The Megyn Kelly Show - Real Story Behind Hegseth "Double Tap" Reporting, and Katie Miller vs. Abby Phillip Throwdown, with Mark Halperin | Ep. 1203
Episode Date: December 1, 2025Megyn Kelly is joined by Mark Halperin, host of "Next Up," to talk about the "second strike" reporting on Sec. Pete Hegseth and the drug boats, the infighting and tension among the GOP and MAGA right ...now, a brutal new report about FBI Director Kash Patel's vanity by the NY Post's Miranda Devine, what the story shows about the state of the Trump administration, hypocrisy from the left and media when it comes to Obama's drone strikes vs. drug boat "double tap" reporting, the backstory to the Hegseth story, Trump "permanently" pausing migration after the National Guard shooting, the significance of the immigration action, Tim Walz doing damage control after the New York Times reporting on Minnesota Somali fraud, the meltdown over Trump calling him "retarded," the cable news battle between Katie Miller and Abby Phillip on CNN, the reaction from Michael Douglas over his son arguing with Scott Jennings, hateful comments from Jennifer Welch, and more. Subscribe to Mark's show Next Up:Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/next-up-with-mark-halperin/id1810218232Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2f0n8G4xqUo8aGxbbbtRjHYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@nextuphalperin?sub_confirmation=1 Hallow: Download Hallow for free for 3 months at https://hallow.com/megynMasa Chips: Ready to give MASA or Vandy a try? Get 25% off your first order by going to http://masachips.com/MK and using code MK.SelectQuote: Get the right life insurance for YOU, for LESS. Save more than 50% at https://selectquote.com/MEGYNGeviti: Go to https://gogeviti.com/megynand get 20% off with code MEGYN. 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 Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, live on SiriusXM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.
Hey everyone, I'm Megan Kelly. Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show and happy Monday. I hope you and your family had a great Thanksgiving.
We did. It was like the real Thanksgiving, but it felt like the fake Thanksgiving because we already had our fakesgiving with our extended family.
And so it was super easy. We actually went out to this lovely restaurant in some of the
somebody else cooked, which, you know, for my family, that's a gift to us all. Caught a little bit
of a cold, but I'm on the mend, and now we are back with a packed show. I'm so excited. It's
December. For those of you who are listening, we have in the Red Studio now our Christmas trees,
our white, like, well, they're green Christmas trees with fake snow all over them and little white
blinky lights. It makes me so happy. We have our Christmas decorations up already. I wonder if you
do too. Doesn't it just improve your mood? Here in Connecticut tomorrow, we're supposed to get some
snow. Oh, I miss snow. At heart, I'm just a Syracuse girl. That's where I live the first 10 years
in my life. I miss snow and sledding. I love Christmas. I know you do too. So let's take a moment
on this December 1st. You only get some 80 to 90 to 100 of them if you're lucky in your life.
And enjoy the most wonderful time of the year. And no, it is not too.
early to play the Christmas carols. Even my boys had to admit I'm allowed to play them now.
Okay. Just before we went to break, a group of Democrats dubbed the seditious six by the Trump
administration released a video, urging military members to disobey orders they think are illegal.
It came out of nowhere. No one, even the left-wing press, started asking questions about this.
No one knew, what the hell are the orders that they're talking about? And they didn't know.
These lawmakers got embarrassed repeatedly thinking that the media would just go along with this.
Like, of course, it's Trump, so he's issued illegal orders.
They didn't.
And it got to the point where even Caroline Levitt complimented the mainstream media for asking questions of these Democrat lawmakers who then looked like morons unable to name the alleged illegal order.
So that's basically how it went down.
And then, of course, since their friends had been embarrassed, meaning the law,
the Democrats, the media went to work, were trying to find some new reporting that actually
would suggest there had been an illegal order, and lo and behold, they came up with it.
I mean, it's just like, I'm sorry, but we would be remiss if we didn't point out.
Can you imagine the Washington Post doing this in order to actually run cover for our Republican
administration as opposed to expose one?
Can you imagine if they had done something like this, this, you know, next level reporting
to get to the bottom of how many orders have been issued and where and how and which one may have crossed a line when Joe Biden was the president. It's just so on the nose. We'll get into what they've come up with. Plus, the spin continues after the tragic shooting in D.C. of two National Guard members by an Afghani National last week.
Joining me now to discuss it all, Mark Halperin. He is the host of Next Up with Mark Halperin on the MK Media Podcast Network. Go and subscribe right now. It's a great, great show. I love listening to Mark's open.
talking points. He keeps me centered and up to date on the latest inside the Beltway. So go ahead and
subscribe right now wherever I get your audio podcast and on YouTube at next up, Halperin, H-A-L-P-E-R-I-N.com.
Believe it or not, Christmas is sneaking up fast. Can you believe it? And let's be honest,
between shopping, travel, and endless to-do lists, it can be chaos every year. But we don't
have to just survive it. We can reclaim the peace and purpose Christmas.
was meant to bring. Somewhere along the way, Advent became a marathon of gifts, dinners, and
decorations. But what's the point if we're left exhausted and distracted? Let me tell you about
Hallow. Their Advent Prayer Challenge, Pray 25, Be Still, features reflections from Chris
Pratt, Gwen Stefani, and more. It's a call to pause, breathe, and remember the real story of
Christmas. A young woman's life upended, a man protecting his family, and a corrupt ruler trying to
destroy it all. And yet, they found peace. This is not about a hallmark moment. It's about finding
stillness and divine peace in a broken world. Try hallow free for three months at hallow.com
slash Megan. Mark, welcome back. Good to be here and I broke the rules and started listening
to the Christmas music on Tuesday. So soon. Yes. Now, let me ask you a question about that. Do you listen
to only Christmas music, like when you're in your car, or do you go back and forth, you know, for the next three weeks?
No. When I'm in the car, it's the Sirius XM holiday channels. And, you know, I like Sinatra, the carpenters.
I like pretty much any artist I've ever liked. I just love spinning up the Christmas stuff.
And then, you know, if I'm being let down, I just switch to the phone and program myself.
Yes, same. I love. Serious XM is made Channel 4 now, the holidays.
channel. They've got the 15 is now the Fallon Christmas. That's a new one. Those are good ones that
I haven't always heard. And then I love traditional Christmas, which I think is 71, Sinatra's 70,
which also is a good channel, by the way. It's great channel. Those are the three I listened to.
We were just away for Thanksgiving, and so I had the car, and I just locked in on those three.
I saved all three channels. It's spectacular. It's like, it gets you right in the mood.
And soon we'll be busting out the Christmas specials. Do you unleash those in a certain way? I'm
curious. I'm a linear TV guy when it comes to Christmas special, so I like to watch
them as they're offered up by the majors. Oh. Oh, old school. Okay. Do you have a favorite?
I love Rudolph, and I love the Charlie Brown one. Oh, interesting. I love Santa Claus's coming
to town. Yeah. The Burger Meister Meister Burger. That's a great one, except we fast forward through
the scene where Jessica sings. It's a bad one. Yeah, I agree. It's a little
I love claymation and I tried to explain to my son like that when I was a kid
claymation was the equivalent of like 4D graphics I just there's something about the
claymation I just find like any any clamation that's got Santa whiskers I just love yes it's good
stuff and I'll give you one more before we move on to the news which is I grew up watching this
it's I'm going to be honest it's not well made you see that when you're an adult in the way
that you don't when you're a kid but I still love it and it's called the Christmas that
almost wasn't. It's so good. You can find it on, at one point, you couldn't find it anywhere before
we had apps all over our TVs. And I had to order it from some remote website in Italy. I don't
know. I got it. Anyway, it's so cute. It's about this guy named Mr. Prune who lives to ruin Christmas
and he's harassing Santa and Mrs. Claus at the North Pole and Santa has to go get a job down in like
every man town he takes one at a toy store mr prune won't let up he's a major antagonist this
guy it's just such a fun one and of course for me brings back childhood memories i don't know that one
but i like the de kensian name of mr prune yes you know we just watched i'd never seen it the dog
who saved christmas you ever seen that no it's it's hokey but it's really good recommend okay
thank you for that sir and i i i do need to mention one other thing i mention it every year
but my favorite Christmas special of all time is Christmas in Connecticut,
which is from 1947, Barbara Stanwick.
Hello, black and white.
They have a sleigh that they ride.
That's me hitting the horses with the straps.
Through the, like, Connecticut countryside, the snow.
It's a very weird and inappropriate love story that somehow you root for anyway.
And just the whole setting of it makes me feel like it's Christmas time.
I love that.
I'll tell you, I know we said we both keep saying one more, but I have to do one more,
which is the Bing Crosby, David Bowie little drummer boy.
Do you know that?
Yes, that's a great one.
It's magical.
That truly is one of the ten times of all time.
It's incredible.
See, now that is an appropriate use of the term magical.
This morning on AM Update, which you sometimes host on, we talked about the Corey Booker
engagement, and Corey Booker used the term magical to describe a,
their date or their second date.
Then when he proposed, he had Mariah Carey playing, Mark.
He took her out on their first date to Broadway to see a female empowerment play, suffragette, the suffs.
I've got questions, Mark Halperin.
What's happening with Cory Booker?
Well, first of all, they gave the exclusive pictures and TikTok and backstory to the New York Times,
but it read Like People magazine.
It was just like this classic, there were seeing.
those of you watching on, on YouTube, you can see.
And the whole thing that you just outlined and you got,
you hit most of the highlights, I felt was written by chat GPT.
Like, like, composed the TikTok of Torrey Booker's whirlwind romance with this young lady.
Yes.
Now, they made her Jewish in the real version, which was a bit of a surprise.
Yeah.
Did not.
I don't know.
Yeah.
Yeah, they had like a split, a split wedding.
They got married at City Hall and then they had like a show wedding that was half Jewish and half whatever it is. He is. I mean, half Jewish, half gay.
Yeah. That's what everybody's thinking.
I mean, everyone I know who knows him is surprised, but not surprised.
And, you know, he has gone to New Hampshire in the last couple months, and he is kind of an under-discussed person of ambition.
You remember James Carvel's famous line about running for president when somebody says, well, that person ran or they really get before, they really run again.
And James said, running for presidents, like having sex.
You don't just do it once and then say, ah, I did it.
I'm done.
Don't need to do it yet.
I didn't hear it.
I've never heard that.
That's very true.
Yeah.
Now, in this case, as you said, some people are raising the question of what kind of sex are we actually talking about.
Yeah, because I heard, on his way to New Hampshire, he swung by Chelsea in Manhattan and also
Provincetown, Massachusetts.
It's just an unconfirmed report, allegedly, Mark.
Good places to raise money.
Look, people have talked about his personal life forever.
And, you know, you don't.
need to have the world's most sensitive gaitar to have a point of view here. But he's now,
like Kim Scott, he's legally wed, and I wish the young couple all happiness. Me too, me too.
However short-lived, it may be, may take him right through to 2028 and the primary season and not
beyond, but I hope I'm wrong, and I'm just a cynical mofo, and I've misread the entire situation.
Though I do view Mariah Carey as a blaring red siren warning sign for. Any woman.
dating a man. No man should select that song.
Wasn't Cher or Mariah Carey? I mean, Cher or Liz Liza Minnelli.
Yeah, true. Equally damning. You raise a good point. It's the trifecta.
In any event, good luck to them. They're going to need it. Okay. Back here, we've got
the Democrats have stumbled upon their alleged illegal order and they're thrilled. They're so
excited. What they're saying is that on one of those Venezuelan drug boat strikes, we
struck the boat that there were two survivors, drug dealers, driving the boat or on the boat,
who were then clinging to the remnants of the boat, and that on Pete Heggseth's order,
they then dropped a second bomb to take out the two survivors, and then two more bombs to
sink the boat, because I guess we want no remnants of the boat whatsoever. And Trump was
asked about this on Air Force One, and Trump denied that Pete had done it.
He actually said Pete told me that that he hasn't done it, that he did not agree to that.
And now we've had two inquiries opened in Republican-controlled bodies of Congress, the House and the Senate.
So the Republicans, or at least making a show of seeming interested in whether this happened because many military experts have said they don't see how this could be legal, like that you are, you're not allowed, they say, and this is still under investigation about what happened.
happen. But if what I just said is true, and that's an if, that it would be clearly illegal
because you're not allowed to kill people who survive an initial strike and who are,
even if they're enemy combatants, kind of hanging on, or in this case, possibly literally
hanging on for dear life. Your thoughts on it? Well, I contain multitudes on this. First
of all, I'm a big fan of stopping the invasion of drugs in the United States. And I think
our children and our grandchildren are going to be so confused when they read
in the history books, that we had presidents who did nothing about it and just sat back and
let people send drugs into the country that killed people and hurt productivity and just all
the scourge of things that drugs do.
So I'm a big fan of anything that addresses that, number one.
Number two, I think President Trump has proven that if you use force aggressively and you use
it in a way that it doesn't cause any loss of American life, that it can be a great deterrent.
We saw that, at least potentially with Iran.
We've seen it in other cases, and we're seeing it here.
So people who say, well, you know, they're not interdicting all the drugs.
They're just getting a few boats.
No, they're sending a message to people whose families and individuals are going to be more reluctant to go to the high seas with drugs destined for the United States or elsewhere.
So I don't want to be misunderstood.
I think those two things are good.
But I'm also old-fashioned about two things.
and I think they're really fundamental to what America is about.
Number one, I don't think the President of the United States should kill people indiscriminately,
or our forces should kill people indiscriminately in violation of law and American tradition.
And that may be what's happened here in this particular case,
but it's clearly the case in general.
And I think there's been insufficient debate about it and insufficient scrutiny about it.
And number two, super old-fashioned and kind of diluted,
I think Congress is a co-equal branch, and in some cases a superior branch, when it comes to the Declaration of War.
And I think no American, whatever you call your politics, no American should be complacent about presidents,
all the post-World Cold War presidents have done this, using their power and disregarding Congress's role in declaring war.
And I think that's what's happened here too.
And I think that's, at a minimum, should be examined.
Well, that touches on an interesting dynamic that's popping up more and more in the press about whether there's some group of Republicans that are dejected and demoralized on Capitol Hill right now, Mark, because they feel like a rubber stamp to Trump.
They feel like they can't challenge him or they're going to get primaried and chased out of Congress, MTG style.
and so they do feel like they've ceded their constitutional authority because they're all so afraid of the 800-pound gorilla.
Now, is that an actual thing right now, or is that just a leftist media fever dream?
No, it's an actual thing.
It's not based on, you know, talking to Democrats or talking to Don Bacon or Tom Massey.
They're Trump loyalists who are unhappy.
Now, some of them are unhappy because of Prince.
And you don't see, as we did over the weekend, normally in the Trump era, you don't see the Republican chairs of the applicable committees in the House and Senate saying this needs to be investigated and saying it in a bipartisan way with the Democratic ranking members.
And they're doing that because they are troubled by this on principle.
Most of the unhappiness amongst Republicans, again, not a democratic or media creation,
is concern about the midterms, concern that they're going to lose the House majority because of the economy
and a feeling that the White House is insufficiently moving to address what voters are concerned about,
particularly how much things cost.
So those are two different areas of unhappiness, one principle, one pure politics.
And again, I think the political one is probably, if you could quantify,
happiness, probably a greater source right now amongst Republicans.
Right, because while we were talking about this a little on the tour, that it's, in a way,
it's so much more fun to be in the opposition, you know, and just like late criticisms on the people
in power.
But then when your team is in power and there's infighting and there's all sorts of articles
every day about how terrible they are, I know it's from mostly the mainstream, which
hates Trump and hates everybody in the Trump administration, but it's aggravating and it's
irritating, and it can be kind of a downer. And I feel like the Republican Party is going
through that right now. What do you think? Yeah, I mean, there's sort of three main areas,
right? One is about dealing with the economy, this word that the president doesn't much like
affordability. But these are tough problems, the cost of housing, the cost of food, the cost of
energy. These are tough issues for any president to deal with. So that's one source of anxiety and
infighting. Two is there's some cabinet members like Pete Hagsett, like Cash Patel, the head of the FBI,
and like Christy Knoem, who have now had to face multiple stories that are super negative about
their storages that, again, are not from the deep state, they're not from Democrats. There's some
cases published in the legacy media, but not always. So today, for instance, New York Post has
a story about cash patel by miranda divine i saw it we should talk about it it's devastating it's
devastating peace and again you got to consider the source maranda's a great reporter and writer
and columnist she's not writing a negative story based on the deep state sources she's just that's
what concerns me she's so good yeah so that's number two is you've got some cabinet members
and then the president's poll numbers just aren't good and again that's not the liberal media
it's not fake polls every poll including private republican polls show it's a snapshot of where we are
It doesn't mean they'll be bad next year.
It doesn't mean he can't turn things around.
But his poll numbers are really bad right now.
And that just all of the one that just hit is from Gallup, which is, you know, the mother of all polls.
Forgive me, I'm having a cough drop.
But that that has approval rating down to 36, a new second term low.
Keep going.
Yeah.
And amongst independence, I think, in that poll, it's 25.
Yeah.
And again, this is not liberal.
It's not anti-Trump.
If his numbers are that bad at the midterms,
they'll lose the House, they might lose the Senate. So that just causes anxiety. And this White House
has done a very good job of not just making Republicans in Congress afraid of them, although they're
good at that, but making them feel they're being communicated with. And right now, they're claiming
they don't feel that way. The White House takes issue with that and says they're communicating all
the time. And it's just, it's just an excuse to rail against the White House. But this is not,
this is not a great time right now for the president's political team but there's there's a
you know there's an interval here to improve things but at the moment there's there are these sources
attention and and when you see somebody like miranda divine write a piece like that about cash
petal who's you know the old omega loyalist it just makes everybody think huh you know like a horror
movie like the the the villain or the the enemy or whatever you want to describe it they're
in the house they're not outside the house they're
in the house.
Well, the FBI report, she references, confuse me.
Because this is what she, her headline is, opinion.
Damning report labels FBI rudderless ship under Cash Patel,
with him and Dan Bongino more concerned with building personal resumes,
which is a quote.
And then she bases her report on, it's called a 115 report, quote,
source reporting and analysis.
of the FBI under the leadership of FBI Director Cash Patel, a pulse check for the first six months
for U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary and Chairman Chuck Grassley and U.S. House Committee
on the Judiciary and Chairman Jim Jordan by the National Alliance of Retired and Active
Duty FBI Special Agents and Analysts. So I remain unclear on whether this was requested
by the Senate Committee, whether this is just a bunch of like ex-FBI people who are disgruntled
and predictably don't like Dan and Cash
or what this is.
Sounds so official.
I don't understand whether it is,
but what we do know is it's very nasty.
It really goes after Cash.
They have a passing shot at Dan Bongino
trying to diminish him,
but mostly it's focused on Cash Patel.
And the thing that they're really zeroing in on
is what they say is like a vanity, I guess, of his,
a vanity.
They talk about how it,
when he flew out to the Charlie Kirk staging, like the FBI staging in the wake of it,
he was insistent on getting an FBI jacket brought to him on board the plane before he disembarked
and that he apparently did not have his own, quoting here,
FBI raid jacket with him, he refused to step from the plane without wearing one,
that FBI special agents at the Salt Lake City Field Office busy working on the Kirk case quote
had to stop and ask around to find an FBI raid jacket.
jacket, a medium-sized one that would fit when a jacket belonging to a female agent was delivered
to Patel on the plane. He complained that, quote, two areas on the upper sleeves did not have
Velcro patches attached. And then he would not leave the plane, quote, until he had two patches
to cover those areas. Quote, so members of an FBI SWAT team took patches off of their uniforms
and ran those patches over to Patel at the airport. The patches were then attached to the loner
FBI raid jacket and Patel disembarked from the plane. The director was not happy with the way the
investigation was going. He had an expletive-filled tirade, whatever. All that's kind of ridiculous.
Of course, people yell in these tense times. But the jacket story, if true, it's not great.
Now, look, I have the same reaction you did, too. Like, I'm reading the story. I've read my share
of stories about stuff like this. I don't remember this kind of quasi-official anonymous report
that's handed over like that I just I just don't remember anything quite like that not just with the
FBI I don't remember anything like that they wrote like a serious rigorous report with all these details
but it's not official but it's kind of official and then and then again the question of Miranda she's the
only one as far as I know who's reported this so far she's not anti-trump she doesn't write for an
anti-trump publication and yet with a few to be sure paragraphs of positive things it's a very
negative story. It's a very negative report. So you got to ask yourself, you know, how did this thing
get done? And how did it end up with Miranda? And how did Miranda decide to write it up? These are not
the only stories like this about Cash Patel. There's other stories, but most of them have
circulated in, you know, places like the Washington Post, the New York Times. So it's a bit of a mystery.
But you've seen the same things with Pete Heggseth and to some extent with Christy Nome, which is,
you just again it's not it's not liberal media it's it's people who love the president who care
about the president who are using uh different outlets in this case the new york post to put out there
there's problems it's hard to escape the conclusion that the people are motivated by desire
to get the the president to to make a change in personnel and he's not done that yet and it's
not clear you know if these will have an impact it's always today
we had a decision from the Third Circuit Court of Appeals before we came on the air,
saying that Alina Haba cannot be the acting U.S. attorney for a district in New Jersey.
And this is separate from the Tish James and James Comey challenge,
which is still making its way up to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.
And we'll see whether that court affirms the lower court decision that she, too,
was that the prosecutor there was also not appointed correctly.
That's Lindsay Halligan.
So this is a separate thing.
It's Alina Haba.
She was Trump's personal lawyer,
and he made her acting U.S. attorney within this district in the Northeast
that answers to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.
Third Circuit Court of Appeals came down unanimously,
three judge panel saying they don't have the power to appoint her.
She's got to go.
She was not properly appointed.
She's not the proper U.S. attorney.
This is not a great decision for Trump.
It's not a great decision to the,
extent it gets considered by the Fourth Circuit. That's deciding something similar, though not
identical, with Lindsay Halligan. But the first thing I did when I got it, Mark, was to look at
who are the judges, who was appointed, and who were they appointed by. And in today's day and age,
what you need to see is not just a Republican president. You need to see Trump, that it was a Trump
appointee if Trump has any fighting chance. If you see George W. Bush appointee, George H.W. Bush
appointee, Reagan, you're not going to see it. You might.
as well see it be a Barack Obama judge. It's almost that bad. They all hate Trump. And that court
was two W appointees and an Obama appointees. So not surprisingly, we knew how it was going to go.
And that's exactly how it went. And that's kind of what I think when I see a lot of the
Republicans leaking on Trump. Because clearly this came from somebody who's more, I think,
right-wing aligned. They went to Miranda. I could be wrong. But it's not just Miranda. I see
some of these reporting in other right-wing papers.
And I think it's the Bush-era people who, you know,
just because they're part of the Trump administration in some way, shape, or form,
like they're currently at the FBI, does not mean that they're pro-Trump.
And if you were there, even if you're a Republican, but you're a more George W. Bush Republican,
you might go to the Post or the Wall Street Journal in particular and leak something very
damaging to Trump.
So it will look like it's, you know, right-on-right violence.
that'll look more credible to the right wing, that is.
But you really hate him just as much as the left hates him.
And what you almost never see is Democrats doing this to Democrat.
I'm like, you're telling me there weren't terrible stories to leak about Pete Buttigieg, Bull, you know,
or Merrick Garland for that matter, or Chris Ray even.
There were.
It just doesn't happen.
Well, it does happen with Kamala Harris.
So there's at least one exception there.
There were stories like that about her and her staff.
I think that it's a sad thing, but it's true.
Judges are result-oriented, and I used to say it all the time after Bush v. Gore,
and lawyers and various political lawyers would call me and say,
no, no, judges are fair, justices are fair, they follow the law, no.
They're almost all result-oriented, and I think that's just horrible.
They should be ruling based on the law, you know, no matter who nominated them for the court.
in this case you're absolutely right that it's a cheat for a reporter to say Republicans are saying if they're Bush Republicans because you know the Bush's and the Bush you know team Bush are not fans of Donald Trump you know any more as you said than the team Obama is but I'll say again there are Republicans now who are unhappy with Cash Patel who are Trump Republicans there are Trump Republicans who are unhappy with Donald Trump right now some about the economy some about Epstein
And you see that reflected not just at the elite level, which is I'm talking about, but you see that in the Gallup poll, but also in other, even Republican polls.
Republicans, for various reasons, are unhappy, even Trump Republicans with the president right now.
And his first order of business is to turn that around, not just overall, but on issues.
Republicans need to be confident about the economy and his policies.
They need to be confident about Epstein and his view there, et cetera.
So he no doubt has problems with Bush Republicans and Reagan Republicans, but he's got some problems with Trump Republicans too now.
And I know that because I talk them directly.
But we have a year to go before the midterm.
So it's reversible, but it requires some honesty right now about what exactly are the problems and are they fixable.
Like the economy, like a better message and actual better policy on health care, like not running around saying we need all these.
Chinese immigrants here and in our universities, and that we need H-1B visas to abound because
our workers can't do it, like that interview with Laura Ingram. That's the kind of stuff that
etches away at the base. They do not want to hear that stuff at all, even though the more
Chamber of Commerce Republicans do like it, and that's why he says it. Okay, let's keep going,
though, on this story about the alleged illegal strike. The left is now very, very concerned, very
concerned about a president or his Department of Warhead ordering an illegal death, an
illegal killing of someone deemed an enemy combatant. Except they didn't much seem to mind during
the Obama era. I was on all the time talking about these strikes that Obama was doing with
the drones. I remember O'Reilly and I having many, many debates about this. And hold on,
we've got some with Obama bragging about how good he was at killing people.
people. And, oh, he told you that in your book, too. Hold on a second. Where is that sound bite, Debbie?
I know. That one's not on tape, but the Obama drone strike is. This is where he was,
SOT 7 is where he was joking about how good he was with the predator drones at the White
House correspondent. And there's a joke, but it's based on reality because he really was taking
out not just alleged terrorist, but Americans who had no due process with his drones. Here's the
joke. And then we'll get to the bigger news.
made with him in your book.
The Jonas brothers are here.
They're out there somewhere.
Sasha and Malia are huge fans.
But boys don't get any ideas.
I have two words for you.
Predator drones.
You will never see it coming.
Okay.
So they're perfectly willing to yuck it up.
I didn't see like a six.
Senator video saying, oh, disobey illegal orders in case you get one to take out the Jonas
brothers. But with you, Mark, he took that joke and made a very serious comment that showed
his real feelings about his use of those drones. And what did he say? Well, he didn't say it directly
to me. He said it, it was, we reported that he said it to his age. He said, I guess I'm pretty good
of killing people. I think that's the quote in, in double down.
this equal to game change. And as you said, he killed an American, at least one American.
That has a big difference, right? For the President of the United States, no, you know,
do we owe the same level of due process to people who aren't Americans who the President says
we're at, I don't think so. But for an American to get no due process and have his president
kill him, that's quite something. Now, again, might have been justified by some, by some
moral, you know, situational ethics thing. But as you said, where was the outrage then by
the press. I was outraged. I was, I was, I was, I was talking quite a bit about it, but where was the
outrage from the media and, and, and from Democrats? And, and Republicans who are principled.
Like, again, there might be a justification for it, but in this country, with our traditions,
this should be discussed and debated, and the president should have to justify it, rather than just
saying, I control the weapons, and now with the drones, you know, even easier, I control these
things and so I'm going to kill whoever I think should be killed. That's a that's a that's just
not our tradition. It might there might be justification for it and I'm not saying I don't I don't
share the goals but it should be debated and discussed and scrutinized and there should be
disclosure about it and and and you know I say nothing could be more MAGA than saying we
can't have a a president who's unfettered in their ability to use our military to do whatever he
wants. You just that's just not that's just not the way American
is. He said to you, or they quoted in your book, Double Down, 2012, turns out I'm really good
at killing people. Didn't know that was going to be a strong suit of mine. I mean, wow, it was a
16-year-old. He was an American citizen, excuse me, killed by a U.S. drone strike in Yemen. He was
the son of terrorist Anwar Al-Alocki, and the justification was, wrong place, wrong time.
Like, too bad. Sorry, not sorry.
Look, the problem they have in the Hegseth situation is reportedly, and again, this is a big asterisk because it's Washington Post reporting, that allegedly after this incident on September 2nd, they then changed the policy, the approach to not, quote, double tap if there were survivors from the boats now swimming in the water after their boat was blown to smithereens.
So it would suggest an acknowledgement that having taken out those two on September 2nd was not ideal.
I don't know if it's an acknowledgement.
It was illegal, but it certainly seems to have been a change in policy.
And in the law, that's exactly the kind of thing you use against somebody, the change in policy or the change in behavior.
Having said all that, Mark, these guys are in no danger whatsoever.
If some overzealous, you know, Senate panel leads to a recommendation for charges, the DOJ somehow finds,
I don't know, some weird independent streak and decides to indict these guys or whoever it would be,
it might be a military prosecution. President Trump is going to pardon them. These guys have nothing
to worry about for this strike. Well, they don't have anything to worry about. I agree with you
from the point of view of a justice department indictment. And I may be wrong about this,
but I don't know that the president can pardon people in the court of military justice and certainly
can impact their careers. I think you can. Really? I don't know. I've turned to
I don't know. Well, I'm trying to remember. I was reading, among others, Andy McCarthy this morning,
who was very tough on the president here, very tough on Heggseth, and not at all at all on his side.
But I think he did acknowledge up front that a pardon would be likely and could render it moot.
Yeah. You know, if you read the Washington Post story carefully, as you did, people should know.
The Washington Post story leaves room for the notion that the order to kill the last two gentlemen, allegedly, was not.
not a direct order from Hegeseth. That Hegset's order was make sure, you know, everybody gets
killed. But it's possible if you read the post story literally that it was the commander who said
do the second tap rather than Hegset himself. Well, I mean, I guess that won't necessarily
affect anything other than the truth of Hegsseth's denial as espoused by Trump on Air Force One
that, that Hegset told me he did not order that. So, I mean, that may get Hegseth off the
hook. In any event, it's like, to me, it's kind of annoying to even debate it. I do think our soldiers
and, you know, all armed forces should not commit war crimes. Definitely on the team don't
commit a war crime. But I also feel like I object to even the scrutiny of this event because
it's all manufactured. It's only being done to retroactively justify this, you know, seditious six
and their, that's what Heggseth is calling them,
and their video, which is based on nothing.
They're just now digging.
It's a fishing expedition.
And it does feel a little, you know,
Stalin's right-hand man-esque, like,
show me the man and I'll show you the crime.
That's how it feels to me.
So I'm really not that into it,
nor do I really care that we're killing the drug boat guys
trying to kill my kids and yours right now
by bringing their fentanyl to the United States
to try to get our kids when they go to college
with, you know, some drug in some moment of weakness.
where they think they're taking a Xanax
like what happened to poor Eric Bowling's child
and instead it's laced with fentanyl.
So I really do kind of not only want to see them
killed in the water, whether they're on the boat
or in the water, but I'd really like to see them suffer.
I would like Trump and Heggseth to make it last a long time
so that they lose a limb and bleed out a little.
Like I'm really having a difficult time ginning up
sympathy for these guys who 10 seconds earlier
almost got taken out by the initial bomb,
but because they managed to get ejected,
you know, a little too soon,
had to be taken out in the water.
I realize legally it may make a difference,
but truly, Mark, this is a tough case
to really gin up the sympathies
of the American people.
Yeah, like I said,
I shared the premise that you just raised
because I think it's important
that we do something to keep our poorest border
from being flooded with drugs
that are killing our people.
So if this is in service of that, I think it's something that should be considered.
I just think there needs to be more debate because I just don't think it's good for the United States to be violating international law, if that's what happened here, or taking human life under conditions that aren't vetted.
Now, I would say every one of these actions has a legal team, and my hope would be that the legal team is signing off on this stuff.
That's what Hexette is saying.
Yeah.
So while outside lawyers may say this is a clear violation, let's find out, you know, again, declassification without revealing sources and methods and operational details, let's find out what the legal justification was for it.
Because if it can't be justified legally, then it's hard to defend it, even if the mission and the goals are admirable and necessary.
But presumably these were signed off on by lawyers.
So let's see what they said.
Let's see how they justified it.
That hasn't been forthcoming.
And I do think that that would quiet the complaints of at least some who are fair-minded about this.
Yes.
And Hexas says they did have sign-off from lawyers at the top of the DOJ and the military system on these strikes,
though his memo is a little ambiguous on like, what about the question of the two swimming in the water?
In any event, I'm not going to lie.
I'm glad they're dead.
Let's keep going because there's a new ad out today.
This whole thing got started as a result of the so-called seditious six.
Again, that's a Hexat term for these lawmakers.
Now, today, there's a new ad that's just been put out by the Women's March,
which is such a weird thing to still have around as like an organization dropping ads.
And this one is trying to do the same thing.
And the way those six tried to get between the commander-in-chief and his armed military,
This one seems to try to get between the Commander-in-Chief
and his armed ICE officers.
Here it is. Watch this.
You will be caught.
You will be removed.
And you will never return.
Kristine Ovo on the TV.
Someone comes in with handcuffs, a man.
He looks forlorn.
She's hugging.
Daddy, how's your day?
He's an ICE officer
What will you say
Read the captions
When she asks about your day
Now these dramatic scenes of ice
Take it out of context
Arresting people
A mask can't hide you from your neighbors
Your children
You God
You don't know
You can walk away
Before the shame follows you home.
Daddy, how's your dad?
You can walk away.
You can walk away as a nice officer,
while not and still receive your paycheck
because these are just cops
who are charged with making arrest mark
based on warrants that are given to them
through a duly enacted process.
That's not what the left will tell you.
They think it's all like dragging kids out of their homes
and making little girls cry.
That's what the women's march wants you to believe.
But they also thought that, you know, equal rights meant wearing a pink P-word hat
and standing on the Upper West Side doing absolutely nothing.
That's the same group.
Yeah.
The tens of millions of people who voted for President Trump left no ambiguity about the mandate he had on these issues.
And they may not like every way ICE operates, but the macro mission to do what is necessary
to not just control the border.
and not just remove certain people from the United States,
but to send the message that you cannot come to this country legally
and expect to be treated like a citizen.
That's what's happening.
Now, are things happening that are in error or in excess
or that aren't to the liking of a Democratic mayor or governor?
They are.
And that's being fought out on the streets of the United States.
And, you know, the hard cases are when some American citizen gets caught up
or some grandma who's been sewing clothes in a community for 30 years gets caught up.
But if people are here illegally, then the law says they need to go.
And in some cases, they're being told to go.
If a citizen is caught up, the government should do its best to make amends and to figure out how to keep that from happening.
But this isn't some rogue operation that's disconnected from democracy.
this is what people who voted for the president in the main one of the main things that they wanted to see him do and that's that's what's happening uh circling back
you can be pardoned by the president under the uniform code of military justice it happened under Biden uh via the u.s probation office
the president can pardon somebody under the um for federal offenses including those obtained in uh u.s district courts
the Superior Court of the District of Columbia
and Military Courts Marshal.
Yeah, that's what I thought.
All right, I said corrected.
Yeah, no worries.
They can be pardoned by Trump, and they will be.
So they're not really facing any actual legal jeopardy,
at least not under this administration.
And given what we saw at the end of Biden,
I wouldn't be surprised if we saw just a blanket from Trump on his way out
that he pardons all the military officers for any crimes,
any alleged crimes in connection with the Venezuelan drugboat raids
so that they don't have to worry.
And they shouldn't have to worry.
There should not be a distraction for them.
they already have to put their lives on the line every day, their actual safety,
they shouldn't have to worry about this BS too.
All right, forging forward.
Let's talk about what's happening in Minnesota because we spent the first like 42 minutes
talking about some not great things for Republicans with which they are going to have to deal.
But they do have something happening on Team Blue that is an outrage and that gets right
to the heart, I think, of why most Republicans cannot stand Democrat rule.
This excessive government purse that is filled with other people's money, none of which anyone can afford, that is then doled out to favored interest groups, and then even when fraud is detected, the purse is not closed.
Instead, it's refilled with more of your money and mine to fund, in this case, Somali immigrants who are buying luxury cars, fancy jewelry, nice homes and clothes.
And in some cases, funneling money back to Somalia to pay for a terrorist group, terrorist group, al-Shabaab, and all under the, I mean, open eyes of Minnesota lawmakers who reports the City Journal and the New York Times and a combo a pair of reports knew.
They knew they were being defrauded, but didn't want to say anything because they were worried about being called racist, Mark.
You know, the parallel is to this horrible thing that's happened in the UK with immigrants molesting children.
Thank you.
And government officials say the same thing.
Well, we didn't do anything because we didn't want to appear to be racist or prejudiced.
This story is so outrageous that the New York Times wrote one of the most fair anti-democratic stories that I've ever read in the paper about what's happened.
And as you said, all these charities, all these government programs, government funded programs,
and in many cases government funding private groups, some coming out of COVID,
they just created fraudulent schemes, fake patients, fake students, young people with diseases and afflictions.
And they just basically said, you know, we help these 100 kids, so give us all the money that, you know,
that we should get from the government.
And as you said, they would, basically the Democrats would see the cookie jar being robbed and then they put more cookies back in the same jar and then turn their backs again.
This is a massive scandal.
And the scale, it's not just kind of symbolic.
The scale of it is like a billion dollars in Minnesota alone for the fraud in these programs.
As you said, most of it, most of the people who've been charged by the U.S. attorney are from the Somali community.
Now, many of them are American citizens, either born here or naturalized, but as you said, many also have ties back to Somalia.
And the Democrats don't really have an explanation for how this happened, except to say, as you did, well, we didn't want to appear racist.
We didn't want to appear prejudiced.
This is an important community in our state.
Massive rip-off of the taxpayers, massive, and a massive repudiation of the notion that you can just hand out government money and hope for the best.
that people aren't going to commit fraud.
Oh, I mean, I don't even know if it was hope for the best situation.
I mean, I watched this one guy who's part of the Democratic lawmaking crew.
I think he's a Republican, but he's part of the State House in Minnesota over the weekend.
And he was like, they all knew.
Everyone knew.
We've all been jumping up and down about this for years.
They just didn't care.
They just decided it was in their interest group to funnel the money to this interest group that paid for them.
You know, all these Somali immigrants are voting down.
Democrat. And he was saying it doesn't make any sense because if you look at their values
on paper, they sound more like Republicans. Culturally, the Somali crew is not exactly far left.
They're, they like school choice, he said, is their number one most important issue. So why are they
voting Democrat? Because of this. There's a given in cash giveaways. Here's a tweet put out by the
Minnesota Department of Homeland Security. I'm not going to read the whole thing because it's
long. Hold on. Actually, I have it here. Okay. Again, just to
couple highlights. Tim Walts is 100% responsible for massive fraud in Minnesota. We let Tim Walts know
of fraud early on, hoping for our partnership and stopping fraud, but no, we got the opposite
response. He systematically retaliated against whistleblowers using monitoring threats, repression,
and did his best to discredit fraud reports. Instead of partnership, we got the full weight of
retaliation by him. It's scary, isolating, and left us wondering who we can turn to. This is a cascade
of systemic failures leading up to Tim Wals.
Then they go on, just a little bit more.
Fundamentally,
Tim Wals is dishonest, lacks ethics, and integrity,
has poor leadership abilities and has never taken accountability
for his role in fraud.
Instead, he deflects by blaming national politics
for his own failings.
That's exactly right.
As far as I can see, and they thank the New York Times
for bringing the plight of Minnesota to the national stage.
I have to say, Mark, I think Tim
Walls is done. I think this will bring him down. He's running for a third term. I think it's over
for him. What do you think? Well, the current speaker, Republican speakers, is going to probably be
the Republican nominee, I think, and whoever their nominee is, I think it's hard to win a third
term, and this story is going to continue to reverberate around the state. It is more of a blue state
than a purple state, though. So for whatever reasons he got elected twice, maybe he can win
again. But certainly he's imperiled. And certainly the threads on this are going to continue to be
pulled. But I'm not ready to predict he's going to lose, but he's obviously now in a very tough
political position. When the New York Times does a very long, big story calling into question your
competence and maybe your ideology, it's a sign of trouble for sure. What did you make of the city
journal report followed a few days later by the New York Times report? I was like, first of all,
go city journal. But what did you? Do you think they, New York Times been working on this and got
scooped or they hustle to get because a lot of these facts have been out there yeah it's a good question
the timing obviously probably not coincidental because they're so close together the question of the money
being used to go overseas to fund criminal activity i still want to see more documentation on that
it's certainly suggestive but i'd like to see more because it's obviously a huge charge and a
potentially massive story well i tip my hat to the good folks of city journal who are ahead of
a lot of the mainstream news reporting and that is
a publication well worth your time, ladies and gentlemen. Mark Halpern stays with us. We will be
right back and there's a lot more news to get to. Stand by. Ever read the label on a typical
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Mark Halpern is back with me. He is the host of Next Up with Mark Halperin on MK Media. Go and subscribe.
Get it on YouTube. YouTube.com slash ATT. Next up. Not A.T. At. I feel like Ron Burgundy.
You got to do the at is what he's trying to tell me in this prompter. It's YouTube.com slash
at, like the at sign, next up Halpern. Okay. I don't know why they did that Mark Halpern, but it's
annoying. Can I tell you the best story?
about that. I heard the other day. It's about someone we both know, but I'm not going to say who it is.
Oh, good tease.
This person was reading Promptor, and it was a story about the Hague. And this person read,
was reading the Promptor and said, the, the hagu, they said. Oh, no. No.
Yeah. Now, Abby hates when I tell this story, but I have to tell it because she's so fun.
Abby is very smart. But she does this weird thing with pronunciations that she doesn't,
She doesn't, she's like a, she's laughing, just like a mental block on certain pronunciations
in certain words. And one time Mark Siegel was sitting on the set with me at Fox, and he had
like updated his thoughts, be, I don't know what she was bringing me, but she was bringing me
something about the segment that we were doing. And what, what it said, what it was about
was, wait, okay, reverse. She had to transcribe something, a medical,
oppressor that it just happened and give it to me while I was interviewed Mark Siegel.
And the document she brought out that she had typed up said,
they said she suffered a grandma seizure.
That's, if you're going to have a seizure, it's one of the best ones to have.
Totally.
But it's so much better than like the mean uncle seizure.
Yeah.
Or the me kin down the block seizure.
There's all sorts of bad ones.
But the grandma, that's awesome.
No, it's like, it's kind of nice to you and gives you a bunch of
candy at the end.
Yeah, it pinches your cheeks.
Speaking of grandparents.
Matt's your hair.
Back to Tim Walsh, because we can't leave that story without me showing the following
war between, well, I'll get into this in one second, between Trump and Wals, but here's
Wals trying to, like, do damage control on this, unmeat the press.
I don't think he understands what that term means.
Here he is with Kristen Wilker, SOT 19.
Do you take responsibility for failing to stop this fraud in your state?
Certainly, I take responsibility for putting people in jail.
Governors don't get to just talk theoretically.
We have to solve problems.
And I will note, it's not just Somalis.
Minnesota is a generous state.
Minnesota is a prosperous state.
A.
Bond-rated.
But that attracts criminals.
Those people are going to jail.
We're doing everything we can.
But to demonize an entire community on the actions of a few, it's lazy.
I see. So they're so well run that the criminals were attracted to Minnesota. And it's not all Somalis. It's literally hundreds of Somalis except for the eight who were non-Somali. So don't generalize, Mark. He too has gotten the research paper on don't alienate the Somalis. They're still voting for us. Yeah. I mean, it's very reminiscent of how he handled controversies during his presidential, vice presidential campaign, which is he's got some stuff to say.
and he hopes the parade moves on before anybody asks a follow-up question.
I did a little checking during the break.
Minnesota used to have two-year terms for president, for governor.
They don't anymore.
Four-year terms.
No term limits, but no one's ever won a third term.
No one has ever successfully been a third-term, four-year governor.
And I think he might not break the streak after that answer.
If they vote for him, they deserve what they're getting at this point.
So here was a little.
war of words between Trump and President Trump, President Trump and Governor Walls, which is the
opening shot?
It's actually, the opening shot was in a true social in which President Trump called Tim Walls
retarded.
He used the word, quote, retarded.
And then Tim Walls responded to that, again on Meet the Press.
I think it's sought 20.
Look, Donald Trump insulting me is a badge of honor for me, but I think we all know as both
as an educator for a couple decades and as a parent, using that term is just so damaging.
It's hurtful.
This is cruelness.
This is meanness.
It's aimed at a broader community.
And as far as demonizing our Somali community, maybe he could help us on some things.
Demonizing an entire community, folks who are in the professions, educators, artists, doctors, lawyers, entrepreneurs,
they bring the diversity and the energy to a place like Minnesota.
and for him to just randomly decide to do this, it makes no sense.
Do your job, get the criminals out, secure our border,
but do it with dignity and respect to the American tradition
of respecting immigrants and refugees as a beacon of hope.
Okay, Trump shutting down immigration from third world countries
was not done randomly.
It was done in the wake of this reporting and the shooting
of these two national guardsmen by an Afghani national over the weekend.
It wasn't random, but let me just give you the last piece of the story,
which is Trump then responding to that chastising from Tim Wals on Air Force One Sunday night.
It's not too.
You called him what many Americans do find in a fix of war retarded.
Do you stand by that claim of calling Tim Moll's retarded?
Yeah, I think there's something wrong with him.
Absolutely.
I'm sure.
You have a problem with him?
You know what?
I think there's something wrong with him.
Anybody that would do what he did, anybody that would allow those people into his state
and pay billions of dollars out of it,
Somalia.
There's something wrong with walls.
Okay, so Trump's defense is he actually is slow.
He's not even taking on the issue that that term is offensive to some.
He's like, but it's real.
It's, I'm telling you, he's not, he's not, he's slow, which is classic Trump.
Classic Trump.
I was going to say anyone who spent any time with Donald Trump is zero surprised at that response.
Yeah.
He's not sorry, Mark.
You're shocked?
No.
He's not even sorry, not sorry.
He's just not sorry.
Oh, no.
Not sorry.
And I had to say, like, I haven't thinking about that word because a lot of people are starting
to use that word again.
I don't mean to be too philosophical about it.
But I do think it's one of those, like, it's a message word.
It's not really like anybody wants to make fun of people who are slow when it comes to brain
development.
It's that they're sick and tired of being told what they can and can.
say that term was used for decades, you know, without it, no one's trying to actually say something
negative about that community. They're trying to say something about the person they're targeting
that they're kind of slow. And this is a way of saying, we're done being word policed.
I think that's why Trump says it too. Yeah, and also it's a word that he grew up using, I'm sure,
because when he was a kid, that was a word people used. So again, I'm not surprised by it.
I'm always against word policing.
This is a general matter, so.
Yeah, it never works with Donald Trump.
I can speak to that firsthand.
Just don't go there.
He's not going to be moved by you at all.
No matter how good your research is,
no matter how good your research is,
no matter how I profile the debate moment,
he will not be moved by the word police.
That's right.
But this wound up being a great strength of his
as things turned out.
Okay, speaking of the national
guard soldiers who were shot. That tweet that Trump sent out, or truth social, in the wake of
this tragedy, these two poor young National Guardsmen, 120, 124, the 20-year-old now dead,
the 24-year-old still fighting for his life. I don't know. It doesn't sound good, Mark.
The perpetrator shot and expected to make it, shot by a third National Guardsman.
But now Trump sends out this truth social, which is just, I mean, it is a, you know, it is a
barn burner. And I have to say, it may be, in the view of many Americans, the best thing he's done
since becoming president for the second time. I'm going to read just a couple highlights very long,
but here are the highlights. He's talking about how he's going to get rid of these migrants and
asylum seekers. And he says, a migrant earning 30 grand with a green card will get roughly 50 grand
and yearly benefits for their family. As an example, hundreds of thousands of refugees from
Somalia are completely taking over the once great state of Minnesota.
gang are roving the streets looking for prey as our wonderful people stay locked in their
apartments and houses hoping against hope that they will be left alone. The seriously retarded
governor of Minnesota, Tim Walls, does nothing. And on we go. Then he says, I will permanently
pause migration from all third world countries to allow the U.S. system to fully recover,
terminate all of the millions of Biden illegal admissions, including those signed by Sleepy Joe
Biden's auto pen, and remove anyone who is not a net asset to the U.S. or,
who's incapable of loving our country.
I will end all federal benefits and subsidies to non-citizens of our country,
denaturalized migrants who undermine domestic tranquility and deport any foreign national
who is a public charge security risk or non-compatible with Western civilization.
I don't know whether any of that or all of it is true, but I think most Republicans would say,
shoot into my veins.
That's exactly what I voted for.
Yeah, and not just only Republicans, some independents, some Democrats.
That's been Donald Trump's poor message for a while and very informed by the experience with Europe.
You know, Europe is dealing with all of these problems in some ways more severe than what the United States has dealt with.
Whatever laws might be broken by what the president's suggesting, whatever traditions, whatever norms, whatever downsides there are,
the coalition that elected him president two out of three times is well on board with that
philosophy about what America needs to do to be safe and prosperous. So there are tens of millions
who don't like what the president wrote, but there are tens of millions who do. And again,
no one should be surprised that that's his reaction to what occurred. And we talked about the
Gallup poll earlier, which had an overall not great approval number for Trump, but one of the
areas in which he's still very much holding on is immigration. So you tell me whether this
retort to that true social by Mark Kelly, who's one of the so-called seditious six in connection
with that Pete Heggseth story we covered earlier, but also has decided to weigh in on this whole
thing with the National Guardsman as well. Tell me whether this is effective, given those
poll numbers, SOT 9. This is kind of more of the same from this president when he says things like
third world countries. What is he really saying? I think what he's saying is he doesn't want brown people
in our country. Mark? I mean, if he wants to get the squad's endorsement for president, it could be
effective. Is that what that is? I mean, it's more than that. It's the belief of the Democratic Party
about Donald Trump. They believe he's motivated by racism. It's what they think about Stephen Miller, too.
They think they're bigots who want America to be an all-white country when that's not what they want,
but that's the, Mark Kelly is enunciating the view of blue America about President Trump's view on immigration.
I mean, honestly, it's so tired.
It's so worn.
It doesn't work.
It's like, okay, you can keep trying to, you know, use those plays out of the old playbook,
but you use them to try to get a woman elected president, and it failed.
What would make you think it's going to work better now on an issue that Trump, notwithstanding his overall sagging numbers, still has huge support on?
So, okay, I guess that's what they're going to do.
There's more of that coming.
You'll be shocked from Jasmine Crockett on MS now.
Here's SOT 10.
And the idea that one person can get out of line and commit such a horrific crime as shooting two of our national guardsmen, two national guardsmen that never ever asked to be.
here. In fact, we know the young lady that lost her life, specifically, we're saying that this
is a waste of time, but now you want to go against every single immigrant. That doesn't make
sense. And it's frankly not who we are, because if that's the case, let's talk about the white
supremacists and how many of them needs to be kicked out of this country, because I can guarantee
you, I can track down more crimes that they've committed, because overall immigrants have a lower
crime committal rate than white supremacists. But we don't want to talk about that in this country.
Overall, I love that. Overall, yes, because there are indeed still more Americans in America than there are
immigrants, madam. But once again playing the race card there and a bunch of disinformation as
she does it, Trump prioritizing deporting migrants instead of white supremacists. Your thoughts on her?
Well, I have to confess in the last three weeks, Representative Crockett has become a guilty pleasure for me.
I love watching her on TV and watching how her mind works as it connects to her mouth.
I really do.
It's just something mesmerizing about how she takes questions and spins them back with, it's like, it's like not word salad.
It's like a word pad tie.
There's a lot of complexities.
There's different flavors, textures, all in there.
So it's hard for me to analyze what she says because I just, I watch her like this.
For those listening on the podcast version, I dropped my mouth in slack-jaw disbelief.
I mean, it's incredible the thing she says.
And she's still thinking of running for statewide office, which I would look forward to.
And by the way, that reference she made to the National Guards woman who was killed thinking it was pointless or a waste of time to be doing this in D.C. is what.
way, way out of context and shame on her for doing that to a newly fallen soldier.
What the woman said, Sarah, was that it's pointless if they're not going to let us actually do law enforcement.
She wanted to have the reins taken off of her and the other National Guardsmen.
She wanted to do more law enforcement.
She was upset over, you know, these constant crackdowns on them, not to be able to do anything to actually help the city of D.C.
So that's a Democrat problem, Jasmine Crockett.
That's not a complaint that she was there in the first place.
It was a request for people like you to try to take the reins off so that the National Guard can do what they're capable of doing.
But who would expect media honesty from her?
Okay, you mentioned Stephen Miller.
And he's kind of in the news today because of his wife, Katie Miller, who went on scene.
CNN and had a very interesting exchange with Abby Phillip, who tries to act like she's just totally
benign, he's totally neutral, you know, it's just the facts that make her always come down
on the side of the Democrats. It's not her bias. It's just the facts. She can't be in charge
of the fact that all the facts run in favor of Democrats. That's just how it goes. So they had
exchange on her show and I'll just let it play out you'll you'll get it this is
Friday night's not 26 wait you have Jennifer Welch on your show very often and you've
never pushed back as she has called my health my son my husband a white nationalist
hold on that is no different than Nick Fuentes going on Tucker Carlson's show it's not
and you should admit it well hold on wait hold on how is it anything similar it's not
remotely similar at all Nick Fuentes sits around and says that he likes Hitler how is
that is similar to do with it what does she have to do that she has nothing to
But hold on.
Literally nothing.
Scott, Katie is the person who just said to me that it is comparable to say that Nick Fuentes,
who is literally a neo-Nazi, is the same as somebody, a liberal,
who has an opinion, who is not a neo-Nazzo.
They are not the same.
How do you want, excuse me, let's go back to this point one more time.
Nick Fuentes can espouse an opinion on Tucker calls his show.
It is not the same thing.
The same way you didn't push back when someone called someone in my family a Nazi.
It's not different.
second, if someone comes on this show and says, I love Hitler and I admire what he did,
they would never, first of all, I would never invite them on the show and they would never be
invited back. So those two things are not the same thing. But yet you've gone on Jennifer Wolf's
podcast. It's the same thing. Okay. So Jennifer Welsh came up. I think I said that that's Stephen
Miller's wife, Katie Miller, but also she was on Doge. She's an independent professional in her own
write and podcast host that Jennifer Welsh who I'm just now getting to see in these podcast clips
who is possibly the most hateful person in the national dialogue today it's like tough to say but even
joy read is more joyful than this woman she's truly deeply deeply hateful of every everybody on team
red here's just sampling of this person who Abby Phillip is totally fine with has on her show
repeatedly went on this woman's show herself Abby Philip did not
hateful. See Stephen Miller, hateful. Jennifer Welsh, not hateful. That's Abby Phillips
World. Here, watch. Shockingly, the conservatives that I thought were just crusty, old white
people have morphed into this young group of misogynist. And I can tell you, when I'm around
white people, they test the racist water. They tested on people like you all. Stephen Miller is a
Nazi and he is a sociopath. He is a little insecure white supremacist. This guy was bullied
in high school and he's unattractive and he's four foot 10 and nobody fucking likes him.
You get to J.D. Vance, who is a failed drag queen? Because little Moses Mike Grinder Johnson
worships two things. Donald Trump and his closeted life for this dementia ridden diaper wearing sack of
shit he started off his 60 minutes interview by saying i am not a nazi okay he clearly clearly
is a nazi people that triple trump should be banned boycotted from enjoying the best thing that
america has to offer which is multiculturalism get your fat asses out of the mexican restaurant
get your fat asses over to crack or barrel because nobody wants to see your fucking smug ass teeny weenie
pink arm, big gut around. Nobody wants to see that shit. No one.
You got it? Not hateful. It's fine. Abby Phillip can a, that's just a liberal with an
opinion. That's how she described her. Stephen Miller, with his integration crackdown,
supported by the vast majority of Americans, hateful. Clearly, Abby Phillip has no problem with
him being called a white supremacist or a Nazi because she was actually on Jennifer Welch's
show when Jennifer said that directly to.
Abby, Philip, fine. Your thoughts?
I just think the left has to play by the same rules as they want the right to play by.
And if they want to be the police of who can speak on the National Town Square,
then they need to recognize that they've got policing to do in their backyard as well.
And they just, right now, that's just not how they feel.
And they should, because they should either let everybody speak or they should police their own side.
But here's what's happening there.
I mean, you're being polite.
But Abby Phillip finds absolutely nothing wrong with what that woman said.
I guarantee you she agrees with all of it.
She's a fan of this Welsh person.
And so she wants her to come on her show, I think four times we counted.
She said yes to going on this person's show.
Then this woman, do we have the sound bite you guys?
I don't know where we are, but like in the sot lineup.
But she went on her show and she's the woman said it directly.
to her. Here's that. Listen, listen to this. There was no pushback. Here's what Abby Phillip
tried to just sort of say, oh, gee, I don't know what's in his head. Gee, could be white
supremacist. Who can know? Watch. Stephen Miller is a white supremacist. I mean, he is, and he's basically
running the White House. They keep Trump busy with his decorating projects. He's got building the
arch now. He's got his Oval Office design. And then you have these real sociopaths that are real
anti-Semites, true white supremacists like Stephen Miller.
And even though he's Jewish, she's like a Nazi Jew.
Well, look, I can't, I can't speak to what Stephen Miller's motivations are.
You're such an asshole.
I'm sorry, but Abby Phillip is a fucking asshole.
She let her call him a Nazi Jew and just said, I'm sorry, but I can't speak to what his
motivations are.
What a cowardly dodge just to try to maintain some
semblance of objectivity. The only proper response to that is, come on, hold it, hold it.
We can criticize his immigration policy all day long if you want. Don't call him a Nazi Jew.
That's disgusting. Well, she calls balls and strikes. She's just she's never seen a Democrat
there or anything but a strike. She's going to have to have her glasses readjusted really soon.
But this is the mainstream of CNN, Mark. This is the reinvented, more mainstream moderate CNN.
that's truly one of the faces of it.
Yeah. If Paramount buys them and Ellison, you know,
enacts his vision, I'd be surprised if she's still in that job.
Good. Get her, Allison. Go Barry.
You can do some crossover programming. They're going to need your help.
Get her. Get rid of her. And by the way, she will fail in the independently
because she has no personality. She has a lot of bias and no personality.
It's a bad combo, actually, but perfect, perfect for CNN.
She's making our friend Scott Jennings rich.
Well, that's good.
We're in favor of that.
But he can go on some other loser show at CNN for that when she gets fired.
Something else happened on regular TV, CNN, with Abby Phillip.
That actually is kind of interesting.
And that is the son of Catherine Zeta Jones and Michael Douglas went on.
And reportedly, as Maureen would say, reportedly allegedly did not do this.
that well, to the point where, hold on, I'm just going to give you the headline before we play
it, the parents are said to be so furious with CNN that they intend to blacklist the entire
network moving forward. Now you're having Scott Jennings weigh in on this and others as well.
This is from a debate that happened on November 10th, but is only now causing the response.
Yeah, you can.
Before you play it?
Because I skim the New York Post story.
What does their son do for a living?
Like, why was he on CNN?
It's funny, you should ask.
He is host of Sirius XM's Young Americans with Dylan Douglas
and a 22 graduate of Brown University,
which is pretty much all we need to know about him.
His Gen Z political show airs Saturdays at 10 a.m.
Must have missed it.
What were you going to say, Mark?
I said I would have guessed Wesleyan, but Brown's okay.
Brown.
I mean, literally,
there's no school, no school in the nation
to which I would less want to, I would, I would, I would,
there's no school worse than Brown when it comes to woketopia.
They're number one.
They're worse than Columbia.
They're, they're number one.
Oberlin, Oberlin is number one.
No, what's worse about Oberlin?
Oberlin.
I know they're terrible.
They've been in Sconson, skin.
But truly, like, I think Brown is an outpost for Hamas.
I think that's almost literally true.
almost but they're so bad
Oberlin's bad
come up
Oberlin is not
like if you
let's go under cover
let's go undercover let's go undercover
can we post do you think we could both
pass for college students
let's go undercover
here's what I'd like to do
go undercover as a Jewish
American and go to Brown
University and like if I were a man
I'd wear the yarmaca I'd do like
something to make it obvious
because they are
breeding, breeding anti-Semites, in my opinion, at Brown University.
It's disgusting.
It's worse than any place.
All right.
Let's do this.
Let's get a makeup artist who can turn you into an Orthodox Jewish man, and I'll get a camera.
I think we should have to take off the makeup, and then wear, like, the right hair.
Let's go to Brown, and we'll go to the halale, and then you'll walk out, and we'll just shoot
the whole thing and see what happens.
Yeah, I think, well, I'll be lucky if I make it across campus, because that, you know,
is disgusting. In any event, back to Mr. Douglas, Dylan, that is, who's the dual
nepo baby. And this is what, look at this. This is reportedly what has his parents so irate
over his, quote, humiliation, allegedly at the hands of CNN, that they're going to boycott
the network. Here.
You cannot put on the American people that Democrats were the one that were hurting people,
making this plight. Who was casting the votes against?
against opening the government.
Democrats or Republicans?
Who was...
Who was casting the votes?
Scott, who was wanting to cut SNAP benefits?
Nobody.
Republicans voted to fund SNAP 15 times.
Who's playing up SNAP?
Who's playing up SNAP after two courts ruled that it was allowed?
Republicans voted to fund SNAP 15 times.
Democrats voted to defund it 15 times,
and now it took...
And we had to get hate to join us.
You talk about the Affordable Health Care Act.
It's terrible.
Landmark legislation is not perfect.
We understand that Democrats, Republicans,
independence.
Seventy percent of Americans,
not Democrats, not just independent, 70% of Americans believe that they should include, increase
those subsidies past the Denmark of December, the COVID-era subsidy benefits.
So it's a huge, huge thing that Democrats, Republicans, 70% agree with.
And look, with it comes to the government shutdown, I was of the persuasion that to go for
it, I didn't really get it.
You know, Democrats wanted a fight.
They got a fight.
Chuck Schumer back in last year, didn't fight.
He got a lot of flack for it, particularly.
home state of New York. So they wanted a fight, but they found a fight that was worth fighting
with talking about the Affordable Health Care Act. People were with them. Democrats were leading
in the polls. We went big on Tuesday. That's what it was for, right? It was for the elections.
Well, I think we should have kept going. What I don't understand, and which I would love others
to help me out understand, I don't understand why we caved so soon when the American people
seemed to be on our... Because the election ended. You just said it. It was for the election.
Listen, the election ended. Hold on. That's it.
normal like whatever i'm booking him on next up by the way are you you should right now right now
i'm trying right now as we speak using my hand off camera to text the booker and say i actually would
listen to that yeah let's see if he does any better with you he didn't do well i mean that's clear
he wasn't substantive and he didn't have his talking points lined up never mind actual substance
but did anyone expect any different like why why did they think their 22 year old son would go on
a CNN across from the Scott Jennings of the world and do well. Why did they think that?
I mean, I don't know. For a liberal and a CNN pundit slot, I didn't think he was so bad.
I mean, it wasn't great, but I mean, with those qualifiers, okay. But honestly, like when I was
22. I could name names, but I mean, I thought, you know, whatever, like grading on the normal
curve. I didn't know. If I were his parents, maybe they didn't like the part, the part in his
hair, I thought I would, I would redo the hair. But to me, it is about a thousand,
It exposes something.
No, it never works.
Not on a man.
I have a center part.
It's good.
But it doesn't work in a man.
But am I right that he had a center part?
Can we roll the tape again?
I need to see it now.
I think maybe I'm wrong.
I thought I'm not going to center part.
No, it requires investigation.
It's important.
I agree.
That Democrats were the one that were hurting people making this play.
Kind of.
Who was testing the votes against the government?
Yeah.
It's certainly and it's indistinct.
Who was casting the votes?
It's not great.
Scott, who was wanting to snap?
So if my son said, I'm going up against Scott Jennings and I'm going to have the center part, I'd say, no.
Pick a side.
First of all, right, show up like a man with a real opinion and a real part.
But I think this espouses like so much about Hollywood.
I think those two are used to everybody genuflecting when they walk by, never mind their offspring with the dual royalty of Hollywood.
legends, at least Michael Douglas
aside, but Catherine Zeta
Jones is no slouch in her own right when it comes
to Hollywood fame, success, and movies,
and so on. And they're horrified.
They don't understand what it's
like to be in our lane,
Mark. I mean, honestly, it's like...
Totally agree. Right? They don't... Like, it's...
It's a day ending
and why to have multiple negative
stories written about you that are not true.
To have people say the most vile things.
This guy had mild pushback by Scott Jennings
in a segment for which he was not prepared.
who cares? Like, look what happened with Gady Miller the other day. Like, this, they should not allow
their 22-year-old son to be out there if their skin is this thin. Totally agree. And I'll say
in my dealing with Hollywood people around politics and, you know, in public policy,
they're pretty thin skin. They just want to be told they're right. So I'm not surprised that
they thought their precious little bundle was, uh, was, uh, overwhelmed in the rough, rough and tumble of
CNN set with Scott Jennings.
Well, while we're on the university set, Brown, Oberlin, and Dylan Douglas, let's take a march
across the pond, I guess a sail across the pond to see what's happening with the now
ex-elected president of the Oxford Union. This guy, George Aberronier, got elected to be the head
of the president of the Oxford Union, the debate club, which is historic and has been around
for a long, long time. And months earlier, before Charlie Kirk's death, he debated Charlie. And
Charlie crushed him. It was beautiful. Charlie, this guy who never graduated college, never went to
college, up against this Oxford kid who was the now elected head of the debate society. And Charlie
swept the floor with him. It was great. And right after Charlie, you know, right after Charles,
Charlie was shot, and as you know, we were on the air together, it was clear, right from the
moment that first, not even the most terrible video hit, but the first video hit, that this
was obviously a very severe situation and life-threatening at a minimum. And instead of recognizing
that, this guy, George Aberronier, who had debated in a gentlemanly fashion against from Charlie,
Charlie didn't, you know, throw shots under the belt or anything like that.
Celebrated it.
We have it.
I thought it was just a tweet.
Tweeting out something like, it's wild, wow, L-O-L that Charlie got shot.
And now he decided to sit down with the British outlet LBC and tried to justify his disgusting tweets, again, which were totally insensitive to Charlie, to his then wife.
widow Erica, to his children, to the community that loved Charlie and supported him,
who he knew was suffering when he did all this, but had absolutely no compunctions about doing
it anyway. And now here he is trying to explain why he sent out the repeated tweets.
A stupid and kind of silly thing for me to say. I reacted to kind of a notification and the
headline. I had no real context for, you know, what happened. I didn't really understand
the severity of the situation. I reacted poorly.
and then upon kind of realizing just how serious kind of these things were,
I kind of deleted everything, I posted on my social media kind of apologising.
Because there'll be some people listening saying,
well, you know, did you really need to know how severe the situation was
and you knew a guy who you'd met, had got shot?
Of course, and I think it's a valid position, I think.
Why did you?
I think part of the, Mr. Kirk's comments don't exist in a vacuum, you know.
He's an incredibly kind of polarizing figure.
And I think it's almost a symptom of him and my reaction,
a symptom of kind of how we have discourse online in which, you know, it's oftentimes very
reactive.
It's oftentimes about saying something almost inflammatory, almost because I wanted to say spark
a conversation about kind of what happened, the fact that, oh my God, I guess it's such
a major event that's just taken place.
You wanted to get a reaction.
Exactly.
I wanted to get a reaction.
I want to have a conversation.
And, you know, a laugh.
A laugh and a bit of a reaction.
And kind of I realized afterwards that, you know, that wasn't the right way to go about it.
Oh my God, Mark, the original tweets are, Charlie Kirk got shot. Let's fucking go.
He posted on WhatsApp shortly after the shooting.
Charlie Kirk got shot, L-O-O-O-O-L, he added on Instagram.
It was repeated. This is not, there was a melee at the Charlie Kirk event.
There was a gun that went off. He knew Charlie got shot.
And now this idiot interviewer lets him get away with, I didn't.
realize how serious it was. And the fact that this guy's even still, I think he's still at Oxford.
He did eventually get a vote of no confidence to be president of the debate society for this year.
But he's at Oxford right now and given a total pass for those comments.
I mean, the original behavior on social media is just so abhorrent, but to then decide to sit
for an interview where the ostensible premise is to explain what you did and to come so ill-prepared
and to make the whole thing just worse and more grotesque i just i find i find it to be one of the saddest things
and of course the premise of his defense is that charlie was some evil polarizing monster
which you know in the months since he's died the left and the media has had all this time to
produce evidence that charlie was a bigoted hate hateful person and of course they have it
because he wasn't and they can't.
And yet that's what he brings to the table as his defense.
Well, I could say these things
because Charlie was such a hateful person.
It just makes me sick.
It's disgusting.
So this was LBC as leading Britain's conversation
with Lewis Goodall.
Lewis, you failed.
That was a disgusting display.
That was a pathetic attempt
at actually holding him to account
for what he, in fact, wrote in those two posts.
And I didn't realize
how serious it was when the tweets themselves say Charlie got shot. Fuck you, Lewis. You fell down
on the job and you humiliated yourself, humiliated yourself against a true villain, too, which
makes it especially egregious. Stand by. Mark Halpern returns after this quick break.
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Mark Halper,
is back with me. Mark, tomorrow is election day, not in very many places, but in some places,
including in Tennessee, where there is a U.S. House seat up for grabs right now. The Republican
who held the district has retired to go be part of the private sector, but was apparently
facing some sort of a scandal anyway, so he's out. And now this Afton Bain, who's a Democrat,
she's currently serving in the Tennessee State House as a representative, is running
for now to be a member of the U.S. Congress against a Republican who would seem to be a
shoe in. I think this district went, what, 30 points or something like that, overwhelmingly to
the Republican last time around. The Democrats now say it would be like a victory if they could get
it to, you know, within 10 points this race. But this woman, who they are running, is an
apparent lunatic. We covered her on AM update last week before we went on vacay. But here she is,
we didn't get to this soundbite, outside of the Tennessee State House, where she was trying
to make some sort of a point, but looked much more like our children when they were toddlers.
Here it is him.
Trying to barge into the, I think it's the speaker's office.
Sorry, the governor's.
That's her screaming.
Are you okay?
Sorry, that was completely a mess.
Then the video goes on for another two minutes with her just sitting on the floor moaning,
just rocking and moaning, like a drama queen.
Like you're trying to play it up for the cameras.
And now this woman who says she can't stand Nashville, she hates is running for, you know,
a Congress position that would represent Nashville among other areas in Tennessee.
And you tell me whether the Democrats have any shot actually winning or coming within their alleged goal of keeping the race relatively
tight. Well, you never know for sure. It's hard to poll special elections. She's unlikely to win
largely because of the makeup of the district, very pro-Trump. But she will outperform Kamala Harris
in the district. And so I don't, assuming she's not going to win, I don't think it matters that she's
going, how close she comes. I think what matters is why is she coming close? Because as that
clip and many others I've seen suggest, I haven't had a chance to go out there and watch for myself,
she's not a very good candidate. Sometimes, you know, you can overperform in a district if you're a Democrat
in a Republican district because you're awesome.
She's not, although her media is pretty good.
Her paid ads are pretty good.
So I think that the issue here is,
are the issues that are resonating in this race
that are allowing a liberal Democrat
to overperform in a very red district?
Will those be the issues that resonate next year?
And if you look at her campaign ads,
particularly the last couple,
they could be Donald Trump ads from 2024.
All the issues she's talking about,
in terms of being anti-Washington pro-change,
worried about working-class voters.
They're all Trump rhetoric.
It doesn't have the same solutions, but they're all Trump rhetoric.
So I think the important thing is to see how close she comes as a measure of just how potent these set of issues might be for Democrats next year,
because every Democrat is going to run on the same issue she's running on.
Hmm.
What I think is interesting about this person, and again, last week's AM update, I think it was Monday or Tuesday, had a lot of soundbites from her.
she's a nut. But what I think is interesting is, to me, this seems to be like a trend for Democrats.
Like, I think they're leaning into crazy. They seem to like this. They seem to think,
oh, she'll get attention. You know, like she's going to get clicks like that crazy podcast or
Jennifer, whatever, Welsh. This seems to work for them, they think, in like generating enthusiasm.
So is that the future of the Democrat Party? Well, I think some of her quote unquote crazy stuff
maybe not helping her, and maybe not why they're attracted to her.
I'll tell you what I do see, and I mentioned this before, the quality of her ads.
She's very good on camera in controlled situations, like Mondami, right?
Like Zoran Mondami.
So I think they're looking for people who are good on social, good on video, who can, you know, get attention, right?
And she's gotten attention.
The last ad, I think it's her last ad of the campaign, at the very closing shot, she winks at the camera.
And it's, you know, it's very effective.
You could, whether you like her or hate her or care about her politics, you can't help.
She's very watchable.
And I think you're seeing not just Democrats, but everybody in politics gravitating towards watchable.
Because that's one thing that Donald Trump has as part of his success.
You can't, you can't teach it.
You can't package it.
But if you find candidates who have it, it's a big advantage because you've got to get people to pay attention.
And Trump has shown the way and how to do that.
Well, that leads us back to your friend, Jasmine Crockett, your girlfriend who can't take your eyes off of when she's on the camera on the screen.
She's my guilty. She's my guilty pleasure, not my girlfriend.
But I think you would say she's watchable.
But I mean, what of the fact that these two women are watchable for all the wrong reasons?
As a woman, I have to tell you, I object.
I object to their stupidity, to their drama.
They're giving all of us a bad name.
Yeah.
And they're giving, to some extent, they're giving, you know, substantive politics.
politician's a bad name, but what's incredible about her is Mondani is consistently a pretty
good performer. He had a bad second debate, but she is, she, I've talked to people who've been
on TV with her. She's not a good performer except in this other gal in Tennessee. No, this
in Tennessee. Crocket, I don't know. I need more data. But this woman in Tennessee, she's good
when she's packaged. And that's, you know, that's something because a lot of politics can be
packaged. You know, I'm, I'm surrounded by people.
with divergent views on AOC and whether she'll be a strong presidential candidate.
But there's no doubt that those who think she'll be a strong candidate if she runs,
seeing her, you know, just the attention economy, the capacity to get folks to listen to what she has
to say, it's quite high with her. And that's something because, you know, Governor Bashir
ain't got that. So what do you think, Mark? We started the show by talking about where Trump's
polling is right now that Gallup poll and some of the problems that the Republican Party is facing
at the moment. Yes, they have 12 months, just about 11 months, I guess, to work it out. I mean,
if Trump can get some better economic numbers and not just get the numbers, but actually
make people feel like things have gotten better, is that all going to turn around? Like,
what if he called you up tomorrow, Mark, and said, what should I do? What do you say?
I'd say, talk to someone who knows, but then I'd say, I'll tell you secretly on making Kelly.
I think the economy, which of course is a truism, it's always the biggest issue.
But I think there's just a big gap now between how people feel about the economy and the better parts of the economy.
And so I think I'm really, you know, I don't want to waste December.
I won't be sitting around doing nothing.
But I'm really focused on State of the Union because I think State of the Union is when he'll get massive audience and he'll get a chance to say, here's my theory of the case.
Here's what's worked so far.
Here's what hasn't.
And terrorists will be a big part of that, the relationship with China.
will be a big part of that. But so will all these questions about what is America's,
what is America's economy going to be? Are we going to be a manufacturing country? Or are we going
to be a big exporter? How are we going to make people feel better about their kids' economic
future? And I don't think currently he's explaining that in a very linear way.
Mark, you're not going to believe this. My crack team just forwarded me a new Emerson
College poll slash the Hill. It has that Tennessee race within two points. It has the Republican
up to Matt Van Epps and this crazy lady, Democrat Afton Bain, F-46, small sample, likely voters,
though, which is good.
Only 600 people survey.
That's a bit of an outlier.
And even the Democrats don't have the race that close.
But, you know, I never predict special elections because the polling just can't capture
who's going to turn out, right, on December 2nd, not normally the time people are, you know,
hyped up to go vote.
But the district is such that she'll fall short.
And as I said, people will make up all sorts of rules if she's within five.
It means this.
Ten means this, whatever.
She's going to do substantially better than Kamala Harris.
And Republicans had to spend a lot of money in this race.
What if she wins?
It'll be by the standards of like special elections.
It'll be an earthquake if she wins.
Because the level of overperformance will be so dramatic.
And Republicans will have spent money, right?
You could say, well, we can fight this message by spending money.
They spent a fortune to try to make sure they held the seat.
And it makes Speaker Johnson's majority, you know, virtually non-existent.
So it'll be a massive deal if she wins, but I don't know anyone in the state who thinks she's going to.
I mean, if this is the standard, like my Strudwick is available.
He's free.
He's good looking.
He's starting to respond to commands, which the Democrats love.
I don't like, this woman is not the answer.
Can he wink?
Can he wink?
No, but he can crap and eat it.
Okay.
See?
See, there's a metaphor there that surmounts and surpasses all other metaphors.
This could work in politics.
This is actually a useful skill for any lawmaker headed to Washington.
Exactly.
Mark Halperin, thank you.
Thanks for helping me on this.
Thank you.
Good to see you.
Under the Weather Day.
Happy holidays.
Ho, ho, ho.
You too.
Bye.
All right.
We will be back tomorrow.
It's an NR day, and we look forward to seeing you then.
Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show, no BS, no agenda, and no fear.
