The Megyn Kelly Show - Terror in Texas and a Possible Clinton Comeback, with Monica Crowley and Briahna Joy Gray | Ep. 242

Episode Date: January 18, 2022

Megyn Kelly is joined by Monica Crowley, former U.S. assistant secretary of the Treasury for Public Affairs, and Briahna Joy Gray, former press secretary for Bernie Sanders and co-host of the "Bad Faith" podcast, to talk about what we know now about the Islamic terrorism at a Texas synagogue, the media and politicians attempting to downplay the Islam aspect of the attack, President Biden's failing poll numbers, the inflation struggles, Hillary Clinton's potential political future, Trump vs. DeSantis and what happens in 2024, terrible Democratic messaging in 2022, the populism among the left and the right in America, how companies are treating their workers, Biden's failed efforts on criminal justice reform and voting rights, whether there'll be a progressive challenger to Biden, our current COVID challenges, and more.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow 

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, and boy do we have a good one for you today. We are going to kick it off, without further ado, with one of my old pals, Monica Crowley. Yes, we got to know each other at Fox News for over a number of years, and then she went to work for the Trump administration, specifically for the Treasury Department, and she's got thoughts on what we're going through right now as a nation when it comes to inflation, when it comes to the economy, which are the most important issues to the voters right now,

but are getting precious little, if any, attention from our president and his administration. This, and we're going to get to that one second, but this as we learn new details about this awful hostage situation that happened down in Texas over the weekend, which I will bring to you. Monica, thank you so much for being here. Megan, it's such a joy to join you and be back on the air with you, my friend. Congratulations. The show is a huge success and I'm so happy to be part of it. Thank you, my dear. I missed seeing your beautiful face and hearing your brilliant thoughts. And this is actually right up your alley. I'm in the news today. I was like, my God,

we got lucky because it's tailor made for you. Let's kick it off with what happened at the synagogue down in Texas, about 27 miles outside of Dallas. And we're learning new details today on the suspect. For the audience members who do not know about the story, the specifics, basically, there's a synagogue called the Congregation Beth Israel Synagogue. It's in Colleyville, Texas, half hour from Dallas. A man named Malik Faizal Akram from the United Kingdom, 44 years old, came to America about two weeks ago, lived in a homeless shelter, then emerged, bought a gun on the street, according to President Biden. That's what he said, and went into the synagogue. It's actually just so sad in a way, Monica. It shows the goodness of those inside the synagogue. This guy comes up, he knocks on the window. The rabbi lets him in, welcomes him, gives him a cup of tea, sits down, have a cup of tea with him. And then the guy raided the services at 11 a.m. while people were praying for people taken hostage, 12 hour standoff. Eventually, the FBI, to its credit, killed the gunman and no one else lost

their life. Okay, but the headlines today are, and by the way, two others are now in custody over in the UK, two teenagers, they say, though. So the plot may be growing, maybe wider than just this guy, the unconfirmed. Okay, people are asking this morning how this guy got into the United States. Apparently, he did have a criminal history in the UK. Again, he's a 44-year-old man. He had a criminal history in the UK. And these tourist visas he was here on are supposed to be off limits to foreigners who have broken the law. And not only was he a convicted criminal over there, but they are now reporting that he was known to MI5. And he was the subject of an investigation as recently as late 2020. But by the time he flew to America, he was was the subject of an investigation as recently as late 2020.

But by the time he flew to America, he was no longer subject to an investigation over there. So you tell me what he was doing in the United States and why this guy got a visa. So that's the critical question, Megan. And a full investigation has got to take place that is clean and honest. And we know that the FBI in recent years has experienced a lot of controversy and upheaval and tumult for very good reason. The FBI, at least at the leadership level, and some would argue even further down, has largely been politicized. And we also know that law enforcement at all levels, including the FBI, has been sort of hijacked by woke philosophy and this woke culture. And you can't talk about certain classes of criminals because it's politically

incorrect. Well, we know the result of that, and that is rising crime, rising events like this, that could very well be part of an international jihadi plot, because you do have these two individuals in the UK who've been arrested as part of this. So we know that when woke philosophy and thinking turns into woke action, particularly with the military and law enforcement, you have a serious problem. And this is the result of what we're seeing. So very, very obvious, and I think serious question needs to be asked, how did this individual get into the country, where, as you point out, he had a criminal history in the UK, he was known to the UK intelligence agencies. The FBI so far has not indicated whether or not this man was known to them, but I think we can make a pretty good guess about that. So how did he get in? Well,

Megan, what we do know is that one of the very first things President Biden did when he entered office was revoke multiple Trump orders of enhanced vetting of foreign nationals coming into the United States. So Trump put into place all kinds of restrictions to come in to make sure that foreign nationals were vetted in the most extreme kind of way. So we weren't letting individuals like this into the country. There's a reason why President Trump didn't have these kinds of attacks when he was president. So the question that everybody should be asking and should be central to any investigation here is, was President Biden's revocation of those Trump era policies on extreme vetting of these foreign nationals, did that play a role in allowing this man in to commit this crime?

Mm hmm. Well, we we need answers with the FBI can't stay silent. Why are the British authorities speaking out about this guy having been investigated by them? But our FBI has said nothing. They won't confirm whether they knew or didn't know so far. And this is after they botched their messaging about this over the weekend, which we can get to in a second. But just want to stay on the latest for right now. Accordingly, according to Daily Mail and the BBC, this reporting, MI5 investigates around 3,000 subjects of interest and has about 600 live investigations at any given time. All right. So about 3,000 subjects on their radar. This guy no longer was, but it wasn't so long ago he'd been on there. There are about 40,000 closed subject of interest cases. And the FBI will not say whether this guy was on our radar at all. So if he had recently been investigated and had a criminal record, the question is, how?

How could how could we not know? Because the tourist visa that he applied for and got are it's supposed to be off limits to foreigners who have criminal records. But what I read in the Daily Mail is that they had gone through sort of a bunch of organizations to figure this out. We apparently do ask applicants if they have a criminal record. And our website claims that we're going to check to see if they have undisclosed criminal convictions. But it appears we might not actually do it because we don't have access to criminal records in the UK's criminal database. So it requires coordination between the two governments, which I don't know if it happened here. There's a there's an MP over there in England saying there seems to have been a dreadful error at the UK and US borders caused by an intelligence failure. And it has to be investigated right away. You know, Megan, every time we hear of an attack

here on the homeland or even abroad somewhere in Western Europe, we all pull our hair out and say, how could this have happened? Well, now we've got a different context in the United States because we have a different president in President Biden. And he has chosen a couple of routes. Number one, a catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan, leaving Americans behind and creating a power vacuum into which the world's worst bad guys are now entering, including Iran, the Taliban, Al Qaeda, China, Russia, you name it. So that now is a staging of area once again for these kinds of terrorists. Then you couple that with the wide open border

and the kind of lax immigration policies that we're describing here in this context, and you have a recipe for these kinds of terrorist attacks within and on our homeland. That's point number one. Point number two, Megan, this is really critical. How many times have we said after an attack like this, I can't believe after 9-11, this is still going on. So after 9-11, we have the 9-11 Commission, and they had two major points that came out of that massive investigation. One was to get Western countries to work together to flag individuals and terrorist organizations so that they could, the UK, for example, could communicate with our intelligence agencies and flag an individual like

this. That was number one. Number two, here at home, was to lower the wall between our intel agencies and our law enforcement agencies like the FBI, and once we stood up the Department of Homeland Security, that agency as well, lower the wall that separated those two so that they could more easily communicate about potential threats here at home. So after that, we were told that both of those things happened. Now, maybe they did, but maybe not to the extent that we need. I know President Trump really tried to resolve that and fix it and get it to a place where we weren't having these kinds of threats. But if those walls have gone back up, and if there is gross inefficiency in the way countries are talking to each other and intel and and and law enforcement agencies

are talking to each other. Well, that better be fixed and it better be fixed stat because American lives are on the line. Right. Because you have, as you point out, the Biden administration day one, you know, Joe Biden rescinding these Trump executive orders that would have taken a hard look at anybody with criminal pasts or suspected to be linked with terrorists trying to get into this country. That's why MI5 was investigating the guy. That wasn't a pure law enforcement investigation. That's an intel organization trying to figure out whether this guy is up to a broader no good than just petty crime. And maybe we'll learn more from the fact that they have two people in custody over there right now. But the FBI's own messaging on this undermined

public trust and made you believe these guys don't get it. You know, are we more interested in being PC than we are in actually getting to the bottom of what could have been a horrific attack on this synagogue? I mean, I'll give the FBI agents on the ground credit for stopping this guy. You know, one person died and it was the shooter, the kidnapper. But in any event, the guy who comes out and gives the statement, the first statement on this, Special Agent in Charge Matt DiSarno says, quote, We do believe this is Saturday from our engagement with this subject that he was singularly focused on one issue. And it was not specifically related to the Jewish community. But we're continuing to work to find motive and

we'll continue on that path. Well, by 24 hours later, they had to reverse themselves because it was clear the man who stormed the synagogue, the Jewish synagogue, and held four people, including the rabbi hostage, while spewing anti-Smitic remarks was he did have anti-semitism on the mind. And they knew that on Saturday because the guy had made clear he was there to get this Pakistani terrorist released from custody. She's being held apparently in Texas. And her name is Aifa Siddiqui. This woman's not good. She is currently serving an 86 year sentence in this Texas facility. She was convicted back in 2010 of attempted murder, etc. In Afghanistan, they called her Lady Al Qaeda. She was once on the synagogue window and got offered tea by the rabbi and welcomed in and then hurt the people who were praying. This woman came to America, was educated at MIT, and got her doctorate at Brandeis. America opens its arms. We welcome these people, right? It's like, come on in. And then she totally betrays, right? She got arrested in Afghanistan carrying sodium cyanide, as well as documents describing how to make chemical weapons,

how to make dirty bombs, how to weaponize Ebola. Preet Bharara, who prosecuted her, said she wanted to blow up the Statue of Liberty in Grand Central Station. She said, quote, I want to kill as many effing Americans as I can. What a lovely person. Then she attempted to shoot FBI agents and military men who were questioning her in Afghanistan that got her convicted back in the States. And at her trial, she demanded that all jurors and attorneys get DNA tested to make sure that there wasn't a drop of Jewish blood among them. So this is this guy's cause celeb. This is why he was in the synagogue to protest her incarceration. And we have our FBI and then the AP repeating the headline and quite a few running with what we don't know what the motivation was. Well, it seems pretty clear. Yes.

And we have seen this over and over again. Like it's some big mystery, Megan, as to what their motivation is. Jew hatred, the hatred of the West, the hatred of the infidel is central to Islamist philosophy and belief, and frankly, central to Islamist, radical Islamist action as well. So we're all here in the West, 20 plus years after 9-11, still scratching our heads, at least publicly saying, gosh, golly, I can't understand why this person would act this way. Why would they target a synagogue? Why would they be screaming jihadi slogans and so on. It's pretty obvious. And you know what? It's obvious to the American people. They understand. They live through 9-11. They get it. It's common sense.

And yet our law enforcement agencies, as well as our military now, to get to my earlier point, they're shot through with woke leadership. They're shot through with this kind of woke philosophy that is damaging their mission. Their mission is to keep the United States, the American people, and America's interests safe and protected, and to advance those interests whenever possible. Instead, they're so bogged down in, it's not even politically correct anymore. It's this dangerous Marxist control oriented language and view that is actually undermining the United States from within. The AP got hit because they just repeated that FBI quote unquestioningly. And I understand as a

press member, it's not really your business to restate what the FBI stated. They're reporting what the FBI is saying. But a dose of skepticism was in order, given the circumstances that we were watching. And apparently early on on Saturday, they knew this was about freeing this Pakistani terrorist who hates Jews. So some of the reactions online were pretty great. I'll give you one from Isaac Shore of National Review. He writes, sure, for all we know, the guy might have chosen a synagogue because he wanted to spend his last day on earth hanging out with Jews. Sure, right, that's possible. And the absurdity of like everyone just going with, oh, no, it had nothing to do with anti-Semitism. Kyle Orton writes, this is absolutely absurd from the AP, in an era when

the most micro identities receive excess coverage and the most innocent slight can be interpreted as evidence of bias. Even a hostage taking at a synagogue doesn't qualify as hostility to Jews. It's part of the pattern. That's the truth. That's why people are being extra hard on them. Because as Barry Weiss once said to me on this show, Jews don't count. That's what she said. You know, bias against every group matters unless it's whites and in particular Jews, because they just they don't rate. They don't count. And they also don't have like strong lobbying efforts with the press. And you know, I would put Christians in that group, too. You know, Christians are very quiet. Christians take a lot of abuse. So do Jews.

And yet they don't rate because they're not a protected class in the conversations we all have with the West. And of course, you know, nobody wants to be called out for going after a protected group like, for example, Muslims. Well, does every Muslim, you know, put on a backpack full of explosives and blow things up or fly planes into buildings? Of course not. But you do have a pattern of behavior when you're talking about the radical Islamists that are driven by a specific philosophy. And, you know, Megan, you cannot defeat an enemy unless and until you are willing to call that enemy what it is. If we can't even describe the true nature of the enemy, then we have no hope of defeating them. So the Michigan attorney general, Dana Nessel,

she decided early on that this case, even though it had already been reported that this guy was there to try to get this Pakistani terrorist who's all about hating America and Jews freed. That's why he was there. He was uttering anti-Semitic statements. He was at a synagogue. Hello. And had taken worshipers of the rabbi hostage. Knowing all that, she goes on TV and blames white supremacy. OK, not Muslim, radical Muslim terrorism, but white supremacy. I think we have that clip. Let's listen. My biggest concern hearing that it's at a synagogue is that this is someone who's intent on committing hate crimes and an act of domestic terrorism. We have seen an incredible rise in rhetoric that is anti-Semitic being trafficked all around the country because we were seeing an exponential rise in hate crimes and an exponential rise in the formation and the membership of these extremist organizations, many of which are white supremacy organizations, and they traffic in hatred against Jews and other minorities.

If it does turn out that that is the motivating factor here, it would hardly be a surprise. She goes right to it. It's got to be domestic terrorism, white supremacists, extremists in this country. That's exactly what Joe Biden said, by the way, on Saturday. He said, we still need to learn the motivations, but I will stand against anti-Semitism and the rise of extremism in this country. Hello, he's not from this country. Right, right. And he's not a white supremacist. What she and Biden just did, which is what the left does constantly, is this dishonest and, frankly, evil indulgence in moral equivalence, that somehow Jew hatred coming out of radical Islamism is the same as maybe like one minor situation in the US that

law enforcement has to go deal with. It is not the same thing. The global jihadi movement is not the same thing. And yet they're constantly drawing those comparisons. And whatever white supremacist groups exist in the U.S., Megan, and there are some, nobody is denying that, but they're not on the level of an international jihadi movement that seeks the wholesale destruction of the West. And so to equate those two and to say that they're both on the same level in terms of power and money and resources, when the jihadi movement has entire nation states like Iran backing them, it is outrageous, it is dishonest, and it is turning Americans into the criminals, right, into the terrorists. That's what Biden's woke FBI is

doing. That's what Merrick Garland is doing, whether it's with parents going to school board meetings, or whether it's somebody going to a MAGA rally to support Donald Trump, whatever it might be that's done completely legally under the First Amendment, their right to peacefully assemble, their right to free speech, they're equating that with terrorism. And they're doing it to lay the groundwork to actually come after us in a more aggressive kind of way. Don't know what kind of form that's going to take. But trust me when I tell you, they're not saying all of this for their health. I do think they believe it, Megan, but they're saying it for much more nefarious purposes. We all need to be on guard and fight back against it.

It's I'm worried for the people of Michigan that they have such a dumb ass as their chief law enforcement officer, because it doesn't take two nickels to rub together in between your ears to realize that if the guy is in a synagogue protesting the imprisonment of a Pakistani terrorist known as Lady Al Qaeda, whose main mission at her trial was to keep Jews from the jury and the lawyers pool. It's probably not the white, the domestic white supremacists here. Those folks don't generally protest the imprisonment of Pakistani terrorists. It doesn't, okay, it doesn't take that big a leap. Let's open our minds to the many other groups of criminals and bad people who are out there. This one, again, who's now 44 years old and killed by the FBI. So the investigation will continue there. I will say just for the record,

when it comes to the president, he was loathe to pronounce a motive, even though we had those circumstances. And I was good with that. I don't think the president of the United States, whether it's Biden, Trump or Obama, who is probably worst of all at this, should be weighing in on these matters until we know what's what. The rest of us, the pundits can do it. The FBI certainly should have had its facts straight and did within 24 hours. But I like it when the president says, I'm not going to weigh in. You know, hope everybody's OK. We'll investigate. OK, we have so much more to get into. Definitely going to get to Monica on inflation now and the latest CBS News poll for Joe Biden. And wait until Monica tells you this is unbelievable.

What she believes is the secret Hillary plan to be the 2024 nominee. At first, I was like, this is nuts. Then I read it. I was like, oh, my God, it's brilliant. I think she might be right. It's amazing. And it's next. Don't go away. With me today is Monica Crowley, formerly of Fox News and the Trump administration. And she actually worked for President Nixon for a time to post his time in office, which is another whole cool story about her four years under his tutelage and such a nice guy. And actually, Monica, I didn't realize this. This is the first time I read this story about you. That when you were going off to grad school, leaving President Nixon, then former President Nixon, 1994-ish, you asked him to write you a letter of recommendation. And can you just tell us that story? Because it's cute. What happened? Sure. Sure. So it was my first job out of college. And I got it because I took a little initiative. Megan, I know you're always talking about taking some initiative. I read one of his foreign policy books when I was a junior in college,

and it just blew me away. So I sat down and I wrote the author a letter. And it's sort of, you know, one of the blessings of youth is you never quite think about maybe all of the consequences of your actions. I just thought, I'm going to to go back to college. And I went to my mother's mailbox, and there was a handwritten note from Richard Nixon in my mailbox. And that just set my entire life and career on a whole other trajectory. But when I started working with him, I realized I needed an advanced degree. And Megan, as an attorney, you'll really appreciate this story. I was set to go to law school. I was accepted at Villanova Law. I was holding my place there. And I was just going to work for President Nixon for the summer, then go to law school.

And one day he sat me down and he took his glasses off and he pointed at me. He said, Monica, we have something very important to talk about. And I said, yes, sir. What is it? And he said, you're not going to law school. And I said, excuse me? And he said, Monica, I'm a lawyer. The country has enough lawyers. We don't need another one who has no passion for the law and really doesn't want to practice. He said, it's clear to me that your main passion is American foreign policy and national security.

So why don't you go to graduate school and study that instead? So Megan, that was the single best piece of advice I've ever gotten in my life and career. But when I was applying to graduate schools, I wanted my boss, my mentor, my friend, President Nixon to write me a letter of recommendation. And I was only applying to a couple of schools because I wanted to continue working with him. So I was applying to Columbia and Princeton and a couple of others. And I came to him and I asked him, and he kind of looked at me with a wry smile, sized me up and down. And he said, kid, have a seat.

I said, okay. And I sat down and he said, Monica, I'm really honored and flattered that you would ask me to write this letter for you. He said, but given where you're applying, he said, I don't think a letter from me is going to help you. And in fact, I think it's going to hurt your chances. And that would be the last thing that I would ever want to do. So I said, no, no, Mr. President, no, no. And he said, go home and sleep on it tonight. You're not going to hurt my feelings. Come back in the morning and

tell me what you've decided. So Megan, the next morning I came back, I thought about it. I prayed on it. And I said, you know what? You are my mentor. You're the former president of the United States. And most importantly, you are my friend. And I would be honored if you would write me a letter of recommendation. So he smiled, wrote me a beautiful one and I ended up going to Columbia, getting two master's degrees and a PhD from there. So I love it. So Columbia had no problem.

Back then, that was probably a different type of Columbia than we have today. Just the fact that you'd been at Fox News would have eliminated you if you ever played there. Not that you had been at that young age, but in any event, I love that story. And I love hearing like he he was so vilified. Of course, all the president's men, these reporters today are still trying to get their all the president's men moment as long as it's a Republican in there. Never when it's a Democrat in there. Right. That's right. But he did a lot of great things for the country. So I love that he was your mentor. OK, Joe Biden,

he's not quite in the trouble that Richard Nixon was at the end of his term, but he's in serious trouble. It's not the impeachment kind, but it is the I don't get reelected kind. Last week, we closed out the show by talking about the what appears to be, I guess, an outlier poll from Quinnipiac, putting his approval rating at 33 percent. Now there's one from CBS News slash YouGov, 44 percent approval. OK% are nervous. 62% disapprove of how he's handling the economy. 62.'s the economy stupid um do you feel he is focusing enough on the economy 58 percent say he is not is he focusing enough on inflation 60 say he is not it and by the way um how's he dealing with covid uh 64 of the american public says badly. So it's like COVID, the economy, inflation, they're frustrated, they're disappointed, some are nervous. And that inflation number of 7% year to year, which is a 40 year high. You tell me how he gets that down. Because if he doesn't get that down, I've heard even top Democrats say he's dead in the water. Yes, I frankly think he's dead in the water now. Nothing is impossible in American politics. So

comebacks are always possible. Rebounds are. But it would require a significant course correction by this president and his administration. And I just don't see that in the cards, Megan. Tomorrow, he's going to do a press conference. I can imagine that it's going to be largely scripted. I can imagine that most of the journalists in there are going to have to submit their questions ahead of time, simply because it's clear he's got serious cognitive challenges. Most of the time he's confused and he doesn't really stay on point. So I can imagine what you're going to see tomorrow is largely a show that's sort of been rehearsed, if not already well scripted. The problem is for him that all of the energy and activism in his party are on the radical left. So even if he wanted to change course, people in his own party would seek to undermine him and torpedo any kind of movement to the center. Remember, in 2020, he campaigned as a moderate, which I didn't believe, but I guess a lot of people

bought that act. They kept him in the basement. So he really couldn't be questioned that extensively. And so I think a lot of people expected that he would govern as a as a moderate, sort of the Joe Biden of his Senate years. And that's why you're seeing the huge drop in his numbers, because not only is it poor performance policy wise, their lives are not better. Americans lives are much worse than they were under Donald Trump. So it is it is a direct result of their lives being in worse shape, but also the discrepancy between what they expected Biden to be and the actual performance as president. So you're seeing that reflected in the poll numbers across the board. And we can talk more about the economy if you want. Once inflation gets so entrenched as it appears to be now, Megan, it is a very,

very difficult and painful proposition to root it back out. We saw it in the early 1980s when President Reagan came into office. Inflation spiked. It was completely out of control. And Reagan and his Fed chair, Paul Volcker, raised interest rates to like 18, 20 percent. You got a massive recession. It was extremely painful, but that was the only way to mop up the excess money in the system and rein inflation back in. They were successful. And then we got a booming economy. But that acute period of time where you have to go through some painful policies in order to get the economy back on track, it looks like that's what we're facing. And that should worry every American. Here's what's crazy. If you're Joe Biden,

and you realize you're heading for a midterm election where you're going to lose the House, and you could lose the Senate, and you are every day facing a more dismal prospect of being reelected, what do you do? How do you shore up your numbers? Do you tout a voting rights bill that's got zero chance of passing? I wouldn't think so, but that's what he's done. Do you say I'm going to go back to get Build Back Better pushed through? Well, let's look at that CBS poll I just mentioned. Is that what people want? Your opinion of Joe Biden would improve if he passes BBB. Seventy six percent disagreed. No, this is not going to improve his number. He can't do it. He doesn't have the support. Joe Manchin's been that clear.

But B, that's not what people want. They don't believe that that's going to solve any of their problems. And they're right. And then or C, would you start touting police reform again? Because that's what he's doing. He's now planning executive action on police reform, though he hasn't said what. There's some speculation that's an attempt to build back up his numbers with black voters who supported him 78 percent in April. Now it's down to 57 percent. Black voters don't want the kind of police reform that Joe Biden's been pushing. They don't. The numbers show they do not want defunding the police. They don't like the choke

holds and they don't like the no-knock warrants. But the DOJ has already restricted that. That's done. OK, so they're already he's already cracked down on that. You ask black voters how they feel about defunding the police. I'll give you here's a poll just out of Minneapolis where they tried to do this. Three quarters of black voters said the city should not reduce its police force. Black voters were considerably more opposed to the idea than white voters were. Same thing happened in Detroit. Black respondents named public safety as their top concern. They ranked police reform last. The people who want to defund the police are Upper West Side white women wearing Lululemon who live in high rise buildings and don't have to worry about crime. What is he thinking? None of these things is going to move

his numbers in the direction he wants. That's exactly right. And, you know, Senator Tim Scott actually put forward last year, 2020, rather, after George Floyd, he put forth a police reform bill that was very responsible, had a lot of really good reforms in there on the headlocks and some other things, and the Democrats killed it. So when you talk about these things, Megan, you have to understand Democrats right now, this is not the party of JFK or Bill Clinton. This is a radical party made up or at least driven by the revolutionaries that want a whole revolution in the country. So they want to tear down the existing system, whether it's on police, military, the economy, you name it. They want a completely different country,

what Obama once called the fundamental transformation of the nation. So when we talk about this stuff, it's not about policies that actually work for the American people, again, on the economy or policing or whatever. It is about power and control away from you for them. You know, when you mentioned the polling of Black communities, of course, they want some reform, but they don't want a wholesale defunding of their police departments. Why? Because they're the ones bearing the brunt of rising crime, particularly rising violent crime. It's their communities getting decimated. They see it. They have to live it every day. Unlike the elite ruling class that talks about this in ideological terms and has the press then amplify those messages. So it's virtue signaling and power and control all mixed in one toxic, corrupt ball. So the Democrats are now starting to get scared about, forget 2022, about 2024 and the White House and what they're going to do, because they've got, you know,

an aged president who, you know, I agree with you, is facing some cognitive challenges. I heard somebody say it was a joke, but it was kind of funny. They said something like it's been a no good, horrible, terrible, very bad week for president Biden on the bright side. He's not aware of any of it. Okay. So forgive me. It was kind of funny. Um, so you have a theory about how the debt, cause we heard, uh, Doug Schoen say, Hillary's coming back. She's good. She thinks she can do it and she's going to try. And we've heard more and more people now, I bet we're going to hear from DickMorris.com soon, that Hillary's coming back. But you have, I think, a really interesting and plausible theory as to how

they're going to do it. Explain. So thank you, Megan. I wrote a column last week in the New York Post and it's up at the New York Post and also on my Instagram at Monica Crowley underscore. So you can see it there as well. And I, you know, I have been observing and talking about this woman now for longer than I care to admit. And I think I know her and her husband and how they think and how they operate pretty well. So I have noticed that Mrs. Clinton is giving a lot of interviews lately. She has also warned the Democratic Party against this radical embrace of the far left, the Marxists in their party and so on. She also has been having her inner circle try to clean themselves up. So, you know, Bill might be beyond repair in the Me Too era, but he is still out there talking about the Clinton Foundation and their work. Most interesting to me is Huma Abedin,

who is our longtime confidant and assistant, who has now written a memoir about her life with Serial Sextor and General Lech Anthony Weiner. She's given these sympathetic interviews. This strikes me as a cleanup operation, getting Mrs. Clinton ready for a new act, another chapter. And what I propose in the piece, which I realize is going to sound far-fetched, and it may very well be, and I could be wrong, but don't put it past the Democrats to say, look, we have a very difficult situation facing us for 24. Biden, nobody realistically believes he is running. He just he can't. He simply can't physically, mentally, emotionally. And so he can't do it. Your vice president, Kamala Harris, is historically unpopular. Nobody can stand her. And remember, in the 2020 election

cycle, she flamed out before a single primary. She was polling at like 2% or 3% among Democrats. And that's before the entire country got to know her and has rejected her. So if she stays and runs, she's going to sink like a stone like she did last time. What the Democrats might think about doing is moving Kamala out. She will not go quietly. So they'd have to make her an offer she couldn't refuse, like, say, a lateral move to the Supreme Court if they could get Breyer to retire. Not sure any of this is going to happen, Megan, but they would have to give her something lateral or a huge payoff to get her out. That looks like a win. Right, exactly.

Something better for her and then move Mrs. Clinton into the number two so she could run as an incumbent. That doesn't mean that Mrs. Clinton is not going to face some real challengers and she will, like Stacey Abrams, for example, perhaps Michelle Obama. And it's going to be this identity politics feeding frenzy if this happens, because if they ditch the first Black woman to be in the White House as vice president, they're going to have to try to make that up. You know, live by identity politics, die by identity politics.

So she's going to have to bigfoot some of these comers like Stacey Abrams and perhaps some others. But don't put it past Mrs. Clinton. She still has a huge base. She's got a lot of fans out there, particularly among women. And I could see the Democrats and the Clintons working together to try to plot this out. That farming her off to the Supreme Court seat is the most brilliant thing I've heard. She's of course, she came into, you know, onto the national scene first because she was this rising star attorney general of the state of California. She's been the top law enforcement officer of a state. So she's, you know, presumably familiar with the law. And there's already pressure for Breyer to retire because they don't want a Bader Ginsburg situation where they wind up with a conservative making the choice. And she would be the first black woman to sit on the U.S. Supreme

Court. So think, I mean, it's just it's brilliant on so many levels. She's got to know she cannot win the presidency. Zero chance of her succeeding there. The Democrats definitely know that. So they cannot have her be the nominee. And Joe Biden, I mean, I think they'd rather run a Joe Biden who had been committed for that 2024 race than a Kamala Harris, because at least he's got a shot. She has no shot. So how do they get rid of her? How do you solve a problem like Kamala? You turf her to the Supreme Court where she might actually be all right for liberals. You know, they might like they might like what she would do up there. And then you replace her with your next best as Biden's number two, who then you're really thinking is going to be your number one. I think this is brilliant. By the way, my team tells me DickMorris.com did say that there is a good chance of a 2024 rematch between Hillary and Trump. My head's going to explode. I know. It's insane. In a country of 330 million people, Megan, we keep reaching for the

same people. Now, maybe they're the best that each party has to offer. We'll figure that out in a primary season. But I mean, I got to tell you, I think there's there are a lot of people around the country who would like to see the next generation kind of step up and take the reins. But none of those people is last named Clinton or Trump or Trump. Stand by. Actually, Trump said some interesting things about DeSantis over the weekend. I'll ask you about that next. And don't go away because Monica Crowley is staying with us. And don't forget, folks, you can find The Megyn Kelly Show live on Sirius XM Triumph Channel 111 every weekday at noon east and the full video show and clips by subscribing to our YouTube channel. Would you do me a favor and actually go subscribe there?

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our full archives with more than 240 shows. Trump kind of going after DeSantis. I mean, Trump, it seems like he's getting ready to run. Who knows, right? He's very good at manipulating the press. So we kind of tend to believe what he wants us to believe. But knowing Trump, I mean, why wouldn't he run again?

He thinks he's going to win. He's obviously the most popular Republican. And he came out this week and, according to Axios, called DeSantis an ingrate with a dull personality, said he has no personal charisma. At the same time, Trump confidant Roger Stone calls DeSantis a Yale Harvard frat boy, not honest, not going to be president. Then Trump says, you got to say if you've had the booster shot, it's gutless not to. DeSantis is the person I think he's talking about because DeSantis won't say. He says with respect to the booster when asked, I've done whatever I did. The normal shot. So unclear. So, I mean, these two are probably the two, you know, most likely, right, that the names that most often get mentioned.

So what do you make of it? Do you think there's a chance DeSantis could actually unseat Trump if they both run for the nomination? Well, I have to say, as a lifelong Republican, Megan, who sees the country on fire, I really hate to see infighting in the Republican Party, particularly this far out from the presidential primary season and election. That being said, to answer your question, Donald Trump is still the 800-pound gorilla in the Republican Party. He controls the party, he controls the base, and he's got one thing that no other politician on the scene right now has, with the exception maybe of Barack Obama, and that is an emotional connection with his voters. Not talking ideological,

not talking about a political connection. I'm talking about an emotional connection. So his voters really believe in him. They, I mean, this is sort of what January 6th was all about, that his voters looked at him and saw someone who championed the forgotten man and woman for five years, that he was there fighting for them and delivered for them while he was president. And they then saw a chance to fight for him. Right. So in this dynamic now, he's got an emotional lock on the party, on the conservative movement and on the base, the populist base. So if he chooses to run, he will be the nominee. If he chooses not to run, then the obvious heir to the America First movement is Ron DeSantis. The problem is that, you know, DeSantis has been

hugely successful in Florida. He has shown every other governor, both blue and red, the way through COVID, through the economy and so on. So he's got a tremendous track record to run on here if he does. Frankly, and I know President Trump doesn't want competition going into the nomination if he runs, but I think competition makes every candidate better, including Donald Trump. Trump had like, what, 20 fellow candidates in 2016. It made him a better candidate. So I say anybody who thinks that they have a shot at this and they want it, they should run. Because even if Trump ends up being the nominee, he will be a better general election candidate having gone through that process and getting beaten up a little bit than if he simply got coronated. And by the way, that applies to the Democratic Party as well.

I know. I think it's interesting because you never Trump. You have a very clear idea in your head of who he is and what he is. And you did even when he first ran. Right. It's like Trump's is larger than life. P.T. Barnum type figure who's an entertainer and he's dynamic and he's great on television and he is a ratings machine. And so he will collect a lot of attention. And we knew that going in. DeSantis, I don't know. I'm not sure. Trump, not in every single circumstance, but he's not bad at picking the one thing that's a person's weakness. You know what I mean? And for him to say dull, no charisma, I don't I can't think of what DeSantis like sounds like. What's he like in a debate? Is he is he colorful? Do people want boring over Trump like they did when they chose Biden?

I don't know. But I think DeSantis should get himself out there more if he doesn't think that label applies, because so far it's sort of like don't really have the clearest image of you and how you are on the stump have a very clear image of him and um if he runs i believe trump ones it runs it's his it's his there's nobody who can unseat him in the gop monica what a pleasure so fun talking to you you too megan thank you so much for having me all right come back soon um and don't don't go away because up next, we're going to be talking to a top Democratic strategist trying out a new midterm. No, well, she's going to talk to us about a new strategist trying out a new midterm slogan by telling

Democrats it's not party leaders who suck. It's you. That's next. Senate Democrats are pressing forward today debating voting rights bills, the move putting heat on Republicans in an election year, sort of, but it's also shining light on divisions within the Democratic Party. Joining me now to discuss that much, much more, Brianna Joy Gray, former national press secretary for Bernie Sanders 2020 and co-host of the Bad Faith podcast. Welcome back, Brianna. Great to have you. Thanks for having me, Megan. Okay. So voting rights, we'll get to in one second. Something fascinating happened with

Paul Begala on CNN that I've got to ask you about. I couldn't, this is like, it's almost like he knew about your podcast and wanted to just serve you up your lead, right? Because when I thought of of you when I heard this, like, oh, my God, a this doesn't seem like a winning message. And B, you're really going to tick off many members of your party, namely the people who vote. So here's Paul Begala talking about the problems with the Democratic Party right now. Do you think that's fair criticism? Did President Biden put more effort into getting infrastructure passed, for example? Well, he he got infrastructure passed, and that's a good thing because success can can breed success. He is putting the full force of the presidency behind. I think the problem for the Democrats right now is it's not that they have bad leaders.

They're bad followers. Oh, it's not the president. It's you, Democratic voters. It's's you what do you make of it it's an incredible clip you know and it speaks to the tone deafness has been running through the party for some time the reality is that some operatives many of whom i would say have outworn their welcome that have been along around since the-owned Clinton years, where they really did feel infallible at the ballot box, are still under the mistaken belief that they never have to interrogate whether or not their own behaviors are affecting the voter population. Look, voters across the political spectrum are increasingly disaffected with politicians, according to polls.

And it's no surprise when you look at the gap between what average Americans want, regardless of political affiliation, and what people in Congress want. And all the deadlock that we see under Democrats is the mirror image of the priorities that happen under Republican administrations that again, are very disconnected from what average American working class voters want. It's not unlike what what was happening in the Republican Party before Trump, where you had, like what's happening now with the Dems. You had this elitist, more establishment group of, with all due respect to Mitt Romney,

Mitt Romney types, who were, you know, sort of seemed perfect on paper to become president or, you know, be a leader, but really were not connecting with the masses, you know, with a leader. But really, we're not connecting with the masses, you know, with the Republican working class, the Democrat working class couldn't get those Reagan Democrats back into the fold. And then we had Trump come, come on the scene and just completely blow everything up. And he did connect with them. And that's how he won. And now it's like the Democrats are the party of the elite, you know, the Harvard educated,

we know better than you. And they don't seem all that worried like they used to be about how people are doing in the unions and whether they're earning, you know, a real livable wage, and listening to their real complaints, as opposed to being like, shut up and vote Democrat. That's what's good for you. Well, there are real structural reasons as to why this has happened, right? There is no party in America that is truly invested in the welfare and growth and strength of unions the way they used to be. Union rights were decimated over the course of the 90s and 2000s. And so now one of the most powerful groups that could stand in defense of workers no longer has the political traction that it used to. At the same time, rules around the influence of money and politics have been corrupted to the extent to which the polls show, a Princeton study from a few years ago showed that there is almost

no relationship, none between the preferences of American voters and politicians, because the predominant preferences that are, you know, expressed that get through to politicians are those from lobbyists and special interest groups. And that's not that's not helping anybody of any political party or affiliation. Yes, this is why it's funny, because I feel like people on sort of the Bernie Sanders team, you know, whether it's you or Crystal Ball or just a big collection are kind of meeting the more working class Republicans and the Republican Party itself is becoming the party of the working class in a strange place, right? Like strange bedfellows are being formed here

because it seems like now the Democrat Party has become the party of elite that doesn't really care about the Democrats love unions. They love the union bosses. They don't care about the actual workers. Otherwise, they'd be handling it a lot differently. Well, I think I would be really clear about this. Republicans are winning no awards here. It's a it's a race to the bottom. And the Republicans hate unions altogether. Right, exactly. So we, you know, it is important that at least under Joe Biden you have

an LRB that's willing to enforce labor laws, for instance. It matters in the labor disputes and the wave of strikes that we've seen across the country. It matters that Amazon is getting a review of, that Amazon workers, rather, are getting a review of whether or not their union efforts were unfairly tampered with by the corporation. You know, those kinds of things matter. And that's

why it matters to have, you know, Democrats in office as opposed to Republicans, but I don't identify as a Democrat. And part of the reason why is because, you know, better than the other guy isn't serving the people the way it should be. And the reality is that I had a recent episode with Batia Angar Sargan, who has written a really interesting book about how media, the way that media is covering working class issues has really affected the way that populations see themselves reflected in politicians. And she has a really interesting and important account about how the failure of kind of populist media has resulted in what we have today. But one thing that her study and her charts in her book reveal is that there is an incredibly elite leadership on the right as well. Papers like The Economist and The Washington Journal have elite audience as well.

And while they might have throw, you know, bow into identity politics every now and then, when it comes to core economic and financial commitments, they always align with the 1%. So what we have is two parties that talk about identity, that have these culture wars in order to distract from the extent to which both parties, leadership in both parties are ignoring the needs of the worker. Majorities of Republicans want a $15 minimum wage or higher. Florida voted for a $15 minimum wage at the same time it voted for Donald Trump to be president by 60%. 60% of Florida voted for the $15 minimum wage. And as upset as I am that Joe Biden hasn't fought for it, I'm infinitely more disappointed in Republicans who are categorically ignoring what their base wants as well.

I mean, I am with you on the need to take a hard look at why people who are working very hard cannot get ahead in this country anymore. The diminishing American dream is a real thing. And we need to be honest about that and how systems need to change. Why do we have these like oligarchs like Jeff Bezos now, right? Like these people at the top of these massive companies who are just swimming in billions of wealth while their workers are toiling away making crap. I mean, they have no lives. They can't see their families. They don't have good vacations. They don't understand why they have to sacrifice yet another day with their kids so that Jeff Bezos can have yet another home. I get that. I totally get that. But I also think I can argue with you about the minimum wage,

because I think that that leads to the destruction of jobs. I mean, we've seen it happen time after time where companies, especially with these inflation rates, say, I can't do that. Like, I'm not my margins aren't good enough. And I'm not going to be able to make it back. And then I'm just going to have to eliminate positions like I can pay my two people $15 an hour, but I could have had 10 at 10 or $9 an hour. Well, when you look at how much money has been earned by our extremely productive workforce, remember, Americans have only gotten more productive over time. Over the last 30 or 40 years, an enormous percentage, the overwhelming majority of profits from that productivity have

gone to the 1%. This isn't to your, about there not being enough money to go around. The issue is that CEOs, corporatists, have been able to keep more profits, steal more profits from their workers who are really doing the labor. Well, no, I agree with you. Like, when I look at Jeff Bezos, I want him to pay as much as humanly possible

to every Amazon worker. You know what I mean? When I see these big corporations. But when it's a smaller business, I just think, you know, you can't hit them with those kinds of minimums, because their margins are just too small, like the workers will wind up paying. Well, here's some here's some other, you know, this is an interesting conversation, because oftentimes, these progressive issues are framed

as being anti worker and anti small business, when the reality is, for instance, having Medicare for all, not making small business owners pay the medical costs for their insurers would be the single biggest boom to small business owners that exists, right? The single biggest cost for small business owners is providing health insurance for their employees. people's paychecks and then have Americans paying twice as much compared to any other similarly industrialized country for worse outcomes medically than other industrialized countries. We simply paid half as much as we're paying to health insurance in taxes for a program that is as well run and as admired as Medicare, i.e. Medicare for all. And that's an enormous business saving. And to your point about inflation, it's important to note that inflation right now is not being driven by spending at all. It's being driven by the supply side issues that are caused by COVID. And what's at the root of

those policies? In the 90s, it sent so many of our jobs overseas so that we have to import so much. There's no more storage capacity here in America because everyone has tried to cut the margin so slim so that CEOs can earn and so that shareholders can earn and be paid dividends at the cost of the American worker. I don't disagree with that either. I don't disagree with that either. Yeah. Shipping all our jobs over to China has had American workers pay real costs on a number of fronts. It's funny. You know, we do like in no world could I vote for Bernie Sanders. I have to be honest. I don't think. But I agree. Whenever I hear you talk, I'm like, I agree with what she's saying. When I hear Crystal talk, I'm like, I agree with that, too. But then, you know, sort of taken to its logical extreme. Some of these things I'm like, that's where I draw the line. But I'm not a Republican. I'm not a Democrat, just like you either. I rational and irrational, who make sense and who don't make sense. Then for sure there is an elites versus regular people problem that needs to be completely busted open.

And it's it's manifest in my industry and your industry more than any other. Right. And when it comes to government politicians and journalists, they're the least trusted among us because they all have their own skin in the game and the consumer knows it. Yeah, I think that's why you're seeing the proliferation of podcasts, independent media shows like Crystal Balls and Saga and Jetty's really taking off. You see people like yourselves who have had amazing careers in mainstream media, finding platforms and a huge audience on YouTube and these other places because folks are decoupling from the cable box. I don't know anybody in my generation, I'm 36 years old, who has cable, really. And we're all just watching the clips on Twitter to the extent that Paul Betbegula says something ridiculous. And it's partly because there's no,

we're not reflected there. I remember at certain points during the campaign, certain folks who were pegged as the, you know, progressive spokesperson, the person who was going to speak for progressives on some of these mainstream news outlets, will call me and ask, hey, what do the progressives think about X, Y, and Z? What's the line? And I would think, you could just ask me off. You could just ask what it is for thousands of people who are out here writing articles for progressive outlets, independent news media, all of these people who have these podcasts and this whole infrastructure. You could just let them on your network, but that's not how it works.

Many of us have been officially or unofficially blacklisted. And the viewers notice. The viewers notice that they're not reflected and they're looking elsewhere. You know what? at Fox News where, so in the same way the mainstream media doesn't like the Bernie supporters and tries to keep those sort of non-quote centrist voices off of the air, really what they mean is elite. I mean, that's truly like the people who are going to protect the 1% are the liberals that they want on television.

The same thing was happening at Fox, where Fox was very pro like chamber of commerce, you know, establishment kind of thing. And Trump, you know, this totally different animal came on the scene. And at first, we didn't know what the hell he was for, right? It was just like, China, China. And you're like, Okay, I don't know. Who knows? It came together and you came to know. But my point is that Roger Ailes at the time said, we need to start peppering the air with not just Dem liberal debate, I mean, a Dem Republican debate. But with Trump supporters, that's a different thing. It's not the same as the normal contributors we have here from back then, let's say the weekly standard. It's a different way of looking at politics and our world problems. And we

have to start. And a lot of people didn't like that. They were like, oh, yeah, they're gone. They're going pro Trump. It's like, no, it's a it's a different strain. Well, the liberal media would never do that. Right. Bernie Bernie people are persona non grata on those stations. But I do want to say that there, again, is like a structural reason why that happens. It's not just that, you know, Ailes is more open minded than people at MSNBC or CNN. The reality is that although Trump was very smart to speak in populist terms and there are a lot of people on the right now who are really understanding that there's an appetite for a kind of economic populism in this country. That is purely rhetorical. We all saw that Donald Trump is no advocate for the working people. He implemented this tax cut for the rich, 85% of which went to the top 1%.

Didn't help a single working person in America, right? Let me stop you on that. Hold that thought, because I will say I was at NBC at the time. And they made boatloads of dough on that corporate tax cut, right? But they did give a lot of it back to their workers. They actually did give, I mean, there were a lot of companies that shared some of that with their workers, not all of them. But you put more money in the employers. Yeah, go ahead. The reality is that in the 1960s, the average pay gap between a CEO and a worker was 30 to 1. Today, it's over 300 to 1.

So we can't have these conversations about individual outliers and what this person did or what that person did. It's true that there's a huge systemic problem here that has been enabled by the changing of our laws to make it easier and easier for the millionaires and billionaires to get richer and for workers to have no rights. And the reality is that the reason that liberals don't allow any of the kind of Bernie voices on TV is because there, at the end of the day, is an alignment between the interests of Donald Trump and the corporatists who have always been in charge, regardless of his rhetoric. And I would urge viewers to be really conscious of the fact that a lot of the people who are using a populist rhetoric right now, when you look at their voting records, when you look at what laws they're trying to pass, when you look at whether

they're actually advocating for material economic changes that are going to benefit their constituents, there's nothing there. It's all, you know, identity politics being played on both sides of the aisle, distracting the fact that there's a real simpatico between the economic elites in both parties. That's fascinating. I mean, I will say Trump, he studied the Rick Santorum book on how to win back jobs for the American Manufacturing Committee, or some either he studied or somebody read it to him. But he became familiar. He's not big on the reading of the books. He became familiar with the plan. He's admitted that, okay, Trump people. And he did try for American manufacturing. I think the trade war with China was in his mind

a way of fighting back on behalf of American workers. You can argue to the cows come home about whether it worked or it didn't work, but that was for them. And the crackdown he would try to do orally, verbally't like I didn't see George Bush doing. I think the Republican Party had settled in very comfortably to being more on a different level when it came to those issues. He was smart to do those things rhetorically. But if I recall the specific examples, there was a lot of bluster in a rally held to keep one factory's jobs in one town. And then a bunch of policies that basically allowed a bunch of other jobs to be sent overseas when no one was paying attention. And that's what I'm saying. It's very difficult, especially for the average person who doesn't do what we do and like stay glued to Twitter and the news all day to really follow the follow-up of what's going on. But when people feel like their dollar isn't going as far, when people feel like their wages haven't kept up with inflation, not just talking

about this recent wave of inflation, right? But the fact that we haven't had a minimum wage raise since Bush was president. This is the longest period of time in American history since FDR got us a minimum wage in the 1930s, but we haven't had a minimum wage. So we're not talking about- It's separate and apart from that, though. Can I ask you separate and apart from that? Because I don't really like government mandates telling private business how they must behave. I love a private business that says, I will treat you well because it's in my best interest, because I want my workers to treating them people right. So they had to unionize so that they'd have more bargaining power. Then they did that. Then the people at the top of the unions, along with a lot of these Democrat politicians, totally sold them out. So the workers got screwed yet again. And

now they're back in a situation where too many corporations in corporate America are screwing them over again, are taking all the spoils from their labors, shoving them in their own pockets to get their 15th home while these people can't even afford a vacation. And it's bullshit, right? I don't, I don't know who the solution to that is. But I think, I think, I think you're going to tell me it's not Hillary Clinton. Look, I will not dispute that union capture is a big, is a huge problem. But the problem isn't getting rid of unions or putting more power in the hands of corporations. Unions are captured in part because of corporations. Like at the end of the day, the role of government, regardless of how big or small you think it should be, is to protect the people from impulses that are natural to capitalism, right? It's right there

in the name. I understand that people who follow the show are big fans of capitalism, but it's a system that prioritizes profit over anything else. And that's not a subjective statement. That's literally how it's designed. That's how our laws are designed. I'll say as a lawyer, that is literally how it works. So someone has to intervene on behalf of the workers and workers going on strike, realizing their labor power, really showing the country that they are the one that is making American rich. They're the one who built this, you know, is a really powerful tool. And that's why we still have to protect and bolster and rehabilitate labor as opposed to thinking that, oh, it's flaws. We should throw it under the bus. But Hillary Clinton, let's talk about Hillary Clinton. 100%. I've got to ask you, I don't know if you heard, but Monica Crowley had this, I thought, like, crazy, brilliant theme or idea on how the Democrats might be trying to, might consider subbing her in. I'm going to squeeze in a break because that's a good tease. I'm going to leave it right there. Squeeze in a break. We'll come back. We'll talk about Monica Crowley's assessment of the plan to bring HRC back into presidential politics.

More with Brianna Joy Gray in just a minute. All right, so Monica's theory, Brianna, is that the Democrats, she doesn't think Joe Biden will run again. She thinks he's too old, that he knows he can't do it. And so he's got to go. So what, so then what? She doesn't think Kamala Harris would ever be the real choice of the Democratic Party because she flatlined when she ran the first time he resuscitated her by making her as VP, but that she's got even her tweet over the holidays? It shows a picture of herself. She tweeted a picture of herself. She says 30 years ago, this picture of her, right?

Like, I don't know why she's picturing picking the very young Hillary looking out to the horizon. It's a profile shot. And it starts with looking ahead to 2022. And it goes on a happy holidays. Okay, so between that, Monica says huma abedin is out there cleaning up her public image hillary did that weird crying of her never read acceptance speech which i said at the time she's trying to warm up her image why maybe she's thinking about running again she says they're gonna turf kamala harris to the briar supreme court seat they're gonna convince steven briar to retire. They're going to fill his seat with Kamala Harris, who is a lawyer. So it's not like, oh, my God, they're

getting rid of the first black female vice president for this white woman, Hillary, to give her a great post. And then Hillary just slides right in there as the number two. Then Joe Biden. Oh, I'm not going to run. Hillary's the heir apparent. Go team Clinton. What do you make of it? Yeah, I mean, I've heard stranger stories. I have heard, you know, Biden, I believe, promised to put the first black woman ever on the Supreme Court when he was running. There we go. The rumor is, however, that it's supposed to be Sherilyn Ifill of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, which I think would be a much better choice for. Well, no one's arguing Kamala Harris would be a much better choice for. Well, no one's arguing Kamala Harris would be good on the Supreme Court. It's a question of where do you offload her?

Yeah. So I hear that as a plan and I wouldn't put it past them. I think you're completely right to observe that she did extremely poorly in the Democratic primaries, that it wasn't clear why Joe Biden was picking her as a VP since black people never warmed to her. One of my colleagues at the Intercept wrote back when I was still there covering the race that Bernie Sanders outpaced Kamala Harris with black voters two to one, despite being unable to get out from under the idea of this Bernie, right, Bernie bro mythology. No one ever questioned why Kamala Harris wasn't able to capture the interest

of any black voters who didn't literally go to college with her in-pledge or sorority. So I can see that happening. Now, there will be some consequences for that because Sherrilyn Ifill in some ways has been quieter than I would have imagined on some of Biden's failures to come through on promises that he made explicitly to the Black community while he ran. I don't know if you remember, there was that leaked call that Biden had with civil rights leaders last fall, right after the election, that very few people covered in the corporate media because it made Joe Biden look very bad. He basically spoke down to all of the senior Black leadership in the country. Al Sharpton was on the call. Sherrilyn Ifill was on the call. Cedric Richmond was on the call. You know, everybody was on the call. And he basically told them, you know, blacks are out, Latinos are in. You don't have the numbers. I'm not going to listen to any of your concerns. And Sherrilyn Eiffel at that time and during that call pointed out a number of things that Biden could do using executive authority, because it was before we had won Georgia, before the Democrats had won Georgia and didn't know that they were going to have the Senate. A number of things Biden could do by executive order to advance the interests of people who are protesting all of summer of 2020.

He completely dismissed it. And even after that call leaked, she said nothing. Everyone continued to run cover for for Joe Biden. And some people speculate that it's because she anticipated getting rewarded by being on the Supreme Court. And I don't know what kind of fur is going to start to fly if those promises start getting undermined. And she's replaced by the extremely Kamala Harris, whose legal career and academic career has been much more mediocre than Sherilyn Ifill's or other people who have sat on the Supreme Court. But what I mean, what do you think is going to happen on the Democrat ticket next time around? But do you think Joe Biden actually will run again? And if he doesn't or isn't capable of running again, that they cannot run Kamala Harris, the Democrats. I mean, why would they do that? I know they're into identity politics. I get it. But I mean, why would they have picked

her to begin with to be VP? I mean, she was in like a spot where she wasn't actually running anything as the number two. But now this is a for all the marbles she'll lose. That's why they just give it to the Republican. Yeah. So all of the negative press that's been coming out about Kamala Harris that is coming from inside the House, as it were, is suggest that they are trying to set her up. I mean, people have been speculating about the fact that all of the negative press that we've seen wouldn't have been coming out of the White House unless the White House wanted to start to dampen her light as it were. And there's also been all of the speculation about Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar, what seemed like trial balloons to see how the public would feel about them being her replacement. I mean, Amy Klobuchar was widely thought to be the VP pick

until in the middle of the 2020 George Floyd protests. And it came out that she was the district attorney when the police officer involved had committed another act of violence against a citizen. And she had basically let him off the hook. But it was too politically toxic to pick her in that criminal justice reform environment. So now that time has passed and it's clear that no one's gonna do anything anyway

about criminal justice reform efforts, no matter how many millions of people come into the street, maybe they feel like it's safe to have someone like her come back. But I agree. It seems likely that Biden's not going to run. I don't know if you've read the political article recently about whether or not there was going to be progressive challenger to Joe Biden, which is something that I'm much more interested in as a progressive because I'm not interested in any of these corporatist neoliberals trying to shoot their shot. And I heard you sounding you sounded pessimistic that that a third party challenger could really get it done. And I one of the things I want to say to you was what about Trump? Trump was basically third party. Let's admit it. I mean, he was not a Republican. He wasn't. He came in there and he bent the Republican Party to his will. The Republican Party looks nothing today like it did five, six years ago. Thanks to him. So couldn't you have a Trump like figure saying he doesn't, but it has to be like a Trump type figure. He does. He's got the mittens. I get it.

Right. Couldn't that happen? And if it could, does anyone come to mind who might fill that role? If not this time around, then next? I think it could happen. I am much less pessimistic on the issue of third parties and other people. I very famously, much to the chagrin of many Democrats voted for Jill Stein in 2016, because I feel like that's what we need to do to break up the duopoly. I think regardless of how you feel about any individual candidate, people who are frustrated on both sides of the aisle, people who are politically independent, people who don't vote because they don't see themselves reflected in politics, need to figure out how to telegraph their political interest in a more

concrete way than just not voting, voting for the other party or sitting it out. And that is a third party, which is why I'm so interested in people like Andrew Yang, who have started this forward party push, which is not just a third party effort, but an effort that says, let's look at ranked choice voting, right? Let's look at voting, getting rid of first past the post voting. So neither party can claim, oh my gosh, you're running as a third party. You're going to be a spoiler. You're evil. You're hurting democracy. No, if we had ranked choice voting, then if your first choice doesn't get 50% of the vote, your second choice vote goes to whoever is left and there's no spoiler effect. And so the Democratic Party's biggest battering ram, which is vote blue no matter who, oh, my gosh, you're going to let Trump and fascists in,

is no longer an excuse for them not to actually act on behalf of the people. So I'm interested to hear about what happens with the forward party. And the political article mentioned Marianne Williamson and Senator Nina Turner, who was Bernie's campaign co-chair. I have no idea if any of those people have actual interest, but I'm very interested to see what happens in the next year or so. Yeah. You just had her on, right? Marianne Williamson. She's fun. Yeah. I mean, we had a great interview. And I think that she is probably the last person left standing on the left who hasn't betrayed some of the fundamental progressive ideals that made people really like Bernie. And I think there's something kind of funny in this parallel track that she has with someone like Donald Trump, who was seen as an outsider and

seen as someone who was advocating for the working classes, despite himself being very affluent, obviously a billionaire. Now, Marianne Williamson is obviously not a billionaire, but she is someone who has been very successful in a different lane in the same way Donald Trump was as a New York Times bestselling author who millions of Americans know from her long career in that kind of spiritual space. And, you know, something we're talking about on the left a lot is with all the divisiveness, with all of the infighting across party lines, even within the Democratic Party, I think America could use a little bit of dose of that kind of return to spirituality and community and figuring out how,

especially in this time of crisis, we can all get through it together. So I'm very interested to see and hear more from her over the course of the next year. A return to spiritual. All I can think of is Trump. Two Corinthians. Two Corinthians. Holding the Bible upside down in front of the burning church. But you know what? Republicans, they used to care about that. They don't care about that anymore. I think the Republicans, first of all, they wanted somebody who could fight. And Trump is 100 percent that person. He was not going to lie down for Fox News, for the establishment, for John McCain, for anybody. And they love that about him. Yeah, I don't I think they've learned you don't really necessarily need to get your religious leadership from the White House. Yeah, although not religious. I'm not a religious person. And Marianne Williamson is kind of a secular Jew. But it's the spirituality. It's the feeling of disconnect people have. It's everybody being quarantined in their little apartments or in their homes, not maybe going to work or to school as much as they used to. And not feeling a sense of identity with our American community and what it means to be part of a society and

what we owe each other and how we can help support and protect each other during this time. I'd like to see a little more of that. Yeah, amen. I hear you on that. I mean, there's so many things, you know, pushing us apart, not just presidential politics and regular politics, but the iPhone, but COVID policies, you know, just the way we've chosen to live, getting rid of the bowling leagues, and we don't go to church anymore, and we just don't see one another. We don't live in these communities that where we interact with other humans as often as we used to. I think it takes a real toll. It's one of the reasons why people are so depressed now. And by the way, on that front, can I just

sometimes I just make a note of something I just want to raise. It's not necessarily your thing or my thing, but like the CDC's most recent guidance, I hadn't actually taken a look at all of it. You know, it came out on January 6th. Do you know that they're saying we should ban football, banned and all high risk sports and extracurricular activities where there is a high transmission rate, which by the way, is right now 99% of the country. Okay. So they don't want banned, no banned, no extracurricular and listen to this one. So I'm like, well, what is, what's the high, cause they say high risk sports and extracurricular. What do they mean? High risk extracurricular activities, I'm quoting here, are those in which increased exhalation occurs. Screw you, CDC, such as activities that involve singing, shouting, band or exercise, especially when

conducted indoors. This is exactly what America needs to be doing. Our kids need to be outside singing and shouting and playing sports and exercising and breathing as heavily as they need to to get those things done, not more distancing, more freaking out and more avoiding things that keep off extra weight, for example, which is a serious comorbidity? Well, I don't know that I would advocate for anybody getting into a room and start sticking with each other. But certainly a certain degree of outdoor activity. Look, I'm someone whose mental health requires that I exercise every day. And it's been difficult for me now that it's gotten colder, even in D.C. It's too cold to run outside for me. And so at a certain point, I had to make the decision to go back and start running on the treadmill in my gym. And I go during odd hours, I go late at night,

you know, in the hopes of being the only person there. And I'm certainly breathing hard, I wear a mask, everyone's required to wear a mask in the building. But there are going to be certain kind of trade offs. And I understand that there's a healthy skepticism of the CDC recommendations, because from the jump, they have been politically motivated. As a Bernie campaign worker, I remember when my predecessor on the Bernie 2016 campaign, who worked as Biden's spokesperson, Simone Sanders, got on TV right after a CDC recommendation that came down on the Ides of March, right after the last debate on March 15th, and said, it's completely safe. The CDC says it's completely safe to go and vote because there was an interest in the Democratic Party and getting people to vote and pushing Bernie out of the race

and ending it early. Whereas, in fact, the CDC had hours before just issued a recommendation that it wasn't safe to go into a ballot booth. It wasn't it wasn't safe to go into a room of more than 50 people or more, which is basically any polling station in most metropolitan areas. Right. And the back and forth about the masks and the back and forth about so many things has caused Americans to be really skeptical about who they should listen to and have to rely on their own common sense.

So I think that's another reason why it's important for us to have a sense of community because we do have to take care of each other. We do have to act as responsibly as we can to help the spread because there are more vulnerable populations among us. Kids are getting hit hard now, but in the way that was the case before. There's long term effects being understood.

And it's a tough time. Kids are not getting hit hard. Kids are getting Omicron at an increased rate the same way as adults are getting Omicron at an increased rate. It's Omicron spreads irrespective of vaccination status and so on. That's what that's what the CDC is now saying. But these numbers that they're claiming about child hospitalizations are overstated. And even Rochelle Walensky admitted that. So I mean, I don't like when people use kids as an example of this, I get very

upset because they're using our kids, not you. I'm not saying you, but I'm just saying the politicians are using children and trying to scare parents into bowing to their policies. And it's not right with most of those kids are in the hospital with COVID, not because of COVID. Well, let's talk about, it's not even the hospitalization rates. For me personally, as a young person with no comorbidities, I fear getting COVID.

You know, knock wood, I feel like I'm the last person in America who hasn't gotten it yet. But I fear COVID in part because of the long COVID symptoms. And it's not, most people don't have them and it's relatively rare, but as someone who uses their noggin professionally to the extent that I do,

I have friends who have experienced brain fog and some of these issues. I already am a little ADHD and have some focus issues. And I think it's natural for people, especially when something is so new and misunderstood, especially some misunderstanding kids, because it hasn't been an issue for kids up until Omicron, really in insignificant numbers, to want to just be as careful as possible. Now, there are trade-offs there. And I think that part of the fight over school closures and all of that stuff is that both sides have very legitimate concerns. Part of the issue is that in America, the only affordable childcare for most families is school. So of course, families are going to be frustrated about the idea of having to keep their kids home

while they have to go to work and there's no paid leave. There's no alternatives for everybody. People are crunched. At the same time, even parents who want their kids to go to school, I think in an ideal world, would like their kids to be going to school

in a safe environment where they don't get even the common cold, much less COVID. And so we need to be able to talk about the interest. I was with you until there. That's not realistic. Your kids to you until there. That's not realistic. Your kids go to school, they get the flu,

they get stomach viruses, they get weird things like impetigo, whatever. Suddenly they've got a sore on their face. You're like, where the hell is that from? Stuff happens.

School's part of life, right? And we accepted this up until recently. It's just, it's life, you know? And you go out there and generally the goal is to have your kids get a bunch of shit

when they're little so that they build up their immunities and it doesn't come back to haunt them when they're grownups and they're maybe maybe not as well positioned to fight it but not shit that you can bring home and kill grandma with that's all no but we're done with that brianna i'm telling you i'm telling you listen i'm the mother of three children i've been living this for the worst but that we should all be trying to act with as much um consideration and calm this is this is my point about having a sense

of well-being for your fellow man no i don't agree i don't agree i don't agree i did it we did it for two years for two years my kids my little eight-year-old he was six when it started he was actually five because he was about to go into his uh next birthday uh has a fucking mask on his face and i want it off i want it off he's he's not an effective vector of this virus. And if he were, I would keep him away. Even now, not believing that about him. I keep him away from my 80-year-old mom because she's in a more vulnerable position. But my mom isn't leaving her house. My mom's scared

about COVID. But he's in second grade. The second grade, I've done my part for two years. How long does he have to have the mask on his face? Five? Ten? Just graduate with it? No. Some people's 80 year old moms live with them and they don't can't afford. I'm sorry for them. They're going to have to make a different arrangement. I did it for two years and I'm done. They can't afford to make it. And that's the

point. We live in a country where 40 percent. Sorry, Brianna, but we can't live like that. We can't. A lot of people can't afford to have their kid get the flu and bring it home to grandma because you can die from that, too. Can% of Americans can't survive a $400 emergency. There are families routinely who live in one or two bedroom apartments, multiple generations. They've been given trillions, trillions of dollars by the federal government to help them through this. And now they're going to send out Bernie. Your guy wants to send out three masks per family. OK, great. Do that. They're giving away the vaccines for free.

That's good, too. We have many mitigation measures that they can take. The best is social distancing. That can happen in any school We have many mitigation measures that they can take. The best is social distancing. That can happen in any school. But I'm done with the masks. If you want to put your kid, not you in particular, but people who love the mask want to put their kids in the mask. I know. I know. So they can go for it all day long. You put the duck mask on or an N95 or a can 95 over it. God bless. And by the way, the doctors where there was just one from Harvard on CNN the other day saying more and more the the the medical information is that you putting a mask like that on your face will protect you from what you're trying to prevent.

I don't have to do it to my kid. Normal is maskless. Normal is without the mask. We're starting to see masks as the norm and they're not and they're damaging to children. They're damaging. Yeah. Well, look, I don't have a child, so I don't have a dog in this fight. But I do have parent friends who are parents who, you know, are home from work. You know, their productivity is being affected because their kid caught COVID at daycare, gave it to the whole family. And now they're not able, you know, they're they're home. Everyone's getting it. You're not allowed. You're going to get it, too. Everyone's going to get it. Omicron's just too contagious look knowing believing realistically that there are going to be some bad downstream effects i don't think it's an excuse not to be

trying our best to support the members of our community that are more vulnerable than someone like me who can stay we've done that or someone like you whose grandparents can live outside of the home no all i'm saying is that for two years we have done that we shut down society we closed businesses we ruined people's lives now it's time for focus protection. Keep the vulnerable awake. Keep them at home. Yes, be careful. I don't I wouldn't let my kids go around my mom right now because of Omicron. But there is absolutely no reason for my little ones to have those masks on their face or for somebody else to be telling me I have to stick a needle in their arm when they don't need that. That's that's not going to prevent them from spreading the disease, even if they get it. Look, I'm a libertarian socialist and I have some skepticism and concerns about mandates broadly as a general measure.

But I also think we wouldn't need as much mandated by the government if we all had a little bit more of a sense of community. That's all I've done so much. Brianna, they've done so much. We're two years into it. They have done their part. It's so ungenerous to say something like that. They, I've interviewed them. They've lost their entire livelihoods. People who have built, you know, chains of restaurants or change of hair salons, done, gone in the dust. I had a friend who had built a great dance company, helping young girls who were trying to turn their lives around over done. They're not you can't dance now.

They're not going to let you do that in New York City. You can't be together in that way. Oh, I mean, we could go on right about the amount of carnage. What I would like and what Bernie was advocating for before the race dropped out was the kind of recurring stimulus checks that could help people afloat, that could help people have rental relief so that when they have to close down their buildings for a time for a period of time, they don't want a government check. They don't want a government check that background they don't want a government see that that's where we disagree that's why i can't we don't want a government check they want to build

they want to run and the business that they built megan walmart and amazon and all of those companies got a a check the the american largest single upward transfer of wealth in american history all the big businesses in america got a bailout for COVID. And it's small business owners like the ones you're describing and your friend whose business was shut down. My mom is a small business owner. I'm a small business owner. We didn't get the PPE funding, right? So there is already socialism for the rich in their country and not for the poor and working class.

And that is the issue. The money is already going out the door. It's just not going to you. So I think we share sympathies here. But I think the reality is we have to keep an eye on the ball of who exactly is the enemy and who exactly is causing all of these conflicts of interest between parents and teachers and workers and employees.

It's not the small business owner's fault. It's not the employee's fault. It's the people who are not putting together the social programs that could relieve the strain that are not putting together the social programs that could relieve the strain that's coming down on the 99 percent and instead funneling all of these tax dollars, funneling all of this money to bail out the millionaires and billionaire class. It's always how it's been done in this country. And we have to I don't know when it comes to covid policy. I don't agree with you. I mean, I would say I'll say this. I wish teachers got paid more. I really do.

I wish most of our work, our working class got paid more. It's bullshit how hard people have to work for so little return, especially up against inflation like we're seeing and so on. But even before that, I mean, I I do feel for teachers and when it comes to their salary, because they do work hard and they've had to work hard over the past two years in most districts. But I'm not I don't you know, they signed up for it. I didn't make them become a teacher. You signed up for it. You get the summers off. Most of us don't now get back into the damn classroom and do your job like that's that's the way it has to work. I didn't make you choose your job. You volunteered for it. Now go do it. You get a paycheck. That's how you get the paycheck. You do the teaching. And the kids have suffered long enough. I stole

the last word. But I love the way your mind works. And I love how weirdly it was like tense. But then we'd come back to areas of agreement. It's like I'm having so many feelings, Brianna, but I learned. And that's my favorite thing about an interview like this. I enjoy this as well. We'll have to have you on Bad Faith podcast

so we can talk a little bit more about why you would never vote for Bernie Sanders. I think we can work around that. Maybe you'll get me. You'll probably convince me just as he's no longer in it. Thank you.

All the best. Thank you. Later this week, we've got Goldie Hawn and we've got the guy from Social Dilemma. Don't miss him, Tristan Harris. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.