The Megyn Kelly Show - Navy's Drag Queen Recruiter, and Fox News' Post-Tucker Ratings, with the Ruthless Podcast Hosts and Graham Allen | Ep. 543

Episode Date: May 4, 2023

Megyn Kelly is joined by the hosts of the Ruthless Podcast, Comfortably Smug, Michael Duncan, and John Ashbrook, to talk about the military using a drag queen to help recruitment efforts, Bud Light's massive PR challenge ahead to win back customers, Fox News hemorrhaging viewers since Tucker Carlson was fired, Stephen Colbert's professional jealousy, Jeffrey Toobin returning to talk about his Zoom incident, media playing defense about Biden's age, whether Trump will actually debate his GOP opponents, CNN's town hall with Trump, Microsoft Word's bizarre speaking features, and more. Then Graham Allen, host of "Dear America" and former Army Sergeant, to discuss Graham’s response to the drag queen becoming the face of Navy recruitment, how the military is changing their values for the worst,Ruthless: https://ruthlesspodcast.comAllen: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/graham-allens-dear-america-podcast/id1456850698Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. The military is using a drag queen to help recruitment efforts. I'm not kidding. That ought to work well. I'm sure that's really going to inspire the guys to sign right up. Plus Jeffrey Toobin is back and talking about that infamous zoom moment. My guests today are excited to talk about all of this. They are the guys from ruthless John Ashbrook, the man known as comfortably smug and Michael Duncan. Josh Holmes is down traveling for his real job today, but the guys are just as ruthless even without Holmes. So guys, welcome back to the show. Great to be back. I've spoken with Holmes

and I have promised him that I am going to give you just as hard a time as when he's here. So we're good to go. Good. And it's sad because I wore my shirt because Holmes was so excited about my hat. He sent me a text, you know, my hat over the weekend, make women female again. And this is also from Kelly J. Keene's website. For those who cannot see me, it reads female. The real thing playing off of the Coke, the Coca-Cola T-shirts. I'm done. That's all I have to say.

I'm done. Okay. That's it. I actually required no such disclaimer because it's obvious I'm a woman. And if you're trans and you're doing it right, it should be obvious in your case too. But then there is no such thing as transitioning from male to female, notwithstanding with the world of cycling and so on. We'll tell you, by the way, the world of cycling is standing by its decision to let a man win, um, the $35,000 prize money for the first time they, they offered the same amount to the men as they did in the, for the women in this international competition. And guess what happened? A guy walked on over to the women's lane, won the whole thing. And the official body of bicycling has said, sorry, not sorry, it's all about inclusion. So the shirt doesn't help. They don't listen. It's all about equity. Yeah.

No, I mean, look, it's wild. I feel like every single day things get more and more distorted. And you see these videos out there about transgender men who are becoming women and putting tampons. Oh, my God. Their bodies. So disturbing.

Where the hell do you put that tampon? I don't know. Where's the science in that? You know, like there's no science. I don't know. It's it's there is no there is no science. You mentioned the military. You mentioned the drag.

I mean, the military has fallen a long way from the days of Bob Hope and Gina Lola Brigida. Like if now we have to look at this guy or, you know, drag, whatever, they have a problem with recruitment. They're your typical person who is growing up and wants to serve their country is turned off by the direction they see our military headed. And I don't know how they got there, to be honest with you. I, for the life of me, cannot figure out how they went from A to B. Do you remember those original Marine ads? Remember the Marines ads where the guy was climbing the rocks and he had the sword and there was like the flaming dragon that he had to slay and it was like inspiring. Right. we've got we got drag performers doing recruitment you know i think success begets success and if you have an issue with recruitment

then every dollar should be spent on making sure these war fighters succeed if they're seen as a successful disciplined force if every dollar we spend is making sure that they succeed that they're safe that they can accomplish the mission, that would help with recruitment. I don't think any of this woke nonsense does anything to help the morale or help recruitment. Do you remember the few, the proud, the Marines? Those guys were badasses with just like the sword would come up in front of their faces. You're like, you either wanted to join the Marines or date a Marine. And that's apparently how this guy felt as well, because he says he's non-binary. I'm not sure whether he wants to date or join, but he did join. The guy, he is part of this campaign that is just, it just ended last month.

It's been going on for several months now to try to improve recruitment in the Navy. And hold on, he shares the name with me. His last name is Kelly and they are unabashed about his role as a non-binary Navy recruit. His name is Joshua Kelly. He's Navy active duty. Um, he is very openly a drag queen. His stage name is Harpy Daniels. Why is everybody last name Daniels who chooses these weird roles? Identifies non-binary, joined the Navy in 2016, told the Navy Times in 2018. He joined the Navy in part because he needed a stable income to fund his drag hobby.

I miss don't ask, don't tell. What happened to don't ask? That worked fine. Now it's like, I will tell and you will listen well i just wonder like do you the standard issue combat boot is that replaced by a high heel for this guy like how does that work exactly i mean look at him there's a reason until he picks up that high heel oh my god oh my god there he is i'm sorry they're shuddering in their boots who is this inspiring to join the navy well the thing is i mean to your point that used to be don't ask don't tell there there are gay people who have served in our armed forces for years and years and years but now with

this woke mentality all they want to do is separate people all they want to do is say that these people are different than you and you're bad because you're not them. And the military is about teamwork. It's about people relying on each other in very difficult situations to help one another get through and achieve something very significant. And all these wokes want to do is just separate people. Yeah. I mean, for the left, all that intersectionality is where they think we're going to find strength in our war fighters. And it's like, no, I mean, fighting a war is about cohesion. It's about teamwork, right? It's about putting the mission ahead of yourself. It's not about this stuff. It's just insane. How'd you like to look over

and see that? rely on in a life and death situation. And the whole time you're there, you've been divided up by category, identity, gender, you know, all these different factors that the left is trying to divide the country by is antithetical to the mission. I think we're seeing exactly what we saw in corporate America now in the military, right? Like a lot of these corporations have been hijacked by the liberal employees on their Slack channels, where their personal values need to be reflected in the company that pays them a salary. And now we're sort of seeing that in the military now, where just like Smug said, it's like me first, my identity first, not the mission, not the team, not the military. Oh my God, I can't get over this video. I would much rather have a badass

actual woman defending the country or a regular man. That I don't want defending me. I miss our men. I quote him every day. Christian Walker, bring our men back. Where are men? Where are they? This is not somebody anybody wants in a foxhole with them. I don't want to look over. None of these guys does. He wants to look over and see this guy with his high heels. I realize he wouldn't probably be wearing them in the foxhole, but you look over this guy who's pronouncing that he's non-binary which is not a thing you are one or the other you are not both male and female sorry to break it to you kelly um and have to deal with that nonsense to begin with exactly the navy wants him there that's the problem guys let me answer that question. The Navy wants him there. The Navy

has hired him, named him as of November 2022 as a Navy digital ambassador. Their initiative ran from October 2022 to this past April. The program is designed to explore the digital environment to reach a wide range of potential candidates for military recruitment. This is how they think they're going to get new recruits. It just boggles the mind. And to a point you made a few minutes ago, Megan, about the few, the proud, and some of the old ads that we used to see out of the different branches of service, those videos instilled fear in the hearts and the minds of our enemies. I mean, think about all the equipment. Think about all of the tech that you saw in these Navy commercials, the jets and the Air Force

commercials. Any bad guy out there who is thinking about stepping to America took one look at one of those commercials and is like, maybe not. And it shows a side of our society that's reflected in the vast majority of our military, which is people who are doing their best, risking their lives for others. And then you have a situation where just a small segment is trying to take advantage of that and completely erase it. I mean, I bet Top Gun Maverick did more for recruitment than this ever will. True. You know, you make the military something to be admired and a successful, you know, patriotic force.

And that inspires people to want to be a part of something, not dividing people like this. It's unbelievable. Well, they're obsessed with identity now. Something that should be that's typically historically was beaten out of these guys and gals as soon as they showed up. You're not black. You're not white. You're not Hispanic.

You're not non-binary. You're a Marine, you're a SEAL. That's what the messaging used to be, to tear down and tear away everybody's differences and humble them down to being one thing, and that is in the US military. That's the only thing that matters, the only thing that binds you together. And there's nothing that divides you apart. Nothing. Now, even in the military, this is why it's a bridge too far. They want to divide them by identity. And here is Harpy. OK, again, not Joshua Kelly, but Harpy Daniels praising the military for its for its focus on the proper pronouns. It might be trivial or small in some things, but for me, it's huge.

I think it's very important for acceptance and inclusion for the service. We talk about our experiences, and this is an experience that I had literally today with the CMC I never met. CMC is a command master chief. For those who don't know, they're the highest enlisted when it comes to making decisions. And in the service, your words matter. Words matter, especially when it comes to higher leadership and in the service, your words matter, words matter, especially when it comes to higher leadership, people we look up to. And what they did is they just simply

asked me what my pronouns were in a simple conversation, not right away. They just like, we're just talking business. And then finally we got into just some small talk and they asked me what my pronouns were.

And I thought it was incredible to see that inclusion and change. Oh my God. Please tell me he's not defending us against Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. Please tell me that guy will be nowhere near the battle. He fucking cried over the pronoun situation. I'm sorry, but no, no.

Where's our men? Right, right. You go in and I mean, I did not serve, but I have so many friends who did and so many friends who were at Paris Island and started out at the very bottom. And when they walked together with their friends, men, women, whoever that they, that it's, it's,

it's something to be proud of, of what you can achieve through the military. Not just not like you apply what you did as a kid to, to American military. It just, it's insane. It's completely flipped on his head. It's just,

it's a shame to see. I mean, if I had to guess the landing boats right before they hit the beaches of Normandy, you know, the crew guy at the front didn't say, OK, everybody, what's your pronoun before we hit this beach? Right. I mean, everything that the military should does should be just geared towards one mission. That's ensuring the success of warfighters. This is unbelievable that any time we're thinking is being spent on something like this. I just think you're witnessing an institution decline that's like the rest of our culture. It has too much boredom that it has to come up with reasons to do things like this. Like you said, nobody cares what your pronouns are when the bullets start flying. You know what else it is though? Here's the problem. A lot of these

people who wear women's clothes or declare themselves non-binary or declare themselves trans, a fair amount, not all, but a fair amount of these guys actually just has this weird sexual fetish, which is called autogynephilia, where they get off, they get turned on by dressing like a woman. That's what's actually happening, sexual arousal and putting on women's clothes. And so I'm sorry, but if that's actually what's going on with Harpy, he should be nowhere near our other troops. He's got what his little women's underwear on underneath his G.I. uniform. And he's getting off on the thought that he's got some women's gear. No, get away from our soldiers and our airmen and our SEALs who are actually trying to defend the country.

No one wants to be around you when you're working out your sexual fetish. All right. Whether it's women in a locker room or you in the Navy, this is, I want to tell the audience, we have Graham Allen coming on at the end of the show. The guys from Ruthless leave us, uh, after an hour and a half, we're going to have Graham Allen coming on and we are going to talk to him. Um, he's an outspoken former military guy who's very upset about this, and for good reason. The reaction is pouring in from former Navy SEALs, former Army Rangers, former Marines, all branches of the military. They're disgusted. This is not the way to improve the Navy's ridiculous recruiting effort fail. They're already way behind. I think the only branch that's on pace to hit its numbers this year is the Marines.

So the Navy's got some 6,000 recruits behind. Like, this is going to help you guys, right? Like, this is the solution. It's like the Bud Light thing. Oh, okay, we need to freshen up our brand a little. What if we partner with Dylan? Like, you don't understand who you're trying to recruit. Yep.

I mean, there's a dislocation between reality and what these people think, you know, the customers of their brand are. Like, you know, like that VP at Bud Light who was like, our brand is too fratty and it's, you know, it's associated with men. And it's like, well, I mean, men like beer, you know, sorry, but they do.

If you think that having somebody transgender uh supporting your beer is going to get people who are transgender or are woke to start drinking bud light you're insane it just doesn't work i i just don't get it well and now now there's a backlash uh you know as you know against bud light they're down 26 in their sales now at their, you know, in stores and distributors and so on, which is, I mean, 26% is alarming. It was 21% last week. It was 11% the week before that. So it's just gone steadily down. And, um, now the company's speaking out the president of Anheuser-Busch. Um, I'm trying to remember what country he's from. I believe my team will remind me, but we've got him on tape. No, we don't have him on tape. Okay.

I thought we were cutting that sound. In any event, he's out there apologizing both to his distributors and to their investors saying we never meant to partner with Dylan Mulvaney. This was one can of beer given to one person. It wasn't an ad campaign and it wasn't approved by the senior management of the company. Still no apology. I mean, you can see he's in free fall. So he's got to say something because the distributors, all those guys who actually sell Bud Light are losing money through no fault of their own. Sorry, guys. But, you know, this

came from corporate and we're going to hold corporate accountable. So now he's trying to satisfy them that they're going to triple their ad buys for Bud Light over the summer. Hello, that's not going to do it. It's not that people have forgotten about Bud Light. It's that they remember what you did. And still, he cannot say the words, I'm sorry, we screwed up. Yeah, I mean, I think it's really simple. The trouble that Bud Light has here versus other attempted boycotts in the past is like drinking a beer with your friends is a very public consumer choice, right? Like when you go to the bar, you know, if you wanted to boycott, say, MLB after they moved out of Georgia for the All-Star game.

Well, I mean, you're going to be watching the MLB in your home. No one's going to see you do it. Maybe that doesn't really gain the steam that it would. Or you order something on Amazon from Nike when people wanted to boycott Nike. It comes to your house, you're going to wear it, whatever. But with a Bud Light, you're going to be ordering that at a bar and you're going to be hanging out with your friends. It's sort of the equivalent of like playing golf with like one of those pink balls. It just doesn't work, you know? Yeah. I mean, these brands are just have been taken over by managers who actually hate our culture.

Yep. These are people who do not want anybody who just has a Bud Light, has any kind of beer, but has a different point of view from them in their woke enclaves, they don't want any other people to enjoy their life because they think differently than them, and that means they're bad. Well, the reality is, as Bud Light has learned, even though the CEO is now saying, oh, Dylan, who? Just kidding. We didn't actually do that. Everybody knows. And everybody saw the commercials they ran last weekend, which had country music and people like celebrating at

a country music concert. I don't know if you guys saw that. They're backtracking. They're trying to get back to the days that where a lot of people fell in love with the brands. You guys remember the commercial with the dad and his kids sitting next to each other. He's like, dad, I love you, man. He's like, you're not getting my bud light, Johnny. You guys remember this funny stuff. Right. But now they hate the dad. They hate Johnny. They just want all of us to like Dylan Mulvaney. And everybody's like, get out of here. It's like, how about just we go back to like the 90s, the 2000s, when this stuff was not injected into our eyeballs on a 24-7 basis.

And also, it's really concerning the fact that the CEO is like, well, this wasn't senior management. Well, you clearly have zero control over your company if the decisions of someone who's not in senior management can have your sales drop 26%. You don't have control of that company. You're just admitting that God knows who's making the decisions that can affect investors, can affect the sales that you have. If he has zero control of that company, then I mean, he should definitely step down if he doesn't know what he's doing. And why didn't they fire the woman who did the campaign, the vice president of marketing? She's placed on a leave of absence. So is her boss. Okay. That sounds like a soft firing, but it sounds also like she's still collecting her paycheck. Well, if you really want to make a statement, if this really

was some rogue marketing person, someone needs to get fired and we need to hear the words. I'm sorry. I take responsibility. This company is so wormy, so eel-like, they refuse to do it. They want us to move on by statements like this in the Anheuser-Busch letter to their distributors, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which got a hold of one of them. This was one single can given to one social media influencer. It was not made for production or sale to the general public. This can is not a formal campaign or advertisement. Anheuser-Busch did not intend to create controversy or make a political statement. In reality, the Bud Light can posted by a social media influencer that sparked all this conversation was provided by an outside agency without Anheuser-Busch management awareness or approval. That's not how it's done. We need to hear the words, we are sorry. We've heard you and we get it and we will work to rebuild the trust after we realize we've deeply insulted you. Let's not forget, Megan, the context of what happened a week before they released this ad. A week before they released this ad, there was a trans activist who murdered kids in a school in Nashville. And there was all of this virtue signaling from the left saying, oh, well,

you don't understand how hard they have it. And then boom, one of the biggest brands in America says, actually, we think that the trans are having a hard time. Like it would the timing of it was just as bad as anything else. You know, I mean, and and for them to pretend like like they didn't do anything wrong for them to pretend like they can get away with not even apologizing to people, I think is a bridge too far. The numbers are already are already showing what consumers are responding to. You know that they're getting all the hell in the world from their distributors. And there are bars who have been

walking... Did you guys hear about this bar in Nashville? Yeah. So why don't you tell that... There was a bar in Nashville that had to call up their Bud Light distributor and say, hey, this beer is going to go bad and I can't sell it. So you're going to go ahead and have to take that back. There was a bar in Indianapolis where they said, if you have a hard time with what Bud Light did, don't come here. Well, guess what? Nobody came. And then they issued an apology to their customers. They're like, well, we shouldn't have got involved in the politics and blah, blah, blah. People want to have a beer so they can forget about politics. For crying out loud,

they just want something else in life that's not so heavy. Right. And for whatever reason, these wokes think that we can't even have that. You can't even have the one thing in life that helps you escape the wokes. And that's the thing is,

no lesson learned here because they're still concerned about the opinions of people who will never be their customer. Right. They're still the opinions of people who will never be their customer. Right. They're still terrified of this group who will never buy their product. And so as long as they're willing to compromise, you know, the trust of their actual customers to appease people who don't buy their product, they're going to be stuck like this. All right.

Now that's and by the way, I just wanted to add to two things. Anheuser-Busch has disabled the comments on that YouTube version of their ad with the country Western like that. They posted their new ad. They disabled the comments. People are mad. I'm telling you, Anheuser-Busch, this is what you need to say. We hear you. We screwed up. We're sorry. We will work to rebuild your trust in our brand. Because as Duncan was saying, you guys know as well as I do, there is a thing about which drink you select. It's the reason, it's half the reason some people drink martinis. The glass is cool. It's like the James Bond drink. It's there's something kind of, I don't know, just sort of cool and elegant and like mysterious about it. Beer is like, I'm a man, right? I'm a, I'm a cool guy.

I like sports. I don't do pronouns. Like that's kind of what beer is, you know? And certainly like Bud Light has been marketed as like the American beer, like tough guy, you know, you know what you're getting. So what man, I mean, I honestly think my husband probably be embarrassed. He'd be embarrassed to order a Bud Light now because it's saying you support a bunch of stuff that you don't support and you don't want to be seen as supporting. If you're anywhere near the right half of the country or the center of the country, this exploitation of female looks, of female lanes, of female spaces, which is what Dylan Mulvaney has been doing. You know, you don't have to be anti the trans community to be anti what Bud Light did with the bill with Dylan Mulvaney. So I don't know how they rebuild that. Yeah, I don't know either. They've got a long, long way to go and they haven't even started yet. I think it could simply begin with a billboard campaign

with the blue backdrop that has two words that says we're sorry. I mean, and that might not even be enough because there's a lot of variety out there when it comes to beer, a lot of variety. I mean, there's plenty to choose from and it doesn't all have to come from one brand and that's owned by a foreign company. You know, like it could be like we, you know, just like Justice Kavanaugh, I like beer.

You know, it's actually pretty good. And like, like I said that i'm not a huge bud light fan haven't been since college um but it's uh they've got a long way to go here's something great you guys know gad sad right uh professor up in canada who's fighting the fight from deep within the belly of the woke i mean everybody around him is woke all the fellow professors hate gad even though he's brilliant he's's so charming, but he's not woke. So that's his sin. So he has to be demonized. But I love this guy and he happens to be really funny. So sometimes when these controversies break, he goes on cam and he films a little video of himself sort of

gently, but very effectively mocking whatever it is. You know, like he had one where he's hiding under the desk that I don't know who was coming, the latest people who scared the left. And he whispers and he gets into like this actor mode. So he did a nine minute bit, which I highly recommend people look at. I retweeted it today on this, on the military, you know, deciding to partner with this drag queen. And just sort of like the gender madness is really what he's trying to take aim at, which is the military story in a nutshell. Here's just a bit of Gadzad. In this Navy, the new Navy, it's inclusive. It's diverse.

You want Navy SEALs to live their full truths. So what? One day they could be dropped in Islamabad or Lahore and kill a terrorist. The next day, they are at a drag show twerking the same person. That's what you want in a Navy SEAL. So next you're going to have, are you looking to come and become an oncologist? And then you see a drag queen twerking.

Are you looking to go into dentistry, twerking ass drag queen? You don't want Navy SEALs that are trained to kill. You want Navy SEALs. What? want navy seals that are trained to kill you want navy what you you see the taliban coming at you from in waziristan oh sure you could go after them with guns or you break out into a drag queen twerking song and dance and then you defuse the situation where it's a competition of twerking. You de-escalate.

This is what we're going to be stuck with, you guys. This is where we're going. Another addendum on Anheuser-Busch. They now are actually offering free beer. They pledged to boost their marketing spending on Bud Light, accelerate production of a new slate of ads, and give a case of Bud Light to every employee of an Anheuser-Busch wholesaler. Again, guys, you're wasting your efforts, Anheuser-Busch. You have to start- Wait till the headline is they can't even give it away. That's it. Right. You have to start with what I said and what Ashbrook said. The billboards

and all the ad spending needs to have those two magic words on it and just keep digging, dig over the next year to try to get yourself out of this hole. Now, speaking of digging, we have the latest numbers on the 8 p.m. over at the Fox News Channel, and they're about as bad off as Bud Light. I mean, they're worse because if you say, well, we're down 20 percent in sales, you know, 26 percent as Bud Light. It's worse than that right now over at Fox. They're down half, two thirds in the 8 p.m. time slot. And the war against Tucker Carlson continues.

I'm going to bring you the very latest in just one second. We'll squeeze in a break and I'll talk about the latest headlines here and some information that I have that I would like to share with you all. All right. More with the Ruthless guys in two seconds. We have more numbers in from Fox. And my God, it's awful what's happening at 8 p.m. I mean, I'm happy to see it. I'm not going to lie. I'm happy to see the people because all these stories are the same, right? Like I do think that the reason the military is falling short of its recruiting goals is because people are sick of the wokeness in the military, the messages from people like Mark Milley that, you know, what they really need to focus on is white rage that they need to read Ibram X. Kendi. Um, they've had it. People don't want to be lectured

to like that in the military. That's in part, at least why they're having recruiting struggles. Um, I do think, the Bud Light backlash is due to this Dylan Mulvaney partnership. So the people are making their voice heard in a way that's really exciting to me. I'm thrilled to see it. You know, conservatives have power too. And not just conservatives,

but people who are just on the side of reason, who don't want to see this nonsense, injected as they're watching their baseball game. And now at 8 p.m., the same thing is happening. Fox News decided it knew better and it wouldn't show its audience, its audience, even the courtesy of telling them why, nevermind Tucker, why he was being fired. They were canning their number one host. And since then, they've gone completely jihad on the guy. I mean, they are engaged in a sustained campaign to destroy.

It's not going to work. Tucker's audience sees what they're doing. But I will tell you, I had my team just pull because I don't usually check the mainstream media for stories about Tucker. I know what I'm going to get. But man, I wasn't surprised to see the headlines. Here's a few as a result of what I believe Fox is doing to the guy. MSNBC, newly revealed text reflected Tucker Carlson's racism, bloodlust. New York Times opinion piece by Charles Blow. Tucker Carlson, white men and the lynch mob mentality. Another from MSNBC, Tucker Carlson, racist and wrong. Racist text.

Same from USA Today. Forbes, The Hill, Washington Post, Vanity Fair, Chicago Tribune, The Guardian, Variety Slate, The Hollywood Reporter, Business Insider, Newsweek, I could keep going. So what I have said before is what I believe a campaign orchestrated from within, most likely by Irina Briganti, who hated Tucker, is working with the mainstream to just demonize him even further as a racist lunatic who needed to go. This is all nonsense. We don't know the real reason he was canned, but the audience gets it. They may be able to convince USA Today, but they're not convincing Tucker's core audience. And I'll show you how I know that. We averaged the seven days that Tucker's

been gone from Fox News and compared it with just the last week he was in the seat at 8 p.m. His overall number, that's everybody who's watching, is down almost 50 percent. It's down 47 percent without him. The key advertising demo, which is the number they care about, 25 to 54 year olds, is down 59 percent at 8 p.m. 59 percent. They've lost almost two thirds of the audience that helps pay their bills. They're left with about a third of their audience. I mean, that's stunning. And I looked up and down the board at the rest of the primetime, which with all due respect to the daytime is all anyone gives a shit about over there at Fox News. The primetime pays the bills, period. They're all down. Just did a quick

calculation. The 9 p.m. demo, which of course is Hannity, he follows Tucker, is down almost 40%, down 39%. And I haven't done the percentage calculations here. Oh, hold on, Steve. My crack EP has done some calculations. I made him do math. Then the 9 p.m. is down in, so in the demo, down 39%, overall down 23%. The 10 p.m., down 24% in in the demo down almost 20% in the total.

Um, and I could go on the 11% got the 11 o'clock got hurt to Greg Gutfeld. He was averaging, um, 1745 a night in the overall. Now he's down to 1586. He was averaging 258 in the demo. Now he's down to 207. And that's the least hurt hour. All the others are down double digits. They have lost repeatedly to MSNBC. They even have lost to CNN, which has no one watching it. And here's what's happening. I'll tell you right now for sure.

Inside Fox News, panic is setting in. If they lose a month to MSNBC, it will be a catastrophic moment for them. It'll be, I mean, if I were a Fox hater who was mad about what they did to Tucker, I would intentionally turn on MSNBC at night, especially if I had a Nielsen box just to show, just so that MSNBC can beat them for this month, because that's what they really care about. Trust me. I was there one year when Nancy Grace almost beat Bill O'Reilly at the APM because it was Natalie Holloway time and she was crushing the numbers. And Bill was the number one show. You would not believe the panic that they were on. They did everything within their power to code out the nights that would be that they knew he'd lose as like a special.

So it wouldn't count against the ratings. I could go through all the tricks, but they are trust me in a panic right now about the fact that the primetime has collapsed and actually could lose an entire month, perhaps more to MSNBC. So what do you guys make of this whole dust up? Well, I think to me, what the most interesting thing to follow is I want to see what happens next when it comes to Tucker. Like Duncan was just saying

some company offered him, what, $100 million? Yeah. On this program. Yeah. I mean, that's just, I mean, that's amazing. Patrick, that David.

I think he has an incredible audience. He's been an incredible voice. And I mean, he could do basically anything at this point. I mean, I remember in the hours after he was out of Fox, people were asking, are you going to run for president? I mean, it's incredible. The audience he has built in the sport he has built in.

I have no idea what he could do next because it could be anything. There's also a stickiness he's built with his audience, I think, over time. And that's because I think his show was just fundamentally different than a lot of other cable news programming. You felt like there was this overarching narrative over the course of his show that he was constantly kind of weaving in. He wasn't just telling you the news. He was guiding you along on a journey of a story he wanted to tell. And I think that's why the audience had a really personal attachment to him, similar in some ways to the way Glenn Beck used to do his show on Fox. I'm curious, though, because I think long term, Fox will probably figure it out. But I'm curious

if you look back at when Glenn Beck left or when you left, Megan, or when Bill O'Reilly left, were there drops as well? And how long did it take Fox to sort of dig out of that hole? Well, when Bill and I left, it was during the Trump era. So I don't know that you can compare that. I mean, I left January of 2007. He had just won. It was about to take over. Like there was no way they weren't going to get ratings at that point. And Bill left during the first year of Trump. So same same situation now. It's a little different. I mean, yes, we're in a political year and Fox has turned on Trump. So I don't know that they're going to be taking all the rallies and the campaign events

the way they used to. CNN seems ready to do that as they did the first time. Then they kind of broke up with them. Now they seem to want to get married again. Um, so I don't know. I I'm not sure so far if they're hemorrhaging, the audience is so angry, they're punishing them up and down the board. And I will tell you, this drip, drip, drip of kill him is backfiring. Everything they've released, and I'm sure it's them, it's my opinion, I don't have proof, but I'm sure in my head that it's Irina Briganti who's pouring through Tucker's on-camera but off-air moments to try to find anything to make him look bad. And one of the reasons I suspect Irina Briganti is a, I think she's a very terrible

person. And B, um, I know for a fact that when I went over to Fox news to give my one and only interview about NBC post my end at NBC, I gave it to Tucker. We've been friends for a long time. And I know because I have a lot of sources and a lot of friends inside of that building who are way more loyal to me than they are to Irina Briganti, that she taped me and that Tucker's team had protocols in place. They were in D.C. at that time. She's up in New York. They had protocols in place to protect their on-air feed, which would go up to New York

from being bastardized or taped or, you know, so that nobody could use anything against Tucker or anybody else in those days. Right. They, they weren't as suspicious of people like her as I was. And she tried to undo the protocols the day I was there. She tried to get the tech guys to basically undo the protections so she could tape me and potentially use it against me. Anything I said to Tucker during the commercial breaks.

Well, guess what? She didn't get anything. I didn't do anything because I'm like, unlike Irina, I'm not a bad person. So she can write off. Um, but that happened. That's how devious this person is. And there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that she did it to talk to her too, who she hated for a long, long time. He didn't like her either. It's on record already in the dominion case. He called her the C word. Some people think he was talking about Suzanne Scott. He wasn't.

He was talking about Irina. And there's no one in the building who likes this person. Even the Murdochs don't like this person. They tolerate her because she's a vicious snake who could be used to hurt other people. This is how I feel about her after having worked with her for 13 years. The other day I said I worked there for 20 years. That's not true. I worked there for 13.

But I know how this place operates. And what they're doing to him isn't working. 20 years. That's not true. I worked there for 13, but I know how this place operates and I, what they're doing to him isn't working. The audience is only falling more in love with him as they see the way he is off the air. Right, right. And I think, I think one of the things, what you just said is, is a very important point because what makes Tucker unique is that he is incredibly brave, that he will question all of the assumptions, even some that may sit uncomfortably with his own audience. He is not afraid to ask difficult questions to kick over every single rock. And he is very transparent with his audience. He always is. And he is so good. He's exactly what you want in a journalist,

somebody who will look at what everybody else is writing and be like, hey, wait a minute. You know what? Maybe if the crowd is going one direction, we need to explore what's in the other direction. I mean, he is exactly what people used to get or maybe didn't always get in. But it's what people want. When you turn on the news, you want to know what it is that you're not hearing. You want the information that the corporate media is not telling you. Tucker told that to his audience every single night. And the fact that so many people in the corporate media are offended by it, don't like it, are trying to shut him up, only makes his audience

love him even more because it confirms it validates the reason they were watching him in the first place. Right. Because there's this herd mentality to journalism now, right, where everybody sort of moves the same direction and there's an established narrative. And that's what, you know, that's the current thing, whether, you know, whether it's Ukraine or Russiagate or whatever, everybody's on the exact same line and nobody's asking questions. So Tucker always countervailed that, right? And that's how

journalism used to be is like, one newspaper goes up with a bunch of reporting, their rival goes out and has to double check it and see if they got all their, you know, their facts, right? If they dotted all the I's and crossed all the T's and journalism isn't like that anymore. It's everybody just builds on the same narrative and never never double checks the facts. And that's what's great about Tucker and it's the reason why he's going to have longevity beyond Fox. The one thing I would say about the leaks is if you're trying to damage the credibility of Tucker Carlson and explain to your audience why he had to be let go, I think Media Matters is probably the worst place in America you'd go to get a story written. Yeah. Right. His audience doesn't pay attention to Media Matters and they see Fox's fingerprints on it. Unless that is you work at CNN, in which case apparently you see nothing. I mean, I'll tell you something else. It's very clear to me that Irina Briganti is trying to suppress any commentary yours truly is making about her. I can see her fingerprints there too. Normally somebody like me making claims like this about somebody like her

would be all over a website like Mediaite, which covers journalists and news about journalists. And certainly when one journalist says something like I'm saying, you know why it's not there? Because she's got them by the balls. They're afraid of her. She's their sieve of leaks and access to anything about Fox. So they're too scared to write it up. Newsmax has been covering it because she doesn't have them by the balls. CNN, same. They also rely on this woman because they need to go to her for access on stories like this one, Tucker. And they can't afford to upset this lady because she's powerful. So there are very few of us who are willing to say what we know about her. And this brings me to reliable sources. I believe it's now written by Oliver Darcy since Brian Stelter was fired.

Listen to this nonsense. This is from the newsletter. The question continues to be, who is leaking this footage and why? Okay, that's really not a question for most of us. The videos appear to have been sourced from Fox News' internal video library. You think, Oliver? You think? Who the hell else would have access to Tucker sitting on set in between the commercial breaks? Meaning, it would have required someone with access to those systems to download the footage. But surely that would leave some trace. I have asked Fox spokespeople whether the network is conducting a probe into who might have leaked the footage. Irina, are you probing yourself? But I've not received an answer. If you are the person leaking the footage and would like to chat about it, do get in touch. That's the journalistic level over at CNN right now from their new media

reporter. Let me reach out to the main suspect and see if she will out herself. Oh, nothing? No one? Weird. Yeah, it sort of reminds me back when Variety had the story up on Don Lemon and CNN PR was like, you know, I don't know where these stories could be coming from about the personnel records of Don Lemon. It couldn't be up. It's just one question I was wanting to ask you when we were scheduled for today is you've had your own show on multiple networks and now you've built your own empire online. What do you think Tucker does next? Do you think another coach him? Could they even afford him?

Or I don't know how the contracts work. No, I mean, look, the only real appeal of a company like Newsmax is he could be live. And I know he likes being live. But I don't think that's going to be powerful enough for him to go work for somebody else. I really don't. He can make a fortune in the digital lane. He won't have to have a boss. He'll still have tons of power.

You know, he has access to all these GOP power players who know they're not going to want to kiss the ring the way they did when he was in the APM on Fox, but he's still a bit of a kingmaker. And I think he'll still have independent power to get these GOP candidates to come on and, you know, talk with him and make news in this election cycle. And he'll have power beyond politics. You know, he's an interesting commentator. So this is just my opinion. I, I, he doesn't, he hasn't said this to me, so I, this, I'm not giving you giving you inside knowledge. But I really think he's going to stay in the independent lane. I do not think he wants another boss. I can relate to sort of being at the point in my career where our industry is just so gross, you kind of run out of people you want to work for. You really do. And I'm there there i think he's there i'll give you this other bit of color of course the late night awful hosts who literally can't go on the air unless they have a team of writers writing for them that's how like flat they are how non-creative uh and i that leads me to steven colbert who decided to take shots at tucker who, like literally had more than his his more than double his ratings in that key advertising demo as like terrible and awful. And this was his parting shot

before he had to go off the air because nobody would write for him and he wasn't clever enough to think of his own comments. Fox News fired Tucker Carlson. I can't believe. Wow. I finally get to say that on TV I've been holding this in for a week I feel like I just had the best pee of my entire life Tucker called a senior Fox News executive The C word Conservative?

Cowabunga? Oh, that word. Wow. Nice mouth, Tucker. For those who don't know what word I'm talking about, he called his boss a see you next Tuesday, or in this case, a see you never, Tucker. That was just... In another video obtained by the New York Times,

Tucker is shown off-camera discussing his post-menopausal fans. Okay, that seems a little rude, but that is most of his fans. After all, the surest way to stop ovulating forever is looking at this face. Okay. You, you will see the guys, you'll see his right.

His writers might be on strike, but the guy holding the applause card is not. That's all he needs. It shows the level of jealousy that was out there. I mean, they were so jealous of the audience size that he had built. Then, I mean, like you said, they have to have writers tell them what to say.

They can't come up with any jokes. And their jokes at this point is just basically reading political headlines. Like this is not a late night show. It's not Letterman versus Leno where, you know, who's got the best guess and who's the funniest. Right. It's the same thing as if you're watching msnbc for 12 hours a day right there's no personality there's no there's no no individualistic style that comes out on and and it's all political for these guys it's a hundred percent there's no there's nothing

light there's nothing funny it's like well look at look at colbert trying to lead us to believe like he's he found tucker's use of that word offensive like misogyny really upsets Stephen Colbert and like coloring across certain lines when it comes to discussions on race, really offensive. As far as I know, he's super buddies with Jimmy Kimmel, who's actually worn blackface while speaking in like actually deeply offensive black accents while pretending to be a suprass saying how he needed to darn sucks. Like Samantha Bee called Ivanka Trump a C word on national television. I don't remember him speaking out about that. I don't remember Colbert being super duper offended and doing long segments on it saying, thank God I don't have to deal with these people.

The outrage is awfully selective. All right, stand by. There's so much more to go over with the guys. I've got to show you the latest Biden gaffe and we've got to discuss it. And the latest Trump response to Biden and some of his gaffes. You'll enjoy this. Don't go away. More with Ruth is coming up. And remember, so you can find the Megyn Kelly show live on Sirius XM Triumph Channel 111 every weekday at noon east. The full video show and clips by subscribing to our YouTube channel. Our YouTube channel is doing really well right now. Thanks to all of you. Every day Thatcher asks me, did we get the button? It's youtube.com slash Megyn Kelly. Did we get the button? We're told you get a button when you hit a million. Steve Krakauer is trying to wiggle out of it now, trying to tell me it's a plaque. I said, what do you mean a plaque? Then he said a button plaque. What the hell is a button plaque? That's not a thing. So every day Thatcher's checking the mailbox. I will let you know when it gets here and it better not be a button plaque? That's not a thing. So every day, if that's just checking the mailbox, I will let you know when it gets here. And it better not be a button plaque.

Okay, guys. Toobin, Jeffrey Toobin resurfaced. He went on with our pal Dan Abrams over on News Nation. And yes, they went there. Here's a bit. What's life been like for Jeffrey Toobin? Well, let's talk about the incident itself. It was a disaster in my life.

Self-inflicted, self-destructive, and something that I will regret for the rest of my life. And what exactly happened? Was it just, you just left open the screen? You know, I'd rather not go into the grisly details. The only thing I'll say about it is I didn't know other people were on the Zoom call, were watching. And this was not an intentional act on my part. I was very fortunate that CNN brought me back. And I worked at CNN for over a year after being brought back. Did they fire you then? No, no, no. I was not fired by CNN. No, that was a mutual decision. In fairness, I should point out that it was a new management

that was less fond of me than the old management. So I can't say they were brokenhearted to see me go. If I could rewrite history or go back in time, of course, I would not want to have brought this on myself and more importantly, on my family. As we used to say in school, of course, I would not want to have brought this on myself and more importantly, on my family. As we used to say in school, this is on my permanent record. Oh, my God. Self-inflicted. That's one way of putting it. That Chiron was awesome. It was like Jeffrey Toobin on being the butt of jokes. What I can't get about this, Megan, is aren't there other people out there that can do legal commentary? Why is it that the entire news media is so desperate to rehab this man's career?

Does he have some knowledge nobody else has about the legal system? I feel like there's a lot of lawyers in America. It's so true. You might want to hear Kim Kardashian's take on it before I listen to Jeffrey Dubin's. It's so funny because like nothing to see here. Ha ha ha. All is normal. You know, I did something. It's been a couple of years now. He's really kind of brushing by the grisly details because he whipped out his unit on a Zoom call with all of his colleagues at the New Yorker magazine while they were doing

election coverage prep and jerked off in front of the eyes of all the women and men with whom he worked. And now he wants to pretend like, well, I didn't know they were watching. What man who clearly hasn't logged off 25 times and closed the laptop would ever think about taking out his penis and jerking off. I'm sorry. There's something wrong. It's not a small detail. I mean, really, what can be said? Honestly, he's written he's written multiple books. He's been like on TV for decades. Did he not save enough money that he can be like, man, I'm going to crawl under a rock and never be seen in public again? I mean, I have no idea why he'd want to want to be on TV. I just got to say, like, like we're news junkies and we love politics. I've worked a lot of

elections. I've gone through a lot of election night, you know, coverage. I've never been aroused by it. And I do this professionally. I have no idea what it would cause the guy being to be lubin with tube and talking about you know what you're going to be doing on election night it's just insane it's not a turn on i like dan abrams question like the foul was would you just leave your screen on or what would happen there you know common thing you just gotta turn your screen off you know who exactly in the zoom were you looking at when you are just on Zoom with all of your colleagues at the New Yorker. Like, wouldn't that be a triple check kind of situation? I just, I want to know, like, what is his home life situation where he feels like the best time to squeeze this in is during the Zoom with your employer?

Like, do you live in a panopticon where you're monitored at all times? Like, I don't get it. All right, listen, in his defense, we all have technical problems in our lives. And this brings me to something. I don't know why I want to discuss it with you. I just know that I do. I want to tell you about a little technology issue I've been having myself, which has been the bane of my existence. This is good because Duncan is our tech guy. He can probably help you.

If you can solve this, hats off to you. My team sends me these research packets, like I got one today for the Ruthless guys, where they pull out various stories and they give me the updates on them and so on. And I'm always driving my kids around. I'm moving around in the mornings. We're doing my hair, my makeup, whatever.

So I like to listen to the packets a lot of the time. I don't always get to read them, but I listened to all of them. And that brought me to Microsoft word, like read aloud, which all you do is you download, you know, you click on the document as long as it's a word document, and then you click the little read aloud icon and it will read the document to you. And this is very convenient, But I have been in a war with Microsoft Word read aloud. Microsoft Word read aloud is racist, first of all. And I don't need you to take my word for it. Would you listen to how Microsoft Word has been reading aloud the beginning of my packets? This is just one of many examples. Take a listen here to Sat19.

What? She went, she went, what is that? What is it, Asian? that's it that's what you get to get the feel okay we can stop playing it they got it i heard some german in there yeah that's what i thought the un is is in session reading german japanese i'm not sure what that producer natasha Natasha! What's that? I don't know. I'm like, what's happening here? I don't think this is appropriate Microsoft Word read aloud. So then, whatever, I could deal with it. It's kind of annoying, but fine. Then what happens is sometimes you're hearing the nice regular lady's voice. It's like an English-speaking voice. And then it switches, without any warning, into something like this. SOT 23....to take a hit. He was the team's

nose tackle. The big guy on the D-line whose job was to plug the middle with his sheer size and wingspan. What? The one thing I had learned as a smaller guy.

What happened to the nice lady? I mean, they really got to work on this. Okay, here, let me give you the third version. Then, you're like, fine, I can still understand what she's saying, at least. I'm like, I'm driving, so I can't really deal with this nine times out of 10.

Then this was the deal breaker. This is when I went to Abby and I'm like, Abby, we got to get rid of this. I got to find a different system. This happens when you've been listening to an especially long packet. This is SOT 22. Yeah. Is it speed reading? What is that? I think it's proof that the machines may not be taking over quite as soon as we do.

I have this to say about AI. It's not working. So I was like, we got to get a new system, Abby. So she goes and she finds me something. We download it. I'm sure we paid for it. It's called Natural Reader. And she's like, MK, this is a solution.

We're abandoning Microsoft Word. I'm like, good, because they're racist. And we're going to go with Natural Reader. That sounds nice. Sounds like a trip to the spa. So I go to the spa with Natural Reader. And it was doing okay. Like the voice was kind of normal. I'm like, okay, this is much better until she switches

into what sounds very much like a woman having a Jeffrey Toobin type moment. The problem is she reads bullet points as the word. Oh, so keep getting all these. Oh, no. You keep getting all these, oh. Imagine a grocery list with this lady. Listen, here she is. There's a normal buildup, and then you'll hear what I'm talking about in SOT20. Previous low was 38%.

In March, he was at 40%, so he's dropped three points in just a month. Comparing Biden's 37% to other presidents in April of third year, oh, Trump. 46% oh, Obama. 44% oh, George W. 70% oh, Clinton. 48% oh, George H.W. 79% oh, Reagan.

42% oh, Carter. 40% oh, Nixon. 50%. It goes on. The only person is aroused by elections other than Jeffrey Toobin is a computer. I think that's a perfect match. He should have just gotten a copy of the software. At first, I was like, my producers are so enthusiastic about this point.

Oh, Biden's at 37%. Oh, he's fallen two points. I'm like, such enthusiasm for the data. And then I was like, why is she making everyone Irish? Like, it's not, oh, Biden. Not a thing. Then they took me to this R-rated place. I can't.

If anybody out there has a normal reader, please email me or just email me, Megan, M-E-G-Y-N at megankelly.com, or you can post it in the comments to this YouTube segment because I need help. Okay, so I feel better. You could always email it to Smug in the mornings and then he could just read it into the microphone. I would love that. Smug has a delightful voice. He has a wonderful laugh. He would put his personality into it. I would pay you for that, Smug. There's a business model. He could drop in a little horse fighting. This is your side gig. What do they call your side hustle? Okay, let's get back to real news. That was real. It's just not actual news. So Joe Biden out there again,

committing gaffes left and right, one of which Trump made fun of, which I want to show you. But here's the first one. OK, he was speaking on Monday during an event to highlight the National Small Business Week in the Rose Garden. He was trying to congratulate the founders of this power company as Florida's small business persons of the year for contributing to the shift to clean energy. Okay. But could not quite get the name of the company out. Entrepreneurs make to our economy. And we see it here again today in companies like, and I hope I pronounced it right, Ame Power? Is it Ame? I believe that's right, yeah.

Ame Power, Florida Small Business Award winner, Business Week winner. You won. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. He gave up. Okay, so there's that. And then then stand by because i wanted to show you so trump has kind of gotten in on the action already and has picked up on some of briar briars biden's priors

uh when it comes to not knowing what he's saying not knowing where he is the wandering uh this is more for the visual audience so listening audience bear, bear with me. Here it is. Do you think at least one time you'd get up and say, I'm running for president? Where where am I going? Where the hell am I going? I want to get out. Oh, no. Over there. Over there. I love when Trump does that last bit with his hands.

We get like, it just, I can't, you know, I can't pretty good. And some, you know, some ripe ground there for him.

Very good. This is Trump at his best. When he's entertaining, when he's light, when he is making people laugh, he is connecting with his audience and he is earning votes back that he may have lost over the last couple of years. And I just think the more that he does, the more visible he is with this sort of personality, the more people are taken back to 2015 when they first met him. Yeah, it's the commentator Trump, right? It's what I always

say. It's like he's your buddy on the couch. He's watching the spectacle with you. And he's like, isn't this absurd? It's obvious to me that this guy's incognitive decline. Like, let's all laugh at him. Right. And it's like Trump can uniquely hit that with the audience. And he feeds off the feedback that he gets from the live audience. And I mean, when he's out on the trail doing stuff like this, the guy is just untouchable.

Yeah, he's unstoppable. But I notice you comment,. Yeah, he's unstoppable. But I noticed you comment, you know, Biden's age. You're obviously bigoted against old people. It's obvious to me. I read Axios and I read that if you think that this is a problem, you could be wrong because he's out there. He's doing stuff stuff he's meeting with people he's meeting them between the hours of 10 a.m and 4 p.m but he's meeting them and uh they know that uh they need to protect him he trusts us he's mentally sharp say his advisors to axios but um only between the hours of 10 a.m and 4 p.m and it can't be on a weekend either. And it's difficult to schedule

public or private events with him in the morning and also in the evening and also on the weekends. And that they are privately comparing him to, quote, an aging king. He has a tight-knit palace guard of longtime aides

whose first instinct is to protect him and not take any chances. So, are they right? I think this is a really important distinction is I think it's clear that this is not about age. I think that Biden is in cognitive decline because that 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. is very telling. Elderly people normally will be up at 5 a.m. to hit country kitchen buffet. Like that is the normal play. The fact that you can't even pull that off has nothing to do with age. He's just falling apart.

Yeah, I mean, it's sort of like, you know, spring semester of senior year in high school, you get a little senioritis. You got to take a lighter class load. You know, you're you're kind of coasting until summer. You know, I mean, that's kind of where Joe Biden is right now. Look, it served him well in 2020. The guy sat in his basement, became president of the United States. So I don't expect he's going to change much. And I think, you know, his cheerleaders in the mainstream media are going to talk about every public appearance like, wow, he's so young, so virile, looking him out there shaking hands and kissing babies. But I think the reality and you see from all these clips is if he's out there for too long, he's going to screw up. And they making jokes. He was smiling.

He was stepping on his word still. But at least he was putting sentences together. At least he was trying to entertain people. And now it's just completely different. And the press is pretending like something, you know, like nothing is wrong. I mean, I had a great grandmother who lived to be over 100. She never one day in her life

sounded like Joe Biden. And it's definitely not an age thing. It is all about ability. And he doesn't have it. No, you're not allowed to make that distinction. Even bringing up cognitive decline suggests you're an ageist bigot. That's where they're going to go, as evidenced by this clip from MSNBC with a Democratic strategist named Chai Kamanduri, who worked for the DNC. Listen to this. Let's talk about honestly, OK, he is old. Age is an issue. Americans have a rich history of holding people's physical characteristics against them. You can ask African-Americans, you can ask women. That is a fact. That is just comparing. It's funny you mention the age thing

that way that you can put it in the context of other discrimination, like ageism. Joe Biden's 100 years old and can't put a sentence together. That's just like the civil problems of the 60s. It's the most offensive thing. If they could listen to themselves, they could listen to be offended by themselves. The most powerful man in the world also now finds himself at the top of the pyramid of oppression. It's unbelievable. That's their trick for everything.

That's their trick for everything. One trick for nothing. Right? It's like, you can't stop. And so that's what we're going to start hearing, I guess. They're going to start, they're sort of floating the test balloon to see. Does that does that fly? Like any criticism of his gaffes is ageist is like, is he going to try to play that card on Trump in a debate like that?

Trump's ageist and Trump's like only a few years younger than Biden is. Good luck. Yeah, I mean, in the contrast between the two of them could not be starker because there is Trump. Every single word is crisp. Every single joke seems to land when he's actually being light and he's actually being himself. And Biden can't do it. And they can they can say it's ages till they're blue in the face. Everybody can see plain as day that they're lying and reality tells the truth. Now, do you guys speaking of Trump and debate before and if he wants to get

to the general election, he has to be the party nominee and that requires him to win the GOP primary. And that will typically require you to go through some GOP presidential debates or not. Right now, the reports are that Trump is thinking about skipping one, maybe both of the GOP debates that have been scheduled so far, though he is going to do a CNN town hall next week, hosted by Caitlin Collins, Don Lemon's old colleague on The Morning Show. But he's reportedly complaining about the GOP scheduling these two debates without asking him. And what they say is that he's mad because number one, he does not hard stop want to go to the Reagan library one. That's the second one, I think. Um, because he says it's non-starter for him because Fred Ryan

is the guy who oversees the library and he's also publisher and chief executive officer officer of the washington post so he doesn't want to go help fred ryan out in any way shape or form the other debate the first one is hosted by fox news and they are reporting hold on a second this is cnn or there's new york times reporting yesterday why Why would I have Brett Baier question me, Mr. Trump told an associate explaining a reason to skip the Fox News debate. I would be remiss if I did not mention the second line. Trump has also mentioned his previous skirmish with the former Fox News anchor, Megyn Kelly, in his private conversations with associates as a reason not to agree to a debate hosted by Fox News. He doesn't need to worry about that

because I will no longer be there. I'm not on the Fox News debate stage. And the question is whether he will be there and whether he should be there. What do you guys think? Yeah, I mean, I think he should debate and I think he will debate, frankly. I mean, he skipped that one debate back in 2016, right before Iowa, he ended up losing the state. And I also think like Donald Trump in a camera is like a moth to a flame. I sincerely do not believe Donald Trump will be able to stay home and watch a bunch of other people get up on national television and talk about it. I just do not think that's going to happen. He'll counter program. I mean, maybe he'll maybe he will. Well, yeah.

But like I think he's kind of making up the rules as he goes here. Right. He won't do the Reagan library debate because, you know, the Washington Post guy or whatever, but he'll do a CNN town hall, right? So I think he's kind of making it up as he goes. And initially, he was sort of working the refs on things like moderators or who's hosting the debate. And now he's basically just saying, well, look, I'm up so much in the polls.

What does it matter? I don't think Donald Trump will be able to help himself at the end of the day. And I think ultimately it's a little debate. I have an idea. I have an idea. I think he should go. He should do a live, tough interview with Tucker Carlson at the same time as the Fox News debate. Oh, I love you.

Oh, that's a good idea. I'm sorry, but that's an excellent idea. That's what should happen. Well, what about the CNN town hall? Because the leftists are freaking out that CNN is hosting him. I try not to spend too much time in Oberman land because it's very toxic and bad for you. But he's kind of amusing to watch in his meltdowns. I kind of get amused by how upset he gets over things. Here he is talking about about Caitlin Collins, who once worked for The Daily

Caller and therefore ostensibly for Tucker, which is why people like Overman can't stand her. Here it is. Have Tucker Carlson and CNN's Trump moderator, Caitlin Collins, both just ended their own careers. Carlson saw a video of three Trump guys beating an Antifa kid, texted to his producer, quote, it's not how white men fight, unquote. That was what I told you Fox had to have discovered at the last minute before trial. It's why they settled. It's why they fired Carlson. And seven years ago today, CNN's Caitlin Collins was still getting paid by Tucker Carlson to write for his site. Her articles have resurfaced. In one, she mocks both torture and charity fundraising for ALS, for Lou Gehrig's disease. Quote, ice bucket challenge hipsters. These Guantanamo detainees did it first. Yet Collins is the moderator. CNN insists will fact check Trump's

lies in real time. She and the town hall have to go. I mean, it's almost sad seeing what's become of this guy. You know, like he's trying to give advice on like, here's how you how you succeed on television, which probably is the last guy who should be an expert on that. And he's just standing there to boycott CNN right now among some of these lefties. They're very and they what they don't want is CNN to do what it did the last time under Jeff Zucker, which is just seed the cameras up and down the lineup to Donald Trump. That is what happened the last time because he's a ratings bonanza and they they feel like CNN's wading into that that behavior all over again. Well, the left just cannot take being questioned because they live in their own woke bubble and nobody inside ever questions anything that they do. And so the first time that somebody pushes against one of their assumptions, they lose their mind. And Keith Olbermann is the perfect example of that. I mean, here's a guy we grew up watching on SportsCenter, and now he's standing next to drywall with a picture of himself screaming into an iPhone or some poor producer is standing there with a camera and he's just yelling at him. Like I did. This guy's appeal, other than a novel curiosity, just blows my mind. There is that people will watch the CNN debate with Trump.

I mean, I do think it's going to be an interesting dynamic for him. Like he's across from a woman. Right. It's not like another guy. He doesn't like Trump and they're going to want to see him destroyed. And yet CNN is under orders from the new boss not to alienate all Republicans and Republican voters. They then there's certainly since an opportunity with the Fox primetime hemorrhaging it like it is. So I kind of want to watch for those reasons alone. You just see how they thread the needle. Yeah, I'm very curious. I'm also curious how much room they give Trump to criticize, you know, other candidates or potential candidates in the Republican primary for president. You know, if they give him a lot of ammo to go ahead

and attack DeSantis, I mean, I think the CNN audience would be fine with that. Yeah, no, I think so, too. And then, I mean, honestly, it gives some fodder to his opponents to say you're going on CNN to trash all these Republicans and conservatives who are just trying to win the White House against Joe Biden. I mean, it's an interesting dynamic. And back to the point that Duncan was making earlier, I think Trump needs to do the debates. I think he will do the debates. He's just so good and so entertaining in these scenarios. And you got to think that he's confident enough in his abilities that he knows he can stand on stage next to everybody else who's running against them and put his best foot forward. I just I think he's I think he has to do it. Well, I mean, that right. If he is as confident as you think he is, Ashbrook, then he has to debate, right? Because now he has a record he has to defend. If he doesn't go out there and debate, it's going to look like he can't defend his record or he's scared to do so. I think it's as simple as that. Right. And the CNN brand carries a very, very low place in the minds of Republican primary voters because of what they've done to Republicans over the past five or six years. And so it's I think it's going to be really interesting to see how the opponents play the politics of him spending time with CNN instead of spending time with the voters.

Right. It's tough. I mean, in a way, they're in a lose lose position because if they excoriate Trump, the GOP is going to be angry. Trump's going to be angry. It's not going to help them their effort to get Republicans back watching. If they do anything other than just absolutely ream the guy, then you're going to have their audience disappointed with them, right? Like you, the Olbermanns of the world want to see her emerge with Trump's jugular. What will be interesting is if Trump starts going back over 2020, what if he gets on there and he says the dominion voting machines were rigged, right? Like the very thing that Fox just had to pay $800 million for platforming. It's like you're going to see an absolute meltdown on the set of CNN. And that that too could be worth watching.

Guys, I think Megan, Megan, to your point, whether it's libs hate watching, whether it's conservatives tuning into CNN again for the first time in a long time, whether it's people just out of curiosity for how CNN plays Trump, it's going to be a ratings bonanza. There's no question about it. Definitely. Well, I mean, by CNN standards, that means they have four viewers instead of two. So let's keep the proper perspective. You were just as good even without Holmes. I don't know what that means. I mean, we love Holmes. I'll be sure to let them know. Thanks, guys. See you again soon. Thank you so much.

And we're going to be right back with Graham Allen who's got some thoughts for the Navy on this drag queen reach out. It is more than a trial by fire. It is a rite of passage. A challenge to join the elite.

And if you succeed, if you can master your fear, outsmart your enemy, and never yield, even to yourself, you will be changed forever. The few, the proud, the Marine. Yeah, that's what military recruitment videos used to look like. Slaying the dragon.

Welcome back to The Megyn Kelly Show. They look a lot different now. We have more to get to now about the latest recruitment effort by the Navy. Graham Allen is an Army veteran and retired Army staff sergeant who served 12 years in combat and was deployed twice to Iraq. He currently hosts the Dear America podcast where he discusses major issues in culture and politics and defends American values. And he has now found himself in a bit of a scuffle with this drag queen sailor who's become sort of the face of the Navy. Graham, welcome to the show. Hey, Megan. Thanks for having me. Really appreciate it. Happy to be here. My pleasure. Thanks for coming on. So what happened was this guy, Joshua Kelly,

aka Harpy Daniels, was hired by the Navy, used by the Navy to go out there as the face of the Navy in a digital recruiting effort over several months, almost a year, and is really loving being so public about it and being a drag queen, you know, sailor. And you came out and said, you know, I'm not feeling it. You said this is not the same military I served under. Our enemies laugh at us. So then Joshua Kelly came out and clapped back, as the New York Post phrased it, and said the following

to you and to Rob O'Neill, who also was critical. You only want to support the military when it benefits you and doesn't involve queer people. Yet the military is the largest, diverse, and adaptable organization in the USA. Well, as a service member, a queen, and an open queer person,

you don't scare me and you won't stop the LGBTQ plus community from thriving. Haters only hate when we're winning. Your response to him. Well, first of all, this was supposed to be a normal Thursday for me. I was supposed to film the show. It's supposed to be kind of a lax day. And then all of a sudden, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, the whole crew starts blowing up. And in fairness,

of all the things that I have said over the course of my whole career doing this, this is probably the most mild thing I've ever said. And I actually was texting Rob O'Neill right before we got on here. I'm not even a Navy guy. I'm an Army guy. But I also was a recruiter for three years while in the Army. And so I know all about in-strength for the military and recruiting efforts, et cetera. My issue wasn't even this Joshua Kelly person. I don't even know. I didn't even know who that was until this came up. My issue was with the Navy and the military in general. We're no longer going after the best and the brightest. We're going after woke feelings. We're going after, honestly, the sexuality of people, which is weird in the first place. What does that have to do with your sexual orientation what color your skin is what

your religion is it has nothing to do with anything and that's that was my issue why i got picked up in this whole thing i have no idea i mean it's not my first scandal uh but like it's not a scandal i don't think my comment was that bad it's not a scandal graham your comment wasn't bad at all don't let them shame you off of what is a very reasonable position. Who wants to serve next to that? Honestly, who wants to serve next to that guy in the foxhole? Not me. Well, again, and let me clarify.

I always have to tell people I have three positions. One position always outranks the other. And that's my Christian perspective from my faith position. You've got the American perspective. And then you've got the military perspective. From a military perspective, don't ask, don't tell was repealed while I was serving in the army. In fact, the only don't ask, don't tell now is whether you're a Republican or a Democrat. But either way, if someone's sexuality or their religion, I don't care. If you're willing to go through the same things that I'm willing to go through, and especially somebody like Rob O'Neill.

I mean, I did nothing compared to Rob. I mean, literally shot bin Laden. But either way, if you're willing to do that and pick up a gun and run towards the war, more power to you. Like I said, when I joined the army, you weren't black, white, gay, straight, Christian, Muslim, nothing. You were green. That's what you were. And you keep all that stuff to yourself. Now, this Joshua Kelly guy, Megan, and you might find this interesting. I was still in the army when all of this, you know, speaking my mind about conservative values and virality on the internet and all this

stuff kind of started. And my chain of command actually had to come to me and say, hey, if you're going to talk about this stuff, you can't be in uniform when you do it. Okay, cool. But then things started getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And then the next thing I know, the Sergeant Major of the Army is calling down going, who is this Graham Allen guy? He can't do both of these things. Now, my ETS was coming up, but I had to make a choice. Am I going to speak about my personal opinions, my personal values, and what I think is wrong with the country? Or am I going to continue to shut my mouth, put the uniform on, and serve the country? Because that's part of it. What's interesting to me now is that the military, the Navy, is now doing the exact opposite of that. They're going to these far left, less than 1% of the population to go out and flaunt their sexual orientations out

to less than 1% to join the less than 1%. It's hypocrisy. I think it's weakening our military because again, I say, we're not going after the best and brightest. We're going after the wokest and that leads to nothing. And I do believe it when I say our enemies are laughing at us. Newsweek wanted a quote, and my quote is always the same. I meant what I said, and I'm not sorry. No, you shouldn't be. And this isn't even, as far as I can tell, a sexual orientation thing. This is a gender confusion thing. I don't know what this guy's sexual orientation is. I don't need to know. But I said earlier, I kind of missed the don't ask, don't tell approach. I don't want to know if this guy's a drag queen in his spare time. I don't want to take part in it. And I certainly don't want the Navy fronting it in an effort to

attract more guys just like him. I'm sorry, but there is an unusually high percentage of people in the trans community who are suffering from some very disturbed thinking and issues. And that's not the kind of people we want to recruit and give guns to. That's my own belief. I'm sorry, but I do think that there should be a certain level of screening for people like Joshua before we hand them a gun. Yep, absolutely. And again, I've been out since 2016. So about the time this guy got in, I was getting out. But back when I was recruiting, like I said,

I have a very in-depth knowledge of this process. If you were on Ritalin as a child up until a certain age, you were not qualified and you were disqualified to join the military. And now we're actively going after people. As you said yourself, a lot of the people in the transgender community and the LGBTQ community, I believe that Joshua could be wrong, identifies as non-binary. Fact check me on that. I think that's correct. When did all of this stuff change? When did

it used to be Ritalin? You know, a lot of kids, you know, I think a lot of parents overuse that, but that's another conversation for another day. But a lot of kids grow out of that. A lot of kids have asthma when they're young and grow out of that when they get older. If you had that when I was recruiting, guess what? You couldn't get in. And now we're actively going after people that in the trans community, the LGBTQ community, there's depression rampant, there's anxiety rampant. And obviously there's a lot of medical things that go on that these people have to use and continue to take, et cetera. It doesn't make any sense to me. And you cannot explain to me how this effort is making our military a meaner, leaner fighting force.

The Navy missed its recruiting goals. They're expecting to miss them by 6,000. In 2022, they met their active duty goal by draining the delayed entry program. So they no longer have that financial accounting trick or that counting trick to save themselves. And this seems to be the solution. I was saying earlier, you know, tell me Graham, but I feel like they're totally misunderstanding why they're having trouble recruiting the next generation of great recruits. This is not the answer. No, no, no, it's not. I mean, Megan, honestly, it's a much, it's a much deeper issue. People have lost, especially the younger generation.

My generation, I'm the old guy now. I did my time. I got out. And it's time for the new generation to come in. The love of country, the idea of being bigger than yourself, the idea of fighting for something and standing for something bigger than yourself, we don't have that anymore. And I know that's a broad statement and everybody's going to be like, oh, well, you can't say that because not everyone, I can say the vast majority of what I'm seeing coming up, the love of country is not there. We were having that issue back when I was recruiting. I can't imagine how difficult it is now. And so you're having to use every smoke and mirror tactic that you can to try to get people in a pair of boots when they

actually don't even really want to be there or they don't really know why they're there. At the end of the day, why did you join the military? Did you join the military because you thought it'd be a cool experience? Did you join the military because you come from a small town and you need to get out? Did you join the military because college isn't for you? Or did you join the military because you love this country and you believe that there is a piece of you that needs to pay your due for the rights and the freedoms that this country grants you? Nobody's saying that anymore. And so that's the issue that's actually going on is pride in country pushing, pushing the actual, what it is to want to be a, in my case, a soldier or a sailor or

an airman or a Marine, or even the space force. Now we we've lost all sense of pride of what it means to be an American. Yeah. I feel like this guy, instead of watching recruiting videos like the one we played coming into this segment, was watching people like this, where now truth has become stranger than fiction. May I remind you of the village people. Oh, God. Yep, that's brutal. He thought it was an actual invitation. But now those people would be in charge of whole divisions of the army and things like that like it wouldn't even be a goof anymore right i mean the thing is as you

point out it's it's strange to hear josh and see josh and understand that this is one of our um fighting forces but it's the navy's fault it's the navy's fault for elevating this guy and i played this earlier but i'd love to get your reaction. This guy seems very soft to me. I know gay men who are tough. They're tough as nails and I'd be happy to be defended by them. I've never met a trans soldier, so I don't know what that's all about. But this guy seems a little soft to be out there with a rifle fighting down the Russians or the Chinese or whoever we're going to have to fight next. Here he is talking about how important it was when his commanding officer came to him about his pronouns. Yeah. It might be trivial or small in some things, but for me, it's huge. I think it's very important for acceptance and inclusion for the service. We talk about our experiences, and this is an experience that I had literally today with the CMC I never met. CMC is a command master chief.

For those who don't know, they're the highest enlisted when it comes to making decisions. And in the service, your words matter. Words matter, especially when it comes to higher leadership people we look up to. And what they did is they just simply asked me what my pronouns were in a simple conversation, not right away. They just like we're just talking business. And then finally we got into just some small talk and they asked me what my pronouns were. And I thought it was incredible to see that inclusion and change oh my god I think he's wearing lipstick in that clip I I have I have no words uh you know this isn't mine but but I've heard this said said multiple times you already have pronouns when you join the military. It's private, specialist, sergeant, sergeant first class. My pronoun was a staff sergeant.

That was my pronoun. You don't need pronouns. Who cares? And like you said, manly men and things like this. I was just a normal person in the Army. I was the other 99%. I even said that in my book that you know uh not your average war story because i wasn't a a seal team six guy like rob who shot osama bin laden in the face uh that wouldn't i've been

around these these these giants of men in the service and you know what they don't care about they could care less what your pronouns are they care about do they trust you next to them in battle? That's what they care about. No, no one cares. You're going to get me on a tangent here. No sane adult actually believes any of this stuff anyway. I heard your segment. There's no such thing as non-binary. What's that? There's no such thing as non-binary. Keep going. Correct. Yes. I heard your segment where you said at first you were willing to, you know, you know, go along with the pronouns and all this stuff. But then you realize it was this slippery slope and they're just going to keep keep chipping away and chipping away and chipping away. I don't believe that sane individuals actually think that if you're

you're a man, you can be a woman. And if you're a woman, you can be a man. No sane person actually believes that, as Matt Walsh would say, you're just saying those things to get along with your day faster and get out of the conversation. Because outside of the military, not only the military, but in America in general, we have become weak people that no longer want to stand for truth, even if it causes adversity. And to be uncancellable, to not let their vitriol response come at you. I think it's funny that Josh threw homophobic and transphobic at me and all these things like those things are going to hurt me when that's not the truth at all. They always want to attack Christian faith and all the above. I've said this once. I've said it again. If you're gay, God loves you. He wants to have a relationship with

you. If you're trans, God loves you. He wants to have a relationship with you. However, it's easy to accept the Savior part of Jesus. That's easy. What's hard is to accept the Lord part of Jesus. And they always want to attack my faith. And I would say this, that Jesus loves you. He wants to have a relationship with you. But if you accept Jesus into your heart, that comes with the Lord part. And Jesus has laid out some pretty clear things about marriage, sexuality, how many genders there are, et cetera. And so I don't get offended by those things. I meant it when I said, I'm not sorry. I'm not sorry for what I said.

I love this country. I don't like the direction this country is going down. And I'm going to continue to be louder and louder and louder because the crazy side is being as loud as they want. And it's the side that loves America. Our side hasn't been fighting. The same people have been quiet. Let me end it by this. I'd love to get your thoughts on Rob's tweet. We mentioned Rob O'Neill, a friend of yours, and I deeply admire the guy.

He wrote in response to this, all right, the US Navy is now using an enlisted sailor drag queen as a recruiter. I'm done. China is going to destroy us. You got this Navy. I can't believe I fought for this bullshit. I feel his anger. He women. I've actually had a couple of friends in the past year alone take their life from suicide. And I think you have a lot of people that are angry. I think you have a lot of people that are sitting here going, why in the world did we put ourselves through all of that? And like I said, I was just a normal guy. Rob O'Neill, SEAL Team 6. I mean, the things that man went through, I'm sure he's frustrated. I'm frustrated and I didn't do 1% of what he did. What was it all for? For our military, China is teaching their kids how to

assemble weapons and how to stab people in the neck with a fork or a toothbrush. And we're over here trying to recruit people and say that you can be as trans as you want to be or as drag as you want to be. That's not the purpose of the military. The purpose of the military is to defend America. And we need warriors to be able to do that. We need tough as nails men and women, but not super soft, tear-filled, sorry for themselves lipstick wearing. Guys, I'm sorry. I draw the line. I've just, I like you have had it with the nonsense, Graham, and it's wonderful and liberating to have found a voice on it. Thank you for being there and thanks for speaking out and thank you for your service, Graham

Allen. Thanks for having me. All the best. Wow. What a show. Would love to hear your thoughts on it. Email me, Megan at Megan Kelly.com M E G Y N at Megan Kelly.com. Go on over to the YouTube, sign up for our YouTube subscriptions. That way we'll sort of, you know, be in your feed. What do they need to do in order for us to actually let them know we've dropped a video, Steve? Ring the bell, smash that like button and ring the bell and download the podcast

too, because that's also a fun way of listening. Thank you so much for all your support. And we will be back tomorrow. Looking forward to a full rundown with you then. Got something surprising for you. Stay tuned. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.