The Megyn Kelly Show - Rittenhouse Jury Deliberates and Media's Disastrous Coverage, with Gov. Chris Christie, Robert Barnes, Andrew Branca, and Richard Baris | Ep. 205

Episode Date: November 17, 2021

Megyn Kelly is joined by Gov. Chris Christie, author of "Republican Rescue," Robert Barnes, Kyle Rittenhouse's former civil attorney, Richard Baris, Director of Big Data Poll, and Andrew Branca, self-defense attorney, to talk about the latest in the Kyle RIttenhouse trial while the jury deliberates, what the jury questions signal about the jury's thought process, media coverage of Rittenhouse and Jacob Blake, the possibility of a mistrial and hung jury, what may happen after the verdict, the November election results in Virginia and New Jersey, the role of race in the media and the courts, how the Republican party can be "rescued," the extremism of the Biden administration, what happens next with Trump, 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. We are officially on day two of Verdict Watch as the jury in the Kyle Rittenhouse case continues its deliberations. They resumed this morning at about 9 a.m. Central. And so they've been at it for about two hours now today, about eight hours yesterday. Jury of seven women, five men. So far, no verdict. The pressure on these 12 people is enormous and somewhat unfair. We're all called to serve as jurors. I remember when I went down to the New York City jury service, they had a video there showing us that even Chief Justice John Roberts has to go through it. Can you imagine voir direing John Roberts? But it's everyone's

civic duty. What case you get on, if you get on, it's largely beyond your control. These are not legal experts. These are regular Kenosha residents who are moms and dads and grandparents and so on, just like you. They have been asked to take their common sense into that undoubtedly drab deliberation room, typically stocked with little more than coffee, if that, and come to some sort of a decision in a case that has riveted and deeply divided the nation. I wish them luck and wisdom, and I'm praying for all of them. Unfortunately, that is not how everyone feels, as people are already amping up the pressure on this jury with totally irresponsible messaging in the press about how a not guilty verdict is essentially a vote for white supremacy, even though the men here that were shot

were all white, as is the defendant. A week ago, the judge had to alert the men here that were shot were all white as is the defendant a week ago the judge had to alert the jurors that someone was caught surreptitiously videotaping them which is not allowed he reassured the jury that the tape had been confiscated and deleted the jury which is not and has not been sequestered is no doubt aware that some 500 National Guard troops have been placed on standby in Kenosha as a city on the edge awaits their decision. None of this is supposed to matter in deliberations, but these folks are only human and it will matter. And their challenge is to decide the case on the law and the facts, irrespective of what may follow. It's good that the governor of Wisconsin, Democrat Tony Evers, is mobilizing the National Guard. It is also about 15 months too late. And as we wait for this

verdict, it occurs to me that Governor Evers, President Biden, Vice President Harris, and the dishonest corporate media all, all have real responsibility for how we got here this day and for what unfolded in Kenosha in August of 2020. The events that landed Kyle Rittenhouse in this courtroom began on August 23rd, 2020, in a case not involving Rittenhouse at all. On that day, police were dispatched to the home of the on-again, off-again girlfriend of a Black Kenosha resident named Jacob Blake. The woman called 911, alleging that Blake had taken her keys and was refusing to give them back. The officers were informed that there was an outstanding warrant for Blake's arrest. Margo Cleveland, by the way, detailed this incident very well in a piece dated August 31, 2020 in The Federalist. When the cops arrived, Blake struggled with them. Two

separate officers discharged their tasers at Jacob Blake, but failed to subdue him. The struggle continued as the officers tried to arrest him, but Blake broke free. Video of the incident captured someone yelling, get my son or get my gun, hard to tell which. and at that point, Blake walked over to the driver's side of the car whose keys he had just apparently stolen and which had his and his girlfriend's three children in it, ages three, five, and eight. Blake appears in the eyewitness video to have a knife and the police are heard yelling, drop the knife, drop the knife, an eyewitness or earwitness testified accordingly. Blake did not comply. He then reached into his car, lunging forward as if to grab something the officers believed to be a weapon

and police opened fire, shooting him seven times. This belief by the officers was entirely well founded. He had fought with them. He had refused to comply with their lawful orders. He was armed. There was an outstanding warrant for his arrest for sexual assault. He had stolen his girlfriend's car keys and was about to get into a car with their children, armed with a knife. He was told to stop and he didn't. And the cops reasonably feared for their safety and for that of the children inside that car. The rush to judgment was mind-numbingly fast. The media, political leaders, and prominent cultural figures immediately pounced, eager to paint this without knowing the facts, as yet another rogue cop out to kill, quote, an unarmed Black man. A disturbing story out of Wisconsin, yet another unarmed Black

man shot. To the point where an officer would get so close to a man, an unarmed man, and just begin shooting him. Once again, a black man, Jacob Blake, has been shot by the police in broad daylight with a whole world watch. A black man, father of three, shot in the back at close range in front of his three children. He was unarmed. What you're seeing behind me is one of multiple locations that have been burning in Kenosha, Wisconsin, over the course of the night. Kenosha is all of it. You just said not all of it is on fire. Is that people have to go to these businesses?

You know, the man was was going to his car. He didn't appear to be armed. There was multiple moments where if they wanted to, they could have they could attack them. Based on what I've seen, it seems that the officer should be charged. You know, I spoke to Jacob's mom and dad, sister and other members of the family, and I told them justice must and will be done. Wow. Joe Biden looking to boost his campaign, weighed in too, as you just heard, in part. Here's more of the man then running to be president along with his number two. Does this strike you as responsible commentary? What I saw in that video makes me sick, especially his children. It's horrible what they saw. Watching their father get shot. Like Gianna Floyd, they're asking why? Why daddy? Once again, a black man, Jacob Blake,

has been shot by the police in broad daylight with the whole world watching. Put yourself in the shoes of every black father and black mother in this country and ask, is this what we want America to be? I think we should let the judicial system work its way. I do think there's a minimum need to be charged, the officers. I think that there should be a thorough investigation. And based on what I've seen, it seems that the officers should be charged. Everyone should be afforded due process. I agree with that completely. That is absolutely one of the important tenets of our system of justice.

But here's the thing. In America, we know these cases keep happening. And we have had too many black men in America who have been the subject of this kind of conduct. They should be charged. They should be charged. They don't know anything about the case. And they're saying that cops should be charged. Harris went on to visit Jacob Blake, a meeting in which she told him she was, quote, proud of him. A man who had resisted arrest, been noncompliant with police, was reported to have drawn a weapon on them, and who had fallen into the crosshairs of law enforcement in the first place for allegedly digitally raping his girlfriend while his very young son slept in the bed next to her. Proud? The governor of Wisconsin, today so eager to keep

the peace, did nothing of the sort in the wake of this Jacob Blake shooting. Rather than calm tempers, he inflamed them. First, he tweeted out the following, quote, Tonight, Jacob Blake was shot in the back multiple times in broad daylight in Kenosha, Wisconsin. While we do not have all of the details yet, what we know for certain is that he is not the first black man or person to have been shot or injured or mercilessly killed at the hands of individuals in law enforcement in our state or our country. No, we did not have all the details then. And noting that fact before passing premature judgment on this case did not excuse the governor's recklessness. The reason one should not comment or rush to judgment as a public

official in a case like this is that they don't have all the facts, but they do have big platforms. Elected leaders in a position of authority have an obligation, a special obligation, to keep their mouths shut until the facts are known, to not stir the public pot in a brew that's already toxic. But this was an election year and the evil orange man needed to be stopped. And George Floyd had been killed months earlier. And a narrative was unfolding in the country that was not to be questioned. Police are on the hunt to kill unarmed black men, and Jacob Blake was just the latest example. Except none of that is true. For the record, and for the umpteenth time, police make over 10 million arrests in this country a year.

About 1,000 of those turn deadly. The vast majority of those shot to death by police are armed. About 40, 40 are not. In 2019, according to the Washington Post, 14 of those who were unarmed and shot by police were black. 14. But what does unarmed even mean? Those cases involve situations where, for example, one man killed was choking the cop and used his taser on the officer. A few tried to run cops over with their cars. A few were beating the cops when the cops opened fire. And in several of the cases, the cops actually did wind up facing criminal charges. So it's not as if there is never any accountability. Shout out to Matt Walsh at the Daily Wire, who's done a great job of detailing these cases. The point is there is not

and has not been in recent years anything approaching an epidemic of cops killing unarmed black men in the streets. In 2018, it was 23. In 2019, again, it was 14 out of some 3 million black people arrested. That is 0.0004% of the black people arrested. But the public perception on this is insane. When surveyed by skeptic.com, 44% of liberals estimated the number of unarmed black men killed by police each year is over 1,000. It's 14. 8% of the very liberal believe that it's over 10,000. 10,000. Again, 14 is the truth.

What a sad delusion. And what a dangerous one. The media stokes this fantasy by putting any police-involved shooting of a black man on loop, painting it as part of a long-standing pattern, and pushback on these falsehoods not allowed. Your humble correspondent reported early on in the Jacob Blake shooting that there were reports he was armed and had a knife. Whereupon the Twitter mob and dopes like Soledad O'Brien spent days calling me

a racist for merely suggesting as much. Where's the curiosity? Where is even the attempt to be fair? Don't hold your breath. Not long thereafter, Jacob Blake himself went on national television and guess what? Admitted he had a knife. I realized I had dropped my knife, that little pocket knife. So I picked it up after I got off of him because they tased me and I fell on top of him. With an open knife in hand that Blake says fell out of his pocket, he walks around the front of the vehicle towards the driver's side door. What are you thinking at that point? I'm not really worried.

I'm walking away from them. So it's not like they're going to shoot me. I shouldn't have picked it up. Right. Then he lunged into his car and he was shot. The Wisconsin attorney general later declined to charge the cop who shot Blake, saying there was no way under these facts that criminal charges were appropriate, a conclusion seconded by Merrick Garland's DOJ. Where's that officer's apology? But none of this mattered in August 2020. There was no willingness to wait for the facts. Instead, the mob, incited by a governor and corporate media desperate to prove their wokeness and by a presidential candidate looking to stoke up

racial animus amongst a Democrat base in which black votes are crucial, took to the streets of Kenosha, burning and looting away. And that is where Kyle Rittenhouse comes in. After days of watching Kenosha burn, a city in which his father and several other members of his family lived, then 17-year-old Rittenhouse decided to do something about the chaos. You see the evening of Jacob Blake's shooting, Governor Evers did not call in the National Guard. He did not. Instead, he sent that absurd tweet I just read to you. Later that night, 100 cars were set on fire in Kenosha. There was rioting, looting. Several businesses were destroyed.

But at least the governor felt good about his wokeness. The next day, Governor Evers finally did call up the Guard, 125 of them, to protect a city of 100,000. More arson and lawlessness that night as criminals styling themselves as Black Lives Matter protesters took to the streets. By August 25th, 2020, the governor had called up another 125 guardsmen. Now that's a total of 250. Mind you, that's half of what he has called up already this week. But by that point, as John McCormick of National Review points out, law enforcement was totally overwhelmed by the rioters. The only visible police presence was around the Kenosha

courthouse, where a fence went up about eight feet tall with about a thousand protesters around it. This was the night Rittenhouse decided to try to protect Kenosha. With frustrations growing about their city burning and elected officials, not to mention the media, giving the rioters a total pass, many felt not enough was being done to keep the peace. Rittenhouse wanted to do something about it. Look, I've said before, I think this was the wrong move. He was not adequately trained or mature enough or the right man for the job. But I get it because law enforcement, as is often the case after the nation wrongly piles on unfairly attacking a cop is racist, either wasn't able

or wasn't willing to control the mob that week. Kyle grabbed an AR-15 and got himself in serious trouble. A man named Joseph Rosenbaum attacked him. So did Anthony Huber and Gage Grosskreutz, and he shot all three of them. And the first two are now dead. And before we knew it, the same cycle that poisoned the Jacob Blake case started again. Joe Biden weighing in, calling Kyle a white supremacist, again the rush to judgment. The media doing the same, calling him a domestic terrorist, calling him a vigilante over and over. But what if they got it wrong again? What if Kyle Rittenhouse did not break the law, but got himself in trouble trying to uphold it. What if this jury sees the truth on those videotapes and says Kyle Rittenhouse had a right to defend himself?

Well, then we may see a repeat of August 2020, riots, looting, chaos, and zero accountability. By the way, not everyone is happy about the National Guard now coming in. Yesterday, Jacob Blake's uncle and other BLM protesters clashed with Rittenhouse supporters on the steps of the Rittenhouse courthouse. Blake's uncle was angry about the National Guard, told the New York Post the move proves Governor Evers is a coward and a racist. He says if the guard is needed, it won't be to control the BLM crowd. It will be to control Rittenhouse's supporters. Quote, we'll be celebrating that somebody's going to jail and they'll be quite upset.

You see, the only just verdict in Rittenhouse, guilty. The National Guard keeps the peace, like the cops and Kyle, racist. And on and on the pernicious cycle goes, setting the nation up for more destruction and more division. Coming up, we're going to be joined by Robert Barnes, founding attorney of Barnes Law and Kyle Rittenhouse's former civil attorney, and Richard Barras, director of Big Data Poll and a polling expert who has assisted with Rittenhouse's attorneys during the jury selection process. This is We Just Get News. The jury has asked a question. We've got it for you, and we've got the jury expert on what it means. Joining me to discuss the Rittenhouse trial, where jurors continue to deliberate right now,

are Robert Barnes, founding attorney of Barnes Law and Kyle Rittenhouse's former civil attorney, and Richard Barris, director of Big Data Poll and editor-in-chief of People's Pundit Daily. Thank you both so much for being here, Robert and Richard. So let's just start with the breaking news on what's happening inside of the courthouse. The jury has asked a question. The question we're told is whether the jury may watch a video in private or do they need to go back into the courtroom to do that. There's a discussion happening right now between the lawyers and the judge about what the answer is uh it sounds like it's a video as opposed to all videos but i'm not clear on that um and apparently the defense has objected to one piece of it saying if it's that drone video that the defense had such a an objection to that the

prosecutor dropped late in the case and that had the blurry, blurry blow up of Kyle allegedly pointing his gun at a witness not not actually involved in any of these charges, then no, they can't watch it on their own. The defense counsel wants to be present for that. And I guess they also want to limit how many videos the jury is able to go review. And the judge is pushing back on the defense on that one, saying they're adults. You can't treat them like children. They can see whatever number of videos they want. So that's what's happening right now.

Robert, let me start with you on what you make of the fact that now it was eight hours yesterday they deliberated. It's about two more today. So we're at 10 hours. And that question and their other question yesterday, which was to see additional copies of the jury instructions. What, if anything, can we glean? So two things. Wisconsin has a somewhat unique rule. It does not allow the jurors to view a lot of exhibits back in the jury room. Most courts do. And Wisconsin generally doesn't allow it. That's why they're supposed to watch

any of the exhibits in front of others so that there can be objections. Probably the reason why the jury would like to watch it in the deliberation room is you have an argument within the jury. You have people who want to stop it and say, see this. And that's, in fact, from the moment they asked for the jury instructions, my interpretation was there were holdouts. And the great danger in jury

selection in this case was because of the pretrial publicity, it contaminated the Kenosha jury pool with many prejudiced jurors that if they did not do a meaningful, detailed probing, voidire, and jury selection, they were going to, both sides, but definitely the defense would get stuck with three to four jurors who would wanted to convict no matter what the evidence showed. And I think that's exactly what we have. What do you make of it, Richard? Because, you know, I was talking in my opening talking points memo about how this whole thing has been so skewed by the politicians and the media from the start, going back to Jacob Blake, which is very much linked to this case. And then they repeated all the same

mistakes on Kyle's case, you know, all the same biases, all the same rushes to judgment. And that has put the jury pool and potentially the actual jurors now deliberating in a really tough position. Yeah, I have to agree, too, with Robert. That sounds like a holdout jurors trying to bring that footage to others. They're looking for a justification because I know it hurts people's idealistic views. But most jurors, Megan, they don't make they don't render verdicts based on the facts and the arguments of the case. We have seen this in many national cases that Robert and I have both worked on. And it really does poison that jury poll. The predisposition towards Kyle in this case really was bad. And the pitfalls showed it in the research. And then also there is a fear. Is that what you mean? When you say predisposition toward Kyle, do you mean against him? I mean, that he was guilty. Yeah, that is what we asked people whether or not they probably they thought he was probably guilty from what they had heard from news coverage or probably innocent. And it was overwhelming, even among demographics that most people at a glance may

think would be favorable to Kyle. But in truth, jury selection is much more complicated than that. People render verdicts based on belief systems and personalities. It's just the way it is. And, you know, from the research we did, it doesn't surprise me at all if there are two to four holdouts that basically have this view that Kyle should not have been there with a firearm and that's it. And once the judge dismissed that misdemeanor possession charge, looking at the research, I could see that as the compromise charge that other jurors could have went along with. And once that was off the table, they're going to fight for some kind of accountability. It's just what we saw. And again,

the media on this, the number of people, it's coupled with what they know because of what they've been told with the media. Also, that is coupled with fear over what happened with the protests in Kenosha. And I mean, more than eight in 10, Kelly, we're extreme. Megan, we're extremely worried about this happening again. And you just can't have that holding over people's heads if you want if you want an impartial verdict. So you did actual questioning system of people who would be in the Kenosha jury pool to get a feel for what the challenges Rittenhouse might be up against were. We did. And there were a lot of pitfalls. I mean, to say the least, there were,

this was a jury selection case, Megan. This was a jury selection case. And in other words, the case gets won or lost on the jury selection. That's it. It was, that's exactly right. And there are just certain people that we found, we talked to, we interviewed over and over and they. And it doesn't matter what you tell them. It doesn't matter what facts you present to them, what arguments you make to them. This kid is guilty no matter what. That's it. And did you find a difference in this jury has seven women, five men?

We don't know what the racial makeup is of the jurors. I guess there was one Hispanic person in the larger group, but we don't know whether that person has made it into the final 12, but mostly white. Kenosha's, I think, 80 or 90% white, so it's not particularly surprising. So did you see, I mean, was there a breakdown in terms of gender on who would be more prosecution or defense oriented? You know, those basic demographics that matter so much with political polling are very marginal when it comes to jury selection in a case like this. Really what we found were people's beliefs on the right to self-defense mattered, personal experiences in their life. I was just trying to explain this before, and I thought back to the Scott Peterson trial where that one juror, Travis, was basically

thrown off of the jury and replaced with Rochelle, who had a life experience that she was abused while pregnant by a man. And everything that ever happened to her in her life that was wrong, you know, that a man did to her, Scott was that man. And I'm not I'm not talking about, you know, the guilt or the innocence of Scott Peterson. I'm just saying how how how complicated these things can be when jurors are deliberating. People's personalities get get into the mix. You know, so life experiences and whether people have certain beliefs and the right to protect property, the right to protect person, their own person, that weighs more than basic demographics like gender. It's incredible. It's also it's complicated, but it's probably one of the more fascinating aspects of

what we do. So what would you have said it was the perfect juror for Kyle Rittenhouse? Yeah, you know, honestly, this is where we had some differences with some of the other opinions we heard. A perfect juror would have been a man or woman who did have strong beliefs in the Second Amendment. A lot of people thought that somebody who was pro-Second Amendment might, or not even pro-Second Amendment, but really right to self-defense, may find that what he did was irresponsible. And the truth is, that's probably 75-25. So we're looking at probabilities when we pick a profile of a specific juror. And then also too, a white, you would look at Kyle and you would say maybe a white woman with certain beliefs in education,

whether they're college educated is probably good for him. But in fact, they were bad for him. So we would probably stick to more working class, man or woman really wouldn't matter, but more working class or at least some college,

but not a postgraduate or maybe a woman who's 45 and older with just a bachelor's. So it really gets granular, but it's interesting. I would say it's more socioeconomic. So do you know any of those facts about the current jurors? Like, do you have any of the data? We know precious little about them. Yeah, unfortunately, and this is probably something Robert should talk to you more about.

But this was a mistake, I have to say, on the part of the defense. They had an opportunity, and I think they had a judge who would have been open to this, to vet these jurors better within a timeframe that Robert and I typically do not get. When this happens in any other given trial, we have to work very quickly. And in this case, there was an opportunity to do a lot more work and it was blown. So unfortunately, we just don't know as much about the jury as I think a good or competent defense would have found out by now. As you should. So Robert, a lot of the viewers wrote in yesterday saying, and some called in saying, why wasn't there a change of venue in this case? So, there's two different issues there. One is that Kenosha, it turned out, was not a lot different than the rest of the state, though Kenosha's concern about issues concerning

their verdict impacting their community was a concern unique to Kenosha. And so we provided that evidence and information to the defense team, and they chose not to do anything with it. And it was also my idea for the defense team to let the court know of what Richard's data found, which was about two-thirds of Kenosha's presumed Kyle guilty, which constitutionally, of course, they're supposed to presume a menace. That, too, the defense team refused to relay to the court. And then lastly, we had a detailed, there's about 17 different questions that were good proxies for whether a juror could presume Kyle innocent. None of those 17 questions, to my knowledge, were even asked of this jury pool.

And we had the defense had the jurors' names a week before the trial and refused to share it with any of the data people that we put together that could help figure out who might be biased. And it looks like three or four of those rogue jurors are now holding up the jury. Is it a long time, do you think, for this case, Robert, 10 hours? I mean, yes. My view was that this case was unique. Usually as a defense, you want the jurors to take a while because usually there's a presumption of guilty of those not supposed to be. And so the longer it goes, the better for the defense. This was the reverse. This was a case in which we found from the polling data, the jurors who recognized his

innocence and who saw the facts and confirmed that innocence came to quick conclusions. And here you had about half of the jurors who were ready to start deliberating Monday night. So that group of jurors clearly was ready to go. My guess is, just reading the tea leaves, and it's always a little tricky, but that you probably have an eight to four, nine to three split. There's several of the jurors that some journalists thought could be bad for Kyle. They are grouping together now when they come back into the jury deliberation room. So that suggests there's also sort of one area of split in Kenosha is you got this old Yankee money

that has disproportionate political and financial capital in Kenosha, but it's only about less than 10% of the population. But they've had a history of leadership roles, even despite the large immigrant population in Kenosha, which is across the board, East European, Southern European, as well as Mexican-American now. And by the way, the Mexican-American, to my knowledge, did actually get on to the jury. So he's part of the part of the five men. But the is that that one of those jurors appears to be on there. In other words, someone that comes from sort of the old aristocracy of Kenosha. And that's someone who was we found in the polling would be bad for Kyle, that they

wanted to judge Kyle for many reasons, that he's from the wrong side of the tracks, that he's from the wrong side of town, if you will, that he caused, you know, controversy to Kenosha in their minds, people who are eager to virtue signal, you know, I mean, just think of Upper West Side Manhattanites who can't wait, you know, it's like something out of electric Kool-Aid test with Thomas Wolfe. You have this sort of impression constantly developed, which I think is true, that what you have in that juror mindset is a very problematic juror mindset for Kyle. And they may be the holdup now for the jury verdict. I'll tell you, I mean, I have tried cases before and you sit there and you look at that

jury and it's amazing how well you actually can predict whether they like you, whether they like your argument. And then when you get to, in some cases, you know, talk to the jury after the verdict comes in and you're just stunned to think, oh my God, why didn't I listen to my instincts? Why didn't I, you know, or I've had a few of those where it's like, ah, gosh, the jury consultant was right. Yeah. I shouldn't have overruled them, that kind of thing. So let's talk about the threat that the jurors know they possibly are facing. Their city is definitely facing their reports yesterday and probably today, too, that these protesters are outside about a thousand of them. According to Fox News of their sort of pro Kyle and anti Kyle sort of, you know, Second Amendment and BLM out on the on the courthouse steps. And apparently they're arguing and they're chanting and

they get the no justice, no peace stuff going. And according again to the Fox News report, you can hear this inside the courthouse. I mean, this jury, they're well aware of the scrutiny on them. What do you think of it, Richard? I mean, how dangerous is that? And the demographic, Megan, that Robert was just talking about too, they also don't, they don't like boat rocking. So they don't want the community to have the civil unrest problems that they saw the prior summer. And we did ask them about how important that was to them. And it was overwhelmingly that they thought that those those that unrest was bad for the community. It wasn't helping, you know, with civil rights. It wasn't advancing anybody's, you know, to make a more equitable society. But they are like you said, they're aware of it and they just don't want to look at this side of ourselves, but it's very realistic that sometimes we make decisions that we think are in the greater good at the expense of somebody else. And for those who think that that doesn't happen in juries, they're very naive.

Of course it does when we have national spotlight the way we have on a case like this. And you have really, again, I am using this coupling because it is this twofold, this one, two combination that happens to some of these defendants. You have the media that comes down and tries them in the court of public opinion. They see very little in the evidence, but it does succeed in poisoning a potential jury pool. And then you have the second part of this where they're afraid of the implications of what might happen if they do the wrong thing or the right thing or whatever is the perceived wrong or right thing, which we find during research all the time. They know what answer they think is the right answer in what you want to hear. So they're always trying to be pretty deceptive when you're doing the research on them. But in the end, we find those belief systems are really the most predictive. And these people, without a doubt, are not going to want their

neighborhoods and their communities torn upside down. And it's just, it's a reality. It's, gosh, it's so unfortunate. And it's not something that they are likely to say explicitly, certainly not on camera after the verdict, or even to themselves inside that jury room. It's just sort of the 800 pound gorilla hanging there like, you know, the media. Here we are. We're going to get you. And so it's that's where the lesser included charges, Robert, could become really important, because if the diehards who don't think he should be convicted of anything wind up folding, right? Like they just want to get a verdict and they want to get this thing over with. They've got the lesser included to go to. I don't, do you know the answer to this? Is that something, the inclusion of those lesser included, something the defense had to agree to? The defense didn't have to agree to it, but if they objected and the reason why there was a colloquy of Kyle was because the defendant can individually object regardless of his counsel's advice, then that can be grounds

for the court to object. But the court doesn't have to accept the defendant's objections. However, if Kyle had not taken the stand, it's unlikely those lesser included would have come in because the prosecution almost exclusively relied on his testimony and the fact that he testified to create the gradations of guilt differential evidentiary basis to have that lesser included, uh, included. And it was our advice, my advice not to take that path, but you know, that ship has sailed the, and I think one of the things they could raise with the court, and I think more and more cases are going to have to do this, which is they're going to have to, your First Amendment rights stop when a defendant's

rights to a fair trial start. And so there is not a right to scream outside the courthouse in a way that the jury can hear. They do not have that right. They don't have a right to influence the jury. So they should have been pushed further back away from the courthouse to make clear that wherever they're protesting could not be heard by the jury inside the courthouse to make clear that wherever they're protesting could not be heard by the jury inside the courthouse. This isn't like a federal courthouse where, you know, it's 20 stories high and some of the new modern ones. This is an old school courthouse that the walls are not thick enough to prevent people from interfering effectively with the jury. And this has been well-established law. And I think the judge made a mistake by allowing the protest to be so close

to the courthouse. And the defense made a mistake by not asking the judge to make sure those protests were not so close they could actually be an earshot of the jury. Yeah, we went through this with those lunatics from the Westboro Baptist Church who were protesting at the funerals of dead service members with signs about gay people. It was very rando. But they're they are allowed to protest. The Supreme Court made that clear. But time, place and manner restrictions are totally appropriate just as long as, you know, they're reasonable. So the judge absolutely could have said you're too close. You got to get farther away. You can protest all you want. But the jury's not supposed to hear that. And again, we didn't even get to the fact that the jury knows they're under threat. They know that they were videotaped. The judge said they confiscated and destroyed the tape, but they know that everyone is looking at them. So they don't they don't need this right now. Well, can you imagine how distracting that is while you're sitting in there and you're hearing all that outside?

We're going to speak next about what what the White House is now saying about this case. I mean, suddenly they're all clammed up. Suddenly they realize it might not be appropriate to comment. Really? And I really think Joy Reid has really lost her mind. She's lost her ever loving mind, how she's really takingday at noon east, and the full video show and clips when you subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's youtube.com slash Megyn Kelly. They've been really, I think, helpful during this whole Rittenhouse trial because you can see the evidence, like the monologue I just did for our listeners.

You can see all the videotapes and so on that I'm referring to if you check it out on YouTube. If you prefer an audio podcast, sometimes you do. It's easy to walk around the house, get your errands done by listening to it on audio. Subscribe and download on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. And there you can find our full archives, by the way, with more than 200 shows. okay guys so the judge has ruled that for now the jury if they want to see a video has to do it in the presence of the courtroom not back in the jury deliberation room and that counsel is entitled to be present and apparently the jury has not revealed which specific video they're

interested in seeing so we'll continue to watch that. So, Robert, let me start with this. If we do have a hung jury, right, because you can definitely see this being the kind evidence, untimely disclosure of evidence, commenting on Kyle's Fifth Amendment rights, commenting on evidentiary issues where the court had actually ruled in advance that they could not get into all of those. if there's a mistrial with prejudice granted after the jury can't come to a verdict, then they cannot retry the case, but they can in Wisconsin appeal the case and appeal that ruling. If the mistrial is granted without prejudice, then basically the prosecution can retry the case and we're back. We start over all over again. What are the odds of this? I mean, because in most trials, the judge would never do that, right? He would never in a hung jury case say, I'm going to grant a mistrial with prejudice pursuant to that motion that was filed before your deliberations. But this case, I feel like there is, I doubt he'd do it, but I do think there's a better than average chance he'd do it in this

case. What do you think? Yes, he's already made the factual finding. That's the magic words in Wisconsin, which is that the prosecutor engaged in bad faith. So when this issue came up at trial during Kyle's cross-examination last week, where the prosecutor commented on Kyle's Fifth Amendment rights and then also further commented on issues that the judge said he couldn't comment on evidentially, the judge specifically, the prosecutor said, I did this in good faith. And the judge said, I don't believe you. And legally in Wisconsin, if you find the prosecutor violated the rules, violated constitutional rights, and it wasn't in good faith, then a mistrial with prejudice is the remedy. It is extremely rare that it's ever granted. But I agree that this is one of

those rare circumstances where it could, and in my personal view, should ever granted. But I agree that this is one of those rare circumstances where it could, and in my personal view, should be granted. Boy, this judge would have to have a very steely spine to do that. What about, can you tell us about this motion that the defense made, a new motion for a mistrial with prejudice based on this high resolution video? So we've been looking at this video that the prosecution relied upon. This is the drone video that they introduced late in the case. And they really think that this is the linchpin. They say it shows Kyle pointing his gun at this witness Zaminski shortly before the pursuit involving Rosenbaum began. And they really the prosecution

loves this video. Well, apparently during its closing, they used a high resolution version of it, which the defense had not been provided with. And the defense is very angry saying, why wouldn't you have given us the high res version where we can see everything just as well as you could see everything? And that I mean, that is an egregious misstep by the prosecution. But do you think what do you make of it as grounds for a mistrial with prejudice? I think in isolation, you could see it as a mistake. But in this case, it's hard to see it as a mistake. You know, the prosecution had the FBI drone footage much earlier than they ever disclosed to the defense. The FBI magically lost their high definition version of their drone footage. Then this drone footage magically showed

up in the middle of trial on their front desk from the evidence ferry, which is kind of hard to believe. And then they only produced the low resolution for the defense prior to closing arguments rather than the high resolution version. And this comes in the context of a defense that lied about Kyle and bail proceedings, lied about Kyle and pretrial proceedings, lied about facts and law during trial, according to a witness tried to suborn perjury. Other witnesses, it looks like they did suborn perjury and, of course, commented on Kyle's Fifth Amendment rights during the trial and cross-examination. So the aggregate of misconduct makes this latest misconduct sufficiently egregious, in my view, for the court to grant a mistraft with prejudice

you could you could do it if you really wanted to um these jurors we have a little videotape richard of what they are hearing again yesterday we were told that the numbers got up to around a thousand outside the courthouse today this the video we have here doesn't show that but it only is a small clip but take a listen to what they're hearing. You can see in pictures that we've grabbed the messaging on the t-shirts of some of the people there. And you know, the jurors have to go in and out of this courthouse every day. One woman wearing a t-shirt that clearly reads F Kyle spelled out and some other threatening messages. They very much appear against him. It's just it's pretty outrageous to have it that close to the courthouse. Have you seen that before? And the other question

I have for you is, have you seen it? Look, yeah, Kyle. Kyle's a white supremacist and terrorist right outside. You can see the courthouse right behind this woman. The judge Schrader is a shit show. That's one right there trying to get at the judge. All sorts of folks outside with bullhorns. Then there's the other side. Let's go, Brandon. I assume they're the other side. And I don't know. So have you seen something this close to the courthouse before? Let me start with that. Yeah, and we have in police-involved shootings and then even what seems to be unrelated, but maybe not so much. We had in Florida, the George Zimmerman trial where the presence of the crowd was very real. So was the case in Casey Anthony as well. That was very real.

But I just think we're in a bit of a different time period now. And based on what the prosecutor did with the high resolution photo, if you have, I'm not a lawyer, but looking at this from the research point of view, if you have a weak case and you're trying to reaffirm someone's beliefs, you're trying to make the story that they want to tell themselves to get to a guilty verdict. If you're trying to get it to make sense, then you pop in with this last minute image of Kyle pointing it at somebody else, and then that can help them make more sense of it. And in the background, you hear all of the screaming and you find maybe this is how I can relieve myself of this pressure. I can use this image and that can be my justification

in my mind to come to a guilty verdict so I can skirt what may be a civil unrest situation. Do you know, Richard, if the jurors in Wisconsin are allowed to speak after the verdict? Can you say that again? What was that? Do you guys know whether the jurors in Wisconsin are allowed to speak after the verdict if they want to? Yeah, Robert, you probably answered that better than me. Yeah, legally, they're absolutely entitled to. Now, the prosecutor came out and said he's not going to talk after the verdict no matter what, which is kind of odd because the ethics rules don't prohibit that. I think the prosecutor was anticipating either a mistrial or an acquittal, and he was just coming out in advance trying to get his excuse. But it's up to the jury entirely. The jury can talk to the public. They can choose not to talk to the public. I believe their names ultimately will become public. They just won't be public probably for several months, much like the Chauvin jurors. But they all know that ultimately they can't keep their information fully private in most cases. The judge may change that in this case, depending if the threats against the judge end up being

threats against the jury. And that was part of my concern. You have these loud riotous crowd right outside basically demanding the jury do a certain verdict, trying to influence the jury by being jury. And that was part of my concern. You have these loud riotous crowd right outside, basically demanding the jury do a certain verdict, trying to influence the jury by being there, not the court of public opinion. Second, you have the governor of Wisconsin who refused to call out the National Guard during the riots, telling everybody he's going to call out the National Guard before the jury went and started their deliberations, which is a signal that he wants them to vote a certain way so that there won't be unrest. And then you have the unrest that's happened after other cases that they got to witness. This all kind of all started after the Rodney King acquittals in 1992 in L.A.

And everything went nuts. And ever since then, everybody's been scared that the wrong verdict will lead to civil unrest. And that's why those any juror who was motivated by that concern should not have been on the jury. And there should have been better questions during jury selection to make sure that couldn't and shouldn't happen, where now there's, you know, the the broad concern is that that's what's influencing the jury, the court of public opinion and people being angry at them, not the facts and the law in the case. As the days go on, the criminal defense lawyers have got to be second guessing their decision to skip a more in-depth jury vetting process. If they wind up getting a mistrial at all, one without prejudice, I have a feeling they're

going to be calling you, Richard. You guys, thank you both so much. A pleasure talking to you. Coming up, we're going to be joined by Andrew Branca, plus Governor Chris Christie is here. Don't go away. Back with me today, Andrew Branca, attorney in self-defense law and his practice, Law of Self-Defense LLC, works to help armed law abiding citizens make better and informed decisions. Bronk has been following this trial very closely, more closely than virtually anybody who's not actually getting paid to be there and reporting on what he has seen at legal insurrection in must read dispatches. Andrew, thanks for being back. Your thoughts now on a jury

that's, I guess now 11 hours into its deliberation on what many of us thought would probably, if it were going to go for Kyle, just a hot mess. I'm sure you know. In fact, I heard Counselor Barnes on your show just a few minutes ago talking about the request from the jurors now to look at some of the videos as exhibits of evidence in the case. And of course, the defense is particularly concerned about this whole drone video issue where they were given a much lower 116th resolution version of this critically important drone video than what the prosecution ended up showing the jury. And this is the key to the prosecution's narrative of guilt here, this notion that Kyle provoked the attack of Rosenbaum and that triggered everything else that happened. And the only evidence they have for this provocation is this drone video that

they effectively did not provide to the defense in anything like the resolution that the jury was ultimately going to see. And explain that. So what was the time difference between the moment Kyle allegedly pulled a gun on Zeminski and I guess Rosenbaum not far away, and when Zeminski and Rosenbaum started to chase Kyle Rittenhouse? So Zeminski never chased him. Zeminski and Rosenbaum started to chase Kyle Rittenhouse? So Zeminski never chased him. Zeminski stayed where he was, by those four cars where Rosenbaum was in an apparent ambush position. But it's within a second or so of when Kyle was supposed to have pointed the rifle and when Rosenbaum was provoked.

And of course, a key issue here is when the defense is given a low resolution version, and they look at it themselves before they have their witness, Kyle, their client testify, they're looking at that low resolution version, and they're like, well, we don't really have to worry about this because you can't see any. It's completely unclear. It's not going to be compelling to the jury. We don't need to spend a lot of time addressing this. When you then discover that what the jury is actually going to see is something that's 16 times higher resolution, well, you might have prepared your client to testify in a different way, not to lie, but to emphasize different things about the experience than was actually the case. And the defense didn't know this higher resolution version

existed until after the evidence had closed. So they simply did not have a chance, an opportunity to adequately prepare their client to provide his testimony. Have you seen the enhanced video? I confess I didn't pay that close attention in the closings to see if the video and the screen grab looked way better than what we had seen earlier. You know, I do have a copy of the high resolution version, and I can't see anything definite out of it. We know we have footage of the judge in the courtroom spending some 30 minutes reviewing these few seconds of video over and over and over again, looking for what the prosecution claimed is obvious to see, and he couldn't see it. I certainly can't see it. I don't expect the

jury can see it. But again, as we talked about yesterday, what we're concerned about here is, you know, having one interested juror who's just looking for an excuse, any excuse, a thin read of an excuse not to vote for acquittal. Then you have a hung jury and prosecutor Binger gets to do this all over again to Kyle Rittenhouse. I'm sure we're showing the high resolution video as you speak, Andrew, just FYI, of the confrontation without circling the participants and so on. It doesn't make much sense, but it does look actually like better quality than what we had been looking at. I want to tell you that the jury has sent out another note. Tell our audience that we don't know

what the note reads, how it reads, what they're asking. And the judge has apparently made a comment, Andrew, on the media and his dissatisfaction with them and saying this may be the last case he ever has presides over in which he allows cameras in the courthouse, in the courtroom. And I'm sure he's getting a taste of what we live every day, which is total distortion by the media and utter unfairness to anyone they perceive as not on their side, whatever their side is. It tends to be left-leaning and certainly in a case of self-defense and, you know, if you're a white kid like Kyle Rittenhouse and a boy, a man, forget it. And he pointed out, I guess, one of the things that was irritating him was the way the media was criticizing his jury, the final jury selection process. They had the sort of greater pool, the greater group,

and then he had to get rid of six and get it down to 12. And I guess he let Kyle Rittenhouse pick just random numbers out of a bag. And that's how he got rid of the six. And this is something the judge has done for a long time, but the media tries to make a big deal out of it. Like this is absurd. The judge is an idiot and so on. Well, unfortunately, the judge's proposed solution moving forward for future cases to not have cameras in the courtroom would just make things worse because then the only insight we would have into what's happening in the courtroom comes from the media that he claims is causing the problem here, misreporting on what's going on, mischaracterizing what's going on in the courtroom.

So I certainly don't think that not having cameras there is in any way a solution to the problem he perceives, which is suddenly finding himself exposed to a level of scrutiny that apparently he's never experienced before. Can we talk for a minute about Jacob Blake? Because you are an expert on self-defense, and that's one of the reasons that you're interested in the Kyle case. But also the Jacob Blake case is directly related. I mean, it's actually related in what happened two days before the Kyle case. But people don't seem to understand that in the case of Joseph Rosenbaum, Kyle, he fired four times. In the case of Jacob Blake, the police officer fired seven times. And this hangs up a lot of people. A lot of moms I know will say that's too many. That's,

you know, he could have shot the one time and incapacitated him. You know, if the other guy doesn't have a gun, like why did Jacob Blake have to get shot seven times? And why did Rosenbaum have to take four bullets? And you help us understand why the law doesn't immediately condemn that. Well, the law says you can use as much force as you need to use to neutralize the threat. Jacob Blake was within feet of the officer. He had a knife, a very large, sharp knife in his hand. He could easily have turned and slashed that officer with a knife and caused a fatal or serious bodily injury wound to the officer.

He had to be neutralized immediately. He was getting into a car with children in it. He'd been known to drive this poor woman's car, whose it was, it wasn't his own car, and crash it deliberately. So the police were concerned about all of this, including the potential for a deadly force attack by him. He was non-compliant with lawful arrest by the officers, again armed with a knife in his hand. I noticed when the New York Times covers this Jacob Blake story, they showed a little video clips of the event and they always edit out the portions where you can actually clearly see the knife in Jacob Blake's hand. That's why people are upset about that event, because they think literally an unarmed man was just shot in the back seven times by police for no good reason. That's not what actually happened.

But because that's how the media reports it, well, people only know what they see, what is reported to them. So they believe that false narrative. And of course, they're outraged. Anybody would be outraged if that was the truth. And Kenosha burns to the ground because of the way the media falsely reported the event. Yes. And they did repeatedly report that Jacob Blake was unarmed before they knew what the truth was. Then when the reports came out that he was armed, they rejected them. As I said in my talking points memo, people like me who said their reports, he was armed. We got called a racist, right? So, I mean, listen, I don't care what they call me, but most people do care. So it shuts them down from saying what they understand is the new truth is the real truth that's being

reported. And the narrative goes on and on. But in the Jacob Blake case, you literally had the soon to be vice president of the United States say she was proud of him, proud of Jacob Blake, who, again, had been he had raped his wife, he had digitally raped his girlfriend. Well, with their young son on the bed. No, no proud. That's a totally inappropriate comment. And she and Joe Biden tried to paint this as part of a pattern of a black man getting unfairly targeted by the police. Then we saw something similar in the closing argument by Binger about Kyle Rittenhouse and his targets the other day, where he was specifically told before the trial, don't don't try to paint these guys as heroes. Otherwise, the judge said, I'm going to let their criminal histories in.

And boy, he got dangerously close. He used the word heroes. Here's what Binger said in closing about the men who Kyle shot. And every day we read about heroes that stop active shooters. That's what was going on here. And that crowd was right. And that crowd was full of heroes. That's crazy. Like, I don't know why the defense wasn't on its feet immediately. Well, unfortunately, this is during closing arguments. The lawyers have a lot of discretion

in how they can characterize things in closing. The jury's told that closing argument is not evidence. They're not to consider it as evidence when they go into deliberations. Of course, it does influence their thinking, as you would expect. And the defense had objected to several statements made unclosed. And each time the judge had simply overruled their objection and said, listen, you can counter argue this issue when you're doing your own defense closing argument. And the defense may have finally just realized, you know, there's no point to these objections on these issues because the judge is just going to overrule us each time. It's pointless. I get that. And there's also strategic consideration of, I don't want to look like I think this is information that's bad for my client and just keep being on my feet

saying, objection, objection. And you want to sort of let it roll past, like, who cares? But I have to say, the reason this wasn't an okay thing to say and an okay thing to let pass as defense counsel was because he couldn't get up on his closing, the defense counsel, and rebut this because the ammunition to disprove the hero status of these guys wasn't allowed in. You know, I went back and looked at it. I understood that Rosenbaum, the first guy Kyle shot, was a convicted child molester and actually looked at the actual charges. And he was faced with multiple. I think it was gosh, it might have been 11, 11 counts of rapes. Yeah. Of raping young boys between the ages of five and 11. OK,

charged and then cut a plea deal copying to two. So this guy anally raped young boys. The first man shot. He was not a hero in any way. The second man shot, Gruber, he also had a long criminal history. According to the Daily Mail, he had assaulted family members. He had put a knife to his brother's stomach saying he was going to gut him like a pig, that he would kill him. Grabbed the brother by the neck, dug his his nails in choked him for approximately 10 seconds uh put a knife to his brother's left ear and his brother felt it cut said he was going to burn the house down with all you effers in

in it uh and so on okay so that's huber then the third guy grosskreutz um he's a violent career criminal too according to the daily mail laundry list of prior offenses, convictions going back more than a decade, domestic abuse, prowling, trespass, two DUIs, felony burglary, two charges of carrying a firearm while intoxicated. On and on it goes. And then 10 days before he was shot by Rittenhouse, he was arrested by West Allis police and charged with prowling when he was caught videotaping a police officer or their vehicles in the parking lot at 1 a.m. Very strong anti-law enforcement views and so on. He apparently struck his own grandmother in the face or was accused of doing that, smashing a lamp, damaging the drywall against which he hurled it back in 2010. I mean, the nerve, Andrew. Heroes? Who do they think they're kidding? But it's all part of the narrative that the person who fires the gun has got to be bad, and those who get shot by it have got to be good. Yeah, I think we really, frankly, need a change in the rules of evidence for this kind of character evidence of purported victims. I'm using scare quotes there again, in these self-defense cases. These are often very, very bad actors, and that's who the defender had to deal with in the real world in this fight with them. I think it gives a very bad perception when you have the person who defended themselves

charged with the use of force crime, claiming self-defense, and everything about them is exposed, but you don't know anything about the person who attacked them against whom they had to defend themselves. I think it's wrong. There are exceptions to the rules of evidence that allow character evidence in under certain circumstances. And I think a case of self-defense should be among them. And certainly if the prosecution opens the door by calling them heroes, and he got dangerously close during the course of the trial to overselling these guys, too, that they if they open the door you run through it as defense counsel like great you you want to go let's go rosenbaum is a child rapist he's no hero and this guy huber um who's you know attacking his brother with a knife no hero and this guy gross kreutz

with his long history but you know gross kreutz takes the stand he's got his hair looking nice he's got his beard you know now nicely kempt and he's presented as just this poor guy's got his hair looking nice. He's got his beard, you know, now nicely kempt. And he's presented as just this poor guy who got his arm shot off. Whereas we know this guy has a long career of rebel rousing. And by the way, Andrew, you heard the prosecutor in the closing get up there and say, who goes out on a night like this? I didn't I didn't go out. Did you go out? I stayed at home. Like what kind of a person even goes out? Well, at least Kyle Rittenhouse was at least trying to keep the peace. His motive was at least pure going in there, unlike these other three guys who were there to cause trouble.

Yeah. I mean, Kyle wasn't even there to try to keep the peace per se, to play the role of a police officer. He was merely there to provide first aid to people. The only reason he had a gun with him at all was because he wanted to be able to defend himself if he ran into a lunatic who tried to kill him, which is exactly what happened, and which is why he needed the gun repeatedly to fight off serial murderous attacks on him. And the only reason he was there was to provide medical care to people who might be injured. You can't say the same for the people who attack them. Right. Exactly right. And the jury, so the jury in some ways is fighting with its hands tied behind their back because they don't have all the information.

There's a rule. There's a reason that the rules of evidence don't allow it. But I think the prosecutor opened the door and I think the jury should have known what kind of men Kyle Rittenhouse was facing that night. Andrew, always a pleasure. Hope we can do it again when we get more info. Thank you so much, Faye. Coming up next, Governor Chris Christie is with us. I'm going to ask him about Kyle Rittenhouse. This is a guy who has a long history in law enforcement as the New Jersey AG before he was governor. But he's also the author of a new book, Republican Rescue, which is making waves in the media and the political world. And I'd love to ask him about it.

Joining me is former governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie. He's the author of the new book, Republican Rescue, saving the party from truth deniers, conspiracy theorists, and the dangerous policies of Joe Biden. Welcome back, Governor. Great to have you. Great to be back, Megan. Can we just start with what happened in New Jersey a couple of weeks ago? I mean, how stunned were you when it was as tight as it was and the Democrat almost lost Murphy?

I have to tell you, I wasn't that stunned, Megan. I was saying on TV for two weeks, two Sundays before, that this was going to be a lot closer than people thought and that we should be talking about both states, not just about Virginia. Because I could feel it in New Jersey. I could feel Cittarelli getting the momentum and the national, you know, wins in the Democrats' face definitely helped. And it just came up a little bit short, two and a half points short. But we won three seats in the state Senate and we won six, maybe eight seats in the state assembly. So it was a very, very good night up and down the ballot for Republicans in New Jersey. Not quite as good as Virginia because they got the governorship up pretty good.

What do you make of Mr. Durr, the truck driver, unseating the Senate leader? That's totally the doing of Phil Murphy. He lost the sitting Democrat governor, Steve Sweeney's district, Gloucester, Cumberland and Salem. Phil Murphy lost those counties to Jack Ciattarelli by 10 points, by 24 points and by 14 points. So when you're the next guy down on the ballot, which Steve Sweeney was, you're asking a lot to do that much crossover voting. And he just got caught in the red tsunami down in South Jersey. And Ed Durr, who, you know, rather than spending about $8,000 total on his campaign, is the is the happy happy beneficiary of Phil Murphy's ineptitude. I thought it was $150. I never heard the $8,000.

Yeah, he spent $150. That was in his 10-day pre-report. But in the last 10 days, he spent about $7,500 in addition to the $153 he had spent before. And his opponent had spent millions to get elected in the first place. Okay, can I ask you about Kyle Rittenhouse? Because I know, obviously, you have a long history in law enforcement before he became governor.

You were the top lawyer in New Jersey. And I did a long talking points memo at the start of the show talking about how the media and Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and Governor Evers in Wisconsin all had a hand in the anger that we're seeing on the streets of Kenosha and in what brought us to this courtroom right now, you know, in the wake of Jacob Blake, the rush to judgment, the public statements by all the people I just mentioned saying that this was an unarmed black man. This is part of a pattern by police that it's an outrage. You know, Kamala Harris saying she was proud of Jacob Blake and so on. It was pretty outrageous. And now we know,

thanks to even Joe Biden's attorney general, it was a justified shooting by the police. No one could have been charged by the cop. No cop could have been charged for his behavior. Jacob Blake admits having a knife and so on. The rush to judgment in the media was not would not reflect that. There was no soul searching. Nobody, very few media outlets corrected the unarmed part of that reporting. And then they did it again in the case of Kyle Rittenhouse, the same pattern again wanted was politicians or any types of public figures talking about the case before you really knew what the case was. And the lack of discipline being shown here is driven, I think, in part by social media and also in part by the by the enormous pressure that the the unbelievably liberal left is putting on the people who want to be part of the democratic party. And if you are not singing from their hymnal 24 hours a day, seven days a week,

they will cancel you. And so I think a lot of people felt a lot of pressure illogically to, to comment on the Rittenhouse case before anybody knew what the hell the facts were. Yeah. First Jacob Blake and now Rittenhouse case before anybody knew what the hell the facts were. Yeah. First Jacob Blake and now Rittenhouse. This president, while running for office, called Kyle Rittenhouse a white supremacist. All right. And there's been zero evidence of that, zero evidence of that at trial, not a word. And even the stuff said about Kyle Rittenhouse outside of the courthouse by an irresponsible media has not held up.

So the man then running for president, now sitting president, calls this kid a white supremacist. The jury hears that. And Jen Psaki was asked about the irresponsibility of that by I think it was Peter Doocy of Fox News the other day. Take a listen to what she said. Why did President Biden suggest that Kyle Rittenhouse on trial in Kenosha is a white supremacist? So, Peter, what I'm not going to speak to right now is anything about an ongoing trial, nor the president's past comments. We shouldn't have, broadly speaking, vigilantes patrolling our communities with assault weapons. We shouldn't have opportunists corrupting peaceful protests by rioting and burning down the communities they claim to represent. Now she doesn't want to talk about it, Governor. Now, now she doesn't

think it's appropriate. Yeah, look, you know, they once again got caught with their hands in the cookie jar and they never want to they never want to admit it, apologize or correct their ways. And it's a it's a typical pattern of Joe Biden. There's a there's an arrogance inside that administration that that is coupled with an incompetence that makes them a very dangerous group. When you add them their self-righteousness to it, it makes it despicable. One of the dynamics in the Virginia race, in the New Jersey race, in these cases, Jacob Blake, Kyle Rittenhouse is race itself. And we see this being pushed by, you know, the far left at every turn. Everything's been racialized.

You know, Kyle Rittenhouse crying on the stand, ripped, ripped by some on the left as white privilege. Joy Reid, I think it called it white, white crocodile tears. Not just tears, white crocodile tears. She continues to be, I mean, I don't think there's a bigger just race baiter on television right now. Here is just a bit of Joy Reid doing a TikTok about the Kyle Rittenhouse case. Listen. It's Kyle Rittenhouse case. Listen. It's Kyle Rittenhouse trial. It reminded a lot of people of something, something, I can't remember what it was. Oh,

the Brett Kavanaugh hearings in which Brett Kavanaugh, who had been accused by a high school friend of committing sexual abuse of her, cried his way through the hearings to make him a permanent member and associate justice of the United States Supreme Court. And his tears turned out to be more powerful than the tears of Christine Blasey Ford, which were the tears of an alleged victim. But in America, there's a thing about both white vigilantism and white tears, particularly male white tears, really white

tears in general, because that's what carrots are, right? They carrot out and then as soon as it gets caught, it's green waterworks. White men can get away with that too and it has the same effect even as the right tries to politicize the idea that masculinity is being robbed from american men by multiculturalism and wokeism they still want to be able to have their tears I mean, this is not unusual to hear out of the left wing media. Right. And it's a real problem. And I wonder, it's not that the government should be cracking down on the joy reads of the world. But what do you think? Because you're writing a book about reinventing the Republican Party. The solution is to that insane type of narrative that's taken hold of the Democratic Party, of so many of our institutions, including K through 12 education?

Talk substance, lay out a contrasting view. And if you do it effectively and persuasively, you make her look even more ridiculous than she looks already. And we just can't engage in getting down into the gutter with that, Megan, on this stuff. Because if we do, they drag us down. It's like I say in the book, when the party's talking about yesterday and vendettas and conspiracy theories, denying the truth, that's not attractive to voters. What's attractive to voters are what are you going to do different than the people who are there now? And why is your way better? And that's what we have to do. And I think with the Joy Reads of the world, we just have to make sure that we continue to talk about what the reality is, lay it next to what she spews every night on television. And I will wind up

winning most of those, if not all of those arguments. Well, that's one of the reasons why Virginia and New Jersey were so encouraging, because it does seem like parents and voters are pushing back on this insanity. I will give a shout out to Miranda Devine of the New York Post, who's always worth reading. She talked about Joy Reid's saying, this is a woman on a seven figure salary who went to Harvard, who has more elite privilege in her little finger than the 17 year old son of a single mother who was in Kenosha working as a lifeguard when all hell broke loose in the form of BLM Antifa riots in August 2020. Yet she continually plays the victim and makes her living punching down at white people less fortunate than she is was incredibly cold, incredibly heartless. Your tears don't count if you're white, if you're a white man, if you're a white man, if you're a white. I mean, it's insane that anything connected to NBC is putting this on the air. OK, so let's talk about your book, Rescuing Republicans, Republican Rescue.

I understand you are you're sort of to me, you tell me whether I'm wrong, but you're sort of a guy who believes he can get those Republican women who voted against Trump in the last election who were turned off by his rhetoric, you know, didn't like the tweets and all that. You think you can get them, if not you, Chris Christie, as a Republican nominee, then the Republican Party in general. But you know you have to hold on to the Trump base. And it's been interesting to me watching you sort of give these interviews. And I think trying to do that dance where you don't totally alienate the Trump base, but you're still in reality when it comes to what happened with the 2020 election. To me, that seems like it's going to be a very tough.

Ho to ride a tough road to ho. I just think like true MAGA country, are they going to elect somebody or go for somebody who's been as critical of Trump as you have? Well, you know, first off, all I've done in the book is what I do and have done with him for 20 years of our friendship, which is I tell him the truth as I see it. And sometimes he likes it and sometimes he doesn't. And sometimes voters will like it and sometimes they won't, but they never have to worry about whether it's honest and whether it's authentic. And the problem with what's happened to our party

when we're mired in this truth denying about the 2020 election is that we lose credibility and all the other issues that we want to talk about, some of which you've already spoken about today in crime and education um on fiscal policy taxes and spending and what it's going to do to inflation and to our lifestyle um and our ability to pay our bills in this country if we're going to be believed on all that stuff we've got to abandon this stuff megan and and so i don't know if i'm really tiptoeing i'm just trying to tell the truth about, as you know, there are lots of things the president did that I agreed with. And I'm going to continue to agree with those things. But that doesn't get you a blanket immunity from not telling the truth to people.

And by continuing to say the election was stolen when there's been no evidence presented, that would that would back up that claim. I took a look. There was a Yahoo poll in August of Republican voters. Sixty-six percent believe the election was rigged or stolen. Sixty-six percent. So how does it work for a Republican to look at two-thirds of the party and say, you're wrong? What I think that two-thirds represents, Megan, is there's only been one voice talking about this issue. There's just been Donald Trump's voice saying that it was stolen. And nobody else on our side,

and certainly nobody with the credibility that I have, having been the first elected official to endorse the president, the first one to chair his transition to play Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden in debate prep, to chair the Opioid Commission for him. You know, it's not like the line for us behind me for people who supported him and helped to make him president. But on the other hand, you know, it doesn't mean that you have to agree with everything that he says or does. I think that what you do is you talk to

people honestly and directly about the way you feel about these issues. And I'm certainly not going to pull any punches. But those folks, I think, are, you know, just hearing one voice right now. You also, I'm sure, this week saw the Des Moines Register poll of Republican voters in Iowa. And, you know, from having been out there, they're amongst the most conservative Republicans in the country. And they asked the question, you know, who do you feel more loyalty to, the Republican Party or Donald Trump? In Iowa, 62% of those who responded said the Republican Party, 26% said Donald Trump. So things are changing, and they're going to take some time to change. And Donald Trump can either be a part of that change, or he can be opposing that change. But either way, rigged, you could make an argument on, right? The suppression of the Hunter Biden reporting, the Russiagate conspiracy, which was touted nonstop in the first two years

of Trump's presidency, trying to blow up that Ukraine phone call into a second impeachment and so on, and the media salivating and every night telling us he's a criminal. Like, I think my own belief is that's part of what people mean by rigged, that this media has 100 percent got its thumb on the scale for Democrats over Republicans and certainly over Donald Trump in a way that really mattered. Big tech suppressing certain articles and allowing others to live. It mattered. Right. So I think Republicans want to see somebody who's going to take up that challenge and try to push back against those people who are tilting the scales. Well, I talk about that in the book, as you know. We have a whole chapter on how Republicans should be dealing with the media. And we talk about how we need to do election reform and make elections better state by state.

But that is not what we're talking about. You know, I saw just yesterday, um, Donald Trump giving an interview to Mike Liddell of the, you know, the, the, the Mr. Pillow guy, my pill, my it's my pillow, my pillow guy, you know, and saying, we know the election was stolen and they were agreeing with each other. The election was stolen. Um, it's just not true, but when we spend all this time talking about it too, it's hard to get by something when you just keep talking about it. My view on this is you say to voters, when I was running for reelection in 2013, I was walking on the boardwalk in Asbury Park, New Jersey, a boardwalk we had

just rebuilt in five months. And a voter came up to me and said, you're running for reelection, why should I vote for you? And so we'll look at this rebuilt boardwalk. You never thought this would be done in five months, did you? And he said, yeah, that's what I got for voting for you last time. What do I get for voting for you next time? If we want to appeal to voters, we have to talk to them about what we're going to do differently than Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. And talking about all this other stuff is, in my view, a waste of time.

And lastly, the media has always been against the Republican Party. Big tech is a new element to that. But the mainstream media has been against the Republican Party my entire lifetime. And we've won more presidential elections than they have. So, you know, let's not be crying in our beard. Let's go out, take them on head on, take them on based on the facts, fight them when you need to fight them. And, you know, I know how to do that.

And other Republicans do, too. So let's go and do that. Let's not complain about it. All right. I'm going to tell you as your friend, I think you need to sharpen your pencil because I saw Nicole Wallace of MSNBC coming at you saying, why didn't you attack Fox News in your book? Doesn't a conspiracy theory, conspiracy theorists like Tucker Carlson, aren't they the bigger danger than media bias? And all I could think was you work at the network that touted the BS Russiagate lie more than any other for years, and you haven't apologized for any of it, not to mention COVID lies about people not being able to get services because they took ivermectin overdoses, lies, lies, lies that they don't apologize for.

They don't correct. Now, you got to get back on your prosecutor hat and get ready to battle on that nonsense. Well, look, and I said to her directly yesterday, two things. One, that if you want to talk conspiracy theorists, truth deniers, that there are plenty of them on MSNBC where I was sitting with her that day. And secondly, I said to her that what she was talking about in terms of terrorism and terrorists and analogizing that to people at Fox News was disgraceful and wholly irresponsible. She shouldn't be doing that stuff. So, you know, I think I took her on pretty well yesterday. And if she still wants to have more, believe me, I'll be more than ready to do it. You've watched me do it before and I'll be happy to continue to do it.

I mean, it is fun when you do it. It's fun to watch. I mean, the way if a lawyer really wants to take you down, there's sort of a linear fun. I don't know, just intellectually stimulating way of doing it. We've seen you do it. OK, let's talk about the Democrats, because there was a poll out the other day. Washington Post, ABC, Republicans lead Democrats by the largest margin in 40 years. In 40 years, that's the widest margin we've seen, right? Four decades. Joe Biden's not faring too well either in terms of his approval.

He's at record lows. And so now there's talk about understanding that Kamala Harris isn't exactly the strongest candidate. Her numbers are even lower than his of drafting in Pete Buttigieg somehow to become the nominee for the Dems in 2024. What do you make of that? I'm shaking in my boots. We're having to face the great Pete Buttigieg. You know, listen, Megan, the idea that this guy is the savior of the Democratic Party, I have spent a lot of time over the past six to eight years in South Bend, Indiana. I had an older daughter who went to Notre Dame. I have a younger daughter who's there right now. If you want to hold up South Bend, Indiana as an example of how he's going to run America, Pete Buttigieg ain't going to do all that great. So if that's their saving

grace, give me a break. This is a guy who we'll see how he winds up running the Department of Transportation now with all of this infrastructure money that's been passed. And we'll see if he runs it as efficiently as he ran South Bend. Believe me, the infrastructure in America won't get much better at all. What do you make of the GOP side right now? Because we don't know who's going to be the nominee on the Republican side. The latest poll had Trump getting 78% of the vote. He's got the biggest name recognition. It's not a total surprise he'd be dominating everyone.

You know, DeSantis gets mentioned a lot. Sometimes Mike Pence, way, way behind Trump. He was at like 12 percent in the latest poll. So who do you think realistically has the greatest chance? You were the star in 2012, but you were not you didn't register on this particular poll. So what's your thought on how on who the leader is and how to get your numbers up if you decide you want it to be you? Look, well, first of all, I don't think there's any leader right now other than Donald Trump, right? You know, he was the last president and he's the person who's going to register most time in the polls. And at this point, no one else even matters. But you know what matters even less? Polls in 2021 about a primary

in 2024. I mean, we just don't know what the world's going to look like then. Remember, at this time in 2016, you know, I was leading the polls at this time in 2016. Soon after I moved out of the polls, Jeb Bush was leading the polls for a long time. So, you know, the idea that anything that's going on now matters is to me, you know, just based on my experience, just not right. And and what I you know, if I decide to run, you know, I'll decide to run because I believe I see a pathway to getting voters attention and making sure that they listen to a voice that's going to speak about conservatism in a common sense way and make them feel good about the fact that they'll have somebody who will fight for them. But at the same time, won't hurt their ears while doing it. And I think, you know, we'll see what happens. I have not made any decision that don't know. And I think anybody who tries to call it now will wind up just being wrong, or if they turn out to be right, it'll be completely by accident. You know, Donald Trump very well, better than virtually anybody listening to this program, I'm sure. Do you think he wants to run

again? Oh, I think he wants to run again. But I don't know that he's made any decision to run again. And I don't think he'll make any decision to run again in the very near future. You know, he's for, for all of his, you know, confidence. He is also a guy who tends to be when it's his own reputation on the line, very, very careful. So I think it's going to take a little time before he sees what the landscape looks like and whether it's something he wants to do or not. I mean, obviously he feels wrong by the last election that we've talked about, but whether that's going to lead him to run the next time at 78 years old, I'm not really sure. Do you think his ideas, you know, he wasn't really a Republican, you know, you and I both know he wasn't really one. He ran as one and he had the R officially after his name. But he had a lot of

policies that didn't look or feel very Republican. And there's a question now about, and there were some that were harder, right, than the normal Republican Party was like on immigration. So do you think that that sort of MAGA base of ideals has become part of the Republican Party? In other words, even if it's not Donald Trump at the helm, do you think anybody looking to get the nomination and lead this party is going to have to adopt the core MAGA principles? Well, I don't think you're going to have to adopt the core MAGA principles, but on a lot of them, you're going to want to. And I think that he did do something politically for the Republican Party in terms of expanding the type of voter who wanted to

support Republicans who maybe not had traditionally not done so. Let's face it, he took a lot of Bernie Sanders voters with his positions on trade, in particular, that drew a lot of Bernie Sanders voters away from Hillary Clinton in 2016, and one of the reasons that he won the race. But I think that the only things you should be adopting are those things which you genuinely believe and can genuinely fight for. Because what the voters can smell from a mile away is a phony. And if they don't believe you authentically believe these things, you're not going to get away with it. It's going to be a fascinating time. But you and I both know that the race for 2024, it's like it's beginning like tomorrow.

I mean, that's just a function of the media. We can't help ourselves. You know, you're like little chess pieces that we can't wait to move. And I predict you'll definitely be one of them. Can't wait to see how it goes. Governor Christie, always a pleasure. Thank you so much. Everybody buy his book.

It's called Republican Rescue and a lot of good ideas in there and actually a lot of fun stories about his time working with Trump and some his interactions with Trump that many made me laugh out loud. I think you'll enjoy it. Listen, so we're going to keep you we're going to stay on the Kyle Rittenhouse trial. And of course, obviously, we have a verdict. We'll have it totally covered for you wall to wall. So don't forget to check in. Tomorrow, we're going to do some COVID. And I'm actually really looking forward to my guest, Dr. Scott Atlas. Boy, talk about people have been just killed by the media unfairly. He's definitely on that list. So don't forget to check that out. And we'll have Kyle, you know, coverage of the Kyle

case as well. Go ahead and download the show on Apple, Pandora, Spotify and Stitcher, youtube.com slash Megyn Kelly to watch it. We appreciate it. Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening to the Megyn Kelly show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.