The Megyn Kelly Show - Kids and Vaccines, CNN and Toobin, and Life After Cancelation, with Mary Katharine Ham and John Crist | Ep. 417
Episode Date: October 21, 2022Megyn Kelly begins the show with a monologue on COVID vaccines, kids, the CDC, and mandates that may be to come. Then Mary Katharine Ham, co-host of the Getting Hammered podcast, joins to talk about t...he need for parents to balance risk and reward when it comes to COVID and vaccines for kids, cost-benefit analysis needed for everything, lack of curiosity in the media, needed skepticism of institutions, the political violence double standard that led to a Twitter back-and-forth, her comments about Jeffrey Toobin, the way she was sidelined silently by CNN, the double standard on Toobin's actions, the state of the media, her pregnancy with her first son, and more. Then comedian John Crist, author of "Delete That," joins to discuss the right laughing at itself but the left refusing to, his experience getting "canceled," what lessons he learned, faith and comedy, the comedy that comes from church, his life growing up, and more.Alternately, here's the CDC on vaccines:https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/index.htmlhttps://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/index.htmlFollow 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
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and happy Friday.
Should the COVID vaccine be added to the list of mandatory vaccines your child has to have in order to attend school. The CDC just recommended yes,
which is absolutely outrageous given the risks to children from these vaccines and the extremely
low risk children face from COVID. Although the CDC's guidance is not binding on states,
local authorities tend to follow the CDC. That is what happened with
school closures, you may remember. And this one's even more controversial because the vaccines
are potentially dangerous to children. Young people are being injured by these vaccines.
And as I tweeted out correctly the other day, a disturbing number of children
are dying after getting them. It's rare, but it's happening.
If you are between the ages of 16 and 24, your chances of developing myocarditis,
a heart infection that is potentially very dangerous, is about one in 3,000,
according to Dr. Vinay Prasad. Prasad is a Johns Hopkins educated physician and expert in public
health. He's been on this program.
He is not anti-vaccine, and he's been an honest broker on this.
Some studies put the chances even higher, like a recent one out of Thailand.
And that's why the relatively recent study out of Thailand is so compelling, because
that Thai study looked at 301 patients between the ages of 13 and 18, did antibody studies,
showed that none of them had evidence of having had COVID. They did extensive cardiac workups on
these kids prior to vaccine. None of them had any cardiac anomalies. And then immediately, within days after getting vaccinated, 29.4%, 30% of them had cardiac abnormalities following vaccination.
Hmm. You don't see that all over the media.
Vinay, who was also present in that interview, Vinay Prasadad suggested it was more like one in 30. The point is there is a decent chance that your kid could potentially contract a heart ailment as a result
of these vaccines. Moderna has higher rates of complications than Pfizer, and dose two is
considered more dangerous than dose one. Several foreign countries have banned or discouraged the
use of Moderna in young men altogether, But Pfizer also has seen complications. Sometimes the myocarditis is clinical, and that
means your kid knows he has a problem. He has chest pains, he's short of breath, etc. You can
take him to the doctor. Doctors say perhaps as many as half of all these myocarditis cases, however,
are subclinical, meaning your kid might not even know he or she
has an issue because there are no symptoms. So you can't get him on medication because you don't
know it's a problem. Vaccine defenders are quick to point out that most cases of post-vaccine
myocarditis are, quote, mild. They're mild. That wouldn't make me feel better for giving my kid a vaccine he doesn't
need. He's had COVID like most kids. Okay. But they say it's mild, but there is a dispute in
the medical community about whether any myocarditis can be considered mild. Some say that's like
saying your teen, oh, he just had a mild heart attack. Oh really? My 13 year old. Okay. No
problem. Others say no, no mild myocarditis is something that we're seeing post vaccine and it is something from which one can easily and quickly recover.
Do you want to take the risk? That's up to you. Shouldn't be mandated.
The CDC has no business telling states it should be on that list. Dr. Prasad, back to him, interviewed a pediatric rheumatologist not long ago who has
examined images of children's hearts after so-called mild myocarditis. And here is how
he described it. There is mild transient pericarditis where people with lupus or people
with other immune diseases have just inflammation of the pericardium and that goes away.
And it's mild.
And it is truly mild. And I think that the description of it makes some people think that this is what we're dealing with.
And I've actually had some people say, you know, well, that's all it is.
But it's not. It's different in that, you know, it actually affects the myocardium
and it actually, in some cases, leaves imaging changes that, although we don't know the,
you know, ramifications of it, and although they seem to be hopefully evolving in a positive
direction in these patients, you know, the bottom line is that I think that as a parent,
you know, if you were a pediatric cardiologist or a doctor and your child had those imaging findings,
you wouldn't be thrilled. You wouldn't be thrilled. Yeah.
Discussing myocarditis and pericarditis there. Another complication. A study published in
September's edition of The Lancet looked at
post-vaccine myocarditis in people between the ages of 12 and 29. It found that 90 days after
they got the shot and got the myocarditis, one in six had not recovered from their myocarditis.
Okay? One in six. 50% still had at least one symptom of the myocarditis, palpitations,
chest pain, etc.
One third of these young people were still missing school or work because of myocarditis.
One in four still had restrictions on their physical activity, even after so-called full
recovery.
Many were still on serious cardiac medications.
Why would a parent with a healthy 12-year-old give them the vaccine with these risks when the risk of contracting COVID, unless you are otherwise immunocompromised, is next to nothing?
All of this leads me to ask, why aren't more reporters raising questions about the safety of these vaccines for kids?
And how on earth can the CDC justify adding them to its list of recommended
mandatory vaccines for children? Once it goes on this list, state after state will say, let's put
it up there with the MMR vaccine. Let's make it a prerequisite for children to attend school. We're
not there yet, but that's what's about to happen. The problems, by the way, are not limited to negative symptoms,
cardiac symptoms, and even potential hospitalization. In our country and abroad,
too many young people are dying post-vaccination. Again, it's rare, but it is happening. And the
numbers to me are downright scary. In New York, a 24-year-old college student recently died after
getting the Pfizer vaccine in what officials identified as vaccine-related myocarditis.
In Kansas, a 20-year-old nursing student died in late September of cardiac arrest,
one day after getting the mandatory vaccine.
Her mother believed the vaccine was to blame for her otherwise healthy daughter's death.
In Michigan and Connecticut, two young teens died
post-vaccination. The pathology reports were studied by researchers who concluded that they
died from a catecholamine-induced injury and not typical myocarditis. However, they said we need
more research on whether that offending injury occurred as a result of the vaccine, which may
have caused the damage that led to a fatal
arrhythmia.
In New Zealand, the COVID Vaccine Independent Safety Monitoring Board said in April 2022
that a teenager died of myocarditis they believe was linked to the Pfizer vax.
The board also concluded the death of a 13-year-old child appeared to be linked to the vaccine,
as was the death of a 26-year-old young woman who contracted myocarditis after getting the Pfizer
vax. In Sonoma County, California, a 15-year-old died of a heart attack 48 hours after getting the
vaccine. Officials did not explicitly link that death to the vaccine, but simply declared the
cause of death unknown. In Vietnam, at least four children ages 12 to 16 died following their Pfizer vaccinations in late November, early December 2021.
A 23-year-old Vietnamese woman died following her second Pfizer shot in January 2022.
Officials linked those deaths to the vaccinations.
In Thailand, a 16-year-old boy died from blood clots following the Pfizer vaccine.
In Manchester, England, an 18-year-old
died from a blood clot following the AstraZeneca vaccine. These are just a few examples. I know
about these because I'm in the news. I've been doing interviews on this time after time, and so
I've got to stay abreast of this. The average citizen doesn't hear these cases reported because
the media doesn't want to talk about it. It doesn't mean anyone who gets a vaccine is going to get myocarditis or is going to die,
obviously. But what's with the silencing? What's with the shaming for anybody who wants to talk
about these cases and ask for more data on exactly how many cases this has happened in
and what the risk actually is to our kids. These numbers, these
cases, they don't even begin to cover the number of cases on VAERS where doctors and medical
professionals have to report vaccine injuries or other people can report them. They don't begin to
cover the number of cases there of post-vaccination injury or death. And keep in mind, many such
injuries never find their way
on DeVere's at all. We've had vaccine-injured guests on this show whose doctors wouldn't post
their severe vaccine-related injuries, and others who were dropped from the vaccine clinical trials
altogether after severe injury occurred during the trials. Our public health officials and the media are so blinded by their adherence to universal
vaccination at all costs. They're not being honest about the data. More questions need to be asked.
We are talking about children. Mandating this vaccine is morally wrong. Putting it on this schedule is insane. Dr. Marty McCary
of Johns Hopkins called the CDC's decision to add this to the vaccine schedule for kids shameful.
Dr. Prasad used the term catastrophic. Both say parents now will be less likely to get any of the
recommended vaccines, the MMR vaccine and so on, because it undermines faith in the CDC. This decision is
going to cost lives. The CDC cannot be trusted. They're not being honest about the data and they
haven't been for some time. They're not even disclosing the data. The human trials for the
current vaccine were never made public. The vaccine companies are calling them top secret. Why can't we see them? Why can
we not see the data? How can they mandate that we stick our kids with this thing without showing us
these data? All of this risk for a vaccine that shows no reduction in disease for children. Dr.
McCary of Johns Hopkins said exactly that on Fox News. In fact, it may endanger
them. Resist this madness and demand more information. The fight is on now at the state
to state level. That's where it's going next. Don't let them shame you into silence. If you
don't stand up, who will? We'll be right back with Mary Katherine Hamm to respond right after this break.
Here with me now, Mary Katherine Hamm. She is host of the podcast Getting Hammered,
which is just amazing. And also, we think employed by CNN, but we'll get to that in a second.
MK, how you doing?
I'm doing all right. Hanging in there.
Good. All right. So where am I going wrong on this recommendation that the COVID vaccine be
added to the list of mandatories? Look, I don't think it's the right decision.
Everything in life is a risk analysis, right? And it should be in science, too. And you
should be dealing with the data, and you should be dealing with like what the risks are to actual
patients here. Throughout the entire COVID era, the tendency has been, especially among children
who are at incredibly low risk for serious COVID, has been to exaggerate their risk in the actual
disease and to ignore other risks, all the other risks,
whether it's their social interactions, whether it's this teenage, particularly teenage boys with
myocarditis, where they have this increased risk. They have almost no data on these
vaccines with children. And then they just pretend that the data dictates these recommendations. When you go scratch the data or you go listen to
the HF discussions, these guys are going, I don't think this should really be used for mandates,
but I guess we're going to say yes. And that is not heartening. And I think for me, the risk
analysis I'm concerned about is I think there's far greater risk to the regular schedule
of vaccines, traditional ones, MMR, DIT-TET, as they call it in Raising Arizona, these kinds of
things that will suffer because trust will suffer. You've got two things going on here. One,
a broken habit of well visits for your children because they made it so hard to go to the
pediatrician
for two years. And then another broken trust with public health officials with a lot of good reason.
There was a June meeting with ACIP, which is this advisory board that made this decision.
And there's just a perfect illustration of this, that a mom who's a data hound down in Georgia caught, Kelly in Georgia,
of COVID Georgia. She caught the CDC misrepresenting the risk of death to children to the ACIP.
It was, they were double counting COVID deaths among children over a period of time that was
longer. They were doing apples and oranges. It was meant to be fear-mongering.
It was meant to pressure this group of people. It was flat out wrong. And it leads them to make
decisions that are not correct. Public health needs to be straight with us. And they repeatedly
are not straight with us. That's why my frustration, this whole thing has been, I know I can't trust
the CDC. I can't, I can't trust the WHO. I can't trust the NIH. So who do I trust? You know,
I don't want to go hardcore the other way. And I understand these are respected doctors,
but I don't want to go hardcore full only Dr. Malone, you know, who I realize is very much
against the vaccines. And I listened to him and I consider him. But, you know, I'm trying to find a moderate voice who I can trust. That's why I do listen to Vinay Prasad. I listen to Dr. Marty McCary. I listen to a lot of experts that we've had on this show who I try to find who are, is that, like I said in the Talking Points memo, one dose is far less problematic than two doses.
Boys are at increased risk versus girls.
And Pfizer may be mildly better than Moderna.
You know, some countries overseas are saying no Moderna at all for that age group.
But you heard the deaths I just went through.
Most of them are Pfizer.
And the only reason we have those reported in the news for the most part, and the reason
that so many of them are overseas, is our media and our public health officials here
won't say the vaccine led to somebody's death because they say it's impossible to prove.
But it's like, OK, perfectly healthy kid gets the Moderna vaccine or the Pfizer
vaccine on Tuesday and dies on Friday of myocarditis and had no problem with myocarditis
or heart health issues prior to getting the vaccine. You have to make a deduction.
Authorities overseas are much quicker to say, well, obviously, that's vaccine induced myocarditis
that led to the person's death. Over here, we're so pro-vax.
It's you can't say that.
We don't know what caused it.
Right.
Well, and what the answer will be, and it's right.
If you're doing your risk analysis, they will say, well, this is a very small risk.
That's part of the discussion, right?
That's part of the discussion about the risk.
And by the way, we've spent two years talking about a minuscule risk
to young, healthy children of bad effects from COVID, right? So I don't want to hear just one
side of the risks. I would like to balance them. Because that's what grownups do. And they don't
tell people to shut up about their experiences. To the point you just raised, you know, I hadn't
even thought about it this way, but they exaggerate the risk
of dying from COVID for children by over counting kids who die with COVID. You know, they go into
the hospital for something else. They happen to have COVID and they die. They count them
as deaths from COVID and do the funny numbers like you point out the woman in Georgia found
them doing. So one way they want to inflate artificially the number of kids dying from COVID. But the other way, they won't count
anything unless they have proof possible. How do you get proof positive? It's like that's why the
Thailand study is so interesting, because they took kids they knew had not had COVID and did
not have cardiovascular issues, then gave them the vaccine, and then saw the increase in
myocarditis and cardiac issues. I'm not talking about deaths there. I'm talking about heart
complications from the COVID vaccine. That's as good as you're going to get. And then if those
kids wind up dying from myocarditis, what are they going to say? We have no idea what caused it.
Well, and Prasad calls it a safety signal. And that safety signal is something you
should pay attention to and you should adjust accordingly, which is the thing we have been
totally incapable of doing in American public health since this began. You see places where
like Sweden and Denmark, they'll go, oh, well, maybe we should just reduce it to one shot for
teenagers. Maybe we should warn teenage boys that perhaps the second one is
problematic. Give people this information. They don't mandate them for young people who are at
very low risk and yet face different risks. But they say you can, or sometimes they even argue
against it. But just like with school closings, we are on a completely different page than the rest of
public health throughout the developed world. And it's this sort of maniacal mind myopic focus on
only one risk as if COVID is the only thing that can hurt your children. It's just not true. And
grownups weigh risks. They don't just consider one.
Think about how, I don't know about you, but I know lots of women who postpone their annual physical because they don't want to get on the scale. Think about the parents who are now going
to be postponing the wellness visit for their kids because they know their doctor is going to say,
well, not only should he get the MMR or does he have to have the following vaccines, you got to get that COVID vaccine.
CDC recommended it.
And now as a result, our state has made it part of the mandatory list.
You can't go to school without this.
And they use the CDC knows this is where it's going.
And still those, I almost said effers.
I'm trying to clean up my mouth a little bit, slightly.
They voted 15 to 0 for this. 15 to 0. This, I think, is just like pressure, social pressure. And they're like, well, I'm not sure I'm going to raise a bunch of issues with this, but then I'm just going to vote yes.
And it is disingenuous to say that this does not lead to mandates.
OK, sure, they don't make the actual mandate, but this is what states and school systems
and counties and cities will use to say this is what we use to justify what we require
for activities
for school as if children haven't had enough things taken away from them.
In D.C., they tried to do this before school started this year and realized it would cut
out about 40% of the Black student community, which is a problem.
And so they postponed it till January.
What happens now?
Perhaps they look at the CDC and go, look, now we have our justification.
And again, when you make that decision to skip the wellness visit, if you're afraid about being pressured about this particular thing, if you have justified concerns about
this particular vaccination, guess what you're going to end up missing?
Your MMR update.
The ones that are the traditional real problems that can cause real problems if
we skip them in mass are going to be the things you miss. And I have genuine concern about what
you think about the rest of this. And those are real vaccines. Those are things that will
actually prevent you from getting measles, mumps, rubella. You know, unlike this vaccine,
which will not prevent you or your child from getting COVID at all, despite it's pronounced Vinay.
Forgive me, I always forget. On his sub stack, he posted an article from a third year medical
student. And he was saying, this guy's got more sense than most public health officials out there
today. And this third year medical student had taken a look at the data and the studies and was
saying that these vaccines for children and teenagers and young people like him, he's a third year
med student, so he's young 20s, have caused more hospitalizations than they have prevented.
That that is what the studies seem to show, that they've caused more hospitalizations
than they've prevented.
And Vinay was saying, I'd be happy to have this guy in the medical profession and treating
my own son.
This is what is a sensible conclusion after
looking at all the data. And yet you look at your school administrator and he just says, CDC.
They've already been boosting college students as a requirement to come back to school,
which by the way, I ain't paying money for that. My tens of thousands of dollars to send this kid off and boost him before he can go sit in three masks in a virtual classroom. But like
the cost benefit analysis on that is not good. But like, this is where we are that, I mean,
Paul Offit, who's like the most pro-vax guy there is like, I don't know, like boosters for young
people. Like that doesn't make that much sense.
That's not a direct quote. I'm paraphrasing, but this is, but when that, when, when he is telling you that it's a real issue and it's why can't we calibrate to risk? Why couldn't we admit that an
80 year old was facing different risks than a five year old. Why couldn't we say
that outdoors was pretty daggone safe and indoors was not like there were so many missed exits
along the way. The media went along with it. Our industry was complicit and remains complicit.
This is what's so disturbing. Like you, you know, you stick a toe in these waters of like, I'm concerned.
I'm seeing very troubling data.
And it's like, you know, like obviously there's the disinformation doesn't know what's happened to all of them.
But that's wrong.
Our industry is we get paid to be curious.
We get paid to say bullshit.
That's not part of the accepted narrative.
And instead say, oh, that's interesting.
Where are you getting that from?
Let's look at that.
Let's go down that rabbit hole.
Why aren't they giving us the data behind these clinical trials?
But you're right.
We should have that.
And I do think it's one of the reasons why we just saw that poll.
And there was one saying nearly 60% have absolutely no faith in the media, zero faith in 60% of
Americans, and one showing 38%, as low as 38% have no faith in the media. Independents have
no faith in the media. Republicans have no faith in the media. The only people with any faith left
are some of the Democrats, MK, but it's all connected.
They're working hard on it, trying to pull that number up.
Well, of course, because it's all their narratives. Yeah. Look, skepticism is good for you.
And it's good to apply it to many large institutions, all of the government institutions.
And yet media is often very selective about how it applies skepticism, or else it would listen to
some of these discussions and scratch some of the data and go, oh, wait, this is not exactly what we were being presented. But they don't do that in particular cases. And this is
one of those particular cases. By the way, leave it to the media to have like 80 plus percent say
that they're a threat to democracy. It's like the only thing we have bipartisan agreement on,
apparently, in one poll. And then in the Gallupup poll it's like seven percent have a great amount of trust for media and media is like awesome job guys that's
pick up your trophy like it's truly it's like the intersection are like nora o'donnell don
lemmon it's like this select group of people who are actually in the media because nobody on the
outside still believes in them it's it's not good and part of it is just it's so populated by people who agree
with each other and the social pressure can be so large to not step out and the institutional
incentives to agree with everyone are great right well this is what's interesting about you
you i mean correct me if i'm wrong but you kind of enjoy
being a contrarian you don't mind being you know the one in the room saying that the different
thing the old one these things is not like the others you've got three young kids you know that's
you so you don't mind going against the grain i i don't i enjoy it because i think and i tell
college students this because i go to college campuses to be the weirdo who disagrees with all of them. It's important for rooms to have weirdos.
And it's important for someone to be the weirdo in the room, sometimes just to mess with the
thoughts, just to test them. Because if you don't test them, then you end up convincing yourself
with a lot of motivated reasoning, never testing your confirmation bias.
And these things lead us to really unhealthy conclusions.
And so rooms need weirdos.
I'm happy to be that weirdo.
I do it often.
And if you don't have it, it can get really dangerous.
And I think that's what you see in a lot of media.
All right.
This is the perfect place for us to take a quick break
because being a weirdo at CNN is kind of a thing.
MK's not actually one, but there's plenty over there. And you will not believe what happened
to her as a result of her calling out one you know very well. And that is Jeffrey Toobin for
his love of masturbation when in front of a Zoom camera. That's where we're going to pick it up
right after this. Don't go away.
Well, as many of you know, Mary Katherine Hamm is one of the top conservative commentators in the business. We've been friends and I've known her forever, and she's
really the best at what she does. CNN hired her for that reason, exactly, of course.
But then the problem is she had the guts to throw some truth bombs about then
network legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin. And CNN was a little cool on that idea, as it turned out.
If you need a reminder on Toobin, he's the guy who left his Zoom on and jerked off in front of
his colleagues at The New Yorker while preparing for election night coverage. These poor people
were just sitting there pretending to be analyzing election results when he whipped it out and started pleasuring himself.
And they had to look at that. Now, he also had a job as the chief legal analyst over at CNN.
That's not where he did it, but he was on air with them and they had to make a decision about
what to do with him. He did not get fired. Now we know why, because Jeff Zucker had his own Me Too problems and had a host of Me Tooers over there.
Toobin was just one who had sexual problems. And so he just got a suspension. He got an eight-month
suspension. Mary Catherine says after she sent out some pretty benign tweets about Toobin,
she was, without her knowledge, quietly suspended.
The punishment was so quiet, they never told her about it until it was over. All right,
Mary Catherine. So it started because you had a little tweet dust up with some internal people
at CNN on whether they were overcovering January 6th compared to the Capitol Hill baseball field shooting,
which had taken place in 2017. You were kind of saying, you know, we moved on from the shooting
of the Republicans, the attempted and actual shooting of the Republicans really quickly
and not so much on January 6th. Yeah, the political violence double standard is one that
really sticks in my old craw. And so I bring it up every now and then. And I just look, I tweeted something, what I thought was calm and factual about our coverage. I know that it's dicey to do that when you're at a media outlet. A colleague of mine came back at me about it. And we had an argument about it that got like medium heated, I would say. Because I think, look, it's my job to comment
on media coverage on national stories. And sometimes that is going to fall afoul of the
organization you're working for. That's always going to be a weird situation. So I try to keep
it above board. In that discussion, I brought up Tubin. Tubin was still an employee of the network. This is under the Zucker regime, not the new one. And that was deemed not appropriate. I didn't know this because no one told me. Now, I knew that that was possible, that that was not appropriate under the rules of sort of avoiding shooting inside the tent. However, I rejected the idea that I have to stay silent about this obviously
egregious conduct and just move on, right? If you're going to fact check me, if we're going
to have this argument, I've got some other issues you could talk about, right. Right. I just the idea that female colleagues are asked to be quiet
about that particular thing. I don't I don't buy it. And I will take the punishment. I would prefer
to be told about the punishment. Wait, but before we get to the silent suspension, which is just so
weird, it's like no balls. OK, they knew what they were doing was wrong and they didn't have
the balls to tell you. It's ironic because we're talking a lot about men genitalia in this little segment but in any event um so before there's so much so before
before this the quiet suspension the twitter dust up you were trying to say correct me if i'm wrong
but you were having this argument with this guy andrew kaczynski who's at cnn who was ripping on
you saying you did you did cover and cnn you did cover the Capitol Hill shooting of the Republicans.
You know, you were there and you were like, yeah, and we and therefore I can tell you that we covered it and we moved on within 48 hours.
And he was kind of needling you and you were making the point.
You said, do you need the rest of my itinerary from that day and the day after, which, again, were basically the only days this was a national story, which was my point. And then he said, got jacked to say about Cuomo and Toobin,
but got a fact check me when he's got nothing. One jacked off in front of female colleagues and
one violated every conflict of interest rule in journalism, referring to Chris Cuomo,
lied about it and got fired. But I'm the issue because I think the congressional baseball
shooting was covered too lightly and taxes are too high. Sure, dude, which was pretty brilliant. And that's a point well taken. You're basically saying, how do I get attacked for for making this calm observation about coverage that I was
involved with. And we did, I mean, truly, truly people will tell you in media that like Giffords
and the congressional baseball shooting, which are fairly analogous were covered the same way.
It's, it's not true. They weren't, it is not true. And I know because I was a block and a half
from the baseball field where I lived,
uh, when someone, the killer, it turns out, uh, or the attempted murder camped out in my
neighborhood for a month looking for people of my ideology to kill. And then he attempts it.
And within 48 hours, those news vans were out of there, man. And you can't give me the excuse
that, Oh, it was, it was far flung from all
the major media outlets. We're six miles away. We are six miles away. And they just it was it was
not as big a deal because some forms of political violence are not as big a deal. That is just that's
right. How it's covered. This is the point you're trying to make totally legitimate. You got
attacked. You got attacked first internally by a colleague.
So you were first just taking issue with the amount of coverage at CNN.
Then a CNN colleague attacked you saying you're wrong, basically.
And then you said you got a lot to say about me, but you didn't say so much about Toobin
or Cuomo.
So silent, right?
Silence is deafening.
So then how many months go by that you we now know were intentionally
suddenly you were you were you were disappeared like mommy dearest if she doesn't like you
she can it was it was till it was until july so that's a that's seven it was beginning of
january till july so it's about seven months to Toobin's eight months.
So you got a seven month suspension for making a comment about Jeffrey Toobin and Jeffrey Toobin,
he got an eight month suspension for actually Toobining.
Yes. So you will see what led me to want to talk about this because I thought to myself,
is this formulated to tick me off as much as possible?
And you have a couple options here.
Look, Zucker's gone, Toobin's gone,
or he was gone several weeks after I was informed of this.
I could let it lie.
My options are I'm under contract.
I can go back and do my job with a smile on my face.
That didn't feel right. I could negotiate myself out of it quietly also the quiet part doesn't work for me or three I could not be quiet I could tell the truth because I think it's the right
thing to do and by the way someday when my children are old enough to hear this story
which must be censored for them, I have three daughters.
Like that's how terrible the story is.
One day when I can tell them, I can't tell them that I shut up about it.
Because this was the reason given to me that in this dust up, the mentioning of Tubin required a breather.
I was not informed of the breather. This all
happened under the old regime, but then I was told, just come back. I said to myself, look,
I can't pretend that nothing happened. So here's what happened. And did we not learn during Me Too
that institutional silence and women's silence about these kind of things perpetuates these kind of
things. And again, one more, one more thing, which I told like, I'm a real say it to your face kind
of person. I could have like, I guess the media thing would do to be, would be like a leak it to
an outlet anonymously. Like this is what happened to me. just say things from me so i told them this which
is as a woman in media i have been asked to comment on every errant penis in the media industry
and there were so many for the past five years sometimes the exclusion of all the other things
i'd like to talk about like tax policy health policy i don't know foreign. And yet I do it because it's the right thing to do, even though
it can be a little humiliating to be on TV talking about nothing but errant penises of your colleagues.
The indignity. I reject that this is the one
penis that I'm not allowed to talk about. I reject it.
That penis is fair game. I don't want to do it, but it has to be done.
You are not the one who unleashed it on the Zoom. It was out there for the discussion.
By the way, and you made this point at the time, and this is what it gets to me. I wouldn't have
been rehabilitated from something like this. I would have. Well, I would have been relocated to an OnlyFans page.
But like, I would not have a career after that.
We all know that.
No, hell no.
Literally, think about it.
Forgive me for going X-rated, but picture this.
If a woman dropped Trow and her underwear and started masturbating on a Zoom call for the New Yorker.
She would never work again in the news business ever. If you just had to sit there watching her
pleasure herself, she would never, ever be taken seriously. Certainly not in his job.
I said this at the time, like maybe, maybe like if you're the entertainment correspondent,
maybe there's a way back.
Not as the guy who analyzes the Supreme Court.
No.
No.
No.
And I just,
I can't shut up about that particular thing.
And further,
I was,
I was informed that I wasn't informed because I was on a maternity leave and
they wanted me to like be with my baby. Oh,'s somebody. They have good policy. Yeah. Well, that's the other thing.
So how did you not know you were suspended? Right. Cause it's, I think the audience might be like,
what do you mean? You know, like, didn't you know, that's a long time not to not.
Yeah, no, no. I had, I of course had suspicions. I just wasn't told that this was a disciplinary
action until after it was over. Well, in a TV, when you're a contributor and they're not calling you, you never know why
you could think like, oh, you know, they've soured on me, you know, suddenly they have the
prerogative. They have the prerogative to not call me, but you could like call me and break up with
me or something or tell me why. Because it's not like you were doing a daily show every day.
What are we doing? Right. You didn't swipe on me. So it's not like you were doing a daily show every day. What are we doing?
Right.
You didn't swipe on me.
So it's not like you're doing a daily show.
You were a contributor.
So it's sort of at their pleasure that you get on the air day to day.
And so after month after month after month, suddenly you're like, it's been a long time.
What's going on?
So then how did you find out? How did they reveal to you that you had been turfed all that time?
Someone called me to tell me sort of in like management or what have you.
And I just I was taken aback, taken aback, Megan, by by this, because I know, look, we work in live TV.
You're going to say stuff. We all are on Twitter.
I don't know what that's like right like so you just I I can take my lumps but I have to you have to tell me about it right and I might
argue with you about whether I should say the thing or whether I should have had the argument
just tell me about it my actual job is to have contentious arguments. Right. So I could do that.
But wait, but the thing that they were telling you they were upset about was you shooting inside
the tent. You know, you took a shot at another CNN or forget the subject matter, but you took
a shot at another CNN or and my my question to you is, did Andrew Kaczynski, the guy who
opened fire on the CNN or you, he was the one who first drew blood.
Did he get suspended?
I asked if there had been a talking to and I or any anything.
No, no, there was no there.
It was a cagey answer.
But to my knowledge, no.
And I I noted pointedly the gender disparity in this
treatment. Let's hear it.
Andrew Kaczynski, I follow you on Twitter.
Were you
suspended or disciplined
in any way for taking a shot at
MK Ham? Go ahead and tweet out the answer
and then we'll know. Because even
he must see how wrong this is,
how poorly you were treated,
and just how immoral that decision was
by CNN. I mean, it's good that they finally rectified it. But what, if anything, did they
offer you to make up for this treatment? Well, Andrew and I, by the way, had a behind the scenes
like because if I have a conflict with somebody, I'll make sure we're cool. I don't mind having
arguments with somebody and then just moving on. Um, and there was some ugly trolling that got involved in the whole thing.
So I said like, let's check in, checked in. We had a nice conversation, a little after action
report. Um, and this is my issue with like the way this was presented to me was, uh,
this thing happened. Uh, it's because of these ways that, you know, you violated the spirit of the shooting inside the tent thing.
You weren't told because you were on maternity leave.
And now you can come back.
Right.
Again,
quietly doing that didn't sit right with me.
And look,
I,
I started my career,
uh,
disagreeing with Bill O'Reilly every week
so like it started this is like in my nature it has what it's what has served me throughout my
career I have this glitch where I'm like oh are you more powerful and uh and also I think you're
wrong uh let's talk about that I would love it like a moth to the flame right so I'm I'm comfortable
with that I was in my 20s when I started doing that. And it's not in my character shut up about it. And you go on.
So what happened?
Did you just drop that without any warning?
And then CNN read it and executives read it.
And then how did they react?
I don't have a reaction.
No one called you?
No.
My God, this is drama.
So you don't know what, do you know what your status is there?
Like, are you still an employee?
Are you still like know what, do you know what your status is there? Like, are you, are you still an employee? Are you still like what's happening?
Yeah. I mean, to my knowledge, I am.
This is a weird professional situation, MK.
Well, it is. And you know what, when you're in a weird situation,
sometimes the best and simplest answer is to tell the truth. that is what i did uh and again i appreciate the the sort of attempt to say like okay this is sort of the slate is clean
because i think it's been clean or that we should have had a brief talk and then it was clean
uh i just can't ignore the seven months of sleep before that. No, the woman should have come to you and said, I am so embarrassed to have to tell
you this.
I'm new in this regime.
You know, there's new management and I'm horrified to find out you've been turfed for seven months
for this comment in Jeffrey Toobin.
It was wrong.
I will do a public apology if you want.
We will do a memo internally, however you want us to handle this. This is my proposal and how we should outed. I explained at the top why I
believe he made this decision. So he's gone, but the people there can actually try to make it right
for you. So are you getting booked? Like, are you still in purgatory?
Not at the moment. I feel like purgatory is still in action. Again, there had been an offer
to just like come back. But, you know, I understood that once again, talking might be detrimental to me. But I did it because I thought it was the right thing to do. And I appreciate many of my colleagues who like, among them Alice Stewart and Scott Jennings, who do yeoman's work over there, bringing our side to the table.
And I think that some of the changes being made are necessary and correct ones.
And yet I'm in this weird middle ground.
They want your voice, but not your voice.
But not when it's taking aim at anything they've done. Meanwhile, this is the thing about media where media demands transparency, answers, self-reflection from every other industry.
Well, maybe not the HF, but every other industry, but itself.
But sometimes you got to have that.
So here I am. Well, I mean, listen, I'm old enough to remember when the Roger Ailes scandal broke at Fox,
they did stories talking about how wrong it is to silence women and how this culture of silence
can lead to pernicious results. And that's true that they're right but not a moment of self-reflection over let's face it
who did they really care about jeffrey tubin i mean like really like he he shot himself in the
foot he was obviously hobbled they had to know he didn't have much of a runway left in him
and you do so why like if forced to take a position in this fight would they would they
side with him? I just think
it's a Jeff Zucker thing. I think he was so protective of all of his me tours, because he
had his own secret. He didn't see any other way. No, I think it was he was the priority because he
was Zucker's priority. And it doesn't have to do with the new guys. But I was still went through
this thing. And I, again, I cannot be quiet about it because is again, is it calculate protecting
Tubin at the cost of me who has done nothing but tweet? Is it calculated to make me as mad as
possible? Yeah. Has, has anybody not a Republican over there been good to you in the wake of this?
Oh, uh, well, I've, I've had really good experiences with tons of people at the network. But one of the,
you know, one of the things about this is that, I don't know, am I I'm like,
semi persona non grata, at least. So everyone's like, you know, I don't have close relationships,
partly because of COVID. And we've all been, we were all benched to some degree and didn't see
each other for two years. But I've had good experiences in the past. I just, again, like needed to air this.
Wait, but did any, but did like any of the anchors or anybody reach out to you after you
posted your sub stack? A few and far between. Oh my God. Seriously?
She's being diplomatic. I'm horrified by that.
I mean, I know a couple people over there.
The audience knows I have no love for CNN,
but I know a couple people over there
who I would absolutely have thought
would have reached out to you
and been like, this is bullshit.
I am shocked to learn nobody has.
Well, there were like two people
who have said through this process,
like this was wrong,
more than sort of management process like this was wrong um
more than sort of management said this was wrong um but yeah it's not it's not a
mass i would say it doesn't seem like your future there is is robust mk and i don't think it should
be i mean i'll ask you i'll squeeze in a break but i want to ask you on the opposite side whether
you think they've got a real future because they're trying to turn things around right
now. I just don't. I think too much damage has been done, not necessarily just in this case,
but just with the American public. And then let's talk about some news, right? Let's talk about
Fetterman in Pennsylvania and all the other stuff that's making headlines today as we dig deep into
politics, which is her actual specialty, not tubing. Stand by,
Mary Catherin Ham, and more right after this.
MK, what do you think? People ask me all the time, do you think CNN can be saved? Because now they
have new management and some new ownership and I think a new commitment to trying to win back some
Republican viewers. Personally, I've said it before, I think it's too to trying to win back some Republican viewers.
Personally, I've said it before.
I think it's too late.
It's just too late.
They've already told half the country that they hate them.
But you're an insider.
What do you think?
Well, let's take my personal experience off the table for a moment.
I'll put my analyst hat on.
And I do think, look, when I went over there uh the brand that cnn had in 2016 although you know
certainly most news outlets are left of me like i'm comfortable with that that's why i'm here
right yeah uh i get that but it was fun it was it was a good time it was i felt like we were
presenting all the possible takes including sort of like a critical Trump critical conservative, which I was more on the side of and a Trump favorable conservative.
And we were having we were fighting the good fight.
Now, there was the part also where, you know, Zucker was giving this like billions of dollars of airtime to Trump. And then there, the immediate response after he's oops elected is like,
well, now we got to be part of rectifying the situation, right? As I said on air many times,
like you can't, you can't unpresident the president, you know, you got to impeach and
convict, or you got to defeat him in an election. Those are those are the choices. But I do think, look, it looks like the new folks are trying to bring in people who, by the way, I don't want to tar with close association with me, but like, but Stephen Gutowski, who knows guns really well, that certainly shows a different attempt to bring in people who understand this other part of the country that
many people on air and news media and national news media just don't have contact with, and they
don't understand them. And I think there were a lot of years lost, not understanding those people
to the detriment of people you're trying to inform about the news, and then get getting really wrapped
up too often in thinking
those people are the enemy of america right look there's there are some people out there who are
bad but not half the country is the enemy of america um and so talking about them in that way
too often can be really really damaging uh and then one of the like we talked about the media
trust numbers one of the reasons people don't trust media is because the media messes up and or lies to them a lot. A lot. And I think like being, watching the Russia investigation and everyone just having a conclusion that they had figured out in their minds, and this is like the entire media with the exclusion of very few, they had a conclusion in their minds and this is like the entire media with the exclusion of very few
they had a conclusion in their minds they were there before muller was they were there before
the facts were and it turned out the facts like never really got to that conclusion
and yeah and and the attempt since then has been sort of to backfill the bs right like
i don't remember the mea culpa.
I don't remember one person on CNN owning,
nevermind MSNBC, owning any piece of that.
We got it wrong and we misled you for years.
Yeah, and it's bad.
Like, mea culpas are really powerful and really important
and they can win back trust.
And you see this in studies too of how people treat media,
but you do have to say the thing.
And that was, you know,
I've attempted to do this in my own career
and I'm sure there's ones I've missed.
My Twitter trolls will fact check me.
But, you know, in 2016,
I thought it was important to go on
the day after the election and say,
look, I gave him a 30, 40%,
the 2016 election,
I gave Trump a 30, 40% chance of winning. Right.
But I didn't think he would pull it off. And I thought it was important if I was going to suit
up the next day to go on TV and say, I got it wrong. I got it wrong. And I want to be honest
about that. Here were my blind spots. I thought Hillary Clinton had a ground game. I was incorrect.
But being straight with people
about those things is important. And the media will tell you that they do that. And that
correction. Why do you think they're not like, why do you think CNN has never done that?
I think because I think it's easier. And honestly, Trump does this too, right? Whereas like, if I just stick with this position and
ride it out, then we'll move on. And no one will notice that I was wrong. But people do notice
that you were wrong. And you should, like, shamelessness is not, should not be the name
of the game. And I just think you earn far more by saying, yeah, like this is this is the thing I goofed up on.
I mean, the 2016 election and I think some of the Russia stuff afterwards, it's like it wasn't we're just wrong.
It was like Oprah's favorite things of being wrong.
You're wrong. You're wrong. You're wrong. And you're wrong. And you're wrong.
You're all wrong. Right. With a precious few exceptions who, by the way, should be applauded for being right and often are not.
But I mean,
it's because of ideological bias, right? It's like they they saw what they wanted to see.
They couldn't let go of it. They had a preexisting judgment about him that colored all of their reporting. I just don't see how you how you recover from that. And more importantly,
from from telegraphing to the audience that you hate them
you know how are you going to get back republican viewers or even just right of center when they
know you hate them the thing is that that brilliant sage geraldo rivera once told me
um people don't watch because of the guests with all due respect to you know the the new
hirings they watch because of the anchors. They watch because of the hosts,
or they don't watch because of the hosts. And they need to like the host, or they're not going
to watch. That's the bottom line. So there is no world in which people are going to tune in to
anchors who said, I fucking hate you for four years, and then say, oh oh they have a guest i like so i'll listen like it's i just it's not
going to happen i mean look i don't think i i think some of that can be overcome but yes it
does have to have a you have to have the moment where you say this i was wrong about this right
or else there's no repairing everything that's one of the things with my with my own personal
situation i was like i know one thing about professional relationships or personal relationships if you
set the bar for what you will accept and not say anything about it there and there is no mea culpa
then that's where the bar is for how you're treated and i think that's the audience media
relationship sometimes too right if you it's true you have to say that this is the thing I got wrong.
And too many people in media are not great at doing that.
And again, I'm not perfect.
I attempt to say when I goof up and I attempt to own up to it.
And sometimes my ideological assumptions lead me astray, but I got a lot more people testing
my ideological assumptions than most people in media do.
That's right. That's right. I mean, it's, I don't know what your experience was like before,
because I agree with you prior to, I would put it a little earlier though, before when Trump,
when CNN turned, but 2015, certainly I liked CNN a lot. I watched, I watched it every night as I
was getting ready for the Kelly file. So I think they would have been nice to you then. I wonder
what it was like during the four years of the Trump administration. You know,
Meghan McCain talks about how awful it was for her on the side of the view. And that's no surprise.
You're not as contentious as she is. You know, you I just think you're just generally an agreeable
person, even if you're fighting, you know, you're just a likable person all around.
Anyway, what was it like for you during those four years of his presidency?
I mean, the first couple of years there were great. And I, again, I don't mind being the
only person who's saying something different. And often it behooves me because I end up being the
one who was on the right side of the issue. So I don't mind being that person. I enjoyed it. I got
a chance to do it. I think it is a worthwhile project to speak to different audiences and to not only speak to people I agree with, although I do love speaking to people I agree with. But I think it's worth doing that work. And I think it was worthwhile for a couple of years there. there and then i again i think partly because i'm i'm not so contentious i sort of i get a little
lost in the mix and i think it was like during covet it was like yeah and i'm i'm over here
yelling like i could tell you guys about yunkin uh i can tell you what's coming uh but i'm not
sure that was super welcomed that That's an interesting thought though.
It was like they, they got to the point where they didn't even want to hear it.
It was like, it's like, you know, cause CNN used to have both sides on and you'd hear
both things represented and MSNBC was not really that way, but CNN has gotten more and
more like MSNBC, including not as interested in voices like yours, you know, that probably
played into your secret suspension, too.
It's like, well, we're not dying to hear those things said on our air anyway.
So enjoy the couch.
All right.
Now on to something more pleasant, because you mentioned your maternity leave.
That was baby number three.
But you are expecting baby number four.
And I understand we've got a gender reveal to do. You've got three girls and
this one's a boy. Who knew? Yay. Congrats. I had my husband call the midwives to check on this
when the when the real happened to us. And he told me and I said, that can't be right.
I don't I'm not capable. I grew up with two brothers and I always just assumed this is where my loud mouth comes
from and my, my tendency to speak up.
I had to fight for every scrap, but I grew up with two brothers and I just assumed I
would have boys, which is not how science works, by the way, as I found out when I had
three girls.
And so I just assumed this one would be a girl, but no,
it's a boy. So here we go. That's exciting. Oh my God. You're going to, you're going to
so enjoy this experience. And it is, I do think dramatically different from raising
girls in great ways. You know, I just, I don't know. I think boys are easier. Am I wrong? The
audience will tell me if I'm wrong. I think generally boys are a little easier girls are awesome i love my girl but yeah the hard labor is definitely in that lane versus
the boys well i know we bonded over this since the first kid that i have shortly after i think
your first or second um and just like having someone who's in the professional world to chat with about this journey has always been nice.
And here I am, yeah, just diving off the cliff with the fourth kid.
And if there's any time to just detonate a bomb in your career, it's when you're pregnant with your fourth kid.
Yes, why not?
Well, but can I say, I mean, you would never say this, but it's just another reason why the CNN behavior is so douchey, which is kind of a fun piece of their relationship,
and had a baby girl, was pregnant with their second, and then he died suddenly in a biking accident, just a freak biking accident while you were pregnant with your second. I mean,
it's just so heartbreaking. Your best friend, Guy Benson, which our viewers may know him from Fox,
it was such a stoic and like what a rock he was during that whole thing.
He was like your number one protector and one of the many reasons we love Guy.
But you managed to get through and you managed to find love again.
That picture of the two of you when he proposed on Twitter against the backdrop, the beautiful
backdrop.
Anyway, it's a great love story.
So it's so resilient and optimistic of you to try again. And you had a child with your new husband.
This is your second pregnancy. And Sienna was like, this is so awesome. Fuck off.
I mean, look at the potty mouth going today. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Again, I mean, yeah, the maternity leave part of that was not my favorite part of the discussion,
because even in my female hormonal state postpartum, I can digest basic information
without any trouble. But yeah, I appreciate you saying all that. It's, it has been a wild ride
for seven, seven years now. And ever since then, one of the one of the, I don't, I don't want to
say there's like a silver lining to this great, to great tragedies, but you will be given tests
in your life. It's just, that's just the way the game is played, right?
And so my sort of public visibility and speaking about what happened to me has been therapeutic to
me. And it turns out, leads people to me when they're in a similar situation. I think if you
Google pregnant widow, I'm like one of the top. It's a, it's an inauspicious honor, uh, but people can find me and I can speak about sort
of going through the fire and coming out the other side.
And that has proven beneficial to other people who are in the same spot.
And I'm, I'm so thankful for that part of it.
Uh, in addition to, uh, my faith and my sense of humor, helping me and my children, helping me to sort of just soldier through that single mom life and to get to where I was and to be able to meet somebody who is a great dad to the kids and now a new brother and sister. I think about that. We just pause, just pause for a second.
The fact that CNN, when faced with a choice between this person and Toobin and this benign comment about, hey, yo, you didn't say anything about him.
That's all you said. Decided to punish you.
I mean, that it's so telling about the character of the management
that ruined CNN, that ruined it. And whether it can be resurrected from the ashes remains to be
seen, but it certainly is going to have farther to go without MK Ham on staff. If they're smart,
they'll reverse themselves immediately. Come finally with the flowers on the bended knee.
It's already public, CNN. We know you did it.
We realize it was old management.
So just own it.
Try to make it right and prove to the world that you will treat the person we know best
as CNN's Republican voice with the respect and the kindness she deserves.
All right.
The next time, because I'm sure you're going to be unemployed soon from CNN.
The next time we're going to get into the news, MK, because that's what you're best at. And it's awesome. Love it.
Thank you for coming on. Thank you so much for having me and for your kind words.
Of course. And thanks for your courage in telling the story. I think this is another instance in
which you probably helped a lot of people who will wind up coming to you as well. Thank you,
my friend, to be continued. Thank you. All right. Up next, comedian John Crist is here. He's hilarious with an amazing backstory. Wait until
you meet him. A Netflix special, a book deal, a live tour were all in the works when comedian
John Crist's double life caught up with him.
It was crushing at the time, but John claims it actually was also a relief. More on that in just
a bit. John is back now and on fire with a very funny and candid book called Delete That and
other failed attempts to look good online. You probably know him from one of his viral videos like this one
every parent at Disney World can relate to. We made it to the happiest place on earth. It's 9
a.m. I got to schedule every minute of our day until 9 p.m. Pay attention and stay close. I just
flew my family halfway across America to visit Disney and all my homeschool kids want to do is
visit the Hall of Presidents. We need a map. $45 for bedazzled
mouse ears, baby. You want these or you want to go to college? Absolutely not. Absolutely not.
It's 930 in the morning. It's too early to get wet. We're not waiting an hour and a half for
impressions of France. Okay. Eat a baguette and lose a world war. That's my impression of France.
Let's go to Space Mountain. No, I'm not going to push him in a stroller. Okay. He's four. No,
that's not right. The Splash Mountain is this way. No, I'm not going to push him in a stroller, okay? He's four. No, that's not right.
The Splash Mountain is this way.
No, you cannot have goofy-shaped chicken nuggets.
Sit down.
Your mother brought ham sandwiches.
Oh, for heaven's sakes.
Pick up your garbage and throw it away.
This isn't Six Flags.
Listen, Rebecca, she's not coming out today, okay?
That dream to meet Elsa?
You better let it go.
Let it go.
John, thank you so much for being here. Great to have you better let it go. Let it go. John, thank you
so much for being here. Great to have you.
Always one of my favorites, that
video. I don't watch my videos myself
too much, but that one's funny.
Oh my God, we really can all relate.
The Disney experience,
the goofy-shaped chicken nugget,
all of it. The stroller, right?
It's like, do I get the stroller?
I don't want to have to navigate with that thing.
All of it.
Oh, yeah.
It's a nightmare.
And then you don't know where the map is.
You don't know.
The lines are always a nightmare.
But I would say, when does a kid expire at Disney?
You say about one or two, maybe?
You mean like when is Disney no longer interesting to them?
Is that what you mean?
When does a kid start turning?
Like, you know, I go over to, I don't't have any kids but i go to my friend's houses yeah and they're like uh
you know you leave your friend's house when you're the kid's about to have a meltdown like
the parents kind of know they go hey it's kind of coming to an end that's true i have to say i was
i think pretty smart i never took them to disney when they were really little so i kind of avoided that and i don't it's like so fun that generally they stay pretty well behaved but those
lines are just absurd i mean like that when it was disney that we discovered the game that some
other parents taught us in line which is the um you have to go around the circle and it's like
um i went on a picnic and i got and i brought an apple i wanted a picnic i got an apple and
a banana i want to pick i got an apple. I went on a picnic and I got an apple and a banana. I went on a picnic and I got an apple, banana, and a carrot.
But then everybody in line has to remember every single...
So you get down to the end of the alphabet.
And then you start all over with a new thing.
It could be cities.
It could be vegetables.
I don't want to play that game ever again.
No.
If I do a part two, I'll add that to it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, I have to say, you can also get the VIP guide, which costs like a mortgage. You'll add that to it yeah yeah well yeah i have to say you can also
get the vip guide which costs like a mortgage you really just have to take a second mortgage
and that makes life a lot a lot easier that place is expensive for sure i still i just came off uh
i'm in virginia beach now i came off uh fox and friends this morning so i still have the tv makeup
on oh nice you look good do you notice the difference when you see yourself in the camera
yes i mean you probably uh someone that doesn't know me personally wouldn't, but I'm looking at
myself in this reflection. I'm like, oh man, I look like a Disney character. You're like,
I'm a handsome man. I laugh at the guys who are always like, especially on TV, like, oh,
I'm not putting on makeup. I'm not putting on makeup. I'm like, okay. And then you pop them
up there next to you. Okay. Cause the anchor always has an anchor and the other guest who said that he would get it and they look like something out of the walking dead
you just look so pasty i told i said and i whenever i put makeup on i go oh man i go this
is unbelievable i'm gonna wear how long can i wear this i've been wearing it i'll wear it for
three days don't even get me started we we need our men to stay men and not be wearing makeup when they're
not on TV. So just stop it. Don't even think about it. All right. So you grow up the son of a
preacher man and you were homeschooled and you were a good boy who always watched his posture
and you know, we're eight kids, I think in the family.
Eight, one of eight kids. Yep. I'm the one of the close to the oldest. I'm the third.
Okay. And you had the pizzazz.
You had like this sense of,
like they could tell
there was something special about you
to the point where your dad was like,
hey, you know, are you into the family business?
He thought maybe you would want to take over as preacher.
And you, did you know?
Like, oh no.
Yeah, it's kind of, yeah.
And I knew it wasn't for me, you know,
but I think my dad has told me uh in politics he uh
he's a pastor and now he's a politician in uh georgia running for uh a house seat in two weeks
and he said a comedian and a politician in a lot of ways are doing the same thing because they see
the world and they don't like it they don't like the way it's headed they
don't like the direction of it and they would they're trying to change it and he said i try
to do it through uh laws and legislation and you're just trying to do it through thoughts and
ideas but it's the same thing it's really true and you know what the the best politicians have
a good sense of humor that they can use at the right time that that's half of trump's charm he's
funny yeah that's a yeah that's a very funny that's well use at the right time that that's half of trump's charm he's funny yeah
that's it yeah that's it very funny that's what that's remember everyone said that about bush
remember they go ah he's like he's like a guy that i'd like to have a beer with or he'd like
he's like a guy i'd like to hang out with the right we every comedian will say this and not
to get too like divisive but the right is great about laughing at themselves.
We go to a NASCAR race, and a guy's wearing a sleeveless cutoff
and some jean shorts and some cowboy boots,
and you make fun of it, but you're like, yeah, it's a joke,
but we're all kind of here.
We're all kind of joking.
Everything's kind of fun.
We can even joke about ourselves, which you don't see too much from the left. I'll just leave it like that.
The left does not mock itself. They only try to ruin others. That's it. They don't even mock
others. They just try to ruin them. Yeah, they just, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it's upsetting. And I know you've been, as I said in the intro, the target of it. I don't know if you
would call yourself the victim of it because you kind of own your own foibles. But can I just say,
from my standpoint, I'm still struggling to understand exactly what you were doing that
was cancelable. I recognize you were behaving like a young man who's succeeding and becoming
famous and maybe not treating treating women perfectly i get
all that but like how does it make you different from any other young man in that situation well
i think uh yeah i would definitely not call myself a victim i think if if um everybody's responsible
for their own actions and their own choices so if that all this stuff, and you kind of know it
yourself, this stuff kind of comes with being a public figure. And as soon as, what's odd is as
soon as I got canceled, everybody that I knew that was a celebrity or public figure in some ways
texted me like, hey, welcome, kind of welcome to show business in a lot of ways,
which is you're like, oh, this is just kind of a part of it. But I think when you first,
you would say the same thing. The first time anyone said anything negative about you, Megan,
on Twitter, the very, very first time, it was so striking and so scary. It was so scary. But now, I mean,
now it kind of just falls off your back and you go, this is kind of a part of the business and
everybody has their own opinion of you in there. And they're also more than welcome to.
Yeah, that's right. So you, as I understand it, the, the takedown
on you was related to the fact that you were publicly, you know, or outwardly this Christian
guy and they didn't think you were living a Christian lifestyle. You were, you were DMing
or texting with women you wanted to have affairs with who were married, things like that, where
they were like hypocritical, like two--faced but you also kind of hit your own low
the thing about your you know your car and then sending the tech like that was dark so did all
that happen at the same time yeah terrible accident i should tell the audience what i'm
talking about you had a terrible terrible car accident where you were ejected and you were in
the hospital and it was it was a uh i would say it was kind of a, uh, uh, a three, four year downward spiral that things got, you know, kind of worse and worse as you go.
You have all these kinds of insecurities that I grew up with and then you kind of become successful and you become, you have, and you go out on the road and it's like, this is not a place for someone that's not in a good mental place and i was obviously drinking a lot and uh in a position that where i should never have been uh out
traveling and i just had a lot of demons that i was dealing with myself and i think ever anyone
will tell you the story like everyone who has read anything about my story which says the same
thing you do and not not to let myself off the hook i'm
here to look everybody in the eye and take responsibility for all of my actions of course
they're all my choosing but everybody goes this sounds like something that every guy in their 30s
would do yeah this is like a normal and it's and i'm not like, what'd you say? I keep looking for the horrible like I get it's not the most perfectly moral behavior, but I mean, to lose your career and then you went away to like a rehab.
Yeah, that was that. What was that? Was that tech addiction? What was that? it was it's kind of i came off the road because it's so like you understand like in the faith
in the faith culture in the faith community and and and back in the me too movement in 2000
like 19 it was so everyone was so scared i was so yeah like now i think of any if these
people would say something about me now i'd'd just be like, oh, okay. And I got a show tonight that's sold out.
I wouldn't pay much mind to, but back at the time,
people understand like in 2019, it was so scary,
but my shows are full now and they're sold out.
We sell more tickets now than we did before.
So same way you, you, you would read the,
the read that an article about me, like you're waiting for kind of the ball to drop.
You're waiting for something horrific.
And you go, oh, so there's some people that didn't like him.
Okay.
But I wouldn't wish cancellation on my worst enemy.
I don't know.
Some upsides to it.
It is very painful. I can relate. Trust me. Horrible. There's some upsides to it is very painful i can relate trust me but horrible
there's there's some upsides to it so you know definitely i yeah it's a i wouldn't i don't like
i don't like to often probably say this publicly because um but i don't like to encourage you know
cancel culture or people being outraged at people but it did in a lot of ways, it did save my life. I've been sober, uh, since that day. And, uh, and, uh, I'm a different person than I was then. And that was
just, I was just going down a terrible road. So you don't want to say that like, you know,
God interjected, or I don't want to get too spiritual about it, but it is, I don't,
I did save my life. Yes. I know what you mean. Honestly, honestly like i i was canceled and i almost feel like it was a
moment in which you know you know when you're like you're making the bed and you you have the
fresh blanket and you shake it and it snaps yeah it was kind of like that right like it shakes you
and like things snap and now you have a nice fresh clean slate blanket and blanket. And you're almost like, I don't know,
I feel like reading your story. I feel like the same for me happened where you kind of become
more aligned with who you really are, what you were really meant to be doing. You know,
my cancellation came after I was doing something that really wasn't well aligned with who I was.
That's the best way. That's the best way to put it.
Right. Like yours did too. You felt more free when you post-cancellation and post-rehab
you came out and you were like screw it what do i have to lose now yeah and that and that that is
honestly it's just like yeah you would say the same thing it was just what you were kind of
living a life that wasn't really aligned with who you were as a person. And then you, when everything, it's so wild.
It's like looking out over a city
that is burnt to the ground.
And you're just like, well, nothing, what matters now?
Like you get to kind of, in my comedy,
I mean, anyone that's seen my standup show,
pre-cancellation and post, be like it's a hundred times better because now
you can say uh that you're not i'm not in i think you're the same megan that you're not in any kind
of fear i don't i have no and i tell a lot of people that are scared they're still kind of
you probably know them they still kind of live over there a little bit. And you just go, you know, come over here.
It's way better.
It's so nice.
All right.
So one of your first forays out into I don't care anymore land, was that the things that need to be canceled?
Bet that was it, right?
Yeah.
Where you were like, just went to the grocery store and just decided to do a riff on like things that need to be canceled.
Let's show the audience just a little bit of that.
This is Sala 11.
We got rid of Aunt Jemima.
We got rid of Uncle Ben's.
But I am wildly triggered by the brands and the photos that I see in this grocery store.
Using a polar bear to sell your ice cream?
Klondike?
Did you know polar bears were extinct?
No, thank you.
Canceled.
Paw Patrol mac and cheese. Listen,
defund the police. Defund Paw Patrol. V8. You know what kind of emissions an engine like that
puts out into the environment? I drive a Prius and that is canceled. Okay, I don't exactly know
who this guy is, but I don't like his look at all. I don't like anything that this guy stands for.
Canceled. White rice. Brown rice. Why do they got to be separated think about it canceled quaker out sky i don't like the look at him he's canceled
well i think the what's funny about that is is is um what comedy and satire does so well instead of
instead of kind of like you know sometimes sometimes maybe getting angry at the left or maybe, you know, fighting back with them.
You're like, hey, OK, let's just go with this idea of because Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben's really were canceled.
Like, all right. Well, OK, so let me not fight with you.
We'll just go there. We'll just go down that road.
And I'm going to show you what that turns into.
And that's often a very, very successful way
to improve social commentary.
Hmm, it's funny,
because I was just,
yesterday I was talking about Jocko Willink,
you know, this just like great, amazing diehard vet.
And he's all about extreme accountability
and you just, you don't blame others for anything. It's all about you what you do. And I asked him once about these annoying,
woke people. And he was kind of saying, even complaining about them as part of the problem.
He's like, just be great, like, be strong, be the best you can be. And don't spend time thinking
about them. Now, in my business, it's not really an option. You know, I just think they have to
be fought. And I'm just the right person to do it. But you have a different approach. You're kind of like,
well, mock them. Show them through comedy how absurd they are, if not them, then everybody
else. So it's interesting. I'm kind of just putting it together, how everybody, depending
on their skill set, fights them in their own different way. it's like kind of i guess it'd be kind of like uh you
know if we're you know fighting a war there's the uh you know there's the gunner there's a guy up on
the hill with the bow and arrow there's the the guys that are actually running down to fight and
then there's the guys in the airplanes like we're all kind of strategically coming at it together i
think a lot of things that the left will do um
we describe it in comedy just to get to get attention my dream is for one day some celebrity
to come out as transgender and then nobody covers it like they go i'm just announcing i'm transgender
um i'm already ready for the protest i'm already
ready for the hate and everybody just goes all right like no one says a word like it's not a
thing and then it'll be like oh a lot of this was just for the motivation of getting attention and
then it just like like they throw out there's 37 genders. And then we go, you know what I'm saying?
We all kind of get into it together.
It's the same thing you do with your, with your kids.
When your kids are being really naughty, you know, the greatest thing is just ignore them.
Just ignore them.
Don't, don't give it any attention at all.
Cause my mom, my mom always says the good me is the best way they want to get attention,
but they'll take it second of all from the bad me.
But the worst thing you can do to a kid is the not me, like i didn't see it it's not happening you're not getting any
reaction out of me i've tried that with my strudwick my dog and let me tell you there's
no version that works um all right now i have a question for you about religion and comedy because
i know you the first time you tried stand-up it it was, I think, in a church? You were doing some stand-up at night.
It wasn't during the service, but it was at night.
You were meant to be doing comedy, and people laughed and laughed and laughed.
And then the first time you kind of went out of that venue, maybe it wasn't considered so funny.
Well, yeah, I would say maybe you're performing at a church or something like that. I used to, you know, work at a church in Colorado and it's kind of a, you know, if you go, if you do a live show somewhere, all the people that show up are your friends. They know you, Megan, they already love you. So when you go out on stage, you just like make an appearance, you go, hi. And it's, it's a very warm audience versus if you just went into an open you know put your
hair back and then put a hat on it went into an open mic it would be you didn't have the padded
stats maybe is the best way to put it so i right so that's what you tried you went out and you used
your same material and not as great so now now the like the post-cancellation i am just going to be me you
does it um do you still like use humor about your upbringing and the catholic church or the
christian you know religion absolutely well i think okay i mean i even use i've even used humor
in a way uh about my own cancellation.
I mean, that's the only, that's the, and everybody else, by the way, if you come to the show,
those are the jokes people laugh at the hardest.
Oh, like what?
Tell me.
Like, give me an example.
I mean, I do a joke about cancellation. I go, I go, I say something that's maybe, some people would say it'd be across the line or
something. I go, listen, I go being canceled is like getting COVID. Like you're scared. You're
really, really scared of it. Then you get it. And it's a week of symptoms to go, man, it's not that
bad. And you're back on the road. I go, I said, I got the canceled antibodies. Now I can say
whatever I want. Yes. I recommend those highly. No, I understand.
Antibodies. Yeah. What is your, you're not Catholic. What are, what is your religion?
I'm not Catholic. I'm, I'm, I'm a evangelical Christian. I would say I grew up in, in a
denomination that's nearest to a Pentecostal, but they would say, you would say in any kind of,
any kind of joke. Like when I first started making jokes,
I was kind of joking around about Christian culture.
I remember in a video specifically about Christian music.
And this is before I was popular.
No one knew who I was.
And everyone in the comments, this is going to make sense to you when I say it.
Everyone in the comments goes, is this guy a christian or not because if he is a christian this video
kind of mocking the subculture of christianity if he is a christian this is hilarious now if he is
not if this guy's not a christian i'm offended is wildly wildly offensive and i think the same
thing you're like oh no it's like whether whatever subculture you're a part of, you're like, oh, no.
Like people can make fun of your family or your parents if they are in your family.
And they like, we love this family.
These are our people.
But if you're outside of the family and they make fun of someone in your family, you know, it's time to fight, you know?
No, then it's like, I'll cut a bitch. Okay. So here's a little bit of you
talking about something near and dear to my own heart, which is communion in church. It's sound
by 12. Remember back in the day, church, you grew up in church, sir. Remember back in the day,
communion was big, a chunk of bread. You used to have to chew. Remember that? He's like, you want to go to lunch? No, I'm good. We just had communion.
I'm straight. Then it turned into a cracker. It's a cracker now. It's a cracker. It's a cracker.
Then it turned into a wafer. We didn't vote on it or nothing. Just a wafer now. It's a wafer.
I would not be surprised to assume the pastor was like, hey, we're just going to put a piece
of bread up on the screen, okay?
Just look at it and take a deep breath.
I don't know.
If you're allergic, there's a safe space in section four.
Figure that out.
So true.
Oh, my God, my little Thatcher.
My little guy.
First, I told the audience, he complained one time
he thought the communion wafer should have a little sea salt on it he's just had his first commandment in may and now
his most recent complaint he doesn't he doesn't like cheese his most recent complaint is he thinks
the communion wafer at our church tastes like cheese it's like it tastes like cheese again
it tastes like cheese that's not that's that they might they might have left him out for too long if
it tastes like cheese right i don't know like what
what could be going wrong with our communion way for it where maybe i don't want to know
but if if you yeah i think people if you're if you're this this is i think that video is a
perfect example it's like oh this guy like goes to church this this is an experience this is a
firsthand experience because there's a lot of obviously pointing fingers at the other side and saying they are they are weird.
They are uncomfortable.
But I'm saying we are.
I love Jesus, but we do some weird stuff.
And that's that's the point of all the comedy.
And by the way, everyone in America is going to get on board with that.
Everybody.
Yeah. I mean, generally, in general, going to church is fertile ground for funny things.
I mean, there's just such an unspoken set of rules that you have.
Like, I had a situation the other day where I was going to church, and, you know, we're going there to worship, right?
We're going to praise God and Jesus and sing and kneel and all of it and i got confused because i thought this person they had their turn
signal on and i thought they were going to turn in the very next road before they got to me yep
and so i went forward i thought they were going to be gone anyway long and short of it is i misjudged
where they were going to turn so they were they were right in front of me and i cut them off it was bad and it was my fault but i had a genuine misunderstanding about what they were going to be gone. Anyway, long and short of it is I misjudged where they were going to turn. So they were right in front of me and I cut them off.
It was bad and it was my fault, but I had a genuine misunderstanding about what they
were trying to communicate.
So it was like my fault, but I wasn't actually being a bad person.
But the person was so mad, flipped me off.
It was clearly mad at me.
And I was like, oh, you know, I kind of tried to say like, sorry, but they'd already gone.
And we both wound up going to the same church, getting out of the cars right next to each
other at the same time. I was like was like oh my god this is horrible which is it's funny that that is a funny like
that whenever there's there's a situation where you know somebody has to be overly pious or overly
put together overly pc the humanity of a human being comes out. And that's, that's always the juxtaposition
for humor. Like if you, when you leave church, like we always had a joke, when you go to,
when you drive to church, you got to put on, you know, the Christian music, you know what I'm
saying? You got to put on some uplifting family friendly music. But as soon as you leave church
and you walk out in a parking lot
and you untuck your shirt,
you can put on some Eminem,
some Dr. Dre, some Drake,
whatever you want.
I don't know why that's a rule
that we always had,
but me and my brothers,
growing up in church,
we always did that.
Going to church,
straight and narrow,
but on the way,
once you do whatever you want. Put your freak on. Well, I was thinking, I was kind of hoping that day that like during the
peace sign, you know, this person and I could like patch it up, but it didn't happen. But there's
some grist for the mill for your next church special. Now you've also been open about your
concerns about young people today. I won't set it up more than that. Here's soundbite 13.
If we had to have a draft with this group of 18 to 25 year olds, we got running around this country.
Just a bunch of life coaches and bloggers will help.
I don't want to get my shoes dirty you ever been shot no i've been triggered okay
so good and so true so true where you go yeah like we cannot go to war we cannot go to war
because if we if we had to have a draft, what would be like, people would
be giving away the locations of the army.
They're like, they're on Apple.
They checked in and go, oh, dude, like it would be, I just, I don't see, I don't see
it happening.
No, let's hope you're right that one's not coming.
I don't know.
When you look at that group though, right?
Like there's so much much there's so much material
for you there like what people are doing today and how sad they all are and how they're all
victims all the time that must be so rich for you oh well we I mean that's the victim mentality
is there's nothing more crippling honestly to society and and again instead of being like that's the same type of bit
there we go hey if you if you're gonna let me let me walk this out let me show you what that future
is if everybody uh-huh i've been triggered uh like what like that's let me walk let me press
and that's what you're seeing now with like i make a joke in my show i go 15 years ago we stopped spanking kids
like there was no discipline for kids and no one was getting beat up at school anymore and now you
got a bunch of people in their 30s who are taking mental health days and can't pay back their student
loans like this that's like we i mean we were just raised differently. Not to be, there's always that comic.
Like when I was a kid, not to be that comic,
but like you took responsibility for your actions.
Louis C.K. has a great bit about when you ran out of money,
you were like, I guess we just can't do any more stuff now.
Like that's it.
It's true. No, there was now. Like that's it. It's true.
No, there was order.
There was absolutely order.
You knew where the lines were
and what would happen to you if you crossed them.
And people got fired.
I talk about it in my book,
like getting fired from jobs,
trying out for the basketball team at high school
and getting cut
going up to the wall looking for my name
and not seeing it there
I'm like asking a girl
to prom like looking her in the eye
and go do you want to go to prom with me
and someone saying no
all three of those are like
tough for a kid to go through
but all made me better
no one's looking at someone else and asking them out on a date anymore.
No one's getting cut from the team.
If the class is too hard, you just get the professor fired.
Like it's a different, it's a, it's a different world, right?
For comedy, for sure.
Yeah.
Oh, well, thank God we have comedians like you to take us there and help us laugh about
the things that make us insane. You know, I'm always talking to my hairstylist,
Sarah. She's always like, I can't look at this. I get too angry. You know,
she gets so mad about these stories. And I'm more like very much inclined to laugh about them. I
mean, I'll fight the battles too. But guys like you who have that genius way of framing it just
right. You're so important to that process. John, thank you so
much for coming on. Let's do a longer interview because I want to hear more about your background.
And I want to tell the audience that you can find John's videos, you can find his book,
you can find his tour info all at John Crist, which is C-R-I-S-T, John C-R-I-S-T, comedy.com,
johncristcomedy.com. Thanks for coming on. Love it. I'll come back anytime, Megan. That was a comedy.com. John Chris comedy.com. Thanks for coming on.
Love it.
I'll come back anytime.
Megan.
That was a blast.
Cool.
All right.
A couple of things I want to tell you.
First of all,
next week,
we've got Senator Ted Cruz on Monday.
He's got a new book.
And then on Tuesday,
the return of Robert F.
Kennedy jr.
Very excited to welcome him back to the show.
We're going to get into all of it.
He's got a new movie out on Fauci, vaccines, censorship.
We talk about all of it.
And then there was this amazing moment where he revealed that his son, Connor, unbeknownst to him, had just gotten back from fighting in Ukraine.
Here's a preview. When we went in, he felt that he shouldn't be arguing about it unless he was willing to, in favor of war, unless he was willing to have skin in the game and take his own risks.
And so he went to the Ukrainian embassy and he signed up for the Foreign Legion and he's been fighting over in the Ukraine for the last couple of months.
Oh,
wow.
He's part of a,
he was part of a special forces unit on that.
And he saw he didn't have any military experience and he kind of talked his
way into the unit.
It's unbelievable.
The story was so good.
You know,
Bobby's sensitivities are more, let's not get involved. And his son felt very differently. And him explaining, you know, how he reconciled that, how his son felt and how he, Spotify, and Stitcher. Also, youtube.com slash megankelly.
If you want to send me an email and get my weekly email that I send out, there's a great
one coming today.
Please trust me, do it.
Sign up at megankelly.com.
Type in your email there.
You'll get today's email and you will see the absolute nonsense that my sweet, naughty
little Stradwick put me through.
Plus an update on all the week's news in 60 seconds or
less. Have a great weekend. Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show.
No BS, no agenda, and no fear.