The Megyn Kelly Show - Kamala Harris' Empty Vessel Campaign, and Trump Makes Up With Kemp, with Charles C.W. Cooke and Rich Lowry | Ep. 869

Episode Date: August 23, 2024

Megyn Kelly is joined by Charles C.W. Cooke and Rich Lowry of National Review to discuss NBC's reporters chatting and congratulating Kamala Harris and Tim Walz backstage, the ridiculous fawning from the corporate media over Harris' DNC speech, how her entire scripted campaign is based around the teleprompter, Harris’ brief and substance-free acceptance speech last night at the DNC, how the campaign is completely scripted and she's an empty vessel, the artificial attempt to rebrand her, the rumor that Beyonce would be performing at the DNC, how it may have been a ploy to increase ratings, the reporters who spread the rumor based on "sources," Harris' cynical and political “price gouging” policy, how Harris' past comments mirror communism, Elizabeth Warren finally getting called out by the media, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and Trump making up after Trump attacked Kemp recently, Kemp endorsing him for the greater good of our country, why Trump needs to win Georgia, Trump's viral interview with Theo Von and his plan to reach younger voters, and more. Cooke- https://twitter.com/charlescwcookeLowry- https://www.nationalreview.com/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. The conventions are now officially over. Thank God. Aren't you relieved? I stayed up so late every day this week watching this terrible, terrible production. I was bored. I was tired. I was uninspired. But I had to be there because there was a lot of fact checking to do. There were a lot of lies spewn and we needed to discuss it. But I'm so glad that this is over. So glad. And now we begin the sprint to Election Day. Vice President Kamala Harris delivered her big speech last night. You know, I thought it was the best she could do.

She did literally the best she's capable of doing. And there's a reason for that. We'll tell you what Mark Halperin is reporting. Some in the press even thought it was magical. It was magical in that it was make-believe. I mean, this is not the real person. We know who the real person is. We've been watching her for years now. There was no hint of who she actually is last night, but she delivered a nice speech that obviously

somebody else wrote for her. And that's one of my other questions. Who wrote it? Because it certainly seems like team Obama is officially on board and all of that same team is all over the media praising her to high heaven without disclosing that they may be helping her behind the scenes, which is unethical. I'd love to know what about David Axelrod and the pod save America guys. Are you actually writing her speeches and advising her and then going on air and talking about how amazingly she performed? Because that's not okay. John Meacham, remember him out there? Oh, Joe Biden, amazing. And it turns out he had written the speech and he was praising it on MSNBC. Anyway, there's a lot of stuff happening

around this woman's makeover. It's an extreme makeover. And we may never get the answers. It's basically just suppositions and suspicions at this point. Her speech was short on policy for the American voters, all the soaring rhetoric. She's going to unite us. Okay. Sure. We're not united. We're not going to be united. Her boss said that too. And then within a year or two, we got dark Brandon. It wound up being one of the shortest acceptance speeches in history, which we were grateful for. Let's be honest. So late. Thank God for those counting. It's now been 33 days since Miss Harris took the baton, received the torch from President Biden. And we still have not seen one interview and no news conferences. She took a couple of questions at the back of the plane one day, which were absolutely non-substantive. And yet when the VP passed by the media, this is their big chance. NBC News was back there last night after her speech. It's Kamala. It's Tim Walls. This is it. This is great. This is your chance as a reporter to freaking ask a real question. This is what happened.

Madam Vice President, how do you feel tonight? I feel good. Now on to tomorrow. Good to see you last night. Yeah. Congratulations to you. Good to see you. Governor Walz, Mrs. Walz, congratulations. Thank you. It felt good. It felt good. I mean, listen, we've got 75 days to go. So maybe for better and for worse, that's the way I am. Like, that was good.

Now we've got to move on. We're going to enjoy one night. Nice to see you guys. Thank you. Thank you, guys. Thank you, Mrs. Hogan. Thank you. Thank you.

Nice to see you, Chanel. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank to see you guys. Thank you. Congratulations. Nice to see you. Congratulations, sir.

That's that's NBC's Kelly O'Donnell, also known as the outgoing president of the White House Correspondents Association. You know, the people who are supposed to hold this administration to account, the same people who weren't interested in the fact that a Parkinson's doctor had visited the White House repeatedly when Joe Biden. Well, oh, wait, he's still in office when he was in office and they still loved him. That that White House Correspondents Association, the other person with her yelling congratulations. That's Peter Alexander, NBC News White House correspondent. You have one job, one job, and it is to cover the White House and now this presidential race, all those who want to be in the White House. And you failed. You had this big, they tweeted that out. It's not like somebody caught it on tape and then tweeted it out to embarrass them. They tweeted it out. They're proud of this. Joining me now, two of our favorites, Rich Lowry. He's editor-in-chief

of National Review and Charles C.W. Cook, senior writer at National Review and host of the Charles C.W. Cook podcast. For all of their work, become an NR Plus subscriber. you will not be sorry. You did one of the favorite things of mine on the NR website, nationalreview.com is you can listen to all the articles. So when I'm getting ready in the morning, when I'm walking the dog, I click on the audio and you can listen to them even if you're not a subscriber. But if you do, you have to listen to the ads, which of course we never want to listen to because we want to get to the content. So you have no ads when you do that, uh, on the audio. That's yet another reason to subscribe. And it's not that expensive guys. Happy Friday. Great to see you. Hey, maybe we should have Charlie start reading

those articles really slowly, Megan. So you have to listen to him times two speed. Like your moink ads. Okay, guys, can you believe that? Like, it's one thing to say, congratulations. And then Madam Vice President, you know, you said the following. Trump's already saying that's not true. Whatever you you always have a substantive question up your sleeve in case you get access. But it was just like we saw all week with her. Congratulatory pat on the back. Let's enjoy the coronation, Rich. Yeah, I mean, the press corps has changed. I don't know whether you remember Jack Germond. He used to be on the McLaughlin Group. I think he's with the Baltimore Sun. But he was this overweight, balding, rumpled guy who wrote numerous campaign books. I just can't imagine him ever congratulating anyone for anything, right? He just wasn't on board. He was

hard-bitten and skeptical, if not cynical, about everyone. And we have a press corps that's totally different now. It's more, quote-, professional, although their work isn't as good and fair anymore. And they're totally on board. And we talked about this, I think, right around the time that the transition was happening to Kamala, how just in the tank the press would be. But it's shocked me even knowing what it would be or thinking I knew what it'd be like going in. It's even been worse than I could have imagined. And to have one of the few opportunities ever presented to ask an unscripted question and say, how do you feel? And congratulations, it's just typical. It's the reaction to what we saw as a fairly anodyne speech, Charlie. I mean,

she really said almost nothing. Um, she delivered it well, especially for Kamala Harris, who we know how she actually speaks was sickening. I mean, the, the it's beyond spin. It's just, it's almost gaslighting. I'll just give you, I'm gonna give you three examples here. I'll play you a triple soundbite. Rachel Maddow, Jake Tapper, and Jen Psaki. Listen to this reaction. All right, you will remember where you were when you heard this speech tonight from the Vice President of the United States. You're gonna remember where you were on this night. No. This is an inflection point in history. It was a remarkable address. One that I've never seen her give quite like this before. A very, very powerful speech.

You gotta go back, I think, to Barack Obama in 2008 for a Democratic speech like this, perhaps even a speech like this at all. It's this magical, charismatic quality in person. So do a lot of politicians. People say that about Hillary Clinton, also true. The public has to see it in order to get you elected. And tonight and over the last couple of weeks, she showed the. When you said these are the text messages that I'm getting. What did you mean?

Well, I mean, by that is she just that was fierce and fearless how she just delivered that. That's who she has been. Charlie, I I'm sure you're in the middle of writing your national review column with those same words. Fierce, fearless, magical charisma. Is that how you experienced it? Well, actually, I managed to get a really quick tattoo of her face on my arm this morning. I was so moved. It was fine. It was fine. And she read from a teleprompter. She was better than she has been. She also said nothing. I think this is one thing those people are missing, is that the reason that it went okay was that she said nothing.

They had focus groups who also said it was fine. I think I saw CNN's went out to a B+. And the reason for that is that when you deliver adequately a speech that is reasonably well written, with lights on you and people waving flags, and say absolutely nothing that could challenge or upset anyone, they will give you reasonable marks for it. But that reaction that you just played is absolutely preposterous. And it was fine, as I say.

There was a piece in the Daily Beast this morning by David Rothkopf that I think people should look up and read. You've got to read all 16 paragraphs of it. That honestly reads as if we've just won a world war that we've been in for eight years. It is the most ridiculous, hyperbolic, hysterical thing I've ever seen. But I assume most of it was written

before the speech was given. Because Harris is a creation of the press. She's an avatar. Her campaign does not exist at the moment. And the response was like the speech itself, completely fabricated. Yeah. Is that the, you said Daily Beast because there's their headline is Kamala Harris nailed the greatest speech of her life. And to that, I thought, yes, well, that that's true. Like look at all the others, but what's, what's so galling about it, yes, well, that's true. But I mean, like, look at all the others.

But what's so galling about it, Rich, is we're not, you know, Tapper's CNN, Maddow's MSNBC. We showed you the NBC reporters. Here's John Carl at ABC. This is all the mainstream. This is who reports on and controls the messaging in news. Listen to Jonathan Carl. He gave a speech, George, that if you take out that section on abortion rights, much of this speech could have been delivered at a Republican convention, a Republican convention

before Trump. This is a Kamala Harris that sounded a little bit more like Maggie Thatcher or Ronald Reagan. Bitch. I'm friends with John Carl, and I generally admire his work, but that's overly enthusiastic. And it goes to the falsity of it, right? When did she, even if it's true, and I don't think it's true if you read it line by line, when did she become a Republican, right? And shouldn't we want to know how this happened?

What's this massive change that she's undergone in her thinking? But there is no thinking. She is reading a campaign from a teleprompter. That's what her campaign is. She does it competently. I thought the speech was fine. It was the best speech she's ever given, but that's obviously an extremely low bar. And it wasn't even the best speech at the convention, which might have been Michelle Obama, right? That line that Michelle Obama had about who's going to tell Trump,

you know, that maybe the presidency is one of those black jobs he talks about. I don't know whether she came up with that on her own, but it was a great line. And she owned the line. And she's a natural at this in a way Kamala isn't. She's a manufactured production. She's more of a complete cipher than we've ever had in recent presidential politics. This amazing event happens where the presidential nomination is handed to her. We don't hear anything about it in her own words, how she felt, what was her role in the transition. She picks a vice presidential candidate, no sit-down interview the way you'd always have with a VPIC and no interviews or major press availabilities before or during her convention. And it's obviously because they switched out a candidate they didn't trust in spontaneous settings and replaced him with another candidate who's younger and better at the teleprompter, but that they also don't trust in spontaneous settings.

Ben Shapiro is taken to calling her scamala. He's not wrong. This whole thing, that was my biggest takeaway last night was it was irritating because she did well in reading her speech that obviously had been written for her. She did well in delivering it. And she is an empty vessel. She remains an empty vessel. We don't know what we're electing. We have clues that suggest she is nothing like the moderate. Her speechwriter wants us to believe she is. But they are perfectly happy. They, the Democrats and the media that's covering for them to to keep it a mystery, Charles, because they understand the truth will not inure to her

benefit. And their main takeaway is that Trump is just such a special evil. He must be stopped. And we don't really care what's in the bill. We'll have to pass it before we can read it. Yeah. And it's a huge problem for them in the long run, because even if it works, people will eventually notice. I mean, Harris has not actually advanced a single argument. She's made the case that she should be president. Quite wise, she hasn't explained. But she hasn't made an argument for a set of policies in which she believes or that her party is superior. And so if she does become president, I think a lot of people are going to be very quickly

shocked. And the only concession to policy in which she has thus far indulged was to talk about price controls and subsidies for housing demand, which was savaged, savaged in the Washington Post, savaged at CNN, savaged by every major economist. And the best Jason Furman, who was Obama's favorite economist, could say was, well, it probably won't happen, which is not a ringing endorsement. And so she stopped that quite quickly. This is an empty campaign. She is a shell. And as I said earlier, and as you have intimated with the clips that you've played, she has largely left the details of who she is, what she stands for, and what she would represent to the press. And it reminds me of this old Ricky Gervais joke where he's talking about God creating the earth. And he says, and he created the lands and the seas, and he creates the animals. And then he says, and it was good. And Gervais says, wasn't that great? You get to review your own work. You get to do all the work. And then you're the guy who gets to do the definitive review of your work. This is how I feel about the press. They've created this completely false person and they've managed to

promulgate this abroad the land so that everyone has this insincere conception of Kamala Harris. And then they report on that. They say, wow, look, she's doing okay in the polls or people think that she's the future or people think that she's full of joy. Well, yeah, because you just told them assiduously who she is. You did the work and now you're doing the review. There's a couple of things on that. So I mentioned at the top of the show, our friends over at Commentary, Matt Continetti goes on that podcast and he was suggesting today that if you read her speech, it matches up perfectly with everything David Axelrod has been saying for a year about how Biden needed to change his messaging, that the same democracy stuff wasn't working.

And that what he really needed to do was change the messaging in a way that matches up perfectly with everything Kamala Harris said. So that's Axelrod. Then today, look at, uh, there's Jon Favreau. He's part of Pod Save America. Kamala Harris absolutely crushed this presidential as any convention speech I've ever heard. Ben Rhodes, former deputy national security advisor under Obama. Kamala just did some real work on foreign policy, combating autocracy, supporting allies, standing up to Putin, speaking to the suffering of Palestinians in a way that we rarely hear. This is someone ready to be president right now. My my. My thought is that if any or all of these guys, Rich, is actually advising her on how to craft her speech, her policy or otherwise behind

the scene, then this is absolutely grossly disgusting and irresponsible that that I think is close. You you can you can help her. Axelrod can help her. Favreau, they can all help her, not without disclosing it and not without then going out and commenting on the very things that you may or may not, but may have been advising her on. I believe this isn't Axelrod's former political consultancy working for her now. And certainly Axelrod is. Yeah. So, I believe, isn't Axelrod's former political consultancy working for her now? And certainly Axelrod. David Plouffe is. Yeah. So, I mean, it's all the kind of former Obama brew.

And Axelrod, to his credit, has been right about most things. I mean, he was early on saying this age thing is a problem for Joe Biden, early on saying we got to dump him. And he's right about the democracy message. There was some of it at the convention. We saw another video of a montage of the shocking images from January 6th. He had Jamie Raskin and others making a January 6th type case. But I don't think Barack Obama, if I'm not mistaken, I don't think he mentioned it once. And Kamala did mention it, but it wasn't the main focus. And I think they're right to make a case against Trump that's more of the kind of argument you make against a

conventional Republican. He wants to cut taxes for the rich. He's out of touch. He's all about the billionaires. He wants to cut Social Security and Medicare, which he doesn't, and he wants to ban abortion. And he's very familiar and divisive, and it's time to move on. That is a much more sensible case than what they were trying to do and what the Biden campaign was trying to do. True. I mean, and no one would dispute that that's a better message. But my only suggestion or my suggestion, what I'm saying explicitly is if Axelrod actually is advising this campaign in any way and then goes on CNN as a supposedly clear-minded, objective analyst, understanding he has Democrat leanings and has helped Obama,

that's dishonest. That is unethical. It's unethical by CNN. This is what John Meacham got in trouble for over at MSNBC, where he had written the Joe Biden speech. I can't remember which one. It might have been the State of the Union. Remember this? Or maybe the Jim Crow. It was soaring. It was amazing. Oh, really? You really love your own pen? Yeah, it also could have been the Jim Crow 2.0 speech. I forget. But all these, Charlie mentioned this on the editors recorded a while ago, all these same people, these historians, John Meacham and others, Doris Kearns Goodwin, who advised Biden and tried to convince him he was the next FDR, are going to be there, right, in January if she wins, saying the same things, whispering the same things in her ear. So no matter what she's running as now, she will attempt to be a transformational left-wing president. LBJ and FDR all wrapped into one as soon as she assumes office.

Here's another one for you. Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine. Best acceptance speech I've ever seen. Goes on to say it was perfect. Absolutely perfect. Okay, that's not what I saw, but I did see somebody who was a good reader and managed not to do the weird cackle. There's somebody who was asking about this the other day online about, you know, the joy, joy, joy, joy, joy, joy. I mean,

it's everywhere. It's so annoying. Matt Taibbi has been going off on this. It's really irritating him. Um, it's obviously all a campaign to excuse away her bizarre cackle and the inopportune, inappropriate times she uses it, Charles. To me, this whole thing has been actually a very smart and effective rebranding effort. Trump's biggest, you know, his greatest gift is marketing. And the Democrats appears to be branding, which is slightly different, but related thing. They took one of her biggest weaknesses, this weird off-putting, strange cackle, and they rebranded it joyful. She's joyful. The Republicans are dour. That was in her speech last night talking about how they're so down. They're messaging so down.

She's happy. You see, she's not depressing. She's a cackler. That shows how joyful she is. And we're supposed to accept this as a policy prescription for our inflationary and border problems. It's risky, though. It is working at the moment, but it is risky. I think there is a very thin line between turning somebody's liabilities into a meme and making them cool by some strange process of alchemy and that person becoming a joke as a result. memes about Kamala Harris, if the circumstances change, are going to look like criticisms, the coconuts, and the rebranding of the laugh, the palm trees, and so on. Because she hasn't fundamentally changed. I mean, it's funny, you played that clip, the first one you played of the journalists being obsequious, when around her, she cackled. She said two words and then she cackled.

So she can hide it on a stage, but she can't hide it forever because that's who she is. And I do think, although I think she has a real good chance of winning in November, I do think that the time for a completely substanceless media driven vacuous campaign is coming to an end. I actually don't think that the public is shallow enough to let this continue unchallenged for another 70 days. Maybe something can replace it and it will infuriate us just as much. But there's going to come a point, especially when Americans tune in, which they tend not to really until the election gets closer, when they say, OK, but what else is there? Who is this

person? What has she done? What does she think? What has she said? I think they believe that they can get away with this indefinitely. I don't think that they can, because I don't think you can indefinitely make her appealing. So there's going to have to be something else as interference. Well, you know, you, you raise an interesting point, how she, the cackle came out after two seconds in that exchange. So we've now learned from the reporting that she was very brushed back on her heels after her interview with Lester Holt, where, I mean, truly one of the nicest guys in journalism. Um, and he said to her, you haven't been to the border and she's, she's the borders are, and she's like,

and I haven't been to Europe. Right. And everyone saw what a faux pas it was and how dumb she looked. And the reports are that she was actually very rattled by her own performance and went underground for a while, like started hiding from the press and started Googling what Fox News was saying about her. It's the same person, Rich, who last night got up there and in one of the few references to her father, where's her father, by the way, where is her father? Her father is alive, but was not there. And apparently does not have a relationship with her. We looked for any sort of public comment. It's been years since he said anything about her. I have no idea what the story is. The guy was absolutely a Marxist. He met the wife at a civil

rights event. She appears to have been very Marxie too. And that's their daughter. I really don't know what happened to Donald Harris. Anyway, she said in one of the few lines about him that the mother, when they went to the playground would say, stay close. And the father would say, run Kamala, run. Don't be afraid. Don't let anything stop you. For my earliest years, she told us he taught me to be fearless, but rich she's not. And this reminds me so much of the, you know, how it is when you're at a cocktail party and somebody's like, oh, well, I'm the kind of person who and then whatever comes next is a lie about themselves. Right. It's what they wish they were, because nobody talks about themselves that way.

The seven foot center doesn't tell you how tall he is. So the fact that she's telling us I was taught to be fearless, the same woman who had to rehearse her dinner party conversation with her staff. It's a lie, right? She is scared. And that's a danger. You put somebody like that in the position of the presidency. Of course. You don't know who's calling the shots.

Yeah. So this is the case that Trump has to make. A lot of Republicans are saying it's all about policy. He's got to talk about policy. Yeah, he should talk about policy. But it all needs to come back to the sense that she's weak, that she's a phony, and that she's a mouthpiece for others. So therefore, she's not suitable to be president. That's what you're going. That's the clinching argument at the end of the day.

She's not suitable for this job. The fact that she can't do interviews, the fact that she was too weak to stand up to the left in 2019 and told them everything that they wanted to hear and has totally reversed herself and is all on teleprompter. She's too weak. She can't do this job. And that's that's the case that Trump has to make. Now, he's going to he has the media against him, of course, as all Republicans do. But the headwinds now are stronger than they've ever been. But he's got to expose her. And I think, you know, eventually she'll do an interview. I mean, she's on the record saying she'll do one by the end of the month. The days are ticking away here. But I think it'll be, you know, she'll sit down with Tim Walz and they'll do an interview with Rachel Maddow, nearly weeping with joy during the whole interview. And they can say they did it. After that, does she have to do another one? Which really is going to put a huge emphasis on the debate. I think here, Republicans

are way overconfident. I mean, she's memorizing note cards as we speak. And Trump needs to destroy her, but he has to destroy her in a particular way without doing what he did in the first presidential debate in 2020. And that's going to be a much harder task than he had against Joe Biden. Joe Biden, he just had to get out of the way. And he got out of the way and Joe Biden fell flat and turned out to be a catastrophic success for Donald Trump, right? It was, it turns out to have been idiotic for Trump to agree to a debate that early in the cycle. He should have waited until September after the convention or late September. So they couldn't do this, this switcheroo, but now he has a much more difficult political problem to deal with. It's so crazy that that wound up being the most

consequential. And as it turns out, bad for Trump decision of this whole thing. It seemed like such a smart move at the time, right? Like, yes, agree to any debate anywhere because we know Trump's going to win. We just didn't expect him to win quite that handily and for it to be such a game changer. I've got to get to this. This is remarkable. Back to the curated version, to your word, Charles avatar that she is and that we saw last night, Mark Halperin, uh, who's obviously got very good Democrat sources because he's been breaking the news on the Biden saga before virtually anybody tweeted this out last night. Listen to this. Just asking what high flying democratic rising star, obviously this is about Kamala who is seeking a big promotion on a fast track has upped her speechmaking skills with the help of friendly, top-level Hollywood talent.

The volunteer pals of this super-active politician, many of whom are extremely creative artists, including at least one lord, have been secretly coaching her ever since her boss stepped aside, offering up do's and don'ts about communicating. The members of this Tinseltown mafia are excited to see a looming high profile demonstration of the fruits of their collaboration. Hat tip, a little birdie. It's amazing to me. She's at the point where Meryl Streep, I don't know who, is sitting her down and gave her

pointers, Charles. This is per Halperin. This is how you hit this line. This is how you crescendo here. Here's where you could use a pause. The absurdity, the fallacy, and contrast that with Trump, who I realized went on way too long. I was there. We were all falling asleep. But at least it was him. At least you know what you're actually getting with that guy. This is an art creation. It's an art project that they're doing with her. Yeah. So what bothers me about that is that it's not accompanied by any sort of thought or substance. It is a movie. That's the whole thing. There's a script and lights

and there's nothing substantive below it. If the story here were that you had somebody who was a person of substance, who had strong views, to which she had held for a long time or had changed with explanation, had made a full account of her having shifted on everything over the last five years, and that person wanted help presenting her notions to the public,

it would bother me less. For example, Ronald Reagan, not that he needed too much help, was an actor. It helped that he was an actor. He had a lovely voice. He knew how to deliver a line. He knew how to stand up straight and how to use his charisma. But he also really believed things deeply. He read a great deal. He thought a great deal. He shifted over time from being a New Deal Democrat to being what became a Reagan Republican. He explained those changes.

He made speeches when he wasn't running for anything. The time for choosing speech was not in pursuit, at least directly, of his own political career. It was on behalf of Barry Goldwater. That's not a problem. If you have a candidate who is not a great public speaker, isn't eloquent, isn't their format, Thomas Jefferson, not that he lived in our age, but he wasn't a great speaker, for example, one reason he stopped giving the State of the Union, but who had convictions and ideas. Again, if they want help, that's fine. What is so grotesque about this is that it's almost a wag the dog scenario where there's no war. So they're going to the Hollywood mogul, the Dustin Hoffman in the analogy, and they're saying, create this war for me. And suddenly you have a green screen and Kirsten Dunst with the little dog running through

and all of the effects show. But there is no war. The country that's supposedly at war doesn't know about it. There's no munitions. There's new soldiers. There's no explosions. There's nothing. And Kamala Harris is nothing. There's nothing underneath it. So she's not going saying, hey, please help me convey what it is that I want to get across because I'm not very good at it. I would understand that. She's saying, help me be something that I'm not and con the electorate into making me president of the United States. And like you, Megan, I'm actually revolted by this. I just don't want this to be our system. Same. I just I can't believe she's getting away with it. And she is getting away with it. But for how long?

You know, the bloom to me seems to be coming off the rose. We talked yesterday about the betting odds having fallen 10 points plus against her while her convention was on. And and this is why I think, Rich, they they released the lie about Beyonce allegedly showing up at the event last night. They wanted to boost ratings. That would be absolutely stupid to say she's coming when you know she's not coming if it didn't have a real purpose, something that helped you, right? That's just why would you say like, we almost got her and we didn't and just disappoint everybody. But it does make sense if your goal is to boost the numbers, because we were looking at the numbers the other day. Trump's convention didn't do as well on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Obviously, Kamala had good ratings on Monday because it was Joe Biden.

It was our sitting president and everybody wanted to see how he was and what he would say, given the scandal. Right. And then Tuesday and Wednesday, they had big count. Count me out on that one. Yeah, right. The Obama's Oprah, Bill Clinton. But I do wonder how the numbers will be for the sort of apples to apples, Kamala versus Trump. Right. And I think the whole Beyonce's coming, she's not coming thing was a, it was a ruse to boost the ratings. That's interesting, because she's going to perform at the end and you have to watch the end. That's interesting. I hadn't thought of that. But it's the kind of contrivance, I don't know whether that's true or not, but it's the kind of contrivance she needs to boost her. I mean, if you look at Obama and Trump, now these are two extraordinary political

talents in their own ways and great performers, but they created movements, right, and hard-fought primary battles that they slogged out and won. They created new modes of doing politics. They created signature issues and catchphrases, you know, whether it's the audacity of hope or build the wall that they came up with on their own. And there's just none of that with her. And even less talented political figures, you know, Bob Dole, he got the nomination because he was a party stalwart for 30 or 40 years. That's not her. John McCain got the nomination because he was a maverick and finally won his party over to his side, at least temporarily. She's not like that. Bill Clinton, you know, governor of small rural state who's dismissed because he had a very bad convention speech in 1988 and then just rises to the top out of sheer talent and verbal acuity and shamelessness and an ability to do personal policy. That's not her. It's just none of these things. She's like where she's originally from, Oakland, like there's no, they're there. So they have to manufacture it. And, you know, there's 75 days or less left. That's still a lot of time, but it's not a whole campaign. If she had had a run in a primary, I don't believe she should have won, would have won.

And then also all these weaknesses would have been exposed and litigated because it wouldn't be, you know, you saying it or Donald Trump saying it would have been Pete Buttigieg saying it if you'd run against her, right? So the media, they like Pete, right? So they would have reported it. They would have at least reported the dispute. And none of that has happened. She's just, you know, she's like Athena from the head of emerging from the head of Zeus, you know, just this Insta nominee with this Insta supposedly movement and this Insta joy. What did you call her on National Review, Rich? Was it a thin wafer? Yeah, wafer thin. She's a wafer thin candidate. I mean, normally most women aspire to that, but not in the way you're using it here.

So just a note on the Beyonce nonsense. They said that there's a hole in the schedule. It's going to be Beyonce. She's going to come. And, um, Katie Fang over at MSNBC absolutely humiliated herself with these moment to moment updates on like, she's, she's been spotted, you know, we've seen her. Um, let me see. Oh yeah. I don't have the actual ones in front of me because she just deleted them. She's now deleted her tweets out of humiliation, but they continue to update. Okay, here we have it in our screen grabs. It was like, she's coming here. She's hearing, she's coming, hearing the special guest is Beyonce. And then well after the point that, um, who was it that broke the Hollywood reporter had an exclusive. She's not coming. We reached out to her reps. They said she's not coming. She's never

been coming. There was never a schedule for her to come or an agreement for her to come. Just stop. After that, Katie Fang tweets out, I'm hearing that Beyonce has arrived. She's here. All I could think was, first of all, Steve Krakauer, our executive producer, who's a very measured guy. He just forwarded it to us with with the word Katie. All I could think is like the girl at the high school prom, like he's still coming. He'll be here. I see a headlight. No, she's not coming. And they were so, you know, they needed to believe and they certainly needed to believe

that it hadn't been a ruse. And now after the fact, they're trying to tell us that this big surprise guest was a videotaped piece videotaped, I say from Steph Curry, the basketball player saying I'm for Kamala like that, that what it's just, we're lied to around every turn there. We're manipulated at every turn in everything they do. Uh, let's get to some of the substance or lack thereof, because I do think some of these things are pretty interesting. Charles, she went out and said, um, okay, a couple, a couple of things. Let me get to this. You can always trust me to put country above party and self to hold sacred

America's fundamental principles from the rule of law to free and fair elections to the peaceful transfer of power. Now we're going to talk about free and fair elections and what Jill Stein and RFKJ and his running mate, whether you like them and want to vote for them or not, what they're alleging has been done to them by Kamala Harris's Democrat party. It doesn't sound so free and fair, but the rule of law, I mean, you've been tracking this closely over at national review, the Biden Harris administration to say that we should trust them to uphold it is something that could only be believed by people who have not been watching them these past four years.

But this is the logical fallacy, I think, that many people have indulged in is the idea that because Donald Trump behaved as he did after he lost the election last time around, that it must not be the case that Kamala Harris or the Democratic Party are a threat to our constitutional order. Leaving aside the attempt to knock any candidates who might threaten them off the ballot, which is real, was a problem. The hit on Trump for free and fair elections and peaceful transfer of power is a fair one. And it would be political malpractice for the Democrats not to make it. You won't find me defending Trump on this quite the opposite. I think his behavior was disgraceful. But as I say,

that doesn't therefore lead you ipso facto to think that the Democrats are good in other ways, and they're not. And this argument about the rule of law or putting the Constitution first that I've heard out of that convention is absolutely emetic. I mean, this is a party that is flirting with court packing to the point at which it has written a law, a flagrantly unconstitutional law, that would have the practical effect of stripping the power from three or two, depending on where you draw the line, Supreme Court justices who have been appointed by the Senate. The party is desperate to get rid of the filibuster, which is a very useful tool at the federal level that makes sure we don't have huge swings in federal policy.

This is a candidate in particular, Harris, who said of Neil Gorsuch that he was too interested in the law when he was proposed as a nominee by Donald Trump. We do not, as a rule, see the sort of constitutional hostility come from Republicans, Donald Trump accepted, that we see out of the Democrats. You find a portion of our constitutional order and they want to change it. The Electoral College is another one. You get some who want to get rid of the Senate. So I just find this an annoying mantle for them to have taken up. I do accept that one of the reasons

they've been able to do it and not be laughed off the stage is because of Trump's behavior and some of the things that he has said over the years. But again, they really do worry me on this. And for her to pretend that she is some champion of the rule of law or our system is just gross. Well, I mean, we've just come through three and a half years of them, of her boss and her administration saying we're not we've received when it comes to some of our COVID policies, when it comes to the eviction moratorium, when it comes to what was the one more recently? Oh, the student loan forgiveness.

Yeah, they've blown off rule after rule, law after law. Yeah, and the Biden approach was basically, I think probably this is going to be struck down by the Supreme Court because there's no authority for me to do it. I'm going to try. We'll see, which is just profoundly against the spirit of how the system is supposed to work. It's not just the Supreme Court that takes an oath and is supposed to defend the Constitution. It's everyone else as well. And you look at the border, three and a half years, the black and white law says you come into the country illegally, you shall be detained until your case is adjudicated or you should be expelled. And they've flagrantly defied that, thumbed their noses at it. And the plan to blow up the Supreme Court, obviously a direct threat to a central institution of American government and Chuck Schumer, this hasn't gotten much attention because so much else has been going on. But the other day basically said that if they get a trifecta in Washington, I think less likely than not, but certainly possible, they will attempt to blow up the filibuster for purposes of a so-called voting rights law and a pro-abortion law. And if they

actually did that, and it's basically democratic orthodoxy now, I don't think there'd be anyone like Manchin or Sinema standing in the way. So if they just get 50, 51 votes, they can do it. You're not just blowing it up for those things, because once you've blown it up for those things, then the case is, well, why don't we blow it up for Medicare for all, too? Do we not care about providing free health care for everyone. So it'll be gone. And you potentially could see, you know, the court packing scheme passed through that means or who knows, trying to bring in Puerto Rico or Washington, D.C. as states. So it's a serious, serious threat to our system of of government. And she stands there and she's reading the words, but they are meaningless. Yeah. I mean, this is like, I think it was Michael Goodwin at the New York post today who was writing Charles that she's, she's all into the freedom, right? They're trying to co-opt the word freedom, which is normally a Republican theme at these conventions. And not once does she mentioned any of the rights listed in the bill of rights, like freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, second amendment. You know,

they're talking about freedom to have an abortion freedom. They say to go to school without having to worry whether you're going to come home. I mean, this is, this is a much more complicated problem, right? Like there is a second amendment. So anyway, they've co-opted that word without actually abiding by promoting the fundamental principles that really embody that word, that make up that word in our founding documents and at the heart of our country. Yeah, you can thank her fellow Californian Gavin Newsom for this, because he's the guy who came up with this idea when he was feuding with Ron DeSantis. You remember those gauzy videos about California that he put out and said Florida wasn't the free state California was? Now, a lot of this, as you say, is abortion. They're fixated on it.

Politically, that does help them. I'm very upset that it does as a pro-lifer, but I'm also obliged to look at the world as it is rather than how I'd like it to be, and they are winning on that. And Americans do seem to think overall that the question of abortion is a question of freedom. I don't. I think it's a question of life. But with that one exception where they've made headway, all of their definitions of freedom are perverse.

There is linguistic games. You know, Josh Shapiro says the freedom to join a union. Not really. Gavin Newsom says the freedom not to be shot. Now, these are public policy questions. Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to set them off the table. We should have debates over unions and what government involvement we have. we should have within reason, given the Second Amendment debates about regulations on firearms and so forth. But it actually doesn't help when you get into this Orwellian mode of pretending that the limitation on freedom is freedom. The case for more gun control is the case against freedom. The case for unions or regulation of the economy or higher taxes is a case against freedom. Sometimes the case against freedom prevails. We do not have a system of anarchy. We have a general agreement that there are some things in our public life that ought to be limited

or regulated or superintended in some way. But you can't really have the argument if the words we use to have those discussions are bastardized in this way. And that's what the Democrats have done throughout this convention, instead of just standing up and saying what they think, which most of the time, although not always, is we actually think there is too much freedom in this or that realm. They're trying to pretend that they are the side that values freedom when they don't. So it's irritating, and it's also dangerous linguistically. And finally, I actually think for them, it's a mistake. I said earlier that there are downsides to running without any substance. I think this is one of them. I don't think it helps you in the long run

if you make the case in the abstract for freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom, because next time you propose something that is clearly anti-freedom, some of the people who went along with you, who were fooled by it, who were lulled into a false sense of security by it, will say, well, hold on a moment.

I thought you were the freedom person. So, you know, it might help her in the very short term, but in the long run, it's not a great play. Yeah, there was so much of that. in the very short term, but in the long run, it's not a great play. Yeah, there was there was so much of that. It was like, well, where where's any mention of the freedoms that we all grew up learning about and understand and hold dear and that have helped us survive some 250 years? There was nothing to that. She talked about in this election, many fundamental freedoms are at stake. The freedom to live safe from gun violence in our schools, communities and places of worship, the freedom to love who you love openly and with pride.

It's I mean, hello, like she's speaking to the 1980s, 70s Democrat and Republican parties like who on either side of the aisle right now is trying to stop anybody from loving who they love with pride. It's been a long time since the Republican Party aisle right now is trying to stop anybody from loving who they love with pride. It's been a long time since the Republican Party has been all about trying to stop gay marriage, for example, which has been recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court as a constitutional right. The freedom to breathe clean air and drink clean water and live free from the pollution that fuels the climate crisis. OK, all of that, that's her EPA that's trying to write laws without having been elected by anybody. And now the Supreme court is finally saying, if you want

laws on all of those things, if you want laws on, on the environment, on air, on clean water, you can do that. You just have to go to article one of the constitution and ask the Congress to draft it up. And then if you get a president to sign it, you're in business. The whole thing was just so disingenuous and showed, I mean, she knows how the constitution works. She just hopes you don't. Rich and Charlie stay with me for the show. We'll be right back after this quick break. So Elizabeth Warren, or as we used to call her on my team at Fox News, Chief Lies A Lot, was out there doing more lying last night, this time about J.D. Vance. Trust Donald Trump and J.D. Vance to look out for your family? Shoot, I wouldn't let those guys, I wouldn't trust them to move my couch.

Everybody knows it was a reference to this obvious lie. No one is claiming it's true other than loons like Chelsea Handler about J.D. Vance allegedly putting something in his in his book about a couch. And it's not true. And it's been debunked. But she just thought it would be great for her to get a snarky line out there about JD Vance. Well, I hope she enjoyed the raucous laughter and applause because things turned for her in the course of about 14 hours. She thought she'd be getting a pass by going on CNBC this morning because she loves to talk about economic policy. And she didn't expect to run into the buzzsaw that is Joe Kernan, who is not some far left guy who gives everybody a pass.

I know him a little. And this guy's funny and he's a straight shooter. about Harris's claim that these agricultural companies and shopping companies or food product companies are gouging people. And she's going to be our savior and she's going to step in and she's going to stop them with our huge profit margins from taking advantage of tough times. So he had a great interview with somebody yesterday and it happened to Elizabeth Warren again today. And let me just tell you before I get to it, Harris doubled down on this. She didn't explicitly say the price gouging thing yesterday or on a Friday when, sorry, last night when she gave her speech, she had said the policy the previous Friday, a week ago today, this is how she phrased it last night. She just said,

I will bring together labor and workers and small business owners and entrepreneurs and American companies to create jobs. Okay. So, okay. You're going to how, but no, that's not in there to grow our economy and to lower the cost of everyday needs like healthcare, housing, and groceries. Now, if you read between the lines there, that's, she's getting Marxist-y, like her dad. It's not up to the federal government to lower the price of groceries. But she thinks it's her purview, and this is what she's been saying more explicitly over the past week, that she's got to stop the price gouging at the supermarket. Here's Elizabeth Warren trying to repeat that nonsense on CNBC this morning. The grocery chains have a 2% profit margin. How about Apple with 50% or 40%? How do you decide? This is not the government's place to do these things.

It's a fool's errand. But one of the causes of prices going up is that there are companies that have market dominance that have said, this is a moment when everyone is talking about. Name another one. Give me an instance. Can I please states have tools to deal with this locally? But right now, we want to make sure that the FTC has the tools to do it nationally. It's just another tool in the toolbox to say we support competitive markets. Is it for a state of emergency? Senator, when did companies learn how to do this?

I let you finish your argument. I know, but now I get your point. Did you invite me on here just to lecture to me? No, I just want to ask you. The whole point is to get markets that are more competitive. It's not about diverting the attention away from the real issues that might actually help the middle class that you always talk about helping. For 40 years, companies didn't know how to price gouge until three and a half years ago. The American people know what's happening in pricing.

They understand that they are being gouged on prices. And who they blame for that are these giant corporations that dominate. No, you blame the Biden administration because you cannot bear the notion that sometimes these competitive markets are in fact not competitive. Wow, Charles, it's so wonderful to see someone in the media do his job, isn't it? You know, the reason that that is especially satisfying is that Elizabeth Warren actually knows that what she's saying is nonsense. This is not some rando on the street who's been misinformed, didn't have any opportunities. Elizabeth Warren knows that that is nonsense. And she knows that what she is doing is peddling it in service of the Harris campaign, because the Harris campaign has a political, not an economic, a political problem to solve. That being that Harris has to do two things that are incompatible. The first thing she has to do is the Clinton-esque, I feel your pain on the price of groceries

and everything else. She has to acknowledge as a presidential candidate that the cost of basic necessities has gone up a great deal in the last three and a half years. The second thing that Kamala Harris has to do is shift the blame away from herself. Because while a genuine outsider would be able to say, everything's got more expensive, I will fix it, it doesn't make a great deal of sense for Harris to do that

when she's the vice president of the United States. And she's actually on camera being the tying boat, breaking the tying boat on many of the bills that flooded the economy with money and helped, not completely on their own, but helped to cause the inflation that we've seen. So Harris has this big problem. How do you say, I understand that it's a big problem that groceries are so expensive without that blame coming back to her? And so what she's hit on is this preposterous notion that grocery chains that make about 1.2% profit every year have, and this seems to have started

on January 21st, 2021, magically, been profiteering, price gouging, or what you will. It's never quite explained, by the way, why they don't do this during Republican administrations. Republicans are allegedly the friends of big business, and all they care about is helping their CEO buddies make millions of dollars. But while Trump was president, while George W. Bush was president, while Ronald Reagan was president, they declined to do this. So they did it during the Biden administration. This is her argument. It's just it's insane nonsense. And I know there's been a great deal of discussion as to how the price gouging bill that Kamala Harris was talking about would actually not work and may indeed increase the cost of things. That matters. It

matters that Harris's FTC would be the same as Biden's FTC and would probably go down this route of its own volition. I'm not downplaying the policy disaster that would be this price gouging idea, but this is a political problem that Harris is trying to solve. And so, of course, Elizabeth Warren, who inexplicably is considered in the media as some sort of expert on economics who could be trusted to talk about the economy, dutifully this morning went on television to peddle this lie, and as you say, ran into a buzzsaw. And it's just delicious to see for that reason. Oh, so delicious. I mean, as the kids say, shoot it into my veins or Joker. So this is, this is perfect though. Like that plan she unveiled last Friday, she got pummeled

by the left and the right. She reduced it down to this passing reference last night, how she's going to, you know, take care of the lower the course, the cost of groceries for us is perfect rich because what she was speaking of was creating an opportunity economy, an opportunity economy. And of course you're like, what's that? What does that mean? Like, what is Kamala Harris's version of that? You don't really have to look that hard to find out because she did not just parachute onto the political scene. She's been vice president for four years. She ran for president the year before that. And she's made very clear what she thinks about when she thinks about

the necessary opportunities out there. Fox News Digital put together a good butted soundbite. I'll show it to you, but I'm going to start with, do you guys remember Life of Julia under Barack Obama? Oh, yeah. Yeah. The convention was going to be living off the government teat from the from birth to death. And that's how Obama visioned your average American woman, Julia. She fully endorsed it. So did Biden. They created their own version. Her name was Linda Life of Linda. And they put out a little cartoon early on in their administration telling us about how Linda's life would go. Linda worked in a factory. Here's page one of it. She's a working mom in Peoria, Illinois. She works at a local manufacturing facility as a production worker and earns 40 grand a year. She's pregnant with her son, Leo.

Leo may or may not make it depending on our abortion policies. No, sorry. I added that. Um, sorry. I'm going to get back to the abortion thing because they're so vapid in the way that they approach. They couldn't care less about the life inside a mother. Okay. You got to laugh or cry back to Kamala. She's, she narrated this little cartoon and then she's been all over the record on so if we're all getting the same amount but you started out back there and i started out over here we could get the same amount but you're still gonna be that far back behind me it's about giving people the resources and the support they need so that everyone can be on equal footing and then compete on equal footing. Equitable treatment means we all end up at the same place. Got it, Rich? Yeah, I do get it. To end up at the same place. Yeah. I mean,

first of all, it makes your ears hurt. I mean, it's so vacuous. And then what she's getting at is so un-American and unfair, right? Even Bernie Sanders, an avowed socialist, I think was on the Bill Maher show a couple years ago, was asked about, does he favor equality or equity? And he said equality, right? Equality of opportunity, we can't guarantee equal results, but she's saying equal results there. And it's just an instance. She had this poolside the other day in front of her plane or next to her plane, and she's asked how she's going to pay for this program. I'm sure you saw this, probably talked about it. And she said return on investment five or six times, right? That's what you do when you're a student who's been

caught out, who hasn't really studied, right? You're asked by your teacher, professor, you know, what's Moby Dick about? You've skimmed the cliff notes or spark notes, whatever it is, man versus nature, right? And they said, well, what happens during the book? Well, it's man versus nature that happens. How does it end? Well, it ends with a metaphor about man versus, that's all you know. And that's her level of understanding of economics. There's no return on investment on the vast majority of the stuff. Occasion There's no return on investment on the vast majority of this stuff. Occasionally, you get return on investment on things like the Erie Canal or winning World War II, but these social welfare programs, no. And, you know, Charlie's right about the difference with Elizabeth Warren. She does know better, but one of the additional delicious

things about that interview is how huffy she got. Because it just goes to how these poobahs and senators, you can go through life saying things that are idiotic and untrue and cynical and get away with it and be treated as if you're brilliant. And then the minute you get in some uncomfortable environment where you're challenged, you're outraged by it. Your umbrage comes to the fore. How dare you challenge this brilliant idea of mine, which is completely absurd. There are lots of things they can say on inflation, right? You can say supply chain, overwhelmingly, it happened in other countries and it's gone down. You can even exaggerate all

those things, right? But at least those things that they're kernels to truth to it, instead, they've come up with this ridiculous price gouging argument. Can I just add something on opportunity economy? Thanks for reintroducing. Yes, wait, before I give it to you, can I just show you a little bit more? Because I saved the butted soundbite for you, Charles, knowing your love for her and this principle. This one actually was put together by End Wokeness on X. Watch. He's talking about equitable, meaning the result will be everyone ends up being equal. Equity, which is everyone should end up in the same place.

It has to be about a goal of saying everybody should end up in the same place. And if we want people to be in an equal place, sometimes we have to take into account those disparities. President Biden and I have put equity at the center of all that we do. Oh, go ahead, my friend. I was good on that. I know people glaze over when you say this because they're so used to hyperbole, but that is actual communism. But I was going to say on the opportunity economy, the great irony here, and I wish that Trump were focused and disciplined enough to make this point. The great irony is that the United States had an opportunity economy in 2019. Now, that wasn't

because Donald Trump at the head of the federal government, was the Wizard of Oz and everything he did was perfect and the president is in charge of the economy or any of those superstitions that we believe. But through a tax cut and deregulation, we had managed to create, foster the genius that is the American free market system. And we had an economy in which people were thriving. And, you know, you want to talk about equity in which for the first time in a long time, the black and white unemployment rates looked similar. And the Harris campaign slogan is, we can't go back. And I think that this is something

that the Republicans ought to say over and over again. Again, don't pretend that they planned this great economy that was perfect, and the second they get back in, it'll go back to it. None of that. But that what killed the best American economy since 1969 in 2019 was COVID. At the convention, Bill Clinton gave this statistic where he said, you know, Republican presidents have accounted for one million jobs created since 1988. Interesting cutoff year. And Democratic presidents have accounted for 50 million. And this is technically true. But of course, what it misses is that Republicans have run Congress for most of that time. So we're really going to start saying you're responsible for this or that. You have to include the legislature. But also the fact that bad things happen at random times.

I mean, the crash came in 2008. COVID came in 2019. Life is just so much more complicated than politics would allow. But one thing that is indisputably true is that until COVID came in and destroyed everything for a while, the economy in 2019 was humming along. Leaving people alone works. That was an opportunity economy. And if I were in charge of the Republican messaging, which I'm not and never

will be, I would say over and over and over again, why is your slogan, we can't go back? Which part is it that you don't want to go back to? Why do you have all these bizarre ideas about what it is that it takes to build a good economy? Why do you need equity? Why do you need price gouging czars? Why do you need the FTC to intervene? What you need to do is keep taxes low, keep regulation low, allow American individuals to do what they do best, hopefully not have a pandemic, and not spend so much money on your friends that we end up with the worst inflation we've had in 40 years, because she's totally vulnerable on this. She just hasn't got a clue. Well said. I do want to follow up on the abortion reference

because they're so callous. We've been talking about, and I know you guys have as well, the fact that there's an abortion truck outside of the DNC. This is what they decided to do to celebrate their joy is to kill a bunch of unborn babies. And nothing says joy like a bunch of dead human beings. I'm sorry, but it's so callous. You can go with the safe, legal and rare lot of normal, loving, patriotic Americans are pro-choice. And that's how they see this. It's downright ghoulish to have an abortion truck outside of your convention and bill it as joyful. There are women parading down the street in abortion pill costumes there. I don't know if you saw the tape. It's unbelievable.

And then the final cherry on top of that Sunday last night, as she's speaking, and of course, they just call it reproductive rights, you know, reproductive rights. If you want to, if you want reproductive rights, you can get them. You can get them in virtually every single state. Some states are a lot tougher now post Dobbs, but go live in California. It's a sanctuary state for abortions whenever you want them. New York, my own home state. Anyway, let's look at who the DNC decided to show as she was speaking about, quote, reproductive freedom, meaning abortion. Look at this. And when Congress passes a bill to restore reproductive freedom as president of the United States, I will proudly sign it into law. It's a newborn baby.

Yeah, it's too on the nose, isn't it? It's a newborn baby. Yeah. It's too on the nose, isn't it? It's unbelievable. If only we could have gotten rid of that one. And little Leo in the belly of Linda. Like, this is next level, Rich. Yeah. Have we ever known anyone who regrets having one of their children? Ever?

Even if the child was born in the quote unquote wrong time or in terrible circumstances? No. And ghoulish is exactly the right word for that van. It's like something out of, you know, Huxley's Brave New World. This is a terrible thing that is happening. So women, some women regret it the rest of their lives. And there's another entity at stake who has an interest in rights. So, I mean, it's cliche to say it. We've said it so many times, but we're so far from safe, legal, and rare, which had a sense this is regrettable that it's better all things considered to have a legalized abortion regime. But abortion itself is not something to be proud of or to promote. And they've totally gone over to the other side where it's something to be proud of, right? It's,

it's, this is something, you know, used to be a mystery address in some far part of town. And they're, they're bragging about having a ban committing these, these acts. So they feel permission to do this because obviously the politics of abortion have swung against Republicans since Dobbs, but they think there's absolutely no limit on how far they can go. And that may be true in this moment. I don't think it's true ultimately. And obviously in moral terms, it's a travesty. It's crazy when you think that they actually are pushing to have abortion stay legal all the way through the ninth month. And then they show a baby who's obviously just a couple of months old. Like, what do you think, babe? How do we think like you almost want, maybe you'll make it. Maybe not. You were on the cusp, you know, under our policies, the one that she's promising to make right now, your little brother, your

little sister might not make it. Are you pro or against just absolutely insensitive to the millions of Americans for whom this truly is a life or death issue. They take it very seriously. It's just a middle finger. And it went out on the DNC's feed on their YouTube channel. They they're leaning in. It actually kind of reminded me of when Oprah was speaking the other night, you know, and she whoever's running this DNC feed is just a savage person. She was talking about, yeah, the childless cat lady. And they showed this like overweight, not that attractive, forgive me, lady.

I don't, I can't remember exactly who she was, but I remember it was like, all right, she might've had some struggles. And they're like, oh, okay. We have the soundbite and you'll see the woman at the end of it. Watch to a childless cat lady. On their original feed, they showed this poor lady, like, huh? Like there's just absolutely no sensitivity for childless cat ladies, which I'm told is a bad thing to be insensitive, insensitive to them. But I queued that soundbite up to you guys, because we had a week of women getting up there and trying to get us to feel sorry for them or to be oblivious to

their actual circumstances from Michelle Obama, who brought up her mom, who really is suspicious of people who make more money than they need. To Oprah, literally one of the richest people, forget women, one of the richest people on earth who decided to take her five minutes of fame and talk about, in part, the misogyny and racism she's faced from the country that made her a 2.6 billionaire. To Kamala Harris last night, who decided to bring up her mom, who was a PhD from Berkeley, her dad, who is a PhD at Stanford, talking about them and like the working class upbringing. I think, would you stop? Because you lived in a duplex when your parents had a divorce

does not make you working class. Your parents were double PhDs. You had all the advantages in the world. Rich, I just can't, it's like so over the top when even Oprah can complain about this country and the terrible isms she's faced. Yeah, where's the gratitude? And they're all condescending towards

or hostile to J.D. Vance, who actually grew up in those kind of circumstances, goes to Ohio University, you know, enlists in the Marines, and then eventually makes it to Yale Law School. And that's a bad thing, right? So it's perverse. And if we're going to have equity, you know, either we're all going to have to get a lot richer or Michelle Obama is going to have to lose a lot of houses and money. Yeah, you know, it's a good point. Do we get it under Kamala Harris's plan, Charles? Maybe we get we get what Oprah has. Aren't we all supposed to wind up in the same place? Great. Let's do that. Yeah, one of the overarching takeaways I had from the whole convention is that the Democrats in that hall

haven't actually met many Democrats, or they haven't quite adjusted yet to what the party is now. Clearly, the parties have shifted somewhat, their coalitions are changing. And some of the rhetoric really did feel as if it was left over from another age, an age in which Hubert Humphrey was going out to speak to Minnesota farm labor types and genuinely meaning it when he talked about the difference between country club Republicans and poor Catholic Democrats. And so you end up with that weird spectacle of Oprah Winfrey talking about income inequality and Michelle Obama talking about people who have too much. And the weirdest of all, as Rich mentioned, is this Tim Walz line that he repeats

everywhere. He's clearly proud of it. It wasn't an off-the-cuff slip where he criticizes J.D. Vance for going to Yale. And it was so odd for three reasons I could identify. So the first one is that before he said it, about two hours before, Bill Clinton had spoken. Bill Clinton's story is that he was a guy from difficult background who grew up poor and somehow managed to make it, in Clinton's case, to Georgetown, Oxford, and Yale. So that was one of the big selling points for Bill Clinton in the 90s. So it's bad now when J.D. Barnes does it. I don't understand the argument. So that was one of the big selling points for Bill Clinton in the 90s. So it's bad now when J.D. Barnes does it.

I don't understand the argument. The next thing that was said was, you know, he had 24 students in his class and none of them went to Yale. If I were a teacher, that's not quite how I would sell my record. All the states go through. Right. And then the last one is that the Democrats have made a big thing in this convention and elsewhere of how the Republicans are supposed to be anti-education. And yet they're critical of people who made it to one of our elite institutions. It was just a very strange thing to say and a thing that you would have expected from a different Democratic Party. And I think they just haven't quite caught up yet with who their voters and who their base is now. That's interesting. Yeah, there are Ian Hayworth on X the other day had a great post on on exactly like the number of speakers there who had been

to Yale and Harvard. I mean, it was actually hold on a second. I've got it here. But it was it was pretty remarkable, like the number of people who are up there and who went to Yale, who went to Harvard, who went to Georgetown. Here's just a quick list per Ian. Um, Jamie Harrison. Yeah. These are the people who spoke Gina Raimondo, Harvard, Oxford, Yale, Hillary Clinton, Wellesley, Yale, Jamie Raskin, Harvard, Chris Coons, Yale, Chuck Schumer, Harvard, Michelle Obama, Princeton and Harvard law, Barack Obama, Columbia and Harvard law, Jared Polis, Princeton, Chris Murphy, Oxford, Andy Kim, Oxford, Bill Clinton, Oxford, Yale, Westmore, Oxford, Pete Buttigieg, Harvard and Oxford, Amy Klobuchar, Yale, Cory Booker, Stanford, Oxford, Yale, Maura Healy, Harvard. We could keep going. So is it only bad to go to the Ivies if your name is J.D. Vance and you started off genuinely poor?

It's unclear, Rich. Yeah. And there's a lot of hypocrisy in this too, right? If he had just gone to Ohio State University, they might have been condescending about that. But those schools, I mean, they're the breeding grounds of the American elite and the democratic establishment is the heart of the democratic elite in many ways. And not everyone who goes there is intellectually or politically corrupted, but there tends to be a dominant monochromatic point of view that all these people represent. All right. We've got a lot to get to over on Team Trump's side because he was not quiet while this was going on. He spent a lot of time at the border. And I think probably two huge significant things happened in terms of Trump getting endorsements or building bridges, mending fences, you know, pick your, um, your, your favorite. But I think one of the big ones was last night and Brian Kemp. Brian Kemp was very, very popular governor of Georgia. Hasn't been going well between those two because Kemp wouldn't do what Trump wanted him to with the nonsense around the election. Trump decided he was a devil and attacked him only recently. Again, like let bygones be bygones for the love of God, for the sake of the country.

He needs to win Georgia and Georgia loves Kemp. And Trump took a shot at Kemp and his wife, blah, blah, blah. Kemp goes on Fox News. I was watching this. It was pretty remarkable. And start saying nice things ish about Trump. Listen here. It's a 24. Look, we got to win. You know, we got to win from the top of the ticket on down. I've been saying consistently for a long time. We cannot afford another four years of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. And I think, you know, Kamala Harris and Tim Walsh would be even worse. So we need to send Donald Trump back to the White House. We need to retake the Senate.

We need to hold the House. We need to hold our legislative majorities that we have in the great state of Georgia. So Trump actually appeared with Brett and Martha shortly thereafter and said in return, some nice things about Kemp. And then I think later put out a, um, no, he said, I was, and then, and then he put out a true social that reads as follows. Thank you to Brian Kemp for all of your help and support in Georgia, where a win is so important to the success of our party. And most importantly, our country, I look forward to working with you, your team, and all of my friends in Georgia to help make America great again. I mean, this is classic Donald Trump. Is it not, Rich? Classic. All he needs is for you to extend a little olive branch to him and you're good. Yeah, very transactional. Also, everyone around Trump

was telling that this was idiotic and he should bury this. So he did the right thing. He never should have revived it. And Brian Kemp, by the way, is one of the most impressive Republican office holders going. I'm not from the South. So when I first met him around a conference table for about 10 minutes, I was like, what's this draw? This guy's not very impressive. And within about 10 minutes, like, whoa, this guy is really on the ball. He's one Republican who crossed Trump on something that Kemp felt was very important, you know, his duty as governor, and had Kemp target him, I'm sorry, Trump target him, go after him, hammer and tongs and survive and thrive. And that's an extraordinary political achievement. And then, you know, he's a party guy.

He thinks Trump will be better than Harris, obviously. So he was just willing to move on and try to win Georgia. And then Trump at this rally, there's some theories that there's an anti-Kemp Republican who spent time with Trump prior to that rally and kind of spun him up. But to spend 10 minutes attacking Brian Kemp and his wife, obviously destructive, made no sense. And it's good that this breach has been healed, at least for now. Charles, it's a I'm overusing the word, but it's kind of a heroic moment for Brian Kemp because I'm sure he's not a huge Trump fan. He just attacked Trump, just attacked Brian Kemp's wife like two weeks ago.

But he, I think, has accurately deduced that Trump must have Georgia. He must win Georgia. And so in an extraordinary act of selflessness, he was the first to come out and say something nice. And he knew exactly the effect that would have on Trump,

who does start these fights, but is also quick to finish them under circumstances like these. Well, I don't think it's extraordinary in the sense that I think what you're seeing there is a difference between a disciplined politician who wants to win and Donald Trump. Donald Trump has a lot of talent, but he's mercurial and capricious. And despite all of the eschatological rhetoric around this election, he doesn't seem to believe that the election of Harris would end the country, because if he did, he would be more focused. And not just Brian Kemp, but the vast majority of Republican officeholders at the state level who stay on track. I live in Florida. DeSantis stays on track, and he wins, and he gets things done.

This is true of Brian Kemp just up the road in Georgia. It's true in Iowa. It's true in Ohio. It's true in Texas. It's true in Ohio. It's true in Texas. It's true in Alabama. The idea that Trump is some sort of exceptional politician without whom the Republicans would be lost is false. At least at the state level, governors within the Republican Party have done an enormous amount and got an enormous amount of wins over the last two or three years on school choice, on constitutional carry, on tax cutting, on abortion, because, excuse me, because they don't

get drawn in to stupid feuds. So I don't think it's extraordinary from Brian Kemp. I think it's absolutely ordinary. I think what is extraordinary is that there was a breach to heel in the first place, that Trump allowed himself to be spun up by this anti-Kemp politician when anyone else in the firmament, I'm forgetting Glenn Youngkin up in Virginia, whose approval rating is about 60%, anyone else in the firmament would have looked at that person before the rally and said, are you insane? I'm about to speak in this state that I need to win where the governor you want me to talk about has a 65 percent approval rating and a whole bunch of wins under his belt. Why on earth would I start a fight with him?

Yeah, I have my own theory on it is that Trump, it's not that Trump is undisciplined. Exactly. I take your point, but I think it's that he just believes in his own gut instinct above all else. And if it's gut instinct is telling him to lash out at Brian Kemp, he hates Brian Kemp. He thinks that's the right thing to do because his gut instinct got him a billion dollars and got him elected president. And everybody all along the way has said, no, no, no, no, no, you're wrong. He's been right more than he's been wrong. And so that's how he operates through life. We've talked about this before, but he was raised going to the church of Norman Vincent Peale, who wrote the pot, the power of positive thinking. And, uh, it's, it's a fascinating reading. You haven't read it in a

while. You can go back and read it, but it is very much, it's actually a lot more biblical and religious than I think Trump actually is. But the messaging is very positive. And I think that's just how Trump thinks. I know best. I'm going to do the right thing. I trust my gut. That's clearly part of it. But also, the idea that he really won the 2020 election and it was stolen from, is pretty core to his political identity, right? If

he didn't believe that, he didn't convince a lot of Republicans of that, he wouldn't have been the nominee. So for him, Kemp and his wife having crossed him on that is a pretty major transgression that's hard to forgive. Now, I don't think that speaks well of Trump. I'm totally on Kemp's side in this dispute, but I think that's also behind it. And the reason why Kemp's wife is particularly not enamored of Trump, this pressure campaign, if you hear about it in detail from them, it was extraordinary. It was very personal. They took it very personally after the 2020 election for good reason. So there's a lot of ill feeling there. It's better for everyone that it's papered over, but there's a reason we had this eruption.

That is back to my point, Charles, which does make him extraordinary. Governor Kemp, able to put that to the side and do what's best for the country. So bravo. It's a good moment for the Republican Party, and they needed one. And they're going to get a second one in about a half an hour, we believe, in Arizona. Stand by, quick break, more with Rich and Charlie, and we'll today. You can catch The Megyn Kelly Show on Triumph, a SiriusXM channel featuring lots of hosts you may know and probably love. Great people like Dr. Laura, Glenn Beck, Nancy Grace, Dave Ramsey, and yours truly, Megyn Kelly. You can stream The Megyn Kelly Show on SiriusXM at home or anywhere you are. No car required. I do it all the time.

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that was created specifically to take us out has spent millions of dollars to take us out. We wanted to win. We wanted a fair shot. The DNC made that impossible for us. They have banned us, shadow banned us, kept us off stages, manipulated polls, used lawfare against us, sued us in every possible state. They've even planted insiders into our campaign to disrupt it and to create actual legal issues for us is exclusively because of the Democratic Party taking us out. And I am so disappointed I

ever helped them. I am so disappointed that I helped Chuck Schumer in that Georgia runoff secure a majority. It's probably one of the biggest mistakes of my life. Welcome back to the Megyn Kelly Show. Rich Lowry and Charles CW cook of national review are with me become an NR plus subscriber right now. Go check it out. As I said, RFKJ is running mate, Nicole Shanahan. They're talking about the dirty tricks. She says the DNC was using to keep them from pursuing democracy, which is supposed to be a value on team blue. Jill Stein also running, um, sent out a tweet in response to, I believe this was Michelle Obama's speech where she was talking about, oh, what happens if you lose an election, you, you just get to fail forward.

And Jill Stein tweeted out, stop the gaslighting right now. The Democrats are trying to sue us off of multiple state ballots, hiring spies and infiltrators to sabotage us, and even withholding public funds that we qualified for months ago. Democrats absolutely cheat and change the rules to maintain their grip on power. Nicole Shanahan responded saying, I'm sorry it's happening to you too, Jill. Amazing how convincing Michelle Obama is when she lies. So these are two important people in this sliver of vote from people who are not necessarily ready to vote for Harris or Trump. And the reporting is that in about 15 minutes, RFKJ Rich is going to drop out of the race officially and endorse Trump, though it's not a hundred percent confirmed. then Trump, two hours later, has an event

where there's a surprise guest, many speculating the two men both in Arizona. It will be RFKJ with an endorsement. What do you make of it? Yeah, so look, all those efforts to keep them off the ballot, if these were favored candidates, if these were candidates the media liked, it would be characterized as authoritarian, illiberal, and anti-democratic, right? Instead, things don't get together, don't go together. It's another instance of hypocrisy, and they're caring more about power over everything else. Now, RFK was fading. One, it hasn't been a great campaign. The most memorable things about it were the alleged brain worm and then the dead bear

cub, which is such an RFK thing because it's a very outdoorsy thing to even think of picking up a dead bear cub and then to drop it off in Central Park because you have to make it to a dinner at Peter Luger's is the other part of the Kennedy lifestyle. But he'd also been fading because the so-called double haters at the pool, there still are double haters, but the pool is smaller. So he was in the teens in some polls early on, now five or six points. And if you're Trump, you know, you want his endorsement. If someone's going to win Pennsylvania by 10,000 votes, which is plausible, and that could turn the election, which is plausible, even if you get an additional 2,000 votes in Pennsylvania or someplace else, another key swing state from this, it's obviously worth it. I love that video where RFKJ reveals that bear story to Roseanne. And I love Roseanne's reactions. He was trying to get ahead of it was about to break and he just decided

to tell it to Roseanne. And she's like, what? Wait, what? What'd you do to the bear cuff, huh? She's doubled on gold. Charles, I know you are not an RFKJ fan. You're not a Trump fan either. But this is this is significant as far as electoral politics goes. We went through the numbers yesterday in the various swing states. He does have support and they tend to be more right leaning. And if he comes out there and says, you know, I'm telling you, please vote for Donald Trump. And Donald Trump's agreed to work with me, who obviously you like these slivers of people in the swing states. It could potentially swing this election. Yeah, I think the you like part of that is the key.

That's been my operating assumption, too, that even if the RFK Jr. support splits evenly, which or close to evenly, which some of the polls suggest that it does, that if you're not a fan of either of the two major candidates, then that's for a reason. And that if you've told people you're voting for RFK Jr., then that's for a reason. And that if the person you prefer over the other two then comes out and says, well, I'm dropping out, but I think that the best choice remaining is X, then you might transfer, at least disproportionately, your vote to X. So if I were Donald Trump, then I would absolutely want RFK Jr.'s support. So Trump, as I mentioned, has been down along the border and just heartbreaking stories. This is very smart and very disciplined by Team Trump. Trump's down there personally meeting with moms

who have lost children to illegal immigrant violence, people who came under the Harris Biden administration and committed just these disgusting murders, a mother of five. It's been horrible, horrible to watch, and it's been effective. But he's also doing some other stuff that's kind of interesting. Now, you guys know, you know me in sports, Rich. And yes, I did listen to Andy yesterday and I do now know how to catch a foul ball. If I go to Yankee stadium, you got to go for the batting. We got to go for the batting practice. Andy and I should take you to a Mets or Yankees game at some point. I would need the translation. So, but he's been, he did the thing with the very popular golfer.

And then he sat down with this very popular young podcaster named Theo Vaughn. And they had this exchange about cocaine, which has got almost 10 million views. Almost 10 million views on YouTube. I'm going to show you part of it. I didn't get

addicted. How did... No, I would just do cocaine. That was really... Yeah. So not just yeah that's and it was down and that's down and dirty right yeah and this is yeah this i mean it was yeah but you don't anymore no i don't do it anymore man and i'm not doing is it too much too much to handle some of the stuff started to get a real rattle in it too i don't know where we were even getting it from in this country but yeah it started to make me feel like i was a mechanic or so the thing you go back to then is alcohol for the most part.

Right. Yeah. But what I want probably is cocaine, but I know that if I have a drink and it'll give me, it'll like be like, okay, well I had a drink, then I can do this. Is cocaine a stronger up? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you're way up with cocaine more than anything else you can think of. Cocaine will turn you into a damn owl, homie. You know what I'm saying?

You'll be out on your own porch. You'll be your own street lamp. Again, this interview, it's got 10 million views. And this is who they need. They need young guys who are motivated. You know how this whole thing's gotten into like the matriarchy and the patriarchy and versus her mom, a lot, whatever. Yeah. You tell me rich, this seems like a very smart thing to do.

Well, you know, I had a similar conversation with them when I had lunch with them in Bedminster about a year ago. It was during the Bud Light thing. And I was talking about Bud Light and how it's terrible it doesn't really taste like anything it's like wait you can taste beers beers taste different i was like what a weird question that occurred to me he doesn't drink so he has no idea so yeah but um yeah he needs he needs to do these kind of things to get above and beyond the traditional media that obviously either doesn't want to cover him or not going to give him a fair shake and And then the border event, I do wonder if the rallies themselves kind of outlived their

usefulness because the media is now so obsessed with playing up the riffs and they're always riffs, right? He wants to entertain himself and wants to entertain the crowd. So, you know, that's what happened in Georgia. We're just talking about Brian Kemp. It's not like he talked about Brian Kemp for 90 minutes, but you talk about him for five minutes. If you've been on message the rest of the time, all that gets ignored. And all we hear is that you attacked the sitting Republican governor. So doing these thematic events, issue-based events, I think you should do more of them. Sit down with families of victims of around a roundtable, victims of fentanyl, or sit down with hardhat guys who work fracking in the natural gas industry in

western Pennsylvania. Will he stray? Yeah, of course he will. It's also really good in those personalized settings. It guarantees you're at least getting coverage that you had an event about this. In the local press, that's what's critical, in the local press. Yeah. Again, as we were talking about earlier, he's got a much harder challenge with Kamala Harris now and is really, you know, in 16 and 20, he both kind of, he wandered a lot and then he kind of closed well,

well enough to win in 16, not quite in 20, but the closing needs to start pretty soon and it is going to have to be good. All those things though suggest more discipline, you know, making up with Brian Kemp. That's good. Accepting the RFKJ deal, if that's what's going to happen. That's good. Going down to the border to create local news opportunities, because really what matters

is not that the national media picks it up, but that the local picks it up and that the local people in Arizona see what you did and see the problem and are reminded of how it could creep into their lives. That's good. So all those things are good. We're done with the Democratic National Convention. Thank God. I didn't, I mean, it was just painful.

I just had four nights of pain, but I do it because I love you guys. I love all of you. Love you, Rich and Charles too. Thank you for being here. Thanks, Megan. Thanks for having us. More next week.

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