The Megyn Kelly Show - Predators Exposed at Nickelodeon, and Democrats Abandoning the Working Class, with Alexa Nikolas and Batya Ungar-Sargon | Ep. 751

Episode Date: March 27, 2024

Megyn Kelly is joined by Alexa Nikolas, former child actress on "Zoey 101" and creator of the "Eat Predators" movement, to discuss the "Quiet on Set" documentary, her experience working with Dan Schneider, the traumatic and exploitative Nickelodeon workplace, how inappropriate some of what she experienced is now in retrospect, Drake Bell sharing his story of sexual assault by Brian Peck, child stars not being properly protected from predators, actors who came out to support Peck after he pled guilty to child molestation, why predators and pedophiles seek out workplaces like Nickelodeon, the responsibility of organizations to protect kids, the current state of Nickelodeon leadership, the responses after the documentary, and more. Then Batya Ungar-Sargon, author of the new book "Second Class," joins to discuss how the left turned against the Democrats abandoning the working class, polarization as an elitist phenomenon, how most Americans are more tolerant and united than elites on the right and left, why minority voters care about illegal immigration and are turning toward Trump, the working class identity in 2024, how Trump can unite various factions much more than Biden can, the corporate media's hypocrisy on democracy and Trump, their disdain for Americans actually getting to choose their next president fairly, woke young activists on college campuses, and more. Nikolas- https://www.youtube.com/@eatpredatorsUngar-Sargon- https://www.amazon.com/Second-Class-Betrayed-Americas-Working/dp/1641773618 Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at noon east. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Today we have two big interviews for you. Later, Batya Angar Sargan is here to talk about her new book about class in America. This is on the heels of these other guys, former New York Times guy writing a book about white rage in the rural America and among the working class. Batya has some different research for you about how the electorate is shaking out and what the real concerns are from people going into 2024 and the election. But we begin today with an interview focused on a documentary series that has taken our culture by storm. I watched it in full yesterday,

and I am still reeling from what I saw. It's called Quiet on Set, the dark side of kids TV. It dives into the dark underbelly of Nickelodeon. Yes, Nickelodeon, the premier children's television network that rose to prominence in the 90s and 2000s. The documentary showcases a hostile work environment, sexualized jokes and sketches in shows featuring very young children, where they were obviously exploited and made to engage in sexualized behavior that adults would fully get, but the children only knew they felt uncomfortable. All of which was created by then show creator and network golden boy, Dan Schneider. He's the man of Nickelodeon, or at least was for all these years. The documentary reveals for the first time in a stunning reveal the identity of a child star

whose name you may know, who was alleged to be sexually abused at the hands of Nickelodeon dialogue coach Brian Peck. I don't think we have to say alleged. Brian Peck wound up pleading guilty to two of the charges and served time. But that was just the beginning. And we'll get to who that was and what he said. He's on camera in the documentary. Before we get to our guest, here's just a bit of the trailer.

Take a look. This is when Dan Schneider arrives. Nickelodeon's golden boy. Here's just a bit of the trailer. These are three predators who worked at Nickelodeon, all in a short amount of time. I had no idea what I was saving my son from. It's a house of horrors. They find this enormous trove of child pornography, 11 charges of child sexual abuse related to a child actor. It made me wonder who was being hurt. I've been waiting 17 years for today.

It wasn't dealing with anybody on the shows or anything, right? It was a child actor. On one of our shows? Yes. And now I'm joined by one of the former Nickelodeon child stars from Zoe 101, who was featured in the docuseries, Alexa Nicholas. She's the creator of the movement Eat Predators now and host of the Eat Predators Daily show. Alexa has been very vocal about her experience at Nickelodeon for years and how she says the network failed to protect her and other children as well. We want to warn you up top that some of what you may hear today

may be disturbing as it concerns language of sexual assault and abuse of minors. Alexa, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me, Megan. Oh, well, I appreciate you telling your story and speaking out in this docuseries and more broadly on YouTube. And so this cannot be easy for you to acknowledge what happened to you, what's happened to these other children, what looked like such a lovely, wonderful experience at a place like Nickelodeon, which now we know behind the scenes was very, very different for far too many kids and with far too many predators. When I started to watch the docuseries, I thought it was all about this guy, Dan Schneider, who's like, I kind of saw him as almost the Roger Ailes of Nickelodeon in that he wasn't like the top executive, but he was the chief show creator.

The guy was like a gold mine when it came to ideas and what would work on television. But it wasn't like the top executive, but he was the chief show creator. The guy was like a gold mine when it came to ideas and what would work on television. But it wasn't as episode and episode goes by, you learn that guy and that guy and this kid and this kid and this kid and this. I can't believe Nickelodeon is still in business in the wake of this scandal. It may not be for much longer. Your thoughts on all of that. Well, first of all, I was going to say, yeah, me too. I cannot believe it is still in business, to be quite honest with you. I mean, watching the documentary was also shocking for me as well, because I sat down for an interview, you know, very early on, and I wasn't sure who else was going to sit down. And I think for a lot of survivors in general, you always think you're the only one. And that could also be a reason why survivors don't come forward is because you think you're

the only one. And so when I sat down in that seat, I wasn't sure who else was going to follow. And so when I watched the documentary, not only was it extremely sad to to witness all of these kids being affected talk about it. Cause you got cast in Zoe 101, as I understand when you were 12, that is very young and you were definitely exposed to inappropriate content. And you know, it was happening all around you, Jamie Lynn Spears, and we'll get to some of what they had to her do that you witnessed at the time. Do you remember feeling that's uncomfortable or that's inappropriate or did you just have the feeling? You know, for me, my, the most vivid memory that I have of being extremely uncomfortable was when it came to the skirts that I had to wear on Zoe 101. And they were so short that I remember the wardrobe, you know, department telling me I had to wear biker shorts underneath. And when I tried on the biker shorts, the biker shorts were too long. And you could see the biker shorts past the skirt. And I remember her saying, we're going to

have to cut these biker shorts. And when she cut the biker shorts, you know, once you get rid of the seam, it would start to fold. And so every single day, I was constantly pulling down these biker shorts. And I remember complaining about it. And she was like, well, it's to make sure that you know, your butt doesn't show. And you know, then you feel like, oh, they're looking out for me. And now when I look back at that, I'm like, why was I wearing a skirt where, you know, my butt could show as a child. And the fact that the biker shorts alone were still too long for the skirt, you know, that was one of my first very vivid memories of just being uncomfortable, even physically uncomfortable, because I was constantly having to pull them down and no one really did anything about it. And then my other vivid memory was just Dan Schneider's behavior on set. I mean, he really did create a toxic work environment. And he made me feel always deeply uncomfortable. I never knew what version of him I was going to get that day. And usually when you think about toxic work environments, you think about adults having to

sadly experience that. But this was children. And this is a time when your brain is still, you know, forming. And it became, you know, essentially childhood trauma. Well, that explains a lot, right? Because we've seen what's happened to not just the stars of Nickelodeon, many of them, but child stars in general don't have a great track record of growing up to be perfectly healthy onscreen actors. You know, poor Amanda Bynes is probably the best example. And she indeed was a Nickelodeon star.

I actually didn't even realize that, to be honest with you. I just knew her when she hit the big screen as this incredibly talented actress. And today, I mean, that poor girl has had so many mental health problems. She looks nothing like her former self. And those clips of her are heartbreaking because it all really started when Dan Schneider found her and she got cast with her own show on Nickelodeon and she was extremely talented, but the environment was not conducive toward wellness. Let me show the audience a little bit of you in the documentary talking about some of your experiences. And this will also show them some throwback clips to you back during the Zoe 101

years. It's at 12. I was 12 years old when I started Zoe 101 years. It's at 12. I was 12 years old when I started Zoe 101. Ooh, cute boy to the left, green shirt, backpack. When I look back at it, my character was there for the boys. Nicole was the archetype of male gaze female where she was girly very short short skirts and pink like kid eye candy how about this top you like this top it makes me look chesty we don't need to be hyper conservative of bodies but that didn't represent even me as a girl at that age. And it wasn't just you.

I mean, it's amazing how many, like from Amanda to Ariana Grande did not realize she was a Nickelodeon star first either. Several well-known names went through the same machine where the exploitation, the sexual references to these young versions of these girls were ubiquitous. Was that that was all a Dan Schneider thing?

Yes. I mean, from my personal experience, that was a Dan Schneider thing. You know, I even have memories of Dan Schneider, you know, at wardrobe fittings where he would ask to have the Polaroids of, you know, they would take Polaroids basically of your outfits. And, you know, that's actually kind of normal when it comes to a creator or executive producer kind of figuring out the color palette for the episode. But thinking about Dan Schneider being in there

and asking for kid Polaroids to have and taking them was pretty bizarre. And I just, you know, as I got older, I realized that that wasn't necessarily normal. Like you don't usually see the handover directly, but I would see the handover directly quite often. And so for me personally, it was Dan Schneider, but I know that this was happening on other kids sets as well. He was the one who created that Amanda show. The Ariana Grande show. Was she also on Zoey 101?

No, she was actually in Victorious, which was the spinoff. Not like a spinoff, but Victoria Justice was in Zoey 101. And then Dan Schneider gave her her own show called Victorious. And Ariana Grande was her friend in that show. Okay. So this is all during his era. He got bounced out highlight during the Me Too movement, but he was there for, I mean, from the beginning of, you know, the two thousands running herd over all these shows and all these kids. And here is from the documentary, a clip showing some of the inappropriate behavior he had the kids engage in, including Ariana Grande in SOT2. People were looking back at old scenes and saying, Dan Schneider is obsessed with feet.

Check this out. Very gross. Impossible to escape children's feet. Dan Schneider. Absolutely disgusting. He's a grown-ass man. What the f*** are you doing? There's one video of Ariana Grande making a joke about a potato. Sometimes I wonder if you can get juice from a potato. Did that air on Nickelodeon? Come on! Give up the juice!

Yikes! I'm thirsty! In another video, Ariana's pouring water on herself in what seems like a very sexual manner. And people started saying, this feels inappropriate for children. Yeah, that's an understatement. Your face is so shows what we all feel. It's like disgust and concern as you watch this young girl

really being exploited. Can I just ask you something? I'm sure a lot of people are wondering and going to wonder throughout our discussion, where are the parents as all of this goes on? Because I think most of us would like to believe, and I know you're a mom yourself now, we'd run in there and be like, no, but where were they? You know, when it came to Nickelodeon specifically, a lot of the parents weren't even allowed on set. So they would be, you know, beside Video Village, which is, you know, the tent where, you know, the executive producers are in and the creator and, you know, they're watching while we're filming, the parents weren't ever in Video Village. And so sometimes parents weren't even really necessarily aware of what was happening. So I think it's really important to note that because

you think, oh, the parents right there beside, for example, Ariana Grande. But that wasn't always the case. I would say more so there was no parents, honestly, on set. And they were told to step out because there wasn't enough room to have everybody in there, like the crew included. And so parents were around, but they weren't around in the way that we think they were around because Nickelodeon would actually not have them present. And some of the parents are interviewed in this series. And I give them credit for just being really honest about the fact that their kids were living their dream. These are not easy roles to get. You know, a million kids would kill to have these roles. And the parents didn't want to do anything to screw up their kid's dream. Because if they

crossed this guy, Dan Schneider, they knew very well that their kid would get fired and would never be asked back for another Nickelodeon show. And it's these aren't parents who saw abuse happening, but just uncomfortable moments that, you know, it's easy for us now to be like, oh, I would have stormed in there. But realistically in the moment, I can see how it was a difficult thing to handle.

Yeah, I mean, the power dynamic, even for an adult, you know, after the Me Too movement, we've learned a lot about power dynamics and how they have an impact on consent. And so when you think about the adults, a lot of these adults, for example, and parents, some of them like would quit their jobs, right? Because not that their child's career was a full time job, but even the auditioning process itself. I mean, I have so many memories, my whole childhood driving, you know, five hours, six hours, you know, a day to and from auditions. And a parent could not have a full time job while taking their children to all of these auditions. So by the time they land a role, the child ends up being essentially the breadwinner, the person who is putting food on the table.

And so for the kid, obviously, that's extremely stressful, even if they're not fully consciously aware of that. And then for the parent, they're aware that if the kid loses the job, you know, that there might not be any electricity that's, you know, staying on in the house or food on the table. And so I think the financial pressure of it all adds to the parents' position when it comes to speaking up for their child, sadly. Yeah, no, that makes perfect sense. My dear friend Melissa Francis was a star back in the day on Little House on the Prairie

across from Jason Bateman. She played one of the new Ingalls kids brought in when the original ones kind of aged up. And she's got a lot of these same stories in her memoir, which is called Diary of a Stage Mother's Daughter. And she had enormous earning pressure put on her during those years. She was obviously the primary wage earner and felt a lot of the same, but no allegations of abuse like these. Before we get into the details and some of the most disturbing stuff that was alleged among some of these other actors outside of Dan Snyder, I want to spend another minute on him because I don't want to be too dismissive of

the alleged hostile work environment that he created, not just with the children, but with adult females. The first episode spends some time with two female writers who I have to say seem like very cool people. Like they're, as writers on any comedy show might be, they're self-deprecating, they're funny. They clearly don't take themselves too seriously, but they're like, oh my God, this stuff happened. And as a third party watching, I'm like, yeah, that's gross.

Here is the story of writer Christy Stratton in part. Listen to what she said he asked her to do. It's at five. We were in the writer's room and Christy was talking about high school, which is relevant because we're writing for a young girl. And Dan was just said, you know what would be funny? If you leaned over the table and acted like you were being sodomized and told

that story about high school. She said no at first. And then he was kind of like, oh, come on, come on. It would be so funny. Just do it. It would be so funny. And everyone's kind of laughing, too, because he's making it like this big joke.

She couldn't get out of it. You know, he's begging her. So she just leaned over the table and did what he asked her to do. Do you remember Dan asking you to act out being sodomized? I'd rather not. I'd rather not. I don't want to talk about that.

I just think of that poor girl and what she had to, you know, go through. And that was Christy in a second soundbite tearing up because that's humiliating. It's a, it's definitely a power play and it's a humiliate, a public humiliation that he was willing to do according to the docu-series to two female employees for him who talk about power dynamic. Yes, he had power over them, but think of the power he had over the children. He's, if he's willing to do that to the women, right? Think about what kind of a person we're dealing with here. Yeah, I mean, essentially a predator in my opinion, because the way that he was not only behaving

towards the children, but the adults breaks my heart because I am a survivor myself. And, you know, sodomy was part of that, of my, sadly, my life. And so to see somebody make a female do that in a work environment is so beyond disgusting. And the fact that it did end up, I mean, from my knowledge, it did end up becoming part of a lawsuit. And so Nickelodeon was aware that he was like that. And I just can't imagine allowing someone like that to continue working for a kids network. You know, this wasn't like this. Like, this is not the first time Nickelodeon has heard her story.

Her story was told to Nickelodeon a long time ago, and they continue to enable him. And I mean, essentially, I feel like Nickelodeon is complicit when it comes to all of this, right? Because they knew and, you know, they just, they let him continue. And that's why, you know, when I heard that story, a lot of the memories also just came back for me personally having to watch, you know, Dan Schneider get massages constantly by, you know, a female employee. And, you know, just to think that that was the culture that Nickelodeon was allowing for me as well as a young girl to hyper normalize female employees massaging their bosses as if it's no big deal, you know,

that can groom essentially children into thinking that that's okay. Behavior when it's absolutely not that's that's sexual harassment. Yes. That this is how it's done. There's no allegation in the docuseries that this guy, Dan Snyder is a pedophile to be clear, just that he allegedly created a hostile work environment. As I point out, he eventually got turfed out, um, during the me too movement and ultimately siloed from the shows that he had created and so on. But, but this is how predators start with the vulnerable would be victims.

They start taking down their defenses bit by bit. And with children, and we'll get to this, it's done by introducing inappropriate topics at an inappropriate age or inappropriate setting, crossing boundaries that shouldn't be crossed to get the child used to that. Talking about sex in a way that is totally inappropriate, not like a normal way that you might find in seventh grade health class, but like in a way that is totally inappropriate, you know, not, not, not like a normal way that

you might find in seventh grade health class, but like in a, in a work setting, bringing it up and trying to get the kid used to it. And then before you know it, it takes the next step. And that, I guess we should get to it is the pattern. I think we've seen, um, with probably the most shocking story of the docuseries and that that's the story of Drake Bell. So we knew that somebody, um, and the viewers may not know him, but his name is Brian Peck. And he worked as like a dialect coach or a script coach with the kids on lots of shows at Nickelodeon. We knew that he had ultimately pleaded guilty to two counts of endangering a child. Let me see exactly what they were so I don't misstate it. I will get it. I'll read it

in a second. I'll find the specifics, but he pleaded guilty. But we didn't know who the John Doe was because it was a minor. They don't put that out. And in the docuseries, Drake Bell, who's a very large child star, very big star at the time, had the band, had his own show, was the victim. And this story is absolutely heartbreaking. It was last night, I'll tell you, I was in my bed, Alexa, kind of like falling asleep and I needed to go to bed, but I really wanted to see the fourth episode. And I was like in the twilight where you're still hearing it. And then I heard the update on Drake. And I mean, my eyes popped open like, oh my God, no. So anyway, here is Drake sharing in part

what happened to him at the hands of this man, Sadiq. I was sleeping on the couch where I would usually sleep. And I woke up to him. I just opened my eyes. I woke up and he was sexually assaulting me. And I froze and was in complete shock and had no idea what to do.

No idea how to get out of the situation. I had no car. I didn't drive. I was 15 at this time. He's so apologetic. Oh, this will never happen again. I'm so sorry. I don't know what got into me, and I crossed the line, and this will never happen again. The abuse was extensive.

And it got... pretty brutal. Why don't you do this? Yeah. Why don't you think of the worst stuff that someone can do to somebody as a sexual assault? And that'll answer your question. Oh my God. Just to fill that out, he was charged, Brian Peck, on August 19th, 2003, 43 years old, for committing lewd acts with a six-month period, charged with 11 counts against a child,

including lewd act upon a child, sodomy of a person under 16, attempted sodomy of a person under 16, sexual penetration by a foreign object, four counts of oral copulation of a person under 16, oral copulation by anesthesia or controlled substance, sending harmful matter and using a minor for sex acts. He ultimately, in a deal, because they always try to spare the child the necessity of taking a stand and testifying, pleaded no contest to two charges of child sexual abuse and served just 16 months in jail, was ordered to register as a sex offender. And the epilogue to Brian's story is equally horrifying, but for different reasons. When you found out that Brian Peck, back then before you knew it was Drake, had been arrested and charged with all of these acts, what did you

think? You know, I, Brian Peck wasn't around, obviously on the set of Zoe 101, because Zoe 101 happened, you know, a little bit after. And so I didn't even know about Brian Peck, which is honestly very scary to think about that Nickelodeon knew that they had, you know, a predator on set, and that they weren't giving any type of education to the children when it came to being aware of, you know, the possibility of someone being on set and being a predator and what to do and how to make a complaint, a formal complaint.

It's really weird to know this now and know that Nickelodeon knew that that happened and that, you know, the next generation, Zoey 101, none of the kids were taught anything when it came to this at all. We never even thought in a million years that, you know, a predator could be on the set. You know, I think we knew at least a little bit that there was a such thing as background checks, you know, and all of this. And so we thought we were protected every single day. So that was really shocking for me, because Nickelodeon wasn't doing the proper measures to make sure it didn't happen again. And, you know, when you fast forward to my story about Ian, who was the talent coordinator, bringing me into a trailer without my mom's knowledge,

you know, it was Britney Spears and Jamie Lynn Spears in there. It was still traumatic, but thank God it wasn't someone like Brian Peck. Right. And when you think about them knowing, you know, that this has happened before and not doing anything to prevent it in the future is really, uh, it really freaked me out to be honest. Right. They were not protecting children. It seems very clear. And this guy, Brian Peck, there's a chilling scene in the docuseries where they show Drake Bell's dad, who you just wind up feeling so sad for. He was Drake's main caretaker. And then this guy, Brian Peck, allegedly inserted himself between the two,

got in Drake's ear about how the dad was a bad influence. The dad couldn't be trusted. You know, you really shouldn't let the dad manage. You got Drake back in the custody of his mom temporarily, who was a parent. This is my opinion, much more checked out than the dad was. And before you knew it, the dad had told the mom, the one person you should not let him spend any alone time with is this guy, Brian Peck. I don't trust him. And what happens? He she allows it. And Brian Peck basically takes over in Drake's life. Drake starts sleeping over there because he lived in Orange County and the work was in a different city and so on. And this is when it happened. So this guy, Brian Peck, did all the things. He slowly but surely inserted himself between the child parent relationship and took advantage of a child of divorce. And he he was on camera, says Drake's dad, Joe, in a situation with Leonardo DiCaprio. I'm going to tie this all together. But two of the people who wrote letters, we now know thanks to the docuseries and Business Insider, who wrote letters on behalf of Brian Peck

when he stood up in court and said, OK, guilty on two counts, were Alan Thicke and Joanna Kearns, the parents on Growing Pains. He had worked apparently on that series and it's disgusting what they wrote. I'm ashamed of them. She's now since tried to walk it back. Who else was on Growing Pains? Leonardo DiCaprio as a young kid was on that series for a time. And there's a video of a young DiCaprio with this guy, Brian Peck. This was pointed out by Drake's father. And we're going to show you the clip.

Look at this guy rubbing DiCaprio's arm. He's just a kid at the time. Watch. I saw this video of Brian Peck on Growing Pains with Leonardo DiCaprio, grabbing his shoulder, running across him and going down his arm. That's the kind of behavior I saw him with my son. Same freaking behavior. Alexa, that is, that's so disturbing. What does that bring up for you? You know, what it brings up for me is that when Drake's dad says that that was the type of behavior

that Brian Peck was behaving like on the set of Nickelodeon, that means so many people were witnessing just that. And, you know, a normal person, anyone would go, what is going on here? You know, there's a clip also where Brian Peck then starts to talk about Leonardo DiCaprio being a teen hunk and, and like displaying his body. And this is all on set, that footage. And that's what terrifies me is that so many people were witnessing this type of behavior. And from my knowledge, I'm kind of pretty sure that, you know, Drake's dad was going to Brian Robbins and Brian Robbins is now the president of Nickelodeon and Paramount. And so when I hear Drake, Drake's dad, you know, say that he was looking out for his son,

and most likely it was Brian Robbins who he went to out of concern, you know, and you think about his dad getting shunned, but then Brian Robbins becoming the president of Nickelodeon and Paramount. that's what really upsets me. And meanwhile, they had restored Dan Snyder, the guy we started on, to a position of power. He got sued by those two female writers. They understood what he was accused of doing. And I believe there was a settlement on it. And they put him right back in a position.

In fact, he went on to have even more power there. So he he was restored. And this guy, Brian Peck, after serving his time, he went on to have even more power there. So he he was restored. And this guy, Brian Peck, after serving his time, he's back out there. He he wasn't shunned forever. Like these guys go on to have second acts in a way that is totally inappropriate and dangerous. Yes, it is, because essentially it's financially rewarding abuse. So when you constantly are financially rewarding abusers, they will not stop. They will not stop because they know that even when they do the most horrific acts, that they're going to be financially rewarded and that they're going to be protected,

which is why, you know, one of my main slogans for Eat Predators is protect survivors, not predators, because in the entertainment industry, it's been quite the opposite, where the industry has been protecting the predators and not protecting the survivors. OK, so just as to underscore the point, Brian Peck was released from prison in 2005. It was 2004. He pleaded guilty. A year later, he was hired by Disney. I'm not kidding you folks to work on the sweet life of Zack and Cody starring Dylan and Cole Sprouse, where he did voiceover work for three episodes, but had no interaction with the cast or crew on set per variety.

The outlet reports that he was immediately terminated after Disney learned of his conviction and his voiceovers were replaced. He continued to appear on a variety of projects, including 2008's Bedtime Stories, 2015's Freaks of Nature, and the 2012 series Anger Management. His last role was in 2018

for a miniseries titled Animal Showdown. Today, he reportedly resides in L.A. for TMZ. This is unbelievable that like that that he would have any sort of access to the industry, never mind to children's programming after serving time for child molestation. Yeah, I mean, one thing to note, though, is one of the individuals who wrote a letter in defense of Brian Peck worked on Suite Life. And so when Disney says that they didn't know what Rich Carell knew and he wrote in his letter that it would be a pleasure to fact that Brian Peck ended up on Suite Life of Zack and Cody and that Rich Corral worked on that show consistently and that Rich Corral said in his own letter defending Brian Peck that it would be a pleasure to work with him again. That's how something like this happens, by the way. That's how it happens.

And Rich is not held accountable, you know, for enabling that type of behavior. But, you know, that's what really scares me is that we know that he's complicit. He's complicit. He's complicit. I mentioned you mentioned Carell and I mentioned Joanna Kearns and Alan Thicke. There were others. James Marsden, who's very well known. He wrote a letter for Brian Peck. I assure you what Brian has been through the last year is the suffering of a hundred men. What Brian's been through. Who cares what Brian's been through? We care about what Drake Bell has been through. Brian was the perpetrator pleading guilty to child molestation. Taryn Killam. I've seen the effects the situation has had on Brian, and I know that he regrets

any mistakes made. Mistakes. Here's Joanna Kearns's letter. Again, Business Insider got they petitioned the court to unseal the letters, 41 of them that were written in Brian's defense. Joanna, I I only can believe that there must have been some of some kind of extreme situation or temptation exerted upon him to influence his actions. And just to add to that, Kimmy Robertson, an actor, wrote, I believe with all my heart that Brian was pressured and pushed beyond belief before he caved in. This is unbelievable. Drake Bell was 15. This guy was in his 40s, 47, something like at the time of the abuse, I think 47 years old. There is no situation in which a 15 year old boy pressures a 47 year old man to do anything.

No, no, there's no such thing as a consent with the child. It's ridiculous. And that's why now they're trying to step it back. And you know, everyone's like, if I knew all of the details at the time, you knew enough, and you still wrote the letter. And that's what's also pretty annoying. Currently, it's all these individuals stepping back, you know, and saying they didn't know all the details. When you read these letters, it's pretty clear that they knew enough. You know, even with... You knew what he was pleading guilty to. It's not like he was pleading guilty to like running a red light. No, it was a child. And even in Rich's wife's letter,

she mentions Drake Bell by name. And she was working on Drake and Josh, working with Drake every single day. And in the letter, she tells the judge that he's okay, that he looks unaffected by it. Imagine Drake working with this adult thinking, you know, he can trust her. Meanwhile, she's writing a letter to the judge defending the predator and telling the judge that he looks unaffected. And that's someone also who was hired by Nickelodeon. Oh my God. Yeah,

it's horrible. Before we move on from Drake, I want to tell the audience that the thing that made me wide eyed in the middle of the night was the update. Of course, like we've seen, his life went significantly downhill after all of this. He drugs, alcohol arrests for DUI. It's, you know, people understand understand. They could fill in those blanks without me even telling them. But then came his own charges of alleged inappropriate behavior with a minor, with a girl beginning when she was 12. It's so heartbreaking. It's not, by the way, it's not that everybody who, who is the victim of childhood

sexual abuse goes on to commit childhood sexual abuse. That's not true. Some small portion does some, I think it's some 30%, but you know, that still leaves the vast majority who do not go on to do that. And I don't want to even attribute the reasons behind the alleged abuse, but he, that was one of the charges against him. And I can't help, but feel like Alexa, this is this part of the danger. Like this is the cycle when, when kids get sucked into this devastating world of abuse that we're sentencing them, them just Drake to a lifetime of awfulness. And then others, others like the little girl who he wound up hurting. Yeah, I mean, you know, when it comes to abuse,

like as you said, not every single person ends up, you know, recycling the trauma onto others, but it does happen. And the most important, that's why when people don't take this seriously, it's really beyond devastating for the future because this is how things do recycle. I really do believe that. I really do believe that.

I know there's that saying, hurt people hurt people, but it is very true. And if we don't take people's trauma seriously and we don't try to prevent, you know, harmful things happening to children, especially, then, you know, we can't be surprised when things happen, you know, out of the blue, someone harming someone, because usually, people are learning this type of behavior. And this behavior is a learned experience for them. And they end up taking back their power in a very, very weird way by doing that act and being in the different position this time. And I'm not saying that's necessarily Drake Bell, for example, but that happens regularly where that's how trauma can manifest in the mind. And we need to take it more seriously. We really, really do.

Right. Because it's like, people know this, but just because it may not be your child doesn't mean it's not going to be someone you know, or the next generation of children coming up who you might know. This is widespread and it gets covered up and people know this. It's Nickelodeon. And by the way, can we spend a minute on how that's probably no accident? You know, the, these pedophiles, there's a reason they went in and exploited the boy Scouts for so many years. There's a reason so many of them pop up at a place like Nickelodeon. They go where the children are. That's why the organization has a heightened duty to be vigilant about background checks and protection mechanisms and checking in with the children and making sure no one's ever unsupervised and

certainly not spending the night at anybody's house because of this problem, this very foreseeable issue. Yeah, I mean, that's that's a red flag. number one for me personally, when I see people, you know, wanting to hang around children, even though children are amazing, you know, it's always a little bit bizarre obviously you look further. But you know, that's number one for me, just because some adults wanting to hang out with children 24 seven is a little bit concerning, you know, unless this is your child, or this is your child's friend, and they're having a playdate, you know, those things are normal, but it is a little bit of a red flag when an adult is so interested in children. And we know from the Catholic Church, for example, you know, this is how these things happen. They're looking for access to children. And so they'll gravitate towards environments that give them access to

children, which is why Nickelodeon has the responsibility where they're on the lookout for that and not even on the lookout for that, being extremely protective to make sure that no one's getting too close, no one's acting in a type of way that could lead to actual abuse. Yes, and yet it wasn't just the hostile work environment alleged against Dan Schneider. It wasn't just Brian Peck and Drake Bell.

The names keep coming. Jason Handy, I mean the name, but he was responsible for shepherding the children from A to B on set. Of course, there's going to be somebody who says like, now you're going over here for your homeschooling. And now you got to go over here and work your lines with Brian Peck. And now you got to go over here and work your lines with Brian Peck. And now you got to go out here and do the scenes. And he was the guy and the pictures of him in the docuseries. He's like kind of attractive. He's got a million dollar smile. He seems really upbeat and fun. And you know what? He describes himself as a pedophile. And he was caught because a little girl named Brandy, who had been guest starring just she

appeared I think in an episode or two on one of the popular shows uh he struck up a relationship with her like work with me I can get you connected I've got you know all these industry connections and the mom was like yeah okay I thought that would be great you know this a connection from her stint on the show the next thing know, he sends her a naked picture of himself masturbating. She's a little girl. And God bless this family because a lot of parents were like, I don't want to participate. I don't want to pursue the charges. I don't want my kid involved any further than she's been. But she did testify against him. And this guy, he went down as well. He pleaded no contest to multiple charges, was ordered to serve a six-year prison sentence,

released in 2009, moved to North Carolina, registered as a sex offender. 2014, arrested on three counts of indecent liberties with a child and two counts of sex offender registry violations. Now he's serving a sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution in Virginia. He'll be released in 2038. These are the staffers around these children at Nickelodeon, right? Right around the time that you were there. It just seems, I don't know, because let me ask you this. When I read these statements that the docuseries producers put up at the end of every episode, and I'll read some of them too, to make sure that the defenses are aired here.

What I hear is Nickelodeon's changes policies to try to do better. That's literally like. And like, yeah, what what have they done? Who's been fired? Who's taking responsibility? Where's the accountability? Yeah, I mean, again, we must remember that most likely the person who Drake's dad went to was Brian Robbins. And so it's kind of a joke to hear Nickelodeon say that when, you know, their president, their current president, you know, was a person who did not protect Drake Bell in in my opinion, and if anything got promoted and is behind that statement today. So you know, when I hear these things, this is just the entertainment industry in a nutshell, where they are constantly promoting financially rewarding the people that

do not protect their employees do not protect the children, and they discard the survivors, the victims of abuse. And that's just the pattern time and time again. And listening to Nickelodeon, you know, you can just tell it's a bunch of lawyers in a room finding the right words to protect their, I wouldn't say asses, protect themselves and not actually protect the children. You know what I mean? That's what it sounds like to me. And I think in that statement, they also talked about formal complaints. Like when a formal complaint happens, we take it really seriously. Well, for example, Drake's dad went to Brian Robbins, most likely, and they blocked Drake's dad from making a formal complaint. What should have happened, what Brian Robbins should

have done was say, wow, I hear you. Let's make a formal complaint. Let's get rid of this guy if he is a concern to you. And that's what that's what should have happened. But no, instead, they gaslit the dad and eventually let the dad get cut out of the whole picture. Because who else is that benefit? Nickelodeon. Yeah.

Well, here's what happens time and time again. They hire an outside law firm and then suddenly everything goes away. Oh, you know, we looked into it. Nothing came of it. Or like we looked into it and something something was done. You know, we're not going to share it with you. Or they don't hire an outside law firm and they investigate themselves, which we all know how that always works out. Yeah, that's that's not going to be a that's not going to be a trusted source whatsoever. I mean, when you think about Jeanette McCurdy's book, for example, right, and you think about Nickelodeon statement, when it came to Dan Schneider saying we, we did not find any type of behavior like this when it came to our investigation with Dan Schneider. Oh, hello, didn't you try to get Jeanette McCurdy to sign NDA? Didn't you try to

get her to sign NDA before she left Nickelodeon? And did you talk to Jeanette McCurdy to sign NDA? Didn't you try to get her to sign NDA before she left Nickelodeon? And did you talk to Jeanette McCurdy? Cause she sure sounded like she had a lot to say about her experience at Nickelodeon. So when I hear statements in general from these lawyers, corporations, institutions, their main goal is to protect the company and protect their, their money, their property essentially. And so it, you know, you just look at it and go, okay, cute, cute, cute. But we know what really happened. Okay, so I want to read Nickelodeon's statement

regarding the alleged behaviors on past production sets. Though we cannot corroborate or negate allegations of behaviors from productions decades ago, Nickelodeon, as a matter of policy, investigates all formal complaints as part of our commitment to fostering a safe and professional workplace environment free of harassment or other kinds of inappropriate conduct. Our highest priorities are the well-being and best interests of not just our employees, cast, and crew, but of all children. And we have adopted numerous safeguards over the years to help ensure we're

living up to our own high standards and the expectations of our audience. Other statements we will post on our show page on YouTube and on my megankelly.com. And there are multiple statements from Dan Schneider as well. He regrets and he apologizes and expresses regret and embarrassment and holds himself accountable for his previous behavior. He wants some of his old jokes to now be cut from the reruns of his own show, but he denies having been cut off from the child's stars while there says he there's a reason they turfed him to some other room other than that. They didn't want him to have any ongoing contact look what's the bottom line what what

what's the bottom line here right do we does somebody still need to be fired is this guy brian we'll reach out to him we didn't get a comment from him but i mean what's the takeaway is it safe for children to be working in these environments uh i don't think so i i don't think so because i don't even think it's safe for adults, per se. So when you put children into these environments that we have learned now adults are not safe in like how, how can we believe that children are safe? And also, just the Hollywood industry in general for a child, I just personally don't think is appropriate. I'm not pro child stars. In general, I do not believe that

children should be working. I like child labor laws and I want them to be very strict. I don't want to see any children working whatsoever. And so, no, I don't think children are safe because I can see still today that adults aren't safe. Yeah. I got to say, I wouldn't do it with my kid knowing what I know. But listen, you're so brave. Thank you so much for telling your story, for being here. People, find her work at Eat Predators YouTube channel, and all the best to you. Former RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel officially fired by NBC News. By the way, CAA has also fired her

reportedly, her agent. Agents are the worst. They're the worst. Someday I'll tell you my agent story and you will not believe how horrifying it is. Okay. Meantime, Joy Reid and Rachel Maddow, so gleeful, so thankful last night to NBC management for axing McDaniel and making her a national laughingstock. They really, really, really loved that and saving their sacred air. I am grateful to Cesar for actually making the right decision. I think it was the right decision, but I want to get your take as well. Oh, thank you for asking me about it. I will just say that journalists are a fractious bunch and to see the executives and the leadership hear that and respond to it and be willing to change course based on it, based on their respect for us and hearing what we argued. I, I have deep respect for that. And I think it's a show

of strength and I'm, I'm grateful that grateful that our leadership was willing to do that. I think the bold, strong, resilient thing. Rachel Maddow, it's always a pleasure, my friend. Thank you very much. I now release you to your evening. We cannot get enough Rachel. Can't we? Shows like Morning Joe can now go back to featuring voices they prefer to the terrible election denier,

Ronna McDaniel. A few weeks ago, they had on the authors of a new book they really want you to read called White Rural Rage. It's a book all about how those pesky white rural voters who they hate pose a threat to the country. Watch. They're the most racist, xenophobic, anti-immigrant, anti-gay geodemographic group in the country. Second, they're the most conspiracist group. QAnon

support and subscribers, election denialism, COVID denialism and scientific skepticism, Obama birtherism. Third, anti-democratic sentiments. They're also the most strongly white nationalist and white Christian nationalists. And fourth, they are most likely to excuse or justify violence. So you mentioned a lot of negative factors about this demographic. Tom, what else do they have in common? Democrats have been told that in order to get rural voters, to get them to listen to you, you have to go there. You have to really empathize with them. You have to show them that you understand their lives.

You have to, you know, put on a Carhartt jacket and go to somebody's farm and have a beer and yeah, maybe milk a cow. Yes. And it turned out that none of that was true. All that he gave them was a way to essentially give a big middle finger to Democrats, to people who live in cities. I'm sorry. I know you heard me. We keep the mic on during the soundbites. Fuck them. That's so obnoxious. They're so, you have a beer, those losers in the rural communities is, you know, they sit around getting drunk all day, just living off of my paycheck. Okay. Uh, we've got thoughts on all of this and we have a great guest today to discuss it all. She's got an in-depth knowledge of the media and working class voters too. She just wrote a book about the latter. Batya Angar Sargon is the opinion editor for Newsweek. In 2021, she was on this program after she wrote the book Bad News, How Woke Media is Undermining Democracy, obviously still very

relevant today. And now she's out with a brand new book next week. It's called Second Class, How the Elites Betrayed America's Working Men and Women. It's available for pre-order now. This is her first interview about it. Batya, welcome back to the show. Great to have you. Oh, Megan, it is so amazing to be here with you. You are such a role model to me personally, but I think to so many journalists, I'm so honored to be here. And I am so excited to talk about the book. This is the first interview I'm doing about it. And I just could not be more happy to be here. You are so sweet. I admire you. I admire your writing and your fortitude. And I've been

watching you light up the internet clip after clip over the past year plus, really enjoying getting your take out there and having people be introduced to your very smart thinking. Let's start on the second point before we get to the NBC drama. That clip is so offensive. We've been trying to get to it now for the better part of a month because it happened a while, a few weeks ago. But the dripping disdain for these disgusting white rural voters, just a broad brush on how gross they are with their Carhartt jackets and their beer. That's what you'd have to drink in order to get along with them. Right. It's certain male gesture is basically being done under the table. Is stomach turning and they are not alone. It's not just the set of and the crew of Morning Jail.

Absolutely. This book, White Rural Rage, is the Democrats fantasy about why they are losing, because it gives them an alibi for what actually happened, which is that they abandoned the working class, which is now flocking to Donald Trump. And instead of acknowledging all of their failures, which stem from the very contempt that you are pinpointing, Megan, they come up with this fantasy that the other side are racists or fascists or election deniers or this or that, whatever the insult of the month is, as an alibi for themselves so they don't have to do the hard work of looking inside and analyzing how they lost the working class and how they came to develop hatred for the Americans who we rely on to survive.

They're just, as I said yesterday, when they were discussing the Ronald McDaniel thing, they ooze sanctimony. Their holier than thou approach to the news, to Americans, to Republicans is on its sleeve. It's readily available for all to see. And they are clueless about what a turnoff this is to normal people. I mean, I'm not, I'm not working class. I come from a middle-class family, but I'm disgusted by them. I mean, you don't have to be in the working class to hate what they're doing, which brings me to your book. I mean, your book is the opposite of their book of that book that they were promoting there. Your book does this radical thing of actually trying to figure out who are the working class and what is driving them? What does concern them?

Is it all the things that they just listed there? As it turns out, you have found the answer's no. That's absolutely right, Megan. Their contempt for the working class, they dress it up as though it is some sort of moral sanctimony or some sort of political ideology. It's just money, right? They're all millionaires and they sit there on their cable news channels and sneer at the people who clean their toilets, right? That's what's happening there, Right. Make no mistake about it. That sanctimony stems from the clash between their economic privilege on the one hand and their belief that they are the good guys on the other hand, which don't often go hand in hand. What I found in my book was the exact opposite of white rural rage. I spent a year traveling across America interviewing working class people in all industries of all races, religious persuasions, family breakdowns, what have you. And what I found was that whether or not a working class person votes Democrat or Republican, they by

and large have very similar ideology and view of the world. First of all, these are the most tolerant people you will ever meet. And that tolerance stems from a number of places. First of all, this country is finally becoming the great nation that we were promised to be at our founding. And that is very important to working class Americans. I write a lot about how they've been abandoned by both sides, by the elites on both sides. These people are so patriotic. They still love this country, even though so many people have given up on them. And they also are very similar when it comes to politics. So one of the major headlines that I found in the book, Megan, was that the vast majority of working class Americans want basically a total moratorium on immigration,

right? Because they understand the truth, which is that these immigrants are lowering their wages, but they also want some sort of government backed healthcare. They feel like they can't afford good healthcare and it bothers them a lot. So you see how neither party is really representing them, right? One party has open borders, but we'll talk about healthcare. The other party has the immigration piece, but doesn't have a healthcare policy. On other issues, they're so united, whether they're Democrats or Republicans. For example, I found that working class Americans are extremely pro-gay. I spoke to a lot of Christians who have a gay person in their life who they want to be treated with dignity, but they're very worried about the transgender ideology.

They don't like seeing it in sports. They don't like seeing it in schools. They don't want to hear teachers talking to their kids about sexuality. And this really unites both conservative and liberal working class people. In short, what I would say is that polarization is a totally elite phenomenon, Megan. Working class Americans are so much more united than they are divided. That is so interesting and just confirms a general feeling. One of the things I love about, you know, we put the show as a podcast and YouTube,

but we were also live on Sirius XM during the day. And so we get such a wide variety of listeners calling in when we take calls. You know, you'll get doctors and lawyers and that and you get the truckers and they they have so many similar views. It's like people who are on the right side, I think generally are more right leaning. They have a lot of similar views because I don't think that there's that many. There are some conservative elites, but this elite thing seems to be rather unique to the Democrat Party. I understand the Republican Party fractured because there were too many elites on the GOP side with the Chamber of Commerce and all that

kind of thing. But the way things stand today, the Democrats do. They have the majority of the so-called elites who are lecturing us at every turn. And I think most of my listeners are disgusted by it and see the same problems that you just outlined, no matter what their income is. Just to put a couple more points on it, here's a little bit more of them talking about this is because this is not just MSNBC. This is how the left sees the problem with the pesky Trump voters, the annoying half of the country that continues to try to back Trump and put him in office. And like the problem with the American electorate. Here's Sat 27. We spent a couple of years after Donald Trump got elected, you know, journalists went to every single diner in middle America to try to talk to red hatted, maggot folks about what what concerned

them, what they were mad about. Nobody went to the rural African-Americans, rural Latinos, rural Native Americans to find out what's mad, what they're mad about. And they have every reason to be mad. But you know what they're not doing? They're not overrunning the Capitol. They're not going down to their state Capitol carrying AR-15s. They have, and nobody treats them the way we do, right, rural Americans, as though we have a moral obligation to know what they're angry about and to cater to them. Oh, my God. Do you know what's so funny, Megan? Is that, you know what Black Americans are really angry about? The open border.

Right. Right. They would never let them talk about that on MSNBC or CNN, right? They are really, really angry that the Democrats abandoned them to open the border and welcome in an entirely new slave cast from failed socialist states to do working class jobs. And by the way, that signals to working class people that you are nothing. That's what happens there. Take in 10 million people to compete with people who clean toilets, which is not actually an inherently bad job. If it pays well, you signal to Americans, an American doesn't do this job.

Why would we do that to people who work so hard? Why would we tell people who clean diapers of the elderly, right? People we rely on so much to do these hard, hard jobs that you are nothing. An American shouldn't be doing this job. It's so appalling. Contempt everywhere you look, Megan, from these elites. You are so right. It's amazing to hear. I love to hear them say it. I love it when they just put it out there. But just to pull out a couple of the quotes, which we ran in the opening soundbite, this is Tom Schaller talking about it. They're the most racist, xenophobic, anti-immigrant,

anti-gay, geodemographic group in the country. Most conspiratorial. COVID denialism. I'd love to hear what specifically. They denied that covid began in a wet market because that's that's not what happened. They should have denied that. They denied that the vaccine would stop the spread. They were right about that, too. They don't believe in an independent press or free speech. It's the white rural voters who don't want free speech, not the elite leftists who are trying to police what we say at every turn on the Internet and on college campuses and elsewhere. There's a psychological term called projection, right, where you don't want to admit your own faults. And so you see them in everybody that you interact with. And that's exactly what this is. Everything that the Democratic elites try to push onto rural voters, onto the working class, maybe we shouldn't be throwing these people out. Right. They'll say to me, well, don't any of these working class people care that, you know, Donald Trump is a threat to our democracy?

And honestly, Megan, what I heard a lot was it's kind of a threat to our democracy to take the most popular politician in the entire country off of the ballot, right? It's kind of a threat to democracy to wage lawfare against the most popular politician in the country, because you are terrified that he is appealing to the very voters that used to be your base. And it's not just the white working class, right? So for example, in 2020, Trump was polling at 8% of black men. He got 18% of black men in 2020. Today, he's polling at 30 percent of black men. You can imagine how many black men are going to actually vote for him. He's polling at the majority of Hispanics, which is the majority of that community is working class.

I mean, this is no longer a white working class party. The Republican Party now is the party of the working class. And that divide in the GOP is going to be crucial to the future. I mean, Megan, you get it, right, that there's no returning to the Chamber of Commerce, Nikki Haley version of the party, right. But I think a lot of people are sort of in denial about it. And they have to realize like these voters, these are the best voters, because they're the majority of the country, right? If the Republican Party can seize on what does it mean to be working class today? And how can we protect

these workers and their labor and their dignity, they will have the ruling majority that the Democrats always dreamt of. By the way, on that front, this is what they're doing instead over on the left to raise money and in gen up, gen up enthusiasm. This just came across the wire on Thursday. Tomorrow, Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton will hold a fundraiser in New York city for Joe Biden and his 2024 race. The cheapest tickets are $225. If you would like a photo with all three men, it will cost you the low, low price of $100,000. Access to more intimate receptions will cost $250,000 or $500,000. So they're really going for the plumbers of America. That's the class they're really trying to appeal to here with their two hundred and twenty five dollar tickets and their hundred thousand dollar photos. It's so amazing because prior to Bill Clinton, the Democrats used to be

the party of the working class. And then Bill Clinton showed up and said, actually, let's have a trade deal called NAFTA. Let's send 5 million good middle class American jobs to China and Mexico, build up their middle class, and then import cheap products for our new base, who are the college educated elites. Barack Obama shows up and says, those jobs aren't coming back. Maybe your father worked in a factory, you're not going to work in a factory. And so they ship all the good paying jobs overseas. And then Joe Biden shows up and says, actually, the remaining jobs, we're going to open the border and bring in an entirely new slave pass to compete with you here for the jobs that are still here. So it's like this, you know, it's really a gallery

of rogues. When you think about the process the Democratic Party went through to abandon the working class and instead cater to the college credentialed elites who consume cheap products from China and consume cheap labor of illegal immigrants. Right. That's literally what that photo would be. I've told this story before, but there was an event I went to out where I stay in Montana and I wasn't actually attending the event. I just went by it because I have a house there. So I was like, okay, I'll swing by. I was invited to swing by. And there was this debate, this is in 2019 I think, or 2020. It was a debate under folding. It was all the elites. It was all the who's who's from Republican politics, democratic politics and tech and Hollywood. I mean, it was one of these muckety muck situations. And they were having a debate about our relationship with China.

And you know who stood up and said, I I've got real questions about them. I don't trust them. I think they're spying on us. I think they're the relationship has cost working class jobs. It was Mila Kunis, Ashton Kutcher's wife. She's an actress. She was there with him. And she stood up and I was like, you go, girl. Well, the crowd turned on her like, how dare you? Right. Some guy who stood up like I have a Ph.D. in Chinese studies and I can tell you we're making real progress and we're at the dawn of a new age with China. OK, then we got a spy balloon. We got covid. We got all the lies. And it was just such a good microcosm into how these elites about whom you write in your book, Second Class, just see the world and stifle dissent. They don't want to hear it. They don't

want to hear any voices that question their master plan because they genuinely think they know better. It's so true. And, you know, Trump really, you know, he took an ax to the handshake agreement between both parties that, you know, we should be shipping good American jobs overseas. But he also really took an ax to the pretensions of the expert class. And nothing reveals this more than the way economists talk about immigration. So every time you bring up the fact that these people are literally competing with Americans for jobs and driving down their wages, every single PhD economist will show up and lecture you and say, aha, but immigration raises GDP in the aggregate, therefore it is good. And it's like, people don't live in the aggregate. There's a class divide in this country. One part of the country is consuming cheap labor. And one part of the country is trying

to raise a family by working that cheap labor job that no longer pays a living wage, right? Obviously, all of the gains of immigration have gone to the top 20%, the top 10%, which are now hoarding over 50% of the GDP. So you have these like college credentialed democratic elites who love to rail about the 1%. But it's not really the 1% that's hoarding the majority of the GDP. It's actually them. And they're hoarding the American dream. They are preventing working class people from being able to have the most modest things, Megan. I mean, it brings tears to your eyes. All these people want is to be left alone, to work very hard and raise a family in dignity, own a home, maybe have a vacation once a year and retire in dignity. It is so modest.

It is everything that the college elites take for granted. And yet it is increasingly impossible for working class people to achieve the American dream, despite the fact that they are doing the jobs that we all rely on to survive. And yet what do you have? You have a president who right now is focused on student loan, quote, forgiveness, which is a wealth transfer where those truckers I was just talking about are going to pay for some snot nose kids student loans that the trucker wisely did not take out because he realized that would probably be a waste of money, whether you're going on to, you know, an elite job in media or you're going to drive a truck.

It's becoming more and more obvious that you're not getting a lot of bang for your buck in these institutions. But in any event, so he's trying to get the youth vote by the wealth transfer and he's doing the, oh, we're all going to be driving electric powered cars by 2032. And that's, I mean, that's a direct punishment of the working class. They're not going to pay $80,000 for a Tesla. They can't. They can't pay $225 for a ticket to meet you either, Joe Biden. That's the difference between eating that

month and not. They don't get it. Right. So it's like all of the president's policies seem ginned at at is in gear toward ginning up support amongst those core elite groups that we were just talking about, like the rich soccer moms, the elite college grads and higher education grads, and the people who are driving Teslas who are definitely not working class. That's absolutely right. When the Democrats abandoned the working class, they created an entirely new agenda that was meant to appeal to the college educated. So, for example, Green New Deal, climate stuff, the kind of stuff you can worry about when

all of your direct needs are being met. Right. When you are a person who doesn't even notice that groceries are up by 18 percent. Right. You have time to worry about things like, you know, the climate so-called climate crisis. Right. So that's a perfect example of an elite obsession that is actually a tax on the working class. As you point out, Megan, I mean, it goes beyond just the cost of the cars, which is huge. In rural America, you can't drive an electric car because you can't stop every three hours and put energy in it, right? You have to drive much, much further to get to work, to get back. And you don't have an hour to sit there. I mean, that's time, that's money, right? And even if you can stop, you can't sit there for at best, at best 20 minutes if they

found a super fast charger. But it's not going to be super fast in most of these stations. That's exactly right. And even from the point of view of the auto workers, an EV takes so much less time on the line to produce. So they know that these EVs signal less working hours for them, less money, less take home pay. And they're not selling. They're just sitting on the lots, right? So again, an upward transfer of wealth to the elites that the working class is supposed to pay for because the elites get high on this sense of,

we are the virtuous ones. We're protecting the planet. You mentioned student loan forgiveness, another upward transfer of wealth, the open border, right, which is wage theft of the working class. I interviewed in the book, you will meet people, janitors, Americans, black Americans who take so much pride in this work, and yet they cannot make a living because they are competing against people who will do it for seven, eight, nine dollars an hour. It is wage theft. Of course, the person hiring the janitor, he loves that, right? So they took an agenda, policy agenda that was geared towards protecting the working class, and they abandoned that and transformed their agenda into protecting the vanity of the elites. And you know who stepped in and picked up that exact agenda, working class agenda? It was Donald Trump, who sounds more like a New Deal Democrat than he does like a Republican. I mean, think about it. Trade war with China, tariffs, closing the border, 15 weeks on abortion. He's courting black voters. He's

courting union voters. He got a historic $45,000 donation out of the Teamsters for the RNC. If you want to look for a consensus candidate, somebody who showed up, looked at where the electorate was, where 70% of Americans were at. If you just look at policy, Donald Trump is the consensus candidate that Joe Biden pretended he was going to be. It's so true. And yet this is why they don't understand on the left why people aren't completely outraged over the latest comment of the day from Trump, the latest tweet or truth. So like, I don't get it. How can they vote for him? I've told the viewers that I met Barbara Streisand years ago. It was 2016. And she's know, I know her politics, but I love her talent and I love a lot of her movies. So I'm able to separate the two, unlike these lunatics on the left who want to

condemn everybody for their politics. Um, but she said to me, how, how did, how did the coal miners vote for Donald Trump? I said, Barbara, Hillary promised to take away their jobs. She made it a pillar of her campaign to wipe out coal. But you know, Barbara Streisand lives in a multi-million dollar cliffside estate out in the Santa Barbara region. And her life is made forever. She's got more money than she could ever spend in her or her children's or grandchildren's lifetimes. They can't get themselves out of their bubble. Robert De Niro out there talking on the late night shows about how he would never play Donald Trump. He's so disgusting. There's nothing redeeming in him. How could people vote for him? Same. He's adorned with

acting awards and red carpet ceremonies and visits to Cannes where everybody kisses his ring and all of his Oscars and the Godfathers and everything surrounding him with all of his wonderful millions and George Clooney meetups. That's not how the people you met are living. They're worried about their paychecks, about their food, about their health care. And they don't give a damn about his tweets or all the allegedly horrible things De Niro sees in Donald Trump. And it's so disgusting the way that they sneer at these people. Like, I want to tell you about a person that I met in Florida. Her name is Amy. She's in the book. She's gay. She's married to a woman. And her wife's mother is an evangelical Christian. And when I walked into the home where

the mother was, when she saw my Jewish star, she flipped out. She'd been waiting her whole life for a Jew to show up for her to proselytize to. And she was so excited to meet me and tell me about Jesus. And I was, you know, totally happy to hear it. And on my way out, she handed me a Bible. And she said, this is my favorite Bible, I want you to have it. And I we get in the car. And Amy said to me, I was worried that would happen. You can leave the Bible, you don't have to take it. And I said to her, Are you kidding me? This is so precious to me. She's an evangelical Christian, one of the most religious people I've ever met in my life. She loves you. She loves her daughter. It would never occur to her to judge you guys. She supports you. They live in a home

on her property. This is so precious. This is America. I mean, this Bible represents to me America. And Amy voted for Biden. Her wife voted for Trump because she felt that he couldn't be bought. And she really respected that about him. And Amy said unionized. But Amy believes that parents who bring children to a drag show should be put in prison. She does not believe in transitioning. She thinks that illegal immigration is stealing jobs and lowering wages. She's opposed to the funding of the war in Ukraine. You know, she's in every other way. She's, you know, very much aligned with where, you know, that sort of 70 percent of Americans are at. This is America. This is the American working class. Yes, I and I think I think about media and the fact that people like, you know, Rachel Maddow and Joy Reid are so far removed from anyone who's actually living like

that, that they can't even think about they can't conceptualize it anymore. It's just so far removed from anyone who's actually living like that, that they can't even think about, they can't conceptualize it anymore. It's just so far gone from, for them. And I will say like, this is, I feel like one of the advantages I have as a journalist is I never got too far afield from that. You know, my stepfather, my mom's husband, 30 years, um, plumber, you know, my mom was a nurse, uh, at the Albany veterans association for her entire career. My sister was a teacher, um, you know, who then got addicted to drugs and had a lot of problems that many of our working class friends have. Um, it helps, it helps to stay connected to people who have those lives and are working hard to make sure they can

eat dinner and pay the healthcare bills and have to watch, you know, what's in the pot in the checking account every month, or the bill collectors are going to come. If you get too far afield from that, you wind up like Joy Reed and Rachel Maddow and Mika Brzezinski. You do. You live your life as Mika and Joe do in New Canaan, Connecticut, and you're surrounded only by the most fabulous. You don't flutter an eyelid at the $100,000 photo with the presidents or the $250,000 or $500,000 meeting with them. And you forget what's actually bothering people. You obsess over things like skin color, gender, climate, right? You obsess over it. And then you don't understand anybody who disagrees. It's sad. All right, wait, I want to

tell the audience, you're not leaving, but just to remind the audience, because we need to support you. It's called Second Class, How the Elites Betrayed America's Working Men and Women. It's kind of like, it's kind of like, it reminds me of J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy. You know, it's kind of like, it's kind of like, it reminds me of JD Vance's hillbilly elegy. You know, it's kind of like that, uh, in its tone and who you're talking to second class, how the elites betrayed America's working men and women. All right. You stay with us. And, uh, we're going to do a quick break before we come back. I'm Megan Kelly, host of the Megan Kelly show on Sirius XM. It's your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations with the most

interesting and important political, legal, and cultural figures today. You can catch the Megyn Kelly Show on Triumph, a Sirius XM channel featuring lots of hosts you may know and probably love. Great people like Dr. Laura, Glenn Beck, Nancy Grace, Dave Ramsey, and yours truly, Megyn Kelly. You can stream the Megyn Kelly Show on SiriusXM at home or anywhere you are. No car required. I do it all the time. I love the SiriusXM app. It has ad-free music coverage of every major sport, comedy, talk, podcast, and more.

Subscribe now. Get your first three months for free. Go to SiriusXM.com slash MK show to subscribe and get three months free. That's SiriusXM.com slash MK show and get three months free. Offer details apply. All right, let's talk about speaking of elites, the latest from NBC. I love how in the clip, you know, Joy Reid is like, now I'll release you to your evening, which Rachel Maddow has plenty of because she works one day a week for $30 million a year. Speaking of not being in touch with regular working class folks. And then you've got Chris Hayes, who also doesn't work too hard,

getting on the air last night, Tuesday. Why? Because every weekend is a three-day weekend for Chris Hayes, but he really wants to weigh in on the horrible Ronna McDaniel. Listen here. As you might know, we don't have a show on weekends or on Mondays. And most of what I wanted to say about all this has already been said very well by my colleagues. In the end, all you can really ask of people in our profession is diligence and open-mindedness and critical thinking and above all else, and this is really important to me, good faith. When I'm speaking to you here right now, I'm not putting on a show about what I think and believe. This is it. I could be wrong about things. Lord knows I must be sometimes.

I might have opinions you think are wrong. We might tell stories in ways that you think leave stuff out or emphasize a wrong angle. But the key to this entire enterprise is a kind of bedrock trust. The trust that we really are acting in good faith. We really are trying to get it right. We are not feeding you lies to be good team players. I am not putting on a show about what I believe and think. That's actually exactly what you're doing.

And I love that it all boils down to good faith. And we know that's not true because if it were true, they would have gone back and corrected the record on, for example, Russia, a lie they told over and over for three years. And if it were a good faith mistake, Baja, you and I know they would have gone back and said, we got it wrong. We gave you the best reporting at the time. It turned out to be false. Never. Not Chris Hayes, not Rachel Maddow, not Nicole Wallace, obviously not Joy Reid, none of them. Everybody who's listening right now should go back and watch your video from yesterday because you did such an amazing job of teasing out the deep hypocrisy that goes on here.

You were saying earlier, you know, these people are out of touch, right? Barbra Streisand out of touch. It's totally fine if God rewards you and makes you somebody who never has to talk to people who are working class again, you know, say thank you to God. But what used to be was people who had achieved that level of success, like Joy Reid, like Chris Hayes, like Rachel Maddow, they had a level of humility that came along with that. It used to be called noblesse oblige, like this sense that you owe something back to the community, to the nation that made you so successful. And the difference with these people is they don't believe in that. They don't believe in God. They believe that it

was their own merit that got them these millions and millions and millions of dollars. And as a result, they don't feel that they owe anything to anybody. The opposite, they have to protect the system that they believe elevated them. And so the way you do that is by silencing anybody who dares to object. And so instead of saying to working class people, look, I'm so successful, I know, I get it. But what can I do to make sure that you have the modest things that you want? They silence them and call them racist and call them fascist. And which brings me back to Rona McDaniel. It's so funny because, you know, she's not even that representative of where the GOP is out, right?

Donald Trump doesn't like her. He feels like she was sort of working against him to bring back the old GOP. But even that kind of a person, they cannot stomach because as you rightly pointed out yesterday, Megan, they cannot stand the idea of giving the other side a fair hearing because they know that if they do, it's going to be curtains for them. Yeah, it's exactly the same thing as the lawfare that they're unleashing against Donald Trump because they don't want the voters, those racist, white, rural, dumb, beer-drinking voters to have a say because they're too stupid. Joy and Chris and Rachel need to decide. They're the smart ones, okay? That's really the message

behind everything they say. You know what? They do say that in good faith. That is something they actually believe and telegraph night after night. We played this soundbite recently. It was, oh God, was it after? It was after Trump lost one of the many legal challenges, or when Trump won one of the legal challenges. It was on immunity. It was on immunity.

And the Supreme Court took the case. That's what it was. He had lost the immunity argument at the lower court, and the liberals were banking on the Supreme Court not reviewing that decision. So he'd have to go pedal to the metal on the J6 case and others. Well, the Supreme Court took it, and the left freaked out. And this is Chris Hayes after that decision came down. That they would rob the People's Department of Justice the opportunity to present all the evidence of his guilt. That the voters of this country, you and I,

the hundreds of millions of us, might be robbed of the information we need to determine whether the man is guilty of the gravest crime any politician has been accused of since the Civil War. If you were hoping that Donald Trump's authoritarian disregard for the rule of law was going to be stopped by Americans' institutions and the court at the highest level, that hope is severely diminished today. The Mueller investigation didn't stop him. Two congressional impeachments did not stop him. Today is the starkest proof yet that in the zero-sum battle between MAGA and democracy, there was and is only one thing that

could ever truly stop Donald Trump, and that is we the people. Americans voting against him, a majority. Hey, right. He's like, oh, shit. Oh, no. Almost there. You know, he's like oh shit oh no almost there you know he's almost there right like he's three quarters of the way there of course donald trump prevailing over a host of competitors in the primary who outspent him two to one like if he a Democrat, they would be noting this for what it is, which is a triumph of the will of the people, right? If you think about Donald Trump, and this is my plug for people who are really, really don't like him, you know, like, and they're really upset that he's, you know, possibly going to win again. I get it. I get that a lot of people don't like his character. But if you care about democracy, and we should all care about democracy,

you have to admit that seeing him crush a competition that is outspending him two to one is nothing short of a triumph of the will of the people. You have to admit that him triumphing over the lawfare and the billions of dollars and the institutional might that the Democrats have thrown at him, that a person in America can still beat those odds just through the will of the people showing up and casting their ballot. If you care about democracy, I'm begging you to acknowledge this is a win. This is what democracy looks like. I love how he says it's between MAGA and democracy. Like you say, you're almost there. Believe it or not, they have a role in the democracy, too.

All right. Now, I've got to get to this today because there's, in other news, more protests going on with these pro-Palestinian protesters who continue to bother random civilians just trying to live their lives. The latest is at Vanderbilt, which like all the other universities, or a lot of them, didn't used to be like this, you know, down South, but it's woke and annoying just like the others now. So these students showed up to protest. I don't know what exactly they want the chancellor to back the divestment movement out of Israel. They hate Israel. They think that they're committing a genocide and they want the chancellor to do exactly what they want him to do. So they tried to get into his office. They demanded to meet with him. And first they shamed a black cop for not joining them because the cop's black. Then they started, then they called 911 because somebody needed to change her tampon. I'm not even kidding you. And they felt it was an emergency that she

be allowed passage. I'm going to start with the second one because there's no way we can end without getting to stop 35 watch toxic shock. Yeah., there's currently a female student who's being denied the right to change her tampon that has been in for multiple hours, which leads to an increased risk of toxic shock syndrome. So while you're saying, right, so then you should understand. Okay, what you are not hearing, what you're not hearing is that if she stands up to use the restroom to change her tampon, they are threatening arrest. So it is not an option for her. Ma'am, do you have an emergency?

Yes, ma'am, I do. That is an emergency. No, do you have an emergency? Not your friend that's inside. Do you have an emergency? That is my emergency. Yeah, I don't remember the time that I needed to have an emergency personally to call 911 for help. Yeah, but neither you nor your friend has one.

This is, this is hard. Can you believe how stupid, I mean, Vanderbilt is a good university, at least on paper. Can you believe just the narcissistic, dumb behavior happening on these campuses? I mean, so much to say, but I'll just try to narrow it down. Ayman Oda, who is an Arab-Israeli politician, used to quote, I believe it was the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, who used to say, we Palestinians are lucky that our enemies are the Jews, because otherwise nobody would care about us. Which is totally true, by the way. And, and I think we American Jews are very lucky that these are the people who have taken up the other side. You know, there's a lot of talk about rising anti-Semitism, anti-Semitism on campus. And I just keep telling my fellow Jews,

like, you don't understand who these people are. Like, I'm going to keep this video so I can show it to them. You know, like, come on, you know, we're these are the American Jewish students aren't in danger. You can't be in danger from somebody like that. You're in danger of like being unpopular with people like that. And honestly, that is a good thing. That should be a marker of pride standard for what you believe in the vast majority of Americans are behind us. You know, you go out into working class Americans, they don't support this nonsense. In fact, it's often coming at their expense, all of this activism, which has, by the way,

these activists have no interest in convincing anybody. You know, they want to upset people. They don't want to convince them. And they've done, you know, they've done us a big favor and shown their true colors. Obviously, there's people in Congress who are saying disgusting things. And, you know, they should be voted out in a democratic way, in a democratic way, if they're, you know, residents don't like them anymore. But, you know, to me, I look at this and I'm like, you know, as Jews, like, thank God that this is what we're dealing with. It is unbelievable how

philo-Semitic and pro-Israel, the American working class remains to this day, how marginal anti-Semitism is in this great country. And I just urge my fellow Jews to see it through this day, how marginal anti-Semitism is in this great country. And I just urge my fellow Jews to see it through this lens because this is the truth. I don't know about the anti-Semitism. That seems obvious, too. But it's definitely I'm feeling anti-stupidism watching the clip. I'm feeling it strongly. It's ubiquitous. I'm going to squeeze in the one about the black cop to watch this. I hope you know that you're protecting a terrible man. And a coward too. And a coward, an absolute coward, who is aiding and abetting a actual genocide. Show your morality.

What if it was your kids? Would you care? It will be your kids. It will be our kids. You think kids gonna protect you? Is a job worth it, sir? Is a job worth it? And you're a black thorn. We're already dealing with this. You can stand with us. 32,000 dead and you don't care. You can stand with us right now

and be on the right side of history. But you won't. Shame. Shame on you. Shame on you. Shame. Shame. Shame.

Shame. You are black in America and you're not standing with the marginalized people of the world. What does that make you? Shame. Shame. Shame. Shame. Shame. Shame. Shame. Shame. Shame. Shame. Shame. Shame. Shame. Shame. Okay. All right, Bajie, let's talk Turkey. It's not really about their nonsense chant and shaming of the black cop. Who are the young college girls going to sleep with? Because they've run out of real men. Who would ever even consider going to bed with any of those mealy mouth, weak knees, cross-legged, elbow holding, mask wearing, lightweights?

I'm terrified for the future of the human race. I love that that is where your mind went. I was going to have a whole thing about how the Democrats keep abandoning black Americans for other pet projects. But you're totally right. It's both the problem for who are the girls going to be with and also a problem for who are the young men going to be with, because young women come out of college much more liberal than young men. And Democrats now are refusing to date conservatives. And so you're going to have a growing sector of the population who has literally nobody to sleep with on both sides. And it's going to be a disaster. No, you can't. Girls, do not look for a man who sits cross-legged when he's

beyond age 10. That's number one. Or who's wearing a mask unless he's like elderly and has a disease. And who links arms. And nevermind all the other stuff he said. You need a real man. Trust me. When you get between the sheets and it's time to do business, you need a real man up there, ladies. Those guys are not it. Baja, such a pleasure. Love you. Please come back. Thank you so much, Megan. Thank you. God bless you. Oh, you too. Again, the book is called Second Class, How the Elites Betrayed America's Working Men and Women. Go get it right now. Thank you all so much for joining us. Tomorrow, live from Sirius XM with the fifth column again in person.

Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.