The Megyn Kelly Show - Jason Whitlock on the Importance of Faith, Racial Division, and Sports | Ep. 40

Episode Date: December 21, 2020

Megyn Kelly is joined by Jason Whitlock of Outkick to talk about the value and importance of faith, the racial divisions in America today and the cultural divide, the decline of competition and rise of "participation trophies" in sports today, sports as a business and a culture, the media business and more.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms:Twitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShowFind out more information at:https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Today on the program, we've got Jason Whitlock. This guy first came to my attention over the past year when he started really getting very vocal on Twitter and elsewhere about some of the crazy stuff we're seeing on these race relations and race wars and all the messaging that's been shoved down our throat by the media. And he's been one of the guys standing not alone, but it's kind of lonely in his space as a black journalist pushing back against the narratives. And he's lived it. You know, he's been he's been sort of taking these positions for a long time, even within organizations like ESPN, which are very woke and leftist. And I admire his his willingness to stand up for what he believes

in, which, you know, we need more of right now in this country. And with Jason Whitlock, one of those things is very much faith and America. So he's an interesting guy, a provocateur in the best sense. And I think you're going to love him. So we'll get to him in one second. He is a writer for Outkick. That's Clay Travis's organization. We love Clay and has been filling in for Glenn Beck on The Blaze.

And you can catch him pretty much all over conservative and other media because, of course, you know, right leaning media, I should say, because, you know, CNN's not going to put him on for all the reasons you know. Anyway, you'll love him. You'll hear him in a moment. But first, the average American has 97 points, 97, that they can quickly add to their credit score, but most have no idea how to get it. Scoremaster credit scientists discovered an algorithm that

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You can enroll in minutes and see how many plus points Scoremaster can add to your credit score. Visit scoremaster.com slash MK. And now Jason Whitlock. Jason, so great to have you here. Thank you for doing this. Great to be here, Megan. I'm honored. You know, I was reading up about you before today and something I kept encountering was your references to your faith. And I really appreciate that, especially in today's day and age. You know, we live in a godless town, New York City, and it's been a struggle. My husband and I are raising our boys Catholic and our daughter Catholic because Doug was Presbyterian, is, and I'm Catholic, and I won. And our little guy is seven. And so he should be starting religious education now because he's supposed to get his first communion in second grade. But

thanks to COVID, it's been tough. Normally they have these little classes, but it's been tough. And I've been thinking a lot about, it's too bad that it's tough. We need to prioritize this. He's got to get into religious ed. He's got to get into religious ed. He's got to get his first communion next year. If we don't prioritize faith in our family, no one's going to do it for us. And I know, you know, you've written a lot about how important faith has been in your life and you're fearing that what, what appears to be more and more a push, especially by the left toward what may be, what may feel like a godless country. Can you talk about that? Yeah, I think, unfortunately, I think we're already there.

I think that particularly among the media, because the media, we're so addicted to social media and Twitter in particular. And Twitter kind of sets our agenda daily, monthly, yearly. And Twitter is probably the most secular place on earth. You almost, it's virtually impossible to build a following talking about faith over Twitter. And certainly if you have a position of influence, a large following in anything in the media or the entertainment industry or the athletic world,

talking about your faith is not the way to gain a following. And so a conversation in the media about faith has virtually been eliminated. And, you know, I'm having this debate and conversation with my family all the time because so now I'm not really political. I've never voted. But and so I'm someone that tries to evaluate the world through my religious faith. And again, I'm certainly a sinner and I'm certainly a flawed person and I acknowledge all that. But I'm struggling with my family a lot because I'm asking them all the time, well, how does that jive with what we were taught in church? How does that jive with what we were taught in church? How does that jive with our religious faith? And the answers are never very good. And so I just look at, you know, so my upbringing in the church and my upbringing as an athlete was all tied to faith. And, you know, there was pregame prayer, there was postgame prayer,

the values taught in sports were somewhat consistent with the values taught in the church. And, you know, we're so used, I made this point in a column a couple of weeks ago about when I was growing up as a kid, the number one sign you would consistently see at a sporting event was someone in the stands holding up a John 3, 16 verse, you know, God so loved the world gave his only begotten son, blah, blah, blah. That was the number. It was a religious thing about Jesus Christ and the sacrifice he made and the sacrifice God made. And now the number one sign you'll see at a sporting event is related to Black Lives Matter. And that's just an incredible pivot. Black Lives Matter is totally secular. If you have any understanding of it, it's based all Marxist values. And I just looked at what

they've done to the sports world, taking something that was very patriotic, very faith-based, and turned it anti-American and anti-faith. It's just incredible. And I just wonder if the whole country hasn't gone that way. And so, you know, I'm constantly talking and writing about it because it's critical and it's important. And I'm trying to show other members of the media, you can actually gain audience if you lean into these values, because I think a lot of people are thirsting for these values to be prevalent again in American society. I mean, I can say on Fox, when Roger Ailes was running it, it was always a priority to not to not dump on people of faith or their expression of faith and to remember that this is still in large part a faithful country.

And that's why, you know, Fox gets a lot of crap for covering, quote, the war on Christmas. But what are those stories really about? It's about pushing faith out of the public square, making it verboten to wish somebody a Merry Christmas. It's not about the words Merry Christmas. It's about the shaming of connection when it comes to faith. And honestly, if there were some phrase that summed up, you know, good religious tidings for every faith, the Pox would have done that and they would have supported it. But I think what these leftists want is no religion.

It's not about Catholicism. They want no religion. And slowly but surely, what we're seeing is, A, think that's very dangerous. And it's a poor substitute for God. It's a terrible substitute. And so, you know, I just look at so many Black Black people that have prioritized our race as our defining characteristic. And, you know, I think back, I was born in 1967, a year before Martin Luther King was assassinated. And so I came up in a generation where my parents, my grandparents wanted me to live out Martin Luther King's dream. That was the priority. He was a faith-based leader and wanted all of us to be judged by the content of our character. And now we're making so many judgments on people based on their sexual orientation, their skin color, things that have virtually nothing to do with the content of our character. And certainly, you know, I think when you prioritize religious values and you try to

come together under our shared faith, that is more powerful and more unifying and more fair and promotes the United States of America, promotes freedom, justice, and fairness. When everybody's being asked to come together under their skin color, division is the only outcome. And obviously the woke-ism that you're talking about is just Orwellian in terms of the controlling of speech and how if you win control of speech, you basically win the control of ideas and you win control of people and their thoughts and what they're allowed to think and what they're not allowed to think. And it's why we've reached this point where I look around at a lot of Americans and I just ask, do they even value freedom? And have they just like freedom is just unimportant right now in America.

And it blows me away. I, you know, the Chris Rock, not Chris Rock, I'm sorry, Dave Chappelle went on Saturday Night Live shortly after a few days after the election. And, you know, he gave his opening monologue 16 minutes. It was very divisive and inconsistent with Dave Chappelle's values. He talked about his great-grandfather, who was born into slavery, became emancipated and free, and eventually met with President Woodrow Wilson, led a delegation of Black people meeting with President Woodrow Wilson. And they defined his great grandfather three ways, said that he loved Jesus Christ, he loved education, and he loved pursuing freedom for Black people. And when I heard that, I was like, how much more American can you be? Loving Jesus, loving education, and loving freedom, and promoting that. And I'm like, we've moved away from all of that. And I thought, Dave Chappelle, does he even understand what he's saying by referencing his grandfather and his grandfather's values,

and how inconsistent they were with the things he said on that Saturday Night Live stage where, you know, he basically promoted racial division and demonized white people in America. Those things are all inconsistent with the things that his great grandfather stood for and the things that I don't even think Dave Chappelle stands for. If you look at the way he lives his life, he's married to an Asian woman. He lives in a rural white community. His comedy has been most popular with white people. Dave was doing a performance that he felt like he had to do to please the people that run Hollywood and Saturday Night Live and all the entertainment industry. Anyway, I'm on a tangent here. Well, I'm surprised at that.

I didn't see the piece, but I loved his Sticks and Stones Netflix piece where he just ripped woke culture, a new one. And I thought it was so cleverly done. And he went down some lines on abortion where I think he was telegraphing to the left. I'm with you. I'm with you until the end. And it was like, boom, no, I'm not. He wasn't explicit, but he was clever in the way he attacked some of this woke ism. But faith, faith can still sadly be bashed with impunity and not just by the citizenry. I mean, we saw this here in New York State when Governor Cuomo tried to limit religious gatherings purportedly to protect people from the spread of COVID. But the bars and the

liquor stores could stay on open. Like you can have as many people as you want in the liquor store and the bar. But the churches and the synagogues had to be limited to 10 people or 25 people. And to their credit, they sued. They filed a legal challenge saying you're discriminating against us. And the Supreme Court in a 5-4 opinion that included Amy Coney Barrett said, no, you may not do that. There still is religious freedom and you cannot discriminate against churches and synagogues because they're religious places to gather. And then of course, Governor Cuomo said, well, they're just being political. But I do think unless people of faith start fighting back for their right to express what's important to them, right, under the First Amendment,

it's just going to get worse and worse. The country is becoming slightly less religious, even though more than three quarters of Americans still, they still identify with their faith. I mean, more than three quarters of the country still says, I'm Catholic, or I'm Jewish, or I'm Presbyterian, or I'm evangelical, whatever it is. But slowly, but surely, or maybe quickly, and surely, it's it's getting demonized, it's getting sort of tagged with a not cool, not okay, not progressive, not forward looking label, whereas exactly the opposite of how it used to be. Well, let me ask you this, Megan, because my contention is that people do still loosely identify with their religious faith, but it's not their priority. And I hate to use Twitter as the example, but I will. Go look at people's bio

and then go look at how they list themselves. Is Christian or Catholic or whatever, Buddhist, is that the first thing they list on their bio? Or is there, oh, I'm progressive, I'm liberal, I hate Trump, I'm conservative. Is their political affiliation the first thing they want to be identified by? And I think that's a mistake, and that's the conversation I keep having with my family about, hey, you can't let politics be your religion either. If you're spending most of your day talking about God and what the Bible says about how we should view the events in the world, you're probably making a mistake. And so that's what I think people still have their faith, but they're afraid to let that be their number one priority and how they identify themselves.

I wouldn't describe that as my number one label or the primary lens through which I view life, but my faith is part of who I am. And I think the greatest gift it gave me was an ethical imprint through which to behave, to use in any tough decision throughout my life that was given to me by my parents and taking me to church, uh, on Sundays when we were growing up and just by espousing the principles in our home and living by them. And I, like I, as we lose that and, you know, just the, just the general principle of do unto others, right. That, that can encompass most of what BLM and the Transgender Act, all these people are pushing for, which is a massive sort of campaign against anti-bullying and anti-demonization of anybody based on immutable characteristics. that, you know, and now they're going as they've removed or try to remove those imprints from us. They're trying to make them much more cutting, much more negative, much more divisive.

And it's working. It's terrifying to me to see all of these, you know, as you point out, BLM messages on the courts at basketball games and in the stands of NFL football games and so on and so forth, when they don't even know what that organization really stands for. They don't know what they're promoting. They're not promoting racial harmony. To the contrary, it's something very different. here and yourself, I would not be afraid of making your faith your primary identifier, because I think the left has done a great job of saying like, oh, if you're not perfect, if we catch you doing anything, we can throw all your faith out and we can say you're a hypocrite. And I think people live in fear of like, well, if I say I'm a Christian, then that gives the left and people over social media, when they catch me doing something unchristian, they can say I'm a hypocrite. And I just totally

reject that. God does not require perfection. And these people down here and these liberals have set themselves up as God, as if there are judges. The Most High, Jesus Christ, he's going to judge me at some point. None of these people here on this planet, I will ever bow to their judgment. And so I'm not, and trust me, I am far more imperfect than you and probably anybody you know. I am a sinner, not a proud one, but I am a sinner. I don't require perfection. I just try to do better every day. And I do, I don't, I'm not afraid of interpreting, asking myself all the time about, well, how do I feel about this based on my religious faith and principles? And I think that is the key. If we're ever going to save this country, if we're ever going to unify again, we're going to have to prioritize our religious faith and come together under our

religious faith, not as perfect human beings. We are all lost. I'm going to go to Vegas at some point and gamble. I'm probably going to gamble not in Vegas. And all the people here on this earth can judge me for that and other things. I'm still a Christian and I still try to align how I engage with other human beings and what things that I jump behind and support. I try to base it off of my Christian view of the world and what allows me the most freedom. And I see so many people afraid to do that. And it's why it's the primary reason the left is winning. More with Jason in one second. But first, if you have not yet tried Super Beats soft chews, you're missing out, people. I love these things. They make me feel

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pressure support you need and the energy you want. And this holiday season, when you buy a bag of Super Beats chews, you can get a second one for 50, 50, 50% off plus free shipping when you make your purchase at GetSuperBeats.com slash MK. That's GetSuperBeats.com slash MK. GetSuperBeats.com slash MK. If we have one upside to the pandemic, it's the old there are no atheists in foxholes belief, right? That when you're facing down a deadly virus that really has taken hundreds of thousands of lives here in the US, maybe it does connect you with your faith. Maybe it's a soothing balm.

Maybe it just strengthens your belief in a higher power and your need to connect with that. And I know that there was an article back over the summer that downloads of the Bible and prayer apps had been spiking. And I don't think that's unrelated to the craziness of what's happened this past year. Certainly the pandemic, maybe politics as well, the unrest over the summer. And I want to ask you about that, too, because there was a really interesting article in City Journal recently talking about how we seem to have gotten really permissive of mob violence in the country, something we were never really in favor of, but that people are now finding justifications to avert their eyes from violence rather than condemning it.

And the author was talking about the MAGA march in Washington recently and how the Trump supporters were being attacked. They were being attacked by counter protesters. And it was violent and saying, look, this is this is no surprise when you've been calling Trump a racist, a fascist, a bigot for four years. You've got they cited Jamal Bowie, formerly of Slate, now The New York Times, as having written a piece that reads, there is no such thing as a good Trump voter. And these people do not deserve your empathy. So do you think we've gotten to the point now where mob violence, riots will be given a pass as long as they're in favor of the right quote, the right cause? Yeah, I think we're certainly there. You know, I've tried to explain to people that if you go look at the history of the KKK, and it started up shortly after the Emancipation Proclamation, there was the violent arm of the Democratic Party to impose their will and intimidate people into supporting Democratic Jim Crow segregation. And it was the backlash to the Emancipation Proclamation. matter, Antifa, the violence we've seen is the violent arm of the Democratic Party trying

to impose their will if you do not submit. Because look how many cities boarded up thinking that President Trump was going to win reelection. And everybody calculated in, okay, well, Trump's going to win and they're going to burn down buildings and loot and terrorize and we've built that into the cake. That's now our expectations and that's why many of us are concerned

like, are we really just going to be a banana republic? Are we really just going to be a third world country where our expectations have been so lowered that we factored in, well, the left is going to kill, rob, and loot if things don't go their way. But let me ask you, let me ask you a follow up on that. I was recently asked in an interview about the mob violence we saw over the summer.

And the question was, can you understand that things may have to get messy before they get better in improving black lives was essentially the question. What do you think of that? I think things have been messy. And listen, let's, let's, George Floyd, let's, and I'm not, I had a cousin that I helped raise killed by the police, by sheriffs in Indianapolis in 2012. His resume, not quite as bad as George Floyd's, but similar. And this is a cousin I absolutely love. His picture sits in my living room every day I look at it. Anton Butler. He was on parole.

The police, the sheriffs overreacted, tasered him, electrocuted him in the rain. I know the pain of George Floyd's family. And so I don't say this callously, but George Floyd resisted arrest repeatedly. Did he deserve what Derek Chauvin did to him? No. But he could have avoided it by simply complying. And then to throw on the opinion, because all it is is an opinion, is that Derek Chauvin did this out of racism. That's just an opinion. That's not a fact. Derek Chauvin more than likely did it out of an abuse of power, incompetence, frustration. There's no proof that there was some racial animus there. And so the media, and particularly social media, have set up this dynamic or this belief, this false narrative, like, oh, things are so horrible for Black people here in America. And they must go out and riot and loot for things to

get better because the police are just out randomly killing Black people. It's just not true. The stats, the data, everything backs up. It's just not true. The police aren't doing this. They're not executing a mass plot to kill Black people. Police violence has actually gone down over the last 30 years. You're far less likely to be killed by the police. And we all know, or any of us with any curiosity, have seen videos of the police through incompetence, through an abuse of power, killing white people that the media never talks about, killing more white people by raw numbers than Black people. Now, people will say, oh, but a Black person's two times more likely to be killed based on, you know, we're only 12% of the

population. But again, we all know you can play with numbers. If you live in a high crime, high violent neighborhood, you're going to have more encounters with the police. Therefore, increasing the likelihood that that encounter could spin gotten so bad that this kind of random violence is America worse right now than it was in the 1950s and 60s. When Dr. King and that greatest generation dealt with. Unquestioned racism. Again, when they put up a sign that says black people can't eat here, can't live here, can't drink water here, can't go to school here, that's clear-cut racism. That's not an opinion. When there are laws restricting your rights to vote and things like that, that's racism. It's not an opinion. This stuff we're fighting about now and pretending like, oh my God,

how can Black people survive under this? It's all opinions. Again, I was born in 1967. Obviously, my parents were born much long, 30, 40 years before me. They experienced racism without ever resorting to this type of violence. And not only not ever resorting, producing results in the way they fought back, that this generation isn't coming close to producing the results. And all of this, and I hate to go back to this because it sounds like I'm a broken record, but all of this is related to the removal

of God. And again, the more secular you become, the more violent you become. Look at the whole Martin Luther King and that generation. The theme was we shall overcome. That's a very hopeful thing. That's a threat. And we've had 30 years of threats, no justice, no peace, and people out in the street, no justice, no peace, threats, threats, threats. It's unchristian. It's not faith-based. It can only lead to the kind of racial division and consistent violence we keep seeing here in America. And so under their no justice, no peace plan, they're right. This type of violence and messiness and racial division has to happen so that we, and so literally the end game with the result, so that we can install

socialism, communism, and Marxism in America. They're right. To reach their goals, they're right. This has to happen. To reach the goals that I'm interested in and you're probably interested in, this stuff is unacceptable. What about Al Sharpton? I read that you once called him a domestic terrorist. And I wonder, because you see him in the wake of any of these big racial incidents. I just watched Shelby Steele's What Killed Michael Brown? And he's in there, clips of him saying, you know, that blaming the country, blaming the cops wasn't true. Hands up up don't shoot was a lie he never comes out and owns his disinformation in fact he doubles down and yet still there he is he gets promoted he's got his own show on msnbc he gets promoted as sort of the messenger for aggrieved black people

so what do you think i i and and al, by the way, when my cousin died, he called me. And I've had some engagement interaction with Al Limited. But I will say in the moments, in the 24, 48 hours after my cousin was killed in Indianapolis, it was a good fit. Al Sharpton calling with concern was a good feel. But in reality, Al Sharpton has been, had a negative impact on race relations in America, has had a negative impact on African-Americans in our journey overall. I don't regret calling him a domestic terrorist.

This is stirring up racial animosity and grievances is his job He's good at his job I think it's it's it's been a crime that he's been put out there as the example For black leadership in this country for a long time. You have to, and I'm not, you can't find any of my work where I'm some harsh critic of President Obama or any president. But I do blame Obama for elevating Al Sharpton, bringing him into the White House, concerning one of his confidants, one of his counselors. He justified and put a stamp of approval on Al Sharpton's race-baiting, undignified, unmanned approach to race relations. It's funny, Candace Owens keeps

taking all this heat for talking about bring back manly men. And she did it talking about Harry Styles and the way that he dresses, but it actually has a much bigger theme and point than just how people dress. And because I look at Al Sharpton and a lot of the leadership right now, it's cowardly. It is cowardly. And particularly, you got to

remember, we're taking the Reverend out of his title. He calls himself Reverend Al Sharpton. He is supposed to be a man of faith. And again, this is where it goes back to the importance of faith, because faith removes fear. Faith is the antibiotic for fear. And people have reasonably fearful, like, oh my God, we've got COVID, we've got all this racial unrest. But faith is what should get you beyond your fear and get you to stand up as a man or a woman and stand on your faith and the principles and integrity and the values that were instilled in you through your faith or through whatever your parents or grandparents or someone, teacher, coach, someone put in you. And we just don't have that anymore. And so everybody thinks they're smarter than God and they got the solution and the ways of the things taught in the Bible and

the church, they're all outdated. And we're going to go, no justice, no peace. We're going to go to war. And we're going, you know, Breonna Taylor. What was the woman that he first got in trouble with in New York a long time ago? Tawana Brawley. Tawana Brawley. Tawana Brawley. Yeah. Michael Brown. We are now, we're now, the Rosa Parks of our generation are now all resisting criminals. We're building shrines to George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and Jacob Blake and Rayshard Brooks and Eric Garner. And they're now the greatest human beings, the greatest cultural icons for Black America. And we're going to war over them. And I'm not trying to diminish them.

But again, Anton Butler, my cousin, who I helped love, who I helped raise and love and love. Again, he's he made some choices in life that put him in a difficult situation. And I can't act like an idiot or lie to people and say, like, oh, my God, it was he's this innocent victim. And he was going to be the president of the United States had he not been cut down. And George Floyd wasn't going to be the president of the United States had he not been cut down and George Floyd wasn't gonna be the president George Floyd was probably gonna remain a stick-up man and a criminal Had he not had that unfortunate incident with Derek show Jacob Blake rap sheet or you know accusations by that woman and you know, it's, so I, Al Sharpton has been a negative influence on Black people in America. He's, to me, he represents, his,

he is responsible for the no justice, no peace slogan. And we've been dealing with 30 years of that mentality, if not 40 years of that mentality. And the results aren't good. You know that, I don't have to tell you, that a black man speaking like that about Al Sharpton or George Floyd or Jacob Blake, that you get called an Uncle Tom, that as you once wrote, the stewards of the zeitgeist do not love me or any other black person who would dare object to their racist manipulation of black consciousness and black culture. And you say these stewards would see George Floyd as 100 times blacker than Ben Carson. What do you mean by that?

I mean that the highest level of blackness is victimhood. There's no, if you're a victim, and again, this is why people are staging incidents. Jussie Smollett was like, well, if I'm going to reach the highest stage of blackness, I need to be beat up by white racists and, you know, nearly lynched. And so he staged an event. You look at LeBron James with without ever offering any credible proof. This guy's worth a half billion dollars. But in order to reach the highest level of blackness, he had to pretend like someone spray painted theainted the n-word on his Brentwood mansion That he was and he was in Ohio at the same time and he somehow used it as proof that whether you're the Brian James Just a guy on the street if you're black, you know

America's is just terrible or it's tough I mean this guy has been pampered since the age of 12. Pampered. Once he showed that remarkable athletic talent, America responded by pampering this guy. And that's why I call him the Black Donald Trump. You know, he wants to talk about Trump's privilege from being born into wealth. There's the same privilege that comes along with that athletic wealth that he was born into. And so, you know, they can all call me names, but they'll never call me alive. You can call me Uncle Tom. You can call me this or that. They'll never call me alive. The conversations, the things that I say in my column, the things I'm saying now,

conversations I've had with Black people my entire life and still have, where no when it's said, and I hear Black people say the same things, they just don't have the courage to say it publicly, and particularly for entertainers and influencers, the people, the liberals controlling the zeitgeist don't allow it. They actually define blackness, not black people. The liberals controlling Hollywood, the music industry, the social media apps, they define blackness. Okay, so let me ask you this. Let me ask you, because this is something I have observed over the past couple of years as I've looked at racial incidents that get blown up by the media or otherwise. To me, I think you just hit the nail on the head. To me, what's happening in the

country right now is not a black white issue. It is a liberal conservative issue because I have yet to meet a more conservative leaning black person who agrees with my white liberal neighbors on the Upper West Side about where relations are between races and what black people need to do to get ahead. The black conservatives talk about these issues and even more centrist liberal blacks talk about these issues in a very different way than white progressives do. And I wonder if we've been fooled into believing this is about a difference between race relations as opposed to yet another divisive political issue in which these white liberals cloak themselves in sort of the righteousness of standing up for an oppressed minority and conservatives retreat to the

individualist, you know, self-empowerment, personal responsibility. America is a great place, place that they usually go. To me, it feels much more like the latter. What do you think? This is where I agree with President Trump and America First. We've given our country over to foreign influence. China, the money that they spend in Hollywood, the tool to smear America. This has been going on for a hundred years or more. That, okay, the West is fine, but the West is racist. We're not. We're all comrades over here in Russia and blah, blah, blah. And in China and blah, blah. And so. Once you let the NBA be taken over by China and the NBA's number one interest becomes protecting their relationship with China, Nike's number one interest becomes protecting their relationship with China to have access to that market and that much cheaper labor. When you allow China to dictate the movies and the tone and even again, there's been plenty of stories written about how dark skinned black people can't be in movies because of China. And so I see all of this is trying to influence American culture.

They're using race to divide us and destabilize us. They have us all focused on race, race, race, and how we're all at each other's throats over race, and we're missing the bigger picture, that they're trying to remove our Judeo-Christian values as a way to limit our freedom, destabilize our country, and make America fall. And that's why my message, and I keep coming back to it, is those of us that are believers, regardless of race, we have to come together. Because if you're a believer, you also believe in freedom. Religious freedom, a founding principle in this country, is being eroded. And if those of us that are believers, if we don't come together and stand on our faith, and again, that does not mean that we have to be perfect. You're going to have to ignore the idiots that point out, oh, well, you had an affair, or your marriage didn't work out, or I caught you at a strip club. You have to ignore all of that.

And I'm just keeping it real, and stand on your face and say, you know what? All that's true. But I believe in freedom. I believe in the principles that made this country great and allowed us. America has a history of 150 years of being well ahead of the rest of the globe on freedom for Black people and racial equality. We have been the world leaders. We're being portrayed as if we're in last place when we actually have been the leaders on these issues. And the founding fathers have been demonized. They imperfect and this again but they weren't ashamed that they were christians and that's why if somebody can claim to be a christian and own slaves well i damn sure can claim to be a christian and like to gamble and have a cocktail

or two and absolutely not so i i think i think you might be beating yourself up too much about the strip clubs too. I personally don't see anything wrong in celebrating a beautiful woman's body if she's showing it to you consensually and making some money off of it. I think that's just too puritanical and you can't let what your priest thinks influence every aspect of

your life. I'm not beating myself up that bad about it, Megan. And I state that having not been in a strip club in three or four years, but who knows? Maybe I'll go to... No, no. We had this debate a couple years ago when the Miss America pageant started

to get rid of the bathing suit competition and I just thought, whose weird idea of feminism is that? If a woman who's smart and talented and articulate also has a banging body and wants to celebrate it, go for it, sister. Back to Jason in one second. But first, have you ever Googled yourself? You know, you have your neighbors. How about that? Well, the majority of Americans admit to keeping an eye on their online reputation. But Google and Facebook are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to finding public records. There is an innovative new website called Truthfinder, and it is now revealing the full scoop on millions of Americans.

Truthfinder can search through hundreds of millions of public records in a matter of minutes. Truthfinder members can begin searching in seconds for sensitive data like criminal, traffic, and arrest records. Before you bring someone new into your life and around the people you care so deeply for, consider trying Truthfinder. What you find may astound you. This might be the most important web search that you ever do, so do it. Go to truthfinder.com slash Kelly right away to start searching. Again, that's truthfinder.com slash Kelly. Okay, I want to bring you this feature now that we call the Devil May Care All Stars. You know, my company name is Devil May Care Media, which is sort of a middle finger to the mainstream media. And that's exactly what I intend it to be. In any event, we try to celebrate people who have

the same attitude we do when it comes to these incessant rules and restrictions we've been told we must follow, but we never consented to, whether it's in the way we speak or the way we live, what have you. And basically, we just want to shine a light on the people in America who embody the spirit of our company, standing up, speaking truth to power, no matter the consequences. And today that brings us to Holly Susie from Providence, Rhode Island. Susie's mother, Janet, sadly died this month after contracting COVID-19. And Susie wanted to hold a small private outdoor burial for her mother, but she was told it's against the regulations of her state. We're seeing that in so many places. So instead of just taking it, she wrote a letter to the governor demanding answers. And she was right on. Here's what she wrote. This is a quote. People can shop at Target, get their haircut at a salon,

eat indoors at restaurants, but we cannot have a socially distanced burial outdoors for my mother. Her seven grandchildren cannot attend. Her older great-grandchildren cannot say goodbye. How can this be? She wrote, it disrespects my mother who has already suffered so much and inflicts yet another pain on her family. Good for her, right? Holly says she's always been a rule follower and her mom would be proud of her by going public to speak out. She would have wanted to fight this, she said. So that's what she told the Providence Journal. And just again, a word on my friend Janice Dean, who's been through the same thing. Both of her husband, our friend Sean's parents died during the COVID-19 crisis. They were in New York nursing homes where our governor thought it would be wise to send 6,000

COVID positive patients. And they were forced to bury Mickey and Dee with no funeral. They didn't get to say goodbye to their own family members. They followed the rules and then sat and watched in horror as the same doctors who said that would be unsafe, okayed the Black Lives Matters protesters out in the streets by the thousand. She felt the way Susie feels, which is Holly Susie feels, which is I followed the rules and I want to follow the rules and I want to do what's responsible, but let's be reasonable. Like this is ridiculous to tell this woman she can't be outside having a socially distanced funeral. She said she was going to have maybe 17 people all six feet apart in the outdoors. And the answer was no. Anyway, here's to Holly Susie, who fought back against absurd COVID restrictions to honor her mother.

They both sound like devil may care all-stars to me. And now, back to Jason. I want to talk to you about sports because I don't know a lot about sports, but I love OutKick. I love Clay Travis and you and your columns, and they help me understand the news items in the sports world. I don't really follow the athletics themselves. But I want my kids to participate in sports. And I think it's an important sort of backbone in building character. And, you know, I get your point on China.

Of course, I had that interview with Mark Cuban where I pressed him on China and the NBA. Meanwhile, the NBA is Black Lives Matter, Black Lives Matter, but they won't condemn China. But it's not it's not just China, because what we've also seen in the NFL and NBA is like Colin Kaepernick, you know, and now he's led this whole movement and been very well rewarded for it financially in the wake of George Floyd with his deal with Nike. You know, he's not, I don't think, controlled by China. This guy's out there

being celebrated as a national hero because he takes the knee when the national anthem gets played. And I've had battles with this guy on Twitter and Ava DuVernay, who's constantly defending him and attacking me because I don't agree with this. And I don't agree with players having to explain now why they won't kneel. It's flipped in the wake of George Floyd. And now you have to explain why you've chosen to stand, which is just nuts. And so you explain that to me, because that doesn't appear to be a manipulation by China. That seems to be liberals. Although it's a manipulation by China. How so?

Because they want to destabilize America. Anything that brings us together is being torn down. And sports have always been the greatest influence in American culture of bringing us together. And you don't have to be very smart to figure that out. Just look at the importance of Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier. Go look at the importance of Jesse Owens winning four gold medals at the importance of Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier. Go look at the importance of Jesse Owens winning four gold medals at the Berlin Olympics. Go look at the importance of Joe Louis beating Max Schmeling in a boxing match in 1938, I believe. Those big cultural moments, particularly Jesse Owens and Joe Lewis

early in the 1930s, they brought America together celebrating Black men as national heroes. That was part of our racial progress. That was setting up sports as the unifying thing in America, that we all came together to score in advance. They played the national anthem. We all pushed our politics aside and we just rooted for our teams and the athletes that represented our country.

And as popular as the cable news networks are and the end of a Bill O'Reilly was and Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly were, none of it compared to the popularity of American sports on TV. There is no greater cultural force than the NFL. Number one TV show on ABC, ESPN, NBC, CBS, the NFL Network, and Fox Sports. That's like six networks. They're the number one show on. Maybe remove ABC. I can't.

The games are showed on ESPN. Five television networks. They're the number one show on. It doesn't take a rock. Live sports, you know, really popular on number one show on. It doesn't take a rock live sports, you know, really popular on all the television networks. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out, oh, if we can promote division within sports, we can destabilize America and get them at each other's throat. And so I look at Colin Kaepernick, his relationship with Nike has been going on for a long time.

LeBron James, obviously Nike's biggest ambassador at the moment. That's why he's been so anti-American and so supportive of the Black Lives Matter movement. It's what keeps them in good standing in China. Nike is dependent on the labor and the market in China. And so I think they're all connected together. The goal for our competitors, and I can't even be mad at China and any of these foreign countries that have, they're competitive. And we've done the same thing to them. And so they're trying to destabilize our country and they're doing it through athletes and the sports world. There's no better place to do it. And even before Kaepernick took a knee, I could see it coming. Like, wow, sports has an incredible place in American culture. And if you really want to destabilize America, promote racial division and polarization inside of sports.

And now you've taken a sanctuary and it's something that brought us together. The national anthem was like was non-controversial. We all stood. It's just a little symbolic, a symbolic moment that's important for national unity. Megan, if you just pride in America has been demonized. How can you have a country when people make you feel bad about taking pride in the country? You can't have a country if everybody's like, well, everybody's running around taking a knee and begging, oh, forgive me for my privilege or American privilege, white privilege. I'm ashamed to be an American. It's hard to sustain the country that way.

And that's, again, I'm really. I don't have a disagreement with that. But I don't think Colin Kaepernick, when he took the knee a couple of years ago, was thinking about China. I think he was thinking about himself as a victim. And even LeBron, as you point out, he somehow has convinced himself that he is a victim of a systemically racist country that made him a hundred millionaire multi-times over. You know, it's like even, you's like even Michelle Obama talking about it. Let me say this, Megan, and this will be probably the most controversial thing I'll say on here, most misunderstood, is look, the left always promotes black idiots. The left will have you believe that LeBron James is more accomplished and smarter than Ben Carson. Any black man who is really intelligent, really accomplished in the educational field tends to get demonized. And so Colin Kaepernick, and again, I'm not speculating. This guy was my favorite football player before he took a knee.

Been following his career, know coaches and players that played with him. Colin Kaepernick just isn't very smart. He's been manipulated by his girlfriend, Ness Nitty, or Nessa, or whatever her name is. And she knew what she was doing. Colin Kaepernick doesn't know a damn thing he's doing. LeBron James, not very smart. Pampered, brought through school to make sure he... I don't even blame him. If I had that much athletic ability, I wouldn't be that smart. I'd just try to make it to that NBA finish line and get that money. But he's not very smart. And I know people get all upset.

Go read his damn Twitter feed. The guy can barely punctuation, grammar, all that childlike. And so, you know, the left puts up people that aren't very smart and puts them on a pedestal. And that's why, again, actors, actresses, athletes, yeah, those are the spokesmen for Black people. That's not Ben Carson. That's not Clarence Thomas. That's not people of great substance who have been in the intellectual Olympics their entire life. Well, I know, but you're oversimplifying, of course. I mean, you've got amazing black intellectuals who are on the other side of this as well. And I, in passing, mentioned Michelle Obama,

who's very well-educated, very smart. You may not agree with her, but you can't say she's not smart. And, I mean, Henry Louis Gates, you could go down the list of smart black people who feel differently about this issue. I don't know LeBron James or how smart he is. Let me give you my knock on those guys, though.

The people that want to cut $100 million deals with Netflix, they know what they have to say. The people, because this is the point I didn't get to make about my criticism of Al Sharpton, just because I forgot. Listen, the 1960s, when John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, and Malcolm X got killed, that really elevated the stakes for leaders. And most people just don't have the courage to be leaders. And that's how you get guys like Al Sharpton. And it becomes about the money. And it becomes people without a great deal of integrity and leadership positions.

Because they're never going to, and again, I look at, you know, I don't want to be hypercritical, Michelle Obama and all these guys. But these guys are all in it for the money. And that's why I haven't really been involved in politics because Republican, Democrat, whomever, they're all in it for the money. What interested me about President Trump was like, well, he already had the money. And so he's not that interested in it. And so I find it kind of fascinating. But I look at a lot of the people on the left as it's just a paycheck. It's just how they can get richer.

I really want to get your take on what's happening in sports in general, apart from the politics of them. One of my big problems as a mother is how sports now is losing its competitive nature, right? The participation trophy approach to athletics. And trust me, I have kids. We don't necessarily play a ton of sports together sometimes, but even just playing games, I think about it. You know, do I want to see my kid cry because he's lost five times in a row at whatever game it is? No, I don't want to crush his spirit,

but he also needs to learn how to lose, how to lose well, how to, how to take it, you know, like a, not to use a sexist phrase, like a man. And, uh, and I think that's important. And when they get participation trophies, I throw them in the garbage and now they know, they know that don't even bring them home because they're going right in the garbage. Some people would say that's unkind. Some people say I'm teaching them the wrong lessons. It's good to get in there, get in the arena. You should get a trophy for showing up. But we seem to be going the other way.

So what happened? Look, the things that made masculinity is toxic is winning. And so they're trying to emasculate the sports world. And they're trying to make things less competitive so that no one's feelings ever get hurt. And it's comical. I can remember my first varsity football practice in high school in pads. And one of the assistant coaches called me the P word. I was a sophomore in high school.

I was a talented kid. But the year before, I played bad on a freshman football team. And the biggest game of the year, I had a bad performance. And so the first day I'm practicing with a varsity football team in the biggest game of the year, I had a bad performance. And so the first day I'm practicing with a varsity football team, coach named Tony Burchett, we got pads on, we're about to start hitting. He called me the P word

out in front of the entire team. And I was so livid. You know, I just started destroying people in practice. And I destroyed people for the next three years and got a college scholarship. And Tony Burchett, who was just an assistant coach, he went on to become the principal of our high school, the superintendent of our school district. The guy's one of my best friends in life. Love the guy. He loves me. There's nothing we wouldn't do

for each other. But we're trying to eliminate that in today's society i'm not sure if he would ever take that chance to call me the p word out in front of everybody because that would be bad uh but i just think sports are being emasculated uh i think men are being made to feel bad for expressing any kind of masculine energy. And that is, you know, we just had something in the news cycle recently. The kicker at Vanderbilt, Sarah Fuller, got a big participation trophy. She was named SEC Special Teams Player of the Week for kicking a ball 25 yards and running to the sideline. And she allegedly broke the gender barrier in major college football. And I don't get it.

It's, you know. So wait, I didn't follow that. So she didn't do an extraordinary kick it wasn't that the kick was anything special it was just that it was done by a woman yeah vanderbilt because of covid lost a lot of their players and needed a kicker uh they recruited her off of the women's soccer team uh they don't have varsity men's soccer at Vanderbilt. Most of the SEC schools don't. They do have club soccer.

Anyway, Vanderbilt got steamrolled by Missouri 41-0. She kicked the ball off to start the second half, kicked it a squib kick about 25 yards directional, and she ran straight to the sidelines. And the mainstream sports media, it led SportsCenter and ESPN. It was compared to Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier. Oh, stop it. Yes, I'm telling you. Yes, it was. And it goes to your point. And keep in mind, this woman, this young woman is an accomplished, high level soccer player. And what drove me crazy about this is she doesn't need her athleticism validated by participating in a man's sport. She's a great athlete. She should be celebrated in the sport she's actually good at. And honestly, her crossover to football should be a fun little feature. Like, oh, this is something we don't see every day. Look at her. Boom, you move on.

No, there's no comparison to Jackie Robinson. And it's insulting to her too, right? Like you're saying, to try to make it into more than it was. To me, it's insulting to women athletes that it says that the highest level they can achieve is competing against men. And I completely reject that. This woman competing in a sport that isn't her strong suit to where literally someone could argue she's the worst player that's ever played in the SEC. But now that's a moment of achievement. It was, it was crazy. I think it diminishes women. I think that, you know, there's a lot. Look, I'm not a dad. So I heard from a lot of dads with a little piece about I heard from a lot of dads.

I sat and watched that with my daughter and it was a moving moment and blah, blah, blah. And I was like, hey. I'm not sure if you should be messaging to your daughter that, you know, her highest level as an athlete is playing men's football. Or, or even if she got there and she did something extraordinary, if she, you know, kicked a field goal under difficult circumstances, maybe I don't, I just don't think it's sending the wrong message to her little girls too, which is, this is what you have to do to be celebrated. You're right. You can be celebrated in your female sport, in your female competition. And if you want to cross over to the men's world, you should only be celebrated if you compete at that level, if you do something that would be extraordinary for a man. Otherwise, there is some sexism built in. And as I do about when, you know, we're told like the Smithsonian telling us that terms like personal responsibility are are white supremacist terms that if you believe in that you're a white supremacist because that doesn't apply to black people. masculine to be pro-achievement, pro-risk, pro-competitiveness, pro-wanting to avoid

appearing weak. Well, I feel all of those things, and it doesn't make me masculine. Those can be feminine attributes too. And the people who are now trying to reverse all this, whether they're talking about toxic masculinity or white supremacy, are themselves engaging in sexism or racism by trying to co-opt these terms for one group and not the other? There's no question that they're trying to fix racism with racism. And I'm not even sure if they're trying to fix racism. I just think they're trying to install racism. And I've been saying this for the last month that the ideological descendants of slave owners are the people on the left. This whole notion that Black is a special category in America that requires a capital B, because you can lump all black people together and they're a special group and they're different than everybody else. Well, that's the same thing they were saying three or four hundred years ago when they determined, hey, you're black.

Therefore, you're a slave here in the South. Your skin color makes you different than everybody else. Therefore, we limit your freedom. And so here we are 400 years later, and the left has celebrated the Associated Press. We're going to give Black people a capital B. No one else gets it. They're different. They're special. Their freedom of thought and everything else is limited. They're all liberals. They all think the same. Joe Biden even said it. They all think the same, blah, blah, blah. They're installing, reinstalling. We went through several hundred years of struggle to remove laws from America that limited the freedom of Black people. We went through a civil war. We went through a painful civil. We went through a painful civil rights struggle where people lost their lives, sacrificed their lives to remove those

laws. And I keep telling people, Megan, America promises freedom. That is it. All these people that are clamoring for America to love them. I'm going to go circle back to my favorite topic. God promises love. America promises freedom. You're looking for love in all the wrong places. Enjoy this American freedom. Fight for this American freedom. And this may make me seem sexist,

and certainly it'll make me seem out of date. I feel as a man, it is my responsibility, if necessary, to violently protect the freedoms that we have here in America. If it comes down, oh, there's going to be some violence to protect this freedom. I feel like as a man, it's my responsibility to do that. That may make me sexist. I'm sure there's some women out there. I hope there's some women out there like, you know what? I'm going to pick up a musket too. I'll fight with you for the freedom. But that's all I want America to provide is freedom. I'll do the rest. If I'm looking for love, I'm going to ask a woman or mostly I should appropriately ask God, love myself. And if some woman actually

loves me, that's just gravy. That's icing on the cake. Well, I did read in one of the profiles of you that your nickname is Big Sexy. So I'm thinking you don't have much problem in that department. The Big Sexy is big mouth, sexy opinions. Oh, that's less exciting. Less exciting. Less exciting. But I, I, I do all right. Okay.

When I put my mind to it, I do all right. So here's to it. Cause I've really admired you. I've really enjoyed listening to you on the pods, watching you on Twitter, watching you on Tucker show and elsewhere. So more of that, please. And good luck. It's been a pleasure, Jason.

Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Today's episode is brought to you in part by Scoremaster. See how many points Scoremaster can add to your credit score today. Visit scoremaster.com slash MK now. Thank you for listening, but I've got to tell you while I have your attention. Our next show on Wednesday, maybe the most powerful piece of interviewing I've ever done in my life. And not for the reasons you think. This is the show I told you about a month

ago where I was like, oh my God, my team just told me like in an email, like, oh, we've got the following guests lined up and they just threw these two in here like it was nothing. And I said, I'm going to keep it a secret, but I'll tell you soon who it is. And it happens to be the two star actors of the only movie I've ever deeply cared about. I don't have star envy or sort of that, you know, thing with celebrities for anyone. A little bit Judge Judy. But other than her, I just, I don't know. I don't feel it. When I look at celebrities, I don't feel that like, oh, except for these two. And you might not even know their names when I say that. Do you know the names Peter Ostrom and Julie Dawn Cole? These people happen to be better

known as Charlie Bucket and Veruca Salt. And they were the stars of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I know I'm not the only one who loves this movie. Millions and millions of people around the world love it. It's become a cult thing. And even if it's not, if you're not in the cults, I'm sure you've seen the movie and you understand why some people really love it. It's got special significance to me for reasons we'll get into. But I have to tell you, I don't remember when I haven't enjoyed an interview more. And it was really some really powerful moments in it. The only interview I've ever done in my life.

And now I'm 50 where I burst out into tears as soon as it started. I was not expecting that. I don't think my team was expecting that either. So if you'd like to hear that, don't miss Wednesday's show. You can make sure you get it by going and subscribing to our program right now, our podcast. And making sure you download, rate, and review. Definitely review after you hear that episode because I'd love to hear what you think and whether, even if you're not a fan of the movie, whether the interview makes you want to see it or look at it in a new light. Love to hear that, and we'll talk on Wednesday.

Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear. The Megyn Kelly Show is a Devil May Care media production in collaboration with Red Seat Ventures.