The Megyn Kelly Show - Kohberger Family Whitewashing, Trump on Maduro Dancing, and Symphony DEI, with Glenn Greenwald, Rich Lowry, and Clarinetist James Zimmermann | Ep. 1224

Episode Date: January 6, 2026

Megyn Kelly begins the show by discussing the New York Times complete puff piece about the family of Idaho murderer Bryan Kohberger, their complete whitewashing of important details and questions about what the family knew, and more. Then Glenn Greenwald, host of Rumble's "System Update,” joins to discuss Trump saying we're going to "keep the oil" in Venezuela, how America is planning to "nurse" the country back to health, whether Maduro's dancing had something to do with American intervention, Trump and Stephen Miller teasing they may just take Greenland, whether America could get kicked out of NATO and if that would be a good thing, and more. Then Rich Lowry, editor of National Review, joins to discuss why Trump is taking a “traditional American approach” to foreign policy with his Venezuela actions, the argument that his saber-rattling is all just about putting America in the best position possible, Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s new tenant director’s insane views on property ownership, her outlandish targeting of "white" people, and more. Then clarinetist James Zimmermann joins to talk about why he's suing the Knoxville Symphony over their actions after he won a blind audition, the DEI policies he spoke out about in his past, and more. Greenwald- https://rumble.com/c/GGreenwaldLowry- https://www.nationalreview.com/Zimmermann- https://x.com/jameszimmermann Riverbend Ranch: Visit https://riverbendranch.com/ | Use promo code MEGYN for $20 off your first order.Masa Chips: Ready to give MASA a try? Get 25% off your first order by going to http://masachips.com/MK and using code MK.DailyLook: https://dailylook.com to take your style quiz and use code MEGYN for 50% off your first order.Birch Gold: Text MK to 989898 and get your free info kit on gold  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 Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, live on SiriusXM Channel 111 every weekday at New East. Hey everyone, I'm Megan Kelly. Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show. We are off to a wild start to 2026 with news breaking left and right, including shocking comments from New York City Mayor Mom Dani's tenant advocate who has gone full pinko Kami. She makes AOC sound like Ronald Reagan. Plus, we have updates on Venezuela and Maduro. Our friend Rich Lowry of National Review is going to be here soon. And later, we have an exclusive interview with a clarinet player who was not hired despite winning a blind audition. He says because of DEI bullshit. You know, remember when Heather McDonald was on a couple years ago?

She's very sophisticated. She knows all about the symphony. She was railing on what was happening to our orchestras. Coast to coast, which are known for these blind auditions so that they can get the best people. Literally, they cannot see you when you go when you play your clarinet or your oboe or your flute. And they just choose the best player. Well, this guy was the best clarinetist, which as a former clarinetist myself, I can tell you. It's not easy.

It's not easy to be the best one at the Nashville Symphony or anywhere else, even the Bethlehem Central. symphony or band, as we used to call it. And this guy won it by a landslide, but as soon as they saw that it was a white guy who wasn't towing the DEI line at his last job, they fired his ass. They didn't give him the job. Well, he's here to tell you his story firsthand. We're going to start today with Glenn Greenwald. He's the first guest in the history of the MK show, back with his first 2026 appearance on

the show now. he's a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, and host of Rumble's System Update. I've been talking a lot about River Bend Ranch because I love their steaks. They have some spectacular beef bundles that are wonderful gifts to friends and family. Their prime rib roast and other bundles are only available while supplies last, and they are going fast. For the last 35 years, River Bend Ranch has been creating an elite Angus herd by using ultrasound technology to identify genetically superior cattle with a focus on flavor and tenderness. only use the top one or two percent of the other of the entire Angus population as their breeding stock, producing beef that has much more flavor and tenderness than your average Angus beef.

All River Bend Ranch cattle are born and raised in the USA, and the beef is processed right at the ranch in their award-winning USDA inspected processing facility. You avoid the costly middlemen because the beef is sent directly from Riverbend Ranch to your home. Order from Riverbend Ranch.com. And use the promo code Megan for 20 bucks off your first order. Let me know what you think. That's riverbendranch.com promo code, Megan. Glenn, welcome back. Always great to see you, Megan.

Thanks for having me. All right, I'm going to throw you for a loop here because I definitely want to get to Venezuela and all that stuff. But I want to start with something we didn't even tell you we were going to talk about today, and that is Brian Kohlberger. You're a lawyer and you're a journalist, so I'm going to throw this at you knowing that you can handle this from just your experience on both of those fronts. something rather, I don't know to say infuriating, but definitely frustrating, annoying and

disappointing, has taken place yet again at the New York Times. So they interviewed Mel Colberger, short from Melissa, who is Brian Colberger admitted quadruple murderer of the Idaho four, a crime that took place in 2002 at the University of Idaho, while these four students either slept in their beds or were in their rooms at four in the morning, when Brian Colberger, who was pursuing his Ph.D. and criminology at the neighboring University of Washington, just 10 miles away, sneaked into their off-campus apartment at the University of Idaho, and murdered all four of these young people, two were 20, two or 21, Zana Kronotel, Ethan Chapin, Madison Mogan, and Zana Cronodal, and Casey Consolvis. And we know he did the crime

because he now admitted it to save his life this summer. He copped a plea deal in exchange for taking the death penalty off the table. Well, now his sister comes out. And in what is an obvious attempt to whitewash, whatever her family's involvement in this, if any, was, she gives this interview to the New York Times trying to sound very sympathetic. And I'll tell you, the reason I have a problem with it. I don't blame Brian Kolberger's crimes on his family. I'm not a lunatic. But there have long been questions about what the family knew and when. And in particular, what suspicions this sister, Melissa, had about her brother. And what if anything her mother and Brian's mother, same woman, knew about his crimes. And I'm going to tell you the reporting, I'm basing this

off of, including that of Howard Bloom, who has owned this story from the beginning, doing exclusive updates on Graydon Carter's publication AirMail, on this show as well for NBC and Dateline in reporting that was so explosive and on point. It actually led the judge to delay the trial or consider delaying the trial because it was such a big scoop, all the stuff that he and Dateline got. Anyway, Howard Bloom knows what he's writing about and has been proven right time in time again in this case. So she gives this interview, Glenn, and she, it's the reporter's name is Mike Baker. Not that Mike Baker, not our former CIA friend, a different reporter. And this guy, from what I can tell, has let this woman completely rehab her image and her family's

image without knowing much about the case or without testing much about the case. First, she says, okay, there's some interesting background, some of which we covered in today's AM update. She says she was, by the way, her picture, she's there, she has blue hair. She has like a goth t-shirt on. She has heavy, weird makeup. And her story is that she was just hired to go work as a mental health therapist. I got to tell you, if I walked in to my new therapist and saw this woman sitting there, I would run the other way. A goth, blue-haired, you know, sister of Brian Colberger, it's a no. And I wasn't the only one who felt that way because she had. She said, to give up her job that she just got as a mental health counselor as soon as her brother got

arrested. Shocking. She talks about how when she first heard about the crimes, this is long before his arrest. They happened two months earlier. It occurred to her that he was just the type of person who would leave his door unlocked and go out on late night jogs. So she called him and said, Brian, you're running outside and this psycho killer's on the loose. Be careful. He thanked her for checking on him and assured her he would stay safe. Of course, he knew he would because he knew he was the psycho killer and that there was no random criminal running around trying to kill college students other than Brian Colberger. Then in early December that year, they write her brother returned to their parents home in Pennsylvania for the holidays and later that month. He got a call from their sister Amanda, I'm sorry, Ms. Goldberger, Mel, got a call from their sister Amanda who said cops had burst into the house in the middle of the night and arrested Brian in handcuffs.

the sister Amanda said to Mel, I'm with the FBI. Brian's been arrested. Mel claims, I was like, for what? The response from Amanda, the Idaho murders. For a brief moment, Mel wondered if it was a prank. Then a sense of nausea overtook her. Then we go on for several pages about what a beautiful family they had. The mother was Catholic, raised them with Catholic values. They read books like Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder, books we read in my very own family, for that matter. And I, too, was raised by a Catholic mother and father. And I would submit for the record, these are not the values that are taught that would lead one to become a psychopathic quadruple murderer at age in mid-20s. She talks about how she's been angered by internet posts from people

who speculated about her family and what they had known about Colberger being the killer. I've always been the person who has spoken up for what's right, she says. If I ever, if I ever ever had a reason to believe my brother did anything, I would have turned him in. Absolutely no scrutiny of this by the Times reporter and no testing of it with what's already been reported extensively about this family and this case. She, he does, however, let her talk about how poor Brian was overweight. He was now they believe somebody with autism. He endured persistent bullying. He wrote online of having no emotion, little remorse and feeling like an organic sack of meat with no self-worth. Later, he spiraled into heroin addiction. How did all that happen,

by the way, in such a perfect family? Just reading Little House on the Prairie and spending so much quality time together. It's never addressed. We were all worried that he was on the path to an early death, but then became so proud of him because he had overcome so much, and notwithstanding his socially awkward persona and his abrasive nature, he wound up, never violent, by the way, she says, at the University of Washington pursuing his Ph.D. Okay. Then she goes on to say, in the days before the raid, they'd gathered for Christmas, they were hugging tightly, they played TV party games. I'm sure it's just the perfect of Norman Rockwell Americana inside this house that produced one of the most prolific young serial killers we've seen in recent decades. Ms. Colberger, Mel,

was cleaning up in the kitchen. A sharp edge of foil caused her finger to bleed and her brother initially expressing disgust at the sight of blood then helped clean the cut and cover it with a bandage. Of course, we don't get into the nature of the crime, which was by knife that he murdered these four innocents at the University of Idaho. So brutally, Glenn, Mike Baker, I guess, didn't think this was worth mentioning, but I realized this is why he included the detail in here

because this feigning disgust at the sight of blood. but this should have been brought home, was they were so bloody these crimes that the house itself began to bleed. We saw in the police photos, which I am now putting on the board for the viewing audience on YouTube, this is the exterior of the home, the murder house on the University of Idaho, where blood is dripping outside of the house. That's how badly these young people were hacked to death and the amount of blood that they spilled. So, Here he is feigning disgust, is the word used in the piece of the sight of blood. And she says, Mel does, that she recalls in those days at home, Brian only briefly mentioning the Idaho murder, saying the investigators were still hunting for the killer.

She says, now, here we get to it. Colberger, Ms. Colberger, Mel, knowing that her brother had driven a white Atlanta back from school, said she had briefly wondered if they were looking for the same model. But then she learned that his was from a different year, 2015, and they were only thinking that the model was between years 2011 and 2013. Now, that right there is such an obvious lie, Glenn. Like, you, I don't know if you have siblings. All these years we've been together. I don't know what your family of origin looks like. But if your mind goes to, my brother might be the homicidal maniac who took those four lives.

But technically his white Alantra was built two years after the years they're looking for, I'm calling bullshit on you. If you've placed your sibling in the field of possible killers, you're actually not relieved that maybe it was a, the cutoff was 2013 as opposed to 2015, which by the way, they later updated anyway. Okay, I'm getting to this. So then they write about how, okay, that the mother has been praying daily now for families of the victims, that Mel Colberger has put the names of the victims and their birthdays into her digital calendar so she will get reminders about them. During the holidays, her family has felt grief that Mr. Colberger could not be with them, but then she would think of the victim's families and the pain they must be feeling.

very careful to say, there's only one set of victims, and I'm not on the list. I get that. Okay. Here is what we know from Howard Bloom. He has reported the following, that Mel Colberger reportedly confronted her father, Michael Colberger, with her fears that Brian was involved in the murders. The book, Howard's, which he wrote when the night comes calling, great book, by the way. The book claims that her father, quote, turned his back and walked away when faced with his daughter's suspicion. This is the daughter, Mel, being interviewed by the Times. The sister Mel was reportedly a witness to her brother engaging in odd behavior, such as wearing his rubber gloves and placing his personal garbage into Ziploc bags before disposing of it

in a neighbor's trash can in the days leading up to his arrest. That detail, too, omitted by Mike Baker. Nothing about the sister reportedly witnessing Brian. doing the most suspicious thing of all, the thing that could have led a jury to convict him even without his DNA on the knife sheath, taking all of his personal trash, putting it into Ziploc baggies, and making sure it went out into the neighbor's garbage bin instead of that at his home of origin after he'd went, he'd gone back to the Poconos with his dad, who drove him cross country. And what, if anything, did the dad do? No. And here's the real capper. The final real capper, before I give it to you, Glenn Greenwell. The mother who's praying for the and she's Catholic and the little house on the prairie. The mother is at the center of this whole thing because while the father did not even bother to show up to the sentencing, allegedly he wasn't feeling well or was having heart trouble and Mel stayed home with him, the mother showed up.

And the mother has been there for Brian all along. When we finally got a hold of his phone records, we found out that the murders, which were done between 405 and 420 a.m. It was in a 12-minute span, right, in that exact time frame. And he had turned off his phone from like 230 to 4.30 a.m. there while he committed these crimes. Then he turned his phone back on. So he gets back to his home, University of Idaho, sorry, University of Washington, by, let's say, 545-6 at the latest. What happens, or 445, 5 at the latest? What happens when he gets there? He calls his mother within an hour. We know from his phone records that at 6.13 a.m., this is within two hours of having hacked four innocents to death with a knife, just him.

At 6.13 a.m., he made an attempt to call his mother. A minute later, angry that he couldn't get her, he called his dad asking why his mother did not answer. At 6.17 a.m., he connects with his mother for 36.5. minutes. At 8.03 a.m., he calls his mother again and speaks to her for 54 minutes while driving back to the crime scene in Moscow, Idaho. Why was he doing that? Had she told him make sure you go back and see about the knife sheath? Had he confessed anything to the mother, it's very hard to believe they didn't discuss it. 120 minutes after he did it when he was obviously very insistent on getting a hold of the mother in the first place. At 9 a.m., another 9-minute conversation

with the mother, totaling over three hours of conversation that day via five calls, none of which is mentioned in this rehabilitative puff piece in the New York Times that did absolutely no kicking of the sister's story or tires, Glenn. And it was a journalistic fail where this guy obviously let himself get used by a young woman with some psychological training on how to manipulate people, as it turns out, according to me. And this had no business appearing in a paper of record like The Times. That's what I wanted to get your thoughts on. Yeah, there's a lot there. And I totally agree that by far the most interesting or at least consequential part of all these events is the journalistic angle. By the way, I do have a brother. And I couldn't

imagine ever remotely even for like a fleeting second considering the possibility that he's a serial killer. And then if I were actually in a realm where I was considering that possibility, that would already be extremely alarming. And the idea that, oh, I'm going to exonerate him only because the car that he was driving was out of the range by about a year. Once you're down that road, you're pretty far well beyond where anybody would, whatever be. I think that would be a pretty big red flag. But the journalist thing I go, I think is so important, Megan, because I think, you know, you and I work in journalism, so we see it up close. Most people who don't work in journalism don't. Like we don't see, you know, heart surgeries up close or people flying aircraft.

And when you do, you, you see things that I think people should be aware of. Oftentimes, one of the things that is most dangerous to journalism is when you get a source who can provide you with an important value. And this is a big scoop, right? This is the sister of this serial killer in a case that has gotten major attention. He's kind of this enigma and mystery. He has never spoken. He didn't defend himself in court. He pled guilty.

No one understands why he did what he did. He won't provide any information. And now the sister is speaking for the first time. It's a big benefit to the reporter at the New York Times to get the story. It's why we're talking about it gets a lot of attention. And one of the problems that bad journalists fall into, the temptation that they refuse to resist, is that when you have a source who's giving you an important story that can help your career, it's very tempting to start trying to almost become.

their advocate, like to take their side, to almost say to them, if you give me this story, I will help you as well. And it becomes this quid pro quo where now the journalist isn't doing journalism by interviewing this source. The journalist hat is out the window because they're so grateful they got the story. And in the course of probably negotiating, they have a personal relationship that develops. And so you have all of these questions. I haven't followed this case that closely so I can't opine on every aspect of it. But what clearly seems to be the case, I did look at this article a few days ago when it came out or maybe yesterday, even though I didn't know what I was going to talk about it with you.

It was my impression, there were so many aspects of the story where, like, there's so many obvious follow-ups that just aren't in here. I wasn't even aware that there was other reporting that they should have been confronted with, but that I do think is something that happens quite often, and it's a big problem with journalism. It's a total fail, and you're exactly right. He was so excited and enamored with his exclusive that he fell down on the job and didn't ask the basic follow-up question. and I don't even know. Does he even know about the case? Has he read anything by Howard Bloom so much. Howard, for example, had been walking us through from the beginning the fact that the FBI had been following Brian Colberger when he trekked back home to the Poconos from the University of Washington with his family. Howard is the one who broke the news that the FBI in trying to match the DNA that was found on the knife sheath used not just the public database of DNA to see if there was a match, but the

private databases too, which is technically a no-no, but it doesn't violate a law. It's just a stated rule. And that's how they found him. Howard broke so many exclusives on this case and to not actually just do a search or be familiar with his reporting before you get to the family member would also be a dereliction of duty. The entire thing, it's not worth the paper it's printed on. It is an attempt to rehab some suspicious behavior. I'm not blaming the murders on the family. But there is a real question about whether A. Mel Colberger had real suspicions about her brother long before the FBI showed up in their house that night that went beyond, oh, gee, they're all washed away by the fact that it turns out the Hyundai Alantra they're looking

for is two years between 2011 and 2013, not his 2015 vehicle. And B, what was the mother discussing in three hours worth of talks, two hours after he committed the crimes with her son. That is the most suspicious. And by the way, obvious question that he should have at least asked and if there was no answer should have told us that that exchange took place. So shame on the times. It's a great get, but only if you handle it properly, which he did not do here. Okay, let's move on to some hard news. We've covered that case extensively here in our audience, I think has him interest in it. So that's why I threw you that for that loop. Okay. Also very much in the news today is Venezuela. And President Trump cannot stop talking about Venezuela to literally

anybody who calls him. Kristen Welker of NBC, Joe Scarborough of NBC just made news talking to Trump about NBC, about Venezuela. And Trump just told Joe Scarborough in a phone interview that Scarborough has now reported on, quote, the president's response, Joe, on the difference between Iraq and Venezuela is that Bush didn't keep the oil. We are going to keep the oil. And to underline his point, Trump said his comments, I'm quoting here from the Scarborough report, said his comments were no longer on background and said in 2016, I said we should have kept the oil. It caused a lot of controversy. Well, we should have kept the oil, the president said. And we're going to rebuild their broken down oil facilities. And this time, we're going to keep the oil. Well, I don't know what that

means, Glenn. And I realize that Venezuela took a bunch of oil from our oil companies decades ago and didn't fully repay the oil companies. But that's literally decades ago now. And I don't know what Trump is talking about, but it seems as close as we're going to get to just an admission that this really is about the oil and that it was about seizing it, that we're going to seize their oil and not just about keeping it away from people like Iran and Russia. And and Cuba and other bad actors with whom Maduro had been cooperating. So, by the way, on the heels of that, he also says openly that we need to nurse Venezuela back to health before there can be an election.

So we are there to get the oil. I don't know what the U.S. oil companies are saying about this. We searched but didn't find anything explicitly. And now, instead of, you know, focusing all of our efforts on nursing the United States economy back to health, we're going to be nursing Venezuela. back to a place where we can trust its elections. We don't know when they're happening. So this is potentially an issue for Trump as we go forward to the midterms.

I'll give you one other fact. He says, no, it's not. He says, and they quote, MAGA is with me. He says, MAGA loves it. Maga loves what I'm doing. Maga loves everything I do. Maga is me. Maga loves everything I do, and I love everything I do too.

So your thoughts on all of that. First of all, I think one of the big problems here is that this is a highly consequential action. You can call it a war if or not a war if you want. I personally regarded it as a war when we send our Air Force and bomb the crap out of multiple cities in a country, including their capital. After we have a massive military buildup and spend months bombing their boats off the international waters of their coast with the CIA covert operation, inside the country that has lasted many months, invade their country with our military, take their leader, bring him back to Washington, and then have the president declare the United States now in charge of that country, ruling that country, governing that country. To me, that's a war, but you can call it whatever you want.

And also, we don't know how far this is going to go. President Trump himself has said, this may not be the end. We may put troops on the ground. He said he's not afraid of that. He's happy to do that if that's necessary. So there's a lot more that can happen. But even in terms of what has happened up to this point, there's two problems, major problems with it. The first one is this was never discussed during the campaign.

We just had a major presidential campaign that went on for 18 months, as they always do. We had presidential debates, campaign planks. Nobody ever suggested that it was somehow important to our national security or otherwise in our interest to go in and effectuate regime change in Venezuela using our military and our CIA. That was never discussed. To the extent anything was discussed, there was a claim, which I agree with, that we have a major problem with fentanyl. And during the United States, I think the big problem is why do so much Americans want to consume drugs, but in terms of the supply, fentanyl doesn't come from Venezuela.

Trump himself said thousands of times fentanyl comes, their precursors do from China, and they come through Mexico. And to the extent he proposed any solution, it wasn't going and doing regime change in Venezuela. It was barbing the drug cartels in Mexico, which we haven't done, and it suddenly switched to this other thing. So when you have that, the fact that we have a major election, there's been no real discussion of this, it suddenly happens, combined with the fact that the rationale keeps changing. Originally, we were told we have to do this because drugs are coming from Venezuela. As I just said, fentanyl, which is by far the most concerning drug, doesn't come from Venezuela.

Cocaine, a small percentage, 7 to 9 percent comes from Venezuela. These are all, according to government reports under Donald Trump, that his DEA and other agencies prepared. So, and also, just because we take Maduro out and leave the government in place doesn't mean that the drug cartels are going to disappear. We're not in Venezuela. How are we going to stop that or change? And then Colombia and other countries, including Mexico, can just, even if the drug flow were impeded from Venezuela, just send more drugs into the United States. It's not going to impede a single iota of drugs in the United States. It's not going to help people who have drug addiction problems and want drugs and keep consuming drugs in the United States.

Then we were told us about liberating the Venezuelan people, except the entire communist government under Maduro is still in place. President Trump wants to leave them in place, at least for the time being, he's saying there, we don't want to have elections. there was an assumption that President Trump would put into power the opposition candidate, Edmond Gonzalez, who was declared the winner of the last election or Maria Machada, the Nobel Prize winner. And he's saying, no, we're not going to put them in place. We're going to do business with the communist regime.

There's evidence that there's more repression now in Venezuela because they feel like they've been attacked externally. So that rationale has gone by the wayside. And then what? We're going to take their oil. Do you know how long it's going to take to refurbish that oil infrastructure? And Megan, even if we steal their oil, and I can promise you, if we do that, obviously a lot of people in Venezuela are going to fight very hard against the United States, against that. We're going to be dragged into the middle of a guerrilla war, the kind that any country would fight if we say we're going to steal your oil for our benefit.

But for whose benefit would that be for the shareholders and the executives of Exxon and Chevron and these international oil conglomerates, none of that is going to flow to the benefit of the American people. So the question is for whose benefit is all of this happening, I think Americans voted for no more regime change wars. We don't want to be governing other countries. We can barely govern our own. And they've made that repeatedly clear. I think it's one of the reasons why they voted for President Trump because he promised not to do more regime change wars. And now suddenly because Maga loves it and Maga loves everything that he does, which may be true. But Maga is a small portion of the voting population.

I think it's going to create a lot of political problems for Trump in the midterms. but much more importantly, major geopolitical problems for the United States. What we're seeing now is many conservatives who are kind of leaning into American power and openly using the term imperialism. Like, we're fine with that. You know what? We're the badass of the Western Hemisphere. We can do it.

We have the military capability and might to show off in this way, which is a good deterrent for these bad guys to see, like, only we could pull this off. You know, like, good for us. better not eff with us. And, you know, if it takes messing with, like, this tin pot country, that's what I've heard people say, then too bad. Who gives a shit about Venezuela is what a lot of people are kind of saying. Like, they've effed with us for too long. They were playing footsie with our enemies who cannot have a greater foothold in the Western Hemisphere. You know, Teddy Roosevelt wouldn't have allowed this. Monroe wouldn't have allowed this. And why should

Donald Trump allow this when he can send the Delta Force in there? And boom, Bob's your uncle. Maduro's out. Yes, his vice president is still running the country. But as Trump says, we control her because we control the oil embargo happening around Venezuela. This is not new, Megan. I mean, nobody doubts that the United States has the most powerful military on the planet. China has caught up in a lot of ways.

But overall, the United States military is by far the most powerful military force on the planet. I don't know anyone literally who doubts that. we are now spending a trillion dollars a year, the first ever trillion dollar year budget on our military. This is all going to the coffers of Boeing and North of Grumman and Palantier and all the rest of the military industrial complex that I thought we were supposed to be worried about and we're trying to weaken. So if you want to take the position that, hey, we're back to 2002, we're just going to go around the world bombing people, invading. Stand by. That doesn't work. President Trump himself is saying, no, we're going to rebuild. Venezuela. Are you going to hear me? Yeah, now I got you. Keep going. Yeah, so I was saying

there's this attempt to distinguish between what this is and neoconservatism by saying, no, the neocons wanted to nation build. They actually really didn't. They just wanted to bomb and kill enemies. And that's what we were doing. And it actually redounded to our harm in so many ways. We tried this so many times throughout history. It's not like the United States has been shy about invading other countries and overthrowing regimes. We've been doing this for many, many decades. And look at what we have, $38 trillion in debt, an educational system and health care system that are totally broken, massive income inequality, people who can't buy a home. And now the idea is we're just going to double down and we're going to put more and more

into our military. Honestly, I don't mean to be too psychoanalytical about this, but I do think this idea that like, yeah, we're back and we're going to dominate the world. This is like a very psychological need that I think comes from weakness that a lot of people feel like they don't get to really go to war, only a tiny fraction of our population or the people who fight in it, at least unless we have a draft again.

People don't have an opportunity to really feel like they're purposeful and brave and courageous and connected to a mission. And so by getting to watch our military from afar carry out successful operations, people get to feel strong and powerful. Like you see these people walking around

who don't really display any bravery or strength themselves saying like, yeah, this is our hemisphere. And they're getting like this kind of vicarious strength from the bravery of others. I think it's a very damaging way to try and feel good about yourself. And the bigger problem is you can go and fight the rest of the world. The reason that big powers like England or France or Belgium or the United States stop being imperial powers is because it sucks all of your resources out of you. You're constantly slaughtering people and murdering people, trying to manage

countries that you don't understand thousands of miles away using all kinds of inhumane force. people decided that it wasn't worth it anymore. That's why imperialism was renounced and this idea that we're going to go back to it. I thought the whole point of the Trump movement was we're going to focus our resources here at home. We're going to invest in our communities in our people. We don't want to build up the military industrial complex. We don't want to constantly be fighting wars.

And like overnight, all of that vanished. And now we're right back to this sort of like Lindsay Graham, Bill Crystal model of the world that I thought the model movement was about renouncing. Totally. You saw how happy Lindsay Graham was yesterday. It was like, okay. He was thrilled. He was twitching with like ecstasy.

I mean, I've never seen him smiling that much. And why wouldn't he? I don't blame him. He's getting what he wants. No, I know. It's like Trump's been surrounded by actual neocons who really love bombing things. And the policies seem to reflect that. Now, I don't, you know, Trump does what he wants to do.

But one does wonder if you're hanging out with Lindsey Graham, whether that's a great thing as our president. Now, Trump did add to the story. I read this in the New York Times, and at first I didn't believe it because there's been a lot of bullshit going on about Trump. Like the Washington Post yesterday reported that the reason he doesn't want Maria Machado. Because she won the Nobel Prize. Yes, because she just sounded like bullshit. And now already the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have both said that that's a bunch of nonsense. So you do have to be very skeptical.

But the New York Times on Sunday reported, and I'm reading here, Mr. Maduro's regular public dancing and other displays of nonchalance in recent weeks helped persuade some of the Trump team that the Venezuelan president was mocking them and trying to call what he believed to be a bluff, according to two of the people who spoke on the condition of anonymity. So the White House decided to follow through on its military threats, which sounded kind of too cute by half. But then the Times reported this this morning, just this morning. President Trump is addressing Republican law, at the House GOP retreat. That happened this morning at 10 a.m. In wide-ranging remarks, he praised the U.S. raid in Venezuela and said that he had been annoyed at the way the ousted Venezuelan president, Nicholas Maduro, had danced as Trump administration officials escalated their threats against him in the weeks before the raid. Here is that moment today in Sot 1. They've been after this guy for years and years and years.

And, you know, he's a violent guy. He gets up there and he tries to imitate my dance a little bit. But he's a violent guy. And he's killed millions of people. He's tortured. They have a torture chamber in the middle of Caracas. So he mentioned the dancing. By the way, here's the dancing.

In case you didn't see it, this is a video from November 22nd. Here is Maduro trying to imitate the Trump dance. which could be the reason he's in handcuffs in a New York City jail at the moment, which is mildly amusing until you really think it through and then it gets kind of disturbing. Your thoughts, Glenn? Here's the thing that's bothering me, Megan. When I was comparing Trump's foreign policy instincts to the Democrats under Biden and Harris and also especially Hillary Clinton, what always struck me about Donald Trump,

and I said this many times on television and other places, is that when he talked about war, he talked about war and prioritized the most important thing about it, which is that people in large numbers die. You bomb people, and we talk about bombing, but there's people on the ground who are now dead, innocent people. He talks about the war in Ukraine. He always is emphasizing the number of people who are died in a way that I think is very important and very healthy.

And he always showed this kind of aversion to war because of that. And it is true that in his first term, he was the first president not to involve the United States in a new war in. decades. That really was true about him, and I used to talk about that a lot. In this last year, though, and I started noticing this when he bombed Yemen in the first month after criticizing Biden for having bombed Yemen, and then he restarted that bombing campaign, but especially when he bombed Iran in conjunction with Israel, and he started going around talking about how he and Netanyahu were war heroes. And it kept saying Netanyahu deserves a pardon for the criminal

charges that he faced because those two are war heroes. And you could see Trump really taking this sort of like pride and sense of strength. He didn't, of course, fight in the military. There was a Vietnam War that he avoided. But he started feeling like he was a war hero and he was starting to get this kind of positive feeling from ordering things bombed and from bullying things up and from showing that he was the strongest. And so in the first term, John Bolton tried to pressure him. So did Marker Rubio to do regime change of Venezuela. And he was okay with it. And then he realized it was too hard and he didn't do it. And that's what led to John Bolton leaving. And now suddenly we're back to, oh, yeah, look what happened. He defied me.

And I went in and we got him. Like, he risked the lives of soldiers and our military and potentially started a new war in Venezuela because he didn't like the fact that Maduro was dancing. And I do believe that was part of the motive because none of it, none of the rest of it makes sense in terms of what it is that we did here. The last thing I just want to say quickly making, if I could, is like, even if a country is weaker, even if a country doesn't have the military the United States has, people just instinctively have nationalistic pride, just like the United States says. If we get attacked where people threaten us, we unite behind our government against them, that is what countries do. And if Venezuelans, including ones who don't like Maduro,

who hate Maduro, think the United States is there to take their oil and use it for the benefit of big oil companies or Americans, of course they're going to fight the United States. And not just they, but people throughout the region, it's going to generate the kind of anti-American sentiment that we saw and still see in the Middle East. because of the same behavior, there's long-term consequences to all of this, no matter how triumphal as people might be feeling right now. There's, I mean, Trump is too smart to not realize that. He's, there is no way he's planning on just stealing the oil without giving anything to

the Venezuelans. I just think he's too smart. You know, he may be talking loosely. He's definitely talking loosely to NBC and Scarborough. But, you know, as for official policy, it's got to involve more than that. It has to come at the enrichment of the Venezuelans, or he, he would know what they what they would do. I mean, so far, what we've seen as reactions out of Venezuela that appear to be favorable, though some of them are old. Like, you do have to be very careful about what

you're seeing online. I know you've been tweeting about some of the videos that are like four years old. It's like, no, no, they were cheering about something else. But there are definitely many Venezuelans who are all over acts praising President Trump. I mean, Anna Navarro on the view was praising President Trump about this. It does not seem like we went in there and decapitated a regime that was super popular. It seems like even the Venezuelans were not too in love with Maduro.

Now, that doesn't necessarily make it right. I'm just saying, I don't know if the analysis of, like, they're going to rally around their flag and their deposed leader is going to work here. Okay, let me just address that. First of all, Democrats despise George Bush and Dick Cheney. They believed he stole the 2000 election.

But the minute our country was attacked, almost everybody united behind George Bush and Dick Cheney, not for like a week or for a month, but for like two or three years, gave them license to go and attack Iraq. He had 75, 80% approval rating. I'll just give you a quick analogy. In Brazil, where, as you know, I live and I do reporting,

a few months ago, Donald Trump announced he was going to tear up, impose tariffs on Brazil, sanctioned Brazilian leaders because he didn't want Jaya Bolsonaro, the former president who Trump likes going to prison. He doesn't like other policies that Brazil is enacting. And huge numbers of Brazil, including ones who hate the government, who hate the current president, Lula De Silva, united and said,

it's not the United States that governs our country. We govern our country. We decide how Brazilians and Brazil is governed. Not the United States. There's always this unifying feeling. The problem is that exiles are people who left Venezuela, you know, we used to hear from like before the Iraq war, these Iraqi exiles who kept telling us, oh, they're going to be dancing in the streets. They're going to welcome you as liberators. They weren't representative of the people who are actually in Iraq who remember are indoctrinated with all kinds of things. Let me ask you something. Because I heard a defense on that that I was like, that's actually not a bad defense.

Talking about the vast difference culturally between Iraq and Venezuela, talking about how you're going in the Middle East with a bunch of Muslims who are raised in ways that we cannot relate to at all. It's third world. And versus Venezuelans who are largely Catholic, who may have a background that's much more similar to, you know, a lot of Latinos living in Miami. And so it's not going to be as difficult to sort of help them revamp their country and reestablish a democracy that works in the way that we wanted to. And that would be favorable toward the U.S. Okay, first of all, this

discourse is completely contrary to everything else we've been hearing for years from the conservative movement, which is the idea that Venezuelans and other Latin Americans, Central Americans, Latin Americans cannot come to our country and assimilate because they are primitive. They don't share our values. They can't understand liberal democracy. They can't integrate into American culture the way, say, like, Europeans could, Italians could, the Irish could. It's different race.

It's a different culture. This is something that we've been hearing for a long time. Now, suddenly Venezuelans are very aligned with us and similar to us and are ready to adopt Jeffersonian democracy in a way that the Iraqis weren't. That's the first thing. The second thing is most of the people in these countries in Venezuela and elsewhere are poor people. They're not very well educated. They've been living under communism for 25 years now. They are indoctrinated to believe that the United States is evil, just like we're indoctrinated

to believe that Cuba and Venezuela and communist countries are evil. They have that same level of indoctrination. They're not reading freely the media or having open debate in Venezuela. They don't want the United States who they view, and Hugo Chavez was a very popular Venezuelan leader before Maduro. You used to talk about how George Bush was Satan. The United States is the great Satan. These are things they've been indoctrinated with for a long time. They're not going to, they're not Venezuelans of sulfur in the air after George Bush Yeah, that's what Hugo Chavez said when, when, exactly, when he followed Bush.

So these Venezuelans of Miami are not representative of like, Venezuelans in the rural area of the country or the poor Venezuelans who live in Caracas, who are now very well armed. And I think we like to tell ourselves that other countries are grateful when we invade them, when we bomb them, when we remove their leader. And the last thing I'll say, Megan, is if China came in and arrested Trump out of the White House, you would have huge numbers of Americans celebrating that. Oh, Trump was Hitler, Trump is. And it doesn't really say much about either the justifiability or what most people

in the country think. These are very unrepresented people we're seeing in the media. I would definitely say that, well, that would never happen. But secondly, in Trump's defense, Maduro was not the recognized leader of Venezuela. So it's not exactly the same as actually like capturing a head of state who's legitimately by any measure running the country. He lost an election in July of 2024. He refused to cede his power and claimed falsely that he had won. I want to give you this. It's not just Venezuela. Now we're talking about possibly invading Cuba. That seemed to be what Marco Rubio was intimating and even Trump was intimating just yesterday. We played the soundbite on yesterday's show. And not just Cuba, but Colombia, where Trump said the president there, better quote, watch his ass.

and then also Greenland is back on the table. And that got very interesting over on CNN. When Stephen Miller gave an interview to Jake Tapper about what's going to happen with Greenland, because Trump keeps saying we have to have it. We just, we have to have it. We need Greenland. He's not backing off. It's caused an international incident now.

European leaders have spoken out saying, we would like to remind you that it belongs to Denmark and that that's a NATO country and that there'll be no taking Greenland. But here's what Stephen Miller said to Jake Tapper, Sot 7. The premier of Greenland and the premier of Denmark and other Danish officials are responding to a Twitter post from your wife, Katie Miller, herself a former Trump White House official, showing Greenland covered with an American flag, saying soon, after that was posted, President Trump repeated the claim that the U.S. needs Greenland for national security reasons. The Danish Prime Minister responded to this in an interview

earlier today, as reported by Bloomberg, quote, I believe one should take the American president seriously when he says that he wants Greenland, but I will also make it clear that if the U.S. chooses to attack another NATO country militarily, then everything stops, including NATO, and thus the security that has been established since the end of the Second World War. Can you rule out that the U.S. is ever going to try to take Greenland by force? It would be military action against Greenland.

Greenland has a population of 30,000 people, Jake. The real question is, by what right does Denmark assert control over Greenland? The United States is the power of NATO. For the United States to secure the Arctic region to protect and defend NATO and NATO interests, obviously Greenland should be part of the United States. Nobody's going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland. So that's a long list. I didn't even mention Iran where Trump said we're locked and loaded and ready to go in if they shoot any protest.

over there, and the protests have been growing. And by the way, now there's reports that the Ayatollah has said he's ready to flee to Russia, if need be, though these protests are not quite as extreme as ones we've seen in the past, where he did no such thing. So whatever, take Iran with an asterisk. But Greenland rhetoric is ramping up. Your thoughts? I mean, there's no coherence here. Like Colombia, where President Trump is threatening, the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, is a democratically elected leader. Nobody doubts that. just doesn't like Petro because Petro is a left-wing leader who has been criticizing Trump. So that now is justification for threatening Petro.

And we're going to go to war in Colombia, possibly. We're threatening. You can't threaten all these wars in Iran, in Cuba, and not follow through. And that's going to be a lot of different wars that we're then going to be fighting. And then as far as Greenland is concerned, you know, Stephen Miller saying, by what right does Denmark have Greenland? It's like saying, by what right does the United States have California? By what right does the United States have Mexico?

These are century-old nations that have been defined by their borders and recognized internationally for centuries. And while it may be true that Denmark isn't going to go to war with the United States over Greenland, the entire EU, all of NATO is going to absolutely separate from the United States if the United States steals land from an EU and a NATO member. Can I just ask you something? Is that such a bad thing? I don't know.

Like, are we like if we get kicked at a NATO? Like, if they can't kick us out, we're the funding the whole thing. A lot of Americans, a lot of Republicans have been saying we should dump NATO to begin with. I don't even, I think, I like when President Trump was questioning the ongoing viability of NATO because it was a defensive alliance formed to protect Western Europe against the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union no longer exists. So I think there's a very good reason for questioning NATO. All I'm saying is that-

If we didn't have NATO, I mean, we might not have the Ukraine war right now. Keep going. All I'm saying, Megan, is that while Stephen Miller is right in this very simplistic, dismissive tone, Denmark is not going to go to war with the United States over Greenland, it's only because it can't. There's going to be massive consequences in terms of having entire regions of the world, hate the United States, view us as this rogue nation. And you can say, I don't really care about that, but that's what opens up China to all

of this influence. That's why China has so much influence, because so many countries have concluded the United States as this bully that uses military force. All of this has major implications. The reason why we get attacked by the Middle East, the reason that there are a lot of people who hate us in the Middle East is because this is the behavior we've been engaging in for the Middle East for decades. We've been overthrowing their governments, opposing the caterships on them, taking their oil, telling them that they have no rights. Yes, they can't fight us in the sense

that they have a military equal to ours, but there's all kinds of repercussions from that. The CIA has a term for that. It's called blowback that if you just go around the world, bullying other countries and taking things that you want, there's going to be a lot of ramifications that you have to take into consideration that are going to come back to say nothing of the cost Who's going to fight all these words that Trump is, is vowing and threatening? I mean, I don't think Trump wants to get involved in a war. Like, I think you can see that, too. He doesn't want, he definitely, he was one of the first people to oppose the Iraq war when Republicans were all defending it.

He doesn't want a war. He's defining his foreign policies, these pinpoint strikes where he gets in and he gets out. And by the time you've heard that there's a war on, it's over, right? And he says, we're not at war with Venezuela. We're at war with their drug dealers and people like that, he says. But I don't, I give Trump the benefit of the doubt that he does not want. anything prolonged and would do his best to stop something like that. The risks I think we're looking at here are that the other sides don't agree, right? Like, we didn't want war before we got

attacked on 9-11 either. Right. You can always avoid war as long as the other side just submits and does everything that you tell them to do. The problem is that very often they don't do that. And many of the worst wars have happened not because leaders wanted wars, but because once you start threatening military conflict, you have military buildup, tensions increase. You have escalation, you have miscommunication, all these things can happen in a very unintended way. This is a very dangerous game to be playing. Like, yes, I do believe that Donald Trump doesn't want to fall into some major quagmire in war. The problem is that the policy that he's pursuing are very likely to lead to that.

I mean, what if the Venezuelans don't submit to all of his orders? He's already said, we'll be happy to put brutes on the ground. And now you have an escalated situation. Look at how Vietnam began. We're going to send some advisors. We don't want war in Vietnam. And within a few years, we had tons of military, tons of soldiers. And within a few years after that, there were 60,000 American dead soldiers.

Not because anyone ever set out and said, I want to have a decade of war in Vietnam, but because the policies we pursued led inexorably to that. I definitely don't think Trump is going to willingly walk us there. But the question is, is it out of our control? Is it potentially out? Great to see you, my friend. See you soon, Glenn. Up next, Rish Lowley.

Look, 2026 does not mean reinventing the wheel. Start small, swap out the garbage snacks for something real like Masa chips. It's the no effort way to eat better without the diet nonsense. Just three little ingredients, organic corn, sea salt, and grass-fed beef tallow. No seed oils, no chemicals, just real actual food. And these chips taste fantastic. Truly, not like those other sad, healthy alternatives that feel like an assignment. With Massa, you get satisfied, not stuffed.

energized, not sluggish. They have spicy flavors, they have sweet flavors. Plus, fans of Masa should also check out Vandy Crisps, their sister brand, three ingredient potato chips that are legitimately delicious. Ready to give Masa a try? Go to masachips.com slash MK. Use the code to get 25% off your first order, or simply click the link in the description, or scan the QR code to claim this delicious offer. Don't feel like ordering online? Masa is now available nationwide at your local sprouts supermarket. Stop by, pick up a couple of bags before they're all gone.

Joining me now are pal Rich Lowry, who is editor of National Review. NR and my buds over there are very much in favor of the action in Venezuela and dropped a very interesting podcast debating it yesterday on the editors, which I highly recommend. So, Rich, we just had Glenn Greenwald on and I know you didn't hear Glenn's defense.

but you've probably seen his remarks on Twitter, and you know Glenn, very, very much against, you know, sort of this imperialist behavior by President Trump, by the United States, worried about the unintended consequences, you know, where it will land, whether there'll be a revolt of some sort within Venezuela, a rallying around their own flag, a rejection of any American control, and certainly of any attempt to seize the oil. As Trump told Scarborough, according to Scarborough this morning, he intends to do, that we're going to, quote, keep the oil. Give us your best defense of why this was a good idea.

Yeah, so Maduro is a terrible person, terrible leader of Venezuela, allied with all the enemies of the United States. But by the standards of when the Monroe Doctrine was really in its heyday, every aspect of this regime would have been unacceptable. The disorder is spreading in the hemisphere and here in the United States via the mass migration it's caused, the criminality and the drug running, the allied with our enemies, none of that would have been acceptable. So look, I agree with what you were saying yesterday. This is pretextual the idea that it's just a law enforcement operation. It wasn't an act of war to topple the head

of state there. But in terms of what we've seen in other interventions, the U.S. has undertaken in the last 20 years, this is so minimalistic, right? This would be the equivalent of a snatch and grab against Saddam Hussein, then having a bathist general take power, and then hoping you can influence him to do what you want. So there are all sorts of ways this can go sideways. There are all sorts of risks. But the way he's done it so far is calculated to minimize those risks, I think. So for people who, you know, haven't spent their lives studying the Monroe doctrine as like freshened up by Teddy Roosevelt, can you just give us a little background? because I did read over an NR about like the numerous interventions that we did do in South America over the years when one of our neighbors was turning out to be derelict or dirt baggy or something that we found potentially problematic to us.

And certainly if we saw at the time, it was always Europe we were worried about it wasn't China back then or Russia. If we saw them meddling, we were pretty quick to go down there and say, oh no. Yeah, so the Minot Docton is the idea that we have supremacy in the hemisphere, right? So the strategic purpose of it is to exclude European nations because they represent a significant threat to us, potentially, geopolitically. And then what happens after its initial enunciation, you get the Roosevelt corollary and the Lodge corollary, which basically kind of flip it in his head in some respects. So instead of excluding others from intervening, we assume a right to intervene when there's disorder such that it's a threat to us or it might tempt someone else to come in and intervene. So just for the record, this is not a Trump invention.

This has been around for over 150 years. Trump is actually just resurrecting a principle that has already been recognized by presidents long ago. Keep going. Yeah. So the Trump corollary is basically just the Roosevelt. corollary or the lodge corollary. It's not a new corollary, but he likes putting his names on things. So he has to have his name on a corollary. But this is a traditional American approach he's taken. Now, we gotten away from it the last 30 years. The last real manifestation of this was

when George H.W. Bush went into Panama. But this is, we went into Latin America on much less provocation than this. Countries would just be poorly run fiscally. And we'd go in and say, okay, we're taking over your finances because we don't want you in debt to Britain or Germany because that might tempt them to come in and seize your territory or take control of your government. We don't want to see that happen. See that happen. So in some of your respects, Trump feels completely new because he's very old and represents traditions we'd gotten away from for better or worse. The Panama thing actually worked out okay. I mean, like, not all of these interventions have worked out. In fact, the vast majority of them have not worked out, like Iraq and Libya. But the Panama thing, which is probably the most analogous, did work out pretty well. And we'll see whether, you know, that's what's going to happen here. What do you make of Trump saying to Scarborough, though, that we're going to keep the oil? Again, I don't know what that means exactly. It's like a snippet. How do we keep the oil? It's not our oil. I realize they owe us some oil or at least some payments for oil they took from Exxon and back in the day. But like,

What do you make of that news this morning? He's had a fixation with this, right? His critique of the Iraq war was in part. We didn't keep the oil, right? Yeah. He doubled down on that this morning to Scarborough. Yeah. So he likes the idea of gaining assets and benefiting from any transactions.

So I'm not a huge fan of this in that the oil in Venezuela is for the Venezuelans. If we're going to help them develop it and have American companies there investing for the good of Venezuelans and our companies are going to benefit too, that's, that's fine. And maybe that's ultimately what would happen. But the way he presents it, I think is counterproductive. The same thing with running Venezuela. We're not running Venezuela, right? You have the vice president running Venezuela. And we're hoping to coer into doing what we want. And I think we'll probably have some success with that, at least in the short or medium term, but we're not running Venezuela. And usually when you're not running a country, you don't go out of your way to say you're running the country. But Trump, again, you like his name on stuff. You like some. You like

And then Marco Rubio's like, oh, no, no, no, didn't mean it like that. Just like, coerce with the oil. And then Trump's like, no, I'm running it. And then the question for the reporter was, who specifically in Trump goes, me, me? He's like, my deputies, because they all have different areas of expertise. But ultimately, me, which I mean, you can do it. Of course, it's Marco. Marko's running everything.

But look, Panama is. Yeah, you go ahead and finish your point. I was just to say Panama is pretty good analog. But even compared to Panama, Panama, this is more minimalist, because we're, we go in on the ground for weeks with troops in Panama. We already had an extensive troop presence there already because of the canal, obviously, and we swear in the new president after we grabbed Noriega on a U.S. military base. So we're not doing anything of that nature in Venezuela. So it's a combination of extremely, in the word that's been used so much about it, audacious

operation with a high degree of caution or trying to minimize downside risk as well. Mm-hmm. And it isn't bad to see, to show China, Iran, and Russia the capabilities of the U.S. military. Because, I mean, the whole operation was, to use a technical term, extremely badass. I mean, I heard you guys talking about this on the editors, but it was really incredibly impressive. I realized people did die on the other side, but not a single U.S. service personnel was hurt. Well, some were hurt, but no one was killed. And no leaks in the dark of night. Got it done. reminded me of Abadabad, Rich. Yeah, but I think even harder than that because Osama bin Laden has some security, not the security that comes with being ahead of state.

And also, this wasn't a shock, right? Bin Laden didn't know where coming. Maduro knew we were coming, probably, or there's a high chance that we would at some point. And still, this was so highly proficient. And it does send a good message to China and other malfactors around the world. Now, China has a big, huge military taking on China. it would be nothing like this, obviously.

But China hasn't done a military operation. I don't know, since 1979 when they lost a border war with Vietnam. So they have to be highly aware of just how good and practiced we are at this. Yeah. You know, it's the old line from Braveheart. That could be my head in a basket. Like no one wants to be on the receiving end of the Maduro treatment. What of the argument that, speaking of China, this is not going to help when they invade Taiwan.

and we say, hey, that's an independent nation. China's a lot more closely aligned with Taiwan than we are with Venezuela. Now, granted, we didn't, like, swoop in and say Venezuela is officially part of the United States. It's a 51st state, so it's not totally analogous. But did we undermine our, you know, moral virtue in trying to tell them to stay out of Taiwan? Yeah, maybe there's a little something to that. But they're going after Taiwan no matter what. We could be the most high-minded moralistic, have the most high-minded moralistic foreign policy imaginable, you know, Woodrow Wilson on steroids and China's still going after Taiwan.

I do think there's a moral difference here, right? I think a sovereign people have the right to govern themselves, but Venezuelans weren't covering themselves because this guy stole an election and was a dictator. And now perhaps we'll get a new election and they'll actually actually have a chance to govern themselves. where I think you'd get more into an analogy that might serve as a bit more of a permission slip to China would be if we went in annexed Greenland, which I don't think we're going to do, and I hope we're not going to do, but they're talking about. Unclear. Unclear. But I heard you guys bet whether we will. Most of the editors had the chance at the end of first terms of us having annexed Greenland was in the 10% range.

Rich Lowry put it out at a 40% chance. have to say I'm with you. Like, he's really focused on it. And what we're learning about Trump is he's actually not saying things he doesn't mean when it comes to these, again, to use the word audacious plans around some of our neighbors. Yeah, he doesn't do everything he says. But everything he does do, he says openly beforehand. And I just think if you really wanted to force the issue and said, look, the 80 second airborne is ready to go. Are you going to cut a deal with me or not? He'd get the deal. Now, I hope he doesn't do that. I think we could get everything we want out of Greenland without going to any extreme measures. It has a lot of critical minerals. If we want to

go mine them, it was controlled by a NATO country. You think NATO would be in favor of that, and we could cut a deal to do that. But I would just urge the Danish prime minister, if she's an M.K. Listener, go have a dinner at Marilago. Don't clap back at him in social media. Go and try to win him over and persuade him in private. Well, and this is another method that Trump has used effectively, where he says, I want a 10. I expect a 10, give me a 10 or else, and the whole game is about winding up with a five or a six. So we'll see.

We'll see on Greenland. I, too, do not think we're invading Greenland. He's talked about seizing the canal, right? And the Panamanian said, okay, no, we're actually, we'll kick the Chinese out, we'll give you a better deal on fees, and he hasn't talked about it since. So the Dane should be thinking about that model, I think. Yes. Okay. Also, I just like our chances in general against the Danes. Yeah.

Enough said. Let's talk about Mamdani. What a mess. So he, not only did he get inaugurated, whatever sworn in, and said the nonsense about we're going to enjoy the warmth of collectivism instead of the frigidity of individual, rugged behavior, or rugged individualism. now he, it turns out he's got a director of the office to protect tenants. And New York is all about the landlord-tenant situation. I mean, the high-rise buildings are filled with people leasing. Their apartments, rich people, poor people, middle-class people, it's the dominant thing in New York. And he has an office to protect tenants, which sounds good, because as between a tenant and a landlord, Most people think of themselves as the renter, and you think, yeah, protect the tenants. Unfortunately, he's hired a lunatic.

Her name is Sia Weaver, and I'll get the name of the wonderful woman online who tracked Seah Weaver's accounts before she started deleting them all. And this woman did a great job. Michelle Tandler, is her name, who pulled the screenshots as some of her most egregious posts. Like, okay, I'm just going to read a couple. There's no such thing as a good gentrifier, meaning people who move into, like, poorer neighborhoods and have a little bit more affluence and are responsible for raising the property values and bringing nicer businesses in, only people who are actively working on projects to dismantle white supremacy and capitalism and those who aren't. Here's another one. Rent control and public housing for everyone.

Massive government interventions to solve gentification. Here's another one. She writes, I agree with you unless you're talking about rent control. Rent control is a perfect solution to everything. She goes on to write, I think pass really strong rent control is a more effective way to shrink the value of real estate than reducing rezoning application. So what she wants is to shrink the value of real estate. She thinks the best way to do it is to pass really strong rent control. Then we get to the racial stuff. This country built wealth for white people. Through genocide slavery, stolen land and labor, white supremacy built the north and the south. Then she goes on to say, endorse, she endorses, endorse a no more white men-in-office platform. And then she adds, and no more reality TV stores for that matter. Obviously reference to Trump in 17. And then she writes, impoverish the white middle class. Home ownership is racist.

Failed public policy. impoverished the white middle class is the stated goal of our new tenant czar in New York, Rich, which tells me it's just as bad, if not worse, than we expected. Your thoughts on Sia, the new tenant czar? Yeah, it's just, it's comically bad. Now, the ultimate problem's not her. It's Mom Dani. These are Mom Dani's views as well, although he's a good politician.

So he did as much as he possibly could to obscure them prior to the election. But private property is not just the core individual right. It undergirds every liberty in Western civilization. And rent control, wherever it's been tried, has been an abject failure, including in New York. You know, the famous phrase, ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning, which is supposedly said during a World Series, excuse me, broadcast in New York in 1977. It wasn't actually said, but there was a huge fire visible from the stadium and so notable that the broadcast. talked about it because all these buildings were burning because they were dilapidated or the owners didn't want them anymore because they weren't making any money off of them and they

couldn't possibly make money off of them. So they didn't invest in them and didn't have any incentive to keep them up. So what you do when you rent control a bunch of apartments, you ensure that their stock, their value goes steadily down. And then meanwhile, everyone else who's not in a rent control apartment has to pay even more because those, you've constricted the supply. So it's just been of abject failure everywhere. So on top of just these hideous immoral views she has, she knows nothing about economics and nothing about the history of her own city. Here's a little more on camera this time from Sia Weaver in Sot 9. Democratic-controlled public housing is really important. And that's why when Raquel is talking

about the communities and that she's describing that, you know, That's a created community where the people who are living there are like setting the agenda. And so, you know, people like homeownership because they like control and that's been perverted by like deep racism and deep classism in our society. So like we have to not have a racist and class of society. And so that's like something we need to think about like deeply. But, you know, we it's about, to me it's about control. And why rent control is really important is because rent control alters the day. the power dynamic between renters and who owns the building.

We have to think deeply about the deep racism and classism behind homeownership, Rich. That's our assignment from Sia Weaver. You know what she reminds me of. This is what people say is being done to South African farmers, right? You get a government that is racist against white people and seeks to oppress them. in order to supposedly make up for past injustices. Wait, can I just say, I'll just say, I'll just sorry to interrupt you, but literally in his acceptance speech, Mamdami said South Africa is our model.

There you go. Yeah, I miss that. But homeownership is a universal aspiration, and it's good for everyone. And you want more people to be homeowners, not to punish people who happen to have enough resources to own homes and to really reduce the value of, of housing and to make rents lower and the price of houses lower, you need a greater supply. So you need to encourage developers and landlords to build and invest more. And this is the exact opposite approach. So not only does she think that housing is racist, she actually thinks that

white New Yorkers are going to have to have a different relationship with property. seea doesn't think you should really have your apartment under the terms that you and your mortgage broker or the seller negotiated here she is in the clip that made a lot of a lot of people unhappy when it hit yesterday sot eight i think the reality is is that for centuries we've really treated um property as an individualized good and not a collective good and we are going to and transitioning to treating it as a collective good and towards a model of shared equity will require that we think about it differently. And it will mean that families, especially white families, but some POC families who are homeowners as well, are going to have a different relationship to property than the one that we currently have. What does that mean? A different relationship to property.

Does that mean your property is being taken from you or you can no longer own it? And I don't know anyone whether they own like the smallest little postage stamp property or the biggest mansion in the country. Everyone is proud of their property. Everyone's highly invested in it. No one wants anyone to take a step on it without their permission. This is a fundamental part of human nature. And that's why systems based on this worldview always and inevitably fail.

So Harmeet Dillon, who's running the civil division at the Department of Justice, she saw that and tweeted out. Reminder, hey, FYI, we're watching you. And it's illegal to discriminate on the basis of race in housing policy. Sorry, but you're going to get sued if you try this shit. Thank God for Harmeet. She's truly like one of the MVP's of the Trump administration. And she does it quietly without fanfare, but she's a badass. Speaking of DOJ policy, let's move to Minnesota for a moment, where the Department of Homeland Security is now conducting raids, I think that's the right word, but a full-scale investigation unleashing some 2,000 agents all over Minneapolis in the wake of Nick Shirley's independent journalist explosive report that hit on December 26th and some of the reporting that came before that.

Here's one video of DHS that they posted showing Homeland Security Investigations in Minneapolis. They're going from business to business. Then Christy Nome's convoy was in the news as well in Minneapolis, checking out some of these areas that were unearthed by Nick Shirley as allegedly having daycare centers with no children. And it does seem, this is smart to me, Rich, because, A, we need to crack down on these people. But, B, it's good politics because Trump doesn't want the narrative to be all of his attention is in Venezuela when we've got real problems here. And he is proving you can walk and chew gum at the same time.

Yeah, so these rays are fine. Maybe they're even helpful. I do think they're in large part for show. And I think the real action here, let me back up. I think the viral content we've seen from the City Journal and Nick Shirley, very helpful. You don't blow Tim Waltz out of the water without them. But I do think they've created a misimpression that this scandal just broke three weeks ago when actually it's an ongoing thing for years. And the federal prosecutors have been heroes there and exposing this and nailing some of the malfactors to the wall.

So the most important thing, I think, get the more resources. I think they have maybe five people in this office led by this guy named Joe Thompson who's been a total hero. Give him a couple more fantastic top of the line prosecutors and some more investigators and let him. keep going at this. I think that's where the rubber really meets the road, because the exposure's fantastic, but you need to nail every single one of these people to the wall. One of the infuriating things about this, I tweeted out after the Nick Shirley piece broke, where was the Minneapolis Star Tribune in breaking this story? Because they've written countless stories defending Tim Walse's insane trans policies on children. They're very focused on defending

tampons in the boys' bathroom. But not so much on unearthing the Somali fraud. And it's come out that part of the reason is they're worried about being called racists. The Democratic lawmakers didn't want to be called racist. I'm sure it applies at the Minneapolis Star Tribune, too. And their defenders were responding to my tweet by showing articles in which the Minneapolis Star Tribune covered the Fed's criminal prosecutions of some of the Somali fraudsters. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about actual investigative journalism where you as the reporter unearth the fraud, where your reporting drags the government to the problem kicking and screaming or willingly. That's what actual investigative journalism

looks like. Not, okay, now the feds have actually gotten a bunch of convictions of 80 Somalis. I guess we're going to have to cover this. Instead, what we saw the media do, Rich, in the wake of Nick Shirley's report and City Journal and Walter Kernkirk, as he called himself, on our show yesterday's County Highway. That reporting is to shit all over the reporting. You know, we pulled a couple of these of the headlines. This is courtesy of Drew Holden, who we follow on Axe, and he does a great job of sort of collating things.

The New York Times, who seemed positively incensed, he writes accurately, that this video from Nick Shirley caught fire, accusing him of being, quote, in search of politically charged footage while burying whether there were any actual kids at these child care centers in the first place. He mentions next the AP, saying this was perhaps the most awful defense of the child care centers. The AP relying on the head of the now famous and allegedly closed ABC Learning Center that didn't have the end to suggest that this criticism is, quote, a political campaign against Somali Minnesotans. Okay, it was a campaign against the poor Somalis.

I could be here with you all day going through them. CNN, we covered yesterday as well as CBS. That's where their focus has been. Yeah, so you're absolutely right. Journalists should be seeking to advance the story. Instead, they focus very often on attacking the guy who advanced the story, right? So the story was Nick Shirley. The story wasn't the underlying scandal.

CNN sent someone to confront Nick Shirley. And then they only covered the story in that they were trying to debunk Nick Shirley. And he got some things wrong. But he also, it was so. compelling because it's just so shocking to the conscience to show up to see him show up at this place. A scandal has been going for years and they're still operating and getting millions of dollars from the state and there's no one there. It's obviously a bogus story. Go and do that yourself rather than attacking the guy, you know, the YouTuber who had the gumption to do it on his

own with a local guide. So part of the reason I mentioned is they're all worried about being called a racist because the fraud appears to be committed by a bunch of Somalis. Their lieutenant governor, Peggy Flanagan, is an idiot. And here she was on December 26th in Minnesota reacting to some of these reports. His report hit on December 26th. Look at her. It's not 25. Saldim al-a-a-combe.

My name's Peggy Flanagan. I am the lieutenant governor of Minnesota. And I'm really honored and humbled to be here with all of you today. I am incredibly clear that the Somali community is part of the fabric of the states of Minnesota. She's in a hijab. Yeah. I mean, if these people are on the up and up, they would have said Nick Shirley, thank you. You know, you've uncovered some fraud.

That is terrible and shouldn't have happened. Thank you for doing it. If you can find more, great, you know, and we'll go right behind you. see whether they're appropriate or not and we'll cut them off and we'll prosecute them, right? That would be the up-and-up response. But instead, they've been desperate to cover for the scandal and minimize it from the beginning. The accusations of racism clearly, even though various bureaucrats in Minnesota thought something was desperately wrong, clearly helped convince them to let it go, and they're still

in that mode. Look at her, Rich. She's got her big, black liberal glasses on, like the Rachel Maddow here. huge glasses that all the libs wind up wearing from Mark Cuban to Oberman to Rachel. She's got her coat of glasses on. I'm a liberal. I'm a progressive. And her hijab. I'm pretty sure you're not allowed to wear that if you're not actually Muslim. So Peggy, I think you've culturally appropriated. She looks like an idiot. And this is why the Minnesota taxpayers have paid

who got, God knows how many millions in fraudulent dollars to this community. Good luck. I believe in the feds, but I do not believe in any Minnesota law enforcement. And Tim Wals has now ended his political career as a result of all this. So farewell to him. Now, in a not totally unrelated story, it hit the news late yesterday that ICE agents who were booking their trip to Minnesota to go check out some of these businesses were rejected. They made the reservations at this Minnesota Hilton. And then the Hilton. And then the Hilton, front desk, whatever, the people managing the reservations, but, you know, site at the local site, it wasn't like on the 1-800 number for Hilton, called them back and said, we're canceling

all of your reservations. We're not having ICE people here. It's in writing. It's, it's, you can people take a look at it themselves, but they made clear they didn't want them there. And now, hold on, I'm trying to find it. Okay. Now, this is all broken by Nick Sorter, I should say, a journalist on X, another independent journalist, who went to the Minneapolis is the Minnesota Hilton. Okay, so the controversy hit. DHS called attention to it,

saying, what kind of BS is this? And then the Hilton chain apologized for banning DHS agents. They didn't deny that it happened. And they issued a statement claiming that they'd been in touch with DHS to a comment the impacted agents and that they do not discriminate against any individuals or agencies.

But now Nick Sorter breaks that there was no such attempt to reach DHS or to make it right, citing Assistant DHS Secretary Tricia McLaughlin, and says even the front desk manager says that he had spoken with the owner shortly before Nick Soder walked in, again, this is Nick Sorder, not to be confused with Nick Shirley, around 10.50 p.m. and confirmed that the anti-ice policy remained in effect. Here is Nick Sorder going to the Hilton. Sop 27. Do you have any rooms for tonight?

We should, yeah. Okay. Like how many? Could we get like 10? 10? I mean, I know it could be. What agency is it for using the government rate? They'd be a department home security.

So we're not accepting people from immigration. ice agents, DHS into her property. It's just our management ownership. Okay, I thought that changed today. I just talked to my the owner of the building and he didn't say there hasn't been any changes.

They lied. Hilton and they hinting in out here in Ever Peak hospitality. Lied. Full of shit. They almost got a little bit of a pass the first time. time, right? You thought they may have learned their lesson. And this is why I said that their

talk is, it means nothing. People were saying, oh, well, no, they said that they're going to change their policy. They lied. They didn't do it. They didn't do it. So they're now going to get butt-lighted. Congratulations, Hilton. Yeah. The name of the property was Hampton Inn, which was owned by Hilton. But this particular outlet is owned by a group called Everpeak, that, was used to purchase this hotel. It's owned by four partners, Parmeet Singh, Amon, Prit, Hyundai, Karandip, Nagra, and Mohindarjee Kaur. According to public records filed last June with the Minnesota Secretary of State. Now, Hilton Corporate has responded to Nick's video saying, hold on a teeny tiny type, saying, Rich, The independent hotel owner had assured us that they'd fix the problem and published a message confirming this.

A recent video clearly raises concerns that they're not meeting our standards and values. As such, we are taking immediate action to remove this hotel from our systems. Hilton is, and has always been a welcoming place for all, we're also engaging with all of our franchisees to reinforce the standards. We hold them to across our system to help ensure that this does not happen again. So, hurrah, because ultimately, sounds like Hilton is doing the right thing. This particular hotel was humiliated. And the Nick Shirley video on the daycares in Minneapolis, I think, has unleashed an inspo amongst many independent journalists like Nick Sorter, Rich, to go out and just do what the Minneapolis Star Tribune will not. Yeah.

So first of all, if you're Hilton, you think you'd just be glad that anyone wants to come to Minnesota in January, right? You think you'd welcome any booking. But clearly, this is an out-of-control franchise. who's trashing the brand of the entire business. The Bud Light reference from Nick there is well taken, and the Hilton Brass apparently is aware of it, or actually just doesn't hate federal law enforcement. So hats off to them to doing the right thing.

But you're right. I think the Nick Shirley example is empowering and catalyzing a lot of this, and I think we'll see more of it in other states, because we need to kick the tires of every single welfare program in every state in every state in America. And if mainstream so-called legacy outlets aren't going to do that, I think we're going to have independent guerrilla journalists doing it. It's a very good thing. It's great. It's great. Even if there are errors in the initial reporting, like what Nick Shirley did, which was seen

over 150 million times his video, which is 43 minutes long, it's of value because it insisted that other reporters get there. It insisted that the feds get there. It made it impossible to ignore. and that was a deep, deep public service. Rich Lowry, as are you. Thank you, sir. Great to see you. Thanks for being here. Happy New Year.

Talk soon. You too. All right, coming up, I mean, I've never said this before. A clarinetist with a story you have to hear. Do not go away. The new year hits, and suddenly you might want new everything, including a new wardrobe. Does that resonate, ladies? Well, our sponsor, Daily Look, makes that wardrobe upgrade way to

easy. Daily Look is the number one rated premium personal styling service for women. With Daily Look, you get your own dedicated personal stylist to curate a box of clothes based on your body shape preferences and lifestyle. This is not an algorithm. This is a real personal stylist, and you get the same stylist every time. And when you head over to Dailylook.com, you can use the code Megan to get 50% off your first order. That's 50% off with my code Megan. Just fill out their style quiz and receive up to 12 hand-selected items delivered to your home. Buy what you love, send back the rest. You will get free shipping both ways.

Head to dailylook.com to take your style quiz and use the code Megan for 50% off your first order. That's daily look.com for 50% off. And make sure you use my promo code, Megan, so they know we sent you. My next guest is making major headlines right now after filing a lawsuit against the Knoxville Symphony in Tennessee, claiming that despite winning a blind audition in which they cannot see who is trying out, they can only hear the music being played, they refused then to hire him once they realized who he was over his past opposition to DEI policies at a

different orchestra. A blind audition is when a musician plays for a panel of judges behind a curtain to prevent any bias in the selection. It's supposed to mean that someone will get the spot strictly based on merit. James Zimmerman started playing the clarinet in 1991 and then professionally in 1997. For over 12 years, James was the principal clarinet of the Nashville Symphony. He played principal clarinet for the Nashville Symphony. His work has been featured in commercials and video game soundtracks and movies. He also happened to perform at President Barack Obama's second presidential inauguration. Here's a sample of James' talent. It was beautiful.

It was beautiful. It reminds me of myself back in 1980 when I was first chair. at the Bethlehem Central Elementary School. Nailed it. My one advantage was my earlier school where I'd gone in Syracuse allowed the clarinet, allowed you to join band in fourth grade. So I came and I was ahead of everybody else who had never played before and that's how I became first chair, which lasted for exactly a year until the others got up. Just, I mean, it's like looking in a mirror, really. Okay, back to James. He says his career started to unravel in 2019 as he began to oppose DEI measures at the Nashville Symphony, which were becoming more and more common

in the music world. His story is complicated. He didn't just oppose a DEI initiative and call it a day. It happened over months. And at one point, he admits it nearly drove him mad, as DEI policies can do. James is here now to explain his story, his lawsuit that he's just filed, and why the Trump administration may be getting involved next. James, welcome to the show. Hey, Megan, thanks for having me. Yeah, it's great to see you. And congrats on achieving so much and on your natural talent. It was very impressive to listen to.

So let's start back. So what happened was, I guess we'll start with the current controversy. You go to the Knoxville Blind Audition and you're a hell of a clarinet player and you're behind the curtain. They can't see that it's you and you are the best, right? That, like, they told you it's yours, like before they actually had the, like revoked it or done any investigation on you, they were like, you were the winner. You're the best. That's right. So the blind audition was a two-day-long process that started on a Monday morning.

They listened to people one after the another all day long. And they keep whittling it down like a sports tryout. And after the first day, they asked me to come back the second day. I passed another round the morning of Tuesday, the 16th of September. They put me into the finals that afternoon. And after the final round, they declared me the winner, came to my dressing room and said, we'd love to have you on the payroll in two weeks. We'll call you tomorrow. And I guess instead of calling me the next day, they dug into my sordid history and found enough reasons not to hire me. And Rachel Ford, their CEO, called me and said, thanks, but no thanks. And we're not going to talk to you about any of this. So good luck to you. And it was clearly based on your

experience with the Nashville Symphony back in 2019. That's right. That's what the email. else says. It says a number of items have come to our attention regarding your employment in the Nashville Symphony, which there are some stinkers in there, but there's a lot of advocacy that I did on behalf of my black colleagues and for the process of blind auditions. So like you said, it's complicated, but people love to zero in on your worst moments in times like this. Mm-hmm. And but what the 2019 incident at the Nashville Symphony seems to boil down to is, you tell me if I've got it right, you stood up for a black oboe player who was potentially about to get the shaft. You stood up for him. Then the person running that symphony kind of overcompensated and started bending over backwards for this black oboe player. You started getting. You started getting. the short end of this relationship, and ultimately, you and he, when you clashed, they took

his side, they didn't recognize any of his bad behavior toward you, but when you finally started to, like, get back in his face, they shamed you for being the problem, and you got booted. Is that basically it? That is exactly accurate, Megan. What happened was there was a botched blind audition for a black oboist who had been playing on a temporary basis in the orchestra. Sometimes when an orchestra needs to fill a gap and doesn't have time to host a national blind audition, they will just appoint someone on a temporary basis. So this oboist was hired without an audition based on his qualifications. He was a pretty good player, but not necessarily up to the standards of everyone else.

But I took him under my wing, became his friend. I coached him for free leading up to the national blind audition that he had to win to become our permanent principal of oboist. And I said to him what none of his friends had ever dared to say, which is, look, man, it's not so much this racism you're talking about all around you. It's the fact that you're paranoid, and you are not taking accountability for your shortcomings. But I believe in you, and I believe you can win this thing, and I'm gunning for you. I got your back. And the best possible outcome here is that you win, and we have the first principal oboist of color in the United States in a major orchestra. And that's what was about to happen in his blind audition.

last man standing after days of difficult competition. But accidentally, we found out it was him during deliberations. And our conductor and the rest of my colleagues who are on this blind audition panel said, oh, I don't want to play with this guy. What do we do? And the conductor says, all right, we're going to declare this a no-win situation. We're going to send him home, and we're never going to speak of this again. And I said, over my dead career, can you do that? So I took a stand against the conductor and all of my colleagues and said, we are going to march back in the conductor's office and tell him how despicable that decision was, and we're going to give this black oboists a chance to prove himself. And we did that. He crumbled. The orchestra

management hired him unilaterally with no vote of his colleagues, so he can now never say that he was hired based on our qualifications, our vote. He was stamped a DEI hire forever, and when I protested. He made up a Jussie Spillett-like narrative about me that I was a stalker and a racist and a nasty person and a white supremacist. What did you want to have happen? What? Because when we'll, like, I'm with you on the story. You're advocating for him. Then they tried to stop him from getting the job, even though it was a blind audition because they found out it was him. And you were like, that's not cool. That's, that's not okay. But then what did they do? Then they gave him something more than you wanted them to give him?

What was it that upset you on the permanent hire? Well, then they gave him another probationary year so he could prove himself and prove that he was going to get tenure. That's maybe a piece of the detail that you were missing. After a player wins a blind audition, they're typically given a one-year probationary contract where the player is evaluated on whether or not they're a good fit because a blind audition doesn't tell you everything about somebody.

It doesn't tell you what their personality is, what kind of a colleague they are, if they show up on time, if they're a good listener, if they're, they take correction easily. This black oboe player was very bad at all of those things. So what do you do? We either hire the guy or we kick him to the curb and he sues the orchestra for racial discrimination for trying to fire him illegally, a suit that in 2019, he absolutely would have won. We all would have gotten crushed. So the management of the orchestra says, well, we can just fire this one play. and pin the whole thing on him, and that's what they did to me. And I knew they were going to do it. My only recourse was public opinion, and I thought if I played the long game... Wait, wait, let me stop you again, because I just, I still got, I got confused again. So they're at the point where they have to decide whether they're going to give them the permanent offer after the one year of probation. And what, what did they want to do? And what did you want to do?

Well, they wanted to hire him no matter what, because they wanted to avoid litigation. So they didn't really want him. They just wanted to do. avoid litigation. Correct. They will never admit this, but we all know this. And I'm the only person saying it out loud. And everyone's trying to say, he's doing a great job. He's a great player. And I'm thinking, that's an insult to our audience. Everybody can hear that this guy's all over the place. And everybody is tired of the struggle sessions that he's putting us through, all of his extra social media that he does declaring that orchestras are racist. Nobody wants to hear that. We just want to come to work. We want to play with the best place.

players and leave. It's a simple job. It's a fun job. And his presence and his advocacy sucked all the fun out of it for everybody. This is not a job you're going to get rich doing. Can you just explain to, because I didn't know this, James, but apparently, like, principal oboist is a rather important role in an orchestra. It's the most important role in an orchestra. When you go to an orchestra and it gets quiet when the lights go down and we all tune up to that one note, that's the oboist giving that note. The oboist gives all the best solos, all the most beautiful solos in the repertoire by Brahms and Beethoven and Debussy are all given to the first oboe. It's an amazing instrument, and it can have more artistic influence on the sound of the group than any other instrument.

So this was not some job where the guy could be covered for by everybody else around him. He was setting the tone quite literally for what we were doing. So you fought to get this guy a fair audition and a fair chance at the organization. orchestra. But having worked with him as a fellow musician for a year, it was clear to you. He didn't deserve the job. He wasn't up to snuff. And that the only reason the orchestra was not about to acknowledge that publicly and let him go, as they would have, in your view, a white man, was because of the color of his skin, which you also objected to. All of this sounds like principled behavior on your part. And when you raise that objection, they fired you?

That's right. I mean, I believed in him. I thought he was very talented, which you was. He has great natural ability, and let's not take away his achievement of winning a blind audition against a national pool of candidates from all over the place. This is a major position. Principal Clarenet of the Nashville Symphony. This is Music City, and a position like that can lead to jobs in academia, in recording studios. This is no small potatoes. This is not a hobby. This is not something that people do outside of their regular job for fun. This is a career. The stakes were high, and I thought this guy had enough talent, but he was just broken brain. You know how some of these wokesters get.

They can't think. They don't see reality for what it is. They start seeing racism in everything, every interaction. And so I was thinking, maybe we can disabuse him of these horrible notions of what's going on around him and convince him to just tone it down and do your playing. But he was not able to be convinced that the world was anything other than what he said it was. So I thought, well, we've got to kick this guy to the curb. Nobody wants to work with this.

Forget it. He had a chance. were complaining about that behavior? Oh, yeah. In our meetings that were leading up to the decision about whether he should get tenure or not, he had no support whatsoever from any musician. The conductor didn't like him.

None of us liked him, but management liked him. The CEO liked him because he was his golden child, his DEI ticket to success. He's like, look, we're going to parade this guy around everywhere and show everybody how righteous we are. He's a human virtue signal, which, by the way, is quite racist to tokenize somebody and do this,

parade them around for their skin color and I objected to all of this. The respectful thing to do to any musician, black, white, or other is to treat them just the same way you would as if they were a member of the majority group. Like, that's the respectful thing. That's like me not going after a black journalist who says something

completely inane because she's black. I would never do my fellow journalists that disservice. I'll criticize you no matter what your skin color is, which is a sign of respect. Stand by, there's much more to this story. We'll pick it up on the back end of this. Quick break first. James don't go away. A new year means new financial goals, like making sure your savings are secure and diversified. Will this be the year you decide to talk to someone from Birch Gold Group?

They use an educational approach with a deep understanding of macroeconomics. There are forces pushing the dollar lower and gold higher, which is why they believe every American should own physical gold. So until January 30th, if you're a first time gold buyer, Birch Gold is offering a rebate of up to $10,000 on qualifying purchases. To claim eligibility and start the process, you just text MK to the number 9-8-9-8-9-8. Birch Gold can help you roll an existing IRA or 401k into an IRA in gold, and you are still eligible for a rebate of up to $10,000. Consider making right now your first time to buy gold and take advantage of a rebate up to

$10,000 when you buy before January 30th. Text MK to the number 9-8-9-8-98. Claim your eligibility today. Again, text MK to 98, 98, 98. Hey, everyone, it's me, Megan Kelly. I've got some exciting news. I now have my very own channel on Sirius XM. It's called the Megan Kelly channel, and it is where you will hear the truth,

unfiltered, with no agenda, and no apologies. Along with the Megan Kelly show, you're going to hear from people like Mark Halperin, Link Lauren, Callahan, Emily Jashinsky, Jesse Kelly, real clear politics, and many more. It's bold, no BS news only on the Megan Kelly channel, SiriusXM 111 and on the SiriusXM app. Here with me today is James Zimmerman,

a storied clarinetist who is now involved in a DEI-related lawsuit. When last we left off, James had explained to us how he had helped a black oboist get a fair shot at making the Nashville Symphony, despite the fact that the conductor of the orchestra upon learning who was the oboist trying out said, I don't want him. And James said, that's not going to fly. You're going to have to give him a shot. He got this black oboist his shot, which led to a one-year trial period. And at the end of the year, James says, those who are in the orchestra and pretty much everyone, other than the brass, meaning the corporate brass, not the actual brass in the symphony, wanted this guy

gone, that he wasn't pulling his weight, that he was annoying, talking about DEI issues all the time, and that he wasn't particularly talented as an oboist, which is a very important role in an orchestra. But this guy was not going to be criticized by James without a fight, and the people running the orchestra did not want to fire their one black oboist, so things started to get ugly. And now all of this is being used against James, James says, by the orchestra in Knoxville, for which he just tried out, and made it. He was the best in the blind audition. But then they said, we're not going to hire you, alleges James, because we took a look

at what happened to you at Nashville. That's why we're deep now in what happened at Nashville. And all this to me is just my opinion, is utter bullshit what happened to you, James. I can see exactly what the motivations were. They were pissed that you wouldn't just go along so that they could look like virtuous people with the black oboist. And they didn't like you objecting to him, mouth. off about how white supremacy was everywhere, which was an inconvenient thing to

to object to back in 2020 and 2019. But they were fine besmirching you. Now, you admit you wrote one weird email that they used against you or whatever, however you want to use the, whatever word you want to use for it, but things got contentious. And this is the one thing that they've been able to like hold against you. And even when I said you were coming on today, people online were like, well, ask him about his email in which you referenced a gun. okay we'll get there so we're setting we're going to get there in one second let's just set it up for the audience so i'm reading here from the free beacon report that broke your story back in 2020 and it says as follows okay tensions in the symphony were rising and the oboist lodged a

human resources complaint against you it described an incident that had taken place over a month before the oboists botched audition now after the botched audition you went to bat for the oboist but here he is saying, oh, you're some sort of a racist because an incident that happened before the audition, in which they claim, you asked him whether it would be okay if you, a white man, use the N-word in your rendition of a rap song. The oboist said, sure, but you, James Zimmerman, nonetheless, apologized after singing the slur, quote, the N-word did not feel good, James recalls, telling Underwood. And now, at this point in the story, the oboist, is trying to use that against you. Do you recall that where suddenly he brought up an old incident that seems to have been long under the bridge to try to paint you as a racist? Yeah, I mean, that was stupid of me. We were both hip-hop fans.

He's the only other orchestral musician I ever met that grew up listening to people like Snoop Dog and the Notorious B.I.G. He knew I liked them. He knew I had at a party a couple days before that had like wrapped along with some biggie. And he was like, I wish I'd been there to hear that. And I had told him, dude, I'm not going to say the N word in front of you. But then we were just like listening to some music after concert one night. And I said, yeah, remember when you said you wanted to hear that? Let's go wrap it in my car.

And he's like, yeah, sure, say the N word. It's no big deal. And I was like, this is, it was so stupid. But I handed him the golden dagger. and three weeks later, after he won the blind audition, and I stuck up for him, he stabbed me right in the back with it because he was so desperate to find some sign of racism and distract from the fact that after two years of playing with us

and winning a blind audition, we still tried to get rid of him. I mean, have some sympathy for the guy. How humiliating is that? After two years of playing with somebody, you go through the meritocratic process of a blind audition, and all of your colleagues except me and the conductor are like, yeah, I don't want to play with this guy, that's got to hurt. So he took it out on me. Simple as that. Well, then you found out that he and another player who was sympathetic to the DEI worldview.

One of them, or both, had filed a secret HR complaint against you in which they were accusing you of stalking-like behavior that, you were not just, quote, racially insensitive, this is the Free Beacons reporting, but potentially predatory. The narrative was seated behind James Zimmerman's, your back, beginning with an unofficial HR complaint about which the clarinetist was never notified. And what they allegedly told HR, without telling you, was that you seemed obsessed with this oboist and his new buddy, who's sympathetic to DEI, that you had been asking detailed questions. questions about these two and their living situations. And the oboist alleged, as did the other guy, that you were deliberately driving by their homes. The Free Beacon reporting, it was half

true. Zimmerman often drove down the one man's street to avoid late afternoon traffic, as did several of his colleagues. So you find out they're trying to paint you as a crazy-ass stalker because you drove down the one guy's street in order to avoid traffic just like half the orchestra? I mean, you're looking at me like this is too ridiculous to be what happened, but that's exactly what happened.

The guy moved into my neighborhood, this other player, not the oboists, another DEI, social justice warrior type of violist, a very troubled young man. And I asked him the same question that I ask every new person that's joined the orchestra. Hey, man, welcome to town. Where'd you move to?

And he moved right around the corner from me. I drove by his house every day before he even lived there. And he reported me as a stalker for that. You think I'm kidding. But this is how desperate these people are. And when I heard that they, so they reported that to management. And management didn't even waste my time. They didn't even bring me in for that. They said, this is so preposterous what these guys are doing to James. We know James. He's been here for a dozen years. He's a star employee. We use him for all kinds of media. He's a great ambassador for the Nashville Symphony. There's no legs to this thing at all. These kids are crazy. I'm sure it'll

just boil. I'm sure it will just go away. That's the management style at the Nashville Symphony. If you just ignore something for long enough, it's just going to go away. But that is what happened. They said when I drove by this kid's house on the way to work, they claimed I was stalking them. So I wrote that email after work after I found that out. I was very heated. I was, I had enough. And I was like, you know what, if management's not going to protect me from this, I'm going to quit the orchestra. I was teaching full time at Vanderbilt at the time. I had plenty of session work. I had other orchestras calling me to come and play as a guest, I was able to leave the symphony.

And I said, I want to quit if you're not going to stand up against these freaks against me. But management fired me before I could quit so they could further their story, this Jussie Smollett-like story that I was some kind of stalker racist who uses the N-word in front of black people. It's all context. Right. So not the oboist, but his other friend who plays the viola had said to you earlier something about his dog. He had mentioned that he was kind of rebuffing, according to the Free Beacon, your efforts to get to know him

because he was buddies with the oboist. And when you mentioned his dog, this guy responded, yeah, and he'll fuck anybody up. And you didn't much like that comment. You kind of read this as, wow, this violist is threatening me with his dog. It's like, F me up.

And so that leads me to your email. So then you find out this guy who's threatened you with his dog, according to you, And this other guy, who you help, but now is playing the race card against you, have filed the secret HR complaint. You're mad. You send an email.

And here is the portion of it, in part, that is being used against you. You write, okay, you write an email to the guy who played the viola. And you write, and you secede HR. It's not like you were trying to make this secret. But you write, never mind the fact that you originally told me your address was this particular address. So I checked it on on my next commute. When I described the house to you, you said something to the effect of, oh, I'm actually at a different address. I thought it was odd you'd forgotten your address, because who would lie about that? But you're new here, so I let

it slide. Also, never mind the fact that at the end of our backstage conversation, when I asked if you have a dog because of the sign on your fence, you affirm that you do, you began walking toward the door to the locker room and said over your shoulder, he'll fuck anybody up. Cool. Certainly you weren't threatening anybody because who does that? I'm terrified of dogs. I'm terrified of he wrote. I have a wife and children. And in my family, we have a firearm. I don't know how to use it, but I'm glad my wife does. It used to belong to her father, who is now fighting stage four lung cancer. But I digress. And then you go back to, you know, your email to him and sort of these two guys hashing this stuff out. And the free beacon reports that the next day,

well, why don't you tell me what happened? Yeah, I mean, the dog comment was so ridiculous that this kid made that. It was at the lunch table. One day I was waiting in line for lunch and I said to him like, yeah, man, that dog you got is huge or something to that effect. And he's like, yeah, and he'll fuck anybody up. It was, it was pretty threatening. And, you know, I was getting concerned after they started reporting me as a stalker that they were ready to show up at my house and do some damage. You could, I was just making a judgment call. You could tell these kids were really out of their mind. And people like that at the time are willing to do violence to get rid of white supremacy. So I did not want it to escalate to that point.

The whole email that you just quoted from is de-escalatory and copied to HR because I wanted their help in de-escalating this situation. It had been going on for more than either. You weren't trying to hide anything. You C-Ced HR on it. Exactly. By the way, who filed the HR complaint? Was it both of them?

I'm not sure. Actually, it was the oboe player and another girl that he had kind of co-opted into being his hench woman, who's now gone from the orchestra. She joined another orchestra. But that's a... Well, the Free Beacon spoke with a bunch of orchestra members, all of whom said, this is ridiculous. James is amazing.

James would never stalk anybody. James would never harm anybody. It is absolutely impossible. But notwithstanding that, less than a week later, what did the orchestra do? Well, they put me on probation first because they're my biggest ally in management, the chief operating orchestra,

the chief operating officer, I should say, was out of town. He was on my side of this whole fiasco, and, you know, this is the crowning detail of the whole story. They suspended me, and I called my buddy in management and saying, I want to come back. Tomorrow's my mom's 70th birthday. She has tickets to the Beethoven Eroica Symphony. I would like to come back and play. It's her 70th. And he said, no, you can't come back and play.

Everyone's afraid of you. We've got these kids in safe houses. We got armed security in front of the building because they think you're about to murder them. So I said, all right, in that case, if it's getting this bad, I want to quit. So give me a refund for my mom's tickets, and I'll be on my merry way. Thank you very much. And he said, okay, I'll get you the refund. So he goes into the ticket system.

He looks for tickets under my name. He looks for tickets under my mom's name and cannot find them because my dad bought the tickets for my mom as a birthday present, which leads them to conclude, I made up the story about my mom's 70th birthday. therefore I am insane and out of my mind and not to be reasoned with and they fired me because they can't find tickets in their own system it sounds like I'm making this up

but this is how ridiculous these people are they're totally incompetent and I got hung out to dry I lost tens of thousands of dollars over this and my entire career and all future prospects because these jackasses can't use their own ticket system

it sounds like I'm making this up but it's all out there I have all the receipts from all of this I mean I wish I could say it sounds made up but I've covered so many these cases where honestly like the white guy or the white gal gets railroaded because of some DEI obsessed person who is usually white, who's like the most ardent enforcers of this bizarre regime tend to be crazy white liberals who want to make themselves feel better by making you suffer because you don't buy into their same ideology. So now what happened to you? Like what have you been doing from 2020 to now when you auditioned for the Knoxville Orchestra? So three weeks after this whole thing culminated, the pandemic hit. So everyone was fired, essentially. And this whole scenario with me got swept to the back burner,

and the orchestra spent the entire pandemic trotting out the black oboist as a hero. He got all kinds of social justice money. He went on all kinds of programs and got all kinds of appointments at universities and boards of directors at conservatories. And he became a superstar on this. I, on the other hand, spent the entire pandemic in this basement learning to write computer software. I learned to code. I went out and did the meme, and now I work in big tech where I've been for the last five years.

And when things opened up after the pandemic, I went back to playing sessions. There's quite a few session contractors who wouldn't hire me for a while, but I have one really loyal contractor who believes in me and knows I'm the best player. So on the side of my tech job, I do, you know, I teach a little bit and I play sessions all the time, which is how I've been able to get my playing into the movies and onto Netflix and at Barack Obama's second inauguration. That's my recorded playing everywhere. There's a much better chance, Megan, that you've heard my playing than you have not heard my playing.

So that's what I do now. I freelance and I do tech. Until this last summer, when a friend from Knoxville, who I played with, a violinist, he said, hey, man, I don't know if you're looking to get back into the game. But I know your story. I've been following you. it's insane and we're looking for a principal clarinetist so you should come out and I thought hmm that's an interesting proposition because Knoxville's kind of a smaller regional orchestra

I think I could keep my tech job I wouldn't have to move okay let's see if I can get back on the horse get back into Olympic shape because Megan you got to practice for these blind auditions like hours and hours a day and I've got an eight I got a nine to five tech job I've got a wife I've got three kids. I've got a life. So I'm practicing all night. My kids are going to the bed to the sound of me practicing. They're waking up to the sound of me practicing. All day long on Saturdays, you know, I put all my landscaping projects and other endeavors on the side to practice for this audition. And I showed up and won just to find out that I'm unhirable. So I'm kind of back where I started. I'm doing tech, playing sessions and talking about how ridiculous the whole orchestra

business has become putting meritocracy to the side for DEI. It's just a damn shame. So, and how much was this job going to pay? So it was going to amount to like a thousand bucks a week, you know, which in my situation. It's not like you're not going to get rich off of it, but at least you're getting paid for doing what you love. Exactly. It was going to be fun and it was going to be my foot back in the door. And I didn't really think too far beyond what's going to happen if I actually win. I just said, you know, the only thing I can control here going into the competition is get my best playing back, because I don't play as much as I used to when I was the principal clarinet of the National Symphony. I'm playing hours and hours a day. Now,

I go weeks without practicing sometimes. So I'm sort of out of shape. This is the major leagues these auditions. But you tuned up, literally, and got back in shape. And then this happens. And they make no secret of the fact you say, she said right to you, the woman running the Knoxville orchestra that given the past issues at the Nashville orchestra, she wasn't going to give you the job, even though they'd already told you you were the best on the blind audition. You won, which is really, I mean, it feels retaliatory. And so you decided this time not to take it lying down and you filed a lawsuit. And by the way, Harmeet Dillon, she is the hero of our show today.

This is her second mention who heads up the civil rights division of the DOJ. has already expressed interest in your case because it's illegal to discriminate against white people on the basis of their skin color too. And if this woman is retaliating against you for you exercising your rights back when you were at the other orchestra and saying you don't have the right to fire me just because I have white skin and I'm not going to bend the knee, they could be in some trouble. So that's your theory. What has the Knoxville Orchestra said since you filed your claim? and what are you hoping to get? So I haven't heard anything from Knoxville yet,

but I'm sure their phones have been ringing these last couple days. I stayed silent after I lost the audition because right after I won the audition and lost the opportunity to get the job, I started talking to my friends that I've made on X, and I got a lot of connections because of my Nashville story, and I was led to a foundation in Washington, D.C., that takes on cases like this.

I picked up some local counsel, and we're suing on two counts, One of them is called Tennessee's Promissory Estepel Doctrine in which I had reason to believe. Estoppel, sorry, I'm just a clarinet player. I'm glad you clarified that. So they gave me reason to believe that they were going to hire me. I sent my resume. My resume shows that I was gone from the Nashville Symphony since 2020.

My story is out there. They could have done some background checks, but they were too lazy to do that. But I had every reason to believe that they knew who I was. and they were willing to hire me if I won the audition. So I'm suing them for, you know, the $25,000. I picked $25,000 for my time spend practicing and a year's salary. So that's what I'm hoping to get in terms of financial compensation. And my second count is that they discriminated against me because of skin color

and hired a non-white player who was my runner-up in the audition. Now, that's a big accomplishment of all the play. players, except me, he bested them all, but he happens to be non-white. So it's not so obvious whether it was a DEI hire or not, but you can think of these people like Rachel Ford saying, hmm, if we just kick James Zimmerman to the curb, we can get a non-white player in the orchestra and that'll up our diversity numbers, since this is all these people apparently care about. It does have a little bit of the stench of DEI on top of it, on top of it. But how would you like to be this kid who's still in college. He shows up to the audition and all of his colleagues say, hey, congratulations.

None of us voted for you at the audition. We all wanted James Zimmerman, but I'm sure you're going to do just fine. And by the way, there's this huge lawsuit about this situation, stinking up the joint. Like, that's a terrible situation to put somebody in. So I really feel for the kid. You know, we clarinetists have somewhat of a brotherhood. So I'm rooting for him to do well and get out of there. I know. I know. How about that? If we're ever in the same city, we should play some duet. I'd love to. I'll play first. You can play the second part, but, you know. I accept. I accept. I will be the one faking the clarinet movement so that anybody has a shot of thinking you're playing is mine. There we go. What we needed here was someone with courage

and this woman who runs the Knoxville Orchestra did not show any courage whatsoever. You should be brought back. You should be given the opportunity to do the thing that you're great at and that you love. And this ridiculous incident that was, happening right before, but as we built up to George Floyd a Palooza, when the nation was suffering from a temporary insanity should not be held against you. That's very clear. And if it has to happen via a lawsuit or a civil rights department investigation, so be it. But it takes guts for you to make a deal out of it, James, because I know no one ever wants to be the squeaky wheel. That's why you kind of go along to get along so that you don't get fired and then you can get the

next job, but this can't keep happening. Can't keep happening in general. Can't keep happening to you. We deserve to be able to hear you. The people in Knoxville just got robbed. The people in Nashville got robbed. And I want to leave the audience with this. Someone who goes by violinophile on X retweeted your story and offered this comment. An important point about this story, I'm not seeing mentioned, is that what James pulled off was a sort of miracle. He had achieved a High-level principal position, rare enough, got canceled, then slugged his way back and won another principal position. It was a real hero's journey. That was, of course, until it was ruined again by another orchestra director who had no spine. I hope it works out for you, James. Thank you so much

for coming on and telling your story. It's been great, Megan. Thank you so much. All the best. Wow. Oh, it's just. to me, it's just, it's heart-wrenching to hear these stories. We've talked to so many people to whom this has happened. They, they, they drove him nuts by this nonsense obsession with race. He sent one email, which wasn't even, that was not threatening. He's saying, hey, you got a nasty dog. We happen to have a gun. He's basically saying, you're threatening to mess with me. Don't. The other guy didn't get fired for the dog. comment, right? Like, only James. Why? Because the one side, this is how it appears, was supporting DEI and he wasn't. This is just, it's ridiculous. And honestly, Knoxville, you're the most ridiculous of all that you wouldn't hire him six, seven years after the fact. Because of this, this woman should have to explain herself. Why? What is it? Is it because you saw somebody who was, who was not white, who was behind James, and that's a much safer hire for you, as he alleges,

where is the orchestra conductor with balls to do what's right? I look forward to finding them because James Zimmerman should not be left on the sidelines. Okay, thanks to everyone for listening. Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.