the if trump wants to pardon him not that i don't know if trump even thinks about you know pr and how it gets covered in this day and age but you'd

need some pr cover for why it's just and the time in exile is probably a decent one you know i look at that now just you know from the perspective of 2020 and i that is fearless journalism i mean that is truly fearless journalism on your part that was a huge huge story. You got a Pulitzer Prize. So I am not alone in my thinking. But to me, it's so funny, Glenn, because I think that's what most of the mainstream journalists think they're out there exposing the truth, speaking truth to power. You know, the Washington Post with democracy dies in darkness, which I always laugh at because I'm like, well, I don't remember you, you know, with a democracy dies in darkness when Barack Obama had his pen in his phone and was issuing these executive orders every other week. But OK, so what I mean, what's your take on this sort of, you know, resistance journalism and adherence to a cause at all costs going on today? I really find it so repellent for so many reasons. You know, first of all, the Obama administration was probably the single most menacing administration when it came to press freedoms in decades um just you know as one example they prosecuted more sources and whistleblowers under the espionage act this 1917 statute enacted by woodrow wilson to criminalize dissent over the u.s involvement in world war one than all previous administrations combined

and very few people in the media you know where was the washington post changing its motto to democracy dies in darkness there were some journalists saying look this is a huge threat to investigative journalism what's happening this kind of threat to our sources as you know your colleague james rosen the obama justice department under eric halter subpoenaed not just his phone records but his parents in order to find out who his source was for a story um i couldn't leave brazil for a year and almost a year and a half during that senator reporting because the Justice Department was saying, if you leave Brazil, there's a good chance we're going to arrest you. Well, at least subpoena you,

but we're probably going to arrest you. So that's number one is there were all kinds of very grave and real threats to press freedom taking place during the Obama administration. And there was no hashtag resistance or media denunciations except in very small sectors of the media, which is why I don't take very seriously what they're saying now. Secondly, if you look at what they claim are the attacks on press freedom, it's usually things like Trump posted some insult, some infantile insult about like Chuck Todd and Wolf Blitzer, or, you know, said something mean to Jim Acosta. Yeah, mean tweets. And that is not a threat to press freedom. You know, like I did reporting all last year in Brazil, and the government, the president himself threatened repeatedly to imprison me, and they actually tried to indict me. That's an attack on press freedom. Being insulted by Trump on Twitter is not an attack on press freedom. Here's the question. What does COVID-19 have to do with losing your home? A lot of bad

stuff has happened thanks to COVID-19. A lot. One thing you're probably not worried about is losing your home. But the problem is that the FBI just reported that since the virus struck, cybercrime, cybercrime, Steve, is up 75 percent. Another problem with coronavirus. So you're thinking, all right, well, then like I shouldn't put my password in. I shouldn't put my credit card in when I order stuff online at the Gap or whatever. It's worse than that because the legal title to your home is online now. And they call the crime home title theft. And apparently it's everywhere. It's not like they can't get the bricks and mortar, but they can represent to

others, Steve, that they own what you think you own. And that pays benefits for them. Right. Right. Not ideal. No. So it's cyber criminals. They find the title to your home online. You probably didn't even know it was there, but it is. They forge your signature on a quick claim deed. I feel like I'm back in law school, the quick claim deed. And then they refile as the new owner of your home. You're off the title. Oh, great. They destroy you by taking out loans against your home. That's how they get it. So they get loans thanks to look at my big home. Look, you can cash this in if I don't pay you. They steal the cash. They stick you with the payments. So you may not even know until you get the late payment or a foreclosure notice on your home. That's how people are finding out.

Anyway, this can all be solved by home title lock. They will protect your home's legal title. Your home, as you know, is your most valuable asset. It's your safe haven. And home title lock will put a virtual barrier around your home's legal title. Your home, as you know, is your most valuable asset. It's your safe haven. And Home Title Lock will put a virtual barrier around your home's title. The instant they detect tampering, they shut it down. Shut it down, Steve. So here's the story.

First things first. You go to HomeTitleLock.com. You register your address to see if you're already a victim. Let's hope not. Then you use code RADIO for 30 free days of protection. Code RADIO at HomeTitleLock.com. a victim. Let's hope not. Then you use code radio for 30 free days of protection. Code radio at hometitlelock.com. First of all, there's a profit model to it, right? Like the New York Times was really struggling financially and became a really profitable institution by-

Oh, they all were. They all were. Just as an aside, let me tell you, at the end of Obama's second term, I was at the White House Christmas party. And they invite the journalists for one of those. And I saw Lawrence O'Donnell of MSNBC. And I said, hey, how you doing? And he said, and I quote, I am on a sinking ship known as MSNBC. And I kind of laughed. It showed some self-awareness. And Trump saved them. He saved them, among other outlets. He, I mean, yeah, I have friends at MSNBC who were on the verge of losing their jobs because nobody was watching their program. Because why would you obama was treated as this kind of like quiet savior figure which isn't very exciting it doesn't make you tune in um you need to get

people revved up and angry in order to get them to watch cable news and so trump was the savior by being able to turn him into this kind of like existential threat to the republic and so there is a real monetary and career incentive to wildly exaggerate the threat that he poses um that's number one you're absolutely right it was it's become a huge profit model for media um to pretend that they're kind of on the front lines of you know this unprecedented assault on democracy by this fascist dictator. You see the rhetoric escalating now. They're essentially treating him almost like a, like a, as a Hitler figure. But I also think, you know, there's that cynical motive, which is we make more money getting people afraid and revved up with adrenaline. But I think that like one of the things that has

happened, which I find really disturbing is that because journalists spend so much of their time on social media now there's so much of an incentive to ignore nuance nuance gets you canceled on social media or at least ignored what gets you attention on social media what gets you applause from your colleagues is maximalist rhetoric and i think that when you stay on social media for long enough time, as they do, they start, it's kind of like one of the most potent weapons of groupthink ever invented. So if you keep hearing enough times that Trump is Hitler, even though there's a cynical motive to say it, which is that people will watch your show or donate to your blog or follow you on Twitter. I think there's also like almost a sincere, it's like a collective mania that takes place that they keep feeding on one

another and making themselves increasingly more unhinged every day. And then there's no, there's no accountability. They pay no price. They get, they get financially rewarded for going after him nonstop, no matter how small the scandal, it will be inflated to an 11. I mean, Russiagate is the best example of that. But there's no accountability. You know, like, look at Rachel Maddow, what she did during Russiagate. And now it's it were real, which everybody knows is a fraud. It was obvious in the beginning it was a fraud, but it became increasingly obvious, and she continued to push it, which is, you know, like, essentially a document that says that this foreign power has taken over and infiltrated American institutions. Not only that, every single completely unhinged conspiracy theory

that can, like, really generate hysteria among the population about a nuclear power in moscow she promoted i mean she went on one night practically in tears claimed that russia had seized control of the heating system of the united states at a time when it was like negative 40 degrees in fargo and she was like what would you and your family do if the kremlin shut off the heat when it was negative 40 degrees you It's almost like Alex Jones or QAnon level conspiracies, but because it's serving an agenda that the mainstream press has decided is just, exactly, people are willing to overlook it. Not only is there no accountability,

there's just lots of benefits. Her ratings just went through the roof the more she fed her audience unhinged conspiracy theories. Yeah. I mean, I used to be at nine on Fox and she was at nine on MSNBC and we crushed her all the time. She never once took a month off of me. But we did have an adherence to fact on the show, good or bad for Republicans, good or bad for Democrats. And I see what I see now. And I confess I don't watch her show. I just see some clips from them is just freewheeling. If it's bad for him, it gets on air. That's it. If

it's bad for Trump, it gets on air. And and if you're a reporter or a fact witness who has a different story to tell, you get no airtime. And speaking of Lawrence O'Donnell, he tweeted out not long ago that anyone defending Trump and I think I think it was either on Russiagate or Ukraine, anyone defending Trump is a liar, and liars aren't welcome on MSNBC. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you're either a liar and or a racist. You know, it's interesting.

I mean, obviously I've experienced this personally because I used to be really good friends with Rachel Maddow before she got on MSNBC show when she was on Air America. We used to go on all the time. We used to bash the Democrats from the left about how they were kind of a fraudulent political party. She's very, very smart. And same with Chris Hayes, who's been a longtime friend of mine, who has a theater cogs show on MSNBC, thanks to Trump. And I used to go on both of their shows all the time,

all the time, you know, to kind of feed the audience whatever they felt like they wanted to have them fed. And then once I became a critic of Russiagate, I basically got banned from the network, especially because I became a critic of their coverage of it. And I find that so interesting because i know like i you know i didn't i'd never watched like any cable show constantly but like i would see your show and i know that you would love one of the things you like best probably because of your lawyer background probably because your personality

is you would like to invite people on your show who were had an opinion different than yours so that you could kick the tires on the underlying rationale, right? Like it's so boring to just have people on constantly affirming your own assumptions about the world. Right. And you learn nothing. They completely backballed anyone who was a critic. Like everybody who's a critic. And that's why they created this echo chamber. Are you saying you've been banned from MSNBC? Yeah, totally. I'm like formally banned, you know, like I was first effectively banned because I know I have tons of friends there. I used to go on all the time. Like I have producers who tried to book me and they get told, no, he's on the no book list. And that's not even for, that's, that's for your opinion that they covered Russiagate wrong, which isn't,

that's an, that's a fact at this point. It's yeah. It's for my dissent on Russiagate. Exactly. And like, and you know, the thing is there were other journalists, um, dissent on Russiagate. Exactly. And the thing is, there were other journalists dissenting on Russiagate with a lot of accomplishments and credentials. Like, for example, Matt Taibbi, who is a longtime popular journalist from Rolling Stone who did amazing work on the left but he lived in russia for i think a decade or so speaks the language and understood from the start that this was all hysteria about putin and moscow and the kremlin and said so when he got banned i don't think he's been on msnbc in about five years either um that's what amazes me not just that there's this prevailing orthodoxy but that they will never allow anyone to question or challenge them exactly because what Lauren O'Donnell said, if you at all are perceived as defending Trump, even if you don't like Trump

ideologically or personally, but if you say anything that pushes back against whatever anti-Trump narrative has been concocted, you're a liar and a racist and therefore not welcome in good company. Right, because not only do they have to say your point of view is wrong, i.e. you're a liar, it's you are a bad person, which the left just does all the time. You have to be completely discredited as a human. It's not just viewpoint. It's racist, bigot, sexist, xenophobe. Take your pick.

They all work. What about CNN? Did they let you on? CNN has become pretty similar to msnbc um i think the last time i was invited to cnn was earlier this year when i was indicted by the walson art government for the reporting i was doing um on brian's sculpture show and i ended up not going on but i don't think so i don't i'm not banned from there um but they very rarely have and they're either um i don't know when's the last time you heard somebody on there defending president trump or questioning the russia gate narrative cnn has reached out to me

to have me on and i've said no every time but the the times they reach out to me they want me to rip on trump i mean it's like oh trump did something to a woman right who should we get megan kelly i have no desire to to play the role they want me to play. It's like, look, if Trump said something controversially, you can talk about it. I'm happy to talk about it. But there's a reason they came to somebody like me. And that's when they, you know, they think I'm going to do what they need the puppet to do. Right. They want you to be their little dancing conservative bear who, you know, like amuses their audience while you criticize Trump.

And that's so interesting. Exactly. That's the only time they'll call. So now they fear you because you're you founded the intercept in 2013, which is amazing. You guys, I love your reporting. It's so interesting to read all of your reporters, too. And you're officially on the outside. I mean, you're you're you're a place where, I also feel that I am now, you know,

now that I'm sort of free, I'm outside of the conservative and the, and the traditional media, which I like, but you are, you've been there for a while and you've been sort of poking and prodding them. And I thought you had a really interesting point earlier this week. It was a column I read, um, about how this is why they're also turning on Joe Rogan, because he should be somebody they like. He's a liberal. He's not woke, but on most things, he's more progressive. But they can't stand him. And I think, you tell me, but I think it's because he's not of them. He's not beholden to them. He's not going to kiss the ring. And he's extremely powerful and successful now. The resentment really came to the fore when there was a suggestion by one of Rogan's guests that Rogan host a debate, a presidential debate, which is kind of like, as you know, the most prestigious thing in media that you can do in a presidential election year. And Trump was excited by it, probably taunting Biden, knowing he would never do it, saying, I would love to do it.

And the media acted like, you know, they had kind of asked just some like random homeless person to come into their glittery realm and vandalize it with their filth. You know, Rogan has a way bigger audience than any of them have. And obviously there's a lot of resentment. There's a lot of professional jealousy. But I really think what it is more than anything is kind of like this prioritization of culture over politics. I think like one of the things that a lot of people on the right

don't fully understand is that establishment liberals, you know, like kind of the dominoing of the Democratic Party, they don't actually care about politics. They're not socialists. They serve the interests of Silicon Valley and Wall Street and K Street. And they're rich donors. They're not at all socialists.

Most of them themselves are extremely rich from wealthy families. They use some rhetoric that's populist in nature, but populism exists far more on the right than it does on on the establishment of democratic party they don't really care about politics they're also not against war or imperialism obama started lots of different wars trump hasn't um what they care about is culture dominating the culture and the reason they look

at joe rogan and see an, even though if you go down the list, he's pro-choice, he's pro-gay rights, he believes in social spending, he's anti-war. He endorsed Bernie Sanders. He endorsed Bernie Sanders. Exactly. So why did they see an enemy? Because they don't care about politics, they care about culture. And Rogan is not, he doesn't sound like them right he's like a regular guy he like talks in regular jargon he likes hunting and mma fighting he tells like some risque jokes so to them he's like an interloper culturally and that's what they care about more than politics and that's why i think the like the contempt for rogan among liberals in the media

which is sort of the same thing at this point, is so revealing about what they prioritize. So what I did think was interesting, just one more minute on him, that he signed his deal with Spotify and made a bunch of money off of it, but already there's trouble, right? Like he had on Abigail Schreier, who wrote, it's so easy for me to say, Irreversible Damage, which takes a hard look at transgender teens and why it seems to be increasing in frequency. And they had a very thoughtful discussion. I thought it was fascinating. And I read the book. And now there's a protest over there. They want the episode pulled. They want him pulled. They want him punished. And Spotify has reportedly had 10

meetings, not reportedly, the CEO confessed. They had 10 meetings about this. And it made me wonder, can Joe Rogan last at Spotify? Can this relationship last? of the primary success of a social movement in my lifetime that affected my life most, which is the gay rights movement, you know, like of age as a gay teenager in the 80s with the moral majority and the Reagan era, no one thought anything like gay marriage was even remotely possible that I've won the full panoply of legal rights. And with my lifetime, that has happened. And one of the reasons it's happened is because so many people who wanted this profound social change engaged in the debate, right? Like said, hey, like you have these ideas about who I am, what my life is like that

aren't actually true. So get to know me, talk to me. I understand that you were raised to think differently. You have religious convictions that lead you to a different place. Let's have a dialogue so that you can actually see the reality of our humanity. It wasn't this like coercive demand that everybody swallowed this truth i'm not saying there were no elements the gay rights movement that did that but by and large it was a it was successful because it was persuasive

and now like around these this trans issue there's like almost this kind of demand that nobody asked any questions about these really profound changes that are being demanded about how we think about gender, how we think about sex, how we think about the choices of children to make permanent. And this is what I find so interesting. I have this media outlet that's based in New York. So I go a lot to New York and a lot of my colleagues are journalists who send their kids to very liberal private schools in Brooklyn and Manhattan. And a lot of their teenage children have friends who are trans, like 15-year-old trans boys who have already had their breasts removed at the age of 15, or the other way of trans

women who have had genital reassignment, sexual reassignment surgery involved in their genitals that are permanent changes that they're making at the age of 15 to 16. And if you talk to these journalists, they'll tell you at dinner over a glass of wine that they're very disturbed by the question that we don't really have a lot of science about, about whether kids are too young to be making these decisions, about whether people are being misdiagnosed with gender dysphoria who actually have other problems in the culture. It's encouraging them to think that they're trans. People have those questions. People in the privacy of their home ask the questions that Joe Rogan asks. But those journalists would never, ever write about it or publicly say it because they're too scared to.

They're too beholden to liberal orthodoxy and Joe Rogan's not. And that's why they hate him because they can't control him. I mean, I know, I'm sure you can relate. I can definitely relate to that. I've always been somebody who will go there. My old executive producer at the Kelly File used to say, MK, you like to go to the place that hurts. And there's a reason for that. I, like you, believe there's no harm in having tough discussions and poking sort of spots that may be uncomfortable. And I also feel it's our job to be antagonistic towards the subjects and the people we cover and to be skeptical. We get paid to be skeptical. And suddenly on certain issues, this is one of the things that's driving me nuts about covering trans issues or covering black lives matter is you're not allowed to be skeptical skeptical if

you are skeptical there's something wrong with you you know you're anti-black people or you're anti-lgbt you know trans people that just isn't true and it's alienating to people who would like to be an ally right but like to help in ways that are reasonable and that we can get on board with. You know, you don't want to support racism, but you also don't support somebody going over to somebody's restaurant table in the middle of the evening and saying, you raise your fist right now

and say BLM or else. It's baloney. Yeah. I mean, what is the purpose of journalism if it doesn't challenge and question orthodoxies? If all it's doing is kind of submitting to them and reciting them and echoing them. You know, it's a very kind of authoritarian approach to say you can't actually question things. And if you question things, we're going to declare you off limits.

Right. And I go back to, you know, again, like the gay rights movement. I remember, you know, like when I was 25 and 30, people would say, you know, there's something I really don't understand. Like how do two men or two women end up married or how do they have sex? And like, you know, you could like, you could easily, if you wanted to just kind of scorn them and say, you a bigot you're you know hateful and or you could say god i'm so happy for the opportunity that you want to have that discussion let's like talk about that and engage in that kind of debate i think one of the things that has happened is exactly as you suggest which is that the kind of liberal left tactic to win debates is to bar them from happening. And it's very alienating to

people who are prospective allies and, you know, it can work in the short term, but I do think eventually it's going to drive a lot of people away because who wants to be part of a subculture or an ideology that says that you're required and forced upon pain of being condemned as a bad human to accept orthodoxies and pieties that you don't actually even understand, let alone yet agree with. So we're going to be doing some features on the show for you all, and we're going to call this one Real Talk. It's just a moment that happened in my life that I thought might be worth sharing. For the first time last week, I saw four of my best friends who I hadn't seen in six months. And let me tell you, it was glorious. We're all New Yorkers. We were last together on a ski vacation out in Montana in March.

It was right before everything happened. And, you know, we didn't even know that there was going to be a quarantine. And we're all moms. We're all raising our kids together here. So we went six months, like most of us, without seeing each other. We had Zoom calls. You know, we actually played Flip Cup, you know, Flip Cup one time via Zoom, which is not ideal, but doable, interestingly. And this is the first time at least four of our seven-woman posse got together. And I have to tell you, you have to eat outside here in New York, pretty much everywhere. And as I walked up the sidewalk and saw them sitting there, because I was the last to arrive, they looked amazing.

It was a beautiful night. There was a warm breeze. We had a couple of drinks. And it was a beautiful night. There was a warm breeze. We had a couple of drinks and it was, it was a feeling of freedom. You know, it was, it was happiness and just friendship, you know, seeing your friends face to face and you don't have to wear the mask at the table. Um, and it turns out one, one is getting engaged. One is about to have a baby. So it was just, I'm, I was launching this podcast. So we got to talk about that. It was just, sometimes it's not like these huge events in your life that matter. It's just those little moments, right? Like an evening out with friends. So if you can make it happen,

I recommend it. So one other thing that I wanted to tell you is that we're going to be answering your questions here. So if you have anything that you want to ask, fire away. It can be personal, it can be professional, It can be professional. It can be about the news. It can be about the show, whatever's on your mind. So the email to reach me is questions, plural, at devilmaycaremedia.com, questions at devilmaycaremedia.com. And we'll get back to you on the show with our favorites and, you know, the ones that stand out to us. And, you know, hopefully we can keep it back and forth going. even if it's comments on the show and you want to follow up.

Maybe I can run down some news for you. So that's how we can be in touch. Personally, the one probably the greatest gift, the greatest positive thing to come out of my, you know, very negative ending at NBC was a freedom, you know, a liberation to just once you've been called awful things by every publication in the country, you know, that's run by these folks, you're free. You know, it's like, so I'm just going to talk honestly about these subjects. And what are you going to do? You're going to say something bad about me. Yeah, that's happened. You already fired that bullet. And I'm good. So on we go. Yeah, I know. I'm so glad to hear you say that. I think one of the really interesting things is that if you look at

the media ecosystem, you know, the kind of like economic structure of it, the outlets where you're forced to recite these orthodoxies upon pain of being fired are doing very poorly. If you look at who's thriving independently, it is people like Joe being fired, are doing very poorly. If you look at who's thriving independently, it is people like Joe Rogan. You know, like Andrew Sullivan, for example, got forced out of his column at New York Magazine because a lot of the millennials at New York Magazine thought he was a white supremacist, think that he's a racist, think that he doesn't deserve to be in decent company. And he went on Substack and his audience followed him. And I think he tripled

or quadrupled his income. That's happening over and over. Same thing with Matt Taibbi, who kind of got forced out of Rolling Stone and now is making way more money than he was ever making at Rolling Stone. The podcasts that are doing well are the ones who refuse

to be captive to this, these pieties. So there's a hunger for people to say i'm kind of free from it and you are right exactly as you said what else can they do to you no nothing else i wonder just why we're i wonder the like why we're on that topic like do you because the way like that all kind of played out was you know you you made your comments about blackface i was explaining it to my husband he's brazilian as we were going show. And I was saying, like, she was kind of like just asking why it is that it always has to be viewed as malicious. Like, is there a way that you could do something like that non-maliciously? Like, you, you know, adore a black celebrity, a black athlete, a black actor. Yeah, does intent matter? Does intent matter? Exactly. You were trying to ask that

question. I do wonder, like, do you regret kind of apologizing for it? Or do you feel like your apology was justified because for whatever reason, rightly or wrongly, people were hurt by the comments and you feel like an apology is justified if people are hurt? You know, that's a really good question. And I've asked myself that many times. I think I'm not sorry that I said sorry, because I do think some people, especially people who had just been reading the media interpretation of what I said, which was they presented it as though I was defending minstrel show blackface and wanted it to return to the airwaves immediately, you know, which wasn't to return to the airwaves immediately you know which wasn't anywhere

close to the truth i was just trying to start a discussion because i had noticed when i was a kid and as it turns out very recently prior to my remarks people were wearing blackface this you know this whether it was as an homage or otherwise they were wearing it and as it turns out nbc itself was putting out at least five different shows as recently as a couple of years before my discussion about it with characters in blackface. So I think it was a good discussion to try to start. So I don't, if people misunderstood the point I was trying to make, I think it's, I've usually been quick to apologize as opposed to just, you know, stand in my, in my principle and say, you misunderstood me and no one gets it. However, I also think I made the mistake of believing that most of my critics were coming to me in good faith. And what I've seen since then is that wasn't true. They were on the war path from you from the beginning. They saw you as somebody who didn't, who shouldn't have been there.

And not just, not just them, but I mean, look at the media, you know, look at even just, I don't know, a couple of weeks ago, Joy Behar was on The View. Now she, unlike yours truly has actually worn blackface and she was defending it by saying, well, it wasn't really blackface because I meant it as an homage. Well, Glenn, that's exactly what I was trying to ask. Would that make a difference? Would that make a difference? I didn't say, yes, it would. And we should all be doing that. I said, would it? And, you know, all hell broke loose.

So I sent out a tweet saying, gee, I, you know, she should be careful because even asking whether intent matters can get you on the New York Times and the Washington Post, and it can get you on nightly news on NBC and World News Tonight on ABC and GMA, which ran several stories about it. I just wonder whether GMA and World News Tonight are going to cover their own host, either Jimmy Kimmel, who wore it repeatedly, or Joy Behar. Guess what? Bug kiss. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that was a rhetorical question from the start. You kind of knew the answer. My only point is that there was no good faith by the media outlets covering it and by the vast majority of critics who just wanted you know a scalp i think people see that you know um you know media the media loves to whine very sanctimoniously about the fact that no one trusts them people turn to fake news sites They've been taught to look at media outlets as fake news.

People have lost trust and faith in authoritative media outlets. And there's no self-reflection about why. It's always someone else's fault. It's always they're the unjust victims of a defamation campaign. And I think that, you know, when they do something like this year, I think the most egregious example was they were shaming everybody who stepped out of their house to go to church, to have a funeral, to do a political rally that had a cause that they didn't agree with. They were denounced as being selfish, as killing grandma. And then suddenly these Black Lives Matter protests broke out all over the country where tens of thousands of people were packed in extremely dense crowds, one on top of the other, at exactly the moment where the pandemic was at its peak. And everybody in the media not only was afraid to condemn it or denounce it or shame it the way they had been doing for other gatherings

that they didn't like, but they were praising it, saying that it's actually justified from the public. And I think people see the fraudulent nature of that. They know, and that they don't believe, unlike the media, that the virus knows whether you're there to support Trump or to say BLM or for that matter, to mourn Ruth Bader Ginsburg. They they know the virus does not discriminate in that manner. Right. Epidemiologically, the virus does not enter your body if it decides that you're supporting a right-wing cause as opposed to a left-wing cause. No, honestly, it was right around the time of all those protests and I was in the grocery store and I had headphones on and I had sunglasses on. And so I kind of had the feel that my mask was still on me and it wasn't. I had forgotten it in my pocket.

And for a second there, I was like, oh my God, I don't have my mask on me. And I had a couple of looks and I was like, oh, Black Lives Matter. And they were like, oh, you go, girl. Yeah. Yeah. It entitles you to do anything. Just totally. No, all the limits are abolished. All right. So I got to ask you before I let go. We got to talk about the election. I'm dying to know because I know you're not you're not big voting. And I'm just going to guess you're not going to support. I mean, Trump's done some things you like, but like I know you were a Bernie guy. So who are you going to vote for? Are you going to share that i end up believing in that if you do vote you kind of even psychologically attach yourself to a candidate

in a way that can affect your independence i prefer not to you know be a supporter of anyone because i want to remain skeptical and adversarial to anyone who wields power um and i also think there's something a little pompous about like announcing my vote like i'm endorsing somebody or encouraging somebody to vote i prefer to just give people information that they can use to make their own decisions about who to vote for um but what i absolutely do reject is the prevailing liberal discourse that looks at trump as some sort of grave threat to the republic as some kind of you know i think trump is much more of a continuation of the american political tradition than he is a departure or aberration from it, you know, I think Trump is much more of a continuation of the American political tradition than he is a departure or aberration from it, except, you know, in these kind of like

rhetorical and stylistic ways where he's obviously different. So I don't accept this, you know, sort of melodramatic proclamation that this is the gravest and most important election in the history of the United States or democracy is on the line. You know, I think that each candidate is better in some ways and worse than others. Do you, the thing about Biden that everybody talks about is whether he's all there. You know, I mean, I feel like as a matter of factual reporting, you cannot deny that he he's in cognitive decline i don't i think it's okay to talk about and i think it's pretty clear um there was a there was there was an exchange like it was just a couple of weeks ago that i thought really sort of put a point on it i'm going to play it and

you can react after because if you could take care if you were a quartermaster, you can sure in hell take care of running a department store in the second floor of the ladies department or whatever. You know what I mean? What? What? I mean, it's honestly sad. And this is so interesting, Megan, because as you probably recall, the primary in the Democratic Party came down to Biden and Bernie. And so those of us in the media who started when Biden was one of the two only last standing choices were raising this issue of cognitive decline. And a lot of the people who were kind of the guardians of the Democratic Party were saying this is such a low life, you know, below the belt tactic to raise this.

And then I went back and I looked. And what I saw was that through all of 2018 and 2019, the people who were most disseminating this narrative about Biden were the Democratic establishment. They were petrified that he was way in the lead, that he was by far the biggest, most known candidate. And they didn't believe that he had the capacity to endure the grueling rigors of an election. And you can find on Morning Joe

and on every MSNBC show and CNN show, Democratic operatives, strategists, consultants saying, I don't think Biden has the mental capacity any longer to run a campaign. It was Cory Booker and Julian Castro in the debate who essentially mocked him for forgetting what he had said just like moments earlier they're the ones who raised those issues because they were petrified that biden was going to become a nominee and be so obviously incapable what saved him is the covid pandemic like that he gets to just stay in his basement and everyone kind of understands that's the best thing that ever happened to him but he's so obviously incognito decline like we all recognize it in our elderly relatives and people that it's sad to see right it's one thing if you're elderly relative like all my mom has to do is like send out the electric bill once a month but joe biden's

gonna have access to the nuclear codes and like decisions about whether to start war and who to appoint. Like the thing is, what's really hilarious is if you watch how MSNBC hosts interview him, because like that's the only place that he'll basically go at this point. Like Nicole Wallace, I think was the first, she talked to him in the most like patronizing voice. You know that like soft,

sweet voice that you use for like elderly grandparents who are ailing in a nursing home. You're like, hi grandpa. Like you would fake laugh at all their jokes. That's how she treated him. Like everyone knows it, but we're all supposed to just like pretend it's not happening. Well, to your point earlier, she's openly declared that she's not going to vote for Trump and she's going to vote for him. So talk about, I don't know whether this is a straight news journalist or, you know, she's trying to even pretend to be or what, but, you know, I, I don't think a journalist should be declaring who they're voting for if they're voting. And, you know, she's sort of shown her cards in a way that was pretty surprising to me when she did it. But let me ask you this, because speaking of the media and Biden, you guys are the ones your reporter, Ryan Grimm, is the one who broke the Tara Reade story as Joe Biden's accuser.

He was sort of following her Twitter and he repeated some of the things she said and wrote an article. And I was like, what? And then she went on, was it Katie Herzog's show? Yeah, Katie Halper. Sorry, Katie Halper's show. And she went on Katie Halper's show. So I feel like the media has done its level best to run cover for him on the Tara Reid story. Whether you believe Tara Reid or you don't, the way they've treated those allegations versus the way they treated the allegations against Trump and against Brett Kavanaugh is starkly different. issue right like what happened was ryan got wind of this and we didn't want to get behind it as a

news story saying here's an accuser because we couldn't tell whether or not it was true and we didn't want to give our journalistic imprimatur to these allegations without any evidence about whether there's that's true that's journalistically wrong to do notwithstanding what was done to trump and brett kavanaugh so what rically wrong to do, notwithstanding what was done to Trump and Brett Kavanaugh. So what Ryan decided to do instead was to report it from the hypocrisy angle that she had gone, Tara Reid did, to Time's Up, that Hollywood-based advocacy group for sexual assault victims, and asked them to represent her. And they've done this in a thousand cases.

And of course they didn't want to do it because they want Biden to win. So they concocted this bullshit explanation, excuse about why they weren't going to represent her which is oh we're a 501c3 group and we can't get involved in elections but all you're not allowed to do if you're a 501c3 group is advocate for a candidate explicitly it was such an obvious pretext to avoid doing it so we reported that and the irony of that glenn so So my issue always was, it was never, I never, it was never, I believe terror. Sorry, go ahead. I was going to say the irony of that is that, so in their, in their purported attempt to not take a side to not, you know, back one candidate or the other is of course they were just running cover for Biden because it turns out Anita Dunn is who's running PR for him, is running PR for Time's Up.

Her firm is senior counsel to her, advisor to Time's Up, which I'm sure Tara Reid had no idea of when she got rejected. And Anita Dunn was also the primary public relations advisor for Harvey Weinstein. So the whole edifice is based on such a weaponization of this issue for cynical and exploitative reasons. And that was always my issue was not, I believe Tara Reid, because how can I believe Tara Reid, right? She has claims that she made about what happened in a hallway in the Senate 20 years ago, which Biden denies. I have no rational basis for adjudicating who I believe or who I don't believe. What I found so objectionable was that the standards that have been promulgated under the phrase, believe women, that got applied to why we should all

believe Christine Blasey Ford, even though there was just as little corroborating evidence for her allegations and Brett Kavanaugh denied it just as vehemently, you have to have consistent standards for how this is treated. Otherwise, what you're going to do is you're going to make everybody cease to take allegations of sexual harassment seriously if you just start weaponizing it in this flagrantly cynical way for your own partisan benefit. And that's exactly what has been done. Tara Reid has more evidence on her side than Christine Blasey Ford had by any standard. Christine Blasey Ford did not have a witness to whom she recounted this alleged incident

within days, 30 years ago. That's what Tara Reid has. She's got a witness, a very credible, professional family woman who's from the Southeast, who I spoke with at length, and so have the other journalists looking into this, who remembers distinctly. And she's got a neighbor, she told two years after that. And she's got a third person, she told shortly after that. And she's got her mother. You guys broke this too. Her mother calling into Larry King, saying her daughter's been harassed. Now that could have been anything, so that's not as

persuasive. But she's got way more. And they're like, you know, that's not as persuasive but she's got way more and they're like you know that's not that interesting but could we talk about brett kavanaugh's gang rape again it's like totally made up lies i mean they they like the media during the brett kavanaugh thing not only promoted christy blasey ford but people forget this you can go back they promoted michael avenatti's thing with julie swetn. Rachel Maddow, I found the video during the Tiktar-Reed controversy, was so excited to announce that she had gotten Michael Avenatti an exclusive interview for him to talk about Julie Swetnick's gang rape charges and put that on the air. And, you know, I think the other thing I think it gets back to, though, of course, there's

like the partisan angle, which is people wanted to believe Christine Blasey Ford because they wanted to stop Brett Kavanaugh from getting appointed to the court and discredit Tara Reade because she's accusing Joe Biden. There's that angle, obviously. But there's also that same cultural angle that we talked about with Joe Rogan, which is look at Tara Reade and look at Christine Blasey Ford. Christine Blasey Ford is this well-groomed upper middle class woman with a PhD. She's like in the like exactly the kind of cultural milieu that coastal liberals love and identify with. Whereas Tara Reed is more similar to like the Bill Clinton accusers like Paula Jones and Juanita Broderick and those kind of people who, you know, as James Carville famously said, drag a $10 bill through a trailer park and you can pretty much find anything. So I think a lot of it is that cultural bias that comes back again, that what matters most is, are you a cultural liberal, somebody with whom they identify? Or are you this kind of like, icky working class person who exudes middle of the country vibes? And that determines so much of how you're evaluated as a human being by our media culture. Well, boy, did they miss Judge Tara,

because she up until now was a pretty committed progressive. And, you know, clearly has rethought that commitment in the wake of what has been done to her. But it's up to the audience to figure out whether she's being truthful or not. If you want to see I did a lengthy interview with her, you can go check it out on YouTube. All right, final question. So where do we go from here? We have a disgusting media that's incredibly broken. What do we do with it? Does it survive? I mean, I think, you know, one of the things we tried to do in 2013 when we created The Intercept was to kind of create a media outlet that could be trusted across the political spectrum, that even if we had political ideologies, we would be open about them, but we would do reporting regardless of where it took us. And to me, I think that has to be the, and I'm not

saying we fulfilled that as much as I would have liked. I think we still have work to do, but I still think that's the model. And I think there is a really underappreciated craving in the public for journalists who can be trusted that way, who can report on things in a way that will contradict or undermine what their political ideology might be without trying to deceive and manipulate them. And I think the internet enables independent media to thrive. I mean, again, you look at Joe Rogan's platform, like, we all ignore it in the media and the mainstream media, but he's talking to 15 million people, and not just 15 million people, but like 15 million people who aren't committed partisans who can go one way or the

other, which is a lot more valuable than an audience of 5 million who are squirrelly in one camp or the other. So I think that there's a lot of kind of undercurrents that this dissatisfaction with the media is giving rise to this independent ecosystem that can reach a lot of people. And obviously like that dynamic that you're talking about is when I feel myself, which is a lot of times, like, when I feel myself getting ejected from, you know, or expelled from decent mainstream precincts, it's so liberating, right? It's so emboldening if you, like, wake up the next day and you're not, like, homeless and you say, okay, I survived it. I don't actually need them. Now I can go speak really freely, you know, as you described. And I think that the more people they alienate that way, the more people they turn against them,

which is always what these kind of insular authoritarian cultures do, the more people they're going to kind of create their own adversaries, their own enemies. And I think that is where I find my optimism is this kind of like counter backlash that they're creating just through their own repellent behavior. Amen. And our thanks to the fascinating and fearless Glenn Greenwald. In the meantime, we'll talk to you next time on the next Megyn Kelly show, which will be released on Wednesday after the first presidential debate. And we're going to have some thoughts. You can find the Megyn Kelly Show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. If you like the show, please subscribe.

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