The Megyn Kelly Show - Rise in Crime, Corporate Cowardice, and Media Hypocrisy in America, with Bari Weiss and Brandon Tatum | Ep. 216

Episode Date: December 7, 2021

Megyn Kelly is joined by Bari Weiss, "Common Sense" editor and "Honestly" host, and Brandon Tatum, author of "Beaten Black and Blue," to talk about corporate cowardice and money over morals related to China, the WTA standing up to China, the rise in "smash and grab" robberies and crime generally in America, an overly-racialized column from the New York Times, how life changes (and sometimes improves) with internet haters, Weiss' marriage, the Colin Kaepernick film, the state of policing in America, the push for Black Americans to consider options other than the Democratic party, confronting adversity, the Jussie Smollett trial, Chris Cuomo being fired by CNN, media hypocrisy, and more.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow 

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Great show for you today. I'm excited for this two hours. In our second hour, I'm going to be joined by Brandon Tatum. Brandon is a former police officer turned outspoken conservative behind the popular YouTube channel, The Officer Tatum. He's out with a new book, Beaten Black and Blue, being a black cop in an America under siege. But we begin today with my friend Barry Weiss, founder of Common Sense on Substack, host of the podcast, Honestly, and author of the book, How to Fight Anti-Semitism. Barry, great to have you back. How are you? I'm great. Great to be here, Megan. I dried my hair for you.

Oh, nice. I want to tell you something. We'll get to this in a minute, but a lot of people will talk to me about various whatever in the news. And if you knew how many people came up to me and said, you know, Barry Weiss says we have to get out of this with courage. Courage is the way out of this, what our country is going through. And so I love it because it just shows your influence grows. It's resonating for people to be able to sort of quote. I realize that was sort of in the headline, but for the people to be able to just repeat it back shows you're having an impact and you're really connecting with people. So I hope you're feeling that.

Thank you. Thank you. I had a wonderful experience in an airport the other day that gave me a sense of that where someone, I was screaming into the phone and some guy comes up and taps me on the shoulder and is like, I recognize your voice, are you Barry Weiss? And I was like, yes, are you a hater or not? And anyway, it was very sweet. And we ended up having breakfast together. And anyway, he was on his way to, hi Jordan, he was on his way to a psychedelics conference. It was really interesting and fun. But you don't get, in COVID, you don't get that sense as much. So I'm a huge extrovert and being able to actually now begin to interact with people is really wonderful.

I was at Duke University last week speaking and caught a sense again of like, oh, wow, people are actually reading and listening to these things. Yes, 100%. I'll tell you, I had not exactly a similar experience, but I was at the grocery store with my daughter the other day and there was this man and he was staring at me. And I mean, he was really staring hard. It was a hard stare and it wasn't breaking. And he'd look away for like one second, but then he'd look back and the hard stare would resume. And I mean, obviously at this point in my career,

it's not totally unusual for, I can see, you know, somebody's recognizing me or asking, is that her, you know, that kind of thing. And you kind of know that look, but this guy was just, and like, it just wouldn't take his eyes away. And it of thing. And you kind of know that look, but this guy was just, I'm like, it just wouldn't take his eyes away. And it was awkward. And I was looking at my daughter, like, don't, don't, don't stare back. Look away. Let's look over here. And finally, like we got into the grocery store and it continued. And finally I said to him, can I help you? Is there, do you need something for me? I'm like, maybe I'm misunderstanding the whole situation. And he was like, oh, I was just wondering if you were Megyn Kelly I'm like oh my

lord it is the it is the is it her you know like people it's fine to do that and appreciate the support but you got to break the stare you got to look away you got to pretend like it right it's like a protocol say something or buy the person a drink there's a protocol there's a protocol yes agree

there was no lunch between us because I was like could be could have all the police could be here soon. It's unclear. But you're but I do feel I mean, one of the things that I feel is that there's so many haters online. And so you sort of over index for that in real life. But most people that are haters online are cowards in real life. And in my experience, the only kind of people that have haters online are cowards in real life. And in my experience, the only kind of people that have ever come up to me are perfectly wonderful and

lovely people. I think it's interesting you describe yourself as a huge extrovert. When did you realize that about yourself? Only when I realized that other people were introverts. I thought that was like the only way, not the only way to be, but it's a little bit like when you grow up in your family context, all you really know is your family context and that's what's normal. And then you sort of move out into the world and you're like, oh, wow, people grew up in wildly different circumstances with wildly different experiences of family life, obviously. But, you know, when you're a kid and then, you know, all of a sudden you're in like fourth, fifth grade, you start to understand that. Yeah. I mean, I think that that's one of the things that propelled me into a career in journalism, to be honest with you. Like I love interacting

with people. I love talking to people. I love slipping into other people's experiences and, you know, at its best, you know, trying to be as empathetic to those experiences as possible and understanding the way that they experience and move through the world. So, yeah, that's a huge reason, I think, that I'm a journalist, beyond the fact that I'm, you know, sort of like not an expert in anything, but very curious about lots of things. That's all you need to be. That makes you inclined toward this kind of career. Yeah.

I mean, honesty helps, too. And you've got that as well. It's funny to me because I still don't know what I am. I don't think I'm an extrovert, but I don't think I'm an introvert either. You know, I do not get the feeling of like people. I want to be with them. You know, I'm much more like I'm happy in my house with my, with my people. And I don't have any obligations to perform or be on or, you know what I mean? Like, yes. But before you became Megan Kelly, the kind of person that people Google in a supermarket or a bar, like that is

understandable now that you're a public figure and the pressure to like not be on. I mean, that's horrible to always feel like you have to be on. But before that, right before you were, you know, noticed, don't I mean, I, it would be from having met you the one time I would definitely characterize you as an extrovert or someone or an introvert that performs extremely well as one. Yeah. I never actually looked at that as a line of demarcation because I've been in the public eye now for 17 years. But you're right. Because I think back on the college version of me, the law school version of me, that person was probably more

outward facing and more excited about dealing with, you know, random parties, random rooms, random. Yeah, exactly. And now you're right, especially having been at Fox News for 13, 14 years and lived on the Upper West Side. I am a little like with the eyes batting whenever anybody walks by, like, I'm going to get it. They're going to get, you know, they're not actually going to hit me. But you do, as you say, you may over-index, but I think on the Upper West Side, maybe I had it exactly right and unclear. So now I am a little bit more like, yeah, I'm a news person. I'm controversial. You know, I do believe the lovers outnumber the haters, but you always have to be on guard.

Yeah. Yeah. You do have to be on guard, but also I thought about this a lot because in a weird way, being disliked, at least by some corners of the internet, I think has made me a better person, if that makes sense. It does. Do you know what I mean? I'm like, oh, always have to tip 25%. Never can, you know, never, never want to complain. I thought it was going a different way. No, I mean like- Like now I actually have to behave well. Well, I, I just like, I think in general, like, you know, my entire history has been poured over

and I'm like, there's not that many skeletons actually, given how deep people have dug into my past. But it also can make you a little crazy. I remember Nellie and I were living in our rental in New York and the water wasn't working. There were two bathrooms, the water wasn't working in one of them. And she was like, I'm going to call the super. And I was like, no, you can't call the super. And she was like, are you crazy? Of course I'm calling the super. And I was like, no, no, like we can't complain. Like we can't ever be perceived to be, you know, Karen-ing, although that wasn't a term two years ago in any way, it's just not worth it. And she looked at me and was like, no, no, we're paying for this apartment.

The water isn't working. Of course we're calling the super. And it was a little bit of a moment for me of like, oh, I've taken this too far. Yeah, you've crossed. You've crossed over to the other side. I, knowing you as to the extent I do, you are a natural extrovert. I was just talking about Rush Limbaugh about how you'd watch him get in front of a room of people and his chest would puff out and he would feed off the energy in the room. And I can see that in you. And it's in part why you, you were sort of born for this moment, Barry. You, it's like everything that's happened to you made you the perfect, one of the perfect leaders for this anti-woke pushback, you know, your

more traditional liberalism, you're the fact that you're in a lesbian relationship, which I want to get to in a minute, because I hear there's news. I like for people to break their personal news on the show. But I'll get to that one second. But anyway, but then your your unfortunate experience with New York Times, where they tried to bully you, and you walked out like Khaleesi, um, you know, with the fires burning all of it, right? It's like, you have to be the extra who, who else would create a new university? You know, only you. Megan, when I'm feeling low, I'm realizing I just need to call you. I feel like I'm licking my funeral. This is amazing. I'll show up. I'll say it all over again. It's very nice. I don't know if I,

I don't know. It's, it's hard to sort of like look at yourself while you're being yourself. And if you become, you know, you, you, it can be a total, I don't know. I think it can become like navel gazing and narcissistic and just try and just try and do the right thing and live out your values. And the thing that I think is amazing about this moment, and you know, we're on a medium that proves it is how much is possible right now in terms of just starting your own thing, starting your own institution, whether it's a podcast, you know, or a media company or a new university or a new school. And as soon as I sort of shifted my gaze from desperately trying to reform and shore up obviously decayed institutions to completely focused on building new things and throwing whatever weight I have between behind

other people that are building other things that I believe in, like the more sort of like optimistic and elevated I felt. And, you know, there's a lot to be pessimistic about in the world right now, which I'm sure we'll get into. But, you know, ask me, aren't you so down? Aren't you so down? I have to tell you, I was despondent in the last year that I was at the Times. And I feel so energized and excited right now about what's possible. And 100% of that has to do with the fact that I just totally changed my like where I am putting my energy. You know, just in case you had any doubts about leaving the New York Times, and I know that you don't. I'm sure you saw this because it's it's getting a fair amount of pickup. But there has there's a guest essay. This is dated December 5th. That's getting some blowback now for good reason.

And it's the title of it is, is my little library contributing to the gentrification of my black neighborhood? This is written by a woman named Erin Aubrey Kaplan. Describes herself as a journalist and author who grew up in the south central section of Los Angeles and nearby Inglewood. Now, this essay is all about, you know, those little I don't know if you read it, but, you know, those little. I did. Yeah. It's it looks like a mailbox, but really it's a little book station that you can take books from in front of somebody's front lawn or I guess potentially leave books. They're cute. I've seen them. And she she thought so, too. We were actually thinking about building one on our front lawn with just Abigail Schreier's book and other canceled people's other books that have been controversial. Oh, my God. Not sure that's the best move in terms of personal security. But I think it would be a very cool move for anyone that's listening to this and wants to stir up a little bit of conversation in their neighborhood.

I'll tell you what happened to that little mailbox slash library. What happened around the corner for me growing up, there was a mailbox that people decided to target. I don't know why. It must have looked imminently wreckable. And people kept like running their cars into it or some kids knocked it down with a shovel. And so finally, the owner built like a sort of rectangular box and filled up the entire base with concrete with just a little slit up top for the for the mail. And so kids who had been eventually intentionally targeted the mailbox, then filled up the little space with more concrete. You can't win. That's amazing.

So maybe you're right. Don't tempt them. There's no reason to intentionally antagonize. All right. So Erin is really wrestling with her little mailbox or her little library because she said, look, I was excited to put this outside. I thought Inglewood, my town, deserved it. And then something horrible happened. Quote, one morning, glancing out my

front window, I saw a young white couple stopped at the library. Instantly, I was flooded with emotions. She's black. Astonishment and then resentment and then astonishment and my resentment. It all converged into a silent scream in my head. Get off my lawn, she goes on. The truth was, I hadn't set it out to appeal to white residents. She says, what I resented was not this specific couple. It was their whiteness and my feelings of helplessness at not knowing how to maintain the integrity of a black space that I created. I was seeing up close how fragile that space could be. She goes on to write, how fragile my feeling of being settled is. It didn't matter that I own my house, as many of my neighbors do. Generations of racism, Jim Crow, disinvestment, and redlining have meant that we don't really control our own spaces. In that moment, I had been overwhelmed by a kind of fear, one that's connected to the historical reality of black people being run off the land they lived on, expelled by force, high prices, or some whim of white people. She never fully

reconciles the feelings, but what she ends up concluding is that black presence has value. And it is increasingly important to maintain and grow black space and to be thoughtful about the integrity of a black space. And of course, Barry, all I could think was, can you imagine if this were a white person saying any of this about maintaining the integrity of one's white space and how white presence has value? Your thoughts on it? My thoughts when I read the article was just the idea that you can write a sentence in public in the paper, in the most important newspaper in the world, regardless of what you

think of it. The idea that you can write, what I resented was not the specific couple. It was their whiteness and my feelings of helplessness and not knowing how to maintain the integrity of a black space that I created. The idea that it is acceptable and not just acceptable, but laudable to say something like this about a large chunk of the population and to reduce people to their race or to the amount of melanin in their skin and demonize them because of it. Right. It's the way that she dehumanizes these people. It's not that she resented them as people or human beings. She resents them because of an immutable characteristic about who they are. I don't know what that is other than racism.

And the fact that that has become completely normalized is very scary. I mean, it's fun to make fun of this article and it's easy to dunk on it. But it's actually like quite chilling to me. And it's just bald and unrepentant racism. The other part of it that jumped out to me, Megan, and we were talking about it in the Slack for my company the other day, as we all read it, of course, is the idea that she says, it didn't matter that I own my house as many of my neighbors do. Generations, as you just said, of racism, Jim Crow, disinvestment and redlining have meant that we don't really control our own spaces. The sort of denial of history that's built into that, the notion that you are sort of collapsing

time between 2021 and pre-civil rights era, you know, or post-civil rights era Jim Crow, okay? But the idea that you are basically saying that nothing has changed, that the state of my life, because of America's ugly and disgusting history with racism, what that does is it erases the heroism and the progress that civil rights leaders in this country made. And it erases, frankly, their sacrifices. And the idea that a person today is sort of the same as a person that was subjected to redlining and yes, generations of racism and yes, being, you know, and Jim Crow and all of the rest of the things she cites to me is just morally perverted.

And frankly, like it's revising history in a way that denies the very people that if you were in a conversation, I imagine with this writer, that she would point to as her heroes. That's a great point because she skips right over the whole civil rights movement, the Voting Rights Act and all of the legislation that was put into place and decides that she's in exactly the same position that Black people in the Jim Crow South

were in. And it's absurd. And there's nothing a white person can do that she's okay with. She criticizes white flight from neighborhoods after we got rid of things like redlining. And, you know, Rod Rehrer's got a great point, a great responsive essay out saying, do you know why white people did engage in white flight? Because the law didn't allow them

to stop black people from moving in. And some of the racist ones were like, well, I'm out of here. So she doesn't she doesn't like that. You know, we did change is his point in this country. Not everybody fleed fled. And she doesn't want the whites to flee the mixed communities, the more diverse communities. But she also doesn't want the whites to be in the diverse communities. Right. Like, where exactly are the white people supposed to live to make Erin happy? I remain unclear. Well, if you haven't listened to it, it's actually worth listening to just a few episodes. There was a podcast series that the Times put out called Nice White Parents. I thought it was a kind of

brilliant headline, to be honest with you, but I listened to it. And what it was about was a school in New York, I believe it was a public charter school, but I might be screwing up. It might've been a magnet school. And it was essentially demonizing white parents in the school who tried to get increased donations to the school. And it was basically, it's worth listening to because it's exactly this catch 22 you're saying. The parents were demonized for being a part of the school, being involved in the school and trying to make the school better.

And that was unacceptable because that somehow was paternalism. It was somehow like vestigial white supremacy, or it was gentrification. But then, okay, so you don't want the parents to be involved in school. You want them to go to another school. Well, no, that's white flight. That's racism. So there's literally no way out in the logic laid out both in that podcast and in this op-ed that you just mentioned. I am quite sure, he writes, that anybody in the New York Times newsroom who read this and thought, hang on, that's racist, knows by now to keep that opinion to themselves if they want to keep their job. And I was thinking about Don McNeil, the COVID reporter who lost his job because somebody was raising with him an incident involving someone uttering the N word. And Don, in recounting the story, said the N word in trying to quote the original story. And he wound up getting fired. And by the way, his replacement over the at the New York Times when it comes to covering COVID has made about 40,000 mistakes. And that's

my overstatement in the same way she overstates the children's deaths by 400 percent or whatever. I mean, so the person, the young, diverse woman they replaced him with isn't really holding up her end of the job. But you can't object to this sort of racist messaging in The New York Times or you're the racist. But that's in part because racism itself has been redefined. And I think that's something that people aren't really fully appreciating. Racism, right, is not bigotry or personal bigotry against someone because of the amount of melanin they have or don't have in their skin. least historically, according to this definition. Therefore, it's not actually, it's a contradiction in terms, according to this new view of things, for there to be racism against white people. It's an impossibility.

And I think once people sort of grok that change, they'll start to understand how things like this, while morally upside down, are justifiable inside the realm of an institution or a culture that has completely redefined what racism is. Yep. And that is why people like Aaron can push for segregated spaces and for taking out the sins of the father on today's generation of white Americans who may have done absolutely nothing wrong or racist a day in their life. That's why they're okay with having little kids treated as Jim Crow himself because of their white skin, because someone's going to have to pay. And you've got generations of people who were

never black slaves wanting reparations from people who never had slaves. And if you object to that, again, see point number one, you're a racist. And I think that there's kind of a distinction, like there's a really reasonable conversation that should be had, I believe, in the political realm about whether or not, like I think the question, for example, of reparations as a federal government policy is a conversation that should be had and should be debated. But the idea that we should sort of force five, six, seven, and eight-year-olds to make them avatars of their race and make them feel as if they are born into either victimhood or oppressor status based on that. That to me is not just wrong on the level of damaging psychologically and socially and culturally for those individual children. But it is also like setting us up for increasingly entrenched positions on race,

which is terrifying to me. The idea that you would want to tell an eight and nine and 10 year old boy, a white boy, that your race is the thing that matters most and your race is the thing that actually gives you power over these other people in your class. That to me sounds like a KKK talking point. Yeah, exactly right. There's much more to go over. I want to get into the crime spree that we're seeing across the nation and the White Houses and now the media's excusing of it in ways, I guess they're predictable, but they never cease to shock me a little. Here with me today, Barry Weiss, founder of Common Sense on Substack, which you should definitely subscribe to, and host of the on Substack, which you should definitely subscribe

to, and host of the podcast, Honestly, which you should also subscribe to because she's always interesting, entertaining, and fact-based, and just brilliant, all-around brilliant. For her young, young years, I don't even like to think about how much younger than I am you are, Barry, but it gives me hope that- I'm so old, Megan. I'm so old. It gives me hope that there's going to be somebody carrying on once, you know, the Reaper comes for me. OK, let's talk about. I met a kid the other day after a talk and he was so lovely and smart. And I said, oh, what year of high school are you in?

And he was like, I'm in medical school. And I'm like, oh, that's how old I am. OK, so I'm terrified because I love Charles CW Cook of National Review. I just, he's so, he is so smart and his British accent really helps. But I just love the way he talks about the news and I've had him on the show many times. And one day I made the mistake of going into territory that got to age and he is, he is, I think 35 years old, right? Abs, did we determine he's 35 is exactly your age.

He's Abby's age determine he's 35 is exactly your age he's abby's age and he's 35 and i mean i i'm like i don't understand it i'm used to looking up to these amazing brains and intellect like they're supposed to be older than i am and i'm supposed to be striving to get there by the time i'm that age i'm like all hope is lost i'm completely screwed if i haven't done it by now i'm not like all the years of reading I should have been doing. It's too late now. I can I can barely I could I could catch up to like the sixth grade version of Charles C.W. Cook at this point. Megan, you look better than every single one of us. So just just just cruise on that, babe. Well, thank you. I'm going to hold on to that. Thank you. That is something that is. Oh, that is everything. OK, so let's talk about crime because it is spiraling.

We've seen violent attacks, tons of shoplifting, these mobs smashing grabs where they, like all these cars sort of block the entrance to a massive store and then dozens of people run in, smash the display cases and take the things. The White House, when asked by Peter Doocy, Jen Psaki blamed the pandemic, not defund the police, not soft on crime policies by elected DAs, but the pandemic. Right. And apparently on CBS this morning, the other day, they played a clip. This is courtesy of Jonathan Turley dot org. I love Jonathan Turley played a clip of a man nonchalantly clearing a shelf of hair care products into a garbage bag and then riding his bike out of a Walgreens.

And one of the co-hosts insisted, it just seems like an act of desperation. I mean, you're not getting rich off of what you take from a Walgreens and going on talking about how sad that was. And I've got to say. How does she explain the the louis vuitton well exactly right it was um it was the i don't know i actually don't watch cbs luxury handbags well this is what turley says he says it also appears that pandemic sustenance gatherers felt compelled to grab 79 000 worth of purses from a givenche store purses certainly do appear to be a COVID necessity across this

accessory deprived nation. When a gang hit Burberry's on the Magnificent Mile in Chicago, they ran past an assortment of clothing to grab high price purses too. What are the criminals going to do without their givenchy bags, Barry? Single tier. I'm realizing I've never pronounced that brand name correctly, so I'm not even going to try and say it now. It is. I mean, we live in L.A., as you know, which is the other day there was a horrible video of a of a mom very near us. Yes. Who was sort of manipulating a stroller into her house when these two robbers like surrounded her and, you know, broad daylight, you know, in a nice neighborhood in L.A. So the average price of a home there was one point nine million dollars. Keep going. Yeah. So so this is happening in much more, you know, raised in ways as we've all seen the videos of. But tell me how there's not a

connection. Let's take the example of San Francisco, you know, where the district attorney Chesa Boudin has announced and, you know, that that that stealing things under I think it's a thousand dollars. Nine hundred fifty. Yeah. We'll be prosecuted. How's that connected to the pandemic? You would think that there might be a connection between that publicly announced policy and the fact that now when you go into a Walgreens and you want to buy head and shoulders, a clerk needs to come and unlock it for you. What are you trying to tell us about your scalp? I just, I am a head and shoulders girl.

I don't know why. It's not a dandruff thing. It's a smell thing. And I do not believe in fancy hair care and skin products. I think if you just stick to head and shoulders and Cetaphil for your entire life, you will be fine. This is my controversial opinion. No, you're in good company. When I went to the Reagan Ranch, Ronald Reagan, like it's preserved from when he and Nancy lived there. And there was a bottle of Head & Shoulders in Reagan's shower.

See how much you have in common. You really have been red pelt. I mean, I didn't think we were going to get into skin and hair care. Hey, you're the one who raised it. Well, I'm simply saying that, you know, I use Head & Shoulders, Megan, as an example, because it's not exactly a desirable shampoo. Why would people be stealing it? There's no shea butter in Head & Shoulders. It's full of chemicals.

And yet, even Head & Shoulders, you need to get under lock and key in San Francisco. So, you know, it's the idea that this is about the pandemic is it's it's risable. It's lunacy. Everyone knows that it isn't. And, you know, I think that we're going to start seeing a backlash to the fact that, you know, we could pick any statistic from all of these cities. The the the homicide rate in Philadelphia, I think, is the highest that it's been since 1991. I think Alec McGillis from ProPublica, who's been an amazing reporter on this subject, tweeted that the other day. It's everywhere and everyone's feeling it. And one of the ways that I know that it's real is, you know, I am I am not a gun fan. I'm quite scared of guns. I've shot a few times

in my life. And coming to L.A., you know, most of our friends are liberal. And most of our friends, an increasing number of them either have guns or considering getting guns. And this has been shocking to me, as someone from, you know, a family that never would have imagined having a gun, how normalized that has become. And I'm not talking about among political conservatives. Yeah. A lot of people hate guns till they need one. And then you're desperate to get your hands on one for self-defense. If the cops are not going to show up, if they're going to blue fluid out because yet another news cycle has told everybody they're awful and racist and so on, crime's going to go up. If you defund police departments like we saw in New York,

where they took a billion dollars in funding away, they get rid of plainclothes officers on the street and so on. Crime goes up. I mean, it's another point Turley was making in his piece saying he cited this 1968 famous study article by the University of Chicago economist Gary Becker, who wrote about crime and punishment. And basically the calculation that he reached was criminals make decisions based on both the certainty and severity of punishment. So you can increase the certainty of punishment. You can say you are a $2 crime. You are getting punished. We're coming for you and lower the level of punishment and that will deter crime. Or you can you could raise the level to a thousand dollars and then we'll we'll shoplift you or we'll punish you shoplifters. But then you've got to have super high levels of punishment. Right. So if you do take that thousand dollars worth of good goods, you're

going to jail guaranteed for two years. Right. But we're doing exactly the opposite of all of this. And then when asked about responsibility or policies or what have you, the Biden administration both blamed the pandemic and then cited President Biden's support of law enforcement, of local law enforcement as a reason why they're definitely not to blame. Is there anybody who believes that? Not that I know. Even your friends out there. No, but it's also, I mean, it is like, this to me is one of the reasons that independent journalists are killing it the way that they are. And why readers are so desperate for their reporting is because this is the story right now.

This is all anyone I know is talking about. I mean, there are other things, of course, COVID mandates and all the rest. But, you know, when you start to feel unsafe or you start to feel that your family is unsafe, none of the rest of the culture war stuff matters. Foreign policy doesn't. None of this matters. People care first and foremost about keeping themselves and their families safe. And once that starts to shift and once people start to feel like the state doesn't have a monopoly on violence and instead they're sort of seeding ground, then it becomes really uncertain and scary. I mean, we were walking in West Hollywood the other day, it must've been 10 or 11 AM walking to a coffee shop.

There was a guy walking down the street, nice neighborhood, just swinging a machete in the middle of the street. And thank God there was a guy walking his dog. I was like, don't go down that street. There's a guy swinging a machete. I don't have my phone, but would you guys call the police? And I called the police and it was like talking to the DMV. They were like, can you wait at the corner until we come and apprehend this person? And I'm like, no, definitely not. I'm an unarmed woman with a dog and my wife and this guy is swinging a machete.

No, I'm not going to wait. Sorry. So thanks. But no. no i'm not gonna wait sorry so thanks but no meanwhile aoc is out there saying it's this is fake news that uh there there are no smashing grabs and that there's not a crime wave uh sweeping the nation okay i mean to me that reminds me of and and the reaction you know from cbs and so on and and the white house it reminds me of what's happening economically right like no you should be you should be celebrating the joe biden economy know, look, look at all he's done. The inflation, it's transitory. It's not really a big thing. Oh, let's celebrate a two cent decrease in the price of gas over a week. Yay. Yay. Go Joe Biden. Something that was that was a joke that

was a chart that was put together as a joke. And then his chief of staff tweeted it out like, yay. And the DCCC celebrated, retweeted it. You know, the DCCC sent it out like, yes, go Joe Biden for a two cent reduction in the price of gas. But the point is there, the gas lighting by the administration and some of the media of the American public on the economy isn't working because people do feel the difference in their pocketbook when it comes to, you know, I want this thing and it costs more than it used to. Not to mention, you know, the job numbers forever. Yeah, it takes forever. The supply chain. Right. They're lying to us about the ships that are in the port. They're like, oh, things are getting better. And then you find out the truth, which is they've just changed the way they count the number of ships that are in the ports off of L.A., the numbers and the

situation is just as bad as ever was. And the same thing with crime. It boils down to don't believe your lying eyes your eyes and your own experiences of the world? Or do you trust, you know, whatever the convenient slogan that is being trotted out that day is? And I think increasingly the chasm between those things has just grown so wide that that like the slogan hearing is just not as effective as it as it used to be. That's right. People are seeing the truth. Well, Barry unleashed a truth bomb on her sub stack about American companies and China and took aim, among others, at this one particular billionaire hedge fund guy who I've been dying to get to, this guy, Ray Dalio. Oh, he's absolutely fascinating. Oh, my God. All right. Let me squeeze in a break because I do have to pay my bills and we'll pick it up there right after this break because we had Enes Kanter Freedom on the show yesterday,

and he's one of the few exercising your favorite word, courage. Don't go anywhere. More Barry Weiss coming up on China, also her new university and much, much more. And remember, you can find the Megyn Kelly Show live on Sirius XM Triumph Channel 111 every weekday at noon east, and the full video show and clips when you subscribe to our YouTube channel at youtube.com slash Megyn Kelly. If you prefer an audio podcast, you can subscribe and get the show for free. Just subscribe and get the downloads, Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. And there you can check out our full archives, including our full interview with Barry the first time she came on, which was such a heartfelt, lovely exchange. And if you don't already love her, you're going to after you listen to that. So our troubles with china continue barry um that we still have not come to understand the truth about star tennis player uh peng pang shui who's gone missing although the chinese have put out

videos of her that are very suspicious she does not appear to be living on her own free will and saying things into camera of her own free will, as the Women's Tennis Association accurately deduced. And they are the only ones who have refused to take the word of the CCP, of even the IOC, the International Olympic Committee, which is like, we've talked to her, she's good. And that's a corrupt body. And the Women's Tennis Association is like, no, we'll be satisfied when we've talked to her. We want to talk to her. And it's been awesome to see, I have to say, Serena Williams, even Naomi Osaka, who I've criticized in the past, showed a lot of courage. She was one of the first to tweet out, you know, this is wrong. Like we need to get to the bottom of this. I can't say the same for

the leaders in the NBA other than, you know, Ennis Cantor Freedom, who was on the show yesterday. He he stands alone in the NBA, which is amazing. He's amazing. But that's that's an organization that that collects tons of money from China. So they don't want to. But so did WTA. They make a lot of money off of China, too. But they took a principled stand because one of their own is clearly being hurt after having accused a Communist Party official of having sexually assaulted her. So you took aim at all of this. The headline of your piece was women's tennis has balls does Wall Street because it's not just the NBA. This guy, Ray Dalio.

OK, Ray Dalio is a hedge fund guy. He's in Connecticut with me. And he was asked about this China. It's human rights abuses. We didn't even touch on, you know, the Uyghurs, the ethnic genocide and so on, their record in China and how he thinks about it when it comes to his many investments. And here is what he said. I can't be an expert in all of those those particular dynamics of that.

I really have no idea. And then I look at the United States and I say, well, what's going on in the United States? And should I not invest in the United States because other things are not our own human rights issues or other things? You know, and I'm not trying to make political comparisons. But I think that those things are different than some of the things we see happening in China. People aren't the government isn't disappearing people, for example. OK, look, you want to get into the policy of disappearing people. I'll give a little bit of a perspective of that. OK, what they have is an autocratic system.

And one of the leaders described it. He said that the United States is a country of individuals and individualism. And that's what it's and that's what it's about. He said in China, it's an extension of the family. And as a top down country, what they're doing is that it's that kind of like a strict parent. They behave like a strict parent. And the notion of whatever they're doing in terms of calling in people and then behaving in a certain way, that's their approach. What is he saying?

He's dissembling. He knows exactly what's going on in China. And, you know, we can pick on Ray Dalio and he deserves it because he beclowned himself with Andrew Ross Sorkin last week. But really, that could just as easily be the CEO of Marriott or Apple or Coca Cola or Nike or the NBA. We could go on and on and on. What this is representing is the fact that anyone with Google knows what's going on in China. We know that it is a country that is carrying out a genocide against the Uyghur Muslim population. We know it's a country that disappears people.

Peng Shui, the tennis star, being only the most recent. We know it disappeared scientists and doctors who tried to tell the truth about the nature of COVID and tried to warn the world, disappeared them. We know it disappears people like the Hong Kong booksellers. We know it disappears someone, for example, I recently did a podcast with a guy called Desmond Chun, disappeared his ex-wife, Whitney Dwan. She still disappeared. So we know that this is the nature of an increasingly totalitarian regime that, by the way, is also using technology to master creating a society that's basically a panopticon in which all of its citizens are surveilled and kept on a social credit system. Yes. All of that is known.

All of that is known to Ray Dalio. He's an extremely sophisticated guy who is managing $150 billion. He's a guy who's written a book called Principles, which is hilarious when you're watching that clip. So that's Ray Dalio. But the point is that he knows exactly what's going on. Everyone knows what's going on, but they are choosing money over morality. That's it. It's a very simple thing. And so we have gotten so immune, we've gotten so numb to the perversion of that bargain that when someone like the WTA chief, Steve Simon, steps out and says, no, we're actually not going to play in China until the CCP explains where Peng Shui is. He said in his unbelievable statement, it's not acceptable and it can't become acceptable. And if powerful people can suppress

the voices of women and sweep allegations of sexual assault under the rug, then the basis on which my organization was founded, equality for women, would suffer an immense setback. It's like, well, you read that and you're like, isn't that so obvious? It's like, it feels like you're drinking fresh water. But the reason it feels like that is because we have gotten so used to the idea that companies just close their eyes to the reality of what's going on there. And if you contrast this with, I'm sure you'll remember, Megan, Daryl Morey, the general manager of, do you remember this? The NBA? Houston Rockets. Yep. Exactly. The Houston Rockets, when he tweeted something very sort of mundane,

milquetoast about freedom for Hong Kong, which was great, but essentially, run out of his job because of it. And, and, you know, and chided, you know, from stars throughout the league, including people like LeBron James. And I just find it, I find it unbelievable that, you know, the idea I love the headline is, you know, women's tennis has balls. It's like, yeah, they have more balls than all of Wall Street. Yeah. And this guy, Steve Simon, I imagine makes a lot less money than Ray Dalio does. It's amazing to me that we pretend it doesn't happen. We do business with China.

We are going to the Olympics with China. We're going to do a diplomatic boycott where we're not sending our politicians in response to which the world said, Jan, who cares? Who gives a damn whether our politicians show up? The question, how do you send a message? You don't send the athletes, but it's, you know, we don't want to hurt the athletes, you know, who have been training and so on. One's a life opportunity for a lot of them. But we've done almost done almost nothing. Well, certainly not in this administration to try to send any message to them that we disapprove of anything they've done. We're acting more like Ray Dalio than we are like Steve of WTA. Exactly. But thanks to people like Steve

and Ennis Cantor, who I know is now Ennis Cantor Friedman, you know, maybe the tide is starting to turn. And going back to the beginning of the conversation, Megan, about courage, things only change when people stand up and say, no, this cowardice is wrong. And I'm going to stand up and make an example of myself and my institution, come what may, even if it means we're going to sacrifice some money for it. Real quickly, because we are up against a hard break. You're married. I knew that you and Nellie were engaged. When did you get married? We actually got married a while ago, but once I left the Times, we looked at getting healthcare for me separately. And then we thought, what are we doing? Let's get married. We got married in a strip mall in Encino. It was a hilarious situation. And we basically decided, let's not tell anyone because we want to have a huge party after COVID. And we don't want to give anyone an excuse not to come. But it's been

a year COVID still going on. Yes. And, and it became too difficult not to say she's my wife. I know I kept hearing my wife. I'm like, wait a minute, wait a minute. She's my wife. And we're building a company and we're having the time of our lives. Mazel. Very happy for you both. So much love. Thank you. And all the best with the column and with the podcast and we'll talk again soon. Barry Weiss, everybody. Up next, Brandon Tatum. Don't miss him. You'll love him.

Welcome back to the Megan Kelly Show. Joining me now, Brandon Tatum. He's a former police officer and the outspoken YouTuber behind the channel, The Officer Tatum. He's also the author of the brand new book, Beaten Black and Blue, Being a Black Cop in an America Under Siege. Intriguing, right? Brandon, thank you so much for being here. How are you? Thank you, Megyn, for having me.

I'm doing well. So you started out as a killer athlete. You were killing it on the football field, right? I'm trying to make sure I understand because I'm not a sports person. Yes, that's correct. I was an All-American football player in high school. I had scholarships to every university. I played in the U.S. Army All-American game for the top players in the nation and ended up going and playing football in college. Okay. And where were you raised and what were your parents like? So my parents were, I could say I was raised in a somewhat of a broken home. My mom and dad split up. They were both great parents. They loved me. They did the best to raise me the right way. My father was a firefighter. He was a firefighter my entire life. He just retired a couple of years ago after. I was exposed to drug dealing and people using drugs, family members going to prison. So I had a pretty dynamic upbringing. But my parents did the best they could to put me in the best position possible.

And I know politically you you've said that you were raised to to understand that you are a Democrat. Like that was sort of the only option on the table in your family. Right. It's almost like breathing air. If you if you grew up where I grew up and you black, you a Democrat and the Republicans are racist white people with no justification, no explanation, no detail. You are a Democrat, period. And so you go to you got a full athletic scholarship, University of Arizona, 2005. You earn your degree. You decided to try your hand at the NFL draft. That didn't work out, but you at least were hoping to join the NFL. I have to I cannot skip this past this point without asking you about Colin Kaepernick, because I know I'm going to I'm going to get to your totally viral video about him. This is one of the first things that made you a star. But before we get to that.

So Colin Kaepernick says guys like you who want to go into the draft, at least those who show up at the NFL Combine, allow themselves to be examined physically are basically modern day slaves subjecting yourself to slave owners. Forgive me. I've got to show just a clip of it for the audience members who have not seen this from his new series, which I think is on Netflix. I watched the whole thing. Trust me, don't do it. But here it is. Before they put you on the field, teams poke, prod, and examine you, searching for any defect that might affect your performance. No boundary respected. No dignity left intact. And on it goes from there, where he compares being in the combine to pictures of slaves and so on. As a man who wanted to play in that organization, your thoughts on it?

Well, first and foremost, if this is modern day slavery, please sign me up and sign everybody in my family up. You can make millions of dollars to do something you love. And this guy, I try not to say words that my mom wouldn't be proud of me saying about this guy, but he is absolutely out of his mind. It is ironic that he is claiming these things about the NFL, yet he is trying to be in the NFL. He sued the NFL for discrimination against him. He's tried to go to multiple tryouts claiming that they won't allow him back in the NFL when the NFL is supposed to be riddled with slavery as if white players don't enter the NFL slavery, as if white players don't enter the NFL draft, as if white players don't compete in the combine. I mean, the dumbest guy on planet

Earth has to be Colin Kaepernick. But the NFL provides wonderful opportunities for young men who are living out their dreams and get paid a lot of money to do it. Okay. So back to when you were a football star, the NFL did not work out for you and you decided to join the Tucson, Arizona Police Department. Now, is it true that this came about after you just on a whim went up to a cop and said, hey, can I go on a ride along with you? Well, it's kind of like that. Back to the NFL, just real quick. You know, I didn't get drafted in 2010 after I was promised by the Oakland Raiders that they would draft me and I was devastated. And I tried out the next year to no avail, things that still didn't work out. And I had an incredible guy who was a mentor to me. And he had told me I need to put an X on the calendar and transition when, you know,

if things are not working and I cannot keep falling for a dead end career. So I decided to look at other options and I never thought about being a police officer at all. I was growing up. I didn't really have a good relationship with police officers. I wrote this in my book. And when I was eight years old, I got arrested for smoking marijuana in a vacant house. So I didn't have this good, you know, feeling about police. It took me to get saved because I got saved in 2008 while I was in college. And I started to really see things from the lens of Christ. And that's why I even gave policing the opportunity. But I apply for everything in the city of Tucson, hoping I get a job somewhere. And at the time I had a small son and they happened to call me back and I was shocked.

I thought they were calling me because I was in trouble for something, but they called me to finish the application. And then I randomly pulled up on an officer named Sean Payne and said, hey, man, can I do it right along? And then the rest is history. Wow. So how long were you an active police officer? About six and a half years. Okay. And during that time, did you you I'm sure you spent every day with other cops. Did you experience a bunch of racism or see racism or hear racism or, you know, find yourself immersed in a system that was systemically racist? Well, well, Megan, according to what they talk about today on some of these news platforms and these race hustlers, you would think that a person like me being black, it was only 12 black officers on our police department, mostly white and Hispanic, that I would see racism riddled everywhere. Matter of fact, I would have been discriminated against, but that's not true.

I've never met a racist police officer. Do they exist somewhere in the ether? Yeah, I'm sure there's somebody out there that shouldn't even be wearing a badge. But from my experience, I never saw a racist police officer. I will say that there are some people who may be racially insensitive, meaning that they don't grow up in the culture to understand certain cultures of people. And that goes all different ways. Black, white, Hispanic, people are human. And some things like that I've seen occur. But for the most part, these are just people who want to, you know, save their community, who want to do good things in the community, who want to serve and protect, who want to just go home at the end of the day. It's not even that drastic. It's just simple people want to do a work that God has called them to do and then see their family at the end of the day.

So you eventually, among your other duties, start being a spokesperson like the public information officer for for the police force. And I'm guessing realized I'm pretty good at this. I'm not so bad in front of the camera and started speaking out more and more. But I think the way a lot of people first got to know you or saw you was that completely viral video you posted about with your thoughts on Colin Kaepernick. Back to him. 70 million views is 70 million that I can't even that I can't get my you got to be normally a Kardashian to get that kind of following on any sort of social media. But let me show a clip of what we're talking about and why it became so popular. You're talking about a flag that represents hard work, dedication, blood, sweat, and tears, sacrifice. And the thing that makes me most upset is that you have these people who turn around and take a knee and want to attribute all the negativity to the flag and

the anthem, but don't want to attribute the positive. Listen, if you feel that the American flag represents negativity and slavery and all this other stuff, then you have to give credit and credence to a flag that have given you an opportunity to go from cornfields and picking cotton to being the president of the United States of America. Going from being being segregated, can't go to proper schools, can't vote, taking you from that point to now you're making millions of dollars to play sports. And you know who's watching you white people. I'm sick of y'all coming up with these lame excuses. Wow. So where did that come from? This, you know, this kid

raised by Democrats, you have to be a Democrat. It doesn't sound like some Democrats feel this way, but there tend to be more on the woke-ism Colin Kaepernick side got saved. But then I also have to give credit to the people that I work with because some of my friends on the police department would encourage me and point me in the right direction and say, look, man, you're not a Democrat. Look at the things that you believe. This is not alignment with the Democrat Party. And you're probably more of a Republican conservative. And, you know, I saw people like Ben Carson, and I finally opened my eyes to the Republican side of things.

And then I and when I woke up to it, it just inspired me to be like, I need to tell the truth and tell everybody what I know now. And I felt kind of disrespected and played because why weren't people telling me this when I was growing up? Why did I get lied to? And when I see people like Colin Kaepernick come out and spew the very thing that I felt oppressed me growing up, I said, you know what? I'm going to expose these people. And the fact that I was a police officer served with my life alongside of people of all races, we're serving every day to protect people and we don't get paid hardly any money. And I'm grateful. And so it makes me incredibly upset when people like Colin Kaepernick, who's raised by a white family, who is the epitome of the dying sport of racism, having a family take you in, take care of you, help you become the man that you are,

and then you crap on the country. I mean, I'm old enough to remember that our ancestors fought so we all can have equality in this country. The flag represent progress. All the people who died with the hope, dream, wish, vision of the next generation to have something they didn't have. And to spit on all of the suffering that they went through and the triumph that they overcame or the triumph that they had is so disrespectful. It literally made blood vessels pop out of my eyes because I was so upset about the lies. Wow. I mean, I understand shortly thereafter you you partnered with Candace Owens on on Blackson. I mean, you you were serious about getting this message out. And I have to say, I saw a lot of that reflected in my love, Larry Elder and his movie, Uncle Tom. And you had a lot of prominent black voices coming out and saying, I didn't realize that there were black leaders with a totally different way of thinking about our experience. People like Thomas Sowell, who, you know, for disturbing reasons, is not exactly a household name. Right. It's like people have to go searching.

And I wonder, listening to you talk about like Ben Carson, if if you think this is why the left finds people like Ben Carson, like Larry Elder so threatening, because not only are you and Ben and all these other guys saying things that they don't want said, but you're an example. You know, if you can see it, you can be it. You're giving people a different way to think. And so you're a much larger threat. A hundred percent. I mean, they are living a lifestyle and building a house on the sand of falsehood, racism and oppression and discrimination and all these things that they do happen in isolated situations. But you're talking about they're inconsequential in 2021 for your success and to be somebody. And the thing is that these Democrats, they thrive on having you oppressed and down and thinking that the world hates you so they can be your savior, so they can create a situation where the government is now your God. The government is who you look to, not individuality, the way our founding fathers believed this country should be operating under.

So they need you to be oppressed. They need you to think the white man is bad and have division. Because if we came together, everybody of all races, all cultural backgrounds came together with the unifying fact of truth. I mean, we are unstoppable. It will be minimum government, limited government. We will flourish and more so than we do today. And these people couldn't line their pockets with this victimhood narrative. But when I see people in this country, amongst everybody else, but a large number of Black people to say, I never heard that sign. I never knew that there was another side to this. Matter of fact, not only is there another side, there's an intellectual argument to disprove everything that I believed growing up. And now I'm free. I can be who I want to be. I can actually live the American dream and not be oppressed. Wow. It's inspirational just to listen to. And it's so upsetting that it's not taught.

And even to utter it, even if even by a black man or a black woman would be considered racist in most schools in America. You know, I mean, obviously, Candace gets calls called the names. Larry's been on the show many times. I mean, literally was called the black face of white supremacy when he was running for the California gubernatorial spot. It's crazy. You have to have a thick skin. You know, as I've, of course, I've been subjected to these names too, as a white woman who doesn't pussyfoot around the issue of race. But it's worse. It's far worse if you're a black man or a black woman speaking out about these things. You take it in a particular way. Right. And I think that I come from a lineage and some black people should acknowledge this. They come from a lineage of strength and overcoming adversity. And so they should be

able to do it even more. So the more backlash you get, the better equipped you should be because your ancestors, some people, not everybody, but your ancestors came from humble beginnings. And that's what drives me is that I'm not a coward. You know, my father raised me to be a man. My father was an example of a real man. You know, I remember he always have this saying because when he first started on the fire department, there was some racism that was on the fire department and discrimination. And I remember him saying that he told the people that work for him that would do things to him and say, you better watch how you treat me because you'll be working for me one day. He didn't cry and quit the job and want to protest.

He said, you know what? I'm going to bust my tail and I'm going to become the chief. And that's what my dad did. He became the chief of the fire department. So I came from, you know, a lion background, you know, we're a family of lions. And I wish that more black men, especially, would think about these things and say, look, I'm a lion in this world. I'm not a coward. I'm not a sheep. I'm not going to fold at the sign of adversity. I welcome adversity because that's going to make me better. That's going to sharpen my iron so I can go out

and make a difference in this world. But we have too many cowards today, like Colin Kaepernick and others, who at the first sign of adversity, they cry and they fold up and they complain instead of doing something about it. You know, there's a saying, I want to make a bumper sticker, that is succeed anyway. And it's something I say to myself, to my fellow women who, you know, sort of can get hung up on their own issues when it comes to power imbalances in the workplace. And it's not to say that there aren women who, you know, sort of can get hung up on their own issues when it comes to power imbalances in the workplace. And it's not to say that there aren't any, you know, for sure, I've recognized some of that. But it's succeed anyway. But if you say that now,

right, if you said that I was just giving a speak to some friends at the Federalist Society and at Yale Law School, and some were making the point, if you said something like that, to most of the kids and professors at Yale Law School, they would immediately call you a racist. They'd be pushed to have you kicked out. You can't say overcome your obstacles. It's like, what are you saying? That's a denial of the systemic racism that's all around us. You're not an anti-racist. You're part of the problem with our society to a certain degree. You know, not everybody in society is completely brain dead, but, you know, some of these people are completely brain dead. I mean, two things can occur at the same time. You can say that there's systemic issues if you believe that to be true. I don't find that to be prevalent enough for me to even talk about. But if some people believe that there are systemic issues or things that are holding them back, that's fine. And like you said, succeed anyway.

We acknowledge what you feel. Now, what are you going to do about it? Are you going to sit around and cry all day? Are you going to sit around and complain? The thing that makes me mad about some of these people who advocate for inner city growth or whatever they, the social justice warriors, is that when you look at these things, you say, how long are you going to wait for the world to change? You can change yourself instantaneously. You can go in the mirror today and say, I'm going to be a better person. I'm going to treat people properly. I'm going to go hard on my job. I'm going to make sure that I do things with integrity so I can prosper. You can do that today. They want to wait until every person in America somehow loves everybody the way they think they should. That's not going to happen. There's going to be racist people in this country till we all die and the world has ended. There's

going to be people, and racism is not just white versus black. Black people can be incredibly racist. I grew up around nothing but black races, but stop waiting on everybody else to change. Stop waiting on these systems to change. Be a part of the change. If you think the judicial system is problematic, go to school, get a degree, become a judge, become a lawyer. If you think policing in America or the police aren't doing well in your community, you're not doing what you think is right, become a police officer like I did. Work your way up the ladder, become a lieutenant, become a captain, become assistant chief, and then ultimately become the chief of police or sheriff. And then you can dictate the change you want to see.

I just can't stand these people that sit around and complain and hope that everybody else becomes, you know, the person they want to be. You can do it yourself. It's so true. Succeed anyway. You can see why Brandon needed a career in front of the camera and getting his voice and his message out. I mean, no offense to the police department and the position of PIO, but the 70 million people have spoken. And you should you can read more of Brandon. He's coming back after this break. But remember, the name of the book is Beaten Black and Blue, Being a Black Cop in an America Under Siege. We're going to pick it up after the break with Jussie Smollett and that trial and some thoughts on Chris Cuomo.

Joining me at this time is Brandon Tatum. Brandon is a former police officer and author of the brand new book, Beaten Black and Blue, Being a Black Cop in an America Under Siege. Great, great title and cuts to the heart of what I'm sure you and a lot of cops have gone through this past two years as we saw, you know, one of the lasting images of the whole post George Floyd summer is all the white women in their Lululemon getting in the face of black cops and calling them racists, right? I mean, talk about the world being turned on its head, Brandon. It must have been incredibly frustrating for you and your colleagues. Yes, it's absolutely hypocritical. I mean, everybody's everybody with a with a with a reasonable mind wants to see things change and want everybody to be treated equally.

Nobody likes bad cops. Not one person I know. You know, I wouldn't be their friend if they did like bad cops. But I don't know anybody that will say, yeah, I support bad cops. But when you're dumb enough to go out and cry about racism and you're a white person spewing hatred towards a black man as if he don't exist, I mean, you're falling in the category of the uninformed, misinformed and evil. These people are are evil in my opinion. And it flies in the face of an argument. And I think that's why the Colin Kaepernick video went viral and why things go viral when people talk about these things, because the hypocrisy is so apparent in these situations that it flies in the face of the mission that these people claim that they want to accomplish. One of the cases some people point to as an example of the fact that it's not that we've run out of real racism, but it's not necessarily a bad sign that somebody, a black man looking for attention like Jussie Smollett would have to make up a story,

right, to get attention. It's not a bad sign about the country that he, you know, in old school America about 50, certainly 70 years ago, he would have had plenty of examples to just show for real. But Jussie Smollett is accused of making up a fake attack, a hoax attack on him in Chicago in the middle of the winter. He hired two black guys, which was his first mistake, right? It was like, why don't you hire two white guys if you're trying to make this about white supremacy? But okay, he hired two black guys to attack him. And now the trial, I will say, took a little bit of an interesting turn yesterday. He's on the stand right now, by the way, and it was yesterday as well. He is trying to suggest that this was a real attack, that he didn't give them money to hurt him.

He gave them money to, I don't know, get food, whatever it was, but for legitimate purposes. And now when the two brothers who testified against him and said it was 100 percent a hoax, we ran through it. We did a rehearsal. One of them was asked by jesse's lawyer something like when did you first know you were gay or when did you feel first feel attracted to jesse and and the brother was like um because there's two brothers who were in on it um the one guy said i i'm not gay i don't know what you're talking about um so when jesse's on the stand jesse is saying he had this relationship the guy's name is bola Asandario. He had a relationship with Bola. It was sexual that they had gone to like a bathhouse, a gay bathhouse together. They had a private room. They fooled around. They did drugs. If that's true, then Bola did lie on the stand, which would definitely undermine his testimony. The other side is denying it. But I do think it's kind of interesting that we're still watching this

and that there are still some in the media and Jussie himself who claim this whole thing was real. And if you question it, you know, see the point that's always made. You're all racists. Well, this guy, you know, I said, maybe I need to recant a statement. I said, Colin Kaepernick is the dumbest person. I think Jussie Smollett has moved in the first place as the dumbest person on planet Earth. I mean, you literally have receipts of payment.

You have video of them going and doing what you had asked them to do. There's video of a rehearsal before the fact. And then I think he wants people to forget that he said it was two white people that beat him up and there was two black people that beat him up on camera that he set up. And I don't understand for the life of me why he chose the dumbest scenario ever created.

You're a black man in Chicago, which is heavily Democrat, in the middle of the night, negative 20 degree weather, and some white dudes are gonna randomly beat you up with MAGA hats on saying it's MAGA country and put a noose around your neck. And then you go home and you still have the little string noose around your neck. Like who would make something up like this other than a narcissist, a person who deserves to go to prison? I mean, this guy is is shameful, to be honest. I mean, all jokes aside, this is shameful.

Unfortunately, this happens more often than people imagine because racism is such a dying sport in America. People have to recreate it in order for them to validate, you know, who they've created, you know, themselves to be. A couple of points on it, too. The and under this elaborate tale, the two men who just happened to run into you, this you, the star of Empire, Jussie Smollett, just happened to have a noose on them and a can of bleach, which they dump over you. And they recognize you, even though,

you know, let's face it, Jussie Smollett wasn't that big a star. So yeah. And the prosecutor showed, he had testimony from one of the brothers saying I barely got the rope around him like it happened so fast. I kind of had to throw it toward him. And then they show pictures of Jussie walking into his house. It's perfectly around his neck and it's tightened all the way up. And the implication was very clear. He he put it there. He tightened it. He wanted to make it look as bad as possible. And by the way, one of the interesting things is the only avenue against these two brothers who testified that Jussie had that he was using and his lawyer was using early

on was. They're they're homophobic. They were against Jussie because he also happens to be gay. So it was a hate attack, you know, OK, they're black, so maybe it wasn't the black thing, but he's gay. So it was it was the gay thing. And then the defense is the one who's saying, actually, they were gay, too. This is the worst lawyering I've ever seen. This is a stupid as they come client and lawyers. I don't know where it's going to go. But you know, what's been what we've been seeing, Brandon, is the same media that propped him up gma did a full half an hour interview with him robin roberts the whole bit they've said bub kiss i think a media research center did the uh the numbers it was like 22 seconds of coverage on abc uh nbc was like 178 seconds of coverage cbs zero they're not so interested in covering the trial of the guy who allegedly made this up as they were about the guy when he was allegedly making it up. Yeah, this is egregious, though. I mean, we expect our media to be fair and balanced and just tell the truth. I mean, you don't have to

have a dog in the fight. Just report the doggone news. You reported the news that he was lying, you know, of him lying. And then when he when he gets found out, you don't report anything. That to me is biased journalism. And that is the problem that I see us facing in America today is that people are biased. They got it. They pick, they pick a side. I mean, Stevie Wonder can see that this was not a real story from the beginning, even in his interviews. And, and, and maybe because I'm a former police officer and I've interviewed a lot of

people and they lie, everybody lied to you every day, almost that you could tell he's lying. You could tell by the way he's looking down and looking around and in the consistency of his story and the way his story flows on camera is indicative of a person who's being disingenuous and is creating these realities that didn't ever happen there's a difference between a person imagining something and repeating it than a person who actually lived a scenario and then having to express himself afterwards but so you should be ashamed of themselves we can show that to you because we've actually pulled a minute soundbite from that interview he gave on gma watch jussie smollett uh in all his glory as i I was crossing the intersection, I heard, Empire. And I don't answer to Empire. My name ain't Empire.

And I didn't answer. I kept walking, and then I heard, f***, Empire n***a. So I turned around and I said, what the f*** did you just say to me? And I see the attacker masked. And he said, this MAGA country punches me right in the face.

So I punched his ass back. And then we started tussling. You know, it was very icy. And we ended up tussling by the stairs, fighting, fighting, fighting. There was a second person involved who was kicking me in my back and uh then it just stopped and i then i looked down and i see that there's a rope around my neck which i hadn't noticed it before because it was so fast

you know what i'm saying it was so fast brandon was so fast. You didn't notice they put a noose around him. Yeah, they got NASCAR speed throwing a noose around him. You know, it's just I mean, like I said, when you see you listen to him and if you have spent any time interviewing people or talking to individuals and you hear people's genuine testimony of traumatic events that they've gone through. There's a lot more detail in some of these, you know, a guy yelled at me and then he just punches me in the face. And then I'm like on the ground and then somebody else jumps in and I'm getting kicked in the back. And then there's a noose around my neck. Like if that really happened to a person, they're going to have a lot more intricate details about the feeling that they had about, you know, different things that

they observed from the assailants. You know, you would think that he would get emotional to some degree if a person is beating you. I guess they weren't trying to kill you, but they were beating you and put the noose around your neck. But I mean, this just speaks to the idiocy of these people who have gone far left in this lunacy world that they have to create things like this. And this is the sad part, Megan, because I see this same character in a lot of people. The tennis player Serena Williams had this character. Lance Armstrong had the character.

Justice Millette has the same character. People who are narcissistic enough to lie to your face and then try to hurt other people who disagree with the lie until they get completely found out. Serena did it when she was at the, at the, at the match and she had got caught cheating. And she tells the, the gentleman that was in charge that he's sexist. She has children and trying to hurt somebody and be evil to another person, knowing that you are in the wrong. And that type of person to me is is is I would say the individual that I dislike the most is somebody who can't be honest and people who lie and hurt others just to cover up their own lies. That's right. I forgot about the Serena thing. It was where they the the said that her coach was making hand signals to her, which is a no-no. And she denied it.

And she played the cards. And then the coach admitted it. The coach was like, I was making the hand signal. So I was like, OK. In your book, you make the very accurate point that the media helps create the divide, the racial divide that we've been feeling and dealing with over the past two years in a very in-your-face way. And I couldn't agree more. And it's no accident that the George Floyd video, as awful as it was, was played nonstop in, you know, leading up to a very contentious

presidential election, right? I mean, it happens every four years. If you pay attention to these things, you see that the media picks a case, the Democrats pick a case, and they put it on loop to try to make an impact, especially with black voters who are important to their base. And I wonder, because I know you've got a lot of thoughts in the media and you were kind of and are now kind of in the media commenting on the news and so on, what you think about the Chris Cuomo thing, because I've been watching it. I'm not a Chris Cuomo fan, and I'm certainly not an Andrew Cuomo thing, because I've been watching it. I'm not a Chris Cuomo fan,

and I'm certainly not an Andrew Cuomo fan. But I do see, I'm going to give him one point here, which is he came out, it's getting tense between Chris Cuomo and CNN, because he seems to be taking aim at Jeff Zucker. They fired him, fine, I agree with the firing. He did so many things during his time at CNN that justified it. I mean, the fake emergence from the basement when we all knew he'd been out and about. We'd seen pictures of it on page six and elsewhere of him throughout to talk about what he did to her. Another, his executive producer of Cuomo Primetime, asked to leave the show because of his bullying. And she got bounced off to the digital property, is no longer producing in primetime because of him. Why do people keep forgetting that, by the way? Just go do your research. There's Shelly Ross is not the only woman who had accused him. And now you see that he was helping his brother diminish these women, cancel culture, accusing Andrew. And he said, try to diminish it. And then it turns out he was up to his neck in it. I mean, he was doing oppo research and specifically testified, I would never do oppo research. Then you see the truth, which is, yes, he did oppo research on them. He contacted all of his sources. He was trying to run down stories, blah, blah, blah, Brandon, is I think Jeff Zucker did know virtually all of this and made clear in May.

I'm disappointed in him, but it was a mistake. I'm not going to punish him. And so not much has changed. Yes, he was doing more than what's disclosed to the public. But I something smells to me. I just feel like there's something there's something more here, because I understand that Jeff Zucker was very well informed of what Chris Cuomo was doing. And that's what Chris Cuomo is saying. Everything I did, I disclosed. And CNN is now calling him a liar publicly, saying this is why he was terminated, for violating our standards and practices, as well as his lack of candor. And so anyway, I smell something fishy, and I wonder what your thoughts are on the whole thing. Well, I'm not shocked at all. I mean, when you have a network that's reporting complete false news, a lot of the time completely lying about people.

You know, the thing that they did to Joe Rogan was absolutely out of control and they never corrected it. They doubled down time and time again. And it was, you know, Sanjay Gupta came on to Joe Rogan's show and completely lied. And, you know, when you see them having character like that, what's to say that they wouldn't care that their top stars and the people that are raking in the money aren't doing nefarious things. It's the same thing in the NFL. It's across the board. There's a vested interest in protecting the image and protecting the bank account. And so I remember when Ray Rice beat his girlfriend up in the elevator, knocked her unconscious. The NFL had the video of that. They knew the bank account. And so I remember when Ray Rice beat his girlfriend up in the elevator, knocked her unconscious. The NFL had the video of that.

They knew he did it. And then when it hit the public, they had to go in safe facing and fire him from the NFL. Same thing with Cuomo. Same thing with Governor Cuomo. I mean, people already know that they're doing this. They have so much power and influence that at some point you can't do anything about it.

And then when it when the cup is overflowing to the point in which they cannot cover for him anymore, when more accusations come out, people with substantive evidence that they're doing nefarious things, they have to then act to save face. It's not about Cuomo. It's about money. If he is going to make them lose money, then they got to let him go to save, you know, the equity in their company. And I hope that people understand this. I mean, it's not about journalism anymore. It's not about covering stories anymore. It's about getting these ads and you want to get people watching your stuff and you want to get them, you know, feared and scared and enthralled in drama so they could come on and you could sell them advertising. And that's what these media organizations do. So I'm not shocked that they knew what Cuomo was doing and that they held on to him because he was making money. And when that when that's begin to

change, they say, oh, we got to throw you under the bus and act like we never knew. And yeah, all of the above. Now, that makes perfect sense, right? Because it's like he wasn't allowed to interview his brother, the then governor of New York on CNN during his time at CNN. That had been the longstanding policy because they accurately recognized what a conflict of interest that would be, how journalistically unsound it would be. And then they sensed opportunity during the height of the pandemic when the press was lionizing Andrew Cuomo. And they sensed dollars. You know, you can see the little dollar signs right in the executive's eyes like, yes, money making cable news. Let's do this thing. So they bent their own rule. Let him put on Andrew. It went as disastrously as you could have hoped with absolutely no hard questions, no probing of the scandal that was already starting to envelop the sitting governor.

And anyone who was paying attention could see this is an obvious dereliction of duty. And the dereliction continued. Right. I mean, it was meantime, Chris Cuomo was getting tests that nobody else could get through his brother COVID test that should have gone to the dying nursing home patients. But he took it anyway. And, you know, the lie about the basement and all that stuff. And none of it led to any accountability whatsoever. CNN was happy to cash the checks they got during that time. And only now, when Chris Cuomo has been dinged up repeatedly by his own missteps, now are they like, we're going to cut bait now. Now we're shocked, shocked that he was, you know, dealing with his brother and his brother's aides. I don't excuse what Chris Cuomo did for one second. They're definitely fireable offenses. But I just wonder who else

has responsibility for what went on there. Yeah. And the funny thing is, they probably got a whole bunch of other ones that are probably in the pipeline to get exposed. You know, Don Lemon communicated with Jussie Smollett when all this stuff came out. I mean, Don Lemon has had accusations against him, allegedly. And, you know, all of these people are wicked. Like, you could just tell how they present themselves on television. A person with integrity is going to present with integrity. And you can see that genuineness in that person's character. When you have somebody who's so nasty on television, who's so condescending, who seems to be off his rocker. And I would ask Don

Lemon, and I think he's next in line, but Don Lemon, he used to be a different way. He used to call out the BS and he got backlash for it. Now he's swung to the far left woke rhetoric into where you can't even listen to him. He's insufferable to listen to on most issues. And I feel like when you see a person's character change that much on television, then they are not being genuine to themselves. And I feel like they treat other people in a similar manner. I think that's why I became popular because people can see I'm genuine. I'm just being me. I don't have no agenda. I, you know, nobody writes checks for me. I do my own thing. And that protrudes. People can see that. And, you know, but it is what it is. You're going to tell the truth and people are not going to like it, but people respect when you say how you really feel.

Yeah. Well, thank you for that. I certainly try. And, you know, it's funny because a very well known personality out there whose name you would know if I were allowed to say it, but I can't share. But this person is beloved by most of America sent me a text after the NBC thing and said, your only problem is that you tell too much of the truth. She's like, she basically said, you tell the truth too much, right? Like, if you edited, you wouldn't get yourself in such trouble. But it's not in my nature. You know, I'm like a moth to a flame. I feel like you can relate. You know, it's like, the more you tell me I can't talk about something, the more I want to talk about it. The more you say this is a whole body of thought that you can't espouse. I want to espouse it. And that was a great example of that whole thing. It was like, no, I know what I saw growing up in the 70s and the 80s. I know. I know that people were wearing brown face to a Halloween party to emulate Michael Jordan, who they loved, and people were not running around trying to cancel them. It wasn't always the thing. Billy Crystal opened the Oscars in blackface. He did. How did that happen on ABC News? You know, NBC was producing shows with

characters wearing it, like, you know, on Tina Fey shows and so on. A few years before I made the comment that this used to not be as big a deal. And then all hell broke loose when I said it. And there are all sorts of reasons for that. But, you know, the lesson is speak truth and deal with the consequences. And hopefully in a just world, if you keep getting yourself back up, you'll land in a better place. You know, you'll be surrounded by better people. You won't be with these nutcases who don't like you and don't want you and blah, blah, blah. It's easy for me to say now that I've steadied the ship, but it was a rough couple of years. It's not just the media. It's also our political leaders. And I've been thinking about it this week because we covered the Kyle

Rittenhouse case very, very closely on this show. And of course, Joe Biden weighed in on that, calling him a white supremacist and so on. And even earlier, I've heard you talk about the Jacob Blake case, which preceded Kyle Rittenhouse. You know, he was the black man shot seven times by the cops. Kamala Harris went to visit this guy who had been resisting arrest, pulled a knife on the cops and said she was proud of him. So what happens after he's found not guilty? We see we don't think it's related, though. The guy who ran down those people in the parade a few days later in Waukesha, Wisconsin, did have some very anti-white sentiments on his social media. He was a black man who mowed down white people.

The media lost total interest. They had no interest in covering if the races had been reversed. My God, can you imagine? And guess who's not going to visit the victims of the Waukesha attack? Kamala Harris. She's not going out there to tell anybody she's proud of them. And Joe Biden's White House says he has no plans either to go. Right. They're not going to go visit the dancing grannies, families, the older women, part of that troop who were killed or the

family of the little kid, the eight year old who was killed because it doesn't play for them politically. Right. Yeah. And I think it was couldn't, I was so upset when I saw Kamala Harris go visit Jacob Blake, given the fact that these people get on and they talk about women's rights and protecting women. And Jacob Blake, the whole reason the police showed up there, because he had sexually assaulted his baby mama and was restricted from the area. And he showed up at our house and she called the police looking for help because this guy was violent against her and did her wrong pretty much. And the cops showed up. And then, of course, he did what he did against them. And Kamala goes to see him. He's such an innocent man. George Floyd. Now, two things can

occur at the same time. I think Chauvin was a complete idiot. And I wrote that in my book. He's an idiot. You don't kneel on a guy's neck until he dies. And then you still kneel on his neck after he didn't pass away. You're an idiot. Now, George Floyd was an idiot, too. This guy had been arrested. I don't know how many times one of his arrests. He did a home invasion on a pregnant woman and put a gun to her stomach. This is not a good person. This is not a person that people should be admonishing and making statues of this guy. It's OK to say he was done wrong and justice was served by the officer going to jail. But my God, you guys make him out of a God and forget all of his previous transgressions. I'm going to say this and I know people may not like this,

but the same thing happened with Ahmaud Arbery. Like, you can agree or disagree with the way the trial went, but why are they posting pictures of him when he was in middle school? This guy, well, it was actually high school, but this guy was not the same kid that you see on that picture. Even if you believe that he was wrongfully killed, why present an image and lie and create this scenario of hatred and dysfunction? The McMichaels, they show their mugshots. They don't show the picture of Travis McMichael being in the Coast Guard. They don't show pictures of Gregory Michael, his father, being on the police department. He honorably served for multiple years.

They don't show that they have an agenda. And back to the politicians. These people are so disingenuous. I don't see how people don't see through them at this point. They never stand up for kids in the inner city. They get murdered by other black people in gang violence. in this country and not one post, not one t-shirt, not one statement, not one press conference about any of this. They claim they care about black lives. They had Jacob Blake, but they don't say nothing about some of these other young boys that get killed. And I've done stories on plenty of them. Young people getting shot in the head and doing homework, drive-by shooting. It was a kid that got shot 20 some times outside of a bus stop just the other day. They will never make a statement about them. They will never talk about those issues. And so it makes me feel like that they have an agenda, and that agenda is brainwashing a lot of people. Police brutality in America isn't what they say it is. I mean, they're completely making it up. Police interact with about 300 million people a year. And it's rare when you couple the interactions with actual

interactions going violent. I know it because I've been there. It's not many interactions will turn violent or even fatal, but they make up the scenario. White people get shot twice as much as black people. White people get shot almost twice as much as black people unarmed. We have never seen an unarmed white person presented on television as a victim of police brutality. We hardly ever see that. So they're complicit in pushing an agenda to get votes, in my opinion. Brandon, I'll leave it on a funny note. I told this story a couple of weeks ago, but I was explaining to my kids the story of, we were talking about Kyle Rittenhouse, we were talking about cops, we were talking about kyle rittenhouse we were talking about cops we're talking about jacob lake they're little they're 8 10 and 12 and i said yes 300 million interactions and 10 million arrests a year and very small number you know 13 according to the washington

post in um 2019 there's a bug in the studio um who were unarmed and killed by police, black men. And, um, my, my eight-year-old looked at me and his reaction was, mommy, people need to be good. They need to be good. He was like, that's a lot of people, 10 million people arrested 300. And, uh, you know, it's like out of the mouths of babes, right? Like personal responsibility. He was, he was kind of getting it. Um, okay. So I want, I got to go, but I, I want people to be able to find you. All right. They're going to buy your book. It's Beaten Black and Blue. Remember that Beaten Black and Blue, being a black cop in America under siege. And where can they find you online?

Because I know you've got a huge YouTube following. Yeah, just The Arsitatum. You put The Arsitatum in Google or whatever search engine that you use. You'll find all of my social media platform. That book is available at Beblackandblue.com. It's available on Amazon. And I really appreciate you having me on, Megan. I really do.

Oh, the pleasure was all mine. I hope you come back, Brandon. Thank you and good luck with it. Thank you. Don't forget to tune into the show tomorrow because Dana Lash will be here. And I'm really looking forward to talking with her about this school shooter.

You know, this case happened on Friday, going into the weekend, and now they've arrested his parents, trying to charge them with a crime. Got a lot of thoughts on it. She's a true gun expert, so we're going to get into it. Break it down for you.

Very fair. In the meantime, download the show on Apple, Pandora, Spotify, and Stitcher. Go to youtube.com to watch it. Thanks, guys. See you tomorrow. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.