The Megyn Kelly Show - Smug CNN, Silencing Speech, and Misguided Biden, with Daniel Cameron, Erik Wemple, and Todd Rose | Ep. 254

Episode Date: February 3, 2022

Megyn Kelly takes on CNN's smug sanctimony under Jeff Zucker, plus Erik Wemple, media critic for The Washington Post, Daniel Cameron, Kentucky Attorney General, and Todd Rose, author of "Collective Illusions," to talk about Zucker's involvement in the infamous Cuomo interviews, the truth about the relationship between Zucker and Allison Gollust and the implications of when that began, Biden's misguided violence in America focus, the consequences of defund the police rhetoric, the far left's absurd comments about the police, the identity politics of the left today, the need to speak our mind in our culture today, why we make bad decisions, cancel culture and the outrage mob, how we can avoid the dangers of interacting with bots online, free speech and the danger of silencing voices, the need to grow your "identity complexity," 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 to get to today, but I want to start with CNN, which was at one time known as the most trusted name in news. Where has all that trust and integrity gone? Today, that network is facing a boatload of questions and criticism following the sudden resignation of its president, Jeff Zucker. His demise linked in part to the debacle related to the Cuomos and one of the worst kept secrets in the news business, that he had long been involved with a subordinate, much longer than they are claiming now.

This, as Jeff Zucker's CNN had turned into a network of smug, moralizing and sanctimony. Yes, under his leadership, he took a bunch of anchors who did have credibility, had them activate their opinion side, which was reflective of Jeff Zucker's opinion, we were told by many, to lecture America on its morals and with judgments at every turn over the past five years. The hypocrisy couldn't be more obvious. Take a look. Our task is quite simply to keep alive the spirit of American democracy. Trump again, comparing it to the flu. And where did he get that from? Fair, balanced and unafraid to be dangerously ignorant.

If you voted for Trump, you voted for the person who the Klan supported. The man he called Little Marco, Mr. Bible Boy. You know, he's got a Bible quote for every moment. This country needs a trust injection, a trust infusion. And maybe it starts right here. All right, here is the official reentry from the basement, cleared by CDC. So we have to stop demonizing people and realize the biggest terror threat in this country is white men. It's stunning. And they're going to go back, you know, to the Olive Garden and to the Holiday Inn that they're staying at in the Garden Marriott.

And they're going to have some drinks and they're going to talk about the great day that they had in Washington. And they really did something and stand up for something. And they stood up for nothing. The media must challenge power and the media must stay on the side of the truth. Because we should have worn masks more. We should have social distanced more. I think we have to stop coddling people when it comes to this and the vaccine saying, oh, you can't shame them. You can't call them stupid. You can't call them silly. Yes, they are. And they'll say, well, I'm not racist. I just voted for him because, you know, I I didn't like Hillary Clinton. If you support somebody who does racist things, that makes you racist. OK, there you have it. So we

need a trust infusion as a country that the media must challenge power and stay on the side of truth. Tell it to your own leaders, CNN. Start at home. Eric Wemple is one of the few reporters who's been willing to report the truth about CNN for a long, long time. He is a media critic at the Washington Post, and he joins me now with the latest on this scandal and its fallout. You are one of the only ones to challenge this notion that they are on the side of truth, that they do speak truth to power, that they will challenge power unless it's internal, Eric, in which case they will ignore and blame others as they've been doing all along, right up to and including the firing of Chris Cuomo as if he was the only of the blame for having crossed the line with respect to helping his brother. And, you know, I just I know basically how closely all those people work together.

And I know how closely Jeff Zucker was a hands-on boss at CNN. It just didn't make any sense to me that there was that great a gap between what Chris Cuomo was doing and what Jeff Zucker knew. So I said, you know, this needs to be investigated. There needs to be some honesty and some transparency around this. And so I kept poking around. And it turns out that the original sort of sin, if you will, the original journalistic sin, which was the Cuomo and Cuomo interviews back in the spring of 2020, the top ranks of CNN were very, very much personally involved in making that happen. And now there's a question of exactly what did Jeff Zucker say to Andrew Cuomo at the time? What was Alison Gullust, Jeff Zucker's affair partner?

What was her role in speaking to Andrew Cuomo? What did they say to Andrew Cuomo to secure the interviews? What kind of advice did they give to Andrew Cuomo themselves behind the scenes? Nevermind Chris Cuomo. They're very quick to point the finger at Chris and what Chris did was wrong. But how about these two who are now playing holier than thou? You know, now we know that they were playing holier than thou and ultimately wound up turfing Chris Cuomo all while concealing what they had been doing behind the scenes. Well, they weren't forthcoming about this, right? I mean, basically what you have is Alison Dulles,

and I hear Zucker as well, although the CNN denies that he was directly involved in trying to book the former governor. But basically calling this guy and saying, please come on our air, please come on Cuomo primetime. You know, I would say in most contexts, that's not a huge problem because news networks commonly deploy all kinds of people to get interviews. And I think that that can be a healthy and perfectly fine sort of thing. But in this case, they were deploying personally their top staffers, their top executives, I should say, to get interviews that were blatantly in contravention of their own journalistic standards. So, hey, let me go and really hustle to know. Here's what I want to know. What was said? What was said by Allison, who worked for Andrew Cuomo and was said to be close to him? What was said by Jeff Zucker specifically in any conversations he had with Andrew Cuomo was advice given on how to handle any particular issue. How far did he go? Right.

Because we already had Donald Trump suggesting that Jeff Zucker had been guiding him or trying to to the extent anybody can guide Trump had been guiding him with respect to Trump's interviews. Totally inappropriate. So did Jeff Zucker do that for Andrew Cuomo? I mean, how intimately involved was he? Because that would be an ethical stain as well. That would be. That would be. I don't have anything reportable on that just yet, but obviously there was talk, right? There was conversation. And people chat, blah, blah, blah. I do think that your investigative focus there is well placed because Lord knows as you say, correctly for crossing the line over into helping the executive chamber of Andrew Cuomo, or at least providing advice to the executive chamber on how to handle the governor's sexual harassment crisis. So I don't think that you can then turn around and have it revealed that there was something more than just straight up journalistic business on these calls.

Exactly right. And what of her relationship with him? I want to know more about how many times they spoke and how many times she utilized that connection, because if they're going to fire Chris Cuomo for stepping over that ethical line, then they need to be honest about what ethical lines they may have crossed and just how far over they went. That's correct. And a germane fact here is that Alison Gullis did serve for a brief period, I believe in 2012, as the communications director for Andrew Cuomo. And so she had familiarity with him and they were tight. And then she was at NBC and then went back with Zucker when Zucker became the boss of CNN in January 2013. So there is that sort of revolving door aspect of this, which I think is always kind of questionable, sleazy, you know, problematic because, you know, at some point these people lose sort of perspective on what profession they're in. You know, are they in a reporter covering this particular story, you want to keep those boundaries in mind and impress these people on precisely what was discussed.

Can I ask you, so it is it's been widely reported now by many sources that several people within CNN are calling BS on this claim by Zucker and Gallus that it only started recently the affair that that um it happened as she claimed during covid this my my own reporting during covid yeah yeah my own reporting uh and my sources tell me that's a lie that's a hundred percent untrue that this affair has been going on for years katie couric alluded to it in her book, suggesting it may have been going on back when her daytime series was being executive produced by Jeff Zucker, which was prior to 2013 when he took over CNN. They were both divorced in or around 17 and 18 from their respective spouses. This would mean that they were cheating on spouses with one another at the office place. And it would also suggest that there's a reason why they don't want to admit that if it had been going on for that long, Eric,

then it means he promoted her up the ranks several times while he was her boss and sleeping with her. That's what it means. What's the reason for saying it only started recently? That's the reason. That's what I have deduced. The reason you don't want to say it's been going on for years is because they don't want people to know. She got promoted time and time again while she was sleeping with the boss. If that's true, she needs to go as well. Oh, well, that's very heavy. And I've heard a lot of, you know, the discussion of this, that it was common knowledge that it predated that. I've also heard a little pushback that, you know, no, this is relatively recent. I would say that the statement from Gullis was very carefully couched, right? She said that the relationship changed in the middle of COVID. I'm

not sure exactly what that means, but I don't think that you're off base in inferring from that statement that it turned romantic at that time. So I do think that that maybe they're trying to be lawyerly or technical there. Maybe they're trying to say they broke up during COVID because they have been together for years. I mean, for years. And it's been an open secret in the industry and maybe not even a secret, depending on who you ask. That's Soledad O'Brien, who used to work at CNN, was tweeting that out the other day. I have several sources inside of CNN and connected to CNN. And I have some impeccable sources who are telling me that this is the case, that they've been together for years. They can deny it. The truth is going to come out. It always does. If you get caught in something like this, it's just better to

show your cards. Just don't just try not to dodge because the truth will always come out. And if he'd been doing this, then it is a very big deal. And that's what I've been trying to say when I see people like Alison Camerata on TV yesterday, I mean, almost in open tears, watching this guy go down. I'll show the audience the clip and the folks at home can listen to it or watch it back on our YouTube channel later. But to me, completely insensitive to, for example, other people in the PR shop who may now be wondering why they didn't get promoted over and over and did not wind up executive vice presidents who and our colleagues. This is an incredible loss. It's an incredible loss. Jeff is a remarkable person and an incredible leader. He has this uncanny ability to make, I think, every one of us feel special and valuable in our own way, even though he is managing an international news organization of thousands of people. I just know that he had this unique ability to make us feel special. And I don't

think that that comes around all the time. And I think, again, it's an incredible loss. And I just think it's so regrettable how it happened. If what you're reporting is true. These are two consenting adults who are both executives that they can't have a private relationship feels wrong. Except she wasn't always an executive and who promoted her. He did. And Allison does not speak for all of CNN staff, current and former. I can tell you that for sure. And there's a real question about whether he did make everyone feel special, including the other people in the PR shop who were passed over for promotions while Alison Gullis kept moving up the ranks, Eric. Well, I think that, you know, I think you're asking the right questions. I do think, you know, if you did the rewind on CNN a few years, they would be all talking about power imbalances, right? And the importance of, you know,

disclosure and, you know, workplace power imbalances. You know, if a boss has a relationship with a subordinate, that's a problem in and of itself. It's on their website right it is and so for cnn to be taking a different position on air is really kind of eye-opening it suggests that there's just there's a circumstantial or or uh you know just a sort of random randomness to their principles i can't imagine can you yeah exactly um but i do think you know, there may be an argument there that this is just a perfectly consensual and not a problematic sort of thing. But if we are to get to that point, there needs to be a lot more disclosure. My sense is that it is problematic and that it's true that he violated these company standards and practices. And he admitted that. I think that standards and practices, and he admitted that.

I think that perhaps the accent should be placed on that. There's reason why those disclosure rules are in place. And the reason they're in place is for reasons that CNN throughout Me Too has been very, very vocal in broadcasting, if you understand what I'm saying. I do. I totally understand. And I will say there's another shoe to drop in this story. This is not the full story. We're going to get more on their relationship and we're going to get more on the bigger picture, I predict, over the next week. But here's what they said when they fired Chris Cuomo. And you reported this at the time. Chris had come back and said through his representatives, oh, there were no

secrets between Chris Cuomo and Jeff Zucker about what Chris was doing with respect to Andrew Cuomo. No secrets at all. And CNN came out and made a statement, quote, Chris has made a number of accusations that are patently false. This reinforces why he was terminated for violating our standards and practices, as well as his lack of candor that he was fired for, in part, his lack of candor. OK, so let's see whether Jeff Zucker and Alison Gallist in particular will be held to that same standard. Your lack of candor gets you canned at CNN, the most trusted name in news.

You were pointing out during the whole pandemic from the Cuomo brothers show forward that they were violating their own standards and practices. And this attempt to blame it all on Chris Cuomo, I want to quote you exactly because you really, you nailed it. You said, and I quote, hold on. The scale of Chris Cuomo's misdeeds should not be diminished. They were certainly lapses on a grand scale. But make no mistake, he had accomplices. to this, that's true. I mean, it's sort of ironic that Chris Cuomo fell in part or mainly because of his line crossing with his brother, which was basically, you know, enabled, promoted, and even executed by his bosses. So there's a complete vacuum of authority, of ethical authority here. You know what I mean? There's no ethical authority in the organization at all regarding this particular journalistic principle.

And so I think that's a huge problem for CNN. And, you know, that isn't to excuse what Chris Cuomo did. I think Chris Cuomo acted unwisely and unethically, and he should have just taken a leave of absence to help his brother. And as a side note, it's clear from the transcripts in that investigation, in the AG's investigation into Andrew Cuomo, it's clear from all those transcripts that nobody was particularly listening to Chris Cuomo either. So he threw his career or at least his job away for almost no impact on this pushback operation. They weren't really listening to him. Well, let's not forget the other piece of this. So when Chris Cuomo's more extensive efforts to help his brother came out, thanks to the attorney general investigation. It wasn't just the on air interviews.

It was behind the scenes advising. It was oppo research on the women way beyond the pale and on and on it went. Originally, Jeff Zucker stood by him and everyone wondered why. Is that just because they're friends? Well, now this new revelation adds a whole new layer of reasons to question. Was it because he was ethically compromised and he knew it and therefore wasn't in a position to fire Chris Cuomo, who had the goods on him and appears to now be using them? Right. Is that why Jeffrey Toobin is still there? Is that why Don Lemon never faced any repercussions for the public allegations against him? And then in a lawsuit that's going to trial this summer, it it raises real questions about whether Jeff Zucker has been compromised for a long time and making decisions out of self-interest as opposed to protecting the most trusted name in news.

You know, it's a good question. I don't know the answer. It sort of requires more knowledge than I have at this point. But what I would say is that it may be difficult to distinguish between whether he was compromised and how close he was with his talent. He was known for being extremely close to all of his producers and his hosts. And they, you know, the sentiment that Alice and Camerata expressed yesterday on CNN was by no means a minority position, at least among the top ranks. You know, Zucker did a tremendously diligent job of keeping in touch with them, texting them constantly, you know, sort of heating their emotional and their intellectual needs and so on and so forth. He was very, very much present for that. That was obvious when you looked at Brian Stelter's reporting. I mean, can I just ask you before I let you go? What about him?

Because he came out. I mean, he's been reporting on this all along, more like he is their press secretary, right? Like he he's like their stenographer as opposed to their in-house media watchdog. And what of him and his apparent unwillingness to stay on what's happening within his own shop? Well, I mean, I have a little bit of a different viewpoint on that. For the most part, I think that Stelter and his people in problem that you just cited, which is becoming a sort of an in-house propagandist for CIA. Maybe not propagandist, but excuse maker. Of course. When all this stuff flared last year, Brian said, I believe on air, that there's no guidebook for a situation like this. There's no page in the ethics handbook

for Chris's behavior. That was absurd. That was outrageous. And Brian, I think really went off the rails there. As I say, I usually think that he does a pretty good job of holding his people to account. But that was a gross, gross. Well, but here's the other thing, Eric, if this really was an open secret within the halls of CNN, that you've got the CEO of the company having an affair with an executive vice president whose promotions he oversaw and whose employment he oversaw at a minimum. There will be questions about whether Brian Stelter should have been more interested in reporting on that because he certainly has reported on other intra-office affairs, liaisons, potential harassment situations. Who right who knows especially in any

scenario she was under jeff zucker in any scenario i agree with your analysis but i would also say that that same um that those same questions need to fall on people like me and anybody else who covers the media because we had heard it too maybe he was a little closer to it but i think that i should be held accountable for that just as much as he does and all of us who are in the media covering industry or niche i should say because i feel that you know it's a ball that i appear to have dropped or obviously dropped um well but you've already proven your independence i will say that you've already proven your independence and what's happened in this industry is too many people want to be on CNN and other channels like it, and they don't want to cross somebody like Jeff

Zucker. Thankfully, you've never been one of those people. You've fired off barbs against Fox, against even me, against CNN. And I appreciate it. While it's never pleasant to be on the receiving end of it, I appreciate the fact that you will report on anybody without fear or favor, as they say. Eric, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for having me on. Yeah, you bet. Before we move on to the tease, I've got to tell the audience something.

The guys at Ruthless, you know we love them. They're hilarious. So I listen to their podcast whenever I can. And this morning I opened it up. And I hear these three guys. You know we love them. And do you know how they opened their podcast whenever I can. And this morning I opened it up and I hear these three guys, you know, we love them. And do you know how they opened their podcast? They opened their podcast, this is them singing. Okay. Listen to it. Hey girl, what you doing down there? Dancing alone every night while I live right above you. I can hear your music playing. I can hear your body swaying.

One floor below me, you don't even know me. I love you. Oh, my darling. Knock three times on the ceiling if you want me. Twice on the pipe if the answer is no. Oh, my sweetness. Means you'll meet me in the hallway. Oh, my sweetness means you'll meet me in the hallway. Oh, my God. Oh, twice on the pipe means you ain't gonna show.

You got to appreciate a little little moment to laugh in the midst of this crazy scandal because you know of course the reporting is that she lived one floor above him with her husband and her three kids or however many kids um and he was married at the time and she was married at the time and he had four kids and weirdly they wound up living in the very same building together one floor away at a time in which my sources tell me they were very much having an affair. Okay, guys at Ruthless, thank you for the morning smile and for giving us a chance to laugh in the midst of all this aggravation. Up next, Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron is here. Very excited to talk to him about COVID, crime as Joe Biden finally makes it to New York, oh, one day after the funeral of

the fallen cops, and much, much more. Joining me now, Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron. Great to have you back, sir. Thanks for being here. Of course. Thank you, Megan. I appreciate it. All right. So let's kick it off with Joe Biden, the president, coming to New York City today. Conveniently, one day after the funeral of that second fallen officer, two cops killed a week ago in Harlem while trying to effect an arrest of a bad guy who's also dead now, thanks to the bullet of a third rookie cop who was with them, 22-year-old and 27-year-old cops, the streets of New York filled with police in a way I've never seen before.

It was really stunning. It was chilling. And it was very emotional. And so Joe Biden comes to town. He could have made it to the funeral of Officer William Mora. He didn't. He decided to wait and come today. And he says he's coming now because he wants to highlight New York. And I'm quoting

now as a great example of a city successfully deploying a strategy to fight violent crime. What are you telling me? What is what is he saying? How could he say that on the heels of what just happened here? And of course, 2021 was the deadliest year for law enforcement ever. And New York is facing record crime rates right now. Yeah, Megan, it's, you know, Joe Biden, the president sounds like Johnny come lately on this. We saw in 2021, the Democratic Party spent most of the year talking about defund the police. And the consequences of the defund the police sort of idea or vision or mindset is what you're seeing play out all across this country, a rampant increase in violent crime. And it's so disappointing to have leadership in the Democratic

Party that talks about defunding the police. Again, they are now, Johnny, come lately to the party of wanting to highlight violent crime. But your viewers, your listeners, folks all across America recognize and have recognized that this is an issue. And so the president is slow to address it. I know there's been Republican leadership and men and women of law enforcement that have been craving the attention and the help. You know, a lot of folks, again, have talked about defunding the police. It's my view and I think the view of a lot of common sense Americans and folks, again, that are listening and watching it, that we need to take every opportunity to encourage, to speak encouragement into our law enforcement community, but also put money where our mouth is and help support them however we can.

And again, I think it's disappointing that the president and a lot of his party have been Johnny-come-latelys on this. You know that their main focus is guns. That's the only thing that they are focused on guns, guns, guns, gun violence. They don't they're not actually focused on fighting crime. They're focused on just getting guns off the street, which I mean, OK, but there are over 400 million guns in America and they're not going to get the guns off the street even if they could do it. Right. And so now you've got a situation where they're saying, OK, we'll do we'll do gun reform. And even Al Sharpton is out there saying, all right, we'll work on crime just as long as it's it's about guns. That's that's all I want to hear. I don't want any tougher on crime policies is basically what he's saying. And Joe Biden indeed is proposing none. So you tell me whether anything changes in New York, in Chicago, in Philly, in San Fran, in L.A., and I don't know how things are in Kentucky. I hope better unless we get rid of these soft on crime DAs for one example. Yeah, well, I'll say here

in Kentucky, our largest city, Louisville, saw a record number of homicides last year in 2021, but that was preceded by a record high number in 2020. Last year, we had over 180 homicides in Louisville. And so we are seeing a lot of bad guys, violent criminals emboldened by this view that it can be open season on our law enforcement community and open season on a lot of members in our community are just trying to go about their every day and provide for their families and come home and be safe. So it again, the only way that something is going to change, albeit or with related to this administration is if we change the administration that is in the current in the White House right now, because I think they feel hamstrung and are not willing to say

what the problem is, which is there are bad people out here. We've got to make sure that our law enforcement community feels emboldened to go after those folks and fight crime the way it needs to be fought. that doesn't feel particularly sympathetic when the cops get shot. And they're not when crime rises, they see it as some sort of a social statement about how bad America is and not as something to be targeted with more cops or laws or prison time. Susan Sarandon might be an example of that. You and I look at the swaths of police officers covering the sidewalks in Manhattan yesterday and then earlier last week on the first funeral of the first fallen officer and think, oh, my gosh. I mean, any normal human is moved by that. She tweeted something out saying this is what fascism looks like.

Fascism. And then she added in her own captions. So if all these cops weren't needed for crime that day, doesn't that mean they aren't needed any day? How does the president deal with that many ways hamstrung by that faction of the left of his party that is adamantly opposed to law and order, to the law enforcement community and makes just disparaging comments like that. Again, Megan, to your point, you see those images out of New York and just know how powerful those images are and how somber that day was. I know here in Kentucky recently we had an officer that was ambushed and killed. These are trying and unbelievable, unbelievably difficult times for our law enforcement community all across the country. And I think as leaders, particularly on my side of the aisle, we have to be able to speak empowerment into our law

enforcement community. We have to encourage them. And again, to your point, there are a lot of folks that perhaps are not center right or not, but are center left that know and see what is happening in this country and recognize the importance of having a law enforcement community that feels empowered to do their jobs to make sure that all of us can exist and live safely in our homes. You see that we put up a picture of Officer Mora's grieving mom receiving the flag his family pointed out that he even in death he saved people they donated five of his organs this i mean 27 year old guy with everything in front of him you can see the pain on his mother's face and you see people like susan sarandon or there's been like this teacher who took a shot at them. And I could go on with a list of lefties who have attacked the cops for mourning and think there's no getting through to them. There's no humanity there. There's not like they just see the cops as one big racist mob that has to be stopped because you've got little kids, you've got seven-year-old girls. And for what it's worth to them, girls of color, brown and black girls getting shot in the head

and dying, they don't care. They don't care. The obsession with skin color stops when you get to the streets of Chicago, right? If it's black on black crime in that circumstance, they don't care. It's so frustrating. I'm sure it is to you because certainly as a black Republican, you've had race thrown in your face many, many times. We talked about that the last time you were on. Yeah, I mean, it is frustrating that a lot of times that the narrative in the media or the narrative in the national conversation revolves around the idea that there are a lot of

bad cops out of here that don't like folks of color, don't like Black people, don't like Black Americans. That is disappointing to say the least about this national narrative, because there are a lot of folks within the Black community. I dare say the majority of the folks in the black community. I think there's some polling on this, that the idea or the notion that we would defund the police, the police that are trying to make sure that our communities are kept safe, is anathema to a lot of black Americans who just want to make sure that they're able to provide for their families and be safe in their homes and in their communities. And unfortunately, you have comments made like that of Mr. Arandan, who, again, disparage the idea of law enforcement, disparage the idea of law and order. But that image you showed of, again, New York and just the, New York and, um, just the outpouring of support there. Um, that's really encouraging. And again, I, I think that, um, after an entire year spent by the democratic party of talking about defunding the police, um, I think they are seeing the

ramifications of that, the consequences of that. And it's going to take, again, to the point I was making earlier, it's going to take you, me, a lot of folks of goodwill speaking truth and power into our law enforcement community and talking about the good things they do to protect all our communities across this country. The rhetoric from groups like Black Lives Matter hasn't helped. And now they're in the news. Now, the the one time head of this group, she was the founder, Alicia Garza. Boy, oh, boy, she came after you. Just to remind our audience, you were in charge of the investigation into what cops, if any, would be charged in connection with the Breonna Taylor death.

Breonna Taylor was shot and killed by police officers who went into her house and they had announced themselves. But her boyfriend drew a gun and shot one cop in the femur and they returned fire, killing Breonna. And you declined to, well, you brought to a grand jury, but you didn't recommend charges against those cops because they were shooting in self-defense, except for one guy who's actually about to go on trial this week for just randomly shooting into a bunch of apartments. He's going to face justice. and connected to it, saying, basically comparing you to Bull Connor, you know, ripped on you for being a black man who wasn't, as she thought, loyal enough to your skin color as opposed to the need for justice. And now we find out that Black Lives Matter is in a whole host of legal trouble of its

own. There is a report today and yesterday, a couple of them from the Daily Mail. Indiana Attorney General slamming BLM as a falling house of cards before the activist group shut down all of its fundraising websites late Wednesday. They've been forbidden from collecting donations in California and Washington due to their lack of financial transparency. But reportedly they continue to do so the indiana attorney general um that who i mentioned he compared them to an illegal enterprise following a pattern of financial scheming and then today it came out that but more about the california letter threatening to hold the founders and the leaders personally liable if they fail to disclose the financial records about their 60 million in donations within the next two months,

saying you may not be a charity at all if you can't produce the facts about where this money went. You as an attorney general in the state of Kentucky, what do you make of it? Well, you know, I've had my concerns about the Black Lives Matter movement organization itself, simply because I think a lot of what they preach or espouse is the breakdown of the family and the destruction of the core of our society, which is a mother and a father and children. I know a dad now who has a son, how important it is for that nuclear family. And so a lot of what Black Lives Matterita, the Attorney General in Indiana, or some of the information that is coming out and some of the allegations that are being made is that a lot of this is a ruse, that the financial or the funds that have been given to this organization are not for any beneficial purpose other than to line the pockets of some of the leadership of that

organization. So that's obviously disappointing to hear and to hear those allegations. But again, to my primary point, the Black Lives Matter organization is about the destruction of the American family and some of the views that, again, they espouse related to something that looks different from and not at all related to the democracy that we have enjoyed here and that was put forth at our founding. They seek to destroy what is, again, the traditional values of this country. And that's why I've been concerned about the organization. And obviously, some of these things that we are hearing now shine a better light on just some of the behind the scenes dealings that are happening with that organization. Yeah, they're in a whole host of legal trouble of their own right now. All right, you heard General Cameron mention his new little baby, only a couple of weeks old now, Theodore.

We're going to get into what fatherhood is like. And he also used to work for Mitch McConnell, who's being attacked now for not having any female black staffers. I don't know what's happening, Daniel, but more with Daniel Cameron on all of that right after this break. Let's start with Mitch McConnell. It's kind of a cool story. Did you do like an internship? You had a connection to him when

you were young, like a scholarship or something, and then you went back and worked for him? That's right. I was what's called a McConnell Scholar at the University of Louisville here in Kentucky. It's a program that he established with the help of a few other folks a long time ago to keep Kentuckians in Kentucky and give them a sort of a world-class education at the University of Louisville. I got to know him through that program. Of course, I think some of your viewers know this. I played football at UofL. Now that's generous to say I played. I was on the bench a lot, but he's an avid UofL football fan. And so we struck up a friendship based on that and realized that our political philosophies were aligned. And so I had an interest in interning for him and actually did that while I was in

undergrad. And then did it again while I was in law school. I clerked or I interned for his then legal counsel. And then I said, you know, I don't know if I want to go back to DC next necessarily, but if I get an opportunity to do that job, I will. And of course I was fortunate to be his legal counsel for a period of time before coming back to Kentucky and working at a firm and running for attorney general. Well, he got putting across here is the question of, you know, Joe Biden saying, I'm going to nominate a black woman to the Supreme Court has been bounced around on both sides. And he got the question put to him this week by Latino rebels correspondent Pablo Menriquez as follows. Take a listen.

How many black women do you have on staff and how are they informing your decision to move forward with this nomination? Yeah, actually, I haven't checked. We don't have a racial quota in my office, but I've had a number of African-American employees, both male and female, over the years in all kinds of different positions, including speechwriter. What do you make of it? They're clearly trying to paint him as, you know, not committed to diversity, and thus, who is he to criticize Joe Biden's pick? Yeah, it's an absurd notion. Megan, you know that the New York Times a few years ago did a whole profile on Mitch McConnell's commitment to civil rights. And like most things that occur His comment about having hired folks that look like me is very true. His speechwriter was a gentleman named Justin Jones.

Alex Jenkins is somebody that's working in the office currently. I've obviously worked there. This is, again, something that the left is trying to do to sort of paint a picture that is simply not true. And so it disappoints me to see the left try to use this. But this is this is how they this is a lot of times how they operate is try to dive into identity politics. And if you don't agree with them, you're either a racist or a bigot. And so it's not an uncommon playbook. I've obviously, as you noted, had things of this guilt happen to me here in Kentucky from sort of the liberal side of the aisle.

But you just put your head down and you keep doing the work. And Mitch McConnell, in all the years that I've known him, just keeps doing the work and keeps getting the job done for the men, women, children here in the Commonwealth and then on the judiciary and our federal system, but also in being helpful in legislation that has been passed in his time there in Washington. But this is a nothing story. The left will continue to try to gin this up over the course of this nomination process. Absolutely. Once he actually selects the black woman, any criticism going her way will be blamed on sexism or racism or what have you. So you're going to have to have, you know, steely spine to see this through. And of course, the non-sexist, non-racist thing to do is to criticize whoever the nominee is just the same way as you would anybody else and not treat, I can speak for women at least, us like we need to be coddled, like we can't take, you know, it's like that it's so absurd the place to which we've gotten. I want to shift gear to something happier. Now you have become a father. And you tell me whether that has made, because last time I was really encouraging you to run for president. You tell me whether this has encouraged you at all. I know maybe you'll go for Kentucky governor at some point, but, you know, we could use great talent.

You're now of legal age. You just have to be 35 to aspire toward bigger office to make his life an even better place. Well, look, he is the joy of of our hearts and our eyes, it changes your perspective. Obviously, I talk a lot about the pro-life movement and how important that is to me, but you become keenly invested in the pro-life values when you have your own son or own daughter, you hear that ultrasound or hear that heartbeat for the first time, you see those ultrasound images becomes all the more real for you. You know, we'll, Mackenzie and I will have a conversation about, you know, the, what our future looks like in terms of the Commonwealth of Kentucky. But right now we're just trying to get Theodore on a routine or a schedule. It's one thing to sort of watch the videos and listen to and read the books. It's

another thing to have a child in your home, a newborn. I've often told people that as attorney general, a lot of my problems stop at midnight. With Theodore, he's just getting started. So welcome to parenthood. Look, I'm so happy for both of you. Congrats on it. By the way, congrats on your big win in challenging the vaccine mandate handed down by the Biden administration too. You did that one and look forward to continuing the discussion another time. All the best. Thank you. All right. Thanks, Megan. Coming up, why does it seem there are so many bad decisions being authored or being made these days? One author has dug into the science and he's next.

We've talked a lot on this episode about bad decisions made by a variety of people. But what is it that drives bad decision making? Bestselling author Todd Rose has done the research and his new book, Collective Illusions, Conformity, Complicity, and the Science of Why We Make Bad Decisions is out this week. Todd, hi, how are you? I'm well, how are you doing? I'm great. First of all, can you just give us the thumbnail on your background? Because it's fascinating. You went to Harvard and taught at Harvard, but it didn't begin like that.

No, it really didn't. Yeah. So I actually was a high school dropout. And it's actually worse than that. I filled out with a 0.9 GPA, which I think you have to work really hard to do that poorly. And not too long after getting kicked out, my girlfriend, who's still my wife today, found out she was pregnant. So we started our adult lives without a high school diploma, ended up on welfare, did a bunch of mid-waves jobs, and then had to claw our way back, but ended up being able to live the American dream. It's amazing.

How did you get into Harvard with a 0.9? Well, I ended up going, got my GED and went to night school at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah, open enrollment, $800 a term and found myself there and figured out who I was and ended up graduating with a 397 in pre-med and psychology, and then went to Harvard. Okay, but this would be a great boon to you, these beginnings, because you would look at Harvard, at academia, at the criteria that we

use to admit people and decide who's going to be a success and who's not, with a much more skeptical eye than probably most people who go there and teach there or other institutions like it. And one of the things that jumped out at me was you left Harvard because you felt like it's a lie. Like, I'm not living my values. I don't agree with the way they're doing this. What do you mean? Well, look, I mean, I really enjoyed my time there. And they're just wonderful people. I enjoyed it. But the structure of higher education in general, I believe that everyone has something to contribute.

And we're all better off when we're betting on everyone in America to pursue a good life and make a contribution. And any system that is about false scarcity, where quality equals how few people you can actually educate, seemed counter to my values. And so while I love the people, I felt like the longer I stayed in that institution, the more of a hypocrite I would be. And so me and my co founder left Harvard, and we started our own think tank populace. And it's been just wonderful. All right. So now before we get on to a collective illusions, which are basically social lies, and it's fascinating. I want to ask you about because I'm now in this and I have three kids and they're still little, but I hear the parents of teenagers obsessing obsessive over college and where where's junior going to go? And, you know, junior is going to get rejected from most of the colleges because that's just the way the acceptance rates work. So what do you want those parents to know about Junior and his chances for success

when he gets rejected from every Ivy League school? Look, I actually spend a lot of time studying this and looking at success and how people achieve it. And what we know for sure is that this idea that we all have to go to one of 10 schools, like privately in America, the overwhelming majority of people don't believe that. But back to these collective illusions, they are absolutely convinced that everybody else agrees this is the only path to success. And so when push comes to shove, they end up taking their child and instead of cultivating their unique gifts and helping them make a great contribution to society, we funnel them into this standard path and end up having them compete to

be just like everybody else. And the thing I would say to these parents is there's really not a future in that. If you want to do right by your kid, you teach them good values. You teach them to know who they are, figure out what they're passionate about and what they're good at, and help turn that into a contribution. And there are a thousand schools that are phenomenally good at doing this at a good price point. You don't have to break the bank. And the cachet that comes with that elite brand isn't really all it's cracked up to be, I promise you. You know, it's particularly good if you can figure out what city you want your kid wants to be in or generally, because if you go to a great institution in or around the talk about the 1930s Elm Hollow slash Mrs. Salt academic study. What is that and how does it help us understand why collective

illusions are a problem? Yeah. Well, let me tell you what they are and then we can circle back to Elm Hollow. So simply collective illusions, as you said, are social lies. And they happen in situations where a majority of people in a group end up going along with something that they don't privately agree with only because they incorrectly believe that most other people in the group actually agree with the idea, right? And as a result, an entire group can end up doing things that almost nobody really wants. And look, you know what I mean, right? We've all had those moments where we thought we're the only ones in the room who hold a certain view, right? And so

rather than speak up, we just say nothing, right? We go silent and we're not alone. You know, research shows that right now in America, two thirds of all Americans admit to self-silencing and you can see the problem here, right? If most people self-silence and then the loud fringe is the only voice that people hear and the results of collective illusion. And that's exactly what's going on in America today. So what does this study prove to us? Just that it's a phenomenon, that it is a thing? Well, here's the thing. Like you would imagine that that kind of like rampant misunderstanding would be rare, but it turns out it's not.

Not today. We've known about collective illusions in research for about 100 years, all the way back to this Elm Hollow, what we can talk about. What's different today is how easy social media allows us to create them and scale them. And so what we're seeing now is rather than a one-off phenomenon, basically you name anything that matters in society today, and it's a coin toss whether you're wrong about the group or not. We're very bad at figuring out how other people actually feel, but we think we're very good at it. Yeah. Well, this is the heart of collective illusions, right? People think,

well, maybe it requires like a bad actor or biased media or something to create that misunderstanding, but it's actually just part of how our brains are wired. So our brains crave conformity. I mean, we are wired to be with our group, not against it, right? Everybody prefers to be with the group. The problem is, is that we are actually spectacularly bad at guessing group consensus because our brain takes a really weird shortcut. This is no kidding. Your brain assumes the loudest voices repeated the most are the majority. So you can see the problem, right? And in today's society, it was one thing when we interact with each other face to face, but on social media right now,

we know from research that say on Twitter, 80% of all content is created by 10% of the users. And according to Pew Research, that 10% isn't remotely like the rest of the country. They are extreme on almost every social issue. But the problem there, right, is if 10% of people hold an opinion, but you think it's 80%, then your brain will assume it's the majority. And you'll be convinced that that's true.

And if you don't want to go against that majority, you'll just self-silence, right? And if enough of us do that, then the fringe view is the only view people hear. The results are collective illusion. I'm trying to remember the story. And I can't remember whether it was Reagan or whether it was the Russians. My facts are sort of melding, but it was a story about how somebody wanted to win over the crowd and didn't have enough supporters in the crowd and just made sure that they clapped the loudest and yelled the loudest and effectively convinced the crowd that the crowd was on said person's side. Are you familiar with this? Absolutely. And I talk about this in the book about ways that we can get duped into just blindly conforming to what we think is the majority when it's like a fringe.

And that term is called the clackers. And it was actually invented all the way back in Rome with Nero, who, you know, besides being a crazy emperor, thought he was like really great actor and musician. He wasn't. But, you know, he wanted everyone to think that. So he brought people and placed them in the audience and had them applaud wildly anytime he did something. So people were like, wow, I guess this is what we do. And that was used all the way through like French theater. And it's still used today. If you think about it, why do sitcoms use a laugh track? That's right. It makes us feel like it must be funny. And so we can get caught up in the emotion of a few well-placed people speaking up, in this case, applauding, and you can create it.

And by the way, just for fun, I actually tried this. Just do this. If you're at some event and someone's speaking, just applaud when they're done and just watch how many people will just go along with you. It's pretty funny. So it's kind of sad. I feel like it's a little bit of a sad commentary

on how needy we are for approval and to feel like we belong to the group, that we're not really forming our own opinions, that we go into a room or we turn on a show or we go on the Internet and we're so easily manipulated by the fringes and then get swept up in the need to belong that at the end of the day, do we even know? Do most of us even know what we really believe? Well, what's so interesting is that, you know, we do a lot of private opinion research at my think tank, Populous, which is get around the effects of social pressure, get at what people privately value. And it turns out people have a reasonably good sense for what they care about and prioritize. But to your point, because we're hardwired to be a social species, that sense of belonging can override our own values if we're not careful. to be a social species. That sense of belonging can override our own values

if we're not careful. I mean, it's remarkable in the neuroscience research that I've done in the past and others have done. It is unbelievable. You put someone in a scanner and you ask them questions about something as subjective as like, whether you think someone's good looking.

Seriously, someone got paid to do that kind of research. But when I tell you that your subjective opinion is the same as the group, you get a reward, a dopamine reward response, the same kind of response that hard drugs create. So we are wired to be part of a group. That does not mean blind conformity. It just means, right, it's better together. But what we've lost right now as a society is that sense of independence, that sense of ability to hold our own judgment. We are so we so need to belong. And

all that's left are these large, like national groups like our politics that we're clinging to rather than actually holding a sense of who we are and what really matters to us. You know, it's fascinating. I was just talking to somebody, a friend of mine, and she was saying she she was never really political before Trump, but she went to a Trump rally and it was like the greatest thing she'd ever done. She felt a sense of belonging. She felt love. She felt uplifted. She felt like she was doing something that mattered. And I was getting it. You know, I was understanding the affinity she instantly developed for sort of the MAGA crowd, not even just Trump, just like the MAGA crowd and being part of something she

felt mattered. Right. And we all need some of that, right? And one of the things we've lost in society, and, you know, the scholar Robert Putnam talks about this in Bowling Alone, we used to be a society that had a nice middle layer of civic organizations. We belong to a lot of things, our churches, even like our bowling leagues. And that gave us a lot of meaningful groups to be a part of. That's gone. That's disappearing. And what's left again is everything's been centralized. Power is all at the federal level. We've gotten away from our core founding ideals of decentralization.

And one of the consequences is now it's just identity politics, right? And I don't blame people for needing that sense of belonging, but boy, there's gotta be more than that. And right now with collective illusions, this adds a new wrinkle to the problem, right? It's bad enough to give up your own judgment

just to go with the group. It's a whole nother problem when you were It's bad enough to give up your own judgment just to go with the group. It's a whole nother problem when you were wrong about the group to begin with. So your conformity, your need to belong is literally destroying the group because it is not what the group actually wanted. But now we see so much pushing back on it. Now you see people saying, just to take a few examples, I will not be silenced on my belief that COVID started in a lab. I that's what I believe. And I'm going to talk about it even if I would be silenced by social media. Right. Which you would have before. Or, you know, in the case of, let's say, trans men and women, you see people saying, no, I know there it's not birthing people. It's birthing women, right? No, you cannot shame me out of my belief that women are the only ones who can get pregnant and give birth to a baby. You can shame me about language all you want, but no, I know what I believe, even if I'm standing in a room, collectively the internet, that's telling me I'm a bad person

for holding onto this thing that we all believe forever up until about a year ago. So you're seeing more and more people push back on it. Why is that? Well, look, I think we're starting to feel the consequences of the betrayal of our own values. And look, we know every time we act incongruently, right? When our public selves are different than our private selves, it takes an enormous toll on our mental health, our wellbeing, and our sense of purpose in life. And so we're rightly reacting to that. What I will say is what we all have to recognize is it's less about whether I'm right or you're right. A free society needs healthy conversation. And the funny thing about the fringe, right, is sometimes they're right. Sometimes it actually helps the group improve. But you never convince someone by silencing them. And so any attempt to socially sanction, you know, get someone to lose their job or whatever, just because we disagree with them, it doesn't just hurt them. It hurts everyone.

Right. And to me, like there is one way out of this problem of collective illusions, because it is, it is leading to false polarization. It is leading to, and it will become real. We have to find the moral courage to be honest with each other about what we think. And we've got to have the civic courage to make it safe for other people to do so as well. That's right. To find the courage, to be it safe for other people to do so as well. That's right. To find the courage to be honest with each other about what we think. I mean, that is one of the joys, I will say, as an aside of doing the job I'm doing now. It's glorious. It's wonderful to be on the other side, you know, to be not part of those two thirds of

people who are afraid to say what they think. I love being able to say what I think. It's so liberating and it has led to way more happiness in my life. And I see people who are stuck on the other side and I really want to go rescue them. Like, come over, find a way. I know you have these jobs where you can be fired for saying what you really believe and so on. But find a way because it's so liberating over here and it's happy over here. Let's talk about authority, though.

Can we talk about authority, Todd? Because you write in the book about how we're even worse on this problem when it comes to doctors, academics, and we've seen some of that too in COVID. There's an example in your book about doctors and nurses from a 1966 incident that sort of illustrates how deferential we are to authority. Yeah. So look, part of being human is you never quite know whether your private knowledge is correct. And so our brains are designed to take in social information. And sometimes the rest of the group does know more than you. I promise you, if I'm in some faraway land and I don't know what berries are poisonous, I'm going to look to what the locals are doing. And it doesn't matter if red berries are fine here. They're not eating them. I'm not eating them. Right. So the problem is, is that like, we, we tend to not realize that we defer not just to the crowd, but to people we think are in authority in part, cause we think they know better. Right. And we will do crazy things just because like the study you're referencing. I mean, just having a doctor that they never met say to nurses that they needed to give like almost lethal doses of a drug, like a shocking percentage of the majority of them actually went along and did it. The thing is, is we just assume these people must know something we don't. And my argument in the book is we shouldn't ignore proper authority.

We shouldn't ignore other people's wisdom. But we cannot ever allow that to displace our own judgment, right? We have to take that information. We have to take our own values, our own experience, and then make a decision ourself. And every time we abandon our own judgment, bad things happen, not just for us, but for everybody. So what kind of a person, because we do have contrarians, even before the social media phenomena

where different viewpoints are being cracked down upon, we've always had contrarians who don't do this, who do not need approval of the crowd, who will jump up and down with a different point of view, no matter what the crowd says, who may kind of enjoy being on the other side. So are their brains wired differently? Yeah, it's so fascinating. So if you look across the population in our brains, so we all want to belong and we all want what we call self-expression, being true about ourselves, like speaking our own

truth. We all differ on a curve, like how much we need one or the other. And so there are people who have really low levels of need to belong and super high levels of self-expression. And they get a lot of reward just being themselves. Some people that I know get a lot of reward just going against the crowd. And it turns out you need all kinds of people, right? If we were a culture of all contrarians, there'd be no social learning and we'd all have to learn things the hard way. But if we're all like need to belong and lemmings, then we all go off a cliff with one bad idea. So the trick here is to recognize that it's not just being a contrarian, right? It is the obligation to say, look, I owe you the truth as I understand it.

I'm not saying I'm right. I owe you my own opinion. And what I think is really fascinating, and you alluded to this, everyone's afraid right now that everyone else is so sensitive and that if I, if I offend them, like the two thirds of Americans who are self-silencing, the number one reason that they are doing it is out of decency, not out of fear. They just, they don't want to hurt people's feelings. But what we find in our private opinion research is the overwhelming majority of Americans are like, listen, everybody else is way too sensitive. I'm not. And I bet you've seen this.

Like when you actually are honest about your views, it's pretty remarkable the kind of respect that that engenders, you know? And so getting back to our core value. I'm laughing, Todd, because I've had a lot of situations in which, you know, I'm somebody who's more center right, who has immersed herself for my 50 plus years in mostly liberal, considerably liberal circles. So I'm more used to espousing my views and seeing this like, and then I just keep blathering and blathering because I don't really care. I'm not looking for acceptance. I'm looking to spread my ideas.

Keep going. Yeah, no, this is great. Now think about everyday folks sitting around our kitchen table. We've been through two years of isolation where we're not meant to be this isolated, where most of our social interactions are really happening online, which again is this fun house of mirrors. It is a guarantee distortion of what the majority really believes, the way it's structured. And as we're coming out of this, we have to remember that we can't trust our brains anymore to tell us what our groups think. And we can't allow social media to dictate the ways that we

treat each other in real life. The thing I would tell every listener and viewer, listen, have the conversations. Because right now, we are so convinced as an American public that we are being torn apart by division and polarization and that the other side, whatever that is, doesn't share our values. I promise you, it is not true by and large. But because we believe it is, it becomes true. But have the conversations. You'll be surprised. Right. So you won't be hashtag part of the problem. Okay. And there are other real tips in Todd's book that will help you not be manipulated so easily, whether it's online or in your real life or just in general as an American. And we're going to get to some of those

right after this. The internet is a cesspool. We all know that. What many people may not know is something like one in five interactions we're having on there are not even with real people. We're getting aggravated by bots. Isn't that incredible? Yeah, it is incredible. So here's the thing. This is what's so important as people think about this, that we're engaging online. It already tricks our brain into thinking

that fringes can be majorities. But now you look at something like bots. So bots are being weaponized, right? These social bots. We know, for example, research from Clemson shows that both Russia and China use these bots and they go into, say, conservative Twitter and liberal Twitter. And rather than spread lies, what they do is they identify the most fringe views and they retweet the hell out of them, just amplify them.

And then suddenly, if I say I identify as a Republican, I'm like, wait, is this what we believe? And meanwhile, they're doing the same thing on the left. And what happens is, is the groups start to go to the fringe, right? And it's pretty crazy. Research shows that you only need about 5% of interactions online to be with bots, where the bots can end up dictating group consensus. Okay. Just 5%. We know that 19% of all interactions on social media are actually with bots, whether you realize it or not. Well, how can it be if, you know, you know who you follow, you're saying that these are fake people? Yeah. So, so if you have a tight control of, you only let people in that you absolutely know, you might be OK.

But but here's the problem. You even get insights that are getting fed back into you, whether you're following people or not, or other people retweet things that you don't realize. But it's just it's pretty crazy. It's it's one of those things where it would be so it was it's clever if it weren't so damaging that that these foreign adversaries have recognized that they can do more damage to our country this way by understanding collective illusions on the cheap, allow us to destroy ourselves from the inside out. And that's for me is why, quite honestly, why I wrote the book is I feel like if the American public doesn't understand this phenomenon, we're not going to solve this and it's going to destroy us. And I want to say a word to my audience because we've realized that the Russiagate, Russiagate nonsense that was peddled by the mainstream media and by the left during Trump's presidency was nonsense. But that does not mean Russia is not trying to sow discord in America. And I learned this firsthand when I was getting ready to go over and interview Putin. One of the times that we had officials from the highest levels of government

former come in to prep me and they showed me they showed me the actual graphs of how a tweet would be sent out and the bots and where they're located across the world and how they could see the amplification that the bots automatically would do on said tweets. And they don't care. They take the pro-BLM side. They take the anti-BLM side. Pick your issue. They take both sides and they amplify the craziest voices because their mission is to sow discord. And you can times that by 10 for the Chinese.

You are being manipulated when you go online. Yes, by big tech, which loves to stir up anger and to keep you just focused on the screen for as long as possible. So they amplify too. But by the underlying actors, which are taking the craziest stuff and trying to get it in your face to make you think it's mainstream. And now you know, given that this isn't just about willpower or intelligence, our brains use this shortcut to estimate group consensus. So you will intellectually think you're like, oh, I know this isn't everybody, but you will feel like it is. And your brain will treat it as such. And if you feel the need to belong, you will

engage in behaviors and say things that align to what you think the group wants. And so look again, there's no real fix, right? You're not going to shut down social media. We want people to have voices. What we have to recognize is now more than ever, we have to commit to those founding American ideals, including protecting free speech and seeing it as a civic obligation to ensure that we have healthy conversations in this country.

What do you make of what's happened this week to Joe Rogan? Right? I mean, day by day, we see more artists pulling their podcasts and their music. This week, Mary Trump pulled her podcast. Whoa, whoa. Joe Rogan or Mary Trump? Anyway, I'm just saying, this is a guy who's trying to have heterodox conversations, who's trying to be unafraid. And he's so powerful that he's become a very big target. Yeah, look, I like Joe Rogan. I listened to him. I can't wait to talk to him. I also disagree with him on a bunch of stuff. But here's the thing. We've known since the founding of this country that silencing someone, even when you know

they're wrong, actually does more damage to society than having healthy, open, honest conversations. So let's just pretend that Joe Rogan is wrong on everything. He platforming him doesn't solve any problem. All it is, is a head on a pike that tells everybody else, wow, if Joe Rogan can't share his view, even if he's wrong, I better not say anything. And that is the ultimate weapon of a fringe that knows they're a fringe, right? Is get everyone to shut up and we'll do all the heavy lifting for him. So for me, like, even when I disagree with Joe Rogan, I still want to hear

from him because guess what? There's always a chance he's right and I'm wrong. And I need to have that humility. And the only way that we're ever going to get smarter together is to hear from each other. Well, complicity, that's one of the words in your title, right? Just to read it again. It's collective illusions, conformity, complicity, and the science of why we make bad decisions. The outrage mob that takes people down on Twitter, online, and so on. I've said for a while now, the best thing you can do when the mob starts is speak up against the mob. But the next best

thing you can do is don't join the mob. That is complicit. Right. So this is the worst part, and I cover it in my book. There's two ways that we become complicit. The worst is in what economist Timur Curran calls preference falsification. We literally lie about what we think just to belong, and we become enforcers of the very ideas we don't want. That's all. Yes. Right. Right. Right. The second way we become complicit, it doesn't feel like it. It's the self-silencing. You think, well, I'm not lying. I'm just not saying what I think. And look, there'll be times when you might not be able to, your life might be on the line, whatever. You might actually get fired. Most of us do it for a lot less. But now that you understand

about collective illusions and you realize that by removing your voice from the conversation, you have doubled the sound of the fringe, right? And if enough of us do that, it distorts the view of consensus for everybody. And the entire country can end up doing things that almost nobody really wants. That's so powerful. You've doubled the size of the fringe. You've doubled the voice of your adversary or the person with whom you disagree by remaining silent. And you write in the book, I wrote it down, quote, compromising personal integrity for the sake of belonging wears away at one's self-esteem. So not only are there consequences to you and your worldviews in you remaining silent, like you might lose the argument, your own sense of self is being eroded by doing that. Yeah. It's one of the best predictors of low self-esteem, which is I behave in public in ways that are different than I am in private. So I talk about in the book that the term congruence, like we have to commit to this. We have to recognize that being true to ourselves and true about ourselves to other people isn't

just good for us. It is. It may be the most important thing you can do to the group that matters most to you. Congruence. So when you say, you know, you're your public, the public, you and the private, you need to match up. You're not talking about like Jeff Zucker's having an affair at CNN while he's going out there lecturing us. You're talking about something more every day in the way we approach and interact with pretty much everyone. Can you expand on it? Yeah, look, it's so

interesting, right? We've gotten to a place in society in part because of things like cancel culture and in part just because we're decent people in this country. We don't want to offend people. That's not our job. And we shouldn't go out of our way to try to hurt people's feelings. But that has led us to a place where we say, you know what? It's just not worth it. I'll just keep it to myself. I'll talk to my close family, maybe my best friends. But now there's no real conversation, no healthy debate in the public. And what's worse, again, is that it is distorting what we think most Americans believe in, right? And so what happens under those collective illusions and why it's such an urgent issue for me is we now live in a country that, like, probably the most common thing I've heard from people, from my libertarian friends to my progressive friends,

is some version of this. Am I crazy? Or did the entire country go crazy almost overnight? There's like, what is going on? And people are like, I thought we shared some basic values. I know we disagree on some things, but it feels like we don't. And I'm telling you, we have more private opinion data on the American public than anybody. And I'm telling you, it's not true. But now we have the added problem of big corporations and sports and so many industries sort of going along with the most hysterical when it comes to speech. You know, like you can't say certain things. You have to have certain opinions. And I agree with you.

They have most Americans thinking, well, I feel differently, but I'm not going to say anything because I've seen this one get fired. I've seen that one get fired and I need my job. And, you know, it's all great for you, Todd Rose and Megyn Kelly to tell me I need to speak up. But no, you know, most people, okay, share your views with each other, right? Most people don't have a lot of control over other people's lives. But the reality is, is that CEOs control the incentives for hundreds and thousands and millions of people, right? And what's interesting is that they are under the same illusions as everybody else. So they may think rather than pushing their own agenda, they're just responding. And I promise you, I've talked to plenty of CEOs about this and they say, look, I don't really believe this,

but I'm trying to respond to the public, giving them what they want. So I take a stand on something that I don't even agree with because I think it's what everybody thinks. Same, under a collective illusion. The problem is, is then everybody below you is like, well, got it,

right? Because I don't want to get fired, or at least I don't want to get overlooked for a promotion. And so we all fall into line and that it just makes the illusions even stronger. I will tell you, we did one of the largest private opinion studies recently on what people want out of work. And this looks at trade-offs. Well, really not just what you care about, but what you sacrifice. Here's what's really funny. One of the biggest illusions that we found there is that the vast majority of people across all demographics,

any way you cut the data, want leaders of companies to stop going public on every social issue. But they are convinced that most Americans want them to be public, right? So if we're under that kind of illusion, CEOs will continue to behave this way. It will create perverse incentives for us to self-silence

and we will be mired in these illusions until they harm us for good. What about, one of the points you made in the book resonated with me. Before we went to Christmas break, my last episode had a little bit about, you know, just remember the humanity of quote, the other side, don't demonize everyone just because they don't share your political views.

And in particular, remember, as we fight on all these issues, and for me, it can be COVID masks, or what have you. There are allies on the other side, there are people who share your goals and your views. And it's really kind of pointless to demonize an entire half of the country as useless or stupid, because that's not really true there. I have enough friends in my life on both sides of the aisle that I know what's real. I know there's reason right on both sides. And there's craziness on both sides too. But, and I want to get to that because one of your solutions I know is increase your identity complexity, which we'll get to. But can you speak before we get to that about the like the importance of the truth, which is that we agree more than we disagree and that when you really press people, you know, to sort of prioritize their values, they wind up having more unity than disunity. Yeah. Listen, and I'm not trying to find good news. Like if we were really this divided, it's important that we say so, right? Because we've

got to find good solutions, but I'm telling you, like, let me give you one example. Uh, we did, we spent a year, uh, doing this survey of people's private views for the future of America. What are the trade-off priorities you want most for this country? And before we gave thousands and thousands of people this instrument, we just asked them, okay, are we more divided or united as a country? And not surprisingly, 82% said we're more divided. Half of those people said we are extremely divided.

And when you cut it by who you voted for in the last election, a majority of both sides said the other side no longer shares their values for the country, right? Okay, so that's the setup. And then we gave those exact same people this private opinion instrument that you can't fake, that makes you make trade-off decisions for the country. And what emerges is shocking amounts of common ground. I mean, shocking. Like there's some division.

For example, we are privately divided on immigration. That's a fact, right? There's a couple of places. But what was most interesting to me, and I think will be heartening for your listeners, is what it is we agree on. Like across all demographics, like by race, gender, even the kind of job you do, where you live,

the things that we care about most are nothing less than core American values. The ones that feel like they're slipping away, but they're not. For example, people care a lot about individual rights on both sides of the aisle. It doesn't seem like it sometimes, but they do. It is a top priority, right? They want to be treated equally, right? Not equal outcomes. They want to be treated equally. And they want to have a fair shot at the American dream, right? And they also recognize that there are things we owe each other that make that fair shot real.

Things like health care, education, and a criminal justice system that operates without bias. What they don't want is top-down control. They are so fed up. In fact, the dead last priority for everyone was having the federal government make decisions for communities and people. The problem is, okay, so that's the truth

of the American character, right? A lot of common ground anchored in our core American values updated for modern times. And yet when we ask them, what do you think most Americans would say? You get a completely different picture. So we when we ask them, what do you think most Americans would say? You get a completely different picture. So we think we're divided. We think the other side doesn't share our values. And so we think that they're going away and we think we have to fight to preserve them.

And I'm telling you, it is an illusion. And the way out of an illusion is not fighting. It is being honest with each other and making the space for other people, treating them with the respect that they deserve to be able way we do. The kids in their 20s, 18, whatever, they're like, hate speech is unconstitutional. And yes, I do want to see people silenced to say offensive things, and I want them to get in trouble, and I want them to lose their jobs. That is a real divide between the young and the old. How would you explain that? Or is that, maybe I just haven't been paying attention and that's something that, you know, when you're young, you're kind of dumb. You get older, you get wiser.

Yeah. So two things about that. So number one, you're partially right there, right? So there isn't an age difference where people are more willing to pile on and say someone should lose their job for who they voted for even, or they have the wrong thing, right? There's a little bit of the Marxist stuff that's emerging there that I think is a little dangerous for society. But here's what's the most interesting. The illusions around free speech are the strongest with young people because they spend the most time online. So I believe most of that behavior, that willingness to jump in and try to

cancel people and silence them is less driven by personal ideology and more driven by the fact that they believe this is what they're supposed to do. So I believe you start with the illusions, you shatter them, and then we'll deal with folks that still think it's okay to go ahead and ruin people's lives because you disagree with them. And the way we'll deal with them is not by ruining their lives, but by treating them the way that they're unwilling to treat other people with respect and listening to their views. You could have called your book Deluded. That could have been an alternate title. All right, now I have a couple minutes left and I want to get to this solution of increasing your identity complexity. What does that mean? So here's what's really fascinating. I was so interested in terms of neuroscience of conformity and looking at ways that like, how do we reduce the pressure groups can put on us? And it turns out in the book, I actually study, I talk about cults a little bit

and how they work to get complete control over you. Well, there's been some really great research on identity complexities, which is if you only have one group that you belong to, it has cult-like power of you. I don't care how much you like that group. You are going to be very unwilling to go against what you think the consensus is. But it turns out that if what you do is have at least three groups that matter to you, and they don't have to be huge. So let's say you're a diehard Republican.

This is part of your identity. It can be a church group, which is pretty big, but it can literally be like a football fan, like a team, right? As long as it matters to you. It turns out that when you have those different groups that matter, if you feel pressure from one, all you have to do is literally in your head, think about your identity as tied to the other group, and it reduces that your brain's response to conformity. So it's such an easy workaround. But most of us have reduced our groups to very small numbers, and it leaves us very susceptible to conformity complicity. Because we will still feel like we're part of something. And like, if we get kicked out of the first group, it won't hurt as bad. And therefore, we'll be more bold

about expressing our ideas. Yep. And given that it's a coin toss, whether you're wrong about the group anyway, this is how it allows you to still speak up when you can and make sure that these illusions don't end up destroying the group that actually matters to you. So interesting. Gosh, it's crazy how we are being so manipulated at every turn today, but I love having some tools to minimize it and, you know, being aware that it's happening and who and how is, is more than half the battle. Todd, what a pleasure. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. All right. Again, the name of the book is Collective Illusions, Conformity, Complicity,

and the Science of Why We Make Bad Decisions. Tomorrow, we got Jason Whitlock. Love him. Coming back. Don't miss that. See you then. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.