The Megyn Kelly Show - Media Malpractice and Criminal Consequences, with Kathie Lee Gifford, E.D. Hill, John Kass and Amy Swearer | Ep. 209

Episode Date: November 23, 2021

Megyn Kelly is joined by Kathie Lee Gifford, author of "The Jesus I Know: Honest Conversations and Diverse Opinions About Who He Is," E.D. Hill, longtime journalist and former Fox News host, John Kass of JohnKassNews.com, and Amy Swearer, of the Heritage Foundation, to talk about the criminal consequences of social justice policies, what Biden and the media owe Kyle Rittenhouse, Rittenhouse's latest Fox interview, the fall of Andrew Cuomo and Time's Up, MSNBC's ridiculous Thanksgiving segment, the various cases where self-defense worked for those accused of crimes, Jesus never canceling anyone and the power of faith, and more.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Big show for you today with lots of interesting guests on all the news happening. In just a bit, we're going to be joined by Kathy Lee Gifford, as well as former Fox News anchor, my old pal, Edie Hill. Looking forward to speaking with both of those strong, powerful, smart ladies. But we begin today with the carnage in Waukesha, Wisconsin, where five people are dead. Another 48 people, that's the latest number, injured, including multiple children. As a result of the acts of a 39-year-old man, happens to be black, who mowed them down during

a holiday parade, apparently without a thought for their humanity. Now, it appears this guy, a career criminal, was intent on killing as many people as possible. And pursuant to your reporter's longstanding policy, we will not be showing pictures of him or repeating the name of this suspected mass murderer, because in too many of these cases, men like this or those copying them are after a kind of infamy, and we decline to help. This man has a rap sheet that would make any felon blush. Two years in prison for aggravated battery back in 1999, arrested multiple times for carrying a concealed weapon, possession of drugs over and over, multiple charges for resisting arrest or obstructing an officer, a criminal sentence

of strangulation and suffocation of another, domestic abuse, battery, probation violations, bail jumping many times, failure to appear in court. Oh, having sex with a minor. He's a sex offender registered now. He did eight months in jail this year alone for shooting at a car on the road after a fight. No sooner had he gotten out for that than he was arrested again on November 2nd for hunting down the mother of one of his children, allegedly punching her with a closed fist and then running her over with his car. The very one he allegedly used against children and grandmothers on Sunday, a maroon Ford Escape. The reason he was out on the street so soon, he posted the joke of a bail required by the DA there for his alleged crimes, $1,000. This guy was an obvious danger to the community. His

risk of jumping bail was clear to any sane observer. Still, they let him out, allegedly because they couldn't quite get his trial scheduled fast enough for the bleeding heart DA, and therefore decided the public should bear the risk of this thug being allowed to roam. None of this is by accident. You see, while the Milwaukee County DA's office is now admitting, quote, our bail recommendation was inappropriately low. The DA himself, John Chisholm, loves letting accused criminals out of jail with a free pass. Chisholm prides himself on being a woke prosecutor seeking cred with the social justice crowd. You should see his Twitter feed. He's been working with a far left group to eliminate cash bail.

They actually praised him for, quote, redefining the role of prosecutor in this new era, saying, quote, Chisholm stuck his neck out there and started saying that prosecutors should also be judged by their success in reducing mass incarceration and achieving racial equality. He too prizes equity, equity, that term that the left loves so much, in his role as prosecutor. This in a county that has seen its homicide rate soar nearly 100% since last year. And it's not just Milwaukee County, Wisconsin. Cash bail reform is happening state to state. A woke, AOC-endorsed method of criminal justice reform that, instead of ensuring that defendants show up at trial by requiring them

to either stay in jail before the big day or to post cash bail, which they would then forfeit if they were to skip town, this lets defendants remain free after arrest unless they're deemed a threat to the community or a flight risk. This guy in the maroon SUV was clearly both, and this DA failed his community any way you slice it. Meanwhile, we get lectured by the media and woke Democrats about how the criminal justice system is based in white supremacy, too lenient on whites and too tough on black defendants. In the wake of the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict, we have seen calls to, quote, throw out the entire system by people like Colin Kaepernick and Ibram X. Kendi. How about the system that lets a career criminal out of prison with a joke bail,

knowing full well he's a danger to society in an effort to score points with who? BLM? Far left criminal justice reform groups? Because I agree that system does need help, just not the kind that Ibram Kendi wants. This social justice engineering has no business in our courts. If these woke warriors had their way, Kyle Rittenhouse would be spending the rest of his life in prison for acts that were clearly legally justified. And the next would-be mass murderer would also be let out on the street to kill despite a long criminal history. All so that folks like AOC, driving her $70,000 Tesla and surrounded by security, or Cori Bush with her taxpayer-funded guards, can say, see, I care about my community. Joining me now to talk about it all, John Cass, a former columnist for the Chicago Tribune,

now posting at his own website, which you should 100% support, johncass, K-A-S-S, that is, news.com. Welcome back, John. Great to have you. You're the perfect person to discuss this with because this is something you've been sounding the alarm on and which in part led to your departure from the Tribune last summer. Your thoughts on it? across the country who are doing this, low bail, releasing violent criminals. And I was defamed by my union. Not mine, I wouldn't join it, but they defamed me and removed me from page two. And so I'm happy to have left. Once I was given a buyout, I didn't want to stick around and get knifed in the back another time by my colleagues, especially since this phenomenon you're describing,

the low-cash bail system, has been part of the news for a long time. And many of us who brought it up have been vilified and defamed. But the fact is, it happens. And victims, as you say, are all over the country and they're broken as a result. That's the thing. This prosecutor can look at us now and say, gee, I'm going to we're going to do a review. We don't know how he got like he wasn't supposed to be granted bail. Your system failed. You knew you said on the record there's been good reporting all over the Internet today

on this. You said, is somebody likely to get out who's a murderer and is going to commit a murder? Yes. But that still doesn't undermine my overall approach. It does indeed, sir. We have five grandmothers and others, dead children holding on to life by a thread right now, because this guy who very much hits both of the things that should keep you incarcerated, even if you don't allow bail, even if you believe in the abolishment of the bail system,

flight risk. He jumped bail so many times I can't even keep count anymore. And danger to the community. When he ran over his girlfriend earlier this month, there were tire marks on her body. What the hell was he doing on the streets? In Chicago alone, there are like some 50 cases of people being shot or threatened to be shot by people who are out on bail. In Chicago, we have at least over 100 people charged with murder walking the streets, not to mention sexual abuse, kidnapping, and other crimes. It happens, it's going on all over the country. And unfortunately, the people of Waukesha and those families that aren't going to have a Thanksgiving with their loved ones. They're paying the price.

And on the other hand, Megan, I believe you're a lawyer, right? You did study the law. Yep. Yep. I practiced for 10 years. I know you know and you believe that all people have the right to bail. We're not trying to say people don't have the right to bail. No, it depends on the case.

Right. And if you're a violent threat to the community, why let him out? Well, and even he, even the DA, this far left DA is admitting this guy should not have been let out. He has to. He cannot say anything other than this was a mistake. But he knew the mistake would happen. He knew that somebody would be set free thanks to his policies. And he didn't really give a damn when asked about it not long ago. He was elected in 2007. And he's been doing this for a long time and working with this far left group to make the system more and more equitable. And I have to tell you, like these risks were predicted by a lot of people who opposed this reform.

And even those who are in favor of some reforms in the criminal justice system, because what does happen sometimes is you get some young kid who commits some offense that would, whatever, it would require $10,000 bail and he doesn't have it. Now he's sitting at Rikers here in New York for a year, who's already been imprisoned for a crime he hasn't been convicted

of. And a year in a place like Rikers can make you a criminal where you weren't otherwise, right? And it's an unjust punishment for somebody on their first arrest or so on. I get that. I get that. But this kind of- But repeat violent- No, this is different. Repeat violent offenders? Repeat with guns? Repeat shooters and people like this? No. And you know what?

This couldn't have happened in a country that had legitimate media. The problem is these woke prosecutors, supported by George Soros and others of the left are protected by woke corporate legacy media. The same media that defamed and tried to destroy Kyle Rittenhouse is the same thing. Exactly. Exactly. Now, I want to make one more point about walk a shot before Rittenhouse. And that is places like New Jersey have taken on, you know, this no cash bail thing, and tried to do better on this. But what they did was, they added a bunch more resources to the criminal justice process so that you could get speedier trials, you could get claims processed faster, so that you wouldn't have to, you know, in the name of a speedy trial, just let somebody dangerous out on the streets.

So if you're going to do it, if you're going to do it, you have to you have to pay the money for it. And trust me, I personally know a bunch of billionaires who love this. This makes them feel like social social justice supporters. They throw a bunch of money at trying to get DA's like this arrest in office. They don't have to deal with the consequences of it. They're in high rises with security guards and so on. But at least if you're going to throw your money at it, throw your money at making the system able to process the defendants in a more speedy way so that we don't have to choose between a speedy trial and letting them out. Put them at Martha's Vineyard, okay? Right

next to Barack Obama, who lives in a seaside mansion. I guess the seas aren't rising anymore. And let him deal with it. But, you know, unfortunately, all too many times, the violent are released back in their communities. Most of the communities are minority and poor. And these people are victims and voiceless while the media goes on, corporate media goes on, talking virtue signaling while people get hurt and maimed. I mean, I don't know how I missed this, but even just today or yesterday, with the bodies

still just newly deceased and people in the hospital, including children, what does AOC tweet out her very first public comment on this? She tweets out, hold on, when prosecutors seek excessive cash bail, it results in increased rates of incarceration, particularly for low income defendants. More than 75 percent of individuals in custody haven't been convicted of a crime and are confined in unsafe conditions because they cannot afford cash bail. Condemning thousands of individuals to languish in such environments as they await trial is unacceptable. And she sends out, she sends out this letter that she just sent to New York City's five district attorneys requesting information on excessive bail and so on. That's, that is not the, that is so tone deaf. Piers Morgan had a great column in the Daily Mail on this,

how tone deaf that is, or she's just ignorant. She's tone deaf, and this is why the Mutsa was created by my ancestors. It's like this. I'm not giving it to you or your viewers, but it's basically to show disgust. I'm disgusted personally, and I read Piers Morgan's column, and before the show I read the one that I had written about this that caused me so much pain and caused me to be defamed by my union. And I'm thinking for the people, the poor people who are victims of these people. They're victims of an ideology. They're being destroyed. Their bodies are being broken. Their families are broken.

And all we hear is, you know, the same blah, blah, blah. You wrote the best column. I tweeted out yesterday saying, if you read nothing in the Rittenhouse verdict, in the wake of it, read this John Cass column. And I recommend it to everybody. If you want to go to johncassnews.com, it's called If Only Kyle Rittenhouse Could, the woke press, the woke politicians who use these cases, they use the criminal justice system of all places not to have ideology drive results to do just that, to get votes, to get clicks. And your columns, I mean, the essence of it is it's dangerous and indecent. Thank you, Megan. As someone just starting out, really, in the independent journalism world, your support there in the tweet was just monumental. it because I believe it 100% that they have no decency. And they probably should watch the Oxbow incident to talk about and learn about lynch mobs. Because what were they but a lynch mob, righteous lynch mob, lying about this kid. And we saw him on Tucker the other night. I mean, this kid wasn't a white supremacist,

Mr. Biden. This kid wasn't a vigilante, Ms. AOC. He was just a kid responding to his community where the government, the people that are supposed to protect them, had wandered off and withdrawn law enforcement and National Guard to let the city of Kenosha burn in those mostly peaceful protests, how the media characterized them. It is just, it tells me that corporate media is dead, that legacy media is corrupt, and that the people are looking for somebody, people to tell them the truth about what's going on. And that's what we're trying to do. That's what we're trying to do. I mean, I would say, I'd say let them keep embarrassing themselves. Let them keep destroying their credibility. But it's scary because in Rittenhouse's case, a man's life was on the line. And in this case of this woke prosecutor letting a guy out who clearly shouldn't have been let, but you cannot be driven by woke ideology as a prosecutor, as a jury, as a judge.

It's one area that is held out and it needs to continue holding out from the musings of Ibram X. Kendi. John, I got to go. It's so great talking to you. Everybody's got to go, johncastnews.com. Thank you, Megan. Thank you so much. Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family. And to you. As we've covered here, there were a lot of insane reactions to the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict. One of them was that if Kyle had been black, he would have been found guilty. He would not have been recognized as having a right of self-defense, that a young black man can't claim self-defense in America. We heard that so many times. Honestly, my team puts together these long summaries of what the media said. And I mean, I could keep you here for the next 20 minutes giving you the examples. Well, there's a woman named Amy Swearer, and she's a legal fellow

at the Heritage Foundation. And she decided to do what more people should do, which is let me actually take a look at that. I'm going to do the research, and I will lay out what I find. And what she found was just how untrue that claim really is. She joins me now. Thank you so much for being here, Amy. I caught your thread on Twitter and thought it was really impressive and well done. And so you take on a couple of claims. But the first is that no black man in America would have been acquitted on grounds of self-defense in the way Kyle Rittenhouse was. What'd you find? Yeah, Megan, I'll be honest. I knew it would be pretty easy. I didn't expect it to be quite so easy to just with a simple Google search from the last couple of years,

find I think at the end of the thread, we had about 50 cases of defendants of color who shot other people in public or were accused of shooting people and claimed self-defense and were successful in that claim and were acquitted by a jury. Sometimes with facts that were strikingly similar to the Rittenhouse case. Other times, you know, facts where, yeah, I still look at it and I'm like, oh, wow, I'm actually fairly surprised it was successful given, you know, what the jury heard. So this idea that black people don't have this right to self-defense, that it's only because Kyle Rittenhouse is white, it's just absurd. It doesn't track with the facts. And it was pretty easy to debunk that just with Google itself. Mm hmm. The one that that's gotten some attention in the wake of the Rittenhouse acquittal is Andrew Coffey, a black man in Wisconsin who was acquitted on saying self-defense found not guilty of murder, attempted murder. sheriff's deputies during the early morning raid that took place at his house back in 2017. And he said, I shot in self-defense at those deputies and a jury agreed with him. I mean,

that was literally on the same day as Kyle Rittenhouse, right? Within just hours, hours of the verdict, this is the exact same result that you got, was again, just a successful claim of self-defense where a jury looked at the facts and said, yeah, no, this is a defendant of color who successfully raised that claim. You know, in the fact that this got overlooked, I mean, it's sort of picking up a little steam after people sort of bringing it to the attention of the media. But for a while there, it was like, you know, nothing else existed outside of the Rittenhouse case. It just, in the eyes of so many Twitter blue checks, it just simply could not be the case that any defendant of color ever has ever asserted their right to self-defense successfully.

And it's just not true. Well, and it's not even just, you know, a black man on trial claiming self-defense, let's say, against another black man. You're talking about shooting cops, right? And so that's like, if this is a white supremacist system designed to protect only whites and cops and so on, we wouldn't have results like this. There was another case of Jaleel Stallings acquitted on September 2nd of this year of murder charges related to him shooting, attempted murder, I think, shooting at several St. Paul cops last summer. He claimed self-defense that he had no idea that they were cops at all. And that was just days after that shooting George Floyd. That's another example. But there you found a lot of them. Yeah. And like you said, there are examples of

defendants shooting at law enforcement officers. There are defendants who were accused of shooting people inside of schools, defendants who were accused of shooting white people in race-related incidents, you know, just all across the board, domestic violence, self-defense, you know, attempted robbery, self-defense, just so many things, you know, and again, that's not to say we can't talk in more nuanced ways about racial disparities within the criminal justice system. That wasn't the point of the thread. But the unfortunate reality is there are a lot of Twitter blue checks who immediately jumped to the most asinine takes on this, you know, that this blanket assertion, that, that this just shows that white people get away with anything and defendants of color never get away with anything in similar circumstances.

And really, it just takes people away from those more nuanced discussions. So to just easily debunk that and get that out of the way, I think, was was, you know, just a really good opportunity to do that. Well, I mean, I led the show with this, you know, this attack in Waukesha, Wisconsin, which was committed. The suspect is a black man the reason i mentioned his race is because this prosecutor has been has decided he's all about equity and making it more equitable for um racial justice purposes and so on um but but this is the reason glenn lowry um over on youtube.com you can catch him on tv blogging hence but anyway he's been saying and he's brilliant. He's black. He's conservative. He's a university professor. But he's been saying that it is pointless and actually dangerous to take somebody's race, whether it's a Kyle Rittenhouse or a guy like this in Waukesha and try to amplify their race into an indictment against the overall system. You know, he's been saying you don't want

white people pointing to the Waukesha defendant and being like, see, this is what black people do, right? Like you would no more extrapolate that man's behavior to the to black people in America than you would Kyle Rittenhouse to white people in America, if you thought he had done wrong, or even if he hadn't done wrong, right? Like, that's the danger. And you can see it clearly now in the Waukesha case. But that's what they've done with Kyle, you know, saying that because a white man got off or shooting other white men, somehow this is this is an affirmation that it's a white supremacist system. Yeah. You know, and the thing is, too, and this has always struck me because it never makes sense, this idea of, you know, even if you look at general racial disparities,

which I think it's very clear they do exist, even if you look at particular cases and you buy into this idea that all the time, just wholesale, defendants of color are always treated differently, especially with regard to their natural right of self-defense and raising that claim. Shouldn't the argument then be not to be mad that a white defendant successfully raised that claim, but to say, okay, how do we make it so that it is equal across the board so that defendants of color can also successfully assert that claim in similar circumstances. So it just strikes me as odd that the response is anger that this defense exists and can be utilized just because the defendant happened to be white. Well, and you know, I've got to ask you this because I read on your Twitter account, you're very pro Second Amendment. This that's where they're going next. The discussion has shifted to the problem in the Rittenhouse case is when self-defense laws meet open carry laws and take, you know, we thought we'd give you a gun in your house. We never thought we would allow you to have it on the streets of Wisconsin, where, you know, multiple, multiple, multiple people have guns. And that's what caused the situation.

Well, no, what caused the situation was the fact that that the city allowed these riots to go on to the point where, you know, a 17 year old felt the need to go and defend property of, you know, of a minority owned business and then is physically attacked in fear for his life. And but for that gun, you know, he's probably still in a hospital bed somewhere, if not, you know, dead himself. So again, it just comes back to this idea of, you know, it doesn't matter who has the gun. I think there's this misnomer out there that a lot of people in the gun community would just be terrified to see, you know, Black people or other people of color walking around with AR-15s. Or, you know, Black people or other people of color walking around with AR-15s, or as, you know,

if you've ever actually interacted with the gun community, this is the greatest thing in the world for most of us is seeing this and watching, you know, people who are not necessarily, you know, considered as part of that social circle to be exercising their Second Amendment rights in a public way. Absolutely. You know, I don't care if that defendant who's in that same situation as Kyle Rittenhouse is white, black, Hispanic, Asian, doesn't matter in that situation. If you're unfair for your life, yes, I hope you have that firearm to successfully defend yourself. I hope that a state like New York hasn't said, well, you haven't proved to us that you are sufficiently afraid for your life to be able to defend yourself in public with a firearm.

And so I think it just it flies in the face of what the Second Amendment community actually believes and practices. We don't need more laws cracking down on guns. In other words, we need for these politicians who are in power to enforce the laws already on the books, even when it comes to something like a BLM, quote unquote, protest. If this governor had done that, if this mayor had done that, if they had pursued the laws already on the books, Kyle never would have been there that night. And by the way, he told Tucker he wishes he never had been.

Of course. Amy, thank you so much. I hope you come back. Thank you so much. Coming up, Edie Hill. She's amazing. I can't wait to get her take on so much in the news from Rittenhouse. Wait until you hear the latest on Cuomo. Time's up and much, much more. Don't go away.

If you are a Fox News fan, there's no doubt you know and love my next guest, Edie Hill. She was, of course, a mainstay in the mornings, and she joins me now to talk about some of the big stories of the day. Edie Hill, I'm so happy to have you here. Thank you so much for inviting me. You have been the same to me since the beginning of my very, when I used to be a very young reporter at Fox. You were one of those women, unlike Katie Couric, who says she tried to put the boot on the forehead of the young women coming up after her. I'll never forget. You pull me aside. I don't know if you remember this story, but you came into the makeup room and I happened to be there and you were full of compliments. You were so kind. And you actually said it wasn't true, but you said

you're better at this than I am. I'm like, who says that to another woman in this business? It wasn't true, but that's the kind of person that you are. You're just giving generous lift other people up. In many other places that I'd worked. In fact, in almost all other places I'd worked, uh, it was every person for themselves and, um, they didn't compliment each other. They didn't support each other. And the, that, that the early days of, of Fox, you know, the first 10, 15 years of it, the women were great and they, you know, they weren't sort of nipping at your heels and, you know, doing stuff behind your back. It was just very supportive. And I absolutely

loved them. And, uh, some of the folks you've been talking about, you know, now Janice Dean, oh my gosh, uh, sweet as it can be. Um, there's just, you know, it was really special, very special time there. Yeah, I agree with you. I had so many positive experiences in particular with the women of Fox News. I didn't know other than KLG. I cannot repeat the same at my next place of employment, but those Fox years were great. And the women in particular, you'd think with like that amount of brainpower and beauty, there'd be more cattiness, but I found the women there to be absolutely lovely.

Okay, so let's talk about- It was interesting that people would talk about that fox look and sort of the blondes and all that. And I said, those women are so smart. If you were to throw something out, you would hit some brilliant woman within five feet of you. And you can't say that in a lot of places. So, um, they were as, as intelligent as they were good looking. It's true. Roger, he had his flaws, but he also had many gifts and spotting, you know, great television talent was one of them. And it's true. You wouldn't, you can't

really last at a place like Fox news if you're not smart, because it'll be discovered because you do spend all day talking about the most contentious issues and you're under a microscope like no other place. So if you're a moron, it'll get exposed quickly and then you'll be out. Okay. So let's talk about the news because I've been dying to get your take on a couple of things. Rittenhouse comes down, the verdict. He gives an interview to Tucker last night. There's been crazy reaction to this verdict, Edie. I mean, just the media and the celebrities and so on, they've lost their ever loving minds. But let's start with this, the effect on Kyle Rittenhouse's life, and the death threats, and the security threats that he's still under. This is soundbite

three. I'm at a place now to where I have to have people with me because people want to kill me just because I defended myself and they're too ignorant to look at the facts of what happened. Do you feel the threats? I do. I see some of the threats. Some of the things people say, it's absolutely sickening. Are you confident that the government will protect you from these threats? Because that's, of course, the government's job. I hope so. But we all know how the FBI works. What would have happened to you if there hadn't been the amount of video that there is? I can't even imagine. I don't think we'd be sitting here right now having this talk, Tucker. That's for sure. Yeah, I agree with both of them. What do

you think? I absolutely agree too. That video was pretty good at showing what had happened that evening. And Kyle Rittenhouse, he needs protection. And one of the first things I said to my husband when the verdict was read was that guy's just got a bullseye on him. It's unfortunate, but I think that that's being very honest about it. People hate. And regardless of what facts come out, regardless of it's a trial by a jury, it is it's human. And people sometimes make mistakes. Judges sometimes make mistakes. But this is our system. And it's a system we've all agreed to live with. And so regardless of what you think is the correct decision, the right thing I think to do is to accept what that decision is. And if

you feel that there are injustices, then work to change whatever that was in the process that you don't think is correct. But in this, I think they got it right. And I'm sort of stunned at the amnesia that much of the media seems to have had. They didn't remember, and they just found out somehow through the trial that he hadn't just been wildly racing across state lines or that he had illegally been owning this gun, that he wasn't necessarily a white supremacist. They discovered that. I was listening to something on CNN. And here's what we've discovered through the trial. There was no discovery there. No, there was no. The people at my community've discovered through the trial. There was no discovery there. No, there was no. The people at my community radio station knew the facts. But, you know, but these CNN hosts pretend that they had no idea. Well, if that's the case, they shouldn't have their jobs because they didn't do it very well.

I mean, it's really bad when the journalists don't know their facts and misreport over and over and over. I think they know it. They know it. What you see these days is that you see a news outlet come to a conclusion pretty quickly, too, on what they think is right and wrong. And from that point on, they select the facts that support their argument. it's almost as if they're handling the trial. And so that's what I think you saw a lot of during this trial in particular. And, you know, as you know, I'm a mom and I always try to, I want my kids to be aware of what's going on around them. And I want them to be aware of how they need to be interpreting and looking at things. So one of the things I've always said to them is make sure you look at both sides. So if you're going to look at a conservative outlet, look at a liberal outlet. And somewhere in between, you're going to find the truth. But

don't rely on one place to give that to you. Certainly don't rely on social media to be giving that to you. And unfortunately, I think that places, well, specifically in this case, you saw on CNN, they simply lie. They don't tell the truth. They then pretend they didn't know the truth when there is no way that they possibly couldn't have. Yet they propagate that misinformation, disinformation, and do it simply to drive ratings and to make money and to pull in viewers and to get clicks.

And that's pretty sickening. And it's not, of course, just the media, it's the politicians too. One of the other things Tucker asked Kyle Rittenhouse about was Joe Biden calling him a white supremacist before any of the facts were in, there was absolutely no evidence of it. He must've heard it on Twitter and thought it was an appropriate thing to repeat as a presidential candidate. He's refused to walk it back even now as the sitting president, which is just terrible. That's abhorrent to me. And here was Kyle with a message for the president directly. Let's play soundbite too. What did you make of the president of the president states calling you a white supremacist mr president if i could say one thing to you i would urge you to go back and watch the trial and understand the facts before you make a statement that's not a small thing to be called

that no it's it's actual malice defaming my character for him to say something like that. I think a lot of people watching have reached the same conclusion. And they would like to see you help make this better by holding some of these liars to account. Do you plan to do that? I have really good lawyers who are taking care of that right now. So I'm hoping one day there will be some, there will be accountability for their actions that they did. Okay. So you're, you're intent on not, you're not gonna let that go. Like I said, really good lawyers are handling that. Yeah. It's hard to win those lawsuits, but

you want to see him try, don't you? Yes. But at the same time, you know, you know that when, you know, when you have stories like this, it's kind of like what happens next when they, you know, when they clear the air and when the facts get sorted out and, you know, when they're able to clear their name, it never really gets clear. There's always that asterisk and people remember the horrible stuff. They kind of skip over and the media certainly does skip over the oops, we're sorry part of it. That's true. That's true. The president and the press. Don't you think that had it been Trump saying something like that, there would have been an outcry, especially now in the wake of the trial. But yeah, there's the crickets chirping.

Right. I mean, Trump defended him. I feel like no president, no presidential candidate should be weighing in on the specifics of legal cases. Be quiet. Let let them play out in the forum in which they're supposed to play out. Right. You don't know anything. You know nothing. Another know nothing is Reese Witherspoon, who apparently believes that playing a lawyer

in a movie makes her an actual lawyer in real life. So maybe she is just as dumb as the character she played in that film. I never thought so, but I'm open minded to to the possibility given the tweets she sent out this weekend. Quote, woke up this morning thinking about every mother, father, sister, brother, friend who has lost someone to senseless gun violence in America. And then there was no justice for their pain. This is a disgrace. The Rittenhouse verdict. It's a disgrace. Okay. Do you know any, she knows nothing about, I guarantee you. Quote, no one should be able to purchase a semi-automatic weapon, cross state lines and kill two people and go free. In what world is this safe for any of us?

Hello, Reese. In the world in which self-defense is a recognized natural right and legal principle that's gotten many people off black and white across the aisle when it's proven. Number three, any US representatives and judges who support this recklessness, you mean self-defense law, will not be receiving my vote ever. Well, since you live in California, that's really irrelevant. No one cares about the loss of one more Democratic vote. But these morons, I love it. I love it because I feel like they actually think that they're doing something. Meanwhile, they've paid zero attention to the trial or the news. It's hard for me to get really upset with her because it's just so obvious that she really didn't pay a whole lot of attention to what was going on and doesn't probably fully understand

our constitutional rights and the way they've been interpreted. So I guess she probably also has a fairly secure home, doesn't live on a large tract of land where owning a gun can frequently be the matter of life and death, whether it's people or animals or anything else. But they, you know, thank goodness they're all sequestered in one state. You know, I'm in Texas and I live, I grew up just outside Austin in a very small town.

And I swear it is just, we've got this t-shirt now. It says, don't Cali my Texas because they're moving in here. Like, you know, I don't know if there's got to be some kind of a great moving sale going on. All the liberals are fleeing the results of their own policies.

Yeah. And that's the funniest thing is that they want to leave that state because they've got horrendous taxes. They've got lousy electricity. They've got, you know, ineffective politicians. They've got bad schools. You go down the entire list of things, and they leave that. Then what happens? They come here, and then they start messing up our public schools. We have really good public schools in this area, but they'll come in and

it's like, how can you possibly criticize my son for whatever it was that he was doing that isn't allowed per the school rules? It's like everybody else, not me, I'm special. And I think that's kind of the attitude that a lot of those folks have when they look at the news also. I don't really need to know what's going on because I'm me. I'll just say what I think and take it. I mean, that's the gospel. The other thing is Reese Witherspoon, she doesn't have to carry a gun because she has a team of security that will protect her whenever she goes into a potentially dangerous event. The woman just got paid nearly a billion dollars for her company, Happy Whatever It Is, nearly a billion dollars. So who is she to lecture anybody about real life problems like how to protect yourself or what the system needs to be reformed. The system just made you a billionaire. So just shut up, shut up and act really, because unless you're going to inform yourself, then, then go away. If you want to become informed, I'll listen to you all day long.

Nonsense like this, STFU. May I share a Rosie O'Donnell story, um, from a public school that my daughter was attending, um, Rosie O'Donnell at the height of her that my daughter was attending. Rosie O'Donnell, at the height of her, you know, let's get rid of all guns and let's boycott. I think it was Walmart at the time. And, you know, guns are horrible. Her child started at the public school, tiny, small school. You know, it's not in a particularly crime-ridden neighborhood. In fact, just the opposite. And so she had been on this anti-gun rampage. And the first day of school, guess what? The child shows up at school with an armed bodyguard. The school says, you can't have weapons on the property, even if you're just dropping the child off. It's like, oh, but my child needs to be protected.

Oh, really? Okay. So you mean the guns that protect you are okay. And the people carrying them, but the guns that might protect anyone else aren't okay. And that's again, this, this just skewed way of viewing the world. I told you, I, um, I just had a wedding. My eldest child got married. And out in our pasture, a pasture in the country, again, not a county where there's a whole lot of crime, but I had a guest from New York that was concerned about all the Texans carrying their rifles to the service in the pasture. I said, you know, I haven't seen anyone carry a gun to a service, but if you want, it will make you feel better. I'll post the legal, you know, 3006, 3007 signs at the entrances that say you can't have concealed carry, you can't have open carry on the premises during this event. Oh, that's,

that's, that's good because you know, I just, I don't feel safe. And so I, you know, I always travel with my bodyguard. Well, wait a second. I mean, your bodyguard won't have a gun either. Will he? Oh, well, yes. I said, well, then that would be an issue. Don't we think? Unbelievable. I was just stunned. Well, truly, we kicked off the show talking about AOC and Cori Bush trying to get these light on crime prosecutors in, trying to get rid of the bail system so that you don't have to be held in jail while you're awaiting your charges on felonies. And meanwhile, they don't have to worry about any of these issues because they've all got guards with guns protecting them. Not

everyone has that. And by the way, it was Kyle's neighborhood. His dad lives in Kenosha. It's right across the border from where his mom lives. That was on fire that the governor refused to protect. So he very much felt like he did have skin in the game, not not defending the decision. But I understand it. And the people who don't, I think, are soon going to be voted out of office. Not AOC, because she's themselves more political than pro-women. Time's up. I think they started for a good purpose to try to help women suffering from sexual harassment, which of course, let's face it, is rampant in Hollywood. The industry that was a lecture about Hollywood and racism, that we should listen to them because they know all about it. They're the hotbed of it, Hollywood. um so time's up gets formed now the latest news this week is that it's going to lay off most of its 25 member staff um that they'll only have three staffers

left in a four-member board uh the entire the entire board is basically gone the ceo got booted um the chairman chairwoman roberta caplan she got booted. They've all been falling, you know, one after the other, because it was outed. But it was just the latest example that they, they basically advised Andrew Cuomo on how to attack his lead accuser in the whole Me Too scandal that he was on the wrong end of. By the way, there's yet another accuser who came out today. He's got a 12th now who's making accusations against him. He's facing criminal charges. But I wonder what you make of the complete collapse of Time's Up and what, if anything, it says about our society. First off, I don't think that it's, you know, it's just a happenstance that it's the same people out in California that started this too.

You know, I don't know what they're drinking in the water over there, but, um, there's some pretty crazy stuff that happens. You know, they, their heart, I believe was in the right place. They had some great ideas, but then he raised $24 million and you're not quite sure what to do with that. You could use it to help victims, but apparently they didn't. Um, instead they used it for pretty good salaries for executives. Um, the, the amount that got to the actual victims that they decided to help, again, the ones that they chose, really was paltry, pitiful. If you look at any kind of

501c3 charity guide, it tells you what percentage of money raised should be spent on executive salaries and parties that they throw and fundraising events and travel and all that, and how much should be spent actually on the charity, the do-good stuff they purport to be wanting to do with the catch. This was completely upside down. First, you're a sucker if you gave money, especially after you saw what was happening with it. But then the audacity to claim that they are supporting victims of sexual harassment and go and help someone accused of sexual harassment. I mean, right. It's pretty easy to see that that's a conflict there. And in both cases that I know of where they didn't help the accuser,

this case against Cuomo and then Tara Reid against Joe Biden, the women making the accusations were lifelong Democrats. They don't give a damn what the woman like that won't save you. What matters to Time's Up is the political affiliation of the man you're accusing. And only if there's an R after that man's name would Time's step step in and that's why they've gone down the tubes because voters on the left and the right and donors on the left and the right understand that that's utter nonsense and they've lost the thread they've lost the mission uh by the way the new york post always great for a headline in reporting on the 12th accuser against andrew cuomo um report their headline for the story was creeper by the dozen. They're always good.

I'm still stunned that, uh, that you have people like that who just don't get it. Like he really thought he was this great mayor, this great governor and that, um, and that somehow he thought that he would get away with, uh, trying to cover up numbers of nursing home deaths and by skewing things. I mean, who, who advises them, who tells them they can get away with it? And, and why do people continue to prop them up? Because it just leads them to these greater and greater, you know, faults. Delusions. I know. It's like when Michael Bloomberg ran for president or de Blasio running for governor. These are people who, frankly, I think Bloomberg did a very good job in New York City. But you're thinking New York City is not in any way, shape, or form like the rest of the

country. It's like if you're the mayor or governor of California and you think, okay, right now, and I'm not talking Reagan, I'm talking right now, you out there and somehow you understand the middle of the country, you understand all the different areas. You don't. You're used to dealing with one group of people, and everyone tells you that everything you do is great because it's such a heavily democratic area. They go out and then seem genuinely surprised when there isn't this outpouring of love for them. But it's just kind of odd. And Cuomo certainly was the poster boy for that. But then for so many politicians, the length of time it took for the Democratic representatives and senators from that state

to talk to him about maybe you should consider resigning, maybe, to actually hold him to the same standards that they use for everybody else. That was real slow and real late. The only way they were forced, they were dragged kicking and screaming to that conclusion by Letitia James, the Democratic Attorney General, who wanted his job and is now running for his job. And there's no question there were politics that motivated her in-depth reports on his nursing home scandal and the women who accused him. But the women had independent corroboration. All of them have stood by their stories. And I've read everything Andrew Cuomo's put out in his defense. None of it undermines what they've said. And the numbers only continue to grow. He's now been criminally charged in one of those cases. And

that case will play out, I think, as early as January was his next court date, I think, on the one. All right. Next, I want to talk to you about the lovely, uplifting, patriotic message I heard about Thanksgiving on MSNBC. You're not just as bad as you think it may be. It's worse. So Edie, as a woman of Texas and a former Fox Newser, let me ask you about the soft on crime prosecutor and others like him. More and more, this is the big push. I see it. Very rich people who don't know what to do. They're certainly not going to go out and march with BLM, but they'll cut a huge check to try to get no bail, right? To try to get criminals who have been accused of serious crimes out back on the streets because it makes them feel better about their millionaire lives and their sort of limousine liberal lives.

And I think it's really showing some consequences. I do think there's a way of doing some reforms without going this far, like this crazy guy in Milwaukee who who's implemented some very dangerous decisions here. I want to the reason one of the reasons it has come up is because I want to ask you about it is because there's this whole crew in Congress that's pushing criminal justice reform at the federal level, the so-called squad, right, Rashida Tlaib. And she wants, like, all the BLM agenda. She wants to open up the prisons, let everybody out. And Jonathan Swan of Axios asked her about this in an interview, and we've got it teed up. Listen to her try to deny it, and he holds her to account. Love this guy. Watch this. In 2020, you endorsed the BREATHE Act, which is a series of proposals to transform America's criminal justice system and create, quote, a roadmap for prison abolition.

The BREATHE Act proposes emptying federal detention facilities within 10 years. To what extent have you wrestled with any potential downsides of releasing into society every single person who's currently in a federal prison? Yeah, again, I think that everyone's like, oh, my God, we're going to just release everybody. That's not what I'm saying. But did you see how many people are mentally ill that are in prison right now? No, I know. But the act that you endorsed actually says release everyone in 10 years. But in 10 years? But think about it.

Who are releasing? But there are like human traffickers. Oh, I know. Child sex. So do you mean that you don't actually support that? No. Because you endorsed the bill. No, I endorsed the BREATHE Act in looking at federal, the policies and how we incarcerate.

Absolutely. Oh, my Lord. It would be funny if she weren't actually in charge, sort of. It's just, you know, it's hard to believe that people really think through some of these things that or they've led such a pristine life that they don't understand how the system really works and what does and doesn't deter crime. You know, I think that there are reforms that are necessary, but these, you know, out of hand, just abolish this, abolish that, because in their opinion, it is only somehow impacting people of color.

Just get rid of it, because that's not fair. It doesn't matter what they've done. It doesn't matter what they're accused of doing. It's just, it's not fair because simply their skin color. And that's kind of where they, the impetus comes from, from, you know, what they believe. And I look at it from, I think, a very pragmatic perspective. As you know, I have a lot of kids, eight kids and, um, and, and with kids, you get problems too. And I recall one of my children making a very stupid decision. Um, one that potentially, I mean, didn't, but potentially could have endangered someone's

life, a dumb prank, a dumb, dumb prank decided Decided to move a concrete sandbag off of a sign into the road, just at the side, but he thought it was funny. Let's see everybody slow down. He didn't really think it through because teenage brains are pretty stupid, still in development. And I recall going to the judge and saying, please give him the maximum amount of punishment you possibly can. Like as much community service, as much of this, you know, whatever it is. I mean, I'm asking you, please throw the book at him because he needs to learn this lesson now. And he said to me, he's a lovely man. He said, I'm sorry, my hands are tied in most of this.

I don't even have a choice as to what to do. It's already predetermined. And it was this light slap on the wrist. And frankly, it would have been so much better. And it would have saved him a lot of heartache later on in life, learning the lesson. If they had just, you know, gotten him back on the straight and narrow right away, instead of saying the message being do something wrong. And there's no there's there's no punishment there.

There's no other than your parents. But that society doesn't necessarily expect better behavior of you, that it doesn't require that you think things through, that you don't respect other people, property, all those things. You get this official statement by inaction or by muted action or by lenient action. And that does not help society and that does not help offenders. And the only reason I think that people think that it may is because they haven't lived it and they haven't gone through those things. They're obsessed. I mean, people like to leave are just obsessed with identity. That's the only thing that matters to them. Her response, you know, when he's like, you're going to let everybody out. There's a lot of

dangerous people in the prisons. Hello. There are career serial killers in there. Now, have you seen how many are mentally ill? I'm sure a serial killer is by definition somewhat mentally ill. If he were legally mentally ill, it would have been raised at trial as a defense. If they're sitting in prison, it obviously failed to convince a jury. And I don't really care. And we're not going to release a bunch of crazed killers and other people who hurt others and break the law out into society because it's going to make her and the rest of the members of the squad feel fine in their dormant buildings with their security teams. No, we are not going to do that. Yeah. It's kind of like this. I call it the flavor of the month

club. And it's when people just pick some cause because it's catchy right then or everybody's talking about it right then. And they jump on it. And, you know, kind of like the Time's Up group, where whatever it is, even valid causes, and they say, okay, let's get on this, we're going to change everything. And then they either lose interest, or they haven't thought through how they can make any change whatsoever. Or they just don't care. Or in this case, I think that a lot of the times, they're trying to change things in order to in order to get more votes. So you have the push to allow felons to vote. And you've got a lot of other things that they keep on saying, you know, should be able to like you should have people who enter the country illegally be able to vote.

They should be able to get identification cards. They should be able to all this stuff. It's like, wait a second. You know, if we have laws, who is it that has been appointed to pick and choose which laws are enforced and which aren't. And, you know, perhaps what they need to do is, is do it like little test run and in her specific neighborhood release, like 50 people from whatever. Honestly, it's like she realizes that not all the people in the prisons are black, right? She's going to help some really seriously evil white people as well. I'm thinking about now he's dead. But think about Jeffrey Dahmer. If Jeffrey Dahmer were alive in prison today, would she let Jeffrey Dahmer out so he could continue eating people with that? Or perhaps a little therapy could help him maybe a little cognitive behavioral there.

Whenever you think about eating somebody, Jeffrey, you just think about this cute little bunny. Think about her bunny's face. Oh, you want to eat the bunny? Okay, nevermind. Think about an orange. Think about a lovely orange, nice and citrusy. I mean, she's not a smart person. That's really what the bottom line. She's not a smart person. She's an ideological person. And we really shouldn't be listening to her. But sadly, she and the squad. Because because they are the flavor of the month in the Democratic Party. And they've been given an inordinate amount of power and airtime, frankly. It's pretty scary. I think that the party has got to come to some kind of realization that what they're selling isn't what people are buying. And all you have to do is take a look at Virginia. Winsome Sears, what an amazing woman. And yet, do you see all these women who support other strong women rallying behind her? No. Instead, they go on shows on MSNBC and they say that she's just a

blackface spouting white supremacism. I mean, it's like, really? Because she doesn't necessarily agree with what you think, then of course, she has to be wrong. Because in that liberal bubble, anything that does not jive with what they think is the truth, must come from somebody who's just too stupid to have figured out why they're right. And they should change their opinion. So I, you know, Winston Sears, way to go. I'm going to be watching her because I was really excited to see that that election. But it also shows you that they're losing it with moderate America. And I believe that moderate America still runs this country, but they're trying to change that.

And I think that moderate America still loves this country and they don't like these anti-American messages everywhere. Just today, they took down the statue of Thomas Jefferson in New York City Town Hall or City Hall because some people decided he's offensive because he owned slaves, you know, a couple hundred years ago. And they get triggered by seeing a statue of Thomas Jefferson. Okay. At the National Archives, we had to put trigger warnings on all of our national documents because people got upset that they were written by our founding fathers who weren't exactly evolved on issues of women and race. And now in the wake of people wondering, is the left going to get it?

Are they going to stop with the constant focus on race and identity and America hating and so on? Here was the message on MSNBC. I don't know this woman's name, but man, is she full of hate for our country and pretty much anybody with white skin. And she hosted this guy and his name, the guy who she hosted is Gyasi, hold on, I'll get it, Ross. Okay. So she had this writer Jiasi Ross on her show. And here's what he had to say on this, the blessed week of Thanksgiving.

The mythology of Thanksgiving closely mirrors the mythology of America. That mythology is the image that white Americans love to see of themselves. White settlers come to a strange land in good faith, bringing something of great value that enriches the people who are already here. The natives also bring something of immense value. Equal exchange. That closely mimics the mythology of white America. It is how America wants to see itself. The truth, of course, of Thanksgiving is much different. The truth is pilgrims did not bring turkey, sweet potato pie, or cranberries to Thanksgiving. They could not. They were broke.

They were broken. Their hands were out. They were begging. They brought nothing of value. But they got fed. They got schooled. Thanksgiving. It makes sense.

There is much for white Americans to be thankful for. But I'm still trying to figure out what indigenous people received of value. Instead of bringing stuffing and biscuits, those settlers brought genocide and violence. That genocide and violence is still on the menu as state-sponsored violence against Native and Black Americans is commonplace. and violent private white supremacy is celebrated and subsidized. From Stone Child Chief Stick to Mike Brown to Renee Davis to Breonna Taylor to Eric Garner, Indigenous and Black people are still being murdered by those paid to protect us. From Ahmaud Arbery to Trayvon Martin, white Americans are

still killing Native and Black Americans with no fear of reprisal. They brought chattel slavery to Africans and Native people. That still happens through the prison industrial complex that imprisons the descendants of enslaved Africans and Natives at far disparate numbers. That is the reality of Thanksgiving. Many of us are still waiting for white Americans to bring some value, still waiting for white America to match the mythology of Thanksgiving. Freedom, justice, equality, reparations for two and a half billion acres of stolen native land, reparations for 246 years of stolen labor, reparations for stealing native children. Stop the killing. It's still happening. Stop the theft. It's still happening stop the theft it's still happening return the land match the mythology then and only then we can all be equally thankful peace

happy thanksgiving pass the potatoes man what would it be like to have that much hate bottled up inside of you? I mean, I feel sorry for that for going on. And he doesn't seem to be concerned about that at all, at all. If you want to go back and look at history and talk about freedom and justice, I was smack dab where there were a number of Native American tribes that were constantly battling and killing each other, constantly. That wasn't freedom and peace and tranquility. This is a common theme that you see as the world was settled. Does that excuse violence? Does that excuse the trail of tears? Does that excuse a lot of the stuff? No, it doesn't. You learn from it. That's what history does. It teaches you what you did wrong in the past and how to do it better in the future. But to just come out like this and first be so ignorant and so full of hate does nothing. It

doesn't help you. It doesn't help your country. It doesn't change anything. And instead, you just have these talk show hosts giving them airtime. I mean, to spew this hatred. And I just pray that no one's listening to him. Well, no one's watching this woman's show. Literally nobody's watching this woman's show. She only shows up in soundbites to highlight her outrageousness. But I mean, it's funny, like the dishonest so-called facts of the narrative. They don't play out. Mike Brown, Mike Brown is an example of how white supremacy is celebrated and subsidized and how black people are still being murdered by those paid to. Mike Brown was found to have been the aggressor against a white officer who Eric Holder, a black man, his DOJ found was not murdered, but that Mike Brown put officer Darren, I'm forgetting his name right now, in a position in which he had no other choice, Darren Wilson, and no other choice but to fire. So stop mentioning Mike Brown. Breonna Taylor, they investigated, again, a black attorney general

investigated the shooting death of Breonna Taylor. And the reason that she got shot is because the police did a no-knock warrant, which was legal in that state, went into her house and fired because her boyfriend, Breonna Taylor's boyfriend, opened fire on them and shot a cop in the leg, in the femoral artery. And he opened fire. I'm not saying the system's perfect, but these are not examples of Black people being murdered by those who are paid to protect us. And on and on how white white people are killing people, Africans and native people with no fear of reprisal. That's not that's not true at all. We could do this with everything, right? We could do this with the guy who did the the truck in Waukesha. That's a black man who killed a bunch of white people. Does that mean black people have no fear of reprisal?

It's nonsense. Stop colorizing everything. they absolutely are and you know frankly if you want to know who is killing most of the blacks go take a look at the fbi statistics they're out every single year they don't lie so if you want to really black people kill other black people and white people kill other white people that's generally how crime works exactly how it breaks down so if you want to save white or black lives then then you know how to do that. And it is not worrying about the police. Should there be reform? Are there mistakes that are made? Absolutely.

Are they sometimes horrendous and take a life? Absolutely. But again, to color it as though that is the reality, the overarching reality is just a falsehood and it doesn't help change anything. So if you care about black lives and you want to save black lives, then you are preaching to the wrong choir. Edie Hill, I'm going to end it on a nice note, a funny note, because we talked earlier about flavors and it reminded me that the fact that you have eight children and look amazing. One time I went to Edie Hill, I said, Edie, how do you maintain your beautiful figure? I need to know. Let me in. And she said at that time, she said, well, I eat whatever I want,

but I only take three bites of it. So I was like, okay, I will do what it takes to look like Edie Hill. That's fine. I'll do it. So you got it for our listening audience. You got to go to youtube.com slash Megan Galley later. So you can see this is a visual. I like okay i'm doing it so i get down to like my my plate and soon into my experiment ed it was like it's like my mouth i opened it as wise i shoved as much in on each bite as i put i'm like this is not the spirit of what ed recommend we had a lot of good times. Anyway, it's wonderful to see you and you still look great. And I hope that you'll come back.

I'd love to have you again soon. Wonderful. Thanks so much and have a wonderful holiday. You too. Happy Thanksgiving. Coming up, my good pal, Kathy Lee Gifford is here to talk about her new book, The Jesus I Know, honest conversations and diverse opinions about who he is. She interviewed so many people for this book, yours truly included. Chris Jenner, Justin Bieber's mom, has an amazing story in there. And it's pretty uplifting. And we could

use that today, couldn't we? Joining us now, my dear friend, Kathy lee gifford she has written a beautiful new book called the jesus i know honest conversations and diverse opinions about who he is the book features insightful conversations about faith with people like kristin chenoweth chris jenner yours truly and lots of other folks who i think you'd find fascinating. Kathy Lee, great to have you. How you doing, love? Hello, long lost friend. How are you? I'm so good.

So first of all, I did not know. You look gorgeous. I really could hate you. I could. If I weren't such a wonderful Christian woman, I could hate you. Look who's talking. All right. So first of all, I did not know that you not long ago got your your star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

There haven't actually been that many people to get such a thing. How did that feel? Oh, there's thousands. And what took them so long? I think my numbers are like twenty six hundred and change. That's not that many. Really? I don't know. I don't know. I just I think I was honored, obviously. It was during covid. So it was So it was not even there in person. So I think that might've made it a little bit more exciting, but you know what I did in a speech that I did not write, I just basically said, thank you to all the people that have just believed in me all these years. Megan, you know, your friends reveal who they are. You find out who is and who isn't right.

And, um, and my fans have become such friends over the years to me. They've, they've just, uh, they have not been fair weather friends. They have been true friends to me. And I just wanted to thank them because I certainly wouldn't have lasted through a lot of the hard, hard times without their faith in me. You know, my credibility is so important to me. You practice what you preach. I mean, I didn't believe the bad stuff, you know, they just didn't. Right, exactly. Or, or they forgave whatever they thought was true and moved on, you know,

whichever, you'll take it on the grounds that they offer it. But that's how you are. That's how you are. You, you wrote in the preface to sort of our conversation in your book about how you befriended me when I got to NBC. We had known each other before and you'd always been super kind through child help or charity. We both love. But you could see the vultures circling and you came in as opposed to somebody who's like, oh, she's up a creek. You asked me to meet you weekly and I did it near his pub in New York. And we had great times and got to know each other even better. But that's because that's who you are. You don't see somebody who's potentially in trouble and say, that'll be fun to watch. You're like, let me go make it better. As soon as it was announced, I had two reactions. My

first reaction was good for her. And cause I knew, I know, you know, how fond I am of you. And then my second one was, oh dear God, she doesn't know. She has no idea how they're going to, the vultures are already, you know, and I just thought, Lord, what do you want me to do? He said, call her, just call her and take her to Neary's Pub on East 57th Street every Tuesday, whenever she can make it. And just love on her. Just love on her and let her know that, you know, that no matter how hard and nasty and cruel and untrue it all gets, that has nothing to do with the definition of who you are, who she is. And I was surprised, like I think the readers of my book will be, to discover that faith is not a new thing to you. And I love discovering in our conversations that day that faith was something

that a component of your life, not just something you did or visit a building you went to once a week. I mean, I knew that. So I was happy to hear that you would be comfortable because not everybody's comfortable sharing their personal spiritual journey. You know, you talk to a lot of people who, like you, aren't necessarily up to speed on organized religion, whatever their, you know, chosen religion is. But it's about your relationship with Jesus, with God, with a higher power. And that's kind of what you explore in the book. Yes. Yes. And people are asking me, well, you know, why did you write it? What a what a cool idea for for I wish I could take the credit for it.

But I have a fantastic literary agent in New York and on the surface, he looks like somebody I would have very little in common with. We don't, we don't share much that it's similar. He is a man, he's gay, he's Asian. He's raised a Buddhist, you know, but I love him to pieces. I think he's fantastic. And I and I just respect him a lot. And and I value him. And so he said, you know, Kathy, I loved your last book. But the parts of it that were that I love the most were when you talk to people like Craig Ferguson or Al Pacino or Kevin Costner about faith when you were on a movie set or, you know, whatever. And he said, would you ever consider doing a whole book about both, maybe 25 people

that will be willing to share it? And I said, do you think anybody would be interested in that? He goes, I would be. And so I just thought, you know what, with what we're going through, Megan, in this world today, you say something somebody doesn't like, they cancel you. You don't vote. You got a D or an R behind your name and they just cancel you. You worship in a different way or you think a different way or you vote a different way and you're just gone. And that is the antithesis of Christianity. That's the antithesis of Jesus. He never canceled anybody. He went out of his way on a daily basis to love people, to find them right where they were and to love them just the way they were. And that's the kind of life I want to live. I want to be a blessing to

people. It's a much better way to live than to be a burden. People have too many burdens today. The only people Jesus ever got angry with, righteously angered, were the Pharisees and the Sadducees, the most religious people of their day, because they weren't feeding their sheep. They weren't feeding the people. They weren't being kind. They were putting more religious burdens on them. And it infuriated Jesus because they had been entrusted with the love and care of God's people. That's a message right out of the headlines today. I'm going to raise that with my priest this Sunday when he guilt me for not always meeting

my Sunday obligation. There you go. There you go. We don't need this, Father. But wait, I wanted to tell you a story because I thought the book is perfectly timed. Kathy Lee's already had five bestsellers. She doesn't need the money. She's just doing this because she puts goodness out into the world. But the book is perfectly timed given, as you say, what we're going through as a nation. Every morning, I read the journal and the New York Times. I like getting my news from both sides. I go to RealClearPolitics.com. I read op-eds from both sides. And I listen to, I love Morning Wire, the Daily Wire's new daily podcast. It's awesome, Ben Shapiro's group.

But I also listen to NPR and often to the Daily of the New York Times. And NPR this morning had a great story. I have to give them credit. They were talking about what happened in Waukesha, Wisconsin. And with this guy who mowed down all these people. And they were saying that there was a guy who showed up at the service, like the impromptu memorial service last night. The vigil. MAGA, you know, Trump 2024 covered. And there was a black woman who went over to the guy

and took a picture of his truck. And the reporter was saying she witnessed it. And that the black woman said to the white male Trump supporter, I like your truck. And I like the message on your truck. And the guy said, which one? What do you mean? She said, the one that reads one nation under God. And that's what brought the two of them together. Just like a moment where they connected on their faith, on their love of country. And I don't know where that woman was a Trump supporter or not, but the point is, right. When we look for a way back to one another, that's the way. Our common ground is our sacred ground. We can always find something in someone that we have

in common. And that's the starting place for a conversation. Not, hey, do you believe in Jesus? Because if you don't, you're going to go to hell. That wouldn't have gotten me into the kingdom. The message that God loved me and had a plan for my life was all it took. And I think that I have discovered in my life, whether I was at a set with Regis or on set at the Today Show with Hoda, or whether I was on the movie set with Craig, when I love people, something happens chemically. I'll never forget. And this broke my heart. I was on the set of Then Came You, the movie I wrote for Craig and for me to do in Scotland. He said, Kathy, why do you love me and Ricky, meaning Gervais, so much? Why do you love us? We're not good guys. We don't share any of your anything. And I said, why wouldn't I love

you? You're fun. You're hysterical. You're kind. You're a good person. God loves you. And I love everybody God loves. And he said something to me, Megan, that literally broke my heart and it should break every, every person of faith's heart. He said, no person of faith have ever told us that they love us. And I went, what? I said, then you haven't met a person of true faith yet. Because no follower of Jesus would ever give any message other than God's love to a person. And anybody who does and says that they're a follower of Jesus, they aren't. You just have to a person. And anybody who does and says that they're a follower of Jesus, they aren't. You just have to understand that.

You've got to know a little bit about the myth. Whether you believe in Jesus or not, there's ways to find out how he lived his life and ultimately sacrificed it out of a place of love and forgiveness and loving kindness. And at the end of the shoot, he said, you know, I still don't believe in your guy. To which I said, you mean our guy?

He goes, okay, our guy. And he said, but I said, I know that. lived his life and the way he exemplified love and forgiveness and kindness is the pattern of perfection that we should all seek in a human life. And he goes, 100%. I said, welcome to the kingdom of heaven. It's not surprising to me. I pray for him every day. Pardon? It's not surprising to me to hear you say that, to hear you talk like that. And actually, I'm just thinking now, we talked last time about my departure from NBC. But can I tell you, the first three people I think to send me flowers, one of them was actually at my house in tears.

But the other two sent me flowers with beautiful messages were three women of faith. Janice Dean, who's another person profiled in your book, who talks about her Catholicism and the role that faith has had in her life, especially this past couple of years with the death of her in-laws to COVID in the New York nursing homes. You, yes, we all know. And Ainsley Earhart, who is very, very much observant, very much a woman of faith, who sent me a beautiful bouquet of orchids and said, hand it over to Jesus. And it's good when you're down and out, especially, or you're struggling with something to realize you do have a lifeline. You aren't alone, smart as you think you may be. There's someone smarter who loves you, who can help you, even if it's not with a message of,

you must now do the following thing, right? It's just an embrace. That's not what people need to hear. They just need to be held and whispered to, not yelled at. Stop the yelling. Whisper to people. I care about you. God sees you. He loves you. You're going to get through this and I'm going to help you because he loves me too. And we're supposed to take care of one another. You know, we understand that as mothers, the joy we get out of all the hard work of caring for our children, but there's nothing more, nothing more fulfilling. And we have friends like that, that we'd walk on hot coals for, you know.

Well, Jesus says everyone is our neighbor. Everyone. And I can't love people like that without his help, Megan. I can't love the unlovely. I can't serve the unkind and the cruel unless God empowers me to. And the only way I can be empowered is by staying in his word every day and clinging to him with all my might. I can't make it through a day without him. I want people to go back, listen to our first interview on the podcast and listen to Kathy Lee's story about forgiving my new colleague here at Sirius XM, Howard Stern, after coming after her for years and years.

And so many others, like the people who smeared her on the whole whatever. We don't have to get back into it, but like the tabloid reports about her. She practices what she preaches, and we could all learn a lot from it. And she's actually reached out to a lot of well-known names for their stories about how faith made a difference in their life. What I want to do after this break is talk about Christian Chenoweth and also Justin Bieber's mom, Patti. I loved her story, which I did not know. Kathy Lee Gifford on the opposite side of this break with those stories. And remember, folks, you can find The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM Triumph Channel 111 every weekday at noon east. And the full video show and clips when you

subscribe to my YouTube channel, which is youtube.com slash Megyn Kelly. Or if you prefer an audio podcast, just subscribe and download on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts for free. And there you'll find our full archives, including the episode with KLG and more than 200 others. Kathy Lee Gifford is my guest now. She's the author of the new book, The Jesus I Know, Honest Conversations and Diverse Opinions About Who He Is. So it's fun reading this to see all the many people who you know and are friends with. I knew about Kris Jenner, and I loved actually what she said to you.

She was, of course, she's the matriarch of the Kardashian family. And her first husband was Robert Kardashian, who was very Christian. And she talked about how at Pat Boone's house, she got her first Bible, the first one she said she could actually understand, called The Way, and that her faith would become very important to her later in her marriage to Robert Kardashian and actually thereafter as well. Could you expand on it? Yeah. I mean, everybody knows the bigger than life, you know,

panoramic Chris Jenner and, and, and, and that's, there's a, there's a lot of that's very real about that. She's, she's very, very smart. She's a very generous person. I've been friends with her for over 40 years. We used to go to Pat Boone's Bible study together when she was a young mother. And I was just beginning my career out in Los Angeles. And so we'd been through hell and high water together. And, you know, I don't call somebody my friend unless they're really my friend. And I don't I'm trying to think of if somebody stopped being my friend just because they they do things I disagree with or don't wouldn't do myself or whatever. in the book about how, you know, she knew that there are things in the television series that

would be troubling to me because I love these people. I love them all. And I'm concerned. I know we're going down different roads, what can happen at the end of them. And I just, I fear for them. I pray for them still every day. We've stayed friends all these years because I knew she had my back and I had hers. You know, if I called her this minute, she would do whatever she could do for me and vice versa. So I loved surprising people. I think Chyna Phillips' story, she's rock and roll royalty, the daughter of two of the mamas and the papas. And her story was deeply moving to me.

But then there's my friend that I've written more songs with than anybody, hundreds of them. And he's a Jewish Scientologist who married a Catholic Scientologist who had adopted a child and raised him up in Scientology. And once I took them on a rabbinical trip to the Holy Land, it transformed their lives. I learned a lot about Scientology from them, and I'm not going to become a Scientologist, but I don't stop loving my friends because they believe some things that I don't believe. God knows of the heart. Only God knows of the heart. Whether it's religious or political. Let me ask you about Patti Millett. That's Justin Bieber's

mom. I did not know this story about her, that she was 18 when she got pregnant with him. She said, this is from the book, I had just given my life to God six months earlier. I was in the hospital for trying to commit suicide, and I encountered God there. She wrote, before that time, I'd been groomed. Well, you wrote, before that time, I'd been groomed for abortion, and I fought on pro-choice debates. But after I met Jesus, I started really trying to get to know God and thank God she did not abort little Justin Bieber. Right. And she says, I didn't write that. That every conversation is verbatim. What people said, unless when I sent everybody like you a copy of what we were

going to go with if somebody wanted something changed because they thought it didn't read the way they wanted it to sound yeah um then we did it you know uh or we took mostly we just took something out that they didn't they thought on now that I've thought about it can we not say that and I didn't want to I didn't want to have a gotcha moment with anybody on this. No, not on this. This was not about that. But yeah, Patty, I met when I forget, was it the Today Show interview? I guess so. She has a book that came out and I hadn't met her before.

And I really loved her. She's very still vulnerable and there's a childlike wonder about her still, although she's certainly not a child. But she was a child when she had her child, you know, and she's very honest about it and still struggling with certain things. And that's what I also wanted to show Megan that nobody's life is completely tied up with a nice blue bow at the end. Everybody's still struggling with stuff. Everybody's still got issues, but we have a God who doesn't just knows that, number one, and doesn't judge us for it, number two. Number three, doesn't dump us because of it. He doesn't

cancel us. God never cancels us, and Jesus certainly didn't. He was the antithesis of cancel culture. Of Twitter. Of Twitter. He's the most radical, the most radical lover of humankind that our world has ever experienced. And the church has gotten it all wrong that we tell people you're going to go to hell if you don't. That's not loving people. That's not loving people. That's condemning them. And we don't have any right to judging them. We have no right to. Jesus said, love one another as I have loved you. And that's what changes the world one person at a time. That's right. And that's what's inspirational, as are you. You guys are going to have to buy the book to hear Christian Chenoweth's story, which is great too, about how God and

inspiration spoke to her at a time when she thought she was at the top of her career, then got hurt and realized something else. KLG, what a pleasure. Good luck with it. So much love to you. Love you, sweet thing. Love you. Come visit Nashville, y'all.

I'd love to. Trust me, any day now. Listen, you guys, thank you so much for joining us. We are taking a few days off for Thanksgiving, so have a very, very happy Thanksgiving. I'm going to be spending it with my family. Very much looking forward to it. And then we'll resume together live on Monday. We're gonna have some best ofs here for you, which we hope you'll enjoy. And we'll see you very shortly. Happy Thanksgiving. Thanks for listening to the Megyn Kelly show.

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