The Megyn Kelly Show - Rittenhouse Media Insanity and the Dangers of China, with Sen. Tom Cotton, Jason Whitlock, and Jesse Singal | Ep. 208

Episode Date: November 22, 2021

Megyn Kelly is joined by Senator Tom Cotton, Jason Whitlock, host of "Fearless" on BlazeTV, and Jesse Singal, author of "The Quick Fix," to talk about the media insanity after the Rittenhouse verdict, the lie that Rittenhouse "crossed state lines" with an AR-15, why Sen. Cotton says President Biden owes RIttenhouse an apology, Merrick Garland's "radical" Department of Justice, the dangers of China and reasons to boycott the Olympics next year, the missing Chinese tennis star, 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 beginning at this hour to learn a bit more about the awful attack last night on people attending a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin. A community tradition they have been doing every year for the past 60 years. Have you heard about this? Have you seen that video? My God. As of right now, we know that five people were killed, more than 40 injured after a driver plowed into a crowd. And if you see the video, you see this red truck going so fast. I mean, the folks did not stand a chance. We don't know the ages yet of those who were killed, but among the injured, at least,

are children. You can see there's one video circulating online where there's a little girl and she's clearly, oh, she looks like three, three and a half, four at the max. And the truck just misses her. But then it plows into a whole group of marchers where they're celebrating. It's it's disgusting. Fox News is reporting at this hour that the driver of the truck is a 39 year old man with a long criminal history who was out on bond that he's being questioned by police. Right now, the early reports first first they said they might be terrorism. They haven't ruled it out. Now it seems like they're leaning toward

this is not a terrorist act. This guy might have been fleeing some sort of knife violence he may have been involved in in some way earlier. So we're trying to figure out more and we will keep you updated on any new developments as they happen over the next two hours. And while you may have taken a break from the news over the weekend, the left-wing media did not. They were in overdrive reacting to Friday's acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse. And to those of you who experienced that with us, thank you so much for being there with us while it happened. It was pretty extraordinary after our in-depth coverage of it all week to have it unfold live on the air while we were at the mic. And the YouTube response has been great, and we appreciate you guys sort of trusting us with

those moments but there were the usual media attacks on the jury uh and the system in the country this past weekend that kyle rittenhouse is a white privileged okay how you know he's the poor kid of a single mom but okay he's got skin. So I guess that just makes him privileged in our society. That's, you know, you know, that line, vigilante, domestic terrorist, nationalist, led off by a judicial system built on white supremacy. The jurors are now racists. The judges are racist. Kyle Rittenhouse is right. You're a racist. I'm a racist. Everyone's a racist. But the media managed to sink to new lows as well, claiming now that anyone, anyone who goes out and protests in support of Black Lives Matter is going to be hunted down and killed. There's no one

better to react to this insanity than Jason Whitlock. He's here with me today. Very happy about that. Also, Jesse Singel will be here later on the media coverage of the trial and the case. Plus, President Biden admitted that he did not watch one second of the trial, but felt very convinced and comfortable saying he was angry over it. He watched nothing, but he's very angry and concerned over the verdict. Well, thank you for your totally uninformed opinion. And when asked if he stood by equating Kyle Rittenhouse with white supremacists, the president deflected and suddenly didn't feel it was appropriate to answer the question. Wow. Where was that sense of reticence, of reluctance to comment on these public matters a year and a half ago while he was running for office? I'm also going to be joined today by Senator Tom Cotton. Really looking forward to that. We've been trying to get him on for a while. We'll ask him about Joe Biden's statements now. He has said publicly he believes the president needs to apologize to Kyle Rittenhouse.

How likely is that? We're going to talk to him as well about his new call for a total boycott of the U.S. Winter Olympics in Beijing. And by the way, some Chinese media are responding to this senator in no uncertain terms. We'll see what he thinks. We'll talk about it. But first, I want to get to Jason Whitlock. He's host of Fearless with Jason Whitlock on Blaze TV. Jason, a pleasure to have you here. Thank you, as always. I mean, the media, it wasn't unexpected that they were going to lose their minds after completely misrepresenting this case from the start. You know, I mean, for a year since August 2020, when it happened, they've been telling us that this white kid, Kyle Rittenhouse, who shot three white people is a white supremacist

because he was trying to keep the peace and help others at a Black Lives Rally riot. We knew it was going to be a riot. We knew it wasn't going to be a protest. As late as night, they were burning things and so on. They make it sound like it was one of these lovely, like, we're just going to hold up our little placards. There was none of that.

There was rioting and burning and arson and looting. Okay, so I want to tee it up with a butted soundbite of how the media sounded over the weekend. For those of you who were living your lives and had the good sense not to listen. Here you go. This jury sent the final and loudest warning to white America about the dangerous rise of white nationalist terror in this country. Like if I'm walking around and I'm a white nationalist, you know, coward little kid with an AR-15 and I see somebody drive by with a Black Lives Matter bumper sticker and I feel threatened, I can open fire. This country was built on the idea that white men had a particular kind of freedom from the slave catchers on the right to inflict

violence in the name of protecting property. Anyone who supports Black Lives Matter should be very afraid. Now we can see people baiting violence to have a reaction, very serious problem for activism, because now we're being told that someone can cross state lines with a semi-automatic rifle and kill people. Today, what we were told was that white self-defense trumps everybody else's sense of safety and protection. The fact that white supremacists roam the halls of Congress freely and celebrate this little murderous white supremacist. You matter. Every time one of these verdicts come out, it's easy to feel like you don't. But I'm here to tell you that you do.

You matter. You matter so much that the second you start to get a sense that you do, a man will grab a gun he shouldn't have in the first place and travel all the way to another state just to quiet you. Oh, boy. Your thoughts on it, Jason? That's great acting. They should all win Oscars or Emmys or whatever. Megan, the only thing, it would be easy to laugh them off, but they're executing a very clever strategy. And it's why they all have the same talking points and why we've heard so much about, he crossed state lines, he crossed state

lines with an AR-15. He didn't cross state lines with a gun. He lived one mile from the border of Wisconsin. He had family in Kenosha, Wisconsin. He had a job in Kenosha, Wisconsin. He was there the night before. But they all have the same talking points because it's an orchestrated strategy to cast everything in this racial camouflage so that they can actually execute their real agenda, and that is to demonize and to paint the American narrative arc as one that has focused on racial injustice from start to finish. And it's an argument they're trying to make to justify a rewriting of the Constitution, a dismantling of Western civilization, a dismantling of Judeo-Christian values that used to define

this country. It's a tactic. It's not an accident. It's talking points that have been distributed to all of the useful idiots of corporate media and all the people in collusion with China and big tech, with all the billionaires that want to move America to make it more like communist run China. And so as stupid as it sounds and as stupid as they sound and as tempting as it is to laugh them off, they're executing a strategy that's working right now. They have us all talking about the lies that they propagate, and we can never have a discussion about the truth. the Bill of Rights was embedded with certain Judeo-Christian values that set up a conflict between good versus evil, and good was winning for about 200 years. But here in the last 50, 60 years, evil is winning, and they're corrupting American values so that they can argue we need a new constitution and that we were founded on racism and nothing has ever changed and this country doesn't work. Even though people from

around the world are beating down doors, Black people included, beating down doors to get in this country, they got a successful propaganda campaign going on that none of that's true and this is the worst place on earth. It's so crazy when you hear the misinformation and also this type of talk. MSNBC's Jason Johnson was the one who kicked off that butted soundbite saying, Kyle Rittenhouse was about to kill those two guys with no consequences because they were race traitors the two white guys who got killed they were race traitors who stood against the core conceit of white supremacy what what no i love even nicole hannah jones um she tweeted out in this country this is after the verdict you can even kill white people and get away with it if those white people are fighting for black lives this is the legacy of 1619 sure i'm sure convicted pedophile the guy who loved to rape nine-year-old boys um joseph rosenbaum was there and was running around yelling the n-word uh that night i'm sure

he was there fighting for black lives who are they kidding me that they were race traitors trying to stand against the core conceit of white supremacy? Supremacy. They wanted to they wanted violence. They wanted to participate in riots. They wanted to cause trouble. Nobody, not one of those guys, but we're attracting white people with long criminal records. We, they'll say, you should judge who's supporting you. It's all Trump supporters, and therefore you must be wrong or you must be. Well, if pedophiles and domestic abusers and other people with criminal records are the ones coming out and supporting you, doesn't it say something about your message? If every time there's a Black Lives Matter rally, there's a high percentage, half the time, there's looting, there's arson, there's violence, there's mayhem, doesn't that say something about you and your organization? Because Dr. King and that generation from the 1950s and 60s had all kinds of protests, all kinds of protests, and faced incredible racial

hostility. But those protests weren't marked by arson, violence, and looting by the people allegedly supporting Dr. King and them. So the Black Lives Matter crowd should be asked, what kind of energy are we putting into the air that pedophiles are running to join us and that every one of our martyrs or virtually every one of our martyrs, has a long criminal history. What is it about your organization that attracts that group and picks those types of martyrs and heroes to rally around? They should be asking some questions of themselves. There was some crazy talk. The Cuomo brothers both felt the need to weigh in. Andrew Cuomo, disgraced, deposed, forced to resign New York governor, said today's verdict is a stain on the soul of America, sends a dangerous message about

who and what values our justice system was designed to protect. You mean the very same justice system that's coming after you criminally now? I guess you don't like it. I understand. His brother Chris on CNN says it's hard to believe that somebody chasing you is going to beat you to death. Really? What about when they put their their hand on the barrel of your AR-15 while yelling F you after having just told you that they were going to kill you? Is it hard then? Is it hard to believe when they chase you and then they beat you with their skateboard in your head? How about the third guy who chased him and then pulled out a Glock on Kyle Rittenhouse? That's really not so hard to believe somebody might beat you to death or hurt you. I mean, this so he tweets out president of the NAACP or said said actually, I think it was on MSNBC, that this was worse than the Emmett Till trial, that the Kyle Rittenhouse trial was worse than the Emmett Till trial, the trial of white men in Mississippi who who tortured poor 14 year old Emmett Till for daring to speak to a white store owner and then was killed and put in the river. And he's the young man whose mom insisted on having an open casket funeral so America could see what had happened to her son. This was worse than that.

They will say anything in pursuit of political power. And that's all this is. It's a tool. It's a strategy to gain political traction and to seize political power. There's nothing Derrick Johnson isn't willing to say in pursuit of political power. to analogize Kyle Rittenhouse in this verdict that involved four white men, four white men got into a conflict. Kyle Rittenhouse was white. The three men he shot were white. This really doesn't have anything to do with black people. I know it was an alleged protest around black lives matter. This was for white people in conflict. And for people to suggest that there was no threat here, there's a will for ignorance and then there's just ignorance. And I don't know which one this is, but there are videos of people getting brutally

beaten in Kenosha, Wisconsin during that week of rioting and violence that we saw there. Citizens that try to protect their property, their business, try to protect themselves, surrounded by swarms and gangs. And if Kyle Rittenhouse didn't have a gun and wasn't willing to use it, if they had knocked him to the ground and he was unable to defend himself, there was going to be a swarm of people beating and brutalizing him because that's what we saw happening in Kenosha during this time. This is a clear case of self-defense. The jury, despite all the pressure from the media and other outside forces, reached the conclusion. Uh, you have a right to defend

yourself in America. Uh, Kyle Rittenhouse, we, we, Megan, we spent a lot of time or the media has spent a lot of time second guessing Kyle Rittenhouse. And I said this on my show last week and I stand by it. I'm not really against people second guessing Kyle Rittenhouse. Hey, why did you go there? You're just 17. That's all fine. As long as the other side is comfortable with people questioning George Floyd. Hey man, why were you arguing with the police for 30 minutes? Why were you jacked up on fentanyl? Why did you refuse to get into the back of the car? People can ask those questions. If we can question Kyle Rittenhouse, why he was there, blah, blah, blah, we should be allowed to question George Floyd and some of his

behavior that contributed to what eventually the tragic events that took his life. He contributed to that. But again, we can't ask those questions, but we can question everything about Kyle Rittenhouse. And Megan, I'm just sorry, a 17-year-old boy whose family has strong ties to Kenosha, lives in Kenosha, he has every right to go defend his community. That's right. His dad lives there. It's right across the border from where he lives in Illinois.

People who live in Illinois cross the border to Kenosha to get a cup of coffee. This is not particularly unusual. But wait, I got to end with this. We've heard from so many in the media, so many of our politicians, right on up to the president,

that Kyle Rittenhouse is a white supremacist. We heard this long before that now infamous shot of him in a bar with members of the Proud Boys, which we'll get to in a second, became public. They called him a white supremacist because he showed up at this protest and he was not on the side of the rioters. And by the way, I just want to make clear for the you know he did show up at this bar when he was let out on bail and he was there with his mom and another family member and there were members of the proud boys there and the proud boys surrounded kyle and asked for a photo with him

it is at the time he was 17 years old his lawyers say he didn't know who this was didn't know the proud boys from anybody they got a photo with him and they all were doing the OK sign, which, according to some, in his lawyers turned over everything, all of his phones, all of his social media. They didn't find one piece of white nationalist propaganda or white supremacist propaganda or following of any accounts that might support or anything about Proud Voice. All they have on him is he showed up that night and he wasn't on the BLM side. He was trying to keep the peace. And secondly, he walked into that bar, got surrounded by a bunch of guys

who made the Hanson symbol. And then he did it too, which for all of human history has been known as the okay sign, but now has been co-opted by some. That's it. All right. So finally he has the chance to speak

and Tucker's going to have him on tonight for his first interview at 8 p.m. on Fox. And here's a promotional clip in which not only does the alleged white supremacist not sound like a white supremacist, he says he's a BLM supporter. Listen. I tell everybody there what happened. I said I had to do it. I was just attacked. I was dizzy. I was vomiting. I couldn't breathe. This case has nothing to do with race. It never had anything to do with race. It had to do with the right to self-defense.

Right. I'm not a racist person. I support the BLM movement. I support peacefully demonstrating. And I believe there needs to be change. I believe there's a lot of prosecutorial misconduct, not just in my case, but in other cases. And it's just amazing to see how much a prosecutor can take advantage of somebody. How do you like that, Jason? I will say he and his handlers are clever. I'm not sure if he authentically supports the BLM movement, but I think it's a very smart thing to say.

I think the kid wants his life back and he has given and sacrificed enough. And so he's saying all the right things to hopefully get his life back and be able to move on with the rest of his life. Hats off to him. Yeah. People need to be honest about what the evidence is and is not against Kyle Rittenhouse, both in this case and when it comes to the white nationalist charge. By the way, the other piece of that is the Anti-Defamation League

reportedly scoured all of his social media and determined that there were no connections to any extreme movements or white nationalist groups and so on, on any of those accounts. So people can just stop. They can just stop it. Jason, always a pleasure. Thank you so much. Jason Whitlock, everybody. Coming up, Senator Tom Cotton on Rittenhouse, on China, and on what the FBI is doing to parents. And James O'Keefe. Don't miss that. I'm joined now by Senator Tom Cotton, Republican from Arkansas. And Senator, it's great to have you here. Really looking forward to our conversation.

Thanks for having me on, Megan. Good to be with you. All right, so let's kick it off with Rittenhouse and Joe Biden. I know you've said Joe Biden owes Kyle Rittenhouse an apology because he did smear him as a white supremacist early on in this case. And there's simply no evidence of it. I mean, truly, I've now disclosed to the audience the entirety of the evidence. He showed up at that riot that night trying to keep the peace and hurt any help anybody who got hurt um and then when he was out on bail he went to a bar with his mom which you're allowed to do in wisconsin even if you're 18 and he got surrounded by a bunch of guys from the proud boys who wanted a picture with him then they all made the okay symbol that is literally it there was absolutely no evidence kyle knew who those guys were what the proud are, what that OK symbol has come to mean in some circles. But for the rest of America, it still means OK. That's it. OK, so based on that, he gets called a white supremacist. I mean, over and over. If you're on the left, you've probably called him that. And Joe Biden was asked by reporters this weekend about whether he'd like

to disavow that and what his reaction was to the jury. And here was his first reaction before he had his handlers write him a paper reaction. Listen, I just heard a moment ago. I didn't watch the trial. So I stand by your past comment. Well, look, I stand by what the jury has concluded. The jury system works and we have to abide by it. And then he came out, Senator, afterward in a paper statement, clearly written by somebody else, and changed his message to, oh, wait, I'm angry and concerned. I'm angry. While the verdict in Kenosha will leave many Americans feeling angry and concerned,

myself included, we must acknowledge the jury has spoken. Meanwhile, he didn't watch any of the trial. Your thoughts on it all? Well, Megan, Joe Biden does need to apologize to Kyle Rittenhouse publicly for slandering him as a white supremacist. There's no evidence at all of that or that Kyle Rittenhouse harbored any racial animus. As you described, he went to Kenosha, where his father lives, to help protect property and persons when the Democratic authorities in charge in Wisconsin

refused to do so. Cal Ripken House had every right to be on that street, just as much as the three criminals who assaulted him and perhaps tried to kill him, certainly as much as the three criminals who assaulted him and perhaps tried to kill him, certainly as much as the hundreds of rioters and looters. So Joe Biden should not be angry and concerned about this jury's verdict. What makes me angry and concerned is that you have Democratic authorities all around the country who have ceded streets in so many cases to left-wing militias. Absolutely right. And the history of what they did in Wisconsin, just not only refusing to call in the National Guard which was later ruled a justified shooting, not only by the Wisconsin, Wisconsin AG, but by Merrick Garland. So they were pouring fuel on a fire. And that is why Kyle Rittenhouse felt like he had to be there. Doesn't mean you have to agree with his presence, but that's why he felt

like he needed to be there. And then the jury agrees that all he did that night was defend his own life when it was threatened repeatedly. Can I ask you, though, about we played a sound bite in our first segment of the media reacting and still white supremacist, white supremacist. Here's some of the political reaction, just to give you a flavor. Representative Cori Bush yesterday or it was over the weekend, the judge, the jury, the defendant. It's white supremacy in action. This system is not built to hold white supremacists accountable. It's why black and brown folks are brutalized and put in cages while white supremacist murderers walk free.

Gavin Newsom out in California. America today, you can break the law, carry around weapons built for a military, shoot and kill people and get away with it. That's the message we've just sent to armed vigilantes across the nation. You've got this lunatic, New York Representative Sean Patrick Maloney, who's chairman of the DCCC, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, saying it's disgusting and disturbing that someone was able to carry a loaded assault rifle into a protest. Sir, this was no protest. It was a riot against the unjust killing of Jacob Blake. OK, Jacob Blake is alive. He was shot. He's not dead, sir.

An unarmed black man. That's not true. He was armed with a knife as your own Attorney General Merrick Garland found, not to mention many others, and take the lives of two people and injure another and face absolutely no consequence. Well, he was on trial for his life in prison

facing first degree murder charges. So there was a consequence. You tell me whether this is sincere belief by these people, or they just want to stir the pot to sort of animate some faction of their base. Well, many of them are deeply ignorant and uninformed, Megan. As you said, Sean Patrick Maloney couldn't even get the basic facts straight that Jacob Blake was not, in fact, killed. He was shot in part because he resisted arrest and arrest that was started because a female associate of his had called the police fearing

for her own safety. Rather, Jacob Blake walked around the vehicle and tried to receive, retrieve a knife from it. So these people can't even get their own basic facts straight. I would also say that a lot of these kind of foolish charges of white supremacy or racism on a matter that had really nothing to do with race are just a veiled attack on the Second Amendment rights of every American to defend himself and to defend his family. In the end, that's what Scott or Kyle Rittenhouse was doing. He was present on the streets of Kenosha with others trying to protect property and persons. They have every right to do so.

And when they're threatened with death, as Kyle Rittenhouse apparently was by the demented child rapist who ended up assaulting him or was being assaulted or threatened by other criminals as he was, he has every right to defend himself. Every American has every right to defend himself and his family and his property. That's really what the left is attacking more centrist left, I guess, that realizes they can't really blame this on white supremacy. I mean, forget, you know, Cori Bush and MSNBC. But for example, the New York Times, The Daily, which I listen to their podcast hosted by Michael Barbaro. I like keeping an eye on the left and the right, right? See what they're saying in both pockets of the media. They, by the way, just said two out of the three assailants coming after Kyle Rittenhouse were unarmed. I think Kyle didn't feel that Anthony Huber beating him over his head with a skateboard was unarmed, nor did they mention, you know, in that particular phrase that he was reaching for Kyle's gun. Okay, but anyway, they shifted, and I'm hearing the discussion shift,

to the problem is really self-defense laws meeting open carry laws. The problem is, you know, we had these self-defense laws that were meant really to cover you in your home if somebody tried to burglarize you or hurt your family, but weren't really supposed to be able to be used by somebody out on the street with an AR-15 who's basically asking for trouble. So I see that's where they're going to go with it. They're going to try to crack down on these laws that allow open carry, that apply self-defense out in the public square if you're armed and so on. What do you think? I think that's exactly right, Megan, is that the left is going to try to crack down on every

American second minute right to defend himself and herself. Again, Kyle Rittenhouse and anyone else who's a law abiding citizen with a firearm that night had a right to defend himself, other innocent civilians, and defend the property that those rioters were trying to destroy. It is very alarming that you have the left today trying to defund the police, trying to delegitimize our law enforcement system, and then to deprive Americans of the right to protect themselves. And that's what ultimately the Second Amendment is about. Sure, it protects our right to keep and bear arms for things like hunting or skeet shooting, but that's not what our founding fathers had in mind. They knew that every person has an inherent right to defend himself and his family and his property. And if more Democrats

are going to continue to allow rioters and looters to rampage through our streets, to break into stores and go on stealing sprees, as you've seen again in San Francisco in the last couple of days, then it's thank goodness we have that second amendment right. Thank goodness we have the ability to keep in their arms and to protect ourselves and protect other innocent lives. Because in the end, as much as we depend on law enforcement to deter crime, to catch criminals, to prosecute them, in the heat of the moment, in most cases, when the police are minutes away, every second counts. And that's why Well, that's the thing. they need the right to defend themselves.

When our country was founded, it was very rural. There weren't huge urban centers, and people did have to defend themselves. It wasn't so you didn't pick up a phone and call 911. It was up to you. And some arguments you hear on the left about, well, now we're modernized. We have the police. We have these huge urban centers. Not everybody needs to be armed, right? It's like, well well why don't you try talking to people who live down in rural arkansas or texas or along the southern border where you've got illegal immigrants coming across armed connected with cartels looking to hurt anybody who gets in their way tell them they don't need a gun okay and now even in in busy cities like kenosha wisconsin where you have a

governor or a mayor who won't send out the police, who won't call up the National Guard, which is what happened in the wake of the Jacob Blake shooting on night one. You're going to see that same lawlessness and people left to their own devices. Like you raise a very good point. Unless the Dems enforce the law, including against rioters and looters, people are going to be left with no choice. Yeah. And if someone like Kyle Rittenhouse or other concerned citizens had been at riots in New York City or Chicago or Washington, D.C., cities and states with draconian and, in my opinion, unconstitutional gun laws, what we probably would have seen is a murder trial of the death of the person who was defending innocent lives and property because they wouldn't have

been able to carry a firearm. But thank goodness the state of Wisconsin, like so many other states to include mine, recognizes that every American has the right to keep and bear arms, to include carrying them outside the house, to defend themselves, because when seconds count, the police are minutes away. And for the record, Kyle Rittenhouse is not on camera running around just randomly shooting people. You know, this whole nonsense of him being an active shooter. He had the opportunity to do that many, many times and he didn't. And in fact, was was trying was yelling friendly, friendly, friendly when he was being chased by Joseph Rosenblum at Rosenbaum.

And the guy didn't listen. The crazed child molester did not listen. Who knew? Let's just talk for a minute before we move on about just how pernicious this is, Senator, because I know it's like, kind of make fun of the political left and these, you know, sort of race baiters who are constantly pulling, you know, that trick. Oh, everyone's a racist, a white supremacist. John Cass, who we love, he used to work for the Chicago Tribune. Now he's an independent media. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. I highly recommend everybody read his article. It's called If Only Kyle Rittenhouse Could Ask Biden and Media Have You No Sense of Decency.

He talks about how, what if they had gotten away with it? What if the jury hadn't seen through this and had been unduly influenced by these people? And this is a quote from his piece. If they'd succeeded, the kid who cried on the witness stand could have been sentenced to life in prison. How would he survive inside a kid like that? He wouldn't. A kid like that wouldn't survive five minutes. The media that twisted and shaped the facts to suit a political narrative and politicians

who benefited from narrative support would have moved on with their lives. And as they heap glory on themselves, Rittenhouse, if put in a state prison, would be dead or wish he were dead every minute of his life. He says, don't forget what these politicians, prosecutors and media have done, because if you do, you're inviting the next mob to grab Lady Justice and bend her to their political will. Well, that's well said. And I want to point out that the jury should be commended for doing what is always a difficult job under extraordinary circumstances. The jury is an institution in our society that is often portrayed as a check and a balance on the executive branch, on prosecutors in particular, and it is that. As we saw in this case, you had what I think borders on prosecutorial misconduct

to include prosecutorial incompetence. If you remember when the prosecutor held the rifle up and had his finger on the trigger, one of the most basic violations of gun safety practices. But the jury is not just a bulwark against an overreaching executive and prosecutor. It's also a bulwark against the mob. The jury stands between the accused in our society and the mob. And in too many places and too many times across human history, that is not the case. And mob justice prevails. But thank goodness we live in a country in which each of us is accused of a crime can be judged by a jury of our peers, not by the mob.

That's right. Social justice, mob justice does not reign inside a courtroom. The laws govern and actual justice reigns inside our legal courts. And it drives the media and the political left crazy, but it's the way it ought to be. I'm going to ask Tom Cotton right after this break about a push now, including from Democrat Jerry Nadler, to have Kyle Rittenhouse prosecuted at the federal level by Merrick Garland's DOJ. And there's plenty more to talk to Tom Cotton about. Lots going on with speaking of Merrick Garland, the FBI now doing something with respect to parents tagging them for potential threats against school board members. They haven't dropped that.

And Senator Cotton's been making a lot of it. We'll ask him about his letter to Merrick Garland. And remember, everyone, you can catch 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 my YouTube channel, youtube.com slash Megyn Kelly. If you prefer an audio podcast, sometimes that's easy. You can walk around, get your errands done while listening. You can just subscribe and download on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts for free. There you'll find our full archives with more than 200 shows, including our show from Friday when we were live on the air of the Judiciary Committee over in the House, is saying we need a Department of Justice review of this case and this verdict, suggesting possible civil rights have been violated, that we meet possible hate crimes could be charged.

And that now Merrick Garland needs to take the reins here because Kyle Rittenhouse cannot be left alone. Your thoughts? Well, that's insane. The last thing we need, too, is Merrick Garland and Joe Biden's Department of Justice take charge of this, given how politicized and competent they've proven in so many other cases, whether it's cracking down on parents who go to school board meetings or raiding James O'Keefe and Project Veritas' offices and homes. We don't need them second guessing what a jury of normal Americans decided about Cal Rittenhouse. As to the specific charges themselves, Megan, as you pointed out earlier, all three of the persons who were assaulting Cal Rittenhouse and whom he shot are white. So it's not clear to me what a white shooter and three white people

who were assaulting him could possibly provide the grounds for a federal civil rights charge. If anyone is going to be engaged in further legal action here, I would think it would be Kyle Rittenhouse against all of the media companies that slandered him. And for that matter, Joe Biden, who was a private citizen last year when he used his megaphone to accuse Kyle Rittenhouse falsely and without evidence of being a white supremacist. That'd be more likely to be the legal action you see, not some specious lawsuit from Merrick Garland. That's a very good point.

And Kyle Rittenhouse may yet do that. It's always tough. I mean, it's been a while since I've looked at it specifically, but if you're a public figure, it's virtually impossible to sue for defamation because you have to prove the other person said this stuff knowing it was public figure for sort of limited purposes when you find yourself at the center of a national news story. It's not like Nick Sandman of Covington, where all he did was stand on court steps and get his picture taken and then got smeared by CNN and others. Kyle found himself in the news for a year because of something he did. So I don't know. I'm not sure what his chances would be in a courtroom because I think they'd probably find him a limited public figure. Anyway, I'd still like to see him try because he was really wrongly maligned. And as John Cass points out, the stakes are so high.

If you just give them a pass, they're going to keep doing it. The media and the politicians, they have no skin in the game. None. Yeah, that's right. And, you know, you may be right on your legal analysis, Megan, you're certainly a much smarter lawyer than I ever was. I'm such a good lawyer, I had to quit the law and join the army. But I'd say this, if I was sitting in Comcast's corporate executive suites, I'm not sure I'd want to try my hand with the jury of Kyle Rittenhouse, Seuss, NBC and MSNBC for the way they've defamed him for the last year. That's a good point. He's being very kindly modest because, um, he went to Harvard law

and I went to Albany law. No offense to my alma mater, but Tom Cotton does not have trouble in the, in the intellectual, uh, department. Okay. Let's talk about Merrick Garland for a second, because now there's a report by the wall street journal that they are now issuing what are called threat tags directed by the head of FBI's criminal division and the head of FBI's counterterrorism division that they are now flagging all assessments and investigations into potential criminal threats, harassment, and intimidation of educators with a, quote, threat tag. This is, again, back to Merrick Garland's enthusiastic embrace of the national school board's push to treat parents as you know criminals possibly domestic terrorists and and garland told the both bodies of congress that he

wasn't going to do that that he was only going to get out and go after violence and threats of violence andy mccarthy who i trust says the threat tag is basically just an organization system for the fbi to organize parents into like you know know, okay, the FBI guy in California doesn't know what is happening with the FBI guy in Virginia. So they all have a massive file if they just tag us all with these threat tags. If they're trying to find all the parents who have been bad. So it doesn't make me feel any better. And to me, it's just proof that they are going forward with this. As Merrick Garland said, it is real. It wasn't just an appeasement of the national school boards or of Joe Biden in a momentary lapse. They really want to come after parents

who get out of line at these school board meetings. Yeah, Megan, I think they're dancing to the tune of the school board associations, radical leftists, who its own board is repudiated now by rescinding the letter that kicked all this off. But I also think they were acting in concert with the teachers unions, people like Randy Weingarten, who shut down our schools for more than a year and are forcing toddlers to wear masks when they go back to preschool or pre-K or kindergarten. I mean, Merrick Garland has proven to be totally out of his depth as the attorney general. Maybe he was a good judge when he could sit up in an ivory tower and read and write about the law with five employees who worshiped the ground he walked on. But to be in charge of our Department of Justice, 150,000

employees on sensitive matters, like investigating parents who go to school boards to complain that their schools are closed and their kids have to use remote learning or complain that their kids have to wear masks in classes or they're being doctrinated to hate America, he's far beyond his skill sets to succeed in that job. So what he's doing, I'm afraid, is deferring to the radical leftists that they've installed in the Department of Justice that do want to crack down on parents who are merely going to school boards to complain about what they see as misguided policies. This is just one example of the politicization of the Department of Justice. That's why I've said Merrick Garland should resign in disgrace.

It's crazy. I mean, I heard you saying to him, thank God you're not in the Supreme Court. Remember that when Barack Obama couldn't get him, he couldn't get him a confirmation hearing because Mitch McConnell stopped it. And it was like, well, you know, the Republicans could do worse with a Democratic appointed nominee to the Supreme Court than Merrick Garland. He seems pretty moderate. You know, like even some Republicans seem to like the guy. Now that you actually see him in office, you tell me, but he seems much further left than I thought he ever was. He's both ideologically to the left and he's incompetent. Again, he's letting these radical ideologues run his department. Megan, we have it on pretty good authority from sources inside the FBI that they did not take seriously the School Board Association.

In fact, they kind of laughed it off until they were directed by Merrick Garland's front office at the Department of Justice to take it seriously. And that's why Merrick Garland sent out a nationwide memo to all of his U.S. attorneys directing them to come up with a plan on what they were going to do to crack down on parents and sick the feds on them when they went to a school board to complain about that board's policies. Well, and he had a couple of reasons to do that, right? His boss, Joe Biden, wanted it done. We've seen that because he coordinated with the school board association on the letter.

Joe did. Biden did before it ever got to Merrick Garland. And two, Merrick Garland is conflicted on this. His son-in-law makes tens of millions of dollars, his organization does, off of pushing CRT materials in these schools, which is in large part what the parents are yelling about at these school board meetings. It would be much better for his family if they went away. And he wouldn't even answer whether he had sought an ethics opinion on that, even though his own ethical rules required that of him. Yeah, and it really does get back to that point, Megan. So many on the left are gaslighting Americans and parents by saying, oh, critical race theory is not taught in schools. But it really does get back to teaching kids, no matter what their age, at what level of intellectual sophistication, that race is the most important thing about you, that there are certain races

that are oppressive and certain that are victimized. That's why, for instance, up in Northern Virginia, another element of the parental backlash was when they shut down AP and gifted and talented programs, or when they stopped admissions at public, restricted admissions at Republic High Schools like Thomas Jefferson. They did those things, again, because they were unhappy that there were so many Asian Americans in those classes and not enough Black kids. It all gets back to the left's obsession with race and trying to indoctrinate kids as young as pre-K to see the world through the eyes of race. That's why Ibram

X. Kendi, one of the charlatans who promotes critical race theory, has a children's book. That's crazy. Who would ever subject their child to that? I mean, he had one of the tweets out in the wake of the Rittenhouse verdict. It reads as follows. They're fighting to maintain white male supremacy, which is to say they are defending law and order, defending their America, where white men can rule and brutalize without consequence. You mean like Derek Chauvin? Because I think he faced, he was a white man who faced some serious consequences for his acts with respect to George Floyd. But this is how they see America, guys like Kendi. And it's to your point about the

schools and the divisions on race. This is at the college level. But there was a story in about Rittenhouse today. There's some university in Massachusetts, Fitchburg State. They hosted several processing spaces segregated by race, right? More and more we segregate by race in response to the verdict. The diversity and equity and inclusion group announced it saying we're creating space for our community to process the not guilty verdict. In the case where Kyle Rittenhouse, an Illinois native, okay, not relevant. He was just across the border from where his dad lived, by the way, shot and killed two people who were protesting. Okay, they were rioting. They weren't protesting anything. The wrongful death of Jacob Blake. Okay, Again, he's alive, people. These people, they don't know anything that they're talking about. But yeah, segregation by race is the answer. That'll solve our racist problems. Yeah. And Megan, this is so often the case in these riots, whether they're in Kenosha or in New York or in Minneapolis, it's many times minority-owned businesses that are being destroyed, barbershops or sandwich places or dry cleaners, oftentimes that don't have enough insurance to

cover the damage. But these rioters, they don't care. They just are going out to rampage because they want to condemn all of America as systemically racist. I mean, that's what critical race theory does. And in fact, I mean, I mean, that's what critical race theory does. And in fact, I mean, I would say that people like Ibram X. Kennedy sound like, you know, secessionists like Jeff Davis or sound like John Calhoun or Roger Taney in the Dred Scott decision. But I don't even have to imply that. One of Ibram X. Kennedy's books is actually entitled The Verbatim Qu quote from Jefferson Davis. It's so crazy. You don't have to peel the onion layers back very far to get

to just how racist those thoughts and comments are. And yet still, we reward them with millions of dollars and big platforms. Senator Tom Cotton, we want to talk to you about what's happening to James O'Keefe and a dust up with China right after this break. Don't go away. Senator Tom Cotton is my guest today, and he has been fired up about China from the Wuhan lab to the Olympics coming up next year. And now they've apparently disappeared one of their most famous citizens and a star tennis player who used to be number one in the world. We'll get to that one second. But I want to start with James O'Keefe and what Merrick Garland's DOJ is doing to him. He's the guy behind Project Veritas, which is sort of it's a journalistic outfit, but it agitates mostly left leaning entities like CNN or certain politicians, the Biden administration or big tech. And then suddenly

we see James O'Keefe's associates, two of his employees, had their homes raided by the FBI looking for Ashley Biden's diary. What appears to have happened is a year ago, while he was still a candidate, she appears to have left her diary behind in a hotel room and somebody found it. And then they were sort of peddling it to people, you know, journalistic outfits. O'Keefe was one of those people who was on a receiving end of the offer. He didn't publish it. He couldn't verify it. He actually wound up turning it over to law enforcement. A year later, right after he publishes a couple of negative reports about the Biden administration, about big tech and the vaccines, he's got whistleblowers, they raid the homes of his two associates. And then he goes out

and complains about it. And then they raid his home. Then they raid his home. And you are stepping in. It's outrageous. Have you're a journalist or support journalism at all for a president and his DOJ to be doing this to a journalist is outrageous. And your your point in writing a letter to the DOJ about this was what? Well, Megan, I wanted to highlight this incident, which you just laid out well. There's still some things we don't know, but everything about it smells rotten. And it seems almost designed to deter anyone daring to think about sharing or publishing any information that's critical of the Democrats and certainly critical of Joe Biden and his family. The Garland Justice Department has

insisted they follow their own regulations, but they just filed a document in court on Friday that also disputed that Project Veritas can be considered a journalistic organization. So I don't know how to square those. I don't know how to square that circle. But I think this is a case of pretty clear Department of Justice overreach against a political critic of the president. As you said, they used no-knock warrants to raid some of these homes. So early in the morning, when there's no risk of destruction of evidence, I mean, when you've already conducted raids in the days beforehand, obviously, if someone had destroyed evidence, they would have had more than enough time to do so. When James O'Keefe's lawyers asked the Department of Justice

not to pilfer through his phones and devices, they refused, forcing him and his lawyers to go to court. And the court probably ordered them to stop doing that if they were doing it and referred it to a special master. So everything about this case suggests the Department of Justice has violated its own regulations, has targeted political critics of the president who are a journalistic organization. You don't like the nature of journalism and has used what you might call the process as the punishment here. So anyone who is involved in this, I think, has a lot of explaining to do. And if they don't want to explain it right now, then I would just be I tell them, be mindful that when Republicans are in charge of the Congress again in 14 months, they're going to explain it then.

Yeah, right. Because has he responded to you? I know you sent a letter to the DOJ saying you sent another 15th. You said, I want a response by the 19th, which was Friday. Did you get one? No, they haven't. But the lack of response is in a way its own response, or that document they filed on Friday is its own response, in which they claim they followed their

regulations when they were investigating journalistic organizations. But then they said that Project Veritas is not a journalistic organization. Imagine, Megan, the outcry if the Department of Justice had done something like this to the New York Times or to CNN, it would be nonstop wall-to-wall coverage. And that's in this administration. Just imagine if the Department of Justice had done this in the last administration to those organizations like the New York Times that are often viewed as nothing but a conveyor belt for people inside the Department of Justice or elsewhere in the government to leak information. Which brings me to another troubling part of this case. How did the New York Times know about these raids almost immediately? It's pretty clear the Department of Justice has been leaking sensitive, confidential, or attorney-client information to New York Times, again, in an effort to intimidate

and embarrass the president's critics. It's so crazy. I mean, Joe Biden was not even president when this diary went missing, however it went missing. And the allegation from whoever got their hands on it was trying to shop it around. It was that there was explosive material that would be very damaging to Joe Biden in the diary. My team has found the information. It is available on the internet. We won't repeat it here because it's not verified. But if it were true, it would be explosive. But he wasn't even the president. And you put out in your letter that the Department of Justice doesn't even have jurisdiction over such a thing, such a small alleged crime, the theft of a diary. By the way, the journalist is never on the hook

unless the journalist does the stealing him or herself. You know, we publish stuff all the time as journalists that we get from somebody who did the stealing. You know, that's Pentagon Papers. You could a lot of stuff. President Trump's tax returns. You're not supposed to have it, but you get the pass if you're in the press. So O'Keefe shouldn't be on the hook for that, even if he had published it, which he didn't. But you ask the question of how do you even arguably have jurisdiction over a diary? Because there are thresholds below which we won't let our feds get involved. Yeah, let's assume the very worst about what James O'Keefe and Project Veritas might have done. Assume for the sake of argument, Megan, as they say in court, and I have no reason to assume this about Project Veritas or James O'Keefe, but let's assume that they did in fact steal that diary.

Okay. Why is that a federal case? What possible federal law was violated by stealing a diary, for goodness sake? It's not like you robbed a bank. It's like you're trapping young girls across state lines. What federal law could possibly have been implicated? And if it was, as I write my letter, the National Stolen Property Act, Megan, well, it's got a $5,000 threshold. Is someone's personal diary really worth $5,000? And then finally, even if it is, the feds don't bring every case just because there is a federal case. They often defer to local authorities or they decline to prosecute at all. So apparently, if you're the daughter of a presidential candidate, you can have the Department of Justice

sick on your dad's political critics because your diary wound up in someone else's hands. Wow. And if you're the son-in-law of the sitting attorney general, you might be able to sick him on parents objecting to your critical race theory agenda in schools. And then he won't even answer any questions about it. See how it works. All right, let's shift gears and talk China. A lot going on with them. And I heard you say recently on, I think it was Fox, I can't remember, but you were saying that if China invades Taiwan, we should be prepared to shoot down their aircraft and sink their ships. And, you know, I, the conventional wisdom on the response to that is, but we won't, because we don't want another conflict. And we're too weak to get in a

conflict with China, which is sort of a, that squares the circle, because the fact that we're projecting weakness, and the debacle that we had in Afghanistan is what I think you believe might lead China to do this in the first place. So how likely do you actually think it is that China would actually invade Taiwan? Well, Xi Jinping has made it clear that he views this as part of his personal legacy to solve what they view as a 75-year-old wound before he might leave office in 2027. I think it could be much earlier than that. Again, I think it'd be next year after the Olympics, where the Party Congress and Xi will presumably be anointed with his third term in office. And I think by being unwilling to say explicitly that we'll come to Taiwan's defense,

and if necessary, we will sink Chinese ships, we will shoot their aircraft down, and we will target the missile fields on mainland China they're using to attack Taiwan. We simply make that attack, that invasion more likely. The most effectual way to preserve the peace, as George Washington said, is to be prepared for war and for your adversaries to know that you are prepared for war. We send exactly the opposite signals, both with our policy decisions these days and by not explicitly condemning. But something weird is happening right now with China. They kind of have to be a little good until the Beijing Olympics, right? Because they don't want

to see an international boycott of those Olympics. And I know that that's something that you're now calling for, not just a diplomatic boycott, which the administration has said it might consider, where it won't send its officials, but the athletes can still go. You want a full boycott. Just given their human rights abuses, I gather, and the one to two million Uyghurs in concentration camps and effectively being tortured. And now we get news of this star tennis player. Her name is Peng Shui, who was formerly world number one,

ranked number one on women's doubles, I think it was. And she's gone. She came out and suggested that she had been the victim of a sexual assault by a top ranking official in China. And then they apparently disappeared her. She was kind of gone. She posted online that she didn't consent at first. She was crying the entire time that this one former member, again, of the Communist Party over there there that his wife was guarding the door while he sexually assaulted her she says i'm still going to speak the truth about

us within minutes the post was taken down she disappeared search engines in china are scrubbed of her even text mentions of her are flagged by state surveillance her social media account disappeared and it's only when finally the white house spoke out and said something like we're concerned that then they put out some video of her over the weekend i don't it was very sketchy and the women's tennis association here in america has been much better than our nba and calling out china saying this is crazy we need real proof that she's okay and not just basically a hostage doing hostage videos for you now what do you make of it yeah well uh well, Megan, first off, I do want to commend the organized tennis for standing up to

the Chinese Communist Party, unlike LeBron James and the panda huggers at the NBA. On the broader question of the Olympics boycott, I called last week for a complete and total boycott of the games to include our athletes, their coaches, their staff. Calling for a diplomatic boycott is basically just standing by the status quo. It's extremely unlikely that any official delegation will be traveling to Beijing given their coronavirus lockdowns. I first began to raise alarms about this question last summer when I began to study more carefully about the risks our own athletes might face. That's the first and primary reason to call for the boycott. I sent the Biden administration a letter. They wrote me back in restricted channels,

even though there's nothing classified in that letter. They're just embarrassed that they have no answer to protect our athletes from ubiquitous electronic surveillance or from DNA harvesting to advance the Chinese Communist Party's advanced biotechnology programs or simple hostage taking, as China showed itself more than willing to do to get back a senior Huawei executive earlier this year. The administration has no plan to protect our own athletes and coaches and staff. That's why we should leave the civilized world and boycotting the games. A second reason, as you point out, Megan, is that this is a government that is today, not in the past, not allegedly, but today engaged in genocide against religious and ethnic minorities in its country. That's not my opinion. That is the Biden State Department's opinion.

They are systematically, for instance, imprisoning minorities in gulags. They are systematically sterilizing or raping ethnic women as a form of ethnic cleansing. We should not give any legitimacy to the Chinese Communist Party. This is the winter games. It's not the summer games. It is more than possible right now to rebid these games to another country. I mean, there's probably half a dozen countries in Europe right now that have the ski slopes and the ice rinks and the other facilities that are needed to conduct these games in a civilized nation. That's right. And meanwhile, you know, we'll see. It doesn't seem like they're prepared to do that, Joe Biden administration. I want to tell you that the chinese media has responded to

your call for a complete boycott the editor-in-chief of the global times which is the ccp's newspaper said on twitter that he called you political rubbish you are quote political rubbish uh said attacked you for quote lies and said that you lack the least self-awareness. Would you care to respond? Well, you know, Megan, this is just an ongoing saga from the Chinese Communist Party directing their ire at me. Last year, I was sanctioned for pointing out that the Wuhan coronavirus almost certainly originated in labs in Wuhan that studied the coronavirus. So, you know, my wife and I have not been able to take our second honeymoon to China, and I guess I won't be attending any of these games. The Biden administration doesn't announce a diplomatic boycott either, since the Chinese Communist Party seems to take an

inordinate interest in my criticisms of civilized world. You couldn't get your op-ed published in The New York Times on, you know, keeping order during the Black Lives Matter riots that we saw in summer 2020. That was the reason that guy, the editor, you know, he got pulled because he wanted it. He supported your op-ed. I mean, they published it, but then the guy got fired for allowing it. You can't you're definitely not getting anything published in the Global Times. So, I mean, your options are getting slimmer and slimmer, Senator, by the minute. Well, not surprising given how much the Global Times and the New York Times

have in common. Well said. Oh, wait, can I just ask you real quick because we have another guest coming up, but what is your prediction on BBB? It passes the Senate. Joe Biden says it will pass. I know Schumer says it'll pass by Christmas. I certainly hope it doesn't pass by Christmas or Thanksgiving or any other time because it would be terrible for American families at a time when folks are paying more for gas than they have in many, many years on the drive to grandma's house or can't even get the food they need for Thanksgiving or the presents for Christmas. If they can, they're paying historic rates for it. The last thing we need is trillions of dollars of more spending. But what's your prediction? Some of which is going to rich homeowners in places like California and New Jersey,

whose taxes are too high in the first place, others of which are going to pay for welfare from households that don't even have a breadwinner, much less someone even looking for work. So this is not what America needs right now. You're not going to give me a prediction whether it passes, whether Manchin and Sinema get on board? I'm hopeful that we can stop this terrible bill in the Senate. That's all I'll say on that, Megan. All right. We'll continue watching it. Such a pleasure. Come back again. There's so much more I want to talk to you about. Great to be on with you. Happy

Thanksgiving. Oh, to you too. Thanks, Senator. Coming up, we're going to be joined by Jesse Singlet. And we're going to dig into Jesse's coverage of Kyle Rittenhouse for more than a year and how the media is botching the story still. Right now, I'm joined by Jesse Singel. He is co-host of The Great Podcast, Blocked and Reported with Katie Herzog. That's in our archive. We had them both on together, and you will love it. They're hilarious together and brilliant apart, too. He's also the author of the quick fix why fad psychology can't cure our social ills. And Jesse's been tracking the media coverage of Kyle Rittenhouse since right after the shooting last year. So Jesse, have they learned their lesson? Now the jury of 12 people have come out and said not guilty in all charges. Did the media get the message,

wise up and start owning the many lies that it has been telling us for the past year and a half? Unfortunately, I've seen a lot of doubling down so far. And, you know, I don't want to overstate this because I do think along the way there was some good journalism, you know, by outlets like The Times and The Washington Post and The New Yorker. especially when it comes to more opinion oriented pundits. It really does seem like they're doubling and tripling down on the idea that Kyle Rittenhouse was a dangerous white supremacist vigilante who was just seeking to cause trouble. And there's just very little evidence to support that account. Yeah, the Times, I agree, they did better than cable news, but that's really not tough to do. I mean, that is thin as kid at fat camp. The Times early on criticized Kyle Rittenhouse for, quote, lionizing the police. Social media showed strong support for officers.

So so what is that? Why is that relevant? New York magazine, terrible, said Trump's leap to defend Rittenhouse is pathological or it's a deadly message that he wants to send to future would be racial justice protesters in other words suggesting trump wants anybody who shows up at a black lives matter matter innocent protest with no violence to know that they could get shot with impunity i mean utter nonsense we could go on daily beast printed out teen vigilante kills unarmed kenosha protester who threw a plastic bag at him oh you mean the convicted pedophile who was telling him I'm going to kill you if I get you alone and then was grabbing for his gun and saying F you while

he did like the misrepresentation. Scarborough said that he unloaded 60 rounds on people. Total lie. You know, Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy came out. I wonder why a deranged white nationalist Trump supporter deranged white nationalist would show up to a protest with a rifle and start shooting people and we can go on. So there are so many examples of it, of it, Jesse. And now that to me, you tell me, but I feel like they can't let it go because it's too important to them the narrative that we are a white supremacist nation, that Kyle just because he has white skin, despite his socioeconomically disadvantaged status, is privileged and has to be held up there and

protected by said white nationalist system. Yeah, I think the sort of tribalistic psychology here is really weird. I mean, a lot of the folks who, in my view, did the worst and most dishonest takes on Kyle Rittenhouse, I agree with them on most political stuff. I mean, I really am. You're not a Republican. No, I'm on the left. And I was disgusted by Trump. And I mean, I could go down the list. It's sort of pathetic. I have to recite my, you know, showing that I'm on the left and I was disgusted by Trump. And I mean, I could go down the list. It's sort of pathetic. I have to recite my, you know, showing that I'm on the right side. The point is there's this, this tribal poll where you need to show you're one of the good ones by,

by trying to one up the last guy about how much you hate Kyle Rittenhouse. And I think that's really, um, that's, that's not how good journalism and good punditry work. You need to look at the facts at what actually occurred. You can't speculate or try to mind read someone. That's exactly right. And it's dangerous. They're playing a very dangerous game. This isn't like, oh, we're going to get you fired or we're going to get you to lose your status as an influencer. Right. This is a young man's life. Just hold hold your judgment. Let the legal process play out. There will be somebody trying to put Kyle in jail for the rest of his attention and you get retweets and you get page views for writing inflammatory stuff. And there's a lot less of an appetite for sort of good in-depth journalism. So when I mentioned the Times, there was a New York Times Magazine article that really attempted to carefully explain what happened that night. And I was a staffer at New York

Magazine. I had access to the page view data. Generally speaking, a piece like that, that represents 10s or hundreds of 1000s of dollars of work and resources on the part of the times, it's not going to get you as much attention as like a really inflammatory column that that gets shared both by people who like it and who hate it. That's very true. And of course, the deliciousness early on of trying to tie it all to Trump was too much to resist. And I don't believe Trump should have commented on this case, just like I don't believe Barack Obama should have commented on Zimmerman, Trayvon Martin. And I don't think Biden should have weighed in on this case either. I just think

especially when you're the president or running to be, you have a special obligation to stay the hell out of it because you have a lot of influence and it's unfair to the person who's on trial. You know, at best it's unfair on war at worst, you're poisoning the trial in a way that could, could screw up the whole result. Let me ask you about hold on a second. Cause we have the, the, the butted soundbite and this, I think comes from Matt Taibbi on the sort of some of the narratives that have come out. The one that we hear over and over and is horror of horror. He crossed state lines, Jesse Kyle Rittenhouse crossed state lines. And then usually you hear with an illegal gun, which turned out not to be true. But here's

something Matt Taibbi put together that kind of gets to the heart of it. Listen, driving across state borders. He's driving across state lines, cross the state line, across state lines, across state lines, across state lines. If you driving across state lines. He crosses state lines. He crossed state lines. Crossed state lines. Crossed state lines. If you look at the Rittenhouse case, he crossed state lines. Drives up to events. Crossed state lines.

Came across state lines. Kyle Rittenhouse, who traveled across state lines. From out of state. Out of his own state. Came across state borders. Whenever you have a situation where a 17-year-old is crossing state lines. White teenager. He crosses a state line, drives 30 minutes into Kenosha.

Remember, you can't cross the line. He crossed state lines. Crossed state lines. Crossed state lines. He crossed state lines. Kyle Rittenhouse, who crossed state lines. That's so great. What's with the obsession?

Yeah, I mean, and it's not just sort of not picking the worst pundits. The ACLU put out a statement mentioned this, even the ACLU. We've known for a long time this is completely irrelevant to the case for a couple of reasons. One is under Wisconsin law, at worst, his possession of the rifle was a misdemeanor. It turns out it's not even that for technical reasons I think you've discussed on a previous episode. He also didn't cross state lines with it. His friend or his friend's stepdad bought it for him and gave it to him in Kenosha. Also, he's from Antioch, Illinois, which I believe is on the Wisconsin border. And he had close ties to Kenosha. This is like, you know, I'm from Boston and Western Mass is very close to Albany. It's like someone who works in Albany, but lives in Western Mass is very close to Albany. It's like someone who works in Albany but lives in Western Mass.

Oh, they cross state. It's just it's completely meaningful. It's helpful, though, because anyone who mentions that you immediately know you don't have to take them seriously. It's like a flag saying, don't take me seriously. That's a good point. Yeah, exactly right. It just I think they think it's it makes him sound more nefarious. Like he's he's at home.

He's putting on his camo. He grabbed his AR-15, he drove halfway across the country in a desire to take people out. He's trying to sneak across the Illinois-Wisconsin border, despite all the fortifications there. Exactly. But it just sort of speaks to me, to their duplicity in trying to make a story sound worse than it does. The reaction, of course, has been insane from the press. And so we talked about earlier the Pauls. But these know nothing celebrities and sports figures really take the cake. I mean, they truly I tweeted out something over the weekend saying, I get you ask any of these people, these especially the athletes and celebrities tweeting out about this case, ask them to name two out of the three people who Kyle shot. Just two out of three, even one. I'll take one, one out of three. Ask them to say the name of the judge. Do they even know what it is? Never mind how to pronounce it. Never mind, ask them what provocation laws in Wisconsin. If they can't answer those questions, they should shut the hell up about this case. They shouldn't have an opinion. They didn't watch it. Joe Biden admits he didn't

watch any of the trial, and yet still he's angry in the verdict. Shut up. Shut up. You forfeited your right to have an opinion because you're not informed. And you should not be fostering any opinions on it since you have none based in fact. Okay, so here's a couple of examples. Of course, Colin Kaepernick weighs in. I would bet everything I own Colin Kaepernick knows nothing about this trial. Absolutely nothing about this trial. He talks about how what we just witnessed was a system based built on white supremacy, validating the terrorist acts of a white supremacist. This only further validates the need to abolish our current system. White supremacy cannot be reformed. But this brings me to my favorite tweet. This is the

winner, Jesse. This is a winner. And trust me, I look through a lot. Mark Ruffalo. Okay, you ready? We come together to mourn the lives lost to the same racist system that devalues black lives and devalued the lives of Anthony and Jojo. Jojo, Joseph Rosenbaum is Jojo, right? Yes. Anthony Huber and Jojo. So our convicted child molester who faced 11 counts of child rape for raping boys as young as nine, who was fresh out of the mental institution, not on his meds and so on. He's now Mark Ruffalo's little Jojo. And he finishes it up with quote, there is no doubt that people who face this young man were more afraid of him than he was of them. What the hell does he know about anything? I think the problem here is so, you know, I think the cat's a little bit out of the bag in the age of social media, everyone's going to chime in on everything. I am

more frustrated with journalists than with Mark Ruffalo. But I do think given that the whole thing that started all this was looting and rioting in Kenosha, and that there's obviously some connection between what people say on social media and how angry and scared people get, at a certain point, people need to take responsibility if they're going to have huge platforms and acknowledge that they could be contributing to genuinely dangerous situations. I'm not saying anyone's going to start rioting just because Mark Ruffalo said that, but when you have 10,000 people spreading the same misinformation, making the same inflammatory claims, at a certain point, there's a risk that you're lighting another tinderbox. And I just

think people should recognize that. Mark Ruffalo has 7.7 followers on a million, 7.7 million followers on Twitter. You know, I do think you need to be more careful. You need to be more responsible. Mark Ruffalo, come on this show. I'm begging you. I'm begging you. I'll give you time to study. You don't even have to do it like this week. Mark Ruffalo, come on Blocked and Reported first. Come on. It's a much bigger platform. It'll be super fun. You can take the whole week to study. I won't ambush you. I'll give you a whole week to study. Come on. And then let's see if you can answer some basic questions about Jojo and Anthony. I mean, like the lunacy. So now, but the other thing is though, like if he

wants to make a substantive point here, there's probably some substantive points you could make about how the situation got so out of control. And also, from my point of view, I don't like the open carry laws in Wisconsin, we might disagree on that, at least that is a substantive fact based point to make that those laws should be different. Make that point. And if you want, that's totally different from distorting the facts of the case. I agree with you 100%. I don't want to see that law changed. But I completely agree. That's, that's an appropriate discussion to have. There's nothing wrong with saying, do we need to reevaluate that? And then the two sides can duke it out. But they know what the facts are. They've been they've literally been testified to in a court of law and on a lot of them from the witnesses who are victims, like who are on their side from Gage Grosskreutz to the others who are not on Kyle's side, who gave Kyle some of the best, most exonerating testimony there was. And still, they won't admit it, right? Still, they talk about Kyle Rittenhouse like he's just this white supremacist who was a lunatic armed vigilante who went there with a

desire to kill people. So to me, it's very disturbing because you you can't you can't stop it. And there's no willingness to sort of be honest about what you got wrong and go back and correct it. And then we're seeing similar things when it comes to, you know, the fake narratives about the Steele dossier and Russiagate. Even, you know, the kid Nick Salmon in Covington, you know, like I don't remember big, long, you know, we're really deeply sorry. Like they don't do that. They just move on and hope they don't get sued. And in that case, they did. All right, let's talk about Kyle Rittenhouse talking to Tucker. He apparently has been shooting a documentary with Tucker Carlson's team throughout the trial. Some people are horrified by this. I'm like, why? Like most journalists would have loved that opportunity on the left and right. It was going to come out differently depending on who you choose. But I saw people sort of horrified that he was doing this. And here, for what it's worth, is part of the trailer for Tucker's longer piece.

The interview of Kyle is tonight. He's doing a longer piece based on that documentary, I think, in December. So watch. It's the stuff that keeps you up at night. Like once you finally do get to sleep, your dreams are about what happened and you're waking up in a, in a dark, cold sweat. You had dreams about what happened every single night. It's quite scary, actually, because the dreams feel so real, and they're not the same at all. They're all different. They're the different scenarios that run through your head during the day,

like what could have happened. I'm alive, but what could have happened? What if I wasn't alive, or what if I did let Mr. Resnick steal my gun? It's those type of dreams. The outcome of it's bad, but almost every outcome is either me getting seriously injured or hurt or dead. Those are just the dreams I have on a daily basis. First of all, your thoughts on the documentary and the fact that Kyle is doing a sit down with Tucker tonight. Yeah, I've seen very little of it other than the trailer. I mean, I guess the Democratic nominee who's now president called him a white supremacist publicly. If after

that, you're surprised that he seeks out right wing figures who are supporting him and in some cases holding him up as a hero, which I absolutely don't think they should. I'm not going to level judgment against him. I obviously, I'm not a fan of Tucker Carlson. I'm not a fan of certain aspects of the right-wing media ecosystem that are lionizing Kyle Rittenhouse, but it's the most predictable thing in the world. Should he have sought out to go on the mainstream outlets where every hour he's being called a white supremacist? That's not really realistic, is it? Exactly right.

Who else would he speak to? And Tucker had his back right from the beginning because he doesn't see everything through a racial prism. I mean, he doesn't just have a knee jerk like, OK, this has got to be something about our white supremacist nation reaction. And I think Kyle's making the right choice because Tucker does have a very important voice, especially on the right half of this country. And that's the half that was willing to give him an open mind throughout this past year. I don't think Republicans were defending him in every turn. I didn't see that amongst the entire GOP. Like I saw the entire sort of left wing press piling on. But Tucker was there early. So I think he's doing the wise thing. And he should have one chance or a few chances to offer his take, right? It's not like he's celebrating. I don't think he's going to be out there like, yeah, it was great. You talk about you heard his humanity there. He's throwing up. Sure, this has been a damn nightmare for this kid. You saw it when they read the verdict. Why can't we have some testimonial to the pain that this irresponsible coverage and irresponsible prosecution, in my

view, puts one through? Yeah, I was actually I was at a bar over the weekend with some folks who disagreed on this and folks who I'm otherwise on the same side politically as. And I think our sticking point was they could not believe that he actually came there and saw himself, rightly or wrongly, as sort of a defender of Kenosha or someone who could help maintain order. They really could not believe that. They thought that he was only there to cause trouble. And to me, that's really what the divide stems from. I don't think it's good. I don't think it should be celebrated.

I think it was a disaster that we literally had paramilitaries basically patrolling the streets of American City. But I just, if there was evidence that he had gone there seeking to antagonize protesters or kill someone, I would highlight that there is none. And I just think that's the real divide right now, among some on the left, because there's a lot of disagreement on my side about this kid. Well, that's exactly right. But they, among all those things, like why he was there, was he there to cause trouble? Was he there to shoot people? Is he a white supremacist? Believe me, the prosecution would have introduced all of that at trial if they had it. The only, only evidence about alleged white supremacy that they tried to introduce that was kept out was that picture of him with the Proud Boys when he got released on bail. And I talked about it earlier in the show. A bunch of guys who we didn't know came up to him and wanted a picture with him. And he agreed, he posed, and they all made the okay sign and he made the okay sign. And his lawyer later said he had no idea what the hell that meant, which, you know, for all of humanity has meant, okay. Okay. Well, and well, to think that he's flashing a white supremacist

sign there, you have to believe that for years, he's flashing a white supremacist sign there, you have to believe that for years he successfully hid his white supremacist allegiances. And then when he was on trial for his life, just explicitly made that. I see even just making that symbol to demonstrate someone's going to screenshot that, but it doesn't really make any sense logically that he would have hidden it so expertly for so long and then sort of explicitly announced to the world, yes, I'm a white supremacist. It's just not it's not rigorous, high quality thinking to even suggest that. It's so true, because not only did he not post anything or follow anybody on his social media that would suggest that because they did pour over that the defense, the prosecution,

the Anti-Defamation League poured over it, but he willingly voluntarily turned over his phone to investigators, gave him the password, you know, have at it. There would be records on there. That's private. That's not like social media. If you've got something, you know, your texts, they'll show it. That's like what the ADL does.

They monitor online extremism. If they could not find evidence of those sorts of ties, it's safe to say those ties don't exist. And that's what the prosecution wanted. Forget the ADL. The prosecutor, Bingeringer would have loved, especially once he got stopped from introducing that photo with the Proud Boys, to find anything. If he could have introduced white supremacist, it's a BLM, it should have been protest, was riot. It would have been great. But no, it wasn't there. So, you know, we have to deal in fact. But the truth is,

even if they had proven it, even if Kyle had some terrible white supremacist ideology, it wouldn't have changed the outcome of this case, in my view, because it really did come down to not as Kyle Rittenhouse, a good or bad person, but was he justified in his belief that he was facing great bodily harm or death at the hands of the three men he shot? Yeah. Although, I mean, to be fair, you should say the same thing about Rosenbaum, who has an incredibly messed up figure who, like you said, was a convicted pedophile, but it's the same deal. No matter how bad his pass was, if in the moment, Rittenhouse had just shot him, it still would have been a crime. But there's way too much attention been paid to everything else but the actual moments in question. And there, I think the law is clear.

I see. I agree with that. And I think the judge made the right ruling in keeping out the criminal pass of these three guys, unless, unless the prosecutor opened the door. And that's how it always works in a court of law. If you, if you, if I put you on the stand and I say like, are you known for your truth and honesty and for being a good man, Jesse? And you say, absolutely. And you know, you would never do anything untoward or illy. I mean, and then I'm opening the door for the other side to come in there and just, you know, club you if if if you had done anything, and I know that you haven't. So they did that at this trial. They actually refer to these guys as heroes, the prosecutor and and not even just in the closing, even during the testimonial. And it didn't come out. So anyway,

a lot of the public is still under the misimpression that these were Boy Scouts just there for to attend a peaceful protest for BLM. Did you think that the just if I can turn the tables, ask you one question. Is your view more that this was such an uphill battle in terms of the evidence the prosecution was screwed? Or do you think they actually screwed up as badly as some people say they did? No, they never should have brought the charges. Once they saw those videotapes, they should have said, members of the public, we know you don't want to hear this.

But he was he was practicing self-defense. He was attacked by all three men. And if you don't like it, you're going to have to deal with it in your own conscience and your own God. But this is not a case for us. This is not a criminal case. That's what should have happened. That's why I'm angry that Binger even brought it.

And I don't excuse the media for misreporting on it or these pundits for sort of running with it in a way that's very I'm angry that Binger even brought it. And I don't excuse the media for misreporting on it or these pundits for sort of running with it in a way that's very dishonest. But Binger's sort of the original sinner, because he shouldn't have filed the case. And I think too many people put too much stock in our prosecutors and our criminal justice system, but he was under a lot of pressure. It's also it sort of shows that, you know, you can imagine a situation like Rittenhouse, where he did it, he did, you know, he can imagine a situation like Rittenhouse where he did it. He did. You know, he is from a poor background, but he did get a flood of right wing support and money and he had some benefits there. But it shows you how prosecutors were really overcharged in ridiculous ways.

I mean, first degree intentional homicide in light of those videos. What happens to the equivalent of Kyle Rittenhouse and he doesn't have a giant media spotlight on him or he doesn't have the benefits of donations? I think there's like a principal point to make here and the ACLU should be on the other side of this and arguing it from the other side. Well, that's what's that's the ultimate irony, right? Kyle Rittenhouse talking in that clip from Tucker about how, you know, prosecutorial overreach. What if he really is a BLM supporter?

What if he really is? What if he goes full social justice after this and says the system stacked against defense? You know, it could happen, right? I mean, it really could happen. That would be funny. That would be a good outcome. I think the opposite is more likely. He's been embraced by the right, which, you know, I'd rather show him the light side, but it's not going to happen given his treatment at our hands. Yeah, that's right. The numerous misstatements, it wasn't just the cross state lines with an illegal weapon. Miranda Devine in the New York Post, she did a great piece on this, talking about how they say he killed two black BLM protesters. Okay, that's not true. Everybody

was white. Even the Guardian on Friday had a piece saying he killed three black men or shot three black men. The Independent, I mean, how could they, how could the independent have a piece like that as a Friday, Jesse? I mean, it's crazy. The other thing is you shouldn't, Rosenbaum definitely wasn't a protester. There's almost no evidence he was. And Grosskreutz's testimony suggested he saw himself as sort of a neutral medic. So I don't, obviously saying he shot protesters makes the crime sound worse and more politically motivated. So it feels like, you know, a year, year and a half ago, we're all talking about accuracy and media and not doing misleading headlines and making sure to hold Trump accountable. People's resistance just to accurate, clear journalism is really disturbing to me because I'm with them that, you know, you should call Trump out for his lies, but you should also describe a politically freighted case like this accurately. And two of the people shot do not appear to have been protesters at all. And by the way, that guy, Gage Grosskreutz, who got shot in the arm, who said he was there to be an EMT, also admit on the stand that he

was carrying a gun that was illegal. It wasn't, it didn't have a proper license for it, that he carries it everywhere. He's very pro second Amendment and that he did not have any EMT supplies or bag on him that night. Like in his history, his criminal history is long and hardcore anti cop. So I don't know what he was doing there that night, but I have questions about whether it was to be an EMT. And the other guy, Huber, was not a good man either. He was also a convicted felon who had hurt his own brother and said he was going to gut him like a pig. I could go on. Anyway, so I've got my doubts. Yeah, no, I mean, I think Grosskorn did testify he had medical supplies with him. But again,

I would just point out- He denied that he had an EMT bag. Oh, that he had a bag. Okay. I do think it might be that both of them thought they were trying to take out an active shooter. But the point is, the only thing that matters is what Rittenhouse saw and what happened to him. And I just, it was pretty slam dunk self-defense. Yeah, that's right. And, you know, it's, it is sort of a function of our self-defense law that you can have

Kyle believing that his life is in danger and ready to shoot. And even Gage Grosskreutz believing his life is in danger and that he must shoot or defense of others that, you know, Kyle's about to in danger and that he must shoot or defense of others that, you know, Kyle's about to shoot others and he has to take him down. The law sort of puts us in a conflicting situation sometimes where two people can both believe rightly, right, with reason that they're about to get shot to death and fire. But there's no real alternative to that, right? Conflicts happen and they can happen with weapons or without weapons. And the law rightly makes one thing paramount, and that is the state of mind of the person

pulling the trigger. We can't start putting people in jail because in good faith, they just made a mistake. That's not who we want spending the rest of their lives in jail. Anyway, okay, Jesse, you've done a great job of speaking truth to power and calling out the left wing media for its lies. And we as always are grateful. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having me, Megan. Listen, thanks everybody for watching. Go to youtube.com slash Megyn Kelly. We'll see you tomorrow. Thanks for listening to the Megyn Kelly show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.