The Megyn Kelly Show - Media's Biden Rescue, and Harry and Meghan's "Rebrand," with Maureen Callahan, Plus Sopranos Star Drea de Matteo | Ep. 723

Episode Date: February 13, 2024

Megyn Kelly is joined by Maureen Callahan, Daily Mail columnist, to discuss the massive Super Bowl ratings that were the most since the moon landing, the Chiefs asking Taylor Swift not to attend the parade, breaking down the Swift hug with Travis Kelce after the game, Biden’s memory issues and the media spin, whether Biden is being undermined by the left in order to get him to step away from the 2024 nomination, constant attempts to claim Biden is more fit privately than what everyone sees publicly, Harry and Meghan attempting a "Sussex" rebrand, what we know about Harry's very quick trip to visit his father King Charles, Meghan Markle’s dubious claim that she’s a feminist, "The View" host Sunny Hostin finding out her ancestors actually owned slaves, her co-host Joy Behar calling it a "bummer," her continued demand for reparations, the trans shooter at Joel Osteen's church, whether parents should be held responsible for their child's actions in a school shooting, and more. Then Drea de Matteo, actress and founder of ULTRAFREE, joins to discuss her iconic role on "The Sopranos," her experience working with James Gandolfini, why she no longer talks to Michael Imperioli, modern TV's refusal to take risks, why she went from voting for Biden to her political awakening during the COVID Era, the left’s drift away from its principles, why she supports Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Hollywood actors’ fear of speaking about politics, her decision to launch a freedom-focused clothing brand ULTRAFREE, 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, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at noon east. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. It's a snowy day here on the East Coast. Later, we're going to be joined by actress Drea de Mateo. She is here. And you know her. You remember The Sopranos? Christopher. Christopher. She's going to be here on the show. She was amazing on that entire series, which everybody, including yours, truly loves. And I'm excited to talk to her about the People's Republic of California and American culture today. But we start today with one of our very favorites, Maureen Callahan of the Daily Mail,

who's right here in studio with me. She braved the snow like a true New Yorker. We're going to start with, well, Biden's cognitive decline. We've got an update on Meghan and Harry's rebrand and all the snubbing that she's been experiencing lately. Lots to get to. Maureen, great to have you. It's great to be back. Thank you, Meghan. All right. So thank you for braving the snow. This one's a legit snowstorm. It's a legit snowstorm, but we have seen worse. Yes, we have. We can survive 9-11. We can get through a little snow.

Yes. And it's unbelievable how like a few flakes these days absolutely shut down even the Northeast, like in the Southeast. Okay, I get it. Right. In the Northeast, we're New Yorkers. No, we really, it's, you know, it's ridiculous. I don't think that a little snow, a little salt on the road is an impediment for anything. So of course I came. I was telling you beforehand, when I was in law school, it was 1994. It was the blizzard of 94. I was living in Albany.

I had grown up in Syracuse and Albany, and I drove three hours in the storm to teach a one-hour aerobics class for $20. It was like, maybe that was extreme, but- Well, I think it sets the table. It shows what that kind of grit and determination can lead to later in life. Or perhaps you're a millennial who clocks in at work and says, I can't make that 8 a.m. meeting because I have a workout, which is a true story. It was about the dough for me. Oh, my God. Seriously?

Yeah, that was real. Is that right? That's real. That's not. So one other word on this all over TikTok right now is Mayor Adams, because he didn't give the kids a snow day. He's making them go to school via like online remote. Yeah. Remote learning.

That is bullshit. Like give us no day or don't give us no day, but remote learning because of the snow, you know, what else is even better? It crashed. Oh no. There were alerts right before I left for your studio that the remote learning system has crashed. So yes, the children should go out and go sledding and have snowball fights and make snowmen and angels. Come on. Yes. Remote learning sucks. They're not going to learn anything from that anyway. So just give them the day. Okay. There we go. So speaking of things in the news and in our lives, the Superbow television event since the moon landing. I'm terrified. What does it say? I was hoping that as a culture, we were reaching like peak saturation levels with

Taylor Swift. Like, you know how the water table can't absorb anymore. And it seems as if we're nowhere near that yet. I just saw that the chiefs have sort of delicately presented to her the idea of not attending the parade on Wednesday. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh. They say that they can't handle the influx of fans that might arrive, but I think it's also kind of let them have their moment.

Yes. You know? She's the new Beatles. I mean, that's how they're treating her. Like the girls with the tears and, you know, I don't totally understand. I really don't have anything against Taylor Swift. It's not like she's one of those people who I really can't. She's done a couple of things that are annoying. But that's true of most of these public figures. But I don't totally get the absolute adulation and rabid fandom that's happening. I will say, I think those

Superbowl numbers are about something else because the NFL, it was like 98 of the top 100 shows this year were all football games. I think they've gotten rid of a lot of that BLM nonsense and people are desperate for something other than politics, you know, just consuming every moment. Yeah, no, I think you're totally right about that. I think, you know, there's a hunger for something that unites us. You touched on this a little bit, well, quite a bit, actually, after the Grammys. To me, it was similar, a similar reaction to the Tracy Chapman, Luke Combs performance, where it literally felt like Tracy was blue America, Luke was red America. And it was just like very quiet, joyful moment of union, like this kind of way of saying like, Hey, like we can get the band back together.

It's so the band is America. And I think it's a similar thing with football, you know? Yeah. Yeah. You're right. I love the way I feel when I'm watching the game, even though I understand very little about it. These guys came on yesterday, crane and company in the daily wire. And my insightful questions included things like when that guy raises his hands, when he did that kick, what happened there? I know this is not where you go for in-depth football analysis. I understand none of it. I understand none of it, but I found myself watching and I, and I felt like it was a real cultural moment, you know? Um, and, but I also felt like we got a really unique look at Taylor Swift's attachment style in the hug at the end of rubbing the belly. No, she ran to him and she kissed him.

And she first of all, she rotated him around to get all the camera angles properly. Like as CBS's camera is moving, she's moving him so they can get the shot. And then she's like grabbing onto him by the waist and hugging him. And she's not letting go. It felt like it went on for a little while. I feel like this is the attachment style we hear of in her songs. Yes. Stage five clinger.

Is that the problem there? I guess if you're dating the Super Bowl champ, you want to hold on. Just ask Giselle. Sometimes they get tired of you very easily, even if you're a supermodel or the world's biggest superstar. Let's hope not here. Just saying it's a thing. All right. We're going to get back to pop culture in a minute, but I want to start with President Biden because you've got a great piece out basically saying he's done. You read the special counsel news. The left is continuing to freak out. And now they seem to be like the justifications for what they said in that report, right? Well-meaning elderly man

with a poor memory and the frailties has been actually entertaining to me. I give you as example number one, Joe Scarborough in his spin in response to the news in that report that Biden couldn't remember either when he was vice president or when his son Beau died within several years. Watch this. I said this yesterday and maybe I don't know, maybe it's just older people. We've lived a busy and active life, but nobody's closer to me. Nobody's been closer to me in my life than my mom. If somebody asked me in my life. I'm not a mom. If somebody asked me in the middle of the deposition, what year did your mom die? I go, I don't know, 2017, 2018, 2019. I don't know. I can tell you everything about it.

I can tell you my final word, but, but, but again, that, and same thing with Mika and her dad. So the fact, first of all, that he was asking that question. Secondly, that somehow that's the most damning thing. And the Trump people are now saying the White House is like an old folks home. They don't know when their parents died? I don't believe that. I don't believe that for one second. I can tell you the day and date.

Same. I can tell you the time. Yes. Same. Everyone can. Yeah. So says the man who is, you know, having private dinners at the white house with Joe and Jill, Joe and Mika go, Joe, Joe Scarborough takes calls regularly from Joe Biden. He's apparently the number one fan of morning Joe. This is the kind of thing that they don't regularly disclose. First of all, it should not be happening. You cannot call yourself a journalist if you want that kind of access to power or proximity to power, or you want them to like you. That's not your job. And to watch these apologists, I mean, I couldn't, I was rabidly flipping the night of that presser between like MSNBC, CNN and Fox. And to watch, you know, Rachel Maddow and her panel try to explain away what we all just witnessed, which was what I would call an extinction level event.

They sound not like serious journalists or serious news analysts, but they sound like cultists. And you would think that they might have a moment of reckoning, you know, where even people on the left are when Hillary Clinton says publicly, this is an issue. This is a legitimate problem. You know, the calls are beginning to come from inside the house. And I did like your statement the other day, because I had a similar thought that could this possibly be a coup from the inside? Because unless he was so determined to go out there against the advice of everyone closest to him, Jill included, why would they expose him that way? Why would Merrick Garland allow it in the report? Exactly. And why would the press suddenly feel like they were let off the leash to ask the question? They have been so politely. And I think it's a kind of journalistic malpractice to

sidestep what we've all been seeing. He said he spoke to two dead heads of state the same week. Three. He added a third. Yeah. Now it's three. I mean, there's a running tally. There's going to be more. Right. Yeah. No, I do have serious wonders about that. Like, is it from the inside? They feel like they have a responsibility to let us just see what they're seeing. This is the quiet like remember the piece during Trump? We're working from the inside to control him. Right. Remember that person? It was anonymous for a while.

Then it turned out to be like a nobody. Right. But is this that? Like, we let you see what we see. Now it's up to the American voters. You know, Politico just ran a piece this morning saying it's too late. It's going to be Biden. Here are all the reasons why.

But when LBJ addressed the nation to say that he was not going to seek reelection, it was March 31st, 1968. We're only in like early to mid-February. There is still time. It's not too late. And even if he wins all of the delegates in, you know, March and Super Tuesday, he can still pass the baton. I mean, if the Obamas, the Clintons, the party elders, the Pelosi's went to him and said, it cannot be you. I mean, there's, he would be forced. He would be forced if they all, or we're going to come out publicly and say, you're not competent to handle the job. He would be forced to pass the baton. And then the delegates are going to have to do what they do at the convention. We'll just see whether these others are up to it, right?

Like whether they're willing to do that to him and their party. Yeah. We'll see the kind of character and backbone. I mean, like, as I wrote in my column, I don't think it's just unpatriotic to be propping up Joe Biden. You know, our enemies are watching this. There is a reason the world is on fire right now. They're emboldened.

They've been emboldened since the disaster that was the Afghanistan withdrawal, which Biden loves to take credit for. You know, and we are no longer feared. And I think the reason Trump against Biden stands such a good shot is people at least felt that the world feared Trump. Yeah. Yeah. And they have no fear of this president. We have fear of this president. We're afraid he's going to fall or say the wrong thing. That was another theory I heard, which was what if instead of, you know, them being behind letting us see, you know, they actually did try to stop him as they've tried to

stop him from giving any and all interviews, including the Superbowl halftime interview. Yes. And what if the fear is not that he's going to lose reelection, but the fear is he's going to start a war. He's going to say something so calamitous that it can't be undone with one of those white house press statements that they keep putting out to try to do cleanup for him after the fact. You know, you heard him say about Israel, like they've gone too far the other night. Well, that was new messaging. What? Since when do you feel that way? You look down at the word ceasefire. He he's gotten his hands major U.S. foreign policy that can be changed with a word here or there. We've seen him stumble regime change in Russia. No,

I didn't. Yes, you did. We heard. So, you know, all of that's only getting worse. And I do wonder whether there's a genuine fear like the one you just expressed on the inside in terms of letting him out there and free. I think, you know, it reminds me of towards the end of Trump's presidency when there were his his top advisers said, you know, we had to make a backdoor call to China and say, if you hear Trump say we're going to nuke you, just please know we're not going to Millie. Millie did that. Yeah. And it's it's a similar like we're dealing with both of these candidates who are so highly compromised. I mean, Trump has been having his own cognitive issues.

He's been talking about World War II possibly erupting. You know, he's been misnaming people. But I don't like the argument that, well, at least under Biden, America is safer. At least under Biden, you know, there are sane people underneath him. This is not a banana republic, you know, and we're telling the world this is the best we can do. We're going to prop up somebody who cannot sit for a softball Super Bowl interview two years in a row. Yeah. Reportedly, they were going to give him Gayle King. Oh, she's not going to ask any hard questions that would have been prearranged and he would have sailed right through it.

And yet he couldn't do even that. So now what they're doing at the White House is they're putting him out in these pre-taped canned videos where they just released one last week of he's sitting with a black family and he's talking about how your dad really loves you. You know how much he loves you. And these kids are like, yeah, we know. He's talking to him about sports.

And I guess this is supposed to make us feel better? Oh, man, you got chicken fingers. You got all of this. I went the route of making sure I had the room. So tell me about you guys. What you doing these days? Why don't you share about your passion of sports? I'm playing AAU basketball right now. Oh, you're really? You're your guard?

Yes, sir. Now, what grade are you in? Seventh grade. Seventh grade. Right now I'm just basketball, playing guard on the JV team for my school. How about in school? How are y'all doing in school?

You should tell the president about the school. Favorite thing about it is the business academy I'm in. We get to, like, travel, so we've been to, like, NC State, Wake Tech, and we... You're kidding me. Yeah, we went to this small dry-cleaning business, and it's just, it's cool. It's a great experience. I'm impressed.

Is that a new program at the school? Yes, sir, it is. It just started just a couple of years ago. You know how much this guy loves you. He just feels it, can't you? Yes, sir, it is. It just started just a couple of years ago. You know how much this guy loves you. You just feel it, can't you? That's it. Your dad's right in front of the bull for you. He looks like a kind of a sweet grandpa talking to kids the way a grandpa would. You know how much your dad loves you, don't you?

Right, right. And that's not going to do it. Right. And meantime, Maureen, meantime, you've got the White House refusing, as his annual physical comes up, to get him a cognitive, a neurological exam. Molly Jung Fast was on MSNBC trying to rip down the Robert Herr special counsel, HUR, report the other day. Just listen to what she said. I don't think that her is a good faith actor. And I think that 245 pages of that show that. I mean, he's not a neurologist, right? If you want to weigh in on legal things, that's fine. But, you know, the idea and again, to fault someone

for saying they don't remember during a deposition when we've seen people like Dr. Anthony Fauci say that hundreds of times during a deposition, that's what you're supposed to say if you don't remember because you don't want to be wrong. Okay. A lot in there. He's not a neurologist, her, so he's not allowed to talk about how this witness would play at trial. I guess as a lawyer, you're no longer allowed to make those assessments. And then he was just saying, I don't remember the way any deposition witness does. That's all. That's all that was Maureen. It's so intellectually dishonest. And I mean, you're a lawyer, you know, this, there's a difference between someone who's being deposed,

who is using facts and language in such a way to avoid answering a damning question versus a sitting president who has to ask when he began serving as vice president, when he stopped serving as vice president, a president who, I am sorry, has used his personal tragedies as part of the fabric of his political narrative for years and years to say, to take umbrage with being asked if he remembers when his son Beau died, which if I recall reading correctly, I believe Biden opened the door to that. I was going to say, do we, I don't remember exactly how it went down, but do we know that it was put to him out of the blue by Robert Herr? To me, it sounds like something he may have brought up and then struggled to put facts around.

That's what I think. That's what I think. And to watch the Molly Jong fast of the world, who sort of built a sort of second act off of being a rabid anti-Trumper, you know, it's just the tribalism in this country that it's not that bad if it's my side, but if it's your side, it's the end of the world is extremely unhelpful. And when you see even the New York times begin to turn a little bit, now they're still having a schizophrenic reaction. Like they're running half of their op-eds are like, it's okay. It's okay. And the other half are like, it's time to go like this. We've seen incontrovertible evidence. We all have someone we know who is struggling with cognitive decline. And if you do as I do, you see the signs, you see what is in front of you. And to be told that you are not bright enough to get it.

Right. That doesn't work with the electorate. It's truly one of those don't believe your lion eyes moments. We know 86% of the American populace believes he's too old to be president, which happens to be the same number he will be if he completes a second term and makes it. Eighty six percent. That's you can't wave that away by saying Robert Herr is not a neurologist or gee, I forgot when my mom and dad died like Joe Scarborough. But we do, if it's true, what they're saying now is behind the scenes, you know, David Brooks, he said that in the New York Times today, I, he's like, I'm really worried about the country because

now they've been misled by this mean special counsel. And this just boosts Trump who's, you know, clearly unhinged. And he says, you know, I've talked to him behind the scenes all the time. He's very sharp, very. That's what Joe Scarborough. So then let's see that, because we we have not seen that we're waiting. But what we see instead is the video with the kids eating the chicken. That's not persuading anyone of anything. And now when asked, will he just at least take a cognitive test?

Trump Trump did it. This is what KJP said at the White House. What do you think about the idea of taking that kind of a test? I mean, look, and I talked about this last week, too, on I believe on Friday. I have known this president since 2009. I he is not just my my boss. You know, he's also some a mentor to me and i spent sometimes countless hours with him whether it's in the oval office whether it's on the road and i believe for

me you're asking me my personal opinion uh he is sharp uh he is on top of things he when we have meetings with him with his staff he's constantly pushing us, trying to get more information. And so that has been my experience with this president. Anything else outside of that, I just shared with you what Dr. O'Connor said to me. And so I'll just leave it there. And then they asked again. So no cognitive test. And she dodged again.

He's constantly asking for more information. Does not prove he does not have a memory problem. Great point. That is such a great point. So if, so it can't be, it can't be both, right? If he is just so with it and together behind the scenes and he's outpacing his youngest staff members and they can't keep up with him, but only those on his inner circle have access to this really spry, intellectually sharp president. But the rest of us get an information blackout and have next to no access to this president who is going to try to run this campaign again from the basement. You know, both things can't be true. If he's that great, why not let him out there?

Let's see him. Let's have him out there all the time. Super Bowl. Sure. Gayle King. Sure. Let's do it. Let's do a sit down. Let's do a sit down with Oprah. Let's do a sit down with Fox. Let's do it. Let's really get in the mix. Do a sit down with morning Joe. Why not? You can't get any friendlier than that. If you can't handle that, you can't handle the presidency. That's

very clear. Um, all right, let's shift gears and talk about what's happened with this shooting at Joel Osteen's church down in Houston. What's amazing to me is this happened a couple of days ago. I've seen Joel Osteen's name in every newspaper in big black print. And then you have to read way, way, way, way, way down in the print article to see the fact that the shooter appears to have been transgender. Now, this, by my count, is at least the sixth transgender person to commit a mass shooting or try within the past couple of years. And each time the media completely downplays that fact and lets the story wither on the vine very quickly. These are not accidents. It's interesting. So I was reading about this and I was looking into, you know, what data they have

about transgender mass shooters versus what we have become all too familiar with is that the sort of straight white male mass shooter. And it turns out it's actually a really, really small percentage. And it seems to me, you know, I was reading about this particular shooter who had gone by alternately male names and female names. It was a woman. But it was a woman. She's been shot dead now and committing the offense. It brought her seven-year-old son along and he's now in critical condition with a head, a shot to the head. Um, there, her, her neighbors in Conroe, Texas had called the police multiple times. I mean, she pulled a gun on a neighbor for like doing the lawn. It was extreme. And she was a known schizophrenic. She had a criminal record. Her mother-in-law knew she was, her mother-in-law's a rabbi. She knew she was deeply mentally ill. And these residents,

five of these women held a press conference, I think yesterday, and said, you know, we are constantly told if you see something, say something. And we said something and we said something and we said something, nothing was done. We went to the police. Nothing was done. She was allowed to legally buy a weapon. That's insane. And we continue to hear this, that it's mental illness. It's not access to guns or the gun lobby. And I just, I don't know how this country continues to put its head in the sand when it comes to this. In this case, in this case, there are questions about whether there should have been more gun enforcement. There should have been a red flag law that would have made sure this person to

get access to it. But, you know, to me it's outrageous because there has, well, while the number overall, you're right. It's usually the white guys, 19 years old, 20 years old. They have a schizophrenic break. There's usually some sort of a warning sign. Oftentimes there are posts online. We are starting to see the profile change. I remember that Nashville shooting where they still haven't released the manifesto.

We found out it was a girl who's posing as a boy. And my first instinct was girls don't do this. This is not a girl thing. This is school shootings. Of course, you can always find an exception. This is not a girl thing. This is school shootings. Of course, you can always find an exception. This is a boy thing. And yet we're seeing it more and more. And it's girls who are taking testosterone, who've obviously struggled with mental health issues. Otherwise they wouldn't be doing a school shooting. And there's an absolute unwillingness to acknowledge that piece of the story and probe why,

why is the dynamic starting to shift? You know, I feel like you and I are willing to say, should there have been a red flag law that would have gotten this person within the crosshairs of the gun screeners down in Texas or where she bought the guns? Yes, obviously. Yes. But it's also the case that we need to look at, was she on hormones? Was there something, was there a change in the personality? What triggered this mental health illness or problem with her? And instead we get total blackouts from the media. On the subject of there are signs everywhere on this person when it comes to mental health and they're totally ignored. Can we talk about Crumbly? Now I don't say his name. He's a shooter, a mass shooter. But his mom, Jennifer, she was just on trial as the mother of the mass shooter. And this is for a case in Michigan. He went into school. They found his troubling writings. So they called the parents. The

parents didn't take him home. The parents knew that they had just gotten a gun from him four days earlier. They didn't tell. They left the kid there. They said, oh, we have to get back to our jobs. And then the mother and soon the father have been put on trial. The mother was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter. The dad's about to go. The dad is actually making a motion to exclude all witness testimony from the school's witnesses because he thinks it'd be too prejudicial. Good luck with that. But not a day goes by that we don't learn more about this couple and how disgustingly negligent they were. That's the thing. Like you did your homework on this Maureen. When I first looked at

it, I was like, how do you hold the kid responsible or the parent responsible for the kid's actions? One of my guests made a great, made a good point about what we're going to do that to all the parents in Chicago of the gang members who are shooting each other. Good question still, but this case, you actually look deep into it, is particularly egregious. It's incredibly egregious. I mean, this child never had a chance. This was a child who had the wherewithal to be calling out for help and begging his parents for help, saying, I need to see a doctor. I am hearing voices. Watching the trial was really fascinating because it feels like a watershed moment in the country. The takeaway for me was sort of, you know, we are just resolutely not going to ever

do anything about guns. The meeting that the parents had with the school, it was a guidance counselor and the dean of students who were in that meeting with this child who had been found with a piece of paper that said, bullets everywhere. Help me. I'm basically going to shoot the school in his bag at his feet was the murder weapon. Nobody looked in the bag. Now they want to prosecute the parents, but guess who they're not prosecuting? Guidance counselor, dean of students who said, hey, but guess who they're not prosecuting? Guidance counselor, dean of students who said, hey, your choice.

Want to send him home? Didn't call the cops. That was crazy. Didn't call first responders. Didn't say to them, you need to take your child off campus. We are going to put a blanket alert. He can't be within 50, 100 feet of this place and get back to us once he's been evaluated. And I really consider it a system wide failure on all levels. How was it up to the loser parents, whether he got pulled or not? I

mean, at most schools in the country, especially in today's day and age, it would be a zero tolerance. You say a word that's threatening, nevermind do the disturbing drawings. You're out. It's not, gee, do you want to leave junior at school for the day? It's get him out of here. How, like how? The teachers walked by him on his phone in class, looking up bullets, you know? I mean, there were a million alarm bells you would see during the trial. There were shown repeated emails from different teachers saying, this child is really struggling. This child made a statement that he thinks his family and his life is a mistake. Like, this is not right. Like, and every response from, you know, the person above would be, oh, I'll catch up with him!

Exclamation point. You know, and it goes to, I read that that school has like four guidance counselors for 2000 students. So it's already an overburdened system. Well, at a minimum, the system should be, even if you can't get the guidance counselor involved, the parents are getting a call and the parents should be trusted to do something. No one wants to be the parent of the next school shooter, except these parents didn't care. And I actually didn't know some of the stuff that was in your article about how filthy the home was, how poor his physical health was, like his teeth. You found, I mean, this was a neglectful set of parents. Yeah. I mean, the neighbors reported the house was filthy. They allowed, they had

multiple household pets, not even the normal ones like dogs or cats that were going in the house all the time. Jennifer Crumbly, I was shocked she testified in her own defense. She talked about walking by his room and they showed photos of it. And it was such the manifestation of a disordered, chaotic mind. It was a mess. Her response was to close the door to it. She spent her time having an adulterous affair in a Costco parking lot. And then, I mean, I don't know how you feel about this in terms of what's fair play in

a prosecution, but they managed to bring in that she and her lover were having like sex parties at hotels and it all felt very grim. It also felt very like, well, what's the, what's the trial for the father going to be like, right? Is bad parenting only going to fall on the mother in this case? Well, because he bought the gun. He bought the gun. Though they said that one of the jurors said in an interview, it was the fact that she was the one who last had the gun with her son that led them to say that's the straw that broke the camel's back in terms of convicting her, which the dad didn't do. Um, reading here from your report, a couple of, a couple of, um, details. He had a journal. Neither of his parents ever looked at it. They never looked at his phone. They never

looked at social media. Okay. A lot of parents might not do that. Many do, but when you know your son is disturbed and saying weird things and obviously has no friends and is depressed to not check, uh check could be really problematic. He drew a young girl in profile, a gun to the back of her head, as you said, a bullet firing alongside the words, the first victim has to be a pretty girl with a future so she can suffer just like me. A text from him to his only friend seven months before the shooting. I hear people talking to me.

I see someone in the distance. I actually asked my dad to take me to the doctor yesterday, but he just gave me some pills and told me to suck it up. It's to the point where I'm asking to go to the doctor. My mom laughed when I told her. She denied that he told her. He said to the same friend, bad insomnia, bad paranoia. I need help. I was thinking of calling 911 so I could go to the hospital, but then my parents would be really pissed. I'm mentally and physically dying. She says she never saw any of it and he never said one word about this to her. I don't believe her. I don't believe her either. I don't believe her either. She made plenty of time for the pursuits that interested her,

her horses, her barn, her married boyfriend, her extracurricular activities. It's, you know, to me, it's such an easy, like, prosecutable case of neglect and abuse. But can you hold a parent responsible for your child's committing mass murder? It's such an interesting moment in the culture. And I think the reverberations are going to be ones that, you know, in the short, in the short term, this maybe feels like a good, satisfying verdict. You know, every parent will think twice if their child is manifesting as a textbook developing school shooter. I mean, he had like dead birds in his room. He was decapitating baby birds and bringing them to school. I mean, it is textbook, but in the long

term, as you said, well, then what parents do we hold responsible? How far do we take it? What eight what's the cutoff age? If you wind up having prior knowledge of an act, like just how culpable are you? They didn't even charge her as an accessory, which I thought was interesting. I thought that might've been a more suitable. Now we're going to cross some uncomfortable lines, right? Because you point out he had 13 cavities at one point. They would let the dogs urinate inside the house. She didn't mention her son for 10 days after he was arrested. She knew he'd committed the crime because they were listening to her phone calls. She was all about herself, asking her dad for money. But there is a good question about whether we're holding this family,

this sort of white Midwestern family to a standard, we would never hold black families of gang members in inner city Chicago too. Or wealthy white East coasters. Yeah. So for example, after Sandy Hook, now that shooter slaughtered his mother before going to that school and doing what he did. But that case got, say, like a 20-page thoughtful treatment in The New Yorker written by Andrew Solomon about the genesis of a school shooter, who's culpable, is it the gun lobbies, is it the culture, are some parents just simply either in over their heads with a troubled child or they just had no way of knowing. This case to me felt like a prosecutor looking at like, this is a good test case. These people

don't have means. They're low class. You look at them, you know, the mother gets on the stand and she's like disheveled and she doesn't look pulled together. And it's just, they're not likable people and they don't have means and they don't have access to power or really good attorneys. Her attorney was a disaster. If you go back, she was a nightmare. She was, she was so worried about her hair. Oh my goodness. She could barely like utter an objection when necessary. She made every moment about herself. I'm trying to hold it together here. I'm trying not to cry, but it's very hard for me. Like, Oh, could you stop? She was also woefully underprepared. She seemed to have glancing

knowledge of the facts of this case. And she didn't push back in ways I think you could have pushed back. I also thought it was an interesting choice to have a young male prosecutor cross examine Jennifer Crumbly. And I wondered what the thinking about that was because watching that as a woman, and even knowing the jury was stacked overwhelmingly with women, I thought that might not play very well. It might feel too aggressive. Um, but I mean, I was wrong. It worked. They, they accurately guessed that the jury would hate her and that they would be the heroes, you know, that they would see the prosecution as on their side and she would be the enemy. But reading your report, I mean, you had stuff in here I hadn't seen. And I too felt like, yeah, she's the enemy.

This is absolutely dreadful parenting. And I really am finding it very hard to feel sorry for her. I expect the dad will get a similar result. I would hope so. Unless he's got something else. And in the case of the Newtown shooter, yes, the mother was killed. The father, he never got charged or anybody. I know he's even talking about this kind of thing back then, but they were divorced. He wasn't really in the picture, which I don't know. Is that an okay defense? I had nothing to do with him. You know what? Great point. But like in terms of this shooter's parents, they were alternately separated back together, separated, living in the same home, but not communicating. And how would we define that? You know, you know, you can have an absentee parent who's still in the marital home and legally part of a marriage.

Well, and the Sandy Hook shooter, his mom, of course, as we said, murdered by him. But if she had lived, if she hadn't been murdered, the case there was of a mom who allowed her troubled son to spend hours on end down in the basement doing violent videos and nothing but. and he had no friends. He was extremely antisocial and she had guns in the house that were unsecure. You could make the case. I mean, you could take those like, and then other parents can be like, well, what do you mean? He didn't have any friends. He had the video games. That was his one outlet. You know, this, we are going down a path right now. That's going to get really complicated complicated really fast. Right. And I feel like our eyes are off the ball still. The issue is minors having access to guns. Sick minors in

particular, because I think especially in the Midwest and the South, access to guns is a norm. It may not be here in New York City, New York, but we're in Connecticut. But that is very normal in other places. You know, my brothers in Atlanta, this is not unusual down there, but most parents, 99% of parents would be way more responsible about it. They bring their kids to hunt. They think it's important for them to know how to handle a gun in the states that are much bigger on the second amendment, but not to a kid who's disturbed. And the rest of us are like sitting ducks

for the parents who themselves are disturbed and then have kids who are disturbed and then buy them guns. And there's no red flag laws in some of these states to step in. Well, the thing I thought was interesting about the father's approach, which you just read,

where the shooter said, I went to my father and said, I need help. And he said, he gave me some pills and said, suck it up. It feels like that would be that sort of cultural approach to what a man is. And a man isn't somebody who goes to a psychiatrist and says, I have no control of my feelings or my emotions, or I'm lonely. That would be considered weak. And so what do you do? You go give him some pills and

you buy him a gun because that's what a man does. You know what I mean? It's sort of this not one size fits all approach. And there's an active effort on the part of gun manufacturers to advertise to children that shooting range that the shooter's mother took him to a couple of days before the shooting. It's got like a family playground, like adjacent to it. And they host like family events and stuff. And it's sort of, that's why, cause I feel like this is our, you know, Northeast bias kicking in, you know, I, I know families for whom introducing guns to the minors is part of the family culture and they do hunt together. I mean, my own husband, he grew up going to his, this duck blind and they would, as I joke now, kill innocent little animals for fun. I'm not a hunter, but I get that it's, it's very popular. It was, you know,

right of passage between father and son. Nobody in his family was disturbed. Nobody, it was, you know, like there has to be some balance between the second amendment and how we embrace it. And we love it. And all the things that, you know, it's, it's importance in American culture and the rights of these kids who are at school to live their lives and not get shot when they walk in by a kid who was really effing disturbed and the parents let him have access. It's just, we haven't figured it out. Okay, quick break. We're going to be right back. Much, much more with Maureen Callahan.

Don't go away. All right, Maureen, I've got to talk to you about more nonsense in boys playing in girls sports. in New Hampshire, not far from Connecticut, where Mael Jacques is celebrating beating other runners at, this is a sophomore, as a state champion in the high jump. It's a boy who is claiming to be a girl competing against girls. And obviously this person has gone through male puberty and, um, has the long legs and musculature of a sophomore boy had a jump of five feet, one and three quarters inch. And with that beat out other contenders at the meet held this past week at Plymouth state university. Um, this person has competed in four regular season meets this season and has earned a first place finish every single time. It's amazing how easy it is for the boys to meet to beat the girls at their sports.

The school, as I understand it, does not require anything of the male athletes to play with the girls. No testosterone lowering. No, it has to be a prepubescent boy, at which point they don't have an advantage over girls. Post-puberty, full testosterone, no problem. Welcome to the girls' sports. And the school has responded to the controversy that ensued by saying, we support all students and student athletes, regardless of their gender identity.

Each student athlete has the right to compete in the activity of their choice. I find that so blatantly dishonest. Except for biological girls, they are not being protected. You know, there was no shortage of articles leading up to this event where this student was competing against the girls that were all headlined. He's expected to, sorry, this student is expected to win. You don't say. So the clearance level for the jump for biological girls is five feet, one inch. For biological boys, it's five feet, eight inches to six feet, one inch. Wow. So, you know, Martina Navratilova had it right. She tweeted that she is so sick of biological males who are failing at their own sports against their own biological gender,

defaulting to girls sports in order to win. And everybody's let these girls down, including their school. In particular, if I were a parent of a young girl at that school, I would be aflame with indignation. Yeah. I would not let my daughter play. I would not let her play on a team opposite this player. And if they tried to put a male on her team, my daughter plays soccer. I would pull my daughter. It would be very hard because she loves soccer. I would not want her to suffer that penalty, but I'm, there's no way I would endanger her or subject her to this unfairness. And until more parents start doing that, it's going to continue. Not one of these parents stood up and said, this is wrong.

I do not support this. I want my daughter to compete only against girls. You know, I feel like they live in New Hampshire. It's very blue. If you speak up, you're immediately targeted transphobe. I think the needle is beginning to shift a little bit. You know, the New York times running that piece about a couple of weeks ago in which they talked the, I think it was Pamela Paul talked to D transitioners who said, I was medicalized as a child. I was given a double mastectomy. I was a

kid. I was confused. I was put on this fast track. I was told by people smarter than me in the medical field what was wrong with me. They overstepped the concerns of parents who want to slow walk anything like that. And it's going to take those sort of stories printed in those sort of outlets accepted by the sort of woke karate of this country who are sacrificing, you know, the like your point about your daughter, like the idea that she would have to sacrifice something she loves because the adults in charge can't do the right thing. We all know what's going on. That's right. The school is too afraid to protect the girls. And then the icing on the cake is in nine times out of 10 in these situations, you get some line about how, oh, the girls have no problem

with it. The girls were so nice to the trans student and so loving and supportive. OK, maybe there are a couple like Megan Rapinoe who just refused to see that there's a problem. She keeps saying, where are all the boys who are taking the girls medals? They're right here, right here, Megan. I got yet another one for you. But the vast majority of these girls, I'd mark money are afraid they're not going to say anything. They need their moms and dads and teachers and

superintendents to protect them. And they're too weak. They're too afraid. And the coaches and whatever athletic governing bodies, there was a group of, I believe it was swimmers. It was high school or college. And they began speaking out and they said, we were told that if we were anything other than welcoming and kind and self-sacrificing, that we were the problem, that we had to quiet down and watch as all of our sacrifice and hard work and our love of this sport have just been eradicated. I can't think of anything more soul crushing. And, you know, I think in 10 to 20

years, we'll look back on this moment as, as a kind of particular madness. This is just to add to it. Um, another piece of their statement, this is from the New Hampshire Interscholastic Athletic Association. Listen to what they say. Um, okay. As a school community, parents and guardians, faculty, staff, and peers, we celebrate student success and personal growth on and off the field. We firmly believe in guiding each student to become caring, compassionate people who contribute positively to the world and those around them. That's what they think sports are about. I'm sorry, but it's not really about raising a caring, compassionate girl out on that playing field. You need a champion, a competitor, someone who understands fairness. Caring and compassion is what you talk about when someone in your class had a death in the family

or they're getting bullied or they're going through something. But you don't have to be taught you must be caring and compassionate when your medals and your chance to win is being stolen from you when it's being stolen. Agreed. And you have a short window. And, you know, we talk about this a lot. Where is the sort of comparable number of biological female athletes clamoring to get in to compete against biological male athletes. Once again, the women's instinct is to not make waves. Those are women.

Right. But also they know like you're not going to be able to compete against a biological male. You're just not going to be able to do it. But I'm just saying there, you don't have a rash of stories of these women trying to take over in men's spaces or men's sports or of any kind. It's the men posing as women who are causing problems. I just like not all of them. Like Caitlyn Jenner has been an absolute delight. I have to say, I love what Caitlyn's done in this space. And Caitlyn's really spoken out on a lot of these issues.

But so many, the vast majority of these problems are guys taking advantage of girl sports and girl spaces, trying to get into girl spaces. You don't hear about the women trying to go into the guy's spaces, even the guy's locker rooms and making them feel uncomfortable. Number one, I don't think they're autogynephiles as a rule. The women who want to dress like men, they're not getting off on their situation. And I just feel like it doesn't come as any surprise to me that the women, once again, are not causing waves. They're not making waves. I know. There's only a couple. I don't understand why there hasn't been some sort of

agreement that, okay, let's take biological males who identify as females and want to compete in sport and figure out a way for them to compete against each other. It would be hard because there are not that many, despite all of these stories that we hear. But if they were really invested in fairness, again, why do the women have to default to this idea of fairness that is inherently unfair? You know, unfair. You know what else? If all these girls are really so supportive as these schools want us to believe, then the girls will run in the open. Tell the girls that they can run and tell the boys too, that they can run both in the gender of their actual sex and they can run

in the open to make it more competitive and more fair for the trans students. If you really believe that, then make it possible. They won't. These girls won't do it because they secretly don't support this. They're just too afraid to say it. Every day we cover another one of these stories. All right. Maureen stays with us. And up next is our favorite segment. We're going to get to the Royal rebrand, how Megan and Harry are celebrating, you guessed it, themselves again. That's next. Don't go away. The Royals, everyone's favorite Royals, the Sussexes, are at it again with a rebrand. They've launched a new website. And the reason that it's making news is because we see, we get a window into how the couple sees

themselves. They insist they are quote, shaping the future through business and philanthropy. The about page reads the office of Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. I thought we hated royal life. And then they go on to talk about themselves. I'll give you a couple highlights. He is someone, okay, give him this one, served 10 years in the British Armed Forces, check. New York Times bestselling author of Spare, a memoir of his life told with compassion, vulnerability, and unflinching honesty. And she is, the Duchess of Sussex is a feminist and champion of human rights and gender equality. Don't forget family care. Family care. That's big, big, big with her. Uh, I'm, I'm trying to

figure out, it's sort of the rebrand to the rebrand to the rebrand to the rebrand. The link is Sussex.com, which also then links to SussexRoyal Meghan was shot by the paparazzi in her Range Rover, like smiling dementedly. Like this week had been such a great win for them. This week you're talking about when he went over there to see his father after the cancer diagnosis. Yeah. I did not see that. So she's like got this wide smile and she's driving. And it's like this week went great for them as if Grand Sussex had not been thoroughly shut out by the Royals in a week in which Charles's esteemed biographer, well-sourced basically Charles Feeding, was told that the visit was actually tolerated and not really wanted, that he sort of barged his way in there, that it wasn't that dire of a diagnosis,

that he had just begun treatment. He had his plans and his schedule. And if you think about, if you've ever known anybody who's had a catastrophic illness, really the priority is what that person wants, not what the loved ones feel they must do. And then so suddenly the headline became Harry rushes home and it makes it look dire. It makes it look like he has access. And, you know, the one piece of information we know that the Royals do not want the gruesome twosome to have access to is what is really wrong with Kate Middleton, because that seems to be something quite serious. That that's also bizarre. I mean, I, everyone continues to speculate. What is it that puts a

healthy woman who is what? 42. Yeah. In the hospital for almost two weeks. They say it's not cancer. What is it? What happened to her? Why won't they tell us? It's very strange, but you're right. The last thing in the world they'd want is for Harry and Meghan to get wind of any of it. So he was there all told with his father for what, 45 minutes? Maybe. That was what we initially thought. It might be more like 30 minutes. And within two seconds, it was leaked to the press that he was on his way back to England.

It was also leaked to the press that he would welcome a meeting with William. Sure. So the leaks of the paltry amounts of information and access they have were already happening. There was no sort of, I'm going to rebuild this with you. I'm going every, I'm a vault. So what do you think this means for when William becomes King? I think we got a preview of what Harry and Megan's life is going to be like under a King William. I think he'd be the fifth, perhaps. I think they'll be completely shut out.

They will not be welcome. If they come back for something ceremonial, I mean, if they were to come back for, hopefully this is long in the offing, Charles's funeral, for example, one would imagine they would be seated way back in the second or third row, hidden behind some plumage as they were at the coronation. How could we forget? That's right. Yeah. So I think, you know, that was the message could not have been clearer to Harry and Meghan. You are not needed, nor are you wanted. And I think that this rebrand is a direct reaction to that because they're all, they're just, those two are like all id.

They're just reactionary. They cannot seem to process information and move forward in a strategic way. Instead, we get this lengthy CV about what incredible accomplished people they are. With nothing in there other than his military service, which I'll give him nothing in there. She's touting how she guest edited British Vogue in July, 2019. That was when they were at their height of popularity, which was the fastest selling copy in the magazine's history. Okay. That's all right. That's I would fact check that. I don't know that I buy that. The, um, the, the descriptions on themselves, we've got to go over, but a point on what you just said, their problem's not branding. That's not it. It's not, oh, we ruined Sussex Royals. We've

got to come up with just Sussex.us. Your problem's not about your brand name. It's about what you've done to the brand that was given to you, Sussex. By the way, some of their defenders are like, that's their last name. Isn't their last name Mount Batten-Windsor? That's the last name of Charles and William and Harry. Does your last name change into the Duke area you control? I don't know. In any event, she claims to be a feminist. And I have to pause here because I

realize she wants us to believe this, Maureen, but you and I have been watching her ridiculous podcast and behavior and attacks on Kate Middleton long enough to know she's a feminist only so long as it helps her look good. But that whole Omid Scobie book is, we believe, Meghan Markle feeding him the nastiest things we've ever read about Kate Middleton. Not only Kate, but, you know, and she slid the knife in during that Oprah interview with the weighty Katie. She said that, and Kate made me cry. But if you're such a feminist, what about showing reverence and true appreciation for the queen who gave her life? She didn't ask for it. She was born into it. She took it with the utmost seriousness. And instead we got that deep mocking curtsy in the Netflix special that just oozed contempt and ridicule. She's not a feminist.

She's as much of a feminist as she is someone who's very invested in whatever the term family care means. I've never heard it. I don't know what it means. I don't know if it's a public policy pronouncement. I don't know. But if you're, if you consider family care successfully severing all ties to your own family of origin, save your mother, and successfully severing your husband's ties to his family of origin, a historic lineage that you are depriving your children of ever knowing, then sure, you're great at family care. You got it. She accused Kate of having baby brain.

She called her rigid, pointed out how formal she is versus Megan, who's a hugger. And then came the Omid Scobie. He's their stenographer book outright calling documented and not just him, but there have been a few biographies of zeroing in on Megan's behavior. The amount of staff she's chased out, all women, how she made them cry, her tantrums, her tirades, young women being broken by her and her and her husband's behavior. How is that in any way a feminist trying to lift up the young women being broken by her and her and her husband's behavior. How is that in any way a feminist trying to lift up the young women? I mean, at least people like I don't call myself a feminist. I I've treated everybody the same. If you're good, you'll get praised. If you're shitty, I'm going to say something about it. But she wants us to believe she would never.

She only lifts up the young women. Well, she also wants us to believe she's a foremost advocate for mental health, which there's no better way to break someone's mental health than abuse them at work and make them feel like they're going to lose their job and reputation at any given moment. You know, so it's it's fantastic. And I also when you mentioned the the Vogue that she edited, whatever whatever in quotes. Um, but I, I, I was thinking about the most recent British Vogue cover, which has all of these female legends on it. And they gathered in one space in London, which is incredibly hard to logistically do. You got Victoria Beckham, Oprah Winfrey, Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell. You know, I think there were 50 women. It was a tribute issue to the editor-in-chief, Edward Enifel, who is leaving, who edited that issue with Meghan.

He invited her. Absent on this cover is one Meghan Markle. I think there were ashtrays at dawn in Montecito when she saw that cover and realized she had not been invited. And you were pointing out that's not the only snub that these two have received lately. Right. So I was watching the Super Bowl and the ad that came on for the T-Mobile audition ad, which has some big, big stars in it, Bradley Cooper, Laura Dern, the two guys from Suits. I don't know their names. I've never seen the show.

Those two cute guys from Suits. Exactly. And I thought to myself, Meghan Markle must be watching this going, why wasn't my agent called? Why didn't I get that call? Why aren't I in Taylor Swift's box? She wanted Taylor Swift on her podcast, do you remember? Oh, that's right. She wrote her a handwritten letter. She got no response.

I forgot it. She must be asking her. So this is one of my new favorite buttons on my serious thing. She must be asking herself the following question, because this is how Meghan Markle sees every situation. It's all about... Pretty squitterspoon and legally blind. Oh, I thought it was election. No, no. It's where she finds out she made the internship. That's how she lives her life. Okay. Last but not least, um, Sonny Hostin of the view, who's constantly raging about race and reparations and how bad America is and its racial past and all this stuff, goes on the Henry Louis Gates, it's PBS, I think, show about your history and finds out that she's, this is fantastic,

she is descended from slaveholders. She's descended from slaveholders and she's been apparently getting a lot of mail about her call for reparations because it turns out she's going to be paying them and not actually receiving them. So here's what she said when she went out on The View and addressed it. Watch this. I was really reluctant to do it because I just sensed that there could be something in my family history that would be disappointing. But what I found out was that my mother's family, while they are Puerto Rican, they actually originate from Spain. And the reason that they moved to Puerto Rico is because the slave trade had been sort of

canceled in Spain and then Curacao, and then they moved all of their slaves to Puerto Rico is because the slave trade had been sort of canceled in Spain and then Curacao, and then they moved all of their slaves to Puerto Rico. And so the family business, I have been told that they were printers and journalists, but they were in fact enslavers. At first, I was deeply disappointed. The slave thing is a bummer. It's a bummer. You can't control it. I still believe in reparations by the way so y'all can stop texting me and emailing me and saying that i'm a white girl and that i don't deserve reparation okay i'm not gonna text you or email you but it's true

yes there's nothing worse than to find out you're a white woman she's so disappointed it's really disappointing her mother was white oh my Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. But you know, the other thing about this is just so fascinating to me. She's talking about her, her ancestors migrating from Spain to Puerto Rico because of the slave trade. What goes on in America, you would think we were the only country on earth who have ever had slavery. This is endemic to the human condition. It really is. And Sunny Hostin, I'm sure is disappointed. She's the self-appointed expert of all things Black America on The View. You would not know there was another Black woman on that panel or a Latino woman on that panel. She is self-appointed. She knows

everything. It's great to see her ego take this hit, but I think it will be short lived. It's amazing to listen to her talk about, okay, she says, my mother really identified as Puerto Rican, but she wasn't. She wasn't. She was Spanish and she was white. She was part of the civil rights movement. She was deeply ingrained in black culture. She identified herself as black race, but Hispanic for ethnicity. But it turns out her race is white. She's European. So she was a poser. She was in Rachel Dolezal is what you're saying. I was just going to say that. Didn't she also say her mother had blonde hair and blue eyes? Yes. That was the tip off. Yes. That something might be amiss.

She always suspected because of the blonde hair and the light eyes inside. I sort of knew this was my history. That's probably why I didn't want to do it. Right. The shame of coming from a white person, the horror. Who can talk like this? Can you imagine if I went on with Henry Henry Louis Gates and he told me that I have black members of my family and I was like, I'm deeply disappointed and ashamed. Can you imagine the reaction? How dare she talk about white people like that? She gets away with it. Well, you know what she should, I would love for her to maybe have, um, Hilaria Baldwin on who still continues to identify as Spanish. She identifies as multi, um, and they can maybe talk about the elastic bonds between DNA and what one would like to

identify as. Yeah. I'm sure Sonny Hostet is just fine with anybody out there who wants to identify as black in their applications to Harvard, which by the way, is where her son goes. And she lives in a multimillion dollar estate. We have the pictures here from magazine shoot she did not long ago. And she makes millions of dollars on The View, but she still wants your reparations. Okay. You need to be paying for that kitchen because I don't know why. Because she owns slaves. Someone in her family. Okay. That will wrap today's segment on Sonny Huston. Maureen, so much fun. So much fun as always, Megan. Thanks for having me on the snow day. Right. You're a trooper. Hardcore. Old school. All right. When we come back,

speaking of trooper and hardcore, Drea DeMatteo. Christopher, you remember, right from The Soprano? She's amazing. and she's here. She's got a lot of thoughts, and we're going to go there. I'm Megyn Kelly, host of The Megyn Kelly Show on SiriusXM. It's your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations with the most interesting and important political, legal, and cultural figures today. You can catch The Megyn Kelly Show on Triumph, a SiriusXM channel featuring lots of hosts you may know and probably love. Great people like Dr. Laura, Glenn Beck, Nancy Grace, Dave Ramsey, and yours truly, Megan Kelly.

You can stream The Megan Kelly Show on SiriusXM at home or anywhere you are. No car required. I do it all the time. I love the SiriusXM app. It has ad-free music coverage of every major sport, comedy, talk, podcast, and more. Subscribe now. Get your first three months for free. Go to SiriusXM.com slash MKShow to subscribe and get three months free.

That's SiriusXM.com slash MKShow and get three months free. Offer details apply. Today, I am thrilled to be joined by a face and name many of you may know from the iconic TV series, The Sopranos, among her other work. Drea de Mateo starred as Adriana and captured the attention and love of millions, including yours truly. She has starred in numerous other TV shows and films, including Sons of Anarchy, Desperate Housewives, and many, many more. But her talents go beyond acting. She is a freedom fighter and founder of the apparel company Ultra Free. We'll get to that. Drea, so nice to have you. Welcome to the show. Hi. Oh my God. I wish that I could have been in person with you to give you a hug because I love you so much.

Oh, gosh. To be continued. I'll take a rain check on it. We got to do it. OK, so let's start with The Sopranos, OK, because I fell in love with you like so many others watching you on that show. And I've put together a compilation of what I remember you for more than anything. Here it is, SOT20. Christopher, you gave Crystal meth to his daughter. Chrissy almost got killed, Christopher. What's our future here, Christopher? Thank you, Christopher. Christopher doesn't want me working anymore. Nothing was going on, Christopher. Christopher, I love you, Christopher. You better.

Christopher! She's not breathing! It's your fucking eye, Christopher! Christopher! Oh my God, that was a loop of Christopher's. I love it. Oh my God. So where are you from?

Where'd you get the accent? I mean, I'm from New York. I was born in Queens. When I went in for the audition, I didn't know it was a mafia drama. I thought it was about opera singers. So, you know, they always tell you to go in as a clean slate. Don't don't be anything. And I didn't get the part because I wasn't Italian enough.

Wait, this is unbelievable. Did you actually think it was about opera singers? I did. Sopranos like and then the series would be the Altos and it's like a cold read. I thought it was a show about, I don't know, some singers who the hell knows, but, um, no, it was not. It was about the Sopranos. And what was funny about that is I had a manager right beforehand who kind of dropped me and said, you have the worst speaking voice ever. It wasn't the accent because I was like, is it because I have a New York accent? And she's like, no,

it's your speaking voice. It's terrible. And you'll never work in Hollywood. And I go, so I'll take voice classes. And she said, no, you should take opera classes. And I said, what fucking opera classes? Are you crazy? And she's like, yes, opera. And then a week later, I booked The Sopranos. I was like, who's singing now, bitch. Did you ever take voice lessons? Because the voice I hear here is absolutely lovely. I can't imagine somebody objecting. Well, thank you. No, my voice was always super deep and I was a heavy smoker. So it was really gravelly. If you listen to my voice in the Sopranos too, very gravelly. But when I start talking to Christopher, my voice is up here and I talk like this. So you leaned in, you leaned

into the New York accent. Yes. And I was raised in Queens, my grandma's house. We went back and forth into Manhattan. I come from a very Italian background. And my two parents in particular did not want me to grow up in that in that um in that world i think because my mom's dad was a mafia guy my dad's father was also so they didn't want me in that world i didn't know that much about it when i did the show i learned more about it as everybody started to die wait in your own family or on the show in my own family oh wow i wow. I knew some, but I didn't know how far it went. You know what? There's so many Italian-Americans

who have, like, one step removed to the mafia, and it explains in part the love affair we have with them, but then also, you know, you get to the hardcore realities and not so much. Yeah, it's true.

And it's, yeah. And, you know, we had a lot, we caught a lot of heat from the defamation societies, the Italian defamation society. I mean, if they did anything, they brought us more press, but it definitely was a lot to deal with during the time of the show. anti-defamation because they felt so secure in being Italian and they loved their heritage. And even the genre, my mom was a writer, so she understood the writing. And there were a lot of politics around the show at that time because it was not PC. It really just took all the risks, something that we won't see right now. Yeah. No, there's no risk taking and people are too

afraid. We're talking about that in our last segment. You, I got to ask you about James Gandolfini. I mean, one of the greats, how was your experience with him? What was he like? He was fantastic. He, you know, I never got that close. We partied a lot together. All of us did when we would go do signings and stuff. But I mean, the, the quintessential Jim story is everybody's getting a big piece of the pie on the back end of the show. But the actors were still just, you know, we weren't making the same kind of money. And he called everybody separately into his trailer to give them each a $30,000 check when they made a DVD deal with him. And they didn't make a dvd deal with the rest of the cast we didn't get residuals because it wasn't a part of um the structure yet at cable

television because we the cable tv tv wasn't a thing it was brand new and we really crushed down those doors and changed tv forever and you know i guess we were the beginning of the end because now tv's terrible again yeah no you're right don't, they don't take the same risks. Yeah. I've got to ask you because I, I noticed, I mean, obviously we'll talk about it, but you, you describe yourself still as a, as a liberal or, but like you pushing back on your party for having lost its footing, you sound conservative in some ways. And I noticed that Christopher, Michael, is it Imperioli, right? He's more on the other side. He's been making some statements that are pretty leftist. So do you guys still stay in touch? And has this caused any friction?

I actually am not in touch with Michael. No, I've heard that he has a lot of disdain for the right. I've heard that. I don't. Listen, I do consider myself. I always have more more on the liberal side, but I guess because I never paid attention to politics in my life and I never I lived in a super literary world with my mom and, and I always depended on the people that understood politics to make those decisions. I lived in a bubble for the most part. I didn't want to get involved. I also never appreciated an actor who got on a soapbox and started preaching politics. It always annoyed me. It would also annoy me in music to a certain degree. Like I was the biggest Neil Young fan that ever lived. And I remember bringing someone to one of his shows and it turned into an observation of the amount of deaths and the propaganda. And there was no concert to be seen or felt. There was no vibe. I wanted to hear the music. And it just became a newsroom and it bummed me out. So I've never been an outspoken person. Although in 2010, my ex at the time made an album called Black Ribbons. That is such an amazing

album. I think all your listeners, if there's rock and roll listeners here would love this album. And it's funny, Steven Spielberg narrate, Spielberg it's all about the last night before the New World Order takes over. And he's DJing from a pirated radio station. And it's the last night before freedom of Speech will be completely taken. And he wanted to contribute to writing part of it. Shooter wrote most of it, my ex. And we did a music video for it. Shooter Jennings, yeah. And some people would know his father is Waylon Jennings. So they're considered the outlaws in the industry. And Shooter very much is that way too.

And he's a country musician and he writes this rock and roll concept album about the new world order and about a lot of conspiracies and things like that. But I directed a music video with him about, it was called Summer of Rage. You could find it online, but that was 2010. And it's all about, and Shooter's singing, you know, you and I, they'll vaccinate, building mass graves. I mean, there's all of this stuff about it. And then one of his main songs on the album is Wake Up. So that was during the Bush administration. So we were anti what was happening then. And then we all went to sleep. You know, a Democrat comes in office and we all take a nap. And I felt that way when Trump was in office last year, the last, you know, whatever, the last run, the last administration, I was like, look, the good thing is, because everyone was so angry, I was like, everybody's awake. Everyone's paying attention right now. But I feel like when Democrats come in, we all take a long nap, especially us liberals do.

And I was never political, so I never had a party. So I guess I would have been considered more of a libertarian, like just leave me alone kind of thing. I'm not involved. But when these last week. You can be my party. I call it the I want to puke party. Wait, the left party is the I want to puke party? We don't have any labels. We're the true no labels party where we don't really have fealty to anyone. We just like good ideas and the government to leave us alone for the most part. Yes. And I

think I found like with all of the conservatives out there in the last three years, it was the only safe place to go and find some semblance of truth for me. I felt more aligned with a lot of the things they were talking about. However, there are some social issues that I would still stick to that were my old school issues, but never condemning someone else for having a different opinion about something. And that's something that I couldn't understand that was happening during the Trump administration. And then it got worse, in my opinion, in the Biden administration. I think people, I really do think that the left is way more just angry. And this is supposed to be the hippies and the,

you know, the people that really do care about equality and inclusivity. And then all of a sudden they are the ones shutting everything down, shutting everyone out, condemning freedom of speech, condemning everything. So yeah, when you mentioned Michael, he was condemning some stuff on his Instagram feed that I noticed, like ivermectin. I thought that was irresponsible. I never took a stand publicly about anything that I was doing until I had... Listen, I still don't. The more I learn about what's happening, the less I feel like I know. And I, and I, and I rely on people like you who do this for a living to really bring it to the people. Um, I don't, I would never be a spokesperson for a drug. I don't think it's, I just don't,

I think it's irresponsible. I agree. This is my, one of my problems with Travis Kelsey is he's out there pushing the Pfizer vaccine. Meanwhile, these 17, 18 year old boys who look up to him have no idea, probably, because the media has blacked it out for the most part, that you take the Pfizer vaccine

or the Moderna vaccine and the boosters, you are severely increasing your risks, in particular for myocarditis, something they tried to hide from us. So I didn't see that on Travis Kelsey's commercial. No, but, you know, you just see $20 million. Right? You know, they own them now. I don't know. I mean, I've heard.

Is that new that he's that that there is it or this was back then? No, he did it within the past year. Oh, story this season. So they're still trying to push that thing, which. And he I mean, look, this season is late enough in the game, so to speak, to use a metaphor he would understand for him to know better. You know, at least to ask your advisor, is there anything controversial about me endorsing the Pfizer vaccine? I've heard a little. It's not to say it hasn't done any good. I'm sure there are people that has helped, especially the elderly, but to be touting it in his role is to tout it to the young teenage and early twenties guys. And that's dangerous. There are risks for them that not everybody shares in. Well, I'm really astounded how, you know, because I listen to so much news that is more on the conservative side now and I don't pay as much attention anymore to the other side. I'm astounded at how none of my friends know the truth with what's going on with the vaccine right now. And nobody knows the side effects, the long term effects, what's happening to people this very moment, how it's how it's manifesting in their bodies now.

I also maybe go down too many really deep rabbit holes with some really intense doctors that are really I'm not even talking about like McCullough or I'm talking about some other like wow stuff that it's like all this kind of dark microscopy stuff. That's the stuff they're finding just not even in the vaccine, just in the environment right now. It's like we're being bombarded. And I feel like there's a war going on and no one sees it and no one knows it. I feel like there's a hijacking that we're in the middle of. I don't know how to... I guess this is one of the things that has led you, as I understand it, to love RFKJ. Yes, I love him.

And it makes me sad to watch so many big, big news stations and big, um, some of the things that I have watched and like, even was I watching, I was watching, um, Michael Rappaport and, and Patrick, uh, David. And I was watching Bill Maher talking to someone else. I can't remember. These are big, you know, big high profile interviews and stuff. It was the South Park guy. I mean, no, I didn't listen. I didn't hear that one. can't remember these are bit you know big high profile interviews and stuff who's the south park guy i mean no i didn't listen i didn't hear that i do want to hear that one i haven't seen that one

but what what astounds me is they don't mention kennedy when they talk about um biden versus trump no one even brings up kennedy's name which is so strange to me because forget about him as president right now at the moment, because I do feel like, you know, the rock star vote right now, if you're going to go off to the other, you know, if you're a liberal and you're going to bend, you're going to still, I don't know if you're even going to go for Trump. You might just not vote at all. I never voted in my entire life until I voted for Biden. Wow. In six, in 12? I guess, was like, you know, you're just going to have to pick the lesser of two evils. And in my mind, I believe Trump was and I'm a

New Yorker. So I always loved Trump, you know, under the radar, always loved him. I love how crass he is. I just didn't think he had a voice, the voice to you to unify people if the world was really on fire with this whole race issue and all the stuff that was going on at the time that I didn't really, I wasn't paying close enough attention to understand what was really happening. And it was all super divisive and it was all by design. And I wasn't, and I should have known that because I knew that back in the Bush administration. But like I said, we all took a nap. We were all sleeping. I was definitely sleeping. I don't know what I was focused on.

How are you feeling about the vote now? Well, back to Kennedy, I mean, I know he's running independent, which I think is super cool. I don't think people are aware of him. I feel like he's been completely shut out by the media. The censorship is astounding to me. I cannot believe the censorship that's happening in the world right now. And I don't think that a lot of even my super intellectual liberal friends, all my New Yorker friends, they're so busy working and taking care of what they need to take care of after the last three years of everything falling apart that no one is paying attention to the fact that they don't even know that he exists and people have forgotten how much people even loved the kennedys and their legacy and you know all of the stuff and how they were taken out and why they were taken out and

no one asks questions anymore but with kennedy i feel like he is the voice of what all these um old school liberals would have appreciated because he cares about the environment. He'll sue everybody that is being wronged. He's fair. He's classy. He doesn't badmouth people. He's got a lot going for him that Trump does not. But Trump's got a lot going for him that Trump does not. But Trump's got this.

I mean, look, there's so many sides of me. Adriana would vote for Trump. A hundred percent. Adriana will vote for Trump from the grave. From the grave. She got rid of her too soon. Yeah. But I, you know, I would I would love in a perfect world to see Trump and Kennedy

together. I feel like Kennedy can be a great voice where Trump sometimes loses it. And then Trump is good muscle. But I also think Kennedy's muscle too. Did you see the report? RFKJ is saying that the Trump team reached out to him and offered him the number two spot. Trump denies it and that he rejected it, saying he's not he's not interested did you see why did you see what he said in an interview because he's not anybody oh because of his wife because of his wife yeah that you would divorce him but i wonder like i wonder because this is i'm really this week is the first time i'm being outspoken about anything so this is my big coming out party this is my my big coming out party about, uh, about all of the, all of these issues.

I've been very afraid. Um, so I wonder if she's afraid to even, I mean, how do you appreciate everything that Kennedy stands for and knowing that, you know, Trump's anti-globalism, all of that stuff, like the stuff that you can't talk about on TV, the words you can't say, like the deep state. I mean, how do you actually tackle any of these social issues without trying to cut the head off the snake? I feel like, you know, what's interesting is they say there's a saying, and I think it's often true more, more often than it's not show me who you love and I'll show you who you are. And that it applies to politics too. So the odds of Cheryl Hines having these vehemently opposed politics to what RFKJ, it's very slim. I think she probably agrees with him on a lot, but she can't say it. That's

my guess. It's just an opinion. She can't say it because you understand this. She wants to work in Hollywood. She's on Larry David's show. He's a leftist. You have to be very careful threading that needle. But even like an old Jewish guy like Larry David, they're filled with piss and vinegar and they know the difference between right and wrong. And a lot of this stuff is just so wrong. But I guess a lot of people aren't digging deep enough to research what's really happening half the time and why it's happening. It's funny. I was on, I did Fox yesterday. These are like, you know, a lot of my friends are like, Trey, what are you even doing? I'm jumping around from like fashion publications. Like this morning we were, we went to Vanity Fair and we were worried that they weren't going to even have us

because a gut felt last night because I made some some crazy comments, maybe. But then I started getting an influx of text messages from friends that are secretly putting out clothing lines under different names. called, oh, Sloppy Tease. And he's an actor. And I mean, he's got a red, make men great again, make a man a man again, all kinds of things he goes portray. I mean, the fact that you're even saying anything and being in Hollywood, the bottom line is I didn't get vaccinated when that happened. And my daughter said, asked me not to use a card because everyone's like, get a card, just, you know, do what you got to do. I had some people being like, you would actually get a card and, and get people sick and ruin people's lives like that. I would have never done it actually. Cause I was petrified because I wasn't sure I wasn't the person with all the fucking answers. Like everybody else was, I was like, wait a minute, can everyone slow down

and let's all research this thing together. Like there's so much risk involved. Why don't we want to know more? And also like my body, my choice. I mean, you want to be a liberal, then you got to fucking follow your own playbook. My body, my choice. Get the fuck away from me. It's like me being pregnant and then being like, but you have to get an abortion. No, I don't want to. That's how violated people felt. So is it that, is it mainly the COVID thing and the overreach that's making you like RFKJ or is it, what else is it? Like, why else wouldn't you vote for Biden? I mean, I have, I mean, I could be here all day with that. I mean, from the war, from Ukraine, Russia. And to me, it's just, I mean, Trump being completely condemned nonstop and no one, this man, Biden's never held accountable for any of the things that have gone down and that everyone has just swept those situations under the rug from, vaccinated and threatening people's livelihoods and taking heroes and by design just to weaken the nation as much as possible. I mean, I really do think that there is a much bigger thing at play here. These aren't really social issues he cares about. My friends would, you know, Dre, I thought you were cool. You were all about, you know, gay rights and abortion rights. And I was like, and I still am. But this is an aberration. This is not gay rights. This

man doesn't wake up in the morning and think, what can I do for the trans community? He's thinking, how can I destroy this fucking country further for the unelected officials behind me to be able to come in and offer a solution once they're completely at war with each other. I just don't believe it anymore. I don't believe any of it. I don't think they don't care about abortion. They don't care about women's rights. If they cared about women's rights so much, then okay, let's talk about sports then. I mean, it's just also right. They turned every issue that we fought for upside down. My daughter came to me and she was just like, so mom, seven month abortion. They're handing hangers out at her school at the entrance to her school. I go, babe, what's this? And she handed to me and it's got a pamphlet on it. And it's like all these gay boys handing out these pamphlets about motherhood is slavery and forced enslavement and all this stuff. And I'm just like, what is going on? My great-grandmother was the only abortionist in 1950s Harlem.

She was a midwife. She didn't want to give abortions, but so many kids were killing themselves. 15-year-old girls. My mom wrote about it. My mom's a playwright. She wrote a whole series about it. And we sold it to HBO a while back, but they were going to make it until they got greenlit on Boardwalk Empire. They gave it back to us, but I think it was mostly because it was just so controversial back then because the administrations were different and these were the unspoken things. But you know that if I tried to make that show today, they would go crazy over it because everything is catering just to one side. There's no equality. I mean, all of this equality, but there is none because it's, it's catering to, you know, a banking system at

this point. Well, and there's censorship, as you know, I mean, I'm sure YouTube right at this second is slapping a warning label on our discussion about the COVID vaccine. No, I don't care. It's trust me. We've had a million discussions like this, but we have to have their little warning label because they want people to refer to the CDC for truth and actual facts on, right. It's, but that, I want to get this in because we can keep going after the Sirius XM show ends, but I want the Sirius XM show audience to hear about ultra free because it sounds like a cool idea. Like you're, you're actually trying to do something about your views and get it sort of your messaging out there through apparel. And that's perfect because you're beautiful and people would love to watch you model anything, T-shirts or what have you.

So what are you doing? Well, we start, I mean, listen, when the mandates happened, I had a pivot and I had to raise money to start another company. So we did that through OnlyFans, believe it or not. And then my son is really into street, you know, streetwear, all the hype beast stuff. So my boyfriend and I, Robbie Stabler, he's a drummer from All Them Witches, Sirius XM is a music place. He's a creative director of his band and he does all the merch and he does all the videos. And we wanted to create a website and merch for the revolution this is what was in our mind we're we want to we want to wake the side up that's not awake yet um and we want to do it with fun art and and merch and we you know our whole thing is like huge labels it's going to be a very um it's very art based, you know, we have crazy videos up there. We might add a podcast to it. I'm so scared, but I'm, I'm, I'm considering it one more time. But after my last podcast, we were continuously censored also on, um, on YouTube. So I don't want to, I might not do

YouTube. I think maybe, yeah, you can do rumble. Yeah. I think rumble would be a better home for us. But the ultra free thing is is about, you know, if you're not going to say, you know, if if you don't stand up for something, what will you fall for? That's kind of the thing. And it's got a lot of humor in it, too. We're making we're not making fun of anybody. We're just making fun of the situation to a degree. But we want to get back to not being so caged in everybody's so caged in i think everyone's tired of it i think everybody's i think we're we're almost the same age and remember when we grew up you could say what you wanted you could offend people like we're talking about this with the super bowl ads the other night they

used to offend you and it was kind of fun it It was fun and funny. Now it's like everybody's on eggshells. Nobody wants to offend anybody. It's like, why can't we? We're Americans. This is why we're the envy of the free world. Because you can come here, you can say what you really think without being punished for it. A hundred percent. And that's, you know, we stand for freedom of speech, no censorship. We're shadow banned on all the social media platforms. What, just for mentioning, just for posting one Tucker Carlson thing, one Kennedy thing, and for using the word freedom and truth over and over again, I'm completely shadow banned. And I haven't done, I don't do anything on that, on that platform, but they got me. It's can people find it? If they want to go support you at Ultra Free, where should they go?

UltraFree.co is our website. UltraFree.co. It's new. There's going to be a lot of other things coming. They're all going to be sort of limited edition drops because we're making everything at home. But we're also going to be doing factory runs of other types of things. But right now, all the homemade stuff is up. And we joke around that it's for protection.

We have a lot of symbols and things on us and huge logos so that you know that you're a part of the ultra-free brigade. It looks good for the listening audience. She's got a very cool black sweatshirt on and it says ultra-free in big block letters on the arm. I love it. And I love this new version of you, Drea.

Speak out, say it loud. It's like, what do you have to lose? I never wanted to be an actor who's doing it, but I feel like I don't have a choice anymore. There's so many on the other side. I mean, that's why conservatives celebrate when somebody who's even not conservative speaks up out of the Hollywood industry to say, you know what? I get you because we recognize it as an extreme act of courage. That's what you've done. That's what you'll continue to do. Please come back. You're the boss of that. We'll do the next one in person. Okay. Thank you. Lots of love. Take care. Yeah, you too. Oh, she's so fun, right? Well, we'll do it longer the next time. And tomorrow, Michael Knowles of

The Daily Wire will be here. So that will be fun as well. We'll do the latest on Fannie Willis, something huge for Trump and the 2024 election. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.