The Megyn Kelly Show - Left Pushes "Constitutional Crisis" Narrative, and Trump Brings Back Plastic Straws, with Charles Cooke, Rich Lowry, and Carol Swain | Ep. 1005

Episode Date: February 11, 2025

Megyn Kelly discusses the new narrative and talking point from the corporate media and the establishment Democrats that President Trump is bringing us to a “constitutional crisis,” their hypocrisy related to former President Biden when he said he defied a court order on his student loan forgiveness plan, and more. Then National Review's Charles C.W. Cooke and Rich Lowry join to discuss the legacy media’s approved narrative about Trump’s "constitutional crisis," the absurd overreaction and the reality of the situation, the outrageous things USAID has been paying for under past administrations, why Trump is so popular currently with Americans based on new polls, why the establishment and corporate media hates him, the "scholars" and "experts" who supported Biden, FEMA execs fired for defying Trump and sending funds, the executive order Trump signed to get rid of paper straws and bring back plastic straws, the hypocrisy from the left criticizing him for focusing on common sense issues, and more. Then Carol Swain, author of "The Gay Affair," joins to discuss former Harvard President Claudine Gay blaming racism for her plagiarism scandal rather than taking responsibility, what she plagiarized from Carol herself, the epidemic of plagiarism in academia today, how she overcame actual racism from white progressives in her past, CNN pundits whining and playing the victim in 2025, the targeting she gets as a black conservative, and more.Cooke-https://twitter.com/charlescwcookeLowry-https://www.nationalreview.com/Swain-https://carolmswain.com/ Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms:YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshowFYSI: Book your free business review today at https://FYSI.com/MegynJustThrive: Visit https://JustThriveHealth.com and use code MEGYN and save 20% sitewideCozy Earth: https://www.CozyEarth.com/MEGYN | code MEGYN

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at noon east. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. I'm not ready. I need like another 20 minutes because there's a ton of news happening and I'm getting my arms around it. But there's more I want to read. There's always more I want to read before I talk to you guys. The show needs to start at two o'clock instead of 12 o'clock. Oh, well, here we go. Uh, let's do this thing. It is day 22 of the Trump administration and the breakneck pace shows no signs of slowing down. It's so fun, but the Democrats think they've found the speed bump they've been looking for. Of course, they're filing lawsuit after

lawsuit, I think 40 lawsuits so far. And that has allowed them because they have some judges who are finding their way. Or what I'm seeing more often is just they're winning temporary restraining orders to say, you can't enforce that law until we have a full hearing on it. Like I need it to be briefed and I need a full evidentiary hearing for me to understand what's going on. And they're like, oh, it's a huge win. We're shutting down Trump's ability to change the government. And then they, when Trump says, I don't think you'd actually do have the ability to stop me from doing this constitutional crisis. It's a constitutional crisis. He's not listening to the judiciary.

Meanwhile, there's literally only one example of him being ordered to resume payments to federal agencies where then the plaintiff said he didn't resume doing that fast enough. And the Trump team filed a brief saying, actually, we are making all of these payments in the following few fields. They were never affected to begin with, but we're still doing our assessments under the other fields that he wanted to see if the funding's proper on. And the judge did not say, you're in contempt. You're in huge trouble for doing that. The judge said, you got to do it. You got to, you got to resume in all of it until we have our hearing. So the judge doesn't think it's a constitution. There's literally just one case in which the judge said, you didn't quite do what I

told you to do. Please do it. And the Trump administration, I think is going to do it. They haven't said we're not going to do it. If the judge says do it and the Trump team says we refuse, then we're closer to actually having a crisis between the branches. This judge is going to get overruled. The feds are allowed. The executive branch is allowed to control a lot of how the money gets spent, whether it gets spent. They can't shut down entire agencies that are authorized by Congress, but they do have a lot of control over money and whether to spend it. And I realize that these various plaintiffs don't like that. The Democrats don't like that, but it's going to play out in the courts. And I think in, as I said last night, nine out of 10 of these cases is going to

go Trump's way. So we are not at a constitutional crisis yet. He has not flipped the bird to any judge telling him he must do something yet. Who has done that? Joe Biden. That actually was Joe Biden. And I don't remember these same people freaking out. But take a look at some of the coverage over. Honestly, all Trump has done is issue executive orders and then gotten sued so far. And what we are experiencing is a power grab. It is a constitutional crisis. It means wholesale harm for everyone who calls this country home. So we have to litigate, we have to legislate, we have to agitate, we have to organize peacefully

in these streets. We are witnessing it's a constitutional crisis. We are seeing an executive branch that has decided that they are no longer going to abide by the Constitution. And now these boys from Doge roll in in violation of the Constitution, in the country has faced, certainly since Watergate. The president is attempting to seize control of power and for corrupt purposes. The president wants to be able to decide how and where money is spent so that he can reward his political friends. He can punish his political enemies. That is the evisceration of democracy. Now, where were all these people when Joe Biden was trampling on the Constitution? I mean, repeatedly, but I'll just, I'll give you one. After the Supreme Court

blocked his, quote, student loan forgiveness program, former President Biden, at the time still in office, spoke openly about how proudly he was bypassing the high court's ruling. Watch. We cannot let this decision be the last word. While the court can render a decision, it cannot change what America stands for. Tens of millions of people in debt were literally about to be canceled, their debts. And the Supreme Court blocked it, blocked it. But that didn't stop me. I announced we're going to pursue alternatives. The Supreme Court blocked me from relieving student debt, but they didn't stop me. I'm relieving the burden of student debt. And the Supreme Court told me I couldn't. I found two other ways to do it.

That was fine. He added an amendment to the Constitution with a tweet. That was fine. Okay. And those were not the only examples of his lawlessness. He was fond of ignoring the Supreme Court. Remember his rent abatement program? That was another time. And around the high court. And we're not talking about a lower federal district court judge. Let's be clear, in the federal system, you file your lawsuit, you're at the district court level. That's the trial court. You lose there. You go up to a federal court of appeals. Now you're getting more serious and you lose there. You go up to the U S Supreme court. If they'll take your case. So far, all Trump has had against him is some federal district court orders,

not a court of appeals, certainly not the Supreme court. That's the one Joe Biden was ignoring the Supreme court of the United States. There was not a Democrat meltdown. Now, the Dems have had some success recently at the federal district court. Judges have temporarily blocked Trump's spending freezes. That's what I just referred to and then ordered him to resume the spending. His executive order saying birthright citizenship is no longer going to be allowed for the children of illegals. Let me just tell you, Trump 100% knew that that would be blocked. There's zero doubt he understood that was going to be blocked. He is trying to tee up

an appeal that will go up to SCOTUS. He's not dumb. The lawyers advising him are not dumb. They know that that's going to go up. His buyout offer for federal employees has been paused. That's the judge who said, I need this briefed. I got to figure out what's what. He is. Trump has every chance of still winning that case. And I actually think he will win that case either before the district judge or when it goes up in appeal. And then there's Doge's access to the Treasury's payment system. The Treasury Secretary, Scott Besant, is saying the two people he allowed to access that were in read-only mode, they couldn't change anything, and they work for Treasury. So not all of these lawsuits are going to be successful. And even the ones that have had preliminary, like,

we do want to take a closer look are not success on the merit on the merits cases. Having said all that, you're not surprised to hear President Trump's not afraid of this fight. Tremendous fraud, tremendous waste and tremendous abuse and and theft, by the way. And the day you're not allowed to look for theft and fraud, etc., then we don't have much of a country. So no judge should be, no judge should frankly be allowed to make that kind of a decision. It's a disgrace. All right. Well, that's Trump ripping on the judges. No one's surprised to hear that either. Joining me now on this and so much more, it's an N's an NR Day, Charles C.W. Cook, senior editor and host of the Charles C.W. Cook podcast, and Rich Lowry,

editor-in-chief of National Review. You can find all of their work ad-free with an NR Plus membership, which I highly recommend. One of my favorite things to do in the morning is to go on my phone. I'm like doing my hair, I'm doing my makeup. And I pull up an article and they've got the wonderful read aloud feature with fair, which very few websites have. It's very, I don't know why more people don't do it. It's a great feature. And the nice lady will read me my NR smart, fair and balanced news while I get other things done. Are rising costs or scaling challenges holding you back? Are you having trouble taking your business to the next level? Financial Yield Solutions, Inc., or FYSI,

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review today to transform your operations, grow your profits, and secure your future. Visit fysi.com slash Megan, or just call 800-877-4000. Success starts with F-Y-S-I. Guys, great to see you. Thanks for having us. Thank you. Okay, so I'm not saying it's impossible to have a constitutional crisis, but we are not there yet. Once Trump says, I refuse, I refuse to obey the federal court order, we're closer. And certainly if we get to the point of the U.S. Supreme Court ordering him to do something or to stop doing something and he refuses, we're there, we're there.

But right now we're nowhere near there. And the thing that is really galling, and I, let me take it one at a time before I get to the really galling. I'm gonna start with you on that piece, Rich. And on just, I mean, I've been listening to some of your discussions with Andy on Trump's powers when it comes to money and the executive branch. But do you think we are now, as the media is telling us, at a constitutional crisis point? No, no, of course not. It's just it's absurd to hear Democrats complaining about a hostile power grab of the executive branch by the chief executive who is elected to be the chief executive, who is elected to administer his administration and has every right, presidents have done this from time immemorial, to have informal advisors or people close to him review

how the government's working and advise them on it. Now, Elon Musk is a little bit more than that. He's an actual government employee, right? He's a special government employee. And it's more than just a think tank the way we thought maybe Doge would be. I mean, it's really an action squad that's going in and doing things. So the executive has a lot of discretion. He can fire people that he wants. He can redirect resources if Congress isn't very specific about how they're going to be spent, which applies to most of these U.S. AID funds. And as you point out, he's mostly being delayed, right? Congress is just, sorry, the courts are just looking at this. And we've all sort of now accepted like the Elon Musk pace of things. Like if it's delayed a week, it's a terrible defeat because everything needs to move fast. But in the scheme of things, things are still moving incredibly quickly, even with these little delays from the court. So you're right. If he defies a court order, we'll have a constitutional crisis. I don't see why he would feel compelled to do that. I think he'd just fight this stuff out in the courts.

And we will eventually have a big dispute over impoundment, because when Congress is not very specific, there's a lot to give in terms of how you spend the money. But whether you spend the money, that's a different question. And you got to spend a lot of it. You just can't zero it out when Congress has said, no, you're going to spend $40 billion. But Russ Voigt and others have a theory that the impoundment act that Congress passed in the Watergate era is unconstitutional, and they want a test case to go challenge that. But that's, again, it's the tectonic plates of the two branches rubbing up against each other, and there's tension and there's give there, and you're going to need a determination by the courts on that eventually. But the idea that just we're on, we're in a constitutional crisis because some federal employees have been

placed on leave and courts are examining whether the executive has that authority or not. He does, but that that's not a constitutional crisis. No, it's not. And there, one of the things that they're upset about is JD Vance issued a post on Sunday on X. Literally, it was a Twitter post, okay? It was an X post, and it reads as follows. If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal, which is correct. If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that's also illegal. Judges are not allowed to control the executive's legitimate power. He's 100% right about all of that. But that's not the same thing as saying, and therefore we are going to defy the orders that have been issued against us. That's saying this initial order was wrong. We will

appeal it and it will be overruled. We are going to win on our legal fight that the Democrats started. But that's not how it's being spun, Charlie. Let me play you a little montage. I played you some top Dems with the new line, which is very clearly constitutional crisis to try to scare people. And naturally, the Democrat media is walking along in line. Watch. We are three weeks into the second Trump presidency, three weeks. And tonight there are warnings that the US is dangerously close to a constitutional crisis. Constitutional law experts say this is the clearest sign that we might be creeping towards a constitutional crisis. Some legal experts say our country could be headed toward a constitutional

crisis. The warnings of a constitutional crisis just weeks into Trump's second term. So will the Trump administration comply with the courts? Or will the president drive the nation full steam ahead into a constitutional crisis? I think this is, he's causing a constitutional crisis intentionally. Your take on it, Charlie. Well, I don't think there's a constitutional crisis. If they ignore a court order, there might be, although there are a lot of checks and balances within our system that declaring anything a constitutional crisis at the first hurdle is often premature. The issue here

in most of these cases is that a judge is indulged what David French used to call Trump law. In a sense, they said the executive has these powers, but Trump's not allowed to exercise them. The way you deal with that as an administration is you take it to higher courts and you make your case. I think it might have been good politics if J.D. Vance had added one line at the end of his tweet saying, and we will win this at the Supreme Court. But not doing so doesn't constitute a constitutional crisis. But I saw Sheldon Whitehouse, of all people, suggesting that criticizing the court system, as J.D. Vance did, is beyond the pale. Are you kidding me?

This is a guy who has spent the last five, six, seven years arguing that the Supreme Court is bought and paid for is illegitimate, a member of a party that spent the Biden years contending that the Supreme Court was not, in fact, an equal branch of government, but was a stain on the system that could only be remedied by court packing, an idea so crazy that even Franklin Roosevelt was repudiated when he tried it in the 1930s. So as of yet, there is nothing that gets close to a constitutional crisis. And on the merits, I think the argument that's being made here is really odd in that the executive branch has been delegated a lot of authority in the realm of spending. Now, I don't think it should have. And I would go as far as to

say, as you probably know, Megan, that some of that delegation is illegal. I'm a non-delegator. I think the Supreme Court has allowed this to go too far. But it's been doing that since the 1930s. This did not start yesterday. If it was legitimate for Bill Clinton or George W. Bush or Barack Obama or Joe Biden to make spending decisions, not whether or not the money was allocated, not whether the department existed, but decisions within the department, then it is legitimate for Trump to do so. And all that's happened thus far is you've had essentially an audit where Elon Musk and others have looked through the spending under the supervision of the president,

who is in charge of the executive branch, and said, here is what's being spent. There hasn't been an attempt to shut down or consolidate or move this agency. If there is, there will be a genuine constitutional question. And if the administration ignores the courts, maybe a constitutional crisis. But this just strikes me as being wildly premature.

Okay, so there's so much misinformation being shoved down people's throats about this. It's quite galling. I want to stick on this question of constitutional crisis for a second. And then we've got to get to the Biden standard on what one may do when it comes to the U.S. Supreme Court, which I do believe is another favorite of yours, Charles C.W. Cook. So, Rich, let me give you another example of how this is being spun in the media. Last night, there was a debate between the great Scott Jennings and the terrible Abby Phillips. Talk about being out of your depth. I hate that show. I love Scott, but I hate that show. It's horrible. Whatever they're paying him, it's far too little. But here's an example of the media dialogue on this.

What I can't get with is you talking in these bizarre, broad generalities. It's not bizarre. Every single one of these cases deals with a discrete issue, okay? When the court says Congress appropriated this money, you must unfreeze it while we litigate this. Why can't Trump comply with that? So you're saying that a judge should decide how and when money is spent for years and not the president of the United States? Scott, let me explain this a little bit more.

Let me explain it a little bit more slowly. A judge is saying— You don't have to talk to me like that. Congress— I have a position on this, and you have an opinion. We can disagree. Yeah, but I'm saying you listen to me because you're not listening, and you're making claims that are not connected to the facts. So while we litigate this, I'm a position on this and you have an opinion. We can disagree. Yeah, but I'm saying you listen to me because you're not listening and you're making claims

that are not connected to the facts. So while we litigate, while we litigate this, I'm a judge and I'm in charge of the executive branch and you're not, forget it. So that gets to the question of whether the judge can force Trump to spend all the monies until he issues his ruling. And now we're getting a little closer to this federal district judge overstepping his bounds. I mean, for a week, sure, he can say that. Like, I want to see it briefed, some of your briefs. But this judge is not going to get away with slow rolling his opinion on this thing for the next year while this case plays out, potentially with discovery and so on. And effectively just undermine the president's power.

No federal district judge is going to get away with that. Yeah, well, you go up and you appeal it. And just, Megan, one reason this is so absurd. Well, first of all, it's just another case, right, where they come up with a meme, a catchphrase that they repeat over and over again. And they hope they'll make reality, right? We saw this all during the campaign. Kamala Harris is joyful. Everyone says joy, and she's joyful, and you hope that actually will make her joyful, or people think she's joyful. Right, Brat. Same thing here, constitutional crisis. Like, it's last 24 hours, the memo

clearly went out, and everyone's saying constitutional crisis. But when they said that Trump was an existential threat to democracy for a year or two, I thought they were talking about he'd suspend congressional elections. You know, he'd try to stay for a third term. It turns out just carrying back foreign aid. That's that's the constitutional and offering to federal employees. I'll pay you a lot more than you otherwise could get. Yeah. So the Congress did not say we have specifically appropriated money for a DEI program in Serbia. Right. If they said that, that would not have gotten through Congress.

So it's executive discretion to begin with on whether you're going to spend money on a Serbian DEI program. Right. with on whether you're going to spend money on a Serbian DEI program, right? So if the executive made that call without Congress specifically commanding it, why can't a new president, a new executive make the opposite call, right? So they want to play this game where one side can do it and has discretion, has executive authority, and the other side doesn't. And of course, that should be intolerable. No one should be willing to play that game. And Trump and Elon aren't. So, wait, I love what you just said.

I've been trying to raise this point, but not as articulately on this show. They're so focused on what's like the good programs, like the laudable, you know, the noble programs that are being stopped, like AIDS medication, if you listen to the Daily this morning, HIV medication to kids in Africa. You know, they're relying on it. Now we're stopping it.

Great. You can spend all day long highlighting that. What they don't highlight, and we'll get into the list, but is the absolute embarrassment of lists when it comes to what they used our money for that Trump is trying to stop while he figures out what the hell is going on. And the fact that it was their reckless spending rich on causes that no one over here supports. Right. That led to this crisis that

led to the next executive having to come in to say, hold on, I'm pressing pause on all of this because you people, the Democrats who controlled this group before me, have corrupted the program beyond recognition. No one's arguing really over HIV medication for children in Africa. If that's all USAID was doing, Trump would not have shut it down. But that's not what we have. I mean, we the list of the you know, the the opera in Ireland on trans issues and you know, the I'll get I'll read you the list. But can we can you spend one more minute on that? Like they created this misuse of funds that's now being rectified by the guy who is in charge of the funds. Right. And he supposedly can't do anything about it, even though he was he was elected in part to roll back this sort of insanity that's infected our government. And just the left's idea, you know, we all believe in promoting American ideals abroad. Right. But they think our ideals are gender ideology and anti-racism and DEI. This goes to a much more minor but important symbolic issue, whether we're going to fly any

flag above our embassies and facilities overseas, except for the American flag. And they've flown all sorts of Black Lives Matter flags and various gay pride flags or versions of the gay pride flag, because they think that is what this country is about, in some sense, at its root, and it's just not. So I support funding HIV medicines. It's good. It doesn't cost us very much, and it does help our image abroad. But the rest of this stuff is just total nonsense. It's poisonous. It's wrong. It creates the wrong image of America abroad. And again, unless Congress has specifically stipulated that this is what you're going to spend it on, Trump is fully within his rights saying, no, we're going to promote our image or help people in some other way. Now, again, I don't think he can just zero out USAID on his own.

He's going to have to spend a lot of this money or most of it, but they're objecting to him redirecting money that he has a right to. Here are some of the examples that we pulled, and I hadn't heard of a lot of these. I mean, some have given snippets, but this is a pretty good list. 1.5 million to advance DEI in Serbia's workplaces and business communities. 1.5 million for DEI in Serbia. Serbia's got a lot bigger problems than its DEI. 70,000 for production of a DEI musical in Ireland. 2.5 million for electric vehicles in Vietnam, 47,000 for a transgender opera in Columbia. I'm sorry, but hard pass a transgender opera in Columbia, almost 50 grand, 32,000 for a transgender in Peru. What? What? Two million for sex changes and LGBT activism in Guatemala. Sex changes in Guatemala. Six million to fund tourism in Egypt. Hundreds of thousands of

dollars for a nonprofit linked to designated terrorist organizations, millions to EcoHealth Alliance, that's Peter Daszak's group that was funding gain-of-function research, including in the Wuhan lab with the bat lady that was directly connected to the research that led to the lab leak. Hundreds of thousands of meals that went to Al-Qaeda-affiliated fighters in Syria, funding to print personalized contraceptives in developing countries, like Megan, you know, diaphragm, cool. Like, what's that? Who wants that, okay?

Hundreds of millions to fund canals, farming equipment, and fertilizer to support poppy cultivation and heroin production in Afghanistan. Two million for Moroccan pottery classes. Trade assistance to Ukraine that paid for models to take trips to New York City and London Fashion Week. week. Two million promoting tourism to Lebanon, a nation our State Department warns against traveling to due to crime, terrorism, kidnapping, and unexploded landmines. But at the same time, we're giving them two million to promote tourism there. Twenty million to create a Sesame Street in Iraq, and more than nine million to feed civilians in Syria, which ended up in the hands of violent terrorists,

including an affiliate of Al Qaeda, which wants to kill us. That's just today's list. And so what, and the Democrats position is you can't tell the president of the United States that he can pause that. He must continue funding it, and he has to continue funding it right now. And if this federal judge says, yeah, continue funding it, that it will be a constitutional crisis if Donald Trump does anything other than fund it, Charles. If you read the law, you won't find any of the items that you just read out. The USAID program was started in the 60s by John F. Kennedy as an executive order. It then existed for 37 years. And eventually, Congress got around

to writing a law that codified it in 1998. Now, that law has certain parameters. The president can't use it, for example, to invade France. He can't use it to build wind turbines in North Dakota. But it doesn't contain any of the provisions that you just outlined. Those are discretionary. Now, again, I don't think they should be. I would like Congress to pass laws with bullet points in them that allocated down to the minute level all of the funds that it wants to spend. I think Congress has got out of the habit of doing this. I think Congress has started to write the president shall or in the judgment of the secretary or in the opinion of the agency and all of that. I've been arguing this for years. I've not changed my view on this.

But it hasn't done that. That is not what that law from 1998 or the executive order from 1961 says. Now, if those things aren't listed in the law, that means the president can't do them at all unless there is another part of the law that says that the president gets to decide how the money is spent, again, within the broad parameters. That's what that law says. It's what it does. We cannot have a constitutional order that only allows non-Donald Trump or non-Republican presidents the discretion that Congress has accorded. I think that the administration has to abide by the judiciary. I am not arguing otherwise. But insofar as there is a proximate cause of any

constitutional tension at the moment, it is from judges who are ruling that the President of the United States is unable to exercise the discretion that Congress has granted him. That's the root problem. Now, yeah, they have to wait. They have to elevate this up the chain. I think they're not going to like the results when the Supreme Court finally looks at this, which I hope is sooner rather than later. But for now, the problem here is not the president. It is the other entities that are trying to tell him what to do. And one final thing on this, the secondary argument that you get is, well, okay, but Trump does have to spend money. What he can't do is say, I am no longer spending money on USAID.

But there's a time component to that, right? Trump has been president for, what, 20 days? So suppose that you come in as a new administration and you want to evaluate what your predecessor has done and you run an audit, which is what Doge is in effect. You might, for a a while stop all payments. You might say, well, we're not going to spend any money until we've worked out what we want to spend it on. Now, at that point, perhaps you are obliged to empty the coffers and say, right, we are going to do what Congress has asked us to and spend this money on X, Y, and Z areas. But you don't have to do it

on day one. You don't have to say, I'm cutting two and a half million here, so tomorrow I'll be spending it on something else. So this whole thing seems wildly premature to me, wildly selective. And to call it a constitutional crisis of the executive branch is just bizarre to me. Let me follow up with you, Charles, on the Biden precedent, which is just so galling. I just can't. I you and I, all of us have been talking about Biden's flouting of the Supreme Court's rulings for four years now. I had a debate with Bill Maher on a week before the election over this when he tried to tell me Trump was going to ignore the constitution and it was lawless. And I was like, what about your guy? He, he didn't know anything about it. He, you know, kind of rolled his eyes at it. Um, I just went back just for kicks. We played you the soundbite of, you know, Biden joking about how he, the Supreme court

didn't stop me, you know, bragging, I should say, not joking, boasting about how the Supreme Court didn't stop me. But it wasn't just with respect to student loans. It also was with respect to, I always call it the rent abatement program, but it was the eviction moratorium program where basically what happened was the feds tried to tell local landlords they couldn't evict people who didn't pay their rents during covid. And there was a question about whether the feds could do that. And the Supreme Court said they can't. That's not they cannot do that. That's not OK. And Biden didn't listen to them and then bragged about how he didn't listen to them and was in another instance, they're really proud about how he really't listen to them and was, in another instance, they're really

proud about how he really didn't give a damn what the Supreme Court said, not to mention the 28th Amendment by tweet, which he tried to do days before he got out of office. These same Democrats were not, I don't have a montage of them there, Charles, saying constitutional crisis because it didn't happen. No, they completely ignored it. Biden did two things that were bad in this area. The first thing he did was manipulate the courts at best and ignore them at worst. You mentioned the eviction moratorium. You go back and you look prior to the announcement of the continuation of the eviction moratorium. You go back and you look prior to the announcement of the continuation of the eviction moratorium, which seems to have been the product of Cori Bush lying down outside the Capitol and crying. Quite literally, that seems to have been what turned the tide.

The Biden administration said over and over again that it could not do it. There are great quotes about this from Biden himself, where he says, we've crossed the T's and dotted the I's. I've had my guys check it three, four times. We don't have the authority. They already had at that point a memorandum from Justice Kavanaugh in which he said that Congress would have to authorize it further. And they did it anyway. And they told Philip Wegman, Biden himself told Philip Wegman that he was doing it because it might take time to litigate and therefore he could at least buy people a month or so. That is a flagrant violation of the court order. And he went into it knowing what he was doing was illegal. That was awful. Another example of that was the OSHA regulation, the vaccine mandate for large companies. He knew that was illegal. Jen Psaki told the press corps that they couldn't do it six months before he did it. With the student loan thing, you had a slight wrinkle, which was that Joe Biden was desperate to persuade the public that he was violating the law, even though he wasn't. He had

violated the law with his order. He knew when he issued his student loan executive order that it was illegal because everyone knew that it was illegal. Nancy Pelosi had said a year before that the president did not have the authority to do it. Donald Trump's education department had said at the end of his first term that the executive branch did not have the authority to do it. Every expert who had weighed in had told him you're not allowed to do this. He did it anyway. That is a massive violation of his oath of office. He then gets his order struck down by the Supreme Court. He moves to two different maneuvers. It wasn't that he kept doing the one that had been struck down. He moved to two different ones that would never got looked at by the courts because they

were too long. And then he ran out of time. But he told everyone that he was ignoring the court. In other words, Biden wanted the American public to believe that he had ignored a court order, which is a hundred times worse than what J.D. Vance said. I think J.D. Vance should have said that we won't ignore the court or we'll take it to the Supreme Court or we're right on the merits and we don't mind litigating it, although it's annoying.

He didn't do that. But Biden did something much, much worse. He wanted Americans to believe that he was ignoring the court. All of those clips that you play leave the average person with the impression that Biden was telling the Supreme Court, as Andrew Jackson famously did, ha, now go enforce it. Well, that wasn't quite what happened, but that is so cancerous for our political system. So for the same people who not only indulged that, but cheered it on, go look at the clips of Democrats talking about the student loan case. Go look at the video of Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden making their argument for it. Go look at Chuck Schumer talking about it,

Elizabeth Warren talking about it. For those people to have ignored it and then cheered it on, to say that J.D. Vance criticizing a judge has created a constitutional crisis is just too cynical for words. Mm-hmm, yeah. And on the eviction moratorium too,

I mean, that was equally disgusting where you had a situation where it was clear that the feds did not have this power to tell us the states and the local landlords you can't evict people. Biden did it anyway. He did it anyway. And then it wound up in the U.S. Supreme Court and the Supreme Court said, yeah, you can't do it. This is not okay. And he doubled down on the doing of it. There was a great piece by a lawyer, Robert B. Charles. He's a Columbia law school grad and worked in the State Department for a time. And I pulled it. It was very well done. And he writes in part in this piece, okay, that Biden, after that Supreme Court ruling, was in a political quandary. Legally, Biden, his White House counsel, and every Democrat on the Hill knew that an executive extension of this eviction moratorium was illegal, worse, unconstitutional. Incredibly, they did it anyway. And he goes on to

say, all of this is more significant than even meets the eye. If the Biden White House can knowingly promote a direct slap in the face of the U.S. Supreme Court, brazenly ignore prevailing law, violate presumptive states' rights, the Constitution's text, and an express Supreme Court ruling, where are the limits? What are the clear parameters? What will they not do? Those are just two examples of him ignoring the highest court in the land, Rich. federal payments to workers saying, or sorry, not to federal programs saying, we did, we did resume some, but not all. And the court saying, that's not good enough. You didn't resume anything. You just left the others in progress and you have to let them all go in progress. That's really where we are on that one case that it's amazing that they want us to now need the vapors over this. Yeah. Yeah. So we didn't hear a peep about the Biden stuff.

And as you alluded to with Bill Maher, I think a lot of progressives weren't even aware. It didn't even enter their ken because they in their information silo. He thought I was being hysterical. Sorry, keep going. Yeah. No one had ever even brought it up. And both Obama with DACA and here with Nancy Pelosi, you had the president himself or high level Democrats say, no, of course he doesn't have that authority repeatedly over and over again. No, we can't do that. And then turning around and actually doing it, which is pretty good tell that you don't have the authority to do it. Here, if you had asked Donald Trump prior to him taking off his second term, can you fire people? He'd say, yeah. Can you review government programs to see if they're in keeping with your priorities and whether they're wasteful or not? He would have said, yeah. And can you redirect money in keeping with your priorities? He would have said, yeah. He legitimately thinks he has this authority for legitimate reasons.

So on top of everything else, what Trump is doing is less cynical than what we saw from Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Here's the other thing. We didn't even talk about what the left was saying after the affirmative action ruling about college campuses. Right. With the Supreme Court struck a deal that said you can no longer use affirmative action. And you tell me whether the left has been complying with that order. It's a joke. Of course they haven't been. And we all know they haven't been. They actually tried in the wake of that order at these college campuses to require video submissions of people's. Right. Yeah. Okay. We're okay, we're no longer asking you to check the box on your race,

but if you could please do an extreme close-up of your skin color, that would really help us out. To get fairly considered, you have to be like a drug informant being interviewed on cable TV or something where your whole,

on 60 Minutes, where your whole face is covered up. Your voice is loud. Yeah, so they can't tell. So, and there've been so many similar efforts to that. And it actually, in the wake of this, I pulled this, this is from a great Jonathan Turley piece that he wrote after the fact. And the headline of it was tyranny of the minority liberal law professors urge Biden to defy the courts and the public back in July of

23, which is when we got the affirmative action ruling from the Supreme Court. And he points out that there were these two law professors, Harvard law professor Mark Tushnet, San Francisco State University political scientist Aaron Belkin, calling upon President Joe Biden to defy rulings of the Supreme Court that he considers mistaken in the name of popular constitutionalism. Thus, in light of the court's bar on the use of race in college admissions, they argue that Biden should just continue to follow his own constitutional interpretation. Weirdly, the New York Times, after it had its big piece about how we're in a constitutional crisis, citing Erwin Chemerinsky out at University Berkeley Law School, saying he's defying court orders and that this is it. Really, they didn't have

the opposing view from their old pals Aaron Belkin and Mark Tushnet saying, actually, the high court or the president does have the ability to defy rulings of the Supreme Court that he considers mistaken in the name of popular constitutionalism. You know what's so great about that term popular constitutionalism is that Mark Tushnet, who never seems to miss an opportunity to blow it for his own side, reserved it for the most popular Supreme Court decision in about 40 years. In other words, he said that Joe Biden ought to channel the popular will to ignore a decision that was favored by 80% of Americans by 65% of

Democrats. It's just perfect, isn't it? I, of course, don't want any president to ignore any Supreme Court decision in part because one of the great virtues of the Constitution is that it protects minority rights. That's the point in it. You want to have decisions that defend, say, the free speech rights of people who everyone thinks are just awful. If you don't, there's no point in the First Amendment. Same with religion and so on. But really, that's your popular constitutionalism, is getting rid of a Supreme Court decision that everyone likes. And it just shows how completely incoherent they are with their language. They have decided at some point in time that they're on the side of the

angels and they're on the side of democracy and that they are popular and that they are constitutional and therefore everything they do must be those things. And so they've started to say, well, what Trump is doing is undemocratic. Well, not really. He won and he won the popular vote. They said Joe Biden should engage in popular constitutionalism, which just means doing what a minority of law professors wanted him to do. And now they're talking about the bureaucracy and the money that it spends on foreign aid projects that are generally pretty unpopular. That doesn't change the legality of it, but it's true, as if this is some great attack on the will of the people. They talk about Elon Musk as if he's unelected, which he is, but so are the other 2.4 million government employees in Washington, D.C.,

excluding the military and the post office. So I never quite know what it is that they mean, other than this is what I want. And the best example of this was the American Bar Association, which came out this morning and used the words rule of law at every juncture in its missive to mean what we at the American Bar Association like. And it makes it very difficult to actually interrogate what the law says, which really, really matters. The numbers, by the way, so just the juxtaposition, yes, the country overwhelmingly favored getting

rid of affirmative action, which in its last vestiges, which were at the college admissions level. And yet they wrote about popular constitutionalism as though that would support undermining that Supreme Court ruling, which was so favored. It's not popular or constitutionalism. Exactly. Neither one. And now you look at what Trump is doing. And he said to Brett Baier the other night, I, I ran on this, you know, like, sorry, people don't like what I'm doing with the bureaucrats and the spending, but I ran on this and he's absolutely right.

And, um, the latest, the latest poll. Okay. Listen to this. This is from CBS news that gave him a 53% approval rating three weeks into his second term, which is just amazing. 53% is very high for President Trump. He's never been that high. And the highest, well, among the highest approval ratings are with ages 18 to 29. He's up 10 approval over disapproval with the young people because they know the system doesn't work for them. They don't feel optimistic about their future. And so he's up 10 with that group. He's

up four with 30 to 44. He's up 12 with ages 45 to 64, up 12 points. Boomers, he's even 50-50. But the approval numbers are very interesting because they, then they asked, uh, is Trump doing more than he was expected to or less than he's expected to? And that's, uh, let's see, 49% say he's doing more than expected. 41% saying he's doing as much as accepted, expected and 9% say less, but 61% who say he's doing more than expected approve of it. So you've got about half of the country saying he's doing more than I expected him to. And 61% say, and I like what he's doing. He's got support for these programs, whether you like him or not, Trump is doing what he promised

or different from promised. 70% he's doing what he promised. I see it. And he's got a 53% overall approval rating. And then last but not least, you look at some of the specifics on this, like Doge, which we've been discussing. Musk and Doge, influence over government operations and spending should be theirs, Musk and Doge's, a lot, some, not much, or none. A majority say he should have some or a lot of influence over government operations and spending. Some say, 28% say he should have some influence. 23% say he should have a lot of influence. And only 18% say not much. 31% say none, no influence. Okay. And then just here's a capper. Trump's focus on ending DEI. 45% say it's the right amount.

39% say it's too much. 16% say it's not enough. So 61% say it's perfect or do more, President Trump. Which gets me back to a point we've been getting at on the show, Rich, and that's that the left decided not to melt down over DEI being removed from all these federal agencies, though CNN is still talking about it every night. And I'm sure MSNBC is too. They don't seem, they're definitely not upset about what's happening with illegal immigration. The numbers are there too on this poll showing that the people support that as well. 59%. Yeah. Yep. And they're not upset about removing boys from girl sports. Yeah. What the left has decided to fight over is foreign aid and the firing of bureaucrats, which had the Trump team,

when I saw them in their Super Bowl box, absolutely jubilant. Yeah. Well, given the alternatives, what would you fight on? Would you really, you want to fight on men competing in female sports or you want to fight on foreign aid? I don't think either are great fights. But by the way, the last three weeks have been the best three weeks the right has had in the culture war in 50 years. One, because a lot of what Trump is doing is going along with the grain of what was already a backlash against some of this insanity. His election itself was a permission slip for institutions like Meta to say, you know, we don't want this. We don't like this woke ideology. It's kind of forced on us. We don't want it anymore. And he's using the hook of federal funding to turn some of this stuff

around. So that's been amazing. And he took a small D democratic approach to this election. I'm going to tell people what I want to do. And then if they approve it and elect me, I'm going to do it. And even if at the margins, people aren't excited about everything, they do appreciate that directness and that kind of approach. And like, just right decisiveness, you know, it's like today we're getting rid of the paper straws. Good. Good. Right. I think we all favor that. And we're restoring the water flow from those showers. What was the famous Bill Clinton line? People would rather you be strong and wrong than weak and right. And a lot of this stuff Trump's strong on. Plus, he has popular backing. It's so true. Yeah, we're going to save his restoration of the water flow to our showers and our dishwashers and our toilets and the return of the incandescent light bulb for the next segment. Rich has got to go. Charlie stays with me. And at the end of the show,

Carol Swain will be here. Very much looking forward to speaking with her. Don't go away. Now is the time to prioritize gut health. Daily exposure to processed foods, work stress, fluoridine water, and environmental toxins can overwhelm the digestive system. The body faces constant attacks, but there is a way to fight back against them. Just Thrive Probiotic is a clinically proven probiotic and antioxidant with science-backed strains designed to keep the gut healthy and balanced. Unlike most probiotics that die in stomach acid, Just Thrive survives, delivering real results without gimmicks. Better digestion, a stronger immune system, increased energy, and easier weight management, all in one powerful probiotic.

Available in capsules or in delicious berry-flavored gummies, there's an option for everyone in the fam. For over a decade, Just Thrive has been committed to helping Americans achieve optimal health with trusted, science-backed solutions. To join the gut health revolution and take control of your health today, visit justthrivehealth.com and save 20% site-wide with promo code Megan. That's justthrivehealth.com, promo code M-E-G-Y-N. Before we leave the subject of spending and how Trump is using Elon to crack down on some of the fraud and waste, et cetera, a couple of things. Listen to this from Trump. He made this point. I don't think he's wrong. He saw his high approval ratings and weighed

in. Sod 18. I have high approval ratings because I'm, you know, I'm using common sense, whether it's getting men out of women's sports. I mean, have you seen what goes on with the boxers and with the weightlifters and with the swimmers and everything? It's so ridiculous. And I think it's a 90 percent issue. And, you know, the amazing thing, the Democrats are still fighting for it. It's crazy. It's crazy. I think we should go to Congress also have that cemented and, you know, make it indelible. But we you know, it's to me, it's all common sense. Who wants an open border where, where prisons are dumped into our country, where prisoners are led into our country,

many of whom are murderers, many of whom murdered far more than one person. And they're now roaming our country. Who wants that? I mean, it's, uh, it's terrible. And he's not wrong, right? From immigration, where Rich accurately pointed out his approval rating is at 59% across all groups, factoring in all Americans there. 64% approved sending troops down to the U.S.-Mexico border. To the trans issue, which he's right, the latest poll showed 79% for barring boys from girls' sports. So it probably is more like 90% because some people don't tell pollsters exactly how they feel. He's doing things that make sense. And that leads me to my first policy point of this hour, and that is the $59 million that made its way to house illegal immigrants in Manhattan from FEMA. So FEMA sent almost $60 million of taxpayer money last week to New York to house illegals here at nice hotels, like the Roosevelt Hotel, which is on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where back when I was free during the days, we would go do

yoga. It was actually, it was a nice life, I have to be honest. I'd do the yoga in the morning and then we'd go meet for coffee, all these Upper West Side moms. Absolutely lovely. Today, you wouldn't be caught dead near there. You certainly wouldn't be popping in for coffee. It's all illegals hanging out in the lobby, staying there on taxpayer dimes. So notwithstanding the Trump order not to do that, there are, there were some top administrators at FEMA who did that and, um, they've just been fired. This is actually from a national review article, um, that was posted today. I think talking about how DHS, which oversees FEMA is now, you know, demanded an investigation into this, saying that the individuals who did this circumvented leadership, unilaterally made

this payment and that they will be fired, that that money, quote, is meant for American disaster relief. This is actually quoting Elon Musk and instead is being spent on high end hotels for illegals. A clawback demand will be made today to recoup those funds. President Trump signed an EO during his first week to create a council to review FEMA operations and root out political bias. The Daily Mail reporting this morning that the woman who did it,

and I think the three aides working for her who made it happen, have now all been fired. But that's direct insubordination, and it's a lot of money, and it makes complete sense for Trump to say, we're not using FEMA relief aids while people in North Carolina are suffering to house illegals in Manhattan. It's funny you mentioned your experience with the Roosevelt. The Roosevelt's actually where I took my wife for a drink at the bar on our first date.

Yes, it's got a good bar. Yeah, and I used to stay there when I would go to New York for TV or other events. I think my sister stayed there before my wedding. So it really is astonishing as someone who, like you, was used to that being a hotel and a nice-ish hotel too with a good bar to see it now as a repository of illegal immigrants. So you mentioned the popularity of some of Trump's early actions. As a rule, I don't like it in politics when people use the phrase common sense because they're often trying to steal a base and pretend that their personal politics are common sense and their opponents aren't. But really, there are so many things on which the Democrats have inexplicably ceded ground that are actual common sense. We disagree on lots of things in this country, which is why

we have two political parties and why we have elections and we have debates and so forth. And a lot of those things aren't going to go away because they're just the product of different philosophies. But then there are the things that you just described. I mean, earlier, all of that spending on foreign aid that I think 90% of people would think sounded crazy. Men in women's sports, spending $59 million to put up illegal immigrants in hotels. There's a suicidal instinct in the current Democratic Party that has created this opening, and Trump has just walked into it, and he's benefiting from it. On the

specific FEMA point with the Roosevelt Hotel, that is a perfect example of how many people in the bureaucracy have come to see themselves. This myth that was developed over time and that is so often parroted by the press, that the executive branch within itself has separation of at which bureaucrats who operate at the pleasure of the president, who is the only elected official in whom power is vested, can make decisions on their own judgment. They can't. They exist to do what the president wants them to do. But that is not the same thing as saying that the president has unlimited power. Of course he doesn't because Congress has most of the power. But when it comes to decisions such as that one, the president gets to make that call. So these people should be fired. There should be an example made of them so that it doesn't happen again, that money should be clawed back. And

anyone who complains about it should be given an eighth grade civics lesson. This is not how our government works. Trump has been abundantly clear on this. There's no ambiguity. He issued these orders on day one or day two of the new administration. It is just crazy to me that there are people in the government who think they have the authority

to spend $59 million against the wishes of the guy who's in charge. And let's not forget, it's because the last guy, quote, in charge, issued this order to pay it. But there's a new sheriff in town. But this is Joe Biden's fault. He's really to blame here. All of this cleanup Trump is having to do is Joe Biden and Kamala Harris's fault. I shudder to think about those two having won again, either one, and continuing doubling and tripling down on these horrific policies. Border crossings are down 95% since Trump took office. Military recruitment is up tens of

thousands. The country is in the midst of a rebirth. As Rich points out, more conservative wins in the cultural wars than we've seen in 50 years, just in the past three weeks. So it really does feel like a renaissance and it's wonderful. There's some missteps, there's some things that'll need to be cleaned up, but that goes with the territory. The FEMA firings, I did find my note. It's their CFO, Mary Comins. She's been CFO since 2017. She has a master's in public education from NYU, a bachelor of arts in political science from Fordham. And according to open payrolls, her salary in 2018, it's probably gone up since then, was $170,000. So for $170,000, you should do what your boss wants you to do. And your boss made

really clear that he did not want this money being spent, and certainly not to illegals. A New York City Hall spokesperson confirmed to Fox News that they had received these funds through the past week, and that of the $59 million, $19 million went to direct hotel costs. The balance funded other services such as food and security for the illegals. I think Mayor Adams will probably work with Trump to get this clawed back and returned since it appears that the Trump Justice Department has pulled off the Southern District of New York U.S. attorney from the Eric Adams case. I don't know exactly how it went down, to be fair, but suddenly Eric Adams is no longer under federal investigation. Charles, my own take on it is I

don't know what they found on the case. I don't know whether he did what they said he did with, like, I don't know, I think it was, like, bribes from Egypt. But as long as that guy stops New York from being a sanctuary city and starts cooperating with the feds, it's a much, much bigger and important goal than whatever he did, which I'm sure he will stop doing now that he's had this scare. Yeah, it is more important, but I don't like it. I think they're two separate questions. And I absolutely want to end this horrible tendency of spending huge amounts of money to house illegal immigrants in hotels. And I think that Eric Adams, although I'm not a big Eric Adams fan, is an improvement over Bill de Blasio, because who isn't? of people who are under the threat of legal action or have been convicted of crimes to try and find common cause of solidarity with Donald Trump, who I think really was treated badly by Bragg,

and use that to get a pardon or a commutation or their case dropped. It's just not the case that our system is irredeemably corrupt or that every case is exactly the same. And the information I read about Eric Adams suggested he'd done something pretty bad, as had Rod Blagojevich. It did not look good. No, and we've seen a bunch of these. I mean, Rod Blagojevich just got his full pardon.

And what was the first thing that Bob Menendez, the New Jersey senator who also committed terrible crimes, said once he was sentenced to 11 years in jail? He said, now I understand how Donald Trump feels. Come on, dude. You did it. You took my, it was so brazen. Practically on Tom Goldstein of SCOTUS blog, which we all went to. Oh, yeah. It's another one. Yeah. Who he was.

He's definitely a leftist. But then suddenly in November, while he knew, but we didn't, that he was under investigation for allegedly not paying millions in taxes. He was like this prolific gambler winning twenty nine million dollars in one poker game while he's arguing before the Supreme Court. He's being investigated by the feds and taking out mortgages without revealing his massive debts from these poker matches. Those are the allegations. He denies them. But while he's always a leftist and then suddenly,

well, he knows he's under investigation, but we don't. This past November, after Trump won and became the next, you know, the president elect, he does a whole piece on how we really should abandon all the lawfare. I mean, all the charges against Trump should go away. It's what's fair. I was like, Tom, we're on to you. Right, right. So I don't like that. And I don't like how susceptible to it Donald Trump seems to be.

But sure, I mean, if we're separating those questions out, Eric Adams is preferable to Bill de Blasio. And insofar as the new administration can work with municipalities and states to stop this, that's good. What is, I think, fundamentally important here is that the bureaucracy responds within the law to the president's instructions. And we're seeing a whole bunch of signs already that it's not. And that is an attack on democracy. The left talks a great deal about democracy. Sometimes I agree with them. As you all listeners know, I didn't vote for Trump because of how he behaved in 2020. But democracy does not

mean things progressives like. There are consequences to Trump's having won. He gets to run the executive branch. And this is an example of him running the executive branch. So I just despair when I read about this, because what you're essentially defending, if you defend those employees who sent this money, is there being some fourth branch of government out there that is accountable to nobody and that is spending your money as a taxpayer based on its own preferences. Right. But they think that's democracy.

That's literally the opposite of it. Right. Yes. By the way, my team just sent me an update on Tom Goldstein. Steve, do me a favor and find the episode number that we talked about this case in so I can refer back to the audience. It's a great case. Most people never heard of Tom Goldstein, but he's one of the most respected members of the Supreme Court bar, which is his own special bar to get into. You have to get into it before you can have an argument before the Supreme Court. And one of the most successful lawyers in front of the Supreme Court and ran this very popular blog called SCOTUS blog. And then this shocking story comes out about all the alleged crimes he was committing while showing up at the Supreme Court to argue some of the biggest cases

that we've covered over the past five, six years. I mean, talk about being able to handle massive amounts of stress. Litigation is stressful, Charles, at any level. But when you're arguing in front of the Supreme Court and the feds are breathing down your neck and you think you're going to be charged with federal crimes, that guy's got a steel of spine. I don't admire him. I'm just saying that the dynamic it's, it's made for a movie anyway. Um, Reuters reporting today that he has just been arrested and detained after a judge in Maryland said he violated the terms of his pretrial release. He'd been out on bail because he was a flight risk saying he may not remain free any longer. The prosecutor said he transferred millions of dollars in cryptocurrency assets using accounts he concealed from the court. I can't. We have no idea who we are trusting out there in the public eye. I'm here to tell you, ain't no felonies associated with yours truly.

And I feel like I can say the same on Charles's behalf. We've all committed crimes. Charles points this out all the time. You commit many every day or week or month, given the number of laws there are, but I'm feeling good against the felonies. Um, yeah, he argued more than 40 Supreme court cases before retiring in 2023. And then he was indicted last month on 22 counts of tax evasion and other tax crimes. The indictment said he won and lost millions of dollars in individual poker matches and made improper payments through his law firm to cover the debts. He pleaded not guilty and did have bail. But now they allege that he has received more than 8 million in crypto currency and sent more than

6 million in cryptocurrency over the last, sent more of it, like to some accounts that were not disclosed over the last five days. He was obligated to disclose all of this to the court. He did not. They argued that this strongly suggests he is preparing to offshore his assets and flee. They also alleged that he tried to stop a potential witness who knew about his personal and law firm finances from cooperating with the investigation by offering things of value, including crypto. The episode is number 985. It's in the middle of it. And we spent about a half an hour on it. Well worth your time. It's crazy. Trust no one, Charles. Trust no one. My life is so boring compared to that. I've never done that, I have to say. No, I mean, you can't see it, but if you look just to my left,

it's my desk, and I've got all my 1099s on there, my W-2s, and doing my taxes. And it never occurred to me to send that cash out into Bitcoin as the precursor to leaving the country and maybe a non-extradition nation and fleeing federal oversight. Never occurred to me. Maybe I should up my ambition. Part of the story to me is just like, I really think he must be, if this is true,

that takes a sociopath to do this. Somebody who's like somehow divorced from emotions. Yeah. I mean, I do think that when you're evaluating whether or not someone is a flight risk, just the fact of them being an extremely high stakes gambler probably bolsters the chances that they are. I had a friend at university who, yeah, he was a professional gambler.

And in our first year at university, he won 300,000 pounds playing poker. What he would do is he would go down to these big London sort of gambling halls and he would wait for Chinese businessmen to run in who just didn't care whether they won or lost. They just wanted entertainment. He was an amazing poker player. So he would just win, right? So year one, he makes this huge amount of money. We're all students. We just can't believe it. And then in year two, he loses 150,000 pounds on net.

And I said to him, I said, I don't know how you could have carried on to the point at which you lost money. Because if I'd won £300,000 out of stock, right, instead of keeping going and losing half of it. And he said to me, well, it's a stupid thing to say, which it was. Because if you had stopped, you'd never have won it in the first place. It's just not how gambling works. You have to be prepared to lose everything you have at any given point. And that's true. And I've always remembered that. Well, if this guy's playing $29 million stakes poker, I think the federal government might be onto something when they think he could leave the

country on a whim. Yeah. I'm glad they were watching. Although Tom Goldstein potentially fleeing would have been a great story to cover. We'll see what happens in this case. I'm definitely covering that trial if there is one. Okay. Trump and common sense. How about the return of water flow, plastic straws, and the incandescent light bulb, which we all love. The lighting is so much nicer. They've improved the LED. I will admit it's gotten a little better, but nothing compares to the incandescent. Trump declared all of this via executive order and tweet and actually doubled down on the plastic straws as only Trump can. Listen to SOT 17. We're going back to plastic straws. These things don't work.

I've had them many times and on occasion they break, they explode. If something's hot, they don't last very long, like a matter of minutes, sometimes a matter of seconds. It's a ridiculous situation. So we're going back to plastic straws. Back to plastic, because he says in his EO, an irrational campaign against plastic straws has resulted in major cities, states and businesses banning their use, et cetera. And it is there for the policy of the U.S. to end the use of paper straws. We want this to happen nationwide. And then he moves on to say he's instructing Secretary Lee Zeldin

to immediately go back to my environmental orders, EPA administrator or secretary, which were terminated by Crooked Joe on water standards and flow pertaining to sinks, showers, toilets, washing machines, dishwashers, etc., and to likewise go back to the common sense standards on light bulbs that were put in place by the Trump administration but terminated by Crooked Joe. I look forward to signing these orders. Thank you. Your thoughts? Well, first off, it is completely insane that the federal government gets to tell us what straws and light bulbs and shower heads that we can use.

This should never have happened. But it did take that power and then it delegated that power to the president. So he's completely within his rights to do this. I think it will be wildly popular. The most annoying argument that I've seen against this from the left is, why is he focusing on this? Why, when there are so many issues, is he worrying about straws? Which is a silly question. Why did you worry about it in the first place, such that he had to reverse it? You can't have it both ways. If it doesn't matter what straws

people use, or what light bulbs people have or what showerheads or dishwashers people are allowed to buy, then you should never have started issuing executive orders and agency rules in the first instance. You can't blame the guy who, with the backing of the public, comes in and reverses your rules and then say, it's so weird. Why does he care about that? And that is, of course, what they've done across a whole bunch of issues, what they did with the trans issue as well. We had two and a half thousand years of sports in which men and women were not regarded as the

same thing in which the risks were understood. The left came in and said, hey, maybe men should be playing in women's sports and anyone who disagrees with a bigger people stood up and said, I don't think that's a very good idea. And they said, why do you care, you weirdo? It's just so cynical. So like this would never have happened if they hadn't tried to regulate this in the first instance. So to go after Trump and say, why isn't he worrying about bigger issues is I think is really unfair. This is something that people are annoyed by because of over government. What I would like to see, and I don't think it's going to happen, but what I would like to see is having issued these orders and got these rules through, is for Congress to step

in and pass a law saying this is no longer the preserve of the presidency. And that if the federal government's going to regulate this at all, it can't be changed until such time as Congress changes it. Because you're never going to get a groundswell in America that wants Congress to outlaw plastic straws or LED light bombs. This has to come from the bureaucracy because people hate it. Well, well said. No, it's another version of Republicans pounce, right? They do something absolutely crazy on the left. Republicans say, well, you're crazy. And it's the headlines, Republicans pounce, right? They do something absolutely crazy on the left. Republicans say, well, you're crazy.

And it's the headlines. Republicans pounce. Well, Trump pounced and is restoring, yes, common sense and order and the beautiful plastic straws that we all want. He's right about the paper straws. They're a disaster. Charlie, great to see you. Thanks for having me. All right. Coming up next, Carol Swain is here. Looking forward to talking to her. Do you know that she was one of the victims of accused plagiarizer Claudine Gay, the Harvard professor who got bounced out? And she's got a new book out. She's going to talk about what that was like and more next. Well, we're right around Valentine's Day, right? And everyone's thinking about love, maybe a little bit more than normal. And what does that bring to mind for you? It

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Remember Claudine Gay? It's been a year since the former Harvard president resigned from her position after refusing to say that anti-Semitic language on campus violated the college's code of conduct. Here's a reminder of her disastrous testimony before Congress. Assume you're familiar with the term intifada, correct? I've heard that term, yes. And you understand that the use of the term intifada in the context of the Israeli-Arab conflict is indeed a call for violent armed resistance against the state of Israel, including violence against civilians and the genocide of Jews. Are you aware of that? That type of hateful speech is personally abhorrent to me.

Do you believe that type of hateful speech is contrary to Harvard's code of conduct, or is it allowed at Harvard? It is at odds with the values of Harvard. Can you not say here that it is against the code of conduct at Harvard? We embrace a commitment to free expression, even of views that are objectionable, offensive, hateful. It's when that speech crosses into conduct that violates our policies against bullying, harassment. Does that speech not cross that barrier? Does that speech not call for the genocide of Jews and the elimination of Israel? Do not get on Elise Stefanik's bad side. She's amazing. I interviewed her at the Republican National Convention, and I just assumed she had

legal training. I'm like, where'd you go to law school? She's like, I didn't go to law school. She's going to be our new UN ambassador, and she's perfectly suited for that job. In addition to Claudine Gay's problems responding to those questions on Capitol Hill, she was accused of serial plagiarism, which really kind of was the death knell, put the nail in the coffin. And one of the authors that she is accused of plagiarizing is with me today. You and I love her. Her name is Dr. Carol Swain. You know, Carol, she has a new book detailing this plagiarism and her own ensuing battle with Harvard. You see, she says she was one of Claudine's victims. It is called The Gay Affair. I like it. The Gay Affair, Harvard, plagiarism, and the death of academic integrity. Carol, welcome back to the show. Great to see you. It is great to see you too. And I understand you were at the Super Bowl.

Yes, I was rooting for your Eagles. Well, and they won. They won. I know. That's right. You have that in common with my husband. He's from, well, he's from Philly, so that's why he loves them. But yeah, they were great. It was super fun. And I really, I don't think I'll ever do it again, but I certainly enjoyed the one time. So you've spent a lifetime in academics when you came on before we detailed your rise, I mean, at the most elite institutions like Vanderbilt. And you have to, if you're going to go that route, write a lot. You have to get published, which you did. And so how did you find out that

somebody else who's gotten published, though not as prolifically as you have, did it in part by allegedly copying and stealing your ideas and words? And that would be Claudine Gay, the one-time president of Harvard. Yes. And before I was at Vanderbilt, I was tenured at Princeton, early tenure. And my prize winning first book, Black Faces, Black Interests, the Representation of African phone call and asked if I had heard that the president of Harvard University had been accused of plagiarizing her dissertation. And then he said, guess who she plagiarized? You. And so he referred me to Christopher Ruffo's ex-page Twitter. And I went there, I saw the article, and then I started getting phone calls and I read the work.

At first I was shocked. It happened 26 years earlier. Then I was deeply sad because she's a black woman, I'm a black woman, and I didn't think it was a good look for black women. And then that sort of morphed into anger, which is not something that I usually engage in. When Harvard came out and said that it wasn't plagiarism, it was duplicative language without attribution. Right. And how did you feel about that? I was angry. And that anger, again, it's not good to be angry. And I gave, I believe, 80 some interviews between December 10th and the middle of January. But I calmed myself down for Christmas. This happened December 10th. I'm angry, angry, angry, but I want to have a good Christmas. I'm a Christian. Called myself racism. And when she blamed racism, then I'm

angry all over again. And I called an attorney who had offered to take the case pro bono, and I told him to pursue it. And so it was an attorney from Austin. And then later, I moved from him to a paid legal team. And doing all of this, Claudine Gay never reached out to me. I had heard of her while I was at Princeton. I was a hotshot when I was hired, and I got early tenure, got it in three years. First book, three national prizes. It's been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court. But I started questioning affirmative action in the mid 1990s. And that was not popular with the people who had loved me from my first book. And that was interesting how quickly you can fall out of favor.

But I started falling out of favor and it felt to me that Claudine Gay was being thrown up to me, this brilliant, brilliant Black woman from Harvard University. And I was not interested that much in what she was doing. And my work moved in a different direction. I had been a congressional scholar. That was how I was tenured. But then I got interested in affirmative action and white nationalism and other issues. So I wasn't paying attention. I stopped attending the conferences. So it was a shock to me to find out that Claudine Gay had sort of built her early career around the theses and arguments of black faces, black interests. And many of our audience members may be asking themselves, how can this possibly be? Because you, I think it's fair to say, are a more conservative thinker.

Maybe maybe heterodox thinker is a better way. And she is a far lefty. So why would she be plagiarizing Carol Swain if, in fact, she did? Well, I was the hot shot back then and I was a Democrat up until 2009. But I like to say that I was a Democrat with common sense. Because back then, when I started, before Black Faces Black Interests, and when I did my dissertation, my research question was, is it really true that only Blacks can represent Blacks? And so I studied black representation in Congress, and I argued that political party was more important than the race of the representative. And I also argued that whites could represent blacks and blacks could represent whites, and that when black candidates lost, it was because of their views and not their race.

And at the time I did that study, 40% of the Blacks in Congress were represented by, were elected in districts that were majority white on election day, when you factored in turnout levels and registration. And so the book, one of the reasons it got a lot of attention is in my concluding chapter, I talked about what would happen to black power if the Democrats lost control of Congress. And it happened a year after my book was published. That's so interesting. I love, well, you're, you're, you know, you're bent toward conservative thinking, especially on issues of race, like concluding that it's okay for blacks to be represented by whites and so on. This led to the beginning of your cancellation. We went over that when you came on, like,

slowly but surely, the universities decided, maybe you're not all that brilliant. These don't seem like brilliant ideas to them. They'd much rather go with the Claudine Gay, who knocks down those ideas and says all the right things, and then keeps getting promoted. And then, even though she's made it to the top of Harvard University, when she comes under fire, along with two white women from other universities who were saying similarly dumb things at those hearings, she blames racism. What did you, I mean, like your reaction when she like decided to blame her problems on that? Well, I mean, I'm not a racist and I was among the people. There were 47 instances of plagiarism. In the book, I have a side by side.

There were five verbatim concerning my work. But my argument is that she used black faces, black interests to set up a straw man. She took one of my conclusions and her work was designed to counter my work. And so there were verbatim plagiarism, but the bigger theft, I think, was that instead of doing it, like if you or I were going to do a research project and we thought someone was wrong, we would say, you know, professor so and doctor so and so argues such and such, they are wrong. And then you lay out their argument, you dissect it, you take it apart. She didn't do that. She tried to avoid citing me and the places where she did cite me,

it was not to give credit for the core of her idea. And so in at least three articles, because she never had a major book, I would argue that she drew on my ideas without giving proper attribution. And I learned in this process that under copyright law, the theft of ideas are not protected. Copyright law protects copyrights, but not the theft of ideas. And her lawyer argued that it was de minimis what she took from me, that that it was fair use and that she had argued the opposite of what I did. And and so that was pretty much their position. And then the university itself, they had an attorney and their attorney said that they were not responsible for the dissertation because ProQuest published it. But they referred me back to the letter by Neil Roman. Yeah, but the bottom line is no one took responsibility. She didn't say she was sorry.

She said when she came under fire that these were just mere errors. Nothing was done intentionally. I'm sure that she and Harvard don't act that way when a student gets caught plagiarizing work. You can just say it was a mere error. And, you know, she's I know when you were thinking about filing this lawsuit, but ultimately decided not to for the reasons you just discussed, you you took a look at where Claudine Gay is now. And you reminded me of something, too, which is she's actually doing pretty darn well.

She is. I don't. Well, you know, plagiarism isn't a crime or a misdemeanor. It's like an ethical, moral breach. And institutions, whether it was journalists, journalistic organizations or colleges and universities, they used to police that. But when it comes to elite, it's not being policed. Harvard doesn't allow its students to plagiarize. They hold them to a strict standard, except if they get away with it. And so in the case of Claudine Gay, they didn't catch it back when it occurred. And so they defend it now that she's on the faculty. And one of the things that really bothers me is that Claudine Gay, you know, she, I mean, she comes from Haitian aristocracy. She went to Phillips Exeter Academy. She has an undergraduate degree from Stanford.

She has the PhD from Harvard. She won two prizes for her writings. And and so it's a reflection on the elites because they educated her. She was their product. And and people like me that come from the other side of the track. There's less interest in me and Roland Fryer, people like us. And Harvard had been accused some time ago of preferring the offspring of immigrants to native-born Black Americans. And so, I mean, they chose her, carefully chose her, they protected her. And as far as I know, she's still earning that $900,000 a year salary. And my book is not just about Claudia and Gabe. I would say that we have a pandemic in academia of plagiarism. And if you are an elite, you can get away with it.

And I could not pursue justice with Harvard. And Harvard's always ignored me. Even when she made corrections to her dissertation, she never made any corrections as far as I know to my work, nor has she ever reached out to me. If she had reached out to me, I would not have written the book. And the reason I didn't file the lawsuit is because under copyright law, loser pays, and I was not going to use my retirement and my Social Security to pay Harvard's lawyers. Absolutely right. Or hers when she's making $900,000 a year. Just so our audience knows, Carol was born in Bedford, Virginia, one of 12 kids.

Grew up in a very poor house, living in a shack without running water. Sharing two beds with her 11 siblings. Did not finish high school. Dropped out in ninth grade. Earned a G GED, worked as a cashier at McDonald's. Carol actually worked at McDonald's as a door-to-door salesperson and assistant at a retirement facility. Now holds five degrees, including a PhD from the University of North Carolina, a master's from Yale, got tenure as an associate professor of politics and public policy at Princeton, and also taught at Vanderbilt, as I mentioned. So, I mean, you have worked your way up from nothing that doesn't get rewarded by these. They don't look at you and say, it's wonderful. Now, if you had somehow managed to turn out liberal, it might, they might want to celebrate that, you know, rags to riches story, but no,

you questioned the one thing you really can't question. You mentioned right. Roland Fryer race. Are you a black person who's heterodox on these racial issues beloved by the left makes you public enemy number one. I mean, I just think that the racism that I know you've had to endure from leftists, right. Who it's like, I don't know what the term is for a woman, but it's like an uncle Tom. That's what they call people like Roland and Clarence Thomas is absolutely shocking. It's true. And they call the women Aunt Jane. And the progressives were always uncomfortable with me. And also many of the black people that I worked alongside, they would tell me, you know, you don't need to tell people where you came from. And there seemed to be a lot of embarrassment that somehow I had slipped through

the cracks and entered those places. And I am a person of faith. And I believe that God somehow opened those doors. I was able to get in there and get credentialed and to see exactly what takes place behind the closed doors. And there's a lot of racism and much of it came from the, all of it came from the white progressives. And I can tell you that my attitudes about race has always been that, I mean, I've never been on, I wasn't in the black student union. I was in the honor societies and my mentors, and many of them were older white men and people, no one, you know, no one encouraged me to feel like I was handicapped because I was Black. I'm a woman. I have children. I come from poverty. I had to get to graduate school and start studying theories of oppression to learn that because I was Black and a woman and with a family that I wasn't supposed to have been able to do the things I had already done.

And it was like poison. And I think that we poison young people's minds today that all of that diversity, equity and inclusion and what affirmative action became, all of that has held Black people back. Because in my day, I would say I benefited from the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution, an environment that focused on non-discrimination, outreach, and equal opportunity. And I had equal opportunity to get into places. I was recognized because I defied the stereotypes, but I could have failed anywhere along the way. There was no equity in my day. That comes through so clearly in our earlier episode together where we, I'll give the audience the number, where we went through it all. And it's an amazing success story. I do have to ask you, I mentioned you last week because we were having this discussion about these absurd panels that

are happening over on CNN and the woe is me attitude of these very successful black women who are running the discussion in Abby Phillips case and the panel that she has still acting like it's 1954 and we've made no progress and we haven't had the civil rights. I mean, here's a little, this is a different cut from the one we ran last week, but here's a sample. I got a law degree, a master's and two bachelors, probably more education than all y'all added up together at this table. And I have always been the least paid person on payroll at every institution I have worked in. And it's not because... Even in the White House?

Even in the White House. Well, whose fault is that? I don't think he worked for George W. or Trump. Well, guess what happened when I was there? DEI. I have faced... I just said I was the least paid person, even in this moment sometimes,

to my counterparts. I do believe I'm qualified. I know I'm qualified. You won't ever tell me I'm not qualified. But the system that I live in doesn't matter about my qualification. Black women are one of the most educated demographics in this country and one of the least paid. Why would that make any sense? Why would that make any sense?

And don't talk to me about the judges you stand before. Talk to me about the theory. Why? Hold on. Talk to me about the world in which we live in and the system that we live in. Let's look at the United States Supreme Court. How can you say we're not going to look at that from the top to the bottom? I'm talking about the legal system.

New York is a more progressive state. We just got a black woman. We just got a black woman on the line. We got a black man from the 70s. You brought up the Supreme Court. One. Did you know, Arthur? Why is it so hard to understand why something like diversity, equity, inclusion

needs to be a part of what we do in a system that never even acknowledged a group of people, never saw us as a human commodity. Literally never noticed who we were. And now here we are years later asking for some simple rights, some simple civility. She's asking to be paid like you get paid. She's asking to be acknowledged like you get acknowledged. And she knows that that is not the case because she is a Black woman. Your thoughts on it, Carol? What an interesting thing about, you know, all these degrees that she has. We know that colleges and universities are not equal. We also know that they have lowered the standards so much, especially at the, even the Ivy League,

that once you get your foot in the door, they pass you along. It's almost impossible to fail. And so a person having a lot of degrees, that tells me nothing about their knowledge base or their work ethic. And I think the work ethic is key. And just having a degree and showing up, that doesn't mean anything. Do you show up? How hard do you work? Those women that were featured, they seem to be doing pretty well. Absolutely. And yet still want us to be, I mean, there's no question Abby Phillip makes millions of dollars and she still wants us to feel sorry for her because somehow there's an invisible

ceiling she keeps bumping up against. you know, she has a primetime show. Like, I don't know what she's bitching about. And this other woman, I have no idea what her work ethic is. Good point. I don't know how smart she is just because she has these degrees. And I don't know whether she's outshining her competitors either. You know, it's like, maybe you're great, but you're not as great as your colleagues. It just automatically has to be gender and race. Well, I can tell you, Megan, I identify more with you just because we are two women that had to reinvent ourselves because we ran up against the forces that be and we did so successfully. Most of the liberals don't have to worry about that.

That's exactly right. Thank you. I appreciate that. And I feel very much the same, Carol. And I'm thrilled that you're going public with this story about Claudine Gay, because honestly, she should have called you long ago to apologize at the bare minimum she could do. Support Carol. The book is called The Gay Affair. Love it. Good turn of phrase. It's very memorable. The Gay Affair by Carol Swain, who we want to support, who will not get a single appearance on CNN to promote this book or MSNBC, hopefully Fox, but she needs our support and she deserves it. The book is The Gay Affair. It's wonderful to have you back. Thank you so much. All right, Steve, what was the episode number our first time with Carol? Oh, 281, number 281. And it's a great one. You'll

fall in love with Carol if you haven't already. And we are back tomorrow with Adam Carolla and Anna Kasparian. Before we go, I just want to point this out very quickly. Last Friday, we dropped a special episode on Brian Kohlberger and all of these big developments that happened in that case when we weren't looking about two weeks earlier. It's huge. It's blowing up online. The episode's only, it's less than an hour, I think. It's well worth your time. Go back and take a look at it, youtube.com slash Megyn Kelly. We will see you tomorrow. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.