The Megyn Kelly Show - Pence and Harris Debate, with Charles C.W. Cooke, Krystal Ball, and Saagar Enjeti

Episode Date: October 8, 2020

Megyn Kelly is joined by Charles C.W. Cooke, editor of NationalReview.com, and Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti of TheHill TV's Rising, to talk about last night's VP debate with Mike Pence and Kamala Harris, and also what might happen next with the presidential debates - and if they actually happen at all.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms:Twitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShowFind out more information at:https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Today, the vice presidential debate, and will there be a second presidential debate? It's in jeopardy. Coming up today, Charles C.W. Cook, Crystal Ball, and Sagar and Jetty, all with their thoughts on where we go from here. Hey everyone, it's Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and what a debate last night. Did you watch it? I watched it. I thought it got a little tedious at times, but overall, I thought the moderator did a fair job and the candidates, well, we're going to talk about it.

With me now is Steve Krakauer. He's my executive producer here on the show, and he's also the editor and writer of the newsletter Fourth Watch, which is well worth your time, by the way, because he's sort of a media watchdog himself, Steve. So I thought on balance that the candidates were generally respectful of one another, that they were pretty measured. There were no meltdowns like we saw in debate number one between the top dogs. It was a little boring and my mind started to wander about, I don't know, an hour in like, what am I going to do tomorrow? What am I going to have for breakfast? That's never a good sign. That never happened in debate number one. And I thought the moderator, Susan Page, was fair. I don't think any criticisms of her today as being biased toward one side or the other are fair.

I went back and looked at every single question in the transcript, and she was right down the middle, and she was pretty vanilla in the way she phrased the question. She covered things you'd expect. Obamacare, China, trade, COVID, the economy, fracking, climate change, I mentioned. Supreme Court, it was all stuff you'd expect. Abortion, maybe the topic selection leaned left a little, but not enough to really criticize Susan Page. That was my overall thought. What'd you think? Yeah, I would say the same thing. I thought that

she did a pretty good job. I will say it seemed that she was very interested in two things, in asking her questions, which I thought they were good questions, not really super interested in the answers and whether the candidates actually answered the questions. I would say both sides, Mike Pence and Kamala Harris, didn't exactly give a straight answer to two specific questions. And there was no follow-up to press for that. That's because she was scared, you know, what-less, that she was going to lose control, like we saw with Chris Wallace. You know, you could see the fear in her eyes, like, oh God, I don't want the train to go off the rails.

Yeah, I think, you know, it was a little different scenario now that President Trump was not up there, the, you know, stirring the pot a little bit, or maybe it was the plexiglass that was between them that really kept it a little bit more subdued. But there was that, but she also really did seem obsessed with keeping fair time, which was interesting.

Obviously, that became a storyline after also. CNN actually timed it that they spoke almost exactly the same amount of time, while ABC had it that Kamala Harris spoke more and CBS had it that Mike Pence spoke three minutes more. So I don't know how we all do our timing, but I thought she did a good job of really trying to keep it balanced in terms of the speaking time, at least. She did. But I will say as a moderator myself, some of those moments were frustrating. I liked that she left it up to the candidates to beat up on one another. That was good, I thought. But there were a couple of moments where I would have loved if she just would have given us a moment of, so what is the answer? Yes or no,

just quick, like just quick, put it right to them. And if they dodge again, don't let them complete the answer with a long dodge, you know, just I'll give you 10 seconds. Yes or no. Are you, or aren't you? I would have loved that. And I think the audience would have benefited from it. Um, no, the only one who did that actually was Mike Pence. I mean, you know, in trying to press for a specific answer and. Well, exactly. On the Supreme Court, which we're going to get to in a minute. I thought, you know, overall, since I thought Pence was very strong on policy, she was very strong on COVID. But I thought without a knockout blow, without like the massive fall down by either candidate, you'd have to give the win to her because her side is winning in the polls. So, you know, the question is whether this could change the dynamic of the race.

And I think like most vice presidential debates, it didn't. So if you wanted to sort of say, well, it was a wash, that's not necessarily great for Team Trump because they would have preferred a knockout blow where they really changed the dynamic. opportunity here. Yeah, the CNN post-debate poll had the pre-debate numbers versus the post-debate numbers for Pence and Kamala Harris almost identical in the sense that not a single person actually moved from before to after, which is not exactly surprising, but was interesting to see. Well, and I think some people on the Democratic side saw what they wanted to see and same on the Republican side with respect to their attitudes in that debate, which which we'll get to. But, you know, Frank Lentz had a focus group that was very focused on, among other things, Kamala Harris's interruptions or her her eye rolls and her her sort of scoffing at some of Mike Pence's answers. And things like that can can affect a voter's willingness to side with you

or their the amount that they like you. Right. If you're too boisterous or too much of a bully, like we saw with Trump in debate number one, it can turn people off. And if you're too nasty or smug that I had a vote on the guest on the Kelly file who I loved. She was a Democrat, but she constantly rolled her eyes at the other side's answers. And I pulled her aside to say, you don't want to see seem smug or angry because you're going to turn off the viewers. They're not going to listen to you when I get to you. And, uh, she mastered it for a while and then never quite nailed it. But you always have to worry about that man or woman. You have to worry about how you look when you're not speaking and what signals you're sending.

Right, right. Especially in a format like this where there are no one shots, right? Everything is a two shot. You see the reaction from the other candidate to what the candidate who's speaking is actually saying. It's the sort of the broadcasting side of it that's interesting there. Yeah. No, I think even just some of the post-debate reaction, I was watching CNN, Abby Phillips said she should have pushed back in certain ways. Dana Bash said she didn't get a lot of help from the moderator. So I don't know why she would get help from the moderator, but that was notable, which all sort of translates to me that Harris did fine, but not great. Right.

Well, I think one of the things I tweeted about was she had several strong answers on the points, but I was distracted by the head shaking in response while he was speaking and i know she was trying to signal i disagree or he's not telling the truth but it it had a turnoff effect on me like stops to stop right um you actually were tweeting a lot during the debate uh and i have to say i went to bed last night i said i'm gonna pull the the tweet that had the most retweets and talk about it with you. At the time, that was you tweeting Pence is so much better than Trump at defending Trump.

And then I wake up this morning and you're trending nationally on Twitter for a different tweet, which was take it like a woman. Don't make faces, which apparently has drawn out people like I'll just give you an example like Bill Burton of one who says, be better, Megan, expressing disgust at lies, deception, and constantly being talked over is worth reaction. Oh, please. The point is not whether he was, in fact, misleading. The point is, what message are you sending to the audience at home? You want to project calm, cool, controlled, and ready to go when it's your turn.

You know, respectful of the process and ready to go when it's your turn. You know, there are a lot of moments in these presidential debates where you could be doing that, but most not. Let's put the first presidential debate of this cycle to the side. But usually the candidates will try to maintain their poker face until you get to them out of respect for the audience who is trying to listen and doesn't want to see scoffing. And I think between the head shaking and she had a couple of, you know, the thing about I'm speaking, I'm speaking. When she first did it, I liked it because I do think when you get interrupted and it does happen a lot to women in the boardrooms and so on, I do believe more than men. It's a good tool. I'm speaking or I'm not done. I like that. But used too much, it crosses over to what is this? An attempted feminist moment or

she was clearly trying to project like you're rude. The floor is mine and I will not seat it. And I started to get turned off by it. Like at least switch it up to one sec or just let me finish or I'm not quite done. Right. Just, just like squeezing alternatives because it started to seem like an obviously rehearsed thing. Right. Yeah. And then it got the reaction from, you know, people like George Stephanopoulos who called Mike Pence a mansplainer. Yeah. Was there, was there a debate reaction that stood out to you? Oh, yeah, many of them. But one more point on Kamala.

The other thing she was saying was, I will not be lectured by the vice president on this or on that. And it was just I think she was dying for him to do something really sexist. And he didn't. And so she had her little lines ready to go. But she was unleashing them on the wrong target. She thought she was going to debate Donald Trump, who was going to be his normal self. And she had a gentleman sitting over there who was debating her like she might be the

future vice president. And George Stephanopoulos may have said, yeah, vice president, who may have said, George Stephanopoulos said that he was mansplaining to her. And to her credit, Martha Raddatz interrupted and said, no, women can be interrupted, too. She wants to be vice president. And women don't get to be treated in a special in a special way just because they're women out there. What's what equality means is you get punched in the face just like the other guy gets punched in the face and you take it. And that's what my tweet was. Take it like a woman instead of how they always say, take it like a man. Right. My point was women can easily maintain composure, maintain facial expressions and hold their cards to the vest until it's their turn on the on the debate stage,

just like a man can. And she needed to do that because today people are talking about her facial expressions instead of the substance of her answers. And that that's on her. So, OK, the reactions to the debate, as I said, they they fell along party lines. But I once again, I was channel surfing around and I couldn't believe first what I heard from Gayle King on CBS News. Listen to it. One point when they were talking about systemic racism, I think it's very interesting timing that a fly would land on Mike Pence's head at that particular time when he said that there really wasn't systemic racism. I saw the fly basically go and say, what? I mean, it was very interesting. That was, I don't want to call that a highlight, but that was certainly a memorable moment.

A memorable moment for Gayle King was the fly saying, say what? Oh, my God. Like she actually treated it as if it were a thing, that there was a message that God sent the fly down to pass judgment on Mike Pence and comments about white supremacy. I mean, you've got to be kidding me. Twitter loved the fly, but I don't understand how the fly made it into any post debate, like actual television coverage, but it did everywhere. Well, and how did it make it into the room, which I'd been told has had been hermetically sealed. People were basically forced to wear hazmat suits until the moment they began to pay. They were, they truly continued to treat COVID like it is the bubonic plague. I realized we

need to take precautions, but how many layers could they have had between the people who are already 12 feet apart on that stage? OK, then there was MSNBC and Nicole Wallace. You tell me whether whether this comment was a bit loaded. Listen, the problem tonight is that Vice President Pence appeared flaccid and anemic, and that's going to hurt him with men. Then she went on to add not just flaccid, but limp and lame. And then Maddow doubled down on, yes, flaccid. What are they trying to say, Steve? You know, it's really it really leaves a lot to the imagination.

Yeah. No, I think. Are they just trying to come up with what's the worst insult they can level at Mike Pence and say on television, I guess? Well, yeah, I mean, even going there, obviously, everybody knows what they're trying to say. Like he's this. He's not a virile man. He looked weak. He's not somebody who could get it done in the bedroom or in the boardroom or in the Oval Office. I mean, that's what they're telegraphing with the use of those words over and over. And if any similar remarks had been made about a woman, everyone would be crying sexism, right? They'd be crying sexism. But the truth is, Mike Pence was controlled. It's like you almost can't win because if you're interrupting and all fiery and energetic the way Trump always is, they say you're a bully. because if you're interrupting and all fiery and energetic the way Trump always is,

they say you're a bully. And if you're a gentleman who's controlled and just measured the way Mike Pence always speaks, then you're limp and you're flaccid. And I thought those comments were out of line. Yeah, that was not shocking from MSNBC, but it was sort of surprising there. All right, Megan, we talked a lot about the people talking on the stage. Let's talk about Pure Talk. Pure Talk.

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And their customer service is right here in the US. It's second to none. Just look at Consumer Affairs. Pure Talk, they say, is the number one rated wireless company. Their CEO is a US veteran who understands what it means to serve his country. So make the switch. It'll be the easiest decision you make all day. Get Unlimited Talk plus, and here's how you do it, text plus two, no, no, get unlimited talk, text, I'm still new at this, plus two gigs of data all for 20 bucks a month. From your cell phone, you dial pound 250 and say, Megan Kelly. And then you will save an additional 50% off your first month. Pound 250, say Megan Kelly. And remember, Pure Talk, simply smarter, wireless. There, I got it out, Steve. It's never easy for me. I'm still learning how to do the ads, but slowly but surely. Okay.

I want to bring in now our first guest. Charles C.W. Cook is NationalReview.com editor and an amazing, brilliant writer. And I always love listening to you on the podcast, The Editors, Charles, because your takes are always so insightful. So thanks for being here. And what are your thoughts on what we saw last night? It was certainly different than the presidential debate that we saw recently. I was on brand last night.

I watched this in a cigar bar, and at points you couldn't hear it. And I thought that that was almost as interesting as when you could in that Kamala Harris came across to me badly in both settings. Now, I should say your audience probably won't know who I am. I don't like Kamala Harris. I am perhaps her number one enemy. She's my nightmare candidate. She's an authoritarian. And on every single issue, she ticks the wrong box for me. But I thought that Pence won the debate. He couldn't answer every question. He was weak on health care. The Trump campaign has been weak on health care, and that's because they don't have a plan.

He wasn't especially convincing on coronavirus. But other than that, I thought he did better than she did. And I think she comes across badly, both when she's speaking and when she's not. What did you make of the head shaking, the I'm speaking and I will not be lectured to by the vice president? Well, if you remember back to the presidential primaries when they were parodied by SNL, the Kamala Harris character was constantly trying to create memes, quite literally on those

skits. She would move her head into the shot and the background would be a famous meme. And this is something that she's got a bit of a reputation for. She did it during the Kavanaugh hearings. She did it during those debates. She does it on the stump as well. It struck me that that was scripted. I mean, she almost behaved as if she were debating Donald Trump. Now, that behavior from Harris would have been appropriate against Trump because his behavior was absolutely disgraceful. But Pence's wasn't. I mean, irrespective of whether Pence is a gentleman or limp, choose your own adventure. He's not Donald Trump. He doesn't interrupt rudely, try to shut people down, try to dominate. The interruptions and crosstalk were fairly normal.

And I thought she had decided ahead of time that she was going to keep doing that so that a certain subset, many of whom are in the media, would say, oh, look, you go, girl. But to me, it just came across as fake and actually weak. For me, I thought the exchange of the night was on the Supreme Court. And for once, someone, and it was Mike Pence, really tried to push her on whether the Biden-Harris ticket is going to pack the Supreme Court if they win, which is a huge, huge deal. I know we've gotten a short form in the media now, but the audience needs to understand if they get in there and add three justices to the U.S. Supreme Court, the Supreme Court is done. It will be over as a credible institution in the United States. So you're basically talking about

rendering ineffective the leading court in the third branch of government. It's a huge deal. And the fact that they keep getting away with dodging on it. When Kamala Harris said in the primary process that she is open to packing the court, she told that to The New York Times. So there she is on the stage. She gets asked about it. We have a little bit of the exchange. Let's listen to that.

Now, you've refused to answer the question. Joe Biden has refused to answer the stage. She gets asked about it. We have a little bit of the exchange. Let's listen to that. Now, you've refused to answer the question. Joe Biden has refused to answer the question. So I think the American people would really like to know if Judge Amy Coney Barrett is confirmed at the Supreme Court of the United States, are you and Joe Biden, if somehow you win this election, going to pack the Supreme Court to get your way? I'm so glad we went through a little history lesson. Let's do that a little more. In 1864. I'd like you to answer the question. And she didn't.

And then he tried again and she didn't. He tried again and she didn't. And even though she was saying, OK, let's talk about packing. After the third time he tried to make her answer, what she answered was, President Trump has appointed 50 federal judges, not one of them is black. So we never got an answer, Charles. No, and her history lesson was false, as Dan McLaughlin at National Review pointed out last night. I'm glad you introduced this subject the way that you did, because I feel often as if this is talked about as if it were a minor policy dispute, excise tax rates or insurance reimbursement rates. It's not. This is an extraordinary proposal. This would be the most radical change to the American system of government in at least a century. When it was last proposed by Franklin Roosevelt, his own party didn't just reject it, but said, this is tyranny. This is the

worst thing that has ever been presented in the Senate. And bear in mind, his own party had three quarters of the seats in the Senate and in the House. He'd won 46 out of 48 states. So it's extraordinary enough that there are people in America in public office who are proposing this. But then not to say whether you support it or not, is I think the biggest story of the election. Now, President Trump very often says terrible things, things that I have written against him on for four, five years. He's bad on the First Amendment. He hasn't done anything, thankfully, but he says terrible things about it. He says he doesn't know whether he'll accept the election result. He dismisses the Constitution when it doesn't suit him. He lambasts the Supreme

Court when it rules against him. This is bad, but it pales in comparison to this proposal, which, remember, would not just blow up the judicial branch, as you say, but as a prerequisite would blow up the Senate, because you can't do this without abolishing the filibuster, which would change the way the Senate has worked for more than a century and put a lot more power to affect Americans' lives, regardless of the state they live in, in Washington's hands without mass buy-in. So this is enormous. And I find it deeply, deeply alarming that neither Joe Biden nor Kamala Harris have an answer for it. What did you make about the moment, another moment that's making news for probably the wrong reasons is, it happened when the fly went on Mike Pence's head. And she was attacking him and President Trump on the issue of white supremacy again. And once again, she said, you know, Trump stood on this debate on a debate stage and refused to condemn white supremacy, referring to the last debate where he was asked, will you condemn it? He said, sure.

Then they said, do it, do it. And then they got in the Proud Boys exchange and then said, referenced back to his Charlottesville comment that there were, quote, fine people on both sides. To me, it's it is annoying because if you go back and look at what President Trump said about Charlottesville and what happened there that day, he did say there are fine people on both sides. And he was talking about protesters who were there in response to taking down a Robert E. Lee statue. And his point was, some people don't like that. Some people don't like the scrubbing of American history. And he went on to say that day, and I quote, I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists. I'm not. He made that clear. But he gave them enough, you know, I don't know, he gave them enough that they've used it against him at every turn. And we see it in every presidential debate. I just don't know whether anybody's ever to debunk because they keep asking and keep asking. And Trump, since he first entered politics in 2000, has condemned white supremacy about 20 times, mostly in unequivocal terms. Now, he is oddly, on every topic, incoherent. He is not a man who, unlike Mike Pence, strings paragraphs together. But there's really no evidence that Donald Trump

is a white supremacist. I think this is more of a media construction. I noticed after the debate with Joe Biden, CNN went within about three or four hours from declined to condemn, to refused to condemn, to actively courted. This is narrative building. Now, there are times when Trump needs to be called out absolutely. For example, when he criticized Judge Curiel and said that he would be unable to give Trump fair treatment because he was of Mexican origin. That was outrageous. That was racism. I think Paul Ryan called it a textbook example of racism. There's no need to invent or endlessly hype this. And I think it is alarming that they keep asking this question over and over and over again, even when they get an answer to it, rather than asking questions that really,

really matter. A good one to follow up with over and over again would be, what do you mean you won't necessarily respect the outcome of the election? That would be a great one to push and push on. Because he said this now twice this year, and he said it once in 2016 during a debate with Hillary Clinton. It's obviously not up to him whether he gets to remain president. But I want to know what that means in practice. And yet we fixate on this, which is really a chimera. Well, I've listened to you on the editors from National Review. And one of the points you make about Trump is a frustration of yours with him is he's really not that eloquent. And right now, the past few months, we've seen America itself, the idea of America come under attack time and time again. It's systemically racist,

the lies of the 1619 Project, that it was formed in order to perpetuate slavery, things that they're trying to undo now quietly at the New York Times without being honest about their mistakes. And Nicole Hannah-Jones, who wrote it, same. Now there's a group pushing for her Pulitzer Prize to be taken away. But anyway, your frustration is you would love to see a Reagan type go out there and really defend some of these principles and talk about why they're important. In watching Pence last night, I thought he could be your guy. I sent out a tweet saying, you know, it's amazing to me how much better Pence is than Trump at defending Trump. And you don't need Mike Pence necessarily. You need almost anyone who case for President Trump as a check on an increasingly crazy left wing in America, a left wing that doesn't just consist of the Democratic Party, which has moved far and far and far away from the Clintonian era Democratic Party.

But in the media and in academia and in Hollywood, there is an argument. Look, we need somebody who will act as a check on that. And it's just odd to me that it's Trump. Now, there's not much choice. Trump is the nominee. He is the president. But almost anyone else would first be more eloquent, would do his reading, would take it seriously, would watch his words, but two, would care about his position. Part of my frustration is not just Trump's ineloquence and unwillingness to work hard, but is that he is at the head of this movement of people who care very deeply about a whole host of issues. And he likes to present himself as the guy standing in the breach. And yet he is so capricious that he seems unlikely

to prevail. So yeah, I'd much rather someone else were there who could do this well, but also would not waste his chance and alienate half the country with stupid shenanigans when it really does matter who prevails in this fight. Vice President Pence put some meat on the bones of the top line that we get from Trump. And it was interesting to listen to him and for him to drill down a little, pardon the pun, on things like the Biden-Harris position on fracking. You know, he stayed on them. And I learned some stuff last night, which I can't say about the first debate. Can I ask you about whether you think that he's really not going to do this next debate. You know, that broke this morning that Trump is saying, apparently the presidential commission unilaterally said, the next presidential debate is going virtual without consulting with the candidates in the campaigns, which is, if true, a problem. And Trump responded, that's pathetic, and I'm not doing it. So what happens there? Well, it's difficult to try to get into trump's mind i i assume he

thinks he has some leverage here which he does uh although it's arguably worse for trump if there's no second debate because trump's losing and he needs to make up ground and it would probably be better for him if the more recent impression of the candidate in the minds of people entering the voting booth were at a second debate in which he was more respectful and more direct rather than that debacle that we saw last time around. Trump's a guy who tries to negotiate every single question. That's how he operated as a businessman. And I assume that's what he's doing here. I hope it is because he needs that debate to have any chance, I think, of staging a comeback.

Yeah, I don't think there's any way he doesn't do the debate. But I am reminded of the 2015-16 election cycle where he was mad at me about my question to him on the women at the first debate Fox hosted. And then he said, if I wasn't going to be pulled as a moderator by the next debate, he wasn't going to show up. And we thought, oh, bull. And right up to the moment, I mean, we're talking 15 minutes before we went on air that night, Brett Baer, Chris Wallace, and I were all thinking he's going to come. He's going to come in, you know, underdog to save the day at the last second with a helicopter drop. And we had a podium ready to go out on stage for him. and we all had questions for him, and he did not show. So anything is possible with him. As we have learned over and over. I mean, this is the story of President Trump right from the beginning. I didn't think that he would be the nominee.

I didn't think that he would be elected. At every stage along the road, I thought, well, he must change. Surely he can't be this chaotic surely the office that he has won will change him you know if i were president which of course i can't be and don't want to be but if i were president i would spend all of my time in the white house feeling as if abraham lincoln's eyes were following me around the room and uh you know the city is called Washington. This would have an effect on me, but it hasn't on him. He doesn't play by the rules. He's not going to change. You know, this is what you've got. So who knows, but it would be to his

disadvantage. To put it in terms he would understand, it would be a bad deal for him if he backed out. Yeah. And one of the effective negotiation tactics in any deal is to be willing to walk away, to actually be willing to walk away, which I imagine he is. And he's played that card right away. And now we'll see that I don't think the Commission on Presidential Debates is really known for its strength and fortitude. So I'm going to guess they're going to cave quickly. We'll see how. Okay. Lastly, can we talk about the polls? Some of the polls that have come out, I just don't believe there was a Quinnipiac poll saying Biden's up 11 in Florida. I don't believe that. And up 13 in Pennsylvania. I just, there is no way Biden is

up 11 in Florida. I just like, no, even the Florida pollsters down there are saying no. But he's also behind, Trump is, in virtually every poll in these major swing states. And now there are some reports that they may be scaling back on advertising in places like Wisconsin and even Ohio. So what is the state of the race today? I think Joe Biden is winning the race. The national polls are catastrophic for Trump. The state polls are closer. I mean, this morning, he's still up half a percentage point over where he was at this stage in 2016. And that's not because it's four years ago there was the Access Hollywood tape.

This has been broadly true for the last two weeks. Now, of course, you have to average those out. It doesn't do him much good if he's winning in one state but getting blown out in another. But it is a lot closer at the state level. And those polls are really noisy. I mean, he's not losing by 11 in Florida, as you say. There is another poll in Florida recently that had it tied. There was one two weeks ago that had him up four. The same is true in Pennsylvania and Ohio and North Carolina. And to an extent, Arizona, oddly, the most recent poll out of Arizona has Trump only down two. So I suppose the answer to the question is, I don't know. But if you are down in pretty much every single averaged poll in every

single state you need to win, you're losing the race unless there is an astonishing mistake with the way polls are conducted across every single polling firm, across every single region. And that was to some extent true with the state polls in 2016 and 2018, but I don't think it was true enough to have him winning if the race stays as it is today the biggest question in this race is how big is the shy trump vote how big is it and is it going to be enough as it was last time to get him over the over the hump okay so i want you to stick around normally i'd be saying goodbye to you now but just stick around with me for one second because we do this feature on the show called you Can't Say That. It's a nod to

cancel culture. You can't say that. You can't think that. You can't be that. Oh, wait, this is America. So the late, I want you to stay because you wrote my favorite column of the past month by anyone on this particular issue, which also caught my eye. So here's what happened for the audience. There's a writer for Inside Higher Education who wrote a column called Why America Needs College Football. And it featured examples of how college football can help Americans get through this difficult time we're going through. Well, apparently that's racist.

And this guy, I guess, was forced to issue a very somber apology. And he did it in a follow-up column. I'll just give you a couple quotes so you get the feel. Here's a quote. I am sorry for the hurt, sadness, frustration, fatigue, exhaustion, and pain this article has caused anyone, but specifically Black students. I am struggling to find the words to communicate the deep ache for the damage I have done. I don't want to write anything that further deepens the pain experienced by my ignorance related to black male athletes in the black community at any time, but especially in light of the national racial unrest. Your thoughts on that one, Charles?

Well, I should start by saying that even if this person had written something genuinely offensive, this apology would be over the top. This is redolent of the sort of concessions you would expect from somebody under torture or in a Maoist apology camp. But what he actually wrote was that football might help us get through these uncharacteristically difficult times. College football holds a special bipartisan place in the American heart. Bear in mind, he's writing this from Ohio State. This is not some random school. This is the football school. And he said in the piece that football gives players a platform to make statements about issues they care about. I mean, he mentioned racial equality. He talked about athletes kneeling to protest police brutality. He said colleges should empower athletes to do this.

I mean, this was not some insane racist rant. This was a very normal, very well measured piece from a professor at Ohio State saying people in Ohio like watching football, it will be great when it comes back. That it has spawned this apology is baffling to me. Because you not only have to apologize, there has to be the period of self-flagellation, and it better be real, as Professor Matthew Mayhew just found out. Your response, which I recommend as a read for everyone, I tweeted it out, but you can also see it at National Review. This is a quote from your piece. to pen a piece of craven absurdity so perfect in scale and composition that it is difficult to imagine how it might ever be topped. But this is what you have to do, right? Now maybe this guy will keep his job because he really, really, really bent the knee. He bent every knee and he's still on his knees. Yeah. And you know what I find so sinister about it as well is that anyone who is not sucked into this way of thinking

can see the power dynamics that are underplaying it. In that as recompense for his saying college football is popular, he's promised to put himself under the tutelage of some other professors at the university who presumably will give him all of the correct opinions that he will now have to follow and say out loud, that's not what a university is for. And that's not why we have a free culture in the United States. That is the opposite of an intellectual approach. And the fact that his immediate instinct was to say,

okay, I will go away, unlearn everything that I have ever learned. Again, what he has to unlearn is that people like college football. And he will throw himself at the mercy of others who will tell him what is right. And then for the rest of his life, presumably, he will hew to their ideas. I think that's terrifying. That is the opposite of what we should want America to be. We have to start standing up and just saying, I refuse. I disagree. And I won't be saying what you want me to say. Charles, such a pleasure. As always, thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for having me. Joining me now, Crystal Ball and Sagar and Jetty of Rising on TheHill.com, which is well worth your time.

You can see it on YouTube. Guys, thank you so much for being here. So let me start with you, Crystal. What did you think was the most important moment last night? So, overall, it was actually sort of weird how normal the debate was. Like, two very conventional, very traditional politicians trading talking points. And I think, like, let's be clear, no minds were majorly made up last night. It's not going to be a game-changing kind of event. But I thought Kamala's opening answer, which she had clearly carefully prepared about coronavirus, was her strongest of the night and ultimately, I think, is also what the election is going to boil down to.

OK, I think we have that. Let's listen. What would a Biden administration do in January and February that a Trump administration wouldn't do? Would you impose new lockdowns for businesses and schools and hotspots, a federal mandate to wear masks? You have two minutes to respond without interruption. Thank you, Susan. Well, the American people have witnessed what is the greatest failure of any presidential administration in the history of our country. And here are the facts. 210,000 dead people in our country in just the last several months. Over 7 million people who have contracted this disease. One in five businesses closed. We're looking at frontline workers who have been treated like sacrificial workers.

We are looking at over 30 million people who in the last several months had to file for unemployment. And here's the thing. On January 28th, the vice president and the president were informed about the nature of this pandemic. They were informed that it's lethal in consequence, that it is airborne. And she went on. I thought that was a strong answer, too. And I thought in general, her best stuff of the night was on covid. Absolutely. And look, it's the top issue for Americans, covid and the economy. She pulled them both together. And this is the reason why the bottom has fallen out of Trump's numbers. It's the first thing in his presidency where he really can't talk his way out of it.

Mike Pence did the best job that he could defending their record, but honestly, he doesn't have a lot of a leg to him something to the effect of how can you keep the country safe when you couldn't even keep your own White House safe? And he said, we have boundless confidence in the American people and sort of put it on individual responsibility. And she responded, you respect the American people when you tell them the truth. And it's asking too much of them to not equip them with all the information they need to protect themselves and their families. That she went back to the Bob Woodward interview. And that really was an important moment in this race. In the Bob Woodward interview, it's not the fake news media. It's Bob Woodward with Trump on tape. And Trump acknowledging for months, I thought thought they're being unfair to the guy because

a lot of doctors didn't realize how serious this was until we were a couple months in a lot of really well-respected medical professionals. And I gave Trump the benefit of the doubt. But when you hear him on tape saying to Woodward, I knew, I knew it's, I know it's really bad and it's bad, not just for adults. It can be bad for kids. He's going down the list and then saying, but I'm, I'm gonna, the reason I'm not saying that is because I want to keep people calm. And she, I think, did the right thing by trying to zero in on what she sees as the consequences of that. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, there was an open question, like, is Trump just diluting himself? Is he just cherry picking data and like sharing what he actually thinks with the American people? And it's very misleading. cherry picking data and like sharing what he actually thinks with

the American people and it's very misleading or is he actively like does he know better and that's what those tapes ultimately revealed and yeah it was the first Trump era book like all of these people have written these books to try to make lots of money off of you know Trump's infamy and whatever this was the first one that actually landed because it was him on tape, because it was Woodward, and because it was about an issue that people really actually care about. Yeah. I mean, COVID is definitely what happened with COVID in the economy is absolutely what if Trump loses, what cost him a second term. Sagar, what did you think about last night? Yeah, I take this view of even in the best of times, vice presidential debates are largely irrelevant. And look at us, we're already the morning after and the main news is not about this debate, it's about the next one, which the president says he's not going to participate in. But we always

have to remember that these are the two people who are one heartbeat away from the presidency. And so what I was really looking at are how do Mike Pence and Kamala Harris kind of conceive of themselves within the realms of their own parties. A lot of people were saying this is kind of the first debate for 2024. I think that's very true. The thing that stuck out to me the most was about Kamala Harris's theory of the Democratic Party. She was talking and bragging about her coalition. And I expected her to be like, oh, you know, suburban women and white, you know, working class men who felt betrayed by the president. No, she went all in on kind of trying to embrace these never Trumpers and more like neocons who, frankly, I think, created the conditions for this country and for the election in the country for Trump's election in the first place.

So I just thought it was a very revealing moment. President Trump has several times refused to commit himself to a peaceful transfer of power after the election. If your ticket wins and President Trump refuses to accept a peaceful transfer of power, what steps would you and Vice President Biden then take? What would happen next? You have two minutes. So I'll tell you, Joe and I are particularly proud of the coalition that we've built around our campaign. We probably have one of the broadest coalitions of folks that you've ever seen in a presidential race. Of course, we have the support of Democrats, but also independents and Republicans. In fact, seven members of President George W. Bush's cabinet are supporting our ticket. We have the support of Colin Powell, Cindy McCain, John Kasich, over 500 generals,

retired generals and former national security experts and advisors are supporting our campaign. Yeah. So you didn't think that was going to particularly speak to, I don't know, to whom, Sagar, to disaffected Republicans? Yeah. The way it plays to me is like, you know, you're trying to win over a Nicole Wallace voter who's already voting for you, or you're trying to appeal, you know, towards that type, basically that type of commentator. And I just couldn't believe, I mean, the only one of the only people who's less popular than Donald Trump is George W. Bush and the invasion of Iraq. And we're talking there about people who worked in his cabinet. We're talking about many of the people that led us into war in the first place. And if you could think of a single event, I mean, I think

I boil it down to Iraq and 2008 as to why Donald Trump is president of the United States. And you're talking about people who played central roles in both of those things. I just I mean, you look and you see how she conceives of the Democratic Party within that realm. And I think that's very profound in terms of what the future of the Republican Party is going to look like, too. Can I think of that? Yeah, go ahead, Crystal. One thing that is remarkable in this race is that, you know, the the the Trump Pence approach to attacking Kamala and Joe has been like, oh, they're these radical socialist leftists. Not only has that not landed, but it has actually their favorabilities, both of them have gone up over the campaign. And you know how incredibly unusual that is. In that moment, there was an opportunity to launch what is, in my view, a more effective and more potent and more reality-based

criticism of Kamala Harris, that she's a tool of the establishment. She's a tool of the donor class. She's a tool of Silicon Valley and Wall Street. We saw that in her record as California AG. Same thing with Biden. No one believes he's a radical leftist. Like I wish, Megan, I am a leftist. I want him to be that. He's not and he's never going to be. No one believes it. But he has been a tool of the corporate establishment. They called him the senator from MBNA because he did the bidding of credit card issuers in the state of Delaware. That was an attack that could have landed. But the way that they've gone about this has actually bolstered the favorability ratings of both Kamala and Joe,

which is every time they they say Joe Biden is a leftist crystal gets little rainbows in her eyes. I wish it was true. So what did you think? We had a heated debate earlier. We were talking about Kamala Harris and her. She was shaking the head and, you know, I'm speaking, I'm speaking. Just as a quick aside, I was mentioning my EP Steve told me that I was trending on Twitter for saying, take it like a woman, stop making faces. handle this like you don't have to interject with those kinds of faces um and the reaction to that tweet has been insane my my team just told me that the actor billy baldwin just tweeted out don't be gross megan you sound like harvey weinstein oh what unbelievable well you know getting attacked by discount baldwin it's so true i'm like first of all it's spare me any moralizing any mention of harvey weinstein from an industry that protected that predator for years and honestly it's like mike pence was not raping kamala harris mike pence was not threatening

kamala harris's career if she didn't do what he wanted or say what he was it's like he was saying things with which she disagreed. She reacted in a way that was distracting and to me seemed petulant. And neither Harris nor any woman is immune from criticism because of our gender. That's true equality. That means we can take it just as fiercely as we give it. It was a real Rorschach test because I thought the first time she did it, I thought it was strong. I thought it was assertive. And for me, it was fine. And look, there are gender dynamics at play. There are race.

That is all certainly true. And there's like a tightrope you can walk. But by the way, it's hard for a man to debate a woman in certain ways, too, because of those same gender dynamics. When she kept doing it, to me, it just, again, it felt a little rehearsed. It felt a little, you know, T-shirt ready. And it was a funny moment. I watched the CNN coverage afterwards and they were talking a lot about this and they were like, I think the audience is really going to feel that the moderation was unfair to Kamala and that she really got run over by Pence.

And then they put up the speaking time. She actually got more speaking time than vice president Pence. So, you know, there was like such a different perception of what happened than what actually unfolded in my view. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. It was just it was so nauseating to me watching like Dan Rather and MSNBC and all that immediately afterwards talking about this mansplaining moment. I mean, it's like you said, give me a break. If you're in a vice presidential debate, you're not immune from criticism whatsoever. And it was so obvious she had prepared the Mr. Vice President, I'm speaking line for like t-shirts and yes, queen, you know, mugs to be sold on the Biden website. It was, it was just a joke. Honestly, there was, there's some woman, I don't know her, but her name is Charlotte Clymer. And she's got some 300,000 followers on Twitter who tweeted out,

your male buddies who thought Pence won, they don't like women in power. Sorry. It's so absurd to immediately play these identity cards when there's any criticism is absurd. And people can see right through it. And speaking of media insanity, just looking at the headlines, apparently Steve Schmidt, who is the most, I mean, he's the craziest never Trumper you've ever seen. He's like he pushed Sarah Palin through as John McCain's vice presidential nominee, and he's never forgiven himself. And the self-flagellation that's gone on from that day to this is just it gains an

intensity. But he just said to on MSNBC that fly on mike pence's head is a mark of the devil seems like a really totally even-handed and reasonable to make someone we should be listening to right no no i mean look he's trying to sell books or lincoln project donations or whatever that's what it all this is all about money you know there's a lot of suburban wine moms out there in America who love hearing that. And they'd be like, former McCain staffer says his mark of the devil. It really gets them going. But look, and actually, interestingly enough, Chris and I were just taking a look at some

research. Lincoln Project ads, people like Steve Schmidt and Rick Wilson and many others, the ads that they're cutting are the least effective ads that are being run by Democrats. According to some new analysis we were looking at, you know, it's more effective talking about health care and the economy. What a shock. Who knew? Who knew? Yeah, but they've raked in millions. They've raised so much money. And so, yeah, it's not ultimately about winning. And I mean, for me, it's depressing that someone like Steve Schmidt, who was, you know, a McCain person and Iraq war and Sarah Palin and all of this is now some like liberal hero. Like what is going on? And still, just like Nicole Wallace and Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post, people are still pawning them off as Republicans as somehow like they're fair and balanced because

they've got somebody who once had an R after their name on. Not so much. OK, let's look forward. What do we think is going to happen with the next debate? Because now Trump is saying, you can pound sand. I'm not doing a town hall debate virtually. Yeah, I mean, I actually think it, I'm not sure, Megan, because, you know, you interviewed people virtually. We do it every day. It's not, I mean, the flow of the conversation versus in person is just so radically different,

especially in the current age, like you cancel somebody's mic if you're talking over them, and however it would work. And it's also a town hall format. I think it's a real loss for a virtual debate. And I think Trump in his you know, his complaint, which was that they can cut you off, I think is correct, which is look, I think if Trump wants to go out there and behave exactly the same way he did last time, Godspeed, let him let America see exactly the case that they are making. And those town hall debates have made for some famous moments in American politics, the HW debate with George W. Bush. I thought President Obama's 2012 town hall was a big moment for him. So if you look back through that, I think Trump actually can excel and has done decently in the town hall format

in the past. So it's a bit of a loss, but I think he's going to stick has done decently in the town hall format in the past. So it's a bit of a loss, but I think he's going to stick to his guns. I don't think it's going to happen. Yeah. I mean, it's kind of it's kind of a terrible landscape for him because virtual is not good for him. I mean, clearly he will be diminished by that. And yeah, they'll be able to cut his mic.

And, you know, that may have served him actually last time because people obviously hated his debate performance ultimately in the way that he decided to conduct himself. But, you know, he only has a few weeks here to turn it around and he needs a big turnaround. This is in 2016. The polls are way more in Biden's favor now than they were in Hillary Clinton's favor at that point. So, you know, we all want to go like, oh, but 2016, no, this is a different landscape than what we faced last time around. People are already voting. He doesn't have many more opportunities to make something happen. This debate was one of the last chances that he would have. Well, that was my reaction when I saw him at the last debate, you know, being so loud and interrupting and so on. I thought this is not the behavior of a man

who's winning. It's a kind of a tell. It's a tell. But I don't think there's any chance he misses the opportunity to change his numbers. He's also, he's a smart businessman. I mean, I realize he's had some business issues according to those tax returns, if those are real. But I think he understands that getting out in front of people is the way forward for him in terms of his his core supporters. I know like Ben Shapiro is like, no, go back in the basement, go back in the basement, just let your policy stand. But I think in Trump's mind, he wants to get back out in front of people. And I can't see him truly bailing. And then it leaves the question of, is there something about the town hall he doesn't want to do?

And then he reappears for debate number three. Right. Yeah, I I think that's definitely within the realm of possibility. Sorry, they can't talk now. So I guess I think I think is definitely within the realm of possibility that we just, I doubt he would pass up an opportunity. But at the same time, when he's the president, he can set the terms. He could say, I'm going to do a primetime address on the night of that. Most people would cover it. And I think that, you know, at the end of the day, he's going to have that ability. He did it with some success during the primary campaign in 2016. It kind of reminds me of that a little bit. His ability to manipulate and have the media, I mean, not even manipulate. Look, he's the president. Whenever he speaks, the cameras are on, especially in the middle of a campaign. I think he has a little bit more of the upper hand here. Last question. Where do you put, I'll phrase it like this, where do you put Trump's chances of winning? Crystal, you first. Very, very vanishingly low. I mean, we've been talking to strategists, pollsters, looking at the numbers that are coming out. It is looking extremely bad and not like

2016 whatsoever. His attacks on Joe haven't landed. His attacks on Kamala haven't landed. He hasn't laid out. Look, in 2016, whether you liked it or not, you knew what the guy stood for and you knew what you were going to get if he was president. I don't know what he would do in a second term. He hasn't made that case whatsoever. And to me, maybe the final nail in the coffin was pulling the plug on the stimulus as millions of Americans are absolutely struggling and devastated. I mean, a suicide hotline was trending on the subreddit on our unemployment of people who have been who have lost their jobs, lost them permanently and are looking for someone to give a shit about their lives. And he pulled the plug. Then he muddied that with another tweet suggesting people might get checks. I mean,

with so many as with so many things with Trump, I don't understand what exactly the next move is. Where do you put the chance of soccer? Because I know like 538, Nate Silver's got it. He's got a 15% chance of winning. But I'll never forget going out there on election night in 2016, and it was the Washington Post saying it was something like higher than 90% that he was going to win. Right. Yeah. I'm always-

I mean, sorry, that she was going to win, that she was going to win. Right. Yeah. I'm always, I mean, I'm sorry that she was going to win that. She was right. I always carried, I've seen Trump, you know, he's wily like a Fox. I won't count him out just as much. I give him probably like one in five,

but I think he, if he sealed his fate, there are two moments, February, 2020 downplaying the virus, comparing it to the flu. And a couple of days ago when he killed the stimulus, he can try and crawl out of the hole with the airline thing or trying to reinstate it. But he gave Pelosi the

excuse that she needed not to strike a deal. Millions are going to go without checks and without money. And now they've got somebody to blame. And that's a very strong reason to vote, not vote for him. Well, less than a month to go. Guys, thank you both so much. Thanks, Megan. Thanks, Megan. Here's my question for you guys. What do you think? Because Trump, at Megan Kelly Show. Not the Megan Kelly Show, just at Megan Kelly Show. And I'd love to see some of your answers because I'm baffled

as to what his next move will be. Okay, I know what our next move is going to be. Tomorrow, we will be dropping our podcast with Candace Owens in a very revealing, really smart, interesting discussion. She's brilliant, as you know.

She's only 31 years old. What that woman is going to do in her future, there's just no stopping her. But tune in because I think you're going to enjoy it. And I'm certainly enjoying being with you guys. Thank you so much for listening and have a great day. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear. The Megyn Kelly Show is a Devil May Care media production in collaboration with Red Seat Ventures.