The Megyn Kelly Show - KJP Pretends to Be Independent, and Elon Slams Trump's Big Beautiful Bill, with Mark Halperin, Sean Spicer, and Dan Turrentine | Ep. 1086

Episode Date: June 4, 2025

Megyn Kelly is joined by Mark Halperin, host of "Next Up with Mark Halperin," and his 2Way "Morning Meeting" co-hosts Sean Spicer and Dan Turrentine, to discuss former White House Press Secretary Karine-Jean Pierre’s forthcoming book rebranding herself as “Independent,” her part in covering up the cognitive decline of Biden, her failures at the White House, Elon Musk calling Trump's Big Beautiful Bill a “disgusting abomination,” whether the Elon vs. Trump drama could have an effect on the bill, why it's still on path to pass,  the tragic new story showing the consequences of Biden’s illegal immigration policies, how the administration placed unaccompanied minors in the homes of illegal immigrant adults, the way the left is demonizing ICE, a key moment in the war between Russia and Ukraine, Trump's relationship with Putin, the very difficult path to peace, whether Rahm Emanuel may be the future of the Democratic party, the concerns that he’s not woke enough to make it through a Democratic primary, the embarrassing Jim Acosta town hall event attempting to 'ignite truth and defend freedom' through his 'Fire Within' tour, the various Resistance grifters on the stage, and more.Subscribe to Mark's show Next Up: https://nextuphalperin.com/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@nextuphalperinApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/next-up-with-mark-halperin/id1810218232Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2f0n8G4xqUo8aGxbbbtRjH Spicer- https://www.youtube.com/@SeanMSpicerTurrentine- https://x.com/danturrentineSmalls: For a limited time only, get 35% off plus an additional 50% off your first order when you head to https://Smalls.com and use code MK.Just Thrive: Visit https://justthrivehealth.com/discount/MEGYN & use code MEGYN to save 20% on your first orderHome Title Lock: Go to https://hometitlelock.com/megynkelly and use promo code MEGYN to get a FREE title history report so you can find out if you’re already a victim AND 14 days of protection for FREE! And make sure to check out the Million Dollar TripleLock protection details when you get there! Exclusions apply. For details visit https://hometitlelock.com/warrantyByrna: Go to https://Byrna.com and order their all new Compact Launcher.  Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms:YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at noon east. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Stay tuned because we have a packed show for you today. Elon Musk publicly slamming President Trump's big beautiful bill, but the White House is sticking to its guns as the legislation makes its way through the Senate. Plus, Jim Acosta holds a town hall in Washington, D.C. that's so bad, it has to be seen to be believed. Unfortunately, no one did see it because no one showed up. What happens when you throw a party and no one comes? It's basically his high school experience relived all over again. We're gonna get to all the news today with Mark Halperin, host of Next Up with Mark Halperin on the MK Media Podcast Network, which is crushing it. Along with former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer and former Democratic strategist Dan Turrentine.

Together, they are the hosts of Morning Meeting, the morning meeting on the two-way YouTube channel. You know, with everything going on in the world, politics, chaos, breaking news, it's easy to feel overwhelmed. But you know who's completely unbothered? Your cat. While we are stressing over headlines, they're plotting their next nap or next meal. And if that meal is not up to their standards, well, prepare for a full-blown feline protest, probably on your favorite chair. I want to tell you about Smalls, cat food made with protein-packed, preservative-free ingredients you would actually recognize from your own fridge. It's delivered right to your door. And that's why Cats.com named Smalls their best overall cat food.

Their best. Smalls started in 2017 with a couple of guys cooking cat food in small batches. Today, they have served millions of meals and donated over a million dollars to cats in need. Give your cat the food he or she deserves. For a limited time only, you can get 35% off plus an additional 50% off your first order by using the code MK. 50% off when you head to smalls.com and use the promo code MK. Very simple. Do that. Smalls.com. Use the promo code MK. 50% off. Promo code MK. Additional 50% off your first order plus free shipping at smalls.com. Guys, welcome back. All right. So we're going to talk

about the big, beautiful bill and the Elon meltdown and all that. Well, we got to start with the news that just hit on Corrine Jean-Pierre reinventing herself as an independent. This from, um, it's everywhere, but this is just from the New York post right up that she claims she's no longer a Democrat. She's coming out with a book, a memoir, hyping, says the New York Post, a, quote, broken Biden administration. They go on to say that it's a tell all she's working on now and it's going to be a look inside. Independent is the name of a look inside a broken White House outside the party lines due in October. Hachette, which is publishing it, says she didn't Jean-Pierre did not come to her decision to be an independent lightly. In this book, she may focus on her focus, her ire on figures aside from Biden. Quote, she has served two

American presidents, Obama and Biden. She takes us through the three weeks that led to Biden's abandoning his bid for a second term and the betrayal by the Democrat Party that led to his decision. The tease goes, and she's going to regale us with a hard hitting yet hopeful critique, defining what it means to be part of the growing percentage of our fractured electorate that is independent, why it can be worthwhile to craft to carve a political space more loyal to personal beliefs than a party affiliation, and what questions you need to ask yourself to determine where you fit politically. You've got to be kidding me, guys. Mark, thoughts on this? Well, this could go any number of ways. Thank you.

Thank you for having us back. I think I think I'm not sure how interested people are going to be on her view of being an independent. I didn't see much independence from her as a spokesperson. But as Sean well knows, in that job, you do need to say what the boss wants you to say. There's a lot of story to be told. I've got some information about what happened during those three weeks, but no insider has really told the story. And a number of the people who were central to the cover-up, and I don't think she was, or the attempted cover-up, have never really been held accountable. No one's really gotten to any of them to respond to what they did. So it's possible that this could be the next big beat in the question of the attempt to

cover up Joe Biden's cognitive decline and the effort to keep the nomination, which, as you know, went on for several weeks until Nancy Pelosi forced his hand. So color me curious about her insider details, less interested in her view of what it means to be an independent. What a lie. She's I mean, Dan, you're a Democrat. She's she's going to tell us what it's like to be an independent. Why don't you talk to the Megyn Kellys of the world who have literally voted until this last election, which put me over the edge on voting more for Republicans. But literally now I've done I voted in nine presidential elections. God, I'm getting old. And I voted, it was four and four, four Dems, four Republican votes up until I voted for Trump again this last time. So it was five,

now five Republicans, four Dems. I've been a registered Democrat. I've been a registered Republican. And now I've been a registered independent for 17 years. That's what an actual political independent looks like. Not like somebody who worked for two Democrat administrations until they got the stank of desperation all over them. And she ran for the hills trying to pretend she knows what independence is. Yeah. You know, just when I was hoping maybe the, we wouldn't have to talk about Joe Biden in the fall. Now I think we're going to be talking again about Joe Biden in the fall and what was going on. I assume she's becoming an independent because she thinks the party's too moderate. I mean, I'd be surprised if she comes out and says the party's become too liberal, which, in my opinion, it has.

So I'll be curious kind of what her angle is. But, you know, you're right. I mean, it'll be interesting because as you and your viewers may know, you're right. I mean, it'll be interesting because as you and your viewers may know, she was in a lot of hand to hand combat with people within the White House who didn't think she was qualified, who didn't think that her performance was very good. They they basically said she often had to read from the briefing book and struggled to answer on her feet. And, you know, she took a lot of pot shots. And so is she going to attempt to, you know, settle scores with people that she thought were not supportive of her performance? Obviously, she's going to talk about, you know, those those three weeks and what they were doing. But to Mark's point, I mean, I'm going to be it back to the center as the party heads into the midterms and tries to move past the debacle of Joe Biden and have to relitigate what was going on inside. It certainly sounds, Sean Spicer, like she's going to stick a knife in the people that help

push Biden out from this line again from Hachette. She takes us through the three weeks that led to Biden's abandoning his bid for a second term and the betrayal by the Democratic Party that led to his decision. It certainly sounds like she's still on Team Biden. And I guess we're going to get a bunch of nonsense about how he could have done it. Yeah, no, no particular order, but a few points on this. When you've lost cringe jump here as the Democratic Party, you're in big, big trouble. I mean, it should not be this easy for us because I can't believe if she doesn't stick with them, I don't know who that leaves you with, David Hogg? This is a problem for that.

By the way, just for the record, this is her second memoir. I was just Googling this. She's only 50. I didn't think you could write two memoirs that quick back and back. Look, here's the deal. I'll just put this out there. If you buy this book, then you should take singing lessons from me. And if you saw me dance, the singing's way worse, because if you are dumb enough to believe that she's giving you any insight into what was really going on, then you really should turn to me for singing lessons. It's not good. This is, I mean, she was literally the most epically unqualified person to hold that position. So if you are looking for her for any kind of insight or understanding as to

what was going on, considering how unqualified and lack of access that she gotten that's on you for wasting the 2799. She, the way they pitch this is like, it's incredible how they're, they're talking about her. I don't recognize the person they're describing. They, they write, um, from the promo from Hachette on this, uh, a hard hitting yet hopeful critique. She defines what it means to be part of the growing percentage of their, of our fractured electorate that is independent, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then she says, they say, as a history maker, veteran public servant, political analyst, and independent thinker. Political analyst and independent. By the way, the pitch went something like this. All right, if Jake Tapper can sell a book about the

original sin, then why can't I be independent? I mean, that's how that went down, just to be clear, because there's no way that anybody thinks she's any of those things. You have had press secretaries, yourself included, Dana Perino, Kayleigh McEnany, Tony Snow back in the day, who are smart people. Ari Fleischer, who are not really, let's face it, utter morons who are just out there as mouthpiece. Obviously, Caroline Leavitt, too, very smart person. But Karine Jean-Pierre is not on the list. Even Jen Psaki, she's not a moron. But Karine Jean-Pierre is not on the list. All right. Even Jen Psaki, she's not a moron. But Karine Jean-Pierre is a total moron. You only need to have watched her for two days to have picked that up. Any random days throughout the entire four years of Joe Biden. Pick your days. It doesn't matter. You will see a complete moron up there. So there is literally nobody in

the country who wants to hear her political analysis on anything. And just in case you doubt me, we just put this is a short little clip just to remind you of what we were subjected to during those very, very painful four years. Watch. The NORAD is part of like a part of a it's a it's a what you call a coalition, of course, a pact. Exactly. We did it in in clearly in step with Canada. Three U.S. winners of the 2022 Nobel Prize. Who won the Nobel Prize in chemistry? Who won the Nobel Prize in physics? Who won the Nobel Prize? Noble. She thought it was noble. She said it so many times, you know, and she thinks Canada is called Canada. Go ahead, Mark. Well, two things. One is it's really unfortunate that they gave her the job because she did make

history. A black woman as press secretary makes history. They gave it to someone who wasn't qualified for the job. And that's not a denigration of anything but her and the people who gave her the job. It's really, really unfortunate. They She should have been smart enough to turn it down. They should have not given it to her. And so it's going to be interesting to see how she explains, and we've talked about this in the morning meeting, Sean's been particularly pointed on it, is what was her role?

Because she's the one who said, Joe Biden talked to a dead congresswoman at an event because, quote, she was top of mind. She was top of mind. Right. So I'll be curious to see how she addresses her role in standing at the podium and not telling the truth. The American people who, by the way, didn't need her to tell the truth because they could see with their own eyes his cognitive decline. The pub dates September, right? Yeah, October, they said. October. So I wonder if it's done because most publishers demand this ridiculous three months in the can before they can publish a book. So clearly she's been working on it for a while. And I wonder if she had a ghostwriter.

But I know for a fact that there are lots of people in the White House who will be worried about this because they recognize that it was a mistake to give her the job. They tried to work around it. They wanted John Kirby, the national security spokesperson, to do more briefing. She was very territorial about that. So there are people who did not treat her great. And I suspect that there may well be a correlation between who comes off poorly in the book and who didn't give her the respect she thought she deserved. 100%. Megan, real quick, to Mark's point, I just want to say this. If you are a person,

look, I will admit I made several mistakes during my tenure. I've been very open about that. You and I actually had a very frank discussion back when I published my first book about this. But I'll say this. If you are concerned about how I describe certain things and then don't share equal criticism about her complicity in covering up the cognitive decline about Joe Biden and lying about it, then your priorities are backwards. And the idea that all these people that when I left the White House talked about banning me and canceling me and then are now trying to figure out what opportunities to give her after she blatantly lied about his cognitive abilities and his physical abilities. Because remember, one of the quotes was he runs circles around me.

He tires me out. I actually think maybe she should get some like checked by a doctor, because if that's the problem, then she's got some serious health issues. Not Joe Biden's doctor, though. No, think about that. Let me just stay with you for a second on this, Sean. After the Trump administration, Trump 1.0, they put Trump's staffers through hell. They had more subpoenas dropped on them. They were dragged into these phony criminal cases. Look what happened to poor Hope Hicks. They made her take the stand at that ridiculous show trial in New York City, made his former staffers testify against him, not to mention just all the subpoenas around January 6th. They got dragged in front of Congress, all these hearings. Where are the congressional

hearings on the cover-up of the Biden mental decline and the subpoena and the shunning of Corrine Jean-Pierre. Mark clearly wants to weigh in. Then I'll go back to you, Sean. Well, just they may be those subpoenas may be coming. But the thing that's not on your list is employers in Washington and New York were told, do not hire these people. If you hire these people, you will be in trouble.

People wanted to give people with Trump 1.0 experience positions at universities. And they were told, no, you cannot work at a university. And now it's a totally different story. I mean, I got I got protested everywhere I went when I did get one or was like, hey, can we run this agreement through a shell company, you know, in Abu Dhabi? And then we'll allow you to do it after you sign the NDA. And they're openly not even asking the questions of her and Psaki. They both lied to our face. They lied about his abilities. They continue to lie. And nobody says a word. It's one thing, by the way, they're not even saying, well, we kind of saw it now. They're sticking by those lies. And Mark pointed this out earlier. These are things

that we all saw for ourselves. So they're not even trying to come clean now and play it, do a tapper, which is, oh, but I didn't realize the extent of it before, right? They're not even trying to make excuses. They're sticking by the lies that they told then. And that's going to be the headache in October. She's got the same problem, Dan, that Pete Buttigieg and others who are in the Obama cabinet, sorry, the Biden cabinet are going to be facing where she's going to have to answer for the lies she told. We just pulled one. I mean, we could be here all day with her defense of Biden. He runs circles around me. We can barely keep up with him. But here's just one of the one of the ones late in the tenure on cheap fakes. They are cheap fakes video. They are done in bad faith. And and some of your news organization have have been very clear, have stressed that these right wing, the right wing critics of the president have a credibility problem because of the fact checkers have repeatedly caught them pushing misinformation, disinformation.

Unbelievable. I say the same thing, though, that I said about the Tapper Thompson book. Her job is to lie for the president. It's unfortunate, but that's her job. The reporters in that room should have said, no, our colleagues running those videos are not running cheap fakes or deep fakes. They're running footage. But look, it's not like, you know, Sean Spicer. I've never heard Sean Spicer come out and be like every word I spoke as the as the press secretary for Trump was heartfelt and 100 percent accurate. I have not heard him try to spin us like that. He understands what that job was. And so do we. Her trying to come out now and be like,

I am a political independent and I see the corruption, Dan, of both parties. And I will be your leader to the promised land of owning your own personal beliefs as opposed to just blind loyalty to these liars in office. Yeah, I mean, you know, it has been cringe inducing on so many levels the last month or so. And once Jake Tapper's book came out and you had Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, all these people who when asked, what did you know? What did you see? Literally, and they tried to change the subject. We're moving forward. Exactly. When everybody knows and knew what was going on. Now, this is going to come back up in October. I think, Mark,

you make a smart point. If she already wrote this and it was before all the kind of media dust up that we've had now the last month, it'll be very interesting if she does dig in and try to convince people like Joe Biden still that all was well, he should have never gotten out this ludicrous idea that he might have won. I mean, I think we might have lost 47, 48 states. I mean, the Senate would probably be 63 to, you know, 37 or something of that nature. So, Dan, who's this book for then? Like, you always have to think, like, who's the constituency? I mean, look, there's always a few, you know, Japanese soldiers on the island after the war ended that kept going there. There are some in the Democratic base that, you know, want to never give an inch who think this is why we talking about Joe Biden should all be about Trump and, you know, his mental capabilities.

And I don't know. I think maybe she hopes she can, you know, buy a beach house or something if she sells enough books. But to Sean's point, I mean, who would buy this? I don't think. And that's the thing I will tell you. I predict now that she doesn't hit 5000 in sales. Yeah, I don't think anybody buys this. No, because she doesn't have the access to know what really happened. Well, I mean, she might sell a few copies if she does name names and dime some people out. But I asked the same question about this book that I asked about most books, including ones by my friend. What was the advance and how big is the first printing? Because if they bet big on this, I think they're going to be disappointed. Oh, well, and I will say this. I've done a book with Hachette, so I know this process.

And I will say I exactly I agree with everything that Mark just said. They look at numbers very clearly on past sales. They were very clear. I mean, like, I'm not going to get into what my advance was. But again, that's that's all predicated on that. And I just don't see her being able to say I can sell this to to these people because I don't know that people who are pissed in the Democratic Party want to buy a book that goes after John Kirby or Anita Dunn. And that to me, that's inside baseball. That's a book club, not a- Sean, share a screen and put up your book contract. Yeah, which one? I've done four. The Hashem one, we'd like to see it. Yeah, no thanks. She's never been an effective communicator. That was the irony of her being chosen for this role.

She never, ever in the four years was able to get up there without reading, just reading whatever she'd written down before she got out there. She doesn't have the ability to speak off the top of her head extemporaneously. She's going to be a disaster on this book tour. If anybody even mildly presses her,

it's going to be really uncomfortable. Hachette, you made a big mistake. You could probably still get out of it. I don't know. But I remember when I wrote my book, it came out in November of 2016, and the final changes had to be made by early August. So that was a little bit of a window. And if hers is coming out early October, she probably still can make some changes in the

month of June to it. And she should write down a bunch of changes, which read as follows. Surprise. I'm actually not an independent. I'm still lying to you. I'm still the same old Democrat partisan hack I've always been. Yours truly, Karine Jean-Pierre. Okay, let's move on to the big, beautiful bill, which now the Democrats have come out with their own name for, the big, ugly bill, which is not clever. And it doesn't work in an alliteration way. Like, you've got to try harder. Dan, tell them they have to try harder. But what's happening around this bill is interesting because Elon came out and said this is an abomination.

And he's going after it hard. He said, like, I can't hold it in any longer. I've got to say how I feel. It's awful. It's full of pork. I hate it. And the White House is saying, we know he doesn't like it. And really, Trump doesn't care, is really what they're saying. It's passed. It's gotten through the House. It hasn't yet passed the Senate. But here's exactly what Musk posted yesterday. I'm sorry, but I just can't stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork-filled congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it. You know you did wrong. You know it. It will massively increase the already gigantic budget deficit to $2.5 trillion,

triple exclamation point, and burden American citizens with crushingly unsustainable debt. Congress is making America bankrupt. In November next year, we fire all politicians who betrayed the American people, which in this particular case would mean virtually every single Republican in the House. And so far far we believe virtually every single one in the Senate who are likely prepared to pass this thing, though, that's slightly uncertain. So what happens to the BBB? Who would like to take that one? I'll go. No, I think it passes. I mean, look in the, in the, in the Senate, look, I, there's two camps in the Senate right now. You've got the spend more types, the Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, who want more assurances, especially on the Medicaid front. And then you've got the sort of deficit debt group, which is four or five.

I mean, notably, Ron Johnson, Rand Paul, Rick Scott. I think look, I think that this thing squeaks it out like it's supposed to. And then it goes back to the House. So far, what I've found been comforting is the Freedom Caucus, led by Andy Harris and several of those members, have not drawn a big line in the sand unless it's, hey, if you add more spending, we're going to have a problem. So right now, I think we're in a pretty good place. The bottom line is we have to extend those tax cuts, and that's what's costing, quote unquote, a lot of money. The way Washington works is that they say tax cuts cost money. So by extending the 2017 tax cuts, that is scored as a cost. The second thing is, and we played this on the morning meeting this morning, right now, and I have the exact numbers here, that we spend $695

billion as a country on Medicare, $695 billion. If we keep going down the path with the reconciliation, we're going to spend $835 billion. That's a lot more. In Washington, though, if you don't get as much as you want, that's called a cut. The bottom line is $150 billion more in Medicaid is going to be spent under the House bill. There is no cut in the bill. And Republicans need to do a better job of articulating the importance of extending the tax cuts so that we don't have a tax increase. And secondly, what we're doing to reduce control spending and hopefully reduce the deficit.

There's a bigger part of this with what they call the rescissions package, which is $9.5 billion in cuts. With these guys, they need to- That rescissions package, forget the name, but basically it just says, so far, only $9.4 billion of the Doge cuts are being codified. But that's a pathetic amount. He was supposed to cut $1 trillion. Doge and Elon said they'd be cutting one trillion nine point four billion. Please. Congress spends that in the lunch hour. Go ahead, Mark. Yeah. Look, Musk is mostly right on the merits. And I get why Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid fighting is a great story. It's interesting and understanding their relationships. Interesting.

But unless Musk does more and a lot more, three realities that were true before he spoke out are still true. The bill must pass. He can't fail. There's failure's not an option or the Trump presidency is in huge trouble. So it will pass.

The two is that there's very few Republicans in the House and the Senate who might possibly vote no. We're talking about in both bodies, maybe 20. And this must didn't increase the number. And so they still have to round up most of those 20. And then lastly, the bill is not perfect. They'll have to sell it as the best thing ever, but it's not perfect. Some of Musk's criticisms are true. There's other things that are wrong with the bill from a public policy point of view, but they can't make it much better. If they did what Elon said, it wouldn't pass because the votes aren't there to do what he wants to do, because what he wants to do is interrupt the delicate balance that got it

passed through the House and has it on track to pass the Senate. Yeah. What he also wants to do is get his EV mandates put back in. I mean, let's let's let's not forget the personal part of this, which is I'm not happy because you guys screwed me. And I also on the cutting all these. We're cutting all these green energy incentives that were very popular under Democrats and Trump is not into energy at all. Go ahead, Dan. Yeah. And and, you know, he was very angry about this A.I. deal that was signed in the Middle East with Sam Altman as the lead, his kind of arch rival. So he's he's got some grievances. And I think, you know, so far, Megan, no one has gone to war with Donald Trump in a primary and won. So unless Musk thinks that he can kind of square off with Donald Trump and defeat him in terms of proxies and primaries,

we talked about this earlier this morning. I don't see any way that he actually moves the needle to have somebody say, I'm with Musk and not with Trump. And I think you have the CBO score just came out that 10.9 million people would lose Medicaid. So if you do what Musk wants, that number goes higher and, you know, one cards out the whole the whole pile collapses. So I just don't see how it stopped. The thing about the Elon threats politically, like when before last November was they had the implicit backing of Big Daddy. You know, like what was scary about that pairing was Elon's money and Trump's political might. But now if forced to choose, as these Republicans in the House and or Senate maybe may have to, they're going to listen to what Trump says, not what Elon says.

Trump is the one who can really hurt them, not Elon. 100% what we know now is Musk is good at business when he teams with Trump he's good at politics but he's doesn't there's no indication he's good at politics by himself he's good at politics

he funds it he pays for it I mean that's like saying like he's not it's like going to dinner he funded the he funded the Supreme Court race

in Wisconsin and he lost he's not he's just not that good a politician. He's good at a lot of stuff, but there's no indication he's particularly good at this. That's right. That's the thing. So it's like and what he's really threatening here clearly is to vote against all these.

These are all Republicans. The Democrats are all going to vote against this. So he's he's when he's saying like they're all they all need to be voted out. He's talking about Republicans. So does he really want to spend all of his money getting Republicans out of the Senate and out of the house? He hasn't gone that far around the bend. So I think that's an empty threat. And even if it's not, it's not going to scare these guys because when Trump wants them to vote for this BBB, I think they're going to do it. I will say this from Stephen Miller, who works for the president deputy assistant. He says the BBB is

not an appropriations bill. No, no, sorry. This is not the part I wanted deputy assistant. He says the BBB is not an appropriations bill. No, no, sorry. This is not the part I wanted to read. He writes the following. The lefty CBO says extending the 2017 tax cuts, preventing their expiration increases the deficit. Some critics have seen this figure and claimed or implied the bill increases spending. Even according to the CBO, the bill cuts spending over $1.6 trillion. So when a libertarian, e.g. Rand Paul, attacks the deficit impact of the bill, they're attacking the tax cut. Honestly accounted, extending current tax rates has zero deficit impact, which is why the bill, because of its spending cuts, reduces the deficit. The bill has three principal sections,

tax cuts, welfare reform, and immigration and border security. It is a dream bill. And really that, that piece of the border security is what is getting a lot of people on board because Tom Holman has been jumping up and down saying, I need more money. If you really want me to start deporting people at the rates you're saying, I need more money. And that's in here. So I think that piece of it will be very popular. I still don't think it's going to change the deportation numbers dramatically. Does anybody disagree with me? Yeah, not dramatically, but incrementally and consistently. I mean, you know, this is a four year project and and there's still lots of people they'd like to deport. They haven't gotten yet to the sort of the tougher choices of categories in a mass way that they'll have to make, but they certainly could to deport more people with more

resources. I mean, that's true. The bottom line is, by the way, on this, it's a philosophy, right? I mean, what Joe Biden did was say, come into the country, don't come, but if you do come, you're going to get a free hotel, free gift cards, free phone, a ton of money. Right. It was it was a way of life. What Trump has done is send a very strong signal that not only don't come, but if you come, we'll send you back. And that has acted as a massive deterrent for further legal aid. It's hindered the cartels and a lot of the other groups that had sort of persuaded people to pay hefty fees to come into to try to come to America. And so Trump has really shifted the entire tone and tenor of immigration so that people know that our country does not have open borders. We will not tolerate you coming over into our country.

There will be no opportunity and you will be sent back. All right. So let me stay on the on the subject of immigration, illegal immigration, because there's a stunner of a story via the Daily Wire today. It's amazing when you think back, and Sean, you were there, but you think back on the amount of coverage the Trump administration got, 1.0, on the family separation problem that was happening, how some families were being separated. And that took up so much ink in 2017, 2018. Less covered was the Biden administration's separation program. And their reporting brings it down to one example. But this is happening all over the country. Sadly, a 37 year old illegal named Wilson Manfredo Lopez Carrillo was arrested by the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office in Florida

on May 22nd. What did this guy, Wilson Manfredo Lopez Carrillo, allegedly do? He took in at least one 16-year-old girl who herself was here illegally. She was a so-called unaccompanied minor who came across the border without a parent. And the Biden administration, rather than turning these children around or doing something to make sure that they were protected once here, and they were here because of the open border and the invitation that you just outlined, decided to place them with, quote, loosely vetted sponsors who had absolutely no relation to them. They were literally taking young girls and putting them in the homes of single, illegal immigrant men without vetting them. What could possibly go wrong?

Police said in the charging documents, the victim arrived in the U.S. in August of 2023 as a 16-year-old. Health and Human Services was in charge of these kids. And they put her in this guy's home. The victim, quote, reported three instances of sexual battery, all occurring in February of 2024. They go on to say that the suspect, Lopez Carrillo, grabbed her, took her into his bedroom, removed her pants and underwear, proceeded to sexually batter her. Right, police? A second incident unfolded similarly with the man offering her $100 to keep quiet, which she refused. She did not report the incidents to police initially due to fear of retribution from the guy, of course. Redacted police statements suggest the adult woman who was in the house became suspicious and confronted Lopez Carrillo.

The victim was given three days to leave the house and sought refuge with a friend from the church. Police say they recorded a call where the victim called Lopez Carrillo and asked why he had assaulted her when she'd been a minor. He responded by attempting to justify his actions. He did not deny the incidents. He tried to downplay their significance. It sounds like they've got this guy dead to rights. And then even she confronted him about the possibility of a pregnancy. And he mentioned giving her a pill. So it's, I mean, this guy is, he looks guilty to high heaven. So now he's in jail and a judge has determined he is an illegal himself.

And the Daily Wire reporting that more than 120,000 of these unaccompanied alien children entered the country annually during the Biden administration. A hundred and twenty thousand as part of a loophole that let illegal immigrants stay in the country if they said they were under 18 and not with their parents. They write there was there were no safe homes waiting to take in hundreds of thousands of children. So the Biden administration began sending them to live in the homes of illegal immigrant adults who often were not related to them. It was impossible to vet them since the sponsors were illegal themselves. And since HHS is not a law enforcement agency, uh, then they go on to say that HHS, uh, officials used makeshift vetting, such as having sponsors just text a picture of a foreign passport into HHS. But there was no way of knowing anything about them.

And most of them had never even been seen by a government official prior to the young girl or young boy being dropped off to them. Alejandro Mayorkas said after the children were delivered to these so-called sponsors, the federal government was no longer responsible for them. He claimed that stopping the trafficking of children for labor was outside of my responsibility as the head of DHS. This is horrifying. And I don't see the wall-to-wall coverage now of the consequences of doing this, nor at the time when we knew it was a problem. And by the way, the Democrat Party got behind it. As part of their platform, they thought this was such a grand idea. Tell it to this 16-year-old

girl whose life has been changed forever. Here's why this is infuriating for two reasons. First of all, every administration's policies that impact people, particularly kids, need to be scrutinized. And as you suggested, there was excessive coverage of the Trump policy in Trump 1.0, but there needed to be a lot and there was. Infuriation, number one, the policy continued. The policy continued and no one in the administration resigned over it. In fact, the resignations were largely people who thought they were too draconian in how they were treating immigrant people coming to the country legally. And the media is infuriating because it's obvious that this is one example, but an important

one, of the inhumanity of the Biden immigration policy. Having the open border, people dying on the way to get here because the border was open, the way these kids were treated. It was an inhumane policy. And yet it was constantly said by the press, well, the Biden policy may be flawed, but at least it's not inhumane the way the Trump. Yeah, they said it was affirmatively humane. And that was his stated goal in his executive orders, undoing the Trump immigration policies on day one that we want a more humane immigration policy. Again, tell it to the young girls who are getting raped by their so-called sponsors. Correct. If you go back to why. And just say real quick, there's many other examples on the face of it. You don't need lots of facts to know that the Biden immigration policy was inhumane.

The fact is, when we talk about family separation in Trump one, the reason that families were separated is that as young children, particularly women, girls were brought over the border. If the two adults or single adult couldn't identify them in a positive way as being their child, then they were separated to ensure that that person wasn't trafficking the young girl in particular. Right. That's happening so many times. That was literally the reason why this was occurring, because we couldn't confirm that an individual, a young child was who they said they were or that who the parent or the guardian said they said they were. So part of it was for their exact safety. This is the opposite of what Biden did, allowed them to come in and say whoever they wanted to say they were. When you meet with border officials that I've done down in Arizona, they'll tell you stories of these young individuals and not just kids, by the way, it's actually adults as well.

They are brought into this country through a variety of restaurants and other hospitality organizations, check cashing, whatever, where they're saying that there's this funnel. They get brought up, brought to cities and towns all over the country to perform these services, to work in different industries and different businesses that are run by cartels. This is well known. And what we were doing in the first Trump administration was trying to ensure that these people

weren't being brought in for nefarious purposes. Quite the opposite happened, as you described. The Biden administration knew the same thing and said, let's take the guardrails off and just assume that they're all here for the right reasons, which we know by the left, out on the street trying now to actively stop ICE as it goes from city to city and make arrests of people like this, Lopez Carrillo, trying to get them out of our country. And we saw some extraordinary videotape yesterday out of Minneapolis. It's South Minneapolis. It was just before noon. This is near Bloomington Avenue and East Lake Street, which is near the whole George Floyd-a-palooza problem,

where ICE officers and DEA and Minneapolis police, not to mention local sheriff and FBI, were there looking for illegal immigrants. And protesters came out. Witnesses had called for people to show up and they tried creating a human barrier. The crowd grew within minutes. They tossed traffic cones and trash cans in the way of law enforcement vehicles. They shouted at the officers to go home. We could see them laying hands on the cops in some of the videotape. Let's watch some of what we saw. A group right here trying to block the police from leaving once again. They threw out a bunch of garbages. Now people are trying to create a line out here to stop

ICE and FBI. That's your city. So get the fuck out. So that's what happened. The mayor actually came out after the fact. Jacob Fry, same guy who was kneeling at George Floyd's coffin with a mask on his face, said, by the way, this actually wasn't related to immigration enforcement. It was related to a criminal search warrant for drugs and money laundering. So why don't you just calm down? He was telling his own people, but that this is how they responded. And we're seeing in other cities too, as ice tries to go in there and do the job

again of cleaning up the Biden mess, your thoughts on it, Dan. Yeah. You know, two things come to mind. The first is what you guys were talking about earlier in terms of the Biden administration and the press, kind of the Biden administration not accounting for these children, their terrible policy, the press not wanting to talk about it. The thought was that it was helping Democrats to push this under the rug, to not give it oxygen, when in fact it was hurting us. Voters knew it. Voters were hearing about it because there's alternative ways, you know, alternative media platforms like your own that are immensely popular. So it wasn't being hidden. It was actually festering and becoming a huge political problem until the party realized too late. The second now is, you know, Democrats are all all the rage right now in the party. If you're in, you know, K Street or you're going to all these confabs they're holding about how do we win again,

is we have to make changes. We have to have ideas and we have to be bold. The thing that's missing is nobody wants to take the first step. This is not even 80-20, it's 90-10, right? The public is overwhelmingly supportive of cracking down on drug dealers, of bad hombres, let's call them, and dealing with people who are here illegally. It's one thing to say I object in terms of just, hey, you're on the Senate floor. It's another thing to get in their way and stop federal agents from executing the law. That's politically insane. And I think this is where some, yeah, somebody needs to step forward. There's a whole host of issues that supplies for and say enough. We were wrong. They are right. And support cleaning up the broken illegal immigration system. Yes. Let's help. I just want to give credit to the independent reporter, Nick Shirley,

who was on the scene in Minnesota during that was protesting and was doing the reporting there. So good for him. Sorry, Mark, you were going to say just some young reporters should put that video on an iPad and walk around Capitol Hill with a camera person and show that video to every Democratic member of Congress and say, what do you think? Wouldn't that be telling? So so you could go you should definitely go to Hakeem Jeffries and ask him because he's out there right now trying to demand that ICE agents who are now, in some cases, wearing masks, that they be identified. He wants them to be unmasked, that they are masking to protect themselves and their families, which we'll get to in a second. And Hakeem Jeffries well knows it and nonetheless comes out and says this in Sat 9. This is America. This is not the Soviet Union. We're not behind the Iron Curtain. This is not the 1930s. And every single one of them, no matter what it takes, no matter how long it takes,

will of course be identified. And here is what Homeland Security had said, Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons had said 24 hours earlier, which made news everywhere. It was on our AM update. It was everywhere. He knew, he knew. He's objecting to the rationale that Todd Lyons provided, Acting ICE Director, in this soundbite here at ASAP 10. A lot of agencies were invited to come out two weeks ago in Los Angeles where we ran an operation where ICE officers were doxxed. So let's just say that again. People are out there taking photos of the names, their faces and posting them online with death threats to their family and themselves. So I'm sorry if people are offended by them wearing masks, but I'm not going to let my

officers and agents go out there and put their lives on the line and their family on the line because people don't like what immigration enforcement is. They are wearing those masks because we ran an operation with the Secret Service. We arrested someone that was going online, taking their photos, posting their families, their kids' Instagram, their kids' Facebooks, and targeting them. So let me ask, is that the issue here, that we're just upset about the masks? Or is anyone upset with the fact that ICE officers' families were labeled terrorists. DHS adding today, Sean, ICE officers now facing a 413 percent increase in assaults. That's why they're wearing the masks. Hakeem Jeffries, well aware of that fact. Well, wait a second. I thought that the Democrats loved people who wore masks. They've been arguing for the last five years that everyone should be wearing a mask. And

now they're anti-mask. I didn't know that. Secondly, they didn't seem to have a problem when all of the Antifa folks were running around vandalizing cities, destroying property, attacking folks. They didn't seem to be concerned that the criminals were wearing masks, did they? And I think the last thing is, and this is what you talked to Dan about, at the end of the day, why are they not siding with law enforcement? Right. This is so interesting to me.

When I started in politics, the big differences were philosophical and parties and policy. We supported lower, less government, lower tax. The Democrats were more government, higher taxes. Right. Different approaches to different policies. Now they're basically saying we're on the side of criminals. And I know that that sounds harsh to say, but at the end of the day, these people are in the country illegally. So, A, they broke the law and in many cases have broken another law. They're a member of a gang. They're selling drugs. They're accused of

something else. And the Democrats' concern is for the criminal, not the law enforcement individuals and their families who are putting their lives on the line to protect us and whose families are dealing with the consequences. I never thought I'd come to a place in politics where one party would be for law and order and for protecting the country and the other side would be for open borders and the criminals. And for doxing the children of ICE agents? I mean, Dan, these guys don't make a lot of money. They don't have the kind of dough that would allow them to go out on the streets of America and protect us and also have a paid security guard back at home protecting their children because some lunatic leftist has doxed the family. That's why they're wearing the masks, and yet they still offer identification to anybody when they're doing the arrest. They make clear that they say who they are, what agency they're with.

It's not like they're trying to fool people that they're not ICE agents. They're just not showing their individual identities because of this. Yeah, look, it's complete insanity. I mean, I think you can have the political argument about how are we going to treat the 20 million people who are here, right? I think everyone, Trump deserves tremendous credit for stopping the inflow at the southern border, right? It started at the end of the Biden administration. It did.

Trump accelerated and has gotten it almost down to zero. So now the question is, what do you do with the 20 million people here, right? And I think some of them are truly like good citizens whose kids are in Little League and they own the local, you know, pizza stand or whatever. What do you do with those people? And then there are the people who are poor, bad actors that we need to deal with. That's a public policy conversation that should be having on the airwaves and, you know, in newspapers to get in the way of federal law enforcement is insane. Right. I support the New York NYPD. They are trying to clean up New York City. Right. Are all of them perfect? No. OK. But as a rule, they're doing their job and they're trying their best. You want to debate Donald Trump on it. Fine. But don't touch the agents. Don't try to interfere with what they're doing. Just as we

said on January 6th, Capitol Police were trying to protect the Capitol. We can't turn around and say, go after these people. It's insanity. Can I just say this, politically speaking, politically though, Hakeem Jeffries is the leader of House Democrats. He's putting them in a box. It's one thing if AOC's spouting off. She does that all the time and not everyone has to care. She's not in a position of leadership. But when Hakeem Jeffries says what he said about law enforcement, every rank and file Democrat, every candidate for office that they're trying to get to run has to answer for that and has to understand where the position of the party is. He's really screwing his own caucus when he does stuff like that.

Well, and that's, you know, I'll just say this quickly, Megan. The problem Hakeem has is he's terrified of the base. Nancy Pelosi was of the base. The base trusted her. They gave her rope to kind of move the party to the middle and try to win elections. Hakeem's problem is he does not have the base. And so, Sean, to your point, I bet in that caucus meeting, the majority of the party is saying WTF, Hakeem. Like, what are you doing to us? Because now we have to go home.

That is a fringe element, thank God, I believe, in our party. But he makes it seem like they're the majority. Right. So you're saying the base is still that the base is normal or the base is not. I can't like I can't figure out within the Democrat Party whether they're still normies or they've been completely taken over by the radical left. Unfortunately, it may be the latter, but we're working on changing that. We got a new tank. All right. There's one man who may be ready to take up that mantle. You guys all know him. His name is Rahm Emanuel. We'll talk about what his plans seem to be after this quick break. More with Mark, Sean, and Dan. Don't go anywhere. And we've got to get to the Jim Acosta party to which no one came. Let's be real. Our modern world can be toxic.

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helping you absorb nutrients better, break down food, and say goodbye to bloating and sluggish digestion. Ditch modern toxins and get back to what our bodies were designed for. Reclaim your gut health with Just Thrive Digestive Bitters, available now at justthrivehealth.com. Use code Megan to save 20% off your first order. That's justthrivehealth.com, promo code Megan. All right, guys, let's spend a minute on some foreign policy issues because there's a shocking, although not, story involving some Chinese nationals here in the United States in the press today. You know, you hear this stuff, it's like straight out of a spy movie. You can't really believe this crap goes on, but it does. And the FBI is weighing in

on it, Kash Patel in particular. Here's the story. Citing here information from the New York Times and the Department of Justice. Two people, Young-Kwin Jian, 33, and Sun Yong-Lu, 34, who are Chinese citizens, have been charged in a criminal complaint with conspiracy smuggling goods into the U.S., false statements, and visa fraud, according to the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, Jerome F. Gorgon, Jr. It appears that the male half of this, Mr. Lu, has fled back to China, so he's probably not going to be facing justice anytime soon. But the female half of this couple, young Quinn Jian, is in a whole lot of trouble. The FBI arrested her in connection with allegations related to

the pair's smuggling into America a fungus called Fusarium graminarium, Fusarium graminarium, which scientific literature classifies as a potential agro-terrorism weapon. Ms. Gian was arrested and booked in the federal courthouse in Detroit. They were in a romantic relationship. She's 33, he's 34. The U.S. authorities say when he arrived in the country carrying small bags of the fungus, which causes a disease that can cripple wheat, barley, maize and rice, not to make not to mention make animals and humans extremely ill. They were getting it on and he tried to lie. A sharp eyed customs agent at the Detroit Metropolitan Airport found the baggies. So right on, sir or madam. And Mr. Liu first denied that they were his. That's Vanessa. That's not mine. And eventually admitted to smuggling them so that he could conduct research on his little baggies at the University of Michigan laboratory where his gal pal, Miss John, was working,

according to the criminal complaint. He stated that while he was in the U.S., quote, he would have free access to the lab at the University of Michigan on some days. Other days, his girlfriend would give him access to the lab to conduct his research. The complaint also offers evidence of another instance, an earlier one, in which the pair may have smuggled material messages exchange. Listen to this between the two indicate she may have successfully hidden material in her shoe on a 2022 trip. According to the complaint, other messages cited in the complaint suggest that in early 2024, Ms. Jian arranged for another associate in China to mail a book with a plastic baggie

hidden inside. They also say they have a written pledge they found of hers, pledging loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party. This fungus can be not only very damaging to winter wheat crops, but can cause vomiting, liver damage, and reproductive defects in humans and livestock. Kash Patel, head of the FBI, saying on X, this case is a sobering reminder that the CCP is working around the clock to deploy operatives and researchers to infiltrate American institutions and target our food supply, which would have grave consequences, putting American lives and our economy at serious risk.

Your FBI will continue working tirelessly to be on guard against it. I mean, I feel, I feel about this, like the, the way I feel about a lot of women in my Connecticut town where they talk endlessly about their fellow female friends, more like're frenemies than that they're friends. And we seem to want a relationship with China. We seem not to want to recognize that they are out to undermine us at every turn and they're buying up our aggro and they've taken over our movie making industry, that they bought large portions of big sports like the NBA. And we want to pretend that this is fine, but they actually are out to get us, Sean, and not just out to like take advantage of us, but like potentially to kill us and poison our food supply, which is a problem. Yeah, well, look, that's the that's the fundamental thing.

China is an existential threat to our military and economic well-being. Full stop. They do it with TikTok. You mentioned our agribusiness, our tech transfers, stealing-being. Full stop. They do it with TikTok. You mentioned our agribusiness, our tech transfers, stealing our IP. I don't know why anybody needs to be reminded of this. They are our enemy. And I'll give them credit. They stepped up their game, right? With COVID, it was like, hey, let's develop this in a Wuhan lab and send it over. This time they're like, hey, let's just bring the fungus straight to America, right? I just, this is unbelievable that we're still trying to figure out how to have a dialogue with them. They are our

enemy. Now, on a funny side, on a lighter note, Megan, I do when I see stories like this, I just imagine having to go in and brief the president on this and just having to be like, Sean, you got to make it clear there will not be a fungus among us. Like that would be the, if there was a light part of it, there's a serious, there's a serious piece of this that I just, we keep trying to have this discussion about them being a responsible stakeholder and a win-win solution. They don't want to have that. They're, they want world domination. We stand in their way. Like, just to be clear, this fungus was coming over to take out our ag industry, to wipe out our crops. If this doesn't come through at some point

after COVID, nothing will. And I'm also thinking, guys, about the Marco Rubio policy of you're out of here. You're over here on a student foreign visa. And I have any reason to suspect your interests are not consistent with those of U.S. foreign policy, you're out. And he got all sorts of blowback for that, Mark. But you look at these examples, like the University of Michigan, one of our best universities, wide open to these Chinese nationals, like, come on in and bring your fungus. Why don't you smuggle it in your shoe? Terrific. And bring your boyfriend, too. I love living in the freest country in the history of the planet. And I think it's important to understand and have relationships even with our most bitter rivals.

But they must just laugh at us in Beijing. You talk about comic relief. They must just say, wait, wait, we just sent them over and the University of Michigan set them up in a lab and they brought the fungus there and they're going to be able to. I mean, they just must laugh at us. And the balance between our security and freedom is it goes back to the founding of the country. It's it's super complicated, but there has to be a reevaluation of the ease with which we're allowing Chinese nationals with loyalty to the Communist Party and spies to just waltz right into the United States, travel around the country, do whatever they want. If we try to spend spies to China, which we do, they make it a lot tougher for them. Yeah. Well, you even just look at the student visas. This has come up, Dan, in the context of Trump's war with Harvard at the moment, where he says he's trying to crack down on anti-Semitism. But we had a guest on recently pointing out that Harvard's, you know, it's at

war, yes, with Jewish students, but it's at war with the West, with Western ideals. And we were talking about that, you know, how they're cracking down on foreign nationals at Harvard, which now are almost 30 percent of the student body because they'll pay top dollar and Harvard loves it. So we're taking in half of China, educating them at our most elite universities. I mean, truly, University of Michigan, Harvard, I'm sure the list looks very much the same at all of these top schools. And then saying, thanks so much for being here while we cash their checks, not wondering or monitoring whether they're hardcore anti-Semitic, whether they're part of the Muslim Brotherhood, whether they're smuggling deadly fungi into the country that they're going to use to cripple American farmers. Like our vetting program doesn't seem to be all that great.

Yeah. And of course, there was this story, I think it was over the winter about the student, the Chinese students at the University of Minnesota who were caught with drones around Norfolk Naval Base flying them over at night and said they got lost. It's a long way from Minnesota to Norfolk with what they were doing. I've actually kind of come around on this. When the Trump administration first started, my thought was like, OK, there may be a few bad actors, but, you know, we are an open country and shutting off students from around the world to come here. You know, they start businesses, et cetera. It has really become apparent that the volume of Chinese students who are tied to the Communist Party, who are the children of members of the Communist Party, who have to go

back and serve in the government, it is concerning. And to Mark's point, and Sean said it too, the way they steal intellectual property, the way they've been accused of of working with universities and harvesting some of the nascent technologies that are being incubated in those universities. Something has to be done. I mean, they are a threat to us. We are trying to decouple our businesses from there. And we need to do something about this. And I think there's bipartisan support for it, by the way. I, the Democrat, you know, Obama tried it. Trump in his first term, Biden all talked about this pivot. If Trump were to really say like, this is going to be the main

focus of my next three years, I think you get a lot of Democrats that would, that would completely agree with them. Wow. You know what? It's let's make America American again. That's, that's the push. I want to say one thing on the deportations while we're on the subject of student visas and other visas on that Mohammed Soleiman case that we've been covering out of Boulder, Colorado, where that guy lit a bunch of Jewish people and others supporting the American and Israeli hostages that had been taken by Hamas. He's in for a world of hurt in the criminal justice system. He's facing a federal hate crime charge. He's facing 16 state

charges, including attempted murder. And now after Marco Rubio said, by the way, if you're here and you're not legal and you've got a family that's here on visas, you commit some sort of active terrorism, everyone's going, you're all out. And that's what they're doing. They arrested, ICE did all of his family members and they're in federal custody right now and facing expedited removal. I doesn't, it's not clear to me that they're here illegally. I can't tell what the, but the Trump administration doesn't care. Your family member is a terrorist who tried to kill a bunch of people. You're here on a temporary provision slip at best. You're out. Go ahead, Sean. No, I just I think that I said this earlier, but I just don't to me, whether it's the anti-Semitism that's run rampant on college

campuses and now is manifesting itself in the horrible incident that happened in Washington, D.C. and now in Colorado, whether it's how we're handling China, there's an element which it's not ideological. This isn't a conservative thing or a liberal thing. There's common sense. The idea that you have to go, gosh, is it a good policy or a bad policy to let your sworn enemies into your country? Is it a good idea or a bad policy to let people who are trafficking women and children into the country? Is it a good idea to let people who are trafficking women and children into the country? Is it a good idea to let people who are trafficking drugs into the country or to back law enforcement or to stamp out anti-Semitism? It should not be ideological. This is common sense. And when Trump talks about this and says, I'm for common sense, he's right. I cannot believe that there are ideological

breakdowns on these issues. The notion that our sworn enemy post-COVID is literally saying, oh, I just happened to bring a fungus into my shoe. And we're like, guys, let's not jump to conclusions here. I feel like that moment after Wuhan, where everyone's like, how could you possibly think it came from a virology lab in Wuhan that makes these kind of COVID? I mean, like, how dumb are we that we have not learned our lesson? There's two kinds of Americans now. There's one that says this guy's got four kids and a wife in the United States. Get him out. And then there's a kind of says, what's their immigration status? What's the lawsuit? What's the precedent? When's their due process? When's their hearing? The poor kids, right? That's a division. That is, you're right.

It's, but our side, which is the former, is winning. I mean, the more and more examples we get of these radicals in our country, whether they're lighting people on fire or they're smuggling in fungi to take down our agriculture, I think people have just had it. They've had it. So those people who are out there harassing the ICE agents are in a distinct minority. One other point on foreign policy now, you know, Trump, of course, ran for office saying he could settle the Ukraine war in 24 hours. He now says he was being facetious. It hasn't happened. And it seems near intractable. I mean, it just Trump is learning the hard way that Putin is just a very stubborn actor and he wants what he wants and he's not easily manipulated, not with flattery, not with praise, not really with anything. And you can sense Trump's frustration

because he thought maybe we can make a deal that works for him economically that will get him off of his rabid focus on expanding mother Russia. And he's learning that it's just doesn't work that way in Russia. It's just, they're a very different minded people. At the same time, he's trying to strike this deal with Iran, where he thinks he can get them to agree not to pursue a nuclear weapon in exchange for us. Well, like not bombing them and potentially cooperating with them on some things. And he just posted the following on True Social. I just finished speaking by telephone with President Vladimir Putin of Russia. The call lasted approximately one hour, 15 minutes. We discussed the attack on Russia's docked airplanes by Ukraine and also various other attacks that have been taking place by both sides.

It was a good conversation, but not one that will lead to immediate peace. President Putin did say and very strongly he will have to respond to the recent attack on the airfields. We also discussed Iran and the fact that time is running out on Iran's decision pertaining to nuclear weapons, which must be made quickly. I stated to President Putin that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. And on this, I believe we were in agreement. President Putin suggested he will participate in the discussions with Iran and that he could perhaps be helpful in getting this brought to a rapid conclusion. It's my opinion that Iran has been slow walking their decision on this very important matter, and we will need a definitive answer in a very short period of time. Look, I don't know what's going to happen on Ukraine, but if Putin will help us on the Iran problem, that's a plus.

And we should be finding some areas where we can cooperate with Russia as opposed to just treating them like they are enemy number one, which they really have never, well, not never, but haven't recently been to the United States. What do you make of the truth, Sean? Look, I appreciate, I really do. President Trump is so sincere when he talks about getting peace. He really, like I've seen him up close. He means it. And I appreciate that about him. I really like how he wants that state back. He was so proud and rightly so over the four years that he had an office initially where we really had a steady state around the world. Russia hadn't annexed or attacked any land in four years,

which wasn't the case prior. North Korea had settled down. China, Hamas wasn't going the way it was now after Israel. So I appreciate everything he's doing. But Iran is a sworn enemy. Just listen to what they say. Death to America. Like I get everyone wants to get a deal with them, but they can't be trusted and they want to kill us. So they'll kind of for those, you know, like as they would say at Shark Tank, for those reasons, I'm out. I do think that on the Russia thing, again, I appreciate what President Trump's trying to do here. But Putin isn't just stubborn. He's evil. And the man wants to do bad things. And I think we've said, hey, the clock is out. We've given you some time. We're trying to get there. At some point, we have no choice but to really

isolate you and feel the consequences of this. Really start putting economic sanctions not just on Russia, but on those that they do business with. He doesn't seem worried about those, Sean. I get it. But I'm just telling you. Trump's already said we might drop secondary sanctions, meaning we're going to sanction all the countries that stay in business with you. And Putin seems to be like, I'm good. Yeah, but we'll see what happens if he really does. I just think that Putin has shown his cards. He's not interested in a deal. The best deal that he ever was going to get was offered by Donald Trump to achieve a lasting peace. And he didn't take that. So at some point you, you walk away and say, all right, now I'm going to show you what we're willing to do. But the, and I ran away. What does that look like? Walk away is a win

for Putin. If it's walk away from Ukraine, go ahead, Mark. No, no walk away with sanctions. I'm sorry. Just to be clear, I want full and secondary sanctions on them to isolate them, to really sort of make him sweat it because his people, when the only way he'll feel this is if his own people start rising up and they will feel the economic consequences of full sanctions. I've got a new program you may or may not have heard of it, Megan, called Next Up. It's amazing. Everyone loves it. Thank you. I did an interview with David Ignatius, the Washington Post columnist, who knows as much about this war, I think, as anybody on the planet. And he's been to Ukraine many times. And he's very pessimistic about what could possibly happen. Right. We can we can talk about scenarios, but there really doesn't seem to be a best case for Ukraine or for the West, because right now Putin's not feeling the heat on the economy. He's not feeling the heat from public opinion. He's not feeling the heat for a shortage of men to send to the war. And those are the three areas that were the West theory of the case was Putin will eventually start to feel the heat in one or more of those.

He's not. And you can talk about sanctions, but Putin doesn't want to settle. Putin wants to win. Putin wants Ukraine to be a vassal state to him. So I don't know where it's going to go. I do know that it's troubling for people still that Donald Trump is friendly to Vladimir Putin. And I get his posture. He'll talk to anyone. He'll talk to North Koreans. He'll talk to Iranians. I think that's the only rational posture. But there's a lack of leverage now, which is frustrating for all Americans, I think, and for Europeans. And it's particularly frustrating for some that the president talks in a favorable way about Putin. I know it's a tactical thing, at least in part.

But right now, I don't see what his next play is. And it's troubling because there's, as David Ignatius said, there's a real possibility that between now and the fall, Putin will do substantial damage, substantial damage to Ukraine, as if he hasn't already done a lot. And then there's the question, Dan, about whether if he's leaning into having Putin help him settle an Iran deal, whether he's prepared to sanction Putin at all on the non-cooperation when it comes to settling Ukraine. Yeah. And I wonder if Putin didn't preview what his response is. And there's an agreement like, hey, don't don't don't overreact, you know, United States. And I'll be curious. I mean, to Mark's point, what leverage we have over Putin is really not very much.

I think other than I don't think sanctions would make a difference. I think the only thing that would really make a difference is to fully arm Ukraine with hundreds of billions of dollars more of weaponry. But there's little appetite in our country for that. I'm not sure the Europeans are capable of it. It's what I personally would love to see. But I don't think Trump will go there. And then the question is, like, do you let Ukraine disappear on your watch? That's a tough pill to swallow. But Dan, what you just said, though, that response thing, Megan, you read the truth. That's critical. What they've already I mean, basically, Trump's acknowledging that Putin saying, I got to do something.

I got to fight back. And the breadth and depth of that response is going to be critical because Dan's right. If what was telegraphed. Right. Did Trump say here are the red lines? You cannot go after civilians. You can't go. I mean, like, where is that line that hopefully was put in place? Because I get it. Everybody cheered the strike the other day and I get it. I was excited to see Ukraine show some prowess, some strategic, you know, insight into the long term planning that they're capable of. But this was there was no way that Putin wasn't going to fight back. He can't.

He'd be humiliated if he didn't. We know that. And so how he responds and what he hits, Dan's absolutely right. This is going to be, to me, we may have just taken a big step backwards, unfortunately. You can feel it. It's like Trump has good faith and really thinks that he's the ultimate deal maker. But this is just, I mean, it's Vladimir Putin. I feel like I know the guy. And I actually disagree with you, Sean. I don't think he's evil.

I'm not defending his character, but I do think he's just very strategic and he's got one goal and that it really is to restore Mother Russia to her former glory and amass territory. And he doesn't view it in terms of like good and bad and innocence and non-innocence. He views it in terms of what's best for his people,

his country, which I do. I mean, I see it's like splitting hairs in some ways, right? And I'm fully cognizant of the damage that he's done to women and children and civilians in Ukraine. I just think, if you ask me what I think is in his head, it's not some maniacal joy of killing or sociopathic absence of care. It's a goal. He's goal-oriented in a way that he thinks is very justified and will restore something wonderful and important

to his own people who he's singularly focused on. In any event, I mean, maybe you could make the same kind of arguments about Adolf Hitler, but I just see him as- I'll respectfully go with murderous sociopath. Well, again, I don't disagree with the goal part of it, but I will say that when you kill innocent people in the way that he has done it and to the extent that he's done it, I don't really care. I just think that you've got to have an element of just raw evil in you that you think that that's a way to achieve your goal. Okay. So we're not going to solve that one, but I do have something fun for us to go back to. Guess who just weighed in on her own book? Karine Jean-Pierre. She's apparently watching the Megyn Kelly show live on Sirius XM, Triumph Channel, listening. And she-

Well, by the way, you better have her on after what you did after that interview with Tapper. Please, I will just say this. I want this so bad. I will. I'm I'm endorsing the Megyn Kelly interview with Corinne Jean-Pierre. I just asked her to be a special pay-per-view episode. Yeah, I mean, at least Tapper had the guts to come here. I don't think she's got the guts to come here. She's not she's not strong enough, but she's welcome anytime.

Here is what she is saying now on Instagram. Watch. But since I have left the people that come up to me, strangers that come up to me just across the country as I'm traveling and sometimes right in my neighborhood at a grocery store, supermarket, airport, my daughter's school, the number one question they ask me is, Corrine, how do we get out of this? How do we protect our democracy? How do we protect vulnerable communities among us? What do we do next? Because we don't have answers here. That's what they ask me. And this is my answer. And what I mean by that is in an era of misinformation, disinformation, the regressiveness of social policy, what we're seeing. Is that a fake book or the actual book?

What I have decided to do, and I really have thought long and hard about this, is to follow my own compass. Oh, Lord. I wonder if she's going to run for office. I wonder if this is all teed up for the fall to get into a primary. Is she a D.C. resident or does she live in Maryland? I thought New York. Somebody better bring me the smelling salts. What?

What did you just say, Dan? I do. I mean, hearing that message, it makes me think she is thinking of running for office. This book is her launch. But did she leave the Democratic Party? Because if she did, she'd have to run for office as an independent this is the big one elizabeth this is the big one elizabeth i'm coming home by the way if you are looking for answers if you're looking for answers to anything in karen karen john pierre's book it's the equivalent of looking for like

medical advice at a home dep. You will not find it. OK, but was she holding like a fake book with empty pages on the cover or is that? She's used to that. She knows how to do that. Well, fake book with. Yeah, because he lives in Queens. You're right. Good point. New York resident. It's oh my. But yeah, you raise a good point. Why would she leave the Democratic Party to run as an independent? Well, I mean, it would make sense for her to run as an independent. Because she's looking at the Eric Adams political strategy. Oh my God, Kareem Shab here. I mean, I realize we have like Jasmine Crockett, Mazie Hirono, and other absolute morons in our Congress, but she is too dumb to hold office.

We cannot keep playing down to the lowest common denominator. These people actually do have a little bit of power. They must be stopped. The candidacy must die in its crib. That's all that there is to say. Maybe she primary jump here, but she cannot have a political career. No, or AOC. I was just looking to see because AOC is part of Queens. I was just looking up here quickly. Who else represents part of that district. Stay tuned. Yeah. Oh, boy. That would be spectacular. Actually, I would love to watch those two. I mean, AOC can run circles around Karine Jean-Pierre when it comes to her oratory, her rhetorical skills. And she's actually tried to do some things as a congresswoman.

Karine Jean-Pierre is just all she's going to do is get up there and say, I'm a first, I'm a first, the first black and the first lesbian and the first woman ever to hold this job or ever to run against AOC in this particular district. I don't know. That only gets you so far. Good luck with that, madam. Okay. Somebody who does appear qualified to run for president. I don't know that he's going to do it and I don't know that he could win, but he's the first one who's possibly raising his hand who has interested yours truly. I don't care about any of the rest of them. But I do think Rahm Emanuel is an interesting name to have in the mix. And I'll tell you what I find interesting about him. He's strong. He's not one of those wussy, pathetic, soy boy Democrats who you're like, ew, what is that? That's not even a man.

He's tough. You know, Hannity used to call him Rom Deadfish Emanuel. He's a ball buster. He's not somebody like Chris Murphy who's got to be like, and I fucking mean it. You know, Rom Emanuel can swear. He knows how it comes naturally. He is kind of a bully, which is OK. I mean, that's fine. You can get some shit done being that way. So I got to tell you, he's not woke. He seems interesting to me. And if I were a Democrat, I'd be feeling somewhat hopeful about him. Dan, where am I going wrong? Well, I think everything you said is right. I think he's serious. I think the fact that he's a bully, his biggest problem would be getting through a primary

because about half the party despises him. And, you know, this is this is over 30 years of being in the trenches. Some of it is from when he was mayor of Chicago. There was a young boy that was murdered or killed by a police officer. He would not. Yeah, he would not release the video camera. So there's some that have not forgiven him. But you go back to 2005 when he took over the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. We had just lost 2004 to George W. Bush. We didn't control the Senate. We didn't control the Senate. We didn't control the House. One of the first things Rahm Emanuel did when he took over, the DCCC, as it's known, was full of all these contracts that were just complete political

patronage, right? There was a Black firm and a Latino firm, and money was handed out all over, not because of your performance, but to take care of constituencies. Rahm fired all of them. He said, we're all about winning. I'm going to hire the best and the brightest. If they're all one gender, one race, whatever, I don't care. It's about winning. Now, he ran an excellent set of campaigns. We won.

But he's made enemies with that type of, you know, damn the torpedoes. I'm going to do what I think is right. I think he's one of the smartest people there is in the party. I think what he's saying that we don't have any agenda that we're culturally disconnected, that we need to not just be anti Trump. He's 100 percent right. I haven't heard what it is that Rahm is going to focus on. I imagine it's coming.

But his biggest challenge is going to be getting through a Democratic primary. Hundred percent. Just wait, I'll give you the floor. I just want to tell people why I'm talking about him. It's not just an admiration society. He he gave an interview to The Wall Street Journal last week and teased a possible White House run. They pointed out he's secured contracts with CNN and The Washington Post to provide commentary. He's been on the speaking circuit. He appears to be laying the groundwork for a presidential bid. He'll be a headliner at a September fish fry for Democrats in everyone altogether, Iowa. Yeah, he calls the party's brand toxic, weak, and woke, a nod to culture issues that he thinks the Democrats have been losing. He's positioning himself as a savior for the party. He's playing the populist card. The American dream has become

unaffordable, inaccessible. The system's rigged. It's corrupt. And on the subject of whether he might potentially have to take on a friend of his, J.B. Pritzker, who's the current governor of Illinois, in a possible run for the Democratic nomination. They say, let's see, they'll have a real debate. Voters will be lucky. We'll have a debate that we didn't have in 2024. So he certainly doesn't like tamp it down. By the way, if the Democrats nominate J.P. Pritzker for their nominee, I'll be thrilled. Do it. I can't wait to talk about the Pritzkers and their love of transing children. We will talk about it ad nauseum on the show and his weird, I think it's first cousin, who's a man pretending to be a woman and really wants your little boy to be female too. So good luck with that. Keep going. You were going to say, Sean, your thoughts on Rahm.

Oh, I agree with Dan's assessment. He's a political animal. I've known Rahm a long time. He was on the budget committee when I was the comms director there 20 something years, 20 years ago. The guy is an animal. He's a fighter. And he none of this woke crap would be in his lexicon. He understands what it takes. And for all of those reasons, they will never get him through a primary. He's he I mean, and I also think the other issue is he's too far now. You know, he's the opposite of Elizabeth Warren. He's hung out with all the private equity guys. He hangs out with the wrong people, to put it bluntly. And for those reasons, he won't be able to get through a Democratic primary. He's not woke enough. He's not progressive enough. But look, I judge candidates on the Democratic side is do they make do they worry me? He's got the political gravitas, the instincts, the messaging to do well. But if I ever thought that he'd get through there,

I'd be a little bit more worried. He will not make it through a primary full stop. So it's a very weak it's a very it's a very weak field. So anyone who's got any strength, you can't dismiss. And and the other the other thing about Rahm that hasn't come up is one way it's a very weak field is most of them cannot raise $20 million. Rahm can raise, I think, with the exception of Pritzker Self-Funded. He can test his brother. Yeah, exactly. His brother Ari Manuel can give it all to him. Ari could write a $200 million check and might.

Easily. You can't discount Rahm because of what's been said and because of money. However, in addition to his record as mayor, in addition to how much the base hates him, he's got no narrative that's compelling. As Sean said, he's hanging out with bankers, he's hanging out with politicians. He can claim he's an outsider, but he's not. There's no story to tell that's Barack Obama's origin story or Donald Trump's origin story. He was born to privilege. He's lived in privilege. He's he's a he's a multimillionaire. And I just think it's going to be difficult for him to find something to say to Democrats, except vote for me because I can win a general election. And I don't believe that that's enough right now for him to overcome the way the base feels about him. And by the way, we know a lot of that is record in Chicago. Most Democrats do not. If he's a serious threat, some smart candidate on the left of Rahm will make everyone in the Democratic Party well aware of his record as mayor. And it goes far beyond

a few high profile cases of things that will not be appealing to the left. Yep, 100%. They're in a tough position because, you know, he is somebody who could potentially take on a strong Republican candidate, a J.D., a Marco.

But yeah, they won't let him make it through the primary process. Maybe. We'll see. But it's interesting to see some people starting to raise their hands, starting to say, maybe me, consider me going to Iowa. I can't, like we just got through this, but it's starting already. Okay. We've got to take a break. We're going to come back and then

we're going to have some fun at Jim Acosta's expense. I mean, who doesn't want to do that? We'll be right back. Homeowners, you need to listen to this. In today's AI and cyber world, scammers are stealing home titles and your equity could be the target. Here's how it works. Criminals can forge your signature on one document, use a fake notary stamp, pay a small fee with your county, and just like that, your home title can be transferred out of your name. Then they try to take out loans using your equity, or they even sell your property. You won't even know it's happened until you get a collection of or a foreclosure notice in the mail. So when is the last time you checked on your home title?

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That's SiriusXM.com slash MKShow and get three months free. Offer details apply. Okay. So Jim Acosta, after he voluntarily left CNN is now trying to have like a, I don't know, a tour of sorts where he's going to have people come watch him or so he thought the free beacon with an amazing piece on how it's going. Uh, Andrew styles wrote the piece, Jim Acosta throws lamest party ever, even by DC standards, you're kind of expected to be somewhat of a loser. Okay. This guy wrote a great piece. I'm going to read some from part of it. There are some tickets left. Jim Acosta told his sub stack followers a few hours before taking the stage at Lincoln Theater in Washington, D.C. to host a live town hall version of his online chat show he started after his voluntary exit from CNN earlier this year.

He wasn't kidding. The lineup for the first and apparently only stop on the Fire Within tour would struggle to draw a crowd almost anywhere else in the country. Rosie O'Donnell, Jasmine Crockett, an assortment of professional Trump haters whose names you would not recognize unless you're the sort of mentally deranged liberal who owns an Anthony Fauci prayer candle and refuses to watch CNN because it's right wing propaganda. Only the most delirious of hyper-online partisans could stomach the pretentious tagline, fueling courage, defending freedom, igniting truth. Shockingly, people weren't drawn to it, guys, and didn't show up. Venue staff informed the

Free Beacon that the upper balcony comprising nearly half of the venue's 1,200 seats was closed for reasons that were soon obvious. Generously estimated the lower section was roughly three quarters full, about 500 people. As the night wore on, it became clear that a significant portion of them were either members of a federal employee union invited to denounce Trump or had personal or professional connections to one of the, quote, performers. First up, Michael Fanone. This was the guy we were told we were not allowed to criticize because he was a cop on J6 and you were not a patriot and you hated cops. If you notice that he was a rabid partisan who was suffering from very serious TDS, you weren't, you were a cop hater. If you said, I don't really believe him. He sounds deranged. So he gets up there and, um, do we have a, uh, okay. Okay. And I'll just tell you what he says.

Um, okay. Setting the tone for the show for known laments. We're in a tough fucking spot. Acosta agrees. We are, we are. He's not afraid to express his feelings with expletives. How speaker Mike Johnson is a petty bitch surrounded by cock sucking colleagues, not to be confused with the unelected Trump supporters who are dick sucking ass clowns. Forgive me. This is dirty even for me. Then came someone named Olivia Troy. Troy, I don't know her, but she was a. OK, thank you, Troy. She's a former Republican who spoke at the Democratic National Convention. She's lamenting the loss of the federal bureaucrats who got fired thanks to Doge and Trump saying it's super upsetting. And I have to say to you that the American people, they may not recognize it right now, but they will realize it in time, the incredible treasure that they've lost. Okay, that wasn't it. Jim Acosta welcomed from across the pond, Rosie O'Donnell, who has moved to Ireland to flee Trump and all of his supporters.

And here's a little bit of how that went. This is going to feel like it's right out of the Jim Acosta show on Substack. We're bringing in a live guest. My friend, your friend, it is the wonderful and talented Rosie O'Donnell. There she is. How you doing, Jim? I'm doing great. Rosie, how are you? I'm well. Everybody showed up. How's the crowd? Not too bad. It's looking good.

There's one person in Washington who's probably not pleased that Rosie O'Donnell is being beamed into the Lincoln Theater just down the street from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. I can't imagine what's going through his mind right now. The Irish have taken you in there. Top of the morning to you, Rosie. Oh, my God. Yes, I'm sure Trump was very upset, guys, to see Rosie O'Donnell appearing in front of a couple hundred people at a Jim Acosta town hall. What is he doing? And you tell me why so few people want to help him in his quest to fuel courage, defend freedom and ignite truth. Do we know what the ticket price was? Free.

We must have it somewhere. I don't, it's not in front of me. It was probably free because usually at those events when they can't put butts in seats, they run around trying to find people who will just possibly sit there. I'd be curious what the VIP seats went for. There weren't.

Let me just say this. Why are you laughing? That's a serious question. I want to know. Who's a VIP at a Jim Acosta town hall? She says, by the way, she loves living abroad. She loves living abroad, and she points out that she loves it in part because the only people who like Donald Trump are taxi drivers. Those disgusting losers who have to drive cars for a living, unlike Rosie, who's on record as saying that she got so famous she didn't think any laws or rules applied to her.

So she's not like a loser taxi driver. That's Rosie, woman of the people. Go ahead, Sean. So I know something about crowd size. And let me tell you, that was not worrying Donald Trump. OK, I'm going to tell you right now that that is not even getting on his radar. Number two, I will just help him for the next one. And I'm just thinking of how we can

connect the dots in some of these segments. What if he leads Corinne Jean-Pierre's book launch? Because I think that together, that would be a huge audience for her. So I mean, I know it's not a lot at all, but that's probably as many books as she'll sell total. That's a good point. That'd be a great way for her to launch. She could go on Chuck Todd's podcast or streaming show, which has fewer viewers than are present as guests on this show right now. They gave out awards. They gave out awards to Miles Taylor, the mid-level bureaucrat who wrote the anonymous op-ed in the New York Times about being part of the resistance. He got an award. Tara Setmeyer, the former Lincoln Project bureaucrat who wrote the anonymous op-ed in the New York Times about being part of the resistance, he got an award. Tara Setmeyer, the former Lincoln Project advisor, got a Defender of Woman Award.

Aaron Parnas, a 26-year-old TikTok influencer, recognized as a defender of Gen Z and denounced members of the media, including Jake Tapper, for being more focused on selling books about a former president than they are about telling the truth. And Jim Acosta really wanted people to lean in on the taco messaging around Trump, which is the lamest attempt to take him down. It stands for Trump always chickens out. And they're trying to make this a thing. Acosta attempted some jokes, and this is in part how he started the night in Sat 24. You guys know this, but it's taco night here at the Lincoln Theater in Washington, D.C. There's a taco right there. This gentleman's wearing a taco on his head. What is going on? My God. The tacos only come in one flavor. That would be chicken. That's right. Oh my God. That is so cringy, Dan. I, I insist you take responsibility for him as a fellow Democrat. Yeah. It, it, you know, what's hard about it is for, for all those who want to say

that he and others during the first Trump term were serious journalists and that they had no partisan bent. It's really hard when they turn around and start doing this and have people like Rosie O'Donnell and and, you know, the like. I I don't know what he's I guess he's trying to make some money and he lost his job. And I can't imagine he's going to make a lot of money doing this. But, you know, this is not helping the Democratic Party move forward. I'll just leave it at that. God, no. Here he is trying to get like a rock concert thing going with the lights. OK, just like when you know you're dying on the vine, just wrap it. You just wrap it. You don't have to do cell phone lights. But he did. Here it is. 27. It may feel like we are surrounded in darkness right now, but I think what you just heard here from these gentlemen up here, from Tara, from Aaron, from Miles, is that there's still a lot of light left in all of us.

Oh, my God. to me if you carry that message with you as we leave this theater here tonight, that this is not a country that is being plunged into darkness. This is a country that can find its way back to the light. You know, a few months ago, that guy was the host of a news program on a network on a network that claims to be objective. And he should, he should be aware that Trump's approval ratings are at record highs right now. No one's buying this nonsense anymore. We're in darkness. Remember the light we have to stick together, all the terrible expletives from Fanone, whatever. You cut that short though. Cause then he led them in a full on version of the Macarena, which really got them excited. And I think that's where he

wowed the crowd is his moves there. So I think that is so here. Wait, just to give you actually how it went down. Here's here's a little bit more between Rosie and Acosta. It's not 26. It's like wrong with your voice. Why can't you say you're making no sense, Mr. President? Do you not know what the Declaration of Independence is? Good point. Well, maybe because they saw that I used to do that and then you saw what happened to me. I have to ask me, is this whole thing AI generated? I'm messing with you. I must ask, as a journalist, I must ask, because I see indications in there that it's not plausible that that's a real video. So I'll ask. I'll ask directly.

He's trying to say that the press is not more aggressive because they're worried about getting Jim Acosta'd by Trump. That's why they're giving Trump this pass. Go ahead, guys. No, what would you have to ask ChatGT for something that's stupid? Because I feel like whenever you're entering into a search term. Come up with Jim Acosta, acting like Jim Acosta. Oh, yeah. Well, maybe it is that simple then. Here's how it ended. Here's how it ended. Because continuing his theme, you know, primacy and recency, he really wanted them to remember it. Saw 28. I forgot to recognize.. Take a taco hat. Interns taco hat.

We're going to recognize him and thank them. Take a taco hat. I'm like Oprah. You get a taco hat and you get a taco hat. No, you're not like Oprah. See, if you look closely, he's got six fingers in that shot. It's not real. It can't be. Sadly, it's real. Get used to it. Guys, thank you.

A pleasure as always. Good to see you. See you soon. Okay, I want to tell you before we go, first of all, subscribe to Next Up with Mark Halperin on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. But I wanted to give a shout out to my friend Justin Wells' new season of Art of the Surge. He's been behind the scenes with Trump since before Butler, like on the campaign trail, getting incredible exclusive footage of our now president. And he was airing this over on Tucker's network. Now, this next season, the first three episodes just dropped on Fox Nation. And I know that the first couple of episodes focus on the night before the election where he was with Trump. And I know that because I saw him when we went to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,

and I spoke for Trump. So he got some of the behind the scenes moments on cam. And I'll show you a couple of those that he sent to us. Here is the moment I was backstage greeting Trump as he arrived at the venue. And you will hear the music playing in the background that Trump has playing wherever he shows up. Eleven hours till polls open. You haven't lost a snap. Wait, can I get a selfie? Yes, please. It was very cool.

I have to say, he pulls up in the Beast. And, well, it wasn't officially the Beast because he wasn't yet president, but like the big motorcade. And you're backstage and you can hear the crowd going wild waiting for him to come. And, you know, he comes in. Could not have been more gracious, of course. And then a little bit more, uh, with between yours truly and Justin Wells, before I was about to go out and speak at this exchange was with one of Trump's guys, but, uh, about what to expect, because I had no idea whether I was going to speak alone was Trump. I, they were like, he might call you up. I'm like, what does that mean?

Here's a little bit of that. I've never done this before. So like when I get up there, should I keep it tight? Should I like do, how long should I go for? Keep it somewhat tight, but trust me, he'll kind of lead you in the right direction. I'm sure he's going to throw things at you and you guys are probably going to communicate. Okay. I'll get some more clarification. Will it be like a co-bit? Like we'll be very well. It very well might be. Okay. I'll be right back. Thank you guys. Thank you. It was fun. I, for part of that, I had my family backstage with me and, uh, they were super excited. And then they went out into the venue and, you know, in those moments before you don't know, I mean, I, I too can get, I don't know, I'm not totally nervous, but like a

little, like I it's, it was unfamiliar. So I don't know, I'm not totally nervous, but like a little, like I, it's, it was unfamiliar. So I didn't know what to expect. And I didn't want to let the president down, the then candidate Trump down. And you know what? It wound up going very well. And most importantly, it wound up going very well for him the next day. And as a result for all of us. So good luck to Justin Wells with the Art of the Surge now airing on Fox Nation.

Check it out. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.