The Megyn Kelly Show - SBF Arrested, and Trans Activism in Media and Culture, with Victor Davis Hanson, Abigail Shrier, and James Murphy | Ep. 453

Episode Date: December 14, 2022

Megyn Kelly is joined by James Murphy, securities attorney, to talk about Sam Bankman-Fried's arrest and the litany of crimes he's charged with, when the fraud is rumored to have started, the evidence against SBF, what we learned from FTX's new CEO testifying before Congress, and more. Then Victor Davis Hanson, author of "The Dying Citizen," joins to talk about why SBF was protected for so long, Dr. Fauci about to go under oath, the non-binary Biden administration official out after stealing luggage, pushing identity ahead of anything else, the trans activist called out in Congressional hearing on violent rhetoric for her own violent rhetoric, lack of outrage on the left, Trump vs. DeSantis in 2024, and more. Then Abigail Shrier, author of "Irreversible Damage," joins to discuss what the "Twitter Files" reveals, journalists being labeled "conservatives" to try to smear and discredit them, current trans surgery talking points in our culture, media backlash for covering trans issues, 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 have a lot of news to get to today with some of our favorites. Victor Davis Hanson is here, as well as Abigail Schreier. But we begin with the news that Sam Bankman Freed's media tour has come to an abrupt end. Indeed, it was only a matter of time as he has been arrested in the Bahamas. The crypto billionaire behind FTX, whose empire has imploded in the last month, they said it was worth 32 billion. Now they're saying they're missing some two to eight billion. They're now facing

a litany of criminal charges. And who knows who else might get charged. So what's ahead here? Securities lawyer James Murphy has been following the story closely and joins me now. James, welcome to the show. Thanks, Megan. I'm really excited to be on with you today. My wife absolutely loves your show. So I'm really looking forward to talking about this fascinating character, Sam Bankman Freed. Well, she obviously has very good judgment. So good on you for choosing her as your wife. Let's talk about this guy because it was only a matter of time, I think, before he got arrested. But what did you make of the charges? Explain to the audience what the charges basically say. Will do. There are eight charges. What did I think of them? I think that they were kind of

basic, easy charges to make. Of course, everybody expected the wire fraud charge. And there are four varieties of wire fraud charged, both conspiracy and direct action by Sam alone. And that relates to basically lying to customers that he would take in their funds at FTX and hold those funds in safekeeping so that they could hold them there or trade them, trade their account should they wish to do so. Well, that's not what happened. Sam took that money and transferred it to this hedge fund, Alameda, which Sam owns 90% of. So he transferred it more or less to himself and that Alameda acted as a piggy bank for him, essentially. And he withdrew money from Alameda periodically to fund all sorts of things,

including but not limited to political contributions, which is also interestingly charged in the indictment violation of campaign finance rules. Specifically, what they focus on is that Sam used proxies in order to give money to candidates. So instead of directly contributing exclusively himself or making corporate contributions, He used proxies. They're not named, but apparently someone is cooperating with the Southern District of New York and fed them that information that he had used other people, given them the money to in turn give to candidates. And then finally, there's the money laundering charge, which alleges that Sam facilitated transactions in or hiding of illicit proceeds of illegal

activities. Now, we don't know what kind of activities those were, if it was we're speculating drugs, arms shipments, evasion of sanctions. These are the things that we wouldn't be shocked to see at an unregulated offshore crypto exchange. Wow. I mean, that last one is a shocker because I hadn't heard anything about that, about him running some blatantly criminal enterprise through which he laundered its money through FTX. So I'm looking forward to hearing more about what he may have been doing down there in the Bahamas at his multi-property estate at the Albany Resort, which is very nice. He apparently owns some 17 apartments, an insane amount of real estate. Right. And now we know where he was getting the dough. Yes. Do we know anything more about whether prosecutors believe this thing was a farce from the get-go or whether it just started to fall apart when crypto started to hit hard times? Well, we know more today than we did yesterday, that's for sure.

So the SEC complaint says that it started from the very beginning so i guess i should step back and say now let me just interrupt james and tell because now the sec has filed has filed uh civil charges against uh bankman freed as well uh as of tuesday accusing him of misleading investors and committing nearly two billion dollars worth of fraud on their customers so you've got the civil action by the customers. So you've got the civil action by the SEC, and you've got the criminal action by the federal prosecutors. Sorry, keep going. Right. And the commodities regulator, the CFTC as well, filed yesterday. So it's typical for these things to be choreographed, that an indictment is unsealed at the same time that these government regulators bring their civil actions.

But it's quite clear from all of the complaints combined and from the testimony of John J. Ray yesterday before the House Financial Services Committee that they're all saying this started at the beginning. And the beginning was 2019 when they started up this FTX International exchange that exempting Alameda from the rules around margin positions started early and that customer funds were used to back Alameda bets from the very beginning. So that was a little bit surprising. It's now cannot be just attributed to, wow, we've got a crypto winter here. Markets went against FTX and they scrambled and did a couple of things they shouldn't do. It sounds like this was the business plan. My God.

I mean, just think about it. The number of people who got pulled into this and the number of celebrities who lent their names to this. I saw an interview he gave in which he seemed to be, I can't remember whether, I think it was the Stephanopoulos one, where he tried to wiggle on whether he did have the right to use FTX customer funds to cover Alameda losses, to fund those monies over to another company, which we were told is a clear no-no in this type of business. And he seemed to be trying to wiggle, kind of saying, well, there were some agreements by customers. He was not seeding the point that it would be prima facie illegal for him to take money invested on his currency exchange FTX and use it to cover Alameda losses, his hedge fund.

Is that going to be possible for him to argue? My understanding was it's in writing as the policy on the FTX exchange that they will not use that money for other purposes and that that money cannot be moved around. It's absolutely in writing, Megan, and clear writing, not confusing, not small type, very clear. The assets that FTX customers deposit on the exchange are their assets. And it explicitly says that FTX cannot use those assets itself, cannot exercise dominion over the assets, and sure as heck can't give them to an affiliated hedge fund to let that, you know, maybe, maybe we'll see a defense of, hey, you know what? You got me. It's a breach of contract. So in essence, sue me. Well, it doesn't work that way.

If you receive money from someone and you know you're going to use it in a way that differs from the agreement. That is fraud. And so I think the case, the wire fraud case and the rest of it, appears to be quite strong by what was unsealed yesterday in the Southern District of New York. So I don't think that tactic's going to work. But I'll tell you what, this is a very, very smart man. Um, and he stuck, stuck to his script in many, many hours

of interviews on Twitter and with Andrew Ross Sorkin and George Stephanopoulos and Forbes and the wall street journal and others, he sticks to his script. And that script is this, I'm really sorry. I should have paid closer attention to what was going on there at FTX. And boy, if I ever had it to do over again, I certainly would have dug in deeper to learn the facts about the margin position that my own hedge fund had on my own exchange. But unfortunately, I was paying attention to other things. Distracted, not deceptive. Distracted, not devious. Could that work legally? Now, if a jury were to buy that, he was just distracted. This wasn't a fraud. This was

like mismanagement by this curly haired kid. Could that work as a legal defense? Yeah, it could. It could work as a legal defense to the criminal charges, which all require intent. But it's not going to work because there are other people involved who we believe are cooperating and will say, I had a conversation with Sam. We all knew that he was transferring billions of dollars to back Alameda trades. And not only that, he was transferring customer assets to Alameda. And then he himself withdrew some of those assets in the form of loans to himself and

to other insiders at FTX. He borrowed well over a billion dollars from his own hedge fund at the same time that he was transferring the assets of FTX customers to that hedge fund at the same time that he was transferring the assets of FTX customers to that hedge fund. And he approved a loan of over a half a billion dollars to the director of engineering at FTX. Why did that guy need a half a billion dollars? Maybe you could have given him a $50,000 bonus if he was doing such a great job. And then finally, Megan, the tip off, and you know this, what prosecutors love more than anything is to have evidence of an attempt to cover your tracks. That tells you everything you need to know about the mental state of the person. You don't cover your tracks if you think what you're doing is legal.

You cover your tracks because you're doing bad stuff that's illegal. And so he had a special software program written for him that provided a back door to the accounting systems there at FTX, through which he transferred assets of FTX customers to Alameda. The prosecutors are going to have plenty of evidence on his state of mind. What was this guy, what's your guess as to what he was thinking? That he could just make up the money, he could make up the losses, the withdrawals, the misuse of funds on the market, that crypto would turn back up and no one would be the wiser? Well, it's a great question, and it becomes harder to answer when you learn that this was part of the business plan. This is what they started with, is having Alameda have access to customer funds at FTX. So they started when there was a bull market for crypto. Right now,

since the beginning of the year, so now for 11 months, we've had a crypto winter bear market. But anyway, when the market was going up, their bets were working and they were, this gets a little technical, but they were acting as a market maker on the FTX platform. So they were trading against customers of FTX. And we just learned recently that they were trading with an advantage. And that advantage has to do with how quickly they are seeing orders being placed so that they can engage in rapid, high-frequency trading as a market maker against what is called regular or sometimes called dumb order flow from regular customers who are entering orders. So my guess is that it worked pretty well, you know, to begin with, but you need capital. And they didn't have a whole lot of capital. They started with some investors out in California, many of whom were active in this initiative called effective altruism. And they discovered that there was this wonder boy who had made a bunch of money doing an arbitrage trade with a South Korean exchange that traded Bitcoin. So you could buy Bitcoin for cheaper

in the United States and other places and then sell it on the South Korean exchange for higher. So that's called arbitrage. And they did very well with that one trade. And so once you, as a boy wonder from MIT and working at a famous trading shop called Jane Street, once you have a track record, you can attract money. And he did, but he needed more and more and more money to bet at larger scale.

And so they started using customer assets. I mean, it's amazing because you look at Madoff, at least Madoff, we think at some point was running a legitimate business. You know, what he said like Giselle and Tom Brady and Larry David, who didn't, of course, do their homework. Who's the famous tennis player, Naomi Osaka, before lending their names to his brand. That's why you have to be so careful before lending your name to a brand. It's not like being the spokesperson for Timex, something that's been around forever. Crypto, we know, is a little... Be careful. Be careful before you give it your personal endorsement so that you can make money off of it. Okay. The guy who's running the bankruptcy process for his company, FTX, who's sort of the CEO now, but he's basically just

trying to manage the bankruptcy, is the guy who did the Enron one. John Ray is his name. He was asked a couple of questions yesterday about, he testified before Congress. Sam Bankman-Fried was supposed to as well, but he got arrested, so he didn't, which I'll ask you about in a second. But John Ray showed up and he was asked some questions about SBF's frame of mind. Here's soundbite one. One of the things that Sam Beckman Freed has said is he had no, no knowledge of commingling of funds. In your eyes, is there any way that Sam Beckman Freed or senior management wouldn't know about this sort of thing? No. I mean, how does Sam's attorneys, his defense attorneys deal with this guy? This guy's got access to all the files, understands them, has already been through this with another massive company, another fraud,

and he's seen it all. And he's out there throwing this guy to the wolves. It's an uphill climb, Megan. Maybe we'll see a guilty plea at some point, but I'll tell you, there's a mountain of evidence. I mentioned that back door. That's a really great fact for the prosecution. But two days before the bankruptcy was filed on November 11th, so we're talking about Wednesday, November 9th, Sam's ex-girlfriend was running Alameda. She was the CEO. She had an all-hands meeting on Zoom. And she said at that meeting, hey, everybody, just a heads up, we've been using deposits of FTX customers to fund our trading. And Sam, I knew about it. Sam knew about it.

A couple other insiders knew about it. So she really does have a great motive for confessing to that in a public forum. The Wall Street Journal spoke to people who are on the call. Surely there's some recording of this as well. So there's a ton of evidence to show that Sam knew exactly what was happening. And so he's going to find it very difficult to get out of this trap that he's made for himself. Well, he seems to be, he hasn't said, is it Caroline Ellison? Is that the name? Right. She's the girlfriend who was running Alameda

and her ex-girlfriend, whatever. It was somehow connected romantically at one point, or so we're told. he seems to be getting ready to blame her. Like I didn't understand. I didn't know what was going on. She was running Alameda. I wasn't running Alameda. He hasn't said Caroline's the bad guy, but he, I've seen enough of him to realize he's getting ready to blame her. And she has said nothing. Unlike Sam, who seems to like publicity more than Megan Markle. He, she, has said absolutely nothing. And the logical conclusion is she's the one. She's talking to the feds right now. She's going to be the star witness. What do you think? Well, she's been spotted in New York in the last week. So there were rumors that

she was in Hong Kong or in Dubai. But she came back to New York. And so everyone is speculating that she is cooperating. And that's where all the detail comes in. I mean, there's quite a bit of detail, particularly in the SEC civil complaint. So I think that's a pretty good conclusion. She hired the WilmerHale law firm, which is a terrific law firm. And it is somewhat of a signal that she is going to cooperate and make a deal. And so all of the email, all of the messaging, the text, the notes of meetings are, I believe, are going to substantiate exactly what she is saying, as well, of course, as the money trail. So there's no way for Sam to say he did not know what was going on, although he has said

that, that he sort of disengaged from running Alameda, even though he owned 90% of it. One of the problems with that posture is some of the loans, some of the over billion dollars in loans that he took out of Alameda, he signed as the lender for Alameda, as well as the borrower for himself. Oh, come on. So he knew everything that was going on. Right, his little doe-eyed, dumbass routine is not going to fly. Here's a little bit more of what this guy, John Ray, again, he's the CEO now getting the company through bankruptcy, what he told Congress yesterday on whether this looks like embezzlement and whether you can trust what you're seeing out of this company, anything

that was done prior to John Ray taking over. Listen here. This is really old-fashioned embezzlement. This is just taking money from customers and using it for your own purpose. Not sophisticated at all. Sophisticated perhaps in the way they were able to sort of hide it from people, frankly, right in front of their eyes. But this isn't sophisticated whatsoever. This is just plain old embezzlement. In your declaration, you stated that you did not believe that those audited financial statements were reliable. Can you elaborate on

why you believe that to be the case? Well, we've lost $8 billion of customer money. So by definition, I don't trust a single piece of paper in this organization. My God, James. Then just one more. To boot, he talked about how to keep the books, they used QuickBooks, which is something a very small business, or as I understand it, even some individuals might use to manage their finances. Here's John Ray of record keeping. Employees would communicate, you know, invoicing and expenses on Slack, which is, you know, essentially, you know, a way of communicating for chat rooms. They use QuickBooks, the multi-billion dollar company using QuickBooks. QuickBooks? QuickBooks. Nothing against QuickBooks, very nice tool, just not for a multi-billion dollar company okay but here's my question to you does that in any way help Sam Bankman Freed like

I was just a dope I just like I was just a kid I wasn't nefarious I was just dumb that's what he's trying and he's stuck to it he stuck to his guns. He's a very, very smart guy. I mean, he went, went to MIT and did, uh, you know, effectively trade, uh, in crypto for a while. And he went to a, a well-regarded, uh, trading firm, but let me just comment on that John J. Ray clip. You need to understand, I watched the whole thing. You know, John J. Ray was exceptionally careful. His answer to 90% of the questions was, hey, we're studying that. We're investigating that.

We're in the process of collecting data, but we're not ready to make any conclusions at this time about whatever you just asked me about. However, when it came to Sam Bankman Freed, you got a simple declarative sentence. Sam engaged in embezzlement. Embezzlement is a crime. You don't accidentally embezzle. You don't embezzle because you were inattentive. You embezzle on purpose because you want that money and you were inattentive. You embezzle on purpose

because you want that money and you've got plans on how you're going to spend it. It's stealing. I mean, yeah, you're a thief is what he's saying. That's interesting. Thank you for pointing that out because I did not watch the whole testimony. That's fascinating. Let's talk a little bit about the players in the new criminal case against him. The prosecutor, Damian Williams, what do we know about him? And is this SDNY? Is this Southern District of New York prosecution? Yes. So he is the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. And Damian Williams is a superstar. Listen to this, Megan. Damian Williams was the son of immigrants from Jamaica. He ended up going and moved to Brooklyn, settling in Brooklyn.

He went to Harvard, then got a degree at Cambridge, then went to Yale Law School, and then clerked at the United States Supreme Court for Justice Stevens. So in our business, your business and my business, or what you used to do, Megan, that's called running the table. There is no way to start a career in the law any stronger than that. This guy successfully prosecuted Sheldon Silver from the New York legislature. He was in charge of the legislature there, presided. And he's tough.

He's energetic. He's legit. There will be no quarter given. I think it's fantastic. This is a great match. He's not going to fall for any tricks by Sam or his or his lawyer and his lawyer is a good lawyer. Mark Cohen. Mark, you know, is is known now for having recently represented Ghislaine, I forgot her last name now, but Epstein's procurer. And he also represented El Chapo, the drug cartel leader. So he's legit. The judge comes from Ronnie Adams in the Southern District. A judge has already been assigned to the case. She's very smart. She comes from kind of legal royalty in terms of her family. Her dad was

Floyd Abrams, a very, very successful First Amendment lawyer who was kind of the key man in that original New York Times First Amendment case, Pentagon Papers. Her brother is Dan Abrams. So you probably know Dan. He's a friend of ours. He's a TV lawyer for ABC. Her husband worked on the Mueller investigation into Donald Trump. So this is a legit family that's been very active. She's very smart, went to Cornell, also Yale Law School. And finally, she did 10 years as a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York. And I'm a big believer in judges who have been prosecutors

because they saw crime up close and personal. They dealt with victims. They understand what police and other law enforcement are up against. And in my experience, that tends to leave an impression, even if someone falls in the category of quote unquote liberal. If you see someone who prosecuted gang crimes, for instance, for 10 years, it really leaves an impression on them. And I think she's going to be a terrific judge to preside over this. I don't see I don't see any hint of politics playing a role so far in this case. She's a fair judge. This is an aggressive prosecutor. He's brought the judge. This is an aggressive prosecutor. He's brought the charges. He wants to win. Now that he's brought the charges, he wants to win.

He doesn't want to go easy on this guy. If he'd want to go easy on him, would have cut a deal up front or would have only brought some lesser charges. So we'll see where they go with it. The potential charges brought now, and they could be amended, more could be coming, would have a potential sentence of 115 years. People always get excited to add up the numbers if they ran consecutively, convicted on everything, maximum terms. What's realistic if he were to be convicted on all this stuff? And what, in your view, will probably happen? There'll probably be a plea. What would be fair? What kind of time are we looking at? Yeah, the potential sentence for Sam, I've seen that 100, 120 years thing.

I don't believe that's correct. The actual answer is infinity years, because each count of defrauding a customer is a separate count. So recently, Michael Avenatti was sentenced to many years for defrauding four clients out of $7.6 million. He got over a decade sentence. So Sam has defrauded more than a million customers, and the missing money is somewhere in the range, is in the billions. Let's say that maybe eight, ten billion dollars. So there is this this matrix called the federal sentencing guidelines. And they look at, well, how many victims do you have and how much money did you steal? And he is off the charts of that matrix. So the true answer is infinity. However, prosecutors may pick and choose the very best,

you know, 10, 20 victims and prove those cases up and use that. And whatever is done, I am pretty confident that Damian Williams is going to go for a term that lasts significantly longer than an expected life expectancy for Sam Bain-Mafrid. So there isn't going to be any 10 or 20 year thing here. Oh, wow. That's fascinating. I mean, he's only 30. So, I mean, my husband and I were just discussing this. If he only gets a 10 year sentence, he's still a young man. He could do it all over again. He's definitely on a PR campaign in part with all these interviews trying to Andrew, sorry, I screwed up the name of the other Sorkin. They had the audience clapping for him, for this alleged fraudster, like a Madoff. It was insane, but that's all part of Sam Bankman Freed's plan. Aw, shucks. I'm in earnest and I'm just, look at me. I didn't mean to hurt you, but look at the bad dumbass over there running Alameda.

It was all her. So we'll see. We'll see whether that works in front of a jury when you're across from Damian Williams. I'll tell you what, Megan, that was really cringeworthy, the applause. And here's People forget about the human tragedy that this story is. I have received communications from people who tell me I have lost all of my money, my life savings at FTX. And what they're talking about in some cases is less than $10,000. They were wiped. That's their life savings. And it's been wiped out. And I've gotten communications from people who say, I'm considering suicide. You know, that's kind of hard to take, hard to deal with. And you try to send an encouraging message back. They really want to hear that they're going to get

80 or 90 cents on the dollar out of this bankruptcy. But these people are really at wit's end. Some of them can't pay their mortgage, can't pay for their car or food or whatever. This is a human tragedy at quite a large scale. So as I watched the Andrew Ross Sorkin thing end with that applause, that was really, really troubling and sad. As I know, so many of these creditors, the smaller creditors, were watching, you know, watching what was going on there. And they saw

a crowd of mostly very well-heeled Wall Street types in New York give Sam a round of applause. Oh, God, that was really stomach-turning. James, thank you so much. Please come back and keep us updated as the case goes farther, because we're going to have some interesting exchanges on this. I have a good feeling. Absolutely.

Megan, this was so much fun. I'd be delighted to come back anytime. All right. And my love to your wife, too. Thank you so much, James Murphy. All the best. All right. We're going to be right back with Victor Davis Hanson. VDH is here. Love talking to him. Stand by. A series of new polls showing that if Florida Governor Ron DeSantis wants to take on former President Donald Trump in 2024, he would win. But do polls like this matter at all this far out? Joining me now, Victor Davis Hanson. Victor's a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He hosts his own podcast, The Victor Davis Hanson Show, and he is the author of The Dying Citizen, How Progressive Elites,

Tribalism and Globalization are Destroying the Idea of America. It's a great book. I've read it. My husband's read it. We gave it to our neighbor. He read it and loved it. So you guys should check it out. The Dying Citizen. Victor, great to have you back on. Can I just pause before we get to the polls, Trump to Santas. Let's just follow up on Sam Bankman Freed. This guy's in a whole host of trouble. But zooming out as to how this happened, like a fraud from the start and charged now with basically the attempted manipulation of our politicians through some sort of money that, you know, I don't know how he how he mastered or how he managed it. But this guy was playing everyone right from the start. And our politicians in charge of regulation and so on were just like little lapdogs running along for the party. What do you make of all of it? He followed a script that we know now, it's familiar. Elizabeth Holmes did the same thing

with Theranos. And it's that environment between San Jose and San Francisco with a little triangle out to Stanford University. Elizabeth Holmes was a Stanford student that gave her cred, supposedly. She was a big Hillary donor, left-wing politics. She used the Steve Jobs getup of dressing in black and being young. And that intrigued and fooled $8 billion worth of investment that went down that hole. He came in. He didn't go with the black getup like Steve Jobs. He went with a bum look, you know, cutoffs, t-shirt, kind of like Mark Zuckerberg's tie dye shirt and, or Elizabeth, I mean, Jack Dorsey's ring in the nose. They all have this get up. He grew up on the Stanford campus. I'm there and I listened or heard or read his two parents who are left-wing law professors. He went to prep school, MIT, so did his associate, Catherine Ellison. She went to Stanford. So they had all of the right

educational brands. They were from Northern California in some sense. They were left wing. He conned this word, you know, effective altruism. So he kept promising that what was brilliant about his con was it wasn't just the 200 million that he'd given to Joe Biden or congressional candidates, but it was the promises that he was going to give, you know, all of his fortune. And when they looked at this crazy $25 billion that was worth their mouth water. So he got de facto before the midterm, at least, exemption from the bureaucracies and the administration and from congressional oversight by the Democrats. And then he kind of like Bernie Madoff just collapsed after the midterms. But

I think everything's been politicized. We could have known this before the midterms. And I don't know why he had to be indicted right before he was going to appear and name names before Congress. It might have been wise to wait one day. But I think now he's kind of an embarrassing amulet around the necks of all these left-wing people. But I guess what I'm getting at is if you come out of a Stanford embryo and you rub shoulders with left-wing politics and you are identified with Silicon Valley and you're an anti-capitalist capitalist by your garb that you wear. And you're absolutely right. He had this nerd naivete. It wasn't like Bernie Madoff. He was, I don't know what I was doing. I was just trying to help people. I'm kind of sloppy. And that appealed to a lot of people. And that was a very effective Ponzi fraud

because of that. You know, to me, it reminds me of like, I don't want to get personal training services from an obese person. And I don't want to get personal training services from an obese person. And I don't want to get my hair done by somebody who's got bad hair. And I don't want to give my money to some guy who's slovenly and can't tie a belt. I just like there's something I realized that was his shtick. But to me, you know, I have investments and so on. I would not I would not give my money to somebody who presents like that down in the Bahamas. That's sketchy. And you know that there's no there's not gonna be any regulation if it turns out he's a fraudster. And indeed, this is one of the

questions. Can he be extradited from the Bahamas? He can. I think he's going to be, but he's going to fight it. It's just the whole thing kind of stinks. But because of his effective altruism, everyone looked the other way. And he got all like Tom Brady. I think I don't know what his politics are. I know he was sort of open minded to Trump. But you look, it's like Larry David, Naomi Osaka, all these big names who are very left, who are like, yes, use my image. I'll take the payday. And because, you know, you're this effective altruist i'll back your brand without knowing anything yeah i i agree with you but unfortunately people who walk the streets of cambridge mass or berkeley or powell or austin texas don't and they've got more money than we do

and that's part of their appeal to themselves and that they want to radiate, that they're capitalists, and they feel so guilty about being capitalists that they're going to dress like every man, but maybe even down dress. And you can see them. I mean, if you walk off the Stanford campus and go down Palo Alto, University Avenue, you see these people everywhere. And they're worth billions of dollars, and they look like they're homeless. Well, you mentioned Jack Dorsey of Twitter, and he's got this persona with like the big beard and the nose ring, whatever. So he's cool. He's cool.

He's got it. He's like just trying to make everybody happy, make the world a better place. And even now, when Elon tweets out something, Jack Dorsey is quick to be like, yo, bro. Yeah, I got it. I agree. You're right on. He's like wants to be liked. You can tell by people more than just his far left base. But then you look back at these 2018 clips of him testifying before Congress.

We do not shadow ban. No, we don't do that. I mean, unequivocal. And now we know, thanks to the Twitter file reporting that Matt Taibbi is doing and Barry Weiss is doing, they were shadow banning. They've been shadow banning conservatives. I don't know for how long. That's one of the questions to see whether 2018 was a lie or just, you know, it became untrue later. But you can't trust these guys, right? They have an entirely different agenda. They have a political agenda and they have a bigger agenda of making cash off of that political agenda and selling it to their left wing base. Yeah, they do. And he understood after he watched probably James Clapper lie under oath and admit that he lied under oath. John Brennan, who's been active on Twitter, who lied two times under oath. James Comey, who pled that he had amnesia 245 times while under oath. Andrew McCabe, who admits he lied to four federal investigators under oath, that there's no such thing as perjury if you're coming from the right ideological direction. And he understood that.

So when he went into that congressional committee, he just lied. He thought they're going to do no more to me than they did to any of these other marquee people on the left. And he was right about that. They didn't. And I don't think they will. I don't think they'll say anything to Anthony Fauci when he just flat out denied that he gave money for gain-of-function research. And he was just under oath in a deposition brought by these two states' attorneys generals. And he couldn't remember anything. I know nothing. What was it, Sergeant Schultz? Nothing. He reminded me of Robert Mueller when they asked me about the two pillars of his own investigation. Can you tell us about fusion GPS and the Steele dossier?

And he said he didn't know anything about either one of them. It was just incredible. Right. I don't remember while under oath for these guys is their code for this is what's going to get me in trouble and therefore I can't say it. So but I know I shouldn't lie under oath. Anthony Fauci couldn't remember anything. He couldn't remember targeting the Great Barrington doctors, the gain of function research. I haven't looked at it that well. Really gain of function. The thing that led arguably, at at least we think to this entire pandemic like it's at least 50 likely even in their their world in our world it's a lot higher no i don't i don't i haven't really researched it why not i know i don't think they think it's lying i think that their their ends are considered by themselves so morally superior than any means necessary achievement or excusable. I really believe that. And I think they're really fascinated by guys who are really wealthy and kind of make fun of being wealthy, like Sam Bankman Freed or Dorsey or Mark Zuckerberg or Elizabeth Holmes.

They kind of like that look. And these guys are smart. They understand that if you do two things when you're wealthy, if you cater to left wing causes, you will get exemption from oversight by the left wing bureaucracies and congressional committees. And if you continue to do that, you'll you'll be romanticized in the media. And all of them have achieved that. Well, now, Sam Payne-Mafrid has said that he gave to Republicans as well. And then when pressed by a reporter, I think it was at Puck, which is a new-ish news organization. How much? Has it been the same to the Republicans? He kind of was wishy-washy. And he's admitted, I guess, to trying to keep those more quiet because he understood the left wing wouldn't like that. But he wanted to buy politicians on both sides. And I, for one, would love the list. I want to see the Republicans as well as the Democrats who are taking his dirty

money. Right. Like who did he buy? And let's figure out how this game actually works. Yeah, I don't quite believe him because his mother was an activist that went out to Silicon Valley billionaires and channeled like $60 million in dark money and then spread it around to the most left wing of all congressional races. She's kind of well known for that on campus. And all this altruism, somehow they ended up with millions of dollars of Bahamas, Bahamas property. I wonder if they paid gift tax on that. One of her, I think his father is a tax expert. So I'm very skeptical about all of this altruism, but I don't really know if he gave any that much to Republicans.

I want the names like you do, but a recent study of the Stanford community shows that 93 percent of people who live in the Stanford zip code gave to Republican excuse me, to Democrats rather than Republican. So I think it would be a small number. I think he threw that out, hoping that, you know, there'd be bipartisan support for him or exemption, I should say, for him. Well, that would make more sense. But as much as he was outwardly saying he wanted regulation of crypto, he thought it was a good idea. The truth is, most people believe that would have just hurt his competitors who are based in America. And that's the reason he wanted it here. He didn't really want it in a way that it would affect him down in the Bahamas. And I don't know whether more regulation is the answer for this whole crypto problem. I just know the whole thing is kind of sketchy. And he's sketchy.

And it's not to say that you deserve to lose your money if you gave it to him. But he fits the profile of somebody who could easily be too quickly elevated by the left. When somebody is talking about the altruism and donating all the right causes and being elevated by the left wing press. Those are red flags. Investors should know that whether the investor is left or right yeah absolutely and he knew that he has a very effective shtick i mean this idea that he just pops up it's all shocks as you said he looks like a slob and then he acts like he's just bewildered that people would be angry at him when he's trying to do the world so good and his only fault was that he was so concentrated

on helping things and helping people and helping couples that he just kind of let this katherine ellison just sort of you know run the business in and he had no idea what was going on so that and by the way you're you're not wrong because he because he's the effective altruist who's going to donate. It's not just that he's going to fund commercials or he's going to make political donations. He's going to actually use the money, his net revenue, and donate it to left-wing causes. So this is how he keeps the left silent and support in the media. It wasn't just the money he gave, you're right. It was the money he was promising over a long lifetime.

And he bought up half the media. He has all these investments in left-wing media companies. So that was smart too. And then your mention of Elizabeth Holmes reminded me too. She was another one. She's a woman. She was celebrated for this woman in Silicon Valley. She's young, she's attractive.

And so all these people thought, oh yes, we're gonna elevate her in the same way we're gonna elevate this trans guy who worked for the Biden administration and non-binary and the guys were running on a luggage stealing spree while he's working for our nuclear facilities. I know Elizabeth Holmes was a big Hillary Clinton bundler. I mean, she had big fundraisings for Hillary at her house. And I was at the Hoover, I am at the Hoover Institution. And three of my, four of my colleagues were on the board.

And I was told, I mean, the word was, if you, you were kind of out of it because you were not asked to join this sure thing and become a millionaire by being on our board. But four of my colleagues were on it. And they were very, They were very prestigious names. I don't think they knew the first thing about blood testing equipment. Didn't matter. She was brilliant what she did in a very nefarious way. These people who commit these massive frauds are brilliant.

They will fool you. A lot of them are sociopaths. And they're in the business of fooling you. You don't expect to be able to see right through them. Victor, stand by. I definitely want to pick up the story about the non-binary Biden official who's up. But like if you have luggage and this person is nearby, run, grab your bag and run. They're working with our nuclear codes. What could go wrong? Stand by. Be right back, Victor. So speaking of identity politics infecting the way we view our potential leaders, whether it's in the community or. At first, Sam was just placed on leave. Now Sam is gone from the administration.

They're not making clear whether Sam was fired or left. But here, this is a 35-year-old person. They say, I can't do the they. I'm sorry. They is already taken. They is not an available pronoun to people. Sam is non-binary, wants us to refer to Sam as they. Sam got suspended when the news first broke. And here was the news. Okay, first, there was an

incident in Minnesota. Okay. And Sam was accused of stealing somebody's luggage. And this is something we all worry about when our bag is going around the luggage carousel, somebody going to take my bag, you think it's going to happen inadvertently. You certainly don't want somebody to intentionally steal it. But that's what Sam was accused of. According to the criminal complaint, the authorities called Sam up to say, did you take this woman's bag? And Sam said, I didn't have a bag.

No, I didn't. I didn't take anybody's bag. No. And they said, we know that you took a bag. It wasn't yours. And then Sam apparently said, well, I miss you're right. I mistook the bag. I thought that this one was mine. And so it was all in good faith. And then they reminded Sam, no, actually, you didn't bring a bag at all. You actually didn't have a bag. And he said, oh, well, I forgot that I didn't take a bag. And so I took this woman's bag completely by mistake.

And they said, no, we have videotape of you removing the tag from her bag and putting it in your handbag, Sam. So Sam was caught dead to rights. And then there was another incident, Victor. That one was in Minnesota. There was one in Vegas as well. Security footage shows Sam walking through Harry Reid International Airport with the luggage.

It was a $320 bag lifted from a carousel stuffed with more than $3,000 worth of jewelry, clothes and makeup that did not belong to Sam. Unclear why Sam targeted the suitcase, but it was a luxury brand. And they say Sam pulled the victim's luggage from the carousel, examined the tag, then placed it back, looked in all directions. When it came back again, he pulled it off the carousel and did the same thing. And the cops smelled a rat. One cop saw the newspaper article about what had happened in Minneapolis, went back and checked the security footage and realized this is the same guy. It's a serial thief. And we had him working in the nuclear department of our energy department.

And really, it does raise the question of whether we are hiring based on the right criteria. Yeah, I think all of us are live and let live, Megan. We don't really care what a person's individual sexual proclivities are, as long as it's incidentally not essential to who you are. But once these people privilege that and say that this is how you're going to define me, then it's legitimate to criticize them because of that. And what we're seeing is that they use this transgendered issue or sometimes being gay as sort of a veneer under which they can do almost anything and you're not supposed to say anything. Pete Buttigieg's another example. He was always billed as the first gay department of transportation.

He just went on maternity leave for two months. And my God, we had supply chains. If you flew over the port of L.A., you would see cargo ships, you know, out to the horizon. And you couldn't really function if you took a flight and needed a connection for a long time. And you couldn't find a rental car. Gas was inexpensive. And the whole transportation bureaucracy was in a mess.

But it didn't matter because Pete Buttigieg was the first gay person. And he was married. And he was home with his husband. And so they use these lifestyles in a way that is supposed to be, I guess, defer us or deflect from them what they're actually doing on the job, which isn't much. And then they get very angry and you object to their performance on the job and you become transphobic or homophobic. But I think they're really pushing it because the idea of the civil rights movement was to make your race or your gender

or your sexual proclivities incidental so that we're all just people. But when you start to privilege that as the essential essence of who you are, then you're gonna come in for criticism in a way that I think is legitimate. The paternity leave thing for Pete Buttigieg, so he took two months. That's what I took for my third child because we were launching my show in the prime time. I took two months for Thatcher

and I actually got cut open and delivered a baby out of my body. So we should not be taking the same maternity leave, Pete Buttigieg and I. No, I know. And I think your job was important, but the nation's transportation didn't depend on you. And it did on him. And he didn't seem to care about people who, you know, their trains were ransacked and there were Amazon packages all over the ground in L.A. You couldn't get baby formula. You couldn't get on a plane.

The plane would fly around because it was looking for fuel sometimes. And you couldn't find a rental car. You couldn't fill up for less than seven dollars a gallon for diesel in California. It was a mess. It is a mess. And he didn't really care. All we heard was that about his sexual orientation. The same thing with Karen, what's her name? Karine Jean-Pierre. brilliant press secretary or had a distinguished record in journalism but is the first gay black

woman and therefore you know when she's not doing a very good job and she's doing a dismal job then when she has made that that declaration of who she is then you can't say anything because you're racist or you're misogynist or whatever or or you're transphobic or gay. But they keep getting burned. They keep getting burned with these elections. They don't learn. They just this week, they invited a drag queen to the White House for the marriage equality bill signing. This is an attempt by the Biden administration to reach out to, I guess, the ever important drag queen constituency amongst the Democratic party and um this person's history you go back and look at this person's history this person goes by marty cummings and was joined by another drag queen named britta filter okay um there's probably something i'm not seeing in the name marty

cummings but in any event um marty cummings in the past tweeted out the kids are out to sing and suck d this is a person invited to our white house this is who the biden administration thinks that is an appropriate choice and this other this britta performed for a group of children at um grace church school in new york which became controversial because the children leader came out and said they felt pressured to dance along with his drag queen like it was okay they walked in and they were handed pride stickers and told take one or you're homophobic um this person cummings posted a photo showing them with three fellow drag queens and a young child saying this kid wants to perform with us next year drag queen story hours what they're known for they call it a family friend friendly event Sure. And again, this guy Cummings, the one who said the kids are out to sing and suck D, who's hanging out with the president now, tweeted out in 2020, F the police, defund the police. We want to abolish ICE. And then ACAB, I guess he promoted ACAB, you know, which stands for all cops are bees. So in any event, there's no screening process, Victor, or there is and they just don't care. I don't understand this because you remember it was Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton, almost any issue that was controversial, they always said, we're here to protect the children. This is for the children. We work on the left for the children. And this idea that you're attracted to to somebody even below the age of consent, we

have this new word, you know, minor attraction rather than pedophilia that they're pushing. And so what they're doing is insidiously lowering the bar on the age of sexuality and sexual sensitivity and cognition. And I don't understand that because that used to be the idea that among the left, they told us that childhood was sacrosanct. And if anything, the age of consent was always too low in some of the backward states. And all of a sudden, because of this transgender movement, they're now really, I don't know what their intent is, but they're really getting it. It's a very murky idea now about a child's ability to absorb sexuality in the rawest form, and they don't have a problem with it, with these drag shows. And I think they've

kind of crossed the Rubicon on this. I think people in mass are going to revolt against it because they're going to say, you know what, children are not going to sit there and be subjected to this type of language or displays. And I think that's going to be across the political spectrum. So I think they've really overdone it and they're going to have a big pushback. Another example of somebody getting a complete pass for their prior controversial comments because they're saying the right things to appease the left happened in Congress this week. So here's what happened. There was a congressional hearing and it was being held by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. Now, the Democratic chair of the committee said the purpose of the examination

was to look at the ongoing threat to American democracy posed by white supremacist ideologies and how the federal government can confront domestic terrorist threats. You know, you're a white supremacist if you're a conservative in their eyes. So, you know, you have to you have to be a little concerned about what the real purpose of this hearing was. So who do they call? The Democrats call this woman who's been on our show and in the news a fair amount lately. Her last name is Caraballo. Could be Caraballo. I'm not sure how you pronounce it, but the first name is Alejandra. And this is a trans activist who is a Harvard law instructor and a trans activist. As I said, this person appeared in a

Washington Post story recently criticizing Elon Musk, the deterioration of civil discussion and so on in America. This person gets confronted by a Republican, Nancy Mace. She's a more moderate Republican, I would say, trying to call her out on some of this woman's past statements. But keep in mind, as you watch this exchange, this woman, Alejandra Caraballo, is there to talk about the ongoing threat to democracy posed by white supremacist ideologies and the danger of harsh political rhetoric. She doesn't like harsh political rhetoric. So watch the exchange here between Nancy Mace and this Harvard law instructor. Is rhetoric on social media a problem and a threat to our democracy? Yes.

Another question I have, do you believe that rhetoric targeting officials with violence for carrying out their constitutional duties is a threat to democracy? Yes. Only a few weeks after the attempted attack on a Supreme Court justice on June 25th, one of the witnesses, Alejandra Caraballo, tweeted out the following in response to a decision on abortion overturning Roe v. Wade, and I'll quote directly from the tweet, the six justices who overturned Roe should never know peace again. Alejandra Caraballo also recently tweeted on November 19th, not even a month ago, that the Supreme Court vested with

the judicial power of the United States by our Constitution stated they are not a legitimate court issuing decisions. And also the Supreme Court is an organ of the far right. So my last question today of Ms. Caraballo, do you stand by these comments, this kind of rhetoric on social media, and do you believe it's a threat to democracy? I don't believe that's a correct characterization of my statements. Did you not tweet that? That you thought that the Supreme Court justices should be accosted?

What I'm saying is that is not a accurate characterization of my statements. How? How? You wrote it. You tweeted it. You tweet crazy things like that all the time. I would have loved for her to have gotten to this earlier. So she could have said exactly how, exactly how did you mischaracterize your own statements in those tweets?

Yeah, you know, this is typical. These are not Democrats. We should remember that they're not even progressive, whatever that term means. Now They're hardcore leftists. And you can really see this 60s idea. When I was in college, everybody said, any means necessary, or the old Marxists that are superior ends justify any means to get to them. So they don't see that as hate speech. Just like Chuck Schumer doesn't see anything wrong with going out to the doors of the Supreme Court yelling, you've sowed the wind, you two, and named Gorsuch and Kavanaugh by name, and you're going to reap the whirlwind. You don't know what's going to hit you. And then we have these people show up at the Supreme Court or Joe Biden who says that half the country is in effect voted for Trump, or semi-fascist or un-American. And then he gives a lecture about

same thing that we have to lower the tempo. So I think that in this new political ideology among the Democrats, you can say whatever you need to affect social change because the social change that you're trying to institutionalize is so morally superior to anybody else's or to the, especially the ossified Neanderthal right, that at times you're just going to have to say things and you're going to have to deny them later. But believe me, nobody on the left is outraged about what she said about Supreme Court justices. Well, that's what I want to ask you, because somebody somebody must have gone to Congressman Jamie Raskin and said, hey, just as a heads up, this woman who we're about to call has got some really controversial tweets recently.

This isn't from 10 years ago. This is on June 25th. She tweeted out the six justices who are returned Roe should never know peace again. It's our civic duty to accost them every time they're in public. They're pariahs. They should never have a peaceful moment in public again. I mean, and the thing is, the Democratic representatives in charge of the committee said, no problem. That's OK. She can come and testify against violent rhetoric. That's what we're going to. She's she's perfect. That's just like Maxine Waters who said, follow people around and get in their faces.

The Trump people go to the gas station and she was lauded for that. They feel that those people are especially committed. And if you have to delude people post facto or you have to contextualize a little bit, that's perfectly permissible. But the main thing that they their takeaway is this person is on our side they're on the front lines they're willing to go head to head with conservatives and sometimes they have to use means that conservatives don't like and we're going to stand with them no matter what and that that's the ideology it's so ironic megan because they they keep saying that the Republicans have been hijacked

and they're no longer Republicans. It's really the Democrats. They have no semblance, not just to JFK or Hubert Humphrey, but Bill Clinton's party doesn't exist. These are revolutionaries, they're hardcore, and they're going to use any means necessary. And I think the Republican establishment has no idea what they're up against, whether it goes to absentee balloting or early voting or the use of dark money, which, you know, I just think that we have no... We can't envision the revolution in our midst when we look at the border or we look at our foreign policy or we look at energy, all these issues, they have in store for us radical changes, radical changes. And they're willing to do almost anything to enact them because

they don't have 51% of the public behind them. They only have these institutions that they've absorbed. This is why Ron DeSantis is so interesting to so many Republicans, because, yes, he'll he'll say these people are lunatics the way we hear Trump say. But DeSantis almost surgically tries to go after their woke temples one by one. Right. Whether it's the Disney thing or the the bill in the schools to stop the sexual instruction of, you know, very young children in classroom time. Now he's taking a deep dive at the Florida Supreme Court level. He wants an investigation into the drug companies and they're misleading about the covid vaccine. So so he's actually doing something about each of these things that is irritating to a lot of conservatives. You know, he's not just saying the right things.

He's doing the right things. And I would submit to you that's one of the reasons why not one but two polls now are showing him leading the gop pack for the nomination we are very early very early in this contest but the contest is on make no make no mistakes as we come back from the holiday it's going to start percolating back up the candidates are going to start declaring in spring and um by the summer we're probably going to be having debates. So here's what the latest news is. Yesterday, we first saw a poll. It was out of Suffolk University. And it was the first to show Trump trailing DeSantis nationally by a wide margin. They did say, take it with a grain of salt, could be an outlier, 1,000 registered voters between December 7 and 11. DeSantis, 56%. Trump, 33%. Again, this is with respect to GOP voters. And it's a good lead for

DeSantis. I mean, almost 20 points. Now, Trump was still leading DeSantis 48.8 to 27.3 in the real clear politics average of all polls polls but the most recent poll there was taken a month ago so that was some good news for dissent for dissent as if he wants to run then today we get the wall street journal with its own poll showing dissent is beating trump 52 to 38 still a big margin among likely that's the relevant group, likely GOP primary voters, saying 86% view DeSantis favorably, 74% view Trump favorably. Those who are very conservative favor Trump, 54 to 38. Those who are somewhat conservative back DeSantis over Trump, 59 to 29. The problem for DeSantis is the moderates don't tend to drive the primary results. It tends to be the more conservative ones who drive the primary winners. So what do you make of all that, that DeSantis

has some momentum? I think when people mentioned DeSantis' name as the real rival to Donald Trump, there were two issues. One was DeSantis shared the MAGA agenda. He had a wonderful record of executing as governor. But did he have the fire in the belly? Could he have the rallies? Would he go after the left in a preemptive fashion? So with the bus trip, it was very embarrassing. The left of Martha's Vineyards, the school board stuff he did, and taking on Disney,

and as you say, now going to the Supreme Court, he's showing that he is every much as feisty and combative as Trump, but without the baggage. So what Trump had to do was he had to convince people that everybody knew he was combative, everybody knew he had a good four years, but would he stop that exhausting psychodrama, melodrama? And I don't understand why he hasn't, other than maybe it's innate to him. But what I mean by that, Megan, was he was coming out as the midterms approach in a wonderful position, because he had four years to critique of his own compared to the two-year disasters of Biden. And all of these so-called conspiracies that he'd weighed in on, whether it was a Russian collusion hoax, or Hunter's laptop, or going after him on social media and Twitter, they all turned out to be

absolutely true. And he was, you know, he was confirmed in all of his accusations. And then, right before the midterm, for some reason, he attacks De in all of his accusations. And then right before the midterm, for some reason, he attacks DeSantis as his sanctimonious. He hints that he's going to run, which it was not necessary before the midterms. And then he goes after Mitch McConnell's wife in kind of a racialist fashion. And then he goes after Youngkin and says his name sounds Chinese. And then he talks about altering the Constitution. I don't think he meant it, but nevertheless, he said something to that effect to replay the 2020. Then he has this nut, Nick Fuentes and Kanye West, no need to go on about him at his house. And so the result of it is people are saying, we like what he did, we like his positions, but we can get this now without all of these melodramas with DeSantis. And that's where I think it's reflected in the polls. Plus it's for DeSantis and minus it's early. And if we had this conversation in 2016, we would probably say, wow, there's a guy named

Scott Walker, and he's been a hands-on governor. He took on the teachers union. He's the perfect executive. He's in a purple state. He won over independents. He's got a base. He's going to be. And I was one of those who felt very strongly about Walker.

But then when he got him on the debate stage, he kind of fizzled. So we'll have to let it play out. But I think right now, Santos is doing what people were wondering whether he could do, and he's doing it well. And Trump is not doing what people wanted. He's really not doing anything. It's been the most non-existent campaign since a campaign was ever declared. He just declared.

Yeah, I don't know. I don't understand. You think he would be out there every week saying this is what Biden did on the border. Here's what we did. And here's what we're going to do in the first hundred days when I'm elected. We're going to take the Senate. We're going to take the House. We're going to finish the wall. We're going to deport people who just walk across

the border illegally. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to open up ANWR. We're going to build finished Keystone. We're going to have more federal leases. Then we're going to do and go, you know, each week take a topic and never mention anything negatively about DeSantis or Nikki Haley or Pompeo or anything. Just say, you know what, I have a lot of people who want to emulate the MAGA agenda. That would be a good thing to say. And he could be statesman-like and his polls would go up. But whoever is advising him or maybe whatever he's thinking, it's almost suicidal. It's designed not to see him win the nomination. Victor, as we're speaking, Donald Trump just tweeted out or my truth social doubt. I'm not sure what this is from. Tweets out a video depicting himself as a superhero with lasers

shooting out of his eyes, saying he's making a quote major announcement tomorrow it reads america needs a superhero i will be making a major announcement tomorrow thank you with the lasers coming out of his eyes he's pulling the shirt out you know to show the super so we'll see maybe he's getting back on the campaign trail yeah i think he knows what he has to do. He has to shut up or be quiet about his rivals and praise them and talk about them with faint praise. And then he's got to talk about his prior agenda. And to the degree he mentions the word balloting or election, it's always learn the elections of 2020, but we're not going back. We're going to make sure it does not happen in 2024. We're going to restore the primacy of election day and election night returns. And I think it'll be an interesting race if he does that. I think this is a testament to your power. I mean, no sooner do you say, you know, he should be out there week after week. Immediately we get an announcement. I mean, this is a hat tip to you and you're amazing. Maybe your power that he's watching you all the time.

Somehow I doubt it, but we'll find out because sometimes they contact me to let me know what they think. Victor, great to see you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Coming up next, Abigail Schreier returns to the program, one of my favorite people, and there's a lot of news to go over with her. Our next guest is independent journalist Abigail Schreier.

She is a contributor to the new media company launched by our pal Barry Weiss called The Free Press and author of the must read, must read book, Irreversible Damage. If you have not read Irreversible Damage and you care at all about what the trans community the medical community which is on bended knee to the trans activists what they're doing to our young girls in particular you need to get this book right now and trust me i've had so many people thank me for recommending this book abigail and thank you for writing it so thanks and welcome back to the program thank you so so much, Megan, for having me on. Yeah, it's great to see you. All right.

So you've been in on this reporting of the Twitter files and Barry's new, the Free Press, which is a new media entity. And so far as I can grasp, pretty much everything Twitter has said about itself on the front of suppression and censorship has been untrue. I mean, they've been censoring and they've been lying about it for many, many years. That's right. They're essentially a censorship regime that was going on. And there were two parts to it. There was the part we knew about, which was also biased against non-woke speech. And that was, you know, people who pointed out that the transgender

swimmer Leah Thomas was a man and that that was the reason for the unfairness to allow Leah Thomas to compete against women in swimming, people who pointed that out on Twitter, they could get their accounts suspended and they were suspended or banned from Twitter. So that's the part we knew about. And the part that we didn't know about was a second sub Rosa committee. This was a secret committee within Twitter to suppress non-woke speech, speech of the political right and anything that was non-woke. And it essentially deflated the tires of all non-woke speech so that it would limit the visibility and how many people could see it. Now, the names that have been

specifically cited in her reporting are Dan Bongino, who's put on a surge blacklist. Charlie Kirk, do not amplify. Dr. Jay Bhattacharya secretly placed on a trends blacklist, which prevented his tweets from trending. That's insane, Dr. Jay. I have no idea what Dr. Bhattacharya's politics are and none whatsoever. He just called for a different approach to COVID. Just just calling for a different approach got him placed on this trends blacklist. Those are the three names I've heard. Plus libs of tick tock. Do we know whether it goes beyond them? Yes, we do. Hopefully there'll be more details in the story we have coming out. But also we're going to look, you know, I'll be going

back to the Twitter headquarters and others will continue to reveal, you know, what we find on things like COVID policy and gender policy. But these were markers that could be put on accounts at any time by this committee. And they really depressed the reach of political speech in a country that is very divided. We are very evenly divided. Our Senate is almost 50-50. Our House is essentially 50-50. And our presidential elections are very close. So this had a profound impact on the reach of a certain kind of political speech.

And just depressing the visibility in an election cycle or when these issues are hotly contested can really alter the outcomes. What's infuriating to me is they blocked it. They suppressed it. They lied about it. And then when people like Dan Bongino would say, I think you're doing this, they'd gaslight you saying, no, you paranoid conservative, grow up. And if you don't like Twitter or the way your tweets are trending, go form your own platform. And Dan Bongino, if I'm not mistaken, did. I think he was one of the founders of Parler or he was at least one of the early adopters. My team will check it out for me. But he was definitely one of the early ones over there.

And then look what they do to Parler. Then you have the whole big tech industry work together after Jan 6 to blame Jan 6 on Parler and effectively ruined Parler. So it's this is what conservatives or just people, as you point out, who are non-woke are up against. media isn't having the same reach, that entire users, this wasn't just individual tweets by someone like Dan Bongino or Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA. It wasn't individual tweets. Entire users, if they were non-woke, if they were of the political right, or if they, as Dr. Bhattacharya, questioned COVID policy, they would be suppressed in a systematic way on media, on Twitter. And we have every reason to believe that the other big tech companies like Google and, you know, which owns YouTube and Facebook are doing the same thing or, you know, very similar things. We know, for instance, that Google marks one, I think it's a third of all PragerU, that's the conservative

site PragerU that puts out, you know, incredibly popular videos, one third of them are marked adult only, for no reason for no good reason, so that they can never be viewed in a library, and children can have access to them. Wow, that I mean, this is we have to continue following as we Yes, I understand. We quote new, you know, we knew it in the way you just have a feeling and you're certain, but this is the evidence of it. And it's worth paying attention to because we can figure out how they did it. We can hear it. We can see the discussions, the reporting on how Trump was suppressed or kicked off. Twitter was very interesting too, is all about how he didn't

violate any policies. They were really struggling because his tweets on Jan six didn't violate a single Twitter policy. And you can see the communications between the Twitter execs like, oh, shit, he actually didn't cross any lines. And then the Twitter employees revolted. They were basically saying he's out of here or we're out of here. And Jack Dorsey bent the knee, ultimately saying, oh, the collective tweets, you know, I don't know, create an atmosphere that's unsafe, whatever. But you can watching the sausage get made on this liberal suppression is dark and illuminating at the same time. How about that?

I think so. Yes. I mean, you know, these that we've been gaslit for so long. And I think that the reason that Elon Musk called to Barry Weiss and Matt Taibbi and other independent journalists was because the public no longer trusts corporate journalists in the same way that it does independent journalists. And the only way to signal to the public

that Twitter would no longer be captured, which we're hoping going forward, it won't have the same censorship, though that remains to be seen. The only way to signal that to the public is to bring in journalists who weren't themselves part of captured organizations. I'm telling you, it's just like Willy Wonka. He could not bring in another candy maker. He had to bring in someone fresh faced and open minded. OK, the you're probably going to be in this group soon and maybe you already are. But I saw you tweeting about the fact that now

that Barry and Matt Taibbi have been doing this reporting, they're being called conservatives by the mainstream press reporting on their reporting. Right. Like, oh, of course, he called some of these conservative. These are not conservatives. I know a lot of conservatives. These are not two of them. They do this to me too. Every article that quotes me or has a segment of mine, conservative podcaster, Megan Kelly, I'm not a conservative. I'm not even a Republican. I don't know what I am. I'm not political. I'm independent. I have strong viewpoints on various things, but they don't all run conservative. Like what are they? So, but your point in your tweet was they're doing that for a reason.

That's right. Twitter and big tech has long been part of a social credit system in which they announce to the world, and they're having a profound effect, they're announcing to the world, these people don't matter. You can ignore them. You can safely ignore them. And I think that has had reverberations across the country, in schools, in school board meetings, in corporations, where certain people are treated and certain viewpoints are treated as if they're beyond the pale and not worthy of fair treatment. And it starts with companies like Twitter, and they've been doing this for years, but the mainstream media has very much been echoing this. And the moment they don't like you, it doesn't matter how liberal, very wise or mad to EBR, they get called a conservative. It's just a way of saying don't bother listening to those folks. Yeah. Even the New York Times had me on their disinformation

list over the Paul Pelosi attack because I said I would like more facts. I'm not sure. And they put me in some Republican, some right wing Republican. I'm like, you know what? Go look it up. You're the New York Times. Check it out. You can see my voting records for the past 20 years. I'm a registered independent. I have been for two decades. Do your homework. It's a way of smearing you. And I don't consider it a negative. I just don't consider it true. So I completely relate to what you're saying. Something you said about the PragerU video stuck with me. So they're labeled adults only, like they're not fit for minors, which is a joke. PragerU video stuck with me. So they're labeled adults only, like they're not fit for minors, which is a joke. PragerU is a gift. Love those guys.

It's exactly the opposite when it comes to the field that you've been writing on for so long, which is this, the transitioning in particular of our young girls and boys. They think anything goes for minors when it comes to that very dicey field. And you were calling attention recently to the testimony of Yale's Dr. Meredith McNamara, who testified before the Florida Medical Board about so-called top surgery, which is a ridiculous term for a double mastectomy, which is major surgery. So we pulled the testimony that you were reacting to. I'll play the soundbite and then you can tell us what, why it grabbed your attention here to SOT11. To be honest, it's so rare. I've never referred a patient for bottom surgery. I don't know of a recent case in which it's been done here. I think what we're dealing with is

extremely rare cases in which that's done. And to my knowledge, it has not been done under the age of legal majority in my institution. And I believe that's the policy of University of Florida and other institutions here in the state. What about for so-called top surgery or mastectomy? The exact same thing. To be honest, I've never referred a patient for surgery. I've never had a patient express that they desire top surgery. And I've never had to explore that because, again, it's quite rare. What did you make of that, Abigail?

Well, to call top surgery quite rare is ridiculous. It's the most common surgery that young women go for. It's the first surgery they want when they declare a transgender identity. And it absolutely happens to minors, sometimes with parents' consent, sometimes without, depending on the state. But we know that there are all kinds of girls as young as 13 have had it for a while, been getting it for a while. We know that now public academic research has come out in the Journal of Pediatrics

showing, JAMA has had two articles now showing just how many young girls under 18 are getting top surgery, meaning elective double mastectomies. So it's in no sense a rare surgery for the transgender population and even for minors who declare a transgender identity. But that's why we have to report on these things, because the public doesn't know. And unfortunately, a lot of people are lying to the public. Right. And who's going to, you have no idea. You're like, okay, she seems like an expert. She says it's not. You have to be very, very doubtful. So this ties into some other reporting that we've been seeing lately. I'll tell you, it was, this article's dated 11-14, right? So it's November 14th. And we get the Times, the Journal and the New York Post delivered to our house every

day. My husband sees this article in the New York Times. I don't remember if it was on the front page, but it was prominently placed. And the headline was they paused puberty. But is there a cost with a question mark? And we both are like, great. The New York Times is actually going to take a look at the downsides of puberty blockers. Like, that's the dawn of a new day.

And the article went on to say there is emerging evidence of potential harm to these puberty blockers, talking in particular about bone density, growth, flatlining. Many do not fully rebound. They lag behind their peers. There's a heightened risk of debilitating fractures earlier than would be expected. Many physicians are prescribing these to patients even at the first stage of puberty, as young as eight years old, and then allowing them to progress to cross-sex hormones as soon as 12. I'm reading this in the New York Times. This is great this is stuff i could read in an abigail schreier article or irreversible damage i'm

thinking okay this is you know they're maybe they're getting more open-minded they talk about um how a transgender adolescent in sweden took these blockers from 11 to 14 no bone scans until the last year of treatment and then they found osteoporosis, full osteoporosis, and the person sustained a compression fracture in his spine, um, causing permanent disability. So they did it. Okay. And then, and then the backlash, right? The, this is just one example, but Teen Vogue took aim at them right after saying they missed the point. This is an unfortunate piece. They go back, Abigail, to the old, they're going to kill themselves if they don't get the puberty blockers. The New York Times has done a disservice to our country. They fail to adequately acknowledge the compounded systemic and direct violence facing the trans community. And as if on cue, within two weeks, we get this

from the Times. Transgender Americans feel under siege as political vitriol rises and back to they're going to commit suicide unless they get the help they I mean, it's crazy. They took one risk. They got hit. They reversed course. This is how it goes. I mean, this is the game they play. The risks that I wrote about near reversible damage, which came out in 2020, I wrote, you 2020, I was writing the book in 2019. These are something they've known about since the beginning. Doctors have known about. We knew the risk of osteoporosis, bone density, because they were blocking puberty.

We knew that a child who didn't go through puberty couldn't go through sexual maturation. We knew that in just thinking about it, that a child who didn't go through sexual maturation might not be fertile. These were all things that we knew. And these were all risks that they willingly and knowingly downplayed and the media participated in and gave cover to them for a very long time. And then when it can no longer be denied, because across Europe, they are banning puberty blockers in institutes, you know, or curtailing their use in France, England, Sweden, everywhere that they have given these things an honest look. Then, you know, suddenly the New York Times, you know, allows a tiny bit of of truth to to to emerge in its pages.

It's it's it's really not an honest broker in any of these conversations. And it's not doing a service to the public. And then they get shamed right out of it and try to post another thing like, they have the risks of suicide if you push back at all. They do in the article, I will say, call attention to the fact that I don't think, you know, they're doing it for the reasons you and I would want them to.

That the American Academy of Pediatrics says blockers can be provided anytime during puberty and hormones from early adolescence onward. The American Academy of Pediatrics. I don't trust anything they say or do. I don't trust them on covid. I don't trust them on this. I've been disgusting, disgustingly disappointed with them. And honest doctors like Vinay Prasad are out there saying the same. What do you make of them? Well, you know, we know that the American Academy of Pediatrics is completely captured. We know that a lot of science organizations are a lot of the medical, all the major medical

accrediting organizations are completely captured. They are committed to woke ideology, often involving denying biology. I mean, they, they really are not honest. And what I always tell parents, and this is really important, is trust yourselves, not the experts when it comes to your children. You are the only person or people who care about your child's welfare in an unselfinterested way and really trust yourselves, but don't trust the experts. The experts at Cambridge Dictionary, redefining woman. I'm sure you saw this trust the experts. The experts at Cambridge Dictionary redefining woman. I'm sure you saw this in the news.

Yeah. Like I sometimes I don't cover this stuff because it really irritates me. It genuinely irritates me. And I but I'm going to. They have added a supplementary definition of a woman that includes transgender individuals. It was unclear when the definition was added. As of march 2022 they said a woman is an adult female human being and that was it now um they say a woman is an

adult who lives and identifies as female though they may have been said to be a different sex at birth by the way my my producers are telling me the um marion webster they added a secondary definition of female that says having a gender identity that's the opposite of male and the cdc the cdc um says that that uh men are capable of breastfeeding and goes on to define chest feeding as a term used by many masculine identified trans people to describe the act of feeding their baby from their chest. They've surrendered. The only ones who haven't so far are Oxford, Collins and Macmillan. What do you make of it? I think these are really significant things. I mean, on the one hand, we read them and we think that's wacky. Everybody knows what a woman is, but they have real impact when you start discussing things like Title IX and Title VII,

which enshrine women's rights. And if those rights are no longer reserved to women, if the ability to compete at high levels of sports are no longer reserved to women, you're ending those rights. You're, the eligibility for those athletic scholarships that, you know, these were very hard won rights for women. So it starts out, it's this quirky sort of queer theory, you know, takeover of our language, but it has very, very tangible rights for women. And I think it's a very, very serious matter. When you wrote Irreversible Damage, this was definitely in full swing, you know, this trans craze sweeping the nation, especially with our young girls. You, Deborah So, and a few others were critical in calling attention to this and I think helping

to pump the brakes a bit. Where do you think we are now going into 2023 versus where we were when you wrote Irreversible Damage? You know, I feel very good about where things ended up with irreversible damage. When the book was published, no one was talking about this. There was virtually no dialogue in the public sphere about what parents should do and what risks there were when a teen girl suddenly announces out of the blue that she's transgender. There was no serious discussion of the risks of the gender medical regime, and they were being actively suppressed by the medical accrediting organizations. So now I think we have a real robust debate in this country, which is always as it should have been't solve if we can talk about it. And that includes pediatric gender medicine. People are going to make all kinds of decisions for themselves. They absolutely

have to know the facts. And before the book came out, I don't think they did. When you came on the very first time, we'll get the episode numbers so the audience, that you've got to go back and listen to that. Honestly, you're going on a drive, pop on that first interview that we did with Abigail, because it was one of my favorites and so illuminating. But one of the issues was how if you put your child in the medical community, you see he or she is like, I'm trans. It comes out of the blue. Because if they really have gender dysphoria, you'll know it from the time they're two, three. It doesn't pop up at 15 or 16 when they start to get a little overweight they start to

get acne and they don't feel like the most popular kid these are all tells that this claim is based on something else but we talked about how you bring them into the psychiatric community and they're like the american academy of pediatrics their knee jerk and their mandate is confirm confirm affirm affirm affirm but you mentioned like sweden and finland and they're now going a different route these are very very left-wing countries they're now placing limits on puberty blockers and other treatments saying that we have to examine more fully among other things the psychiatric issues that may be going out the mental mental health of the patients. That's really important, that switch. Yes, that's right. I mean, we have in this country, affirmative care is the standard,

meaning the doctor's obligation is always to affirm or agree with the patient's self-diagnosis when it comes to gender dysphoria. The idea that someone has the condition of having a severe discomfort in one's biological sex. In this country, there are actually conversion therapy bands. And what that means is, and I last counted, there were 20, I think 22 states. And what that means is that a practitioner, a mental health practitioner who doesn't agree with a young person's diagnosis that they are, they have gender dysphoria or that they're really somehow a boy, if they don't immediately agree, they can be accused of conversion therapy,

converting the person out of being transgender, even a minor, and they can lose their license. Now, this is an incredibly inappropriate incursion on free speech. And I really hope it will one day be challenged in the Supreme Court that doctors are not allowed to freely give their opinions when it comes to gender dysphoria. It is really a limitation on their ability to practice. My gosh. And of course, we're lagging behind Sweden and Finland in figuring this out. But Abigail has actual solutions for parents dealing with this with their kids in irreversible damage. Episode 12. Go back and listen to it. Great to see you again,

my friend. Great to see you. Thank you so much, Megan. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear. you