The Megyn Kelly Show - Meghan and Harry's Neediness and Disloyalty, and New Free Speech Case, with Tom Bower and Lorie Smith | Ep. 407

Episode Date: October 7, 2022

Megyn Kelly is joined by Tom Bower, author of the new book "Revenge," to talk about how Harry and Meghan met, their toxic relationships with the media, how each were needy and found a way to meet their needs in each other, similarities between Meghan and Diana, the relationship between Kate Middleton and Meghan Markle, Meghan Markle's disdain for those who are nice to her, the Queen's relationship with Harry and Meghan, Harry's changed personality, the couple's disloyalty, why Harry and Meghan now are panicking over their Netflix documentary, the real story about the explosive Oprah skin color comment, and more. Then, Lorie Smith, a website designer whose case will be appearing before the Supreme Court in the latest LGBT and free speech and exercise and religious liberty case, along with her lawyer Kristen Waggoner of ADL Legal, to talk about what the Colorado law says about what Smith must put on her website, the key factor of "compelled" speech, what the Biden is doing now, and more.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and happy Friday. Later in the show, we're going to be joined by a graphic artist and website designer who is taking her free speech case all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court this fall in one of the biggest cases this term. She says she has a religious objection to designing websites for LGBTQ couples who are getting married because it doesn't align with her Christian faith. Remember the case that went up with the baker who didn't want to bake the Christian, he was a Christian baker, didn't want to bake the wedding cakes for LGBTQ weddings a couple years ago? This is kind of the next iteration of that.

And this case could have huge implications on when the government or colleges taking government money can force you to say or do things that don't align with your own beliefs. It's happening more and more in America today. And this woman decided to do something about it. The high court is taking the case. The lower court ruled against her. So she will give us an interview along with her lawyer from the group that is also representing that baker whose dispute goes on. I'm looking forward to that. That's second hour. But first, as I mentioned, it's Friday and we're going to dive into the ongoing saga of Meghan and Harry. Meghan Markle's latest episode of her archetypes podcast had hashtag Meghan Markle is

a racist trending on Twitter. We'll get into why and more with someone I have been dying to interview. Tom Bauer is the investigative journalist and biographer in Great Britain. I mean, this is the guy. You get scared if he wants to profile you because you know he's going to keep receipts. It's going to be tough to dispute. And the man does his homework. His latest international bestseller is called Revenge, Meghan, Harry and the War Between the Windsors. And it is available this week in the United States. Tom, thank you so much for being here.

Well, thank you very much for having me. Welcome to the program. So I'm fascinated by this whole thing. And my biggest takeaway in reading the book is these two are as thin skinned as they come when it comes to their public image, whether they matter, what people write about them, and whether they are being adequately protected by those around them in the maintenance of these images they believe they have. What do you think? Well, you're absolutely right. I mean, they are so hypersensitive and very, very aggressive to those who criticize them and they love those who praise them uh is all part of the business for

megan that has been what she's believed in from a very early age early age she is always wanted celebrity but doesn't want to control the narrative uh and anyone who gets in the way with her is ghosted and attacked and harry has become hypersensitive and hates the media and yet seeks approval from the media by going on Netflix or Spotify or Apple TV. So the contradictions, the hypocrisy is enormous. I was shocked at just how thin-skinned Harry is. You know, Meg and I almost understood.

She's a Hollywood B-list to be charitable actress. She was a social climber. Her whole thing is about image. So I can see why she's so easy to upset when it comes to bad press. But Harry is, you know, he's the grandson of the king. He's a prince. I was surprised at how much, according to your reporting, he follows the media and follows social media and cares about every word that's written. And your reporting and other reporting has now suggested he believes he's got a limited time to be on the world stage because Prince George is aging by the moment and will overtake him as the next best thing in the British tabloids and so on. I was shocked to hear that.

I mean, is that who he is? Well, I think Harry is a very complicated person because he's not very intelligent and undoubtedly remains damaged by the early death of his mother, Diana. And he very foolishly blames the media for having, in his words, murdered her, which is complete nonsense.

But I think he loved the adulation. He loved it when he was being praised, especially when he was a soldier. But then he became criticised, firstly because he became drunk in public. Then he wore a Nazi uniform at a party. Then he was wearing absolutely nothing in the nude at the party in Las Vegas. And he couldn't cope with the criticism because, in his view, he is a target. And it didn't help that his telephones were hacked by News International, Rupert Murdoch's group here in London.

And so he became hypersensitive and blamed the media for the crashes of his relationships, never thinking that they could have something to do with himself. So he's a very complicated, depressed, unintelligent man who is seeking a role and has got really nobody on whom he could rely, which is in the end where Meghan stepped in. A needy man met a woman who could help him with his needs. I had always looked at it more as, oh, she landed this prince. That's what she was out for. We know

that she was hunting for someone of wealth, of notoriety in Great Britain, and she landed the biggest you could land. But it worked the other way, too. feeling irrelevant she comes along she's a you know somewhat well known person or at least that was his impression um and she's mixed race she could elevate his star as well it worked both ways well you're absolutely right i mean what i discovered was of course that she was hunting for a man in eng England from 2013 onwards when her marriage had crashed and she couldn't find anyone in Canada at the time. And she wanted she wanted wealth and she wanted fame. And she targeted, there's no doubt she targeted Harry and found someone who was a childhood friend of his, who could introduce them. And then on the days before they met at their blind meeting in a club in London, she researched Harry very carefully and knew exactly what buttons to press,

that he would like Africa, was interested in animals, was interested in philanthropy. She's very tactile. She's very seductive. And she landed him on the first night, even on his own admission. He says, I realized on the first date, she was the one. And of course, that's because she's also a great, in that sense, an actress. She knew exactly how to play. And the point about Meghan is, it's easy to dislike her, but the point about her is that in her own terms, she is an astonishing success. She came from nothing, not a very successful actress.

She had no money. She had no future after the Suits series in Canada. And suddenly she's an international star with quite a lot of money. And of course, in her terms, that's a great success. Now, of course, she lied about never having Googled Harry when she gave an interview early on. We know from her friends, that's not true, that she was very focused on the royals and had visited Buckingham Palace and had watched Harry at length after his mother died.

So we know that's not true. And she turns out to be a serial fabulist, as your book outlines brilliantly. I mean, the lies from this woman come regularly and they're bold, they're big and they're bold. But I want to go back to something you said about Diana, because I was saying to my husband, I said, Tom is, he spares no one. He's very honest about what he has found and what's real and what's not, whether it's positive or negative. And the thing about Diana actually surprised me, Tom. From over here, the narrative has always been, oh, poor Diana, the media, they basically killed her. The paparazzi chased her into this tunnel in France, and that's what led to her death. And you just touched on it. There's much, much more to that story, too. And Diana very much had a role in manipulating the press and inviting the press to hound her in a way few have really spent time on in the press. Can you spend some time on that here? Yes. I mean, I think we've got to go back very briefly to the beginning that Dinah herself was the product of a very broken family. Her

mother literally dumped the children, ran off with somebody else. And her father wasn't interested in his children, and nor was her stepmother really so she was a very broken woman when she met uh prince charles and that was as we all know a terribly unhappy marriage but she then became glamorous she she suddenly discovered her fame because she was very beautiful and very charming and she loved the attention and she obviously spotted uh particular journalists who not only attracted her but would do what she wanted and that was of course andrew morton in the writing of that amazing book and then uh richard k of the mail uh daily mail and also the famous bbc interview and she she fluttered

her eyelids but most important of all in that last um meeting with Jodie Fayet in the south of France, she would telephone or text the photographers and the journalists to tell them where she would be and when she could be spotted. So she encouraged the paparazzi. And don't let's forget, it wasn't the paparazzi that killed her in the tunnel. It was a drunken driver hired by, employed by Mohamed Fayet. And that was the cause of her death. And she wasn't wearing a safety belt. paparazzi that killed her in the tunnel. It was a drunken driver hired by, employed by Mohammed Fayyad. And that was the cause of the death. And she wasn't wearing a safety belt. So, but Harry doesn't want to know any of that truth. That's the trouble with Harry. He just likes, because in a simple way, the paparazzi murdered my mother. Well, it wasn't as simple as that at all. And

she was a person who not only manipulated, but also went through quite a lot of men after Charles. I mean, she was a beautiful woman. There were many men who chased her and she reciprocated. She was having a good time too. Of course, you spend some time in the book on how there's been

so much speculation about whether Charles is indeed the biological father of Harry and how some were trying to get a hair sample of some of her lovers to see whether, well, to get a hair sample from Harry to see whether it matched up with the biology of another lover, something that Harry's had to live with too, wondering and the speculation. So there are similarities between Diana and Meghan Markle in that way, in that they've suffered some negative,

they both suffered some negative coverage, but they both have manipulated the press. I mean, Meghan is one of the first to manipulate the press. She claims she wants privacy, but she's working press opportunities every day. I mean, she loved to see herself on the cover of Vanity Fair. There's no reason in the world they would have ever put her on that cover had it not been for the fact that she was dating Harry. But she pretended like she had accomplished something wonderful as a philanthropist that would land her on the cover. So Harry himself has been guilty of this, trying to compare her to Diana, compare her to Diana. The same thing's going to happen to her if the press keeps writing negative things.

And you point out that these two misunderstand Diana entirely, most especially what made the press interested in and what made many love her. Well, yeah, I think that's the problem. But they play the Diana card, just as I would say that, unfortunately, in some way, Megan plays the race card. It's always the victim. And the victim always gets unquestioned sympathy without question.

That's the way it plays at the moment in society. And Harry likes to portray Meghan as Diana, but they've got actually nothing in common at all. Because Diana, for all her criticism of Charles, was always absolutely loyal to the Queen and completely loyal to the monarchy. And although obviously she thought about herself in terms of her life, she would never put herself above the monarchy, which of course was the downfall of Meghan in Britain, that she wanted to be number one. She didn't want to be part of a team. And they play the Diana card to suggest that when she is criticized, her fate will be the same as Diana's.

But I think most people have seen through that now. They were shocked at the beginning and sympathetic. But I think to that extent, the sympathy is running thin now. time on how Meghan Markle didn't quite understand, or if she understood, wouldn't accept, that there is very much a hierarchy inside of the royal family, and Harry's had to abide by it, and she needed to abide by it, but it was one of the things that most frustrated her. Well, I think frustrated is the right word, but on the other hand, also annoyed her. The point is that Meghan, being an intelligent woman and educated, and by then already 34, she knew exactly when she joined Harry and moved into Kensington Palace that there was a hierarchy and that he was number

six in line to the throne. I think she was disappointed, to say the least, that he wasn't very rich, because she couldn't understand how a prince in Britain could not have a huge amount of money. And I think she thought she would be using her platform, as she put it, to campaign for her causes. But she was told long before they married that that was out of the question. She had to be uncontroversial. She had to be neutral. But that didn't suit her. But that didn't matter to question. She had to be uncontroversial. She had to be neutral. But that didn't suit her. But that didn't matter to her.

She wanted the label. She wanted the position. She wanted the authority and the fame. And I always believe, and that's how I described it in my book, that she kept all the relationships in Hollywood going. She had them all to her wedding because she wanted to celebrate with them and do them the favor of coming to windsor castle that spectacular event she always intended to go back she never intended to uh disappear as a uh as a dumb duchess she was always going to be the diva in hollywood

and then she banished it that's that's it and she didn't care about the damage caused i think that's the other huge difference. Diana was very sensitive about causing damage, although, of course, she caused a lot of damage to Charles. But Meghan Markle has never shown any compunction, any sorrow for those she crushes. And it's all part of the cause for her. No, she's definitely not sorry. And I do want to talk about the cultivation of celebrity because it's remarkable what you report in the book. But one of the things that jumped out at me

was she didn't want to have to walk behind Kate Middleton, the future queen. She felt that they should be treated as equals. And yet she joined an organization in which they're not equals. Well, I think the big shock came to her in a way when she moved into Kensington Palace. And Harry has got a two, three small cottage in that complex. And literally on the other side of the corridor Kate and William have a 22 room apartment with two kitchens and so that came as a bit of a shock to Megan but I think that was a shock she could overcome because she didn't intend to stay and that was the other part of the problem so to speak but of course the two women didn't get off and are not surprised. And I don't blame Meghan entirely for that, because Meghan was a self-made woman.

She'd come from a tough background. Every penny she had, she earned. And and she had got to the top using her wiles and her clever way of working people and things. Whereas Kate just waited patiently for William finally to propose and marry her. Now, Kate is a remarkable woman. She is going to be and is now a terrific ambassador for the monarchy and for Britain in a way that Meghan could never be a representative of anybody because there's only one person she can represent. But they weren't going to get on, especially at the time that Meghan arrived, when Kate already had two children,

was pregnant with a third. She had suffered very bad morning sickness. So she didn't have the time, which Meghan felt that she was entitled to, to look after Meghan. And Meghan thought that she was entitled to be treated like royalty, plus. And that wasn't going to work after Meghan. And Meghan thought that she was entitled to be treated like royalty, plus. And that wasn't going to work.

Right. She wanted Kate to cater to her, take care of her. Harry complained to William's staff that it wasn't happening. She didn't like walking behind Kate and the fact that Harry had to walk behind William, the future king. And then we saw in the Oprah interview, she claimed that the truth of the relationship with Kate Middleton is that Kate abused her, that Megan never made Kate cry.

And that what was so infuriating about watching the press coverage for Megan was that she was, fact the victim and the media was reporting that she was the aggressor and that Kate was so out of line with Megan. She brought Megan flowers to apologize to her. And that shows that Kate was in the wrong. And she had to sit back and and be powerless, feel powerless with the media reports that she was the one antagonizing Kate. She went, as she did in every chapter of your book. I mean, like she continues to go to everybody at the palace saying, get that lie out of the press, get that lie, get that. They've said something else negative about me. Hello. It's called being a public figure. But she was very frustrated that the palace wouldn't go out there and start bashing Kate in the press by saying, oh, no, no, no. Kate's the bully. So what really happened? Who

wronged whom in that relationship? Well, I think we've got to start with the opera interview. I mean, I think that we've all counted here in Britain about 17, what we might call inaccuracies or lies that Meghan told opera and opera didn't challenge Meghan on any of them. And I think on the Kate front, I have absolutely no doubt at all that it was Kate who cried. Because Megan, as I show in the book, is a bully. And Kate's unhappiness really stemmed from the fact that Megan's staff, which she shared with Kate, were constantly complaining that Megan was treating them appallingly, bullying them, cutting them dead, isolating them, humiliating them. It was terrible. And if there's any doubt about Meghan's ability to,

her treatment of people, you've got to look and read the chapter of her photo filming in Montreal for the Reitman's ad, a department store in Canada, where she bullied the crew mercilessly. And so I think there's no doubt in my mind, and I don't think anyone else does, that it was Meghan who was cutting up Kate,

who's a very polite, humble person. She wouldn't treat anyone badly. And Meghan has a history of treating people badly. So I think we can count on that. And the trouble is that the turnover of staff in Kensington Palace, as they all left because of Meghan, seems to be replicated in Montecito. You constantly read of Meghan's staff in California resigning or retiring or leaving and being replaced or not being replaced And she doesn't seem to realize that the problem is not your PR team. The problem is your behavior.

The problem starts with you because the PR was absolutely wonderful. The book takes us back and reminds us about how the press there was when she married Harry, the press was wonderful for her. The British people loved Harry and they were delighted to see him so happy and in love. And she was playing the role of demure, supportive partner to a T. I mean, very well. It wasn't until she started to make her positions clear and continuously play the victim from the palace that people started to get a feel of who she really was. And then the public opinion turned and so did the press.

Well, I think you're right. And you've given me two, I think two things which are important. First of all, remember, she leaked this extraordinary story to People magazine about how she was being mistreated by her father and by the palace. And that was absolutely something which was absolutely extraordinary. But I talked for two days with Megan's father, Thomas in Mexico. And at one moment he turned to me and said,

do you know, uh, it's all my fault. I spoiled her rotten as a child, everything Megan wanted. I gave her, I gave her everything Everything Meghan wanted, I gave her. I gave her everything, and I, in that way,

made her feel that she was not only the queen, but the empress, and therefore, in a way, that is why she behaves in the way she does towards other people. And I think that's it, and obviously she's treated her father appallingly, she's treated her father appallingly she's treated boyfriends appallingly husband pretty badly uh there's no loyalty except if she thinks there's something she can get from somebody uh and that's a rather sad tray i mean it's it's a survival of

the fittest in hollywood but even even megastars treat people well on the way up because they might need them on the way down. An old cliche. But it's rather sad. But it is the reality of Megan's life. That comment about, you know, whatever she wanted she could have reminds me of your other reporting. And I think Dan Wooten reported this as well on Tiara Gate. And Harry's behavior in stepping into that same role, You know, she's going to have what she wants. And his behavior and hers around the tiara she was going to wear to the royal wedding

was dreadful with respect to, in particular, the queen's dresser. I think her name is Angela Kelly. Yes. But that shows you not only Meghan's demands, but also that she could manipulate Harry to fear that if she didn't get what she wanted, in this case the tiara, and being able to use it for a hairdressing appointment before the wedding, that Meghan will be unhappy. Harry is always terrified that Meghan will leave him. He was terrified during their courtship. He was terrified even before the wedding. I think he's probably scared now as well that she might just dump him. She's very good at making men feel they're dispensable.

After all, she has a good track record of treating men like that. And so, whereas I, for example, think that they did an extraordinary job in trying to help her understand Britain, understand her new role, she is contemptible of people who are nice to her. She sees niceness, in my view, as weakness. She doesn't fear people who are kind to her. And she only shows those she fears some respect. That's the survival gene. That's the battling gene of this woman. She wanted this tiara, and her hairdresser came over from the United States,

and they wanted the tiara for a dress rehearsal. Not even a dress rehearsal that just for the stylist to do Meghan's hair in practice. And he wanted to work with the actual tiara. And they didn't arrange it with Angela Kelly, who dressed the queen and oversaw the use of the crown jewels on the monarch or on a family member, and they hadn't arranged it. And so the this woman Kelly said to Meghan, that's not how this works. It's the crown jewels. You can't just call up and demand

that I run them right over to you. Didn't go over well. And Harry behaved worse than anyone. And interestingly, it was the queen who called him up and told him to start behaving properly. I think there was a very interesting quote in my book where the most important, oldest lady-in-waiting, a woman called Susan Hussey,

long before the wedding, told a group of actors at a lunch for a theatre, this will all end in tears. The idea that the Queen was thrilled with Meghan is, of course, nonsense. She had her own fears, as did William, who told Harry, aren't you rushing it too much? As did Charles Spencer, Diana's brother, who feared that Harry was going too fast. And if I can push forward

to Prince Philip's funeral, I got this astonishing quote from the Queen as her hair was being prepared to appear at her husband's funeral in Windsor, where she suddenly said, thank goodness Meghan isn't coming. They were all sick of her, but they just put on a good show. And Harry's friends, too. You report on their first meeting with her, which was absolutely dreadful, even though they were excited to meet her. Well, this is the shoot at Sandringham. Sandringham is one of the royal family's palaces, a huge house in Norfolk where there's a very good partridge shoot. And he invited, I think, eight friends with their girlfriends and wives and it's you know traditional english british weekend where you arrive on friday have dinner

then you go shooting on the saturday big dinner and then sunday romp around and leave after lunch and uh the friends after they were going on their way home, were all texting each other, OMG, oh my God, because Meghan had spent the weekend telling each of them off when they'd said jokes which she thought were unacceptable. She behaved like a woke. She was a prissy, prissy woman who was just reprimanding them, telling them off all the time when they weren't being politically correct. And they just couldn't understand how Harry, who really is one of the lads, you know, he's one of these Englishmen who loves joking and boistering around and telling

dirty jokes and the rest of the whole thing, had this woman who was so difficult and so censorious, kept on telling his friends they weren't behaving properly. And that, of course, happened again when they afterwards go to the wedding of his best friend in Jamaica, where she behaved very badly. And the mothers of his friends, who were obviously there for the wedding, were quite shocked by the way that Meghan behaved, how she constantly complained or refused to engage with them. She didn't make any effort. That's one of the slightest things one could say about her.

It's not hard to believe because she continues to lecture the world on their language and their behavior and how she wants them to do better because she's taken yet another offense at how someone is. And instead of Harry challenging her in any way, he's joined her. I mean, he seems now as woke and insufferable as she is. Absolutely. And what's so terrible about it is that, of course, as you said, he was so much loved because he was a happy-go-lucky. He played with children everywhere. There was a very famous occasion in Jamaica where he was Urson Bolt, the famous sprinter, where they joshed around together. And he's changed. When he came for the funeral of the Queen last month,

he looked very, very sad, not only because of the Queen's death, but he looked sad about being relegated to the sidelines. Many people thought he suddenly looked as if he realised what he had lost. But he clings to Meghan. That's the interesting point that now is raised by many people, whether he's clinging too much

and whether she'll get tired of this limpet hanging on to her and she'll move on. I don't know the answer to that at all. But there's no doubt that his constant confessions of mental disturbance or chaos in his life, thinking that somehow it's manly. I think it worked at the beginning when he first made his Apple broadcast about his mental health.

There were many men, I think, who sympathized, were grateful that their own plight was brought out to the public attention. But by now, he seems to be fixed on one track, his mental health, or say two tracks, his mental health and his hatred for his own family. And I think that is really where the dividing lines come, that you might have your gripes about your family in private, but to spill it out into public the way that Harry has done is terribly disloyal. It's appalling behavior. And that is annoying people in Britain. Especially when you know, I mean, the one goal of the Queen was to protect the monarchy and protect the continuation of it.

And the way of doing that is to say very little, remain mysterious, don't take political positions, don't be irritating. And he's blown all that up. He and she have done their level best to change all of that. um about whether we should believe megan's mental health claims and you know that she was suicidal in the palace and went to an hr manager about it because that's where you go when you're living in the palace you go to the hr person uh because harry's whole thing was mental health for seven years mental health this mental health that and now this couple wants us to believe that she was in the palace suicidal and once the hr person said, I can't help you, they just stopped and did nothing. One of the many good questions

that he raises. Stand by because we're going to talk to Tom about what's coming next because now there are reports that these two after the Queen's funeral are getting very scared about what's in this Netflix documentary that they've been filming

for the better part of a year. We'll pick it up right there after this quick, quick break. So, Tom, there are a couple of things in the works with these two. She's got her podcast, which is basically just a victimhood episode every week. It's the it's about the toxic stereotyping of women. One week it was divas, the other she focused on race. Now it's about Asians. Every week it's another very rich, successful person who should be thanking America for the opportunities that she's received. And instead, Meghan manages to bring out the one incident in the woman's past that reflects badly on the country and extrapolates that into a larger

narrative about how tough it is to be this woman, what a victim she is, how bad America is. I mean, it's insufferable. But she's also, in addition to her podcast, working on a Netflix documentary along with Harry. And it is believed, yes, it's about their life, but also about the royals. And the reports this week are that they're wobbling. Page Six or york post is reporting that they're now going back to netflix saying we've got to take huge chunks of it out um in the wake of the queen's death it doesn't feel appropriate we don't maybe not want to go as hard on the family as we did and that netflix and the film's producers are saying no you know you said this stuff this is the film this is

why you're getting 100100 million, too bad. So what do we think is likely to happen here? Well, I think that what happened is they made a pact with the devil when they first got to the United States from Canada in 2020. They needed money. They wanted fame. They wanted to be able to tell their story in their terms. And I think what's changed is that in their trips to Britain, first earlier this year with the Queen and then certainly during the funeral, they suddenly realised that they're going to lose not just their own reputations,

but I think they've been given an ultimatum. First of all, I don't think their children will get titles if they go ahead and slander the royal family. But they also have got to consider that their own titles, the Duke and Duchess of Tussies, could be taken away by Charles if they misbehave. And I think that's something that Meghan and Harry are very worried about because, after all, although she pours dirt on the royal family the whole time, whenever she introduces herself, she says, I am Meghan, Duchess of Sussex.

Now, with Netflix, that is a great problem because Netflix, of course, also reflects what's in Harry's autobiography, which has been ghosted for him. I don't know if you've actually read it, but I'm sure that it contains a lot of very damaging material about Charles, William, Kate, and, of course, against Camilla, Charles's wife. And so the whole package is now really a time bomb

for the royal family and filled with poison. And I think one of Charles's, King Charles's, greatest challenges is to somehow defuse that time bomb. And I think he's made various threats to Meghan and Harry and warned them that if they go ahead, they're going to find themselves ostracized in a way which they can't believe. And so they're worried. And yet they want their $100 million from Netflix

and their reported $50 million from Spotify, and I don't know what he's gotten as the advance for his book, but I heard you with Dan Wooden saying he's going to go forward with that biography and his memoir, whatever autobiography. And, um, and, and that's full steam ahead. Yes, I think so. I mean, I think the reports that they're wobbling might be true, but I think they might want to temper it a bit.

But in the end, I think they left Britain after the Queen's funeral feeling as angry as ever, if not more, because they had been excluded from various events, especially a reception for all the 100 heads of state who came to the funeral. He had not been allowed to wear his uniform when he wanted. There was still a lot of tension, no reconciliation between them and Kate and William. So they went back to Montecito. when the photograph of Harry, of William and Charles

was shown with Camilla and Kate, a very nice photograph taken on the day of the Queen's funeral. Within hours, the Sussexes had released a photograph of themselves, Meghan in a red dress. And clearly this was the resumption of hostilities, but from Montecito towards the royal family in the Windsors. And- Because they were calling Charles and William and their wives the Fab Four, which is what they had called Meghan and Harry and Kate and Will before their sort of breakup. And now that label's being

used to describe the king and the future king. So yeah, that was their response. It's sort of breakup. And now that label's being used to describe the king and the future king. So yeah, that was their response, as sort of a middle finger. Absolutely. And it was a good photograph. But it was a photograph saying, we're a power couple.

It was a photograph saying, we can exist and flourish without you lot. But Megan's a fighter. She spent her whole life fighting, and she's fighting again now. And Harry is, I suppose, brainwashed, would be the politest way of saying it, into going along with it.

He thinks that he has been badly treated. It's easy. He's the victim. It is the most astonishing story. But there's no doubt they are a great threat to the royal family. I mean, you know, Megan's allegation in Opera's interview that she was the victim of racism rebounded across the whole world. And one of the results of that, I think, totally untrue statement was that the Caribbean countries, which are part of the British Commonwealth, where the monarch, the queen, now the king, is the head of state, wanted to distance themselves and become republic.

That was, I think, very much part fuelled by Meghan's damnation, which people believed. And I think it's very unfair that the royal family is racist. I think the opposite. I think that the king has spent an enormous amount of time developing extraordinary relationships with all the diverse communities in Britain. And I must tell you that here in Britain, we think it's a bit rich for Meghan in California,

a state which has got its own racial problems, to blame the British or racism. You know, we're on the whole a pretty tolerant society. Well, it's amazing. There was a chapter here where we had Prince Harry lecturing the world on white privilege. It was like, maybe you should take a seat on white privilege. That moment with Oprah, where she accused the royals, she refused to name the person of being a bunch of racists. She wouldn't even say because Oprah did not follow up in the moment by saying, can you at least rule out the queen or Prince Philip, who is dying at this moment in hospital? Oprah didn't follow up and they didn't rule him out until the next day when, you know, the clamor had reached fever pitch. So we never got a name.

But you have extraordinary reporting in your book on what this was likely based on and how it doesn't match up to what Meghan said. Here's the clip, SOT6, from the Oprah interview. In those months when I was pregnant, all around this same time, so we have in tandem the conversation of he won't be given security, he's not going to be given a title, and also concerns and conversations about how dark his skin might be when he's born. What? And who is having that conversation with you? What?

So, um... There is a conversation. Hold up, hold up. There are several conversations about it. There's a conversation with you... With Harry. About how dark your baby is going to be? Potentially, and what that would mean or look like.

Ooh. And you're not going to tell me who had the conversation? I think that would be very damaging to them. So tell us what you actually, what your reporting shows happened. Well, of course, that was brilliant of you to bring that clip up because the body language just showed her discomfort as she dug deeper into her own hole. I mean, the truth is this, that there are two truths. The first truth is that the conversation I'm told, and I believe,

was very early on in their relationship when Harry is bowled over by Meghan, is desperately in love, and already is talking about marriage. But long before their engagement is even announced, let alone they're married and she's pregnant. And he's sitting in Clarence's house with then Prince Charles and Camilla.

And Camilla just laughingly says, well any child you'll have will probably have brown skin and ginger hair. And they all laugh, including Harry. I mean, it's not because of racism. It's just one of those things everybody imagines. When somebody is pregnant close to you, you wonder

what the child will look like. But it was not said as anything other than... Like a concern. That's what Meghan's going to do. A concern about how dark the baby would be. No, no, he wasn't concerned about that. And no one cared about the colour of the skin.

It was just a joke. It was just a passing comment, which Harry probably told Meghan much later. But Meghan, you see, gets her story wrong deliberately because she suggests it's when she's already pregnant with Archie and Oprah fails to pick her up when Harry then turns up on the set and contradicts Meghan's whole timeline.

And that's very, very important. And secondly, I don't believe, and no one has believed, that there was any conversations about the colour of Archer's skin or taking away privileges because of his colour, potential colour. In any case, he's completely white. But, I mean, it just didn't occur. But she used Harry's reporting of this one comment in the kitchen, you know, which was totally harmless in my view,

but conjured it up, built it up into something horrendous. And that was part of her rehearsed speech to opera. I mean, nothing that came out of Meghan's mouth in that interview had not been rehearsed, all very carefully planned. And that was one of the headlines that she wanted. She sought to damage Camilla and to his disgrace, disloyalty, while telling the truth, Harry, about the timeline, did not say that it wasn't intended as racism.

But there we are. That's how it occurred. So, and by the way, just to back you up on that, Harry comes out and says, I'm not going to share the conversation, but at the time it was awkward. I was shocked. Oprah says, can you tell us what the question was? No, I'm not comfortable, he says. But he says, but it was right at the beginning, right at the beginning, he says. He wasn't going to get security and all

this other stuff. And he said that there was some real obvious signs then before we got married that this was going to be really hard. This is long before she's pregnant. He seems to be talking about the conversation you're relaying where she's trying to amp up the victimization. I'm pregnant. I'm expecting the baby is going to get no rights N-word, which to me is an obvious lie, because if the British press had called her children the N-word, it would have been an international scandal. What I believe probably happened, if anything, is some moron commentator may have said something racist in one of the many comments below one of the many articles, and these two who are so obsessed with their press coverage, may have seen the comment and, like they did here,

blown it up into the larger narrative about how they're being treated by the evil family or the evil press. And I think what you must add as well into this is that, of course, when Archie was born within 24 hours Meghan made a statement that she did not want Archie to have a title and when she was visited

by an official and told that automatically Archie would be called Lord Dumbarton she said no, no no child of mine is going to be called Dumb and refused to accept the title so she had already said that he didn't she didn't want any titles for her children but more importantly she knew that the children while in britain would always get protection and we're protected the whole thing was a lie by her and it doesn't show well on opera that she

didn't challenge these falsehoods. But the idea as well that Meghan put round at that time in the interview, that they take away her passports, take away her keys, take away her liberty. She went to her baby shower in New York. She went to see Williams play a tennis match. She went to Morocco. She went to Elton John in the south of France. She went to someone else in George Clooney in Lake Como. It always was travel and all the rest of it. She was just not telling the truth. Like we've seen so many times. And you mentioned Clooney. The book explains what the heck George Clooney was doing at her wedding, why Amal Clooney showed up at her baby shower, her absolute zero connection

to Oprah. Why was she at the wedding? Tom's got the backstory and all of that. This woman's obsessed with being a star. She ghosted all of her friends. She ghosted her family. And the book reveals it all. Tom Bauer, what a pleasure. Thank you so much and good luck with it. Thank you very much for having me. Yeah, I'm sure it's going to be a big hit over here as well. Okay. We're going to be right back with a website designer whose case is going up to the U S Supreme court in what is likely to be a landmark decision on just what they can force you to say when it may conflict with your religious beliefs or other beliefs for that matter. It's not really a religious case. And remember, folks,

you can find The Megyn Kelly Show live on Sirius XM Triumph Channel 111 every weekday at noon east. Our full video show and clips at youtube.com slash Megyn Kelly. Our audio podcast wherever you get your podcasts for free. Plus, while I've got you, today is the best day to sign up for my American News Minute. If you haven't signed up for it, it's all the week's news in one minute or less, plus really fun links, including the latest on my poor little Strudwick. So you can guess what the ugly brown thing is next to him in today's edition. It's not what you think. Go to megankelly.com, enter your email address, and I will shoot you an email later today. Okay. Would love to talk to you.

The U.S. Supreme Court began its new term this week, and the justices will hear cases on some of America's hottest issues, including race, elections, and free speech. Our guests today are no strangers to free speech litigation. Lori Smith is a graphic artist, a website creator, and the owner of a company called 303 Creative. Lori wanted to expand her work to create wedding websites that celebrated marriage between a man and a woman. But a Colorado law says she must promote all messages regardless of whether they violate her religious beliefs. And so if a lesbian couple comes in and says, we want you to do a website promoting that, you have to do it. Lori decided that that law was unfair and she challenged it. And after a lower

court ruled against her, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against her. She asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear her case. And now they have agreed to. And this case will be one of the biggest cases to follow in this term. Laurie Smith joins us now, along with her attorney, Kristen Wagoner, who is president, CEO and general counsel of ADF Legal. Welcome to the show, Kristen. Good to have you here again. Thank you so much for having us. You bet.

Kristen, first of all, I love that you take these cases on. God bless Alliance Defending Freedom because you take on these cases, you have, what, like 400 lawyers now. And I think if I were a young lawyer burned out at my old law firm, which I was for a time, I would have been glad to join you. I just really respect what you guys would have been glad to join you. I just

really respect what you guys do. And you've been winning. You know, you you're the person who argued that cake case right with the with the baker who I interviewed on NBC. Yes, we have been winning and we're grateful to God for it and grateful to a Supreme Court that is returning to the text of the Constitution. We've had 14 wins since 2011, and hopefully Lori's will be the 15th. We're praying that to be so. You are standing up for constitutional principles. If they happen to align with your religious beliefs, that's what makes you fight, what makes you interested in the fight. But this is not a court that's just deciding things based on religion. They're taking a look at your arguments and saying,

no, she's got a point. Like the Baker case. Didn't that go 7-2 in your favor? Yes, it did. Yeah. So we had liberals and conservatives joining to say, no, we're going to have we're not going to make the Baker bake the cake for the gay couple when it contradicts his religious views, although that one's ongoing. So we'll get back to what's happening with him. Let's start with you, Lori. And thank you so much for being here. So just give us a little bit about your background. You're a graphic designer. What were you doing before you caused all this trouble? Well, I've always been creative. I have been creative since I was young. I had two parents who encouraged my creativity, and they were both entrepreneurs. I spent a good deal of my early childhood

with my mom. She owned a women's boutique here in the Denver Metro area. I'm a Colorado native and we spent a lot of time just as a child in her store, watching her run her business. And as I got older, I would help create artwork and storefront displays and even the artwork on the postcards that we used to hand stamp and mail out. So I've always been creative. I continued with that creativity and attended college and really honed in on my creativity skills. And I've always wanted to own my own business. And I think a lot of that comes from when I worked in my mom's store. And I learned at a very early age that I have to work hard. And I would graduate college with a degree in business marketing. And after many years in the corporate world and nonprofit world, I decided it was time to start my own business. So I launched 303 Creative. And I did that because I wanted to design and create websites and pour my time and my talent into

things that I was passionate about. I love what I do. The best part of my job is that I get to work with people from all walks of life, including those who identify as LGBT. And that's an important piece of this. You're not refusing to help anybody who's in the LGBTQ community. You just don't want to make a wedding website for them because that's where it conflicts with your religious beliefs. Yes, I work with people from all walks of life

and I currently have clients who identify as LGBT. So my case has always been and always will be about the message that I'm being asked to pour my time and my talents into promoting. It's never about the individual. It's always about the message. So to be clear, did anybody ask you to make a lesbian wedding or a gay wedding website for you, or you just saw the Colorado law and realized trouble was coming? It was actually both. I have had requests for same-sex weddings, but I think the biggest issue for me is, as I looked around at the way the state was treating other people of faith, it was obvious that the state is censoring my speech. So I really didn't feel like I had much of a choice other than to stand to protect my right

to speak freely, because this is not only about protecting my speech. It's about protecting everyone's speech, even the LGBT web designer who doesn't want to be forced to, you know, oppose same sex marriage in their work. This is about protecting speech. Yes, for me, but ultimately for every American. And let me, let me just put a little meat on the bones. When we talk about a wedding website, what is that? Like what, you know, back in my day, you'd have like maybe a registry, but there wasn't like, what is it? What is a wedding website? I know they've caught them a long ways even since my own wedding, but wedding websites are a way to tell a story. I'm a storyteller that began back in my mom's boutique many years ago when these brides would come in with their mothers

and tell the story of their relationship. And so a wedding website, yes, it incorporates a wedding registry, but it's artwork for me, each and every client that I take on or project that I take on is unique and one of a kind. I'm not creating template websites or, or plug and play type websites. Clients come to me because they want a story to be told. So in this case, telling a story of marriage between a man and a woman is important and unique. Yeah, they wouldn't want you because, you know, you want somebody who gets it and, you know, feel supportive of it. You wouldn't want somebody who's like, well, I've got some problems with this doing your wedding. So like it's it doesn't work out even if it's forced, especially if it's forced. Now I know what you're talking about, because this reminds me of back

when I was at Fox, my pal Brett Baer, It came out, somebody in the newsroom discovered that Brett and Amy had one of these, and it told the story of their love and fall. And we mocked him mercilessly. It was the sweetest thing. It was super fun. They are very much in love. Okay. So now Lori said they're censoring my speech, Kristen, but they're they're doing two things like this law.

It's censoring her. It's telling her you cannot post certain things on your own website, your business website. And it's also trying to compel speech, which is also unconstitutional, by saying you must say the following things. So can you just frame for us how they're doing those two things? Sure. Well, there are two different components of the law. The first component basically says that if Lori decides that she wants to speak on the issue of marriage, to use unique stories, to share her faith's vision of what marriage is, then she actually has to share the opposite view as well. So if she decides to go in and design custom websites, and again, I think it's important, Megan, to understand these are not plug and play websites.

They are custom, unique websites. Every one of them is different. If she decides to do that, to show the beauty of marriage as her faith teaches her, then she also has to show and do custom websites that shows the other view of marriage in terms of being between same-sex marriage. And so that's one way that the law compels her speech. It says, if you're entering this area, you have to speak messages that violate your convictions. A second component of the law, though, also says, and you can't speak out in terms of what your own beliefs are on your own website, because

it might make a customer feel unwelcome. So Lori's view of marriage, she's not able to share on that website either. And I do think that it's important to point out that Lori's position, as she said, is the position that we should all take in terms of regardless of our view on a particular issue. If the government can censor Lori, it can censor any one of us. So you, you're not even allowed Lori to put, to post on your website. You know, I'd rather not do the same sex marriages because I'm a Christian. It doesn't align with my worldview, my, my, my religious beliefs. Forget whether or not you would be forced to. You can't even state that as your own feelings on your website. I cannot communicate my view on the topic of marriage on my own business website.

Wow. I mean, this seems rather extreme to me, Kristen. And the Tenth Circuit's ruling, which is a two to one ruling, seems out there even by, you know, looking at sort of more liberal jurists standards. Well, you're right in the sense that the 10th Circuit's decision itself in terms of how far it went was much further than any other decision. But there have been a number of decisions in other states that have reached essentially the same result in terms of practical purposes. So we know about Jack Phillips case litigated in Colorado, but just last week we were in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York with a photographer who's actually facing criminal

penalties for declining to do custom photographs for same-sex weddings. And she's facing actual criminal fines and criminal penalties for that. And then, of course, I know you're familiar with the Washington florist who essentially had to retire. And there are a host of others who have been victims to this law, which is why we need to be able to stop activists and government officials from misusing public accommodations laws to essentially punish and ruin those who don't hold their viewpoints. Because this is what the court is saying, that that Lori's free speech rights have clashed with the anti-discrimination provisions of their of Colorado's civil rights

laws that you may not discriminate. You can't offer lesser or no services to somebody because of their sexual orientation. That's what they claim this is, even though she is servicing LGBTQ people for any website they want, except for this one. But they claim that's that's close enough. You can't you know, that's the same as telling a black person no service, period. That analogy is offensive. First of all, the decisions that Lori's making are based on what the message is that she's being requested to create, not who the person is that is requesting it. And even the United States Supreme Court has recognized the difference between interracial marriage and same-sex marriage. It is said in the Loving v. Virginia case that, you know, interracial marriage laws were about systematic oppression and subjugation of

an entire class of people, that it was about white supremacy. And in Obergefell itself, the court's decision on same-sex marriage, the court said, decent and honorable people hold the belief that marriage is between a man and a woman, and that actually all of the Abrahamic faiths still have this belief. And so that it's not based on animus or anything else. It truly is a core conviction about how God created marriage. And in Lori's faith, for example, the marriage analogy is the analogy between Christ and the church. So it holds a very sacred place in many of these faiths. Lori, why, you know, you have people, and I know this because I had Jack Phillips on my show and interviewed him before his case went up. That was the case for my audience. I mentioned this the other day where there was a there was a producer at NBC who'd been there for about two minutes. I'm not going to be using your questions. I'll be using my own questions since I practiced law for 10 years and I covered

the high court for three years. And this young twit, forgive me, had a freak out that I wasn't going to ask her questions and I didn't ask her questions and mine were just fine. Okay. Sorry. Just bringing it all together for the audience that's been following my journey on the story. Well, I remember that. I remember that. I, you were there. I just want you to know that interview. And you were very fair to us, but you were also tough. And I think that that produces, people should hear both sides of these things and make their own decisions. Exactly.

So, and he did just fine. And that, as we pointed out, that wound up going his way seven to two. But in any event, so what is it, you know, people will say to you, same way they say to Jack, why can't you just do it? You know, like what? Just do it. You know,, same way they say to Jack, I can just do it. You know, like what? Just do it. You know, the law says you have to, can't you just do it? And what do you say to them?

My faith inspires every, everything that I do. I can't separate my faith from my work. It inspires what I do. And so because of that, the artwork that I create that the artwork that I create the designs that I create the way that I work with my clients all of that must be glorifying and honoring to God so no I cannot communicate a message that goes against my deeply held beliefs nobody should be put in a position of having to do to do so nobody Nobody should be in that position, whether your views are the same as mine, or whether they're different. Nobody should be in a place of the government

telling them they must communicate a message that violates their core beliefs. And what what, if anything has happened to your business, as a result of this law and in the wake of this controversy? Well, this journey has been going on for six years and it certainly has been a roller coaster. I have received quite a bit of just vile hatred my way, as I'm sure you speaking with Jack have heard through his story. It's been very similar for me. My clients have been harassed by those who oppose me. I have people who attempt to hack into my website.

But to make matters worse, my family's been threatened. I've had people driving by my house, sending things to my home. I've had to put a security system on my home and put my daughter's school on alert. I've had people wish incredibly just rotten things, death threats, like I've said, but threats of physical harm too. It's certainly been a challenge. And I think what's hardest for me is that those who oppose my stance, I've always been hopeful and treated people with love and kindness and respect. And I'm hopeful that we can get back to a point where we can disagree about topics like marriage, but to do so in a respectful way, because it's really awful. We can't have a dialogue. Instead, they go to the internet or they send threats. It's been really hard. It's been a hard

and difficult journey for me. Oh, I'm sure it is. And I remember in that interview with Jack Phillips, he was teary when he was talking about what had been done to his employees and how much they'd lost. His business was basically destroyed because he refused to bake that cake for a gay wedding. What's happened with him? Because that case seemed it was definitely a victory for him, but it's been ongoing. He's also in Colorado. Colorado and this law continue to cause a lot of problems for people who have genuinely held religious beliefs. Well, yesterday, Megan, we had an oral argument at the Colorado Court of Appeals because Jack is still in court today. This is his third case. Shortly after the court agreed to hear his first case, which was in 2016, he received a call on that same day from a transgender attorney who asked him to design a custom cake to celebrate the attorney's gender transition

with blue on the outside and pink on the inside. And Jack declined to design that cake. In addition, that attorney called back and asked also for a cake celebrating Satan and having him smoking marijuana, assuming that maybe that would trigger some sort of religious discrimination claim. And Jack declined that cake as well. In terms of his journey, Colorado came after him three weeks after we won the case at the U.S. Supreme Court. They again asserted charges based on the incident with the transgender attorney. And that third case is now at the Colorado Court of Appeals. So it's not just Lori. It's not just Jack. It's Emily Carpenter, as I said, in the in the Second Circuit. There are artists out of Arizona and it just keeps

coming. Chelsea Nelson out of Kentucky, who's also a photographer. So we need the court to explain why. Explain why the 72 decision did not put an end to this. Because, as you recall, that term was Justice Kennedy's last term. Justice Kennedy wrote the majority decision and the court's decision focused on so hostile in how it treated Jack during the process that it didn't even need to actually reach the free speech arguments. It didn't touch those because it said that kind of hostility is impermissible. and those who perpetrated the Holocaust in open court. And then shockingly, what we found out through the second case after the Supreme Court case was that that commission, again, doubled down on that hostility as well, even after the Supreme Court ruled in our favor. So in a sense, we want to free exercise. We advanced free exercise jurisprudence that, in other words, religious freedom.

But we still need the court to address the free speech issues because, you know, the market can do what it wants to do. If people don't want to purchase products or purchase custom speech in other areas because they don't agree with Lori or Jack or others, that's up to them. But what we're talking about here is government power. It is the force of the state to silence, to coerce, to punish, and even to ruin people that don't agree with its ideology. And that should frighten all of us, no matter what we think about this particular issue. Because the high court did not accept this case as a free exercise challenge. They're not saying, let's decide this as religious rights and get into our religious rights jurisprudence. They're deciding this, let's decide this as religious rights and get into our

religious rights jurisprudence. They're deciding this one as a free speech case. So is that what you wanted? Because the court's free exercise jurisprudence, where do your religious rights end and somebody else's rights begin, is a mess. It's a nightmare. The court's been totally inconsistent. They have a new standard every case. They expand it. They contract it. It's a nightmare. The court's been totally inconsistent. They have a new standard every case. They expand it. They contract it. It goes left. It goes right. It's very hard to follow. So do you like where it stands right now and you're glad that they're not touching it? Or would you prefer that they reevaluate free exercise and free speech? Well, I do think that free exercise needs to be reevaluated, but I'm not

at all disappointed they're looking at free speech in this case, because I think that we win on free speech. And for our purposes, it is an essential issue that needs to be resolved today. I mean, every other day on your podcast, you're addressing some sort of censorship or speech, whether it's through policy, through private power. It impacts every profession, the medical profession, the academic profession, those who are experiencing any professional licensing. We have a ton of students. We do more work for students on public campuses than any other conservative institution or law firm. And every day they're facing all kinds of new harassment and coercion from schools. So we need a solid, strong, robust decision that says it's wrong for the government to punish people because they disagree with what

the government says on a particular topic. That is exactly where I'm going next. All right, stand by Lori and Kristen, because this is not just a Lori Smith problem. This is your problem too. Whether you're on a college campus or at a company that's forcing you to say certain things in your DEI training or what have you. Compelled speech is all the rage right now. Can you imagine how you'd feel if your college made your kid say something, you know, Black Lives Matter or, you know, trans rights or human rights. It's happening. If they made them say it, if they try to make you say it, we'll pick it up right there. So, Kristen, we talk about this all the time, but the case that I'm thinking about is Jodi Shaw,

who was at Smith College, and it's just a gal with her microphone. And she sits down at the mic and starts talking about how they're making me say these things I don't believe. They're making me participate in these classes which are spewing nonsense that I don't think is right. And I think it's really racist. And I don't want it. And what I'm basically saying to Smith College is you may not racialize me, my colleagues and my work setting. This is wrong. Things went from bad to worse with Smith. They found an excuse to turf her and the litigation ensued thereafter. But that's compelled speech. They were trying to make her say things about white people, about race that she did not believe in. And it wasn't in that case a matter of her religion. It was just a matter of her morals and her character and what she believes is right and wrong. So in a case like that, you guys would take a case like that because that may not be a free exercise case. Right. But that's a free speech case, a compelled speech case. Well, we need to understand that civil liberties travel together, right?

So if you want to have religious freedom, you have to have free speech. Even if you want to advocate for a certain side of immigration laws, or you want to advocate, be pro-life or be pro-abortion, speech is fundamental to that, that we're able to exchange freely in the ideas that we have and to pursue truth. So all of our civil liberties are connected. And just as important, when you look across the world, you see that those countries that don't protect speech don't protect the other rights either, whether that's the freedom of the press or even how we protect our minorities, those who are vulnerable, as well as our economic freedom. So it really is a linchpin that's very important to the stabilization and really just a free nation. Now, it's one thing if the government does it in a public school. That's a no brainer. They're not allowed to do

that. I mean, they really are not allowed to do that. It gets less clear when you go over into the private sector. But most of these colleges take federal money. So they're on the hook too. They're not allowed to violate the First Amendment while taking government money. Is that correct? Well, there's some distinctions that can be made. So in terms of, I'm not a big fan of the government imposing its own ideology when it comes to the strings that are attaching. And you're seeing the Biden administration do that left and right now. Like we just had a case where they tried to use strings with Title IX, where private schools were giving lunch money or lunches through federal funds to kids that needed food. And they were going to withhold those monies unless the school embraced the gender identity ideology that

the Biden administration is perpetuating. So what are some nuances? And yes, yes, it's astonishing the lengths that they're going to right now, that they will deny food to kids, they will deny equal opportunities to women. What they're doing is deciding what side they want to be on passing laws and policies, and then putting criminal punishments against those who disagree. But in terms of your question about how the First Amendment applies, it applies to public institutions. And in addition, private institutions, they can't engage in discrimination. So when some of the cases that you've mentioned involve race discrimination, potentially, they involve sex discrimination, potentially, and many of these instances involve religious discrimination as well under civil rights laws. money, because that's the case with a lot of these K through 12 schools. They don't take government money. Colleges do, for the most part. Can they engage in discrimination? I know that we've got

discrimination laws that say you take any government money, you're on the hook. You cannot say white people are bad. You can get sued and you'll lose. But if they're purely private, can they do it? They cannot engage in discrimination. Civil rights laws apply to private entities as well as to public entities. And they routinely, you know, the Biden administration is attaching all kinds of federal strings to these laws that are actually forcing them to engage in discrimination in terms of the gender identity component of it. So, and again, the speech component is even more concerning. Megan, we have been litigating for years against public universities,

and predominantly it's been about speech codes and speech zones, right? You can't say this or that. You have to say it in a certain place. You have to have a permit before you do it. But now we're seeing them even get more aggressive where they're issuing like no contact orders without due process to students and saying, you can't be anywhere near these students if you're

making them feel at all uncomfortable, even though you've just simply articulated a conservative idea in the classroom. Wow. Oh, my gosh. I mean, that is that is anti-American. But this so this concerns me, though, because free speech is in a different lane. It's not necessarily the same thing as the anti-discrimination laws. You need a good you need a government actor. And if it's a purely private institute, they can get away with this.

Well, they can, to some extent, in the sense of they can't engage in, again, religious discrimination. So in Maggie DeYoung's case, for example, you know, the university was essentially putting penalties against her because of her religious views. And most private universities have policies in place that prohibit this type of discrimination. There are very few private schools that actually don't take some sort of federal funds where these civil rights laws clearly apply, the Americans with Disabilities Act applies. There are many laws that apply to private universities that prevent this kind of discrimination. And in addition to that, most of them have policies that are supposed to be embracing academic freedom and a free speech culture. The problem is that they don't do it on the ground. And that's why we have to keep litigating these cases. On the speech codes and

speech zones side of things, there's really strong case law that protects students and faculty members. But as soon as the case is resolved and we win, the university usually tries to go back to its old policy or just discriminates in a different way. And that's why we have to stay vigilant about this. It's crazy. You really do have to stay vigilant about it. It reminds me of when Californians passed that initiative several years ago that they no longer wanted the universities to use race in admissions. And they said, okay, that's the new law. And then the colleges started to do it anyway. They just found another way of doing it. It's like they are run by people with an agenda and they will not let go of their agenda, even when ordered to do so by a court of law or the voters. So you really do have to keep an eye on them and make sure you're constantly on them. So, Laurie, can I ask you about you and your politics? Are you in an area that is heavily Christian that like, you know, do you have support there? Or is everybody like, why don't you just move to Texas or, you know, move to

Oklahoma, get out of Colorado? I have actually heard that comment before, to which I say, free speech is guaranteed to all of us, regardless of the state you live in. But I would say that we have a lot, I have a lot of support here locally, the state, I'm a native. So the state has certainly changed over my lifetime, but I received quite a bit of support from people in the area, even support from those who don't agree with me and my views on the topic of marriage, which is eyeopening because we do not have to agree on the topic of marriage to understand that what's at stake impacts all of us. So I'm certainly grateful for the support that I have had and the prayers. It means a lot to my family and I. Now, it's a good sign for you that the Supreme Court took this because you lost at

the lower level. So you want to be in the position of having someone review that if they thought the Tenth Circuit clearly did the right thing, they probably wouldn't have accepted the case. Doesn't guarantee a win, of course, but rather be in your position than the other side's. However, if it doesn't go your way, maybe Kristen falls down on the job. Not likely, but let's just say it doesn't go your way. What will you do? Well, I'll be deeply saddened, of course, and I am concerned now, but I'll be even more concerned than my dream has been to step into creating for weddings. That's what I've wanted to do for six

very long years now. And if the court does not protect speech for myself and for others, then I will remain uncensored. That's concerning. It's concerning to me, but it's concerning for my daughter and those who are younger, who may have an interest in doing what I'm doing now and future generations. Steeply unsettling. Can you see a world in which you would do it? You'd be faced with either doing it or closing up shop. I cannot communicate a message that violates my belief. No one should be put in that position.

I can't, I can't do it. What about Kristen as a practical matter? Like like could she kind of phone in the website? Would that be unlawful? You know, like what's to stop Jack Phillips from baking a lame cake or, you know, like you, Laurie, does the website, but it's like not so great. Like this is what you're going to get because I I did it. I never promised you a rose garden. I think a couple of things would be in play. Lori and Jack believe that all people should be treated with dignity and respect, and they

want to bring their best to their work. And they believe that God calls them to do that. I mean, the scriptures tell them that we're called to excellence in all things. And so doing a subpar job would violate their faith as well. In addition, we can't live by lies. And that is what that is. You know, we can't live by lies. And that is what that is. You know, I don't know if you saw, I'm sure you probably did, Megan, the recent story involving Judge Ho out of the Fifth Circuit, who gave recent remarks lately, who just essentially,

my favorite quote in what he said was simply that, you know, silence is contagious, but so is courage. And what's at stake in allowing censorship of free speech is self-government itself. And it is this concept that we would live by lies. We all have a role to play in this, whether that role is having the privilege of talking to you and sharing Lori's story, or it's having the privilege of sitting in our kitchen table with our kids who are being fed a bunch of lies themselves and need their parents to help educate them in ways that maybe previous generations didn't have to do. Judge Ho, for the audience, just recently made public remarks in which he said he's not going

to hire any law clerks from Yale Law School because that school has just gone around the bend when it comes to cancel culture and cracking down on free speech. And he's trying to teach them a lesson. I'm sure he would love to get some clerks in the Federalist Society at Yale Law School who think about the world more the way Kristen and I do when they look at the law. But he's trying to teach them a lesson and he hopes other judges do as well, which is this should be a principle we can all agree on, that there are certain standards, there's certain constitutional standards that we live by and that are written down that we must live by. Can I ask you, Christian, what what is the next area that you see popping up as the

biggest? I know sort of the future of this litigation, because I like I've been watching California and its law on what doctors may and may not say when it comes to, quote, misinformation on the vaccine and COVID, which is, to me, insane. I mean, it's science. You're allowed to revise your old opinions as new information comes in. But more and more we've seen in COVID, the crackdown on the Internet, crackdown on the medical community with all the race essentialism and the trans stuff. We've seen crackdowns in schools on what you can and cannot say and the free flow of discussion. So where is it going?

I think you're right to ask those questions, but I think they all come back again to speech. I do think that speech is a significant issue of our day. Obviously, religious freedom is too. But I mean, we've even seen one of our cases at the Supreme Court was a case called NIFLA, which involved whether religious pro-life centers could have to speak messages about abortion that violate their convictions. And we won that case as well, but that was a five to four win. And so now in the post-Roe world, we're seeing activists, attorney generals starting to go after pro-life clinics and their speech.

We saw California pass a recent law on that. And it just keeps going. So I think that we have to be able to stand up for the right to hold beliefs about human sexuality, including that we're men and women, and then we're different. And that's a good thing. We're complimentary, but we definitely are equal. Because this gender identity ideology is really threatening to swallow up the rights of women, equal opportunities for our daughters, and just basic differences that make a civil society great and diverse. How can people support Lori and Alliance Defending Freedom? Well, all of our work is pro bono, and we would love the support. They can go to our website at

ADFlegal.org to find out more. Good. Good for you. We're going to be watching. Lori, good luck. And we'll watch the whole thing. Come on back after we get a result. All right. Thank you.

All the best to you and you as well, Kristen. See you soon. Quickly, before we go, Andrew Sullivan's coming back next week and we'll do pumpkin spice latte live tasting with the Pipcom guys. Download the show. Check out the newsletter. See you on Monday. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.