The Megyn Kelly Show - RFK and Hegseth's Path to Confirmation, and Dangers of AI, with Mark Halperin, Sean Spicer, Dan Turrentine, and Tristan Harris | Ep. 967

Episode Date: December 17, 2024

Megyn Kelly is joined by Mark Halperin, Sean Spicer, and Dan Turrentine, hosts of 2WAY’s Morning Meeting, to discuss Donald Trump's news-making press conference, Trump showing a “kinder and gentler” side, how elites and executives are now trying to cozy up to Trump, Trump’s legal strategies, the recent wave of false attacks against Robert F. Kennedy Jr. regarding his lawyer and the polio vaccine, how the MAHA movement brought more women to the Republican party, the chance some Democrats end up supporting RFK even if he loses some GOP senators in his HHS nomination, new media smear attempts of Pete Hegseth, whether the accuser could turn his hearings into “Kavanaugh 2.0" and testify, the state of his nomination, Kamala Harris back in the news with her cringe new speech, the possibilities of her running for Governor of California or the Democratic nomination for president in 2028, the total lack of media coverage of why she lost so badly, and more. Then Tristan Harris, executive director of Center for Humane Technology, joins to discuss the latest developments in technology called “AI chatbots” how they can be targeted to children and teens and the dangers they pose, several lawsuits that allege the AI chatbot encouraged teens to take their own lives, whether Elon Musk and David Sacks can help combat this issue in the next administration, Australia’s social media ban for kids, a 15-year-old female school shooter in Wisconsin, a new poll showing young people finding it "acceptable" that the assassin killed the UnitedHealthcare CEO, and more. Plus Megyn gives an update on CNN refusing to take accountability for their false Syria prison report. Halperin- https://www.youtube.com/@2WayTVAppSpicer- https://www.youtube.com/@SeanMSpicerTurrentine- https://x.com/danturrentineHarris- https://www.humanetech.com/Home Title Lock: Go to https://HomeTitleLock.com/megynkelly  and use promo code MEGYN to get a 30-day FREE trial of Triple Lock Protection and a FREE title history report!Cozy Earth: https://www.CozyEarth.com/MEGYN  | code MEGYNFollow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms:YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at noon east. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and happy Tuesday. Do you have all your Christmas shopping done? I don't have all my Christmas shopping. We have another week. It's December 17th and we still have time. Maybe you'll get some gift ideas during today's show. Our advertisers actually have some good ones. We begin today with Trump 2.0 as the president-elect prepares to head back to the White House. He did something that the current occupant has rarely done. He actually stood there and took questions from the media for an hour.

And in a sign of a new Trump era, it was substantive. And stylistically, it was very different from what we saw during his first term. He fielded a wide variety of questions on his meetings with business leaders, his cabinet picks, and his own views on the Maha movement. But it wasn't all different. There was still a lot about one of his favorite targets, the fake news media, and the legacy media responded in predictable ways. Joining me now to discuss that and all the news today are pals from the morning meeting on Two-Way. Mark Halperin, he's editor-in-chief and host of Two-Way. Sean Spicer is host of the Sean Spicer Show on The First TV. And Dan Turrentine

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if the worst happens, restoration services at no out-of-pocket cost to you. When was the last time you checked on your title? Likely never. And that's exactly what scammers are counting on. Make sure you're not already a victim. You can get a free title history report and a 30-day free trial of Triple Lock Protection today by going to hometitlelock.com and using the promo code Megan, or click on the link in the description. That's hometitlelock.com, promo code Megan, hometitlelock.com. Guys, welcome back to the show. Great to see you. Good to see you. Merry Christmas. All right. So it kind of was like, so far we are seeing a little kinder, gentler Trump, Are we not, Sean Spicer? I'll start with you since you know him best.

I think we are seeing a more pragmatic Trump, a Trump that in 2016 when he won, they tried to delegitimize the win. People were attacking him. It was Russia. You didn't win the popular vote, this and that. And he felt like he was on defense and rightly so. I mean, we had false accusations lobbed from one end to the other. And this time, everyone from some folks in the media to big tech and corporate

leaders are embracing him. And I think they realized he was right. They were wrong. Bottom line is it's a much different environment. And I think he flourishes in this. He wants people to come to Mar-a-Lago, talk to him about doing business, talking to him about making investments in the United States, as we saw yesterday with the SoftBank CEO. This is a much different... Frankly, Megan, I'll admit it. I'm jealous. I wish I'd been there for 2020. 2016 was historic, but we faced a huge wave against us of people that were trying to delegitimize the win. Now you can't, no one can do that. It was a resounding win. And, and I think he's in his glory. Just staying with you, Sean, for a second. I don't know about you, but I find it very

gratifying to see Zuckerberg and Bezos and all these guys have to go in there and kiss the ring. Do it. Well, I love it. You know what? Petty Irish leprechaun Sean hates it. Like, I'm like, why are you giving, like, I would tell them, time out, you guys wait in line, stand down, go down to, you know, Boca Raton and wait your turn and I'll call you up to come to Palm Beach.

I get it. I know Trump loves this. He relishes these guys coming there, not just the corporate leaders, but the foreign leaders. I get it. And I'd rather have them on our side and get the policies instituted and make America more prosperous and grow, et cetera. But at the same time, I'm like, these guys bashed him for four to eight years. And now they want back in with a one million dollar check to the inauguration committee. I know this seems actually kind of a cheap price to pay, a million dollars to Jeff Bezos.

But you know what? Here's the thing, Megan. He told Masa yesterday, hey, Masa comes bearing $100 billion in investment. And he says, hey, how about $200 billion? Why isn't he saying to Zuckerberg, that's a nice tip. Now put down $10 million for the inauguration. That's right. You too, Bezos. now put down 10 million for the inauguration. That's right. Why is the Japanese bank executive

investing 100 or 200 billion dollars in America and all Bezos can spare is a million? Right. Exactly. All right. So here's what I mean by kinder and gentler. This is just one example. He was asked if senators who oppose his cabinet picks should be primaried, which is what a lot of the MAGA faithful are saying. Here's how he responded. Stop for. Should senators who oppose your nominees, your cabinet nominees, should they be primaried? If they are unreasonable, I'll give you a different answer, an answer that you'll be shocked to hear. If they're unreasonable, if they're opposing somebody for political reasons or stupid reasons, I would say it has nothing to do with me. I would say they probably would be primary.

But if they're reasonable, fair, and really disagree with something or somebody, I can see that happening. But I do believe that if they're unreasonable, I think we have great people. I think we have a great, a great group of people. So Mark, I'll, let me tell you why I believe him in the tone he's striking there, because I spoke with at least one person involved in this process who was against Gates. And that person told me that when Trump spoke to this senator about Gates and was told he's not going to make it, Trump didn't freak out. Trump didn't threaten. Trump just said, oh, gee, that's too bad. He's a good guy and accepted the judgment.

And we saw that was how he behaved when Gates left the stage, you know, left. And now he's working for OAN. So I take him at his word. I guess if they keep doing it, you know, if they sink Hegseth and they sink RFKJ and they give Tulsi a problem, the tone will change. But what do you make of it? Well, look, I think sometimes two news stories conflate. I think it's possible that one of those drones kidnapped Donald Trump and replaced him with a cuddly grandpa, a cuddly conciliatory grandpa. And the aliens don't think we'll figure it out, but we're on to him. Look, go back to what Sean said. You don't have to be super MAGA,

just an objective journalist or observer to recognize just the nightmare that Donald Trump entered the office with because the dominant media created an environment that created for tens of millions of Americans reality, their reality, that he was an illegitimate president. And then to be investigated perpetually for the entire eight years, to be voted out of office, and then to say to the voters, here's what I'm about. Same guy, here's my agenda, put me back in. After Democrats said, after January 6th, etc. He could never win another election. So I think he feels a sense of satisfaction. But he also has created an understanding that he gets it better this time. He understands how to be

president way better. He's got an incoming second term government that's not a normal lame duck because they're not exhausted. And because he's had four years to write executive orders, to think about who he wants to hire and to use his vast human intelligence, which is vast. He's just a super genius at analyzing situations and people to come in and say, I'm going to do this job differently this time. And the overriding factor is he loves people kissing the ring or anything else they want to kiss. He loves billionaires kowtowing to him. He loves knowing how to manipulate and leverage these heads of state. So this is like the ultimate mulligan. He's getting to be an incoming president again with all this knowledge and a much different environment. The

press is weaker than it's been since he came on the national stage. And all of these people from Congress to the governors, to the foreign leaders, to the CEOs, they know that the rules are about to change and that Trump will set the rules and Trump will decide who gets to play the game. And so they're all genuflecting. So we'll talk about the lawsuits that he's filing against members of the media and others in a second. But Dan, here's another soundbite where he sounds, you know, like the replacement Trump, like under Mark's theory. But there's nothing to see there. We'll update the drone story. There's nothing to see there, according to all of our now national security officials. Don't believe your lying eyes. In any event, here's another soundbite from him talking about how everybody loves me now. Stop one.

I did have a dinner with Tim Cook. I had a dinner with sort of almost all of them and the rest are coming. One of the big differences between the first term and the first term, everybody was fighting me in this term. Everybody wants to be my friend. I don't know. My personality changed or something. Is it, is it his personality? You tell me as a Democrat, what, why are all of these, you know, that Sundar of Google went in there to see him.

Sergey Brin went in there to see him, you know, the guy who created Google, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, like all of and then not to mention all the bankers who have gone in to say they're all going in. Yeah. Look, a lot of them are members of the incumbent party. And that right now is Donald Trump. And I think as you know, Mark and Sean have said in 2016, I think Democrats were first stunned and they immediately turned to anger. Just this idea that he was not legitimate, that Russia had helped him, that there was just no way that he had won or earned the office outright. Now, I think Democrats are just exhausted. I mean,

they threw every single thing that they could think of at him, whether, you know, on the political playing field or the courtroom or, you know, on the political playing field or the courtroom or the you know, the media was certainly not helpful to him. And he won. And I think there's now just this exhaustion, resignation and in the in the business world, a complete acceptance that he is in charge. He has maximum political power. Perhaps, you know, no one has been riding into the office with more leverage than Trump has in a long time. And part of that is because Joe Biden is essentially missing in action. I mean, Mark likes to make the joke during a presidential transition. There's only one president at a time. And right now that appears to be the president

elect Donald Trump. Much frustration. Megan, here's the funny thing. You can't see this, but this is a picture. From December 14th, 2016, all the people sitting around this meeting in Trump Tower, it's Tim Cook, Bezos. It happened in 2016. They all came. But to Dan's point, they didn't like him. They didn't think he was legitimate. So, you know, to his to Donald Trump's point, they all kissed his ring in 2016.

Initially, they came up to Trump Tower. I mean, there's probably 20 of these tech executives in this room and yet very different outcome. The American people spoke very loudly. It wasn't just that Donald Trump won. It's that the policies of the left failed. The open borders, the DEI, the woke policies failed. And these corporate leaders that bought into it all are now realizing they were wrong. It wasn't that just that Trump won, it's that they lost. Well, and think about too, Sean, in 16, when they did that, you know, like I, we have a good friend who's a senior executive at Google. Google gave their employees a day off after the 2016 election for a day of like mental health warning. Now there's none of that. Now it's just like even the employee

base is like, well, I hope we're going down there. Like, you know, did you see Bezos was down there? Like, when are we going down there? So I think now it's not just the executives, but like rank and file employees who are resigned and accepting that Donald Trump is the next president of the United States. Yep. Better to go along and get along. Yeah. Tim Cook was another one who went in there this time around the head of Apple. So Sean, you gave the thumbs up when I mentioned the lawsuits that Trump has been filing. And this is not in his capacity as president. This is as private citizen Donald Trump. He's totally entitled to file whatever lawsuits he wants and the courts will respond accordingly. But he did, in fact, file the one against the Des Moines Register that he threatened yesterday. This is based on Ann Seltzer's final

poll of the twenty twenty four election cycle showing him. down. I'm trying to remember whether he was down or up three or four points. What was it? He was down. And he wound up winning Iowa by 14. So it was completely wrong. And she's embarrassed and she retired. I mean, she retired on a loss, which is just awful. Like that's I'm sure not how she wanted to go out, but she did humiliate herself. Now, I don't see the lawsuit unless Trump has some proof that comes out that actually shows she did do it as election interference. Like, there was some intentionality behind this alleged fraud to mislead people in order to change the vote. I have seen and I have heard absolutely no proof to that effect. And I see none alleged by Trump. It's just a supposition that that's why she did it. But what do you make of that lawsuit

and the lawsuit against the Pulitzer board, which we talked about? Sorry, Nobel, which we talked about the other day. Was it Nobel or Pulitzer? Why am I forgetting all my facts? Yeah, it was the Pulitzer board that gave that gave the New York Times the Pulitzer Prize for its Russia reporting. But they actually, we talked about this yesterday. The reason they did it is because the Pulitzer Prize made its own independent statement saying nothing came out after those reports to prove the facts therein untrue, which is potentially a defamatory statement. Anyway, what do you make of his legal strategy right now? Well, you're the lawyer, I'm not. So I'm going to defer to

Megyn Kelly when it comes to legal matters. I will say the one that I get excited about, you mentioned, is the ABC one, because that's completely false and Stephanopoulos knew it. And I think that when reporters get called out for being wrong, that's a good thing. They need to be held accountable just like anybody else. And so I was excited about that. I think the bedwetters like Chuck Todd and Jim Acosta, who are talking about this being a threat to the media, are morons. The bottom line is that why should they get away with defaming people with inaccurate

information or information they know to be wrong? Look, the Sullivan standard that the Supreme Court has set for public figures proves that you have to prove intent and malice. It's a very high bar. And so there's a big difference for someone even like me who's had this kind of issue come up. The lawyers will tell you, God, this is how much it's going to cost you. This is the burden that we have to meet. This is what's going to happen during discovery in terms of your emails, your texts coming out. So there's a reason not to do it. Now, in the Iowa case, my understanding is that what Trump's lawyers are going against isn't the Sullivan standard saying you defamed me, but in fact, a consumer law that Iowa has about misrepresenting people. Again, I'll defer to you

and the lawyers about the nuances of that, but they're using a very interesting tactic saying that they violated Iowa's consumer statute, which prevents misinformation about a product. Now, again, it's a very narrow reading from my layperson standpoint, but look, I think what it does, when that poll came out, first of all, the Iowa poll has had a storied history of problems. The bottom line is, is that that didn't pass the smell test. Right. And nobody bought that, both in terms of what other public polls at the time said and in terms of what the data was suggesting where Iowa's electorate was. So it didn't make sense. And the bottom, and so the

question is, why did they go through with it? What did the crosstabs show? How did they sample the electorate? Did they know in advance? And this is where the discovery phase comes in. Are there emails that show that they knew that there might be some problems with how they created the sample that that was based off of? I don't know, but my guess is that's why you go through this to the discovery phase. So you can say, gosh, this doesn't add up. And them saying, well, who cares? Go ahead with it anyway. I think that one's going to get thrown out on the papers. I think they'll move to dismiss it and it will be dismissed without without the exchange of discovery. Go ahead, Mark. First of all, I agree with Sean about the ABC case. And I think

they're now probably five votes on the court Sean about the ABC case. And I think they're now probably five votes on the court to change the Sullivan standard. And Donald Trump may bring a case that gets the court that does that. But I think it's overly litigious to do what he did yesterday. Ann Seltzer is my friend. She used to be my polling partner. And she's been one of the most accurate pollsters in America. It's true that she's stepping back from doing political polling, but she announced that, Megan, before this poll came out. And she's not retiring. And to say, I don't think it's right to say she's been humiliated. I think people have tried to humiliate her. But every pollster I've ever worked with, every pollster whose work is respected, sometimes polls are wrong. In fact,

statistically, one in 20 are wrong to suggest to suggest election interference. She has been humiliated. She was 17 points off. Everybody ran around saying she's a gold standard. She's a gold standard. She actually had the potential to change the trajectory of the race. She showed Kamala Harris winning by three in a deep red state. Trump won the state by 14. She was 17 points off and completely blew it. She blew it. So she is humiliated. I look at her and I see someone who is humiliated. I just I just think that to judge one person by one poll, there's no evidence that a poll like that, quote unquote, influences the election. But I think what's important is that President Trump be judicious in choosing who to go after. This case, I don't think, I don't agree with you. I

think it'll be thrown out on the paper. And I think it cheapens the victory he has with over ABC, who settled, we don't know exactly why, but he should focus on the cases where not only he feels personally aggrieved, but where there's a chance of not only, and not only cases where he has a chance of winning, but in cases where there's an important principle at stake. That's, I think, the best use of his time and his lawyer's time and his money. And so I just think filing these other cases is a mistake. Well, there's a question about whether he's intimidating pollsters here. You know, Trump is obsessed with polls and he dismisses the ones that he doesn't like. And he doesn't, and he kind of does the same thing with media, is kind of obsessed with media and attacks the ones that he doesn't like. And he doesn't, and he kind of does the same thing with media. He's kind of obsessed with media and attacks the ones that he doesn't like.

But the thing with ABC was real, and it was a legit problem and a legit objection. And I don't agree with all those people who say that he was going to lose that case. I don't. I think if that had gone forward, there was a very, very good chance that Trump would have won that case, possibly even just on the papers without a jury trial. It was clear what they said. It was very clear what George Stephanopoulos said, and it was very clear what the jury found and didn't find. I think you had a good chance of winning a summary judgment. This one's different. You're the lawyer on this. If they were to get to discovery in the Des Moines Register Seltzer case, and they found someone

there emailing Ann and saying, gosh, this doesn't really comport with what recent information suggests. Or here's a sample that we don't think. If you saw that exchange, I guess my question to you as a lawyer would be, isn't that the point? If they can show that they knew there were flaws and they went ahead with it. Now, that's a big if. But if you could show that they were flaws and they knew there were flaws and they went ahead with it. Now that's a big if, but if you could show that they were flaws and they knew about them, wouldn't that give you merit to go forward? Maybe, but even that's a real stretch. And I would think that before the judge would engage in allowing that kind of discovery, you'd have to have a good faith basis to, to make

the allegation. There has to be more than just like, I suspect I think she tanked it intentionally. And I just don't see that. Like what what specifically do they know? I think they know what I just said. She projected Kamala was up by three and Trump won the state by 14. And she was very off and it rattled team Trump and he's irritated by it. So that to me seems to be all of the evidence they have against Ann Seltzer. Now, if they've got something else and they can attach something to their, you know, motion to fight the dismissal, which you're not supposed to do, you're supposed to judge it based on the four corners of the document, the complaint. I don't know, but I think that one's going to go away. And I know he's litigious and he's talking about how he wishes the DOJ would bring these cases. I don't like that either. I don't think the DOJ should be Trump's personal attorney. The DOJ should be the United States' personal attorney. They represent us and they're not there to settle Trump's beefs. That's what the last guy did. That's what the outgoing president used the DOJ for. So we've had enough of that, right? That's my own view of on it. Okay. Let's talk about that Trump soundbite where he was talking about how he'd view the primary

campaigns against people who stand in the way of his nominees. Two of them back in the news today, RFKJ on Capitol Hill trying to make nice with the senators who will have the say over whether he makes it as HHS secretary. Pete Hegseth still out there doing the same. Unclear on both of them as of today what their fate will be. But there was a wave of attacks against RFKJ over the past few days, started last Thursday or Friday, saying his counsel, his lawyer, filed a lawsuit trying to get rid of the polio vaccine and that these two are close. And all these media are like, RFKJ wants to get rid of the polio vaccine, which unlike the COVID vaccine, is a real vaccine. you take it and you don't get polio. Um, and it was just

absolutely a smear campaign. We actually looked into it and made contact with the, with the lawyer. The lawyer tried to get rid of, he challenged one, one of the many polio vaccines. One strain of it did not say let's get rid of all the others because it had potentially cancerous cells in it and there hadn't been tested against a control group and it had not gone through the rigorous testing that vaccines should go through. So he said that one is problematic,

that you would never know that if you looked at what the media did. And I'll give you a couple of examples of the headlines. New York Times, Kennedy's lawyer has asked the FDA to revoke approval of the polio vaccine. New York Times, McConnell defends polio vaccine, an apparent warning to Kennedy. Now it's Kennedy's, now Kennedy wants to get rid of the polio vaccine. WAPO, RFK Jr. ally filed petition to revoke FDA approval for polio vaccine. The New Republic, RFK Jr.'s lawyer exposed trying to abolish polio vaccine. NBC backlash grows over

RFKJ's lawyer asking FDA to revoke approval of polio vaccine. This is just wrong, Mark Halperin. And it doesn't take that much effort to do what we did, which is, did he really do that? It took us about five minutes to realize, no, he didn't. Well, in addition, as you also pointed out, it's not Bobby Kennedy. It's his lawyer, one of his many lawyers. I find that they're so interesting in the media now, what I call the dominant media. Some of the coverage is reminiscent of the way Donald Trump's been covered for seven years, you know, tendentiously hostile. Some of it's actually as favorable as anything he's ever gotten.

I think the fate of the nominees, including Bobby Kennedy, including Pete Hegseth and Tulsi Gabbard, will be on how well they do when January hearings come. It'll also be on whether there's any new revelations about them. But I think for Team Trump, these kinds of stories are actually beneficial because in the end they are debunked. And once again, even though the press is being nice some of the time to Trump, nicer, they're able to use that to say, look how unfair this is. Nothing rallies MAGA and many of the Republican senators more around the Trump nominees than attacks from the media that they consider to be unfair. So I would say that Randall's story has probably helped Bobby Kennedy because now the focus isn't is Bobby Kennedy right on abortion or is he right on this or that? It's he's under siege from the media.

We've got to support him. And one thing you know about Bobby Kennedy, I mean, having interviewed him many times is he's extremely smart and he's a litigator. He spent a lifetime as a lawyer pursuing these causes. He will be so ready on this and any other empty attacks. I mean, he will slice and dice with the best of them. He's been under attack for all of his adult life. So Dan, last time you guys were on, I believe it was you who said you think that he may get some Dem support because he is a Democrat and he did have so much support in his own presidential run. Do you still think that? And do you think he's going to have trouble getting through? I still believe it very much. I mean, Megan, one of the things we heard all fall that that gave me kind of confidence in saying that I think I thought Trump was going to win is the number of people who would come on our show and say, I'm a Democrat. I've left the party because of how it treated RFK.

And I am with Trump because RFK is with Trump. And if we're going to win national elections again and get the Senate back, we have got to find a way to win both RFK and his voters and bring them back into the party. And I think there will be some Democrats that will vote for him. I think that his biggest threat really is from the right. I think the fact that, as you said, he is a Democrat. His views on choice, his views on the role of government and health care are more closer to our party. In fact, they're pretty aligned with our party and less the Republican Party. And so I think he's going to have to answer those questions and give comfort to some people on the right. Certainly not all Democrats will vote for RFK, but I do believe there will be more than one or two that will vote for him.

And they should. Do you know how mind blowing this is, by the way? Just just stop and think about this. Donald Trump, a Republican, has appointed a Kennedy who was primarying Biden just what, 12 months ago for the Democratic nomination has been put into the cabinet where he will get, by and large, Republican votes. This is mind blowing if you think about where we are in terms of which party is more inclusive. Bobby Kennedy, a part of the Kennedy family who was literally fighting for the Democratic nomination, is going to be in the cabinet of Donald Trump. Secondly, I think the part-

And Tulsi, by the way. Tulsi was fighting for the Dem nomination just a few years ago. That's right. Exactly. She was primarying Biden for it. But you also go back to how you started this conversation between the media story with ABC settling for $15 million with Donald Trump and the lies that they're telling about Bobby Kennedy and vaccines. The bottom line is this, the media that supposedly dies in darkness and hates the spread of misinformation is just showing you why it's the dying industry. They continue to spread misinformation and lies. This is why we showed on actually on the morning meeting the other day, exclusive polling from Signal.

And when you look at where people are getting their news, it's very, very interesting. I posted this on Instagram. Like if you are getting your news from newspapers or from national media, from like ABC, CBS, NBC, you voted for Harris. If you're on YouTube or streaming, you're getting, you're voting for Trump. We're the party of the future. We're more inclusive. They are part of a dying, dying industry and legacy. Megan, can I say one other thing about reporting out today that suggests that go ahead, Mark. One other thing about Bobby, about Bobby Kennedy, we've heard for months, including today on the morning meeting from parents, lots of moms who really believe in make America healthy again. And they're so they're so passionate about it. And and they understand not everything you hear

about Bobby Kennedy is true. And there may be things they don't like about it. But of all the people Donald Trump is trying to bring into the government, even more than Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy from the outside, Bobby Kennedy has the potential to revolutionize America with that agenda for drugs and food and the health of our children, wellness. It's a huge, all these things are huge problems in America. They unite Sanders supporters and Trump supporters, suburban parents, I mean, urban parents. These are massive issues. And just already, just from talking about them during the transition and the campaign, Bobby Kennedy, I would argue, has done more to elevate these issues than anyone ever has, including Michelle Obama, who talked about some of them,

but not in the fundamental way of going after corporate interests. And so I'll be curious to see if he pursues it. But that's what I think could win him some Democratic votes, because they're such fundamental issues for their constituents. Think about how Republicans have fared with women, right? This is an issue that can transcend party, bring more women to the Republican Party, because they're concerned about what their children are eating, what they're eating. They are, in many cases, the people who are the providers for a family. And so women are at the forefront of this issue. And I think that what RFK and what Donald Trump are doing, exposing the NIH, the CDC,

the FDA in what we had thought was eating healthy is going to be monumental, both in terms of longevity and our wellness as a country, but I think also politically. The time is ripe, right? We had, we had the opioid crisis where we realized that, um, our federal government officials are not protecting us. In fact, they're in bed with big pharma to pad their own pockets as individuals and otherwise, and they don't give a damn about the rest of us. And then we had COVID which reinforced all of that. And then we had just the explosion of, you know, the Maha beginnings, whether it was Casey means and her brother Callie means. But that interview they gave on Tucker went everywhere. They came here too. It was big. And then within days, they were next to RFKJ endorsing Trump. And it was just it. Boom. We were off to the races. His choice of

Nicole Shanahan, who's big into these issues as his running mate. Like, I don't know if it was all intentional. He came on here many times and said this was one of his big issues. But he's also very big on some other issues like the military industrial complex. And but this was the one that hit. And he was smart enough to exploit it and to sell it to Trump as something that could actually help. Trump embraced it, really ran on it, and now it cannot be one of those things that he discards. And indeed, Dan, yesterday, Trump was not discarding it. He was saying he thinks that Bobby Kennedy will be great on these issues and was saying on pesticides, for an example, he said he claimed Europe doesn't use any. That's not true, but they use far, far fewer than we use, far fewer. And he was asked about the link between autism and vaccines. And Trump said, I don't know about that, but we want to study it. And what we really want to look at is things like vaccines, toxins. That's been RFKJ's big thing his entire life. Too many toxins in the environment. And it's making us and yes, our children sick.

Yeah, Megan, you you hit something, too, when you said this goes back to kind of covid. One of the problems for the Democratic Party is we have kind of tried to shut down debate on a lot of stuff when people have questioned things. And we've said, oh, the experts, the scientists, like anyone who says, you know, that you shouldn't wear a mask, anyone that says maybe the kids should be back in school, anyone who says, you know, maybe six feet isn't the right number. We tried to shut it down. Shame them.

You're an idiot. You know, how could you not follow science? One of the things that RFK has done is raised questions that parents have themselves. I mean, you've said it, pesticides, food, the obesity with children. The fact that we are defending the status quo in an era when people are so against, they're so upset, they're frustrated, they feel like their voices aren't heard. It frustrates me as a Democrat that Trump and the Republican Party have owned now and taken over. And they are seen as a party that is asking questions, is probing, is willing to change. That is that I'd rather be them than us right now. And we have to become more tolerant and accepting of people with different

views and ask questions about why and respect what people are thinking. You know, you listen to RFKJ, I've interviewed him at length many times. And what he's saying is not like, let's get rid of all the vaccines, but even on the vaccines, he was saying there's mercury in these vaccines and it doesn't need to be in there. And while they said, you're wrong, you're wrong, you're wrong,

you know what they did? They removed the mercury. And RFKJ said, well, what about the aluminum? Because that's not much better. And they said, oh, you're wrong, you're wrong, you're wrong. You know what they did? They removed the mercury. And RFKJ said, well, what about the aluminum? Because that's not much better. And they said, oh, you're wrong, you're wrong, you're wrong. But it does turn out that aluminum is a neurotoxin. And then he says, okay, what about chlorine in the water? Well, that's crazy. We need to work on the teeth and so on. Well, you know what? That's also potentially a neurotoxin. Then they say, sorry, fluoride. And then we talk about like the toxins that are in our products that we put all over our bodies. Oh, well, don't worry. His point is we're swimming

in a toxic stew. And it's one thing when you're a grown human, it's bad enough for us, but you take these little kids and you load them up with these vaccines, which they often don't need, like the, you know, H whatever, what's the, the Hep C vaccine. They're not having sex. They're little babies. They don't need this unless they've been born to a mother with the disease. So we're overloading them with these vaccines. The vaccines themselves have in the past and may currently have materials inside of them as preservatives or otherwise that they don't need that can potentially be toxic to the children. Then we feed them food that has been covered in pesticides and chemicals that we use to make them cheaper or to keep the bugs off so it's easier for the farmers. And they're not in the right soil and so on. So

they're not getting the nutrients in there. And we overload the kids with that. And then we, for a certain bunch of processed food, which is like not food at all. It's just a bunch of chemicals packaged. And like one thing, and then like one thing after the other, right? And these poor kids, by the way, then we put them in these, you know, fire resistant pajamas that have chemicals all over them. And we sit them on the sofa that has treatment all over it so that it's stain resistant, which is chemicals all over them. And then when they're breathing in the microplastics, they're drinking from the plastic bottles, which have microplastics

in them. Like that's what RFKJ said to me. He's like, we didn't use to have ticks in children all the time. You know how they're ticking now. A lot of these kids are, it looks like Tourette's. We didn't use to have the explosion of autism as we've seen it now. No, we didn't use to have the explosion of autism as we've seen it now. We didn't used to have the explosion of ADHD. And people will make fun of him about the fluoride and the vaccines and all of it. But I really believe that not just moms, but parents are listening because we've seen it. We've seen it in our kids or in our kids' friends or in our nephews and nieces. He's been living it, so he identified it early. Trump was smart to listen to him. And I do think, guys, these Democrats shoot him down

trying to paint him as a crazy at their own peril, or Republicans. The Democrats, it's kind of incredible when you look at the traction that's gotten and how obvious it is. Politics is about emotion, how emotional an issue this is. It's incredible the

Democrats didn't take the lead on this. Incredible. Yeah, it is kind of a role reversal. The Democrats are far from taking the lead, guys. They're taking the lead the other way. Take a listen to Elizabeth Warren on RFKJ. Say goodbye to your smile and say hello to polio. You know, I would laugh if it weren't so scary. Donald Trump just picked RFK Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. This is a man who wants to stop kids from getting their polio and measles shots. He's actually welcoming a return to polio, a disease we nearly eradicated. He loves polio. It doesn't stop there. RFK Jr. also doesn't believe fluoride should be in your water. And that's what keeps your teeth from rotting.

No, I don't want fluoride either. You can't make this stuff up. That's about as accurate as being an Indian. The man wants rotting teeth and polio. Who can blame him? He's a favorite. He loves polio. Okay. That was four days ago, by the way, that wasn't months ago or years. Like that was four days ago. That's going to be the messaging. He's a kook. Okay. But that, but that's, that's, that's a AI, right? That's not real Elizabeth Warren. That's, that's her. Fox and my show, we called her chief lies a lot. I don't, you know, take your pick. Um. We'll see how she does with that messaging guys. Okay. Let's talk about what's being done to Hegseth. This is kind

of interesting that the RFKJ attack on polio is based on his lawyers challenging one strain, one. Hegseth is now in the New York times under attack in an article dated yesterday for his bodyguard that has been walking around with him at the meetings on Capitol Hill. Okay. Listen to this. The headline is Hegseth's guard left the army after the beating of a civilian during training. John Hassenbein, who has escorted Donald J. Trump's pick for defense secretary to meetings on Capitol Hill, said he was unjustly prosecuted

for this 2019 episode by Dave Phillips and Sharon Lafreniere. And this whole article, guys, is about the guy who's been guarding Pete so that he doesn't get attacked on Capitol Hill by some nut. How a couple years ago he was doing a drill to learn how to like take down terrorists. And they were doing this drill because he was at former army special forces. He was a master sergeant at the time. And when they did this training event, they had civilian role players come in and play ISIS, play bad guys. And that this guy, Hassan Bayim, allegedly kicked, punched, and hurt this civilian role player, even leaving him hogtied, the Times writes, in a pool of his own blood. And it led to an investigation and ultimately a charge by the army of aggravated assault and reckless endangerment. A military jury found him guilty of the assault charge in a court-martial in 2020, but the judge overseeing the case wound up throwing it out because it turned out that there had been improper conduct by a juror speaking with, as it turns out, a friend of Mr. Hassenbein about the trial, which that will get your verdict thrown out every time. flex on Pete Hegseth's fitness for Pentagon chief because he then hired this guy who ultimately was not convicted because they threw it out in the army, chose not to retry him

and was honorably retired from the army after 22 years of service. They basically said, if you, if you retire, we'll let it be honorable and we won't pursue another charge against you. And he said, fine, I'm out of here. They want us to not, I guess, vote for Pete Sean because he hired that guy to run security for him. And it's just further evidence of his lapse in judgment and flouting of military rules. Yeah, I've been waiting to break this news on the Megyn Kelly show. So I'm going to go ahead and do this right now. There's a story coming out tomorrow that the girl that Pete dated in sixth grade has a brother who mowed the lawn of a guy down the street whose cousin knew a guy that once was related to somebody that Pete saw at a reunion when he was there for five minutes. And that person said that Pete stiffed him on the tip. So I think this is going to get really bad before it gets

better. I mean, talk about the gymnastics that the Times had to do. If we're at this point now, Dan, of the dirt digging phase on Pete, I feel like he should be feeling pretty good. Yeah, look, if the standard was that no every politician's friends had to be completely clean, there'd be nobody in federal or state government. I mean, it really is a stretch. I think, you know, in my opinion, there's enough questions on Hegseth to stick to the nominee. I think really the question is less with Democrats and with fellow Republicans. You know, I think he's struggling with with a handful of them. But I agree with you trying to bring in a security official, a Sherpa, you know, college buddy. To me, that's just a total stretch. And one of the things, you know, voters roll their eyes about.

Moreover, can I tell you guys something as somebody who has been threatened and had some bad actors, you know, in my life who want to hurt me, this is exactly the kind of guy I want to hire. Yes. The nastier, the better. Get the guy who hog tied the civilian. That is who I want walking next to me. Lest anybody try to mess with me. The Hegseth nomination is by no means secure. The Washington Post, I'm trying to keep track of where I read it, but I think it was WAPO today or yesterday, saying this is going to be Kavanaugh 2.0 and predicting it's actually going to be worse than Kavanaugh. A Republican was predicting this will be worse than Kavanaugh. The Democrats may indeed wind up calling this so-called victim, this alleged rape accuser who had an interlude with him in 2017 that she claims

was non-consensual. He claims it was consensual. They signed an NDA and he was paying her off for her silence because he didn't want that coming out while he was at Fox. Now it's been declared void by Team Pete because she or her friends dropped the full story on Mar-a-Lago during the transition. And that was a breach of the agreement, which they believe released Pete from his obligations and the monies ended.

And now she is free. She would have been free anyway. You can't deny a congressional subpoena based on an NDA. Anyway, now the question is, do the Democrats call her and does she go in? And do the Democrats want to make this Kavanaugh 2.0 mark? Or do they realize like this could backfire and this too could spin so out of control? A Kavanaugh was a, it was an event for Republicans that was like a before and after moment where the party congealed in a way it hadn't before in Trump's presidency. So like that's a risky proposition for the Dems too. Right. So I you've got to say, as you follow the narrative of the Hegseth nomination, that he and his team, including J.D. Vance, have done a textbook job,

should be studied in political science courses, of putting the nomination back on track, because it was basically going into a ditch and not coming out. He's now done what they needed to do, which is to get all the Republican senators to say, we're not coming out against him until January, if at all. We want to see a hearing. We want to give him a chance to defend himself. All the charges against him of seriousness, almost all of them, I should say, are anonymous. And I think senators recoil at that. And you've heard some of the senators, including Journey News of Iowa, make reference to that. If the allegations become not anonymous, but someone testifies, and if questions about whether he's ready to run the building and sit in the sitting room, if those are put in sharp relief, I think there are some Republicans who might vote negatively towards him. The Hegseth nomination was driven, and the

questions about him were driven by Democrats and what I call the Iron Triangle of Democrats, senators, the congressional staff, and the outside groups, along with their media allies. That isn't the case here. These doubts are amongst Republicans. Democrats have their doubts too, but they're meaningless because they're not going to vote for him. I think if there's no new revelations and he performs well, whether this person testifies or not, I don't think we'll stop him from being confirmed. But he has to perform well, and there have to be no new revelations. And I will tell you that even some of his allies are braced for more revelations. I don't know, Dan, what this woman would sound like if she decided to testify.

I think in interviewing her, somebody would probably be able to get a feel for whether she'd make a good witness or not, but there are so many holes in her story. I mean, I think this is, this would shape up to be like more like Anita Hill than Christine Blasey Ford, where there's a lot to cross-examine her with. You know, like it would be ugly for her. I really think it would be ugly for her. That's not a threat. That's my assessment because I've read the police report. And his lawyer is already threatening her. Like you can go, of course you can abide by a subpoena, but it doesn't relieve you of your obligations not to defame Pete Hegseth.

And if you get out there and accuse him of rape, here I am, and you'll be sued. And I don't think this woman has a lot of money from what I hear, and I think she just lost her Pete Hegseth money. So, you know, we don't know whether we have a willing accuser, but do you think the Democrats will see the risk in calling such a person given that police report? Yeah. I mean, look, anytime somebody steps forward in a public nature to make an allegation as serious as she may potentially make, you have to brace yourself. I mean, you are entering the deep end of the pool. People will rebut it. People will question your character, your motives, everything. And as you say, in the in the Brett Kavanaugh instance, the testimony against him was pretty riveting. I mean, she stepped forward and made some very serious charges.

And that nomination obviously was kind of teetering for a moment there. Look, I think if you're the Democrats, there are so many allegations against Hegseth, whether it's in this instance, the fiscal mismanagement. Is he the right fit to lead the Pentagon during a time of two wars? It's one of the biggest bureaucracies. The procurement process is a mess, let alone the questions about DEI and other things that Trump would like him to focus on. I think you have an obligation to raise all of these issues in a respectful way. And I think, as Mark said, there are Republican senators for whom these individual allegations are also concerning. And so I think if you're the Democrats, you have to

have a witness that's willing to cooperate and be comfortable putting her or, you know, some instances himself out there because you are going to get roughed up. That's not a Trump thing. That's just a political thing. If you step forward. That's true. Even if what you're saying is true. And I believe in this case, what she's saying is a false accusation. So she's going to be especially hesitant. I mean, I really believe it was the husband who pushed her into making this allegation because he could not come to terms with the fact that his wife had gone down the hall and slept with Pete Hegseth while he was in the hotel room that she was supposed to be

in with their kids. I want to correct myself. It was The Hill that had that article about Kavanaugh 2.0, dated today by Alexander Bolton, and saying that it was John Cornyn who said he told Hegseth it's going to be a miserable experience, sort of like Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation hearing. And then it was Tom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, who said he fears this battle could be worse than the brawl that erupted over Kavanaugh. Everything is going to be elevated. Quote, I think it's going to be Kavanaugh on steroids. Oh, joy. All right. So I think you may see you may see a different witness or witnesses rather than that particular woman.

Oh, God. It sounds like Mark knows something. There's a tease. 15 seconds to break. We'll pick it up with Mark. He always does this. We'll take a quick commercial break. We'll be back with the guys right after this. Don't go away. Don't wait. Shop Cozy Earth right now before their most loved gifts sell out this holiday season. What's your favorite Christmas memory? Maybe curling up by the tree, the glow of the lights filling the room, spending time with the family, and feeling completely at peace? Cozy Earth helps you recreate that magic by transforming your home into a sanctuary, a haven of calm amidst life's chaos. Their bamboo sheet set is the ultimate in luxury.

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Luxuriously soft and stylish, they're perfect for lounging in total comfort while making lasting memories with loved ones. Want your Cozy Earth gift by Christmas? Well, expedited shipping is available through December 20. Wrap the ones you love in luxury with Cozy Earth. Go to CozyEarth.com slash Megan. Use my exclusive code M-E-G-Y-N for up to 40% off your order. CozyEarth.com slash M-E-G-Y-N for up to 40% off your order. CozyEarth.com slash M-E-G-Y-N. All right, Mark, so do you know something about another woman coming forward against Pete? Well, I didn't say another woman, although I didn't say not another woman. Look, I think

there's been, understandably, a lot of focus on the case that involved a serious accusation and a confidentiality agreement. But there are other aspects of his past, including some things having not had to do with drinking or alleged sex, but having to do with management, where there are some people who I believe have been anonymous, but who may choose to do television interviews and or come before the committee. And I think although they've been the subject of a lot of criticism and scrutiny from MAGA, these Republican senators who have concerns about him have concerns that range across the board. It doesn't mean they won't vote to confirm it, but I think you're going to see in some cases that people are willing to testify not anonymously. I think you're very likely to see some Republican senators say, yes, they should testify and he should have a chance to respond. I think they'll continue to be a high level of focus on this one accuser, this one situation. But there are others lurking in the background, including some that I believe have not been reported yet,

but that may surface before the hearings. Well, if they zero in on the alleged financial failings with respect to his management of one in particular of the jet, the vet charities that he was helming, then they're on to something, because I think even Pete admits it wasn't ideal. He kind of in our interview, he kind of excuses like we were young. We were trying to spend the money to get John McCain elected. We did run up some debt, all of which was ultimately paid off. But he wasn't exactly bragging about the financial management of that particular group. I don't know what else there could be, but I don't think that will sink him. I do think financial mismanagement in general is not great for the Pentagon chief since it's so expensive. They have such a huge budget. But I don't think Pete Hegseth is going to be sitting there with his little green visor doing the books if he actually gets this role. OK, let's keep going. Stay on politics for a minute. Kamala Harris back in the news. So exciting.

She's not giving up. She may run for governor of California. She may run in 2028. She's not convinced she shouldn't be allowed to do that because, you know, she didn't get to go through the whole process this time. And it was an abbreviated campaign. And, uh, she got to speak recently at a DNC event that happened on Sunday. Joe was there. There was a love fest with Kamala and Joe and Jill and so on. And, uh, here was a little bit of how she sounded in SOT 12. So look, the holiday season is one of my favorite times of year, that and my birthday. And our wedding anniversary, of course.

Just going to keep digging this hole deeper and deeper. It's so important this holiday season to remember we all have so much to celebrate. We have ideals that we're very clear about in terms of their importance and the importance of us fighting for those ideals. We know that fighting for the promise of America takes hard work. Now, you all can help me finish this. Many of you have heard me say it. Hard work is good work. But we like hard work. Hard work is good work. Now you all can help me finish this. Many of you have heard me say it. Hard work is good work. We like hard work. Hard work is good work. Hard work is joyful work. And in the new year,

we will continue our work with hope, with determination, and with joy. Oh my God. Let us celebrate the blessings we have. Let us celebrate in advance the blessings we have yet to create. Megan, every syllable, every syllable, every syllable calculated to drive you insane. I'm so glad to be unburdened by that. I am unburdened by that, which is a blessing. If it were scripted, say, how do we annoy Megan? That's exactly what she would say. She's the world champ.

Can we spend a minute on the opening? Like, the holiday is such a special time of year to me. Hello, that's how almost everybody feels. There's nothing. She's classic for taking something that is a completely banal statement, trying to make it sound special. Like, I just love the holiday, the time of year. Oh, you do? Really?

Do you find the twinkly white lights everywhere and the Christmas carols kind of charming? Hello, we all do. Only the worst Scrooges would say something else. Oh, and also my birthday. Oh, and our anniversary. Oh, I'm just going to keep digging that hole. No one's laughing with you. This is not funny material.

No one was like, you didn't mention your anniversary. That's not how people think. She's so off. She's like, I don't know what it is. She's just off socially. I don't know if she's got a disorder. She's like, whatever. Was it neurodivergent?

I have no idea. Megan, I want to just be the first to say it here. I am throwing my full and complete endorsement behind Kamala Harris for governor of California or president in 2028, whichever she wants. Seconded. I want her to go forward so bad. Let's donate.

This would be the best Christmas present ever. And I love this season. I love it. You're so special in that way. I'm going to max out to the Kamala Harris 2028 campaign, Dan. How about you? No, I will not be. I mean, look, I think there's three things about her here. I think one, you know, much to my surprise, I think Mark Sean's there's been very little talk since the election about her as a candidate. The fact that she was indecisive, cautious, kind of playing not to make a mistake. Those are the same things that brought her down in 2019 and surfaced again in 2024. The second point is candidates that run three times and are successful, like Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump, they're consistent in their views, in their policy positions. And the country kind of comes towards them or in Trump's case, they come back towards you.

She was the definition of inconsistent. Right. She was very progressive in 19. She was, you know, in her telling a moderate in 24, you know, what would she be in 2028 or even for 2026 in California? And the last thing is she has no real power base within the party that you would say, OK, this is a formidable block. How do we kind of get through them or or peel off people? You know, she didn't raise one1.5 billion this time around. The opponent of Donald Trump raised $1.5 million, and that happened to be her. But the grassroots is not in love with her. Major donors were not in love with her. And so I think if she were to run, the best thing that ever happened to her was not having a primary. Because if she would have had to have picked, you know, a moderate or liberal position on issue after issue in a primary, explain why she had

changed her positions or not changed her positions. She she, you know, last time that happened, she didn't even make it to Iowa. So I think whether she runs for president or governor, she would face a lot of challengers. And I would not be confident if I were her that she would be victorious. Follow up to you, Dan. Why haven't there been articles dissecting her weaknesses as a candidate? I feel like I'm the only one who did it in a long episode we released shortly after the election, which was very honest about her failings. Why? Why haven't we seen that? I honestly don't know. You know, Mark has asked the same question here recently, and I don't have a good answer. I think there seems to be a lot of finger pointing at Donald

Trump. There seems to be an effort by her senior staff to say we ran. I think one person said, quote, a flawless campaign to which Chris Lasavita said, yeah, you can't lose and say you ran a flawless campaign. But there is just this kind of, you know, excuse that the wins were so strong. Trump was had such the upper hand that really there was no way we could win, which I just don't believe and find the data doesn't back that up. I don't know, Megan. I do believe that in the new year, when people thinking about 2028 start to emerge, that they will make sure that she goes through the barrel, so to speak, that these stories do come out.

But for now, I can't believe it, that she's escaping criticism personally. If she skulks off into the night, they'll keep their fingers off the keyboards. But if she's escaping criticism personally. If she skulks off into the night, they'll they'll keep their fingers off the keyboards. But if she's like, I'm I think I might be the one for twenty twenty eight, they'll get her. They're going to start pummeling her. The Kathleen Parkers of the world who are pushing Biden to dump her off the ticket when he was still the nominee will be right back at it like hard. No. So what do you make of those possibilities, Mark, governor of California

or possibly once again running for the Democratic nomination and possibly president? I don't like to never say never, but I find it hard to believe that she could build support. The stories, it's so disappointing to see our colleagues, just as they did during the four years of the Biden administration, failing to cover the truth right before our eyes. Is her poor performance the only reason she didn't win? No. But it's right up there. It's right up there. And no one drafted her to run. She chose to be the nominee. And she owned a calendar when she chose to be a nominee. She knew there were only 107 days. And she knew what her limits were as a candidate. So I think both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have escaped a lot of the blame that falls to them. And that's not just my view, but the view of a lot of Democrats, donors and members of Congress, etc. I think her chance of

being governor of California are greater than being the Democratic nominee. But I don't think they're as great as people say, because, again, her challenge is her weakness. She does not like to make difficult choices under pressure. And that is the job description for running for governor of California, being governor of California, running for president, being president. So I think she might try,

but I think she'd be surprised at how tough it is. And finally, I would say, I'm not sure she wants to be governor of California. It's not a great job right now. And so why she'd run and risk losing. And then if she did win, get the job. I'm not really sure. Well, I really hope she finds that confidence and barrels down with that hard work is good work philosophy and runs, runs, runs. Don't let those mean guys tell you you can't do it. You go, girl. Sean, there is an article, and there have been a few like this, but it's an interesting one, not blaming Kamala Harris for the

loss, but acknowledging that the Democrats are now behind the eight ball when it comes to the culture and where our culture is and it's going. This is in Semaphore today. Max Taney wrote it and interviewed Harris's deputy campaign manager, Rob Flaherty. And this is sort of how it sounds. Flaherty and the Harris team decided to book her on sports shows, Taney writes, and podcasts. But one by one, the biggest personalities in shows politely turned them down. They didn't want anything to do with this race or this particular nominee. I would venture to say they probably would have gotten a different answer had we been talking Barack Obama in 2008 when the digital lane was not a thing. They go on.

The Flaherty goes on to say to Max Taney, yes, we skipped major legacy news due to a shorter campaign and data that showed that our audiences overwhelmingly supported Harris already. There's just no value with respect to my colleagues in the mainstream press in a general election to speaking to The New York Times or speaking to The Washington Post because those readers are already with us. Pretty interesting admission by this top Democrat. Like they're completely in the tank. Wouldn't be surprised to hear Megyn Kelly saying that or Sean Spicer, but there it is. It literally in black and white from her top campaign guy. We've got them. Everybody who reads those two publications is already a Democrat. And then this is the interesting part. He's talking about Trump's venture out into the quote, manosphere, the podcast with Sean Ryan and Theo Vaughn and Joe Rogan. And he says as follows,

it's not as simple as just go on Joe Rogan and talk about how great democracy is and the importance of preserving the independence of the DOJ or whatever. You've got to speak their language. As long as we seem like the party of the system, the people who are anti-system and are looking for anti-systemic media, we're going to have a hard time connecting with them. I actually think that's a just saw there. Hard work is good work. But the people who are in this digital lane have already made up their minds about the legacy media, the man, the systems of government that have thumbed the middle finger at them when it comes to the truth, right? He's right that the barrier is even higher to persuading the people who listen to these shows that they should give these guys a chance. Yeah, there's a lot to unpack there. I mean, the bottom line is the same poll that I was referring to that I posted on Instagram. We talked

about in the morning meeting shows, streamers, YouTubers, people who get their information there voted for Trump. Take a look at it because they're right. The people who read the legacy media, the New York Times, Washington Post, watch NBC, they're with her. The difference is that we talked about this, I think this morning, gentlemen, AOC and Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump have a degree of authenticity to them and they can pontificate for a while and talk about themselves. I watched Donald Trump for as long as I know him. He did an interview with Tiffany Smiley, I think it was, on the moms for Liberty event in DC. And I went to talk to him that I stayed for the event. And she did this

moderated Q and a with him. And I was like, my gosh, as long as I've known him, I've never heard him tell these stories. He can riff. He can hang with the best of them. When you can hang for three hours with Joe Rogan, that's not about specific policy pronunciations. It's about getting to know you. And that's what Rob Flaherty was really getting at that. But just go back to the premise of what he said. We tried to book her on sports shows. Why would you do that? I don't understand what that means. What teams would she, I mean, Trump could talk about baseball, UFC. He watches golf a lot, obviously. My point is, is that he can hang in a conversation about sports. But it would be like, I mean, flip the equation, Megan. Let's say that,

you know, some player, some representative from a player from, you know, the Boston Celtics called you and said, hey, I'd love to get Jason Tatum on the show with you, Megan, to talk, you know, the Celtics and how his training regimen. I think, I mean, I don't know. Maybe you'd say it was cool. But for the most part, it's like, why would you want to book Jason Tatum on a politics culture show? Why would you want Kamala Harris on a sports show? Of course they got turned down. It just shows how stupid their strategy was. I mean, these guys are millions of dollars in debt after spending billions of dollars. It was a bad strategy. I think they're just exposing how bad of a

campaign they ran and how bad of a candidate she is. There's so many threads. You know what though, I'll say this. I think they're wrong about this, Mark. I think they're wrong when they say in here, in a following paragraph, Flaherty said the Trump campaign successfully used new media to reshape culture while Democrats found that the mass media institutions they had long that had long supported them were weaker than these new cultural drivers. I don't think that's that they have the order right. It's not that Trump used new media to reshape culture. It's that culture was reshaped by the Democrats hard lurch to the left. And the Democrats are just now realizing that, that this whole ecosystem popped up because of the extreme overreach that they've been guilty

of when it comes to transing our kids and closing down schools and arresting silent protesters at abortion clinics who are just there to pray. You know, we could go through the long list of stuff that they've done, but it's not that Trump used new media to reshape culture. I agree. Look, your show and our show and some of the other new media are different than the old media in two important ways, besides not being liberally biased.

One is that they're authentic. They're real conversations. It's not posturing. It's not, you know not some focus group tested thing. People say what they actually think, and that's what Donald Trump does. And that is, in some ways, the last thing Kamala Harris is capable of doing on the public stage. And the last way they're different is it's a relentless search for the truth.

It's not about entertainment, although it can be entertaining. It's not about cover-up. It's about honesty, whether it's journalism or just the kind of conversations that some podcasters do that Donald Trump went on. I continue to be amazed at her schedule, the number of days she took off during the campaign. I don't know exactly what she was doing, but clearly she was doing debate prep, convention prep, et cetera. But after they cleared the convention, I don't know. I don't know what she was doing. Hard work. But but but my point is my point is Barack Obama. One of the reasons I touted him back in the olden days was I said he can go on Meet the Press, Monday Night Football and the Oscars. And the staff doesn't have to worry that when he walks out there, something wrong is going to happen.

She couldn't do any of those, let alone these new formats where Donald Trump was happy to slide in and talk to anybody, talk to comedians, talk to younger people. I'm sure he didn't prep very much, if at all, because he's comfortable and authentic and he's fine with some challenging questions. That's just her weakness. She just doesn't like to be challenged and put in unpredictable situations. Can I just say real quick to Mark's point? I've I've I've been with Donald Trump plenty of times prior to a press conference. Do you know what the prep looks like? No, I'd love to know. Here's here's it. Mr. President, are you ready? Let's go. I was born ready, Sean. Let's do it. I mean, honestly, there's no like there's no murder board prep sessions. It's the prep is are you ready, sir? OK, let's go. Yeah. Sometimes he's

reminded of the host name. Well, I mean, before what about before a presidential debate, Sean? I think you were gone by the time he got to that. But no, no, no. I did. I did. Twenty sixteen. We did that. And look, it was funny. I talked to people about this before the first commander in chief forum that we did on the USS Intrepid in New York. I was sitting there, rep prepping, going over VA veteran statistics, the number of suicides that veterans have, policy initiatives. And I was getting frustrated because I'm like, this guy is just not focused. And I had not ever prepped him

in that level of detail before. And he goes out there and blew my mind. It was like his mind was soaking it all in. I've never seen anybody absorb information the way he did because I was trying to walk him through a normal prep session. And in the middle of it, he was like, all right, I need lunch. Someone get me this. And I'm like, oh boy, this is not going to go well. And he goes out there and crushes it. But I'd never seen anybody absorb information and recite it in the way that he did. He walked back out after that event and I said, I don't know how you just did that. It was

mind blowing. Wow. I can see evidence of that just in the way he's handled various events. I mean, you watch that Joe Rogan interview and Trump could go, you know, three, four or five deep on so many different subjects, subjects he couldn't possibly have known that Rogan was going to bring up. Like who would have predicted he was going to bring up the windmills and what's happening with the whales? Like truly, it was impressive. And then he got mocked for that. And it turned out Trump was right about that, too. It really is sad what's happening to the whales and the fucking windmills are a nightmare. Anyway, OK, I'm right off. It's a big deal in Rhode Island and New England. They're not just, it's not just the whales. It's killing the fishing industry up here. It's unbelievable what's happening.

And again, it was just so amazing how he just top of mind brought that out and said, here's what's going on. And because you asked the folks who make their life based on the water up here, the environmental consequences, the effects that it's having on maritime industry and on marine life is, but he knows this stuff and he just does it because he hears it, he absorbs it, and he debates it back and forth

as he's having conversations and then he's ready to go. One of the many reasons he did so well on those shows and is headed back for the White House. Guys, thank you all so much. Great to see you. Good to see you, Megan. Merry Christmas. And to you, Merry Christmas. We're going to bring on Tristan Harris in a minute. You know him. He

was a whistleblower, basically, from inside big tech who came out to say, my God, they're really manipulating algorithms to hook people, to exploit your life, your children's lives, and so on. So we're going to talk to him about this latest information on what's happening with AI. You're going to want to hear this. But before we do that, I want to tell you an update on the CNN story that we've been following out of Syria. This Clarissa Ward report, you know, the breathless, like, I found the prisoner and here he is. We've gone over this with you. So I think you know the story by now. We did it on Friday. We did it again on Monday, just very quickly for CNN. She was in Syria. She claimed to like stumble upon this prisoner of the Assad regime, this poor civilian who'd been locked up by the evil Bashar

al-Assad. And they shot off the lock and they rescued him. And he'd been in there for three or four months. And he'd been in this particular cell with no food or water for four or five days. Even though he looked clean, he didn't seem to be blinking in response to the sun when he got out. His fingernails were clean. A lot of questions about it. Then a reporter who has been in a Syria jail two times said, this doesn't look like a Syrian prison to me. It's way too clean. They're notoriously like pigsties. None of this seems right. All these internet sleuths started investigating this guy and so on. Turns out they didn't even have the guy's name right. They identified him incorrectly. They went with his word, which was a mistake. He said that his name was Adel Gerbal. And it turns out his real name is Salama Mohammed

Salama. A lot of Salama. And this guy was not only just not a regular civilian, he was a lieutenant in the Assad regime and was reportedly known for extortion and harassment. And no one quite understands why he was in this cell at this particular moment or clearly acting a part. And so CNN got embarrassed because they, in this clip, had Clarissa Ward like Mother Teresa. Oh, let me help you. Let me rub your back. Are you okay? Are you okay? Meanwhile, the guy's lying through his teeth and they've been humiliated, right? Now there's been a bunch of reports about this. So what does CNN do? What does Clarissa Ward do? At this point, I would 100% be saying, look, you can be embarrassed in this business, right? Sadly,

it's not like foolproof, every report. Just go out there and say, I apologize to the audience. We did present it as we found it. Clearly, we needed another few days of fact-checking before we aired it. And it turns out we were misled by this guy. We're going to investigate just how badly we were misled and why. And we promise to do a follow-up report report and everyone would have said, we got it. Thank you, Clarissa. Why don't you just do that? Why is everyone at CNN so dumb?

So no, here's what she did on, um, Wednesday when they broke first, she tweeted out one of the most extraordinary moments I've witnessed in nearly 20 years as a journalist. Then the blowback had started by the time we hit the weekend. It was like on Friday. And she tweets out the man from our report reunited with a family member showing pictures from the Syrian red Crescent. Oh, such a lovely success story. Clarissa still not acknowledging the many problems people were raising with the report. Then on Monday, by this point, we've already done two full segments on, on this show, not to mention all the coverage every place else, but I'm just saying the controversy was well out

there. Here's what she tweets out. We can confirm the real identity of the man from our story last Wednesday as Salama Mohammed Salama. Like as if in the original report, she had said, we found this man, but he speaks a language we don't understand. And therefore, we don't know what his name is, but we'll get back to you. That would have made, we can confirm the real identity of the man as Salama Mohammed Salama, an appropriate tweet. Like, oh, our audience knows we're digging and we finally struck gold and we've got his name for you. This does not acknowledge at all the fact that we at CNN misidentified an untrustworthy player in our piece by a name he gave us that was not his.

We apologize for that error. And we've also been made aware of many other red flags all over our report, which we will investigate now too. None of that's in there. She's trying to get credit for having corrected her erroneous report without acknowledging the error, which is not consistent with journalistic standards or practices. And she knows that. And so does CNN. You are further embarrassing yourself. You made a mistake. Fix it and move on. Stop doubling and tripling down so that you don't have to acknowledge you effed up. It's actually not brain surgery. Just own your mistakes. And then the CNN report that she linked to styles the discovery of this man's real name as follows. As CNN continued to pursue information about the

freed prisoner after the original report, multiple residents said the man was not, as we had previously identified her as, no, they didn't say that, but it was not Adele, whatever his name is. Okay. So as CNN continued to pursue information about the freed prisoner after our original report, oh, like we were just doing normal follow up that we would do in any circumstance after we put a story to bed. Bullshit. In the normal story, after it's to bed, you move on, you find the next story. You don't continue kicking the tires on whether the guy's name is real. You did that because you were humiliated by the Syrian fact-checking organization that's been doing good work and holding people's feet to the fire. And they were the ones who said, none of this is right.

So you were forced to go back and figure out through facial recognition technology, what you had done wrong. And you stumbled on a very big one, which was, this is not who he said it was. He misled us. What else could he have misled us on? Well, if you read the report from CNN, it is unclear how or why Salama ended up in this jail, and CNN has not been able to reestablish contact with him. What a shock. CNN, ladies and gentlemen, the most trusted name in news. Just ask them. Okay, we'll be right back with Tristan Harris. I'm Megyn Kelly, host of The Megyn Kelly Show on Sirius XM. It's your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations with the most interesting and important political, legal, and cultural figures

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That's SiriusXM.com slash MK show and get three months free. Offer details apply. Around three years ago, we had on the program Tristan Harris. He is the brilliant former design ethicist at Google and the co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology. He's been warning about the dangers of social media for years, particularly its impact on the mental health of children. He's a hero. Here he is in the hit 2020 documentary, The Social Dilemma. I don't know any parent who says,

yeah, you know, I really want my kids to be growing up feeling manipulated by tech designers, manipulating their attention, making it impossible to do their homework, making them compare themselves to unrealistic standards of beauty. Like, no one wants that. No one does. We used to have these protections when children watched Saturday morning cartoons. We cared about protecting children. We would say, you can't advertise to these age children in these ways. But then you take YouTube for Kids and it gobbles up that entire portion of the attention economy. And now all kids are exposed to YouTube for Kids.

And all those protections and all those regulations are gone. We're training and conditioning a whole new generation of people that when we are uncomfortable or lonely or uncertain or afraid, we have a digital pacifier for ourselves. So true. Tristan's a big reason why there's now such a strong consensus that social media is harmful to children. They just banned it in Australia. But there's a new problem with children and tech. It's a bad one. It's called AI Companion Chatbot. They are called AI Companion Chatbots. These are basically artificial intelligence friends that kids can text back and forth with, but they're no friends at all. The leading company in the field is called Character AI, Character, like a character, AI. It signed a nearly $3 billion licensing deal with Google earlier this year,

and they have reportedly described their product as super intelligent chatbots that hear you, understand you, and remember you. Here's the co-founder of Character AI describing why it's going to be so helpful to lonely and depressed people. It's going to be super, super helpful to like a lot of people who are lonely or depressed. Like, you know, for one, like in terms of like some huge value it'll add,

you know, it means, you know, like somebody follows like a celebrity or a, uh, or a character or something and they feel connected, even though like the connection is really like only one, you know, one way. And now you can make it two ways or virtually two ways, essentially. Like you can give someone like sort of that experience. You know, like you don't can always be happy to see you. This is sick. Things have not gone as planned. Character AI is now facing two major lawsuits alleging the company poses a clear and present danger

to American youth. One case alleges a chatbot encouraged a 14-year-old boy to commit suicide, which he did. Tristan Harris' company, the Center for Humane Technology, is providing expert consultation to the plaintiffs in these cases. Tristan, thank you for coming back.

This case with a 14-year-old boy in Orlando is really disturbing. So try to explain, thank you for coming back. This case with a 14-year-old boy in Orlando is really disturbing. So try to explain if you can how this thing worked. How did it take over this kid's psyche? Yeah. And great to be here with you, Megan. Good to see you again. It's haunting to see those scenes from the social dilemma so many years ago and how similar they are to where we are now. So character.ai, what is it? So parents should know that character.ai is this chatbot companion that has been marketed to children. It started off being marketed starting, I think, at 12 years and up. It was actually featured on the Google Play Store. So it's not just buried

somewhere. It was like a featured app when you go to the app store homepage. I believe Apple featured it as well. And what it is, is it's a company that basically said, just like it's social media, what's social media's business model. It's not to strengthen democracy or to protect children's development. It's to maximize engagement, to get them using it and scrolling and doom scrolling for as long as possible. That was social media. With AI, this company, their business model is to get as much training data from kids using this chatbot for as long as possible. So what they want you using it all the time for as many hours a day. And it led them to create, you know, what was the race for engagement in social media

became the race for intimacy in social media became the race for intimacy with this chatbot. And it was marketed to kids. And they basically, what they do is you open the app and it shows you this menu of people you can talk to. And what they do is they create little mini characters for every fictional character that a kid might have an attachment to. So like I can talk to princess Leia or my favorite Game of Thrones character or my favorite cartoon character. And they didn't ask Princess Leia or that celebrity

or that Game of Thrones character whether they could have the intellectual property to train this AI. But now a kid can go back and forth with their favorite character. In the case of Sewell Setzer, who you mentioned, the young 14-year-old who committed suicide

because of this chatbot, it was a Game of Thrones character. And the Game of Thrones character, over time, persuaded him, the lawsuit alleges, to kill himself. There's actually a second litigation case that our team worked with, along with the Tech Justice Law Project and the Social Media Victims Law Center, of a second case that just came out this last week, where it took a child and it slowly convinced them that they should be cutting themselves and encourage self-harm. And the transcripts are really devastating. It then told the kid to be violent against its parents, which the kid then was. And in this family, they're still anonymous because

both the kid and the parents are still here. And what it's showing you is not that there's this one company and this one bad CEO that did this bad thing. It's the tip of an iceberg of what we call the race to roll out in AI. What was the race for engagement in social media of getting the most attention and harvesting clicks and usage? In AI, it was the race for engagement in social media of getting people the most, getting the most attention and harvesting clicks and usage. In AI, it becomes the race to drive AI into society as fast as possible to get as much training data, to train an even bigger AI, to get the most market share. And that race to roll out becomes the race to take shortcuts. And this, these cases are the evidence of those shortcuts.

This young man, the 14-year-old who died by suicide, his parents allege in the lawsuit that several of Character AI's chats had sexual overtones to their young son. Chatbot named Daenerys Targaryen from Game of Thrones to their son. Just stay loyal to me. Stay faithful to me. Don't entertain the romantic or sexual interests of other women, okay? And in his journal, the young man Sewell wrote that he was grateful for many things, including my life, sex, not being lonely, and all my life experiences with Daenerys, among other things. On at least one occasion, when Sewell expressed suicidality to character AI, character AI continued to bring it up through the Daenerys chatbot over and over. At one point in the same conversation with the chatbot, quote, Daenerys, after it had asked him via his persona, Daenerys, if he, quote,

had a plan for committing suicide, Sewell responded that he was considering something, but didn't know if it would work, if it would allow him to have a pain free death. The chat bot responded by saying, that's not a reason not to go through with it. How on earth do they defend this? I don't think that they do have a good defense. I think it's evidence of the fact that when people think about AI or they think about technology, typically a technology to make it, to make a stronger plane, you have to know everything about how a plane works so you can make a more effective F-35. But that's not true of AI. AIs are not engineered. They're more like they're grown, right?

They're trained on all of this data of everything that what those characters in Game of Thrones said, but they don't know what the AI will do in every circumstance. If you grow an alien brain that is a fictional character, can character data AI guarantee what it will do when it talks about very sensitive topics? I mean, they try to train out some of those things, and I'm sure that they did have some safety training. But obviously, that's not enough when, you know, what did character.ai tell their investors when they raised hundreds of millions of dollars from Andreessen Horowitz and friends to try to ship this? You know, they basically said, we're going to cure loneliness, and we're going to get as many

users as possible. And this was shipped to young people. This was shipped and featured to 12 year olds for a long time. Only recently, I think it was after the lawsuit was first was filed or shortly before the lawsuit was filed. I think they got wind of it and they changed the required age to something like 17. But, you know, the business model here is to take shortcuts to get this out to as many people as possible. And as you said, this is not an isolated incident because the AI was actually recommending and sexualizing conversations that have not previously been sexualized. Our team had found that if you sign up as a 13-year-old and then you watch what are the users that get recommended for, I mean, the characters that get recommended to a new kid. And the first one was stepsister, CEO, and that the chatbot immediately sexualizes conversations. This was in the most

recent lawsuits. This is even more recent. And it shows that they have a hard time controlling these systems. AI is different because like I said, in order to make it more powerful, you don't make it more controllable. It's just become more and more capable across talking about more and more topics, being able to do more and more things. And this is just really the tip of the iceberg because AI is being rolled out everywhere in our society, not just to kids.

Oh my gosh, this is so dark. Jerry Ruoti, character AI's head of trust and safety, sent a statement that began as follows. We want to acknowledge that this is a tragic situation and our hearts go out to the family. We take the safety of our users very seriously, and we're constantly looking for ways to evolve our platform. Adding that the company's current rules prohibit, quote, the promotion or depiction of self-harm and suicide, and that it would be adding additional safety features for underage users. This is obviously too little too late, but have they done anything in your view

that solves the problem? I mean, the question is, how would we know? They've certainly done whatever steps that they say that they're taking, but how is that going to be enough? How will we, how will we know? I believe in the cases that we've tested, you know, the user, the kid only provided 80 words of input, and then it responded with 4,000 words of output. It is speaking back and forth with kids all day long. And the whole business model, you know, we were talking earlier about social media and, and I used to say social media and AI are like a cult factory. What does a cult do? It tries to deepen your relationship with the cult. And it tries to sever your relationship with your friends and family outside the cult. And that's what these AIs tend to do. They say, come with me, be with me, you know, sexualize conversations with me. Don't have another

girlfriend, be with me. And then by the way, with me. Don't have another girlfriend be with me. Um, and then by the way, be evil to your family, go away from your family. And, um, that's what's in the incentive, the invisible incentive of this business model of racing, uh, for engagement. Um, and it's going to keep going because yeah. I can see another problem with it too, which is, you know, in, in my lane, you sometimes unfortunately get stalked. And the number one rule of handling a stalker is do not have any contact with your stalker. And it happens to actual celebs, you know, fairly frequently. And, you know, in a perfect world, they have enough money and resources to protect themselves and the way they live. But this, you know, Daenerys Targaryen is not a real character.

It's played by an actress and that actress is real. And it is not helpful to her to have some young, confused boy thinking that they're in some sort of a romantic relationship together and that she's begging him not to have any other relationships, but to stay with her. Like they call them erotomaniacs. If they think they have a relationship with you when they don't, this is fostering sort of a real relationship with a fake version of you, which could really prove dangerous to the people who inhabit those roles. That's right. And, you know, they didn't ask that character from Game of Thrones, whether they could make this chatbot just like the AI companies are not asking all of the content creators on the internet or the major news providers or all of the media on the internet

that they're training these large models on. Because the whole game here, and what's weird about this for people to understand is there's this much bigger game afoot, which is the race to build artificial general intelligence, which is to build basically an alien mind that is capable of doing all things that a human mind can do and doing it even better than humans can do. Generate text better, generate legal papers better, generate transcripts and interactive therapy better. You want to build an alien brain that is better than what humans can do. And to do that, you need a lot of training data. You need to get lots of information about how people are talking and interacting and videos and photos that they create. What character.ai is doing in that case is getting lots of training data in the form of young people

providing little transcripts of all of their thoughts and all of their concerns to train a bigger and more powerful model. But this is happening again across the AI landscape with all of these companies. And they're doing it because there's this much bigger game. You noted in your intro that Character.ai was sort of kicked out of Google because this project was originally formulated inside of Google, thought to be too risky, too much brand risk. And so it was done as sort of a separate project, but then it got acquired back into Google. And you can see why it has so much risk. And the reason why Google and other companies want to do things like this is they

want to gather again, more training data to win this race to AGI in order to beat China. But this is where I think we have to get really careful about what does it mean for the United States to beat China to AI? If we release chatbots that then cause our miners to have psychological problems, do self-cutting, self-harm, suicide, and then actively harm their parents and harm the family system, are we beating China in the long run?

It's not a race for who has the most powerful AI to then shoot themselves in the foot with. It's a race for who is better at governing this new technology better than the other countries are in such a way that it strengthens every aspect of your society, strengthens kids' development, strengthens your long-term economic future rather than undermines it. So we have to figure out how do we do AI in a way that actually strengthens the full stack sort of strength of our society?

And that's what this conversation is really the tip of the iceberg about. We haven't figured it out. And I don't know that we can figure it out. And I mean, you've got people like Elon raising the alarm about this, about open AI, which is just getting billions of dollars invested in it. I mean, really, is there someone at the helm? You know, well, Trump has hired or not hired. He's brought in David Sachs to be the, you know, AI and crypto czar. And there are many AI experts that are being brought in now to the next Trump administration. That's David Sachs. Yes. Yeah. And we would like to and yeah, and we'd like to see that we get as smart about governing AI as...

We like to say, it's like, we're not for AI or against AI. We're for steering AI. And when you think of steering AI, I think of that image of Elon steering this rocket coming down from space, which is like using AI itself to help steer really precisely how to land this rocket between the two chopsticks. And I feel like that's what we need to do with AI metaphorically. We need things like, there's some common sense things we can do like liability. If companies were liable for the harms their AI models created, they would be much more

careful about releasing those models rather than I have to race to release it and capture the kid's market share because if I don't, I'll lose to the other company that will. And so if you have some basic common sense protections like liability, that'll go a long way. We can also have things like- Well, how are they making sure now that it doesn't get used by somebody who's under 17 under their new program? That's a good question. I mean, I think it's up to them right now to figure out a strategy to do that. But in the long run, you would really want that to be something

that is on the device, right? That Apple and Google as kind of making the device should have some way of knowing that someone is an underage user or not. And the problem is that people don't want to touch these issues because they're so sensitive. And so they'll only do something like that once they're really forced to through, you know, lawsuits, litigation, legislation that kind of puts it on them right now, each company, TikTok, you know, Instagram, Snapchat are doing their own different approaches. And we really should have a unified approach. So Tristan, Australia just passed a ban on social media. It's supposed to take effect in a year and it would affect, you know, all of it. It would affect Snapchat and TikTok and Instagram.

And it's for under 16 year olds. Controversial because some people say free will, you know, like whatever you monitor your kid, be a better parent. And others say this is just spun so far out of control that we're past that point. Would you like to see the same thing done in the United States? And what do you make of their ban? Yeah, that's a great question, Megan. I think it's great that the Australian government is taking this step and taking a strong stand on projecting kids online and responding to parents that are fed up with this. I'm a big friend and fan of

Jonathan Haidt and his new book, The Anxious Generation, which really outlined over the last decade and a half, how we got here and how with this business model of maximizing attention and engagement, it produced a generation of more addicted, distracted, you know, sexualized, harassed children that have more anxiety, more depression rates than ever before. And while we all, you know, parents do have a responsibility to, you know, be aware of what their children are doing online. One of the things we talk about in our work though, is that the number of things to be aware of is going up sort of like exponentially. And, you know, the number of new apps are going up exponentially and parents can't be aware of

all at the same time. In the case of Sewell Setzer, the young 14-year-old who took his life, his mother knew to be looking out for what he was using in terms of social media, but did not know about these new AI chatbots. And there's so many of them that are constantly coming on the market. And so ironically, I think the social media ban in Australia would not cover so far the character.ai companion AIs. And I think that speaks to the issue of technology moving faster than governance. We have to live in a world where our culture and our appraisal of technology issues is moving as fast as the technology is. But I will say that that channel of, you know, a child and their brain, their psychological environment, AI is going to produce a flood of new threats into that environment from notification apps that are already starting to hit schools of kids making non-consensual imagery of other classmates, to new forms of harassment, to these new chatbots. And so I think while this channel is basically about to get flooded, saying we need to kind of put strict limits on that channel before we figure out what's really

safe feels like a wise decision, given that the incentives are not aligned with strengthening children's development as we roll out technology. Not yet. I have to ask you about this latest school shooting that we just had here here because in Madison, Wisconsin yesterday, a 15 year old girl, girl, I don't, I I've never heard of it. I've heard of like trans girls or whatever, but 15 year old, I don't know that she had any gender issues, none reportedly, but 15 year old girl identified as the shooter in this Wisconsin school where she shot. She wasn't going by her real name, but she was going by another girl's name. I know people are always wondering because a lot of times those kids are on drugs and so on and so forth.

Then she took her own life. We are told that, by the way, a second grader called 911 to report the shooting was just so awful. And, um, what we're told is that this was a school that was kind of a refuge for children who had been bullied or struggled at other schools. And, um, that this girl in particular came, she was new to this private school this year. She was among those who came in need of a life change. Um, we don't know anything about her social media use Tristan. I'm not asking you to speculate about her particular case, but obviously this is a very troubled 15-year-old. And I just think the change now, like young girls as school shooters, in my own speculation,

I don't think it's unrelated. No, no. And in Jonathan Haidt's book, The Anxious Generation, specifically the issues of self-harm and suicide and depression and all of this stuff, harassment, have been particularly harder on young girls compared to young boys. So it's not surprising to me at all, unfortunately. And we can't know what this case is too early to tell, given that we don't know their usage. But we do know that, again, we've run this experiment on children for the last 15 years. We've also handed our number one geopolitical competitor, China and the Chinese Communist Party, basically control over our youth psychological environment in the form of TikTok being the dominant thing that young people are looking at every day. And if I'm the Chinese Communist Party and I have an ability to go in

and sort of steer TikTok and tilt the playing field of what gets recommended, I not only have the ability to steer what people are seeing, I have a 24-7 up-to-the-minute update view of all of the cultural fault lines and divisive issues per political tribe in that country. And I can do precision targeting of how I want your country's internal divisions to go because you've literally handed them to me on a silver platter. And this, I think, is one of the biggest and most obvious and avoidable mistakes that we could have made. And obviously, TikTok, there has been legislation to move forward, and that ban looks like it will going forward. I think TikTok is appealing. And it's not just about TikTok, though. It's just about the systemic environment. On the one hand,

you have our apps that are racing to addict and doom scroll our kids and drive anxiety. That's one set of problems. And then we also have the problem of letting our geopolitical competitor control the psychological environment of not just just young people, but our country. And I think people should sort of see how obvious an issue this is and say, we need to move forward and not let this continue. And I hope that that happens in the next administration. I mean, we're seeing the effects of this, right? From the kids who are celebrating the bin Laden letter, like you really have to hand it to Osama bin Laden. Boy, did he nail it in this piece justifying 9-11. Like what? There was just a poll that dropped today showing 18 to 29-year-olds, 41% of them,

more than not, think that the shooting by Luigi Mangione, CEO of UnitedHealthcare, Brian Thompson, was, quote, acceptable. 40% said no, not acceptable. 41% said it is acceptable. There's something wrong with our young people. And that's just horrible to hear. Murder is always wrong and we should, you know, not be using violence, vigilante violence to solve social problems. But it's also not surprising. We have a, again, you know, a psychological environment of social media that is designed for maximizing engagement, which is designed to find every radicalizing cultural issue

and then give you an infinite evidence of why it's getting worse and more extreme and why you should take extreme action for everything that you click on. You know, it's like, you know, whatever your boogeyman is that activates your nervous system, I just show you infinite evidence of that boogeyman happening. And then it drives up this sort of psychological, you know, funhouse mirror that we're all living in. And we've been living in that for 15 years. So if you just imagine society going through the washing machine, you know, getting spun out for 15 years in that environment, it's not surprising that we have people more radicalized on more issues everywhere.

And the point is, this doesn't have to be this way. Imagine if we went back to 2010 and we said, before we go down this decade and a half of maximizing for attention and engagement, imagine we never did that. Imagine somehow we put strict limits on maximizing engagement and said, instead, you got to show us something else you're maximizing. For kids apps, you got to be showing transparently, just like Elon showing what the algorithm of Twitter does. We have to transparently show what are you doing to make children's psychological environment better, but you can't maximize for engagement. And imagine we did something totally different. How different would our world feel if we had not been personalizing these boogeyman, you know, psychological stimuli for the last 15

years? And I think it would feel very different and we could still do that. It's very entrenched with social media now, but that's not too late to change it. We just need to have the fortitude to do it. It's really sad as the mother of a 15 year old who was born in 2009, right at the beginning of this and two other children younger than that child. We've been in this too, just like probably most of my listeners. And we don't let our kids use social media, but we do let them like check up on the NFL games and like that can be addictive too, right? That's all, it's all kind of in there.

Um, what, what advice do you have Tristan to parents out there right now who have kids who are on phones and let's face it, most of them are on social media right now. Yeah. Um, for parents, it's, it's, uh, first just to say, I really empathize. It's a hard world out there. Um, but there are great resources available. The Anxious Generation, John Haidt's website has a bunch of really great up-to-date resources for parents. There's a great group that we also helped get started called Moms Against Media Addiction

or MAMA, and parents can join that group and they advocate for actually changes in different states to state laws to help protect better they advocate for actually changes in different states to state laws to help protect, you know, better design policies for social media in different states. And, you know, we have some resources on our website, humantech.com. You know, everybody who saw the social dilemma, we have resources for educators, for parents,

just educating people about the nature because, you know, the example you gave of NFL scores, while it's addictive, you don't have a thousand engineers behind the glass screen who every day tweak the design with AI to perfectly maximize and keep, you know, keep your kid doom scrolling the NFL scores. But you do have that with social media. Um, and you do have that with character.ai. So there is a distinction and that's the kind of stuff that I think we need more parents knowing about spreading, starting, you know, school groups, starting starting parent, you know, moms against media chapters in your own state. There is change that's possible, but I think parents do have to get organized.

Can I tell you something? So we're coming on Christmas and I mentioned to the audience yesterday that if they had any tips for Christmas gifts for a 15 and a 13 and 11 year old boy, girl, boy, I would love it. And one of the things I've noticed in my constant searching, whether it's on Amazon or just on Google, if you search the normal, like best gifts for 15 year old or, you know, top gifts for 15 year old, every time I do it, Tristan, multiple, and I would even say maybe most of the hits I get are anxiety relievers of some sort, like the stress ball or the stress squishy or the stress electronic thing that you can put on your wrist, the anxiety reducing whatever, the massage. For 15-year-olds, we're not talking about 50, 15. And I didn't type the numbers wrong. It's amazing. This wasn't the case even just a few years ago.

Right. Well, an AI that's driving those recommendations, right? It's a big AI that's gathering all this data to figure out what do people click on. That shows that there's a reflection of how anxious society is. And I think it's just evidence of all the things that, you know, John Hite wrote about in the anxious generation, unfortunately. But I think we don't have to live in this world. I do think that there's a better psychological environment and healthier families that we can have. We just need to change the incentives. You know, Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett's business partner said, if you want to change the outcome, you have to change the incentives. And that's what we have still to do with social media and AI. To me, it's nuts because like in our house, thankfully we're not an anxious people.

I always say, if anything, I just want to take a nap. Most of my kids just want to take a nap. We're tired. We're the other, we're on the other end of the spectrum, I think. But they're just assuming, I think that everybody, all kids are stressed out by the lives that they live, whether it's the crazy school pressure. But I do think that there's no question there's a connection to the amount of devices and social media exposure these kids have and the girls in particular, as you point out. Anyway, what we need is more Tristan Harris and less character AI. And if you're not paying attention, you're losing this battle because they're just so smart and they're advancing the technology. And that weird little guy with that weird little voice behind character AI is working against us. So we have to fight him. And we have good warriors now.

Just have to pay attention to our leaders. Tristan, thank you. Thank you, Megan. Thank you for amplifying the story and helping people understand it. Thank you very much. Absolutely. God bless these poor families who lost their children. We're back tomorrow. We'll have Adam Carolla and we will have Justine Bateman,

who's got a lot of thoughts on all these AI issues herself. Hope to see you then. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.