The Megyn Kelly Show - Left Losing Meme War, Chelsea Clinton's Pod, and How AI Helps Scammers, with RealClearPolitics Hosts and Eric O'Neill | Ep. 1162

Episode Date: October 2, 2025

Megyn Kelly is joined by Tom Bevan, Carl Cannon, and Andrew Walworth, RealClearPolitics Hosts, to discuss the unfunny Democrats not being able to take a joke, the left losing the PR battle as the government shutdown continues, the left and media’s reaction to Trump’s ongoing sombrero memes, how the shutdown may ultimately end, what's really happening with Kamala Harris’ book tour, whether she's prepping a run for president, Chelsea Clinton’s new anti-MAHA podcast, her being the “ultimate nepo baby,” why she's using the term "Dr." before her name, and more. Then Eric O'Neill, author of "Spies, Lies, and Cybercrime," joins to discuss cyber-scams that have become more frequent, how AI is making cybersecurity even harder, how people can protect against it, how O'Neill was able to catch one of the most prolific spies in American history, and more. Bevan, Walworth, & Cannon- https://www.realclearpolitics.com/O'Neill- https://ericoneill.net/books/spies_and_lies/ SelectQuote: Life insurance is never cheaper than it is today. Get the right life insurance for YOU, for LESS, and save more than fifty percent at https://selectquote.com/megynVandy Crisps: Get 25% off your first order | Use code MK at https://vandycrisps.com/MKByrna: Go to https://Byrna.com or your local Sportsman's Warehouse today.Riverbend Ranch: Visit https://riverbendranch.com/ | Use promo code MEGYN for $20 off your first order.  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 Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at noon east. Hey everyone, I'm Megan Kelly. Welcome to the Megan Kelly show, and happy Thursday. It's day two of the government shutdown. Is it already backfiring on the Democrats? The White House is warning that mass layoffs in the federal government are imminent. But the Dems seem more concerned about calling Trump's AI videos. racist. They really want you to think that he's a racist and his videos are racist. That's the takeaway. That's what they want you to go home with. How's that working? Here now for a reaction to all of today's news are buddies from the Real Clear Politics podcast, which you can also hear on Sirius XM. Tom Bevan, co-founder and president of Real Clear Politics, Carl Cannon, Washington Bureau Chief for Real Clear, and Andrew Walworth, chief content officer. We have to talk about something you will not want to miss out on.

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Get the right life insurance for you, for less, and save more than 50% at selectquote.com slash Megan. That's selectquote.com slash Megan. Guys, welcome back. Great to be with you. Now, I just want to give you a little tease. Yesterday, we ran a soundbite, and my team, when we finished the show, said, oh, we have a longer, better version of that soundbite where this particular person goes on more about the subject. And I said, this is perfect because I really want to save that for Andrew.

So just, I'm not even going to tell you who it is. Just know that's coming your way today. Great to have you back. Okay. So let's start with shutdown. orama. I love the sombrero thing. It's highly amusing. The Democrats don't know what to do in response. And so they decided, I guess, to do some sort of a marathon on their YouTube channel. Okay. So in the early hours of the shutdown, Hakeem Jeffreys put on his YouTube channel a rotating cast of Democrat House members and influencers to try to keep like a marathon. ongoing of it's the Republicans' fault, not the Democrats' fault? And this is how that went. Politico,

which is not exactly averse to Democrats, writes, at times, just a few dozen viewers were watching. On YouTube, Democrats peaked at around 1,000 viewers. Had the feel of a throwback telethon with none of the charisma or surprise. Jeffries at one point said, y'all, I ain't scared. I'm from Brooklyn. Okay. The live stream featured four frontline Democrats of the 26 who are in competitive districts. Missing stars on the Dem side like AOC and Jasmine Crockett, a possible tell, writes Politico, that they see some risk in participating in something like this. Democrats were not able to field live programming for three hours in the middle of the night, despite an internal email desperately seeking. participants. The White House meantime began live streaming a roughly three-minute clip of various congressional Democrats in other times speaking out against previous shutdowns, and the viewership on

that absolutely dwarfed Jeffrey's views. So it doesn't seem to be going very well. Carl, I'll start with you. Thoughts on where it is now 24 hours in. Well, the Democrat strategy is a little mystifying. They said that they were closing the government because they wanted to guarantee health care for people, the most vulnerable people. I wouldn't say American citizens, but I don't want to get into that just yet, but the most vulnerable people living in the United States. That's what they said. And then when it happened, their messaging was the Republicans shut down the government. And so, you know, when people are arguing with your thesis, they don't get to your point because I think swing voters will say, wait a minute, weren't you

Reagan about you wanted to shut it down, don't, didn't you, wasn't their vote in the Senate and all the Democrats voted to shut the government down? So I think that this trying to score, they're trying to score cheat points on blaming the Republicans without, which interfered with their larger message of why they were doing it. Yeah. Tom, I don't know. So far, he's right, exactly, that like, they're not getting their message across. What I'm seeing is sombrero and them getting hammered, pretty much at every turn on why they're trying to fund health care for illegals, why they're cutting federal pay cuts or paychecks in the name of health care for illegals. I think that's right. And one of the most interesting things about politics over the last

few years, Megan, is that Democrats don't know how to mean. They can't mean. And Republicans and Trump in particular and the MAGA folks have mastered the art and they continue to do it. So they do this sombrero thing. And then Hakeem Jeffries comes out with this indignant, you know, I'll say it to my face or whatever. And then they put a sombrero on that. And that because it's become a running gag now that everybody is in on, it seems like, except for the Democrats who are busy yelling that this is racist. There was just one where they put a sombrero on J.D. Vance.

And he was talking in sort of spanglish about how he can't compromise. He can't negotiate with the Democrats because they're. quote, retardo. I mean, it's this funny thing that has happened here where the Democrats, and you're right, they tried this, like, they tried this telethon thing. They can't get any views. That way they did this, I don't know if you saw this cringy video of like the Republican Democrat kitties trying to explain the shutdown.

I mean, it was like, it was so bad. So bad. And so they really seem to be just sort of flailing about. And the question is, okay, well, you know, how much is this going to hurt? them politically. And, you know, or are we just living in two completely different information bubbles where, you know, the left thinks the Democrats, you know, they're, they're with them and the right is obviously with Republicans. And so there is, there's very little political damage that can, that can come from this. On the other hand, you know, they're definitely not helping

themselves, I don't think. And they are, I think it's clear to everyone that they are the obstacle to opening the government. And so they will pay a political price, but it's just a question of, you know, how much will they pay? Just before we came to air, Andrew, I saw a clip of Jake Tapper cross-examining Hakeem Jeffries in an not so friendly, mildly friendly way, but it was all about here. Here's the provision right here that shows this will provide health care for illegals, the thing you're arguing over. Like, I know you say it's not true, but here's the provision. So, I mean, even on the left wing channels now, you're getting the right wing narrative because it happens to be true. So any journalist who honestly wants to talk about this is going to have to raise

the provision that they're arguing over, which indeed will provide coverage for illegals and health care. Yeah, it's, you know, it's a complicated topic, obviously. It really comes down, though, to redefining what an illegal is. That's what the real. argument is about here. About 6% of the people who are on Medicare are what they call non-citizen enrollees. And these are legal residents, but they're not full citizens. So what the GOP is trying to do is they wanted to exclude some of these now lawful immigrants. These are like Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans who have been given protected status under Biden. So Trump wants to revoke that. So that's really what the fight is over. It's over who

qualifies as a legal residence. And Dems, they want to keep these groups and let them remain legal residents. The White House wants to reclassify them. So, you know, it is interesting. We sort of have this discussion about the memes and stuff like that. But if you dig a little bit deeper into what they're talking about, it's just a little more complicated. Well, I mean, what I see is we pass the big, beautiful bill. We had these debates. The Democrats lost. The Republicans lost. The Republicans won and passed it. President Trump signed it into law. And now the Democrats want to remove a chunk of it in order to find the government. No, I think that's absolutely true. I think I think the Democrats did vote for this and and. Maybe they were the bill. But they didn't vote for it.

They didn't vote for it. They voted. There were not Republican votes that it passed. So, Megan, it's not so much that the Democrats are being hypocritical. They're just saying, we never signed up for this and we're still going to resist it, right? Yeah, but it's, I mean, the law passed. Like, how do you hold up funding? for the government by saying, we need to undo your legislation. You have to undo your legislation that you just passed in order for us to just fund the government, which is something you have to do every year. Well, you can see why that's not a great talking point.

So instead, they just say Democrats, they just say Republicans are lying. And this is every, half the senators have put out, you know, Sheldon White House put out a thing. The Democrats, Republicans are just lying about this. And then somebody went on Twitter, I'm supposed to call it X, I guess. and put the provisions from his home state right there next to his statement. And the other thing is that there's two other aspects. One is money is fungible. Medicare is paid by the states.

If the federal government's given them money for something else, and then the states are using it for that, you can't say that no money is going to people who aren't citizens. And the other part of it is that Democrats, in 2019, you remember this, Megan. I forget who it was. One of the moderators asked them during the debate, and it was this huge cast of characters led by Joe Biden. Do you favor?

Oh. It was Savannah Guthrie. Here. So I'm remembering this right. Yeah. And they all raised the hand. Here it is. Stand by.

All right. Raise your hand if your government plan would provide coverage for undocumented immigrants. Everyone's hand is up. Every single Democrat candidate has raised their hand that their plan would provide cover for illegals. And my point here is that they've gone. in six years from bragging about this policy. And I can defend that policy. I could give you a new testament explanation why it's a really good policy. They've gone from six years from saying that's what they believe in to saying if you say that's what they believe in, you're a liar.

And it's, we do need an independent media to point this, that these are not compatible. No, you're right. This is Al Franken, you know, former comedian, former senator on X. Is J.D. Vance a liar or just woefully ignorant when claiming that Democrats want to give health benefits to undocumented immigrants. And then you look at that soundbite, how many of you would fund health care for illegals? Literally every hand is up, every single one. It's just the proof is everywhere. They're not going to convince people on this. Instead, they're doing cat memes like Tom points out. We should show it just so people can see this is the Democrats fighting back. This is supposed to reflect, I guess, some level of swagger. It's size.

18. Republican and Democrat kitties cannot agree on what should be funded. Democrat kitties want you to have health care. Republican kitties do not. Republican kitties control the Senate House and the White House, so they're using that to cut your health care and give money to billionaires. Democrat kitty tries to negotiate, but Republican kitty keeps running away. He has a vacation to get to.

Uh-oh. Suddenly the money you pay for your health insurance has tripled. Thanks, Republicans. Oh my God. And then the Republicans' response was simply, one picture of the derogat kitty with sombrero, the mustache, and the little, what are they called? What are they called? That's a little instrument that you shake. Maraca. It's a Maraca, yeah. Little Maracas.

I think they were, I think they were trying to reach their, their coveted demo of childless cat ladies with that video. That's what that, that explains why they. Taylor Swift. No, by the way, just, just for the record, if you remember that primary, every Democrat also raised their hand, and this was a big deal during that primary, Castro, who's running for president, they wanted to decriminalize border crossings, right? It was a yes or no question. They all raised their hand for that, too. And you remember not too long ago, Bernie Sanders gave an interview where he said, and I posted something at the time because it jumped out to me, he was asked a question about illegal immigration.

He said, well, nobody wants, nobody wants an open border. That's silly. Democrats have never wanted that. And it's like they're trying to rewrite history here. They absolutely, obviously, were for this leading into 2020. They were for it the entire time Joe Biden was president, not a single Democrat stood up and said, Alejandro Mayorkas, what you're doing is wrong. Joe Biden, what you're doing is wrong.

They just denied it. They said it wasn't happening. They said, you know, all these various things to excuse and allow this policy to continue. And now they won't take accountability responsibility for it. Okay. So now what we have is a media that understands those facts as you just lay them out. And so instead of doing more of what we did see Jake Tapper try to do today to his credit, we're getting a deflection into those memes are racist. That Trump is a racist. Why are we seeing a sombrero? Just not just totally not getting that America has moved on from those days. We are just no longer willing to forget our sense of humor. I speak on behalf in particular. of all Irish Americans. There's nothing we like more than making fun of one another.

And this is a sampling of what we've been seeing on the airwave stop for. What does that shameful man do? Something that draws a sombrero and a mustache? Sombrero. Showing this video that Donald Trump put out, this fake video, it is absolutely disgusting. Say it to my face. Trump is continuing to post racist and bizarre AI videos. I'm not going to play that.

It is the ugliest, possibly the single most demented thing he has ever done on social media. I'm not going to play the whole video because we don't find it meets our standards. So we're the news. We're not going to tell you what it is, hateful, kind of bigoted, doctored image. You'll have a very easy time finding it, but you won't find it on this program. I am not going to use this hour to show that kind of Trump filth and depravity. They don't get it. Like, Tom, it's better to be in on the joke.

It's better maybe to give it an eye roll, be like classic Trump. But they're really, the Democrat media is doing this because they're much happier, just leveling accusations of racism than getting down to the honest truth about what's in this bill

and why the Democrats are objecting to it. I think if it really was... I think if it really was racist, they would show it. I think they know it's not racist and that it's funny and that their audience might actually they might actually laugh at it privately or secretly and be like,

you know what, that's actually kind of funny. So they just describe it as this depraved. I mean, Lawrence O'Donnell, come on, please. The most depraved thing ever, Trump's ever done. Tom, if you say it's depraved and filthy, then your watchers on MS. I got to see this and they call it up. That's true. You can see it may be in bad taste.

It's not depraved. It's not filthy. The single most demented thing that Donald Trump has ever done. Right. You know, when, when, who was it that made fun of J.D. Vance? And he, like, leaned into it and laughed about it, right? And I, as they said earlier, what the Democrats have done here and Hakeem Jeffries and the media, they've allowed, I mean, you should, you just showed four or five of those clips. The Trump War Room and some of the MAGA folks, they put sombreros on every single one of them, including they put a sombrero and mustache on the, on the Hispanic Congresswoman that was complaining about it being raised. So they've turned this into a running gas. that is that most of the country, I think, finds, they may find it in bad taste. They may think it's childish, it's juvenile, but I think most people think it's, it's pretty funny, and they get a laugh out of it, or it's kind of harmless, but they certainly

don't think as, I don't know what percent of the country lines up with Lawrence O'Donnell and thinks it's the, it's the worst thing that's ever happened to the country in the history of the, you know, America. You don't think it's the single most demented thing that this president or any has ever done. Here, here to your point, and I'll place for you, Andy, is a C-SPAN caller calling in, I mean, the C-SPAN.

It's not exactly known for its levity, but here we go, SOT 6. I called Akeem-Jeffrey's last night and a tank left him a voicemail, and I wanted to know where he got the somberal from because I wanted to buy one, too, because I thought he looked good in it. It's just a joke.

joke. See, nobody can take a joke no more. This country is so evil in so many ways that nobody can take a joke anymore. You do not think that is funny? A mariachi band, Donald Trump playing all those instruments, and that is funny. Come on. He speaks for us all, Andrew, but that's a real. He speaks for us all, Andrew, But that's a real, like a regular person, just calling it to C-SPAN to say, would you lighten up? And then it's perfect to see the C-SPAN anchor like, oh, my God, he wants me to laugh at the sombrero. I definitely cannot laugh at the sombrero. Oh, I like the J.D. Vance, he said, I will make a solemn promise to you that if you help us reopen the government, the sombrero memes will stop. I think, you know, I do think a couple things.

It makes me a little nostalgic for the days of when we were all bemoaning the fact that Twitter had ruined political discourse and that, you know, 126 characters or whatever it was. I mean, now we're talking about memes as if that's the heart of political discourse. And I think, unfortunately, that is sort of at the heart of our political discourse right now. And I think that's kind of sad in a way. But I also think that the Democrats have just, it's like Lucy in the football. I mean, don't they, why do they sort of rise to the bait so quickly on something like this? And it sort of deflects them from making arguments that they, you know, that they could be making, I suppose. Because now they're arguing about this and they look like they, A, it looks like they can't take a joke.

It doesn't advance their argument. You can't beat Trump when it comes to social media. You shouldn't even try. And I haven't seen anybody on the left who, who comes close to Donald Trump in terms of just sort of an understanding of how you use this new medium in this new era. And he redefines, you know, he just redefines what political discourse is. And we may not like it. We may, you know, think, oh, my gosh, I wish we were arguing over op-eds in the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post.

But we're not. This is where we are. And he's the master of it. So it's like they're very upset that he's exploiting. Mexican culture in order to make his political point. But, you know, I am old enough to remember taco trucks everywhere, which they said was an acronym that stood for Trump always chickens out. That was before we bombed Iran. But that's what they wanted to say that he would always chicken out on his threats. And they love to see the little taco trucks show up everywhere.

I think we have a little montage of that. Democrats trolling Trump with the taco truck. DNC parking this truck outside the Republican National Committee in DC to talk Trump with his new Wall Street nickname Taco, which means Trump always chickens out, a reference to the many times that he has retreated from his trade war threats, right? Promising something and then lowering them without a negotiation. The truck, obviously featuring an image of Trump as a chicken, this is the White House says Trump has sent out letters to major U.S. trading partners, and they have demanded their quote unquote best offers by the end of the day. tomorrow. Credit once again to Western Lensman, who finds the best stuff. But this is all over the place. They thought that this is wonderful, a wonderful thing to do, Carl, back when it was making fun of Trump. But now that it's making fun of a Democrat, it's racist. Well, you know, this is, I once told this to George Stephanopoulos when he was working for Bill Clinton in another

context, Megan. But the difference between someone who laughs at his enemies and a person who laughs at himself is the difference between a bully and a person with a sense of humor. And, And, you know, we talk about people on the left aren't funny anymore, but that wasn't always true. I mean, the funniest guy on the left was Al Franken, who you mentioned earlier. Then he decided he was going to run for Congress. And Al Franken spoke at the White House Correspondents' Dinner twice, and the first time he was really funny. He was not in politics then. He poked more fun at Republicans, but also some at Democrats.

Then he decided he was going to get into politics. He later ran for Senate of Minnesota, and the second time he wasn't funny at all. hyper-partisanship is almost by definition not funny. And so this thing where J.D. Vance retweets the things making fun of him, of the memes poking fun at him, that's actually an essential point here. You know, we're in baseball playoffs, Megan. Are you a Yankee fan? Because I hesitate to bring up this sport.

Yes. Well, I'm not. But let's argue about that another time. Well, I mean, I have no choice because the Mets didn't really have a great year. That was my dad's team. But I know enough to know they stunk up the joint this year. All right. Well, but here's, now we're in baseball players.

There's a phrase in baseball. It's really apropos of this. It's called rabbit ears. You have rabbit ears. And it means this when somebody's ragan on you, you get mad. You get red in the face. You can see it bothers you. Well, if you do that in baseball, if you show you have rabid ears,

you will subject yourself to unmerciful teasing and hazing. And so people tend to be stoic or laugh along with it. This is, I saw Hakeem Jeffries sort of showed that he had rabidies. And I don't mean that in any kind of... You're in trouble laughing. I'm just talking about this baseball phrase. And so he assured that they would keep doing it. And I just, you know, that's such an elemental thing.

You'd think he'd know that. Can I make one more comment before I, I don't mean a monopolist, but you showed that C-SPAN clip. That guy not laughing is John McArdle. He's a great young journalist. He has a terrific sense of humor. But at C-SPAN, they were taught by Brian Lamb. By Brian Lamb, they can't laugh at stuff like this.

And I found this out myself when Brian had me on his show, his book show about my book. And he was a book about presidents. And he said, you know, you say good things about presidents, every president in this book. And I said, yeah, but you'll notice Richard Nixon's not in there. And it's supposed to be a laugh line. You're in a studio alone with the guy. And he doesn't even crack a smile. He's a poker face.

And I finally had to say, Brian, that's a joke. and he still didn't laugh. He was, yes, I see. So that's, that's the C-SPAN way. It explains a lot about C-SPAN's ratings. Well, I wanted to spend them. I love those people. Just make sure you give the audience absolutely nothing to connect to. That's what's most important is that you show zero humanity. That's our business model. I'm trying to defend C-SPAN. As long as we're on the subject of TV programming, back to the telethon over on Hakeem's

YouTube channel, Tom, by 9.55 p.m., they had Don LeMond. on there. This is how desperate they got for anyone. So Don LeMond gets on there and asks, what's next? The former CNN host, again, this is political writing, turned independent creator, asked of Representative Ayanna Presley, Democrat of Massachusetts. How can the people watching, what can they do? Political finishes with just 122 people are watching. So you've got Don LeMond sitting there with a member of the squad, and they garnered, this isn't at four in the morning either. This is at 9.55 p.m. They garnered less than 130 people in their effort to turn the narrative. I would say this. If I were advising Hakeem Jeffries, I don't know exactly how to land it.

But I think the next move should definitely be him at a Mexican restaurant, actually wearing a sombrero, maybe doing a dance. and then at the end saying like one line that he wants people to remember about what this dispute is really about. Like, it's all in good fun. I'll be the first to make fun of myself. I think I looks good in this hat. I'm not sure about the mustache.

But what I don't look good in is being surrounded by people who don't have their health care and that's actually what I'm fighting for. Something like that. That's a good ad. I like that. I think it's too late for that. I think if he had done that originally,

but he's already been, into overdrive. And so to do that now would be almost seen as capitulation and that he had lost. But if he'd done it proactively, I agree with you, Megan. Can I just say one other thing, which your lead-in brought to mind? It is, and I rag on the media quite a bit on our show, our listeners will know. That's one of my favorite parts of your show, which I use to every day. It's the rare podcast I don't miss. I appreciate that. And we are kindred spirits in that way. And so you'll appreciate this line. It is one of the most, one of the most satisfying things about the new era that we're in here is that so many of the media grandstanders and scolds, and I'm thinking of Don LaMond, I'm thinking of Jim Acosta, I'm thinking of Joy Reid, are now in their basements getting like 50 people viewing their shows.

when they used to be, you know, Jim Acosta used to be, you know, grandstanding in the White House press bringing. Remember you ripped that microphone out of that young intern's hand in the East Room? I mean, this guy was the biggest asshole who ever lived. And now he's in his basement doing, you know, a show to 10 people. So that is ultimately, I mean, that is just very, very satisfying. And what you mentioned, you know, Don LaMond being on with like five people watching, trying to help the Democrats out. What can people do? What can all 100 people watching do?

We'll give them their marching orders, Representative Presley. I mean, like, that's how bad things have gotten. She's not even one of the stars of the squad. She's like third-tier squad. And so, look, they don't know what to do. And I don't, so how does this end, you guys? You know, I mean, who waives the white flag first? What will it take?

Because now they're saying, technically, if things go forward without any change on October 15th, the troops are going to lose their paycheck. and then shit gets real. So what happens, Andy, do you think, to bring this to a close? Oh, I think the Democrats cave. I think it's, there's no doubt in my mind that at some point they'll have to, there'll be some sort of negotiation worked out where they're going to discuss this between now and the end of the year.

But they'll say that, you know, we've got enough concession, good faith concessions from Republican leadership that we're going to continue these discussions and a couple of the Democratic senators will hive off. I don't think that Chuck Schumer will vote for this bill, though. I think he will be a holdout. He's under a lot of pressure. Under a lot of pressure. But they'll find the votes. What is it? Like six votes, Tom, that they need something like that. So that's what I think happens. The one thing that I'll say about this shutdown, too, is it's the most, it's a strangest shutdown. It is a partial government shutdown. We should, we should say that. But everything is open. I mean, they didn't close the Smithsonian. They didn't close the

national parks. The VA is open. Social Security checks are going out. The post office works. So, you know, a subtle message of this shutdown, I think, to the American people is, hey, maybe, you know, maybe we shouldn't take these shutdown so seriously in the future. I personally, and I said this on the program the other day, I'm so tired of covering shutdowns. It seems like every two years. It goes and goes and goes. And only rarely do they actually get to the point where they shut it down. So at least this time we've got to shut down to talk about it. Yeah, some drama.

There's some drama. But even the drama is kind of a non-drama because I think for the average American person, you know, how does this affect them? I'm checking. The one place where it is being felt is it the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Oh, yeah. That one guy. There's one dude sitting there by himself. Not producing...

What if that one guy had produced better numbers, Andy, than the whole B.O. Can't you see him there? I guarantee you that guy is there by himself going, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Why don't I have that song stuck in my head all day these days? He's got nothing to do. Yes, I agree with you. I think, correct me I'm wrong, but I think they need five, right? Because they had three Dems cross over to help, but they lost Rand Paul.

So once they lost Rand Paul, that left Republicans with 52, then three Dems came, they gave him 55, so they need four. five more Dems to vote on this in order to get it. You could be right. Because you're right. Rand Paul says he won't vote for it. So he won't vote for it. That's for sure.

All right. So that's what I think. But I think the Schumer thing, the Schumer thing is very interesting to me because he was the one who caved the last time. Then he took all this guff for caving. And he caved for good reasons. I mean, he saw that President Trump was going to exploit the shutdown as he's now threatening to do.

He's saying, I'm going to lay off a bunch of people. I'm going to stop funding already. This is like today's story of the shutdown, but he's already saying we're withholding $18 billion in funds from New York City's 2nd Avenue subway and gateway tunnel projects, the latter of which connects New Jersey and New York. New York area lawmakers are very, very angry at that. He's canceling nearly $8 billion in funding for energy programs that he characterized as part of the left's climate agenda. The cuts will impact 16 states, all of which voted for Kamala Harris. He's, this is like funding for energy infrastructure projects in places like New York, California, elsewhere.

So this, this is not going to be good for Democrats. This is not going to be good for blue state voters. He's not going to lose many Republican voters with these moves. So like he's ratcheting up the pressure. And that brings me back to Chuck Schumer, who I think is normally somebody who understands he needs to behave rationally, that those results are going to hurt Dems more than they're going to hurt Republican. but he can't do it because this is already being put on him and he's worried about the AOC polls.

Like there was just a poll last time around that showed her absolutely crushing him. I'm trying to see if I have it in front of me. It was showing her crushing him in a head-to-head matchup. And yeah, she had 55%. He had 36%. This is back in March when it comes to the 28 Democratic Party. party primary for U.S. Senate. So he's really got to worry because does the Democrats want him to cave or don't they? They're trying to label this the Schumer shutdown, which he doesn't

like. What does Schumer do? Well, you can see him. Just imagine the caucus meeting where, yeah, there's all these Democrats. Because you're right, Megan, he's a rational guy he knows. And he's like, okay, we need a few Democrats, but I can't be one of them. So you guys are going to have to vote for this and help me out because there's no way. way that he can do it. I agree with Andy. I think eventually, and we didn't even mention the fact that, you know, Russ vote at OMB. I mean, they're about to start firing people. And that's going to, I think, enrage the Democrats and also hurt them. So I think there will be enough Democrats that are going to, they're going to come up with some sort of try face-saving maneuver and

open the government back up and claim that they won when they actually didn't. And hope their base buys it, and then move on. I'm going to show you this one soundbite of Chuck Schumer on CNN. He was on with John Berman, who asked him about the Schumer shutdown. And look what happened. Every Republican who's gone on TV, the last 12 hours or so, has called this the Schumer shutdown. What do you say about that name? Senator Schumer, can you hear me?

I can't hear Senator Schumer Can you hear me? I don't think Senator Schumer can hear me right now maybe the government shut down including audio on Capitol Hill Hmm

Or could he Tried and true method of avoiding a I've got technical difficulties Well Mike Johnson was very Your piece Mike Johnson was blunt about it He said that Schumer had shut down

He thought it was irresponsible Shut down the government Because of personal considerations And he was saying that because of what you're saying, Megan, because he expects to be challenged in a primary, he went along with this. And it begs the question. So if he's not really the Democrats leader in the Senate, reminds me that old cartoon, I think it was Pogo. Maybe someone will remember the crowd is marching by and the guy says, oh, there they go. I must follow them for I am their

leader. And it makes you wonder. So who, yeah. So who is the Democrats leader in the Senate then? If it's AOC, she's not even a senator. That would be kind of have a new wrinkle in American politics. Oh, well, listen to this. So Pelosi gave an interview on Capitol Hill, and AOC came up. It's always interesting to me to watch Nancy Pelosi talk about AOC, because you know underneath, she can't stand her. So she's always got to maneuver. She's very deft at maneuvering.

So you get, like, how does she maneuver? Here's how that went. It's not 12. It was a thought from the Republicans that AOC is directing this, and she said that senators are welcome to go to her office directly. Is she driving that? saying such a ridiculous thing. I'm just quoting what AOC said.

She said go to her office directly. Do you think there's any credibility to that? She's not directing this. She's wonderful. She's a real team player and the rest of that. You started by saying Republicans say that she's directing this. She is not how King Jeffries is. And this takes a lot of experience,

a lot of unity from the caucus in terms of the point of view. And that's what this is. She's an articulate, a spokesperson for her point of view. Oh, boy. First of all, you're not allowed to refer to a black or brown person as articulate. We learned this. That's considered racist. So somebody needs to tell.

Megan, she's over 80. She gets a pass. And it was an interesting dodge and we. What? Like, what? What? It's not, I mean, she's, she's fine. She's talented in her own way.

She's a real team player. Yeah. Exactly the opposite of what Nancy Pelosi actually thinks. Wait a minute. Did you miss that, though? She said that Hakeem Jeffries is the Senate majority leader, the Senate minority leader. Not Chuck Schumer. Yeah.

Well, and also, do we really want to pin this on Hakeem Jeffrey? She said, Hakeem Jeffries is directing this. Like, great. Great to have the admission. It's you guys. And it's at Hakeem's direction. Now we know exactly who to blame in the next primary. AOC was on MSNBC, MSNBC, MS now, MS now guys.

And what's her messaging, right? Because this is all a proxy fight for the next political election. So everybody's trying to stake out their territory. And that piece of it I am enjoying, I think, speak for all of us there. Here's that with Chris Hayes. And I want to just ask you straight up, like, are you planning to primary challenge him? Do you think that's why he's doing this? This is so not about me in this moment.

This is about people being able to ensure their children. And I will say, because I saw some senators speculating about this, and I saw some Republican members of Congress saying, oh, well, if we have this shutdown, it's because of AOC. Well, if that's the case, my office is open and you are free to walk in and negotiate with me directly. because what I'm not going to do is tolerate four million uninsured Americans because Donald Trump decided one day that he wants to just make sure that kids are dying because they don't have access to insurance. I'm in charge. That's what she was saying there. Nancy Pelosi doesn't know shit. I am running this thing. Come right in my door. I love that. I thought it was great. I mean, my door is open. You come to go.

directly with me, forget all these other folks. Honestly, I don't think she's getting a primary Chuck Schumer. I think she's going to run for president. Do you really? I do. I do. I think she's going to be, she's going to give it a good, hard look. Is she old enough, Tom?

She will be. She will be. Yeah. Yeah, she'll be just barely. I mean, it makes me sad because I think about how young she is. And like Charlie, Charlie was 31 when he was killed. We all knew Charlie Kirk was going to be president one day. He actually only had another four years to wait before he could have even tried for it.

I mean, he absolutely would have been more skilled than AOC, not as legislatively experienced, but more experienced in life. And when I think of somebody as young as that actually going for it, it makes me Miss Charlie even more because, you know, what an opportunity that would have been. How fun would it have been to watch like two young guns like that go at it in the debate? Oh, my God. It's so sad it will never be. Sorry, I took a side turn there. But it is interesting to see AOC stepping into a leadership position there, guys. Yeah, no, and I think you saw there in that clip why she's effective.

I mean, she doesn't take the Trump bait. She sort of went directly to the issues she cares about or talks about, framed it in this extreme way, and said, you know, come to my office and talk to me. It was pretty forceful. So, you know, people should not underestimate AOC, I think. that yes, she's young and she's brash, but she's, I think she's shown that she is where the future of the Democratic Party is. It's her and Mom Donnie. I mean, all the energy in the party is on the left. And I think that, that I'm not so sure Schumer will want to run again. I mean, it may not be that the fear of being primaried is so great that he may, he may retire. That's my,

she is T minus two minutes from getting a sombrero. You know, it would be interesting to see how she would react to that name. I would be, because she's, herself. I don't think she'd laugh at herself. I don't think she'd take it well. No. Yeah, probably not. They're already calling her abuelita online because of her extra.

She put on a few pounds. And some people are saying, I think she looks better now, actually. I'm not going to touch that. Good Lord. That was not the special thing we had saved for you. Andy. Okay, that comes later. Well, all right, so what do you see, Tom?

Andy says it will end with the Democrats caving. And soon? Is that your prediction? Let me just get sooner in the distant future. No, soon. Soon. I think when they start firing federal employees, yeah, I think it's going to come soon, sooner rather than later.

How about you, Powell? Last time was 35 days. And I don't think the Justice Department people, military, I think after two weeks, that they don't get paid. I don't think asking a million Americans to work without pay is going to go down in either party. I think that the Trump administration will give a little bit enough for the Democrats to be able to say,

okay, we'll do a clean CR and we'll push this down the road. I'm thinking, right, not 35 days, between two and three weeks. Maybe by Columbus Day, something like that, which... Or native Indigenous People's Day, whatever. Whatever holidays are. You know, at my daughter's school, when she was in fifth grade, I think it, or was it, no, seventh grade, seventh grade, they asked the kids to argue whether we should keep Columbus Day or change it to Indigenous People's Day. My daughter was the only person who said we should keep it. And the teacher cited against her, unbelievable. Do you remember when they tore that statue down in Baltimore, like Christopher Columbus, like threw it into the Baltimore, Chesapeake Bay, into the harbor? And Nancy Pelosi was asked about it. And she said, oh, well, you know. know, people do things that, you know, it happens.

And, but I found that her brother was like, when he was mayor, was at the inauguration of that statue and spoke very highly of it. And she grew up in the little early. So, so, you know, sometimes, nobody has a sense of history anymore. Have you guys seen the new statue of Tina Turner? Oh, no. I did see a thing of that, yeah. It's terrible.

We'll drop it in for the YouTube audience, but I don't even know where they put it up. But they put, I mean, I appreciate the goal, you know, to honor Tina, which, yes, right on, we should, like one of the great diva icons of all time here in America and worldwide. But it was so bad. It took, like, her hair, I don't know, what they did to her hair. They tried to get that great hair she had on the cover of what's love got to do with it. It was kind of spiky and cool. And they made it just terrible and kind of flat and weird.

It was, it did not do her justice. It wasn't quite as bad or her. phallic as the MLK Memorial thing with the arms and the hugging. We didn't go to that place. It wasn't R-rated. But it was just a fail on every level. Okay. Now, I want to shift gears, though, because we're talking about sort of what the fight between the dens and the Republicans and is it a proxy for, you know, the next election or at least the Democrats' primary race. And I want to look at team GOP because what's happening right now is Trump is advancing his placement on his number one issue, issue on which he is polling the best. And that is crime. That New York Times Siena poll that came out

earlier this week showed crime is his number one issue. And that's post the saber rattling about sending troops in places, the actual sending in troops to Washington, D.C., and to a lesser extent, L.A. to support ICE. And now he's sending troops to support ICE in Portland, Oregon. And he's sending a bunch of troops down to Memphis. Memphis, Tennessee. Memphis, tent see. That's allowed, and that's the biggest we've seen yet, because it was invited by the Republican governor. And that's how, you know, the system works. It's fine for him to send troops if requested by the state governor. And so this Republican governor did it. They're worried about Memphis, which is Democrat run. And Stephen Miller, who just throws the best fastball, went down, they all

went down there. Pam Bondi was down there. Stephen Miller was down there. Pete Hegseth was down there. They were like, we've got you, Memphis. This is on. It's a partnership. We love you. We're going to make sure there will be no block on which residents feel uncomfortable or unsafe to walk. Here's a little bit of Stephen Miller. All we ask from you is to show up at roll call every single night with your brothers and sisters in the federal government and to go out and get the criminals off the street. And if you do that, I pledge to you. We will liberate this city from the criminal element that has plagued it for generations.

This is not just a strategy shift. This is an attitude shift. We are not going to live in an environment anywhere where there is a street that belongs to a criminal, where there is a neighborhood that belongs to a gang, where there is any physical space anywhere that belongs to anyone other than the law-abiding citizens and families of Memphis. The idea that there is a square inch of block in this city

where a citizen doesn't feel safe, is unacceptable. This is Memphis. This is the United States of America. And all that bullshit is done. It's over. It's finished. So good. I have to think, you know, your average voter is feeling the shoot it into my veins in response. Like, who would be against that? Seriously, Tom? Who would be like, I prefer the murderers? Yeah. Look, I think crime is. is an important issue. It's one, it was part of the last election. It's going to be part of the coming elections. And I think you mentioned Trump, it's one of his best issues now. You know, I think Stephen Miller is, is, he may not be the best messenger, I think, because he's one of the

big bogey men on the left for, so, you know, that, I know you like him, Megan, but, but I think the message itself is, is hard to disagree with. The question is how you go about doing it, right? And we've had this discussion in Chicago and other places is like, is it sending in the troops, is it sending in the National Guard, or is it, you know, letting local law enforcement do their job and supporting them and helping them. And there is some nuance in the polling data on that. But there's no question that this idea, Democrats are losing on the idea that in Chicago,

for example, that, you know, everything's just fine. And we should tolerate a certain level of crime and homicide and lawlessness. You know, we know perfection's unattainable, but that doesn't mean we have to let 500 people get killed by, you know, get murdered every year in the city of Chicago or 300 or whatever the number is, even though it's gone down. Yeah, when it's gone down from where it was a couple of years ago, that still doesn't mean it's acceptable or that we should be accepting of that. And I think that is a very common sense message that does resonate pretty wide and pretty deep. What do you make of it, Carl? Well, I think breaking the cycle of crime in these cities is a noble goal. But when I hear, first of all, Stephen Miller on one side and J.B. Pritzker on the other,

I haven't heard anybody say an idea that will help. You know, the Democrats, Tom's point out, the Democrats are losing on this issue because they're pretending that if you have 700 people killed in your town and the next year you have 690 that you're doing good work, that's just, yeah, people think. that's insane. The Democrats actually sound like they're defending violent crime. But when Trump just says we're going to send the National Guard and clean up these streets, well, okay, but then what? How long do you keep people incarceration? Do you build new prisons? How do you break the cycle where people in some of these neighborhoods would rather join a gang than join a church? It's a very complicated problem. And it seems to me Democrats and Republicans need to work together to solve it and not just hurl empty, goofy talking points at each other. Well, Stephen Miller was predicting that businesses quoting here and investments are going

to pour in and Memphis will be richer than ever before. That could happen. That could happen. It happened in New York after Rudy Giuliani cleaned it up with Bill Bratton. If you bring safety to a town, you are increasing the likelihood of investment and businesses popping up. And if they can get that going in the time that they've agreed to have the troops there, which remains unclear to me as of now, that actually could begin to turn Memphis around. And once you show the people how they could be living as opposed to how they were living, that the standard is raised. You know, the demands are going to be higher for how they have to continue on. So this is a glimpse, and it could be a really valuable one. All right, stand by. We've got to take quick break. We will be right back with the guys

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To cower, to hide, to go silent is not the answer. And all I can tell you is there is no fucking way I am canceling one stop on this tour. Not one stop. I'm going. I'm going to stand on these stages and I'm going to say all the things that we say all the time on this show. We're going to make it safe for my team and my guests and you. We're going coast to coast and do something.

really important, which is say what's true and what's real to honor him. I really now more than ever would love to see you all face to face. God, I would love to see you face to face. I need to see you face to face. I am doing this tour, and I would love for you to join me. Megan Kelly.com for the tickets. Back with me now, Tom Bevan, Carl Cannon, and Andrew Wallworth of Real Clear politics. So Kamala Harris is having her moment in the sun. I heard you guys talking about this on your show. And she's in a great mood and she actually has reason to be. Her books are selling fast like wildfire. 350,000 copies sold so far, which is actually really good. I actually can't wait to see when she hits the New York Times bestseller list. If she has the

little asterisk next to her number, which not everybody knows, means that you used bulk sales to get there. Bulk sales are basically a way of saying, here's $50,000, go buy my book. And some very prominent authors, not my husband, but authors you would know, do this. Always look for the asterix to see whether they've done that. But in any event, obviously, she's got a lot of book sales. And here's just a little sampling of how she's sounding these days. This is her on TikTok Tuesday evening.

Her big event was Monday, but this was posted on Tuesday. 30. It's not 30. I have had the experience many people have had or will have had this experience of walking into a room and being the only one that looks like you or has had your life experience. And my request of you is that when you walk in that room, you walk in that room, chin up and shoulders back, knowing that we are all in that room with you and you are not alone and you carry the voice of so many people who are proud that you are in that room and expect your voice to be strong.

She can't do it. She cannot do it. She's desperately trying to be Oprah and she can't be Oprah. And as it turns out, Oprah is kind of a psychopath. I'm going to do a piece on this at some point. Honestly, we were raised by wolves, those of us who watch that show religiously. I figured it out at 54. In any event, Kamala Harris is not even as good as the fake Oprah, never mind the real one.

And I don't know, you guys. You seem to be very bullish on her newfound confidence and think that this sales number is going to encourage her to actually run again. I mean, I'll start with you on that, Andrew. Do you believe that? Yes, I do. Absolutely. Why? I mean, I love it.

I want it. But why? I think, well, all politicians operate inside a bubble. and in her bubble, this is, reinforces the view that, you know, she's, she's still anointed and she will go forward. And I think she will run again. I think the Washington Post, though, had a great, they, they said her book tour is even less compelling than her campaign. I think sort of describes it. It's been, it's been a shock to me. I will say this. I have not read the book. I've read the excerpts that were in the Atlantic, and I've read about it.

And it does seem there's some juicy tidbits in the book. And maybe it's a better book than we expected in that regard. It doesn't seem like it's a great campaign book. So I do expect a second book before she runs, especially because this one's been such a hit. So, yeah, no, I think she's running. I think the campaign's on. And I think she's gunning for those people who will be on the dais with her in the first debate right now.

In the book, she goes after. them, you know, sort of one by one. I don't think Republicans could ask for more because you have this terrible candidate who now has this artificially inflated sense of self because whoever wrote that book for her managed to make it juicy enough that people want to buy it. Even people who don't like her are buying it because they want to hear her, you know, sling all the mud at these other Democrats. So this has inflated her to the point where she actually thinks she can do this, which she definitely cannot, puts her back in the primary. which now we're going to get to see the infight.

Now we're really going to get to see them go after each other. Pete Buttigieg is going to be like, how gay am I, Kamala? You're the bigot, right? Everybody she took Amat, Josh Shapiro, all of them, Tim Walls. Who knows who's going to be up there next door, AOC? And it's going to be the free-for-all that we've wanted. I mean, I don't think I'm a good enough person for God to actually make her the nominee again and for us to have that race.

But I might be. I mean, I'm pretty good. So I don't know. Tom, Carl, what do you guys think? Can you imagine they're going to be on the debate stage and Pete Buttigieg's going to say, you know, that little boy was me, Kamala. He's going to be, you know, do-up t-shirt.

It would be awesome. Look, I do think this is, and by the way, you know, I do think this is somewhat, I just, I find it hard to believe that she is selling out all these places. I mean, again, she's coming to Chicago. I said this on our program the other day. She's coming to our show, or coming to Chicago on, I think, the 11th of October. And I was like, oh, it's on a Saturday. I'll go check the tickets. You could barely get in the door for over $100. And people were paying, the average ticket price was like, $5 or $600. If you want to

set up front was like $3,000 or something. I mean, it was like, who are all these people? I think there's a certain level of astroturfing going on here. It is bulk sales of the book, I think. Tom, you are obligated to go see her, and here's why. I'm going to remind Megan, she listens to our social. She'll remember this. You said the tickets cost more to see Kamala Harris than to go to the Cubs game. Yes. Somebody took you to the Cubs' Padres game yesterday.

So now you have to go to the... That's true. That is true. Do it for all of us. And you know what, Tom, you can put it on your expense account. Yeah. Well, thank you, Carl. Very nice.

Yeah, you owe it to us, Tom. And just bust out your iPhone. Get one of those expensive tickets. sit up by the front, you can bust out your iPhone. And if you could shout out a question, that would be amazing. Like, I don't know. Ask her to do one of her accents. No, but I do think one of the side effects of this, especially if it is not all organic,

and there isn't this sort of, you know, groundswell of support for Kamala Harris, which I really do doubt. But one of the side effects of that is going to be, it is reinforcing this idea among her and her team that, my gosh, people really do want to hear from Kamala. They do still like her and want to see her, you know, run again. And so I think that may end up being one of the products. I don't think, by the way, even if she does run, she's not going to win the primary. I just don't see how she could possibly do that.

Well, you already have your candidate. You said it's AOC. You said she's going to run. I think she's going to run. I think 2028 is going to be a free for all on the Democratic side. I think you've got. Can I ask you two before I toss to Carl. When does 2028?

get started. Not January 1st, 2028, but like, when does it get started? The race. It started a month ago when Gavin Newsom said he was running. It's on. Yeah. Right now. There's a shadow primary that's going on right now. And she went back in it. She went back into her book and we, I think I'm making this up. So, and put that thing about Gavin Newsom texting her when she asked for his endorsement. And Gavin held a press conference about it and said kind of puckishly, well, I'm, I was one of the first people to endorse her. I endorsed her. within hours of that text. I'm sure that's in the book, too.

Well, he knew it wasn't, as Andy pointed out. So it's on right now. They're running. I actually thought that was the most respect I've had for Gavin Newsom, where he didn't call her back, just for the listening audience who hadn't heard. She said when in that period, after Biden passed the baton to her, she was trying to garner support so that nobody else pushed for an open primary. It was just going to be hers to run with.

She was calling all these dams like back me, back me, endorse me. And she said with Gavin Newsom, she called him. And she got a responsive text that just said, hiking. We'll call back, yeah. He was one of the first. He was one of the first to come out and back Joe Biden to the hilt immediately when this whole thing, after the debate happened. Because he knew that if he didn't, it was his best chance of winning and becoming the next nominee. If Kamala Harris did, you know, she's his ultimate rival.

and so he was pretty clear about which side he was on right from the jump. Yeah, the ultimate tell that she's running will be when she starts her podcast. That seems to be the thing you have to do, right? Is Megan running for president? No, I am a better person than I thought I was because there's no way God would give me these gifts otherwise. If Kamala Harris starts a podcast, I promise to personally promote it every day. I will personally bro. We will be on that, like white on rice.

We will be making sure we monitor every word she says. She can title it unburdened. Yes. Perfect. There you have it. And we she can do all in-depth specials on her school bus fetish, her Venn diagrams. Venn diagrams, yeah. Don't forget the Venn diagrams.

The duality. Yeah. Maybe underestimating her. She's so, listen, the alchemy here is, and I like, and I like your theory on it, Megan, we don't have one. these halls that she's selling out, if she had announced previously to this book that you could come here for free, they wouldn't have been sold out. So now people are paying an exorbitant amount of money. So what is going on? How is that? Yeah, or are they getting paid to go there? Is there some donation being made to some group they belong to? And then they're being sent over there. I mean,

that campaign had $2 billion and they're used to finding a way to fill seats with people who didn't otherwise want to be there. Same idea as bulk book sales, right? You buy a bunch of tickets and hand them out. Yeah, look, guys, I will entertain that possibility. However, I will say this. That book is on track to be one of the 10 bestsellers of the year. I don't think you can do that all through sales like this. I mean, if these trends continue, it's going to be a legitimate bestseller. Andy, you're so naive. No, he might be right because Steve Krakauer is telling me that at least on week one, she didn't have the asterix. So either they are legit individual sales or she found a way around it, which also I don't put past her team. I mean, they've, they've found, you would have to

have a way of showing fake popularity if you're running Kamala Harris's campaign. And let's not forget, this is the same team largely that ran Joe Biden's campaign and actually tried to make him look alive. I mean, an even greater challenge four years earlier. And then again, not when he ran for re-election. So, like, these are, you know, they're talented people. They couldn't get the ball over the end zone, but, like, they are talented people. All right, but now you raise the issue of starting a podcast, Carl, and that leads me to my next two subjects. We're going to get to Michelle Obama. That's for you, Andy. But first, we're going to start with Chelsea Clinton. Oh, excuse me, Dr. Chelsea Clinton. Yes, she's pulling a Jill Biden and insisting that we call her

Dr. Chelsea Clinton now because she has her PhD in like international studies or something. But her podcast is not about that at all. It's it's about taking down the Maha movement to put it in a much sexier way than she did. She's sick of the lies. And so Dr. Chelsea Clinton is starting a podcast called That Can't Be True. Here is the trailer. It's not 37. Is it just me or are things actually really weird right now? now in the world of public health. Every day brings another confusing headline or far-fetched claim, not to mention the cuts to cancer research, to women's health research, to brain research, to the dismantling of the suicide prevention hotline for LGBTQ plus kids. People's

lives are at risk. Welcome to That Can't Be True, a show that sorts fact from fiction, especially on issues impacting our health. I'm Chelsea Clinton, an advocate-author, teacher, and most importantly, mom, navigating this insane time right alongside you. I hope you'll join me and a group of trusted experts as we shine a light on what's real, what's not, and why it matters. Who in the world is going to listen to this? Who is saying I need more Chelsea Clinton in my life? If only Chelsea Clinton would advise me on the day's news, especially the Maha movement. What? She has zero expertise that will help her advise on this. She's not a real doctor. And really, she's the ultimate nepo baby, which people can't stand. So explain to me why this is being born. Before I do that, Megan, I'm not going to embarrass this reporter by mentioning his name on air today. He works for me. But he once referred to Jill Biden as Dr. Biden in his story.

It's Philip Wegman, isn't it? I pulled him into my office, and I said, he said, why am I here? I said, we're going to talk about Dr. Jill. He said, okay. I said, let me ask you something. If you were having a stomachache and you needed it, would you let her take your appendix out? This is an old newsroom thing for my youth. He said, no, I said, then she's not a doctor.

Right on. And honestly, I'm not going to run down Chelsea Clinton. I covered her parents. I love her dad. dad. I knew her when she's 13, but she's not Dr. Chelsea. That's not happening in our pages if you're listening, Phil Wigman. I'm sorry. God bless you. I knew it, Phil. I knew it. I could tell. He's so respectful of everybody. It's what we love and hate about him. I do find this very annoying, and I do think Chelsea Clinton's time in the national spotlight has come and gone.

She is one of the most annoying people on X. She's constantly defending the Clinton Foundation, like it's, you know, the squeaky, clean organization her parents lied to us that it was. And she took over this whole graft. And we're supposed to look at her and pretend, Tom, like she's some sort of an authority. Why again? Why? Like, she's basically Hunter Biden in a dress and without the drug addiction. Well, listen.

The idea that she's going to use trusted experts to fact check. information about all the, you know, handle all the misinformation that's out there, particularly as it pertains to public health, is just, it's like she's swimming in the wrong direction, I think. And clearly, had she launched this podcast, you know, five years ago, is there any question about what she would have said about masks and vaccines and shutting down schools for the benefit of those kids? And, you know, I mean, it's just like, come on. I, I think this will appeal to a small section of, of, you know, the Democratic Party or people who are violent fans or whatever. But beyond that, I'm, I just don't understand the, the appeal

of this at all. I mean, is it lost on anyone that her mother is all over the news right now for having launched the plan to take down the Trump presidency and the Trump campaign before he was president by falsely alleging that he was a Russian stooge, that her mother was the OG inventor of disinformation to advance her own political career. And now Chelsea Clinton wants to be underdog to save the day by combating disinformation being put out by the Trump administration and in particular the maha strain. Please, I've got a great subject for you to start with Chelsea. It's very close to home. I can guarantee you get the exclusive. I mean, it's like the elephant in the living room, Andy.

Yeah, well, it's being produced by the Clinton Foundation, too. We should point that out. When you say, who wants to listen to this, it doesn't really matter because basically this is a vanity project. It is funded almost, I think if it isn't entirely funded by the Clinton Foundation, the Clinton Foundation is claiming is the producer for it. You know, she has a master's degree from Columbia in public health. So just to give her some, you know, credence in this, you know, to talk about this issue.

I don't hold it against her that she's not a doctor that she wants to talk about this. I do think she shouldn't call herself a doctor if she's talking about medical issues. I find that really misleading. And, you know, I would, I would urge her to stop doing that because I think it hurts her credibility to the extent she has anything on the topic. she did have a podcast earlier it was called well i forget the name of it but she tried this once before that podcast ended so we'll see what happens with this one she's tried a lot of things in life she's been you know a network correspondent she's a investor and yeah remember she's been an investor she's on the board of a couple media companies um she's on the board of the clinton uh foundation uh so

You know, this is just the latest career for her. And, you know, maybe this will work out as well as the other ones did. Nothing seems to last more than a couple of years. Do you dare me to tell a heartwarming story about Chelsea Clinton? No, I have no desire to hear her. I can't stand her. But I was enjoying listening to Andy trying to, like, definitely navigate not saying anything too negative about her. No, I think she's a very, as Trump would say, nasty lady.

I really can't stand Chelsea Clinton. And there's a reason she's failed at all those things you listed. She really isn't an attractive person in any way. I'm not speaking of her outside. Though, I mean, I've got thoughts on that too. But she's not an attractive person. I think she's ugly on the inside and it projects. Megan, that really leads perfectly into my story.

I'll make it brief. All right. Okay. So I was doing pool duty. Bill Clinton was present. We were at Martha's Vineyard. We went to a party. He had a party for the press on the last day.

And to bring your family. So I brought my kids, and my daughter, Kelly, was 10. And Rush Limbaugh had said something nasty about Chelsea that she was ugly. She was 13 or 14, you know, and had braces and was kind of awkward the way teenagers are. And even for Rush Limbaugh's fans, it was too much. Anyway, she sweeps into the party, and my daughter, Kelly, turns and looks at her and says, that's Chelsea. And then she says, I had no idea she was so beautiful. and I put that in my pool report, and Clinton called me, said, I appreciate what you wrote.

And he should have. That's my story. That's a nice story about your daughter. Your daughter is very generous in her approach to other people, unlike your host of this particular podcast that you're on right now. She's a nasty person. I'm sorry, but she is. I mean, she's pretty hateful. I can see directly where she gets it.

And there's a reason she's failed at everything. And I have to say, like, you can't just launch a podcast and expect people to come. Like, you actually have to have done something. The reason you guys have a successful podcast is because you have spent your lives immersed in politics. You actually have expertise and you know everything about the subject that you speak about all day. I've spent the past 30 years of my life, either practicing law or in journalism, too,

which is why I cover politics and law the way I do. So people understand that when they listen to you. Like, really, what is she going to talk about? her husband's investments, the graft at the Clinton Foundation, her one year on the Today Show that was a nightmare, her master's degree, which as far as I can tell, is the only experience she's had with public health. Good luck. And here's the other thing. In order to resonate in the podcast world, you have to have like an interesting personality. You actually do. You either have to be like clever or nice or controversial or something, you know, just naturally, because

if you fake it, they'll know that too. She's none of those things. She's a bore. She's a snobby. snotty, nasty, burr. That's how I feel. And so it's not going to go well. Okay. How do you really feel, Megan? Sometimes you really find exactly the words that you want to describe what you're describing. Okay. That leads me to Michelle Obama. Okay. We ran the soundbite of her yesterday, guys. speaking of people who are on podcasts that are failing. And it was this sound bite all about how she can't stand Barack Obama.

It's like every sound bite from her is about how little she likes him and can stand him. And she was talking about how she was talking to a relationship therapist on her show and was like, I have to save my commentary during the day if we see each other at lunch because we don't do anything now. And so when I see him at, you know, we can't talk over the line. I'm like, save it for dinner because. otherwise we'll have nothing to talk about when we get to dinner. So we get to dinner and all I'm really thinking is I sit there looking at him is I can't stand the way you chew. It drives me crazy. Like this, there's like true contempt for the guy. And you wind up feeling really sorry for Barack Obama.

You know, like you can see why the guy is afraid of her. Anyway, my team informed me that there's more and that we needed to play. And I think it's out 31. Lauren, you correct me if I'm wrong, but here we go. You really go there. And then you really say, because how many times do somebody asks, what are you thinking about? And you're like, well, let me make up a thing.

Right. Because I don't want to actually tell you what I was thinking about right now. Which was like, the way you're chewing makes me want to smack you upside the head. That's why guys don't want to have to say. That would be an edge. That would be a edge. And that would be really interesting. You could like open something up there in a big way.

Why is you're chewing, annoying me so much? Hearing another person chewing is you're hearing the essence of who they are, their otherness, their bodily functions. That's good to know because the girls and I are very irritated with the way Barack chews. So the girls, too. Everyone hates him at the table. This poor man sits down every night to nothing but contempt. And somehow Michelle Obama thinks this is going to make her super related.

by always talking about how much she loathes her life partner and husband, the former president of the United States, Barack Obama. So you tell me whether we were sold a bag of goods by a media that for years wanted us to buy them as like America's it couple and like the example of modern love and how it can be done and you can have it all. And we all want to be Michelle and Barack. Well, empty nesting is hard. I think that's one thing you can take away from this, right?

You know, she talks about this. Her kids aren't there, so they've got nothing else to talk about. So, you know, I'm afraid to say, I bet that's a little bit more relatable than you think. I think that there are a lot of wives who feel that way about their husbands and hate the way they chew. I always think of it this way. I think that everything that your spouse does that drives you crazy, you are doing at least the same to them. So that's just part of the equation of being married, I think.

The other thing I'd say is that if they have nothing to talk about it. Maybe I'm just one of the lucky ones. But nothing my husband does drive me crazy, literally nothing. Like I really enjoy him. Oh, yes. He's a pleasure spent time with. He's good looking, smart. I sit across the table from him kind of dreamy-eyed.

And we've been married almost 18 years now. I think Michelle Obama's, and it's fine if you have an occasional complaint. Of course, that's human. But all she does is complain. It's so bad, Andrew Walworth, that I did a whole spoof on her, which we labeled Megan O. And I think I nailed it. Here we pulled that back up just in case you missed it with your busy schedule. Here it is.

People ask me all the time they want my advice. And so they ask me, what is marriage? What does it mean? And I tell them, It's about misery. I tell people and folks think that this is harsh, it's like you're going to have a bad decade. And when you have a bad decade or two,

what you need to remember is it's not you. It's your husband or your children. That's who's to blame. If you choose to have a traditional marriage and you have kids, let me tell you, the years of one to 13, We'll be bad. And don't be surprised. People say, oh, it's a bad week.

It's a bad day. No, no, we're talking decades now of bad marriage that you definitely need to blame on someone else. Nailed it. Pretty good. That's pretty good. Biking the ball in the end zone. I have one for you, Tom Bevin, before you get too comfortable. Stop 32.

Okay. I'd get into the, how do you put up with men? And let me tell you what Barak did. You know, and she'd always say, you know, no one's perfect. She used that example. She said every year, it was almost like she had to renew her faith in her marriage. So I think that helped me not walk into my marriage with completely unrealistic expectations that this man that I was going to marry was going to be my all and everything forever and ever. Amen.

That's just not, you know, the way it works. That's one of the reasons why I try to be honest. People look at our marriage as the ideal, you know, because in an Instagram world, you know, you see two loving people doing a hard thing in the world, you know, always on stage, giving each other a hug after a big speech. And making it look easy. And a lot of young people could look at that and go,

I want a marriage like Michelle and Barack. Right. And it's like, well, let me, you know, let me talk about what makes. marriage is, you know, because it's, even when it looks good, even when it's great, it's hard, you know. It's very easy to quit on a marriage. Oh, gosh, she's so unhappy. She's so unhappy. She's never said a nice thing about, like, she gives 30 terrible comments, and then 31,

she'll remember she needs to say something mildly complimentary because she's making them look bad. But she defaults almost immediately back to how miserable they are, Tom. Yeah, I mean, there are two thoughts that I have. One is, you know, we live in an age of oversharing, and she seems to be oversharing here in exquisite detail about her marriage issues, which, you know, especially someone of her stature and who has the sort of status that she has, you know, if you can't say something nice, you better not say anything at all, I would say, number one. Number two, she seems like she has a little bit of. imposter syndrome. Like she she feels bad that her marriage is portrayed as this ideal when it's not. And so she feels guilty about that, it seems like. And she wants people to know. And look, marriage is hard. I mean, that's that's sort of obvious to everyone. But it shouldn't be, you know, as hard as she makes it sound. I mean, she does make it sound like she's, she's miserable and it's a struggle. And, you know, while people have their difficult,

difficulties in marriage. This seems like something, something a little bit more than that. To me, this plays right in to leftist narrative, Carl, that we've been hearing more and more. J.D. Vans tried to get at it, perhaps not as articulately as he would have hoped for the childless cat lady's comment. But the Democrats have been leaning in to marriage sucks and children suck. And staying a straight single lady. is really the best way. You're not burdened by a man. You're not burdened by these annoying children

who the entire one through 13 period will be miserable raising. I mean, that's the other thing. Can you imagine, like saying that about your children? One through 13 was terrible. It was awful. Like, I've heard mothers say that like, you know, the first year was rough

or age two, you know, they're kind of a terror. One through 13, that's basically the whole thing other than high school. Anyway, so this is like we've been featuring we've been featuring on the show. like articles there was one in New York magazine about my husband sucks and he smells bad and I can't stand him and marriage blows and you know we're still married but I'm not enjoying I think she thinks it's kind of cool to talk this way about her partner you know you may be right but you also

maybe giving her too much credit um this doesn't look like a lot of thought went into it she seems to be just unburdening herself to use a word just sort of venting about things I mean bodily functions? Are she going to start talking about farts next? I mean, I don't understand what she's doing. And I don't understand why she's doing it. You know, in, you know, Miller's Crossing, my favorite gangster movie, the Gabriel Byrne character says, people do things for a reason.

But what is her reason here? And you're giving her a reason, you know, the politics of the modern Democratic Party, but this seems more emotive than that and less. Or maybe it's just a worldview, right? Maybe it's just a worldview, like something that's built in, like her worldview that happens to align with what's happening on the Democratic side, where it's just you're negative about the things that make you happy, that should make you happy. Well, that's like that old bumper sticker, you know, annoy a liberal, work hard and be happy. But what's the source here? What is the real source of her resentment? This guy seems actually

from a distance. We don't, you know, you seem pretty easy to get along with. No Donald Obama. Pretty easy guy doesn't yell. Nor would we even know her name if she didn't marry this guy. I was going to say, I mean, she's got the house in Hawaii, the house on Martha's Vineyard, the house in Chicago. I mean, they, it seems like if they really didn't like each other, they wouldn't have to spend this much time together. There we go to their separate houses, right? There's the wall worth we've been waiting for.

He always drops in with the hammer. He's got the velvet glove and then the hammer drops eventually. Go ahead, Tom. But Megan, I think you pointed out, the. The most interesting thing about that clip was what she said about kids. Like, she did not enjoy being a mother for the vast majority of her kids lifetime. She hated the White House. She hates her marriage and her children.

It doesn't sound like she enjoys being married at all. And, you know, I've got five kids. And, you know, my wife and I talk about this because our youngest now is a freshman in high school, which was a real problem. You know, we're like, where did our babies go? But every stage has wonderful moments and wonderful aspects to it for her to be able to look at her two kids and say, yeah, one through 13 is terrible. I mean, that really is revealing and it does reveal a lot about her worldview and how she views what happiness looks like to her. And it clearly doesn't look like having kids and it clearly doesn't look like this particular marriage that she's in. Maybe it's another marriage, but it ain't this one.

I haven't heard her talk about what she loves. Like, she spent a little time practicing law. Right. I've never heard of be like, that was it for me. I loved being up there making an argument or being a junior associate or whatever. Nothing. Like, there's, she never talks about, like, that one period of her life where she was really happy. I think she had a miserable childhood.

She clearly wasn't raised to, like, understand that happiness really can be a choice, you know, looking on the bright side, finding a way to laugh at life's challenges. And, like, she's sort of like, who's the character? character and peanuts. Pigpen, who's got the cloud over him all the time. Like, she's just walking around with that dark cloud. And yet she's chosen to launch a podcast that's supposed to be about, like, life and life's issues and getting Michelle Obama to, like, give you life advice. And in promoting it, she went on, I think it was Amy Schumer's podcast. And she was like, people line up to hear from me. They wait in line to hear what I have to say. And this is what they get. Like, Dower, Debbie Downer, Dower, Michelle. I,

I don't have a tail, and my husband smells bad, Carl. Well, how about she, one to 13? How can you not love four-year-olds? Now, we've all had them. Four-year-old is the perfect age. Perfect age. I would give anything to be able to go back and do it over again. Me too.

But the other thing is, I mean, the idea that at 13, things get better, most people at 13, I have three daughters. They were great throughout, and I would not trade a day of any of it. but, you know, about 13, 14, that's when, that's when it gets challenging. I mean, you know, one to 13 was a cakewalk, yeah. You know, what she was talking about, you know, when they turned 14, that's when they really start to get independent. So that's when they needed her less.

And therefore, we're not as annoying to her. It's like, maybe motherhood wasn't for you. Like, I'm, I'm not sure, but the veil is getting dropped inadvertently or advertently by her on this podcast every day. and the picture's not so pretty. All right, guys, a pleasure. I love getting to know you this way. It's always interesting and love the pod.

Thanks, Megan. Thank you, Megan. All right. We'll do it all over again soon. Okay, we've got something interesting for you up next. A guy who caught the biggest spy in modern American history, a guy who is spying for the Russians. And my next guest was like the guy who went undercover working under him to nab him.

And he's got a warning for all of us on our online activities. Let's be honest. America can still be a dangerous place. And you cannot afford to wait for help. Sure, you could use a firearm. But in today's America, defending yourself with deadly force, could have legal consequences. According to FBI data, 99.9% of all altercations do not require lethal force. And that's exactly why many are turning to Berna.

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raised in the USA and processed in the USA too. This beef is aged to perfection for 21 days and then shipped directly from the ranch to your home. This is not your average black Angus beef. So order from Riverbendranch.com, use the promo code Megan to get 20 bucks off your first order and let me know what you think. Riverbendranch.com promo code Megan. We absolutely have to keep talking. It's more. more important now than ever. This fall, Megan Kelly is taking her show live to cities nationwide. To go silent is not the answer. I'm going. I'm going to stand on these stages and I'm going to say all the things that we say all the time on this show. We're going to make it safe for me.

We're going to make it safe for my team and my guests and you and do something really important, which is say what's true and what's real. And I would love for you to join me. Megan Kelly.com for the tickets. You can stream the Megan and Kelly Show on Series XM at home. or anywhere you are, no car required. I do it all the time. I love the SiriusXM app. It has ad-free music, coverage of every major sport, comedy talk, podcast, and more. Subscribe now, get your first three months for free.

Go to SiriusXM.com slash MK Show to subscribe and get three months free. That's SiriusXM.com slash MK Show and get three months free. Offer details apply. Joining me now is a national security strategist and former FBI counterintelligence operative who wants to warn all of us on the dangers of cybercrime and how we can protect ourselves. Eric O'Neill began his career in FBI counterintelligence as an undercover operative. He's best known for his role in capturing the notorious spy Robert Hansen. In 2001, O'Neill helped capture Hansen, who was an FBI agent at the time spying for the social. and Russian intelligence for over 20 years.

The case was such a massive story. It turned into a Hollywood movie, of course. Actor Ryan Philippe starred as O'Neill in the 2007 thriller called Breach. Watch. I don't know what I'm supposed to be looking for. The guy doesn't drink, goes to church every day. Faith, family, country. Those are the things that matter.

Come to admire, am I safe? Yes. Respect them? I never cared about making headlines. He's a traitor, Eric, started spying for the Russians in 1985. Good news is you're in the middle of the biggest case we've ever run. The damage he's done to the U.S. government is in the billions. It might be years before we truly know how many deaths he's been responsible for.

Why don't we just arrest him? Can't do that. Director wants him caught in the act. What if he's smarter than I am? He spent the last 20 years out thinking Russian spies. He's smarter than all of us. So good. He has spent years in national security and cybersecurity, but even he fell for a scam disguised as a reputable speaking engagement.

Well, he's now out with a new book. It's called Spies, Lies and Cybercrime, Security Tactics, Cybersecurity Tactics, to outsmart hackers and disarm scammers, which you can pre-order right now. Eric, welcome to the show. This is the book, Spies, Lies, and Cybercrime. Get yours right now so you can have the best of the best advise you on how not to be a victim. And it's sad because these criminals can get right into our homes. They can get right into the palm of our hand thanks to our iPhone when we think we're just doing something innocent like responding to an email or making a purchase. And before you know, you're interacting with a dark web criminal. You're exactly right, Megan. And first of all, it is wonderful to be on the show with you. And I can't imagine a better place. launched this book and it looked really good in your hands, by the way. But the colors are just right. They really are. Yes, you were exactly right. See, what, the big misconception about this a massive growing crime, I mean, cybercrime right now is the biggest growing business on Earth

is that attackers aren't using some sort of computer to get into your computer. What they're doing is they're using what's called social engineering to attack us, you and me. And that's SpyCraft. That's traditional espionage in a modern environment to come after our data. Like what? Explain social engineering. Right. So social engineering. So many people think, you know, someone's using some sort of malware and it's computer

to computer. But instead, what they're doing is they're using texts, email, DMs on social media now in order to fool you into doing something you shouldn't. So, for example, and you set this up, when I was almost compromised, by this cybercrime gang, they sent me an email inviting me to speak at this exceptional speaking event in Cape Town, South Africa, at the Hillsong megachurch. And it was this incredibly carefully designed scheme to get me to trust and to get me to do something I shouldn't do, which was literally just send the money. And they almost got me. At the last minute, I realized this is too

good to be true and did a little bit of double checking, which I should have done in the beginning. and it would have saved me a lot of pain. Wow. I know that you are pointing out that they're getting very sophisticated now and trying to fool us by using AI too to mimic voices if they have access to them of your loved ones. I couldn't help but think of at the time we were almost scammed and we ran this as an episode one year. We did a whole week on fraud. And what happened was just briefly, my mother-in-law, God rest her, we lost her this year. She received a phone call from someone claiming to be her daughter, my sister-in-law, claiming to have just been in a car

accident where she'd been arrested because she allegedly got in a fight with the cops and her partner got in a fight with the cops and they were going to jail and they needed to be bailed out and they needed her to wire money to the courthouse right away and then gave her a courthouse number. So it sounded like legit. But here is a clip of my mother-in-law telling that story. she said that she was in jail on a drunk driving charge and that she had we i needed to get talk to somebody that she had a telephone number she just said i'm so scared i'm terrified and um i asked her where brad was and she said, well, he's in jail too.

The sophistication of this whole thing, Eric, was downright disturbing. We caught it at the last minute, same as you. I've seen that scam many different times. It's used in a number of different ways. So that's one of them. There's a car accident. I'm in jail. You need to pay my bail.

And normally what happens is the next person you talk to is the, the public defender, right, who's saying if you don't pay, they don't get out. There's another one, though, which is, yeah, exactly, the public defender. And then the idea there is they want to put pressure on you. And what they'll say is, if I hang up the phone, then your daughter will spend the next week in jail. If you can't pay right away, I can't get her out, right? That's what they said. They did it on a Friday. They're like, we're going into the weekend. She's going to be stuck there. Exactly. So that pressure causes you to not think, to not take a step back and think, wait, could this be real? Because what they don't want you to do is say, hold on a minute and then try to call your loved one and see if it's real or not. The other way that this scam works very often is you get a call from a family member. And what they'll do is they'll actually look at social media to find out when that person is on vacation. Then they'll use AI to clone their voice. And it just takes five seconds of some clip social media to clone the voice. And what they'll do is they'll call as your family member

and say, Mom, I'm in Panama. I'm wherever they're on vacation. And I was mugged. I lost my wallet, my phone. I'm using somebody's phone at the hotel. I can't even pay my hotel. I need you to quickly wire me a thousand dollars where they're going to kick me out on the street. And this gets everyone. I know so many family members. So that's next level. In this scam, it was somebody pretending to be my sister-in-law and just she said she broke her knows. And that's why she sounded a little different. She didn't explain why she sounded different, but she did lay the foundation just in case Jackie had any questions. But you're saying now people are taking your voice from your Insta or your online posts, running it through an AI machine

and making it say things like, I'm stranded because they've seen that you're in Panama or on your socials. And they use that against, let's face it, it's usually an unsuspecting grandparent or elderly person who has zero clue. This is even possible. Now my team tells me you guys have put together a this technology with a deep fake of yours truly promoting spies, lies, and cybercrime. Let's take a look. Right. Spies, lies, and cybercrime is the only book you need to read to keep yourself safe from every kind of cyber attack. Okay, that did not fool me at all, but it could fool somebody very old.

That deep fake right there took me about two minutes. I just grabbed the first image of you that popped up in the red dress, because it goes with the book. And then what I did is I just ran it through a suite of software that animate your image. And I didn't clone your voice. I just picked a stock voice that was close to yours. I didn't want to clone your voice without asking permission. But you can see how fast you could do something like that.

You can do it. And maybe pull some people online. And this has been used in order by disinformation campaigns. Joe Biden's voice was cloned. They've cloned Trump's voice. They've had pictures of Trump. If you remember when he was going through all those court cases in orange jumpsuits and people thought that he had been arrested, AI can cause a lot of chaos if it's in the wrong hands.

So how on earth are people supposed to protect against this? And then we have to talk about the dark web, too, because that's scary. Oh, certainly. So how do you protect against this? Well, AI, as you saw with that video, it's choppy. That's not a good one. there are much better ones if you take some time, like I have a, I have cloned myself and used it on stage where I came across and then had an argument with myself and it really scared people

in the audience because they're like, which is the real Eric? And you can, you can, you can do a few things. One, you have to be able to take a step back and take a breath sometimes before you take an act. The attacker is going to try to make you do something that you don't feel right doing, like send a wire for $1,000 or a quick payment. They put pressure on you, even when they use AI. So you need to not succumb to the pressure and take a breath. I know it sounds terrible, but one of the easiest things to do is hang up and call back. If you feel like your daughter's been kidnapped, your son, because this is a huge scheme.

I've kidnapped your child. And this actually happened to a mother in Arizona. And I outlined it in the book. I tell the story. And she was so sure it was her daughter's force saying, mom, I'm in trouble. And then this angry voice has said, I'm going to. pump your daughter full of drugs and leave her in a ditch in Mexico if you don't pay. She was so scared, but she had the peace of mind to keep him on the phone and then have

her friends start calling and calling until they actually reached the daughter. What I do in my family... Believe it or not, when this happened to us, we did not even think to call my sister-in-law and her partner, Brad. We were so dumb. We were believing she was in jail. Yeah, it's psychology, though. They're putting that pressure on you.

They put you in a pressure situation. And we don't, unless you're trained for it. And I know that you're good at pressure situations. But for this kind of scam, you want to act to save someone. You want to act to help. And you don't take that moment to think. And the criminals understand that psychology. They've studied it.

They've even hired intelligence officers from Russia and China and Iran to come work for them to help inform these scams. That's crazy. That is like downright scary. I want to tell the audience that episode is number 818 in our feed 818. And in there, it has a very fun conclusion because before we sent any money to this guy, we finally did figure it out. Like we finally did catch on that this might be a scam. And I tape recorded the conversation in which I knew at this point.

I knew. And I still had him on the line. And it has a very interesting ending. It's great. I love this tape. We love it so much. So we played it out in full in episode 818. People should check it out.

We have a piece of that deep fake of you warning about AI avatars with yourself in an AI avatar role. Let's watch it. Sot 19B. Hold on there, Megan. I'm the real Eric. Don't listen to this other guy. You think you're listening to Eric O'Neill. But what if you're not?

I look like him. I sound like him. I even move like him. For all you know, I could be the real Eric, and the one sitting there is just another fake. That's the trick with AI avatars like that other guy. They don't have to be perfect. They just have to make you doubt what's real. One moment of hesitation, one click, and it's too late.

That is very creepy. That's a little better. So with that defake, I actually recorded about two minutes of me speaking and uploaded it to the software. and then it is animating, fully animating, and saying what I type. So I just type the script and it says it. And imagine if you're a dark web attacker who has, you know, found Eric O'Neill and then downloaded one of my speaking events, right, or YouTube videos and uses it to create that and then uses that on a Zoom call.

Give us some examples of some of the other stories in the book. There was one with a woman named Jennifer. It was pretty disturbing. Yes. De Stefano, said that story, right? right there. It happened in April of 2023. This is the mother in Arizona who gets a call from her daughter. Now, it turned out not to be her daughter, but she was sure it was her daughter, and the daughter just said, Mom, I'm in trouble. Actually, she testified in front of Congress about

deepfakes and said that a mother knows her daughter's voice and I was 100 percent certain it was her. And then the next voice, of course, comes across and says that I'm going to kill your daughter if you don't pay me. And as they're going forward in negotiating, she's negotiating. with the kidnapper, who ended up being just a cybercrime gang, they're saying, we're going to send a car to your house to collect the money, which can happen. Sometimes this can move from cyber to physical. Now, Jennifer had the peace of mind to get her friends to start calling her husband, her daughter, and finally connected with her daughter. I think her youngest daughter, they were at a dance class connected with the older daughter, who was away on a trip

with her husband, a ski trip. And the criminals were clever enough to monitor the families social media and, you know, spy talk, we call that reconnaissance, and strike when the daughter and the husband were away on this trip. So it was going to be hard to contact them. It just so happened. They got a little lucky because the mother and the father and daughter, the daughter had gotten sick. So they were in the hotel and not skiing. Otherwise, gosh, yeah, because usually don't have your phone with you or even on while you're on the mountain. So, I mean, tell me more about how these criminals can come from the so-called dark web. I don't understand the dark web, but just in reading up on your book, you were talking about people go there for organ purchases.

There's the, yeah, the body parts bizarre. Human purchases, like what, what? So the dark web, to understand that here's the like really fast one-minute primer on the dark web, right now the internet, just the amount of data on the internet is almost 100 Zeta bytes of data. A Zeta byte is there would be so much paper in a Zeta byte if I stacked it from my feet as high as it would go. It would go past the Andromeda Galaxy. So we have 180 of those in the internet, which is astronomical. A little under 5% of that is the dark web. And that's the underbelly of the internet. It's a group of anonymous servers. And unless you have the right equipment and know-how, you can't get there. But there is a marketplace for everything. It is the most extreme. black market on earth. In fact, I have a friend who goes down to the dark web to look for these scams before they hit us. He calls it depravity at the touch of a button. And it is. You mentioned the body parts bazaar where you can buy a heart and a shady doctor to transplant it for you. That's

around $200,000. You can buy eyes, which can also be transplanted, the corneous. That's $2,000. Hands feet are $500. I don't know why you would want that other than the best Halloween caught. Yeah. Yeah. Why would you buy a hand? I don't know. But people are creepy and weird, and if there's something you want, you can buy it. But it's also the biggest arms trade. The biggest drug trade on Earth. They will literally sell you anything you want. They put it in packages in coffee bags and then send it through U.S. mail to you. How do people feel comfortable doing this? Aren't there good guys like you, you know, when you were at the FBI monitoring all of this and then swooping in when a deal like that is made? The FBI tries its best to monitor. They're very good. Sometimes they go in and they, it's They kill the servers for the cybercrime gangs, but the problem is that they have backup servers and they just come right back. Most of the dark web sits in places that don't have cyber crime laws and countries that don't have extradition to the U.S.

They also will take partitions of parts of legitimate servers and countries all over the world. And when they get cut off, they just restore. And so just the cost of cybercrime in the dark web, and this is the most sobering statistic, I think I quote in the book. The cost of cybercrime right now is almost $14 trillion. So forget the drugs and the human trafficking and the weapons. Just cybercrime moving through the dark web is $14 trillion.

So to give you an example of how much that is, right now the GDP of the U.S. is $28 trillion. The GDP of China is only 18. By next year, the dark web will surpass $18 trillion, which would make it the second largest economy on Earth by GDP. Right now, it's number three. And it's more than Germany and Japan put together. Now, are those people messing with us, or are they just running their own criminal underworld for people who want to buy body parts? And I don't, I mean, I'm sure they trafficked children. But are they, are they?

Yes, it's the biggest human trafficking. I take my readers in one chapter, I take my readers over my shoulder as I go down into the dark web to the deepest, most depraved places with my friend. And he showed me horrible sites where you can, I mean, This is going to, I mean, the kids cover your ears, but you can buy a young girl. You can decide what hotel they're going to deliver her to, and they send you a PDF instructions to build your basement dungeon. It's absolutely terrifying. Absolutely horrifying.

Oh, my God. I can't believe that law enforcement isn't all over this, but I guess they're not always as clever as the bad guys and knowing where to find them. They try, and they do a good job. The biggest drug trade on earth was called the Silk Road by this. guy named the Dread Pirate Roberts, that was his online moniker, they were able to take him down by going from the distribution, the drugs that were landing in people's hands and backtracking all the way up to the source who had set up these online marketplaces. And then about a year

later, it all came right back. Somebody else just took it up. So it's very hard to stop the dark web because of how it's designed. And in the book, I explain exactly what the dark web business, it's oranges, its origins, and kind of what you can do to avoid a lot of these dark web cybercrime attacks. Can we talk about the Robert Hansen case for a minute? Because it's just so interesting. So you were just a young cub at the FBI when you got put on what would become really like the biggest espionage case in modern American history. So what happened? You were like 26 or so right around there. You'd get a job working with the FBI. And how did you connect get connected with this? And what did they tell you the operation was?

I started working for the FBI when I was 22, so I was pretty young. I was an FBI ghost, which people still don't really understand what that is. It's an investigative specialist, part of the special surveillance group. We would, any given day, I would hunt a spy or a terrorist primarily around Washington, D.C., so these undercover investigations. I was fully undercover for five years. And then suddenly, I got asked in the strangest way possible by my boss, supervisory special agent named Gene McClellan to work on a case that was the most unique case the FBI had ever run. And he shows up at my house early on a Sunday morning, wakes me up and asks me to come outside. Your boss in government never comes to you, right? You always go to them. So I thought I was

getting arrested and I walk outside and he grins at me because he knows, you know, how law enforcement you are always joking around. But he knows that I'm concerned. He says, ever heard of a guy named Robert Hanson? And I hadn't. And he said, good, we want you to go undercover and catch them. And now I was mad at him because I said, why did you come here to tell me that? He said, because my next meeting is with the director of the FBI. That was Willie Free. And I have to tell him whether you're in or out, in or out. And I knew it was going to be incredibly disruptive. That day, I think I had been married three months, you know, newlywed with my wife. I was also in law school. But, you know, that was an opportunity and a chance to do something really

incredible. So I said yes. And I could have never, I could have never expected what I was getting into. It was. So you go to work for him undercover. They created like a fake bureau for him to work at. They suspected he might be the one. They knew somebody was leaking to the Soviets, but they didn't know who. And then over 20 years, he was just in the right place too many times that they started to think, maybe, maybe this guy who's very well respected, very well respected. And they created, I guess, a fake bureau

that they wanted him to oversee. And you went to work for him there, like ostensibly as an underling? Right. Precisely. What they, the issue with Hansen and what I didn't know going into this case was he wasn't just a spy. He was the legendary spy

that everyone in the entire intelligence community, FBI, CIA, NSA, you have it, was after a guy that was only known as the code name Gray Suit. And I didn't know that going into the case, but we had been after him for two decades. Entire careers had been broken trying to catch him. And at one point, the FBI went to the top Soviet analyst in the FBI, supervisory special agent, and asked him to help them catch this legendary spy gray suit. That was Robert Hansen.

So he was so good at this. They asked him to catch himself. And then they built a mousetrap for him, an office at the FBI. They put him in charge of information assurance, which today would be called cybersecurity, gave him access to data, hoping he would steal and drop it under a footbridge in Vienna, and we would catch him ahead of time. And I was put in there undercover to make sure he didn't get away with it. It was the most difficult thing I've ever done in my life.

Did we find out why he was doing it? Was it for money or why? That's a great question and a question everybody wants to know because he has steadfastly. He died in 2023, so now we'll never precisely know, but he steadfastly refused to ever answer that question. But I'm pretty sure I know because we had so many discussions. And in fact, at the end of the day, it turned out he was recruiting me to take over for him when he left.

He began at the FBI, hoping to be a spy hunter. and they ended up making him, in his mind, what he thought was a librarian. He was a brilliant analyst. He wasn't really good at operations. And he was mad. So now he's a disgruntled employee. At the same time, he's having all these children. He's a Catholic and Opus Day.

And I'm a Catholic, too. He would call me a junior varsity Catholic. And he's having all these kids and he can't afford his life. And you add that angry at your employer, need money desperately, and he chose to spy. And once he was promoted enough that I don't think he needed to spy anymore, he could make ends meet. He continued to do it because it's what made him belong to something bigger than him. And everybody wants that. And to Hansen, he couldn't give it up.

It was the most exciting part of his life. And so he continued. And not only continued, he seemed hell-bent to make sure that he was going to be the best damn spy in history. He just gave up just some of the most horrible secrets that have been ever, been given to Russia or any foreign power, including the lives of people who are our spies, undercover operatives. And he didn't take a lot of money for it. He made under $2 million. Did he confess? At the end of the day, I was able to find the information that was, I mean, you're an attorney. I found the smoking gun in the case. It was such a perfect piece of evidence.

He had actually on his Palm Pilot, which for anyone who's younger than Gen X, is a, personal data system was a big clunky thing that you would open up and then you'd stab it with a plastic stick to get the data in. But basically it was just a big digital calendar. He had all of the information we needed to catch him encrypted on that pomp pilot. And I was able to steal it from him, copy it and get it back before he was aware it was gone. So we had a slam-done case. He pled guilty and then spent years being interrogated by the FBI so we could understand what he broke and fix it. Was there a moment, Eric, by the way, we're talking to Eric O'Neill about his book, Spies, Lies, and Cybercrime,

and many of these details are in here, Eric's backstory and why he got interested in this. Was there a moment where, like, do you remember the moment when you realized it's true? Because there had to be a beginning, you know, at the beginning they thought maybe him, but you were sent in there to figure out whether this is the guy. Like, was there the moment where you were like, oh, my God, it's him? Yeah, I had captured some information from him earlier. And of course, when you're undercover, they tell you as little as they possibly can because they don't want to put too much in your head that you could mistakenly reveal and now the whole thing falls apart. And in fact, the FBI was saying was telling me, literally, I mean, I'm going undercover to do this, way to build my confidence.

You're probably going to be the one who screws this up. You know, my first job was don't make the mistake, right? But there was a moment when I was just done with this. I was trying to get to law school. I was trying to keep my marriage together. I was constantly in this office and I went to the special agent, a woman named Kate who's played by Laura Linney in the movie. And I said, I just won out. I can't, I really can't do this anymore. This is, this is really disrupting my life. And I don't think we're finding anything. And she looked

at me and she said, first of all, you can't get out. You're in and there's no, there's no walking out of here anymore. But second of all, that information you just found, I'm going to show it to you. And we realized that he wasn't just a spy who had spied, but the legendary one that we've been trying to capture since the early 80s. Someone who had given up information that led to the death of every single spy we had in the Soviet Union between 84 and 85. He shares that with the CIA spy named Aldo Gaines. So he was, and then I felt like, oh, man, now I'm going full bore. I'm going to do everything I can to try to find the evidence that puts him away.

way. What was it like when you saw him arrested? I wasn't there at the arrest because I was still undercover at the time. They didn't want him to know that I had found any of this information. I was actually driving home and I got the call. And I remember I got the call and they said, it's done. We got them. And I looked over at my wife. We were driving home, I think, from the eastern shore. And we lived right in Washington, D.C. And I asked Kate, I said, can I tell Juliana? And she said, just your wife, we're still trying to get the I.O. We don't want any of this out. And I literally pulled off the highway and just looked at her and I said, I got to tell you something because I've been lying to her for this entire investigation. Really? And I thought she was just

going to get out, get a cab, and that was going to be it. But she looked at me and she said, now I understand. It gave me a hug. And I was like, I'm keeping her forever. This is, if she can get through this, we can get through anything. I've been told her that I got promoted to a computer job at FBI headquarters that was going to let me go to law school and not miss classes at night anymore, that it wasn't going to be working undercover anymore, and I couldn't tell her anything else. I was told to lie. I wasn't allowed to tell her what I was doing. So meanwhile, you're working on the Robert Hansen case the whole time. How long was it? So it took, it took me about three months to find the evidence that put Hanson away.

And that was after 22 years, right, of trying to catch him. How, was it, was it a situation like an iPhone? I don't, I mean, I remember the Palm Pilot, but I never owned one. Did you have to get in with a password? Like, how did you get into his Palm Pilot? Right. So it's, you know, if you read in my, the book before Spiesies and Cybercrime, Great Day, I actually go through this, the pivotal scene of this case, but also in the movie. We tricked him into going down to the shooting range in the sub-basement. We were on the room 9930 and the ninth floor.

And while he was away shooting, and we did it with a. pretext. I brought in a section chief and a assistant director that he absolutely hated and caught him off guard. And for the first time, he didn't reach into his bag and grab his palm pilot. And so as he left with them to go shoot, I knew it was there. And I grabbed it, ran down three flights of steps to where we had a tech team waiting and they copied it, encryption and all, and then broke the encryption later. And then within two weeks of that, we caught him. Now, the scary thing was he goes down to the shooting range. He takes a few shots and then he goes, he comes right back up. I think he realized he left his palm pilot. And I had seconds to get it

back before him. I wasn't sure if I had the right pocket and the scary thing about that moment. And I, I recovered from PTSD from this moment. I was a hundred percent sure he's going to walk out of his office and shoot me. There was no way I got it right. But just sometimes God looks out for us. And I did. That's incredible. So now, you've devoted the rest of your life to helping the rest of us not fall victim to professional liars, really. That's kind of what a spy is and it's what these cyber thieves are. And is it something, you know, I always think it's, you know how you get the little alerts on your phone saying like this charge went through or that charge went through? And half the time I'm like, I don't know what

that is, but I just assume I authorized it somehow. But that's another way they get you. Like they just get into your bank account and they just take $1 a month. from Megan Kelly, one dollar a month from Eric O'Neill, one dollar month for all these people. And like, you wouldn't even notice it. But what are some of the other clever ways that they get at us that we might not even be thinking of? Let's talk about phones, right? Since you mentioned texts, have you ever gotten that text that just goes, hey, or I'll meet you at the, I'll meet you at the cookout later, or are you picking me up, right? And you think this is stupid. This is a number I don't recognize and you delete it. Well, some people don't.

A lot of people don't. A lot of people are very polite and they'll respond and say, you must have the wrong number. I'm not invited to a cookout. Or whoever is picking you up, you might want to get the number right. These are fishing expeditions by cyber criminals who have these dark web call centers with literally people who are chained to desks. They're kidnapped and they're chained to a desk and they have to work off their commission to be set free. And what they do is they send out these texts on these big lists that the attackers buy off the dark web and they just try to see if someone replies in their plight and then they start these long courtships so they can use something called romance fraud to get you to fall in love with them and or finance fraud or something we call pig butchering and they might take weeks to become your friend before they say something like I need money I'm harmed and if they've gotten you to fall in love with them you might send them money or the other scam we see all the time that I advise people and I talk about in the book and I tell a story about a grandfather

who lost his whole pension to this is, hi, now that you're my new best friend, let me tell you about my job and I do this special kind of investment with cryptocurrency. And then you invest a thousand. You give them a thousand, I'm going to help my friend. And they show you a website that looks really slick

where your $1,000 has just turned into $3,000 in a week. And you're like, how is this possible? They say, cryptocurrency is different. And then you invest all your money with them. And you think it's legitimate until you say, I would like to withdraw something, and they disappear. In cybercrime, we call that pig butchering, because it's based on this old Chinese art of

fattening a pig up as big and big and big as it you can get it, and then butchering it for as much meat as possible. And that's literally what they're doing to people. So when you get that text that just says, hey, be super, super careful. Do you ever mess with these people when you get these on your phone? All the time. I have dragged them out for. I've dragged out people for months, you know, just wasting their time. And what I'll ultimately try to do is figure out who they are. And that story about the scammers who almost got me and a little backstory, they sent me this brilliant scam

that I was going to go speak in Cape Town. And they were going to fly me first class. So I was going to fly in the pot. It was going to be the first time I ever did that. And it was going to my full speaker's fee, and I looked at the church, it seats like 10,000. So I was really excited. I bought the first class ticket for $10,000. And that's how they hook you. Because once you're in for 10, you really want it to be true. There's something called confirmation bias.

And the more they can make you want it to be true, the more you'll do dumb things. Then I get a call from an administrative person who works with the church, but also the South African government that says, we need you to pay for your work permit, your visa, and your repay. Patriation fee. And it was all to the tune of like $1,000. And apparently what they do is once you pay that, it's more and more and more. That's what got me to start thinking to, whoa, whoa, whoa, this must not be true. And there were like a cast of five characters calling me and talking to me and emailing me. I called the South African embassy. It's incredibly sophisticated. And they said, we don't have anything like that. And then I knew it was fake. But to get back to your original question, you don't. Don't use your personal cell phones with somebody who runs a company that does cybersecurity and competitive intelligence. I was able to identify each of the threat actors, the bad guys in this cybercrime ring and get them all arrested in Cape Town. Yeah. And I felt so good. And I did some things before that that I don't want to talk about because I don't want to get in trouble just to make sure I turn the screws. But then I got them all arrested. And so I get the last laugh, but I tell that story on stage and I tell it right up front in the book because I want to be able to say that these attackers are so clever.

And if it can happen to me and I'm trained, it can also happen to you. So we really need to work hard to defend against it. Yes. I mean, I told the stories, too, just about us almost being scammed because I think people would be shocked that we were so gullible. And my audience was shocked. But they, it's like one thing leads to another. And with us, we believed it because Doug's mom called him and said she spoke to Diane. Diane had this terrible thing happened to her.

And Diane needed our help. We weren't like patient zero in the chain of events. So we just had to believe Doug's mom. Doug's mom was the one who had to believe the scammer, who, of course, is she was elderly and so on. And we had never heard of such a scam before. So no alarm bells whatsoever went off for us. So you can be fooled. You know, that's why we told the jury.

Sorry, because there's more people who hear your story and my story, the less are going to fall for it. And I just, like, that was the first I knew that they've gotten so sophisticated, same as yours. We had multiple actors on this scam and multiple phone numbers devoted to, like, now you can call the court and here's the case file. Right. Now here's the criminal defense attorney.

You can talk to him. Like, they knew exactly what we would be doing and they were prepared for it. And I'm embarrassed to add that they actually wanted the payment in crypto and we still didn't totally know. That was the beginning of the end, though. You know, you shouldn't feel embarrassed because this happens to everyone. I have friends and I never name anyone in the book who had happened to who are brilliant engineers. You know, one thing you can do to protect against this, especially deepfakes when they're cloning people, when they're cloning voices, is have a, what we called in the FBI sign of life. I work

counterterror and there was also always going to be a chance that some terrorist group grabbed you and kidnapped you. And what I would do before I deployed was in an envelope. I would write, military does this too. Write the answers to three questions. No one knew the answer to. It was sealed in the envelope. And then if I was kidnapped, they would open the envelope and ask me the question or asked the kidnapper the question. If they couldn't answer, they knew I was dead and they were just going to try to ransom back a body. You can do something like that with your family as well. A little easier for me. With my family, my children, my wife, we use the first line of a silly poem that no one's going to guess. So if your kid is kidnapped, they can work

some of the poem in and you know it's real. And if they don't, then you know it's, it might be a deep fake. But you would say to the kidnapper, ask her what the poem is. Like, ask her what our family code word is or whatever. And if they can't repeat that back, then you know you're being scammed. Or if you're looking at a deep fake, because deep fake can be video too. You said, you played the video, right? The bad video of you, the good video of me. And you just type whatever you wanted to say, ask that person, if you're talking to your daughter, you're talking to your husband, and you think it might be a deep fake, ask something they would only know. Like, what's the book you asked me to read the other day? Because this person's only, this fake version is only

working off of data that they called about this person from the internet. Exactly. So something intimate, I know, don't go too intimate, but, you know, the book we read. What movie did we watch last week? The attacker's not going to know that. They'll get very flustered and they won't know what to say. They'll probably just hang up. Yeah, exactly. Wow, this is so interesting. There's so many things we need to do to protect ourselves. It's in spies, lies, and cybercrime by Eric O'Neill. You guys have got to buy the book. You're right. It does look very nice against my background. I'm so grateful that you came by. This is fascinating, Eric. Thank you for having me. There's a wonderful discussion, and I hope we can do it again. Yeah, I want to have you back on one of our crime weeks and have you

tell me this story in all full detail and walk the audience through how it all went. What a great, great crime story. Definitely. You know, I listened to your whole crime week. My wife and I listened to your podcast. Actually, we love your, well, we call it Megan in the morning. That's how we start our day. And I had listened to that crime week. And when I was listening, I'm like, I should be on there. And when I was talking to my team, I said, this is the, this is the podcast that I really want to do more than any other. Well, consider yourself booked. We've got nothing says Christmas like crime. So we always do a week of crime when we go off for Christmas. And people love it. It's become something people look forward to. So let's get into this with

it in granular detail and exactly how we got this bastard. All the best to you, Eric, good luck with it. Thank you, Megan. Yeah, don't forget, spies, lies in cybercrime, support Eric and buy this. This would be a great gift for, speaking of Christmas, for like anybody in your life going into Christmas. Who doesn't want to read about this? Like, interesting spy stories and how to protect yourself and what they're doing on the dark web? It's one of the big questions of mankind in 2025. Speaking of crime back tomorrow with Kelly's court. And guess what's happening? Diddy gets sentenced.

Don't miss that. We'll see you then. Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.