The Megyn Kelly Show - Tariffs and Markets Perspective, Exclusive Info From Nashville Shooter's Journals, and American Held in Russia, with Victor Davis Hanson and Chris van Heerden | Ep. 1043

Episode Date: April 7, 2025

Megyn Kelly reveals exclusive new details from the Nashville school shooter’s journals, what we can learn about the killer's obsession with gender identity and race, why we believe it's in the public's interest to know what was written and what was left out of the final Nashville police report, and more. Plus Victor Davis Hanson, author of "The End of Everything," joins to discuss President Trump’s tariff plan and the volatile media and market reaction today, why it’s important to take a deep breath and gain some perspective, what the goal actually is and why it's a slow process, the disconnect between rich conservatives and the working class, why the working class is more focused on trade fairness and employment opportunities than what happens in the stock market, how the Democratic Party has shifted towards representing elite interests, unhinged, self-important leftists freaking out about Trump and Elon, their narcissistic speeches at the weekend rallies, George Conway crying over Trump and his relationship with law firms, and more. Then Chris van Heerden, whose girlfriend is wrongfully detained in Russia, joins to discuss what led to his girlfriend being stuck in Russian prison for a 12 year sentence, how it was all over a $51 donation, the horrible conditions she's living in now, how he's hopeful about the Trump administration and his frustrating experience with the Biden administration, how Peter Berg and Dana White are helping, and more.Hanson- https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/victor-davis-hanson/the-end-of-everything/9781541673526/van Heerden- https://freeksenia.com/Angel Studios: Become an Angel Guild member today and get 2 free tickets to The King of Kings movie when you become a premium member. Visit https://angel.com/MEGYNKars4Kids: Call 1-877-kars4kids or visit https://kars4kids.org/MKJust Thrive: Visit https://justthrivehealth.com/discount/Megyn and use code MEGYN to save 20% sitewideJacked Up Fitness: Go to https://GetJackedUp.com and use code MK at checkout to save 10% off your entire purchase 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, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at noon east. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. He's been called the disruptor-in-chief, and that's exactly what Trump's tariffs are doing to the market today. False reports of a Trump tariff pause saw the Dow Jones industrial average erase a morning 1700 point loss to go up over 800, only for the market to go back to a loss of over 800 when it turned out the rumor wasn't true. Currently at 12 noon on Monday, it is down 500 points back and forth. Look, you can't look. You can't look at it. I'm sure we've lost a lot of money. My mom is on a fixed income. It doesn't matter the income level. You can't look at a moment like this.

You're supposed to be in this market for a long-term payoff if you're a younger person. And if you're an older person, you're also not supposed to sell when the market drops precipitously off of an event like tariffs. That's generally what they say. So looking is just bad for the soul and ultimately the pocketbook for many, many people. That's a general rule. And hopefully you've got a financial advisor telling you exactly what to do because, you know, people who just want to play the market like they're in a casino. OK, I guess you should look. But somebody was just recirculating an old Trump quote because he used to own a casino in Atlantic City. You know, there's no crying in the casino. The market is like a casino. I mean, it is a better place to go. It is not a guaranteed

source of income. It can go up and it can go down. And we have volatility, volatility right now in our economy. So, you know, hold the line, like hold, don't panic. Do not panic. That's actually what Trump is saying this morning. Don't panic. So we're going to talk about what's happening because these tariffs are having a greater effect on our market, at least. And we'll see what they do to our economy. But, boy, he is getting such pushback now from establishment Republicans, the ones who didn't really want him. I mean, like, I'll look.

Elon's not a fan of the tariffs from what we're gleaning on Twitter. But Cormaga so far seems to be still in Trump's corner. Establishment Republicans like the journal. They don't like the tariffs. We knew that. They also don't like the immigration reforms. We knew that. They also didn't want Trump. They wanted Nikki Haley. We knew that. And Democrats who just want to hate Trump to hate him, they're all against him. But what can we just hold on, just hold on and don't let these Wall Street hot shots who live and die by a two point market move dictate the wisdom of Trump's tariffs, which are a longer term strategy. Look, President Trump is far from panicking.

He posted this morning on truth social quote, the U S has a chance to do something that should have been done decades ago. Don't be weak. Don't be stupid. Don't be a panicking. It appears to be a new party name. He's thrown out there. Oh yeah. In fact, the followup line is a new party based on weak and stupid people be strong, courageous and patient and greatness will be the result. So you heard it from the president. Don't be a panicking, panicking. We're going to get into it. Plus more of our exclusive reporting on the Nashville school shooters journals, which we broke exclusively this morning on am update, which you should check, uh, later today after this show,

I just want to tell you what happened there. We received an exclusive on the Nashville shooters manifesto from the FBI. We exclusively had permission to report on it, though not to post the documents. And we spent the weekend reviewing the over 1,000 of them. What we concluded, and it's outlined in Morning Update, which is on YouTube and on our podcast feed, is that we were misled by Nashville authorities last week who said, there's not one document called the manifesto, so we're just going to tell you based on our reading of these 1,000 plus documents what the motives here were. And guess what didn't make the dance? The shooter's trans ideology at all, at all. So we read through the documents and again, we've been misled. This woman was obsessed with trying to trans herself,

wanting to trans herself, trans ideology. I mean, it was like reading a leftist playbook on race, gender, and hatred for America. And now it's becoming really clear why this wasn't shared with us for two years. Well, we've seen it and we don't have the same agenda as the people making those decisions. And thanks to Kash Patel and his transparent efforts at the FBI, we will bring you the full report later today. We begin today with Victor Davis Hanson. He's a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and author of the book, The End of Everything, How Wars Descend Into Annihilation. What are you doing this Easter to celebrate with your family? Angel Studios,

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a truly wonderful movie this easter season and be a part of making family entertainment great again. Angel.com slash Megan. VDH, welcome back. The meltdown on the establishment right and the Trump hating left over the volatility caused by Trump's change in tariffs is everywhere. Good luck tuning into a podcast, a television show, picking up a paper without being told how terrible these decisions are and how Trump doesn't know what he's doing. It is you actively have to work to find somebody like you who says, let me tell you another way of looking at this and try to disabuse some of these establishment types of their very, very well-held wisdom. So, VDH, your thoughts on the tariffs? Well, there is a lot of misinformation. The first thing is that I know this, I'm like you,

I have a 401k and it's been really hurt but don't trump did everything wall street wanted his first term he he repealed dodd frank he deregulated he cut taxes he uh include he encouraged uh accelerated depreciation and the market went up megan 65% under Donald Trump, higher than even Biden, even though that he suffered through the COVID. So I was looking at the Dow when it's 37 or 38,000, it's pretty much where Biden was in 2023. And over the Biden and Trump eight years, it's gone up 100%. It's gone from 1900 when Trump first entered office up to 38, low point. But if you look at wages, and this is what it's all about, even though the productivity over the last 50 years has almost doubled per worker, wages only went up 35%. Now, as far as the psychodrama goes, you and I are elites and we understand that,

but 10% of the country owns 93% of the value of the stock market. 50% are only invested at 1%. So a lot of this paranoia is that these people are not making over a 10-year period what they think they deserve. In other words, their portfolios over the last decade went up by 80% and no longer at this particular point have doubled into 100%. But they're not interested on the people below who would have dreamed of having wage returns to be comparable to the stock market. The other thing is, and I don't understand this, that they are not offering any constructive alternative. I keep thinking, well, maybe the left, and I remember Bernie Sanders and Nancy Pelosi said that our policy toward China was a job loser.

I remember Paul Krugman said he was a mercantilist. I can remember Warren Buffett writing that we are being wiped out by, that was 20 years ago, by asymmetrical trade. So I'm waiting for all these voices to come up and say, no, this is what we should do to address the $1 trillion annual trade deficit or the trade deficits that have been, without exception, continuous since, what, 1975 for a half century? They can either say, well, you know, trade deficits don't matter, and I'll tell you why. Or here's a better way of doing it. Or yes, we're paying $3 billion a day in interest on the national debt, but here's what I would do. Or here's how I'm going to get. They don't do any of that, especially the left.

So it's just. And then when you look at the whole totality of the Trump 80 days, it's, well, we went from 10,000 a day to zero on the border. Nobody said that was possible. We've already identified $150 billion that everybody on both sides admits is probably waste and fraud already. For the first time in a decade, you can navigate through the Red Sea. The Houthis are pretty much in withdrawal. Iran is completely emasculated. And somebody is talking about ending the Ukraine war, which instead of just, we'll give them whatever it takes to the end. So there's been dramatic changes that there's no appreciation. And one last thing, I think workers understand that even if they don't

buy stock in the company in which they work, The stock market is important. Donald Trump used to brag that he had raised it 60% his first time, and people said, oh, the stock market, that's not a good barometer, workers' wages and unemployment. But Donald Trump already had provided this week, you'd think the stock market would take note, 100,000 more jobs than the government said would be produced. And the interest rate at an annual rate maybe at this month is about two, five percent. And so he's getting to some data. And then you think, well, given this hysteria by the 10 percent and the media and academia and politics and the corporate world, he's done for. And then you look at the Harvard-Harris poll, and he's still 49, 46, down a point or two.

So I guess what I'm saying is I'm not – this, for me, I like to do exactly what you said, take a deep breath, and then contextualize this with the Russian collusion hoax that we all said was a fake and we're not disbelieved. The COVID lockdown debacle, the Hunter laptop disinformation fable, the lie that Joe Biden was fit as a fiddle, the idea that Kamala Harris had closed the distance and she was three points ahead in Iowa and going to win that. And these all were these psychodramas that turned out to be not what they were. And finally, one last rant. They keep talking about tariffs, tariffs, tariffs, recession, depression. I can't think of a tariff that caused a major recession of depression. It didn't cause the 2008. That was Wall Street. That was this reckless Wall Street hysteria that we're seeing now only channeled into subprime mortgage

securitization in the market when there wasn't capital there that they said there was. The Smoot-Harley lack did not cause the Great Depression. We had a surplus at the time. It was unnecessary, yes. It was punitive, yes. But it was two years after, when it fully was implemented, it was two years after what? Who caused the Great Depression? Buying on the margin and reckless Wall Street investors. So it's kind of ironic that Wall Street has a tendency to go bananas, speculate and hurt the rest of us. And now they're trying to cite Smoot-Harley that had nothing to do with the Depression. And they should look to themselves. And the final thing is that they think there's going to be help from the Democrats on deregulation, tax reduction, investment, protecting American companies,

dealing with the debt, dealing with the deficit. I don't think there is. Nothing's coming out of the left. Everything that's coming out of the left is antithetical to what the Wall Street Journal, for example, believes. So I just would like to hear what their alternative scenario is. Donald Trump's communication, I would only suggest to them that he have a tragic tone. Instead of saying beautiful tariffs and we're going to make them pay or Europe has been ripping us off or repertory. He should say, you know, I didn't want to do this, but we've had 50 years of this and

nobody brought anybody's attention to it. They offshoring, they outsourcing that has destroyed the industrial base of this country. I don't like cutting federal workers, but who had ever cared about the $37 trillion debt? Who cares about the $3 billion in interest per day? I was tasked to do this in a way that nobody else has addressed it. I don't like doing it, but I'm going to do it for the good of the country, even though I'm going to be hated for doing it. If he said that, I think it'd be – the other thing he could say is he's got to talk, cease all the talk about repertory tariffs, where he says, well, we're going to make them pay for all the stuff they did in the past, or they manipulate the currency, true, they use health and safety gimmicks to forbid import, true, but for right now, at this moment, he's got to talk about reciprocity, that American people will back him the whole way if he just says, I would like zero tariffs with partners.

And barring that, I want our tariffs to be what their tariffs are. And just stop all the talk about we're going to have a 10% on everybody regardless or we're going to tar Australia, even though they have a trade deficit with us. He can get in in the second round to the currency manipulation, the VAT tax, the scams that countries use to say your products aren't clean enough, or they may have disease, all of that. But for right now, the American people just want to be due unto others as they do to us. And they will back him to the end of the earth when he makes the argument, I am just let, it's on autopilot. The fate is in these people's hands.

If China wants to be happy, then just do tariff what we do or I'll go with them on zero tariff. That's a winning argument, but not, well, Australia had a 19, you know, 2003 little quirk and they stopped beef. That's too intricate right now. Australia has basically zero tariffs. They run a deficit with us. We should not be tariffing them. The Chinese is, that's a special case. And it's amazing, like the disparity in terms of what they import to us versus what we import to them.

And, you know, people are talking about, well, they Trump really added a lot of tariffs on them, 37 percent on top of the preexisting tariffs that were already there under Trump 1.0 that Biden claimed to hate, but then kept in place. And it affects virtually nothing because they don't buy from us. So it's almost just an exercise. And well, OK, it's like a thought exercise because compared to what we buy from them, they buy next to nothing from us. But today, they actually had the nerve to issue a retaliatory tariff after Trump's 34%. And Trump just issued this statement on Truth Social. He writes, yesterday, China issued retaliatory tariffs of 34% on top of their already record-setting tariffs, non-monetary tariffs, illegal subsidization of companies, and massive long-term currency manipulation. Despite my warning that any country that retaliates against the U.S. by issuing additional tariffs above and beyond

their already existing long-term tariffs, a tariff abuse of our nation, will be immediately met with new and substantially higher tariffs over and above those initially set. Therefore, if China does not withdraw its 34% increase above their already long-term trading abuses by tomorrow, April 8th,

2025, the U.S. will impose additional tariffs on China of 50%, effective April 9th. Additionally, all talks with China concerning their requested meetings with us will be terminated. Negotiations with other countries, which have also requested meetings, will begin taking place immediately. Thank you for your attention to this matter. So let's talk about China because, you know, the general thinking seems to be what's going to happen in North America is ultimately going to be done by deal between Trump, Canada, and Mexico. That, you know, he already struck a deal with them first time around, and they'll probably strike another deal because we're all on the same continent and we have an interest in having healthy trading relationships with our upstairs

and downstairs neighbors. Then there's Europe, which now is, you know, acting as a block, some 27 countries. And I think the general wisdom is that we'll reach a deal with them too. Some sort of a deal, like maybe this is a negotiation to hit something better. So it's really about Asia. These tariffs are about, in large part, about Asia. And China, the number one, where there's this huge disparity. And then when we hit them with tariffs last time around, they outsourced a lot of their manufacturing to some of these other Asian countries, like Vietnam. We're like, oh, okay, we don't have to do it here. China said, we'll do it in Vietnam. They're not subject to the new increased tariffs on us. So now Trump has included Vietnam and all these smaller Asian countries in his net.

So I don't think it's any accident that he's making an example out of China with this truth social post, Victor. And I think he's right on because I think Americans understand on an inherent level that everything we buy was made in China. You can't avoid it. If you try your, you know, from food to toys to clothes, the electronics, you name it. They make it there. They export it to the America to America and we pay through the nose for it. And now Trump's trying to right that balance by bringing American manufacturing back and decreasing our dependence on this country that hates us. Your thoughts on Asia and China and how that all plays in here. Well, traditionally in these trade wars, the country that is running a big surplus is more vulnerable because their industry and their economy has been geared toward mercantilism. And that's true, especially of China. The second thing is there's going to be a lot of opportunistic countries, Vietnam in particular, that are going to come to us and say, we can do what China is doing to you, and we will give you a better deal. We'll have reciprocal tariffs with you. But if you go after China, we're here, and they're going to pop up. It's

like musical chairs. If the music goes off, everybody wants a chair. Once he starts to do these deals, a lot of countries will say, if I don't cut a deal with him, I'll be the last one to get into the American market. And so China is vulnerable in that aspect. They also have 300,000 students here. We don't have hardly any there. They are buying hundreds of thousands of farmland in strategically located places. The FBI, CIA has estimated that 1%, and that was very generous, of students and people from China on green cards are actively engaged in espionage. That could be 3,000 or 4,000 people. So my point is this, is that they see us as naive and as ripe for exploitation in 360-degree thinking.

If Trump gets into a tiff with him, as he is now, he has all sorts of levers. He could say to China tomorrow, we're restricting the number of Chinese students that are coming to the United States by 100,000. They would go ballistic. And so would the universities who are using those and charging them 110% as a way of cash to subsidize a lot of the things they shouldn't be doing. So he could say that tomorrow that the Chinese cannot buy land in the United States, especially farmland within a vicinity of a military base. He could really clamp down on patent, copyright theft, military exchanges. Some of our allies have exchanges with China, which they appropriate American technology. So they think that we are completely dependent on them. And we are in the short term. But on the long term,

their entire growth has been predicated on American magnanimity. And they know that. And, you know, getting back to Wall Street, we were told we were sold this, Megan, by the Clinton administration, the George Bush administration, the Obama administration, that the more laxity and deference that you gave China, the more that they would rack up surpluses, become affluent, create a middle class consumer class, get plugged into globalization, have their students in Western universities. Then they would liberalize and then they would become a constitutional society and join the family of nations. That never happened. They used this asymmetrical relationship with Europe and us to make a lot of money, to build a lot of weapons, to bully their enemies and create the Silk Road, Belt and Road mercantile empire,

and all as a way of dethroning the United States. So they have no goodwill among Americans, and they're much more vulnerable than everybody thinks. We were watching, you know, the usual suspects, for the most part, beat up on Trump. There are a few outliers. But what I am gleaning is that some of the people who are defecting from Trump on this plan are just giving him time to see how it works are people who are extremely heavily invested in the market. You know, it's like, okay, I get it. You're not his priority right now. He wants you to benefit too eventually, but right now he's doing something that he thinks long term could help the bottom half of the country, but they're not used to that, Victor. You know, I've been following Bill Ackman's ex-fede, and he actually, he had a post about you, tweeting directly to you, saying you made a compelling case for the tariff strategy, but that you had one issue incorrect, he claimed,

that Trump, he describes the Trump tariffs as reciprocal and proportional to these other nations and what they've assessed on us. In actuality, the Trump tariffs were set at levels substantially above and in many cases at a multiple of the counterparty countries' tariff levels. And goes on, as Bill Ackman tends to do, with a very, very long post. Yeah, I don't think it's the way you calibrate whether it's reciprocal or not. So I think that most of them are reciprocal. Well, I know what you mean, because I mean, there are some countries who they don't have a tariff on our goods necessarily, but we're just not allowed to sell our cars there. They've created such a green scheme

that keeps us out that it might as well have a 100% tariff. I can tell you from agriculture, we dip chickens because we don't want people putting a whole chicken on the counter for more than 24 hours. So we dip them in chlorine tinge water. European does not want, Europe's don't, what they say, oh, we're going to make a law of chlorines too deadly. Or the Australians say in 2003, one Canadian cow came across the border with mad cows. So we're going to ban all beef. And they did until 2019. And then even after that, they made it difficult. All of that we're going to ban all beef. And they did until 2019. And then even after

that, they made it difficult. All of that we can do in a round two, but I do think it's a parody. I live in a very poor community. And when I go to the supermarket, people will come up and talk, mostly Mexican American people. And I can tell you that not one person the last week has mentioned the stock market. All they have talked about is trade, trade and jobs, jobs, jobs. And these are the 50% who account for 1%, 50% of the country that accounts for 1% of the market capitalization value in Wall Street. But that's not the people who are reporting. That's not the people who are weighing in.

That's not the people who, reporting. That's not the people who are weighing in. That's not the people who. And I think people, you know, and when you say reps, when they say reciprocity, that's what I was getting to earlier. The first thing they'll say is they would say, I talked to four or five people and they said, is it true that Mexico has 170 billion trades? That's not fair. Is it true that Canada has 101? Yes. That's all people care about. They don't want to have inordinate. They don't want to be the bully. They would either like zero tariffs or tit for tat. And if Trump can stick to that, he will not only get a lot of foreign investment and change of attitude, but he will get the overwhelming support of the American

people. But if he gets into all of this stuff that we just talked about, which is valid and legitimate, but if he does it in round one, then people are going to come, well, Trump's, I think the Wall Street Journal runs almost every day. Trump is lying and not reciprocal. That is a losing argument at this stage. Well, just to finish the point on Bill. So then by Sunday at 5 p.m., he called for a 90 day pause in the terrace. So first he was OK. I disagree with Victor a little, a little. But he said we have to help Trump succeed is the least we can do. Then by Sunday at 5 p.m., the earlier exchange was Saturday. He called for a 90 day pause. We've got to pause it. We've got to pause it. The president's losing

the confidence of business leaders around the globe. This is not what we voted for. Got to call a timeout. Then he followed up by saying, if you haven't noticed by now, I speak the truth, regardless of the consequences to me personally, or what other people think. Then by Sunday night, he was taking shots at Howard Lutnick saying, I just figured out why he's indifferent to the stock market and the economy crashing. He and Kenner Fitzgerald, which he runs are long bonds, meaning they profit when the economy implodes. It's a bad idea to pick a secretary of commerce whose firm is leveraged long fixed income and irreconcilable conflict of interest. By Monday morning, he was saying he had been unfair to Howard Lutnick. I don't think he's pursuing his self-interest. I'm sure he's

doing the best he can for the country. I'm just frustrated watching what I believe to be a major policy error. Okay. So what, with all due respect to bill, I mean, I've seen this from quite a few very heavily invested people. They're, they're against this because they're watching their own fortune or the fortune of their company go up and down precipitously. They see these massive falls, and they want to stop it. And I get that. But of course, you know, waiting it out long term and letting things settle is what every investment advisor tells you to do. But separate and apart from that, they don't understand that this isn't about helping the Bill Ackmans of the world. It just isn't. And Republicans in particular are used to a president who is devoted to helping their

pocketbooks. It goes back to the wisdom of my Nana who lived to be 101. And when she saw I was working at Fox News and I was saying certain things on certain policies and starting to sound more right wing, she said, Republicans, she goes, we're we're Republicans are for the rich. We're not rich. We're Democrats. Right. That's that was my Nana's wisdom born in 1915. And she wasn't wrong. And I think there's still a very large portion of the party that is used to that being the basic approach. Absolutely. I grew up in a Democratic. All my siblings are Democrats. And what I was told was the Republicans, all they care about are capital gains tax and privatizing Social Security. That's what I was told. And Trump comes along. And for the first time, he has it's not what he said, it's what he did. He recaptured the middle class. You look at every statistic data point from the 2024 election that and the subsidized poor. And he just he wiped out the Democrats in middle class voting. And that and this is the reason why. And that's why he hasn't

really he hasn't taken a Wall Street hit of the same magnitude in his polls, because, as I said, 50 percent of the people have one percent of the value of the market. Well, on that point, on that point, here's let me just play this out. but it's for, it's Scott Besson, our treasury secretary, who sat down with Tucker last week and spoke to that a bit. Here it is. We have president Trump's previous term when everyone said none of this was going to work. Oh, the China tariffs are going to do this. They're going to cause inflation. They didn't. This is going to happen to working class. It's going to be bad for working class Americans. Well, guess what? Working class Americans, the hourly workers did

better than supervisory workers. The bottom 50% of households, their net worth increased faster than the top 10% of households. And look, I'm not happy with what's going on in the market today, but the distribution of equities across households, the top 10% of Americans own 88% of equities, 88% of the stock market. The next 40% owns 12% of the stock market. The bottom 50 has debt. They have credit card bills.

They rent their homes. They have auto loans. And we've got to give them some relief. And that top 10%, Victor, as you know, includes all of the Acela Media, all these anchors on CNN, all these op-ed writers for the Wall Street Journal, those are in the 88%. They are the ones who own the market.

Yeah, and because they're running around like a chicken with their head cut off, and as somebody who lived on a farm, I mean, chickens really do run off. It's something to see. Oh, boy. And this is why I use that metaphor, because they remind me of when my Swedish grandfather would say, cut the chicken's head off and then see this thing flop around. Oh, my God. And that's what they're, yeah. They've lost their mind, is what I'm saying. And if they would just take a deep breath and they would just say, hey, job growth shocked everybody.

It was up 100,000 jobs that they said would not happen. The inflation rate is looking good. Oil prices are down, energy are down 10%. On the foreign market, it looks like Iran is not going to be the disruptor that everybody said would happen. It looks like there is some pathway to Ukraine, a ceasefire. It looks like the Red Sea is navigable again. It looks like the southern border is calm. It looks like we can deal with Canada and Mexico, even though they have these huge surpluses with us. It looks like if you look at Trump, what he's talking, extending tax cuts, deregulate, it looks like the first term in which the market went up 60%. If they would just look at that and calm down, I think, I don't know what they're trying to do, if they're trying to do a 2008 or 1929 psychological meltdown, but they look ridiculous. They look ridiculous. And you

know what's going to happen if Trump cuts all of these deals on this investment? And you and I have this same conversation nine months from now, and there's $4 trillion investment. Then they're going to say, I was with Trump the whole way. I tried to calm people. It reminds me so much of all the people that swore that Christopher Steele was a genius or the laptop. They just knew it was cooked up in a Moscow headquarters or that Joe Biden was fit in a fiddle, Joe Scarborough. I've seen this guy. He's never been better. And, you know, I got a call on election night from a very good journalist and said, oh, Victor, I think it collapsed. This Des Moines poll is the most reliable. He is down three points. If he's

down in a red state like Iowa, he's lost. And I said, this is bogus. He won that state by 12 points. So that class of this elite that owns stock, it's synonymous also with the people who follow every breath in the media and academia and the corporate boardroom and the legal community. But they're not Americans. Not like most Americans is what I mean to say. The majority of Americans don't think like they do. And I'm not making fun of them. I'm just saying they get touchy. They get edgy. They get impulsive. They're kind of, I don't know what the word is, but I drive over to the coast, you know, each week on the Stanford campus. And by the time I'm there 48 hours and I come back to central rural agricultural California, Central Valley, it's like, wow, I just went to Mars and I'm now back on Earth because they they're not representative of most people.

I know what you mean. No, I think about it all the time because now, of course, I've been in media for a long time and we have some nice trappings surrounding us as a family. But we used to live in this three bedroom duplex that was in an OK area of town in this small little town in Westchester. Um, you know, no, like a one car garage was fine. I'm not saying we were poor, but we were, we didn't have a lot of money. That's for sure. And we were absolutely happy. We were so happy as a family. And we drive by that all the time. And our kids remember living in that house when they were toddlers. And I always say like, you remember what life was like there. You don't need all this money. You don't need a swimming pool. You don't need this stuff in order to live a really happy life. You need family. You need friends. You need something ideally that occupies your time on a daily basis that makes you feel like you're contributing to society. But I don't, I just, I can't help but feel that there's an underlying, like, missing value here in the rush to condemn

his plan by the so-called elites. It's like, could you just hold on and come to terms with a moment? Like, what if you did have a massive wipeout on Wall Street that didn't rebound? I don't believe for a minute that Trump will leave it there. He, too, loves wealth. He loves wealth. He loves rich people. He surrounds himself with rich people because he so admires them. And what they, there's no way he's going to tell the rich base you're screwed. But like, let's just imagine a world in which they do get a little screwed and they actually lose a fair amount of money. And the lower half of the country rises up. I just think there's like this piece of the people covering this,

the ones who are having the meltdowns that cannot imagine a life without their immense wealth. Well, I mean, I can give you examples. I live in a 150-year-old house that was falling apart. So I had people work on it to re-walk. So Juan was one of the electricians. He had long COVID. He could hardly walk. I said, Juan, how long have you been working? He said, I never took a day off. I can't. He was a genius when you looked at this old house, how he figured out circuit panels and everything. And then there was Jose and he was

a painter. And I said, you don't look good today. He said, I have a kidney infection. I have to go up for injections that you see every weekend. And I said, how do you take the fumes? The fumes must add to your kidney. He said, what's my alternative? And he said, I have a mortgage on my house. I have car payments. California, I can't even afford, you know, 550 for diesel. That's what everybody goes through, and they're not melting down right now. And you know what else? The people who are melting down did not melt down when whole towns were wiped out. They didn't care because they were offshoring and outsourcing and getting returns on investments beyond their wildest dreams when the legal class, the academic class, the investor class, the corporate class, the media class woke up in

the 70s and 80s and said, oh my God, the market is not 280 million Americans. For my skills, there's 7 billion consumers. And I have a skill set or I have a service or I have goods or I have the know-how to capture that $7 billion. But as far as those muscular classes that assemble, manufacture, farm, mineral, whatever, well, we have a special vocabulary for them. As Joe Biden said, you go down in a mine, we close it, you'll learn how to code or program. Hillary, oh, you know, coal's off. You know, we're going to put you or program. Hillary, oh, you know, calls off, you know, we're going to put you in the mind, our business. Okay. And then we had that language of disparagement for the same people, but now they were tagged with Trump. They were deplorable. They were

irredeemable. For Obama, they were clingers. For Biden, they were chumps. They were dregs and garbage. So that's who they are. And I'm not just saying this to say it's okay to see the market go down. I think the market is going to settle down. I think it's going to digest this. And if these countries start to come in and think, I got to come in before I'm the left out. And Trump is wise enough to take the deal that results in either a no tariff or semi-reciprocal and not worry, as I said earlier, about the past and then just says, we're going to discuss the issue about health or gimmicks and that later. This economy is going to take off. I think interest rates are already going to go down. Right, exactly. Trump's pushing for that. It's going to be,

my only worry is that there's going to be something like a Chinese bioweapon or COVID 2.0 or something. But I think he's got enough people around him that are brilliant and they are determined and they're addressing all at once budget deficits, trade deficits, long term debt. And it's something to watch. I'll tell you what, here's a little bit of comfort for all the people who are part of the Acela media and the 1% and all that. Trump, there were some grumblings out of the Trump White House that he might raise taxes on the rich or at least let them raise. In other words, when the Trump tax cuts expire later this year,

he is expected through reconciliation to put them back into place for people. And there was some talk that maybe he would exclude the richest Americans from that in order to pay for his no taxes on tips promise and his no taxes on social security promise. And I don't know whether that, whether he's going to do that or not, but I would say if the market continues to bathe in uncertainty and volatility between now and then you have a much higher chance of Trump not letting your tax cuts

expire as a rich person, because he's just not, he's not going to completely thumb the middle finger at the, you know, wealthier half of his base. He's just not, that's his whole family. It's every single friend he has, it's him and he hates taxes and he hates paying the government for things. So it's like, just let's use our heads, take a deep breath, calm down. Okay. And that applies triple to the leftists, Victor, because not only are they lamenting what's happening with the stock market, even though they were pro-tariff their whole lives long, the left has been pro-tariff for a long, long time. There's a, there's a soundbite of Nancy Pelosi from 1996 making the rounds. I don't know if you've seen it, but she's totally pro-tariff.

Actually, we have it. Here it is. How far does China have to go? How much more repression? How big a trade deficit and loss of jobs for the American worker? And how much more dangerous

proliferation has to exist before members of this House of Representatives will say, I will not endorse the status quo. Right now we have a $34 billion trade deficit with China, the 1995 figure. It will be over $40 billion for 1996. The average U.S. MFN tariff on Chinese goods coming into the United States is 2 percent, whereas the average Chinese MFN tariff on U.S. goods going into China is 35 percent. Is that reciprocal? The U.S. allows China to flood our markets with 30 a third of their exports. By the way, so she said it was a thirty four thirty four billion dollar trade deficit.

Then now it's like two hundred and fifty. I think Trump should really call her up and ask if he can hire her and she can do that again and update it. She can really explain to people. Yeah, I just read this. Suddenly, Richter, they're all about free trade. The left is suddenly all about free trade. They don't like tariffs now because it's Trump's plan. And of course, they don't like Trump and they don't like Elon. And they're having like severe meltdowns coast to coast, not only in the protests that we saw over this weekend, completely astroturfed, right? Like hands off. What does it even mean? I don't even know what it means. Hands off. I guess they don't want Elon doing anything. No, no cutting government waste, no finding efficiencies, none of that. And then we get this, the Federalist producing a survey. It was done by the Network of Contagion Research Institute, NCRI, in partnership with Rutgers University that finds 55% of self-identified leftists say killing Trump is justifiable. They go on to say that this is about something more than just the desire to kill Trump. There is a broader assassination culture that appears to be emerging within

segments of the US public on the extreme left. Quote, these attitudes are not fringe. They reflect an emergent assassination culture grounded in far left authoritarianism and increasingly normalized in digital discourse. The reports found widespread justification for lethal violence, including assassination among younger, highly online and ideologically left aligned users. The report points to disturbingly high levels of support for political violence, particularly against Trump and Elon Musk. Your thoughts on that? Well, I don't want to be accusatory, but when you have the president of the United States telling donors that they got to put a bullseye on Trump, as Biden did, or you've got people like Jasmine Crockett saying they've got to take right to the gates of the Supreme Court while it was

in session and said, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, you reap the wind, you're going to reap the whirlwind, you're not going to know what's going to hit you. And you mainstream it, and then you look at the recent act of violence, the ideological rannings such as they were of the two foiled assassins, plus the Steve Scalise shooting and the trans thing, you're getting the impression that a lot of really stupid, crazy people on the fringes believe that if they were to come out and commit violence against Trump or Elon or some major person like that, they wouldn't be ostracized. They would be canonized.

And that is a very dangerous narcotic. If they, that language of our elite, they've got to stop it. And we're already, you know, this, if, if anybody on the right on January 6th had started a key, let's say a Mercedes or something around the Capitol, they would have gone. They would be in jail today. And the swatting, you know, I was gone and I've lived here my whole life. And I have never had more than one county sheriff come up. Three county sheriffs came out when I was gone. My wife

was here alone. She was terrified. They came out. They were armed. They went through the whole property. We have 40 acres. And they were worried. Yes, they were worried because somebody, they said, had called up and said that there was an armed danger here. And they do that to everybody. They do that a lot. Yeah, it's happened. And it's normal. And you start getting email the last seven or eight months. And it's not, you're an idiot. I thank you. It's be careful if I ever see you and that kind of email. And a lot of people are getting that. And all of that is this climate that we have no, in the left-wing mind, we don't have the House, we don't have the Senate, we don't have the White House, we don't have the Supreme Court,

we lost the popular vote, the electoral vote. All the issues that we're for are only 20%. The Trump people are on the right side of 70, 80% of all these issues. So what are we going to do? We're going to go take to the street. We're going to SWAT. We're going to demonstrate. We're going to we're going to have a few nuts that will take out a United Health executive or stuff. It's really firebomb Teslas. really been one major Democratic politician who got up and said, this is horrible what you guys are doing to Tesla. Instead, you have people like Tim Walz that looks out and brags that he's driving down the value of his own public portfolio as governor of Minnesota by Tesla stock dropping. No, it's outrageous. They could stop it if they wanted. Let me give you the numbers. They say those who identified who self-identified as left of center.

Forty eight percent say they can see that it's at least somewhat justified to murder Elon Musk. Fifty five percent said the same about murdering President Trump. 55% of those who simply identify as left of center think it is somewhat justified to murder Donald Trump. 55. That's sick. There's something deeply wrong inside the Democrat Party. This is not how Republicans talked about Joe Biden. Certainly not 55% of the Republican Party would be out there justifying murder. There's something wrong. There's a sickness.

There's a cancerous illness bubbling up inside of their party. The assassination attempts on Trump, the burning of the Tesla facilities, the firebombing of the charging stations, they're not one-offs. The praise of Luigi Mangione, Luigi Mangione, it's all connected. There's a theme because it is thematic in describing the left today. I have to take a quick break. There's so much more with VDH and we'll pick it up right after this. Let's talk about that car you own, but don't use. The one you're paying to keep registered and insured. It's just sitting out there taking up space out front and

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Welcome back to The Megyn Kelly Show. On Friday night, we received more than 1,000 pages of writings by the Nashville school shooter. Chilling journals that local officials in Nashville did not want you to see. The FBI sent the files to the Megyn Kelly Show, as well as to Congress, on the heels of a report from the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department last week that was severely lacking. Our team reviewed the documents created by the perpetrator of the March 2023 shooting that tragically took the lives of three children and three adults. The three children were third graders, age nine. The documents provide clear insight into the depraved mind of this killer,

critical context that was excluded from the 48-page report released last week, and that has been withheld from the public for two years. At one point, about a year plus ago, Steven Crowder got his hands on three pages, which was great. It was something. Three pages out of a thousand they have been withholding for years, saying it's somehow too much for us to see. We've seen every other shooter's manifesto, rantings, writings. Why not this one? We here at the Megyn Kelly show do not name school shooters, but due to the nature of this news, we will mention that the shooter's given birth first name is Audrey. However, in the years leading up to the horrific act, she instead went by the name Aiden and used he, him pronouns. On our AM update show this morning, that's another show we're doing

now. It's a 15-minute news update for you in the mornings. You can get it on youtube.com slash Megyn Kelly or our podcast feed. We delved into some of the writings, and we will continue here. We'll repeat a couple, but we will add. Because the report from the Nashville police barely touched on the full scope and breadth of what was contained. The killer's struggles with her gender, her obsession with gender identity, alarming racial animus toward herself as a white person, and how those factors contributed to the act that she committed that day. Why do you think they excluded all of this? Why are those two things too hot to touch?

The families of the victims do not wish for this information to be made public. We understand that, but we are sharing a sampling of necessary context omitted by the Nashville police, and that has been hidden for far too long from the public. The public has a right to know as a matter of safety in preventing more of these. The FBI has given us permission to say what is written, but not to show the actual documents. The journals contain many pages expressing the shooter's belief that she is a man and was born in, quote, the wrong body. In one entry dated April 12th, 2022, this is a year before the shooting titled let kids choose their sex. The killer writes quote, how dare God hand me a training bra when I didn't know WTF it was as a kid. I hated it much more. I'd like to dispose my vagina.

We should all choose our, our gender. And I keep in mind, as you hear just these samplings, I'm going to read you that what the Nashville police represented was that her trans ideology, her gender confusion had absolutely nothing to do with a horrific act she took. From how do you, why? How do you glean that? This stuff is all over her writings. She's clearly deeply disturbed by it. But somehow that's the part you can excise from her motivation.

Wrong. In another, she writes, quote, how does it feel to grow up the gender you were born with and are comfortable and happy with? Well, I don't know that feeling. I never did. You senseless people that you don't know. WTF comes out of your mouth telling me I'm female. Female pronouns make me feel like I want to die, especially called woman. I never was ever. I hate being in a woman's body, need to die. But this had nothing to do with the act she took at Covenant School. In an entry marked June 6th, 2021, the killer writes, quote, Eric and Dylan, that's a reference to the Columbine killers, were gods. All those little dumb shits in other school shootings during the 1990s were not gods, just cowards. Even if maybe they had a reason, they left it

a mystery. I realized that after knowing Columbine, I immediately became attached to it. Not just the notorious outcome, but the preceding evidence leading up to it. I feel I am the reincarnation of Dylan Klebold. My thoughts of depression are forever linked to his and my experience as well. In a diary entry shortly after that, the killer writes about how epic it would have been if she had shot up her own high school, quote, kill all the white kids, kill my own race. F yes, destroy all the white people who are teachers. Let all the black kids go unless if I don't like you. About a month later, the killer writing several pages about why black pain is different from quote white pain. Quote,

black people were given fate, given nothing. While white people get power in the White House, have all the privileges, even to white people like me. White people are born with privileges. Black people aren't. Black people always had to earn and fight for their needs and wants. It was like that in history. It's like that now. The killer goes on, quote, being white sucks, but being black is so cool. Black people should rule. White people should fall. Every white person who lived and died, I hate you all. July of 2022, the killer writes about wanting another therapy session, but not having the money. Quote, I need to have another session with my therapist. I need her.

It's been two months. I don't deny needing help. I loathe the reality of my fate as an autistic, dependent 27-year-old. Later on in the journal, three pages that appear to have been printed and affixed into the journal, titled in all caps, I hate the American people. The killer writing America was doomed from the very beginning, quote, America started with slavery and white people ruling land. Black people were objects and owned by white landowners and farmers from the start of July 4th, 1776. There are no African-American rights. Slavery is still happening.

It goes on, quote, government agencies have all the freedom, white people who want to take away instead of adding more. What do you call that? America is not the land of the free. It's a land full of idiots. It will only get worse in this country. Not near enough gods like me, America and its people all destined to soon be destroyed. The entry signed, quote, I hate you all, Aiden. The journals outline more ideas about how animals are better than people, about how she hates life, she hates money, and a wishlist for the day of the attack involving hopes of, quote, lots of blood, lots of victims, 20 plus dead, sick, sick stuff.

Back with me now, Victor Davis Hanson. I'm sorry, Victor, but nothing, nothing in there makes it too dangerous to release. This is apart from the fact that it's completely in line in the ways that I just read with what leftist schools and leftist thought is pushing right now in American children. There's nothing especially controversial about this versus manifestos we've seen in other cases. So why wasn't this released for two years, either by the local authorities in Nashville or by the FBI under Joe Biden? And why, when the Nashville cops finally released some 48 page summary of the thousand pages last week, did they specifically dissect the gender ideology as not not a causal relationship with the act she committed? Not not the gender, not the race craziness she'd suffered. This wasn't a racial crime, but I'm just saying all the inconvenient sicknesses get excised as the reasons. And it took Trump's FBI to submit this thing to us

and also to Congress for us to have a clear airing of what was behind this woman's sickness, sick mind and what caused her to do this horrendous act. Yeah, I mean, why wasn't it released? Because under the Obama and Biden administrations and even earlier, they established this principle that there's a binary, that it's kind of a neo-Marxist binary. And on one side are oppressors and on one side are oppressed. And once you find yourself self-declared on the oppressed side, then they feel that there's opportunities, exemptions that are accorded to you. Sometimes they're at the university and they're trivial. You get a safe space. You get to pick the race of your roommate. You get a special graduation. But then there's been a movement, we see it in the UK a lot, that penalties, and we see it in San Francisco, fines will be predicated on sexual orientation, gender, race. So this person, I shouldn't say this person, the people who dealt with this case were aware of that. And they felt that they would not release the stuff

because she was part of this protected group. And if you were to attack this, not even attack it, if you were to treat this special person who has exemptions the way you would any other person, then the powers that be would come down on you. And they've created this climate of fear. The other thing about it is everything she said, you can find in either the school of education or the general campus. I could go into the Stanford bookstore and look at what is assigned and pull out a book within five seconds that had every one of those tropes she talked about, evil white people, black people are still slaves, et cetera, et cetera. That is inculcated and absorbed, not just on the campus, but it

drifts off in all these different ways. That's where our teachers are taught, in the schools of education. This student probably had a class with one of those types of teachers or the general night classes. It's not just Harvard, Yale, Stanford. It permeates the community college, the high school, the K-2, you know, A. Can I just jump in there?

Can I just jump in there? Because I read this before, but my friend's son, elementary school son, I think he was in fourth grade when this was written. It could be third, third or fourth. Um, and she pulled him from this school and it was the same school we pulled our kids from. But he was asked to write something up in school. And the question was, what would you teach people about, I guess, if you could teach? And he wrote the following. It's short. The event I would teach people about is slavery. The reason I think it's important to teach people about this event is so then we can see that America was built on black people, not on whites behind the scenes. It's all black. The reason we have picked crops, built houses and America is because black people did it all. The only thing white people did was take credit for the work they didn't do as a white person. I stand with black people all the way.

This, this is a sweet, and he has absolutely no animus at all inside of him, but they're curating it. He's clearly been spoon-fed this same diet, and he had loving parents who said, oh, no, you don't. And he knows there's two themes he also is aware of or he reflects. One is that he will be rewarded in some ways for mouthing or repeating this orthodoxy. And second, he's ignorant. So when he talks about white this, he has no idea what the Battle of Shiloh was or Gettysburg or 700,000 people were wiped out over the question of slavery. He has no idea what it was like on Okinawa or what it was like on Iwo Jima or at the bulge where people died to give this country its preserve, its freedom,

and this self-critical, always re-examining nature of the United States. He has no idea of that. He has no idea. I can tell you that for 20 years at a state college as a professor, when I wanted to send a student to graduate school from a kind of a state college that didn't have a great reputation, the calls that I would get from the admissions committee in law, in medicine, in PhD programs is, do you have anybody who is African American or Hispanic? And I did a lot because I was in a minority community. But if I had a white male, they would say, don't even, we do not want a white male from Cal State Fresno. I had that, I'm not saying that that balances out anything, but the last 50 years, since the civil rights movement took a different

direction, we have had institutionalized and exempt biases and prejudice and set asides to try to level the playing field, et cetera, et cetera. And just forget all of that and your ignorance. That's why we have people that do these things. Nobody ever cross-examines them. They're narcissistic. And I hate to say it, they're arrogant because they don't ever feel that they have to hear an opposite point of view or they're too lazy to go out and just pick up any book in the library that would give them a different take on things. They're filling these kids' heads with hate. This Audrey's head was filled with hate,

self-loathing, loathing of her country, loathing of her race, loathing of her gender. I mean, it was severe. And while she did wind up going to see her therapist there, you heard a reference to it. Uh, and the mother urged the therapist, um, to see her and they came up with a plan to take away her guns because she was obsessing over killing her own father. She wound up going and getting a gun anyway. And that's what she used to kill all these poor little students and their teachers in Nashville, Tennessee. And I, you know, I asked myself,

why would the Nashville police officers be trying to scrub the record for us? You know, like I, I kind of get Biden's FBI, but I don't really get, but you know, Kamala Harris won Nashville, Nashville, just because it's in Tennessee, doesn't make it right wing or Republican. It's not. And, you know, I think there's a, there's probably somewhat of a shared instinct to take out the most incendiary social hot buttons from the full explanation of what was in this person's head. You know what? Maybe, maybe in some people's mind, they're totally unrelated. I don't see how you make that argument. But the point is, it's not for the Nashville police to scrub the record of the

evidence of what she was obsessing over before she took the lives of six innocents. That is not okay. That's not what we've been doing in these school shootings. And I say good for Trump's FBI for being honest while trying to be respectful of the families. They didn't blast it everywhere. But we have to have an honest account of when these things happen. Well, I mean, all of the rewards, psychological and career awards, are on one side and everybody makes the necessary adjustments anywhere geographically los angeles why would a black firewoman say that if she goes into a burning house and sees a white male and she's supposed to pick him up and maybe cannot then it's his fault for being in the wrong place that would get you fired anywhere but that would get you resonance or maybe promoted and the whole

thing about if you look at the autopsy of the LA fire from the public works person to the assistant fire chief, to the regular fire chief, to the mayor, to the deputy mayor, everybody was freelancing in creative ways to try to think up of a DEI woke angle that would draw attention to themselves and be self-congratulatory performance art and lead to career enhancement. And that's the landscape we created. And everybody, according to their station, tries to fit in. And we see it everywhere.

And that it's illiberal, that it's contrary to the Constitution, that it's contrary to the whole Enlightenment. Nobody cares. They're ignorant. And that's what we're dealing with. It's all on the list, the self-hatred, the white hatred, the hatred of country. It's all there. It's all there. It is. I appreciate you walking through it with me. And again, to the listening audience, you can check out the AM Update for other recitations. It is not, as I pointed out on that show, our habit to read manifestos of these school shooters. I take no joy in repeating their thoughts and their crazed musings, but given what's been done in this case

and how it's not available anywhere else, I felt we had no choice. And it was the last responsible move to make on this. Anyway, moving on. Many of the same people who went through those types of adult educations or K through 12, even if they're younger, were out in the streets this weekend in protest of, I don't really understand, to be honest. It's like the Cory Booker speech. No one really knows what exactly they're protesting. Just they want you to know they're angry and hands off, which seems like a better slogan for the Me Too movement than whatever this hit. What do you mean? Hands off. She's wearing the Statue of Liberty outfit. Or is that a he? Forgive me, madam. It's difficult to tell. And there was plenty of that weird mania

on the streets at these protests too, Victor. I'm going to give you one that has it all. Here's a taste of what we heard from these, I don't know, how many groups, 150 groups at various protests, the hands-off protests this weekend. Take a listen to SOT8. I am black. I am Filipino-Japanese, second generation. And I'm a disabled trans man. But I'm also a Medicaid patient. Oh, God. I'm also a person who uses food stamps. I'm also a person who has been through houselessness in this country. I'm also a person who has gone through substance use and addiction. Oh my lord. What? I'm gluten free.

I mean, she hit it all. Yeah. What the thing about all of them is they never present any evidence. So she says, I am everything he wants to erase. And this is what he said. And this is what he did. That proves my point. It's the same thing with a not Donald Trump is a fascist.

Chris Matthews the other day would say, no, he's just tell us exactly what he's done. And if it's any different than any other president and then make your case. And, you know, I was always taught by my fifth grade composition teacher that when you're writing or speaking, she would say, now, Victor, remember to limit the first person I to one or two times. All these people have one thing in common. She says, I am, I am, I am, I am. It wasn't about the message. It was about me, me, me. And that's something that we forget sometimes.

This entire therapeutic left-wing movement is predicated on narcissism and I. I don't really care what their stories are. I want to hear their ideas and their arguments and whether they'll stand antitheses. But it's always about me, me, me, me. When I was her age— Let me give you one more. This person is playing right into your hands. Watch this. This is from the D.C. rally, seven. My name is Greisa Martinez-Rosas. I am an immigrant. I am undocumented, unacclaimed, queer, and unashamed. I, I, I, and all of the proper boxes are checked. You're exactly right. What would be so hard to say? I came here illegally. I have mastered the English language. I obviously have some means. And I took a couple of weeks and filled out some forms and got a green card.

And then I decided I wanted to get citizenship and I applied for it. What is so hard about that? Instead of just saying, I came to the country, I found out I was illegal, I didn't do anything about it. And if anybody wants to enforce the law of my host, then blah, blah, blah. But again, it's this arrogance. It's all about me, me, me, and what I have to do and what you have to do for me. And a lot of people who listen to that just say, I don't have to do anything for you. I follow the law. I can't pick and choose to say, you know what? I am Victor Hanson and I have had this happen to me and I had that happen. And I don't have to go 60 miles an hour in a 50 mile hours. I can just do what I want. And that's what people are tired of. It's this therapeutic, narcissistic self-infatuation. The meltdown, though, about Trump's alleged excesses,

Elon's a different story, you know, we'll see. But the Trump alleged excesses are interesting to me. They're interesting to me because people who you and I both know and like are joining in on some of that. You know, your old pals and my pals, too, at National Review have been very critical of Trump, the deportations, taking people to the El Salvadorian prison, his crackdown on a couple of law firms saying, you know what, you're no longer where the federal government doesn't want to do business with you, Perkins Coie, you who unleashed through Hillary campaign spying and Russia gate on me. I don't actually think the federal government should be doing business with you.

And same for you, Paul Weiss, who rushed to hire the one guy who made it his mission to prosecute me when he worked for Alvin Bragg and when Alvin Bragg wouldn't prosecute me, wrote a whole book about how I should be prosecuted. And ultimately, Tish James took up the mantle and sued me and got an award for $500 million bankrupting or threatening to my company. Trump said, you know what? I don't think the federal government should be in business with these two particular law firms. Well, my friends in National Review, who are honest brokers, wrote very, very critical pieces saying that's basically a bill of attainder and that, you know, we're shipping off people without to a to a jail without having them tried and convicted on criminal charges.

And so that's what they're talking about. This is fascism. This is not us. And this guy, I don't lump in with the National Review crew, but he is a lawyer. He is definitely a Trump hater. And he is starting to lose it over, in the case of Paul Weiss, that one of those law firms, they bent the knee to Trump and said, we'll do whatever you want us to do. Please don't do this to us. And Trump got his way. And half of Paul Weiss is just apoplectic now. They're very sad. Paul Weiss, one of the founding

partners, two grandchildren wrote this scathing letter like our grandpa would never have wanted this. Shame on you. And here is George Conway, formerly married to Kellyanne Conway and a respected lawyer, along with Sarah Longwell, who I believe is also a lawyer and his partner on his podcast, talking about the legal profession and Trump. Satu. When I read that letter, I was just, I was really, I was just moved by it because it really conveyed everything. People want to stand up for something. And I wanted them to know people are listening to them. And it was good to know that people are listening to us. We're all in this together. And this is a fight for so much more than profits for partner. This is a fight for democracy. This is a fight for the rule of law. And some people just don't give a shit. And that makes me angry. You know, you join the legal profession and they hit you with,

I have a lot of really good friends who are lawyers, they hit you with a lot of like, this is a revered profession. You have a real role that you play in society. There are these invisible lines that you help maintain for the constitution. And then to have everybody just act then like it doesn't matter at all is bizarre.

It houses, you know, it's it hurts. Literally in tears. But I heard none of that when they unleashed the lawfare campaign against Trump, Victor. Those norms don't count when we're summing up the norm breaking. I would ask Mr. Conway, why do you think that on November 18th of 2020, three things happened simultaneously. Nathan Wade, the Paramore lead prosecutor of Fannie Willis' circus, was in the White House talking with the White House counsel and billing him the hours. The same day, Michael Colangelo left the DOJ under Merrick Garland, and he had come there from working with Latita James. He left to go to work for Albin Bragg. And third, on that same day, Joe Biden had Merrick Garland appoint Jack Smith, the federal prosecutor. And why did they do that? Because they knew Donald Trump was going to announce his candidacy to run again. That happened all the time. All of that was lawfare. And Joe Biden was on record saying, why didn't, why wasn't he indicted after he left office he said he had a regret about

merrick garden because he didn't go after jack smith jack smith didn't go after soon enough everybody knows that they know the whole thing that they they staged the whole mar-a-lago raid to get a hundred files out of taking 13 000 of them it was point zero zero eight percent and they brought little tags to to do it and they messed it up and took an arranged photograph. Twenty-five states tried to take him off the ballot, and they knew that was illegal. Kevin Clinesmith, one of the lawyers in the entire Russian collusion FBI law, doctored and forged a document. And he went before one of the judges involved in all of these, and he got just no sentence at all compared to what the people who were parading around nonviolently on January 6th. So the whole legal system has been weaponized. Everybody knows that.

And Donald Trump says we're not going to do business with Perkins Coie. It's because they volunteered to be a paywall so that Hillary Clinton could get dirt on Donald Trump. So she went through the DNC, and then the DNC went through Perkins Coie, and then they went through Fusion GPS, and then they hired Christopher Steele to make up 99% of that. And all Trump is saying that each one of you are culpable. And I wish the National Review would just say, why are those 51 intelligence authorities that lied, Brennan, Clapper, Panetta, who were the architects of it, along with Anthony Blinken and Mike Morrell, why don't they just say, what happened to them? They pulled one of the greatest hoax right before the debate to arm Joe Biden with a lie, and they probably influenced some of the voting 10 days later. Nothing happened to them, nothing. So all we saw the last four years was a concentrated and often connected legal to warp the law, warp the law. And if Donald Trump had just said, you know what, I'm tired,

I'm not going to run for office, or if he had not been the candidate, it would not have happened. It was all aimed at one person's sense of their hatred. And they thought that they had the moral and legal right to use the law for their own political purposes, and there would be no consequences. And so far there hasn't been until Trump says, you know what, I'm not going to do business with you who abused your ethical and legal responsibilities. Right. It's like Trump's not trying to throw these guys in jail. Trump's saying these don't seem like respectable law firms to me. One saw a man who tried to throw me in jail unjustly and said, that's the guy for us.

Let's hire it. Let's run and hire him. That's one of the things that Paul Weiss did. And so they made this bed themselves. I mean, Paul Weiss is a very political firm. It's full of Democrats. They decided to get political. They understood that they might alienate someone like Donald Trump. They just didn't bank on him becoming president again and having power. And so I don't see anything wrong whatsoever with what Trump is doing to them. And I think they did the right thing in caving. And who gives two figs what the granddaughters of the founder thinks? They don't have to save the firm. The head of the firm has to save the firm and save the client base. And of course, save their fat cat salaries and their private school tuitions that they're paying.

Like he has to be practical about this because they made some very bad decisions prior to the moment Donald Trump did that. But George Conway will not cry about any of that. He will not cry about the weaponization against Donald Trump because he was for it. So spare me, spare me. And then what's even,

what's even worse is the bill of the, when the national view calls bill of attainder, there's only two examples that are clear cut. The New York state legislature passed with its Democratic majority a law that said after Donald Trump was being investigated for tax returns, and they passed a law that said anybody who is being investigated currently for their tax account, we will turn over his state return commission. Then they passed, when E. Gene Carroll came forward and had all of those fantasies and fables, at the first ruling it said these are way past, 30 years past the statute of limitations. And you know what? The same legislature passed a bill that said for the next 12 months, anybody who claims that they were sexually assaulted has one year to file charges

no matter how long ago. There is no statute of limitations. That was aimed at Donald Trump. And they admitted to both of them. A bill of attainder is where you like a governmental body declares somebody guilty without a trial. There is no question that these two law firms did the things that Trump believes they did. It is not it's not a mystery. It's not even something in dispute that the hiring of this employee either happened or didn't happen. It did happen. It's

knowable. Perkins Coie's role in Russiagate is very well documented up and down the record. It's known. There's no need for a trial. But it isn't. And it's not guilt as a criminal matter either. Go ahead, Victor. But it's not even a law. A bill of attainder says that you see you post facto create and pass to the legislator a particular piece of legislation to go after what somebody did in the past. He's not doing any of that. He's just saying, I have choices to use all different types of law firms, and I just don't want to use those because I feel they're unethical. It's not like the New York legislature deliberately thinking Donald Trump, he's now under investigation. We are going to change the law to go after him for something he's already done.

And that's what they did. And nobody at the National Review, where I worked for 21 years, said a word. What do you—well, I mean, they—I love National Review. I just want them to be a lot more balanced. I like National Review. You can have the bash piece. Definitely have a bash piece. That's fine. But at a place like NRA, we expect there to be a piece on the other side. Half of the Republican Party is MAGA or loyal to Trump. And then there are the establishment types. And you can't just have... Thankfully, they did get John Yoo on there recently to defend some of the Trump immigration

actions. But they've been extremely hard on Trump with the tariffs and the immigration. And I did want to ask you what you thought about the lawfare, Victor. I mean, it's every day, just now, just as we were coming to air, we got this. The DC Circuit Court of Appeals, I believe it was an en banc panel, meaning all of them came and sat. They basically said these two leaders of federal boards who were fired by Trump, one was on the NLRB and one was on something called the merit systems protection board. He fired them. They were appointed by Biden and they sued saying, you don't have the power to fire us. And long story short, Trump, he just lost. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals on Bonk said, you didn't have the power to do this.

The Supreme Court's going to have to decide. And this, too, is getting funneled up to the Supreme Court. So every single thing he's, every single executive order, they're trying to stop it dead in its tracks, Victor, by clogging it up in lawfare. Yeah, they filed more in the first month than they did, than all lawyers did in the four years of the Biden term. So you have about three to four of these 750 district judges, and they are the refined version of the Tesla stuff, the disrupting the joint session of Congress if you're Al Green or the antics of making videos with smut mouth, threats, kickboxing. All of that stuff is the street theater. Obama or Biden appointed judges to delay, delay, delay, and then hope that you can, as Robert Mueller did, eat up a year or two years of the Trump term, fighting, fighting, fighting all this. The weird thing is that we saw that in almost all these cases, these liberal judges, they kind of mirror image the lawfare that went out.

Just as we saw, Ingaron was very biased. We saw that Mershon's daughter kind of grifted off her father. She was a Democratic consultant. And, you know, Judge Furman, I think his brother was an advisor, an economic advisor to the Biden administration. I think Judge Boasberg has people in his family that are in very left-wing activist groups. So the more that they can establish, these judges can establish that they're very left-wing, either their familiar relationships or themselves, the more they're likely to be picked out. And now it's all gone to their head. And some of them are more powerful than the National Security Advisor, the Secretary of State. They are exercising U.S. national security policy right now. They are determining what a president can do vis-a-vis relations with foreign

countries even. And it's gone to their head, and they really have an impression of themselves that's not warranted. And it won't stop until Justice Roberts and the Supreme Court say this is enough. And if they don't stop it, these people on the left never realize that it can be done to them just as easily. And the Republicans did it a little bit. But it's kind of like the filibuster. When they were in the majority, they said that the filibuster was a racist relic. That's what Obama said. And then when they were in the minority, he filibustered Judge Alito's appointment. They don't have a consistent philosophy, really, other than whatever the right does, we're going to oppose and make the necessary adjustments to fit the fit the case. Yeah, the Supreme Court is going to have to shore up and take these cases on and take them on faster so that we can get governing underway. They cannot just be this black hole where cases go to die along with the entire Trump agenda. So sooner or later, they're going to have to take them on and they're going to have to decide them. And it's going to have to be done

at a more expedited pace. Even Judge Henderson from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals said that in the opinion she authored in this case, like it's got to be taken up by the Supreme Court. And the sooner the better, like get to work. Tick tock people. No time like the present Victor, a pleasure, my friend. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me. Okay. When we come back, we've got a story that you will not see anywhere else on a U S citizen right now detained in Russia. Wait until you hear this. Let's be real. Our modern world can be toxic from ultra processed foods to environmental chemicals. Our modern world can be toxic. From ultra-processed foods to environmental chemicals, our bodies are under attack every single day. And one of the

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bodies were designed for. Reclaim your gut health with Just Thrive Digestive Bitters, available now at justthrivehealth.com. Use code Megan to save 20% off your first order. That's justthrivehealth.com, promo code Megan. As Americans are getting inspired to make their health and fitness a priority. Let me tell you about Don and the team at jacked up fitness, a great American company. Their commercial grade power rack pro has everything you need to get a full body workout from home. The cable crossover system and integrated weight stacks allow you to do hundreds of exercises, basically everything you can do at the gym. With everyone's busy schedule, having one of these commercial-grade,

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And when you're ready to order your own Power Rack Pro, save 10% by using my promo code MK. No more excuses. Let's all get in the best shape of our lives. Go to getjackedup.com. I'm Megyn Kelly, host of the Megyn Kelly Show on SiriusXM. It's your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations

with the most interesting and important political, legal, and cultural figures today. You can catch The Megyn Kelly Show on Triumph, a SiriusXM channel featuring lots of hosts you may know and probably love. Great people like Dr. Laura, Glenn Beck, Nancy Grace, Dave Ramsey, and yours truly, Megyn Kelly. You can stream The Megyn Kelly Show on SiriusXM at home or anywhere you are, no car required. I do it all the time.

I love the SiriusXM app. It has ad-free music coverage of every major sport, comedy, talk, podcast, and more. Subscribe now. Get your first three months for free. Go to SiriusXM.com slash MK show to subscribe and get three months free. That's SiriusXM.com slash MK show and get three months free. Offer details apply. Now we're going to talk about a woman named Ksenia Karolina. She's a 33-year-old dual Russian-American citizen and amateur ballerina who has been wrongfully detained in Russia for almost 15 months. And

wait until you hear how she's living. Last August, Ksenia was convicted in Russia of, quote, treason and handed a 12-year prison sentence in a Russian labor camp. Her crime? She donated $51.80 in 2022 while in America to a U.S.-based nonprofit that helps children and the elderly who have been impacted by the war in Ukraine. Vladimir Putin increased the penalties for treason back in 2023, and Russian authorities took her into custody in January of last year while she was visiting her elderly grandmother, her first visit to the country in three years. And before you knew it, she was in jail first for some ridiculous charge, and then they said she had committed treason with that $50 donation. And she's been convicted. She pleaded guilty because she was told that she'd have to

do that in order to avoid some genuinely lengthy prison sentence. And so she did, thinking it would just be a slap on the wrist. She could get out of there over the 50 bucks. No, she's there a dozen years. She's been sentenced to a dozen years in a Russian prison. The State Department tells our show that the U.S. government has officially designated Ksenia as wrongfully detained. That's a good designation for her to get because it means they will work for her release. And now we believe the Trump administration is. But a source close to the situation tells us Ksenia is having numerous health problems as she endures reportedly horrific work conditions at a penal colony over 1,000 miles east of Moscow. Luckily, Ksenia has a fighter literally fighting for her. It's her boyfriend, Chris Van Yerden. And Chris is a

former international boxing organization welterweight champion who retired from the sport last year to work full-time on Ksenia's release. Here's a video he narrated at FreeKsenia.com. There's a proverb in the Bible that talks about making plans, but recognizing that God has the final vote. That is how I feel. I celebrated the past New Year's Eve while vacationing with my amazing girlfriend, Cassina Carolina. She's who I've been waiting for my whole life.

She's beautiful, funny, and adventurous. She sneaks food to our bordeaux booths. She lights up every room with her energy and her optimisms. My Christmas gift to Cassandra was to pay for a trip to Russia. Maybe I thought that would make it go faster and she would be back home with me in Los Angeles sooner.

But something intervened. I'm not sure it was God, but it was something. When the Russians found on a Venmo app that she had made a $51 donation to a U.S. nonprofit organization, she was told she was facing charges and could not leave the country. I'm appealing to the Russian government to be the responsible actor here. It was a mistake to arrest her. Please let her go.

Show the world you are better than being afraid of my ballerina. Chris joins me now. Chris, thank you for being here. I'm so sorry this has happened to your love. So just to get the chronology right, it was 2022 she made this $51 donation. It was 2023 that Putin upgraded the penalties for treason, making it punishable by life in prison. So this was what we call ex post facto. After the fact of her alleged treason, which was the donation, he decided to make this crime punishable by life in prison. Then in January of 2024, she went over there completely not expecting any trouble from the Russian government. She's

got dual citizenship, but suddenly found out she was very, very wrong about that assumption. So tell us how the trouble for her started when she got to Russia. Megan, thank you for having me. And yes, the way you just explained it exactly, it's bogus. It's just blows my mind, these treason charges. I'll tell you what, we went to Istanbul. She wanted me to go with her to Russia to meet her parents. I didn't like the idea. I didn't like the idea of her going in the first place, but she convinced me. I'm a Russian citizen. I speak the language. I'm going to Yekaterinburg. It's not the main city. She convinced me that it's safe. And I bought that plane ticket.

And I decided to go to Istanbul with her for New Year's. And from there, she'll go home. I'll come back to LA. And the flight from Istanbul to Yekaterinburg was four hours. My flight back home to LA was about 10. So I knew that by the time I get back in LA, she's already settled in. I'll have a message from her. Well, I got back to LA and I haven't heard a single word from Ksenia. I tried for about six hours that day, like trying to get all of her. Then out of nowhere,

I got a message that simple message, send me a message and it said, crazy, I've not yet seen my family speak to you later. And I replied and I said, is everything okay? And I haven't heard from her again for about six hours. Then I received a phone call from a random Russian rumber. It was Ksenia in tears. I said, what's wrong? She explained to me that she was arrested, interrogated for 16 hours at the airport. I said, for what?

And they said, well, I don't know. They took my phone. I was flagged, asked a bunch of questions to the extent where they didn't. They didn't want to give her water. They don't want to give her food for 16 hours because they believed she's part of something bigger. And she said, I don't know what you want me to say, but I'm just here to visit my family. After 16 hours, they released her to her family, but held onto her cell phone. And that was the start of everything. That was the January 2nd. That was the start of everything. So he held January 2nd. That was the start of everything.

So he held onto her cell phone, and it was on her Venmo receipts that they saw she had made this donation while in America as an American citizen to 50 bucks to help children and the elderly displaced by the Ukraine war. And they said that that was, in fact fact a $50 donation to pay for weapons. Yeah. Yeah. You're right. So $51. After they took her phone, they sent her back to her family. So they released it to her family and they said, you're not allowed to leave your Katerinburg. You will hear from us. And we now know within the three weeks from January 2nd to January 27th, they investigated every single thing on a cell phone. This is where they came across the Venmo, $51 on Venmo, charged her for treason, funding the enemy state. That's what she was charging for, funding the enemy state, buying weapons.

And if you know, I started laughing and crying at the same time because it was like, if you know my Ksenia, she is the sweetest, kindest person you'll meet. She goes out of her way to do good for people. She hates seeing people hurt. So you can imagine elderly people, young kids without food and water, she would be the first to donate money. And I remember listening to these charges they charged her with and how the Russian media proclaims or the portrait they sculpt for the Russian audience is bogus. Like, for example, she was charged for hooliganism,

for attacking two male officers. I was like, I am a fighter. Yes, I am a fighter. Ksenia is the opposite. Ksenia has got a soft heart, sweet heart, cries easily. She doesn't have a bad bone in her body. So when I heard that, it broke my heart. So yeah, originally they said they arrested her for hooliganism, as you pointed out,

and then they upgraded the charge to state treason. So she's been slapped with this crazy charge of treason. She's just there to see her grandmother. And she gets a Russian lawyer, which I imagine one has to do in order to fight charges by the Russian authorities. And so how did that happen? And did she not have any counsel, you know, back from the States to help guide her through this process? Yeah. Well, you're taking me back now. I'll tell you the process to get that lawyer was, it was very, very difficult because first of all, I'm dealing with the mother and father, which are in Russia and they want to be hands-on with a lawyer. They want to be able to see the

lawyer in person and they barely speak English. So I need a Russian lawyer. So the process started to get earlier. And I will tell you, every lawyer turned us down because they said it's too risky. They said, you're fighting Russia. Like, we can lose our license. And eventually, we got all of the lawyers we have right now, or had, and met the parents. The parents loved him. I didn't like him at all. I just didn't like him.

I said, we can do better. And the parents was persistent on, no, we like this lawyer. We'll go with him. Anyway, go with the lawyer. Long story short, the lawyer ended up telling Kassadin to plead guilty. Now, I was very upset about that. I was like, why would you do that? And he said, look, she's going to get 20 years in prison.

I can get that down to five years if she pleads guilty. I was like, I don't like this, but the parents liked the idea. So the lawyer got her to plead guilty. And guess what? She got the minimum of 12. It didn't work. But it painted this picture of Ksenia now acknowledging what she did. And it made me very, very upset.

This lawyer, as the time progressed in this whole battle, we realized this lawyer is like a puppet to the KGB. Just a puppet. He's doing everything they want. He made Ksenia sign letters Ksenia was never supposed to sign. She signed it because the lawyer said, no, everything is going to be good. So the lawyer wasn't really representing her best interests at all. No, no, no, no.

Was there any other evidence against her that they used or did it all boil down to this $151 payment? That's what has been released is the $51, legalism, funding the enemy state. She's part of a, first they paid this whole picture of her being a spy. Basically because she had dual citizenship. Yeah. And I was like, this is ridiculous. But it came down to the $51, which is shocking, right?

It's still, to this day, it blows my mind that she's losing her life for $51. So what do we know? I mean, those Russian prisons are no joke. What do we know about the conditions in which she's being held? I got to be very smart here because I want to tell you, but I got Ksenia in trouble already once because of being in the media

and sharing some stuff she writes in the letters. Because you would think she's written to me before where they blank out some stuff in the letters which means clearly she tries to tell me something they came across it they blanked it out but if there's things they don't blank out you would think i'm over i'm okay to share it so i want to be careful but um the conditions are bad i can tell you right now, it's harsh. She's in a labor camp, right? So she wakes up at 6 a.m. in the morning. She works till 9 p.m. at night.

She gets two 15-minute breaks in between for lunch or coffee break or to brush her teeth or whatever. It's snowing in siberia close to where she's held at close to siberia it's snowing it's freezing cold out they're working now um i want to share some something with you which is which is it's heartbreaking but i was i'm the same time i'm so proud of ksenia because she's very strong-minded yet she's very she's delicate and she's not cut out for this she's not I don't even think I am

I'm a fighter I will deal with it but the thing that Ksenia is in there she was speaking to me when all of this happened she was locked up she's an esthetician now so she's all about beauty and taking care of herself. Skincare, her beauty.

So she explained to me, and she's finding humor in all of this, because as I read the letters, she will write, ha, ha, ha, can you believe this? So she's explaining to me how she ended up chewing on her clothing to get the material loose. And then she would take the material and floss her teeth with it, just to make sure she's taking care of her teeth. And reading that for the first time broke my heart. But it also made me very proud to know that she's strong-minded. She's finding a way. You know, they go. How often do they let them shower? Good question.

Once a week. Okay. But it depends on how they feel. There was a moment of her not going to the shower for two weeks. But again, Ksenia, knowing her, she would write to me. She'd go, babe, your mom, her mother would send her some wipes and stuff. And she was like, I would use the toilet water to clean myself. Oh, boy.

And I know this woman. I know her. And for her to now live in that circumstance, it's heartbreaking. You know, she's got problems with her legs. And this worries me. This really worries me. She's now all of a sudden got leg pain. She's got some big veins popping out on her legs from all the standing.

She had what they think she had a minor seizure because of the labor the hard working labor she had a seizure which they think we don't know she collapsed, shaken the medical medics were rushed in she

she explained to me in the letters how she's peeling thousands and thousands of potatoes every day. But you only get a few seconds. There's people yelling and sweating at you all day and you've got to rush. And then you've got to put the potatoes in the boiling water. So she's got blisters on her hand from the boiling water burning her hand. And she's getting basically no attention.

Like it's harsh. It is. Do you think she could do 12 years in these conditions? No, she cannot, Megan. And she's written that to me in the letter. And she said, Chris, my love, I'm sorry, but I'm not going to do 12 years. I'm telling you right now.

Which is to obviously put one on one together. Put one on one together, put one on one together. And you can imagine what she's trying to tell me. I know that you've tried to move heaven and earth. This is an incredibly difficult problem to solve. And, you know, the Biden administration. You got the designation under Biden that this is wrongful detention, which was good. They were not going to give it to me.

They were not going to give it to me. I can tell you right now, the Biden administration was not going to give me that wrongful detention. Working with the Biden administration, I want to bring this across. First of all, I want to say I'm grateful that I got that wrongful detention under the Biden administration. But there's only a handful of people in that Biden administration that I have a lot of respect for. And one of them is Roger Carstens. He was an amazing man trying everything to help me get Ksenia out. But he was limited as far as what he could do.

I was fighting to get this wrong for the tension. I mean, you have to meet this. I've been in this game now. I call it a game because I realize it's a political game for the US and Russia. It's just a game. It's someone's life. It's Ksenia's life, but it's really just a political game. And

you have to meet 16. I think you have to meet 16 criterias on a list in order to be declared wrongfully detained. Now, I've done that in August. By August, as soon as, by March, by April, I said, guys, what are we still waiting for? Like, Ksenia's clearly wrongfully detained. And I pointed out everything and they're like, yeah, playing the games.

And I said, look, there's no rush for any of this. Let's do this right. There will be no prison swap. Take your time. Take your time, which upset me. And then there was the first prison swap and Ksenia wasn't included because she's not being declared wrongfully detained I was very upset anyway so I meet these criteria and I'm speaking with the state department under the Biden administration and I said okay we've met these criteria can we get Cassandra declared wrongfully detained because there might be a next

prison swap and I want to make sure Christina's on that list. No, Chris, don't rush. Don't rush. There will be no swap. I can promise. They guaranteed me. They said, we guarantee you there will be no prison swap until maybe the elections. And I was like, I took a breather.

I was like, okay, I guess I can't do much. Guess what? There was a prison swap on August 1st. And I missed my opportunity because the Biden administration told me, no rush, we'll take this slowly. We want to make sure we do it right. Even though by April, May, I've had the criterias. And we missed an opportunity.

Then I met the criterias. I met them. There's two people I want to thank. Other than the people I work with right now, a man with the name of Peter Berg, big Hollywood producer, very close friends, like a dad to me. Friday Night Lights.

Yes, Peter Berg. Lone survivor. Currently, he's, right? The list goes on. He's currently playing such a big role in helping me get Cassandra back. It was for Peter Berg made a phone call. Peter Berg made a phone call to the U.S. government.

And he put some fire under them. And he said, look here, this girl is clearly being wrongfully detained. And after that phone call, they declared Kassandra wrongfully detained. Another name I want to thank is Dana White. Dana White being very good friends with President Trump is on board as well. Dana's advocating for me and Dana's pushing.

Now I'm on your show Megan because I know President Trump has a lot of respect for you. I've watched his interviews here, watched your shows. He takes note to what you say and I'm on you. I'm begging. I'm not a begging man. But I'm begging for this girl's life. It is not looking good for her. And if there's somebody that can bring Kassandra back, it's President Trump. I know it. And I'm begging him. I know he can bring her back like this.

She's not doing well. Do you have, I heard that you were in touch with Steve Witkoff, President Trump's envoy, which would be excellent. I mean, he's empowered. We definitely can put you in touch with Rick Grinnell too, and we can be in touch with him. But what's the messaging right now from the Trump administration? Well, it's quite. The last three weeks to a month, there's really no, nothing following, nothing happening. That's why I was, I want to thank you, Megan, for giving me this platform. That's why I feel like there's nothing happening right now. And I'm on here and I'm begging you and I'm begging President Trump, something needs to happen.

Woodscuff, I'm trying to get on a phone call with Woodscuff. It's not happening. I don't know why. And I'm on your show and I'm trying to connect with Woodscuff to get out of his mouth. I know Senator Rubio is on it as well. Adam Bauer is on it as well. Adam Bauer is on as well. Because of what's happening with the attempt to reach a settlement on the Ukraine war. I wish, you know, it's like she was probably in a better position prior to things hitting this roadblock, right? When things were a little better between Trump

and Putin, they were getting along a little better. Right now, I'm sure Trump doesn't want to inject something new that they need to bargain over, argue over. He's trying to get a war resolved, but, but that doesn't mean it won't happen. I just, I can, I'm sure you felt the change of fortunes when the talk about each other and about resolving this conflict got worse, but that doesn't mean it won't happen. We just need to make sure she stays in their focus. And I'm sure, you know, I'm sure that they're aware there's no way. I mean, president Trump is not the kind to leave an American behind over there, especially ballerina who's in jail for treason because she gave a $50 donation to the Ukrainians. I mean, it's just,

it's outrageous on its face. I, I wish I could say it could appeal to Vladimir Putin and his sense of justice on this. I don't think that's going to work. So I promise I will call attention to this segment, to my administration contacts, and we'll hope for the best. I feel your pain. This is deeply, deeply wrong. She's lucky to have you, Chris. Megan, you know what? Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm lucky to have her. Like, if you get to know Christina, like, I'm very lucky to be part of her life.

And I'm not stopping, you know. I want to say this, but just, again, you painted a picture already, but people, I get a lot of mixed messages, hate messages, mixed messages. She gets what she deserves. No, I just want to remind people that Ksenia is a normal human being,

loves her friends, loves her family. She'll put them above everything. She's outgoing. She's outgoing. She's active. She's being charged for treason for something she did as an American citizen in the United States in 2022. That millions of Americans have done. She's charged for treason, a law that was passed in 2023 by Russia, a year after Cassandra's donation, she's not part of any organization

other than being a good, loving, kind-hearted human being that loves exercising, laughing. And I'm begging the American people to not forget Ksenia and help me. How can you help me? Go to the website, freeksenia.com, and share the content we share and help me keep her name out there and help me keep this story alive because she's already given up.

She's already 90% given up, but we will not give up on her. I will not give up on her. You know, I feel like I'm really loving my dad's experience. And I believe he could get Ksenia homecom to learn more and donate. If you feel inspired to try to help Chris in his quest to get his love back home and out of a terrible, terrible place where she does not belong. Chris, thank you. We'll continue to follow it and we'll follow up with you behind the scenes as well. Megan, thank you so much. All the best. Wow.

Jeez, this is, stuff like this happens. And you know what I was saying, I think is really true. It's now Trump's in a tough position. He's negotiating for something that involves, you know, many, many lives. And that's unfortunate, right? Because in a calmer time, her life would get more priority. But President Trump got Mark Fogel home, even though he was trying to negotiate the end of the Ukraine war. And I think he can get Ksenia home too. I think Putin will let her go. I just don't think Putin's going to let this

dual citizen, young ballerina stay in a Russian jail for 12 years. I just don't think Putin's gonna let this dual citizen, young ballerina stay in a Russian jail for 12 years. I actually don't think he will, but it's gotta be made a priority and we have to stay on it. Thank you all for listening. Tomorrow, really looking forward to bringing you Dr. Mark Hyman. This guy is amazing.

He's got so much good information to give you about your health, your doctor, what you need to be worrying about, what the future holds, whether you need to change your doctor. And I think you're going to enjoy the conversation. Great talker and super smart. So we'll do that together tomorrow. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no no agenda and no fear