The Megyn Kelly Show - GOP's Giant Virginia Victory, with Ken Cuccinelli, Charles C.W. Cooke, Asra Nomani, and Bill McGurn | Ep. 195

Episode Date: November 3, 2021

Megyn Kelly is joined by Ken Cuccinelli, former Attorney General of Virginia, Asra Nomani, VP at Parents Defending Education, Charles C.W. Cooke, senior writer at National Review, and Bill McGurn, columnist at the Wall Street Journal, to talk about how Glenn Youngkin beat the odds and won in Virginia, the impact of "mama bear" mom voters, how what is being taught in schools became a key campaign issue, the "bad ideas" of racial division, Minneapolis voters rejecting the "defund the police" rhetoric, Seattle electing its first GOP official since 1989, more key races across the country, what Youngkin's win means for Biden's agenda, the key demographic shifts from 2020 to 2021, an incredible New Jersey state senate victory by a truck driver, the Trump impact on the 2021 races, and more.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow 

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest and provocative conversations. Hey, everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. We have a huge show for you today following a giant GOP Virginia victory last night. Republican Glenn Youngkin did it. He beat Democrat Terry McAuliffe against all odds, handily, in a race that was seen and is still as a bellwether for what may come in 2022 and 2024. But that's not even close to it. The Republicans are projected to flip the Virginia statehouse to picking up at least seven seats held by Democrats. The Virginia voters have had their say and they feel really strongly about a change in direction in that state. And it's not just Virginia and the South. In New Jersey, New Jersey, deep blue New Jersey,

mainly Virginia, at least used to be red. New Jersey's been blue forever. So it seems Democratic incumbent Phil Murphy is locked in a shockingly close battle with his GOP challenger, Jack Ciatarelli. Despite Murphy being up by as much as eight points in recent polls, he is expected to eke out a tiny victory as of this moment, but it's not yet completely certain. And the fact that he is even on the ropes in New Jersey says a lot about our national electoral politics, which we'll get into in one minute. Meanwhile, a ballot initiative in Minneapolis touted by Representative Ilhan Omar to replace the police with a public safety department failed. And Seattle elected the very first Republican official in the city since 1989. This is you've got recalls going for school board members and DAs as far west as San Francisco,

a Democrat bloodbath on Long Island where Republicans are taking over office by office. I could go on even here in Connecticut where I am, Republican sweep. It was an incredible day for Team Red. And there are all sorts of reasons for that. To break it down for us today, we've got a cast of all-stars. Charles C.W. Cook of National Review, Bill McGurn of The Wall Street Journal, Azra Nomani, a Virginia parent and vice president of Parents Defending Education, who will respond to all we heard from the media last night that the parents who voted because they don't want CRT in their education systems are deluding themselves because it's not taught.

Really? Well, she's a Virginia mom. She's actually part of this group that I've been mentioning to you guys, Parents Defending Education, as I said, that's been keeping a thumb on it coast to coast. So we'll take a hard look at that and whether that delusion is going to continue costing Democrats in future races. And to kick us off on Virginia, we are honored to invite here and have here with us Ken Cuccinelli, former attorney general of the Commonwealth of VA and a gubernatorial candidate a few years ago. Ken, thank you so much for being here. What a night. What are your thoughts on what it means? Well, first of all, it was a great night. Very encouraging in a state that Biden won by 10 points last year to flip it by 12 for a sweep of all three statewide offices that were up. And as you noted, Megan, winning back the House of Delegates, which is actually in some ways even harder to do.

But anyone who looks at the map of Virginia will see that there were Democrat seats flipped in almost every region of the state. But you'll also see this solid blue block right outside Washington, D.C. And Virginia's politics are affected, unlike any other state, by the massive growth, bipartisan, unfortunately, of the federal government over the years. So it's hard to sell a limited government philosophy in that part of Virginia. Yet education, crime and economic opportunity and the focus on them by Glenn Youngkin and the whole Republican ticket carried them over the top last night. I see it as revenge of the moms. That's my own head. Oh, yeah. And what happened last night, they were told their opinions didn't matter, that they needed to stay out of the education of their children. And they, as it always happens

in electoral politics, have had the last word. Yes, indeed they have. And I've been joking the last two weeks, you know, the mama bears are out and fighting. And when the mama bears are out and fighting, you want to be on the same side as the mama bears. And Terry McAuliffe got mauled last night. I mean, literally, he doubled and tripled down on parents not having a say in their kids' education. He claimed CRT wasn't actually happening in Virginia, all while Loudoun County, Virginia was the national, not just Virginia, but national epicenter over CRT, transgender issues, safety in schools, and parental involvement. And ultimately, even Virginia law says parents have the final authority over their kids' education. So for

Terry McAuliffe to come out the way he did really made him vulnerable. But Glenn Youngkin had to play his part, and he made him pay. It would be one thing if just McAuliffe had said that and it was a gaffe and, you know, Rich Lowry has said the worst gaffes are the ones where the politicians tell you what they actually think about something. That's what happened. One thing if he misstepped and said that a debate and then tried to do cleanup for weeks thereafter. That's not what happened. As you say, McAuliffe doubled down and stood by his statement that parents have no rights telling schools what to teach. And it's a sentiment reflected nationwide now, as I see Democrat pundits on TV and members of the mainstream media seeming to repeat that parents don't have any business inserting themselves in this. And to me, it's like, okay, well, let's see how that plays out over the coming elections, if you're going to double and triple and quadruple down on that messaging. And Megan, I think it's important for people to remember, first of all, a lot of those people

are going to get very quiet now. But we need to remember, to your point, that's what they really believe. They said it, they were doubling down on it. It's only now that they see how out of the mainstream they are that they're going to stop saying it, but that does not mean they're going to stop believing it. And when those people get power in the space that can affect education, that's what people can expect to see happen. And Glenn Youngkin said on day one, he's going to get rid of CRT in Virginia schools. That kind of follow through makes being a Republican candidate in Virginia, not only survivable, but an opportunity to thrive again. Can you put this in perspective for us as a guy who knows Virginia so well,

and obviously ran for governor there yourself and lost to McAuliffe when he when he won before? How big a victory was this for the Republicans? And what you haven't heard talked about, so we can be the first, Megan, is the incredible turnout in this election. If you look at the turnout compared to four years ago in the governor race, which was then a modern record, this year blew it away. Absolutely blew it away. And if you look at where the biggest increases in turnout were, it was all the Republican areas. I mean, literally some areas ran out of ballots because so many people showed up to vote in this election. It was more like a federal midterm in the 60% turnout range than it was like a Virginia governor's race around 40, 45 percent. So very high enthusiasm. The education piece played a big role in the enthusiasm. And that flip from last year, I think, is going to set the stage as Virginia has before in 2009, before 10, and in 1993, before 1994, Contract with America, we're seeing that pattern play out again. Our odd year election is showing people what's going to happen across the country next year.

I think it's a virtual statistical certainty. The Republicans will take back the House, and they have an excellent chance of winning back the U.S. Senate next year. And there's also an election security element here, too. What do you mean? Well, the last two years, Democrats got control of Virginia elections. I'm sorry, offices. They had the House, the Senate, and the governorship, and they made dozens and dozens of changes to Virginia election laws. We basically ran this year under a Democrat set of rules and won. And so lesson number one is the people who say, oh, your vote

doesn't matter. Don't show up. They'll steal it anyway. Don't listen to those people. That is not true. And we proved it in Virginia. And we have the opposite that happened at the beginning of the year on January 5th, where people believed that sentiment in Georgia. And we lost two Senate seats because of that. So that's lesson one. Lesson two is organic Virginians, regular folks, thousands of them this year got trained to be election officials, went in and worked. In Virginia, we call them the registrar.

It's a different name in different states. But went in and worked the election themselves. Every local election is run by local citizens because the registrars where you live don't have enough people to do it themselves. So they bring citizens in. And Republicans have always been outnumbered in this space on the inside of these polling places. Well, not this year. This year, the effort made by ordinary Virginians, thousands of them, to get themselves trained and to participate in our 45-day election, because that's one of the changes the Democrats made was we don't have an election day anymore

We have election season with the 45 days of early voting That's very difficult to provide all the manpower to cover so that you have the transparency and the security Provided by citizens watching every step of the way But that happened in Virginia and that can happen in Connecticut where you are It can happen in every single state in the country. That doesn't require any politics. It just requires effort on the part of ordinary citizens. It's a great point because, you know, Republicans lament these changes in voting laws that make it, as you say, election season. But once you've lost that particular battle because the Dems control the statehouse or what have you fight, you've got to fight on the terms that have been delivered to you. And that's what the Virginians did. The enthusiasm on the GOP side was higher than it was on the on the Dem side. We saw that going into the election. If you've got to have mail in ballots, then then use them. I mean, that's one of the things Youngkin was saying to everybody. Do it. Especially rural Virginians. You guys don't want to hang around the polling station all day any more than I do. Mail in your ballot. And it worked. Now, let me ask you this, because the numbers in particular, so it was white women who made the big difference here, and in particular, those without a college degree. Just starting more broad, 2020 white women went for Biden in Virginia,

50 to 49. It was tight. 2021 white women went for Glenn Youngkin, 57 to 43. So there was a big swing for the Republican. Women without a college degree in 2020, they did tend to favor Trump a bit more than women overall, 56 to 44, Trump Biden. In 2021, women without a college degree went 75% white women, 75% for Youngkin, 25 for McAuliffe. And I will tell you, when I look at that and I see that the women with a college degree still favored McAuliffe, 62 to 38 for Youngkin. I think what's playing out there is, yes, revenge of the moms. Women without college degrees don't tend to be able to take advantage of private school. And they don't tend to be able to get their kids out of public education systems that are shoving things like CRT and trans

ideology and inappropriate books down their throats. They have to go where they pay the taxes. And women who don't have a college degree very often can't afford private tutors like somebody who's practicing law or practicing medicine or what have you involved in the government can do. And so they were the victims of this never ending shutdown and the never ending mask mandates and felt powerless for much of the past year plus until last night. And you tell me whether Democrats will hear that. Some will.

Some, you know, what passes for a moderate Democrat today, which is probably covered by the Endangered Species Act now, but they exist. And in a 50-50 U.S. Senate and in a House of Representatives so closely divided, they matter. They make the difference right now in where votes swing at the federal level. And that's repeated around the country in many places. Some of them are going to get this message. I don't ever think the, you know, the Ilhan Omars and AOCs of the world are going to get this message. They don't want to hear it. And they, you know, they have a left-wing ideology that believes in imposing itself on the rest of the populace. But, you know, the Joe Manchins of the world aren't in that category. The John Testers in Montana, you know, they're not they're not the same ilk. And I think what you're going to see is a major deepening of the already significant battle in the Democrat Party between what, like I said, what passes for their moderates and their far left wingers. Their far left wingers

are going to say at the federal level, oh my gosh, we've got to hurry up and do all these things because we're going to lose power next year. Whereas the moderates are going to say, whoa, we got to stop doing these things or we're going to lose more power next year. And so that battle is going to be driven to a higher pitch of intensity than we've even seen so far. That's exactly right. filibuster. I think Virginia will protect the filibuster. The senators who have doubts about getting rid of the filibuster are going to look at Virginia and think, oh, I don't want to get run over by that steamroller. I think that's one of the sorts of outcomes that the whole country is going to benefit from immediately from Virginia's success. Well, that's exactly what

people are wondering. How much of a break, if any, does this put on the Democrats agenda, whether it's the filibuster or the spending bills or even just this sort of woke ideology that permeates culture zealot, but the CRT was such a central piece of the contest. And it was it drove enthusiasm and intensity, particularly on the Republican side in support of Glenn Youngkin. I mean, the numbers are incredible. The Fox exit polls for the quarter of people for whom, you know, CRT was a top issue, they broke 71-28 for Glenn Youngkin. Those are unheard of kinds of splits. And you're going to see a major impact from that all across the country. And it'll be interesting to see just in Virginia, does a still Democrat state Senate recognize the mandate with which Glenn Youngkin is coming into office and accommodated somewhat? We will see in January. NBC to CNN and just reading this morning, the AP, the New York Times, they actually state as fact or under the guise of a correction of the record, CRT is not being taught in K through 12 schools.

CRT is not being taught either in Virginia or elsewhere. They state it as though it is a factual assertion that they can defend. And it's funny, Ken, because, you know, as a mom myself with kids who are 12, 10 and eight in the school systems a year ago in New York, now in Connecticut. And I've had so many guests on this show to talk to me about other states. I don't care what you call it. Racial division is being sold to our kids day in and day out in these schools. And the message of ignore your lying eyes and ears and believe me, MSNBC anchor,

when I tell you that's not critical race, no one cares. That's semantics. You're dividing our children based on melanin. That's the bottom line. Yeah. And that's evil fundamentally. But their best defense is to is to argue it doesn't exist, which is what McAuliffe tried to do. But as you point out, you used the word evidence. The evidence is overwhelming. It's on the state board of election website. It's in the curricula. It's in the libraries. I mean, this was demonstrated in the most Democrat parts of Virginia, Fairfax County, the biggest county in the state, very Democrat, two to one. And last night, about 65, 35, roughly, in favor of McAuliffe, a million people live there. And people were pulling books out of the library, reading the books to the school board, and they were being

shut off because they were too vulgar, disgusting and outrageous. And yet that's what they're feeding to the children. So hypocrisy was, it went noticed by parents most critically. And you walk through some of the biggest splits there with the moms. And no surprise that mothers would react most strongly to protecting the ability to control their children's education and to not teach them this sort of evil that we're not saying don't reflect on the negative aspects of American history, the oppression of blacks, you know, with slavery and then between the Civil War and the civil rights era. That's all real. I was the last attorney general in Virginia under preclearance. There was a reason the Voting Rights Act was needed in 1965. And as the feds had to keep an eye on certain southern states to make sure that the votes were

fair. That's right. That's right. But as the Supreme Court said in 2013, we fixed it. We have fixed it. Yeah. Those problems we've grown out of. And one of the other things in Scott Rasmussen's exit polling was that something like 80 plus percent of Americans agree with that statement. So the Democrats are really on the wrong side of reality and history here. governor. Oh my gosh. A star is born, right? Winsome Sears wins the Lieutenant governorship. And also Jason Mayares wins first attorney general. Okay. Attorney general. She, Winsome, born in Jamaica, grew up in the Bronx, electrician in the Marines. She is black. She was vice president of the Virginia Board of Education. She made education a centerpiece of her campaign, school choice, parental rights. She was the anti-McAuliffe. And Jason, first ever Latino AG, first son of an immigrant. His mom fled Cuba and was up against a Democrat two-term liberal activist incumbent.

So these two take over these top spots in Virginia. And I'll tell you, this winsome Sears has got a future in politics. Here she was last night with a new kind of message for Virginia voters. There are some who want to divide us and we must not let that happen. They would like us to believe we are back in 1963 when my father came. We can live where we want. We can eat where we want. We own the water fountains. We have had a black president elected not once but twice, and here I am, living proof. In case you haven't noticed, I am black and I have been black all my life.

She's amazing. She's all energy. I'll tell you what. She's the most conservative candidate to ever win for lieutenant governor. She's the first black female to win statewide in Virginia. Of course, Doug Wilder was the first elected black governor anywhere in the country. And that happened in Virginia 30 years ago. And, you know, so history was made there. And Jason Villarreal, first Hispanic statewide elected official, he'll be attorney general taking over from Mark Herring. I call him Red Herring. He did such a terrible job for Virginia. And Jason really laid his record out

there and won the race. It's tough to beat incumbents. I don't care what state you're in. It's tough to beat incumbents, and he did it. But interestingly enough, here we are. It's the middle of the next day. And how much have you heard the mainstream media talking about the first Black female and the first Hispanic statewide in Virginia? Where's the celebration? Almost nothing. Oh, to the contrary. And I know you pointed this out last night. And I thought you were dead on. I'll just give you I'll tee it up for you and you can respond. But we're hearing things like the following. This is from Wajahat Ali. He's with the Daily Beast, but he's all over CNN and MSNBC. This is the guy who was in that infamous Don

Lemon bit with Rick Wilson, where they were sneering at Republican voters like this, those pretending that they were Republicans talking about Democrats like those Democrats with like their maps and their math and their that's that's Wajah Ali. He tweeted out whiteness remains undefeated. Whiteness remains undefeated in Virginia. Hello. Hello. He writes, let's wait and see who those white suburban voters went for tonight in Virginia. Any guesses? Well, was it Winsome Sears? Is that is that who you mean? Watch out. And the whole white supremacist lie can has been thoroughly dismantled in the Commonwealth. had a governor who did blackface, Northam, who Terry McAuliffe called for to resign. But then Northam endorsed McAuliffe and McAuliffe has now been hugging him all the way to losing. And his attorney general, Mark Herring, called on Northam to resign. Four days later, we learned Mark Northam did this blackface sort of thing too. But while he had called on Northam to

resign over it, he didn't. And he won his Democrat primary against a qualified black opponent. So don't tell me which party is clinging to its whiteness. They had two old white guys who had embraced blackface or done it themselves, who were their candidates. The only minority they had was for Lieutenant Governor Hayalala Ayala, who, you know, lost, obviously, to Winsome Sears. And so either way, a minority woman was going to win the Lieutenant Governor's race. But it was Winsome. And I'll tell you, you're going to be hearing more from her. She is, like I said, all energy, former Marine. She's also been in the House of Delegates in the past, so she knows the system already. And she will be presiding over a Democrat, for now, state Senate.

And it's definitely going to change the environment there. She's a real winner. And Jason Meares is finally going to bring the rule of law back to Virginia, where Mark Perry has just been doing whatever he wants. But she's clearly got a future at the national level in GOP politics. And let's hope that her name portends exactly what it suggests. She's going to win some and she's going to win some more. Ken Cuccinelli, so great to talk to you. Thank you for being with us this morning. Good doing you, Maggie. Wow.

Up next, a Virginia parent, one of those mama bears Ken talked about, and a vice president at a group that's been really important in this whole electoral cycle, Parents Defending Education. Azra Nomani is here. If you want to know exactly what happened in Virginia last night, and frankly, across the country, all you really need to know is the story of Azra Nomani, a Muslim immigrant, a single mother. She came to the United States not knowing a word of English, a liberal progressive who

only moved to Virginia because she saw the state vote for Barack Obama in 2008. But last summer, she stood up and began speaking out and then would not stop speaking out. Only moved to Virginia because she saw the state vote for Barack Obama in 2008. But last summer, she stood up and began speaking out and then would not stop speaking out at her local school board meetings. She says she did it because she began to realize what her son was being taught in school was, quote, anti-American propaganda with a racist core. Azra is now a vice president at Parents Defending Education, a great group which you should totally check out if you're dealing with this nonsense in your K through 12 school. They've got great roadmaps and help for you from Azra and others like Azra. She's also a former Wall Street Journal reporter. Azra, so great to speak with you again. Great to see you. Oh, it's so great. I can't even believe the trajectory of our conversations

from years ago to today. Right. across the board Republican. And it was a moment for her. I think she felt a little teary about it. She felt emotional. It wasn't because she's gone, you know, hardcore pro second amendment. It was because she's a mama bear. Like your shirt says, she's a mama bear like you. This isn't a Republican Dem issue. Yeah. It's such a tragedy that the Dems right now cannot see the humanity of their base because they're so caught up in the politics of Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib and AOC. They're just chasing the extreme. And they've left them behind, the centrists like myself. Like you said, I only moved to Virginia in December 2008.

I remember it precisely, Megan, because I was living in D.C. and I needed to find a new place. Well, the election had just happened of 2008 and I grew up in West Virginia. So I grew up, you know, really feeling pride in our state of West Virginia being on the correct side of history on the issue of civil rights, slavery, this big issue of slavery. Well, it was only when the state voted for Barack Obama that I said, oh, it's ready for a Muslim immigrant progressive feminist like me. I raised my son here. And then all of a sudden, in June 2020, the principal at my son's high school told me that I and the other Asian, mostly Asian, mostly immigrant parents had to check our privileges. And on it goes. You're the perfect person to talk to about this lie. We keep hearing over and over from the mainstream media, from the Democrats, all over cable news last night that that CRT is a unicorn.

It this is not something being taught in K through 12 schools. They say it like it is a factual assertion. They are correcting this nonsense record that conservative crazies, white supremacists keep pushing. I mean, your take on it, because I will tell you, I just said earlier in the show, I don't care what you call. I don't care if they're not teaching the actual legal doctrine that you learn in law. That's not what parents are saying.

You're teaching racial division. CRT is a catch-all phrase for parents who don't know quite how to categorize the insanity you're delving out. Yeah. My colleague, the president of Parents Defending Education, you've spoken with her. She said, I don't care if you call it magical unicorn theory, right? We are just opposed to it because it's bad news. Like behind me, Megan, is all of the books on Islamism that we would talk about for years, the extremism within my faith of Islam and how we had to challenge it. Well,

now I have here critical race theory and all of the extremism of wokeism. And it is very much real and happening in the state of Virginia. First of all, just to start off with your audience, critical race theory says that we have to look at all issues through the lens of race. It's just very simple premise. So that was a fundamental problem on this issue of my son's school because they wanted to have racial demographics at the school matching the racial demographics of the county. 20% Asian, 70% Asian in my son's school. So right away, they changed admissions. So it's getting in the weeds a little bit here, but I just want to let people know how it is that they started messing with schools through the lens of race. And then one example I have here that I wrote about in National

Review, I think you talked about it a bit, is this class called How to Be an Anti-Racist Educator. And I didn't get this into the National Review piece, but the premise of this class that's taught at Marshall High School right now to educators there in Virginia, just right down the road from me here, is that they have to discuss in lesson number six, exploring and understanding white men. So this is, again, looking at people and society through the lens of race. And they use this book, Courageous Conversations. And Courageous Conversations is the bad ideas of this man named Glenn Singleton. That's who they brought to my school in New York. That's one of the schools we left. Yeah. So he, you know, because you know how in Islamism, we had to study where did

extremism come from? And then we learned it's the Muslim Brotherhood, right? It's this guy named Haradawi. Who are the vessels of these bad ideas? And it's this guy, Glenn Singleton. And that's what they are now teaching these courses in here. And they're going to include in the next coming weeks here in Virginia, right down the road from me, the privilege walk, right? You know, all of these anecdotes, Megan, that have just, you know,

seeped into our school systems. And it's always bad ideas from really like, you know, not very sophisticated intellectuals who are just now making millions of dollars. And, you know, over here, I have the receipts, the contracts from a neighboring county, Talbot County next door in DC. It's money, it's bad ideas, and it's ultimately trickling down into our schools. And that's what we know. We see it every day as parents, we hear about it and we're not stupid, you know, we get it. And just like you guys just talked about, we are not going to let anyone get in between ourselves and our cubs. That's right. And you talk about, I mean, in your piece for National Review, which was wonderful, and I recommend it to everybody, Virginia parents have had enough of woke lies at their schools. This is a couple days ago before the election, woke lies. We heard so many more of them. the examples you gave was of that anti-racist educator you just talked about and who the

encouragement that people listen to Bettina Love and promote Bettina Love. We've seen this all over Virginia. We've seen it actually coast to coast. Bettina Love is a problem. This is a woman who says whites need therapy to overcome their racism, ignorance, and history of harm in the school setting, who doesn't believe that children can learn well from teachers of the same race, who says public schools do not see blacks as human and they're guilty of the systemic anti-blackness and the spirit murder of black and brown babies, that whites are directly responsible for the plight of, quote, dark children. What?

I don't care. She is a critical race theorist. But even if those words aren't used, the fact that these Democratic politicians and media pundits will not acknowledge that stuff is trickling down to our children is at their own peril. You tell me it's at their own peril. Yeah, you know, James Carville was a consultant

to the Terry McAuliffe campaign. And I signed up for the newsletters. And every day I'd get, you know, another missive from James Carville or whoever else they brought in. And you know, Megan, that James Carville called out the wokeism earlier this year in the country and said that it was going to cost the Dems. But his voice is not prevailing. And in fact, all of this character assassination last night of the voters of Glenn Youngkin reveal that they are only going to continue to try to smear us. I know Wajahat Ali very well. He is part of the Muslim network in the United States that has now embedded itself in the Democratic Party. And, you know, he was just a

kid who would write to me from time to time and say, oh, can you help me place an op-ed in the Daily Beast? Well, now he has a coveted role as a contributing columnist to the New York Times, and he bounds off about all of this absurdity. But Megan, this is really important. And it's like only with you that I can really connect the dots. In the state of Virginia, the Muslim individuals who have been part of this network of political Islam, that's called Islamism, they live right here. They're right down the road from me off of Route 7. They have contributed mightily to the Democratic Party. They had as a favor, then, the Virginia Education Secretary installed during the Northam administration. He became the vehicle through which Ralph Northam saved face from his whole Black Day debacle. He was the one who launched this whole war against merit at my son's school. He put in all of these ridiculous ideas about critical race theory and equity. Ayala, the lieutenant governor nominee, she's part of that whole network. They want to keep that unholy alliance alive between the Islamists represented through people like Ilhan Omar and the Democratic Party. And

this is a rejection of that alliance. And the Dems are just going to continue to lose if they keep thinking that that is America, because it's not. It's regressive ideas that are actually very illiberal and racist. And as you know, Ayaan Hirsi Ali has been making the same connections and saying exactly what you're saying. And it's bold of you. I know you get blowback for that, but it's bold and it's true. It's factual. Can I show you this is for our listening audience at home. This is a cartoon that embodies the way the press is reacting to the Virginia victory of Youngkin last night. It was retweeted by, among others, Nicole Hannah-Jones. And what it shows is Glenn Youngkin in his little fleece sweater vest kicking a young black girl. And she's falling, and her books are going everywhere. And it says, The Campaign's Final Stretch. And in her, I can't see it from here, but the names on the book, what are the words on the books, guys? It says something like, you know, history or racism. You know, it's like her trying to educate kids on history and he's kicking her and making her fall. And that's how they sum up what your movement is about, what parents defending education, what all these parents who took to the polls last night to try to say, don't divide our kids based on race.

Do teach history, but don't teach one's an oppressor and one's an oppressed just based on melanin. That's how they describe the movement. Yeah. You know, I have this signs here because I wanted to just illustrate. I've got a sign that says grannies for Glenn, Democrats for Glenn, sportsmen for Yunkin, parents for Yunkin, because I stood there in the ballroom, about a thousand people packed shoulder to shoulder. And I'll tell you, there was me. I voted for Glenn Youngkin. I am a Muslim immigrant feminist, and I am a mother of color. And I am what they are now claiming white supremacy looks like. Beside me was this amazing mom,

Subarna Dutta, who came here from India, and she had just dollars in her pocket. And Megan, she was never involved in politics, but the school board, the 12 Democratic school board members in Fairfax County just ignored her. And Yu Yan, this mom from China, and Hemang, another dad from India, just ignored us all these months, just like you just said. You know, they treated us a lot like we were invisible. They would mute us. And we got to have the last word, as you put it, last night. And Soberno was dancing, Megan.

She felt like she had defended the American dream, that she had come sacrificing so much to experience. Azra, I can relate to this. I've never been a political activist. I've never been an ideological person. As a journalist, I've always kept my cards close to the vest. This is a different thing. This is about the future of our country, about loving America and teaching a future generation that it's okay to love America and it's a good thing. And it's about shaming, shaming of one's immutable characteristics in a way that would be very damaging on the psyche of an entire generation of children already facing record suicide rates. If you don't speak out against that, you're complicit. You're complicit. And so I,

too, felt joy to see the message being sent back to these politicians that parents do get a say, that the parents are the ones in charge. And after this break, I want to pick it up with you on. I know you made this point before, but it's not just the race thing. It goes well beyond that. I watched you defend another woman whose soundbite we played on this show who was going off about the inappropriate sexual content. And this is not like 1960s, like, oh, they're showing sex. They're talking about sex in the books. This is disgusting child rape promotional materials popping up in our schools. And so my point is that the battlefront is wide and it's far from over. And we're going

to pick it up there in one second with Azra. Stay tuned. By the way, you are listening to The Megyn Kelly Show live on Sirius XM Triumph Channel 111 if you're listening right now. And you can catch us every weekday at noon east. Also, you can check out the full video show and clips when you subscribe to our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash Megyn Kelly. Or if you prefer an audio podcast, we got you covered. We got everything for you, whatever you want. Subscribe, download on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. And there you'll find our full archives with more than 190 shows, including the Ruthless podcast guys yesterday who predicted what would happen last night pretty well. Great guys. You'll enjoy it. I want to talk to you for a moment about Stacey Langton, because people get you get caught up in the CRT thing.

And I do want people to know it's real. And by the way, as you pointed out, it is or maybe it was Ken, but it is literally on the Virginia Department of Education's Web site. It features a, quote, anti-racism in education page. It shows, quote, drawing from critical race theory. It's right there, black and white, on their on their Web page. You don't have to take Osra's word or my word for it. They teach Bettina Love. They teach Ibram X. Kendi. They teach Robin D'Angelo. I mean, OK, we can pretend till the cows come home that they're not teaching the anti-racist divisive stuff but they are but it's beyond that azra and you guys have been doing a great job of

putting this out and i know that you wrote about defending stacy langton who they tried to silence at the school board meeting they didn't want her they tried to cut her mic and you had her back and i'm gonna play this out by i'm gonna give the same warning and because then i want you to give us the context for this yeah i'm giving the same same warning i gave when carol marco with suzanne and we played this it is graphic it is disturbing if you have children in your car you you might want to turn this part down um it's upsetting and it's inside the virginia schools Listen to Stacey. I decided to check the titles at my child's school, Fairfax High School. The books were available. And we checked them out.

Both of these books include pedophilia, sex between men and boys. Both books describe different acts. One book describes a fourth grade boy performing oral sex on an adult male. The other book has detailed illustrations of a man having sex with a boy. The illustrations include fellatio, sex toys, masturbation, and violent nudity. Pedophilia here. From the author, Maya Kobabe, quote, I can't wait to have your cock in my mouth. I am going to give you the blowjob of your life. And then I want you inside me. End quote. From the author, Jonathan Evason. What if I told you I touched another guy's dick?

What if I told you I sucked it? I was 10 years old, but it's true. I sucked Doug Goebel's dick, the real estate guy, and he sucked mine too. This is not an oversight at Fairfax High School. This material. There are children in the audience here. Do not interrupt my time. Do not interrupt my time. There are children in the audience. There are children in the school where you've placed this book.

We all owe her and you a debt of gratitude. You and Stacey and moms and dads like you are the reason we had this book. We all owe her and you a debt of gratitude. You and Stacey and moms and dads like you are the reason we had this result. Yeah, we're like Nancy Drews. Megan, I bet you read Nancy Drew when you were growing up, right? Of course you did. And you know what you just said before the break, I just want to reflect on that for a second, because I know you, I've been following you for a long time. You always give a platform for those of us that have been advocating for what, you know, correct issues, I believe. But when they introduced this content in front of your child, you became the mama bear, you

know? And that's really where I think you felt it, right? Like a deep existential threat. That's what it was. Yeah. Absolutely right. It's infuriating. And if you won't fight for yourself, you don't want to be active. You don't want to be a squeaky wheel. All those fall

by the wayside when it's your child. Yeah. And the beauty of your child, you know, that just remarkable innocence and just joy that they have as human beings. We don't want that, you know, adulterated with this, this kind of stuff. This is critical race theory in education, which they claim doesn't exist, right? They say that it's just the law. It's literally on the front of the book. Well, I know, like, boy, they're very subtle about it, aren't they? But you know, on Stacey, I went there that night, because I was on the waitlist on the school board list of, you know, public participation. And I sat there dutifully, nicely. And then all of a sudden, this mom started speaking,

and I'd never met Stacey before. I didn't know who she was. And this was one of the books that she presented. It says genderqueer on the front of it. Yeah. This is one of the images of the violence that she talks about for those who can't see it. Well, you know, there's a blade going through the genital area of a young man. This is the pedophilia that she talks about. This image of a bearded man having a sexual relationship with a boy, clearly. And then finally, explicit, explicit. I've marked it in my post-it note as blowjob. It was a little indelicate, but this is in a school

Robinson It's literally showing fellatio. Yeah. I just we have to know the truth. I'm not doing this to be sensational or anything like that as Stacey did. You could hear the tremble in it poor thing she was you could hear

the tremble in her voice right while she was reading that garbage because she didn't she was embarrassed reading it but this genderqueer book you know the um the uh secretaries of all these different educations all of our different, they like to excuse it away as award-winning. And this is what parents are opposed to because critical race theory takes garbage about race. And then gender theory and queer theory end up taking issues of gender and sexuality. And that's how we're getting this assault on our little baby cubs. That's right. It may indeed be award winning. You know what else it won? It won Glenn Youngkin, the governorship of Virginia. And it's not going to

stop. It's not going to stop unless this kind of content stops because the mama bears are not, they're not done. Azra, so wonderful having you. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going too, Megan. You're amazing. Thank you. Don't go away, folks.

Charles C.W. Cook and Bill McGurn of The Wall Street Journal coming up in just a couple of seconds. We're going to keep talking this week. Joining me now, one of my favorite people, Charles C.W cw cook he's a senior writer at national review and i've been dying to get your take on this charles uh first let's just start with you overall your thoughts on what happened in virginia and then nationwide last night this was a route it was surprising i got it wrong i know you listened to the editors. I said McAuliffe would win.

I was wrong about that, but I don't think anyone quite predicted the scale of what happened last night to the Democrats. Not only did the Republicans sweep Virginia, they won all the statewide offices and control of the House of Delegates, but they're still counting votes in New Jersey. It looks as if it's going to be decided by 15,000, 20,000 votes, which was absolutely unheard of in the prediction game. Also, Democrats lost every single judicial race in Pennsylvania. They did badly in the New York City Council elections. Seattle elected a Republican against an anti-police and anti-jail candidate for city attorney. So there's a lot that's specific to Virginia to talk about, but clearly there is a backlash here against this administration and the Democratic Party in general. Yeah, I mean, the news was just bad for the Democrats

in city after city, state after state. Texas, Governor Abbott was tweeting out that a Republican from San Antonio was just elected at the House of Reps there, won an open seat that had been held by a Dem. San Francisco recalls now for lax on crime DAs and school board members who are pushing CRT and who are pushing things like

let's change the name of this school while they're not keeping it open for the kids to go. Long Island bail reform killed a couple of races for Democrat DAs out there was a bloodbath, they said New York City just as you know, elected a former cop who's pro gun as its new mayor, which is about as right wing as we probably go in New York these days. It was a city that went 87 percent Manhattan for Joe Biden in any event. Yeah, it was bad news for Democrats across the board. But Virginia, Virginia was the stunner. And what we're seeing today is I'll just give you a piece from The New York Times right above it. This is how they say they think that that Youngkin did it. Republicans found an issue that energized their voters, uniting the white grievance politics of the Trump base with broader anger over schooling during the pandemic. critical race theory, a concept not taught in Virginia schools, they falsely claim. Mr. Youngkin

resurrected Republican race baiting tactics in a state that once served as the capital of the Confederacy. Do you agree with their analysis of what we learned from last night's vote? I don't, although that is a good review of what they should say if they want more last nights in the coming year. First off, it's not a myth that critical race theory is being taught. One can only make that case convincingly by being extremely semantic and narrow. It is, of course, the case that schools K through 12 are not teaching critical race theory in the way that critical race theory would be taught at a law school or a graduate school. But that's not what parents are objecting to. No parent in America is complaining that their children are being taught graduate level work. They're complaining

that the framework and the assumptions of critical race theory are making their way into K through 12 education. And they are. I mean, they made their way into that New York Times excerpt you just read. They made their way into all of MSNBC's coverage last night, some of CNN's coverage, and many of the reactions from the left too last night that we have now seen. Everything is held to be about race. Absolutely everything. Education is a code word for race. There is a phenomenon at the moment of brain worms in this country attacking our commentators and forcing them to see every question through the lens of race. There is, of course, a benefit occasionally at looking at power structures

and history and law and culture and trying to work out how race affects it. But when you do it for absolutely everything, you really lose your ability to reason. And that's what parents are worried about at school they're worried that the people who are teaching the curriculums that are being written are being infected by the same brain worms and that rather than getting away from judging people preemptively on the basis of their race or seeing them as pawns on a chess board to be judged by the color of their skin that we're doing that more and more. And it really was farcical watching people simultaneously insist that this doesn't exist,

but it's also wrong to oppose it and then demonstrate that they themselves are infected by it. Yeah, I mean, I've said this before, but I want to repeat it. In our school in New York City, they wanted it to be mandatory reading for all teachers, a piece by a so-called professor that argued in every classroom where white children learn there is a future killer cop that we need studies on white mothers who indoctrinate their children into black death. In Virginia, we ran a soundbite from a mom the other day who said my six yearold came home and said, am I evil because I have white skin? I don't care what you call it. Call it whatever the heck you want to call it. But that's what's being taught. It's divisive and it's odious and wrong. And yet this is how the geniuses over on MSNBC, Joy Reid, Nicole Wallace, posited the issues last night. Listen to this. It's Soundbite 7. If you're saying education is the most

important issue you might be a black voter who says i'm defending great literature and defending tony morrison and i don't like the idea that youngkin wants to be a governor that would purge those books what's next the biography of dr king is his campaign promise and he was making this promise in loudon and in a in Alexandria, is on day one. I'm going to ban critical race theory. That is like us banning the ghost. This isn't a party that's just another political party that disagrees with us on tax policy. That at this point, they're dangerous.

They're dangerous to our national security. Because stoking that kind of soft white nationalism eventually leads to the hardcore stuff. OK, so what what what people on the left really want to do, Charles, is just have us read Toni Morrison and conservatives are trying to get Toni Morrison out of the schools, which is the beginning of their soft white nationalism that's about to lead to harder stuff. I mean, oddly enough, it's that sort of thinking that's more likely to lead to the banning of Dr. King's biography, because Dr. King believed in judging people by the content of their character and not the color of their skin, which is the one thing Joy Reid and

others seem incapable of doing. I think that the importance of teaching children the American creed is just unappreciated by the sort of people we just heard. And you can't do that without teaching them about slavery and segregation and racial animus. But if you are to bring up a generation that understands what America is about, and indeed understands where America has fallen short, you have to start with the presumption that the American creed is a good thing, but at various points in America's history has been undermined or ignored. America has, for much of its history, been hypocritical, but the ideals were good. They were great. And I think if you combine some of the thinking in critical race theory, which holds that America is essentially a white plot, that all of its laws are the instruments

of whiteness, with the sort of historical revisionism you're seeing in the 1619 Project, you're actually going to create a culture, both in the schools and outside of it, in which we aren't telling people we have a beautiful set of ideals, a world-changing set of ideals that we fail to live up to, but that then created the regeneration that led to the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement and so forth. And that would be an absolute disaster because if you lose that, you lose hope. And I think that's what parents really worry about is the idea that their children will not be exposed to America's historical sins, but will be told that that is America and that they are somehow complicit in it and that it

exists to this day, much as it did a hundred years ago or even 60 years ago. And that isn't true. So I think it's totally rational for people of all races to be worried about that. My own experience here in Florida, talking to parents of all races is that they hate this. They think it's a step backwards. And I think what you saw in Virginia last night was a welcome repudiation of that. It's interesting to me that it was the white college women who still backed the Democrat McAuliffe versus the white women who lacked a college education, because that's what we've seen on the streets and the protests and so on. It's these, you know, Upper West Side women and Lululemon with their college degrees and their high rise buildings trying to get rid of the cops, trying to bring critical race theory into these. And it's a lot of black voters and some some

non-college educated white voters are saying, what are you doing? What are you what? No, we don't want to get rid of the cops and we don't want to divide our kids based on skin color and so on. All right. Let's talk policy, because I know you guys on the editors have been talking a lot about what would if McAuliffe were to lose, what would a McAuliffe loss on the Youngkin victory mean for the Biden agenda? And I ask you that on a sweeping level and then also with respect to his two huge spending bills, which I know is really of interest to you. But I mean, a very popular Republican said to me last night privately, watch Pelosi and Schumer because you think it's difficult herding cats. Try herding scared cats. Well, I hope that your interlocutor there is correct. Thus far today, it doesn't seem as if that has got through as a message to the Democratic Party, although Joe Manchin made some noises this afternoon.

I think it would be really quite absurd if the Democrats didn't see this as a repudiation. A lot of what happened last night in Virginia was the product of Virginia politics. We just discussed some of it. We didn't even get to Terry McAuliffe's contention that parents should not be involved in their children's education. Something eight out of 10 voters disagreed with him on. Right. But whether or not this should be the case, a lot of last night was also clearly about the national environment. And the national environment is just not good for Democrats at the moment. It's happened pretty quickly. Joe Biden's really unpopular. His approval rating in Virginia yesterday was 42, 43%. His administration is underwater on almost every key issue. The bills that he's trying to push through Congress

are not popular. Most people don't know what's in them and what they do know about what's in them, they dislike. You don't need to take my word for that. I am quoting a Democratic-aligned think tank called Third Way, which acknowledged this this morning. Most Democrats want these bills, but independents and Republicans do not. And, you know, I've seen people arguing, well, this election disaster indicates that we need to get our act together. We need to pass the Biden agenda. I think that's ridiculous. I think it's self-evidently ridiculous, but I also think it's ridiculous given the high turnout in Virginia. If this had been a low turnout race, you could have credibly made an argument, look, Democrats

are disillusioned because they haven't got what they wanted. They shouldn't be disillusioned because they have 50 votes in the Senate and a cushion of three in the House. The fact they're trying to achieve this with these narrow margins is silly, but maybe they'd be disillusioned. But turnout in Virginia last night was huge. Terry McCaul have got more votes last night as the losing candidate than any Democrat has ever got in any gubernatorial race in the history of Virginia. He just lost because Youngkin got more. So high turnout helped the Republican. And that suggests to me that if we're going to speculate as to how the national environment and the congressional environment is affecting local races, we should do the opposite. We should say, look, people really

don't seem happy with what the Biden administration is trying to push through. And if you look at the exit polling from CNN, there's a lot to bear that out. The vast majority of Virginians said that Joe Biden is too liberal rather than liberal enough or not liberal enough. The vast majority of Virginians said that they want government to do less. So I don't see how we could draw from this that these terrible losses in Virginia and elsewhere somehow ratify a Biden agenda that Americans didn't ask for in the first place. It's not not why he was elected. Julian Castro was on MSNBC last night saying McAuliffe was the wrong candidate. I think you may have tweeted this too moderate. We should have had someone much more left. I mean, if that's where they're going to go, I don't know that he speaks for the party. But if that's where they're going to go,

I think bloodbath will be another word we'll be using after the midterms in 2022. No, I think so. And this is a mistake that both parties make you hear this on the right too sometimes republicans lose winnable races and they say well the guy we ran was was a squish you know he wasn't conservative enough there wasn't enough of a difference it's rarely true there are certain moments in history where you need sharp differences. But usually, that is a form of denial. And that's just that's just not true here. I mean, when the Democratic primary was underway in Virginia, most people correctly said Terry McAuliffe would have the best shot because he was more moderate. And if you look at the

environmental factors yesterday, at the state and federal level, the idea that if he'd been a hardcore progressive, the heat of one is, I think, silly. And it's also somewhat contradicted by what we've seen in actually progressive areas. I mean, I mentioned earlier, Seattle just elected a Republican. And up in Buffalo, New York,

a socialist candidate, self-described socialist candidate, was beaten two to one by a write-in candidate. So I'm not really on board with that argument. Yeah, I think it was in New Jersey. We were following a race by a guy. It was a truck driver, a truck driver who spent, I think, $149 on his campaign, who just ousted an incumbent in one of the race in one of the state races. It's amazing. New Jersey. This is now we're not talking Texas. So the voting population is telling us something. And but expand on it, because I know it's not all about CRT. And I actually think even the school battles, not just about CRT, it involves COVID lockdowns and never ending masking. And I was saying to my friend the other day, I almost feel like they've forgotten about our children, like they slap masks on them, and they have to go and wear them eight to 10 hours a day, not not in Florida where you are. And then they just moved on. And it was like the CDC said a couple weeks ago, well, by the way, you can't take them off even when you vaccinate your child, which we're likely to make mandatory. OK, but like everyone else has them off in the grown up level.

And, you know, at some point they need to come off and you have no metrics. So I think that's in there. I do think the inappropriate content that I highlighted with my last guest is something that people are upset about. But the backlash that we're seeing coast to coast, it goes beyond schools. It speaks to crime, right? The rising crime numbers, police. You frame it for me. Well, I think that one way of looking at this is to think of where we are relative to where we were a year ago. And two things have happened that are pretty negative for President Biden. The first one is that he is now the president instead of Donald Trump. And what I mean by that, it's obviously

good for Biden personally, but after a certain point, presidents own problems. As a libertarian leaning guy, I often think it's unfair what we put on our president, but it's also unfair what presidents claim they can do. And Joe Biden, when he was running, said he was going to make the economy better. He was going to shut down the virus. He's done neither of those things. Now, some of it's not his fault. But at the same time, if you say, I'm going to fix things, and then you don't, people notice. And the Democrats have thought they could get around this by saying Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump every 10 seconds. We saw Terry McAuliffe do this in Virginia. It works maybe for one, two, three months at the beginning of a presidency,

and then it goes away. People just don't think like that. So Biden is now suffering from expectations that haven't been met. The other thing that's happened is the politics have turned on a number of crucial questions for him in the wrong direction, just at the wrong time. Back in September, when he announced his federal mask mandate, which I think is flatly unconstitutional, it had majority support. It wasn't huge, but it was 54, 55. Now, and it hasn't actually been implemented yet, although I hear it's about to be, now it's underwater. I mean the vaccine mandate. Vaccine mandate. Sorry, I misspoke. The vaccine mandate's now underwater. Partly, I think, because people have seen their friends and family get fired in some areas. Partly because I think

it has made things worse in terms of selling the vaccine. The vaccine is a good thing, and it should be easier to sell than it is. And the same thing I think has happened with masking, with masking in schools. I think people's patience, as you suggest, is wearing thin with school closures, that was another factor in Virginia. And it's also happened on the economy. Gallup tracks American sentiment towards the size of government. Three months ago, Americans said the government could be bigger, could do more. Now they're back to saying it should be smaller, do less, and we should be leaving more roles

to businesses and individuals. And Biden hasn't actually passed either of the bills that he wants to pass yet. And so he's now found himself out on a limb with public opinion rapidly shifting. And on top of the debacle that was Afghanistan, on top of his general lackluster performance, and on top of the supply chain issues, high gas prices, inflation, and economic malaise, that's causing him and his party real problems. Yeah.

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how do you enjoy the play? Yeah. Just a word before I go back to those spending bills, because I know you've been watching them closely. So this is the story I was mentioning in New Jersey. All right. Edward Durr, a conservative truck driver who reported spending just headed off by a few dollars, $153 on his campaign, leads the Senate president, Steve Sweeney, the longest serving legislative leader in New Jersey history by over 2000 votes, uh, in the South Jersey based third legislative district. Um, they say, this is an article, uh, New Jersey globe saying if Sweeney loses, it will cause a total realignment of politics in New Jersey.

Um, this would be truly earth shattering for New Jersey politics. If this guy loses his state Senate seat, could be a stunning political upset. And we have a soundbite from Edward Durr, the truck driver. Let's listen. My name is Edward Durr. I'm running for New Jersey State Senate. I've lived here all my life, raising my three kids. In 2020, my opponent sat by and watched as Governor Murphy forced nursing homes to take in COVID-19 patients resulting in the death of over 8,000 of our seniors. He remained silent as Governor Murphy with his lockdown and mandates forced the closing of over one-third of our small businesses across the New Jersey family

thousands of jobs. The Senate President has spent 20 years in Trenton. Higher taxes, increasing debt, and a rising cost of living. We deserve better. New Jersey, it's time for a change. So together, let's end single-party rule. Vote for me, Edward Derrick, for Senate. And he rides off on his bike. By the way, Charles, 99% reporting now he's still up 2,000.

He's going to win. Oh, he is. He's going to win. Absolutely. And when he wins, it's going to show a couple of things. The first, and this is the theme I've hit on for years, money in politics matters to an extent, but it doesn't trump the issues. And clearly what he was talking about resonated. He spent $140. He seems to have registered his candidacy, printed out a couple of t-shirts, made that video, set up a Facebook page with nothing on it, and then left it. And that is important because what that means is that in New Jersey

last night, a lot of people, unbidden, walked into the voting booth and voted Republican. They weren't pushed by TV ads, radio ads. There weren't people knocking on doors. There weren't millions of dollars spent on a lot of these races. They just voted Republican. And that's your basic nightmare when you're a party that is on the downswing, when people can win by doing nothing. So last question, then, rounding back to those big spending bills, you guys talk about them all the time. You got the $1.2 trillion infrastructure. You've got, I mean, it was $3.5 trillion in domestic spending, a wish list of

Democrat items. That's obviously gone down, thanks to Manchin. But what is the likelihood of that latter bill? I mean, both of them, but really the latter bill going forward now? Well, these things unfortunately gain their own momentum. So it seems probable that me that the process by which this is being written is chaotic. Now, we've talked before about it being intrinsically absurd, given the size of the Democrats' majorities, and our debt, and our existing spending, and so on. Also, the fact that we're not actually debating anything in the bill. We debate the number, then we shove things in. Apparently that's how we do it now.

But I think that the way that this is being conducted by Democrats is really strange. I mean, last week Joe Biden said, right, here's a compromise, and then he flew off to Rome. And immediately Democrats said, no, it's not. Earlier this week the progressive caucus in the House said, all right, we're fine. We're on board with this now. So let's move forward.

And Joe Manchin had to make a speech saying, I'm not on board. Manchin today said that he thinks it's time to wait again, to pause, whether that's a longer strategic pause, as he puts it, I don't know, and really debate this and score it and think about it. So the more time that goes on is worse for the bill. And if it somehow creeps into next year, there probably won't be a bill because lawmakers do not like passing

big controversial bills in election years. But at the very least, it's going to be smaller. I just can't fathom why Democrats thought that they had any sort of mandate to do this in the first place. Americans aren't clamoring for it. This was not the message of the last election. And as we saw last night, there's just no real support out there for it or for them.

And public sentiment, if anything, has gone the other way. So you ask what the likelihood is, something maybe just under 50%, something really big, maybe now 15%. But the fact is, we are just irresponsible with our spending. We're irresponsible with permanent programs. And the only really good outcome, as opposed to less bad outcome on this is for the bill to go down completely. One of the many reasons to listen to the editor's podcast is Charles's love-hate relationship with Joe Manchin, depending on the day and what he's done. Your hopes, they rise, they fall, and you're always very honest about it. What a pleasure. Thank you

so much for being here, Charles. Thank you so much for having me. Up next, Wall Street Journal columnist Bill McGurn, who's been all over this Virginia race. He's here to talk about some exit polls and other interesting results throughout the country and what they portend for the future. Joining me now, columnist from The Wall Street Journal, Bill McGurn. Bill, let's start broad. What do you make of what we saw last night? Well, I think it's an earthquake. And I think, you know, Glenn Youngkin really ran an excellent campaign. But I think it's clearer today when you look at the closeness of the race in New Jersey and you look at the other candidates who won in Virginia.

This is a lot bigger than just Glenn Youngkin. It suggests that Democrats might have to think their whole enterprise, not just trying to win elections by shouting Trump, as Charlie was just telling you, but also their progressive package. I mean, where is the moderate Democrat agenda? It doesn't exist. It's just a watered down version with the lower price tag of the progressive agenda. It's like they may have gone hard left, but country didn't joe biden ran as a moderate and then started governing as a hard lefty and the country's still where it was saying what are you what are you doing over there come come back because stop stop that right now and the question is what joe biden are we likely to get next the one who ran as a moderate and governed as a moderate for some years, or this weird leftist version of him we've seen more recently?

Yeah, I mean, that's the question. Look, he's opted to take on the Bernie agenda. He kind of falsely presented himself as a moderate in the last campaign, and he's allied himself with the very extreme version. I think part of it is ego. You know, he wants to be a transformative president. I think part of that is kind of getting back at the Obama team that didn't really take him that seriously, that he wants to go down in history as more sort of radical and far reaching than Barack Obama. And I think it's just really crashing into the cliffs right now. There was an interesting we put together a butted soundbite of some of the Democrats on CNN. It's kind of interesting to watch is like that the light bulb appears over their heads. Like maybe maybe what we're doing and saying isn't working.

Watch this. I think that Democrats are coming across in ways that we don't recognize that are annoying and offensive and seem out of touch. The messages tend to be moralizing. It is. We are going to tell you. You got a lot of parents who just spent a year homeschooling their kids and were forced to do so to tell those people, look, we don't care what you think about education. That is a big insult. But maybe they are too liberal. Maybe some of the messages slow down, slow down. Aha. Oh, maybe we are annoying when we tell parents to get out of their schools and their kids' education and so on. But I don't know. You tell me because when I I listen to a broader discussion just this morning on Morning Joe and they were really sort of doubling down on, you know, OK, maybe we need to talk about race in a different way. And all I could think was that's never going to happen. The Democrats are not going to start talking about race differently just because of this election. And that's a problem for them. Yeah. Look, as you know, people in our business are not very

self-reflective when they get things wrong. And, you know, one of the lessons of Virginia is that in a, you know, in a tight race, calling half of the voters racist is not really a winning formula. You wonder if people are getting tired of the race card, if that's part of it. You know, Terry McAuliffe did it himself in the last weekend on the campaign. He accused Glenn Youngkin of running a racist campaign from start to finish. And he was echoed by a lot of people in the press. And remember, there was a big dirty trick in there by the Lincoln Project. You know, there's supposed to be so many racists in Virginia, so many white supremacists, and they couldn't find five real ones to send to the Yunkin campaign. So they sent five phony ones, you know. And has the press been interested in finding out who these people were that were photographed? No, I just think that's their kind of appeal. If you disagree with them, you're a racist. And I think Glenn Youngkin just kind of shrugged it off.

And it's even more extraordinary if you look at the other Republicans running in Virginia, Winston Sears, African-American woman, first African-American woman to win a statewide race. We've got a Cuban-American that looks like he's out in front for attorney general. And yet these are the people that supposedly racist elected. It's just insane. But I agree with you. I don't think we're going to see any self-reflection on the press, any reconsideration of this. That's their mode of operation, demeaning the other side and calling everyone racist or white supremacist or Trumpkins. a black woman in a powerful position call out the racist nonsense that gets spewed by the left, right, about half of the country and the intentional manipulation of black voters. Listen to her. This is what the Democrats do over and over again. They come into the black

community and they try to gin up our anger over some supposed threat or some supposed slight. And then we're supposed to run out and vote for them because they're coming to save us. They're our political saviors. Folks, here come the Democrats. They are the cavalry. Thank God for them. You know, at some point this is going to get old and this is the time and this is the year it's going to get old because we are sick of it. Wow. Yeah, she I mean, she's an impressive woman. I watched her talk about how she signed up for the Marine Corps and was willing to die for the country. What an impressive woman. If she were a Democrat, she'd be on every front page and they would be touting her all the time, but she doesn't fit

the profile. Look, this is so insane. You have Larry Elder, African-American candidate for governor. He was accused of promoting white supremacy himself in the California campaign. In my family, Megan, my three daughters are Chinese. I'm an ethnic and gender minority under my own roof. My kids, though, are called white adjacent and so forth. It's just insanity that we have, and I think people are tired of it. That's right. I think they're tired of it, too. So let's talk Trump for one second, because McAuliffe tried to make Youngkin into a Trump disciple. That didn't work. It was kind of interesting. Even McAuliffe said to the press on Monday, he thinks it would have been better for him, Terry McAuliffe, from a political perspective, if Trump hadn't been deplatformed by Twitter. It would have been better for him if he had been out there doing his stuff that he does. Alas, Trump is not on Twitter. And I wonder what we learned from last night when it comes to Trump, his influence and the road forward for Republicans. Well, it's interesting. My understanding is that

Glenn Youngkin did better in the Trump areas of Virginia than even Donald Trump. He really got out that vote. He played it very well. He didn't attack the former president. You know, he wanted his supporters to vote for him, the Republicans, but he didn't appear in any rallies with them. I mean, as try as hard as Terry McAuliffe did, Donald Trump just wasn't a factor. They you know, Terry McAuliffe ran against Donald Trump, not against Glenn Youngkin. And it shows this lack of agenda. And that comes, I think, more into a stark relief when you look at New Jersey. New Jersey, Donald Trump really wasn't a factor, wasn't part of the campaign. To the degree that Phil Murphy campaigned against Jack Cittarelli, it was over vaccines where he had

said, you know, he opposed vaccinating, forcing young children to be vaccinated. And that was kind of the issue against him. And yet in this very blue state, much bluer than Virginia, you know, it's almost tied. It's come down to a statistical dead heat. I believe that Phil Murphy at this minute is up by about 15,000 votes, but it's much closer than anyone realized. And Donald Trump isn't a factor here. So I think so many people were counting on this to be their 2022 campaign, just campaign against Trump. And when you see it, I think all those plans have to be reconsidered now. Listening to the Democrats deal with this loss on some of the left wing cable channels, they keep making the point. Not everybody's Glenn Youngkin. Not every Republican can do the little fleece vest sweet thing that Glenn Youngkin did. You know, they're basically like their fire, their mouth breathers, their they're going to look more like scary Trump MAGA world type candidates. And then the Republicans will learn that they can't do it. Glenn Youngkin in every state. But like if you were advising Republicans across the country how to win now, right, how to win. Right. Do they have to follow the Glenn Youngkin model? Is this the new way?

Well, I think the Glenn Youngkin model is pretty good because, first of all, I think he's a genial, affable man. And I think that came across. So it was hard to tar him as a new Donald Trump. But I think for other Republicans, the other message was Glenn Youngkin had an agenda. You know, talk about bread. They always say he had bread and butter kitchen table issues. He literally did. He was one of the things he campaigned on was eliminating this 2.5% sales tax on groceries. So that's literally a bread and butter issue, right? And other tax cuts and the schools. And, you know, it's funny, the left is always saying culture wars, culture wars when they launched them. You know, what the schools issue, education became the top issue. I believe in September that Glenn Youngkin was 33 points behind on the education issue.

It's generally polls in favor of the Democrats. And then you watch what happened in Loudoun and Fairfax counties. And by the end of the campaign, education was the top issue. And I think Terry McAuliffe had a 10-point deficit, you know, and that deficit, you know, that meant a lot of suburban moms and dad people who had turned on Trump in the last election came back to the Republican Party, or in some cases I know of, came over to the Republican Party. So I think my message is there is a Republican agenda about letting people keep more of what they earn, making the public schools accountable to parents and so forth, and pursuing

policies that promote prosperity, not identity politics that promote divisiveness. I think that's a pretty good formula for the United States. I think you look at New Jersey, as you point out, Biden won it by 16 points, 16 points. And now it's neck and neck between a Republican nobody ever saw winning this race and the incumbent Democratic governor. And it does make me wonder whether we're going to see, let's say Phil Murphy pulls this out and he stays governor of New Jersey. Does he start waffling on vaccine mandates and mask mandates and all the overreaches that we've seen in particular in blue states when it comes to muzzling children and muzzling adults and never bending on vaccine mandates, even with people who

have natural immunity? You know, do they do they take this message, Bill, do you think? And even if he wins and say, right, I've got to be careful. Yeah, I think he might. I'm not sure that the Democratic Party in general will, because I think, you know, the other read of this, the opposite of yours and mine is among progressives. They would say, you know what the problem is? And I expect the White House to say this. We didn't pass Joe Biden's Build Back Better agenda, all that spending and taxing and, you know, recasting of the economy and new entitlements and so forth. And if we had passed that, have an achievement, the voters would have turned out. I'm not sure. But I think they've always thought they have a small window. The progressives have always worried that in 2022, they'll lose whatever majority they have. So they have to ram it through very quickly. Look, that's what Nancy Pelosi is trying to do. She's trying to ram the spending bill, the reconciliation bill through before the CBO can score it because she knows the scoring will show that it isn't paid for and all these kind of tricks that Joe Manchin has been complaining about.

So I think you have you'll have two different reads. And one reason for those reads is by and large, the Democratic moderates aren't really moderates. They're basically they accept the progressive agenda, but with a lower price tag. Right. They don't have a moderate agenda, but they're often in swing districts, you know, districts that either went for Donald Trump or Biden won by a small margin. They're worried about their seats in Congress. Most of the progressives don't have to worry about that. There's a handful that do, but most of them don't have to worry. Look, AOC, you know, got rid of Amazon for her district, you know, which would have been a big plus. And she's probably going to be there as long as she wants to be in that seat, assuming she doesn't

go after Chuck Schumer's seat. So there's a different dynamic. The progressives aren't really worried about their own incumbency and the moderates really are. So they're frightened. But if I were a Democratic, a so-called moderate, I'd be looking at the results and say a year from now, do I really want to be subject to all those Republican ads about passing this tax and spend monstrosity, especially if it does what I think it's going to do and really harm the economy? filibuster or packing the Supreme Court goodbye, the most crazy agenda items. So let me flip it on you and say, what about Republicans? Because apart from try to be more like Glenn Youngkin, there are some lessons for them in here. And I think one of the things is that what we saw with parents at the school board meetings was the opposite of astroturf. It was real. It was organic. It was heartfelt. It came ground up, not top down. And I don't think it's going to stop because having lived this firsthand as a mom with kids in school, they can't reverse

engineer this crazy race ideology just like that. It's in there and the teachers are committed to it. Believe it. Not to mention the trans stuff and so on. So I think this is going to go on and on. And I wonder whether we're going to see, well, I think Merrick Garland goes away entirely on his little task force, his FBI investigate. There will be no prosecutions of any single parent in America from Merrick Garland because they understand politically that was a disastrous move and probably helped Youngkin win. And B, I think that they're going to have to get somehow more empathetic openly toward the parents at these meetings, as opposed to just saying over and over again, you lie, you lie. That's not working.

Right. Look, I'd make a general point and a specific point. The general point is that this is going on all over the country. There's a recall effort against three school board members in San Francisco. You know, San Francisco is like the woke capital of the USA. But a lot of parents were upset that it was one of the worst districts in terms of reopening the schools and so forth. They've watered down the entrance standards for one of their elite schools.

There's a lot of dissatisfaction among parents who are not Republicans in San Francisco over the school board. And you see this in other parts of the country. And I think, again, as I mentioned, there are a lot of specific issues. People don't like critical race theory. They don't like, you know, dividing kids by their race and telling some kids, well, you're part of the oppressor class and the other part of the class, you're the victims here. People don't like that. But I think what they've learned, you know, they've learned this from COVID. First, their kids have been home. They've seen what's taught in the classrooms. They see how they're treated, that their interests come last. It's the teachers' unions that come first. And they want their public schools held accountable.

And I don't think they can help themselves. Look at Loudoun County. I mean, one thing that really hurt Terry McAuliffe is first he made that statement where parents should have no say in the schools. I mean, that was the classic Washington gaffe where he inadvertently blurted out the truth of what he believed. That took on a special resonance because, as you mentioned, Merrick Garland had responded to that school board letter where they suggested that protesting parents are really a form of domestic terrorism. So that was one aspect. And then in Loudoun County, you know, where there was an assault of a girl in a bathroom, the school superintendent at a meeting of the school board told everyone in the room there were no reports. Everyone on the school board knew that was a lie and didn't say anything because the superintendent had emailed

them about the assault on the day of the assault. And so people see their officials just lying to them. And as far as I can see, the man hasn't resigned yet. They just see unaccountability. I think the fastest way to make someone into a conservative say, hey, Megan, why don't you go down and try to speak up at your local school board? They go through that experience. They're going to be radicalized. Well, I will say, shout out to the Daily Wire and their reporter. I think his name is Luke Rosniak. I listen to their Morning Wire every day, and he did a great job in breaking new details on that Loudoun County story that we hadn't yet known and that have taken over.

So it's been a lot of great reporting and great effort by parents to try to turn the tide on some really crazy policies that are very abusive and bad for kids. And Bill, it's been a pleasure speaking with you and reading you over the past months. Hope to do it again soon. We're going to have much more. We're not done. We're going to be back tomorrow. And we'll have the latest on Fauci appearing before the U.S. Senate and the Kyle Rittenhouse trial and more fallout from this Virginia win. Don't forget to go to YouTube.com slash Megyn Kelly. And thanks for listening. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.