The Megyn Kelly Show - Inappropriate Messaging to Our Kids, and Being Skeptical of Power, with Jeremy Boreing and Bryan Dean Wright | Ep. 297

Episode Date: April 11, 2022

Megyn Kelly is joined by Jeremy Boreing, co-founder and co-CEO of The Daily Wire, to talk about fighting back against progressive cultural drift and how quickly the drift happened, inappropriate messaging aimed at kids, Dr. Fauci's shifting commentary, why Boreing is starting a razor company to counter the woke mob, advertisers boycotting conservatives, The Daily Wire's push into kids programming, and more. Then, Bryan Dean Wright, host of the new podcast "The President's Daily Brief," to talk about the FBI set-up that led to zero guilty verdicts in the supposed Gov. Whitmer kidnapping plot, the truth about the Deep State, sharing "gossip" about Ukraine and Russia, Wright's background in the CIA, the need to be skeptical of government officials - particularly when it comes to Ukraine, the need to check a variety of sources for your information, the "white supremacist" talking point, 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 and day two of my sunglasses as I recover from LASIK. I expect to have my eyes back tomorrow. More on that later. Or maybe not. It depends. Maybe you're sick of LASIK. It worked brilliantly, by the way. I can see so well. But I'm not allowed to wear eye makeup until tomorrow. And I still have blood.

Very bloodshot eyes. She had blood coming out of her eyes. Well, this time it's true. On the show today, my old pal Jeremy Boring. I'm so excited that he's here. I've known him for years. I actually, this gave me the chance to study up on him, something you don't really do on your friends, right?

But I learned a lot. And I think you're going to learn a lot if you don't know Jeremy, which, I mean, if you don't, sad for you. Stay tuned because you're about to meet somebody amazing. He's fearless. He's somewhat behind the scenes, more in front of the scenes as well now lately, a thought leader in the conservative media, in really the movement behind conservative media and fighting back against woke culture. Jeremy, along with my pal Ben

Shapiro, is the co-founder of The Daily Wire, and he's helping change the view that conservatives are too old, not cool and only backwards looking. He says if conservatives want to win, they need to stop bitching and begging. And instead, they need to get creative and start building, stop bitching and begging and start building, building the future that they want for their families, for for themselves. And you're going to feel truly inspired by the way he talks about how to battle back. He's doing it. He's not just talking about it. He's doing it. Whether it's media, politics, entertainment, or even apparently the way we shave, he's got a plan for it all.

Joining me now is the anything but boring, Jeremy Boring, co-CEO of The Daily Wire and founder of the brand new razor company, there's a reason for that, Jeremy's Razors. How's it going, JB? So happy to be here and so happy to see you. And I didn't know that you had just had LASIK. And when the screen popped up and I saw you looking fabulous as always with your sunglasses, I felt really shamed. Like, I don't belong here. I'm not stylish. I'm not fashionable. You know, I decided to go for like a summer Maryland look today because if you're going to wear your sunglasses on the air, might as well just lean in.

Fabulous. Thank you. Well, we're going to get to how you restyled Ben Shapiro. One of the many things I learned about you. Little fashion king. I didn't know that in a minute. So I could use your fashion advice. But this is where I want a minute. So I could use your your fashion advice. But this is where I want to kick it off today. So much to talk about. Can we just talk about this news headline, though?

Dr. Fauci is back in the news since it's a slow news week. I guess they decided to book him again. This is what his new message on COVID. Jeremy's found a new message for April of 2022. And this is it. It's not going to be eradicated and it's not going to be eliminated. And what's going to happen is that we're going to see that each individual is going to have to make their calculation of the amount of risk that they want to take. We're going to have to live with some degree of virus in the community. Oh, really? Really? Jeremy? Oh. I had not seen that. Right? I had neither. So it's going to be up to us to determine our own individual risk. Thank you, benevolent leader. Unbelievable. I mean, I just can't wait for him to be banned from YouTube and Twitter for saying

so. Exactly right. You should ban him on the Daily Wire. I mean, it's remarkable, right? This guy's been lording over the rest of us for the last two years, while almost every rational person has been saying, yeah, you can't eradicate an airborne contagion. We're going to have to assume some risk. We're gonna have to make our own risk calculations. And we've essentially been called everything from grandma killers to Nazis for saying so. What's really amazing to me, though, I think we haven't seen this guy in, I don't know, two months or something, really. When the Dems started realizing they were polling badly on shutting down the world, destroying the mental health of children, breaking the economy and starting wars all over the place. They just got rid of Fauci altogether. And I like to think that his last gasp at fame is to come out as a diehard conservative.

That's what we're going to see from that. It's going to start sounding like Laura Ingraham day after day. You know, here's what ticks me off, though, because, OK, this is almost like the refunding the police. Do you know what I mean? Like, they do it quietly after they've completely screwed your life up, your community's life up, you know, to the cost of many untold millions. Because he, with the tail between the

legs quietly says it's going to be up to people to make their own individual risk assessment. You know, I have to learn how to live with covid. OK, you've already ruined people's lives. You've ruined the education of children, teenage girl suicides up 50 percent and so on. Just this week, my son, my sixth grader, on Saturday night, he was exposed to a friend who has COVID. As it turns out, the kid has COVID. So my son is considered a close contact. So guess what? He has to miss the next five days of school.

My son, who doesn't have COVID, he has no symptoms of covid. He can't go to school for five days because they're following the dumbass CDC recommendations that close contacts have to quarantine to for five days. And you know why? I'll tell you what. I mean, I love our school, but this is punitive because if my son were vaccinated, he could go right back to school and he would just have to take a test after five days. That's it. But they they're punishing the unvaccinated kids to try to guilt the parents into getting the vaccinations. Well, guess what? It's not going to work. In fact, it has the opposite effect on me. Yeah, that's right. Because you're ornery, which is one of the things I like about you. But what you're really saying, it is punitive, right? They're saying the vaccine doesn't prevent transmission. If your son did have it,

the vaccine doesn't really increase your son's chances of surviving it. He's young. He's going to survive it. I mean, almost statistically, certainly going to survive it. So there's actually no actual benefit to the policy they're taking, except, as you say, getting even. The one thing I disagree with you about, though, is you say that Fauci comes out tail between the legs and kind of whispers, hoping not to be heard, that now we have to make our own risk calculation. I don't find it that way at all. He went on national television and said it without even a grimace or a groan.

I think it just goes to show the complete power that the left has in all cultural institutions at this point, that he can spend two years saying one thing, now say something in complete contravention of what he's been saying all along. He never has to acknowledge that any change has occurred. It's just what he said yesterday was the science, what he says today is the science, what he says tomorrow will be the science. Same with refunding the police. They're never held to account. They're never held to any consequence. I say all the time, the way fact-checking works, which is in any sort of non-mainstream media, one of the great burdens that we have to face is all of the fact-checking works, which is one of the, in any sort of non-mainstream media, one of the great

burdens that we have to face is all of the fact-checkers, particularly in social media. And the missing context fact-check is the most egregious. Essentially, if you say, if the Daily Wire writes a story and we say, you know, like Joe Biden is the president, we'll get a fact-check, missing context. We didn't also say that he is a great president. Meanwhile, the left can wildly change their positions on any policy. They never get held to account. They can parrot talking points. I mean, almost everyone in America uses the term, don't say gay, when referring to the legislation down in Florida. That's a partisan talking point that you will hear echoed by the New York Times,

the Washington Post, CNN, the entire establishment media. Never are they fact checked for the fact that the bill doesn't say don't say gay anywhere in it. I mean, it's just remarkable the latitude that they have to say anything that they want to say, disconnected from anything they've ever said before with absolutely no, not even consequence in the form of a subtle pushback from anyone who's interviewing them. And then, but then did you see the amount of putback when the other side started to say, OK, we'll call it

the anti-grooming bill. That's what we'll call it because it's not a don't say gay. It's certainly not. So, you know, we say it's the anti-grooming bill. Oh, it's not. This isn't grooming.

What they what what these teachers want to do isn't grooming. How dare you? Like the indignation at spin the other way was everywhere. Yeah, it's what you're doing. It's an assault against those who have been groomed. Right. Yeah, basically. But that argument is essentially don't talk to my kid about your sex life. And the teacher who's like, how I if I want to say I was out with my partner over the weekend, I can't.

First of all, you can you can mention your partner. There's nothing in the Florida law that doesn't allow you to mention your partner. You cannot do sex education on, uh, homeless, homosexual lifestyle, et cetera, or transgender, uh, issues at the K through three levels. That's it. Until the kid is eight. Yeah. Education. That's it. It's, it's instruction in the class. It's not a reference to being out with your partner. And if I were gay and I had a partner and I said I was out with my partner, the kid said, what's a partner? I would say that's the person with whom I spend my life. And if I were gay, I'd say and she's this. And if they said you have a girl partner, I'd say, yes, go home and ask your parents about it. That's it. You know, you don't run afoul of anything. Our friend Vivek Ramaswamy calls it the wait till eight bill, which I think is far more accurate and really puts in context what we're talking about. We're talking about very, very, very young children being exposed to ideas from educators. By the way, ideas in many cases that the educators don't want the parents to know that they're exposing their children to, which maybe is the first indication that it's not something that should be going on. But to your point, of course, there are ways to talk about these issues. No one's suggesting, or no reasonable person is suggesting that we don't live in the world we actually live in.

What we're saying is there are right ways to navigate these waters and wrong ways to navigate these waters, and that parents have every right to determine how they want their children exposed to these ideas. These ideas, by the way, which are novel and radical. I mean, we can talk about transgenderism, we talk about homosexuality, homosexuality certainly in some form has always existed, but the way that we're treating these issues in our society right now is completely novel

in all of human history. And so if you're gonna take what definitionally are radical sex and gender theories, radical race theories also, which we're teaching to kids now, which have never existed, no one has ever thought or taught at any point in human history, I think it's worth saying, well, maybe kids aren't a great place to engage in social experimentation. And maybe kids need to be provided the most stable environment possible. And if we want to engage in these other debates, we should do it at the level of adults. But of course, we're not allowed to debate any of these issues as adults. You'll get shut down

out of social media, driven out of the public square. It's the real hubris of the left that they think that they can reorder society completely without having a single conversation about it. That's kind of the thing I gripe about. I'm like a speech absolutist, really. I think in particular on major issues, we have an obligation to actually talk about them. We have an obligation to ruffle each other's feathers and offend one another and really and really chew into these issues. And the left doesn't want any of that. They see speech as some sort of act of violence, which is just a too long. And I don't want to say it's just conservatives, because I think it's just rational people opposed to this crazy agenda have done as told. They've done as instructed, just kept their mouth shut. They didn't want to be called the names. And you've really been leading the battle of stop being so silent.

Fight. Yeah. Like speak up. To your point, we did a poll at the Daily Wire. We noticed something was happening in all the national polling around the Florida legislation, which is that instead of actually presenting the people being polled with the text of the bill itself, pollsters were framing language to present to parents or to the people being polled and the language was always really slanted. So we did a poll where we just presented a thousand people nationwide with the actual

text of the bill, 37% of them Democrats, 32% of them Republicans, the rest of independents. What we discovered is everyone opposes teaching kids under eight in public schools these radical sex and gender theories. The majority of Democrats, the majority of independents, obviously the majority of Republicans. So of course, it's not actually partisan where the average American is concerned. It's partisan only in the sense that the parties have the sort of radical elements in particular in the Democrat Party sort of drive the ship at the moment. But almost everyone agrees that kids don't need to be subjected to this kind of stuff. And that's why I think the Daily Wire has a lot of success right now when we do fight back against these kinds of ideas because yes, of course,

conservatives really support what we're doing. But I think a lot of people are offended by what's happening in the country, particularly where kids are concerned. I think a lot of people feel betrayed by companies like Disney, who were a major part of their childhood, probably their parents' childhood, and they always imagined would be an important part of their own children's childhood. And when you hear that, no, they've gone all in now on inculcating radical sex and gender theory into incredibly small children. That's just too much for people. Oh, I mean, I love it because people are like, they aren't teaching.

They're teaching tolerance or on the critical race theory. They're only teaching history. And I, having lived this firsthand with my own children, say, okay, whatever you can call, I don't care what you call it. You can call it whatever you want. We'll use whatever terms you want. My eight-year-old sat in a class

where they told him and his other little buddies that when they turned 18, they could chop off their penises if they wanted to become women and they could take puberty blockers between then and now, between eight and 18 to stave off manhood if that was their choice and when the

parents confronted the the science teacher on why she said that to them she said we take the conversation wherever the boys lead it oh sure okay so the eight so the eight-year-old boys led that and by the way totally inappropriate anyway if i followed the conversation every time my eight-year-old took me to an inappropriate place, I'd live there. My God, you don't do that as a responsible grownup. So that's number one. And then on the race stuff, again, you can call it whatever you want. Don't teach in my school, in my son's school, that quote, in every classroom where white children learn there is a future killer cop because that's what you wanted as mandated reading for every faculty member who has access to my two sons i don't you can call it whatever the hell you want screw you stop teaching it i don't crt and it's happening

so you need people who say this florida bill is unnecessary, tell it to my son's third grade science teacher. She was nine months pregnant, so we couldn't yell at her. But we were angry. We were angry at this woman for presuming to do what this bill now specifically says in Florida you may not do. Yeah, that's right. The left's favorite trick is do something radical. When anyone says, hey, that's radical, say we're not doing it. There's nothing radical is even happening.

Also, you aren't allowed to take any steps to stop if it were happening. And then within about six months, they'll say, yes, it's happening and it's good. And then after it fails miserably, they'll come back and say, we shouldn't do that. No one ever should have done it. We were never in favor of it. Yeah, we were never in favor of it. Exactly. Now, another school, two points in New york city we weren't at dalton but dalton's even crazier than our schools if that's possible or at least was it still is and uh they they were sort of going out on the limb we sort of covered the the gender stuff and the the race stuff uh but also the inappropriate like sex education like sex about your bodies whether it's kink right too much education about sex too soon.

This was a cartoon at Dalton. Is this soundbite or full screen team? I guess it's a soundbite. Oh, it's the woman who she even this woman wound up getting shamed for doing this because the parent body fought back. But here's this woman who was brought in to educate, I think it was kindergartners, first graders. Say again? Yeah, first grade on what happens to one's body parts. Listen to this. Hey, how come my penis gets big sometimes and points up in the air? That's called an erection.

Sometimes I touch my penis because it feels good. Sometimes when I'm in my bath or when mom puts me to bed, I like to touch my vulva too. You have a clitoris there, Kayla, that probably feels good to touch the same way Keith's penis feels good when he touches it. But have you ever noticed that older kids and grown-ups don't touch their private parts in public? Hmm, they don't? That's right, Keith. It's okay to touch yourself and see how different body parts feel, but it's best to only do it in private. Oh my God. This woman came in and she showed that video to a bunch of first graders. Unbelievable. Well, you hear about this

camp that's happening in Indianapolis where they're teaching third through fifth graders how to use a condom. Oh, my God. They've lost their mind. There's some great reporting that one of our Daily Wire reporters did on this. You pay $250, drop your third grade student off, and they learn how to put a condom on. By the way, in a mixed gender environment, they're not segregating the kids by gender because they say gender is a spectrum. So it'd be impossible to even know how to separate kids at this point. And all kids of all genders need to know how to put a condom on at eight years old.

I mean, it's absolute insanity. What I can't believe is that the left hasn't learned anything. I mean, look at what happened in Loudoun County last October. Look at the results of the election there last November, unseated. Terry McAuliffe put Youngkin in as governor there. No political group in America has ever been stupid enough to mobilize parents as a voting demographic until right now the left has somehow managed to turn parents into a voting demographic. And they're going to bear quite a harvest, I think, for their efforts. The gosh, I can't remember the number, but I was listening to

the Daily Wire's morning podcast. It's called Morning Wire. I love it. This morning, they were talking about something like a 19-point Republican advantage on the generic ballot right now. I mean, it's crazy. It's definitely double digits, and it hasn't been this promising for the GOP since Newt Gingrich and the contract with America back in 1994, I think. It's looking like it's going to be a bloodbath akin to what we saw during when Obama said he took a thumping after he pushed through Obamacare without majority support of the American people. I mean, because, as you say, they have mobilized parents and they won't back down. They backed off of defund the police, but they aren't backing off of this stuff at all.

The woke stuff, they won't back off of that. They can't. I mean, it's it's a trap of their own making, right? They've essentially mobilized the most radical elements of their base around these ideas. And now if they move off of them, they're worried that they can absorb the loss of one election, but they can't absorb the loss of their base. I think that that's what their calculation is right now. I think most Americans are fairly stunned at what a radical Joe Biden is as president on these social issues. They think we've known Joe Biden since he was literally too

young to actually serve in the Senate and had to wait for his birthday in order to be sworn into his seat. So they think we understand the guy. I think what they failed to actually comprehend is that someone survives in politics that long by being a shrewd political operator, and he understands the moment that he's in where his base is concerned. Does Nancy Pelosi not believe in gender and if not in the gender binary? And if not, when did she stop believing in the gender binary? Her entire career has essentially been premised on the gender binary and the feminism of the 60s, 70s, 80s. So I mean, the entire notion is nonsensical that they actually think these things. What they think is they aren't going to be able to win if they don't say them. And so I think that's the trap they're

in. And you hate to see it. You hate to see it happen to such nice guys. You hate to see it. Well, was it this weekend, the girl from Harry Potter. God, girl, right. OK, some of us didn't believe that society could ever get this. Like, of course, you know, you're if you're a 10 year old girl has to see a penis in the locker room, you just and you have a problem with it. That's your bigotry. You just suck it up and that's your daughter's bigotry and you just educate her better. So she's not a bigot like you.

Some of us thought this was an insane point of view that we could never get that far out there on things like, you know, people who menstruate or chest feed or. But that sage Dennis Prager, who, God, he takes a beating. He's always taken a beating. He's a conservative guy. He's brilliant. But he's been ahead of the curve on warning on some of these social issues, and people are like, lunatic, conservative, Bible thumper, dismiss, dismiss.

Listen to Dennis Prager, this is Soundbite 7, a couple years ago, predicting the future, 2019. To say America's anti-Semitic is a lie. To say it is racist is a lie. These are giant left-wing lies. To say

that men can menstruate is a lie. And that is now that is what is said. Wait, wait, wait. You never heard it. Check it out, folks. Check it out. Anyone who says a man cannot menstruate is considered transphobic.

I missed this whole story. You did. You did. I agree. Tell me where you're getting this. Just Google it. Can men menstruate? Who is saying this? You're talking about a very small percentage. Oh, really? Then how do you allow men, biological men, to run against women in the races in Connecticut and set all the high school records? Okay, I know. They're called men. The Nation magazine said they're women. men to run against women in the races in Connecticut and set all the high school records. OK, but they're called men.

No, no. The Nation magazine said they're women. But I would agree with you on that. The way you framed it is nonsense. Even Martina Navratilova came out and said, this is ridiculous. You might as well not have women's sport. This is a far cry from saying men can menstruate. I agree. But that's not where anyone went with that,

but you. At the University of Berkeley men's room, tampons are given out. Check it out. Dennis, I remember you in the old show. You were a little more reasonable. What did I say

that wasn't unreviewed? You said that we think that men menstruate and no one does. Have you heard about it? I'm a doctor. I missed that one, I confess. And this is one of the premier reporters. I mean, he knows everything. That's crazy.

Yeah, three years. Wow. Three years it took to get from nobody thinks that to essentially now even Bill Maher himself is a is an advocate against this kind of insanity that's that's permeating our culture. And challenging that, somebody will call you a bigot. Okay, call me a bigot all day long. Men do not menstruate. Only women do that. Only women give birth to babies. And only women are women. And then there are trans women.

And I understand there's room for them too, but that's not the same thing as a woman. Yeah, right. I mean, you're taking kind of a classical liberal point of view, which says that we can actually tolerate differences in our society. And unfortunately, the left has become utterly intolerant and says, no, absolutely no dissent will be accepted. You must say that reality is what we say reality is. And this is why I think Prager seems prescient because he, Dennis sort of occupies this unique space in the national conversation where he does take a very religious view of how civilization actually works, but it isn't like a

preacher's religious point of view. It's more like a theologian's, although that's not really the appropriate word in Judaism. It's more like a theologian's point of view. Dennis is actually assuming that things that humans have believed were true for thousands of years are true, and then looking at what's happening in the culture and how it juxtaposes with that. And so he can kind of see the encroaching Gnosticism of the sort of separation of the mind and the body, which is a very old heresy in Christianity, which Dennis is well aware of. And you see that really playing out with this trans movement. You see it playing out with half of Silicon Valley believing that they can upload the ones and zeros that are the human mind into a system and separate

you completely from your body and you'll never die. Right? What? And that makes for some great science fiction, but it makes absolutely no sense. It doesn't even pass the most common sense like smell test, but they believe it because they're much, much smarter than common sense. And that's kind of where we are. We're in this weird moment where everyone is just too damn smart to actually accept that anyone who ever lived before them could have been right about anything. While at the same time, everyone is far too fearful of being publicly criticized or driven out of the public square to actually say that the king is naked when he obviously is that i mean his prediction and the way three years ago i mean i was make i say maybe 2015 you know when i first

was but 2019 three years ago my god yeah um and the the the the distance like just disbelief that that could be happening anywhere now of course billher, he would be very familiar with that. Ronan Farrow, all of those panelists would be very familiar with that line. And I it scares me like I don't we have to stop it. And the only way to start stopping it is to start talking about it and how absurd it is. You guys have been doing that. The Daily Wire has got a lot of great commentators. I love them all, including Michael Knowles. And you always tease him. You always tease him. So mean,

God King, so mean. So he got not in trouble, but one of your advertisers decided to attack him, to attack the show, because he was standing up for gender as being a legit thing i don't remember his exact quote but some stupid razor company named harry's had been an advertiser on the daily wire and they made the mistake of listening to a twitter account that i think literally had two followers what a bunch of dumb assasses. And tell us what happened, Jeremy. Yeah. Well, Michael made the mistake of saying that gender dysphoria has historically been categorized as a mental illness. And to your point, someone on Twitter with two followers, I believe a high school student with two followers, pointed this out to Harry's,

who had been a longtime advertiser on not only that show, but across the Daily Wire. And they immediately sprung into action to alert the woke mob to the fact that there'd been a terrible misunderstanding. They had absolutely no idea. They were outraged, shocked, I tell you, to discover that the conservative media company that they did business with had conservative points of view. They put out a tweet saying that our views were inexcusable and that they were going to end their sponsorship right away and also review all of their sponsorships for other signs of, quote, values misalignment. And they're going to put

it on your permanent record. Yeah, put it on your permanent record. Exactly. Obviously, you know something is wrong when you understand that corporations are inherently cowardly because controversy they think is bad for the bottom line. Of course, that makes absolute sense. But you know that something's really out of whack when their cowardice manifests in this way, that they are more afraid of a high school student with two Twitter followers than a major media company with 48 million social media followers under management. They have absolutely no fear of us because we, the conservative media sort of institution, have absolutely never stood up to them. And the reason we've never stood up to them is by and

large that until very, very recently, there have been large linear networks that controlled the distribution of all of your favorite conservative shows all the way down to Rush Limbaugh. Rush Limbaugh needed premiere, he needed iHeart, he needed access to those 600 some radio stations. When they run boycotts against Tucker, Tucker needs Fox News. He needs access to those affiliate stations around the country. Fox needs those carriage fees. And so there's always been this large linear network between the commentator and the commentator's audience. But that's not true in podcasting. And what really happened here is when Ben appeared at the March for Life back in 2018, obviously abortion is a controversial issue. It's also an issue where at least half of Americans agree with Ben's point of view, maybe arguably more than

half. And yet $1.5 million worth of advertisers walked out on us the next day because Ben had the audacity to appear at the March for Life. Now keep in mind, in 2018, we really needed a million and a half dollars. That was a significant percentage of the Daily Wire's revenue that year. And I got on the phone with these advertisers, and I got on the phone with the ad agencies that represent them, and I got on the phone even with our agency partners at Westwood One, who've been very good partners to us, and yet we're very much on the wrong side of this issue. And I told them, it's one thing if an advertiser wants to take their dollars away from us, that's their right, that's business. Advertisers come and advertisers go all the time.

If they don't like the cut of our jib, if the ad isn't performing, whatever, they can leave. But if they make public statements in which they attack us, they're partners who have leveraged our own credibility to tell our audience about their product. And if they attack our audience, 50% of the population who we try to speak to, then I'm going to use that same ad inventory to tell our large audience that those advertisers don't want their business. And you would think a nuclear bomb had gone off on this phone call. You can't do that. That's the worst idea I've ever heard. That'll drive out all the advertisers. Everyone will be afraid to advertise with you. You'll lose everything." And I said, I won't lose anything except money. I said, you guys don't actually control our access to the airwaves. At that time, Ben's audience was like a million downloads a day.

It's substantially bigger than that now. But I said, we talk to a million people every day with the advertisers, and we'll talk to a million people every day without the advertisers. We talk to a million people every day with the agency support. We'll talk to a million people every day without the agency support. You have absolutely no leverage on us. There's a new sheriff in town. We're not going to play the game. Do not let these advertisers attack us or our audience. Again, they want to go, happily show them the door. If they want to attack us, we're going to get into a war with them. It's on. Right. Because they're not the only ones with market power and the ability to sway an audience.

All right. Now, wait, that's a good tease for me to hold the audience over. I'm going to squeeze in an advertisement of my own because the way that Jeremy and the Daily Wire fought back is absolutely brilliant. And it's working. It's working. So we can all learn something. We'll play his new ad for you right after this ad. Back with me now, Jeremy Boring, co-founder and co-CEO of The Daily Wire, which is

expanding and becoming more and more powerful. And that is a great thing for America. We need something. We need a counter to the left's total dominance over so many facets of our culture. And rather than just sit around whining about it, Jeremy Boring and Ben Shapiro and their backers decided to do something about it. And that leads us to your response, Jeremy. I mean, I realize this is, this is just one small battle that you guys are fighting. You've, we'll get to the, the large, large, large battles and big, big money that you're investing in fighting bigger cultural

battles. But this one's smart and it's very indicative of how you guys are going about it. So you were told back in 2019, you're insane. No advertiser will, will come to you if you do this. And you said, we don't care we're going to keep going with or without advertisers and you by the way were shoring up your fan base with subscribers which was smart so it was like we're not going to be totally dependent on the advertisers because we know it's our side that always gets canceled so we're going to say and you guys put it out there you say please support us just in case we get canceled like we need to continue bringing you that product. And by the way, I think you guys just announced some big, big numbers on

the subscriber base. 600,000, is that what it is, paying subscribers now? 600,000 paying subscribers. They make it possible for us to ensure that we can go toe-to-toe with these advertisers. And someone has to go toe-to-toe with these advertisers. There's a complete imbalance that happens where essentially only conservatives face the problem of advertiser walkouts. And I say walkouts because there's always this cascading effect to it. Almost never does one advertiser leave you in a vacuum because when they virtue signal on their way out the door, when they, like Harry's did to us, put out these tweets that say our values are inexcusable, they're essentially telling all of your other advertisers that the only excusable thing to do would be to also drop. And so you wind up with two or three or four of these advertisers always

leaving at the same time, which can do real economic damage to your business. It makes it an attack on the business. It's not merely an act of self-defense by the corporation who's trying to protect themselves from the woke mob. It's also an offensive act against our business. And that's why I just don't think we can put up with it anymore. I think we have to be able to stand up against it. And so I essentially self to the pledge that I would go toe to toe with the next company that did this to us. And I didn't. A couple years go by. There's another episode. Some advertisers walked out. I talked big again about what I was going to do. And I could tell the agencies didn't really believe me. They were tired of being on hearing me rant and rave. They did go push back on those advertisers and brought some of them back to the table, got them to delete some of their offensive tweets, and I sort of calmed down. But when the Harry's thing happened, I thought, you know, I'm essentially the boy who cried wolf here. If I don't actually act on this, then my threats mean nothing. I've got to put my money

where my mouth is. And so I didn't even call our agency partners when Harry's attacked us publicly. I didn't call the agencies that represent Harry's. I didn't try to call Harry's directly. I just letcott these institutions when all of the institutions are essentially infiltrated by the left today? You still need a razor. So whether you dump Harry's and you go over to Gillette, who puts out commercials essentially saying that masculinity is now toxic. In other words, you have no real options because there are strange confluence of social posturing, ESG, investing on the street, and the left's enormous power to boycott, and horrible HR laws that put all these companies essentially at the mercy of their youngest and least experienced and least valuable employees, there's just nowhere to go. So I thought, well, the only real answer is to build an alternative.

And we spent a year building Jeremy's Razors, which we enhanced four weeks ago. To great fanfare. I think, you know, some say, Megan, I'm not one to brag, but many people have told me the greatest commercial that they've ever seen. Stop it and let the audience decide. We have about a minute of the two-minute ad queued up. Listen to this. Do you remember when there were two genders

and only one and a half of them had to shave their mustaches? Oh, hi. I'm Jeremy Boring, CEO and God King of The Daily Wire. Harry's razors used to advertise on our shows. They're a great product, and we were happy to do it. That's before some peon who works for me went and said that boys are boys and girls are girls. And that was just too much for Harry's.

They condemned our views. Views held by millions of Americans and virtually every human who's walked the planet until about 15 minutes ago as inexcusable. And they dropped their ads from our network because of what they called values misalignment. You're damn right our values are misaligned. And it's not just Harry's either. Gillette razors used to be the best a man could get. Then they decided that men are too toxic. Unless you're the kind of man who teaches his daughter to shave her beard.

If that makes sense to you, keep buying Gillette. But if you've had enough of the woke bullshit and you're tired of paying companies like Harry's and Gillette to hate you, you can buy my new razor instead. He took a flame thrower, but he was running i love that and now you want people to buy jeremy's razors jeremy's razors last i check has more twitter followers than gillette does and they've been on twitter since 2009 you've been on for a month, not even. And how are the sales doing?

Great. And we're closing in on 60,000 razor subscriptions at the moment, which we think is a pretty good first month. So you know what? I should have remembered this because I was shaving. I wasn't shaving. I was shopping with my daughter and we were talking about razors and we were in the toiletry aisle at CVS and she was showing me the different things and she picked up Daisy. And you know what, Jeremy, I have to tell you, like I'm a child of the 70s and 80s and I did nothing other than watch TV. My parents never told me to play outside. They were just like watch more television.

So I did. And it came to me like the ones that really like almost as good as your ad. When you shave with Daisy, you go a little crazy. Oh, you want to show off your legs. All you want to show is your smooth, soft skin. You crazy Daisy shave. Almost as good as Jeremy's razors. I'm tired of putting up there.

They're bullshit. High praise. Of course, my commercial is hilarious and fabulous and everyone will love it. It's not the best commercial ever made. It's just the best commercial made in a long time. I actually think it's resonating with people because 10 years ago, this was like every third commercial on TV was irreverent and sexy and funny. And now you watch the Super Bowl and every ad gets described as important or beautiful. It's so true. Nobody wants important advertisements for consumer goods.

So we just made an old school commercial and the response has been unbelievable. The social media response, enormous. The video has gotten, I don't know, 15, 16 million plays so far. And as I said, we've sold 60,000 razors. A, because I think people just respond to, oh, I remember when we could have fun with, I remember we could have fun watching something. And two, because they're just glad that we're punching somebody in the mouth for this, what seems like never ending series of losses that we take in the culture. You know, I like what you're saying. They insult you. They insult you.

They insult Knowles, who takes a beating in that ad. You do not give the return high five, left him hanging. But they insult you. They insult Knowles, who takes a beating in that ad. You do not give the return high five, left him hanging. But they insult you. They insult Knowles. They insult your audience. It's an attack not just on you, but on your audience to say that these are despicable values or whatever, however they phrased it. Bullshit. That's not how the vast majority of Americans feel. That's right. Every person working at Harry's who's above the age 30 had these exact same views in 2017. I mean, it's absurd to think that something this novel and brand new can instantaneously become the only acceptable point of view. And so, yeah, I think that our audience and even an audience more broad than the Daily Wire's audience, a bigger cross section of Americans are simply tired of these dynamics, these market dynamics where there are no alternatives. And so basically the premise at The Daily Wire is let's do something about it. Let's build alternatives.

Let's have an affirmative positive view of the future. Let's do something constructive instead of just lamenting and grieving all the things that we've lost. Why don't we get busy building the things that can be? Like the alternative to Disney. the proud alternative to Disney, like the alternative to Disney. That's right. You know, we've been working on kids content over here at the Daily Wire for the last three months. We've been developing a couple of animated shows. We weren't going to announce them until, you know, end of the year when we get past the election and

all of the kind of politics of the moment. But Disney leaked those Chris Ruffo leaked those unbelievable tapes from Disney of people saying, yeah, we have a not so secret gay agenda. And we're going to put many, many, many, many more examples of all of this into our content aimed at incredibly small children. And we thought, well, we can't sit on this anymore. Somebody's got to get out there and say something. And we are doing something. So let's announce it. We announced that we were starting our DW Kids program to sort of coincide with all the entertainment we've been making since 2020.

And the reception is unbelievable. And to your point, I think this is a far more important fight than Jeremy's Razors, as much as I love the Razor company. This is the most important fight that we're in. This is the fight for our ability to raise our kids in a safe environment where we don't have to pre-screen everything, where we don't have to explain how their own eyes lie to them, how, you know, the historic combined wisdom of every single human who's ever walked the face of the earth was wrong. And only the ideas that have been cooked up by gender studies majors could possibly be right. So I think the most important thing we're doing is this kid's offering. And I think people are going to love it.

I don't know if you've seen any of our movies that we've launched over the last 18 months. I know what people expect from us. Their expectations are quite low. And I think when they actually see the content,

they can't believe that we're serious about it, that it's not a joke. You got the two guys from, refresh my memory where they like a legit veggie tails veggie tails the two guys who did veggie tails so they're animators and they know how to do this and you yourself are of hollywood uh you're you know formerly a hollywood producer and so you know what you're doing you know how to make great content you just haven't been focused on you've been focused on news content but this is part of expanding the daily wire to, to be more of

a massive conglomerate that's fighting back against these left wing dominant culture companies that are trying to shove their agendas down our throats. And you've been making the very valid point, which is look is as long as they, whatever their values were, as long as they stayed neutral in their product, we would still patronize them. We would. And frankly, you know, everybody needs razors and everybody needs children's content, whether it's books or movies or what have you. So they just haven't had a lot of alternatives if they wanted to make a cultural point. You know, they can't it's not realistic to say, like, don't shave and don't turn on the television and never go to the movie with your children. But now there's a realistic alternative. It's crazy to me that this hasn't happened prior to

you guys in any meaningful way. But I have a friend who was just, just telling me that she let her two young children sit there watching a movie. I was like, Oh, Disney, you know, we as moms, we trust Disney dads to like, here you go. The kids are three and five. And, uh, she turned on red panda that sounds fun it's a movie about a little panda it's disney and then she left she did her chores you know there's whatever she's she's cleaning the house with whatever she's doing and she later finds out that her she was subjecting her three and a five-year-old to a movie about periods it's about menstruation what right they're talking about tampons like Wait, no, no. I'll talk to my three-year- can actually win any of these arguments. I don't think the average adult isn't sitting

around waiting to be convinced that boys aren't boys and girls aren't girls. I'm like you. We have a range of opinions at The Daily Wire. It's always fun when CNN says, far right outlet The Daily Wire, blah, blah, this and blah, blah, that. I think, man, if we're far right, what does that mean? We have a very disparate series of strains of conservatism that get expressed from very Matt Walsh, the theocratic fascist, to Michael, what's his name, who's really a Catholic integralist. So mean. Common good guy, Ben, who I think is sort of an intellectual product of the Tea Party. He's a kind of traditional Reagan-type American conservative. I'm the most liberal of everybody here. I'm a Hollywood conservative. I like to make things. I like to dream about the future. Nevertheless,

certainly every one of us could get on board with a world where we accept people who are different than us. That's not a problem. Certainly not a problem for me. I just don't want you to tell me what I have to say. I don't want you to tell me what I have to think. Don't tell me what I have to do. And I sure don't want you telling little bitty children all of these things. As Matt Walsh likes to point out, kids believe in Santa Claus.

Their grasp on reality is fairly tenuous. So that's a really exploitative thing that Disney is now doing. It's an exploitative thing that these teachers who oppose the bill down in Florida are doing. They really want to be alone with your kids so that they can teach their kids your values without you actually interfering in any way, without you having anything to say about it. It's bullshit. We got to do something about it. Daily Wire is doing something about it. I don't think we're the only ones doing something about it, but I'm proud that we are actively participating in that. Well, I'm proud of you too. All right. I promised the audience I would mention how you styled Ben.

Jeremy styled Ben. He found little Ben Shapiro. I think I found Ben Shapiro before you found Ben Shapiro. Did I? I think I did. I don't know. When did you find little Ben? I like it. He was on my show in 2013 on America live. Yeah. I got involved with Ben, uh, probably 2012. We were introduced.

You just said that. Cause I said, we were introduced by Mark masters. Stop it. You know, it must, it must actually, it was earlier.

It was 2011. I know it was 28. So I met 20. I met him in the cradle. That's what I meant to say. All right, I got to go because we're a hard wrap. But you're the one who made him so beautiful. Ben Su called me when Andrew Breitbart died.

So I know it had to be before 2012. Yeah, oh, good point. Well, in any event, you're the reason he's a star. He has a lot to thank you for. And so do we. You're awesome, Jeremy. Thanks for coming on. I hope you come back.

Thanks for having me. Rock on. Our next guest is Brian Dean Wright, former CIA officer and host of the newly launched podcast, The President's Daily Brief. Lots to discuss today, including no supposed domestic terrorists being found guilty in the supposed kidnapping plot of Governor Gretchen Whitmer. Not to mention the situation down at the U.S.-Mexico border. Lots going Gretchen Whitmer. Not to mention the situation down at the U.S.-Mexico border. Lots going on. Welcome, Brian. Great to have you here. A very good day to you. Okay, so let's kick it off there. The left made a big deal out of this trial about these guys and

the alleged kidnapping of Governor Whitmer and how they'd worked together. And this was a symptom of what's wrong with the country under President Donald Trump, who's radicalized people and so on and so forth. We finally got our verdict. And by the way, the feds never lose. They never lose. If they've charged you, you're pretty much screwed because unlike local DAs, they just have the goods. They don't go to trial if they don't have the goods. But we had questions. We had questions in this case. God bless Julie Kelly. Have to give her the tip of the hat. Amen.

Right? Because she's been all over this, same way she's been all over the January 6th defendants. And of course, she was written off as some loon. She was right. These guys,

they didn't have anything against them. They didn't say nice things. They weren't fans of the governor. They didn't talk, you know, super sweet and aren't going to be invited to Buckingham Palace anytime soon for, you know, tea with the queen. But there are two the only two men were found not guilty and the other two mistrial.

The jury couldn't agree on the charges. So you tell me as a former CIA officer what this tells us about our deep state, our security state, not security. What does it tell us? Yeah, well, let's get into the what is a deep state, our security state, net security. What does it tell us? Yeah. Well, let's get into the what is a deep state second, and let's first unpack what the heck happened here. Because for folks who aren't following this story, it can be a little bit confusing. But what you need to know is that you, your government, your taxpayer dollars, set up a bunch of guys who otherwise would not have engaged in any kind of criminal behavior. And the only reason they were able to be charged is because the government gave them the platform to commit terror. Right. So the background of this, a bunch of guys who spent most of their time, I think, talking politics, libertarian ideas, huge fans of guns. And from what I understand, massive amounts of alcohol, crazy amounts of weed.

They were high as kites sitting around talking about whatever it is that came to their mind. So a part of that, to your point, is they just didn't like the government, a lot of them libertarian. And the crazy part of the story is as they started thinking about the ways that they could strike back and they're drunk and stupor, one of the guys decided to go to the FBI and say, yeah, we have a problem. I think these guys are bad. Two months later, he says to the FBI, you know what, actually, I don't think so. That's when the FBI actually sets up this operation to take this group of terrorists down. So as an American, I think not only myself, everybody watching the show, we should now understand very clearly that the FBI

will take you, set you up for a horrible set of charges, not because you're actually going to do it, but because you've complained or bitched, et cetera. And that's really, really chilling. So I think that the lesson that I take from this is that we should all be on the phone and our emails calling our senators or representatives saying this power should be taken away from the FBI absolutely immediately because it's being abused. That's my take on what this horrible case in Michigan really shows us. But to me, it seems tied into the distrust that we have with, in particular, the FBI, but also the CIA. It's just we don't trust this group of people to work for us as opposed to against us anymore. You are so absolutely right. Back in 2017,

we all learned why this group of people doesn't deserve our trust. You see, that's when James Comey acknowledged that he took classified information and gave it to The New York Times, not because of any grand reason of corruption, but rather he wanted a special prosecutor, Bob Mueller, to be appointed to investigate these collusion allegations. Now, look, Comey could have taken that information, those allegations, his concerns to Capitol Hill, to the oversight committees who could have in turn done the investigation. But he didn't. Comey leaked it because he wanted that special prosecutor. His own personal biases, his own personal politics led him to take matters into his own hands. And that's really the definition of the deep state. Let me take you back in time. 1990s, a guy named Aldrich Ames, he was spying for the Soviets. He was a CIA officer. When the Bureau interviewed him and asked him, why did you do it? Why did you commit treason against your country and speak to the Soviets, become their spy? He said, I know what's best for the nation's security, and I'm going to act on it. That's the definition of the deep state. It's someone who doesn't give a damn about laws and rules. They care about their own personal politics, their own beliefs,

and they are the ones who should lead the nation, not to run for office, but instead stay wherever they're at in the FBI or the CIA, the NSA, et cetera. And they're going to use their powers that the American people have given to them, and they're going to act on it based on whatever they desire to do. That's why the American people mistrust because of people like James Comey and others, and they have reason to mistrust these folks. Call them deep state, whatever you want. It's real, and we have absolutely real reasons not to trust them. Yeah.

I mean, like Strzok and his gal pal, too, they didn't help any, right? Or they're wanting to bring down Trump, making it perfectly clear and thinking they were above the law, even though they were supposed to be the law at the FBI. Let me back up because I want to know a little bit more about you. You so you are a former CIA officer, but where did you grow up? Like, take us back to young Brian, because I'm sure you weren't thinking back then CIA officer, like no parent looks at their kid. Well, maybe some do. I don't think CIA, right? Because some are quite clever at hiding facts. Right, right. Yeah. The sneaky little ones. You're like, all right, CIA, I can see it. You know, I grew up on my family's ranch in Eastern Oregon. My family's, pardon me, has been farming and ranching since the 1800s. We homesteaded there.

And I knew from a very young age that I wanted to do something different. I wanted to keep exploring in the world. And so I think as I grew up, doing something of service, whether it be the military or in the CIA, was really attractive to me. You know, it was a great place and a great time to grow up. Politically, my family was mostly conservative Democrats. But as time moved on, you know, our family started to change, too. You know, our little small farming community, we had a timber mill and it shut down because environmental concerns and our little town started withering and frankly dying. And so a lot of people started falling into really bad habits,

a lot of booze, a lot of drugs. And as I saw that, including in my own family, I was like, I'm going to make something of myself. I'm going to do something different. And as I do that, whatever that is, I'm never going to forget where I came from. I'm never going to forget the struggle of the people in my own family, in my own community. And so I was so fortunate to be selected back, uh, back in 2001, work for the CIA started just after the nine 11 attacks. Let's go there. What were you doing? How old were you? What were you doing? How, how are you selected? Did you apply? Did you, how did it happen? Yeah. So I tossed in an application online. That's it. Uh, they gave me a call and they said, we'd like to have a chat with you.

And so we started this process. What were your qualifications at that point? Like I always picture it like, you know how these beautiful girls like, you know, Giselle, they have a story like I was walking down the street and then the model search found me and you see Giselle and you're like, yes, that makes sense. That's kind of how I picture it with the CIA. Like there I was with my furtive glasses. Like today I'm ready to be recruited by the CIA today.

I'm ready. Right. Like I could be, I could try to do damsel in distress. I could try to do like international woman of mystery. How do you get the tap on the shoulder? Yeah. Well, obviously I don't have the face of Giselle or anything close to it. You do.

So you would have been hired. So I'm not sure where the hell they hired me. Obviously you have a face for radio. You know, my focus academically was international studies in Latin America. I'd spent some time in the former Yugoslavia volunteering for different relief organizations, working with refugees. So I had this inclination that I could share about international affairs and that I understood them at a relatively young age. I was 24 at the time, which is very, very young. Most folks are well into their early 30s.

So it was a little bit unusual. And then I just got in front of them. And without my Giselle looks, I had to use charm. I had to use my smarts. And somehow I tricked them. It's so climactic that you filled out a form online. I wanted something better. I wanted like, well, I was holding up a bank and they flipped me. Right. I've got to work on this story. It is not good enough. So how long were you active in the CIA?

Yeah, for well over a decade, I was involved in the intelligence community, generally speaking, the CIA for well over those 10 years. And then I've had a very, very tremendous honor and pleasure of teaching the next generation of America's spies. So that's been a lot of fun as well. Okay. So you can be of the agency, but be critical of the whole system, the intelligence system. How do you square those two things, right? Because it sounds like you didn't have an entirely bad experience and you stayed connected, but yet you believe in the deep state. So explain that to me. Yeah.

Look, when we walk in as a young officer, when we first walked in, they talked to us very explicitly about the importance of speaking truth to power. And that means something, right? It meant truth to power. And that means something, right? It meant something to me then, it means something now. When you know that your own government is falling short of what it's supposed to, in spirit or in law, it is your obligation to stand up. And that's not just the country, generally speaking, or even the policymakers, that's your own colleagues who do things that are improper or wrong. I remember very early on, there was a guy who was using some of his tools to check on the text messages and phone calls of his ex-girlfriend.

So obviously that was not a way that he was supposed to be using his authorities and power, and he was fired. And he should have been because he abused his position. So it starts there for folks like me, when we walked in, we call out things that are wrong. But I'll tell you, the later that I got in my career, there were things happening where, and I wish I could go into details, but there were folks at the CIA who were lying to the National Security Council and lying to the staff of the president saying that some of the things that we were doing were really, really effective when in fact they weren't. And we knew that they weren't effective, but by not telling all the truth, it allowed us to paint a very rosy picture. And so towards the end of my time at the agency,

while I was so grateful to have been there, to learn so much stuff, to be that young farm kid who manages to go around the world and do incredible things, it also opened up my eyes to the politics of intel. And those politics are real. And those politics protect the CIA and its authorities and its operations, its personnel. And sometimes it acts against the best interests of policymakers. And that's because you get a bunch of these folks, whether you call them deep staters or just longtime, you know, administrative people who really forget their oath. They forget the mission. And that is to be of service to the American people,

to be of service to the, to the president and ultimately understand that your paychecks is being given to you by a bunch of folks out there in this country who don't understand the problems, but you should, and you do. So stick with the mission. And instead they let their personal politics get caught up in all of it. And I didn't see that at the agency. Let's talk about the politics because I never really thought about the FBI or the CIA as political, politically motivated organizations. You know, I thought it was all about the law, the greater good. So dumb. But anyway,

that's what I thought. And I thought Comey was a above board guy. There was a story at the hospital bed with Comey and Mueller. I loved it. I was like, you know how Trump caused complete meltdowns by people at like CNN, who we thought were kind of normal prior to Trump, but now we realize are lunatics, or at least went insane because of him. So what camp are they in? The CIA, the FBI? Well, so historically, we have seen the politicization of both of those entities, both the CIA and the FBI. I mean, J. Edgar Hoover is the most infamous example of the very beginning era of the FBI. So it's not new. The question is, why is it so blatant and why is it so public and ugly? And actually, at the end of the day, why are these folks within the CIA and FBI, particularly those who have left, why are they so unapologetic

about being so political? And then when they're wrong, they never apologize. It's like there's no shame. So we know that it was over 50 individuals, former intelligence officers, some of them I actually know quite well. They signed that letter that the Hunter Biden laptop was fake Russian disinformation. Now, all of them should have known to keep their mouth shut because there were no forensic evaluation yet of that laptop. But they went ahead and they gave their gravitas, not just their name, but they represented the CIA and the NSA. And it gave a lot of voters the impression that, yeah, that laptop in no way could be actual or real. But in fact, it was. And a lot of voters went to the polls believing

people like these 50 plus intelligence officials. So that's the part that I think is new, that is shocking. It's a bunch of folks who absolutely have no problem showing their political colors. And then even when they're wrong, they never apologize. They don't care because actually the whole point was engaging to some degree of propaganda, right? It's disinformation. They knew damn well that it wasn't going to be or likely could be, I should say, a legitimate laptop. It was real.

They knew that, but they lied so they could achieve a political goal or outcome. And that's the part that I think is so worrisome and so alarming and ultimately undermines our republic. It's so hard for the average Joe sitting at home to figure out. I mean, that one, most people on the right got because they trusted the New York Post. They read the report. If you spent two minutes actually reading the story, watching Bobulinski and Tucker, you knew it was real.

You knew this wasn't made up. But people who don't watch Fox, people who don't read the New York Post were just told one thing, which is it's disinformation. Move on. And the Russians do plant disinformation over here regularly. So it's like, oh, OK. Plus, it's not Joe Biden. It's Hunter Biden. So if you wanted to move on, you kind of had a reason to. It's like, that's just the sun. the regular Joe to figure out what's propaganda coming from our guys, coming from our own president, press and, you know, people who work for us in the federal government. I think that last week there was a report from NBC, a reporter that actually has really good sources within CIA. And he said that the Joe Biden administration has willingly started to leak and share low confidence intelligence with the American people on what's happening in Ukraine. So what that means is that they're basically sharing gossip and rumor. I mean, it's coming from the CIA or the NSA, but they've done no vetting, no corroboration. And so they're just saying to America, hey, we think all this is true. American intelligence officials say.

But that is so incredibly dangerous to just be putting out garbage intel to the American people. I mean, it suggests there's something else going on here. And in fact, we know what happens when you put out garbage intel, right? So in the run-up to the Iraq war, there's a very infamous operation, Curveball, a man who was a liar, but said there was weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And we believed him. We didn't do the work. We put out that garbage, low quality intel, and it started a war. So it's appropriate for people to, I think now more than ever, say, when I hear an American intelligence official say, I'm going to be skeptical. I'm going to keep looking for other sources of news. And I'm going to be skeptical. I'm going to keep looking for other sources of news, and I'm going to withhold judgment until I see enough of that from enough people that I trust

to agree, to believe. You should have skepticism of your government. You should have skepticism of the CIA and NSA. Keep looking for other sources of information until you believe with absolute certainty, high degree of confidence, that whatever's happening in the world is actually legitimately happening and not propaganda. It's OK, ladies and gentlemen, to question your government. You know, what's crazy is that that's a lesson that the press needs as well. And they never used to. I mean, if there's one thing, if there was one requirement you needed to become a journalist, it was skepticism of your government. Doubt everything, check everything and then check it again and then check it again because there were the tools that they used to spin the populace

like we know that that's not news so but we've lost our willingness our desire to to play that role look and none of this is new right i mean so back in world war ii the british actually set up a propaganda office in new york city to pump the American people full of this belief that we should be involved in the war before, in fact, we did. So the journalists of that time and that era were very well aware of exactly what the Brits were doing, just like the Russians of today, to achieve whatever their ultimate goals or aims are. So good journalists understand that their whole DNA should be questioning. For decades, they've known this or should have known this. So you're so right. What is happening in these past many years? And I think part of the answer is looking at the political giving of journalists. And we know that that number, depending on the poll you look at, 85 to 95, 98% of journalists when they give

political leads to the Democrat party. So that tells you that there is an inherent bias made up of the vast majority of people in the industry. And so when that happens, you start getting groupthink. You don't want to run stories or investigate stories against your side, right? I think that is what is so different now. That's my view of it. Looking at that political donation piece,

that tells me that's part of the problem. We are becoming politicized in virtually everything we do. And that includes our media, which is the one thing we need to not be political, to hold people in power to account. And that's the whole damn idea of having the fourth estate, right? But we have lost the whole conversation about why it's important. And I don't know how to push the media, the journalists into doing what's right because they just refuse. I mean, they've been wildly wrong in the past five years about Russian collusion and Hunter's laptop. You go on and on. So I'm not sure what the forcing function is here. But holy smokes, I hope we find it. Well, I know that there are specific items of disinformation of low grade intelligence that you think even our president has repeated directly to us that have been making news headlines,

including last week. And I'm going to play one of them and we're going to get into the specifics right after this quick break, because I think it's important to show the people what exactly we're talking about. And we'll get into more about what you're going to be doing on that quote, presidential daily brief, your new podcast, because it seems like you're hoping to address a lot of this, a lot of these problems, especially when it comes to national security. All right, stand by. Back with Brian in one second. I want to correct something I said earlier. Apparently, I falsely maligned Red Panda. It's Turning Red. That's the name of the movie, Turning Red.

You might think it's a show about, like, the Russians. No, it's not. It's a different reference. But back with us now is Brian Dean Wright. He's host of the brand new podcast, The President's Daily Brief, which launched today. And that's a reference to the PDB is sort of what you give the president to let him know what's going on in the world, the quick and dirty. And he's going to give the quick and dirty to you in 20 minutes or less each morning, in particular, when it comes to national security news, I gather, Brian,

is that correct? That's it. Again, the PDB, for folks who aren't aware, is given to the president each morning, usually by about 4 a.m. And America's spies and spy masters deliver the critical news the past 24 hours. But what's a little bit different is that they also share sort of why it's important that the president and the country know about it. Right. So lots of news. Why is it important? That's what those intel officers, those spies and analysts focus on. And then the final piece is the solutions. All right. So we've just presented a bunch of problems to you, Mr. or Madam President. How do we solve it? What do we do about it? So that's what I'll be doing on the show. I'm going to provide those three different buckets of focus. So the news, why do people care? Why should they care? And then what could we do to solve the problem? So that spirit of the president's daily

brief is what I bring in the podcast each morning by 6 a.m. Well, it's very timely now, given what's going on in Ukraine. And I know you've been open about questioning some of the narratives we're being fed on Ukraine, which is another subject on which you're just not allowed to question the orthodoxy. And that's not OK, since we are being misled. In particular, you pointed out our president's comments about Russia preparing to use chemical warfare are worthy of our questioning. I'm going to tell the audience what this clip says because it's a little hard to hear and then I'll play it for them. But it's the reporter saying to Biden, how concerned are you about the threat of chemical warfare right now that Russia would use chemical weapons? How high is the threat? The president says, I think it's a real threat. And then he goes on to say, we would respond. We would respond if he uses it. The nature of response would depend on the nature of the use. Here's that soundbite for you to listen to or try to yourself. Soundbite 10. I think it's a real threat. We would respond. We would respond if he uses it. The nature of the response would depend on

the nature of the use. Okay. What's wrong with that answer? Everything? Yeah. Okay. Let's start with what we would do if another nation used chemical warfare. We would not, in turn, use chemical warfare. We have made it very clear through our laws, through our agreements, that we are not going to use chemical weaponry. So Joe Biden stepped in it. Surprise, surprise. But the second piece is the intelligence that underlied that suggestion that chemical warfare was likely to happen or very much could. In other

words, we have a high degree of confidence that Russians are bringing in those chemical or biological weaponry. There was no intel that said that. But that is not what came out of the Biden administration or the intelligence community. It was, in fact, the suggestion that they were, that Moscow was bringing in those weaponry. So what happens when the president of this country and the intelligence community start sending out false stories or low confidence intelligence? Well, now you have every reason to doubt everything, right? This goes back to what we were talking about, that reasonable people can now say that when the U.S. intelligence community says something, you need to be suspicious of it because they're putting out garbage information. That's the

implication here. And that's why it's so important to recognize it, to call it out and demand something different. So you've got the Russians who have RT, which is state-run media, and they'll just say whatever they're told to say by Vladimir Putin, by the Kremlin. You've got the Ukrainians who have President Zelensky, who is truly in an existential battle for his country and has every reason to mislead and absolutely has been misleading on a number of fronts. I mean, we've seen that just the most obvious stuff about, you know, like the whatever the guy, the single person who shot down all the jets or, you know, there's been a lot. Um, but, but the more clever propaganda isn't as obvious as that. Right. And so you always, you have to be on guard that you're being manipulated by a guy who really

wants our support, more support than we're giving. And we'll say what he needs to say, because talk about being in a position where you think the ends justify the means. I mean, he is, he is, you can understand it, but you need to be aware of it. And then there's us. Right. I don't I think we're not in the habit of prior to the past five years of second guessing everything our government is telling us that there was sort of we believed a compact with our government that they might try be releasing blatant propaganda. So my question to you is, were we always naive? Were they always doing that? And we've just gotten smarter? Or is this a new brazenness? I suppose that it has been there in some degrees for a long period of time. But I think, you know, starting with the war in Vietnam all the way up until now, we've

had this degradation of our belief and our trust in our government, that they were telling us the truth. You know, the World War II generation, you know, a lot of people ride around the flag. They knew some of that was probably propaganda, but the Nazis were very clearly the world's number one enemy for good reason. But then through the Vietnam War, it was very clear that the lies were just to cover up embarrassments, right? And so I think that you've seen that over and over and over again. And the media, in some cases, has been willing to go along with it, other times challenged it. But now when

they're going along with it, it's because of party politics, not because, you know, they, they, for some reason, you know, were in bed with the administration, with their good buddies, with one person or another. But it's actually the politics that are driving that complacency. So I think it's always been there. I think Vietnam showed us that. I think things in the 1980s in Central America under Reagan and obviously into the 90s in places in Africa under Bill Clinton, the things that he did and tried to cover things up. I think we're all just starting to become very clear that we can't unfortunately trust our government and we have to question and we should. That's a good thing. And again, so our government, you know, we as a press have always known that they're

not the most honest crew. And so we viewed ourselves as sort of the people's representative. We will hold them to account. We will point out the lies. We will ask the tough questions. And that's not happening now, which is why people are distrustful. And then they get spun down into rabbit holes on the internet that are not necessarily healthy places to be. So half of the battle is picking your sources

as a news consumer, even as when I'm in the role of news consumer, as opposed to news deliverer, half of my battle too is picking my sources. Who do I trust to lead me down the right places so that I don't mislead my audience? And that's key. I mean, that's been key to my own credibility is not choosing the wrong sources. And let me tell you, in the intelligence world, we have multiple sources, much like you do in the media world as well, multiple sources saying the same

things, but it's not just humans, right? So in the world of Intel, we also have emails and we have phone calls that we've captured, right? We take what are called mass collection. So soil samples, air samples, we have lots of different ways to collect intelligence. And then if all of those different forms of information are pointing in the same direction, then we have a high degree of confidence that we know exactly what's going on. Medium confidence, we have fewer of those things. And then low confidence, we usually only have one or two. And so we rarely, if ever, will share anything that's low confidence. And that's going to be, I'm sure, the same in your world. You want to be very careful about sharing things that are low confidence. But that's actually not true anymore.

That's the part that just last week, we know that the Biden administration is putting out low confidence information, uncorroborated, unvetted, single source information. And it might be right, but it could probably be wrong, equally so. So that's the wild danger in doing this. And it's just incredible that the intelligence community would go along with this, knowing that that's what got us into trouble in the war in Iraq with that Operation Curveball. It started a trillion dollar war, a hundred thousand plus Iraqis dead, thousands of American soldiers dead.

Other ones came home without arms, without legs. But we promised ourselves in the intel community that we would never do this again. We would never go along with an administration that was putting out low quality garbage Intel, but we're doing it. The Intel community is doing it again. So how the hell do you clean that place up?

New leadership, new emphasis on ethos. But my goodness, that's a big conversation of how to clean up the Intel community. So you mentioned the media goes along because of partisan politics, also because they're part of the elite and these are their compadres. they're rubbing elbows with them at the Georgetown cocktail parties. It's not they're no longer divided the way that we used to be as woke as possible and to take whatever line will make them sound woke because they'll get fired if if not like if there's if there's any distance between them and the woke messaging that could be their head in a basket and um anything having to do with race of course that's that's another thing but just today or last week i think it was actually uh the department of homeland security came out assessing the greatest terrorism related threat in the United States is the threat of domestic violent extremism, specifically the threat of white supremacists.

That's the greatest threat we face here, calling out the increased hate on social media. Joe Biden said the same white supremacists are the most lethal threat. And that gets used in debates like we're having right now about, for example, our Southern border against people who are saying, we got to slow our roll down there. We have a true crisis facing us right now. The latest numbers were up to 7,000 people crossing the border a day. 4,000 people crossing a day is considered a crisis per Obama's Department of Homeland Security chief, Jay Johnson. Now we're at 7,000 and we're going up. I mean, we haven't even, like once they actually lift Title 42, which let us deny anybody even trying to claim asylum, they're saying it's going to go up. I mean, it could be triple, quadruple, quintuple that we're facing a true crisis and the media will knee-jerk start

calling anybody who raises concerns racist, white supremacist, hashtag part of the problem. Yeah. So let's start with, is it actually the country's greatest threat? The answer is no, but here's, here's the tell the Biden administration right now, you and I as taxpayers, we are sending weaponry and training to the Azov battalion, which is in Ukraine. And it is part of their defense forces against the Russians. Here's the issue with the Azov Battalion. They are absolutely neo-Nazis. So right now, Joe Biden is funding neo-Nazis in Ukraine. He's funding white supremacy. So it's absurd to say, on one hand hand that we think there's this existential threat in this

country and really the world of white supremacy, and yet we're funding it in Ukraine. There's a disconnect, obviously. And so it tells you that the underlying suggestion that white supremacy is somehow the greatest problem, it's silly. It's not true. The data is not there. In fact, there was a recent study from the Department of Defense that looked at extremism, less than 100 cases in a service of millions and millions of people. Now, is 100 cases or less bad? Of course it is. But 100 as compared to millions and millions of active duty service members puts that in context. So we have a game. It's wokeism baloney. It's virtue signaling. And it's really about a greater goal, right? It's very clear what that greater goal is. I think reasonable people can

disagree, but it's very clear that all this silliness is being used to divide the country. And let's see what the left in particular does with that division. But white supremacy is not an existential problem in this country. Otherwise, we wouldn't be funding it in places around the world. And then we would be very smart about saying, look, the southern border is not a racial issue. It's about choosing who comes into this country. It's about vetting who comes into this country. I remember 9-11. I think a lot of people remember it. And we probably should have been very more careful, much more careful about who we let into this country, like maybe not some hijackers or

Islamic extremists. So that issue hasn't gone away. The border is important. So I think this whole conversation about the woke is stuff. It's so frustrating because we all see the truth. We all know what's going on. It's not about white supremacy. It's about politics, about dividing the nation. The question remains why they're doing it. What about Ukraine? What's your viewpoint on what's happening there? Forget U.S. involvement, but what's happening there between Russia and Ukraine? So very clearly, Vladimir Putin is on the march for more territory. He's afraid of NATO. And I think that his rationale for that, it doesn't matter if you think you agree or parts of it you agree with or disagree, that the reason, the rationale, it doesn't matter.

You don't invade a country like he's done. You don't start shelling civilians like he's done. He is obviously a tyrant, a bad man. But the question is, from the United States' response, from a taxpayer's response, if you're the parent of a soldier, of a Marine, what should our response be to that horrible disaster in Ukraine? And is it our response or is it more of the European people's and government's response to handle this issue because it's their backyard? Right? So those I, are very fair questions.

We can all acknowledge that what Putin is doing in Ukraine is wrong. The question is, what do we do about it? What should our involvement be? So far, polls show pretty overwhelmingly that the American people don't want troops there. Good. We need to make sure that we keep up that drumbeat of insistence that we don't go. But that's why I think in part Joe Biden is releasing some of this low quality intel to try to justify greater involvement. That's why we have to be on watch for that stuff. But it's very fair to say, look, I think that what's happening in Ukraine is awful. My heart breaks for the people of Ukraine. And I think this is more of a European problem. We'll do what we can. But at the end of the day, we're not going to send our soldiers, our Marines and our money to fight this war. What do you make of I had on last week, Garry Kasparov, and his point boiled down was stop now or stop later.

It's coming. It's going to be our problem eventually. Yeah, well, while I appreciate that argument, I don't think it's right. In fact, I think there's an intelligence that suggests that that's true. So his assumption there is Vladimir Putin wants to take over the entirety of Europe, much like Hitler, right? And then continue on with sort of this domino effect, right? This is the argument that we heard back in the 1950s and the Russian government's intention that's their plan and we have high degree of confidence that in fact that's exactly what they're doing if that were true now that starts to change the calculus the United States should be potentially much more involved in that war through both blood and treasure but the intel ain't there the other problem with that with that assessment is it doesn't really necessarily factor in already that Putin's paid a high price for invading Ukraine. His calculation, who knows what it was two months ago, even if it were the worst, like first Ukraine and then Poland,

he'd have to be having some pause now given given the losses he's taken and, um, and the, and the economic sanctions that he's been forced to endure. In fact, today, just today, I'm trying to find my, in my notes, but there was some, there was a note about him acknowledging the severe losses that, uh, that he has faced that the Russians have faced. Uh, it's significant losses of troops. He acknowledges, he added that the loss of these russian soldiers was a quote huge tragedy the heavy losses explain why pivots underway in moscow right now not to mention i think they lost their ninth commander and so on so i mean you're

talking about massive casualties over there that good gracious even if he had the most ambitious intentions that's he doesn't want to unnecessarily antagonize the Russian people. Yeah. Look, he knows that if this goes south, that if this fails, it's his head, right? So this is a huge, huge risk for him politically, for his own life. So he's not going to let this war in Ukraine just go by the wayside and walk away from it. So that tells you that this is going to be a long war. It's going to be a bloody war. And ultimately, there has to be either a stalemate that then forces the Russians and the Ukrainians to sit down and find a diplomatic solution, or one of either those sides just has to crush the other. And right now, I think most good, smart money is on a stalemate. And so that's why I think

we really should be pushing diplomacy behind the scenes, working with Israel, working with Turkey, two very trusted partners of Vladimir Putin and of Russia. That's how this war is going to end. And also keep in mind, China is very much interested in continuing to support what is going to be kind of their junior buddy in the world, Russia, in terms of selling a lot of the oil, selling various market bits and pieces that otherwise couldn't go out in the world. Stuck in Russia right now, China's going to take advantage of that. So you're going to have a much tighter relationship between those two, in part because Russia has nowhere else to go. So huge changes geopolitically happening in the world. Beijing is definitely benefiting from this. But we have to remember

that at the end of the day, Putin is not going to walk away from this. This work, he has to win or it's his head. So we've got to be very smart and very careful about how we help the Ukrainians and the Europeans exit from this conflict. Back to the southern border. have apart from just the number of migrants that are now going to effectively be living in the United States with no one tapping them on the shoulder, telling them to go home, is what's coming? What else is coming across the border, you know, in terms of drugs, the cartels, the type of people we had reports last week about, you know, all these gang members and pedophiles and convicted murderers. But like, I worry in particular about the drugs, the fentanyl and so on. What do you think we can expect as a result of this open door policy? Well, we're going to continue to see what we have seen.

At this point, 100,000 Americans are dead from the drugs that are being sent over fentanyl in particular via the Chinese government and the cartels in Mexico. I mean, I just wanted to pause for a second to think about that. We are rightfully upset about what's happening in Ukraine, but 100,000 Americans are dead because of what's coming across our southern border. Our communities, communities where I come from, particularly in rural America, are really struggling with this issue. And it doesn't get the press it deserves. It doesn't get the outrage it deserves. And it doesn't get the money. I mean, Ukraine is getting how many hundreds of billions of dollars. And my goodness, Congress

about lost a gasket when Trump asked for, was it four billion to finish the wall? So we're sending hundreds of billions of dollars abroad to fight a war that is awful. Meanwhile, we have 100,000 Americans dead because of what's coming across the border, this fentanyl garbage. So it is incredibly frustrating for me for lots of reasons. And then, of course, we know that we've got over 100 different countries represented on the border in terms of individuals coming across. They're coming from places that have lots of active terror cells. Are we vetting those people? No, we're not. They're coming across. They're coming from places that have lots of active terror cells. Are we vetting those people? No, we're not. They're coming across the border. We don't have all the tools that we

need down there to vet those folks. So I'm sorry to say that a lot of those people are coming into your communities and mine every single day. And we don't know what they're going to be doing. Some of them, maybe most of them are actually very peaceful, very good, loving people escaping horrible places. But we still have an obligation to have abort because we get to choose who comes in or we should. But the real concern I have is both the drugs piece and then second, this this unknown security risk. Who's coming in? We don't know. What do you what's your take on why Joe Biden's allowing it?

Right, because I don't believe Joe Biden wants a flood of fentanyl rushed into the United States. Hunter Biden might. I don't think the dad's in favor. So what do you think the reason is? Well, I think that the cynic in me says this is politics, right? So we know that the census captures people, not citizens, right? So if you start filling up cities with lots and lots of people, the representation of the house of reps actually changes. So you start shifting your political power in this country to your cities, which you as a Democrat control. Democrats are mostly an urban party now. So if those illegal immigrants end up going to your cities, they get the representation, not because they vote, because obviously only citizens can vote, but it definitely changes.

Well, we'll get to that in a second, won't we? But the point is that the House of Representatives changes. The constituency is different, right? The other issue is this. Do they actually vote? We are now seeing in different places across the country that in local elections, they're letting folks who are not citizens vote in those elections. So the argument then is, all right, if it's starting at the city level, what's to say that it's not going to move to the state level or indeed the federal level? Will there be an argument made for it? Damn right there will be. Because why? Those people, even though they're here illegally, are contributing to tax base, you know, they're active members of our community. So they should get a vote, too. So we all know where this is going. It's very, very obvious, I think, the cynical view of this.

Now, otherwise, I don't know, because it doesn't make any sense. Why would you open up your country to lots and lots of people that, and with the data tells us this, don't speak English and don't actually have any skills? The data is very clear that these people come into the country as a net burden on society. By the second and definitely the third generation of these immigrants' families, they are in a net positive, historically speaking. But for the first good 10 to 20 years, those folks are a net burden on our country. So there's not a lot of good sense for letting them into the country other than in the cynical way that I think this political voting issue. So much to think about and thankfully so much to talk about. His name is Brian Dean Wright and his new podcast is The President's Daily Brief.

It's available now on all podcast platforms. Brian, thank you so much and good luck with it. Thank you kindly. Before we go, I want and good luck with it. Thank you, Connie. Before we go, I want to tell you two things. Number one, Dave Rubin's back tomorrow. That'll be fun. And I've got to tell you about a story we had on Friday's show.

We had on the poet Joseph Massey to talk about his story, how he built his life back up after being targeted by the cancel culture mob. His new book, Rosary Made of Air, was at 53,000 and outside the top 40 in poetry on Amazon before the show. Thanks to you, we helped move his book into the top five in poetry worldwide,

the top 500 bestsellers overall, and keep it going. You can support him on Amazon and we'll see you tomorrow. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.