The Megyn Kelly Show - Michael Knowles on Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, Entitlement and Victimhood, and the Woke Drift in Schools | Ep. 75

Episode Date: March 12, 2021

Megyn Kelly is joined by Michael Knowles, host of The Michael Knowles show on The Daily Wire, to discuss entitlement and victimhood, feelings vs. facts, Meghan and Harry, Piers Morgan's exit from "Good Morning Britain," Chris Harrison's latest apology attempt, the new ideology of progressivism, the uproar over the Jeep Cherokee and Eskimo Pies, the woke drift in American schools, gender and sexuality, men and women, arrogance and ignorance, the illusion of identity, tolerance and more.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms:Twitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShowFind out more information at:https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Today, Michael Knowles. He is one of the most popular podcasters out there. He is with Ben Shapiro's Operation. He is what you might call a whippersnapper. I think he's only 30 years old. He is with Ben Shapiro's operation. He is what you might call a whippersnapper. I think he's only 30 years old. He went to Yale and somehow described himself as to the right of Attila the Hun. How'd that go? Right? We're going to ask him. But he's written books. He's been very out there with this commentary. He's totally fearless and he's funny. So we're going to talk to him about all the latest

in the craziness with the cancel culture. You would not believe like just when you think it's dying down, it isn't. By the way, you can no longer have a Jeep Cherokee. Otherwise you're a racist. So we're going to get into some of the stuff that has happened as of late. Joy Reid's latest attack on Tim Scott and other things when he joins us in one minute. So stay tuned for that. First of all, do you go by Mike or Michael? I usually go by Michael. I like that. It was only because my mother forbade me from having a nickname as a kid, so it sort of stuck. I was going to say your Christian name. I appreciate it. My, uh, my son, my, my brother's son is named Joseph. Now he just got married. He's in his late twenties now, but when he was born, my brother said, you know, I can foresee Joe, Joey. I think, I think we got it covered. And, uh, when he was little, but they

didn't foresee was that he would call himself Jojo, which somehow got turned into Dojo. And we all called him that for years. Dojo. That is a superb nickname. That is a really, really good nickname. You do have to think it through, right? You have one child. You have to think it through.

What could they potentially be called? I did. When he was born, we really liked the name Simon. And what's the nickname? It's called? I did. You know, when he was born, we really liked the name Simon. And, you know, what's the nickname? It's Sai, I guess. So I like this idea of my son is like an old Yiddish man in a shtetl somewhere in Lithuania, you know. And did you go with Simon? Absolutely.

Oh, yeah. We actually have called him Little Sai, depending on how sort of much like an old man he looks at the time. Our middle child, Yardley, I actually didn't think that through. I didn't think there'd be a nickname for Yardley. And what we all call her is Yards. Yards. That's great. Okay. What does that conjure up? But I like it, right? I like the full name Yardley too. That's a very nice name. You know what? I like it too. And it's funny because she wants to know where her name came from because her older brother Yates got his name from Doug's dad. And so she's like, where did Yardley come from? And I don't

know, but I've said before, I'm pretty sure because the name came to me. And I'm like, how? And I'm pretty sure it came to me from the movie Christmas in Connecticut, which I watch every Christmas time. It's this old like 1947 movie with Barbara Stanwyck. And there is a very fat, old, bald man named Alexander Yardley. And I think she says namesake. That is great. Have you told her? Have you? Yes, she's aware. She'll actually say, Yates will say like, I'm named after my grandpa. And she'll say, I was named after an old, fat, bald man from a movie. In the movie. That's really funny. So I like Psy.

Okay. So let's talk about the latest news on Piers Morgan and Meghan Markle because this saga goes on. I love it. And I know people, like a lot of people aren't that into like the royals per se, but this has just turned into the ultimate example of victimization culture. And now it's a free speech thing, right? Because Piers threw down, walked out, and has basically that, but I absolutely do. It seems to me that Meghan Markle is the most sophisticated biological weapon that America has ever produced. And it's very sad. I think it's revenge for the War of 1812. But in a way, she's kind of the voice of a generation, the kind of generation that would rather play a Disney princess than be an actual princess.

She had to Google the national anthem of the country into whose royal family she was choosing to marry. You know, it doesn't get any more entitled than that. And, you know, I'm not one of these conservatives that believes, you know, last time I cared about the royals was 1776. I think it's actually the English monarchy has served this wonderful purpose. Queen Elizabeth is one of the most important and admirable women on earth. It's a representation of the nation itself. And it's very fitting that now you have a member of the royal family and this American woman that he married attacking the nation because we as a civilization seem to sort of despise ourselves these days. So I'm not surprised that you'd see it.

You raise a good point. She Queen Elizabeth is she might be the living opposite of Meghan Markle. She's all about duty, service, country, stiff upper lip, don't explain anything, you know, just forge forward. And Meghan Markle and Prince Harry are somehow emblematic of this narcissistic, it's all about me, and I'm always a victim. And, you know, so feel sorry for me. And I don't like the service. I don't. It's it's hard to smile on the Australian tour. Right. Like she's actually thinking we're going to feel to duty so much as she was oblivious to duty. She was oblivious to the idea that, and I suppose this is true of a lot of people today, both in the States and in Britain. We have a culture that views politics primarily through rights. And there are different traditions of this.

You know, conservatives have a certain view of rights and the left has another view of rights. But if you view politics primarily or exclusively as a matter of rights, then it's only a matter of time before it becomes a politics of entitlement. The only way that a politics that recognizes rights works is if the politics also recognizes duty, obligation, loyalty, affection for your family, and ultimately for your country, because patriotism is merely an extension of filial piety for the affection that you feel for your own country. And it's really sad to watch this happen as Prince Philip is in the hospital fighting off this infection when the queen is what, 94 now, 95, has served her country admirably.

It seems to me that Meghan Markle bought the lie that a lot of people buy about something like the English monarchy, which is that it's all about prancing around in castles and riding horses and going on duck hunts or something. It's a very difficult life of duty. You and I can wake up in the morning and do basically whatever we want to do. If we want to change jobs, we can do that. And if we want to go marry somebody, we can do that. And when you are born into the royal family, there are a lot of privileges that go with that, obviously, but there are a lot of restrictions. There's a lot of duty. That is your place in life and you serve a very important role as a symbol of the country. And I think they were absolutely

shocked to learn this. Certainly she was shocked to learn this and he apparently didn't provide her any help. How could she have been shocked? How? We knew from over here. I mean, it was obvious to everyone. How could it not have been obvious to her, especially when she had access to someone the rest of us didn't? The prince. I'm sure he told her. And for her to now claim like, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. It's not believable. Instead, she goes out there. And the thing that it's been driving me insane is that, look what's happened, Michael. We have 2.6 million people dead. We have record unemployment in Great Britain. We have 10 million people unemployed here in the United States. And we're supposed to care about what title her kid is going to get? Well, I don't.

I don't care at all. I want her to shut up and go away. You know, Megan, I think you're being terribly unfair here because Megan told us herself that she had nobody around her who could tell her anything about what it's like to be a royal. Nobody like, for instance, the prince that she was marrying. And really to complain about having to learn the national anthem or to complain about having to learn the hymns before your wedding into the family that runs the Church of England just represents a narcissism that I do think is emblematic of the culture. The only sort of benefit of the doubt I'm giving her is that she has been raised in a culture in the United States in particular that is so focused on the self

that she, I don't think, could really see past that. The moment that she, you know, encountered the reality of duty, of being a civil servant with a tiara on, rather than some Hollywood starlet, which I think she thought was going to be the life of a royal. Then she left. She ditched and she dragged her husband with her. It was so sad to see. Every so often in the interview, Harry would say, well, you know, darling, I think. And she'd say, shh, stop it, Harry. I'm answering now.

Allow me. Well, I mean, I, and she definitely played, you know, the race card. That was very clear. And yes, it sounds like there was somebody who apparently said something racist within the royal family. We don't know because Oprah didn't probe more. And I mean, I was saying earlier that I'm not sure we should just go with this because it's such a scurrilous allegation. Like in a court of law, you'd have to back that up. That would not have been admissible the way it was elicited by Oprah. You'd have to have a foundation who said it, where, who heard it, you know, and you'd have to get the details of it. I'm not sure we should accept it just because it was such a broad sweep. I'm not sure we've got the evidence, but let's say we do. So what she's proven is that there is one person in her husband's family who is concerned about skin color and sounds like they may be a racist. How does that lead you to pull up stakes from the entire monarchy to leave the country, to arrest the prince away from his family, to go back to the United States, which, by the way, we were told is also a racist country by woke people like Meghan? Okay, so somebody is kind of

douchey over there in the royal family. I get it. But what she's really complaining about, what she really was upset about was the mean press, which to me is just so weak. I'm sorry. I know the press is nasty. I've been on the receiving end. Of course. But come on, come on. And by the way, you think it was nasty then? Wait till you see what they're going to do to you now. Right. Now that you don't even have the semblance of palace protection. It's simply not credible. I mean, the allegations she's making about race are not credible. Her apparent inability to memorize a national anthem is not credible. She's an actress. Her job is actually to learn her lines, right? None of these things. The understanding that the press is going

to come and attack you, right? She's been in the public eye for quite some time. So I don't really think that's credible. Also, don't you think if the royal family had a real problem with Meghan's race, which by the way, no one would even know her race. I mean, she is what we call in Hollywood, ethnically ambiguous. My mother, who I mentioned earlier, my mother had much darker skin than Meghan Markle. But if you can claim in any way, some sort of victimhood that carries social currency. But don't you think that if the royal family had some problem with Meghan's race, that they would have mentioned this before Prince Charles walked her down the aisle. Don't you think they would have mentioned this before they welcomed her into the family? Did they just learn their biology a couple of months ago? Did

they just, oh my gosh, they might have a child. Well, goodness. Well, here's the other thing. So let's say somebody had this thought in their head, like concern about how dark the child's skin was going to be, right? Not good, not good. But what actually matters in life is not whether somebody might somewhere harbor a racist thought, a sexist thought, a transphobic thought, but whether they act on those thoughts. And as far as I can see, the royal family's behavior had nothing to do with race. They embraced Meghan. They embraced Archie. They did not withhold a prince title for that kid because his mother is multiracial, is biracial. Not at all.

All the facts that have come out say the kid never had any entitlement to become a prince. That was known for a hundred years. Long before Prince Harry met Meghan, they knew his kids would not be princes until his dad took the throne. Then it would be up to him and his wife about whether to bestow that title or accept the title bestowed by the king. So there's nothing. She's got nothing to prove that anyone behaved in a racist way.

There was one racist comment, allegedly. So it's like from that and her mean press coverage, we've spun into this narrative of like, now you get the head of BLM, one of the founders of BLM calling for a quote, a boycott of the royal family. Right. I don't know exactly how that boycott's going to work, but this is so emblematic of our culture, Megan. There's actually a joke going around right now that the left was so angry about George W. Bush's foreign policy of bombing the Middle East. And then they were so happy when Obama and Biden decided to bomb the Middle East because it was a woman manning the drones. It was a person of color dropping the bombs, and the bombs had a rainbow flag and the BLM sign on it.

What has happened increasingly is that we have shifted away our focus from actions to words. And this comes with the shift wrought by, call it political correctness, call it wokeness, call it whatever you like, the shift from old moral codes to new speech codes, the undermining of old standards of behavior with this new sort of lexicon that we all have to adhere to. Jen Psaki, my favorite current White House press secretary, we get such a kick out of Ms. Psaki. She was just confronted with this problem that Joe Biden is facing on the southern border, where the numbers are far worse, the children are being separated from their parents, they're being put in cages. It's an identical policy to everything that the left ever accused Trump of doing. And they said, do you have a messaging problem? And she said, no,

the past administration had a moral problem. Well, what's the moral problem? The two policies are almost identical, but it's the intentions, the deep seated beliefs. The actions might be the same, but something, something there is different. That's right. Well, I mean, and I want to get into the immigration thing with you in a bit, but before we, before we leave the, the Royals, um, I wanted to talk about the Piers Morgan piece of it, because the other thing that the woke left does is everything boils down to one's lived experience and they don't care about facts like hard facts that put the lie to someone's claim are now dismissed out of hand as just contrary to one's lived experience. And it's very frustrating to argue with somebody like that, right? Because it's like, how are you supposed to make any progress if that's some sort of trump card they can always throw out on you and pierce morgan i watched that segment which preceded his walk off the set and he was angry he was talking to their weatherman the good morning britain's weatherman who forgive me i think

he's mixed race i know he's a person of color and um the the weatherman was trying to make a similar point in response to pierce point about the kid was never entitled to be a prince. And she she misled us. And we've got that clip. I don't think most people have heard this. This is a lot of people are playing why he walked off or showing Piers' walk off. But here's what preceded it. Listen, Megan just got it wrong. Archie hasn't been prevented from being a prince because of his skin color. And that's been now believed by Americans on national television there. And that is damaging. But again, do you know what? It's their lived experience.

No, it's not true. Piers, it's their lived experience. And again, this is where the confusion comes in. How do you sometimes identify covert racism? It's actually quite hard because it's not there for you. But Alex, on that one, it's not true. It's so frustrating. What are you talking about covert racism? He was never entitled to the title black, white, purple. He wasn't going to get it. It's not her lived experience. It's her imagination.

Megan, those are just your deeply ingrained implicit biases. Don't you know that King George V understood in the early 20th century that someday down the line, there would be this boy who was in the line and he was one-eighth black, and this was all just to promote white supremacy or some other such evil. This problem is widespread. I mean, you see it everywhere from the Smithsonian Institution describing the objective reality or objective truth as white supremacy. You see it to this dismissal of facts here in the royal family. It comes from an undermining of our faculties of reason and will. It actually does tie into this issue of political correctness because

political correctness asserts that by changing words, you can change reality. That words, which are symbols that we use to communicate with one another, they actually have no tie-in. They have no relation to some objective reality outside of themselves. So we can just construct any sort of reality that we want. To quote Hamlet when he's feigning madness, it's all just words, words, words. And so you see this expressed in a lot of cockamamie left-wing theories during the 1960s and 70s in the academy. But what this redounds to is, you cannot tell me that my suffering is not real. The suffering of the individual, the claim to grievance is the only thing that I can know. I feel, therefore I am. And you can

present all the facts in the world. We're simply not speaking the same language. And this is why, by the way, if you want to have a civilized politics, you need to be able to agree on the meaning of words and the things that words refer to. That's how we persuade one another in a republic. When you can no longer do that, when you cannot communicate, then you have lost your mode of politics. When you lose speech, you lose that mode of politics and politics merely becomes a bunch of interest groups grunting at one another, which is sadly what politics in the West would appear to have decayed to. Well, so after this 14-minute exchange, you could sense Peirce's frustration. And I must tell you, I felt it too.

I'm sure our audience listening right now is feeling it too. First of all, what does that even mean it's her lived experience? She made it up, and therefore we're supposed to say it's true? It makes no sense. So then Peirce ultimately so then alex beresford is the guy's name which is very close to alex baron sin they should not be confused alex beresford is the weatherman for good morning britain who i am told by my team um has publicly said that he had one he had his mother was white i think his father was black um so he was still

poking peers and he was suggesting that this entire criticism by Piers boils down to the fact that Piers doesn't like Meghan because, as Piers has told everybody, Meghan ghosted him years ago. She sort of, in his view, used him to work her way up the ladder in Great Britain and getting contacts that were well known and then ghosted him as soon as she met Harry. And so that was Alex's attack on Piers right before he walked off the set. And then he called Piers a name. Listen. And I understand that you don't like Meghan Markle. You've made it so clear a number of times on this program, a number of times. And I understand that you've got a personal relationship with Meghan Markle

or had one and she cut you off. She's entitled to cut you off if she wants to. Has she said anything about you since she cut you off. She's entitled to cut you off if she wants to. Has she said anything about you since she cut you off? I don't think she has, but yet you continue to trash her. OK, I'm done with this. No, no, no. Sorry, no. Do you know what?

That's pathetic. You can trash me, mate, but not my own fault. No, no, no. See you later. Sorry, can't do this. This is absolutely diabolical behaviour. I'm sorry, but Pierce spouts off on a regular basis and we all have to sit there and listen. 6.30 to 7 o'clock yesterday was incredibly hard to watch. that was not being conducted in good faith and with guardrails that would adhere to fact, whatever the facts were. And by the way, Meghan Markle may not have criticized Piers publicly

over the course of after she ghosted him, but we now know that she was the one who called the station herself to complain about his statement that he didn't believe her because with respect to her claim that she was suicidal, she purportedly said she was very concerned about others with mental health issues, hearing that kind of thing. Now, by the way, at no point did Megan claim that she is currently having those feelings. She was recounting a feeling she claimed she had a couple of years ago and Piers, a couple years later, was saying, I'm not sure I believe anything she says. I actually don't believe anything she says, which is a view he's entitled to have. So now we know she personally had a hand in what became this huge kerfuffle leading ultimately to his departure.

But diabolical. That was his behavior for not willing to have the convo. I was so glad that Piers walked off that set. And I think some American conservatives might be a little confused by it because we love to talk about the free marketplace of ideas and you know, the only answer to bad speech is more speech and we've got to stay in the fight and debate these things. You are not in any way obligated to engage in a debate in bad faith. When you, when you say that this person talking to peers was not acting in good faith, that is the key here. They were not debating ideas. There was no persuasion that was going to go on here.

This was a character assassination, a petty personal attack on Piers Morgan. And I loved his expression. He just said, sorry, mate, you can trash me, but not on my own show. And I think conservatives have a lot to learn about that. We seem always to give in to the left on the guardrails of the conversation. We always seem to give the left their premises and we debate according to their premises. And Peirce said, no, thank you. It's a losing battle. It's a trap. tried he tried for 14 minutes it wasn't like he just said all right you're not somebody i can talk to because you're not dealing in fact he listened back and forth then it got personal on piers's show and he kind of had it and clearly i mean i

said this before but clearly he had had something with his own team behind the scenes prior to going out there on the set i could tell i mean just from having been a tv anchor i could read it on the look on his face clearly before he went out went out there, somebody ticked him off. And who knows what they said. I'm sure they were chastising him over his remarks. And Piers is Piers. You don't want Piers? You shouldn't have hired Piers.

He was his quintessential self that day. And now he's basically, I don't know, he seems like he might be kind of enjoying thumbing his finger at everybody because he is a free speech advocate. He wrote a whole book about this and here is what he told the press who hounded him on the street yesterday. I believe in freedom of speech. I believe in the right to be allowed to have an opinion. If people want to believe

Meghan Markle, that's entirely their right. I don't believe almost anything that comes out of her mouth. And I think the damage she's done to the British monarchy and to the Queen at a time when Prince Philip is lying in hospital is enormous and frankly contemptible. So if I have to fall on my sword for expressing an honestly held opinion about Meghan Markle and that diatribe of bilge that she came out with in that interview. So be it. Although the woke crowd would have thought they think that they've canceled me, I think they'll be rather disappointed when I reemerge.

Good for him. I love it. Right. It's like when this kind of thing happens, I feel like everyone needs to speak up. He needs to say, no, I won't be canceled. Right. And I'm not sorry because he wasn't sorry. And the rest of us, I mean, I tweeted in his in his favor a couple of times the other this whole week. And I went on a bunch of British television to defend him because we've been talking on this podcast, Michael, about how it's not enough when the mob comes for somebody to just not join the mob. If that's the best you can do, then we'll take it. It's better than joining the mob. But what we really need is people who are able to fight back against the mob, to stand up for the one being mobbed. And you don't have to agree with him about whatever he said. You just have to stand up for the principle of free speech and against mob rule. Yes, this is I think the way that we persuade people to do that is by showing the reality of what we call the cancel culture, because a lot of the time, I think the reason people don't speak up is that they feel that they can hold on to their old privileges. The privileges that the sort of dominant liberal order gave to them. You saw this great example over the past week with one of the musicians in the

band Mumford and Sons. He had complimented, and you see it was so sad. He complimented Andy Ngo's book detailing how awful Antifa is. Andy Ngo has gotten brain bleeds from Antifa. He has seen it really firsthand, did excellent reporting. And he said, oh, I liked the book. And now they're trying to cancel him for it. And what did the musician do? He issued an apology. And it was the worst thing he could have done, not even as a matter of truth and justice, but even for himself. He's getting this bad advice where people are going into his ear and saying, don't worry, just lay low, apologize to the mob, appease them a little bit, and then they'll forgive you and you can go back to your old popularity.

That just won't happen. There is no forgiveness in this culture. Sir Roger Scruton, speaking of wonderful Englishmen, the late Roger Scruton said that in order for us to have civilization, we need confession and we need forgiveness. You need to be able to say, whoops, I did something wrong and you sacrifice your pride. And then the rest of society has to be able to say, okay, I forgive you and you sacrifice your resentment. And then you can get along together and have a country. That would appear to be on its way out. America used to be the land of second chances. I don't

even know if we're the land of first chances anymore as these radical ideologies are advancing. And so in that world, any kind of weakness, any sort of apology to the mob, it's not only going to set you back, but it's certainly going to set back the cause of the traditions that we all cherish and want to maintain. Let me ask you about that. So you're the banjo player in Mumford & Sons, hugely successful, right? This is sort of, I guess they described Mumford and Sons as more folksy. I don't, I didn't realize that that was the, the area that, you know, Kind of like a pop folk. Genre for that. But okay. They're awesome. And it's a great gig. They're succeeding, right? It's a huge band. So they come to you and they, they say, we can't really,

it's not going to work with our lefty folk people for you to be an Andy Ngo fan. And you kind of got to, like, you got to fall on the sword if you have any chance of staying with us. I mean, most people, it's hard to be a musician. It's hard to find, you know, to hit success. Most people would do it, would do what he's trying. I get what he's trying to do. I feel bad for him, but I get what he's trying to do. Don't you? I totally get what he's trying to do. The thing he doesn't understand is he's already out of the band. The thing that he doesn't understand is he's already lost whatever he had. And so the choice is not, do I stand firm and lose my gig or do I capitulate and degrade myself and then get my gig back? I think that choice is over. The only question is, do I lose my gig and keep my dignity or do I lose my gig and grovel to the people who are going to destroy my career? Oh my God. So that's a very interesting thought. First of all, I'm going to need to sit with that. I really am. I'm of course thinking about my own personal history, but I wish we had known each other then.

This is true, I think, of a lot of people. Because this kind of culture came on us so fast that the old way of thinking was, you know, apologize, sort of, it's okay, it'll work out. I just think in the last number of years, that has really changed. That rug has been pulled out from under our feet. And that's a pretty negative social change. No, my friend Melissa Francis says, she goes, MK, you killed apologizing. I mean, your incident was kind of one of these moments where you looked at it and you said, nothing about this makes sense. The alleged issue, I call it the non-troversy itself doesn't make sense, but then even the reaction, the apology, the culture had snapped. Something in the culture

had snapped and look at the effects that it's had now into the future. Yeah. I've said before, I really felt through the whole thing like people were gaslighting me. I know what I said is factually true. And yet there's nobody out there, almost nobody, defending me. By the way, Piers Morgan was one of them who openly did defend me. Ben Shapiro, your colleague, boss, is another one, but very few. And so I was really like, I'm being gaslit. So I guess I did step on some huge landmine that was very culturally blind of me. And I'd been so beaten down by my year and a half at NBC at that point. It was like, I was just a little pulp of my formal, of my real self. Up next, I am going to play you a soundbite that you will not believe. Stay tuned. It's from

Chris Harrison, the host now sort of turfed host of The Bachelor. I mean, just flogging himself on Good Morning America with Michael Strahan. It was shocking. It was a shocking exchange. If you haven't heard it, you will. Stay tuned. While we're talking about groveling and pathetic and apologies, oh my God, have you seen what's being done to Chris Harrison of The Bachelor? You know, you'll be shocked to hear that I'm not a nightly Bachelor viewer, but I have heard about this. This is a real, it's become an international incident from some tabloid TV show. It's so cringy.

So just to get people up to speed, my understanding understanding of it is somebody, a woman on the show. Yeah. It came out that in 2018, so not that long ago, I guess she was in college. She went to something called like a plantation party. Totally inappropriate, right? It's like, okay, 2018. It's probably not a good idea. And it came out and she was deeply apologetic. She was

embarrassed. Right. And Chris Harrison, who hosts The Bachelor, was asked about it in an interview. And he basically said, yeah, plantation themed frat party in college. And he basically said, well, cancel culture. You know, was it wrong then or is it just wrong in 2021? And he was trying to make the point of like, you know, we sort of always have this perfect 2020 hindsight and are we beating up on her too much, right? So that was his knee-jerk reaction. Well, you, he actually said we should have grace, right? Yeah.

Well, F that. Grace, what? So he was removed from The Bachelor. I don't, he's not officially fired yet as far as I know. He's been, quote, taking a break and is not on The Bachelor show. He's hosted for like, I don't know, 45 years. Spent forever. Since the Hoover administration, right? Right. So it's already kind of like, the whole thing is making me feel uncomfortable. And I'm like, Chris Harrison? Hey, when did he become controversial? And then he went on Good Morning America with Michael Strahan last week.

And I was like, every muscle in my body was clenched watching it. It was so uncomfortable. He looked like a hostage. I was like, blink twice if you can hear us, Chris. Are you okay? Are they giving you food and water? So just listen, because we have a clip. Listen to this. A lot of people, and I'm wondering, why would you defend Rachel Kirkinell? I am an imperfect man. I made a mistake,

and I own that. I believe that mistake doesn't reflect who I am or what I stand for. I am committed to the progress, not just for myself, also for the franchise. You said, quote, is it not a good look in 2018 or is it not a good look in 2021 because they're the big difference? So what is the, to you, what is the different or is there one? There is not. Antebellum parties are not OK. Past, present, future. Knowing what that represents is unacceptable. I am saddened and shocked at how insensitive I was in that interview with Rachel Lindsay. And I didn't speak from my heart. And that is to say, I stand against all forms of racism and I am deeply sorry. I'm sorry to Rachel Lindsay and I'm sorry to the black community. So you are the right person to lead this franchise into the future, you feel?

I plan to be back and I want to be back. This interview is not the finish line. There is much more work to be done and I am excited to be a part of that change. A lot more work to be done. Chris, I cannot agree with you more on that. You guys know his apology is his apology, but it felt like it got nothing more than a surface response on any of this. And obviously he's the man who wanted to clearly stay on the show but only time will tell if there is any meaning behind his words megan do you remember do you remember at the end of breaking bad spoiler alert but you know the show's been out for a while so great ever great yeah i mean truly magnificent tv and at the very end, Walter White, this sort of villainous guy, his brother-in-law,

cop brother-in-law is about to be killed by the drug dealer. And Walter's pleading for his life. He's saying, no, just do this, Hank. Don't, no, just say this, say you'll do this. And Hank looks at him. He says, Walter, you're the smartest guy I know. And yet you don't realize that this guy decided to kill me 10 minutes ago. You don't realize that this is all for naught. You know, listening to that interview, what he first said when he defended this girl and said, you know, look, have some grace and different times, whatever. That was a defensible man. That's an upstanding man who's actually standing up for somebody and standing up against a mob.

The guy who went on that TV show is despicable. I mean, that- It's a shell of a man. A shell of a man. The only way they can really beat you in this sort of woke cancel culture, look, they can take your job, they can take your money, they can take your reputation. But the only way they can really beat you is when they get you to degrade yourself. And sadly, they succeed at

doing that a whole lot. I had so many feelings when I watched it. Obviously, every line was scripted. You could just tell. And he went on to say that he's, of course, now working with a diversity trainer. A certain male gesture comes to mind. Do you know the male gesture? I mean, as a matter of fact, I don't believe him. And even though I thought it was not graceful of Michael Strahan not to let him off the hook a little. I can't say I disagreed with Strahan's assessment. It didn't seem sincere. I think he was right about that. Of course, it was insincere.

You know, you're initially in this moment where you disagree with the guy. You say, well, I have a different view on antebellum parties. I disagree with him. Okay. But now it's not just that you have a disagreement with this guy and you think that he's a bad fellow and has bad motives. You also know he's a liar. He has actually given you a reason to criticize him. I don't think the previous criticisms were legitimate at all, but he has now given you a legitimate reason to criticize him. And so the mob wins. Right. And I'll be shocked if he actually does return to the bachelor franchise, to your point about the end of Breaking Bad. But you know, the thing is you look at things like this and you think, okay, I mean, no, I don't think many people are going to support an antebellum party. And 2018 wasn't that long ago, but it was before this crazy, has to lose his show over, you know, could we be more graceful?

I don't know if the standard was the same then, are trying to tell us that the Jeep Cherokee is offensive and has to lose its name. That's happening. And Jeep, I think, is going to do it. Oh, well, of course, because you see, in the name of anti-racism and anti-white supremacy, we need to erase any vestige of any culture that is non-white. I mean, first of all, you know, on the point of this party, you're not allowed to have a party about the South, you know, the big skirts or anything, but you're allowed to have a toga party. And last I checked, there was a whole lot of oppression and slavery in ancient Rome. Perhaps someday you won't be able to have a toga party. Perhaps these cultural mores, these standards are changing so rapidly because they're not really about any

just standard. They're really just about the imposition of the rule itself. The fact that these cultural radicals can get you to acquiesce and do their bidding. That's, you know, I think sort of the first thing that we need to come to grapple with. Well, I don't know anything about like Plantation Party doesn't sound like a good idea to me. I have to say, right. Like I'm pretty loose about like not slapping people on the hands on, on non-PC stuff. That one seems rather obvious, but I also think she was a dumb ass college student and an apology should be enough, right? She's this girl shouldn't have her life ruined. And Chris Harrison, who was trying to throw her a bone and accept the apology, he shouldn't have his life ruined. He's been

critical to that whole franchise. And now it's like, F you, you're done. Right. Well, and just, you know, just think about all the things that you have done in your own life. You say, gosh, well, that wasn't so great. Oh, I messed up there. Oh, I did something wrong to this person. And think about how you have been forgiven for those things and how you would like to be forgiven. And of course, it would be nice to extend that grace to other people. But we are caught up in this particular ideology. It's a truly this is sort of the essence of progressivism, whereby the past is always bad and the present is always a crisis and the future is always going to be wonderful. And so if you defend in any way, anything in the past, which means if you don't go along with the progressive political agenda, then they'll find some reason to go after you, some reason to cancel you. And unfortunately,

people who do not speak, I think people who spend all their time in politics kind of understand that and they're better equipped to deal with this mania because maybe some people have seen it coming. But for most people who don't spend that much time browsing political philosophy in the news all day long, this will be a surprise to them. And I mean, that is what has created the cancel culture. And I want to follow up on that one second, but I do want to just round out so people know a UCLA law professor, Berkeley law professor and Berkeley doctoral candidate wrote an open piece saying, look, Jeep has signaled that it's open to granting the Cherokee Nation's request to change the name of the SUV. out that non-Indians have for years co-opted Indian culture and identity. For example, the game of cowboys and Indians being played ad nauseum by children forever as one example. And then they go on that the other point they make, brace yourself. Guess what else is racist? The Eskimo pie. Are they taking our Eskimo pies? You can kiss your ass goodbye if you like it. Oh my gosh.

It first came out in 1921. They say the cheery icon of an Alaska native child wearing traditional cold weather clothing has traveled around the globe. This happy-go-lucky imagery has circulated more broadly than knowledge of Alaska's complex colonial history. Ignoring the sovereignty of the indigenous peoples of Alaska. You racist, you put down that pie right now. I would like to state for the record, I am not now, nor have I ever eaten an Eskimo pie. I do not want to be marred with the allegation of racism. You know, what's so ironic about this, though, not that the left and the people pushing this particularly care about the irony, is you erase Cherokee, what are you going to replace it with? Some sort of generic English name? So then you've erased Cherokee from the culture. Even consider the more famous example

of the cancellation of Aunt Jemima, because Aunt Jemima is allegedly racist. Aunt Jemima is a black character that was played by a black woman, which most people know. But what a lot of people don't know is that Aunt Jemima was a character created by a black comedian, a black comedian in the late 19th century named Billy Kersans, who was part of the minstrel theatrical tradition, which is now obviously very politically incorrect. But you have a black writer creating a black character for a black actress. And in the name of racial justice, some white marketing executive at a corporation is going to cancel all of that. Isn't there something perverse about that logic?

100%. And by the way, my team's telling me that actually they're getting rid of the name Eskimo Pie. That's fine. What's the new name? I'm trying to look at this. Eddie's Pie. What is it? E-D-Y. Eddie's Pie.

Oh, Eddie's or Edie's? Edie's Pie? There it is. See? Oh, yeah. Edie's, right? That's the ice cream brand. I think it's Edie's.

You would have hoped they'd at least rename it Inuit Pie. But no, absolutely not. It's Edie's. They just replace it with a sort of generic American term. And there goes the Eskimos. No, it's gone. And the thing is, what I was going to say is, all right, so this girl on The Bachelor, she's done.

Chris Harrison, I guess he's done. But remember, we just had a story in the news this week or last week about the incoming editor in chief at Teen Vogue, Alexi McCammond. And this girl, she sent out some dumb ass college tweets that were anti-Asian. She was making fun of Asian eyes. I mean, there were definitely racist tweets. And she, like there was, there was an uprising. 20 people at Teen Vogue wrote like, screw her. You know, she shouldn't be people at Teen Vogue wrote like, screw her. You know, she shouldn't be here. But Vogue stood by her.

Right. She's young. She's black. She's I think she's 28 years old. Young woman. So this wasn't that long ago. Right. That she was in college. Let's remember.

And she's OK. She's going to she's going to keep her job. She worked for Axios before this. But Anna Wintour and all the others are going to stand by her. Chris Harrison, white guy, not so much. Of course, because it is really not about a standard. There is no universal standard that's being applied here. It's not, as Adrian Vermeule, the Harvard law professor says, it's not hypocrisy, it's hierarchy. There is a new sort of hierarchical caste system being imposed upon American politics, which is a really dreadful sort of thing and antithetical to the culture that we all want. But it's very effective. And I think conservatives are actually

sort of missing the point here. When we dismiss these things, we laugh about it. We point out the hypocrisy. We giggle at the absurdity. PC, wokeness, cancel culture. Yeah, it's absurd. Oh my gosh, it's crazy. It's also a cogent political strategy that has been ruthlessly effective for decades at this point. And it appears to be accelerating. Everything we do to try to stop it seems, if anything, to help this process advance. Well, I mean, another example was Joy Reid, who's constantly making racist and inappropriate remarks, anti-gay remarks, you name it. She came out last week and called Tim Scott, Senator Tim Scott. She said he's only there at this Republican event to, quote, show a patina of diversity,

a patina of diversity. So offensive. And Tim Scott responded by saying, to your point, Michael, and I quote, we need to take these comments seriously. Woke supremacy is as bad as white supremacy, end quote. And this is not the first time she's called him a token. She's like, that's just fine, I guess, because Joy Reid has black skin.

She also, by the way, called Justice Thomas Uncle Clarence. Right. Obviously, another name for Uncle Tom. Just fine because of her skin color. And I think that leaves most people sitting back saying, what important point because the rules now are that the logic doesn't matter and the arguments you make don't matter. It just matters what the person who makes those arguments looks like. So Joy Reid gets to say certain things, but I don't get to say other things, whatever. This gets to the left's understanding of free speech, which I think was articulated very well by Herbert Marcuse, father of the new left. He wrote an infamous essay in the 1960s called Repressive Tolerance. And the thesis is you can't tolerate intolerance and therefore you got to shut up all the conservatives and you need to encourage speech from leftists. And we've dismissed this on the right for many decades and said, oh, it's perverse, it's awful. There is a sort of logic to it. The logic is that all free speech regimes have some standards. There's some things you can't say. Some things are off limits. That's always been true in America.

It's always been true everywhere else. And what the Joy Reads of the world are saying is, yeah, we support racial tolerance, but Clarence Thomas laboring under a false consciousness is actually setting that back. And so we can be as vicious to him as we want. Tim Scott, same thing. We can be absolutely vicious. And according to our understanding of speech, that is totally coherent. I think that if conservatives don't recognize the logic that the left is using here on speech, if we just keep uttering platitudes about free marketplace of ideas or whatever, I don't think we're ever going to stop it. Because their perception of free speech is actually, I think, a little bit keener and their strategy is obviously much more effective. And they don't – they have such a blind spot as to how regular Americans feel and live. And of course,

the silent middle is too afraid to speak up. But I was thinking about it just this week when it's, so it's Women's History Month now, right? Now that we're in March, it's Women's History Month. And there is this woman, God, she annoys me. Her name is Jill Filipovic or Philip. Oh, yes. I don't know. Right? With an F. And she went after Rush Limbaugh after he died. She was one of the people who wrote an article and she went after Ben Shapiro. She wanted Ben's article about, you know, his, his remembrance of Rush to be all about Rush's alleged sexism. That's how she wanted Ben. Anyway. So she wasn't a Rush Limbaugh fan. Okay. She doesn't have to be,

but she's the gender. She covers gender for the New York Times. And literally she spent time tweeting on March 10th. Okay, here's the tweet. And now I'm really going to get myself yelled at. But I think the issue of example setting for a kid is a totally fair one. What example are you setting when dad works for pay and mom does the care work at home. Lots of reasons not to want to set that example for a child. Oh my God. Right? So I tweeted out two things on this, which I'll read. This is idiotic, disgustingly judgmental. Stay at home moms are setting a great example, just as moms working outside the home are as long as they're loving and engaged. This sanctimonious guilt trip is sexist bullshit, whether from a man

or a woman. Ladies, do not listen to this moron. And my follow-up was, also, any woman trying to pit stay-at-home moms against moms working outside the home has no business calling herself a feminist or covering gender for the New York Times. Hey, Jill, you called Rush Limbaugh a woman hater. Look in the mirror. She loves women so long as they're they're living their lives exactly as Jill would like them to. Yes. But, you know, this has a long history among feminists. When I saw her tweets about this topic, I thought, wait a second, you're telling me that now if you want to stay home and raise your family, that it is wrong for you to do that and your husband has every right to make you go to work, doesn't quite sound like women's liberation to me. It seems like there's

a bit of a bait and switch, but it goes all the way back to those second wave feminist debates between Betty Friedan, the American feminist, and Simone de Beauvoir, who are very famous French feminists and the strumpet of Jean-Paul Sartre. And they were disagreeing over whether or not women could stay home and raise kids if they wanted to. Wait, can I just pause you? Yes. What is the strumpet of Jean-Paul Sartre? So there's a very vicious, awful philosopher in the 20th century named Jean-Paul Sartre. And the irony of, I guess this is one of the examples of the irony of feminism, is that Simone de Beauvoir, most famous feminist in the world, was basically the jilted common law wife of this philandering

derelict named Sartre. But somehow this was presented as very empowering. And it actually, she explains this in an interview with Friedan. Friedan says, well, look, if some women want to work, that's good. And if some women want to stay home, that's good too. And Simone de Beauvoir says, no, we cannot give women the option to stay home with their family because sure, a handful of women who really want to go out and work, they're going to go work. But most women, if given that choice, are going to stay home and raise their kids. And that is not liberating. If we want to liberate women, we have to force liberation upon them. And I think when you understand that fact, which goes far beyond feminism, goes to basically the whole left program today,

when you understand that they believe in their heart of hearts, that they need to force liberation on you, seems like a contradiction in terms. All of this kind of highfalutin talk starts to make a little bit more sense. It's infuriating. I hate when they try to pit moms against each other as though one version is better or one is a bad example for children. Screw you, Jill. Now, meanwhile, you should read Barry Weiss,

as everybody knows, because she's brilliant. And she's got her own sub stack now, which everybody should subscribe to. And she actually put this one out on City Journal because I think she needed some, just to make sure she had all her ducks in a row and her reporting and backups and all that. But she had this crazy good incendiary piece

about schools that hit this week. And one of the schools she talked about is here in New York, Grace Church. It's very Tony, very sought after. And they are getting rid of, they're banning the use of the terms mom and dad and boy and girl. To the point where if you read a book about like, I don't know, little boy blue, you know, you're not allowed to say the word boy. You have to, they say you have to substitute the name in. I don't know what little boy blues name is. Like you have to be like, this is a, this is a story about little Bob blue. And you can't say mom and

dad, you have to say caregivers or generic parents. And you can't say n and dad. You have to say caregivers or generic parents. And you can't say nanny or babysitter either. It's like it goes on. So we've gotten to the point now where you're just not even allowed to say boy and girl in these classrooms, Michael. I just think, are we getting to the breaking point? Well, this, it does show you, I think, why the right and part of the left has gotten so focused on this transgender issue. Because the transgender problem, gender dysphoria, as a psychological matter, affects very, very small number of people. It seems to be spreading as a social contagion, but in terms of

the psychological issue, it's very rare. And so why are we spending all our time talking about how we can't say boy, we can't say girl, the boy's got to go to the girl's room, the boy's got to be able to compete on the girl's track team. The reason we're focusing on that is because it gets to the fundamental distinction in human nature. It's funny that we talk about racism so much. There's really very little distinction between the races, but there is a distinction between men and women. Men and women, traditionally understood, are complementary to one another. They go together. Men are from Mars, women are from Venus, but somehow we go together. There's never going to be a war between the sexes because everybody's sleeping with the enemy, as the old adage goes. So if you can obliterate

that fundamental distinction, then you really do have control over a society. Then you really can remake society as has been the plan of leftists going back even further than Marx, Whitaker chambers, the ex communist, uh, ended up being one of the guys to convert Ronald Reagan to be a conservative. He said Marxism communism, it's not a new ideology. It's actually the second oldest faith of, uh, it's the alternative faith of mankind that began in the garden when the serpent told Eve, ye shall be as gods. And by the way, it has a relation to our free speech debate. And I think it shows the constraints of free speech, inevitable constraints. You're going to have to limit certain things because if we believe as a

society that boys are boys and they cannot become girls, then we are going to refer to boys as he. We're going to use that language. It's going to affect the way we perceive the world and how we talk to one another. If you believe the new fashionable idea that actually there's no such thing as sex and boys can be girls and girls can be boys or whatever, then you're going to refer to boys in dresses as she. You're going to communicate different ways. You're going to perceive the world differently. If our country can't agree on the most basic things, then we cannot have a country. And I think it's why the left has spent so much energy on this issue. And I think it's why people on the right who kind of see what's going on are spending time fighting back against it as well. Well, I don't know why it has to cross over to intolerance

toward preexisting beliefs, language, and science. I actually am not somebody who doesn't accept, right? If somebody says, if somebody born, you know, designated male at birth and they're, and they're, they're a boy. And then they say, I want to live my life as a girl. And I feel that I am a girl. I will respect that. I will absolutely use their pronouns of choice. You know, my own belief is that there are two sexes. I'm a science person. I believe that there are two biological sexes, male and female. And then there are people who just feel like they're not in the right body and they identify more with the other sex. And that's fine by me.

But stay out of my lane. Don't fucking tell me we can't have women anymore. I'm sorry. But like that's bullshit. And don't tell me we can't have boys and girls. And don't tell me if I want to use those terms. It's because I'm transphobic. And honestly, I know.

I have trans people in my family. I know trans people. And I don't know one who is in favor of this bullshit. It's like their activist lobby or even just self-flagellating super woke liberals are driving us to make these decisions that I don't know who wants this. No, of course. It's always going to be some white marketing executive canceling Aunt Jemima, right? This is not some cry from the oppressed masses. Whenever it would come up that they would want to rename the Redskins, there would always be public polls of Native Americans, and they never cared. None of them cared at all about the Redskins. It was only woke white liberals. And it's the same thing here with the transgender question. And actually, you don't just need to take my word for it. You can look at the way that the left has used these identity groups.

So yeah, I don't think that people confused about their sex are particularly militant, not in my experience, not the ones that I know. But for decades, we were told in defense of homosexual rights leading up to the redefinition of marriage, we were told in defense of homosexual rights leading up to the redefinition of marriage, we were told actually a pretty simple argument. People are born with innate sexual desires and innate sex, and you can't change that and you're born this way. And so a compassionate society is going to accommodate that and tolerate that ultimately even to the point of redefining marriage. I totally understand that argument, and that argument ultimately was successful. And then the very same lobbies undercut that argument with the gender question,

because they came out and they said, actually, there is no such thing as sex, and not only is sexual orientation mutable, but actually sex itself is mutable, and you just need to have some cosmetic surgeries, and then you can be the other sex and nothing is fluid and nothing is fixed at all. And you say, well, wait a second, you just gave me the exact opposite argument. Uh, and now you're giving me this new one, but both of them are designed to obliterate the old understanding that we had, the old standards on these things. And I, I think that this is a feature of woke leftism. I don't think it's a bug. I think it's a feature. George Orwell talks about this in 1984, which these days has been skyrocketing up the bestseller charts on Amazon. I think it tells you a little

bit about our culture book written 70 years later. It's back up at the top. What Orwell says in 84 is the totalitarian tyrannical regime rules through new speak, which is a sort of political correctness. It rules through surveillance, but most of all, it rules through double think and double think is his word for the regime, forcing you to hold mutually contradictory ideas in your head at the same time, the born this way argument. And the, there's no such thing as sex argument. If the regime can force you to hold both of those ideas at the same time, in Orwell's words, you lose your capacity and willingness to reason. And getting back to your excellent point earlier on, when we can't reason, then all we have is our lived experience and our grunts and our

interests and politics collapses. In a second, I'm going to ask Michael about his new book that he's got coming out. Unlike his old book, we're really hoping that there'll be something in there. His April 2017 book was called Reasons to Vote for Democrats, a Comprehensive Guide. It had a table of contents, had an extensive bibliography, and it had 266 empty pages. It sold some crazy amount. Initially, I think it was 60,000 copies, so it's up above that now, but we'll get into it in one second. I want to bring you, before we get to the ad, a feature we have here on The Megyn Kelly Show known as From the Archives. We thought this one would be timely because it's about Piers Morgan.

This is where we direct you to a show from our library that we think you should check out again. And Piers was one of our early guests. This is actually episode 16 we're talking about, talking about a friend of the show, Piers, who has been in the news quite a bit this week, as you've already heard. He walked off his UK morning show, Good Morning Britain, where I've been a guest many times and I enjoy the show. And he never came back. Here's Piers on our show on October 28th. We're at this place now where I think one of so absurd because, of course, the First Amendment

is necessary not to protect speech you like, but speech you do not like. No one's trying to shut down speech everyone loves. Well, that's the whole point, isn't it? Is that I regularly, I follow lots of people on Twitter whose opinions I don't agree with precisely. So I hear something outside of my own kind of echo chamber. And I urge everybody else to do the same. When you only follow people on social media that agree with you, you start to develop this very tribal, entrenched view of things, which doesn't allow for any nuance or any movement. But it gets really insidious when, I mean, universities, colleges around America, we're having the same problem in this

country. When they decide that even someone like Bill Maher is unacceptable and has to be low-platformed because he's held a shining light to wokery and all things around it, when that starts happening, you really think, well, hang on, who are you going to allow to speak? And what kind of education are kids going to be getting in these universities? What are they going to be taught if they find everything offensive, if they're triggered by everything, and they can't even have a speaker like Bill Maher, who's a liberal, come and talk to them, let alone a bona fide conservative? I don't know where this takes education.

I don't know where it takes students. I don't know where it takes students. I don't know where it takes democracy. But I do know it's taking it, as I say in the book, into a dangerous place where coronavirus has been appalling. But it will be. Historically, pandemics tend to blow out in about two years. And then where are we left as a society? Because if we don't wake up, which is the title of my book, we don't wake up to this problem. I think the attack on free speech over time, after all this, will end up being far more dangerous than any virus. He called it, he's living it, and we need to stop it. I've got a feeling Piers is not going to be silent for long. And that is a very good thing.

And this has been From the Archives. Back to our interview after this. In a world in which, you know, the messaging, the public messaging is all about how you've been victimized and it's all about your identity and not about your brain and how you think about the world.

It's just, you know, you were born a victim. If you have certain skin colors, certain, you know, lady parts or what have you. Yeah.

It's just a, such a self-defeating message. And like that, it explains why people are depressed and they, you know, the people who are pushing for these woke identity politics, they have nothing to replace it with. They have,

once they get rid of, you know, they shove critical race theory down our throats and they're making everybody say there's no more gender. I don't know what kind of world we live in other than, do you feel as sorry for me as I do? Right. Right. I mean, there was a great Babylon Bee headline about Meghan Markle, which said- Oh, I saw it. It was amazing. It was so great. And Meghan Markle inspires millions of girls around the world to show them that no matter how rich, beautiful and famous you are, you still can

be oppressed because that obviously has social currency. The way that you know that that victimhood now carries social currency is that you have so many people pretending to be races other than white. The Rachel Dolezal example, there have been plenty of these cases, professors at NYU, people who are pretending to be a non-white race. Well, if there were such a thing as white privilege as the left is currently describing it, certainly people would be going in the other direction. Linda Sarsour, who is a radical leftist woman, she famously said that she began to sort of lean into her Islamic identity because she didn't want to just be a boring white woman in New York any longer. There was a big push that she was actually quite supportive of during the Obama administration to create a new racial group, MENA, Middle East

and North Africa. Traditionally speaking, people from those areas when race mattered were classified as white in the United States. The push to create a new racial category to declassify people as white would seem to me pretty clear that the privileges and the social advantage are very much in the other direction and they're justified by claims of victimhood. So people want to embrace an identity that will be traditionally oppressed. But if you are actually in a group that's been historically marginalized, like Latinas, Latinos, and you vote Trump, then you lose your person of color identity.

Then you are multiracial white. Yes, that's right. You're a white Hispanic. It's so complex. And by the way, to your point, Abigail Schreier was on the show who wrote Irreversible Damage, which every living human being should read. And she was saying it's no longer cool to be a lesbian. We're losing lesbians to the trans thing because it's not cool enough. People are looking for an identity that is kind of sexy. And they're like, oh, lesbian? Yawn. Same thing with gays. It's like, nah, boring. You gotta find something more interesting. Right? And you see this reflected in social scientific surveys, which I'm sure is what Abigail was

referring to. What's funny is that our culture is so prideful. We're so arrogant and we're so stupid. We are so ignorant, even of our recent past and certainly of our ancient past. There is no new idea under the sun. And what has come up, these new crazy gender theories or whatever, this is just the reemergence of an ancient heresy. I mean, very specifically, the transgender thing is the reemergence of a heresy called

gnosticism, gnostic dualism, this idea that my true self has nothing to do with my physical body. I might look like a guy and I got an Adam's apple and a deep voice, but actually deep down, I'm something else. And the flip side of this heresy is another crazy idea that is being pushed these days, which is materialism. The idea that I am only my body, you know, our loves, our hopes, our dreams, our affections, they're all just illusions. It's our brain pistons firing all wacky to dilute us. And therefore we don't need to worry about a moral order. And if it feels

good, do it, is kind of the prevailing moral idea. So those two versions of humanity, those two ideas about us are currently being advanced at the same time, even though they're polar opposites. And they obviously miss the truth of the situation, which as Abigail might say, is the truth of the complexity of sexuality or the complexity just of our nature, which is we are soul and body. We are spirit and physical. And those things are together and they're inseparable on earth. And gosh, isn't this a complex world that we live in? It would seem that that answer, the only non-simplistic answer, is the only one that people are no longer willing to engage with.

I know. It's like tolerance isn't enough. It has to be total abandonment of the world order we knew. You can't be a woman anymore. Women aren't the ones with breasts or who menstruate. And you can't even say, oh gosh, what was the one or who menstruate. And you can't even say, oh gosh, what was the one that somebody was telling me? You can't even say like, it's the woman who gives birth. I don't know. It went on like every day there's a new rule. And I just feel like, no, I don't accept. I disagree. I will protect my ability to say I'm a woman and I don't really give a damn if it offends you. But this whole conversation is reminding me, we cut this clip because what we saw the other day,

our whole team was laughing, but this kind of nails it. It's this, he's a comedian, Ryan Long. Oh, love him, guys. Palomar. He's playing like modern therapist talking to this distraught young woman about life in today's day and age.

Here, listen. A lot of therapists will tell you how to get your life together and what you could do differently, but they rarely ever focus on what the world could do differently. That is your family's fault. That's society's fault.

Whoever you are, there's things working against you. It's my job to find those things and help you base your entire identity around them. I've been feeling pretty lonely lately. Have you tried posting online about what men can do differently? I was dating this one guy, but then I f then I his best friend

in his bathroom at his birthday party. If he can't take you at your worst, he doesn't deserve you at your best, and society needs to change his views on women at their worst. I now understand the world needs to change the way it looks at hot messes. I think I've been smoking too much weed.

You've actually been smoking the perfect amount, and am I correct in saying you use it to self-medicate? 93% of New Yorkers go to therapy. So whether you're born in the wrong place with the wrong parents, the wrong amount of motivation, the wrong gender, you want energy to be focused on who's to blame for that happening rather than antiquated what you can do about it. I love it. He totally hits the nail on the head.

It reminds me of this observation that struck me a few months ago. We always hear about institutional racism and institutional oppression. So then I started thinking about the institutions. We've got big tech, the government, the universities, Hollywood, high education, low education, all these institutions. The left controls every single one of them. So if there is institutional racism, don't you think that the people who are making that claim, maybe they should look at themselves. I mean, all of us more broadly. If society is really the problem, the system, if that's really the problem and it explains everything that's

ever gone wrong in my life. What is society? Last I checked, society is just all of us, right? At some point, don't you have to look in at yourself and say, gosh, maybe I am not only a victim, but I am an active person. You know, one of the most bigoted aspects of this whole woke racialist idea is the idea that only white men, straight white men are, they're the only fully human people because they're the only people with will and intellect and any agency at all. This is their theory, right? And if you, if you in any way deviate from that identity group, then you don't really have a will. You don't really have ability. You don't really have any agency. That is the worst possible thing

that you can tell a kid. It's the worst possible thing that you can tell anybody who you hope to develop into a flourishing human being. And it's truly white supremacy. That is white supremacy. That could be right out of the mouth of David Duke, which is what's scary. No, you're right. They don't look at their own institutions. They think all the racism is, you cannot refer to mom and dad. I just think people are going to be pushed to the brink. And when you look at the larger situation in the country right now, you know, I think Biden has gone so much more woke than we thought he would. So it's like we went from Trump who fought this nonsense to Biden, who we were told is going to be this sort of milquetoast moderate who's leaning way into this stuff at a time when he's pushing for amnesty, right? For the 11, 12 million illegal or people who are in the country illegally right now undocumented, um, where people are swarming across our Southern border and he's doing very little

about it, right? The press is giving him a complete pass. Unemployment is still 10 million people still unemployed. Right. So it's like a covid lockdowns remain in place, easing a little. But as we get people vaccinated, we're still being told masks possibly through 2022. Right. I just think how much are you trying to try people like what how much should we be expecting of the American people to take? Well, you know, we were promised a return to normal. And the first thing he does is nuke women's sports and obliterate the border. Tell us we have to lock ourselves up for two years. But that would be the new normal. I mean, this is this is something that really worries me when you hear people in public health or people who are politicians talk about the new normal. We all laugh about that. We say, we're not going to wear the masks forever. We're not

going to social distance. What an Orwellian phrase, if ever there was one, forever. But we sort of are, right? The way that you get norms is when you just do certain things for a long enough period of time, then that becomes normal. And I had a fear that this would happen with Biden because Joe Biden, and I don't mean this to sound as insulting as it will. Joe Biden is nobody. Joe Biden, I don't think he's had an original thought in his entire life. That's why he had to drop out in 88 because he was plagiarizing everybody else's thoughts and lying about his record. It's true. I think he is a glad handing politician who kisses babies and smiles for photos. And what he is in office is an empty suit and an avatar for the political winds. He wakes up in the morning, licks his index

finger, he puts it high in the air, figures out which way the wind is blowing, and then he just goes in that direction. And unfortunately now, because the left, I don't think that he is speaking for the majority of Americans. I don't think the majority of Americans want to nuke women's sports and open up our borders. And every poll shows that I'm right about that. But what is really blowing in that direction is the institutional power now in the country. This is something I actually detail it a bit in my upcoming book, Speechless. The way that the left has attained influence in this country is very subtle. It's through what a communist theorist, Antonio Gramsci, called a war of position rather than a war of maneuver.

It's not just they advance and they retreat and they advance. They take positions of power in all of the institutions and then they exercise that power. So the reason I think that no one's really worried about Joe Biden's obvious cognitive decline right now is because nobody thinks that every day he's making all the most important decisions. He is an avatar for this political establishment, this system that could operate without him or with him or with him some of the time. It's operating in a way on its own. You mentioned you're having a book come out. Is this one actually going to have words? Well, you know, Megan, I decided after my best-selling blank magnum opus, Reasons to Vote for Democrats, I thought it would be a curious

challenge to write a book with words. And furthermore, I thought it would be funny if for my second book, I wrote a book that is actually about words. So the title of that book is Speechless. I just turned in my final draft to the editor. It is in a way providential, I guess, that the book happens to be about exactly what is going on right now, how we got here through this political correctness regime, which a lot of people date back to the 80s. I think it actually goes back further to the 20s and why conservatives have been so feckless at opposing it. It seems like anything we do, political correctness advances. And I think it's because it lays a trap for conservatives, where we either go along with their crazy new standards or we abandon standards entirely. Either way, PC wins. And I will tell you, though, Megan,

I will tell you, writing a book with words, I admit this fully, all humility, it's much harder than writing a book without words. I'm glad I did it. It was edifying, but it's trickier. It's so much trickier. So I do think the reason people like Republicans and others, the left too, which I think is largely with us, that they go around, they went along with it for so long because no one wants to be called a racist or a sexist or a homophobe or transphobe. They don't, for too long, back to the discussion we had at the top, we have all been assuming that our critics are operating in good faith. And I think the big reveal over the past couple of years now that they've reached too far is they're not, they're not. And just because they throw these terrible names and labels at you doesn't mean it's true, even if they have a critical mass on their side saying the same. They've got their army, but the silent middle, the silent majority,

they're our army. And you just have to keep reminding yourself of that. Right. And I think this, I don't want to be called racist thing is a big issue here. I'm not so worried about being called racist anymore because I know that I'm not racist. Racism is an offense against human dignity. That's why it's wrong. So that's why I'm not going to do it. Done. I don't care what these people, these crazy people call me. But it's a it's a real fear. It's the worst thing that you can possibly be called in the country right now. And so what happens is there's only two responses that you can have to PC if you're in any way not a leftist. The one is you go along with it, right? You just say, okay, I'll start using the new words and doing whatever you want me to do.

And then the second way is to say, okay, look, I don't want to go along with your new words, but I am not going to make any substantive claims myself. You do whatever you want. Live and let live. And you get rid of all the standards. But the problem here is the whole point of PC is to get rid of the old standards. An example that really jumped out to me about this was some months ago when Drag Queen Story Hour was in the news. I guess this was before COVID. Drag Queen Story Hour is this event where transvestites will come in and twerk, sexually dance in some cases, for toddlers. And some conservatives said, you know, this is a bad idea. And there were other writers who I think were a little bit squishier who came out and they said, no, actually, it's a blessing of liberty. And there were other writers who I think were a little bit squishier who came out and they

said, no, actually it's a blessing of liberty. And at the heart of this is a kind of radical skepticism. It's this trap of PC that we've been talking about, which is the argument here was that if you say that we shouldn't have drag queen story hour, then the left might say that we shouldn't be able to go to church on Sunday, you know, cause they're just, they're both sort of similar things. First of all, they're already telling us we can't go to church on Sunday. We've been dealing with church closures from the state for a lot of the COVID pandemic. But also, are you telling me that we really do not have the moral conscience, the act of judgment to be able to say, drag queen story hour, not so good, going to church, probably pretty good. Are we really not able to distinguish between right

and wrong and true and false and good and bad? Because if we're not able to do that, then the left has already won. The woke people have already won. We've already been defeated. And like Hank lying there on the ground and breaking bad, we just don't know it yet, but it's already happened. Yeah. And I mean, how do we lie down so easily to it? I tweeted out this little picture a week ago that summed it up saying, how do we get to the point where wet ass P word is song of the year, but we have to cancel Dr. Seuss as too offensive to be seen. Like what the hell has happened to our country?

Talk about double standards. It makes sense to me, Megan. It actually makes sense to me in that. I mean, you even think just on the music front, they always want to cancel that Christmas song, you know, baby, it's cold outside. They say that is sexually very transgressive. It's a Me Too homage. It's a Me Too homage, but wet ass P word, you know, that's perfectly wonderful. But the reason for this, of course, is because those things have a purpose. You know, what the left has wielded very effectively now for at least 50 years is sex,

is licentiousness, right? If you arouse people's sexual appetites and you get them always so ready and raring to go, then they're going to be less in command of their higher faculties. The founding fathers knew this. This is why there were huge prohibitions against obscenity for most of our nation's history. Theoretically, it's still on the books. And I also understand why eBay is going to ban Dr. Seuss, certain Dr. Seuss books, but they won't ban Mein Kampf. I understand why Amazon will ban Ryan T. Anderson's humorously titled, but actually scholarly book, When Harry Became Sally, but they won't ban Mein Kampf because Hitler and Mein Kampf do not pose any threat to the left's

agenda. No serious person looks to Hitler for wisdom, you know, other than a handful of skinheads or something. Actually, the left benefits by keeping Mein Kampf in circulation, if only to make it more forceful when the left calls all their opponents literally Hitler and Nazis. Whereas Dr. Seuss really is influencing impressionable young minds. And so if he in any way contradicts the orthodoxies of the day, you got to get rid of that guy because the left is always trying to get a hold on the common sense. This is why they care so much about education. They can't answer Ryan Anderson's book about transgenderism. So they have to ban that. That's not hypocrisy. It's

actually a pretty clever strategy in my mind. It's such crap. It's like I grew up reading all those Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Damsel in Distress, Must Be Rescued by the Prince, Old Women are Witches and Hags. I get it. Like I, I read all that. It worked out fine for me. I didn't see myself as a damsel in distress ever. Like that shit is not like those character traits are not formed by stupid children's books. And I mean, as much as you can put, like, I mean, you remember when I was at NBC, uh, Savannah Guthrie wrote along with Noah Oppenheim's wife, a book called Princesses Wear Pants. And I put her on because, you know, she was a colleague. I remember thinking to myself,

like, this is so stupid because like, yeah, they might, or they might wear frilly dresses and there's nothing wrong with that. You can wear the frilly dress and the little Mary Janes and have your hair done up into big curls and you can still be an ass kicker. And I think like, if this is the problem that Jill Phillip has or whatever her name is that some people just have an image of, of empowerment looking only one way. And if that's not reflected in your children's books, if Dr. Seuss has something that might be mildly offensive to some, we have to get rid of it. Otherwise the damage it'll be immense. I know. Wait, I stole the last word on that, but I've got to ask you, cause I know we have a limited time, but just listening to you and all

your amazing, like smart references. I know you went to Yale and I didn't know that prior to studying up for this interview, but how did you get so smart? That is very kind, Megan. It's all just a performance. You know, I just memorized a few. No, I really appreciate that. I actually, I have a serious answer to it too, which is because we're in this culture where people are, the curriculum are being totally destroyed.

You know, good books are being taken out and replaced with total nonsense. And we're always being told, you can't say this, you can't think this. I find that if you just read a book every now and again, if you just turn off the mainstream media, I mean, I'm sure you can speak to this just the same. You will learn much more about certain things because there is, as Ronald Reagan famously said, the problem with our opponents is not that they

don't know anything. It's not that they're ignorant. It's that they know so many things that aren't so. So for instance, you have the 1619 Project comes out and says America was founded to protect slavery. You don't need to be a member of Mensa. You don't need to get a perfect SAT score to find out that that's just total nonsense. That's just not true. Really, you just need to read like two articles or a book and you will know that's crazy. The current fashion to get rid of Christopher Columbus, say he was this awful worst person in the world. If you just like read up a little bit on the guy, you'll find out that isn't true. I think that the dominant left-wing narratives that were being told, they're forceful because they've got the weight of propaganda

behind them. They've got institutional power they've got the weight of propaganda behind them. You know, they've got institutional power. New York Times spent millions of dollars promoting the 1619 Project. But the arguments themselves are pretty shallow. They're really, you know, they're made of paper. And if you just poke at them a little bit, you know, if you investigate a little bit, I think that just about anybody will be able to re-educate ourselves and realize that a lot of what we're being told just isn't true. Now, where did you grow up? I grew up in New York.

I grew up in a very liberal county, Westchester County, in a very liberal state, New York, with very liberal friends, and went to a very liberal school, then moved to LA, a very liberal city. I have no idea how I ended up to the right of Attila Dahan. How did this happen? I don't know. Scientists will wonder for years. Are your parents conservative? No. My mother was sort of a centrist, I guess. She wanted to vote for Clinton in 96. And Megan, I kid you not, I was six years old. I was a political junkie though. And all I knew from watching that, I don't know how this was the case. My grandfather used to teach me it's a grand old flag and things like that. So maybe

I learned it from him. But I, in 96, I pleaded with my mother. I said, please vote for Bob Dole. I think I was, I was the only guy in the country who was really enthusiastic about Dole. And all I- Except for Bob Dole himself. Bob Dole's going to vote for Bob Dole. I think I was the only guy in the country who was really enthusiastic about Dole. Except for Bob Dole himself. Bob Dole's going to vote for Bob Dole. Exactly. But all I knew is Dole was a war hero and Clinton was a draft dodger. That's all I knew about the whole race. And I begged and I begged and she got such a kick out of it that she actually let me go into the voting booth with her back when we had physical voting booths. And she let me pull the lever for Bob Dole. So I guess I'm actually confessing to election fraud right now on air. But that was my first vote for Bob Dole when I was six years old. But she was

kind of a moderate Republican. If that, she liked some Democrats. My father, kind of a moderate Republican, but he's voted for Democrats too. So I don't know. I'm slightly to the right of Genghis Khan. So how that happened, I don't know. I do think that left-wing places such as Yale or living in New York City or Los Angeles, they kind of either bring you along with the dominant view or they force you to really think about what you believe. So if you go into that and you got the ideological bullets flying every day, you're going to discard some of your beliefs. You're going to change some of your beliefs

and others you're going to dig more deeply into. You're going to investigate more. And in a way, I actually think conservatives have an advantage in these left-wing institutions, because they have to know what they think. They have to be able to explain it. Did you own it? Were you open? Yeah, I was open. I came out. It's much harder these days to come out that way than sexually. It gets better. It gets better. Does it? Well, that's the only question. I don't know about that. But I did. I came out and I actually became much, much more conservative. You know, I was sort of that fashionable, fiscal conservative, social liberal, as people would say. And then I became much more so. You know, some people say conservatives want to return to the 1950s.

I think over time, it's become more like the 1350s, you know, you really, you really dig into these things. And at the time, shockingly, I did. I don't, I don't know how. I think part of the reason was because, you know, I was involved. I did a lot of activities. I was in the theater. I was in student government. I was taking a bunch of classes, political things.

And it was during the age of Obama. So people were less on edge. Whenever the left is in power, they tend to be a little bit nicer, I've found, only a little bit. But the other reason is because people knew me, right? If you know somebody, especially if you get to know them a little bit before you know their politics, then the caricature that's in your mind that's been implanted there by the media and the educational systems of the evil, awful conservative, it just doesn't click, right? Because you've got this real thing in front of you and you say, no, I like this

guy. I like Michael. So I don't know how that's going to work. And they come up with all sorts of explanations. One thing I have found though is I had lots and lots of friends. I had a great time. I got invited to lots and lots of parties in college and in all these liberal places. But out of sight is out of mind. And I've found the only people that I've known from all those places who've really sort of turned on me, say awful sorts of things because of my political views, they're the ones that I just don't see anymore. And so it's much easier to retreat to this awful caricature that you're told by the media. I think if we had more interactions with the left, I think that would really crack some of the propaganda. Yeah. I mean, I've said before that I think one of the ways to fight racism is to expose people

of different races to other people of other races who are awesome, right? Like that sort of embeds a positive view in your head. And the same is true with conservatives and liberals. Try to surround yourself. They don't have to agree with them, but just if they're likable, if they're kind, if they're good people, it can be a step. I just had Andrew Schultz on the program saying that we should dance. What we need is to dance. But just lean into something that's kind of fun and less political and not quite as divisive. Not so self-serious. Chesterton had this great line. He said, the angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly. It doesn't always have to be this tedious sort of everything's a

grand political statement. This happened in the 70s. You know, the radicals did say the personal is the political. So all of our personal interactions had to be opened up to public scrutiny. But can't you just sort of let it go for a little bit? You know, in the long run, we're all dead. We're here together. We're all broken. Can't one have, I guess, getting back to our earliest conversation, can't one have just a little bit of grace and hopefully get along with our countrymen? I hope so. Now, I think we can end this by doing a big favor to Meghan Markle, who is back in the United States and Prince Harry for that matter, and spare them. I'm not going to sing the national anthem because that's too big, but I also love Grand Old Flag. So I, let's sing it. Could you know it?

Gladly. You're singing it with me. It's a grand old flag. It's a high flying flag. Flag and forever in peace. May she wave. I think the delay is a little tricky. So don't forget to subscribe to the show because on Monday, we're going to have Victor Davis Hanson. Cannot wait to talk to him.

We were going to put him today, but we taped with Michael Knowles the same day. And he was so fiery about these current events, including the Royals, that we were like, he's got to go on Friday. Because I don't have it in me to ask Victor Davis Hanson about the Royals. There are limits to what I can do. And these news cycles have timeliness issues. So we need to enjoy Michael. And then we'll get to sort of the godfather of commentary, Victor Davis Hanson, the one, the only, the enlightener, the illuminator on Monday. So excited. Been trying since we launched to get Victor. I'm not, I don't feel the need to ask

him why he said no for so long. But the point is, he said yes, eventually. And you'll get to hear him on Monday. In the meantime, have a great weekend. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear. The Megyn Kelly Show is a Devil May Care media production in collaboration with Red Seat Ventures.