The Megyn Kelly Show - James Woods on Biden's Farewell and Political Bias in Hollywood, and Jim VandeHei on the Trump Era Media and More | Ep. 848

Episode Date: July 25, 2024

Megyn Kelly is joined by legendary actor and producer James Woods to discuss Biden’s speech to the nation last night after dropping out of the race, how he didn’t address his health conditions, the media fawning over "hero" Biden, his incredible career as an actor and producer, why he loves America and how he stays so patriotic, how he stays friends with liberal Hollywood stars like Rob Reiner and Whoopi Goldberg, how conservatives are forced to stay quiet today, how Hollywood silences conservatives today, his personal experience with "Oppenheimer," how he isn’t afraid to speak his mind and the second act he's having now, and more. Then Jim VandeHei, co-founder and CEO of Axios and author of “Just the Good Stuff," joins to discuss the state of the media, how political bias seeps into coverage, the past month and coverage of Biden's cognitive decline, the "border czar" controversy, the impact Trump has had on the media over the years, the importance of finding sources and networks that you can trust, the most important states and demographics in the 2024 election, why Harris will likely pick a white male VP, the swift coronation of Harris by the left, and more.  Plus, Megyn addresses the insane antisemitic riots happening in Washington D.C., the ridiculous and dangerous pro-Hamas protestors and their radical views, the brave Americans protecting our flag, and more.  Woods- https://x.com/RealJamesWoodsVandeHei- https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/739608/just-the-good-stuff-by-jim-vandehei/ Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms:YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at noon east. Hey, everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. What a show we have for you today. President Joe Biden giving his farewell address of sorts last night, an 11 minute scripted campaign like speech that was, as the New York Times described, delivered, quote, with a rasp and a slight slur in his voice, speaking sometimes haltingly. Remember all those descriptions before he dropped out, before this became an issue by the New York Times, when they would point out how he was obviously deteriorating before the debate? No, me neither. Now we're going to be super obvious and on the nose and all over his deterioration because he's a liability and he

will be the dumping ground for everything in order to inoculate her. In any event, the speech gave no indication why he stepped aside as the nominee. I guess we're not entitled to know. I guess it's just going to remain a mystery. It's up to our little imaginations, but still somehow is fit to remain president. Other than the clear implication that this was all done for political purposes only. Duh. But the point is, why? What made him a political liability? Was it the fact that he's non-compass mentis, but still remains as our president? I guess we're just supposed to skip past that. His replacement, Kamala Harris, is getting a

massive assist meantime from the compliant media. My God, they're disgusting. They're so disgusting. So busy memory holing her actual record this week. I mean, it's everywhere. It's ubiquitous. The number of media outlets that are running cover for her, fawning like a high school sophomore asked to the prom by the football captain, and also scrubbing all the records of that football captain's criminal history or his run-ins with the law, whatever. I can't think of the analogy of what Kamala Harris has done. Saying dumb things, being super political one way, so much so that they dubbed her the most liberal person in the Senate. That's been memory hold as well. It's just absurd what they're doing. There's no better person to

talk to about this than my first guest, who is someone I have never spoken to before, but I'm super excited to bring to you today. He doesn't do many interviews, although his ex-account gives a good idea of his point of view these days and is a must-follow. Legendary award-winning actor James Woods. Grand Canyon University, a private Christian university in beautiful Phoenix, Arizona, believes in equal opportunity and that the American dream starts with purpose. GCU equips you to serve others in ways that promote human flourishing and create a ripple effect of transformation for generations to come. Change the world for good by putting others before yourself. Whether your pursuit involves a bachelor's, master's, or doctoral degree, GCU's online, on-campus, and hybrid learning environments

are designed to help you achieve your unique academic, personal, and professional goals. With over 330 academic programs as of September, GCU meets you where you are and provides a path to help you fulfill your dreams. The pursuit to serve others is yours. Let it flourish. Find your purpose at Grand Canyon University. Private, Christian, affordable. Visit gcu.edu. So happy to be on this show. You have no idea. By the way, it's been years probably since I've done press. I don't want to do press usually. And for the obvious reasons, because they are now by and large the propaganda organ for the D.S.C., as you and I and any rational American knows. jam through a candidate that is not only not really qualified for what the majority of Americans would like for their country, but is actually, I think, a danger to this country. Her progressive, uber-leftist ideology is something that will literally, if not bring this country to its knees,

and we'll get to that later as well, then certainly we'll cripple it for a while. But I swear, after four years of Biden, and with the possibility of four or eight years of Kamala Harris, I don't think this nation, after 248 years of its existence, could actually continue in any way, shape, or form that we recognize it to be. And good morning. She's good morning. And thank you for doing the show, notwithstanding the fact that you don't do many. And I know that it really is amazing how she's been elevated to the nominee without a single vote being cast for her first time in my life. I've agreed with BLM, which is tweeting nonstop about that, saying this is undemocratic what you're doing. I was shocked when I saw that. I mean, I find myself, and I'm sure you are surprised by this

as well, in the unenviable and surprising position of agreeing with BLM and Bill Maher and so many people who, organizations that may have their own particular attitude about how things are supposed to be in this country. And we are now finding ourselves converging with a common ground of common sense. So last night, did you watch the remarks? Oh, of course. Of course I watched it. Yeah. And I was, look, I have to give you a caveat on my position about Joseph Biden. First of all, he's not Joe Biden. He's not some happy, cheerful uncle. He's a hair-sniffing, child-curious person who's been a bagman and a political hack for

50 years. He has never done anything but service himself and his family, who has been a puppet for somebody, I don't know who, for the last four years and has been a political hack for 46 years before that. But here's the problem. He clearly has dementia of some kind. I don't know if it's Lewy, I don't know if it's Alzheimer's, I don't know if it's Lewy body. I don't know if it's Alzheimer's. I don't know if it's frontal lobe dementia. I don't know what is afflicting him, but I have a cardinal rule about these things. I think it is cruel. It is unkind. It is incorrect. And it is not fruitful in any way to torture a person who is mentally, I won't say mentally ill, but who is suffering from cognitive

decline at such a rapid and alarming rate as he is. So from the time he got sick, which was probably before he was even elected, but certainly by his first year in office, he, as the person he is now, is no longer fair game, I believe. However, the loathsome, disgusting political hack that he was for over four decades in this country is certainly fair game. What he did to Justice Clarence Thomas during those hearings was so vile that how any, you know, his famous statement when he was starting to show me into god he was

you know if you don't vote for joe biden you ain't black it's like he's the most racist president we've ever had since before jim oh i mean it is amazing and you've got him he tried to take down clarence thomas his vice president kamala harris, tried to take down Brett Kavanaugh on flimsy allegations that she used to make herself look tough. But you're right, because we are being gaslit right now about both of them since the strong arming worked to get him out. Last night, I'll play you a little bit of his remarks just so the listening audience knows what we're talking about. And then I'll play you some of the reaction, discussing him as just this selfless man who loves democracy. Okay, so let's just listen to Biden last night in what turned out to be a very harshly partisan address from the Oval Office. Take a

listen. I revere this office, but I love my country more. It's been the honor of my life to serve as your president. But in the defense of democracy, which is at stake, I think it's more important than any title. I believe my record as president, my leadership in the world, my vision for America's future, all merit at a second term. But nothing, nothing can come in the way of saving our democracy. That includes personal ambition. So I've decided the best way forward is to pass the torch to a new generation. That's the best way to unite our nation. You know, there is a time and a place for long years of experience in public life. There's also a time and a place for long years of experience in public life. There's also a time and a place for new voices, fresh voices.

Yes, younger voices. And that time and place is now. Ben Franklin was asked, as he emerged from the convention going on, whether the founders have given America a monarchy or a republic, Franklin's response was a republic if you can keep it. A republic if you can keep it. Whether we keep our republic is now in your hands. So it was all, really he's using his 11-minute farewell to stick the dagger in Trump. But honestly, it's staggering. Unity is so important. Unity, when you call half the country mega-degenerate Nazis and their candidate is Hitler, which they said 10,000 times in lockstep themselves, the most Nazi-esque behavior you could ever imagine.

You know what Nazis do? They imprison their political opponents. They marshal their lawfare army, and they go after you and try to destroy you. When you're in office, they create false mandates, they create false fictions. The Russia hoax led by that pencil neck geek, who unfortunately is one of the representatives of my state, Adam Schiff. By the way, what happened at the Standard, Adam? Another question, you know, Ed Buck's buddy, Adam Schiff, who is literally one of the few people in the history of the United States House of Representatives who has been censured for being a liar. Okay. They try to destroy and when it works, then one of their minions, one of their insane followers who's been fired up by their hateful, hateful, non-unity rhetoric decides to try to put a bullet in the leading candidate for president of the United States. And a third of them, according to polls, say that they wish the assassin hadn't missed.

You tell me if that's you. You tell me if that's love. It is, you know, you talk about this isn't a dictatorship. We don't have emperors and kings here. You've got a candidate now who's going to be running for president of the United States who's never gotten a single vote in a caucus for her from her party. OK, what we've seen with her is the closest thing we've seen to a coronation since we broke off from old great Britain. But because it's important to give him his payment,

right? His payment for withdrawing under duress was we'll make a King out of you. And then she'll be the queen, but we'll, we'll make a lion out of you. We'll, we'll, you'll get your library. We'll say the nicest things. You'll be the greatest thing since George Washington and the media did its part. They understood that was the deal. They lived up to the deal. I give you a sampling from last night after the speech, top five. This was a speech for the history books, just the type of speech that will be replayed for decades to come. This moment puts him with a bunch of American greats, you know, the sort of George Washington. This was selfless. This was

selfless on a level, I think, that's important in a way that we talk about George Washington being selfless and saying, I could keep doing this for me because I think I can. The question, does character still matter? Well, in Destinate, in Destinate, the kid with the stutter did good. He did good.

That's a good man. He fell on the sword. He had somebody sitting in that chair and he wouldn't give up power no matter what. Wouldn't give up power, let there be an insurrection, wouldn't get out of that chair. Even when the people voted for you to get out of the chair, he wouldn't get out of the chair. And you've got somebody who's sitting in that same chair showing that character does matter. Gratitude is the word for so many people in this country pointing to Joe Biden now and calling the patriot who stepped in when democracy needed it. Unbelievable. I mean, to hear anyone in his or her right mind compared to George Washington is just laughable. It's laughable and it's painful to think that we have to deal with this.

You know, I'm, I'm in a organization, a wonderful organization called the sons of American revolution. I'm a direct ninth generation descendant of Gustavus Reb who fought at the battle of Cowpens, which was the battle that was featured in the wonderful movie that Roland did with Mel Gibson called The Patriot. Great Patriot ancestor was wounded there. When I see what this country has become under Joe Biden and is destined to be further eroded under Kamala Harris if lightning strikes five times in a bottle and people end up being stupid enough, honestly, to believe the lies

about her and from her. I can't imagine that my ancestors are not spinning in their graves. You know, I lost my dad when I was 12 years old. God rest his soul. He fought in two wars. He had two Purple Hearts in World War II, fought in the Korean War. And he passed when I was 12 because he got the wrong blood transfusion at a military hospital during a surgery. When you're a child and you lose a beloved parent, you have these fantasies of what would it be like if he came back for one hour? What would you do? You know, it's that kind of field of dreams thing about playing catch with your dad on the field of dream. But I always thought, what would my dad and I talk about?

And I thought recently, it's almost like you have to imagine what would he ask? And if he said to me, what's happened since I've been gone? And I said, well, you know, now they castrate five-year-olds because they have an illusion that because they like the color pink that, you know, they're really a woman trapped in a five-year-old male body. They do that. It's okay to have men march naked down the street with their genitalia flopping around in San Francisco

to celebrate a month of pride. Pride because they engage in certain different sexual activities. It's when you say it out loud and in some objective way, it sounds like such rampant madness that it's almost impossible to comprehend trying to tell a person who had spilled blood for their country that, yes, you can stand in Washington, D.C. just yesterday and watch Palestinian people, supporters, not Palestinians, supporters of a terrorist organization dedicated to the eradication of the Jews that Hitler didn't

yet, okay, and tear down the American flag, gleefully burn it in our nation's capital, which they still have a right to do, believe it or not, because of our glorious Bill of Rights that allows free speech and free expression, free assembly, nonetheless. which they still have a right to do, believe it or not, because of our glorious Bill of Rights that allows free speech and free expression, free assembly, nonetheless, and then hoist the Palestinian flag over Union Station. It's unbelievable. It is.

It's disgusting. What these people have done to this nation that I can't even grasp it. I just I I don't understand. Look at that. We're looking at it right now. They are low. They lowered the stars and stripes in front of Union Station and they're cheering as a Palestinian flag goes up. These same people, the same Palestinians who would throw the gays off the roof are going to celebrate their culture, their background, their flag in front of Union Station in Washington, D.C., our nation's capital. And everyone's just sitting around watching it. Oh, no, they're not sitting around.

They're actively participating. And here's the problem. When they say from the river to the sea, ask them two questions. Which river? Which sea? They don't even know. You know, they chirp these mantras that are provided to them by the mainstream media, the legacy media, the corporate media. Oh, let's just face it.

The fluffers for the abominable abortion that news media has, they have become. They're a joke. I mean, the New York Times won the Pulitzer Prize for the Russia hoax, which their own guy, Mueller, said, no, it wasn't a hoax. It didn't exist. It was a waste of taxpayer money, and it interfered with our president trying to serve us during his term and fulfill the promises that he made that we voted for. But instead, he had to be distracted by all of this ridiculous nonsense. But you know what? The Hunter Biden laptop doesn't exist, according to our intelligence sources. And let me speak to that for a second, if I may. I have several friends because I've had my life threatened

more times than I can tell you from my political views. I've had my career destroyed because of it. I had an agent who probably was 20 bears deep when he did it on the 4th of July send me a text and say, I'm feeling patriotic meant. You vote differently for me in the United States of America, so you don't deserve to have the career that you worked your ass off for for 40 years, and I'm going to destroy it and blacklist you. And that's what this piece of shit did. Pardon my French. Okay. Now, the good news is he lost his biggest client and so on. And then I said, well, I've got to find a way to pull myself up by my bootstraps. And thanks to two wonderful people in my life, David Wargo, my friend from MIT, and my glorious best friend for my entire career in Hollywood, a man I helped get into the business, Chuck Roven. The three of us together, David and I brought Chuck a book called American Prometheus and said, do you think you can call your associate and friend, Chris Nolan,

see if you can get him interested in this project that we've been trying to get off the ground for five years? And he did. And the rest was history. And I was able, thank God, all up by my bootstraps. And, you know, and it was wonderful when Chuck, you know, won the Oscar. And the first thing he did was thank myself and David.

First thing out of his mouth. That was sweet justice, even for me, James, even where I was, just to see them have to thank you and see you back with the award-winning. I mean, it won every award oppenheimer did and they had to thank him that was sincere but like everyone in hollywood had to bow down and say this was a great idea yeah and well the nice thing about it was look if you can put anything in Christopher Nolan's hands and he says yes, the heavens open up. He's a remarkable, great. Cindy asked his wife and producer partner, Emma Thomas, wonderful woman, and Chuck Roven.

Do you know that I am the executive producer of Oppenheimer? And you know, I did it all on a handshake. We all just shook hands and we made that movie. And we, well, we didn't make the movie. We watched the movie. Chuck and of course, Nolan made the movie, but we, we, we were able to put that together because these are decent people. By the way, Chuck is more liberal, you know, in his politics than, than I am. Uh, never interferes. We can talk about anything. We don't have to hate each other. I'm going to say something on your show

that's going to shock you. It's going to drive you. I'm going to lose a million followers on Twitter right now. I love Whoopi Goldberg. I hate her politics. I think she's insane with her politics. But I worked with Whoopi on a movie, A Ghost in Mississippi.

I got an Oscar nomination. It was a great experience. I got to meet Van Evers, you know, and it was just a remarkable experience. Whoopi and I had the best time together. She was such a sweet person. We became great friends. I like her. And if Whoopi Goldberg and I sat in a room, I'd sit down and go, who wants to start first? Because no matter who starts first, the person who starts is going to say, why are you so nuts?

But here's the difference between, I think, look, people say you're a conservative firebrand. I was a Democrat for 20 years. I'm're a conservative firebrand. I was a Democrat for 20 years. I'm not a conservative firebrand. I am a centrist. I believe in the Constitution of the United States of America. I believe in the laws of the land, and you should obey the laws of the land if you're a citizen, and you should honor your oath of office to support and enforce the laws of the land if you are an elected leader. I don't believe that somebody like Gavin Newsom can say, well, you know, the state of California voted for the death penalty, but I'm just not going to enforce it. Okay, great, then I'm not going to acknowledge your gun laws.

I'm going to run around with an AK-47 shooting up the sidewalks. Of course not. You don't get to disobey the laws selectively but democrats do we don't do that can i ask you about this because i love this i love i also have so many friends who are democrats who are liberals i don't really have any woke friends but i do have a lot of dear lovely democrat friends and i read that you're actually friends with Rob Reiner, too, who is one of the biggest Trump critics. That's a biggie. You worked very early on together. I understand you maintain the friendship. Well, it was the same movie, but let me say something about about Rob. OK, Rob Reiner. Well, this quote's going to hurt. Rob Reiner is a patriot.

And by that, I mean, he is passionate about ideas that he believes in. Hey, it's the United States of America. You can believe what you want. And the things that he believes in are to him the way to make America great again. Now, it may not be great in the way that some of the ideas I'd like to see to make America great again. It may not be that. We may not have an equivalency there. But I believe that he truly cares about this country, And that's one of the reasons he's so passionate.

I think he's very wrong about a lot of his social aggressive ideas. But, you know, he's entitled to that. What's magnificent about this country is that Rob Reiner and I can be friends and completely disagree about just about everything, quite frankly. But you know what? Rob fought for me. The studio didn't want me for Ghost of Mississippi. And I promised him, I said, if you take the chance and hire me, I'll get you an Academy Award nomination with my performance, because this is an important story. And it was. It was about the assassination of Medgar Evers, you know? And while hateful people, oh, good, I'm glad I got shot. Let me tell you a wonderful story about that one. We were filming in Jackson, Mississippi. I'm all made up in this makeup, be like Byron D. LeBeckwith. Byron D. LeBeckwith happened to be kept after he was convicted

for murder, for life, instead of being in the state prison where he would have been murdered. The state of the Commonwealth of Louisiana, is it a Commonwealth state? Whatever, of Louisiana has a responsibility to protect their prisoners. So they put him in the jail in Jackson, Mississippi, in the county jailhouse, which is above their, I think is above their city hall and so on. So he was in the jail, in the hospital part of the jail, looking down on us when we were filming the story. And I walk out of the limousine and I'm looking at the crowd and I look up and there's Byron DeLaBeckwith in the jail window, hospital window, looking down. And I got a note to come into the courthouse. And a lovely lady, she was one of the corrections officers that was assigned to oversee him.

And she said, Mr. Woods, I think she was actually a deputy sheriff as well, or a police officer. I'm not sure what her exact, but she was a law enforcement personnel. Very robust Black lady serving her community. And she said, Mr. Woods, it's a pleasure to meet you. Mr. DeLaBeckwith has asked if you might want to meet him. She said it very cordially. And I said, could you tell Mr. DeLaBeBec with that I decline the invitation? And as an amendment to that thought,

I hope he rots in hell and has his jizzards eaten out by wild dogs. And she says, you know, I always thought I'd like you. You married? Did not see that coming. Well done. Well, wait, this is, so I've got to, I got to follow up with this because I'm, I'm driving to something you among your many theatrical accomplishments. You were in one of my, and I venture to say most American women's favorite movies ever. Um, a little film in 1973 called the way We Were. It was a very young James Woods playing opposite Barbra Streisand. You were pals on the college campus and you weren't Robert Redford

to have that role, but you were pretty prominently featured in this movie. And one of the things that you helped her in was her on-campus protest. She was a communist and you guys were young and believed in these leftist, you know, commie ideals. Correct. And we pulled a little clip of it. And then I'd love to ask you whether you've maintained with Barbara what you've maintained with Rob Ryan. Watch. What's up, Katie? Yeah, all the way to Moscow. You can still take communion and like the Soviet Union.

What's cooking in the Kremlin, Katie? The Kremlin is worried about the civil war in Spain, are you? Thousands of Spanish citizens are being bombed and machine gunned and murdered. Only one country is sending help. One country. The Soviet Union. Katie, be my comrade. Okay, just a little snippet. But she's gone pretty far left too.

And I wonder whether there's any relationship there. You know, I bumped into her a couple of times. And again, you know, it's funny in our business, when you bump into everybody, it's, when I, social media sort of changed things a lot. When I was kind of focused on social media as a more conservative person, been blacklisted because of that agent's behavior vile behavior i uh i went to an opening of a film a friend of mine had produced it was

kind of new to the business and i thought okay i'll go it was at the academy uh theater and you you come down the stairs and the place mobbedbed. And I thought, oh, man. I felt like I'm just, you know, I felt like that one guy in the famous pictures of everybody saluting Hitler and he's not saluting Hitler. I thought, well, here I am. I'm at a meeting of the Communist Party and I'm in half that room. People come up to me and go, hey, I just, you know, I just want you to know I'm with you. But, you know, I just don't want to say anything. And I said, and don't say anything. I said, because people really are dangerous. They will, you know, that these casting directors now will look up your

social media history. They'll see who you follow and so on. Yeah. You know, I say to my friends, I won't say who it is, but a very patriotic, great American who does wonderful things for people in this country, supports veterans and a wonderful guy. He said, you know, being just moderately conservative in this country, just being conservative in America today is like being gay in the 50s. It's almost like you have to whisper. I see people say to me, we'll be talking, they go, you know, I'm thinking of voting for Trump. But I go, you don't have to whisper this. This is the United States. You don't have to whisper that you're going to vote for the most popular person in the country right now in terms of the polls

to be the next president of the United States. You actually don't have to apologize for exercising your First Amendment rights. And we've got to stop doing that. But if you ever want to work again in Hollywood, or if you want to make a career there as a young person, different story. No chance. You must keep quiet. Oh, yeah, you have no chance. I mean, look, it's really funny when, when Oppenheimer came out, there was a discussion about my Twitter and it was gently suggested that I basically remained invisible, which was painful. On the other hand, I'm a pragmatic person. And I thought a lot of people put their effort into this. So I'm just going to be an invisible pariah because the people

who are going to be voting for Oscars, which is very important for a film to get Oscars, because it does help with the financial reward and the historical archive in which it will rest forever, Academy Award winning best picture, Oppenheimer. You know, I don't want to deprive those people. I don't want to have some nutcase come out of the woodwork, fabricate some ridiculous story about me. I've had a million of them said they're all lies. I don't want that to happen and have the clickbait story be, James, what's the executive producer up in there?

We're not going to watch that movie. So, you know, I just, I stepped back and basically, you know, took one for the team and just, you wouldn't even know, I wasn't even invited to the Producers Guild Award. I'm a producer on the picture and I was not invited to go to the Producers Guild Award, which is fine, awards. By the way, one I was not invited to go to the Producers Guild Award, which is fine.

Awards. By the way, one. But, you know, it's not that environment was not the one that my father shed blood for. It's not the one that I see as the America. I would like to see my late brother, God rest his soul, my late brother's children, and they're now their children. Not the future I see for them. I'd like you to be able to vote for whoever you want to. And people say, you know what, you have a right to do it. Man, I disagree with you, but Steve, come have dinner and so on. And I just don't know why there's this vicious underlying cancer that has destroyed our business. And here's where it comes from.

By the way, I got a little secret project coming out soon in October. Can't say anything about it. If you go to my website, jameswoods.com, there'll be a little hint of what it might be, but I can't say another word about it because it's gonna be but some things are gonna kind of come out because because i decided to embrace the second act oh look at you you are such a little devil i couldn't figure it out though i i have the picture but i don't know what it's telling me yeah you're gonna have to think about this now for the next couple of months. But we're going to be teasing stuff out.

If you sign up, give your email on the website. You'll be given updates on it. It's a project that's just unbelievably near and dear to my heart. And the good thing is I'm doing more stuff now. I'm involved in the production of'm doing more stuff now. I'm involved in the production of Oliver Stone's new movie. I love Oliver. He's difficult. We disagree on everything. We fight all the time. And he came to me and said, hey, Jimmy, you know, you think you can help with this project like you did with Oppenheimer? And I said, I think I can.

You know, I've got Chuck and Alex Gartner and, of course, Fernando Sulichin, who's Oliver's producer. And the four of us are together on a handshake, kind of just trying to get this beautiful project put together. And we will. And it's going to be fantastic. So, you know, F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said there are no second acts in American lives. But my second act is shaping up pretty well. And I give all the credit to somebody who's sitting there off camera, my absolutely beloved, brilliant wife, Sarah, who is like this extraordinary photographer.

Oh, there she is. That's the night of the Oscars. By the way, everybody tries to get into the Vanity Fair party. We were living at the time in the wonderful L'Hermitage Hotel. If you ever stay in Beverly Hills, stay at the L'Hermitage. Wonderful people there. We were staying there while we were renovating the house we're in now. And for some reason, our local internet provider gave us a hard time.

So I had the camera set up in our living room. So beautiful. Now I'm sitting in front of the refrigerator because we're near. Sorry, the connection was bad because they were doing some. But there we are. Anyway, so my beloved wife, like I'll be watching poker on TV and she'll be in the other room. She'll be doing stuff. And I figure she's probably watching the Kardashians or something. And along the way, all of a sudden I said,

what are you doing? So, you know, my book, I said, what? I said, what? My book. I said, your book? What book? She goes, I'm, you know, I'm writing a book. Well, first of all, she's, this is a little scary. She's an unbelievable expert on every murder ever committed. Yeah, she's my kind of gal. I'm ready to solve crime with Sarah. Oh, great. Let's have a threesome so you can both stab me to death after you duct tape me to a chair.

That'll be fun. She, I can't believe I just asked Megan Kelly on air to have a threesome. Anyway, okay. Anyway, no. I said, I'm sorry. Well, what's your book about? She goes, well, I've got a few chapters. Do you want to read it?

And now I go, now I got to read my wife's book. And, you know, I said, Sarah, you know, I'm a professional producer. I'm, you know that, right? She goes, yeah, honey, I know that. I said, so do you want to, oh, darling, this is wonderful. It's so cute. You want that? Nope. I want your straight answer. I got a book, got a manuscript. Want you you read it like a producer? I said, okay. What do you have? Seven chapters. Shit.

Okay. I read the seven chapters, and I put it down, and I go, I say the three words every writer wants to hear, and which are almost a guarantee if you write a thriller or a mystery, to get your movie made or your book made into a movie. What happens next? She goes, what happens next? She goes, well, I'm working on it. I can't, but you can tell me. She goes, no, Mr. Big Shot, I'm a producer. I'm going to give you the answer. No, you'll get it when I'm ready. And I said, I can't believe it. You've been sitting in there all this time, writing a book over the past, whatever we've been four years and whatever she

goes, that's sort of accurate. You'll get it when I'm ready, by the way, is sort of the cardinal rule of marriage, but go ahead. No, no, here's the punchline. I said, I wasn't writing a book. I said, oh, I'm confused. I wrote four books. What? I said, we've been married almost a decade, and in the process, you've managed to write three and a half novels?

And I didn't know about it, because, you know, I'm Hercule Poirot. I know what's going on around here. I'm in a 2,200 square foot house on the beach. There's no way she can ever get away from me. Hey, what are you doing over there? And, you know, she's writing like novels and her photography, as you probably know, if you follow her online, I mean, everybody on X loves Sarah's pictures. In fact, on my website, I think maybe in the future, we're going to so many people have asked. I'm just going to do it. We're going to publish a book of her photography and let people be blessed with the experience of seeing that. I love my wife.

She's just. Oh, well, I love that. Honestly, and I think, James, especially in your position, I can speak to this to some extent myself, when you're under attack all the time, having true love in your life makes it all tolerable. It's like you have this other source in your life where like, this is what matters. This is what makes me happy.

This person's opinion matters to me and none of the others does. Well, and by the way, you can now extrapolate out from that and say, right now, you know, it's the honeymoon period. Oh, come on, Harris. Oh, my God. She's the new queen of America and all this stuff.

Yeah, she's a person who wants mandatory buyback of your guns. She doesn't care that the border is open, basically. She doesn't even want the fact that if you break the law and come across this fictional border that we no longer have. Look, you know, she wants to get rid of fracking, offshore drilling. She wants to have everybody drive golf carts the rest of their life. It goes on and on and on. She's the Chairman Mao of America, and she's masquerading in some little outfit like she's some little liberal doll who was taking care of law and order in California.

Yeah, putting black men in prison for smoking marijuana. And I can say this bluntly, you don't think Kamala Harris has smoked marijuana? Have you ever seen some of the videos? She finally admitted that she has. She admitted on Charlamagne Tha God that she has. She thought that was super funny, but didn't have much of a laugh for the people she put in prison for it well the people

who were murdered in prison probably because you know when you go to prison a lot of times you get murdered for other things because you aren't in the right gang or whatever but you know she doesn't care and they don't care and you know to say look when was on Twitter, it's a funny thing. Elon Musk has blocked me. And I love Elon. You got in a fight with Elon. I mean, he's one of like the greatest ever. But he had wanted to take away the blocking feature. And I fought against it.

So he thought it'd be cute and blocked me. And I said, thank you. You're proving my point. People have a right to block people. I don't think it would have been great had he banished me from X. And he didn't, to his credit. But he blocked me, which I think was kind of his loss in a way. I saw the point he was trying to make because he and I share so many ideals that we believe in. He'll probably unblock you. He's probably temporarily irritated. I don't see it lasting. And this is really important. I don't care if he unblocks me. I don't need his approval. What I admire him for is that he didn't ban me. When Jack Dorsey Morsi and the cabal were running Twitter. I got banned from Twitter for seven months

for paraphrasing Ralph Waldo Emerson. I basically said, if you try to kill the king, you better not miss. And they said, oh, that's violent. And they said, we won't let you back on unless you retract it. At the time, I had two million, three million followers. And I said, fine, I don't give a, it's fine. I don't have to go back on Twitter. Everybody said, oh my God. It's like, I don't care. I don't need you people.

Yeah, but we missed your account. We were happy that it restored you. I know, you may have missed my account, but here's what you don't want, Megan. You don't want my account with me. Look, it's the same with these people who want to defund the police. If you worry about being murdered, raped, carjacked, whatever, in Joe Biden's or Joseph Biden's America, and it's going to be that way in Kamala Harris's America, God

forbid if she's ever elected, God forbid that ever happens, you know, then you might want to rethink your position of defunding the police because the police cannot defend you when they have their hands tied behind their backs. OK, as we're learning. Yeah. As the whole country is learning the hard way. Wait, I've got to get something. This is in the news and I want to get your thoughts on it. It's a Hollywood thing kind of in your wheelhouse. So yesterday, this week, J.D. Vance is under fire for a comment he made a few years back on the Tucker Carlson show in which he said, you know, there are these childless cat ladies who are miserable and they want you to be miserable, too. And he was pointing out some of our elected officials who don't have children saying,

you know, that they have no stake in the future. It was a sort of, you know, tongue in cheek comment, whatever was passing reference. Well, now all this shit has run has rained down on him Like he hates women and he hates people who have no children. And that's not true. But one of the people who weighed in was Jennifer Aniston, who writes on her Instagram as follows. Uh, all I can say is Mr. Vance, I pray that your daughter is fortunate enough to bear children of her own one day. I hope she will not need to turn to IVF as a second option because you are trying to take that away from her too, which is not true. But I'll say this, James, to the point we had, we discussed earlier, where was Jennifer Aniston

standing up for little girls who are getting their breasts chopped off for political purposes by people who are shoving this gender ideology down their throats without figuring out that they might just be temporarily depressed or who are being forced to compete against boys in high school sports to the point where they wind up partially paralyzed and permanent nerve damage from the, I didn't see her sticking up for that, but I'm perfectly happy to see her on board the women's rights train. But you know what? I haven't seen her there ever before on any of the key issues that don't involve a passing reference and a stupid joke. First of all, I have kind of a cardinal rule that I don't specifically say anything negative

about other people in Hollywood because it just becomes clickbait. So I'm not going to address a particular person. I will. Okay. I mean, I'm just being safe about it. And, you know, when you're a man, you have to be very careful about how you address women's issues because I look, my dad died, God rest his soul, when I was 12. I watched my mother, my mother would have been president, the first woman

president of the United States if there were fair elections and she were living in this era. Because she loved this country. She knew how to make things better for people. She would be appalled at what they're doing to girls today because she had two granddaughters and she loved them. I have a sister. I have my brother's two daughters. You know, we have a girl on the way in our family. And look, to see a child of 12, 13, 14 years old have a mastectomy because of politics. You know, the Salem witch trials were about hysteria. When people believed in witches, you could stir people up. And mass hysteria is one of the most dangerous phenomena in the history of the world. Mass hysteria has been more

responsible for wars, for concentration camps, for mass murder by dictators, Pol Pot, Stalin, whatever. When you introduce sick, evil, medically, psychologically, socially, humanistically corrupt, cancerous ideas contrary to human nature and all human value, and try to make it seem normal when it's not, you are creating a whirlwind of destruction that can lead to horrific results. Look, when you first discover your sexuality and somebody, a coach, whatever, gives you a library book for a boy, oh, it's okay to have anal sex or whatever, and so on, and the kid does it, and then the rest of his life is teased for being, you know, and I won't use the words, the derogatory words they use, that is a cruelty beyond imagination. And the longer these people keep doing it, the more the rest of us will band together and say, we have got to bring this country

back. And if going forward means more castrations, destruction, evil by the progressive lunatic left, then I'm very happy. And I don't use this mantra ever. But I would like to see America fulfill her greatest dreams and ambitions. And that will never happen under this cackling clown we have now. And it certainly didn't happen under this gentleman who has cognitive decline and is currently in the White House while the world's at war, which is another thing we could talk about for another hour. I can't tell you how much I am honored and overjoyed to have been here with you. I admire you. My mom would have loved you.

That is a high compliment. Thank you so much, James. I really hope you come back. I know you don't do a lot of press, but we'd love to be one of the outlets you do do. My wife has never missed one. She, you know, she's the one who's responsible. I said, you know, I don't do press. She goes, you got to do Megan.

I go, you're right. You got to do Megan. I hope she tries to beat me up, but you gave me a pass this time. Next time. Well, next time we'll get into it. But I can't because I actually, I love what you say

and I love how forcefully you say it. We need 10 million more just like you. Thank you so much. All right. See you soon. That was just fun. Oh, wow. It's great to hear a reasonable voice who says it like it is. A lot more of that coming your way. Stay tuned. We'll be right back. Do you ever think, how can I work this hard and still be in debt? The piles of overdue bills, the threatening phone calls, never having money to do anything. If you are trapped in debt, done with debt can be a way out. They have developed aggressive new strategies to end your debt permanently. Done with debt stands between you and the harassing, annoying bill collectors. Who wants to deal with them? They tirelessly negotiate with your creditors to lower or even

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speech before Congress. Nearly two dozen people arrested, many just been released. The protesters defacing American monuments, ripping down the American flag in favor of Hamas's and clashing with police. As of this moment, we have yet to hear anything directly from President Biden. His senior deputy press secretary managed to put out a comment saying, quote, identifying with evil terrorist organizations like Hamas, burning the American flag or forcibly removing the American flag and replacing it with another is disgraceful. Every American has the right to peacefully protest. But shamefully, not everyone demonstrated

peacefulness. Good. But what kept the president from issuing a statement directly condemning what we saw yesterday in Washington? I think we know the answer. Well, last night, President Biden delivered his 11-minute speech, quitting the White House, explaining why he's quitting his bid for a second term, making brief mention that he will continue to call out hate and extremism, and of course, bringing up January 6th. That was followed by an ice cream social with his staffers on the White House grounds, as noted by NBC's Peter Alexander. As for Vice President Kamala Harris, shortly before we went to air, she finally issued a statement on the unpatriotic protesters, only once she was under fire from J.D. Vance and others for saying nothing.

In the statement, she condemns individuals, quote, associating with the brutal terrorist organization Hamas and condemns the burning of the American flag. Meantime, on Capitol Hill, roughly half of their Democratic colleagues, roughly half in Congress, skipped the address by Mr. Netanyahu on Wednesday, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Congressman Jim Clyburn, and of course, AOC. One who did choose to attend Michigan Congresswoman and squad member Rashida Tlaib, who wore a Palestinian flag pin as a sitting American member of Congress and a cafe and repeatedly helped up, held up a sign reading

war criminal and guilty of genocide. As Mr. Netanyahu spoke. Outside, it was just bedlam and disgust. I just can't believe what I saw in the nation's capital yesterday. The terrorist sympathizers making comments like this one to Fox News' Griff Jenkins. You said you would support Hamas? Are you saying you support genocide? What does Hamas have to do with 20,000 babies and children massacred and butchered? Women and families, 400 universities flattened, schools flattened, hospitals flattened. Thousands of hospital workers murdered. Do you think that has anything to do with Hamas or humanity?

It's human rights. We're human rights. What about the hostages? What do you say about the hostages that have been held in captivity? On October 7th, most of those people were killed by Israeli forces using the Hannibal Directive. Hello, wake up. All right, so that's obviously not been proven to be the case, but the protesters are getting very passionate out here. Yeah, she seems nice. Timcast News also capturing this.

Protesters burning the American flag, chanting Allahu Akbar. Hello. You're not allowed to do that when it belongs to the federal government. You want to burn your own flag? Go for it. That's the beauty of living in America. You can do and say stupid, offensive things. But stealing federal property and burning it is a no-no. We used to refer to that as a crime. They also, you could see, had put up an effigy of Benjamin Netanyahu. One guy grabbed the burning flag and made a run for it, trying to save it. It was actually pretty great.

Then this crazy ass mob ran after him and tried to attack him. Even once they ripped the burning flag back from the guy, they wanted to hurt him. Nice group of people. Those American flags were ripped from their rightful place outside of D.C.'s historic union station and burned. How did the media respond? Well, apparently Politico was upset that Republicans were upset. Quote, Republicans pounce after Netanyahu protesters burn U.S. flags and wave Hamas ones instead. That was an actual tweet sent out by Politico. What are you doing, Politico?

That is the wrong headline. Republicans pounce. They know this is a thing. Why do they keep doing it? Yet another example of how out of touch they are. Real clear investigations. Mark Hemingway put it a very different way. I think he's closer to the truth. On one side, he has in his post, former President Trump, bloodied fist in the air with old glory waving behind him. On the other, anti-American protesters burning our flag. As he puts it, the ad writes itself. When the dust settled yesterday, American patriots took matters into their own hands and good for them. There was a very sweet scene after it all settled down involving former FCC chairman Ajit Pai, who I really love this guy. So reasonable. He's such

a nice Twitter follow. He had biked over. He wasn't looking for attention. He was doing this privately, but Breitbart was there documenting the scenes and they saw him do something that the others weren't doing, which was he biked over to place his own personal flag at the scene. Breitbart captured it. Good for them. Clearly did not realize who they were talking to and listen as he explains why he felt it was important to do this. Sir, I see you putting the American flag there. Just wondering why you're doing that. So I'm an American citizen. I'm proud of my country and I don't like the fact that the flags were taken down. So where it just happened to be visiting D.C. today or.

No, I lived in the D.C. area. I was in the government for a long time and served for many years, including the prior administration and the FCC. And I love this country and everything it stands for. I'm as strong a believer in the First Amendment as you'll ever find, but I also do not like the fact that our nation's capital has been defaced and defiled in certain ways, and in particular, the flag being taken down. So I thought the least I could do is take the one flag that I could move from my house and bring it here to make sure that the Star-Spangled Banner still waves

over the land of the free and the home of the brave. God love him. Isn't that amazing? Again, not looking for attention, just did it privately because it was important to him. And I'm right there with you. Thank you for doing that. When darkness fell, several lawmakers went out there. This is a great piece of the story and restored the American flag to its proper place at DC's Union Station. Congressman and former Navy SEAL Dan Crenshaw among them. Good for you, Congressman. He's been on the program before as well, writing that a group of them, including the Speaker of the House and many

veterans, went out there and restored the stars and stripes to their rightful place, saying it took a while to get it done because the Hamas supporters broke the connections on the flagpole with the lines. But D, but DC police helped them out and got them zip ties to get it up. I love that. Look at this. It's great video. They did the best they could on finding the flags to put up. They said they're going to replace them with better ones. And, you know, I guess newer, but what a great gesture. What a great gesture restores your faith in humanity. Okay. So, um, that was a remarkable story yesterday. And I have to say, I've had enough of, of the lawlessness and the disrespect of our country.

I don't want to listen to a law who Akbar watching an American flag burn in our nation's capital as they threatened Patriots who strat who tried to protect the flag. That is, that's not us. I don't know what that is. But we need to fight against it. We need to call attention to it. And we need the media to understand that the headline is not Republicans pounce, okay? The headline is people supporting a terrorist group that right now have American hostages in their custody, came to Washington, burned our flag, and chanted Allahu Akbar, and then tried to attack American citizens and cops. That's the story. It's not that hard. Meanwhile, speaking

of the media, the Democratic Party, its bigwig donors, and media elites have fallen in line and in love with Vice president Kamala Harris. Oh, the honeymoon continues honeymoon or coronation, or you can pick any of those words. Even the New York times called it a coronation and it, and it has been, uh, this as Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer said this week, Oh boy. Oh boy. Are they enthusiastic? Yeah. It's ground up grassroots. One name in those who have rushed to endorse Kamala Harris so far, at least, has been missing, and that's former President Barack Obama. The New York Post is reporting, citing one source, who they say is close to the Biden family, that Mr. Obama has not yet endorsed Harris because he doesn't think she can win. Apparently, Mr. Obama was hoping that the nominee

would be Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, according to the Post. Now, we should say NBC News is reporting today that Mr. Obama and VP Harris have spoken and that he will soon endorse her. But what are we to make of the delay? He is sort of an outlier at this point. Everybody, everybody, all the top Democrats have. And if true, does the former president actually have a point about Senator Mark Kelly, who's getting more and more buzz, at least as a possible VP candidate to Harris at the top of the ticket? Joining me now, Jim VandeHei. He's the co-founder and CEO of Axios, and he's also the author of the recently released book, Just the Good Stuff, No BS Secrets to Success. Jim, welcome to the show. Great to be here. I don't know about that intro. You know, I started Politico. I don't work there

anymore. Now I've started Axios. So I'm going to throw myself to the wolves. All right, let's go. Well, I don't blame you for Politico's tweets these days. We can talk about Axios later. But the political thing, it's such a it's so annoying. Republicans pounce. How does that kind of annoying fucking headline wind up? Forgive me, Jim. How does that how does how is that the headline? It's I watch this stuff unfold all the time, right? I think people underestimate how at news organizations like a tweet gets sent out. It's often like a young news desk or who's looking at a piece that runs on the site and they're figuring out how do I get people to engage with this and they throw it up there.

I think people assume, one, sometimes there's more thought put into it than there was. And that, two, there's some kind of agenda because it was a crappy tweet or a clumsily worded tweet. And so what I always advise people on is like, listen, I think people get really hopped up about the media. I think there's a lot of things that media does that can tick people off, but that for the consumer, what you should do is find some sources that you follow, that you authentically think, try to get to the closest approximation of the truth on a routine basis and deliver on that and follow them and maybe not get so hopped up and assume that there's

a conspiracy between every bad tweet or every dumb thing that that an entity does. Well, I think you're probably right. This is probably a young staffer who was sent out via tweet. But I think the young people in D.C. are overwhelmingly left wing, as you know, I mean, overwhelmingly. So those things are not coincidental. This is how she saw the story. She saw the story or he as it's a Republicans overreacting story as opposed to my God, what what is happening? What are they doing? You can always glean a reporter's sympathies in the way they style the piece. So you're right, though. Media selection is part of shielding yourself from. I think that's true. I think audience is true. I think it is true that if you took every single newsroom

and put people on true serum, that there's more people who probably have a liberal background than not. And so I don't think that that's an unfair critique. I think what's an unfair, maybe critique or not, not generally known would be I listen, I worked at the Washington Post, I worked at the Wall Street Journal, I started Politico, I started Axios. So I have a pretty good sample size of reporters. I think most reporters, despite their own personal politics, do try to get to the closest approximation of the truth and try to do it in a clinical way. Are there times where they screw it up or maybe because their background, they're not as familiar with faith or they're not as familiar with the gun culture or the hunting culture? Yes. But I do think in general, I wish that people, readers in particular,

didn't assume the worst about every single news organization and every single reporter, because I feel we then go down this dangerous road where nobody believes anything. And in a world where nobody believes anything, you have like intellectual anarchy. And within intellectual anarchy, I think bad things will happen. And so I think the media has a responsibility to try to be as clinical and as fair as humanly possible. We certainly try to do it at Axios. I encourage anybody at other news institutions to do the same. And then I encourage people on the consumption side to just know your sources and maybe like try to find things you trust and not get so hopped up. I completely disagree. I didn't want to start it on a disagreeable note,

but I totally disagree with all of that. I think that the agenda is so patently clear. And I do want our audience to know, Steve Bannon was on the show a couple weeks ago singing your praises. I mean, Politico and Axios are just incredibly powerful news organizations and they're yours, you know, like not political anymore, but you started it without you. We wouldn't have had it.

And you were this kid who I know had a crappy GPA at Wisconsin and said, you know what, they're telling me I have no future, but I'm going to go create one for myself. And boy, have you. And I appreciate everything you've done. However, just completely disagree on the bias in the media. I just think it's it's in your face every day. What's happening with the borders are, you know, whitewash today is just today's example of it. But I mean, let's go bigger. Let's talk about what they've been doing with Biden. You know, it was like everything about his health was downplayed. People were attacked. The White House reporters weren't reporting on it. They didn't even know that the Parkinson's doctor had been visiting the White House. They didn't care to

check or, you know, look at any of that. And then they stuck the knives in him for months. Well, weeks, I guess, since the debate. And then as soon as he left screen, it's like he's the greatest. He's wonderful. Joe Biden is a patriot. It was like you all stuck the knife in him because he was no longer useful. OK, I'll take it. I'll take that. So what I would say, going back to find a source that you trust, if you go back and look at Axios coverage, which is the only one I can really defend with with personal knowledge, we've written a lot about that, like an extraordinary amount to the point to the point where we did a great job in covering his post. I don't give a crap if we have friction

with any White House. We're trying to get to the truth. So there was a source of truth would have been Axios in this case where we were reporting on that. It was out there. And I agree that other news institutions weren't as aggressive on a topic that you could see with your own eyes. And it's a very valid topic. They said, pardon? They were saying cheap fakes. It wasn't just they weren't aggressive, but I mean, you had NBC and CBS and CNN and MSNBC saying the evidence that we were watching before our eyes was not what we know it was. Yeah. Again, like I can't defend other news organizations. I can say there were people in the mainstream media, us, I would put on that list, who were covering it aggressively. And that's what you need to find.

You need to find sources of truth that you believe that are trying to get to the truth and get to the closest approximation of it. Doesn't mean we get every single thing right or that there aren't things that I would critique that we do. It's my job to do that all the time and to recalibrate, just make sure we have the right people doing the right coverage. But it is out there. And I do still think that people take these outlier cases and then assume that everything the Post or NBC or Times writes is crap or it's partisan or it's biased. I just don't think that to be true. Like I read a lot of these publications, quite religiously worked at some of them. And I would argue at a lot of those places, they have some really good reporters. And the ones who are really good on topics I care about, I try to follow because I find it edifying.

I find that I walk away with it knowing something I didn't know. If someone kind of reeks of bias and they exist, you and I both know that, I don't follow them. I just don't. And like the test for us is like you Steve Bannon, right? Like I know he's a reader of Axios and I'm sure there's a lot that we write. He'll jokingly like text us and say, you're a damn communist. And like, but I know he's reading us every day because he believes that we are getting to the closest approximation of the truth. And that's part of the job. And it's again, it's like the, it comes with the gig, right? Like media is just a, it's, it's front and center. It's part of everybody's life and everyone has an opinion on it. I don't think Axios is by, is anywhere near the worst offender. I mean, I, I, you probably wouldn't even be on the show if, if, if you were right. Cause you

wouldn't want to talk to somebody like me. Um, but I don't agree with the, in giving the mainstream media like a widely a pass or an assumption that they're all operating. Most are operating in good faith. That hasn't been my experience. And, you know, I've been on more conservative type media side for all of my career. So I've seen it through a different lens entirely. Um, I've been, I know you were with the journal, but it was a short stint. So I've been 20 years in conservative media and it's just when you're a conservative and you see your ideals being bashed at every turn and reduced to a pounce when you say what, you know, like then you develop these opinions. But since we're, we're going there, let's talk about Axios because the, the example that's in the news today, and I'm looking here at a free press piece, um, by a guy named Peter Savodnik, he's calling you guys out in particular

for this border czar thing. And he takes us back to March, 2020, 2021, where you guys publish a story with a headline, Biden puts Harris in charge of border crisis. Biden puts Harris in charge of border crisis. And it was done by your politics reporter, Steph kite, K I G H T, um, who she informed us in that piece that Harris would be addressing the migrant surge at the U S Mexico border, that Harris would be addressing the migrant surge at the U.S.-Mexico border, that Harris would lead the efforts with Mexico and the Northern Triangle, meaning Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, to manage the flow of unaccompanied children and migrant families arriving at the border. And we understood at the time that this was a big deal.

President Biden had said that he was going to turn to Harris for his biggest responsibilities, and this was one of them. Then today, well, yes, yeah, Today. Right. Today's July 24th. Um, the same reporter, I guess that was yesterday, yesterday, the same reporter at the same outlet, yours, put out a story headline, Harris border confusion haunts her new campaign, reporting that, in fact, back in 21, Biden enlisted Kamala Harris to help with just a slice of the migration issue. And now there's confusion around the VP's exact role and that early early media misfires and the rapidly changing regional migration crisis has made the issue a top target for the GOP trying to define their new opponent.

Meantime, she had said the same. And then you guys added a note to your own earlier report saying we Axios were among the news outlets that incorrectly labeled Harris a border czar in 2021 after all the blowback. So, Jim, what like people look at it, they're like, this isn't even being even Harris isn't talking about this. She wasn't out there saying, don't call me a border czar. So what made you go back and amend your earlier reporting? Okay, so I wasn't personally involved in this, but it's my company, so I will talk about it. So when you talk about a czar, there's a czar, which is like an official appointment. Well, we don't really have czars. Well, people have used that term in the past when they appointed appointed somebody to have basically specific control over a portfolio. Right. And so to me, like this whole argument about whether she's as

our or not as our is like a is a semantical thing. Right. It's not actually a substantive thing. Like the truthful thing is, was she involved deeply in the Biden Harris immigration policy and what happened at the border? Absolutely. Was she fully responsible for their immigration policy and border control? Absolutely not. I don't think she had the trust of the administration at that time to be able to control that entire portfolio. Were there parts of it where she had say, and I think the president himself even said, she speaks for us or speaks for me on parts of this portfolio? Absolutely. Should she have to explain and defend the immigration policy and the border issues under the Biden-Harris

administration? Well, of course she should. Like, why shouldn't she? She is the number two in the U.S. government, and we have an issue at the southern border that is arguably the biggest topic in the swing states that are going to decide the election. So whether you call her a czar, don't call her a czar. She was intimately involved in the policy. Undoubtedly, he's going to have to defend it and will have no choice but to defend it because it's one of the top couple of issues that voters care about. Certainly, it's not just Republican voters. There's a lot of Democrats and independents who care about it and see it as a legitimate crisis. And they want to understand between

the two candidates, what are you going to do about it? If we have all these people trying to swarm over our border and we have people here who are here illegally, how are you going to take care of that problem and the derivative problems that flow from it, whether it's crime or the economic effect of having people here or not having people here? So to me, like this is one of those topics where people's heads explode and they spend it. Is it a czar? Is it not a czar? And you're actually losing focus on like, who gives a crap at the end of the day, what the official term is at the end of the day, what is the policy? Can she defend the policy? Does Trump have a superior policy? What would the effects of those

policies be? And then for me, the voter, now that I know those things, if that issue is what I care about, how do I make a really educated decision come election day on who I should vote for based on that topic? I hear you on all of that. But the bottom line is the media said, I mean, I'm looking down the list of the publications. We've got Washington Post, New York Times, Politico, Axios, CBS, USA Today, Time. That's just what I found before air. All of whom called her a border czar. That's when he announced this back in March of 21.

They all went with that. I mean, I'm reading. The president himself said, I have asked her, March of 2021. I have asked her to lead our efforts in stemming the immigration to our southern border, the migration to our southern border. I've asked her to lead our efforts in stemming the migration to our southern border. That was how he announced it. And then now that she's become the top dog, it's like czar. Who said czar? That's not an appropriate term. It's not just axios. It's not just political. Wait, let me run the soundbite and then you take it.

I'm going to give it to you if I show the audience what we've heard from the television news reporters watch. Quote, unquote, border czar. Vice President Harris was not a border czar. Meantime, Vice President and border czar Kamala Harris facing some backlash. What he said about Harris and immigration was not true. She was never appointed border czar. And this will be her first visit to the U.S.-Mexico border region since she was appointed as the border czar by President Biden. People are going to have to counter the misinformation.

You already hear folks talking about the border czar. She wasn't the border czar. President Biden tapped Kamala Harris, Vice President Kamala Harris, to be the border czar. Now, she wasn't the border czar. That's what Republicans labeled her. They were very critical of Kamala Harris, especially in her role as border czar. Now what she's up against is folks lying about her border record, calling her a border czar. Kamala Harris, who was appointed as the border czar. The Biden team didn't declare her the border czar. They wanted her to work on kind of the root causes of immigration. There has been so much criticism against Kamala Harris. You know, she was the border czar. The Biden team didn't declare her the border czar. They wanted her to work on kind of the root causes of immigration. There has been so much criticism

against Kamala Harris. You know, she was the border czar. Calling her sort of the border czar. It's pretty amazing. Newsbusters put that together. Go ahead, Jim. Yeah, my point on that is it's still like a semantical battle. Was she czar or not czar? I don't even like if you're a voter, like, what do you care? Like, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter. Then why is the media doing it? I think I don't know what was the root of it yesterday. I'm sure it came up in some context or someone used it. And then I'm sure like even our story was like trying to explain the nuance of was she technically a czar? Because in the past, some governments have actually appointed someone to be the czar that have the

official accountability, the official authority over a specific policy. We have that. Forgive me for interrupting you, but we did have that. It was Roberta S. Jacobson before Kamala Harris. And when she was stepping down, she said she was happy to see Ms. Harris assume the work of stemming migration from Central America. This she was thrilled in The Washington Post was reporting the same time describing this move that she was taking on the lead role on the overall border and regional issue. I mean, it's just to me, if the semantics don't matter, then why is the media now just she's been elevated, rushing to change the label? I've not seen you played a bunch of clips that I have not seen.

What I do know, I don't know anybody or nobody should be denying. Was she intimately involved in the administration's immigration policy? She was whether she was czar or not czar. What should matter to anybody is not was it called a czar or not called a czar? To me, that's the kind of silly stuff that people get distracted with, spend an entire day hyperventilating. I agree with that. I totally agree with that. It's partly on you. Like you. I'm going to critique you. So you critique me, me being a representative of the mainstream media. What I don't like about conservative or really liberal media is to assume that everything that the mainstream media produces is not on the level. example of it with no recognition of maybe 99.9% of the content that was produced by those same organizations yesterday might have been really helpful. It might've been totally on the level.

It might've been things that you'd say, yeah, that was a, that was a well done story. Well reported. That's helpful. Boy, that's happening in the environment or boy, that's happening. I mean, Jim, on this program, you haven't been watching the Meg and the Megyn Kelly show. Cause we've, we've cited Alex Thompson a lot. We've cited Axios a lot. As I said, we gave you a shout out just recently. I'm trying to defend the other people. Well, but I'm not going to you will not find me defending MSNBC. I think Politico has gone much further to the left than Axios has. I mean, you left the organization. I know you had some critiques of clickbait media and so on. So I'm I'm not I'm not coming down on Axios in particular.

In fact, this was, I think, one of the more egregious examples, because I think in general, it's one of the least offensive publications, which, trust me, for me is a compliment because I generally don't love most of our media colleagues and the way they approach the news. But my general my concern is right is because of the way that people treat media. And I'm not saying that the mainstream I could give you a thousand things of mainstream media has gotten wrong and things that I wish didn't happen and didn't happen to this day. What I worry about is if we have most people spending most of their time trying to figure out why everyone's full of it and why everyone has some kind of agenda. What happens when we live in a society where none of us have any kind of common understanding of like, I'll answer that. I'll tell you, is that a problem? Yes. How do you solve it? What are the options? Well, there's a physical fence. There's non-physical fences. There's more aggressive policing on the

other side of the border. I wish more people paid attention to that. And I think like where you and me, where we come at it, you come at it with a very specific show and you have your view. I come at it with a very specific company trying to do things our way, like where I feel like we can help people, where I try to serve people is just try to get to the closest approximation of truth. Try to be clinical. Admit like that there's things that we get wrong. Like what I don't like with the mainstream media

is like pretending like we haven't gotten anything wrong or pretending that when that reporters went on there and suddenly started to betray their biases. I hated that. I think it destroyed it's destroyed part of the soul of mainstream media. But I don't think therefore the soul is totally gone and that there's no truth that's emanating from a lot of really good news organizations that are full of people trying to do the right thing. So I take your point. I still disagree. I don't know if I can say the soul is dead, but I think that the organization, like the entity, has completely changed to the point where you really do have to figure out who you trust. And that is not the fault of the consumers, the readers, the viewers. It's our fault.

It happened. It was happening even before Trump. But Trump completely broke the media, and they allowed it. They wore their biases on their sleeves. They leaned into them. They declared him a unique threat and began every report by pointing that out, calling him names, sexist, racist, this, that, the other thing, and telegraphed for, you know, now it's been eight years that they not only loathed him, but they loathed people who supported him, which as it turns out is half the country or more. And that's what broke media. That's what led people to go down rabbit holes in the most extreme cases and follow just online strange sites that would mislead them or in better cases, I would argue. And that's not

just because I'm a part of digital media decided to go someplace else, decided to realize I can't trust CNN. Not only do they mislead me, they hate me. So I blame the media for the choices they made, in particular, once Trump became a national political figure. I, you know, I don't totally disagree that a huge trigger of both like hyperventilation on behalf of the media and then a reaction to it was triggered by Trump. I do agree with that. I don't think where I disagree is I don't think, therefore, because that happened, you can't trust media.

And again, I'll go back to Axios, which is the only thing I can take ownership of. We've interviewed Trump a bunch of times. I know he reads us. I think he thinks we try to get. It doesn't love everything we write. He's tried different times. He's tweeted or put something on true social that he doesn't reads us. I think he thinks we try to get, it doesn't love everything we write. He's probably different times he's tweeted or put something on true social that he doesn't like us. But like, we seem to have a pretty good line into them. We're able to break a lot of news. We've, like I said, we've interviewed him, spent time with him.

And the way that we've done it and the way that I would encourage other people in the mainstream media to do it is, one, get the hell off of Twitter. We ask all of our employees, not just our reporters, to not express their opinions in public settings because we're trying to regain the trust. We're not perfect, but we try to do that. And then when we report, report clinically. We don't even have an opinion page. I don't want it. I don't want it to

get, I don't want it to be muddied for the people who might trust the content that we have. And then I try to hire really experienced reporters who can break news and tell you things that you didn't know. And again, my only ask of you or of any other buddy who might be an Axios consumer is like, let's say we screwed something up. Let's say we got yesterday wrong. Don't just then assume like everything Axios writes is crap.

Like we're human, right? We're human like anybody else. And what I would say with us or the journal, you are, but for many, it is a pattern, Jim, for many, it's a pattern and they don't deserve our good opinion or the benefit of any doubt. I'm not putting you in that camp, but I mean, we've been covering this long enough to know there's, there are many dishonest brokers who just, they not only hate Trump, they hate Republicans and you can see it in their reporting and their headline choices and their content choices. Okay. Enough about the media where there's a navel gazing, right? But you,

you have been having a lot of good scoops in connection with the whole Biden problem and now Kamala's elevation. And I really want to get to that with you. Let me squeeze in a quick break and we'll come right back with Jim's inside look into the White House and what's happening there. XM channel featuring lots of hosts you may know and probably love. Great people like Dr. Laura Blandbeck, Nancy Grace, Dave Ramsey, and yours truly, Megyn Kelly. You can stream The Megyn Kelly Show on Sirius XM at home or anywhere you are. No car required. I do it all the time. I love the Sirius XM app. It has ad-free music coverage of every major sport, comedy, talk, podcast, and more. Subscribe now. Get your first three months for free. Go to SiriusXM.com slash MK show to subscribe and get three months free. That's SiriusXM.com slash MK show and get three months free. Offer details apply.

This morning, you have a piece called Behind the Curtain, the new 2024 campaign foretold. And you argue in here that these two, Trump and Kamala, are going to unleash their attacks in seven states, but three will decide the winner, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. So explain that to me. Why Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania instead of everybody's talking about Kamala's chances in the Sun Belt, Nevada and Georgia and Arizona? The reason that even coming out of the RNC or you'll see it coming out of the DNC. The reason that the polls don't matter that much right now is the election is going to be super close. Right. How do we know? Because the last several elections have been super close. You move 50,000 votes last time around and Biden loses.

You lose 78,000 when Trump won and he loses. Like we're just we are just a 50 50 country and there's only really seven or so swing states. The truth is, if you just look at the map in terms of the states that are authentically in play, there are many more ways for Donald Trump to win than there would have been for Biden and that there would be for Harris. And there's almost no map that works for Democrats that doesn't include Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin. You lose three, they call them the blue wall for a reason. You lose those three, it's really hard to sketch out a scenario where Democrats win the White House. It's one of the reasons that it was crystal clear almost instantaneously after that debate debacle that

Biden had that he wasn't going to survive because you could see almost instantly that those states in particular were taking a hit for Democrats. And they realize if it collapsed, the whole thing was over. And so one of the reasons I think that the pick will likely be, almost certainly be, a moderate white male, maybe from one of those three states, is they're not stupid. They know that they have to win those three states and that to do it, they have to appeal to a broader set of voters than Biden was appealing to. And so I wouldn't be surprised at all if Governor Shapiro from Pennsylvania is the pick, because Pennsylvania, you could argue,

is the most important state in this presidential election. And so when you're watching the election, paying attention to it, national polls are irrelevant. And to be honest, if you live in about 42 or 43 states, you're probably irrelevant in terms of determining whether or not who's going to win the presidency. It's really those seven swing states. And even inside of those, it's about 6% of the people who are truly persuadable, who are undecided, who right now are saying they won't vote, but might vote. It's really that narrow. And even within that 6%, you talk to the campaigns, they're looking at the same people. They're looking at Black men who suddenly are much more receptive to Donald Trump. We saw that with the election results last time. It's continued. Hispanics,

generally, for whatever reason, Trump has been appealing more and more to them and has had more success than I would argue any president, certainly since George W. Bush. And then young people, which especially when it was Biden versus Trump, young people moving really decisively towards Trump. And you even see it on TikTok, or much more engagement with Trump content than you would see with Democratic content. And so they're really focused on those micro groups. And if you, the point of the column today was, if you really want to understand everything they say and do, look at it through that lens, and you'll start to understand why they talk about the things they talk about,

why they visit the places that they visit, why they put out the videos that they put out. So she those are the three groups that typically would vote overwhelmingly Democratic, certainly black voters, young voters and, you know, up until recently, Hispanic voters. But Trump's been eating into all those margins and was alarmingly so for the Democrats when Biden was still the nominee. So now we just did a show with Emerson polling on their latest poll, which shows she's gotten the numbers up already a little bit in those groups. Young people, she did see they did see some improvement for her. And they said in particular, young minorities have come back a little bit more for her. And so the question you're saying now between now and November is

how much can she get those numbers up? The young people, black voters, Hispanic voters, and that this race is going to be all about improving those margins. For sure. I mean, think about it. So just think about it as a numbers game. You could safe to assume anyone who was going to vote for Biden, especially a damaged post-debate Biden, is going to vote for her. That's not enough to win the election. So then there has to be something that's additive. It's why Emerson's taking a look at, well, young people, which is good news for her. The bad news is young people don't vote. And even when they were jazzed about Barack Obama, they didn't really vote. So you can't count on that being enough. And then you have to look at

what are historically, I mean, really, really, really reliable voting groups, Hispanics and African-Americans. Huge, huge, huge. Like you're talking 92 percent for a lot of candidates with the black vote. So when you start to see Trump getting 20, 30, we're thinking about the Hispanics, 50, 50. That's alarming, alarming. It is not new. It's not new. So if you go back to the last election and you look at the results, yes, Trump lost. But Trump did better with black men than any Republican had in some time. It did better with Hispanics. It just happened to be that Biden did better overall and had enough votes to be able to win, especially in the pivotal swing states that we're talking about. And that's the reason that post-debate, I knew within 20 minutes of that debate, Biden was going to get forced off

the ticket. He didn't realize it, but he was because Democrats knew that if Biden goes down, the whole damn thing goes down, meaning they're not going to win the Senate. They're not going to win the House. The Senate is a map for the Senate. Very favorable for Republicans. Doesn't guarantee they're going to win it, but they should win it just based on the states that are in play. The House, very much a toss up. But if you just look at the dynamics of it, like if you would have had a really bad top of the ticket, everything went down. And that is why almost in a Shakespearean way, you saw post debate, all of these people who I think they love Joe Biden. I don't think Barack Obama necessarily loves him, but I think he likes him. And I think that there but Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Hakeem Jeffries, their silence echoed very loudly. The

minute that they didn't say definitively, knock it off. He's our nominee. No scenario. We're swapping it. It gave everyone license to say, let's get the guy out. And little by little, she went on Morning Joe and said, we'll wait for his decision after he'd already decided that was that was a big tell. Let me ask you quickly about the Obama report in The New York Post. They cite one source close to the Biden family as saying Obama didn't endorse her because he doesn't think she could win. Do you put any stock into that? I would have a hard time as a reporter writing something based on one source who's not close to Obama. I don't think that that is the reason. Do I think.

Kind of telling that maybe a source close to the Biden family thinks so. That's kind of interesting. Now you're getting into some tricky personal politics. Biden and Obama have a very complicated relationship. You saw that. A lot of people around Obama helped push Biden out. And it is very accurate. The Democrats don't want to talk about this now, but one of the reasons Biden ran for reelection and one of the

reasons he refused to step down is he did not think Vice President Harris can beat Donald Trump. That is certain. Our reporting is certain on that. There was deep, deep reservations, not just by him, by people around him. Eventually, he endorsed her. He has to. It's his vice presidential pick. But that, for all the Democrats who are feeling euphoric, and there is a euphoria, they felt like we're screwed before, now we have a chance. The thing that should give them pause and that they should reflect on is, what was it about her in the White House that gave the people with the closest proximity to her the belief that she can't beat Donald Trump? You got to start figuring out and then reverse engineer that. I think a lot of it is she overprepares. She doesn't have a lot of people who've been with her a long time. So there's like this curious lack of loyalty. What is it about her

and how do you offset that enough to be able to win a presidential election? And so we're not done with the twists and turns. This is like one of the craziest, wildest work. Our kids, kids see that Trump photo on a on a on a history book. And we're going to be reading about the debate debacle, arguably the biggest debate debacle in the televised debate history, right? Like 22 minutes ended a presidency. Then you have a candidate getting shot or getting almost assassinated. And then you have a president stepping down. And then you have his vice president coronated instantly.

This is not over. There are going to be more wild twists and turns. And that's why we did the column today is just try to ground people to take a deep breath. Like these are the things you need to be watching for. Realize it's going to be close. It doesn't mean that the media is skewing polls or that polls are wrong. It means that we live in a really divided country, very tight. And there aren't that many people who are that persuadable. I mean, I always joke with people. I was like, who's the last person you met when you said, hey, Donald Trump, what do

you think of him? And they're like, I don't know. Jury's still out. That person doesn't exist. You could go to some African village. They'd have strong thoughts. I read online the other day, somebody had a joke saying the only way we'd have an October surprise that was truly a surprise this year is if actual space aliens come down and somehow mess with the election. I think that's about right.

Quickly, before I lose you, because we're about to end with the computer. Some are speculating the best VP choice might be Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona. He's not in one of those states you mentioned, but he's the son of two cops, the husband of Gabby Gifford. He's obviously spoken out about gun control, which Democrats like, but owns guns and also was a NASA astronaut and a fighter pilot. I see all that. I kind of like that argument. But you're saying don't bet on it because Arizona is not one of those three states. I mean, Arizona is one of the seven states. So it could he, with his addition to the ticket, plausibly take a state

that I think right now leans Trump and turn it into a toss-up or a leans Democrat? It doesn't seem to me that his popularity is such that he, by himself on the ticket, would get it. That doesn't mean he doesn't get it. He fits the bill of what they're looking for. They want a white, moderate male on the ticket with her. And I think if it's somebody who has good ties to the business community, has faith in their background, they're looking at the same map we are. They're looking at the same persuadables that we are. They understand the skepticism that swing voters have about Joe Biden and have about the Democratic Party. And so I don't think it's a coincidence

that it's Rory Cooper, that it's Mark Kelly, that it's Shapiro in Pennsylvania, that Wall's in Minnesota. It's not a coincidence about that these are the people that are under Beshear in Kentucky, that they're the ones that are under consideration. And I would be very, very surprised if it's not one of them. I'd be pretty surprised if it's not either Kelly or Shapiro. Wow. I mean, that's yet another thing we have to look forward to. And it's going to happen soon. It's going to happen. Actually, it's going to happen really soon because it looks like the Democrats are going to have a virtual vote now earlier than expected. So if you want to jump in against her, I think you have like 72 hours left. It doesn't look like that's where this is going. Jim, listen, we appreciate you coming on. Please

come back. Thank you. It was great. I appreciate it. Fun conversation. All the best. Likewise. Okay. And thanks to all of you for joining us today and every day. We greatly appreciate it. If you want to get more of our content, you should go to meganandkelly.com. You should sign up for my one email. I don't bother you. I check in once a week and I will give you all the news you need to know from the whole week in 60 seconds or less. Go to megankelly.com. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear. Thank you.