The Megyn Kelly Show - Michael Cohen's Glaring Credibility Issues, and Decline of Public Schools, with Viva Frei, Phil Holloway, and Corey DeAngelis | Ep. 790

Episode Date: May 13, 2024

Megyn Kelly is joined by legal experts Viva Frei and Phil Holloway to discuss former President Donald Trump's former lawyer and "fixer" Michael Cohen on the stand at the trial in NYC, why Cohen and Stormy Daniels could be extortionists, the various reasons Michael Cohen might not be trusted, the lack of evidence in the case, the outrageous gag order on Trump while witnesses keep talking, Cohen's obsession with Trump, the shady reason Michael Cohen secretly recorded his client Trump, his credibility issues on the stand, Cohen's original story that he paid Stormy Daniels out of "love" and "loyalty," what made him completely change his tune and hate Trump, the Fani Willis disqualification case heading to the Georgia Court of Appeals, Willis' RICO case against Trump apparently collapsing, and more. Then Corey DeAngelis, author of "The Parent Revolution," joins to discuss the indoctrination happening in public schools, the rise of school choice as a viable alternative, the failures of public schools, how teacher's unions are hurting kids, COVID highlighting the problems and making things worse, and more. Holloway- https://www.youtube.com/@PhilipHollowayFrei- https://vivabarneslaw.locals.com/DeAngelis- https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/dr-corey-a-deangelis-ph-d/the-parent-revolution/9781546006862/?lens=center-street 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. Happy Monday. I hope you had a great Mother's Day. I did not post anything on X about it yesterday because I was enjoying the family. In fact, I only made one post yesterday and it was on Instagram and it was about thunder trying to save my children who are not in any danger, but she didn't know that in the pool where a large basketball hoop had fallen in. And my good girl thunder barked and barked and barked until we went out and took a look. Everyone was fine, but my sweet girl didn't know that she was letting us know. Strudwick just sat there, did not bark and then ruin your soccer ball. Okay. So the legacy media Sunday morning news shows barely covered the trial of

former president Donald Trump yesterday. And you know why? Because it's going well for him. Trust me when I tell you that if it were going poorly for him, if Stormy had been the nail in the coffin of Donald Trump, they would have been all over it. So the fact that they barely touched it should tell you everything you need to know about how this Stormy Daniels testimony actually went down last week. We now turn to the prosecution's star witness, and that is Mr. Trump's former fixer and lawyer, Michael Cohen. It's been a very interesting morning. He's a convicted felon himself. He has massive credibility issues, to put it mildly. He's been on the stand all morning, and we will bring you the latest. We've been watching every single line of testimony. Joining us today,

Viva Fry. He's a lawyer and Rumble creator, and Phil Holloway is a legal analyst and host of Inside the Law on YouTube. Welcome back, Viva and Phil. Great to have you. Thank you for having us. Great to be with you as always, Megan. All right. So I think it's fascinating seeing this happen. I mean, to me, it's like a Greek tragedy. You know, Michael Cohen gets picked by Donald Trump to work for him when he's a young lawyer in his 30s, gets a good job, a good salary. He's idolized Trump from his perch growing up in Long Island. You course, Trump was known by us all back in the New York early days. And his job is not exactly as lawyer and counselor. It's more as fixer,

where Trump wants him to do certain things and he does them. And like, you know, he testified one of the things he did for Trump was to negotiate down certain fees Trump owed or contracts Trump was obligated to pay on. And it occurred to me when I was listening to this, you know, the relationship was fraught from the beginning, right? Like, I think there's a reason Trump hired someone as sketchy as Michael Cohen. He was reportedly always desiring to have someone like Roy Cohn, you know, the famed lawyer who would just, he was famous for his strong arm tactics and getting things done. And this was supposed to be his Roy Cohn. And Cohen spent a lifetime trying to just get Trump what he wanted. As he put it, I just, my job was to make him happy. And I don't know what sort of corners were bent or what happened, but New York real estate is infamous for corners being bent and, you know, for operating operators doing what they need to

do in order to get these buildings built and deals done. That's just the way it is. Not just Trump, by the way, I know a lot of these guys. So of course, Trump had this lapdog working for him, who then when he started to run for president was just begging, begging, begging to be part of the administration, to be taken along, you know, for the next piece of it. Take me with you, take me with you. And the theory being posited by the defense is once Cohen realized he was not going anywhere near the White House, things started to go sour when he realized that he was just going to be on the outside as a surrogate. And he was not going to be holding my heart here. Attorney General. My God. My God. Can you imagine? Okay. Trump was like,

yeah, no hard no. You're not going to be Attorney General. But the prosecution side, Viva, is that's not what turned things south. What turned things south is the jig was up. They'd been working together with AMI to cover up these women's stories who were coming forward. Karen McDougal, the playmate of the year in 98. Stormy Daniels, with whom Trump allegedly had this one night stand. And was working with AMI or in the case of Stormy on his own, paying off these women to keep them quiet. And when the shit hit the fan, Trump cut ties, let him twist in the wind and he went down for it. And now it's Trump's turn. So that's kind of how it shook out this morning. And the Greek tragedy winds up, as in others, with the wannabe aspiring son sticking the knife tragedy winds up, you know, as in others with the wannabe aspiring son

sticking the knife in his dad, turning on him. He says Trump turned first, but in any event, he's up there testifying so far this morning about how he loves Trump. He was happy. He really loved his job. If only, if only the dad had seen how wonderful he was, Viva, perhaps we wouldn't be here today. He might have been a better attorney general than Merrick Garland in fairness, but the competition's not very high there. But it's so wild. We're listening to this in real time right now. And it's as though, look, there are better call Saul type attorneys. And then there are Alan Dershowitz type attorneys. And quite clearly, I mean, I like better call Saul and he seems like a nice guy. But quite clearly, Michael Cohen was of that pedigree of an attorney. And there was I'm now convinced, by the way, had listening to all of this, that Michael Cohen

and David Pecker were in on this quasi extortion scheme against Donald Trump. When you have Michael Cohen basically the fixer. And I forget who said it last week. He was the fixer because he broke everything. You know, he's he's fixing, you know, negotiating these deals on stories that they know are false, making work for himself so he can bill for this, even though they know the stories are bunk. It's like everybody was having a dip at Donald Trump's pockets. But the bottom line is, even if all of this is true, there's no underlying crime to any of this.

But the more bottom line is that Michael Cohen is a corrupt extortionist of his own, in my humble opinion, I'm not talking like in law, but it's certainly seen that they were all just making work for themselves so they could dip into Trump's pockets and all take a piece of the pie as Trump is paying it out because it's not worth his time to deal with any of this. So you don't believe that Trump had a one night stand with Stormy Daniels or had an affair with Karen McDougal? McDougal, I don't know. Stormy Daniels, no. From what I know, I'm not intimately involved with anybody in the campaign. For someone who is a self-proclaimed neurotic hypochondriac myself, you're not having unprotected sex with a porn star who is in the industry of

having unprotected sex because she's allergic to latex condoms when you have options that are better if that's your proclivity in life. So I don't believe it for a second. And I believe that Stormy Daniels is an extortionist who was trying to get money out of Trump, as Michael Abinadi has now seriously implied from his jail cell in New York. You know what's crazy, Phil, is I came into this trial completely believing that Trump had had a one night stand with Stormy and an affair with Karen McDougal. And I still believe he had an affair with Karen McDougal. That one got a little bit more detailed from testimony. I think it was today with Cohen, where it was it went on allegedly for a long time, for months, if not years. And Cohen confronted Trump with the fact

that she was shopping the story around. And his first response, according to Cohen, was she's so beautiful. So they definitely knew each other. There are pictures of them together. And I don't I still believe it. They didn't call her and they're not calling her. But I no longer believe the Stormy Daniels story. I at least have very serious doubts about I would not find beyond a reasonable doubt, not that they have to, but I would not find beyond a reasonable doubt that they had an affair. She came across as so not credible, as we discussed on that Friday night show. I just, I can't, I don't put any stock in what this woman's, her new Me Too remembrances. I now believe it could have been a whole, could have been a setup. She met him

at the Tahoe thing. Maybe she went to his apartment, his hotel room. Maybe she didn't, but I can't believe a word out of that woman's mouth. Well, considering the source being Stormy Daniels, and of course, now if Michael Cohen says it's true, then I am irredeemably confined to believe the alternative that it did not happen. If Michael Cohen says the sky is blue, I'm going to doubt the validity and the truthfulness of that statement. You know, Michael Cohen, back to him, you know, we talk about him being a fixer. Well, it sounds to me like he likes that moniker way too much. It seems to me that he's embracing that. I guess it goes to his ego and pumps up his ego just a little too much. When you talk about renegotiating contracts

and you talk about working down the dollar amount that you owe people on bills and things like that's actually practicing law. That's not necessarily being a fixer. But in Michael Cohen's mind, he gets more mileage on TikTok out of being labeled the fixer for Donald Trump. So when you talk about whether the affair ever happened or any of this other stuff, by the way, look first to the bias of the people making the claim. Does Stormy Daniels have a bias against Donald Trump? Most assuredly so. Does Michael Cohen have a bias?

Most assuredly so. And the fact that they are leading this testimony or perjury, whatever it is, with evidence that makes the case for him being biased against Donald Trump, I think only goes to help Donald Trump. Because first and foremost, before you get into all of the prior inconsistent statements and the convictions for things related to fraud and lying, if a defendant who sits in the witness chair has a built-in bias against the defendant, you can disregard all of their other testimony. And the same goes for Stormy Daniels and whether or not they ever had an affair. So far, Michael Cohen is trying to sketch a relationship in which he's tight with Trump,

Viva, that he it was an open door policy. He could go in there whenever he wanted, didn't need an appointment and that they were so close that Trump shared his contact list. Like in his, I don't know if it's his phone. I don't think Trump, yeah, seems to be a shoe. Yeah. The Rolodex phone use, but, uh, his Rolodex. And I actually just heard people on CNN saying, Oh my God, who would do that? Who would share every single contact they have with, you know, their their right hand person? Meanwhile, I'm like, Abigail Finan literally knew when it was time for me to get more birth control that, you know, back when I was taking it, my assistant. Let me tell you, there are plenty of us who share everything with our right hand person. But the whole point is to show they're tight, they're tight, tight, tight. And later,

it will be argued, Michael Cohen would never have done anything without running by Trump. Well, OK, I have to get this thought out of my head before because this goes back to the question. So whether or not you believe Trump did this with Stormy Daniels, for anybody who didn't watch her testimony, she said she was allergic to latex. So in all of her hundreds of movies of career, she never used a condom. And we're to believe that Donald Trump, who by all accounts is a germaphobe, would do this. It's like that old commercial when you have unprotected sex with somebody, you're not just having sex with them,

but everyone who they've ever had sex with. So all that said, I had to say that before I forgot it. Do I believe, Michael Cohen's testimony is all over the place. I put out a meme, because it's hilarious, where his answer was, yes, I mean, no. That was one of the last tweets from inner city press, Matthew Russell Lee, that I had the privilege of reading before we went live. The guy, he'll say anything. What's clear is that he's got

overt malice and animus towards Trump, as does Stormy Daniels. And she's got a personal vendetta or at least financial interests in seeing Trump go down because she owes him a half a million dollars and doesn't want to pay any of that. They have clear animus if they don't have potentially other mental issues. I mean, Stormy touched on it as to whether or not she might be suffering from some mental issues. Michael Cohen, if he doesn't touch on it, it might appear to be apparent from his behavior. But what we've seen in the broader scheme, we've seen a politically weaponized machine that has no qualms about using the mentally unwell

as tools for political profit. The way they exploited E. Jean Carroll to go after Trump under that law that they recently amended to allow her to do it. I'd say to some extent, the way that the machine exploited Fetterman in his time of illness, just because they needed him on the seat.

And then when he started saying things critical of the party, they start potentially throwing him under the bus. We see an exploitation of Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels to their detriment to pursue Trump. And my concern is it doesn't matter what evidence is presented or is not presented. We are in New York. Trump is getting convicted the same way he was found liable for that nonsense E. Jean Carroll suit. So the bottom line, I don't think it matters what evidence is on display or what evidence is contradicted. I think Trump is getting convicted regardless. It'll be for the appeals court. That's how I feel, too. I feel the same. I feel like it's kind of it's beyond it's kind of a moot point. I hope it's not fell, but it's kind of a moot point. I mean, we're lawyers, so we want to analyze the evidence and say, are we convinced?

Has the prosecution proven its case? But I mean, I just can't get past the fact that New York, when Manhattan, when 87% for Joe Biden and those 13% probably voted for Jill Stein and no one like I just this is not a Trump loving town politically, Manhattan. And the odds are lawyer or not lawyer, you know, health care worker or not. They don't like Donald Trump. No one they know likes Donald Trump. Their families hate Donald Trump. Their wives hate Donald Trump. Those are the odds. So I just can't get past the fact that we're kind of out here like bobbleheads. The trial's already lost in all likelihood. That's what Alvin Bragg is banking on because this truly has to be one of the worst cases I've ever seen. You tell me about your

experience, but I mean, it's such a joke that he must be just banking on the fix being in with the jury, given their politics. You know, when I was a prosecutor, I could not even imagine for one second bringing any case to trial, let alone one against a former president where there is absolutely no corroborating physical or other evidence to support the testimony of a disbarred, convicted, felonious liar named Michael Cohen, who goes on TikTok and wants nothing more than to show the world him in his Donald Trump behind bars t-shirt, when that is the person who concocted any kind of scheme, or made any legal plan, or gave any legal advice, and he wants the jury to send the client

to prison for doing what he, as the client's lawyer, asked them to do. It's just not a rational thing to expect in a rational legal world, but when the deck is stacked in your favor, like it probably is for the reasons you said for Alvin Bragg, then you can just go for it. And all you care about is the short-term potential for a short-term conviction. And let's not kid ourselves either. Harvey Weinstein, yes, his case got reversed because a judge let in too much irrelevant stuff to slime a criminal defendant to the point that it became an unfair trial. But we cannot say that we can expect the same thing for Donald Trump, because for the same reason that the jury has got it in for Donald Trump, the same reason Judge Merchant, I think,

is biased against Donald Trump, the justices and the judges in the appeals process also probably hate Donald Trump, because it is, after all, New York. So this thing from beginning to end, top to bottom, just stinks of being unfair. And it's the kind of thing that in a rational world would not have gotten this far. But we've got this convicted felonious liar, Michael Cohen, who has to not only make out all the elements of the crime, because we haven't seen that yet, but we also have to get a jury, I guess, to pretend that all the other times he may have lied under oath, so be it.

But this time he's decided to tell the truth. We'll get to what liar Michael Cohen is. We'll take some time to dig into that. You know, the thing is, they've proven, you know, they've had testimony that Trump was concerned about this Karen McDougal, the playmate of the year with whom he allegedly had an actual affair, not like a one night stand. And that he that the National Enquirer paid her one hundred and fifty thousand dollars to give them exclusive rights to her story, which they never published. That Stormy Daniels came forward alleging a one night stand and that Cohen paid her $130,000

and then sought reimbursement. That's the underlying basis for this case. They also have proven that this doorman, this doorman at Trump Tower claimed that there was a woman inside Trump Tower who is the mother of Trump's illegitimate baby. And the National Enquirer paid that guy 30 grand to catch and kill his story. We know that one was not true. And Trump presumably knew that one was not true. So there's no question that Trump did pay through Pecker. I guess he didn't reimburse him because Trump is an infamous cheapskate. I mean, that is pretty much the uniform testimony. But Trump wanted that story caught and killed, Cohen and Pecker, and they did.

They caught and killed the $30,000 doorman thing, which indisputably was fake. Now, I heard CNN this morning talking about, well, these payments are a lot higher, $130,000. No, they're not, you dumbasses. You guys know in the world of law, the difference between 30 grand and 130 is nothing. It's basically how dumb is your opposing counsel who's trying to shake you down, right? Like I'll pay probably 150 to get rid of you. That's nuisance change. That's what my client's going to pay in legal fees if we have to do this for the next six months. But it's a nuisance value settlement either way. So we can't tell anything by the money. This was Caitlin Collins, by the way, suggesting this can't tell anything by the money about whether Trump

thought it was true, Viva, or knew it was true. Well, Caitlin Collins has not had the best takes on things in any realm of the universe. But I think this actually highlights something a little bit more insidious, where you had Michael Cohen and Pecker, the fixer fixing things that they break, going to Trump with a story that everybody knows is false, but saying, you better pay it off and you better pay us off to do the work. Or if it goes public, it might cause harm anyhow. And it does sound an awful lot like Michael Cohen and Pecker were involved in a shakedown scheme on Donald Trump.

And it might explain why AMI, which is Pecker's organization, signed the non-prosecution agreement with the state back in 2018. But one thing that's worth mentioning in all of this, it's not just that it's a biased jurisdiction and a corrupt judge. Like, we're talking about all this now, and we're still forgetting, or we seem to be forgetting, that Trump is still being gagged. He's still incapable of publicly addressing these two confirmed liars, a porn star and a convicted perjurer, according to Arthur Angeron,

the other New York corrupt judge. He's still gagged while all this is going on and can't publicly refute a lot of the lies that they're saying. Stormy Daniels gets up there and says, I felt drugged. I mean, objections sustained. But what the hell is that to say? I feel like I blacked out like it's so prejudicial and so absolutely irrelevant to the underlying theory of the underlying felony. And by and a shout out, by the way, to this guy named Joe Nierman. Megan, you might not know him, Joe Nierman, good logic, a New York attorney who's trying to lift the gag on Donald Trump with the not so novel but pretty obvious argument that the gag on Trump doesn't just violate so novel but pretty obvious argument that the gag on Trump

doesn't just violate his First Amendment rights. It violates all of ours because we have the right to hear what he has to say. But bottom line- Dershowitz has been saying that too. Yeah. It's wild. This guy is doing some good work, un-gag Trump. But he's been gagged. These two people come out and spew the most prejudicial of lies. And if he dares to comment on it publicly, corrupt Judge Marchand, whose daughter is profiting handsomely from this trial, as is Adam Schiff, her client, if he says anything, he'll be as is Michael Cohen. Oh, yeah, Michael Cohen with his tick tock and all this crap. I don't know how that works. But if Trump says anything, he might go to jail because it'll be

his 11th strike for contempt charges under this corrupt Judge Juan Marchand. The whole system is freaking broken. And is it Al Pacand. The whole system is freaking broken. And is it Al Pacino? The whole system is out of order right now. And people really need to appreciate it and start speaking up about it. You're out of order. You're out of order. Yes. No, it's actually amazing because Stormy Daniels has written a book. She's had a documentary made about her. She's gotten paid off both by Michael Cohen and then by all these news agencies, including NBC News, which gave her $100,000 for back footage, for back footage. Bullshit. They bought her interview. They're just like the National Enquirer in that way. They're making bank off of these allegations. And Michael Cohen

now, despite the fact that he's a convicted felon with a tick tock with merch he's selling that has Trump's picture in jail. This is like a week ago. This was out there and he was touting it and celebrating it. This is their star witness biased much. The only person who can't comment on it is Trump. And then we have the sitting president of the United States making jokes about Trump's trials at the White House Correspondents Dinner. Once again, Trump can't respond.

He has to keep his mouth shut or they're going to throw him in jail for real. What if this case is still going when it comes to an appeal or what have you, when these two, if these two finally do have a debate in October, which is typically when the two candidates debate and And Joe Biden brings it up. Can he say anything about it then? Does the gag order last until the end of the entire case, Judge? Or is he allowed on the presidential debate stage to actually offer a retort when he's under attack? That's how absurd this whole thing is, Phil. Yeah, the whole thing is absurd from top to bottom.

This business with the gag order, I just can't for the life of me understand why Judge Merchan seems to think that he can't issue a gag order against somebody who's under a state's subpoena. For Christ's sake, he can. He should. And the fact that he refuses to do so is only, in my view, more evidence of his bias. But if I can get to this one question back to Michael Cohen, where is attorney-client privilege? Why is the judge allowing all this into evidence? Because all the stuff that Michael Cohen was involved with was attorney-client privilege. And the fact that he's not a lawyer anymore is irrelevant. Are they saying crime fraud exception, Phil? Well, I mean, nobody seems to be litigating this, Megan. And I don't see anybody objecting. I don't

see anybody standing up saying, you know, this is my attorney-client privilege. I object to all this stuff. And Michael Cohen, by the way, is out here talking about things that are not even related to the issue at hand in this case. And so there should be an objection every time something like that comes up. There are two lawyers, as we know. And can I just jump in? Because I'm going to argue against myself. So how can it be crime fraud exception, basically for the listening audience, if Phil's my lawyer and I tell him a bunch of stuff, it's privilege. But if what I'm telling him is I'm, I'm committing, uh, you know, some sort of a fraud and I want you to paper the deal for me and you have to put it

down in a false way because that's how I'm going to get away with my fraud. And Phil's like, yeah, I'm on it. I'll do it for you. That, that would not be privileged because of the crime fraud exception, but they're not alleging. Even the prosecution knows that a hush money payment is not illegal. Paying off Stormy Daniels, paying off Karen McDougal, even paying off the dumb doorman, not illegal. What was allegedly illegal is the documentation of it, which they say wasn't proper, but they're not talking about communications, at least not yet, related to the documentation. That's actually what they're really missing is testimony from Michael Cohen that Trump directed or knew about exactly how this was all going to be documented.

Maybe we'll get there. But go ahead, Phil. For crime fraud, you've got to have some judicial determination that there was a fraud here. There's no evidence outside of what Michael Cohen says is that there was any kind of crime or certainly there's no fraud. You've got no victims. You've got somebody writing a check to his attorney. It's either for attorney's fees or it's to pay for the consideration that's necessary to support a valid contract. So there's been no judicial determination that crime fraud even applies here. So how this whole thing is coming in without any objection apparently is beyond me. And hopefully the two lawyers on the jury will at least see that because we lawyers, if nothing else, we take pride in the attorney-client

privilege. It's sacrosanct because if we without it, we couldn't do our jobs. We could not represent our clients, whether it's in a criminal case, a business relations case, domestic, anything. We can't do our jobs without a attorney-client privilege that is held sacrosanct by the courts. Maybe these two lawyers on this jury will appreciate that and see that there is something very, very rotten in Denmark. I mean, Michael Cohen, for the record, is no longer a lawyer. He's no longer a licensed attorney. He's been disbarred. That's just the smallest of his many problems with the law. Convicted felon, you know, admitted liar, lied before Congress while under oath, said he lied to a federal court, was cross-examined by Alina Haba, Trump's lawyer,

in one of the other cases and admitted, yeah, I've lied repeatedly to federal courts. I mean, he's just being disbarred as an attorney is the least of his worries, but he tapes his own client. You know, they spent some time this morning on his tape, uh, Viva with Trump discussing the Karen McDougal payment, which is color to this case, but is not really at issue in this case. The documentation of it is not something he's been charged with. It's the documentation of a different payment to a different woman. The prosecution is just setting the stage with the Karen McDougal stuff. Look, the evidence that we've been seeing adduced by Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels has had a no probative evidentiary value. It has only been for

the purposes of being prejudicial in that it's humiliating or paints a picture of when you're talking about the crime fraud exception. Look, I won't venture out of my alley. I was a Quebec attorney, no, no longer practicing because I don't live in Quebec anymore. But when Michael Cohen was recording these conversations, there was no crime even being alleged to have been committed. And so he's recording the conversations with his client, not because he's being bullied into breaking the law by an El Chapo type client. He's recording it to extort his client at a later date,

if need be. And that's what we're seeing. Let me just interject. What he said today was that he recorded him because he wanted to then go show the National Enquirer, see this is like, he's on me to make sure it's getting done. We got to make sure this gets done. You know, I'm that connected. Megan, let me just tell you how I'm not calling you this name. I'm calling Michael Cohen. How

insanely idiotic that explanation is that he's going to go tell David Pecker, I secretly recorded my own client and now I'm showing you something that he doesn't know I even recorded. I mean, it's so for you. What he did was make a recording potentially with the long term objective of extorting Trump. And that's exactly what he's doing right now. He failed to get on the campaign. It seems that he was heartbroken and some people might have suggested suicidal, but that's what he was doing.

He wasn't even recording a crime in real time. The ultimate irony in all of this is that I don't know if you followed Michael Avenatti, the other the other convicted lawyer extortionist in this wonderful trilogy of characters from from jail, tweeting out that he gets a call from the producer of Stormy Daniels documentary Netflix series. And then they admit that they circumvented payment to Stormy Daniels to circumvent the money that she owed Donald Trump. And so they concocted a fraudulent payment scheme to conceal Stormy Daniel assets from Donald Trump. And so they concocted a fraudulent payment scheme to conceal Stormy Daniel assets from Donald Trump. I mean, it's another realm of accuse your enemies

of what you're doing, confession through projection. They are the ones who are guilty of everything they're accusing Trump of. But bottom line, when Cohen was recording that conversation, his explanation is untenable at best. To say, I'm gonna go to some other guy now and show you a secret recording between me and my client, untenable. He was doing it for- It at best to say, I'm going to go to some other guy now and show you a secret recording between me and my client. Untenable. He was doing it for, you know,

it does occur to me. I don't I don't believe that Trump has committed a crime here. But I would say if you're thinking about committing a crime, you should definitely do it with a bunch of losers, convicted liars and, you know, people with no reputation, it's very helpful when they take the stand. It was very easy to dismiss. For the record, here is that Cohen Trump audio from September 2016. All right. This is two months before the election, not even discussing Karen McDougal. And you can hear Cohen suggesting the matter has been handled and you hear Trump say something about cash and you'll hear Cohen say, no, no, no. And then they say, check. I don't know that the submission was that this is Trump clearly being like payer in cash for God's sake. And Michael Cohen saying, no, I don't, I'm not sure if my own take on it is that it hasn't really become an issue,

not for nothing, but here's the tape. Um. I need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info regarding our friend David, you know, so that I'm going to do that right away. I've actually come up and I've spoken to Alan Weisselberg about how to set the whole thing up with funding. Yes. And it's all the stuff, all the stuff, because, you know, you never know where that company, you never know where he's going to be. Correct. So I'm all over that. And I spoke to Alan about it when it comes time for the financing, which will be. What financing? We'll have to pay you. No, no, no, no, no, no. I got no, no, no. OK, so that's the you know, it's showing how involved Trump was in the payments to

Karen McDougal, not Stormy. And thus the implication by the prosecution will be he was this involved in Stormy as well. And I assume Viva shortly we're going to hear Michael Cohen probably testify to that, too, that he micromanaged all the payments, including the stormy payments. Again, though, they have to get to him also saying, and this is how I would like it to be documented in the books. This is how you should bill it, Michael Cohen. And this is how our bookkeeper keeper will write it down. I really I don't know that I wouldn't put it past Cohen, but I'm actually not expecting

that testimony. This is the portion where Michael Cohen said that when asked, is there a longer conversation you had later? He says, yes, I mean, no, I think. And I think this is the same one where he says that the call got or the recording got cut short because he got a call from Capital. All right. I'm not sure that I even believe that that recording was cut. It was cut short as a result of an incoming call. I'm not sure that I even believe that that recording was cut short as a result of an incoming call. I wouldn't put it past anybody to cut it there because who the heck knows what they discussed afterwards.

What do I surmise from that? Absolutely nothing, to quote the great movie UHF. Absolutely nothing. All right, good. And that doesn't even have to do with the alleged payment in the alleged 34 charge felony indictment. This is just a color of the file with a bunch of prejudicial, irrelevant information to attack character or make someone look bad. All that I know is listening to that. Michael Cohen sounds like the scumbag stereotype of an attorney that we all know that he is. It's so dirty, Megan, to record a conversation like that. What was he doing? That was that was

with a client, with a client, with your only client. And when you point out accurately, he knew this wasn't a crime that this there was one even allegedly cried. Just he just recorded him without telling him on his iPhone. All right. Stand by. When we come back, I want to the movie clip that I think best embodies who Michael Cohen looks like right now. And we'll get into some more detail about what he's saying on the stand, saying on the stand. And the many, many, many, many lies already told by Michael Cohen. How will the jury take this guy seriously? So completing our Greek tragedy, he wanted to be attorney general.

He wanted to be taken along to the administration. Trump was smart enough to realize, no, there's no role for you there. And then this is basically what happened to Michael Cohen. He became very familiar to many of us who have seen this movie many, many times. He jumped out immediately in all of the writings he did about Trump and podcasts he did about Trump and testimony he gave about Trump becoming absolutely obsessed with a man. I give you Glenn Close. I just want to be a part of your life. Oh, this is the way you do it, huh? Shut up in my apartment. What am I supposed to do? You won't answer my calls. You change your number. I mean, I'm not going to be ignored, Dan. Yes, that's Michael Cohen today. He makes his living based on Donald Trump. He

talks about Donald Trump. Even on the stand, he seemed a little wistful about his earlier time when he mattered to Donald Trump. And now he's just like everything about this guy is defined by Donald Trump. He did switch his tune. I mean, I like, OK. He has lied so many times. It's hard to keep up. Um, but he's praised Trump repeatedly. I'll just give you a little, okay. Here he is in SOP three in a montage. One thing Donald Trump is he's a compassionate man. He's a man of great intellect, great intuition, and great abilities. Mr. Trump's memory is fantastic. And I've never come across a situation where Mr. Trump has said something that's not accurate.

Mr. Trump truly cares about America. He loves this country. He's an amazing negotiator, maybe the best ever in the history of this world. The words the media should be using to describe Mr. Trump are generous, compassionate, principled, empathetic, kind, humble, honest, and genuine. He's not lying.

He was protecting a friend. There's a difference. What is the difference? The difference is he was being a true friend. He was, it didn't matter to him. He will ultimately, and I've said this so many times, he will ultimately go down in history as the greatest president. Oh, my God. With Chris Cuomo, who, by the way, has got his hands totally dirty in this whole thing, too. So that's that's

the government star witness today, Phil. I mean, I realize he changed his tune, but it's so self-serving. A jury will see through this. I hope a jury will see through it, but we're talking about New York after all, and we've well documented that this jury, Alvin Bragg is counting on this jury to be sort of in the bag for Bragg and against Trump. You know, when you've got a lawyer who is surreptitiously recording a client and then basically saying this little snippet of a conversation proves all the other things that I'm saying that are negative about him, which, by the way, weren't recorded, it just defies credibility. There's just no way in the world that a rational jury and a rational legal system would buy off on any of this, Megan. You've got this individual who's capable of saying all of the things that you just played in that shot. And then fast forward to today, everything that he says under oath before this jury is going to be diametrically different. Normally, we would

say that that person is a compulsive liar and is not the kind of person you want to build a felony prosecution around. They have not proven the elements of this case. There's been no evidence yet in this case that Donald Trump committed a crime. They're going to have to hang their hat entirely on the testimony of this liar. They're going to have to get a jury to say, you know what? All the other times he's lied, we're going to give him a pass. We believe beyond a reasonable doubt he's telling the truth here in court. And it's going to be all done without any corroboration.

There's no physical evidence. There's not going to be any documents. You're not going to have Donald Trump writing a letter saying, hey, Michael, I want you to use this money. I want you to pay it for something. And I want to record it on the books in another way. No, this is payment for legal fees or legal matters. And that's how it was legal expenses, expenses,

which is even more ambiguous. That's the word they used. And where's the account? Yeah, well, that's exactly right. I mean, the CFO is in jail. He's at Rikers and I don't expect him. There's a real question about whether they're going to drag him in and testify. And if they don't, whether they're going to get an adverse inference drawn by jurist instruction, we'll see. But here's Michael Cohen. I gave you the he's the greatest thing since sliced bread. That was like Glenn Close and Michael Douglas in the beginning of the movie. The hot elevator sex, the days and days behind closed doors while the wife was away. It was actually only one night. That was the beginning. Then Trump started to

ignore the calls. And much as it had the same effect on Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction, here's what it did to Michael Cohen. All right, I'll show you. Let's start with top five. Michael Cohen here with another Michael Cohen reacts. Well, I've been receiving countless phone calls by people all concerned because they're hearing on the media that Donald Trump is going to run again. And he's going to make this fucked up bullshit announcement sometime after the midterm elections. All right. I still to this day maintain that he is not doing it. It is still part of this great grift of Donald Trump. Now, for me personally, I hope to God that this fucking scumbag runs. I really do. And you

ask me why? Well, first of all, because 24 hours after that, I'm going to put together my own team. I want to run as a Democrat. I want to put myself up on a stage against this fat fuck, this orange crested Mandarin Oompa Loompa. So let's see. Let's see if I'm right. Stay tuned. I'll be back. Then he took his bunny off the stove. This is their star witness. I don't use the word grifter very often. I'm not going to use it now. But that very much seems like someone who's going to say one thing when it's profitable one way

and say something that's the exact opposite when it's profitable the other way. And the other thing is when he's out there praising Trump, first of all, I happen to agree with him back then. But he's not just praising Trump because he is like a narcissist, indirectly praising himself. This is how smart Trump is, how good he is and all this stuff. And I'm his right hand man. I'm his fixer. So it must be a reflection on my own greatness as well. But the idea that this guy is a convicted perjurer, he is a confirmed liar, he's a he's a scoundrel of the highest order. I am now retrospectively reanalyzing Judge Engeron's decision in the E. Jean Carroll

case where he addresses Michael Cohen. And he specifically says it's very funny why he said it. This man is a convicted perjurer. He's a liar. Some Engeron was Engeron was the fraud case, the $400 million fraud anger on was yes, the $455 million Cohen testified in that case. Keep going. Yes, not the EG and Cal. Sorry, just to clarify that there. Anger on said as a matter of his decision, Michael Cohen is a convicted perjurer. And while some triers of fact might not give much weight to

the words of a liar, I believe him here. I'm paraphrasing, but it's almost verbatim. It's almost perfect. And now that I'm listening to that and rethinking it, it's like Angeron was phrasing what the jury has to spew out in terms of coming to a conviction here. Yeah, he's a convicted perjurer. Some jurors might think he's a liar now, but we choose to believe him now because once a perjurer, not always a perjurer. But I think Enron actually telegraphed and laid up the script that the jury is going to gobble up to come to their foregone conclusion. Everyone around him, Phil, is a liar. Michael Cohen is a liar. He had a lawyer and continues to have a lawyer. He's still represented by this guy, David Schwartz, who you may recall Michael Cohen got in trouble a couple of months ago when he was trying to get out of jail not long ago, late, late 23. And he cited a bunch

of case law to the judge. It was all made up. It was, it was fake cases that he used some AI generator to come up with. And his lawyer was this guy, David Schwartz. And I've got to show you this. So David Schwartz came on my show at NBC shortly after this whole story broke about the $130,000 payment and so on and so forth. And now we know that Trump reimbursed Cohen for the $130,000. We know that. And it's almost better if Trump just would have done it himself because you can make unlimited donations to your own campaign, but you can't have a third party do it, which is how they're trying to get him. But anyway, there's no question that Trump reimbursed Cohen for the 130. But the first defense that Cohen came out with was, I was not reimbursed.

And I just did this out of my love, again, back to the Glenn Close in the elevator, for Donald Trump. And Schwartz came on my show and tried to spew this nonsense. Look at this. He got approached. It'll take $130,000 to make this go away. He had to make a decision. OK, I get it. I'm not even challenging. I'm challenging on the impossibility. It's not that he paid 130 grand for something he didn't do and never saw. I get it when you're looking at it in a vacuum. But if you understand the relationship here,

it makes complete sense that he's approached, am I going to go to the boss or am I not going to go to the boss? All right, what do I do? He chose not to go to the boss. He chose to take care of this thing. Why wouldn't he get $130? Why would he pay $130,000 of his own money? Well, you know what? When Michael Cohen does come out, you're going to find out the mechanics of that. No, you're not answering. You're dodging. You're getting out of balance. I am answering you.

What's the truth? The truth is he loves the boss. He did it out of love. He did it. He did it. He did it out of love, and he did it out of loyalty. All right. So they laughed openly at him. We know that he was reimbursed. Of course, he was reimbursed. And that's his lawyer. He's the lawyer is a liar. Cohen is a liar.

The jury's not stupid. I know they hate Trump, but they're not stupid. And I just gave you one soundbite. Here's a little bit more of Michael Cohen on the record since the breakup talking about Trump. I think he hit the panic button a while ago. However, what he's very good at is hiding it in front of the camera. He's calm, cool and collect because he's a sociopath. I looked at him and I said to myself, boy, what a sad looking, pathetic, deflated individual. He is playing to the lowest denominator of American that exists in this country. He is truly the most dangerous person right now in this country and possibly the world. Trump 2024, More like Trump 20 to 24 years. Okay. So the thing is...

Oh my gosh, a lot to unpack. The prosecution's trying to front a lot of this indirect. So to take the sting out of what's going to be an absolutely brutal cross. But there's no way they can take all the state. They'd spend every day, all day for the next two weeks beating him up if they really wanted to get after everything the defense is going to do to him. And I just can't believe that once the defense is done, the jury is going to be having any feeling other than I want to vomit.

Get him out of here. But, Megan, you say that the jury is not dumb. The problem is they're partisan in all likelihood. And that's a big it's a big distinction. They're not going to do what they're going to do out of stupidity. They're going to do it out of partisan prejudice. And and that's what I think is a foregone conclusion. But everyone should rewatch that Michael Cohen and just appreciate confession through projection. Everything that Cohen just said about Trump is true of himself. But Megan, one thing about Phil, I sorry I cut you off.

You mentioned it a moment ago, and it's something that people should really understand. By reimbursing Cohen, the allegation is that it was a disguised campaign contribution because, you know, over donate to your own campaign. And so if it was Trump donating to his own campaign in kind or whatever, it's not a crime. If it's Cohen who did it because he got reimbursed and it exceeded his campaign contribution, Cohen should be the one on the defense. Well, here's the other thing. Here's the other thing, Phil. I heard Andy McCarthy raising this point. And as usual with Andy, it was a good one. Who was defrauded? Who was the victim of this alleged fraud? Because Michael Cohen paid the money. Michael Cohen and everybody around him, the testimony is consistent. He got paid back and Trump paid him double what he paid out so that he could pay full taxes, 50 percent on all the monies. So New York state did not get defrauded.

The only thing that was defrauded was a book, allegedly, in which they didn't write down reimbursement for hush money payment to Stormy Daniels. They wrote legal expenses paid to Michael Cohen pursuant to a retainer agreement. And the testimony was there was no written retainer agreement. But meanwhile, all these lawyers are coming forward and saying, I never have one written down. I've had so many cases in which I don't have a written down retainer, even if you're supposed to. Anyway, so who was defrauded? The book. The book was given bad information that was kept internally at Trump organization. The book wasn't even filed as an addendum to a tax return or to some sort of corporate submission that was required. It went on the shelf and it sat there until Alvin Bragg subpoenaed it. So who was

defrauded? Because fraud in the ether is not actionable. And the law is really clear on that. They won't enforce fraud claims unless there's an identifiable victim, which is one of the reasons why the whole fraud claim under Engeron was so outrageous. But there, at least, we had a specific statute saying it was OK. Yeah, well, Engeron, of course, doesn't require any victims before he labels something fraud. Neither does Letitia James and apparently neither does Alvin Bragg. In the TikTok video with Michael Cohen, when he says he might run in, you know, in 20, because he wants to be sort of on stage. Well, that's what's happening right now. He's got his way. He is on stage. This whole thing is a theatrical stage production. It's

not a court of law. This is nothing that's based on reality in terms of law, because for the reasons you pointed out, there's no victims, no victims, no fraud. It's the only time in history that I know of where two misdemeanors, arguably with the statute of limitations having passed, are combined together to make a felony or 36 felony fraud counts where nobody was defrauded. It's absolutely ridiculous to call this thing a court of law. This is simply a theatrical production. And Michael Cohen has gotten his way. He is now on center stage with Donald Trump and his TikTok followers are just going insane and his own star in his own mind is on the rise.

But let there be no doubt, Megan, that this jury is going to make their decision based on their feelings about Donald Trump, not about what's going on in this courtroom. I can only hope that there's one or two, maybe even three that will say, look, you know what? Even though we don't like Donald Trump, we don't see a crime here. And if he can hold up. We love the law. All right, wait, stand by. Hold the rest of that thought, Phil. Quick break.

And then back with the guys right after this. Gentlemen, for what it's worth, Trump sued Michael Cohen for breaching attorney client privilege months ago, but he dropped the suit in October. There was some allegation perhaps it wasn't viable because Cohen was acting as, quote, fixer and not attorney. But of course, Trump's whole defense is that he paid legal expenses. So I don't I'm not sure why or even if the Trump team abandoned the Michael Cohen shouldn't be talking at all because he's my lawyer defense. We'll have to look into that more. Here's what just happened before they just broke for lunch. It's 1 p.m. Eastern. Cohen testified that Donald Trump told him to, quote, take care of the Stormy Daniels story. Cohen says that Trump, upon learning that Stormy

Daniels was shopping her story, was very angry with Michael Cohen, who you recall by this point in the story had been working with AMI, National Enquirer, to tamp down these stories from Karen McDougal and the doorman, et cetera, calling it, he says Trump did, a total disaster and saying, quote, women are going to hate me. Cohen says he responded that he had no control over Daniel's story. Quote, just take care of it, he says Trump told him. Cohen says he kept Trump informed on Daniel's situation. Quote, that was what I always did, which was to keep him abreast of everything. Cohen said Trump, quote, was not thinking about Melania.

This was all about the campaign, end quote. While discussing the Daniels deal, Cohen said he, Cohen, raised Melania to Trump and that Trump responded, quote, don't worry, he goes. How long do you think I'll be on the market for? Not long. He wasn't thinking about Melania. This was all about the campaign. Per CNN, Trump smirked and shook his head when Cohen mentioned Melania. Here's what's annoying to me still. And the audience has heard me like this on a broken record. But like we've been over this campaign finance law does not look at what was in the subjective head of the defendant to figure out whether you violated the campaign's

finance laws. It looks at the nature of the payment. If a hush money payment is paid for any reason other than to help somebody's electoral chances, then it's not a violation of the campaign finance laws. It's only something like a payment for polling or, you know, the lectern to set up for a debate that you're never going to have again or use again. That could be a legitimate campaign finance expense. If Trump tried to claim this hush money as a campaign finance expense, they would have come after him saying that it wasn't a legitimate one. This wasn't a campaign finance donation expense, et cetera. They're only claiming it retrospectively. But even Trump's defenders,

Phil, on CNN and elsewhere, just skip right past this and go right to, it was all about Melania. It wasn't about, and I'm sitting over here pulling my hair out saying, no one gives a shit. We don't care whether it's about Melania or it was about the campaign. All that matters is, is a hush money, the kind of payment that could only ever be used to advance one's electoral chances. That's the only inquiry and nobody will talk about it. It won't wind up in the jury instructions and the jury will be misled the same way CNN is about what the relevant test is. Was it more Melania or was it more of a campaign concern? And in addition to that, Megan, I want to know where the objection is to this speculation. You're asking a witness to talk about what may or may not be in the head of the criminal defendant in this case. I don't

know. This is why it's so frustrating when you can't watch the actual court proceedings on a live stream or on television because you're getting it second and third hand. But when a witness wants to tell a jury what somebody else thinks, that's an improper question. It calls for speculation if they have some type of proof intrinsic that shows this is what is in somebody's head, if they wrote a statement and you can infer something from that. But for this man to offer his opinion is absolutely an objectionable question. And it makes me wonder what kind of kangaroo court is Merchan even running here? Because if the defense lawyers don't object to it, why doesn't the judge himself object to it?

It's patently an improper question. He's starting to feel a little Judge Ito-y to me. I mean, I realize he didn't allow cameras in the courtroom, but he's feeling a little Judge Ito-y to me. Like he doesn't have control of his courtroom. He's not compelling the control of the witnesses before him. And it is his courtroom and things are spinning out of control. We saw that with Stormy and I have no doubt Michael Cohen will be similar on the Michael Cohen front Viva. I want to show you two things. Number one, we talked about how he's banking. He's cashing in on being the Trump nemesis. He's got a TikTok show he does, which he agreed to suspend until after his testimony out of deference and respect for the court. This after he was doing the show and tweeting and giving interviews to CNN and MSNBC

elsewhere for days and days and days while this trial was going on. It was only when the judge said to the prosecution, please control your witness. And they said, we can't control him. We didn't strike a deal with him. Like he's actually not under our control. And, uh, he was getting, he was jeopardizing the case. So Michael Cohen finally said, all right, I'll be quiet until after the trial or after, after my testimony, not, not the trial, but here's what he was doing for the listening audience. I'm going to describe this video. Okay. Here he is talking about Donald Trump and the listeners put here like a baseball cap on him. This is like the viewers can, they put hearts above his head. He's like the resistance leader. They put a cowboy hat and a

mustache. Like they love him. Like, yeah, you go. He keeps doing hearts with his hand, you know, like Justin Bieber hearts. Like, yeah. When everybody says something nice, like he keeps doing it over and over to show how much he appreciates the positive feedback. They're putting a heart with a crown on top of the listening audience. A couple more. Yeah, go ahead. I'm just for the listening audience. What we're watching is pure insanity when they give him like these, I think, tick tock tips. He's got to do the sign that they put in their tick tock tip. It's it's enough to make you think you're going crazy watching what he's doing. Sorry, just that is OK. I think they like they give tips and he does.

He has to do what they do in the graphic. Well, somebody got on there and made him look like a fool with not that he doesn't there. But I mean, with like a silly knight's hat. And that is like this. He looks like Woody Allen over there on the right. And I think ABC News did an article about all this. And then he denied it. He said they were fake news.

OK, well, we can kind of see it with our own eyes what you're doing. But he is a hero to those on the left. And now, Viva, this is my second point. Who doesn't remember Donald Trump, right, with The Apprentice? And this is really how he rose to fame beyond New York with this show. All right, and I'm going to show you. Let me show you top 14 first, just for those of you who don't remember the Apprentice promo.

I've mastered the art of the deal and have turned the name Trump into the highest quality brand. And as the master, I want to pass along my knowledge to somebody else. I'm looking for the Apprentice. And credit to the New York Post for finding this and pulling it. Good for them. Now take a look at Michael Cohen's promo for his show he's pitching to all the networks called The Fixer. I've been on a journey of redemption, working to set things right with my family, my friends, my country. Speaking truth to power and calling it like I see it. But now I'm paying it forward, wielding the tools that I've learned for regular people in trouble. The little guy doesn't usually have access to people with my particular set of skills.

But that's all about to change. I'll work with you, offering expertise, advice, and solutions to fix your problem. Together, we'll change your life. I am your fixer. My God, someone's probably going to pick it up. Give him credit. That's well edited and that's well put together. But that is the proverbial lipstick on a pig. No, Megan, one thing that cannot also be overstressed when you talk about the hush payments and unless it's exclusively for the campaign, then it's not unlawful to begin with. Just compare this to historical precedent. You had John Edwards

paying off. Just to interrupt, Viva, because it does bother me. It's not they don't have to prove that it was exclusively for the campaign. They have to prove that the nature of the payment is such that no one ever pays or would pay this payment for anything other than a campaign like campaign polling. OK, so it's not even what's in his head is totally irrelevant. And if this judge had just allowed some expert testimony from a campaign finance expert, he would know that and it would be changing the shape of this trial. Sorry, keep going.

No, well, it's a good clarification because I was not only going to leave this at John Edwards, who made a hush payment in a campaign season, and it was deemed, I think, totally lawful. Hillary Clinton's opposition research with the Steele dossier, which served one and one function only campaign purposes, which was misrepresented in terms of how it was paid for, mislabeled. And also, oh, yeah, it was an outright lie that was used to be smuggled to the FBI via Hillary's attorney. And for that campaign violation, for that, you know, disguised, unlawful relabeling or mislabeling of a payment, she got fined eight thousand bucks in the DNC, one hundred and thirty thousand bucks.

That was the actual crime. That was an actual crime as opposed to what they're going after Trump for now. So it's again like it's not just double standards. It's outright lawlessness because they're going after their political adversary and they just have to find a politically prejudiced jury to, you know, pull the pull the pull the switch. This is why you have even Fareed Zakaria, no right wing zealot. He over at CNN saying the following, Sat9. The trials against him keep him in the spotlight, infuriate his base who sees him as a martyr, and even may serve to make him the object of some sympathy among people in general

who believe that his prosecutors are politically motivated. This happens to be true, in my opinion. I doubt the New York indictment would have been brought against a defendant whose name was not Donald Trump. Good for Fareed, though. It's bad. It's not bad because it's bad. It's bad because it's helping him.

I mean, what moral and ethical depravity? It's not objectively bad, so therefore wrong. It's bad because it's strategically not working the way you want it to. Go ahead, Phil. depravity. It's not objectively bad, so therefore wrong. It's bad because it's strategically not working the way you want it to. Go ahead, Phil. Yeah, so, I mean, Fareed is absolutely correct, and I'm glad that he said that because, look, and I would say the same thing, too. If this were a trial where you had a Barack Obama or a Bill Clinton or even a Joe Biden that was being targeted by a partisan district attorney in an area where the deck is absolutely stacked against it from a criminal defendant standpoint,

I would be saying the same thing, because this needs to be about fundamental fairness, fairness in the justice system. That's what due process is. That means fundamental fairness. And if they can take it and they can do it to someone like Donald Trump, a former president of the United States, then they can do it to you. They can do it to me. They can do it to Viva or anybody else watching this show. So if we allow our justice system to be weaponized and bastardized in this way, simply because we don't like a specific person, orange man bad or whatever. And if you can get the deck stacked with a jury,

a judge and a prosecutor all on the same team designed to get a specific individual citizen of the United States, then our system of justice means nothing anymore. And I've got to believe that it means more than that now. If we can have more on the left, like Zachary is saying this and pointing this out, then great, because we need the left and we need the right. We need everybody to understand that this is about something bigger and more than

Donald Trump. It's about the very existence of our judicial system as we know it. Reject the bastardization of our legal system. All right. Just here's a little bit of color. OK, exactly. Because, you know, it's one thing to say Cohen's lied under under oath, but this is via Politico who went through it and did a good job by his own admission. He's lied in court. He's lied to the media and he's pleaded guilty to lying to Congress. In 2018, he pleaded guilty to nine criminal charges, including campaign finance violations. Those were tacked on at the end. He said, OK, yeah, that one, too, because that'll help me get Trump tax related charges in line to Congress, sentenced to three years in prison. He told Politico that when he lied to a Senate committee in 2017, he did so

solely for the purpose of benefiting his then boss, Trump. He wants that as an excuse. Soon after his many guilty pleas, Cohen began saying publicly that actually he had not committed tax evasion, despite having told a federal judge in court that he had. Example, when Cohen attempted to get his sentence reduced, federal prosecutors said that they had substantial concerns about his credibility as a witness and that following his sentencing, he, quote, made material false statements during meetings with prosecutors and the FBI. Prosecutors declined his offer to meet with them again. During Donald Trump's civil fraud trial, Cohen again remarked, this time under oath, that he had not committed tax evasion, the thing to which he pleaded guilty, and said he had lied to the judge when he pleaded guilty. Trump's lawyer said,

so you lied at the time you lied more than once in federal court. Is that correct? Cohen? Correct. After his testimony in the civil fraud case, Cohen had sought to have his supervised release requirements eased, but federal prosecutors for the Southern District opposed that. And he did go back to jail. They told the judge overseeing the issue that Cohen, quote, has continued to deny responsibility for his own criminal conduct and appears to have lied under oath in a court proceeding. This guy, you couldn't ask for a less credible witness, especially on his Glenn Close subject, Donald Trump. Now, can we just spend a minute on the legal expenses and the actual documentation, guys? This is like, this is drier, but it's really the most important thing. I keep asking my team

because we have to read the updates. Same, same as you guys do. Has Cohen yet testified, Trump directed how these payments were going to be written down in the books or that he, that he knew about it or that he directed it. Cohen has testified just right before lunch that he directed and knew about the repayment to Cohen for the payoff to Stormy. All right. So that's in the record. But that doesn't get us there. They need him or someone to testify that Donald Trump was the one who not just signed the checks, which did not say what they were for on them, but who said to Cohen, this is how we're going to document it, you know, to to get around the campaign finance laws. That's Bragg's theory. Has not happened so far. So back to Andy over at

National Review. Okay, let me just read you these stats and then you guys weigh in. Here's what he points out. Okay, this is important. Each month in 2017, beginning in February when the arrangement was finalized, Cohen was to provide an invoice. That invoice would be paid by check. An entry would be made on the Trump org's books. DA Alvin Bragg says that the Trump records are false because the payments to Cohen really constituted repayment of a debt, not legal expenses. And that debt was incurred in October, 2016, the 130 paid to Stormy, but they were made to appear in the records as if they weren't repayment for a debt, as if Cohen was being paid for ongoing legal services provided in 2017. The checks don't say anything about why Cohen was paid, just that he was paid 35 grand a month, which is true.

As for the entries in the Trump Organization records, testimony at trial this week showed that the bookkeeping department logged the payments as, quote, legal expenses. And there was testimony that not much thought went into this, that the bookkeeping department was using a drop-down menu on a computer program designed in the early 90s and routinely put payments to lawyers and related expenses into this general category. And then, you know, he makes the cases many have that these actually were legal expenses. Cohen was Trump's lawyer. By the way, he also goes through the

money. Arthur Aydala was confused about this, as was I on Friday. This is how much they paid Cohen, 420. A lot of people have said, well, why 420 if it was only 130 to Stormy? Here's the math. They doubled it up for taxes. That gets us to 260. Then they also gave him 50 grand, which was for 2016 tech services from a communications firm called Red Finch Solutions. All right, so now we're up to 360. And then they gave him a bonus for 60 grand, which is not described. We don't know what the bonus is for. Andy points out it could be retrospective recognition of past services, could also be prospective expectation that Cohen, in his then new capacity as a private lawyer

who had just separated from Trump would continue to serve Trump as needed. So there we have it. The payments are written down. The bookkeeper made a decision based on a drop down menu, Viva. Nowhere, anywhere has there been testimony tying it to Trump's knowledge. And this is a fraud case. So that matters. Megan, it's a it's a joke. Was it McCartney last week who said that, you know, Trump basically knew nothing about this and it was for legal services as per retainer agreements? I mean, that is what it has always been. And, you know, these numbers might seem a lot or astronomical for people who have never practiced law

or for people who are not wealthy like the Trumps. I mean, this is what, a couple hundred thousand dollars for a man, Michael Cohen, who's off doing his business and Trump doesn't want to be bothered with every detail that's going on. Michael Cohen does his business and says, here's what it costs this month and go. And, you know, unless there's some radical need to look over invoices and see what's

going on, that's what was going on. And but the problem is, even if it was what they want to say, it was it wouldn't be legal, but it's not even what they want to say it was. This is all just a big kangaroo coat show trial so they can hopefully eke out a conviction before November. So sleepy Joe Biden can repeat the talking point. Convicted felon. Do you really want this guy to be a president, even though it gets overturned on appeal? Because all of this is unconstitutional or unlawful

because you can't have a state prosecuting for federal election crimes that the feds themselves looked into and refused to take on. All right. Last question, Phil, on a different subject matter, because there is a significant piece of news out of Atlanta today. We talked last week about how the court of appeals down there and state court of appeals had accepted the the case. They said that Trump could file an interlocutory appeal, meaning before the trial is done over the judge's refusal to disqualify Fannie Willis. They gave him or he had until May 18th to do it. Today's May 13th, right?

Today's May 13th. So there's news in that. What is it? So we now have, I think, the first of the several notices of appeal having been filed. So basically the way it works is once the trial court and the Court of Appeals agree to the interlocutory pretrial appeal, then the parties go back and file their formal notice of appeal with the trial court. And that is what officially transfers the case or begins that process anyway to the Georgia Court of Appeals. So far, I think we know that

Michael Roman, of course, that's Ashley Burchard's client, Ashley being the one who basically uncovered all of this for the benefit of the world. And so now she has filed her notice of appeal. Donald Trump, to my knowledge, has not yet filed his notice of appeal. I would suspect that he's probably going to wait until close to the end of the 10-day deadline in which to do that. But this is significant because, in my opinion, this formally divests the trial court of any jurisdiction to take any further action on the case. Some lawyers don't agree with that, admittedly, but I believe that now that it's in the Court of Appeals, I believe that no other action can be taken. And even if it can be, it's probably a bad idea for the trial court to continue with any other business because it might all be for nothing if it turns out that Fannie Willis has no business remaining or being the prosecutor in this case. It is amazing.

I mean, the last word on this, Biva, but you've got Georgia stopped in all likelihood. Mar-a-Lago's not going anywhere before November. January 6th is stopped because the Supreme Court has the case on immunity and another case that may gut that January 6th federal prosecution involving non-Trump J6 defendants. And now we have this New York joke case with Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels as the star witnesses. It's amazing what the Trump team has been able to pull off. Well, it's wild the depths of the depravity that this system is going after Trump because they don't want democracy to run its course. I would only say in the Fannie Willis case, first of all, I predicted Fannie Willis would get disqualified. And when McAfee

declined to disqualify her, I felt a little deflated. I will claim vindication if the Court of Appeal does disqualify her. And I think they will because I couldn't see them taking this with all the delays unless it was to overturn what McAfee did. Just to highlight, McAfee had a nice fundraiser with one of the witnesses, the former governor and Democrat Roy Barnes, who apparently is representing Fannie Willis in the state investigation. You know, it's it's they raised forty thousand bucks for McAfee in his run against his challenger, Robert Petillo. So interesting stuff. Corruption, good politics. I guess it's only a question of perspective, but I want full vindication when Fannie Willis gets disqualified. Yeah, same. Guys, thank you. Great job. Great to see you both.

Thank you for having me. And here's what was interesting for the listening audience. All this happens, you know, as I've said, Trump's pulling the inside straight. That's what he needed to get out of this. And he's doing it. And so, as Viva points out, it's shit. It's just left to democracy now. Right. That's how the left feels.

God, remember that Chris Hayes thought like it's really going to be up to the voters. Like the horror. New York Times reporting this morning on a brand new New York Times Sienna poll revealing, quote, an erosion of support for Mr. Biden among young and nonwhite voters upset about the economy and the war in Gaza, leading to the following headline. Donald Trump leads President Biden in five battleground states. In Wisconsin, this is showing Trump behind just by two. You recall he won Wisconsin in 16, Trump lost it in 20. In Pennsylvania, Trump up by three. In Arizona, Trump up by seven.

In Michigan, Trump up by seven. In Michigan, Trump is up by seven. Wow. In Georgia, Trump's up by 10. 10. My God. And in Nevada, Trump's up by 12 points, 50 to 38. My God, I got news for you, Alvin Bragg, et cetera. It's not working. That's why it wasn't on the Sunday shows. And they've realized this was a suicide mission. They thought it would be a kamikaze where they take him out, maybe hurt themselves a little. It was a suicide mission for them. And we are getting closer and closer. I mean, summer's two weeks away. Once the summer's on, we're into the conventions and then the vote is here. This was a disaster. It was a disaster of epic proportions, what they did with this lawfare. And the American people love Trump or hate him, knew it. It motivated people in a way

nothing Trump could have done would have nothing Biden could have done would have. This is absolute folly. And it's great to see the voters holding them accountable. I mean, honestly, this is why, you know, I spend my summers with the Jersey shore. Jersey shore is definitely pro-Trump for sure. I mean, you go to Atlantic City where he used to have a casino and it's like every boat has got the Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump. But New Jersey typically votes blue. And you saw Trump went on his, you know, he gets the weekends off from his trial. Did you see the crowds? They estimated 100,000. I don't know whether it was 100,000 or not. It's irrelevant what the actual number was. For sure, it was tens of thousands. Look at this. It's incredible for

the listening audience. I mean, it looks like a stadium almost of people. They're dying to hear from him. They miss him because he's been kept off the campaign trail. And they're angry for themselves and for him. I hope you like it, Alvin Bragg, Jack Smith, Fannie Willis, because you're going to get a lot more just like it. Okay, we'll be back in one moment with Corey DeAngelis on the nightmare that is your child's school. Stand by. 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, Megyn Kelly. You can stream The Megyn 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. School choice is gaining in popularity. Gee, I can't imagine why. With all the campus protests, CRT, DEI obsession, and gender ideology craziness,

that's just the tip of the iceberg. Joining me now is one of America's most prominent and influential school choice advocates, and that's Corey DeAngelis. Corey is a senior fellow at the American Federation for Children and author of the new book, which comes out tomorrow, The Parent Revolution, Rescuing Your Kids from the Radicals Ruining Our Schools. Man, Corey, that is the perfect title. That's exactly the kind of book I want to read. They do need to be rescued. There are radicals who are ruining

the schools. And perfectly, you dedicate the book to Randy Weingarten. Tell us why. Yeah, well, the teachers unions overplayed their hand by fighting to keep the schools closed as long as possible to secure ransom payments from taxpayers. They were able to leverage the school closures to call for more money. They got $190 billion in so-called COVID relief since March of 2020. And guess what? They overplayed their hand and they sparked a parent revolution because families, one, saw that the school system didn't care about them all that much. And families had to – they were desperate seeking alternatives. They were trying to pay out of pocket for private school tuition and fees while still paying for the closed government schools.

But the silver lining was that the teachers' unions plan backfired very quickly when through remote learning, which we really should have just called it remotely learning. Not a lot of learning was going on. But families got to see what was happening in the classroom. And guess what? We now have 11 states with universal school choice. Milton Friedman's vision finally coming to fruition. I wish he were alive today because now one in five states already have school choice for everybody. No picking winners and losers. Everybody can take their kids' taxpayer education dollars to the school that works best for them. That could be the public school. If you like your public school, you can keep your public school. But if not, for whatever reason, unlike with your doctor, you can take that money in the form of a voucher or a scholarship to a private charter home or other type of educational learning environment that works for them. So this is the silver lining of the pandemic. I mentioned a lot of the the hypocrisy and just theatrics and fear mongering in the book. And if you want to take Ted Cruz's advice on the back, he says, ruin Randy Weingarten's day by reading this book. I did dedicate it to her. I sent her a signed copy. My handwriting wasn't all that great.

I apologize. But it's because I went to government school, so you can't really blame me. The parent revolution, the parent revolution, the parent revolution. That's the name of it. Let me tell you something. I've often thought while doing the show, if I just if I only cared about there, there's your dedication, your note to her. If I only cared about doing a fun and interesting show, I would have kept my kids in their indoctrinating New York City schools because it would have been nonstop fodder for my program, the insanity

that went on there. But I actually love my children and it seemed like actual abuse to me. And so as everybody knows, I pulled, we pulled our kids from those schools and found much better schools out here in Connecticut. Well, I checked in with some of my friends at those same schools still. And my one dear friend has a son who was in my younger son's grade. So now they're in fourth grade, right? So her son, she shared with me a little essay. It was like a little paragraph that her son had to do about America. And I am going to read to you with her permission what her son read. She got it home and could not believe her eyes. Okay. He writes, the event I would teach people about is slavery. The reason I think it's important to teach people

about this event is so that we can see that America was built on black people, not on whites. Behind the scenes, it's all blacks. The reason we have picked crops, built houses, and America is because black people did it all. The only thing white people did was take credit for work they didn't do. As a white person, I stand with black people all the way. This is a 10 year old boy who is not getting this from mom and dad. He's learning this at an institution that in the third and fourth grade is trying to indoctrinate the children to hate the country and hate whites. It's very clear. The only thing whites did was take credit for it all. She was shocked.

And I don't believe they'll be at this school next year. And look, the taxpayers are spending about $40,000 per student per year in the government run schools in New York City. And look, the whole school system is supposed to be meant for creating a more cohesive society, creating more of a civic participation and tolerance of others' views. This is the exact opposite of what we're seeing in our government institutions today. And that's why the parent revolution has been sparked. The schools aren't focusing on the basics. They're not focusing on math, reading, and writing, on education. They're indoctrinating kids in ways that are antithetical to their

family's values and to the values of this very country. And so families are saying, hey, why not give me half that money? Give me 20,000 or even 10,000 to take my kids somewhere else so that I don't have to pay twice, once through the tax system and again, out of pocket for a private school or even to homeschool at a fraction of the cost of what they're spending in these government failure factories. How do you measure it, Corey? Do you measure it by state? How many states now have school choice? What's our metric for success here? The barometer of success used to be whether you had any form of school choice at all, whether that was for low-income kids or special needs kids. The new barometer of success, the new measuring tape is whether you have universal school choice. We're not picking winners and losers anymore. Everybody pays for a public

education and everybody is guaranteed a publicly funded education. That doesn't have to happen at a government school, though. And now you have before 2021, no states did this. Now we have 11 all red states controlled by Republican legislatures, Arizona being one of the first and one of the most recent being North Carolina and Alabama this year as well. The momentum isn't subsiding. And it's because it's really popular of parents in Arizona, for example, right when they opened the website to sign up for the scholarships, the government website broke down. I mean, so you can make a joke about it being a government product. That's why the website broke down. But it's also because so many families flocked to

the alternatives that we now have 80,000 families in just about a year flocked to the school choice program in Arizona. It's popular with parents. It shouldn't be a partisan issue. If you look at voters, Republicans, Democrats, and independents on the ground, they support school choice nationwide with super majority levels.

If you look poll after poll after poll, the problem is the Democrat elected officials are a wholly owned subsidiary of the teachers union. Joe Biden's a hypocrite on school choice. He went to private school. He sent his kids to private school and then he fights against school choice for others, pulling the ladder up from behind himself. Thankfully, Donald Trump is a supporter of school choice. He would he would support it and fight for it as hard as possible. He did so when he was in office last time. But the problem is Randy Weingarten, who I dedicated my book to and sent her a copy. She's the head of the American Federation of Teachers. Ninety nine point nine seven percent of their campaign contributions

in 2022. Guess what? They went to the Democrats, not the Republicans. It's a it's a complex money laundering scheme. It ought to be illegal. They use public funds to lobby against the Republicans. It's a it's a complex money laundering scheme. It ought to be illegal. They use public funds to lobby against the public. And it's all just a way to funnel money to the Democratic Party. Some Democrats are defecting on the issue in elected office, but it's a very rare case for them to buck the party trend. And it's all about money. It's not about logic. There's no better example of this than in Illinois, which is just so disgusting when it comes to children and school choice there. I never miss an opportunity. My audience knows to play the video of those moronic Chicago teachers during the pandemic. While this children low income in great need of education were kept at home, as you point out,

not learning, they were dancing. They were doing interpretive dance to show us how these totally able-bodied teachers could not possibly go into the classroom with these little germ-carrying monsters. Let's watch it. Make it make sense. Safety is essential. Oh my God. Keep our students and our teachers safe. All right. If these women are 35, it's a lot. They could be in their late twenties. And yet they wouldn't teach the children because they were terrified of dying of COVID. They refused.

Chicago's legendary for its bad public schools and Illinois in general. So tell us why Illinois in your book, you point out, is a particularly sad case. It's worse than we knew. Yeah, I mean, they're totally pathetic, but they did show families nationwide how low the unions will go. In Chicago, they had a board member vacationing in Puerto Rico, thousands of miles away, but while railing against going back to work in person. Somehow, it was safe enough to travel halfway across the planet, but it wasn't safe enough to go back to

work. They just wanted to go on vacation. They used any excuse possible. In Illinois, the unions were actually successful last year in getting rid of a private school choice program specifically for low income kids. And guess what? The teachers union boss out there, Stacey Davis Gates, she sent her own kid to private school this year after just a year before calling school choice racist and calling private schools segregation academies. I mean, I don't know if that's not hypocrisy. I don't know what is. And look, other families should have opportunities, too. If she wants to send her kids to a private school, fine. But she shouldn't step in the in the schoolhouse door and prevent other families from escaping her unionized failure factory. She knows it's not good enough for her kids.

It should be it should be good enough for other families to access alternatives as well. They shouldn't be trapped in her government run dumpster fire. We call the Chicago public school system. It's so sad. Your book points out that there it was in 2017 that the Republican governor made a deal with the Democratic controlled legislature to pass a budget that included school choice scholarship program for low income students. But there was a catch. The scholarship program was set to expire in 2022, unless they extended it. They, which they did, but only till 2023 that year, more than 9,000 kids were benefiting from the scholarships, but the unions don't care about the kids. They don't pay union dues, you write. So they set about strong arming politicians to oppose it.

In 2023, the legislature failed to enact an expansion of the program before the session ended. And Governor J.B. Pritzker, who I'm sorry is a villain in my view, he's just on the wrong side of everything, did not appear to lift a finger to help the families benefiting

from the scholarships. And now the scholarship program has expired. Most of those poor kids deprived of those scholarships will likely end up back in Chicago's government schools, where only one in 10 black students can read on grade level. Only one in 20 are proficient in math. This is 9,000 families that wanted better for their kids. Most of these families will be minority who wanted to give their kids a leg up, who wanted to learn, who had the attitude, who were ready to do the hard work and were learning, and they just pulled the rug out from under them. What they want to do instead is that when those kids get to be in junior or senior year in high school, totally unprepared for the colleges to which they're applying to just get rid of SAT scores, to just

ignore GPAs, to forget all the learning loss that they've had from K through 12 that they otherwise could have had had this been still open and admit them to the Ivies or the junior Ivies or what have you, then give them gentlemen's A's where they're totally unprepared. They're not learning anything because they're incapable of doing the math and the English and then force them out on society and pretend that when they don't make it, it's racism that led to them getting fired. You can see the pipeline. If they actually cared about these black and brown kids, they would do something about this. I mean, they were calling reopening schools racist,

but Chicago Teachers Union in particular, they put out a tweet saying that the push to reopen schools is rooted in sexism, racism, and misogyny. They threw every buzzword at the wall to see what would stick, and they deleted it pretty quickly after I replied to him with the CNN headline of all places that said that the school closures disproportionately hurt black students and it widened the achievement gap. So it was the complete opposite. If anything, it was more racist to close the schools than to open them. And maybe they realized that. But you had-stop fear-mongering with caskets and

fake tombstones even in dc where i was living at the time they placed fake body bags outside the public school offices implying that if you wanted to have it had them go back to work just like everybody else just like the private schools just like daycares everybody else is literally going back to work they were the only ones fear-mering, saying that you're trying to actually kill us if you want to. I mean, no one that no one wanted that, obviously. And it was just so ridiculous. And in Chicago, they were striking in 2022. I mean, to think about it, two weeks to slow the spread turned into two years to flatten a generation of kids in leftist cities like Chicago. They were even calling for police-free schools, Medicare for all, a wealth tax to reopen Los Angeles schools.

I mean, this is the same union president in Los Angeles that said that there was no such thing as learning loss. I mean, if families aren't awake now, I don't know when they will be. The good news is we're seeing a lot of evidence of a parent revolution where parents are pushing back at school board meetings. Yes, in some cases they're having their mics cut off for reading content that they don't deem appropriate for the public school setting. It's not age appropriate. But you have these same people who say that conservatives are banning books. They actually called to burn my book. A teachers union executive board member in Wisconsin said that it's a great day for a book burning party.

Hasn't even read it yet. They're total hypocrites. And but parents also got silenced by the NSBA, who sent a letter to the Department of Justice or to the Biden administration, implying that parents should be investigated under the Patriot Act for domestic terrorism. They even had a threat tag created by the FBI specifically for parents protesting at school board meetings. 26 states have already left the NSBA, which means parents, if they band together, they can start a revolution and not just start it. They can win it in their specific states as well by becoming a political juggernaut. It's called The Parent Revolution by Corey DeAngelis. And it's well worth your read if you're a parent, especially stuck in one of these schools. But even if you're

not like we're we love our schools now, but I care. I care about other people's students and children and the next generation and how they're coming up. The political indoctrination is just yet another problem. Um, that's everywhere. Libs of TikTok and Chaya Rachik, she just interviewed a woman about this. Here's, here she is explaining the problem in SOT 21. This is Chaya. Libs of TikTok has obtained a disturbing lesson plan being used in the Tigger Tualatin school district in Oregon, centered around Nazi Germany propaganda and the Holocaust. This lesson used at Tualati Middle School appears to display political bias by equating former President Donald Trump to that of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler. On the last page of the

lesson, students are asked to guess from a collection of quotes which ones originated from Donald Trump and which ones originated from Adolf Hitler. It's unbelievable, Corey, but that's not the outlier. That happens a lot of places, that kind of rhetoric to children on politics. I mean, these clowns, this is why they're so afraid of families actually getting a say in their kids' education, because the left almost doesn't even need to have kids anymore. If they can control the school system, they can still control the cultural direction of America going forward. If they're indoctrinating other people's kids in the government school system, that's about 50 million kids being churned through a system

for 13 years of their lives for seven hours a day. Conservatives can't win this battle just by having more kids of their own. They need to be able to fight back at school board meetings, win school board races, but also fight for the right to take your kids' education dollars to another school, which gives parents, conservative parents,

more agency. The school board won't want to cut off your mic or call you a terrorist if you have real leverage. If you can say, hey, I'm going to take my money elsewhere, I'm going to take my kid elsewhere, then they'll have an incentive to listen to you in the public school system. So school choice can be a rising tide that lifts all boats, but it's also not just important for your parents, for your family and your child. It's also important for the future of this country because the left has infiltrated the school system to turn kids into socialists, which will mean bigger government in the future, will mean more of a leftward drift in the future. But what I'm thankful for is that in these 11 states so far, since 2021 alone, a revolution has ignited and we're winning this war that the unions have waged on our kids for

far too long. Bit by bit, people are starting to pay attention, Corey. The parent revolution is the name of the book. So what is it? I mean, I know that the unions, you know, as you pointed out, donate overwhelmingly to the Democrats and then the Democrats just feed the unions whatever they want. But what is it? What what's in it for the unions? Why are they do? Why don't they give two figs about the children? Well, because they're a teacher's union, not a kid's union, and they don't even treat the teachers all that well, either the ones that are doing a good job. The unions just serve as a way to protect the lowest common denominator. They create rubber rooms in New York City where they put teachers there who can't even be around kids.

And then they pay them. They spend millions of dollars on this each year because they won't fire them. I mean it's just totally ridiculous. But we now have a kids' union. They're called parents, and they've woken up. They're never going back to sleep. They're never going to unsee what they saw in 2020. And the parents union can beat the teachers union because parents outnumber the employees in the system and they care about their kids' educational needs more than anybody else, certainly more than bureaucrats sitting in offices hundreds of miles away. I think if Democrats are smart, however, they'll stop listening to the teachers union. If enough of the band together, the teachers unions will become powerless and they won't have as much control over them in the future.

We've seen some whiffs of this this year in Louisiana, for example. Their house just passed universal school choice overwhelmingly, 72 to 32. They didn't need any Democrat votes, but they had 20 percent of their House Democrats vote for the bill. And so more Democrats are starting to do the right thing on the issue. It's more of the exception than the rule. But you also had in Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, when he was running for governor, he said he supported private school choice. He went on Fox News last year saying he supported school choice. He ultimately caved to the unions that spent over $700,000 on his campaign. But my point in the book and that what I'm telling you today is that because there are some there, the GOP has picked up the football

and moved the ball forward as the parents party, that becomes politically disastrous for Democrats to oppose parental rights and education. The more it's a political winner for the GOP to win on the issue. In some polling, including from the Democrats for Education Reform, in some states, they're finding that Democrats have lost their double digit advantage on the issue of education. And that poll from the Democrats for education reform, they also put out a press release saying Democrats would be smart to try to come along on school choice, too, because it's such a popular issue. So it'll be tough. It's like trying to get the GOP to break up with the NRA. It's a that's a tall

order. Listen, thank you for writing the book. Again, it's called The Parent Revolution by Corey DeAngelis, the subtitle, Rescuing Your Kids from the Radicals Ruining Our Schools. It's out tomorrow. You can pre-order it right now on Amazon. Corey, thank you. Thank you so much, Megan. It's amazing. I mean, and you got to get loud.

You got to be the squeaky wheel. I remember when my son started last year in seventh grade and we're at a non-woke school. They hired a new teacher. The teacher opened up the class by saying, this is an anti-racist Ibram X. Kendi classroom. All that matters is offense, not intent. We called the school and we were like the 50th family to call. Everybody had called saying, oh no. And guess what? That teacher was corrected and made clear too, that this is not how you're going to run this classroom and is no longer with the school. Be a squeaky wheel. Use your voice, even if you're not used to it. Come back to the

show tomorrow because Ruthless is here. Can't wait for that. We'll see you then. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.