The Megyn Kelly Show - Inspirational Kentucky Derby Winner, Viral Tucker-NYT Interview, and Blake-Baldoni Trial, with Emily Jashinsky | Ep. 1309

Episode Date: May 4, 2026

Megyn Kelly discusses the story of the Kentucky Derby winner Golden Tempo's amazing comeback, the trainer Cherie DeVaux becoming the first female trainer to win ever, the inspirational story of jockey Jose Ortiz and his brother, and more. Then Emily Jashinsky, host of "After Party," joins to discuss Tucker Carlson’s viral interview with the New York Times, his perceptive “reframing” of Nick Fuentes and his place in our culture, the areas where the left and right align, the massive layoffs at The Daily Wire, the business and editorial decisions that led to this moment, whether America's ceasefire in Iran will be able to hold while the UAE says it's being attacked, the alarming rise of gas prices, how the Trump administration can get out of this war, a bombshell new story setting up the Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni trial, what the embarrassing Ryan Reynolds text messages about Baldoni reveal, the key question at the center of the Blake Likely trial with Justin Baldoni's company, similarities to the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard trial, and more.   Subscribe now to Emily's "After Party": Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/after-party-with-emily-jashinsky/id1821493726 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0szVa30NjGYsyIzzBoBCtJ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@AfterPartyEmily?sub_confirmation=1   Birch Gold: Text MK to 989898 for a free info kit and to see if you qualify for up to $10,000 back through May 29. Relief Factor: Try the 3-Week QuickStart for just $19.95 at https://ReliefFactor.com or call 800-4-RELIEF. Pure Talk: Dial #250 and say keyword MEGYN KELLY to switch to Pure Talk and get unlimited data for just $34.99 a month! Birch Gold: Text MK to 989898 for a free info kit and to see if you qualify for up to $10,000 back through May 29.     Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKelly Twitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShow Instagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShow Facebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow  Find out more information at:https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East. Hey, everyone, I'm Megan Kelly. Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show and happy Monday. We've got big updates for you on the war in Iran. There's breaking news at this moment, which we'll get to in just a bit. Plus, we're going to show you why everyone is talking about the Tucker Carlson interview with Lulu Garcia Navarro over at the New York Times. You may recall she and I sat down together not long ago. Now she has sat down with Tucker. made a ton of news. But we have an unorthodox lead story for you today. Unorthodox because we don't do a lot of sports here on the MK show, but we have got to make an exception for the greatness we witnessed on Saturday at the Kentucky Derby. I can't stop looking at the videos of it.

I'm not going to lie. I've teared up multiple times watching this horse come from behind and win this thing. Is it just me? I don't, I'm such a sap. I do love horse racing. I grew up steps away. from Saratoga Raceway, which I absolutely adore. It's like time travel there. Nothing has changed since 1959. There is nothing quite like going up there. You don't have to be in like any sort of fancy part of the park. You could just go get a hot dog, get a beer, and watch your horse on two dollar bets all day. Trust me, I've done it many times and think you're in Shangri-La. Anyway, I do enjoy it. But this was just so moving. You know, it's like, I love all the movies. I love sea biscuit. I love Secretariat, and this guy's story on Saturday was kind of like a sea biscuit.

If you did not see it, Golden Tempo, who faced 23 to 1 odds, and who was literally in last place earlier in this race. I mean, last by a lot, had a stunning come from behind victory, narrowly beating out Renegade, who had much better odds and who also had a bit of a slow start, notwithstanding. Watch this. Colonel Sully is next. And then come the two trailers, Albus and late running Golden Tempo. So on to the backstretch they go here in the Kentucky Derby. Six-speed is expected, setting the pace of 46.44.

Renegade is in behind that group. He's on the rail. He's got 10 legs to make up as six. speed and Denon Bermitur 1-2 on the far turn. Mike Smith is so happier their turn. They're outside. Two and a half back. And then down toward the inside comes emerging market as they make their way to the top of

the stretch. Further ado is getting going on the far outside with commandment. They're both putting in their runs as they arrive into the final furlong. O'Sally is also gaining ground. On the far outside as they come to the last 16th of a mile, DeNan Bourbon and Fred both selling a huge long shot. Renegade and Golden Tempo are closing two. Here's go.

2.02.27 seconds. Ah, so great. We love a Cinderella story here in America, don't we? It's incredible. It almost took divine intervention for this horse to pass 17 horses and win this thing. And maybe that is indeed what was at work on Saturday because look at Golden Tempo arriving at Churchill Downs on his face. You see what looks very much like a cross, an actual cross. He's got the white marking up his nose that a lot of horses have.

And then he's got the horizontal cross at the top of it. Unbelievable. The horizontal line making it look just like a cross like he's been kissed by the Almighty. It's great. and he ran like it too. Now, the stunning underdog victory, it would be a great story all by itself, right? Because this horse, they weren't sure about him.

We reported this in AM to update. He had lost his previous two. He'd only run four races. And he had lost the most recent two. He'd come in third. Kind of fell apart toward the end and couldn't close it out. So you can understand why the odds were 23 to 1 against him.

They were like, eh, I can't do it. You know, nice horse, but no. So no one was expecting great things from him, or at least almost no one. But that alone would be a stunning underdog story. We love those stories. But the more you dig in on Golden Tempo, the better it gets. Because you heard the announcer mentioned there a woman. Her name is Cherie DeVoe.

You know, Golden Tempo and Cherie DeVoe, we're showing her petting Golden Tempo here for the listening audience. It's great because other than the day of the derby, she's always in her sweatshirts and her, you know, jeans. she's a horse trainer, but she's not looking to put on any airs for us now that she's becoming a national star. But Cherie Duvaux is officially the first woman trainer to win the Kentucky Derby and just the second female trainer to win any triple crown race. And I guess you are allowed to say she won it, even though she's not a horse. To me, it's like kind of jarring. The horse won the race, but like you do say she won it.

Her breeders won it and the jockey won it. They all won. They all are recognized as winners on Saturday. And here is Cherie's live reaction to the victory. Watch. Her daughter's squeezing her. Oh, my gosh. You can feel the excitement.

Shari appeared on the Today Show this morning. The race aired on NBC and explained why she was not especially surprised by Golden Tempo's victory. This is a look from above Saturday afternoon. Golden Tempo goes from dead last, 23 to 1 odds, by the way, goes from dead last to first. For folks who don't really follow horse racing, that's pretty remarkable. But you maintain that you kind of expected that, that your horse sort of had this all season, this sort of slow start but finish his straw? Right.

So golden tempo is what we call a deep closer. So he is out the back. And he just doesn't have a lot of speed, but he has a lot of stamina. And towards the end of the race, he does have a, we call it. a quick turn of foot. So he can make up a lot of ground. But just in the early stages, he likes to just hang out behind and let them all do the hard work, and then he can just

finish up and, you know, beat them all at the end. He likes to just hang out. I'm sure that's tough to watch as his trainer or owner or a fan. But boy, oh boy, it wasn't tough to watch on Saturday. And Sheree weighed in on her now viral celebration, too.

That reaction that's gotten a lot of attention the last few days, you going just bonkers. I love that. Folks who like know you well, that's not unusual. That's you at pretty much every place. Yeah, no, well, it's gotten a bit tapered down as I've gotten older, but that's the tapered down? No, no, that is not the tapered down. That is definitely all systems go. But, you know, if you win the Kentucky Derby, man, male, female, whatever, you should have a reaction like that.

I think that actually was her friend standing next to her who hugged her on the win. And she had she posted something on her Instagram thanking that friend's employer, which I think she said was like the racing association of a particular state or maybe it was the national, for firing her friend so that her friend could come work for her and be part of the historic day and historic win on Saturday. Such a sweet story of friendship for those two as well. Despite being the first female trainer to win the derby, Cherie does not, to her credit, want to make this about her gender. The horse racing has long been dominated by men. It's started to change a little bit in recent years, but you made history on Saturday. Do you consider yourself a trailblazer? Is that

something that? No, I consider myself a horse trainer, and I just happen to be a female, but you know, it's quite an honor to be the first female trainer to win a Kentucky Derby. Perfect, perfect, perfect, great answer. She posted this picture of Golden Tempo this morning on X with the caption, being a celebrity is hard work. Some well-deserved rest here for the listening audience is the horse wearing like a horse blanket around him and completely snuggled into a bed of hay. So, you know, they say horses sleep standing up, but they can sleep lying down too.

And this horse looks like he's enjoying his rest on his side. You know, you almost expect somebody to be reading him a story. right next to him, and here's one they should read to him. It's about a winning jockey named Jose Ortiz, a Christian family man who frequently posts Philippians 413 on social media, quote, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Jose came up short, his first 10 times competing in the derby before finally winning gold on Saturday. Look at this. tweet from May 23, 2020. It's a picture of Churchill Downs where they run the Kentucky Derby, Jose writing, quote, one day. Some dreams really do come true. Here's Jose getting emotional

after his victory. Watch. I'm just blessed. I get to ride almost every year, but get to winner. It's just special. For my mom and my dad here today, it's very special. It's very special. I just wish my grandpa was here, but I know looking for heaven. It's very happy that I get my goal, my life dream goal, achieve. And, you know, it's just amazing experience. I can't wait to see my family and celebrate. Oh, so sweet. So sweet.

He's from Puerto Rico. Thank God his parents were there to see it. imagine what that feels like for them too, right? And especially considering that the jockey of the second place renegade was Jose's brother. I read Ortiz. Look at this photo. This is the best photo of the two brothers together. This is put out by the Derby and for the listening audience. What you see is the two brothers on the horses. This is like moments after they cross the finish line. Their horses neck and neck. And the two brothers each with their arms outstretched. touching each other's arms. I was like, I'm tearing up just looking at that. That is so beautiful.

Good for them. What a moment that must be. I'm sure the life of a horse jockey is not easy. I'm sure it's actually quite physically grueling. If you watch the derby, you saw just moments before they went into the gates. Great White, who was a long shot, a beautiful horse, reared up on his hind legs and threw his jockey, who fell, and then Great White. And then Great White, almost fell right on that jockey. Thank God, the horse did fall, but both he and the jockey were okay. And then he was rearing up. He was clearly like in a mood and did not want to get into that gate and he ultimately scratched. So yeah, I mean, I think the life of a jockey is challenging in a lot of ways. And these two brothers went through it together, obviously with the support of their parents.

And what a day for both of them and for their parents, too, to watch it. Now, IRAD ran on Renegade, and he wrote on Renegade, and Renegade's owner, Mike Repole, had reason perhaps to be disappointed on Saturday. After all, his horse was indeed one of the favorites, but Renegade did not win. He came in second. So what was Mike's message as he got a hold of Renegade's jockey, IRAD? considering IRAD, you know, had the second place finish. And let's take a listen to what Mike said to him. A little warning on the explicit nature of this great conversation.

Are you fucking kidding me with a ride? That's why you're the best rider. Fuck you're a brother. Fuck you, brunt. I'm sorry. That's why you're the best rider in the punch me. That's why you're the best rider on the country. You're the best, okay?

You're the fucking animal. If you're ever gonna fucking lose, if you're ever gonna fucking lose, you're loose to your brother. Family one for you, okay? All right? Let's go beat them up, you later, okay? I'm so proud of you.

That was a fucking unbelievable right. Chair. Oh, I'd rather be second to you and everyone's in a man. You got fucking hit right away, right away. You get everything fucking right. Unfucking believable.

I love you, okay? Oh, so great. I love him, too. If you couldn't totally hear it, he was saying, unfucking believable. You're the best writer. So effing proud. If you're ever going to, he says, if you're ever going to fucking lose, you'll lose to you, brother. I love this guy. He's straight out of central casting.

You did everything right, everything right. The whole time, he's hugging him. He's kissing him. He's hugging him again. What a sweet guy, at least based on that one clip. I don't know anything about him, but I love how he handled coming in second and getting that jockey in front of him. Wow, that's great.

If you ever got to fucking lose, you'll lose to your brother. That's great. Love the New York accent. Isn't it so great? All the drama, all the history, paying off big time for NBC. The derby setting a record, viewership. In fact, I was riding in my car with my kids the next day and Thatcher, who's 12 said, mom, how many people do you think watch the derby? And I said, I, you know, I would

guess about 20 million. And I'm happy to tell you, I nailed it. They did set a record. It was an average audience of 19.6 million across NBC and streamer peacock, which NBC owns, with a live audience peak of 24.4 million viewers, probably for that last for a long as Golden Tempo brought it home. out of nowhere. It's so great when you hear the announcer, like, realize, holy shit, two new horses are about to come across the finish line and pass the ones I've been announcing on. And by the way, shout out to the announcer. Because, like, how hard is that? Because for the rest of us, I think, you see the horses start and it's such a clump of color and horse. You have no, I have no idea what I'm

seeing. Thank God for the announcer's ability to call out the names, to say them quickly, to, I mean, second by second, update you on who's just a nose ahead and who's not and who's making a run for it and so on. In any event, no one, including the wonderful announcer, saw Golden Tempo coming. I mean, he was the last. It was like kind of rid him, wrote him off. And then he said, how you like me now? His winning time was an impressive two minutes. 0.02.27 seconds on Saturday. 2.02.2.2.2.2. Not quite, though, not quite as impressive as the goat of horse racing.

I speak, of course, of Big Red or Secretariat, as he was officially known. His record of 159.40, which is actually quite a bit faster, believe it or not, those two seconds, are something like the equivalent of 17 furlongs or horse lengths, longer. So, I mean, had Secretariat run that same race, even with this horse in it, Secretaryate would have crushed him. It's kind of crazy to think about how amazing Secretariat was. So his record, which was set in 1973 at the Derby, still stands, a remarkable achievement. According to Sporting News, 19 of the 20, qualifying.

Kentucky Derby horses this year can trace part of their lineage to Secretariat including Golden Tempo. How cool is that? That horse, I mean, he had special sauce, like there's something magical about him. And in case you have

forgotten just how majestic and impressive Secretariat was, here he is in the 1973 Belmont Stakes. Behind them. Then it's twice the prince, and the trailer is Private Smiles as they go by the turn. Those two together, Sham on the outside.

Sham getting ahead and front as they move around the turn with Secretary at second. Then there's a large gap. They get eight lengths back to My Gallatin and third and twice a prince fourth, and Private Smiles is still a trailer. They're on the backstretch. It's almost a match race now. Secretariat's on the inside, by ahead. Sham is on the outside.

They've opened 10 lengths on my Gail. who is third by ad with twice of Prince fourth. Then it's another eight lengths back to private smiles who is trailing the field. They continue down the backstretch. The back secretary is not making believe. He's got it by about a length and a half. Still stand. Stam legs back, five gallon twice of Prince.

They're moving on the turn now. It makes me tear up to see those moments, those great sports moments, whether it's Miracle on Ice or the hockey players. this time around in the Olympics, male and female, the U.S. teams, or the horse coming from behind. And that was a, yeah, match races. They were saying that that whole story was documented so beautifully in the movie Secretariat, starring Diane Lane. And just a fun fact for you, in the movie Secretariat and in real life, there was a famous moment as Secretariat was about to be born. and they knew that this was a good pairing of, you know, the mayor and the stud.

And it was from two very respected breeders. And they would meet, Dinny Phipps of Phipps Stables would meet with this other breeder. Forgive me, I can't remember his name. And they would flip a coin, and whoever won the coin toss would get the pick on the horse they wanted. and the Phipps family had secretariat. They had secretariat, and they, well, here's what happened. We pulled it from the movie so you can see what went down in the coin toss all those years ago. Please don't take offense, Ms. Chenery, but your father almost never won our coin tosses.

And I do hope you've inherited his luck. All right, we're all here now. Mr. Phelps has the call, the owner of Bull Ruler. Now, the winner has the choice of the offspring of Mr. Chenery's marriage, Hastie Matilda, or something royal. Are we all in agreement here? All right. Here we go.

Talk. Ed? Ed's, it is. I'll go with Hastie Matilda. Ms. Chenery? Okay, so she took something royal, which led to Secretariat, and they won everything. because now she had the secretary and the Phipps family lost out on that. And the Phipps family, however, did not stay losing because they co-own this beautiful horse here,

Golden Tempo. So anyway, Secretary's links to racing go on for very good reason. He's a historic horse. So are his offspring. So many of them. And Golden Tempo, I don't think we've seen the last of him. Will he win the triple crown? That would be hugely exciting.

but at this point, who cares, seeing this horse come from behind, bring the W to the first female trainer. Yes, to the FIPS family, who co-owns him with St. Elias horse st. Helps st. Helps' to bring it home for Jose and the brother with the arms. It's like all so good. There's so little good news. That's why we had to start the show with this amazing story. Bringing in now for reaction, Emily Jishinsky. She is host of After Party on the MK Media Podcast.

podcast network, and she's host of the MK wrap-up show on SiriusXM. When there are supply constraints on commodities, prices surge. You see it with fuel prices, with everything happening in the straight-of-home moves right now. And you know what else is a limited commodity? Gold. They mine it out of the ground. And when it's gone, it's gone. Governments cannot just print more of it.

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into a tax-sheltered IRA in physical gold. Text MK to the number 9-8-9-8-98 to see if you qualify for a first-time gold buyer rebate of up to $10,000. Emily's such a great story, isn't it? You're killing me. You're killing me. You just did 25 minutes on horses. We watched Secretary eclipse.

We were watching Highlights. It was such a journey, Megan. I had no idea of Megan Kelly Horse Girl. Such a journey this morning. Yeah. I am. I'm a sucker for any of those, like, you know, come from behind victories. But I do love horse racing. I do. I know it's controversial with some because sometimes they

mistreat the horses, but like I know some of these. I know some in the Phipps family. I've known them. And they're wonderful people. And most of them, I think, dearly, dearly love the horses. And it's like there is nothing like watching a horse race. I love the whole thing. You go for the day. You can either do it the fancy way. Like I've been to the derby a couple of times, which is super fun. You wear your most outrageous colors. You sip. those mint juleps, which are awesome. Or you can do it, you know, lower brow. You know, you can buy the cheap ticket in and do the $2 bets here and there, which is so fun. If you see your horse come in, you know, win place or show, it doesn't matter. Like, it's so thrilling. It's like, I don't

know what it is. I guess I'm just like a gambler deep at heart, even though I almost never gambler. But it is so exciting. Do you ever do it? Have you ever done it? No, I haven't. But, you know, I love any moment in sports where the announcers are so. good at channeling the excitement of the moment. And I feel like that's what we got in the Derby this year. Like that was actually really, really incredible. There's an art to doing that. And it was totally nailed. Yes. I remember one time years ago, I was with some friends. And it was, I think I was in college. I had no money. We went to, I think it was Belmont Stakes. And it was trying to think of how it went down. But I know we ran out of money by the end of the day. And then our last race there,

And back when I was in college and law school, I was an avid aerobics instructor. It's actually how I helped put myself through college and law school. I taught at like 15 to 20 classes a week. It was insane. And I did aerobics and I did step aerobics. I was in the Step Reebok demo team back in my day, Emily, and a different body. In any event, the last race of the day had a horse named aerobic stepper. I was like, oh, my God, I've got to bet on that horse.

And it's like this horse Golden Tempo, it had terrible odds. We all scrounge. None of us had any money left. We came up with 20 bucks and we bet it on aerobic stepper. And damn it, the horse won. What? We had won a few hundred bucks. We were in like seventh heaven.

We thought we were rich. It paid for our whole evening like the group of us. I don't know. It's like this small turn of fortunes and you feel prescient when you see your horse go across first. and you feel like a winner. Even if your life is, I'm like pushing people to go to the gambling track today. But like even if your life isn't going that well, your horse wins. People can probably relate to this.

This is probably why they love regular sports that I don't watch that much. Like your team wins in basketball or baseball or football. And you, you feel like a winner, you know? It's true joy. It's joy for the team that you love or the horse that you believe in. And it's joy for you because you feel smart. You feel prescient, you know, like you backed. the winning horse, that's a saying even outside of racehorsing.

You know what I mean? Like horse racing. So I love it. It's a feel good story. And America needs one of those right now. I feel a good story. That's the story about aerobic stepper and Megan Kelly. That's the movie that I would watch.

That hasn't been made into a movie yet. The cinematic quality of that, especially as you just told it. Astounding. Wait, I have to tell you one more story about a racetrack, which is just so funny. I went to the Kentucky Derby years ago. And there was a fair amount of conservatives show up at that thing. And there was this one sweet woman. This is many, many years ago.

And this woman said, can we have her picture taken? And I said, sure. And she's much older. So I put my arm around her. And she said, darling, would you do me a favor? I'm like, sure. She goes, would you mind just reaching behind my neck and just pulling the skin tight? for the picture.

Did you do it? I'm like, sure. I got you. So I pulled it. No way. She was with her sister too. They both laughed. They thought it was hilarious that she does this.

I'm like, you know, you can pay a doctor to do this to you just one day and it will stay that way for many years. Making Kelly. Yeah. Asking. Yeah. You seem really nice, but I can't follow you around forever. She was like, she didn't care. She had no humiliation over it.

embarrassment whatsoever. She just want to look good for the picture. And I've never forgot that dear sweet lady. She was great. I love that. So that was my other horse race story. And I am going. I'm going again this summer. I plan to to Saratoga. We're making our plans now. It's just such an enjoyable thing. So anyway, to the listening audience, you guys let me know. Do you like going to the horse races? Will you be going this summer? And what did you think of the wonderful golden tempo? Sherri and Jose, God bless him. Maybe I can get one of those folks to come on this show and talk about it. Since I'm now America's horse racing officiado expert, self-declared, 2006. It's been decided. Okay. Oh, one other thing I'll tell you, the family, now for years,

what we do in my family, you're not going to be surprised because the listening audience knows I love costumes. We have a box of costumes for the Kentucky Derby, and I have ascots for all of the men in my family and like the sort of bowler hats and like a bright jacket. And for my daughter and for me and for any female guests we may have over, I have super, super bright derby dresses and fascinators for everybody. So if you just happen to swing by, I will put you in one of these dresses and a fascinator. And Doug makes mint juleps, real ones for the adults and mocktails for the kids. And we all place our bets.

Not one of us bet on Golden Tempo, even though we did bet long. long shots as well, but we did not pick Golden. And it was thrilling. So fun to watch the race. We sort of freeze it on the peacock or NBC coverage. And then we're all ready, we come down and we watch that 20 minutes. And then it's such a fun tradition. Anyway, you got to make your own fun in this world. Okay. And speaking of fun, let's talk about what's happening in Iran. Perfect transition. Now you see why I wanted to begin with something more fun. I changed my mind. We'll get to her in a little bit.

Let's start with what happened with Tucker, because that's actually really interesting, and then we'll get into what's happening with the actual war. So Tucker sat down with Lulu, who I actually really grew to like over that interview that I did with her at the New York Times. I really think she tries to be fair. She's obviously a liberal and a New York Times journalist,

but I like her. And I thought did a very nice job with Tucker. Was it perfect? No, there were a couple of low moments, or she's really, really focused on Nick Puente's. But overall, I thought she gave him a fair shot, and Tucker handled himself, of course, very, very well and was very deft. And anything, any sort of would be traps she was laying, he saw from a mile away. And it made for a very interesting, robust exchange between the two of them.

There was the obsession with Nick Fuentes. But Tucker, his answer on it was very, very good. Nick Fuentes, of course, for listening audience, is like, they call him far right. I disagree. I don't think he's far right. I don't know what he is. He's not ideological, really. He's like more of a black-pilled young guy who hates both parties, says very controversial things about Jews and blacks and women. But outside of that says a lot of things that, you know, have turned out to be prescient unlike politics. So he's got a bit of a following because he's got a good track record on his political predictions and insights, but he's incendiary in his discussions about any

group of color or vulnerable, marginalized, whatever group. So anyway, he's become more and more popular over the past five years with a certain segment of especially young, disaffected men. And it's all the left's fault. It's all the left's fault who have told these young men that race is really what matters. It determines everything. It's the number one thing about you that matters. And by the way, if yours happens to be white and you're a male on top of it, fuck you. You suck. So the left has driven people to, you know, a commentator like this. They have only themselves to blame, but the reporters at the New York Times would never acknowledge that. By the way, he says he's voting for Gavin Newsom. He says that because he doesn't

like the fact that J.D. Vance, if he's the nominee, is married to, I won't repeat the ethnic slur about Usha, but it's an ethnic slur about him being married to a brown Indian woman. And so I don't, this doesn't sound far right to me, but whatever. He also thinks he's hot, Megan. Fuentes also thinks Gavin Is him is hot and good looking and has the, yeah, he's got the look. All right. I have to say, on the sliding scale of politicians, he is hot. It's like Chief Justice John Roberts on the sliding scale of judges.

is he's hot. But like, then you put them out of the real world and things change. And then, of course, Gavin Newsom was like, you know, one of those, like, I don't know, like a real housewife where they might look fine while they're just sitting there and the screen grab. But then you hear them talk and you're like, oh, my God, never mind. Okay, here's Tucker and Lulu on Nick Fuentes, 17. Fuentes himself is a distraction from the conversations that matter because power is displayed. through the structure of the economic system, globally and per country, and in the use of force. So it's the economic program and the foreign policy program are what matters in every government

from the beginning of time. Those are the two questions on which there's a bipartisan consensus in Washington between Republicans and Democrats that we should do this thing. The public rejects that thing on both categories. They reject the economics that are a consensus choice, in Washington, and they reject the foreign policy, this consensus choice in Washington. And so Washington's response, Wall Street's response as well, is to be like, let's have a race war, and you guys can, like, argue over blacks or whites or whether J.D is married to an Indian woman, like what? And so Fuentes is incredibly useful for people with actual power to divert the conversation to something that is both irrelevant and divisive because it's a divide and conquer strategy.

And my strong view gained over 35 years of watching carefully and being involved is that that's come to its end. Okay. So smart. Such an important reframing of some of the things that we've been discussing lately, Emily. And I mean, I think this is why people who don't like Tucker find him so threatening because he's such an effective messenger and he can redefine an entire debate like he did right there. Yeah, and it's a really deep point that he's making. Neil Postman in the mid-80s was kind of hysterical over Ronald Reagan being the president as an actor. And he saw this as the television-based epistemology overtaking the print-based epistemology. And in amusing ourselves to death, he wrote about how inferior the television-based epistemology of politics and culture was to a sort of political epistemology based on print. And there's, I think, merit to that. But what we're in now is like the algorithmic social media, based epistemology. And I think this is kind of what Tucker is getting at in that Fuentes, for many people, is a meme. They don't sit around and watch like long episodes.

He definitely has like a dedicated audience on his streams, which man, I think you're right. The left drove so many young men, especially straight into his arms and empowered him with their rhetoric that was often wildly over the top, inaccurate, wrong, and bigoted against men in so many cases, just did that for like the last 15 years and then don't want to have to reckon with the consequences. But more so, he's for many, many people, a meme. They're laughing at him. They're not at laughing with him. They don't really know much about him. They don't have much context for him. They just see funny clips that they were told were very naughty. And when you're a teenager, you're in your early 20s and people are telling you, you can't laugh at these

things. The kids got comedic timing. And he says awful things that other people won't. And it's a meme. It's a meme. And Tucker is correct. It's a meme that has been used. as a distraction from some of these structural problems that people would rather not talk about because it implicates them. It implicates the worldviews that they have perpetuated. It implicates the worldviews that they still hold dear about the ickiness of populism and the Hoypoloe being wrong about their own fate. And so there it's just much easier to fight this war with the proxy of Nick Fuentes than it is to actually deal with what's happening in the public. Because if you look at it, and Tucker believes that there's basically a uniparty, you know, that the left and the right on so many of the biggest issues are indistinguishable.

And he's not wrong about that. On some of the smaller issues, though, there are big differences. Like, not smaller, but like smaller than like the economy, which obviously is the number one thing that's motivating most people. But he thinks on the economy and on war, never ending war, and in particular war on behalf of Israel, the party. the parties are nearly indistinguishable, and that both sides would much rather see as arguing over Nick Flentes and his views on race than on those two things on which there's not that big a difference between the two of them. They all vote both sides to line their own pockets. They all seem rather corrupt. And they all love war. They get paid by, they get put into office by the military

industrial complex and APAC. And those are effectively their masters, which is why we continue to see war after war after war, even from a guy like Trump who ran on not doing this. There's another great moment in the interview where I think Lulu asks Tucker, like, why then are people so obsessed with Flentes? I'm paraphrasing it. I don't have the exact verbatim language, but he responds, well, because it's easier to call someone, or maybe they were talking about anti-Semitism, but I think it applies to Flentis as well. It's like, it's easier to call somebody a name and to call them a bigot because it immediately stigmatizes and ostracizes them than it is to actually grapple with an argument they're advancing. And so if you're calling

somebody that word, you're calling somebody, you're making this really serious charge, you actually should be able to back it up. But so often it's just deployed in a way that shuts a person down, shuts a person up, stigmatizes them, ostracizes them. And so that is the way to get them out of the argument. And you can basically discredit an entire opposition movement to war. If you say anybody who is flirting with this is, this is what happened with Fuentes. We were playing six degrees of Kevin Bacon with Fuentes every day last fall. Like if somebody had ever watched a Fuentes clip and laughed at it. Oh, my goodness, you hate Israel.

It's just happening constantly. And Tucker is right. He points it out in the interview. He's like, well, it's much easier to default to the label and to the name than it is to deal with the argument. it's just a shortcut. It's a cheat code. If you apply the name and the label, then you just are automatically kind of disqualifying them with a segment of the public. And it's really, I mean, it's a terrible way to do politics in the United States, obviously. Now you have a huge section of the country that's against this war. You can't really do that. And so it's falling apart. Yeah. I went on Tucker's show months ago and said basically what I just said about Nick Fuentes,

which is he has a lot of sharp insights. And he's a smart political talker, but he says absolutely vile things about blacks, about Indians, about Jews, about women. And so, you know, you've got to, like, putting that to the side, he's got some smart commentary. But, you know, you can't, like, obviously, you can't talk about Nick Fuentes without talking about that stuff, which I did. And my newfound detractors on the right, on the neocon pro-Israel right, clipped. Only the one part where I said, like, whatever. what what his value was, and circulated it all over X, all over X.

Like, that was the alpha and omega of my own thoughts about Nick Fuentes. And fuck those people. Fuck them. The dishonest, disgusting people who do that shit. You know, I just, whatever. You got to live with it because the Internet's going to do what it's going to do. But some of them are my former friends. Some of them are people who actually used to come in this show.

And it's just, it's not good for anybody. And I know, Megan, like, you have really thick skin. But I also just feel like we have to. pause and realize what a horrible thing that is to do to another human being, especially another human being who is like put their own skin on the line to stand up as you have done many times in some of these campus cases and to like stand up against legitimate anti-Semitism. It is just, I don't want to get numb to it a horrible thing that is for one human being to do to another human being because in the United States, we have worked really hard to stigmatize bigotry.

We have more people from different parts of the world, different backgrounds, living in one country than I think has ever happened in human history in such close proximity. And it is an incredible accomplishment of the American people that we have done this for the length of time that we've done it with the level of relative harmony. Like, yes, things feel tense and painful right now, but what we do in the United States is actually amazing. And it's partially because bigotry, genuine bigotry, has been highly stigmatized. And so to apply that label to somebody who doesn't actually believe those things and to just, again, put the label on them, not argue about whether you're enabling it or just like have a substantive argument fine, but to just toss the label around

is truly disgusting on top of just not being constructive. It poisons the dialogue. It makes it impossible for people to talk to each other. And on a human level, it is really sad. And if you're doing that without thinking about it because you're caught up in the algorithm and you're not pausing 10 minutes before you do it, that's even more shameful. Like just take a break. Just take a break. And I know it sounds like quaint at this point because you've gone through so much of it. and many people have, but it's just, it's such a bad thing to do. Yeah. No, I mean, it's, you know, it's unfortunate because it's not working out for the people who did it. You know, it's like people who just jumped on the anti-Semitism train.

They've dismissed Tucker as one. And, I mean, like, the notion of calling me an anti-Semite is so absurd that the listening audience to the show knows what a lie that is. But like the outside people, they don't know. They don't, not everybody listens to the show on a daily basis are enough to know. But you're seeing it now, right? you're seeing it. Like the people who have made that they're calling card to just look at all conservatives with doubts about Israel and say, you're an anti-Semite, they're failing. Their shows are failing. And I do think it's in part why we saw what I consider to be very sad news about the

Daily Wire on Friday, where they had mass layoffs. And this is a company that for most of its existence has been near and dear to my heart. And I still have a lot of friends over there. And I am rooting for them. And even though I've had this massive blowup with Ben Shapiro, that that he initiated, I have never been anything but good to Ben and we were dealing with each other behind the scenes in a very lovely manner before he attacked me publicly at the turning point thing in December. I'm rooting for Ben too. I don't want to see Ben suffer. I don't want to see his company implode, but it certainly seems to be. There are reports of 50 to 60 percent of the staff having been laid off. They officially denied it. But I think the problem of the daily wire is

multifaceted. They invested tens of millions of dollars in this dragon movie, which they, they kept behind a paywall. It had no chance of paying off for them. It was just absolutely foolhardy. They expanded into, they sort of like, you know, they had mission creep, Emily. You know, like they, now they're selling razors and they're selling chocolate and they're selling, I don't know, all sorts of different products as opposed just like doing the news, you know? And they started to do all this like children's programming and, um, movie making, and it's like, I think if they just stuck to their core mission of doing the news in a more fair and balanced way and hadn't gotten hung up on all these other projects,

and yes, indeed, the Israel First Nature of Ben's coverage in particular, I think they'd be fine. I don't, I think, you know, in the off election years, it's always a little slower for, you know, any podcast. So I'm sure that's a factor. But I think they would have withstood that, no problem had these other factors not been there. I just think in general, the right doesn't take well to name-calling, culling of the movement, anyone declaring themselves like the godfather of it, who will decide who gets to stay and who gets to go. According to Ben Shapiro, Steve Bannon had to go as of December. So did Tucker. I got lumped in there as an alleged coward in the world of Ben Shapiro for not being outspoken on his favorite issues. Barry Weiss doubled down with her free press.

None of these people is doing well. The free press, not doing well. CBS is having the lowest ratings it's had in between 25 and 100 years. I don't even know if it hasn't been around for 100 years. Like in a century, though, basically, since it's formation under her leadership. And she's pushing all these messages on her evening newscast and her morning newscast. The people are rejecting it. They're rejecting it, Emily. Yeah, I think that's right. And I mean, at the Daily Wire, one way that you can tell, I think people are rejecting it is that, to their credit, they've allowed Michael Knowles and Matt Walsh to kind of openly dissent from some of Ben's arguments. And sometimes they do it on their like live streams, which I think, again, like that is that is a good thing. And it tells me that they know even among their own audience that it's sort of controversial to be totally embracing every single element of Ben's arguments. I think that they're just that it's sort of controversial. I think that it's, it's sort of controversial to be totally embracing every single element of Ben's arguments. I think that. I think that it's, they also, I mean, it's an interesting new media lesson. We don't totally have the full story publicly yet, but the growth was too fast and you have to have diversified, I think, revenue streams, whereas if like a big chunk of your revenue is based around Ben and you want to build a big media company that does movies and TV shows and documentaries and also has a news website. And remember they had a publishing imprint for a while? They were doing books and children's programming. you're reliant on probably streams of investor money, but your big pull is still

been. At one point, it was Candice. That's a really rickety foundation for a media company in the long term. And so I think they ran into some trouble with that, where it was just, to your point, mission creep way too fast as well. Like creep is probably not the right word, but like mission sprinting in different directions. And it was not a good foundation for success. Yeah, I mean, just he's doubled on on it many times. Just when President Trump decided to attack Tucker and yours truly and some others who have been skeptics of the Iran war repeatedly in some tweets a couple weeks ago, Ben retweeted his turning point speech calling for us to be excommunicated from the conservative movement saying, now seems like a good time to re-up this. Okay. All right.

I see you haven't moved at all off of your position that you get to dictate. who's part of the conservative movement, who isn't. Meanwhile, I'd been at Fox News for 16 years before anybody even knew his name. Like, some of us have been in this media space for a very long time, fighting very important fights for decades. That includes Tucker Carlson, for sure. And it also includes yours, truly, and others. And he decided to double down on it.

So it's like, okay, when your business is hemorrhaging, maybe... a wide net. Maybe launch your criticisms on an individualized basis. Take on Tucker's arguments. Take on mine. Whatever. You think I'm not saying enough about X. Okay, you can spend your show talking about that if you want. I'm sure your audience doesn't really want to spend its day hearing about that. But okay, you could do that as opposed to, I shall decree who is in and who is out. I appoint myself, master of the conservative movement. That doesn't work. Liberals may like that shit, but conservatives don't. Maybe the neocon Israel first crowd likes it, but nobody else does, Emily. Well, and listen, like, we've been inside these conservative movement spaces. Like, one of the big messages that I have to

people inside the conservative movement, also like Republican and Democratic Party, like look at what just happened in Maine where Janet Mills, the sitting governor, had to drop out of the race because Graham Platner was so powerful. Janet Mills had all the money. They thought it was ridiculous that Platner would ever win. And she didn't even make it to the primary. A lot of that is because institutions are less powerful than personalities now. So you can't say that, oh, we have to defer to the power of this institution. Like remember when National Review did this to the Birchers, that doesn't work on younger people, it doesn't work on Americans anymore. It may have been true. No one's true in the 70s and the 80s with William F. Buckley, but it's just not the same anymore.

The institutional power is different. And so you have to make arguments. You have to appeal to individuals and you have to have those arguments with individuals, not with institutions. And you can't just defer to that stuff anymore. This same crowd did this to Pat Buchanan, whose ideas have been vindicated 110 percent, whom I've read a lot of over the past year. He has so many insightful things to say about America's role in the world, about our foundational goals, about what's happening with foreign influence, yes, from the Israel lobby and others as well, and how we've been, we count out to them.

You know, we have made ourselves subservient to a foreign nation, never mind just influenced by it. And that's why he had to be otherized and demonized. We'll pick this up on the opposite side of this break, more with Emily after this. Don't go away. When it comes to supplements, there are two things that matter most.

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We in the Kelly Brunt household have been up late over the past week or two watching imperfect women, which I highly recommend. It was so good. We just watched the final episode last night. It's hard to find good thrillers, you know, that don't have like lame ties up at the end, you know, tying it together. They nailed it. Really, really well done. It's got Carrie Washington. It's got Elizabeth Moss. It's got Kate Mara. Really, really good. So if you haven't seen it and you like thrillers, it's an eight-parter. I never know where you see of these things, right? Emily, the next question is,

which app did you watch it on? Who the hell knows? I don't know. I don't know what app we watched it on. Netflix or Apple, I think. Well, I like that you can stay up late for Carrie Washington, but not for after-party, Megan. I'll remember that. I have inside access to after party. That's true. That's true. But, Doug, of all people. I expected more.

I know. Usually we're there, usually. There's bad stuff happening that you should know about in Iran. Our ceasefire is not going well. You're going to be shocked to learn shocked. Here's the latest. First of all, the person updating us on the latest bad news is Bradley Cooper, which I told Steve Crackauer,

we've really dropped the ball here. we're not taking these pressers live. And Bradley Cooper is the new spokesperson for SentCom. Turns out there's more than one man by that name. He says the following, that 15,000 U.S. service members are now involved in what we're calling Project Freedom. We reported on this today on AM Update. It is our new effort to help commercial vessels pass through the strait of Hormuz.

Trump, the administration clarified that we're not, allegedly, we're not like physically escorting and protecting them, we're just helping show them the route that will avoid mines and other dangers, I guess. No one really knows, as is typical with the reporting on this war. But the reporting is that we have 15,000 U.S. service members who are involved in this effort that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard has launched drones and missiles to try to disrupt the mission over the last several hours. And now we're having like return fire. The U.S. blew up six small Iranian boats in the Strait of Hormuz on Monday, after Iran launched multiple cruise missiles, drones, and small boats at U.S. Navy ships and at commercial ships being,

quote, protected. Again, it's unclear by the U.S. military, according to Bradley Cooper. The Iranian boats were attacked by U.S. Apache and S.H. 60 Seahawk helicopters. So it doesn't sound like a ceasefire. It sounds like there's some fire that's not ceasing. And this is to the surprise of no one. As President Trump claims, but no one knows for sure what's in there, that he's received a 14-point plan from the Iranians to bring this thing to a close, which he claims is not good enough. And now he's going to play hardball and he doesn't want to talk to them yet.

I was on with Pierce Morgan a little earlier, Emily, and he asked me, what would you tell the president to do? And I said I would tell him to just take the deal. give the Revolutionary Guard something. Like, it appears to be that they're mercenaries. So give them some sort of financial incentive to relinquish control over the strait and don't make whatever around the nuclear program be the thing that screws up the end of the deal

because we already know that we did obliterate their nuclear facilities in June. And our intelligence community already assessed that they're nowhere near having a nuclear bomb. So we'll continue to speak, spy on them. Obviously, if we want to continue with the IAEA inspections, they'd probably agree to that, frankly. And that's really all we need. In my view, and Mark Levin has a different view. I get it. But let's just get out and try to open up the straight of Hormuz because that's the pinch point

they have against us. And now our blockade of their ports at the pinch point we have on them. But we're going to feel that pain. Already, we've got jet fuel at the highest level they've seen in years. We've got airlines folding here in America. Spirit had many problems, but this was like the last straw. We've got American Airlines profits for this year already projected to be wiped out by the hike and fuel. The price of gasoline per gallon is now up at what? Four, what is it, you guys remind me? Four-25 or something? Four-forty-five. Now it's four-forty-five. My own pump in Connecticut, $5.9 a gallon. $5 a $9 a gallon.

That's crazy. And you're going to see it. Right now they're projecting. I was actually just looking at the New York Times this morning. My God, it's so small. I'm getting so old. But the projection is that the Strait of Hormuz is expected to remain effectively closed for weeks, raising the prospect of prolonged high energy prices.

And they pointed out something I hadn't seen, which is, despite Mr. Trump's claims of gas prices dropping soon, Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright, acknowledged last month, they could remain elevated for the rest of the year. Now, that's if things wrap up today, today. But they're not going to wrap up today. So the longer this goes on, the longer the pain goes on, because these energy prices remain spiked and that has a rolling effect that doesn't hit us here in the United States the next day. It takes months. So all of this portends very badly for the midterms. and for President Trump's approval ratings and his ability to get anything done, Emily.

Well, and this is where it's really bad for the president is that he is now in a situation where he has promised to win a war. And he said multiple times he's won the war, but Americans have for several months now made sacrifices at the pump. This is obviously going to cause, basically, across the board inflation. And that's not, I think these assessments are correct.

Trump himself acknowledged in an interview with Maria Bartaromo a couple of weeks ago that, yeah, the prices could remain elevated all the way up until the midterm elections. And so when you're asking the public to make a sacrifice for safety, and then you have to find a way to negotiate something that is different from what was on the table before the war, that is a serious, serious problem for President Trump right now, because if you lose American lives in the Strait of Hormuz, the Strait of Hormuz was obviously open before the war began. And so if you, end up losing American lives. This is an escalation that we're seeing happen right now in the

process of trying to get something back to the pre-war status quo. That is disastrous all while you're asking Americans to sacrifice their hard-earned money. It's basically wiped out the benefits that the Trump administration was excited about from the tax cuts. That's what some of the economic estimates are looking like right now. It's easy to see how those prices are so, so high and not going down anytime soon in all likelihood. And so you might end up, I pray to God it doesn't happen, but you might end up losing more troops in the process of trying to open the Strait of Hormuz. And then what is on the table in terms of actually like we're right now seeing President Trump has said the Iranian Navy has basically been decimated. Well, we're in an era of asymmetric warfare where they have their mosquito fleet, they have drones, they can find a way to cause us pain if we're truly trying to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

So where things are looking at right now for a peace deal, your option is, I think, the say, option. But the president is in a situation where he said that he was going to change the fate of Iran. And he's defined it in many different terms, you know, freedom for the Iranian people. He's defined it as no nukes ever. And I don't know where you go from here at this point. If that's what the president thinks he has to get out of this conflict to look like, he's truly had a win. So it's a scary position to be in right now. Yeah, because you've got the risk of escalation right there looming over every move we make and every move they make, anything provocative by us. And they'd be happy to start this thing back up. They don't, they don't care. And they are enjoying

watching Trump suffer politically. And I think the president's very frustrated. My own impression is he's very frustrated right now because he's used to be able to, to being able to will his desires into existence, you know, just the sheer force of him. And he's, you know, He's a tough negotiator. He can be a bully in his negotiations, which has always worked for him. And it's not working. And he's not used to this. I just, I think he doesn't quite know how to get out of this one. I think that's totally correct. If they had a good idea of how to get out of it, we wouldn't keep hitting these impasses in negotiations and the like. And, you know, that's the question. If Iran wants to say 15 years, 20 years, no enrichment. and put that on the table and it's not good enough for President Trump, then, which again, I don't even think it's an unreasonable position for Donald Trump who ran on non-nuclear Iran against Barack Obama, like the politics of it.

You could easily see how you get, you know, that position from Donald Trump. But at the same time, if that's the brick wall that you're hitting, it doesn't go away. It doesn't go away unless he finds some way to restore the straight, restore the straight of her moves to what it was in the pre-war condition. and then force Iran to concede, while it has all of these asymmetric abilities to keep causing us pain. So I don't know how you end up breaking that wall

because it's the same thing that we keep hitting up against. They're not going to agree to no nukes ever. It's just not going to happen. And unless we're willing to keep fighting it out against this asymmetric military threat from Iran, then we're in it for the long haul. Mm-hmm. You've got Lindsey Graham and Mark Tieson saying, if they won't give us what we want, the leaders with whom we're negotiating in Iran, kill them, kill the people we're negotiating with, so that we can get some, quote, more reasonable people to negotiate with. So we should just keep killing the people were negotiating. I mean, what that would do to the United States' ability to negotiate with anyone on a go-forward basis is unthinkable. And that is, to me, so irresponsible. That's, that is, to me, so irresponsible. That's an insane suggestion.

Just like you will agree to everything we demand or we will drone you and your family. You're all going to die. This is being thrown around casually like it's an easy option for us without any recognition of the fact that we have intermediaries. We have the Pakistani PM who's involved in all of this. Like that's an important ally in some ways. Why would we telegraph to them or anybody else that our word is no good? We are never participating in good faith in the. negotiations. You disagree with us. We will fucking drone you, and it'll be over. So, like,

how's that going to go? That feels really good in the moment when you're killing the person you disagreed with across the table from Jared Kushner. The consequences long term, be damned. Well, right. It's predicated on the idea that if you kill this person, if you drone this person, what's going to come next is going to be someone more reasonable. And that assumption is doing some real heavy lifting from Lindsay Graham and anybody making such propositions because if you are asking people, just on a human level, if you're asking people who would be in a position to negotiate after you take out one layer of leadership to then be more reasonable rather than more radical and more doggedly opposed to the United States, again, that is a very, I mean, you are

betting a lot on that particular idea of what would happen if you do that. And then what What, of course, to your point, happens when you're trying to host negotiations in the future and people worry that it's a setup for them to get killed or drowned in the process. The long-term ramifications of that way of prosecuting a war are just frankly insane, insane. But it keeps happening, of course. Our word used to be really good. Our word used to be very good, the word of the United States of America. And it's being eroded and besmirched bit by bit by every time we keep doing this. This is twice we've allegedly negotiated with the Iranians a good faith, only to bomb them while they were negotiating with us.

And, you know, Tiesin and Lindsey Graham would like it to be a third, at least. Speaking of our word, President Trump tells Fox News in an interview that's about to hit, that the Iranians will, quote, be blown off the face of the earth if they attack U.S. vessels that are guiding ships through the Strait of Hormuz as part of, quote, project freedom. So the Iranians will be blown off the face of the earth if they attack the vessels. I mean, they are attacking the vessels. We just started the hour by saying they've launched drones and missiles to try to thwart the traffic and disrupt the mission over the last several hours.

That's what led to our retaliatory strikes against them. So it is happening. I'm not sure exactly what he means, if this is just more bellicose language by the president, trying to escalate everything to an 11, right, to try to just scare. them. We're going to blow it. End civilization as we know it. Okay. You know, like all this rhetoric. By the way, the latest poll shows the majority of the public strongly disapproves of that language. They want him to stop doing that. He won't listen. Like, shit talking is something the president's really good at. And I think he thinks that's his only tool. I really do. I think it's like tried and true.

It's familiar to him. It's comfortable. It's like a, there's like the old sweater with the elbow patches. He loves it. You know, he puts it on. He feels good. He feels warm and fuzzy. So like shit talking and ship posting, he's home. But I don't think he knows how to actually get us out of this, not against this enemy. I want to go back to the Tucker thing for a minute because, yeah, you go. Well, I was just going to say, I mean, it also, the power of it fades over time if it's not then followed up. And I'm certainly very happy that he didn't follow up on his threat to wipe out an entire civilization. But it only goes so far. If you continue to speak in the bellicose rhetoric, and then it turns out to just be rhetoric, just even tactically, that doesn't

fulfill its own goal. So the power of it wanes over time anyway. It's sort of like with the tariffs, which I've been pretty supportive of, to be honest, but it's basically this idea that you can, you know, posture, get the markets to go in one direction or the other. Well, some countries have started to bet against the United States and do their business elsewhere and say, well, we can't rely on the United States anymore. We can't rely on the word of the president because it changes. And so we're just going to hedge our bets and go somewhere else. He's doing something similar, I think, on the foreign policy level. And the power of being able to intimidate other countries into agreeing with you to coerce them. It does wane over time.

It's not something that lasts forever. And plus, it's like my main thing is, I don't want American troops to die, number one, but I really am very focused on the midterms because the midterms get tougher for Republicans in 28, in particular in the Senate. I mean, obviously in the Senate because the House red does itself every two years. But the Senate is, it's the map gets worse for. for the Republicans in 28. So they really need to hold on in 26. And now we played it for our audience late last week.

Mark Halperin's saying, I think the Senate may now be in play, like legitimately in play, which was new for him. He hadn't been there. And so, like, if we lose the Senate, if the right loses control of the Senate, you, like, forget, you will not confirm another judge. President Trump will not get another judge on the federal bench for the remainder of his term, which is a very big deal. That is, like, a large reason a lot of people on the right,

voted for President Trump because of the lunacy happening on the federal bench and to put a stop to that. Well, you can kiss it goodbye. Never mind the investigations that we're going to see. It was just going to be nonstop investigatory. He's never going to have a nominee to his cabinet confirmed. You know, he, good luck changing on a member of the cabinet because they need Senate confirmation too. Like, it's just, it's going to be so stymied for him. If he loses control of the Senate, that can't happen, which is one of the reasons why we are looking so closely at gas prices, which are hurting people. They're hurting working people. People, like my mom who lives on a fixed income. Obviously, I help my mom out. But, you know, without me,

she'd be living on a fixed income that would very much be rattling her because her day-to-day would be deeply affected by these gas prices. And that's how most Americans live. Here's Harry Enton on how Americans are reacting to the rising gas prices in Sot 10. Look at this. Blame for the increase in gas prices. 77 percent say Donald Trump, I look back at every president I could find on a similar question, which is when the gas prices rise, who gets to blame? Trump gets the blame more than Joe Biden did back in 2022, more than Barack Obama did in 2012, and more than George W. Bush did back in 2005, 71%. Donald Trump takes the cake.

He owns this mess, according to the American people, and it is quite the mess because his gas prices climb ever higher and the increase in the percentage that blamed Donald Trump climb ever higher, his approval ratings go down in the basement. But when you break it down by party, this is where it gets. Oh my, you know, this is a Republican base that has been infatuated with Donald Trump for years. But even here, blame Trump for rising gas prices. 55% a majority of Republicans blame Donald Trump for gas prices. That is the highest ever blame for gas prices from one's own party.

Then you see 82% of independence. That's the highest percentage who blame the president of the United States among independents. Not much of a surprise 95% of Democrat, but majority, majority, majority. And what he keeps saying, Emily, is that it's basically your patriotic duty to support these higher gas prices and pay them because Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon, notwithstanding the fact that it was his own intelligence agencies that said they're not getting one. We're good. That's not a concern we need to have right now, especially in the wake of the bombing that we did in June. So that, I mean, it's not, the public is not buying his rationale at all. And what he keeps saying also is, look at the stock market, the stock market.

okay, that's a rich person thing. Like, I'm sorry, but like, yes, the average person may have 401ks that get affected by the stock market. But the true average American is worried about what's in their weekly disbursement from Social Security, what they get in their paycheck. And they don't have a ton of money in the market. Right. Stocks are a long-term concern for probably about 60% of the country, but it's not their monthly income is not coming. from that. And so it's, he takes so much credit for the market that I think it's actually why Harry Anton was just pointing out. Those numbers are historically high of your own party,

blaming the president for where gas prices are, because if you are constantly taking ownership of the markets, it looks to the average person like you're taking ownership of the economy. And he's done that in various ways over, you know, gas prices are great. He's taking credit for the gas prices being great. And so he's, you know, if anything economic is happening in a good way, taking credit for it. He's very intentional and strategic about that. And so it's much easier than for people to blame you when the economy is in a bad position. And Megan, I remember you and I were talking a month ago about some of these Senate races. I think the big ones to watch are Ohio and Nebraska right now, because if you're in Ohio or if you're in Nebraska, you're Pete Ricketts and

you have to defend the administration at every campaign stop that is taking money, it feels like to the average person, is taking money out of their pockets for the straight of war moves, which was open before the war began, if you have to defend that at stop after stop, your support for this war, your support for this president to voters, those two races are really, really, really, really wants to watch. Susan Collins is kind of always vulnerable, but always persists. So I don't know what's going to happen in that race. Texas, I think, is probably safe for Republicans. North Carolina is going to be a real problem for Republicans, North Carolina, Ohio, Nebraska. Yep, that's a big, big problem across the board. Georgia, certainly. So a lot of serious headaches for Republicans,

especially as they get into the summer and they're back at home. The one in Maine concerns me, too, because this Graham Platner, who's now going to be the Democratic nominee, you know, even Tucker was like praising him somewhat on that New York Times interview because his foreign policy sounds like Tucker's, you know, like, don't intervene. Like stay out of other people's wars, which I like too. However, you look down the resume and you see he wants to pack the Supreme Court with extra seats and make Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico states. No, it's a no. No. Oh, my God. If that were to happen, you know, like we'd have amnesty. We'd have mass amnesty if we had a Democrat in the White House and a Democrat-controlled Senate with people that radical. It's very scary to me. I care about foreign policy, but it's not my number one issue to the place where I'd be willing to vote for a guy like that. but he's got, I don't know, he's got some, is it charm? I don't know if that's the right word. Is it like charisma?

I'm not sure he's new and he's young and he's interesting in a way that Susan Collins can never be and never was. Yeah, we've interviewed him before at breaking points and he's very raw. Like he will just have a conversation like a normal human being. And so policy disputes aside, looking at him as a candidate. I know it's such a low bar for politicians, but he's the type of guy. Like, I was just listening to him with David Serota on Lever News yesterday. David asked him if he would go on Tucker's podcast. And Graham's response was, you know, I don't know. To be honest with you, I'm just sort of torn on this question myself. I've been thinking about it a lot. And I just don't know, you know, he's like, I just want to be honest. I don't have an answer for you right now. It's like that to the average voter right now in this, as we're talking about earlier in the show, the algorithmic social media based political discourse that we have. It's like, oh my gosh, that person sounds like a human being. They're not reading talking points. So I think he's just a very, very good candidate.

Policy disputes aside, again, he's very anti-establishment. He says the problem is with both parties, and he's just able to talk like a normal human. So he'll be tough. He'll definitely put up a good fight in that race. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny because the Democrats will vote for him, notwithstanding his Nazi tattoo. And the New York Times will sit down with Tucker, notwithstanding the fact that they've been telling us,

he's like, chief racist of all. times, right, like on the front page of its paper, just a couple years ago. But now they're interested in him, right, because he's crossed the president. It's like, they're so predictable, these left-wing media outlets and the Democrats in general. They're so predictable. It's like, oh, whatever, a certain male gesture comes to mind. Okay, I want to keep going. I did want to get to this one. I did think this was interesting. Tucker was asked about the Nick Fuentes interview. He had told me this privately, but he said it on camera. Here it is, Sot 18. I wish I had had. I hadn't done the Fuentes interview because...

Really? Yeah, it was totally not worth it. I mean, it was like kind of interesting, I guess. But it was used as I added to the distraction. What I really wanted to talk about was where we were going in this war with Iran. And I spent like a month getting calls from people being like, you're a Nazi. Okay. And I wish I hadn't done that.

Not that it didn't imperil my soul. I've interviewed far worse people than Nick Fuentes, like Mike Huckabee, far worse person than Nick Fuentes, hurt many more people than Nick Fuentes. Same with Ted Cruz. So I don't think it affected me. I interview people I disagree with all the time.

And often I'm polite to them, including war criminals. The only person I've really been in polite with is Ted Cruz, because I have limited self-control and he's just so repulsive. I couldn't control myself. And I was a jerk. And I tried to apologize.

But if you had to sit across from Ted Cruz, it's just there's something about him. It's just like repulsive. I mean, it's like disgusting. Like if you entered a men's room and Ted Cruz was there, you would be like, I can hold it. I'm leaving. And I broke down under the strain of his repulsiveness.

But in general, I try to be nice to everybody. But man, that Fuentes interview, I just added to the distraction. Okay. So we've established he does not like Ted Cruz. But I play that clip, not for that piece, but for the Fuentes thing. I knew that he'd regretted doing it because it's truly, like, they turned Tucker into a Nazi for sitting across from this guy. And it's crazy, Emily, because, you know, she pressed him to.

She's like, well, I saw your Ted Cruz interview. It was much more contentious. It was more prosecutorial where your interview with Nick Fuentes was, like, more friendly. And he explained there why he doesn't like Ted and why they got contentious. And, you know, Ted gave as good as he got in that exchange. but it's amazing how much of our national conversation revolves around this guy Fuentes and some of these characters who make their way into the news. They have their opinions.

They're controversial, of course. But it's like, why wouldn't she want to discuss more what the policymakers are doing than what this kid in Chicago, I don't know if he's a kid anymore. I think he's like 29. Could be wrong. But he's, you know, in Chicago thinks about life. Like why? Why is she so focused on that and not actual policy that all appear on the pages of the New York Times the next day and the day after that?

I had the exact same reaction to the interview that it was like generally, generally okay. But then the focus on the Flintestust up was absurd, like wildly over the top. It was interesting to me that Tucker said he didn't think that it was worth it. It quite obviously was not worth it. Like the juice was not worth the squeeze. There was a middle part of that interview that was really critical. of Fuentes as it was happening, and nobody went with that section of it at all. You saw no clips from that part of the interview.

It basically just didn't exist where Tucker was questioning him on how you can consider yourself a Christian and be bigoted and believe in blood guilt and the like. Again, nobody picked up on that part of the interview. Didn't see any clips of it. But yeah, it did become a distraction through, it's not even really Tucker's fault that it became a distraction. I was getting actually kind of angry when I was listening to this recent episode of Tucker's show where he did a great interview with this head of a startup on that is doing like reproductive technology like very high tech reproductive stuff and it was you could tell a technology that Tucker found abhorrent morally abhorrent and i'm listening to him give this kid a really

fair kind polite civil decent interview and it was a fantastic conversation which made me angry because if you listen to every episode of Tucker's show you realize he does does this all of the time. He's truly correct that basically it was the Ted Cruz interview and the end of the Huckabee interview where he lost his school. But it's something he's like, he's a conversationalist and it's why his show is successful is because he's very good at getting people to open up and genuinely press them as a human being, from one human being to another, on the questions that the conversation is leading them to. It's not super prepped. It's really him up in Maine, just having a conversation, the cameras are rolling. And so the, the, the,

That's why people like him, and that's why this effort in the long term is going to backfire to try to smear him. Because again, when you dig into it and you watch the reality, just like I thought Lulu did a good job of bringing out who Tucker is by giving him the space to talk in this conversation. He sounds a lot more reasonable outside the clip ecosystem. And when people have that experience of seeing the long form versus the clip, sometimes it's radicalizing for people and in a good direction where they realize they are being lying. to by the people who they thought were against the media, who they thought were against the institutional legacy media, who are acting just like the institutional legacy media. That's exactly right.

He's going to be on the program on Thursday, so we'll talk to him about some of the other clips that are making the rounds and more. All right, I'm going to take a quick break, Emily. We will come back, and we've got to get into the massive, massive piece that just dropped in Vulture on Justin Baldoni and Blake lively with some new reveals in there. Wow. Talk about dysfunctional. Stand by. Paying 70, 80, 90

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Back with me now, Emily Jashinsky of the After Party show and the MK wrap-up show as well, live right here on SiriusXM after the MK show airs. And you can call in and speak to her just as soon as that starts in a short time. Okay, so Vulture does a very, very deep dive into the Baldoni Lively saga. This is part of New York Magazine's media empire. And it was a fascinating read. I have to say it was 30 pages long. And what I learned is that you should never work with Blake Lively. Every errant word, suggestion,

story, personal anecdote, or moment with the guard down, will be used against you. Notwithstanding the power imbalance being on her side, she will paint herself a victim. She will turn her celebrity husband against you and Taylor Swift, as we know. And that the loathing of this woman extended well beyond, ultimately, Justin Baldoni and his business partners, even Sony, right? was it Sony, which was, I guess, putting out the film. I got to make sure I have that right. Yeah, Sony called her a terrorist, called her a terrorist in the way that she was behaving

toward Justin Baldoni and the rest of the people working on this film because she wanted to be a boss lady, Emily, and she tried to bully Justin Baldoni and was bitter about the fact that on her prior films where she'd been hired, just to act, they would not let her screen write or direct. Meanwhile, they had other people filling those roles. And that was also the case on this movie she did with Baldoni. It ends with us. But she thought she had a weakling whom she could bully into letting her do those things. And when, and he did. He largely did. But only when she decided it wasn't enough, he wasn't seating enough. And she started to defriend him on social media and so on. Did he then realize he needed to hire his own team? and that's when she started to feel like she needed to sue him. You know, like any bad publicity must have been generated by him. There's no way people could be turning on her. And now we're about to go into a trial.

It's May 4th today. We are 15 days away from the start of what is likely to be the trial of the century, at least when it comes to civil liability and or Hollywood. So what were your impressions? I know you took a look at the vulture article. Yeah. Well, I always love when Kelly, court is in session on this because the trial is going to be like really, I don't know,

it's just there's so many tangled variables or interests that are like going through the legal process right now with this story. But the vulture piece puts the meat on the bones. I think of the broad contours that you and a lot of others saw immediately when that Christmas time New York Times article dropped. That was, this was like a year and a half ago at this point. It was like the first big article of the saga, and it was trying to point the finger at Baldoni in almost a me-to way. And you could see in that story how something was being built and constructed, even at that time when we had so little context about what was happening behind the scenes. And what you get in this vulture piece is the step-by-step TikTok of how Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds roped in. a network of very powerful celebrities and their reputations to try to take down Baldoni

and save Blake Lively's career. They brought in Matt Damon and Matt Damon's wife. Obviously, people have known about the Taylor Swift of it all for a long time, but they are consciously trying and you see in their text messages, which are deeply embarrassing because they are groveling to their celebrity friends. Like, reading them as a third party, you have, secondhand embarrassment for these celebrities who are groveling over more powerful celebrities and trying to bring them to their side. They are invoking politics. Ryan Reynolds is referring to Baldoni as a phomist, like F-A-U-X-minist, a fake feminist. Yeah, here's the quote. He writes to Matt Damon and his wife. This is from Ryan Reynolds. He calls him a malignant, a malignant, easy for me to say.

malignantly vain sociopathic, phominist with almost no sense of boundaries or shame. Keep going on. Yeah, I mean, there's message after message where they are invoking politics, feminism, being a good ally. You can see this in some of the early text messages between Blake lively and Justin Baldoni. They are like bonding over allyship. It just makes your skin crawl because it's so cringy. It's just like...

And their wokeness? Yes, it's just like toxic millennials. behavior, which I can say because I'm a millennial, but they are just like trying to bring these, this huge network of celebrities to crush Justin Baldoni. And they are manipulating the media in the process. It's incredible to watch the behind the scenes happen with all of these text messages. Yes. It's amazing. And how small these huge stars are at heart. You know, you can have all the money and all the fame and all the trappings of Ryan Reynolds and Blake lively and still feel so small that you've got to rally your celebrity

to try to ruin this director, Justin Baldoni, who really wasn't planning on doing anything to Blake lively. He wanted to have a successful movie. He wanted to have a great rollout. She started to publicly humiliate him by unfollowing him on social media and getting the rest of the cast to do that

and making him stay in the basement for the premiere. And he accurately deduced, I mean, it doesn't exactly take a genius that she was trying to ruin him. Like, this was the beginning of a smear campaign from which he was unlikely to recover, hired his own PR team to try to fight back, and that's been painted as now retaliation for the alleged sexual harassment.

She, in my view, completely falsely claimed she was subjected to on set. The sexual harassment piece of her claim has been thrown out. But I do think one of the most interesting things about this trial is going to be the exact same dynamic we saw at Amber Hurd, Johnny Depp in that trial. Because she, you see in the text messages outlined in this article that her team, including starting with her and her husband Ryan Reynolds, they're like, we will label him this fomynist, like a fake feminist. Justin Baldoni was one of those touchy-feely guys with a man bun who was like, oh, women, women, and I need to be a real ally and all that stuff. And they were like, he is the devil himself. He's a disgusting man who uses that as a label to reel in women

whom he then takes advantage of, speaks inappropriately true, treats with Me Too like behaviors. And they are going to have the chance to tell that story. They are going, we get some of the details, which I actually hadn't heard some of these, about how they write in the, about how it started to go south, initially over tensions around sex scenes, reading from the piece here, some of the first tense of tension between the two emerged as they started working out the intimate scenes between their characters in the spring of 2023. Baldoni wanted the movie's first sex scene

to telegraph the shifting power dynamic between Ryle, the guy, and Lily, the gal. That's Justin and Blake's characters. She's in charge and then he takes over, Baldoin wrote in a description of the scene, quote, two strong personalities coming together as one. His character would start kissing his way down her torso

until his mouth finds that precious place between her legs. I mean, this is like, Day, what of me doing the dirty readings on the air after that JP Morgan lawsuit? And I'm not Adam Carolla, so I can't handle it quite like that. It was just becoming like a sidekick for me. Okay.

His direction called for the camera to then close in unlively as she, quote, moans in ecstasy. Baldoni's notes about a different scene described what parts of their respective bodies he hoped to show. Quote, I imagine side boob, an outline of butt in close-ups if she is comfortable, he wrote. I'm fine showing my butt, female gaze, because he wants the whole scene shot through like a female gaze, he says. Lively expressed discomfort with a number of these proposals and a nudity writer that she negotiated. She drew the line at any implication of oral sex along with any nudity beyond side breast, which would be seen whilst still wearing a bikini. Lively, who is 38, also did not want to perform an on-screen orgasm. I'm too old for that. Baldoni later recalled her saying. She told Baldoni that some of the scenes in the script, like one in which Lively

would role play as a naughty doctor, we're starting to feel pornographic, and so on. So it takes you through how she started to view him as like this Me Too creep as opposed to like the director of a saucy movie that has like a passionate

couple in which she realized he's actually an abuser, right? So it's like, if Baldoni were doing this and they were making like, I don't know, the social network, yeah, you'd be like, isn't this about Facebook? book? Why are you talking about side boob? But like, this is about love, relationship, sex,

and blah, blah, blah, and whatever. And so that's her side versus, back to the Amber Hurd Johnny Depp thing, his side, which is she's the fake feminist. She wraps herself in this cloak of female empowerment, but she instead uses it as a cudgel against perfectly legitimate business partners who happened to me male because she knows it's a weapon. It's a tool in her arsenal in that if she, Blake lively, deploys it, they're effed and no one will believe anyone other than, you know, the believe all woman, Blake lively, making the allegation. So like, those are the dueling narratives. It's almost like who's going to win the narrative. Whoever wins the narrative wins the trial. Didn't one of them, I thought Baldoni actually hired the Johnny Depp, was it the publicist or the lawyer in the Amber Heard case? Like that's one of them.

The lawyer doesn't work for him, but it might be, I mean, he has Brian Friedman, my lawyer representing him who does not have the Johnny Depp lawyer at his firm. But it could be a publicist. Yeah, but it might make sense. By the way, Brian, Brian Friedman, he went on in the well, which is one of our MK True Crime new shows with Mark Garragos. And Matt, sorry, Matt Murphy. And they interviewed Brian Friedman, and he offered some insights on the trial, which is great, because he's about to try this thing in two weeks. And listen to what, this is the one I want to play because it actually telegraphs a little bit about what they, the defense, are going to concede. Stop 34.

You know, are you defaming someone when you're actually? actually, you know, what's showing up are videos that existed on the internet. You're not creating new content. You're actually, you know, you're actually just being blamed for content that was older content that is reappearing in the internet and reappearing in, you know, in significant ways. I mean, I think we could all agree that during the premiere of a movie, the start of a movie, there's a publicity campaign. And, you know, that was another. issue in in in in why there was some organic hate but um but ultimately you know i think that that um you know when you're you're basically doing nothing but showing what already exists

whether something like that can be actionable okay so if you're showing something like that exists can it be actionable i thought he might have been intimating that it's possible those negative videos about blake were recirculated by some on Baldoni's team. I could be wrong, but I thought I gleaned that from his answer. And that could be what she's trying to base her claim on. You know, that's definitely her theory, which is that Baldoni's people pushed it.

There was not a lot of proof of that. There was a lot of proof that a bad PR wave overcame her around the time of this movie, but not that Justin Baldoni caused it. That he was ready to do that, that he had hired PR people to help him. if he needed to do that. But there may be a question of whether if the PR people working for Justin helped circulate those bad videos, is that worth $400 million as she's now claiming?

Right. I mean, this is, I think that's the crux of everything in this. Like, one of the reasons I find the story so interesting and have from the beginning is like it has potential to be a radicalizing experience for young people who are interested in pop. culture in the way that people who are interested in politics have had some radicalizing experiences along the lines of what we were talking about earlier in the show, where you have the clips versus the reality. And what we see in that vulture story, especially if you go back and read the original New York Times story that has been questioned hugely throughout all of this, every step of the way, it's that you see how there are, there's a big business

now in manipulating what was supposed to be the raw, authentic future of the internet, which was social media. This has become a big corporate endeavor with millions, sometimes billions of dollars on the line. And it is absolutely behind the scenes being manipulated for business purposes, for personal purposes by people who have more power than you, who are trying to create these images and these actual narratives. They know perception as reality. And so they're trying to manipulate the perception. That is one of the absolute most fascinating things about this story. is the chicken or the egg component, were people organically already starting to question Blake lively amid this kind of vibe shift that was happening at the time over like millennial feminism

and how sort of weird it was and how outmoded it seemed to Gen Z? Was that already percolating? Or was it planted? Or was it just part of like it percolated organically? And then it became part of this business strategy in Baldoni's camp to get his cut of the movie to win at the end of the day. They're like manipulating screenings. It's just like the level, to your point, about how small celebrities can be, small, but then also in this like, what is even the right way to put it? This strategic grand plan to make more money at the end of the day and protect their reputations. Like, it's really amazing to see that in action when you go behind the scenes. So true. There's one other I wanted to show from In The Well, which you guys should check out. It's a new podcast with Matt Murphy and Mark Garagos featuring Brian Friedman this week, the lawyer for Justin Baldoni, SOT 33.

The lost damages on a movie that wasn't made would seem to me to be the most speculative type of damages that would almost be garbage. So is that the argument? What was the argument? it. Well, some of the argument was, you know, obviously that Wayfarer had the rights to the movie, so it was ultimately their decision to whether it made the sequel or not, and there was no, you know, there was no, you know, decision made, and possibly the sequel could never be made. That certainly, who was going to be in the sequel or not, and who was going to be participating at what level, even if one was made, was some decision that wasn't even made yet. And in fact, Sony, who, you know, was a co-financer of the movie, you know, Mr. Colgrave reported in court that Sony had referred to Blake lively as, you know, as a terrorist. And so there was no guarantee that Sony would want Blake Lively that he'd be involved in the sequel, you know, when you're referring to someone as a terrorist.

incredibly telling and you know she's trying to get damages for a sequel to a movie that never had a sequel all right got to run quickly emily you'll pick it up in a couple minutes on the after show thank you we're back tomorrow with red scare thanks for listening to the megand kelly show no BS no agenda and no fear