The Megyn Kelly Show - Heard's Lies, Depp's Lawyer, and the Truth about Fossil Fuels, with Robert Barnes and Alex Epstein | Ep. 333

Episode Date: June 1, 2022

Megyn Kelly is joined by lawyer Robert Barnes to talk about the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard trial, what the jury is likely to find, the cultural effect of the trial on the #MeToo movement, the PR war, the performance of the lawyers in the case and particularly Camille Vasquez, the evidence of abuse in the case, and more. Plus, a Megyn Kelly monologue on the lies Amber Heard told on the stand, how she would have made the closing argument as Depp's lawyer, and what we know is true as the jury has the case. Then Alex Epstein, author of "Fossil Future," joins to talk about the truth about fossil fuels, how it helps our environment, the way billions of people don't use energy in the way the developed world does, the power of machines, whether we should be worried about climate change, climate change alarmists and predictions that have failed to come to fruition, Biden's outrageous renewables promises, being honest about the present, 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 begin today with the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard defamation trial, which is now in day three of deliberations. The jury's meeting right now. They got the case on Friday. This case is all so many of my friends have been talking about. I don't know about you, but it's incredible to me with two mass shootings, with inflation at record levels, the buzz online, not to mention in our little Jersey Shore beach town last weekend was all about this couple's failed marriage because we are obsessed with celebrity in this culture and lifestyles of the rich and famous. We love salacious trials, especially of beautiful people with interesting, to put it kindly, lives. And the truth is there are other

agendas at play here as well. The death of the Me Too movement, the return of men's rights, maybe, maybe. Almost to a person, my friends are Team Depp, and they have come to absolutely loathe Amber Heard. I mean, loathe. You remember Mark Garagos saying women are particularly hard on other women? Oh, has that been true in my own personal observations? She is diabolical, said one of my pals. She is a person who thinks nothing of destroying, toxicity, destruction, lies, insults, disgusting personal hygiene, crapping on their staff, desperate insecurity, and abject cruelty. Elon Musk tweeted last week at their best, they are each incredible. Really? Based on what we heard at trial, at least one of them is actually a sick, twisted, pathetically sad abuser. But which one? This case really is a true he said, she said. They can't both be telling the truth

here. Either he physically abused her, perhaps as many as a dozen times as she claims, or he didn't. Depp's team suggesting Amber was the only witness the jury heard from supporting her abuse allegations but the truth is no they've misstated her claim her sister claimed to have witnessed the abuse on the stand under oath her makeup artist claimed to have covered up bruises many times friends claimed to have heard out of control arguments that led to them getting police involved in a desperate Amber scared on the other line. And one friend testified that she personally photographed her injuries, a split lip, a swollen face, hair, a big clump of blonde hair pulled out and still sitting on the floor

in their apartment, allegedly at Johnny Depp's hand. Not to mention the marital therapist who testified that this relationship was mutually abusive. Amber produced those photographs, all of which Johnny Depp challenged with expert testimony suggesting they had been doctored. Or pointing to other photos Depp's team did, taken after these alleged beatings, featuring a glowing picture-perfect herd. Her sister, well, she's blood. The makeup artist? Never saw what caused the injuries, and so on. The jury was given a lot to think about,

conflicting claims on each one of these pieces of evidence. My own take on it is this. There's plenty of evidence to support Amber's claim that she was abused. Sexually abused? Less so. Amber Heard introduced reams of proof on tape and through witnesses to establish some form of abuse took place. I mentioned their joint marital therapist. She was actually Johnny Depp's witness. And here's what she said.

There was violence between from Mr. Depp toward Amber. Yes, you're right. And then with Ms. Heard, he was triggered and they engaged in what I saw as mutual abuse. But you heard her. There was violence perpetrated by him on her. That's Johnny's witness, who was their joint marital therapist. OK, so there is evidence in the record from which this jury could conclude he abused her. That has nothing to do with Amber's onstand testimonial. There are tapes of him insulting her, berating her, destroying property around her. That's abuse. It's not the exact physical or sexual abuse that she claims took place, not on tape, but it's certainly enough to justify at least two of the three statements that he's now suing her over, which appeared in a first-person Amber Heard

op-ed in the Washington Post in 2018, declaring that she had faced domestic abuse. Now, interestingly, on Tuesday, the jury had a question about that op-ed and the verdict form, potentially very telling. Their question focused on the first of three statements from Heard's op-ed that Depp now claims were defamatory. The statement they asked about was the headline of that piece, quote, Amber Heard, colon, I spoke up against sexual violence and faced our culture's wrath. That has to change, end quote. The jury is asked on the verdict forum if they believe this statement is false, a prerequisite to finding that it is defamatory. Truth is an absolute defense to any

defamation claim. If it's true, there's no claim. They wanted to know if they were being asked if just the headline was false or if the entire op-ed was false. The judge told them on this particular question, the only issue was whether the headline was false. There are two other questions that get to Heard's more general claims about being, quote, a public figure representing domestic abuse. Now, it's always dicey to try to read jury questions since we have no idea what's going through their heads and you can easily get embarrassed on this. But I'll go out on a limb and say this is a bad sign for Ms. Hed. If the jury believed her entire op-ed headline and body together, why would they send out this question? If they believe she was a victim

of sexual violence, as the headline says, and of domestic abuse more broadly, as the body of the op-ed claims, why would they need to draw a distinction between the two? Why wouldn't they just check the boxes? No, this headline was not false. No, neither was the body of her piece. It seems to me they have doubts, at least about her sexual violence claims. Not ideal for her. As for her counterclaim, it's not going anywhere. Her lawyer's statement and closing argument that her didn't even really want. The 100 million she's countersuing for spoke volumes. She basically just gave the jury permission to let it slip away. We didn't mean it. We're not really here for the money. We're here to make his case go away so

Amber can, quote, get her life back. Whatever happens legally, there is zero doubt that this case was a PR win for Johnny Depp. He had been painted as a wife beater by a media that rushed to canonize Amber Heard. He lost business, so he said, his reputation certainly, and was publicly humiliated. And at a minimum, we now know that Amber Heard, while painting herself as a victim, failed to tell the Washington Post and the rest of us the whole story, her hand in it, her own behavior. And it's tough to deny that Johnny Depp benefited by bringing it all out into the open. I believe Amber was abused by Johnny Depp. I believe Johnny Depp was abused by her too. I watched her testimony and some of it rang true to me, but I also observed her tell many obvious lies while under oath. So many, in fact, that if I were a juror, I could not rule in her favor. Just a few examples, and these are my opinion. She lied when she told the UK court

that she had donated the 7 million divorce settlement he gave her to charity. Depp's lawyers did an admirable job of exposing that. And Amber Heard was visibly uncomfortable on the stand when she tried to suggest that a pledge to donate was the same thing as donating. What did you do with that money? $7 million in total was donated to, I split it between the ACLU and Children's Hospital of Los Angeles. As of today, you have not paid $3.5 million of your own money to the ACLU. Yes or no? I have not yet. And as of today, you have not paid $3.5 million of your own money to the Children's Hospital of Los Angeles, correct?

I have not yet. Johnny sued me. She lied when she said her Washington Post op-ed wasn't about Johnny Depp. That was a joke. It was obviously untrue. Later at trial, Heard inadvertently admitted it, exposing her own earlier duplicity. The only one who made it about him, ironically, is Johnny. I know how many people will come out and say whatever for him. That's his power. That's why I wrote the op-ed. Oh, really? Wait, I thought it wasn't about him. She lied when she denied that she or her friend had defecated in her marital bed the night of her 30th birthday after she and Depp argued and he left for another home. The chauffeur, Starling Jenkins, testified that Heard admitted it to him at the time. Moreover, the feces, which we've seen

now in pictures, was obviously not from a four-pound Yorkie, as Heard preposterously claimed. to the surprise she left in the boss's bed prior to leaving the apartment. And when you refer to the surprise in the boss's bed, what are you referring to? The defecation. What did Ms. Hurd say about the defecation in Mr. Depp's bed? A horrible practical jerk gone wrong. She misled the jury when she suggested that Johnny Depp had thrown his ex-girlfriend Kate Moss down the stairs during their relationship, an accusation she gratuitously threw into her own story about a fight she had with Depp atop the stairs, one that came back to bite her in a sensational way. Watch. And Johnny swings at her and I don't even wait, don't even wait for any other, I don't hesitate, I don't wait, I just in my head instantly think of Kate Moss and the stairs and I swung at him.

Did Mr. Depp push you in any way down the stairs? None. During the course of your relationship, did he ever push you in any way down the stairs? No. During the course of your relationship, did he ever push you down any stairs? No, he never pushed me, kicked me, or threw me down any stairs. But the biggest and most telling lie of all, the one I would have devoted much of my own closing to was her claim that she did not leak the video of Depp attacking cabinets to TMZ and that neither she nor her team alerted TMZ to her court filing in 2016 seeking a restraining order against Mr. Depp. This was the death knell to her credibility. And here is how I would have argued it had I been

Depp's counsel. Members of the jury, I would have said, there's a jury instruction often used in the law. It's Latin. Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus. And what that means is that if you find Miss Heard lied to you during this trial about one thing, you are within your rights to conclude she lied to you about everything. And she did lie to you about so many things. But here, let's take just one. Let's take this one thing. And let me ask you if she's a liar. May 27th, 2016, the day she filed for her restraining order. On that day, someone called TMZ and told them she would be there at the courthouse, told them exactly where and when and what poses they could expect from her.

Maybe it was Johnny she actually suggested on the stand. She had given him a heads up about the filing, she claimed. So he knew that she would be there. Johnny Depp. He called the tabloid press to alert them to the fact that his wife was about to publicly call him an abuser. He thought press coverage of that event might be what helpful to his career. And what about the pose to show off the alleged bruise that was promised to TMZ? Do you believe that Johnny Depp viciously attacked his wife, bruising her face, then called TMZ to photograph her injuries, promising them that she would pose just right so that they could document it to their millions of viewers?

Or is it more likely that Amber Heard, who went to the courthouse that day with her publicist and for the first time ever without makeup, saw an opportunity to land a blow in the PR war. And then she had the nerve to look you in the eye. She was very good about trying to make you feel connected to her, wasn't she? She looked you in the eye and she tried to tell you that neither she nor her team had anything to do with that. Does anyone believe that? And why would she lie? Because she doesn't want you to know she's a manipulator. She makes things up to make herself look sympathetic. And then she had the nerve to blame that too on Mr. Depp. This is the same woman who told you that neither she nor her team leaked the video to TMZ of Depp going after those cabinets. A tape taken on her phone by her, to which TMZ now mysteriously owns the copyright. How did that happen?

Who could have given it to them? You heard Morgan Tremaine testify, he's from TM TMZ that they posted that video within 15 minutes of getting it and that they would not have done that unless it came directly from the source of the video he meant Amber Heard that's where they clearly got it that's why they have the copyright that's why they were able to publish it within moments of receiving it. And that is why the end of that video, which you saw here in this courtroom where Amber mocks Mr. Depp, is cut out of what aired on TMZ. Here is what was shown in court. this morning, you know that? Were you in here? No. So then nothing happened to you this morning?

Yeah, you're right. I just woke up and you were so sweet and nice. We were not even fighting this morning. All I did was say sorry. Did something happen to you this morning? I don't think so. No, that's the thing.

You want to see crazy? I'll give you fucking crazy. That's crazy. Oh, you're crazy. Are you crazy? Have you drunk this whole thing this morning? Oh, you got this going? You got this going?

I just started it. Oh, really? Yes. Really? Oh, you got this going? Oh, really? Yes. She was in control of what she sent to TMZ. The one in this courtroom, she had to produce the entire thing. Even that last part where she was kind of smirking might have made her look a little bad. And once again, she lied about it. She looked the jury in the eye and said, absolutely not.

I wouldn't have leaked that. Not me, not my team, because lying comes easy to Amber Heard. And so while you may struggle with whether to believe her claims of abuse, not one of which is documented on her infamous videos, not one of which is backed up by her even saying on the tapes she loved so much to record, Johnny, you've hit me many times. Johnny, you've abused me. Johnny, why do you hit me so often? That's not on there. While you may nonetheless still say, I think he did something to her. She is not credible enough for you to find that it is

more probable than not that he did. She has destroyed her own credibility and her own credibility, and her own case with her lies about critical facts, falsest in uno, falsest in omnibus. Amber Heard is a liar. That's what I would have argued. And it's a shame in a way. It's a shame. She's undermined her own substantive claims of abuse with her perfidy. She's made it harder for other women bringing these claims to prevail because this trial is so public and the skepticism generated will come back to haunt someone with less power and less privilege. And it was unnecessary. She could have owned all of these things and admitted to doing dumb things and fighting the PR war in the only way her team knew how, but said, look, none of that changes what he did to me. The fact that she couldn't own any part of

it is telling, and it's disturbing, and it's a definite red flag. Finally, a word in her defense. Johnny Depp's star power is the third party in this case. He has used it deftly from the start to the finish. And he has the on bended knee, asking us to believe him, to trust him, to understand and empathize with him. It's very rare for a celebrity of that magnitude to be so open about their childhood trauma, their marital drama, and so on. Celebrity remains intoxicating to most Americans. It's having a powerful effect on many here and you can see it in the throngs of fans who wait for him each day and who hashtag for him online yes she's famous too but she's not even close to in his league and it worries me because he's also very rich he's hired nine lawyers from a great firm to go after her. He has a great PR

team too. She fired hers mid-trial and for good reason. And it hasn't been lost on me that most women would be totally outmatched by this kind of money, power, fame, and influence on the other side of the courtroom. She's uptight, he's loose. She's torqued. He's collegial. He cracks jokes. She's not really in a joking mood. He is winning the likability battle, which can be tough for women, especially beautiful, rich ones like Amber. And yet this is not a likability contest. It's not supposed to be. Nor is this supposed to be about the Me Too movement writ large. Some people see it that way, celebrate it that way. But this is about Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, not you and the bullshit claim lodged against you, not Brett Kavanaugh and the bullshit claims lodged against him. Johnny and Amber. And on that front,

a few points. Believe all women in and always is and always has been a load of crap. But the truth is that most women, and the studies show this, do not actually lie about abuse. Most do tell the truth, even though doing so is incredibly hard. Not all, but most. Nor does the absence of other women lining up against Johnny Depp mean he is not an abuser of Amber Heard. An abuser can start later in life and can start with just one woman. His own marital therapist seemed to suggest that's what happened here. He controlled himself for 20 to 30 years, she said, but she triggered him. That's his witness. That he may not have done this to anyone else does not mean he didn't do it to Amber Heard.

You may have a son you want vindicated like Johnny Depp wants to be. You may have a daughter who is far from a perfect victim like Miss Heard, but you weren't there. I wasn't there. This case does not mean something did or did not happen to you or someone you love unfairly. This is about a terrible, toxic marriage that never should have happened in a world, Hollywood, that promises the moon and more often than not delivers drug addiction, insecurity, sadness, rejection, emptiness, meaninglessness, and a valueless life. Look at these two and then hug your spouse, your children. Remember that a life of value is about respect, honor, love for yourself and those you hold dear. Not fame, not drugs, not booze, not red carpets, not five penthouses filled with feces and so-called friends you barely know.

That truth, more than any other, may be the biggest takeaway of this entire mess. Joining me now to discuss, Robert Barnes, founding attorney of Barnes Law. Robert, great to have you back. What do you think? I think that it depends on what the jury thinks about what domestic abuse means. So I think as a whole, there's the cultural subtext here of the excesses of the Me Too movement that Amber Heard sort of piggybacked off of, that I think most of the people watching the case came to the conclusion that she at least was an abusive personality. The only question left was, was Johnny guilty at least of abuse, even if he was not an abusive personality? And that really depends heavily on your definition of the

word abuse. But I think Amber Heard contaminated her defense by making exaggerated claims, making claims that appear to be patently false, sometimes contradictory claims. So I think the problem is if this case comes down to do you trust Amber Heard or not, then it's an easy win for Johnny Depp. If the case comes down to do you think Johnny Depp's behavior was, at one point during the trial, Southern gentlemanly at all times or not, then Amber Heard would not win her counterclaim, but Johnny Depp would fail on his claim. I think what Johnny Depp set out to do, he won. He wanted to win in the court of public opinion. I don't think he cares all that much of what happens with the jury, but I think it would be added vindication for his side of the aisle if that took place. And then for the cultural

commentators to recognize that Me Too can be Men Too, I think, is a valuable addition if we focus on the broad construct of abuse. If it dev her. And yet she's an imperfect victim. He's richer. He's got a better legal team. He's more determined. He's angrier. And he did threaten to destroy her at the end of their marriage. He did say he was going to bring global humiliation to her. And he's got the means to do it. And there's that little sort of bird in the back of my head saying, is that what's happening here? I think at times there can be aspects of that. I mean, figuring out Johnny Depp is tricky. He's clearly a great performer, and he performed very well throughout the trial and on the stand. Given his kind of other admitted alcohol and drug problems, staying completely clean for six weeks might not have been the easiest thing, but he appears to have achieved it. I also thought they did better on just every aspect of marketing. I get that she wants to be seen as a tough or sees herself as a tough survivor. But I think that undermined the victim presentation. I mean, I've represented victims of domestic abuse for 20 plus years,

hundreds across the country, started out doing it as a young lawyer. The reality is you got to play into the gender stereotypes that exist if you want to win. It's what I've told many clients, and I've had clients are like, I'm not going to look this way. I'm going to look this way. And I get it. I understand it. But I say, look, if you want the jury to see you through their cultural stereotypes that they understand this world to be, then you need to kind of look the part. Johnny Depp played the part of the poor, abused, henpecked star husband who was really the nice, sweet guy underneath. She didn't play the part of a young, vulnerable victim. I mean, she could

have dressed differently and her hair differently done presentation differently she was tough she was uh invulnerable and that just doesn't play into the image an archetype that people have of young abused girl with older powerful wealthier hollywood star and so i all the pr side johnny depp's team did much better than her side. They did. And I had Geragos on not long ago. We were talking about how early on, we both found Camille Vasquez slightly annoying. This is early on where she was like, I do, Miss Heard. I do, sort of snippy. But by the end of the trial, I really became a fan of hers. And I thought she did a great job.

And I thought, you know, her cross-examination was classic. I mean, it's what we learn in law school. It's what we do on trial team all the way through trying real cases. Just the total control of your witness. Yeses, noes, that's it. Anything beyond that, you control your witness. You get an instruction from the judge. You don't let them budge so that the whole story comes out just as you want it to.

And she's only 38 years old. She thought she did a great job. Absolutely. I mean, she was definitely the best lawyer of anybody in the courtroom that I saw, at least. And I thought what she did a good job of is not only understanding how to command different aspects of a witness, but also just communicating an emote in a more real human way. I mean, she doesn't come from one of the elite law schools. And I think that's why she was probably the best lawyer in the room is because she can connect to people in a real tangible way. And you could tell she had a real connection with Johnny Depp that I thought was very important that

Amber seemed to lack with her lawyers. Everybody's watching, the whole world's watching, juries watching, galleries watching, judges watching. It's important to communicate and emote connection between you as a lawyer and your client. And she did that better than anybody else in the room in terms of with Johnny Depp, as well as communicating most effectively with the jury and staying focused and controlling someone like Amber who wants to go off as a witness, wants to tangent as much as possible, is not an easy thing to do. And she managed it very, very effectively. She, of course, it's no accident that they used her as lead trial counsel. There's nine lawyers

on that legal team, and there are a lot more senior trial lawyers who are available, I'm sure. But they wanted a young woman sort of sandwiched in between Amber's age and Johnny's to telegraph to the jury. I don't think he did it. I think Amber's the bad guy here. And she did a very good job of that. And they were right. They were showing affection in an appropriate way between one another. And Amber's lawyers were not likable. I at no point did I have anything but sort of mild disdain for them. I cannot believe that there's a guy practicing law whose name is actually Rottenborn. I mean, that's like why you wouldn't rethink that before you tried to go sell yourself to juries. I don't know. It's not good. But I don't think they they made any connection with the jurors in the way Camille Vasquez did, which there's a reason she emerged as the star and they didn't. No doubt. And in my experience, I think Amber Heard does show signs of an abusive personality, even if the most abusive personalities are that way because they are the victims of abuse, often end up in relationships where they're the victim of abuse,

but they're also the abuser themselves. And the thing is those personnel, in my experience, when I knew my client was telling the truth, when their ex, spouse, partner, whatever it may have been, picked a certain lawyer because certain abusers just flock to certain kinds of lawyers. And they tend not to be able to get good, capable, competent, skilled, emotionally stable lawyers because those lawyers either don't like their case or they as a client don't like them as a lawyer. They want lawyers who will do their bidding rather than lawyers who will do what's best for the client. Classic example here is she's kind of in trouble right now because of that headline in particular, factually and legally. But in my view, when I read the op-ed, it appeared that that headline was about the first paragraph, which was about other

people that she had been the victims of prior to even meeting Johnny. Because she talks about experiencing sexual abuse when she was young and in high school and in college or college age before she met Johnny. And yet that would have been the defense to embrace. But because she did an all or nothing defense, basically, she made that part of her own case by alleging abuse during the trial of that nature. And it's like, that was unnecessary from a legal perspective. It made her case more difficult. It made believing her more essential to the case that it would have otherwise had to be. But I suspect that was her decision more than her counsel's decision. And I think the limitations of her counsel reflected the problems of the client.

It's bad because that jury question is potentially very telling, right? She did not, it was not submitted to this jury that that allegation about her having suffered sexual abuse was about other people. It was ultimately she owned that this piece was about Johnny Depp, even though she tried to lie about it, which was just absurd, an absurd dodge. And she gave it up. And if the jury comes back with a finding that that's the line, because that's been separated out that from the other, quote, domestic abuse assertions, if they come back saying that piece is the defamation piece and the other two are not, they're really going to live to regret having gone that far. And I realize she testified to an alleged sexual abuse. She claimed that he sexually abused her with a with a bottle. And that same Australia trip in which he claimed she severed his finger with a bottle.

So they're each pointing the finger at one another, so to speak. I don't know. That's not something she looks to have previously documented. That wasn't something she had gone to. She had another witness to back her up on. That's all down to Amber. When I had clients that tended to exaggerate and tended to tell stories that were just a little over the top, it was usually a sign that there was problems with the client's story in general. And I would say out of one out of 10 clients I've had ended up making up stories. You know, most women who came, I mean, almost all my clients were women. Most of them, now this was in the physical abuse context. Emotional abuse only slowly did the court systems recognize as being part of the abuse

issues related to the Violence Against Women's Act and Orders of Protection and so forth. But the nature of it, it was just too much. And I think she had a tendency to tell stories that were too much. And either she just overrode her lawyers or her lawyers didn't say, okay, even if that happened, that's going to sound less credible to the jury than say this version of abuse. And I think it was a mistake of her to just go all or nothing. You have to believe everything I said or nothing I said. Yes, he was the worst person ever. Every worst story imaginable.

He not only went off the res, he went off the res completely in his form of behavior. And then little things like, okay, he's hitting me a lot when he's got rings on. Do you think about what that would look like physically, whether that's something that could be covered up by makeup or not? So, you know, there were things she hadn't thought through. I think that there was behaviors by Johnny Depp that are pretty hard to defend. I mean, some of the things he said in text and whatnot, pretty hard to defend. The texts are the worst.

Yes. Yes. And if I had been them, I would have only focused on that. You know, if I was her lawyer, I probably would advise her not to even testify unless she had to, because she's clearly someone who can't help herself. She got caught. When she admitted she really wrote it about Johnny was because she was under cross and didn't like where the cross was going. And people who are making up stories tend to always add a sentence that they just can't help themselves. And she did that repeatedly to her

detriment. And he didn't. You know, that's the other thing. He didn't. I would happily have done a list of the lies Johnny Depp got caught in. You know, it's not like I have no dog in this hunt. You know, I'll see where the jury takes us. But he didn't get caught in lies. She did.

And so, you know, like I said, it really undermined her entire story. And I agree with what you said on that, too. She did say on the tapes at one point that he put a cigarette out on her. And that to me, Robert, was the closest she got on those tapes, which was constantly taping him. Why isn't there other than that? Why isn't there one of her saying, Johnny, you punched me in the face several times. Johnny, you slapped me over the wino forever. Like you've there's no why is there no documentation of any of that? That is one of the questions I remain with. If this really happened and she was so pro videotape happy, why isn't that on there? I mean, I think it was two interpretations. Generally in my experience, when my client accused someone of abuse that had no history of it prior, it was a red flag. Wasn't a guarantee the person didn't do it. The person didn't snap that something didn't get triggered in this context, but it was usually a red flag because generally speaking, abusers have a long history of it because it's deeply rooted in their psychology and their psychopathology. I mean,

it's their fear actually that's driving them. They think they're trying to quell their fear when they're being violent towards their spouse. And if you get inside their head, people would be surprised, but you feel bad for them because they're tortured minds, totally tortured minds. And it comes from abuse when they're young, but the, uh, so I, mostly I thought, you know, the absence of proof with the absence of a history tells me that her story is likely not true about the physical abuse, but the other possibility, what became clear throughout the trial is she sees herself as a survivor, uh,

as a survivor. And I think, uh, I've, I've no doubts now that she was the victim of bad abuse from a young age and probably repeated abuse by the time she was in her teens. I think some of the stories she was telling about physical abuse were true, just not necessarily true about Johnny Depp. I think she was describing stories from other places and other times. It's why the stories get kind of elastic and a little chaotic in their description and lack certain key details. They're things that happen just not in the context of Johnny Depp. So I think that's probably the primary reason. But the secondary possibility with her is that she sees herself as a survivor. And survivors don't like to admit they've ever been the victim

of anything at a certain level. They overcame. They achieved. They're not affected. They're not impacted. You didn't hurt me. And she even says things to that effect on those tapes. So it's possible the physical abuse took place and she would never acknowledge it on a tape with Johnny because she's too strong and too tough for that to ever happen to her. I think there's aspects of that in her personality. The evidence in favor of that argument would include her then mocking him for being weak. You know, like you're such a baby, you know, you always complain. Yeah, I didn't hit you. You were fine. So that would dovetail well with your second theory. I do want

to talk about the other evidence she submitted of her alleged injuries and how you think that's playing right now, because this most abuse cases or harassment cases or cases involving this type of power imbalance and abuse of it would not involve any proof other than the word of the woman. But she did have some so much so that a UK court ruled that she was a truth teller, that there was enough evidence of abuse, that it wasn't defamatory for a paper, a magazine over there to say he was a wife beater. So what about that? What how much the jury be dealing with her supportive evidence? That's we're going to pick it up after this quick break. Is it taking a while? Are you surprised it's taking this long? And what do we glean from that, if anything?

Two things. One is that given if this is Fairfax County, so it's not a D.C. jury, not as bad as the Sussman jury, but D.C. Associated attended politically. And I thought the one thing Rottenborn did well in his at his close was he made the case not about Amber Heard, but about domestic violence and Me Too in general. And he said, if you vote for Johnny Depp, you're voting for domestic abuse, you're voting against Me Too. And this is a very liberal Democratic jury pool, seven jurors. It's also a herd-friendly demographic, very male, five out of seven men. As you noted that women would be a harsher judge of her and Johnny Depp's core base are women over 40, particularly white women over 40. There's only one of those people represented on the entire jury. Actually, no white women over 40. It's African-American and Asian women are the only two women, majority minority jury. So I think you have a liberal democratic

jury. Now I think it still leans in Johnny Depp's direction just because of how the evidence was presented at trial. And I would still favor Johnny Depp to get a win on some charge of liability. Damages won't matter too much because she's kind of run out of cash defending herself out of this case, took the $7 million and spent it on lawyers instead of donations, although she pledged it. But I think it's likely going to go in Johnny Depp's direction. But my guess is right now it's 5-2. There's probably a split. Virginia is unique.

A lot of states don't require unanimous civil juries. Virginia does. So it's seven jurors and they got to get all seven. My guess is at least one or two are holding out for Amber Heard. Could be hung jury. That would be fascinating. My God, we're going to have to go through this all over again. He just might do it. Although let's hope not since we both agree he's won the PR war and that's really what he was after. It's interesting because on that point you just raised, there was a post-deliberation motion by Depp's team. They were upset that Amber Heard's lawyer, Rottenborn,

told the jury that a ruling against Heard, quote, sends a message that no matter what you do as an abuse victim, you always have to do more, quote, no matter how honest you are about your own imperfections and your own shortcomings in a relationship. You have to be perfect in order for people to believe you. Don't send that message. And they argued that that argument is improperly asking the jury to focus on a larger social objective than the case they're being asked to decide. The judge said she would not entertain that motion because the case is already in the hands of the jury. Now, it would be extraordinary for her to go knock on the door essentially and say hey i just want to give you a an instruction one thing to disregard and even if she had it it would still be floating

out there and and the end depth's team maybe not the lawyers but his supporters are kind of doing it too right like this is the death of the me too movement by the way that already happened in brett kavanaugh um but like this is a chance you know, to sort of reestablish my fairness in the process and, you know, the openness of mind that not all women are truth tellers on these claims. So what do you make of the competing social narratives? I think it was where Rottenborn had to go because of how the evidence had presented itself. You got a jury that's politically predisposed towards the MeToo movement and towards not wanting to be, what he was really saying is, do you want to be the juror, the juror who's known as putting a death nail in the MeToo movement because of the public and social and cultural significance of this trial? And that was smart of him because I think they were a little desperate at that point. A hung jury is just fine for them legally.

What they've lost in the court of public opinion, they couldn't recapture now. And at least if they could avoid a big verdict against her, they've kind of done the best they could do under the circumstances. I don't think she's going to be getting any jobs anytime soon, but her only chance to get back into Hollywood at any level would require a verdict that at least was not in Johnny's favor. And so I think that I think it was the right move by him politically.

And even some would say ethically controversial move, but one that was probably in the best interest of his client to make. And maybe what's saving her right now, because I think otherwise this was most people thought it was going to come back unanimously in favor of Johnny on Tuesday. The fact that we're here after mid-afternoon Wednesday or going into the afternoon Wednesday says that at least he did that part of his job effectively enough. Good point. The thing that I keep trying to remember is you and I have had a very different experience. The public's had a very different experience of this case than that jury has. The press coverage of this has been ubiquitous, and it's been largely pro-Johnny, you know, for all the reasons we discussed. I mean, it's very few people are out there defending her. They did some analysis online.

It was as of May 23rd. Hashtag I stand with Amber Heard has garnered about 8.2 million views online hashtag johnny for justice for johnny depp has earned about 15 billion views uh he he has a fragrance i guess a cologne it's demand for it has soared by almost 50 just on monday night he went to london he's a musician as he testified to as well And he got a standing ovation after performing at the Royal Albert Hall. You know, there's a groundswell of support for him that we feel. But the jury probably doesn't. They've been instructed to stay away from media. I mean, they're human, but most people would understand you don't talk to the jurors while they're walking around over Memorial Day weekend about the case they're trying. And I think most

people try to do their civic duty by not engaging in discussions. They're certainly not supposed to be Googling anything or, you know, so they really may be just deciding what they, what is true about the linear presentation this judge allowed them to experience. And that's how people like you and I can go wrong because our experience is much more vast than theirs. It would be too unsettling for them because they would predict basically the juries would do what they wanted the jury to do. And then the jury didn't. And it led them to question the whole legal system. But the whole nature of jurors, very tough to read. And you're right. The biggest thing that's different between the jury and everyone else is the jury was picked because they don't care about these people, because they don't care about this case, because they are not emotionally attached or invested at

all. Not in Me Too, not in Men Too, not in Johnny Depp, not in Amber Heard, not in Hollywood, not in social media. And so consequently, they can have a radically different view than everyone else in the courtroom because they're not attached, not invested, not involved. And that's how they often surprise people. And in a case like this, where you've got clearly a lot of damaging evidence, most of it against Amber Heard, but at least some of it against Johnny Depp, it'd be very easy for a jury to just say, screw it, nothing for nobody, everybody go home, or for the jury to just hang because they saw the case radically differently because they are, as a unit, seeing the case completely differently than, frankly, everyone else is. I'm going to correct myself grammatically. People like you and me, those things bother me. They

stick in my craw. Let's talk for a minute about the photos before we wrap because most abuse victims don't have that. So the fact that she had any photos of herself looking bruised or the one friend testified, she took the photo of of what appeared to be something on amber's lip her face red a mark on her cheek and big clumps of hair on the floor um that clearly looked to be amber's and she took a picture of her skull too showing like what looked like missing hair and then she went on james corden the next night looked amazing a great point for the defense but his attempt to deal with a lot of this was to say at least some of them had been manipulated. He had an expert who testified as submitted. They couldn't

have been they could they could never have been sort of dealt with in this one program if they hadn't been manipulated. In other words, they had some data on them, some metadata that showed they went through an editing function before they were submitted. Anyway, how did that wash, do you think? She made a massive tactical error by adding on the other allegations. Because what happened is, if she had just presented these stories that were consistent with these photos, those photos become powerful evidence. By saying, hey, look, I have photos when I got hurt, and then saying he did things like make me walk on glass and all these other brutal forms of attack. And it was hitting my head and bashing it and strangling my neck and all these other much more extravagant allegations.

Then the jury says, well, why aren't there photos of that? Why aren't there photos of your feet being cut off if you were actually having to walk all over glass? Why aren't there photos of other things given some of the extreme physical injury you're describing of him punching you repeatedly with all his rings on. So that's where she would have been smart to focus on what physical evidence do I have of physical abuse. Only confirm that. Note confirmed. She herself said that she had memory issues and the rest. So she could sort of black that out if she wanted to on those grounds.

And if she focused on that, the photos would have become strong. What happened is the photos almost become impeaching evidence because she doesn't have photos of the more dramatic physical violence that she alleges against Johnny. Mm-hmm. All right. So I need a quick answer. 10 seconds, ideally, or less. What's your prediction for how it's going to go? I won't hold it against you. The odds are that Amber Heard does not lose. I'm betting that she does. Verdict for Johnny, seven figures or more. Wow. Robert Barnes putting it out there. Always a pleasure. Thank you so much for your insightful analysis. Happy to be here. And now we wait. Now we wait for a verdict. Could come at any point if we get it during the show. Obviously, we will bring it to

you live. All right. Now, when we're the show, obviously we will bring it to you live. All right. Now, when we're coming back, we're bringing you an important story that I've been dying to talk to you about. It involves fossil fuels and climate change. And a guest who says, not only do you not need to worry about fossil fuels, you should be celebrating them, that they are the answer in a lot of ways to what is ailing humanity. How about that? OK, we'll go there.

And don't forget, you can find The Megyn Kelly Show live on Sirius XM Triumph Channel 111 every weekday at noon east. The full video show and clips by subscribing to our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash Megyn Kelly. Some of those photos and so on, the evidence that we discussed will be there if you check it out later. If you prefer an audio podcast, follow, download on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts for free. And there you will get our full archives with more than 330 shows. After experiencing the most expensive Memorial Day travel period on record, fossil fuels are in a lot of people's minds. For decades, climate alarmists have taught us to demonize the very energy sources that allow us to live our lives comfortably, our current administration

included. But fossil fuels have found a cheerleader in philosopher, author, and energy expert, Alex Epstein. He has been championing fossil fuels for years, even taking his message to the Senate in 2016. Take a listen to Alex butting heads with then Senator Barbara Boxer. Mr. Epstein, are you a scientist? No, philosopher. You're a philosopher? Yes. Okay. Well, this is the Environment and Public Works Committee. I think it's interesting we have a philosopher here talking about an issue. It's to teach you how to think more clearly. Well, you don't have to teach me how to think more clearly. Very few of you would be alive without cheap, plentiful, reliable energy. Everything you're wearing, whatever made it possible for you to get here, is made possible

by energy. And it's not just energy in general. You have to produce it cheaply, reliably, scalably, efficiently. And you can talk about, oh, I think that can be done via solar. The way to figure that out is to compete on the free market. But as long as your life is being made possible by the people of the fossil fuel industry, I think you should be grateful. And I think it is a crime, a moral crime, that you are damning anyone by association. How about that? Alex is the author of the new book, Fossil Future, Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal and Natural Gas, Not Less. And he is with me now. Alex, I've really been looking forward to this conversation. Thanks for being here. Me too. Great to use them. You celebrate them and say they're the answer. This is from your book where you say, I'm going to try to persuade you that if you want to make the world a better place, one of the best things you can do is fight for more fossil fuel use,

more burning of oil, coal, and natural gas. And then you go on to say, this is going to seem craziest of all, that you think that we will experience higher environmental quality and less danger from climate if we do so. So give me the broad 30,000 foot intro to why you believe that. Well, the first reason I believe this is because it's been happening for 100 plus years that we've been making the world far better using low cost, reliable, scalable energy from fossil fuels, including, most people don't know, we've made our climate far safer. Climate is naturally dynamic and dangerous. Human beings have made it unnaturally safe. And this is very clearly documented. We have data on climate-related disasters and climate-related disaster deaths.

So from storms, floods, extreme temperature, everything that's supposedly getting worse, they're documented to be down by 98% over the last 100 years. And they've continued to decline in the last 50 years, as catastrophists have said, we'll have sometimes up to a billion deaths from climate related causes. And so what people don't get is they think of the planet as this perfect, delicate nurturer, and our impact ruins it. Whereas the planet is really a deficient and dangerous place. And to make it an abundant and safe place, including safe from climate, we need a lot of machines, which means we need a lot of low cost, reliable energy. And fossil fuels have been, and I argue will be by far the most scalable way of doing that in the coming decades. Now, you make sure to point out you're not you're not a climate

change denier. You know, I mean, like you're somebody who acknowledges the planet is warming, but not necessarily at the catastrophic levels that are being predicted. And that you I don't know, would you say it's not something we need to worry about? Or we just would you just say it's just not something we need to catastrophize the way some on the left do? I think you need to just recognize what it is. So yes, when you do anything in life, there are benefits and side effects, and some of those side effects are negative. So when you burn fossil fuels, it's a warming gas and a fertilizing gas, by the way, that part is positive. The warming has positives and negatives. Warming occurs mostly in colder parts of the world where people want it to be warmer, but it can also lead to some increase in heat waves in warmer parts of the world.

But the thing that comes along with that are just these enormous benefits, the ability to have modern agriculture, which depends on modern diesel machines and fertilizer, the ability to have modern medical care, the ability to have all of this time to fight, you know, a new virus like COVID-19. So my basic argument is, we need to think about fossil fuels in the way we think of prescription drugs, you look at the benefits and the side effects, except the one thing about fossil fuels is they can actually cure their own side effects. So they can make drought worse, hypothetically, but then they can have irrigation and drought relief convoys that make it far better, which is why drought related deaths are down 99% over the next 100 years. So I'm okay, and I'm totally okay and on board with people looking for superior low-carbon alternatives. And I'm probably the world's biggest advocate of

nuclear, but we should not be sacrificing energy because energy is far more important than climate change. And I know you make the point in the book that what we don't realize is that there are 3 billion people out there who are not using really electricity and energy at all in the way that we do here in the Western world, and that what they're using is actually quite terrible for them and for the environment. And so expanding the use of fossil fuels to these people would actually help the world, not hurt it. I mean, one statistic that I find really powerful, which I got from the energy expert Robert Bryce, just looking at the data, is that there are 3 billion people who are using less electricity individually than one of our

refrigerators. So you just think about, you have to divide all your electricity into one refrigerator. And as you indicated with environmental quality, one third of the world is burning wood and animal dung for their heating and cooking. So think about what that means for their environment. So yeah, imagine them using natural gas, even modern clean coal. It's a total transformation in their environmental quality, also gives them clean water. And then it just allows them to become productive and prosperous. Without energy-powering machines, you cannot be productive and prosperous, and therefore the world is not a good place to live. Let's talk about that, because we kind of take these machines for granted, don't we? It's like, I don't know, I'm building a studio right now, and you look out, you see the excavator,

and you see the dump trucks and you see all these big machines that do what would take men or women probably years to actually do. And they do it in a week. That's related to your argument. How do we power those vehicles? How did like the way in which we use fossil fuels goes well beyond what we put in our gas tank? Definitely. I think it's such a crucial point. And before I started in energy, I just didn't think of it, right? I just thought of, oh, I fill up my gas tank and maybe I pay a gas bill and I pay a power bill, you know, most thinking about that. But the way to think of it is today's world is just completely unnaturally abundant. And everything you see around you, it can exist in this abundance,

including the food, by the way, because of machines, because we can use machines to dramatically amplify our abilities and expand. So by amplify, I mean, an example of that is a modern combine harvester that can reap and thresh 1,000 times more wheat than the best manual laborer. So it turns us into supermen, superwomen. But what it also does is it allows us to do things that no number of human beings can do. For example, we can't get 1000 of us together and fly, right? We can't move cargo by a flight, we need machines to do that a lot of what computers do, we can't do at all. What an incubator does, that's that's a really life and death thing I point out in fossil future, like human beings can't provide that. And so our whole

way of life, the whole world we live in as we experience it depends on these amazing machines. And they are these unsung heroes, as are the people who are producing the fossil fuels that we're choosing to use, because they are the lowest cost, most reliable way of powering our machines most of the time. You point out in the book that according to the WHO, 2 billion people lack basic sanitation in this world, toilets and so on, that an estimated 10% of the world's population consumes food irrigated by wastewater. That diarrhea kills roughly 432,000 people annually. I mean, those are just stunning numbers. But if you live in the fossil fueled world, you have a very different experience, incredibly clean, incredibly sanitary.

Yet another thing we take for granted. Yeah, and I think we should really lay a lot of blame on what I call our designated experts. The people are basically telling us, hey, here's what to do. So the people are telling us, hey, we need to rapidly eliminate fossil fuels. And what I point out starting in chapter one of the book, which is called Ignoring Benefits, is these people are ignoring the huge benefits of fossil fuels now and in the future. And this is really deadly. So an example I've been thinking of lately, because we're hearing talk of starvation, is the fact that we haven't been taught about the benefits of fossil fuels for agriculture, both fertilizer coming from natural gas, and the machine, all the amazing machines being powered primarily by oil based fuels.

And an example I give is one of our leading experts, a climate scientist named Michael Mann has a whole book about fossil fuels and climate. And he talks a lot about agriculture, but he only talks about negative side effects about how warming might harm agriculture in some area. But he doesn't talk about the fact that 8 billion people depend on fossil fuels for their food. And so it's no wonder we've restricted fossil fuels, prices are skyrocketing, and people are threatened with starvation. And I put that on Michael Mann and our other designated experts for deliberately making us ignorant about the unbelievable benefits of fossil fuels. And you touched on the medical benefits a second ago, but they're vast.

I mean, you're talking about just something as simple as the MRI machine. Or when my little guy got hurt over our spring break skiing, we had to put him through the CT machine. Like these things, you don't even think about the little plug you put in the wall and how those things are powered, but it matters. Yeah. And you think about, I mean, you think about people in the poorest parts of the world using less electricity than a refrigerator. You have real situations now in the world where hospitals have to decide, do I turn the lights on? Do I refrigerate the vaccines? Do I operate the instruments on the operating table refrigerate the vaccines? Do I operate the

instruments on the operating table? Now, a story I tell is about a woman in Gambia, in Africa, who has a premature baby. And it's in the US, it would be just no problem at all. You wouldn't even think about it. I mean, you just have an incubator and you have all this support. But they don't have incubators because they don't have reliable electricity. And these babies just tragically die. And the rest of this mother's life is just tragically affected by this. And whereas like a friend of mine near the same time had a kid premature with much worse complications, and they never think about it anymore, because they just had all these amazing machines to support them. So it really is life and death. And it's another case where experts have failed us that

we're not thinking constantly about all the poor people in the world who need more energy. Right. My God, this happened to Abby. How early was Lillian? How many weeks? Sorry, Aubrey, how many? She came at 31 and a half weeks is my assistant who I'm talking to. And her baby came at 31 and a half weeks and was in an incubator for a long time and didn't

leave the NICU. And you're right. You don't even think about it. You just thank God for modern medicine. You're so grateful to the medical technicians for helping you. But there are people living in other parts of the world for whom that would only be a dream. And those are the ones who could benefit from this. And the energy answer that we hear from leftists is solar and wind. And these things can really help these people. They don't have to go right to oil or natural gas. Why is that not true? Well, the first thing we need to observe, always start, I think, by observing reality. So the fact is fossil fuel use is growing around the world. It's still growing. So it's 80% of the world's energy and it's growing. And it's

growing in particular in the places that care most about low cost, reliable energy, such as China and India. So why are they doing this? Is it because they don't know about solar and wind? China, by the way, is using coal to make huge amounts of our solar and wind. So they know about it, but it's just not cost effective for them. And the basic reason is that solar and wind are unreliable forms of energy. So you can't just look at the cost of the solar panels and the wind turbines, which that's what these claims do that claim they're cheaper. You need to look at

the full cost, including the cost of providing them 24-7 life support. And when you look at that cost, they add cost to the grid, they don't replace it. There are also many forms of energy that they don't address at all. They just produce electricity, which right now is 20% of the world's energy. So I don't consider these serious. When people talk about them as replacing fossil fuels in a world that is desperately short of energy, I think this shows a real lack of valuing of energy. It's one thing to say, hey, I want them to compete. I want them to evolve. I want them to supplement fossil fuels. I believe that if they are actually competitive, which is a whole issue because they get a lot of preferences. But if you're talking about let's get rid of fossil fuels in the next 27 and a half years,

which by the way, is the mainstream idea in the world right now, which terrifies me and our government has signed on to this. Like if you're talking about that in an energy starved world, I don't think you at all value the benefits of energy. What, when you, when you said that solar and wind turbines only account for electricity, 20%, did you say 20%? Yeah, 20% of the world's energy is electricity. Okay. 20% of the world's energy is electricity.

And that's the only lane in which wind turbines and solar panels can play. What, what are the other forms that, what are the other forms of energy that they don't service at all? So the big categories are different forms of heat. So there's residential heat, and then what's called industrial process heat. And then there's transportation, including heavy duty transportation. Now, it's not that they can't play in them at all. So I talk in chapter six about ways in which, which is about alternatives, you know, ways in which eventually you can do more and more things with electricity. But the fact is that the often the cheapest way of heating buildings, and also heating, generating huge amounts of heat for industrial processes,

is to burn a fossil fuel, such as natural gas directly, using electricity. So for example, in California, where I live, we have this insane policy of where we're preventing people from using natural gas. Now, even though burning natural gas directly is incredibly clean and incredibly cheap. So what are we doing? We're burning natural gas to turn a turbine to eventually generate heat. We put it over transmission lights. it loses half the energy often more. It's just totally wasteful. And this hurts the poor most of all. Now, talk about something like flying a plane. You can't do that with electricity. People talk about hydrogen, that's totally in the future. And even it's hypothetical, even hydrogen is far cheaper to

generate with fossil fuels. So again, what I want to point out is that the experts that we're relying on are not giving us the benefits of energy in general, and fossil fuels in particular, they're just giving us the negative side effects. And that is a catastrophic way to think about things. Can you expand on how these renewable energy sources already and still depend on fossil fuels? Like if you think you're going all clean and opting for wind or solar, you're not. And also with electric car batteries. Can you touch on that? Yeah, of course. So I'll just take the example of where I live in California. So what we have done is we have subsidized and mandated huge amounts of solar wind, particularly solar.

And if you look at what happens, what we have is in the middle of the day, during sunny time of year, when it's in a really sunny time of day, you'll generate a lot of electricity via solar and everyone will brag, oh my gosh, we have so much of electricity via solar. But then what happens at night, none of it comes from solar. And so you need to rely on other things. And so what you need is you need, and even when the solar is coming, it's never coming in the exact amount that you want it. So it always needs 24-7 life support by reliable, controllable sources of electricity, whether in the state or in the case of California, we import huge amounts of electricity from

outside the state. For example, Los Angeles has long imported a lot of electricity from coal in Utah, which I don't think the Hollywood celebrities know that they're doing, but that's part of what makes Hollywood work. So yeah, what happened in 2020 is there was a heat wave regionally. We were so dependent on other states with more reliable sources, but they needed their electricity because the wind had died down and in the evening, the sun fades. And so there wasn't enough for us. So it's just whenever you think about these uncontrollable, unreliable source of energy, you have to recognize they can go near zero at almost any given time, which means they need 100% backup slash 100% life support. And when you try to cut that, when you try to cut back on that to save money, which we've

done in California and also Texas has done, then you get blackouts. You're playing what I call reliability chicken, where you're basically praying for it to be not too hot, not too cold. And you want plenty of sunlight and plenty of wind. And nature doesn't always cooperate. And then you have disasters. So we need to recognize what we're doing here. It doesn't make any sense.

And by the way, if you want cleaner electricity, which I'm all for, we should be liberating nuclear because that is controllable, clean and safe electricity. one thing like okay i can't turn on my netflix or my my lights are not on okay in the airplane no that's no one's going to agree to that you know you're going to want a big old tank of gas up there so also the battery would fall out of the sky right that you can't take off with the battery is the other thing about it right it just doesn't well because the battery that because so people need to think there are reasons why we're using fossil fuels. So fossil fuels have out-competed alternatives for over 100 years. They're used everywhere in the world, even where people have no incentive to use them, no domestic industry, such as Japan. And one reason is because they have this incredible

attribute of what's called energy density, which is they store a large amount of energy in a very small space. And that is crucial for many applications, but above all, portability. So if you have an airplane that needs to carry humans and other cargoes, you want the highest density possible because you need to carry your fuel with you. An electric battery has nowhere near the density of jet fuel, which is why you don't have any electric planes. And there was some solar plane that cost something like $100 million, and it flew one person, and they regarded it as some sort of success. I mean, this just shows how much religious fervor there is for solar and for batteries. But yeah, oil is amazing in terms of its energy density.

And that's why it's the most valued thing in the world. And that's why when you have all of these administrations and politicians so hostile to oil investment, oil production and oil transport, you really get a crisis. And that's what we're experiencing right now. And I want to talk to you about this, but I know I should point out to the audience, you're like Schellenberger in that you used to be not like this. You were like, OK, it's fine. And I'm not really thinking about fossil fuels, but it's not like you work for the oil industry.

You know, you're you're just took an honest look at this and said, what's working, what's fine. And I don't, I'm not really thinking about fossil fuels, but it's not like you work for the oil industry. You know, you're, you're just took an honest look at this and said, what's working, what's not working. And I've come to these conclusions. Honestly, it's not like you're, you know, for some lobby group that's trying to push fossil fuels. So that's why we should be listening to you. Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, I think you should, I think there are a lot of lobbyists. I'm not a lobbyist, but I think a lot of them are really good people. And I mentioned in that boxer clip, I think it's wrong that we associate people in the fossil fuel industry as they're, you know, they have negative motivations and stuff like that. I consider it really heroic that most of the people I've met in that industry are really good, but it is true. So Mike is a really good friend of mine and I'm

a big supporter of Christopher Governor. And, you know, he came from a more like classic liberal background. I grew up in a very liberal environment. I didn't even know anyone in the fossil fuel industry when I came up with my ideas, let alone like ever had any financial relationships. So I was a lot, I was free market guy mostly, but I was a very, very strong, I should say, but I was really scared of climate catastrophe. And I, yeah, and I just, but when I started studying this, I realized, oh my gosh, these guys are not looking at the benefits of fossil fuels. That's like, you're looking at a polio vaccine and you don't look at the benefits and you

only look at the side effects. And it made me really interested in what are the benefits? If we look at this carefully, how big are the benefits? And they're huge. And that's why I came from a liberal environment, Chevy Chase, Maryland, and now I'm the world's biggest champion of fossil fuels. Cause I'm like, once you really look at the, the, the full context, it's so beneficial. And we're, we're like killing people and threatening our security by not recognizing these benefits. That's why I spend like three years trying to research every nook and cranny and make it clear.

Cause I, cause I do think it's existential. And I think people are thinking of it backwards. It's so interesting. And short of killing people, we're really impacting people on a day-to-day basis here in our own country with what Joe Biden just essentially admitted was a choice of trying to transition us to renewables while we've got record high gas prices. Here he is on camera actually admitting it. This is from Monday, a press conference following a meeting in Japan. Was it this past Monday? Yeah, it was. Okay, take a listen. Soundbite 11. When it comes to the gas prices, we're going through an incredible transition that is taking place that God willing, when it's over, we'll be stronger and the world will be stronger and less reliant on fossil fuels when this is over.

So it's an incredible transition and it seems designed. He's trying to get us off of the fossil fuel breast. I hate that word teat. I can't do it. Right? I mean, that's clearly what he wants. And people are really hurting because of this. Yeah, I mean, incredible is a nice, ambiguous word, right? Because it can be like, oh, it's really good. Or I can't believe that you thought this was a good idea. So the context here is, again, the world is drastically short of energy. The world needs far more energy. We have to recognize we are uniquely privileged to live in the part of the world that is extremely empowered. There are 6 billion people in the world who use an amount of energy that anyone watching

this in the US would consider totally unacceptable. So you have to recognize that fossil fuels are 80% of the world's energy. They're growing because they are uniquely cost-effective and will be for the foreseeable future. So when you talk about this energy transition, what it really is, is it's an energy addition. It's adding solar and wind. Unfortunately, it's been an unreliable and costly energy addition. What we really want is a cost-effective energy addition where we're looking for alternatives, doing things like liberating nuclear using more natural gas. But when the way this, quote, energy transition has been architected, if you want to

call it that, is the primary thing has been restricting fossil fuel use. So look at what Biden did. His first step was let's shut down a pipeline, a key method of transporting a very valuable form of oil from Canada that our refineries specialize in. And so now we want to get it from Venezuela, right? Or he shuts down, you know, he bans leasing on federal lands. More broadly, he threatens the oil and gas industry. And he says, in his campaign, I guarantee you, we will end fossil fuel, threatening them and making them not want to engage in more investment and production because he's threatening it. And all of this, so notice what he's doing is his transition is destroying the industry that's working, the fossil fuel industry. It's not liberating or otherwise enabling a superior

industry. And that's why it's so destructive because it's this false promise of solar and wind that's causing us to dramatically handicap ourselves, which leads to globally high energy prices, and then higher and higher levels of insecurity for us and the rest of the free world. We've invested billions of dollars in renewable energy fields, trying to give people a leg up, give them a crutch, Solyndra and so on under Barack Obama. That's sort of what turned Schellenberger around. He was this Greenpeace type activist saying, let's do this thing, and was one of the guys shepherding the Solyndra project and others for the Obama Green Energy team, and came to realize, this doesn't work. This is stupid. I'm on the wrong train. And so

did an honest reevaluation of what might work. But given all those billions of dollars, Alex, like that we've invested of taxpayer money trying to make these industries work here and elsewhere, where are they now? What percentage of the energy that we use are those are solar and wind that we've invested all that money in? Well, so it's, you know, globally, it's about 3% solar and wind. And then in the US, it's something like 12% of our electricity, about 4% of our energy, maybe it's up to 5% of our energy is solar and wind. But I want to, so the billions, it's many more than billions, at least hundreds of billions, arguably trillions. But the really costly thing is the restriction on fossil fuels that these are used to justify.

It's one thing to take our money and waste it, and that is really, really bad. But it is a much worse thing to drastically increase the cost of energy by restricting it. When you think about higher oil prices, coal prices, natural gas prices around the world, this was a totally preventable problem. It is only caused by artificial restrictions on fossil fuel investment, production, and transportation because we've got plenty of the resource. And the knowledge of how to harness it has not diminished, it's gotten better than ever. But our politicians on this idea that we need to get rid of fossil fuels and replace them with unreliable solar wind, they have restricted development around the world. And so that is the real tragedy, because you raise energy prices. And as I told Barbara Boxer, and she didn't listen, when you said, oh, you're a philosopher,

I don't need to listen to a philosopher. Well, philosopher looks at the big picture. And this philosopher learned a lot about energy and became an energy expert. And a very simple truth is the cost of energy determines the cost of everything because energy is the industry that powers every other industry.

So when you make energy more expensive, you make everything more expensive. And that's what we're seeing most tragically right now with skyrocketing food prices around the world and threats of starvation. No, she did not listen to you. Instead, here is who she listened to, Soundbite 12. You have stolen my dreams, my childhood with your empty words. And yet I'm one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you? Oh boy.

Greta Thunberg is, she's got the ear of most folks on the left in our country and globally. That's what people believe. That we've stolen the childhood of people like Greta and that we are on the verge of global catastrophe.

I mean, I'm very sympathetic to Greta. She's totally wrong about everything, but I get why she's wrong because she's, she's no child has ever, I mean, being a child in her era is like the greatest opportunity any human being has ever had. And this is why I'm really big on before we're predicting the future, we have to recognize the present. And most of the people we're trusting to predict our future are in total denial about the present. So the truth is that there's never been a better time to be alive, particularly before COVID and before we've had this energy crisis caused by fear of fossil fuels. But in general, it's still extreme poverty.

So people living on less than $2 a day. When I was born in 1980, it was 4 out of 10 people. Now it's 1 out of 10 people living on less than $2 a day. That's adjusted for inflation. I mean, that is unbelievable. The world today, again, you're far safer from climate than you've ever been. But people have this false narrative. Talk about whatever she said, false narrative or false dreams. It's this false idea that we inherited a perfect planet, and we ruined it. No, we did not. We inherited a dynamic, deficient, and dangerous planet,

and we've made it unnaturally abundant and safe to the point where we think it's stable. It was never stable, but we experience it that way because we have so much control over our lives, including we can avoid famine, we can deal with drought, we can deal with flooding, we can deal with all of these things, and life is so good. And if you recognize the level of mastery that we have over nature, including over climate, and that that depends on machines powered by fossil fuels, you are optimistic about the future. Because if we've made climate so much safer, after 170 years of warming and one degree of warming, how could you possibly think that another half a degree or degree

is going to be an apocalypse? That's just a primitive religious fear that has no basis in reality or science. Okay, I'm going to squeeze in a break. But after this, we're going to talk about accountability for the wrong predictions from people we're still listening to. And then we will get into nuclear because it's an exciting form of energy that has been just bastardized by people who have a different agenda. And more people need to know the truth. More with Alex Epstein right after this. Before we go on on nuclear, can you just, can you give me a minute? Because like the car batteries, I never even stopped to think about the fact that I'm like, okay, I don't have an electric car, but I'm like, I get it.

The car batteries, that makes sense. Don't have a gas guzzling vehicle. Maybe I could do my part to save the environment. And then Schellenberger was pointing out, how do you exactly think that the battery to that car gets charged and powered, and if everybody were driving one, what do you think the United States would look like? And how would we power all the charging stations and so on? So any thoughts on whether electric vehicles are our future? Well, I think the jury is out. So in general, I'm always in favor of innovation and things that are more cost effective. So for most people right now, EVs aren't more cost effective, both because they generally cost more. And also, they're not as

effective in that they don't have the same range, they take longer to charge, you know, they have can have a lot of issues, whether it's real when it's really hot, or when it's it's really cold. And in any case, when you're thinking of this, you always need to think about what is the when I think about energy, I always think about what's the full process of producing the energy like with solar and wind, I don't just look at what's the cost of the solar panels and wind turbines, I look at what's the cost of the backup that you need all the time. And with the EVs, you need to look at, as you

said, where does the electricity come from? And because we have a mostly fossil fueled grid, it comes mostly from fossil fuels. And unfortunately, the EV industry has not been very honest about this. The experience that drove this home for me is I wrote an article in Forbes that got a lot of attention maybe eight years ago. And it was called with the Tesla S, Elon Musk has created a really good fossil fuel car. And I think that's what caused him to block me from Twitter. I think he didn't like that messaging. But it's really true. It is a really and I it was and I think it is a really

good fossil fuel car. If you think that this is rapidly getting off fossil fuels, you're wrong. But there are some advantages of EV. So I'm all for innovation in the field. The scariest thing to me about EVs is what we have in California, where Newsom is mandating battery powered vehicles and undercutting our electricity. So that would be like if you mandated corn ethanol, and then you prevented people from growing corn. I mean, that's what we face in California. So that's the really scary thing is our electricity is getting worse. And yet we want to become far more dependent on electricity. And is there any risk to you know, you know, what happens when the battery is in your house, and you don't take care of it, and something

crushes it and like some weird stuff comes out and you're like, I'm going to die a toxic death in a year if I touch this stuff. Like, I don't know. Is there any negative effect to the world, to us and having all these batteries running around and potentially getting smashed up? And it just seems to me there are risks there. Yeah, you need you need to be aware. So batteries somehow got transformed from the thing you were supposed to be most afraid of, right? You should never throw these in the trash. They're dangerous.

To they became viewed as like organic food or like something, you know, they're just viewed as this totally healthy thing that's part of this green environment, et cetera, et cetera. So yeah, batteries are very hazardous. They can burn easily. But, you know, I think you can manage those risks, but you have to deal with them in an honest way. You can't just treat them as, oh, they're clean. Oh, we don't need to worry about what to do with them. Schellenberger has also pointed this out with solar panels. Solar panels

have a lot of toxicity in them. You need to have a plan for disposing of them. But I keep coming back to the people who are pushing these solar winded batteries as rapid replacements for fossil fuels are not serious about energy. They don't really care about energy. I think the leaders have a hostility toward energy. I talk about this in Chapter 3 of Fossil Future. They actually don't like energy because energy allows us to impact the world more wherever it comes from. But they've put forward to mask their hostility toward fossil fuels and nuclear and hydro, by the way. They've pretended to support this magical green

future, but there's no magical future. The green stuff isn't as cost-effective, but it also has incredible impacts. And so what you find is that once these impacts become revealed, the green movement says, yeah, we don't really like that too. Like, hey, we want more solar and wind, but let's oppose mining. Well, all these involve massive amounts of mined material. So it's further proof to me that what we're dealing with is an anti-energy movement that's pretending to be for these fake forms of energy to mask the identity of their hostility toward all forms of cost-effective energy. Well, how do they see us living in the future? I mean, how does that end for them?

Well, I think it ends with them. It depends on who you mean by them, because I think some people innocently believe this. But I think with some people, it ends with them being in control, and them feeling superior. I mean, the basic so my background is philosophy, and I'm really interested in environmental philosophy. I think that's really what gives me a different perspective. We're taught the environmental philosophy that the planet is perfect. And our impact on it is immoral and self destructive, whereas my philosophy is a planet is perfect, and our impact on it is immoral and self-destructive, whereas my philosophy is the planet is imperfect, and our impact is very moral and constructive and beneficial so long as we do it with the principle of advancing human flourishing in mind. So it's good for us to take the naturally dirty and distant water and make it unnaturally

clean and local, like it's good for us to take the naturally dangerous climate and make it unnaturally clean and local. Like it's good for us to take the naturally dangerous climate, make it unnaturally safe. But because we have this, our leaders have this very deep hostility toward human impact on nature. They really want a dehumanized planet. The leaders do like they, and you see some of them, I talk, I show this in chapter three of the book. Some of them really want a planet with less human, they say less human impact, but what does that mean? That means less humans. If you, if somebody said to you, Hey, Megan, I want to see a planet with less human, they say less human impact. But what does that mean? That means less humans. If you if somebody said to you, Hey, Megan, I want to see a planet with less bear impact, you would expect you would say these, these people hate bears, and they want to kill bears. And I think that's ultimately true of a lot of our leaders. And some of them don't realize it.

But that's the direction they're moving in, particularly by impoverishing the poorest people in the world by depriving them access to fossil fuels. You know, those cults that believe the end of the world is coming and they say like, you know, Judgment Day will be here. And then they get the date and they're like, you know, December 1st, 1979, it's happening. You know, there will be no Earth after that. They're coming back down from outer space to get us or whatever it is. Well, it doesn't happen.

And weirdly, the cult doesn't dissipate. They somebody who's at the leadership level changes the date and they stay part of the same mashup that we prepared when Schellenberger was on, because I'd love to get your reaction. And you'll recognize the voices that Bill Gates is in there, Greta Thunberg, John Kerry and others. And what they have been telling us is coming our way long before 2022. Listen. Climate change will kill five times as many people per year as the peak of the pandemic by the end of the century. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction. And all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth.

Five years, scientists predict we will have the first ice-free Arctic summer. Millennials and people and, you know, Gen Z and all these folks that come after us are looking up and we're like, the world is going to end in 12 years if we don't address climate change. Animals that can eat grass have very unusual stomachs. They leak natural gas both out the front and the back. Nobody knows how to get rid of that. How to get cows to stop farting. Exactly. But that's another big source of greenhouse gas emissions. OK, so that was John Kerry in the middle there saying in 2008, so by 2013, that the Arctic would be ice free, ice free, he said. And you heard the other predictions. AOC just a couple years ago said, we're going to be dead in 12 years, we got 12

more years. So did that did any of that pan out? Well, none of those have panned out so far. And I think it's important that in that history, again, the world has gotten a lot better. So I only take predictions from people who acknowledge the past and the present. And unfortunately, this rules out Bill Gates, whom I admire in many ways. But if he talks about, quote, climate change killing five times more people than COVID, well, climate change, that's a vague term, I would call it climate impact from rising CO2 levels. That's a side effect of fossil fuels. And fossil fuels, their overall effect, if you look at the benefits and side effects, has been to make our lives amazingly long, including amazingly safe from climate. So if he said, yeah, fossil fuels are amazing. They've made us unnaturally safe from climate. We're currently not experiencing

a climate crisis. We're actually experiencing a climate renaissance, but I'm afraid of the future for X, Y, and Z, then I would respect it. But instead he treats the present as terrible. Notice Greta, who's been miseducated by people like Bill Gates, who says people are dying. No, they're not. Not compared to the past. They're living. That's the story that needs to be told. And if you look farther back, and this is what I do in Chapter 2, which is called Catastrophizing Side Effects, you can see our leading institutions, including many thinkers that we've been listening to for 30-plus years and calling them experts, people such as Chief Science Advisor to President Obama,

John Holdren, they've been predicting imminent disaster from four catastrophes. So catastrophic resource depletion, catastrophic pollution, catastrophic global cooling, catastrophic global warming. And yet we have more resources than ever. We have higher environmental quality than ever. And we're safer from climate than ever. So I had to invent a new term to capture how wrong these guys are. They're not just wrong, they're 180 degrees wrong. And we really need to question whom we're designating as experts, given that they have a track record of being 180 degrees wrong about fossil fuel side effects, and they ignore fossil fuels benefits. There's something deeply wrong with our expert class on this issue, which is why I decided to become an expert myself and write a 420 page book, because I think we need a fundamental re the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000. Well, that hasn't happened. Another guy, you mentioned Obama's top science

advisor, John Holdren. Carbon dioxide, climate-induced famines could kill as many as a billion people before the year 2020. Didn't happen, and on and on this goes. If you read the book, you'll see he names names and gives you the exact predictions that did not come true. All right, in the time we have left, make the case for nuclear. So I think of the case for nuclear as nuclear is an amazing alternative for the future. You have a lot of people who are pro-nuclear who are anti-fossil fuels. Actually, Schellenberger used to be this. Now he's, I think he's pro-all energy and he recognizes the world needs more energy. And that's one thing that's great about him is his thinking evolves over time as he's exposed to new facts and new arguments. But there are people who are pro-nuclear that are hostile

to fossil fuels. I think that's a mistake because fossil fuels are totally necessary in the coming decades to provide the far greater amount of energy the world needs. But nuclear has unbelievable potential. I mentioned how concentrated oil is and how important that is. Nuclear material is far, far more concentrated than oil. It has this huge potential even one day for transportation. Right now, we already have nuclear-powered icebreakers, nuclear-powered submarines, nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. So you have this incredible potential to generate just an unbelievable amount of energy in a small amount of space.

The problem is we've been regressing on nuclear. Nuclear was a relatively cheap and certainly very reliable source of electricity in the 70s. Now it has been demonized and criminalized in the US to the point where it's about 10 times more expensive. We've gone from four years to make a nuclear plant to 16 years, and it can easily be canceled. We're in a nuclear tragedy right now. So what we need to do is we need to liberate nuclear, there's a whole bunch of anti, anti nuclear pseudo safety stuff we need to get rid of. And that's actually why my next I talked about, I give a plan for doing this in fossil future. But my next big project is what I call the energy freedom platform, which I'm

pushing the candidates this fall. And that includes one of the five planks is decriminalize nuclear, because if we don't radically change the the five planks is decriminalize nuclear, because if we don't radically change the laws that are demonizing and criminalizing nuclear, we're not going to get the nuclear innovation that we want. And that could really one day, you know, the long term replace fossil fuels. And in any case, it could provide far more energy for the whole world. And I'm all about I want the world to have far more energy. And I think long term, the only way we're going to get that is with a lot of nuclear. You know, the knock, to name a couple, one is nuclear waste and it not being well contained

and it getting into drinking water, et cetera, or playgrounds, what have you, and meltdown. Thoughts on that quickly? Sure, yeah. So the waste is actually the easiest waste to deal with, which is why we don't have actual problems with it. Right now, it's stored in pools of water that are not at all connected to drinking water. I was laughing about that. And then the meltdown is actually a good thing. What that means is that when nuclear goes wrong, which is rare and very, very rare, it doesn't explode like basically other forms of energy, which can kill people. It just overheats and it melts down and you have time to get away, you have time to recover, which is why we don't have deaths from radiation in the civilized world from nuclear. So recommend learning more about it in chapter six of my book and there are other resources as well. But it's such an amazing technology. And again, we have an anti-energy movement that's not only anti-fossil fuels and distorting the truth about

that, but also nuclear. What that should point out to people is there's something wrong with the way we're being taught about energy. And I submit it's because we have a movement that's really hostile to human impact on the planet. And so it's really hostile to all of our energy that impacts the planet, I believe mostly for the better. Alex Epstein, thank you so much. Good luck with the book. I'm sure my audience is going to love it. I appreciate you being on. Thanks, Megan. There is a verdict in the Johnny Depp versus Amber Heard defamation trial. All told, the jury was out for 12 hours and 45 minutes deliberating this case. Update from Long Crime Network, which says

that Johnny Depp will not be physically present for today's 3 p.m. verdict. He will be watching from the United Kingdom, where he had, quote, previously scheduled work commitments. Do not know whether Amber Heard will be there, but guaranteed they'll both be watching. We hope you'll watch and tune in to us tomorrow when we'll have a full reaction to what happens today. And we will also have Matt Walsh looking forward to him coming back first time since January on his new documentary with The Daily Wire. What is a woman? Which is available today. Check it out and hear him discuss it tomorrow. In the meantime, download The Megyn Kelly Show on Apple, Pandora, Spotify and Stitcher.

And go follow us on YouTube dot com slash Megyn Kelly where we'd love you to subscribe and smash that like button. Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.