The Megyn Kelly Show - The Naked Hypocrisy of the Emmys, Crazy Mask Policies, and the LuLaRoe ‘Cult’ with Leonydus Johnson, Roberta Blevins and Derryl Trujillo | Ep. 163

Episode Date: September 20, 2021

Megyn Kelly is joined by political commentator and host of the “Informed Dissent” podcast, Leonydus Johnson, to discuss the pandemic hypocrisy of the attendees of the Emmy’s, San Francisco Mayor London Breed’s defense of nightclubbing without a mask, the new COVID policies for toddlers, the increase in violence against innocent children, and more. Megyn is also joined by former LuLaRoe retailer and employee Roberta Blevins and Derryl Trujillo to discuss the new Amazon Prime documentary series “LuLaRich” and to share their own experiences working with the scandalous multi-level marketing legging company, 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. More COVID hypocrisy over the weekend as 500 of the biggest celebrities crammed inside a small tent. But that's outside, you. But that's outside. See, it's outside for the Emmy Awards in Los Angeles, while thousands of L.A. County students K through 12 are forced to wear face masks all day at school, irrespective of vaccination status. We're going to dive into that and the ongoing crisis at the border, among many other things. And I'm very excited to be joined for the first time today by a political commentator and host of the show, Informed Dissent, Leonidas Johnson.

Leonidas, so nice to meet you. How are you? I am doing great. How nice to meet you as well, Megan. Thank you for having me on. I'm thrilled. You're one of the wonderful people who I've learned about on Twitter and then discovered you in the digital world and now finally get the pleasure of speaking to. So honored to have you here. I'm honored to be here. It's crazy how that happens. You know, we talk about how disconnected we are sometimes with the digital world. But I've met so many people just through Twitter and Facebook.

So it's amazing. I know. Just when you think Twitter's all bad, you have a relationship like this for me. And you think, all right, well, maybe not all bad. Not all bad okay yeah let's kick it off with these hypocrites out in hollywood who you know despite lecturing all of us and their virtue signaling with the masks and on and on and the kids sitting in la county masked up all day same as you saw with the met gala here in new york kids masked up all day irrespective of vaccination status these hollywood celebrities are basically on top of each

other, hugging one another, no masks anywhere in sight. And if they hadn't been lecturing the rest of us all the time, I wouldn't care, right? I'm like you, get your thumb off of me. But they are lecturing us. And it's truly, yet again, rules for the year and not for me. Every time, every single time. And you're right, It wouldn't be a big deal. We want people to be unmasked. We want people to go out and have their liberties and do what they think is best for themselves and make their own decisions. But the problem is that they're the ones who are lecturing us and they're the ones who are telling us, oh yeah, we have to have your kids masked. This pandemic is horrible. People are dying. And then we see these images on TV of

them celebrating on the red carpet and having their pictures taken, hugging each other after winning awards. And you see the staff standing around wearing masks. And it's such a disconnect and it's so absurd. It's so ridiculous. And I can't believe I can't I can't can't believe people aren't catching on to what's happening because I think it's just look at this. Isn't like Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael, aren't they embarrassed to be standing across from the masked serfs? You know, as Glenn Greenwald put it last week, something like, well, see, their their faces are pointless. Who cares about their faces? Right. They're like royalty. Right. And yeah, you said the mass search. There was a picture from the Met Gala. I don't even know who she was. She was wearing a

dress and she had equal rights. Carolyn Maloney, she's my congresswoman on the Upper West Side. Okay. Okay. And you see in the background, there's all these women dressed in black and they're wearing masks. But yeah, but she's the important one. She's above that. She's our royalty. She's the crowned princess. We can't have her in a mask. So it's just absurd. So I would just hope that more people see what's happening. That's really the key. Like look and see what's happening. Well, look what they're doing. They're making you wear a mask while they're not going to do it. They're exempting themselves. So it's just, it's ridiculous. And there should, it should cause a revolution. And not saying like a violent revolution, but it should cause a revolt. Like should people should push back and say, stand up.

Yes, like we saw in France. We're not doing this. Yeah, it's crazy. Not like at the revolution. I mean, France, like recently where people are taken to the streets to We're not doing this. Yeah, it's crazy. kids are in school so that what what they the way they defend not wearing masks people like aoc people like these celebrities as they say well everyone was vaccinated everyone was vaccinated at the met everyone was vaccinated at the award ceremony well that doesn't matter first of all you're supposed to wear your mask at the mat even if you're vaccinated which you know apparently if you're with anna wintour you don't have to um but every in like the the the school situation like at our school for example everyone everyone 16 and up has to be vaccinated. So why in New York and Connecticut, New Jersey and California? Why did the high

schoolers, all of whom have to be vaccinated, have to keep their masks on all day when these people who are putting the policies in play don't? I mean, it's it's naked hypocrisy. They don't give a damn about children. They don't give a damn. Absolutely not. Absolutely not. And this isn't new. This has been going on the entire pandemic. The hypocrisy has been happening the entire time. Even before we had vaccines, they were doing the same things. They were going out when they were supposed to be having lockdowns. They weren't wearing masks except when the cameras were on. I mean, they have been doing this the entire time. So it's not like they just started in trying to use the excuse, oh, we're vaccinated now. No, you've been doing this the whole time. You've been shirking the rules and putting them on other

people while you exempt yourself. And it's been happening all the whole time. And you made the point about kids. And I've talked about that at length. It makes no sense that we would do this to our children at all. Like you talk about adults and people who are more at risk. Okay. Like we can talk about the risk and talk about whether it's beneficial for them, but we have the science on children and we know that COVID is not a risk for children and they're not at risk to get it and not have severe symptoms, not at risk to spread it. And so why are we doing this to our children? And what was it, New York that passed the law that said that, or passed the mandate that said that the children above the age of two have to be masked. You have a three-year-old in a daycare that's being masked. It's unbelievable. Why? What is the purpose of this? And I haven't wrapped my head around it. I can't understand the motivation other than, Megan, children are easier to control. You know what I mean? So it seems like these people are on a power trip and adults are harder to control.

But children, you can you can exert your will over them. And that's the only thing I can figure. Do you hate children? Do you have children? You do hate children. Like why pass these policies that are uniformly harmful to kids? It's like to your point. Yes, you can potentially get covid from a child.

You have to try pretty hard. What all the studies have shown is that they're very inefficient vectors of the disease. That's why you have CDC studies that study the 90,000 kids in Georgia and find masks really made absolutely no difference. Kids, unless they're right on top of you, the odds of you getting COVID from a child are very, very low. And yet we treat them like they're, they're dragons whose breath, every molecule of it is infected with the fire of COVID. And that's why we're shoving masks on these babies. There was a video, Leonidas, I tweeted it out on Friday, I think, of this little boy who was between two and

three crying. We have it queued up crying as the teacher over and over in daycare refuses to let the kid keep it off of his face. Watch this. Put your mask on. You got to wear it on. You got to keep it on. Put your mask on. There you go. Keep it right there.

Yay, Mason. Yay. there. Yay, Mason. Yay. You feel him, Mason. Look, we're going to keep it right here. No. Keep them low. I see you. Keep your mask on. Put your mask back on.

Oh, God. What are you looking at? Keep it on your face. You gotta keep it on your face so we go outside. Oh, God. It's stomach-turning. Mason is in the right,

and that teacher, though she's trying to comport with policy, is abusing him. You can Megan, fear is a powerful motivator and it makes people do just insane, ridiculous things. It makes people lose their capacity for rational thought. And what I try to explain to people is that we all have the capacity to do evil things and cause suffering in other people, even when we think that we're righteous and we're in the right, right? And a lot throughout this entire pandemic, we've been seeing that. We've been seeing people who've been driven by fear, who've been making completely irrational, otherwise rational people making completely irrational decisions to control other people and to control children and to exert this insane power dynamic. And like we said, it's child abuse. I mean, the things that have been happening from

shutting down schools, making kids wear masks. And now there's even the Pfizer is trying to approve their vaccine for kids from five to 11. So they're trying to push all of this stuff on kids. And it's not based on science. It's not based on science. It's based on this sort of religious right kind of thing. It's all based on fear. And like I said, I've tried to get people to understand that look, you have to have some perspective with this stuff. Like, look what it's doing to that kid. There was another story about a woman got kicked off an airline. I think she was from Oklahoma. It was United Airlines. I think she had a two-year-old who was asthmatic and the flight attendant would not let him pull down his mask and they ended up kicking them off the flight. And it's just like, how do we get to this point where we let ourselves become these

monsters because we're afraid? And that's really the question people need to ask themselves because it's not a left or right issue. It's not a partisan thing. It's a human nature thing. And we need to get a handle on it before it gets really, really out of control. It's already out of control.

Are we getting to a breaking point? Because you've got, I guess, Vogue. You know, Anna Wintour runs Vogue and she's the one who does the Met Gala. And they followed AOC behind the scenes as she was getting ready in her stupid tax the rich dress. You know, she's really sticking it to the man by wearing that dress as she licked the boots of the billionaires left and right. But like when people see this woman who's trying to claim that she's a socialist, she wants to impose these socialist policies on us.

And everybody's kids has to be masked because it's the right thing to do. You know, do your part. Meanwhile, like, look at these women on their knees in the masks as they adorn her with the proper fixings on her dress and her hair and her, okay, when they see that, when they see people like the San Francisco mayor, London Breed, did you see, did you see that video? And the dancing in the nightclub. I had a great time. No, I'm not going to pull my mask up. I'm not going to sip and put my mask on. I think, do we have that soundbite? Let's watch this.

The San Francisco mayor during a mask mandate that applies while you're inside. I had a good time at the black cat. And I think it's sad that this is even a story. You know, I was there, I was eating and I was drinking and I was sitting with my friends and everyone who came in there was vaccinated. So the fact that we have turned this into a story about being maskless. No, I'm not going to sit and put my mask on, sit and put my mask on, sit and put my mask on, eat and put my mask on. While I'm eating and I'm drinking, I'm going to keep my mask off. Can I just tell you? So, like, of course, you and I agree with her. That's exactly right. I don't want to have the mask on at all. Never mind. Put it up in between bites. It's ridiculous.

But I just had to do that on my on my flight down to Houston for a convention with Dan Crenshaw. I had to do it. I had to put it up and look at her. Here's her pictures of her in the nightclub. She she's dancing. She's not eating. She's not drinking. She's dancing on the dance floor, having a good time without her mask while she forces all her constituents to keep their masks on. They're not allowed into the black cat and to take their mask off. Only she can do it because the rules don't apply. Look at this to our elite leaders. And she's totally unapologetic about it. Meanwhile, the kids in San Francisco masks all day once they can finally get their asses into school because they've been out of school for the entire last year. And now it's spotty. People should be angry. People should be absolutely livid. But again, this isn't new.

They've been doing it the whole time. Gavin Newsom has been doing it. Bowser in DC, she's been doing it. All over the place. Lightfoot in Chicago, she did the same thing. And like you said, every time they always have excuses. Oh, well, I was drinking or I was eating. This doesn't apply to me. Whereas if it were us, if it were me or you, then the hammer would come down on us. Oh, you want to kill grandma? You want to kill the kids? Oh no, you're a horrible person. And so the double standards. Now you ask if I thought there was that whether we're at a breaking point. And I would hope so. I would hope so. Not that I want to see things collapse, but more and more people are starting to speak out. More and more people are starting to push back against this stuff.

And I work in healthcare and there's been a bunch of nurses in my area who have been protesting the vax mandates and everything that's been going on. So we're seeing more and more of that more and more of that happen. So it's not that I want to see a collapse, I just want to see people wake up, I want to see people recognize that we're being manipulated. And, you know, and Jesse Kelly always says, the people who are telling you to be afraid of Coronavirus are not afraid of Coronavirus. So we should follow their example, she can go, she can go out and have fun. She can go out and celebrate. Obama can have his parties and do whatever he wants to do. They can have the Met Gala and the Emmy Awards and do whatever. So let's go do that too. Let's take the mask off the kids

and let's just make our own personal decisions about what's best for ourselves. And then let's move on. Okay. But let me ask you as a practical matter, how does that work? Because I'm with you a hundred percent. I'm with you. And yet I want my children to continue going to school. And if I send them without a mask, they're going to get bounced right out. And I want to go into the various restaurants and I'm not allowed unless I show in New York, a vaccine card and have a mask on, you know, I, I don't really want to be the person in the YouTube video who gets punched or gets in a fight because I refuse to comply. I don't really want to have a fight at all. But I like the idea of civil disobedience. And yet, realistically, am I going to do that with

my kids in school or not buy my groceries to do it? I don't think so. Yeah, it's a tough call. It is because people are losing their jobs and things like that. So there's a real risk. There's real sacrifice associated with it. And anytime you have authoritarianism, anytime you're dealing with tyranny, it's going to be like that. So again, it's a personal decision that needs to be made. And you know, what you're willing to tolerate and what you're not willing to tolerate. Like, like I said, there's a lot of nurses that are that are protesting the vax mandate, and they're facing, they're facing termination, they're facing being fired from their jobs. And let me ask you something, let me ask

you, because this is one area in which status as you status as a disenfranchised group, a minority group does nothing for you. Right. Because we used to we heard first about how it was very important to get everybody vaccinated. Then hostess or a white waiter kicking out black patrons of these restaurants and get out, get out. You don't have a vaccination card. And suddenly this whole like, oh, you know, we've got to understand there's been a history in the black community of distrust of vaccines and so on. No, it's the white workers saying, get out to the black people. And I haven't heard boo from these groups who have been talking about systemic racism and so on. I mean, it seems like COVID trumps identity. Absolutely. Ibram Kendi has been very quiet lately about this, which is kind of interesting because his whole stick is that any system that creates disparate impact between races, that that's a racist system. So vaccines may I forget what the percentage is, but there's a large percentage, much, much larger percentage of black people who are unvaccinated.

So you're shutting them out of society now saying they can't go to restaurants or bars or whatever. And so according to Ibram Kendi, that should be considered a racist system. But no, they're very, very quiet. And I don't know, Megan, what I normally say about it is that the people who adhere to these kinds of things, they don't seem to have actual principles. They don't believe anything that they say. They just know what they can use in the moment to manipulate other people. So if today- Control. It's about control.

Control, right. So if today racism has the power, then I'm going to use that against you. If it's vaccines today that has the power, then I'm going to use that against you. And then, so whatever I believed yesterday or said I believed yesterday, all of that's out the window. None of that matters. It's only what I can use today, right now in the moment to manipulate you. And then, so whatever I believed yesterday or said, I believed yesterday, all of that's out the window. None of that matters. It's only what I can use today right now in the moment to manipulate you and, and like you said, control and exert power over you. And you see that with everything. You see that with race, the critical race theory. You see it with gender. You see it with you see with the COVID stuff. I mean, think about it. How many times have we heard that health care is a right and we need universal health care for everybody? And now all of a sudden it's OK to kind of push out this idea that maybe we should deny health care to unvaccinated people. It's like, well, how can you know that it was a right? Yeah. How can you hold both ideas at once? There was a landlord in Florida that said that he was he was going to evict people for being unvaccinated. And Occupy Democrats retweeted that tweet and said, yeah, yeah, it's retweet this if you support it. We support this guy. It's like now all of a sudden the progressive wing is supporting landlords and evictions. So they don't believe in anything that they say.

Wouldn't you love to get like a PI on that guy and just follow him for 48 hours? That's it. I guarantee you're going to find that guy speeding way above the speed limit, eating food that's terrible for him, having a cocktail, you know, or maybe four or five, who knows? I don't know who this guy is, but I'm just saying, should all of that count? Is this guy perfectly fit? Is he at all obese? Because that counts against him to this guy who's going to be the moral arbiter of everybody who's declined to get a vaccine, including those who have natural immunity because they had covid. You know, does this guy have some superhuman powers against heart disease, against speeding deaths? It's just if we want to start doing this to each other, it's not going to end well. No, it's not. And that goes down a very, very dark road. And one of the things they'll say is like, well, obesity isn't contagious. Well, so what? So what? Heart disease kills 650,000 people every year.

So if it's truly about saving lives, then hey, let's mandate exercise. Let's mandate healthy diets. Let's get rid of McDonald's. You know, if we want to do this, then let's do it. I'm going to fine you. And speeding risk, people. I mean, if I speed and I get in a car accident, you know, I'm going to hurt more than just myself, odds are. So it's not all of these can be dismissed as just a risk you take to you and you alone. You know, society has gotten a place where we do tolerate some level of risk. And by the way, if you've got,

you know, a lot of morbidly obese people taking up a lot of hospital beds, don't tell me that doesn't affect other people in the same way. A lot of COVID patients might affect other people's healthcare when they go to the same facility. So, you know, if you really want to take these are these arguments to their logical conclusions, they don't end well, this is doesn't end well, we don't judge people for their individual medical decisions, their individual liberty. And I know we mandate vaccines. I'm well aware. I've gotten my kids all the vaccines, but this one's new.

This one's new. And there's just no way around it. Yeah, there's no way around it. All right, wait, I want to pick it up with you right there because I'm going to squeeze in a quick break. There's so much to go over. He is Leonidas Johnson and he has hosted the podcast Informed Dissent.

Up next, the Biden administration seems to be focused on everything, everything, He is Leonidas Johnson, and he has hosted the podcast Informed Dissent. Up next, the Biden administration seems to be focused on everything, everything, except the surge of 10,000 immigrants down in Texas that even Democrats are starting to call them out on. Stay with us. Welcome back to The Megyn Kelly Show, everyone. Today, I'm joined by Leonidas Johnson. He's a political commentator and host of the Informed Dissent podcast and has been very brave about pushing back against some of these nonsense narratives we've been fed over the past year, whether it's, you know, the COVID virus doesn't doesn't attack people who are at a BLM protest or that we're suffering an epidemic of police attacking and killing unarmed black men. And he's gotten some pushback for the positions he's taken. But he doesn't seem to care about pushback, which is one of the things I love in anybody. All right. Let's start with what's happening at the southern border, because the Biden administration does seem very firm on talking about anything other than this crisis at our southern border,

where we've had 200000 people come across the border in July, another 200,000 in August. We only used the COVID mandate that Trump issued saying we're allowed to send people right back immediately for half of those. So we've got 200,000 new immigrants across the southern border in just the past 60 days alone. And now we have this crisis at basically in Del Rio, which is a bicultural city that's used to cross border traffic. And there are some 10,000 illegal immigrants, undocumented workers from Mexico sitting underneath this bridge. And only when Fox News got a drone down there and started showing us the pictures, which then the Biden administration banned, did they finally start to do something about it? Now some flights are starting to bring these migrants back to Mexico. But the overwhelming majority of these folks and others who come into the country saying,

I want asylum, I want asylum, will likely have a hearing at which they won't get it, right? 85% are denied. And the other 15% will then just be released into the United States to wander, to be molested, to have to work illegally in terrible conditions, right? Because when you don't have papers, things don't go so well for you. And we're not supposed to pay any attention to that humanitarian crisis at all, what's happening under the bridge, or what's going to happen to these folks once they're released in the United States without papers or any pathway to anything. It's really quite something that this is happening at such a large scale and we're

not hearing too much about it. Like you said, the Fox drone, it's unbelievable how many people were under that bridge. You said 10,000. I saw somewhere even upwards to 15,000 and like all these people. And it wasn't that they were just coming in either. They were coming, they were able to come in and they were able to go back freely. So they were like, like pits passing back and forth and they weren't, you know,

they, they're, they're not able to be apprehended. And the border patrol is completely overwhelmed and we're just not hearing about it. It's incredible. And, you know, so you wonder what what the Biden policy is. If you look at the White House website, it says that, you know, the White House wants to reform the long, broken and chaotic immigration system and Biden's going to somehow do this. OK, when, how, what's what's the plan? What's the policy here? Because right now it's we're in full crisis mode and nothing seems to be doing. Nothing seems to be done about it. His message, Kamala Harris, his messaging is what brought them here. His his open borders message brought them here. And you don't have to believe

me. Just ask them. The immigrants who have been crossing the southern border say openly, we think now's our chance. Joe Biden seems very open to us being here in a way Trump was not. And that's why we made a run for it. But this is to to their own detriment. I mean, we are endangering these people with these messages because there's not even any running water for these folks down underneath this bridge. We're not handling it. We're not equipped to handle it. This wink and a nod open border thing is not safe for these folks. But we don't we don't seem to be worried about that. And I ask you between that the southern border between it now we have to admit that this drone we used over in Afghanistan killed a bunch of innocent people and no bad people, including a bunch of children. And the Biden administration is doing like a collective shoulder shrug, like, whoops, sorry. Paris and France, they've recalled their ambassador because they're so ticked off about this deal we struck with the Australians on submarines. The Senate parliamentarian just said you cannot shove through the immigration reform bill, sorry, House, as part of reconciliation, that's actually something

that's not going to be able to, you can't just say that's an economic measure and grant citizenship effectively to all these millions of people. So Biden's taking it, you know, on this front, the other front, the other front and so on. And I wonder whether you look around and think this is true chaos right now. It absolutely is true chaos. And I can't believe, we knew the Biden administration was going to be problematic. And we knew that there was going to be a lot of issues with him coming in just from his campaign and the things that he ran on. But I didn't anticipate it being this bad this quickly. We're into September and it's already just falling apart, whether we're talking about immigration in Afghanistan, COVID. I mean, everything,

you hate to say it, but like everything is just seems like it's just imploding right now in our country. And we don't have a leader. I don't know who behind the scenes is telling Biden what to do or guiding him, but he's empty. His eyes are empty. His head is empty. He's an empty suit up there just doing things that he's in our country are very concerning. So then, and like I said, it's not just immigration. Like you look across the board and we have all of these things that are happening that are just, uh, it's unbelievable that we, well, what about crime? We haven't even talked about crime.

So, um, right now. Okay. This is from time magazine on September 13th across the U S more children and teens are being caught in the crossfire, uh, in crime. But this is how they finished the sentence. Just teens are being caught in the crossfire, uh, in crime, but this is how they finished the sentence. Just interestingly are being caught in the crossfire, a by-product of gun violence. Do you mean criminals? Is that what

you mean? A by-product of criminals. It's like the guns got up out of their cases, went out to the streets of Chicago and fired themselves. A byproduct of gun violence that has been exacerbated by the pandemic. Again, do you mean criminals with too much time on their hands? Is that what you're trying to say? They're talking to emergency room physicians and so on. Gunshot injuries at pediatric trauma centers spiked 50% across Houston, 300% in Hartford, Connecticut. Down in Fort Worth, they're up as well, up to record numbers in Memphis. They're talking about the number of shooting victims,

record highs. Some experts attribute the rise in violence to pandemic related school closures and unemployment strains and emotional and mental health have led to poor conflict resolution and so on. We're not supposed to care about any of those effects of the pandemic. They don't count those, those that led to dead kids. those don't count. All the only ones that count are the deaths. If you happen to have covid, you don't even have to die of covid. If you happen to die and you have covid at the same time, those count. And I'm telling you, I'm getting angry because the crime, having just moved from New York, is out of control. The number of shootings and what I get instead of honesty is opinion pieces like we saw from NBC and like some

report from Democratic Party aligned think tank Third Way saying, oh, there's a hysteria about crime waves suggesting there isn't. And there is. Wow. There's absolutely a crime wave. And NBC News is putting out falsehoods. Just downplaying it. That's unbelievable because it's not even debatable that that crime is up. That's the question is why? I mean, you can focus on robberies like, oh, in-home burglaries are down because everybody's home, but they're ignoring murders and shootings. Yeah. I mean, it's awful. And here's something interesting. I live in rural Ohio and there's more guns here than people and we don't have shootings. Nobody gets shot here. And if there is a shooting, it's once in a great blue moon.

It just doesn't happen. But there's guns all over the place. Everybody has guns around here. So to come and say that, well, it was coupled with firearms and the pandemic and say that's a cultural problem. I've been keeping a list. I haven't tracked all of the inner city violence, but I keep a list of the kids who are killed in inner city violence, kids who are under the age of 13, so 13 and younger. And last year there were 78. And this year so far there's been 55. And this is all over the country, mostly in places like Chicago. Of course, we talk about Chicago all the time. But I mean, these kids are mostly victims of stray bullets. And that's not even including kids who were just shot and recovered. Then we're talking about hundreds. And then once you expand that to under 18, then we're talking multiple hundreds. We're talking about 500, 600 kids that are being killed in street violence. And so that's just kids. That's not even looking at the adults in which

you get up to like 7,000, 7,000 plus, 7,500. And so to say, to ignore this problem and to just downplay it and say, oh, it's just hysteria. Whereas, you know, we look at COVID deaths, kids are much more like, kids in those neighborhoods are much more likely to be killed by some other dude, some other guy with a gun than they are to die from COVID. And but we're ignoring it. And so it's crazy. Even to bring it up is considered controversial. Meanwhile, here to your point, and I know I appreciate the running list you've been keeping because no one seems to care about these kids who die on the receiving end of a gang member's bullet. In Baltimore, stray bullets have injured a five-year-old

sitting in his bathtub, a 10-year-old buying a bag of Cheetos earlier this year. And nearly half of all murders in Baltimore took place in the daytime in 2020, in the daytime. So the criminals are getting more brazen, more bold. And as our little ones get shot in their bathtubs, I just, how is it not on the nightly news every night? How is it not the lead? We've grown totally immune to inner city violence. I know you've said there's something called, this is your term, hood culture that we seem totally unwilling to call out. Yeah. And I'm not suggesting that we dwell all the time on tragedy and just depress ourselves. Because just keeping that list

has weighed heavily on me. And I try to update it maybe once a week. And I don't mean to be trite about it, because obviously the people that are dealing with that stuff directly, obviously that's much more horrible for them. And I don't mean to like compare myself to them, but to say, but you know, dwelling on that, it weighs on you, but still to ignore it completely, that's just outrageous. And, you know, to say that, um, you know, like you said, the kid that shot in his bathtub or, uh, Jazlyn Adams that was shot in Chicago in a, in a McDonald's drive-thru, like she was in a drive-thru with her dad getting a Happy Meal and somebody started shooting into their car and ended up killing her. And there's all kinds of stories like that, that kids out playing in their yard or sleeping in

their bed, babies in strollers, babies in strollers getting shot because these people are just shooting indiscriminately into crowds and not caring who they hit. And I heard a detective say one time that, uh, the ideology behind it is that they know where their target is. And they know, uh, that if they just shoot indiscriminately, that they're going to hit somebody that they care about. They may not get them specifically, but they're going to hit somebody else that they care about. And that's why they go shoot up funerals and birthday parties and things. I mean, it's just the lack of humanity is incredible. And it's unbelievable that we're not talking about it, at least on a cursory level, just to say, oh my gosh, this is happening. The only reason I began keeping that list, and I'm embarrassed to admit happening. The only reason I began keeping that list and it's embarrassed, I'm embarrassed to admit it. Like the only reason I'm, I've been, I started keeping that list last

year was because I have so many kids were killed on July 4th. And I started, I realized how big of a problem it was. And I didn't know it. I didn't know how bad it was. And I started doing the research to see how many kids were being killed. And just blew me away and i was like somebody has to put this out there um especially with all the stuff going around about how many unarmed black people are killed by police and how awful that was because i think last year it was like it was like 12 or 13 or something like that and then you have 78 kids who are killed in street violence and nothing there's there's. No national news, no outrage, no talk about we need to change the culture. Nothing. And you talk about this.

You talk about how this isn't necessarily a black-white thing. The so-called hood culture, it can be white, it can be Latino, it can be black. The point is, why aren't we taking a hard look at these crime rates and trying to help the little five year olds in their bathtubs so they don't have to live like this? Right. There's no kids should have to live like that. Not in America. This is this is not our country. We should not have little kids being shot in bathtubs because somebody shot through their apartment wall or their house or whatever it may be. And yeah, it is cultural at its root and it's not racial. And I try to explain that to people pretty often that a lot of times we like to conflate race and culture. And particularly, you think about hood culture and you say, oh, well, you're criticizing Black people. No, no, I'm not. I'm criticizing a certain segment of our society that lends itself to this violent behavior. And that's not a racial thing because

there's white people involved with that. There's Black people. Like you said, there's Latino people. There's Asian people. It's all across the spectrum. People who adhere to these ghetto hood values, this lack of respect for authority, this dismissal of education, this external locus of control, this idea that things happen to you instead of you being in control of your own life, no sense of personal responsibility, promiscuity. I mean, all of these things are indicative of a toxic culture that runs rampant through our inner cities. And that's what needs to be addressed. That's why crime rates are going up. And that coupled with pulling back our police and not allowing them to do their jobs and the whole defund the police movement. I mean, these are the things that need to be addressed. And if we really care about saving lives, that's where we would put our focus, Megan. Okay. Up next, I'm going to ask you about something. I don't think you even know this is coming.

And our audience definitely doesn't know it's coming. But I'm going to talk about how my reliance, my admiring of Leonidas got me in trouble with my own Hall of Fame membership at my high school and what I said to the school and what they said back to me. That's up next after this quick break. Welcome back to The Megyn Kelly Show, everyone. Leonidas Johnson is with me today. He's a political commentator and host of the Informed Dissent podcast. So I have a story for you. So as I mentioned at the top of the show, I'm a big fan of yours and have been, and I just think you're very brave in your commentary. And I think if you were saying things that were more supportive

of BLM and less supportive, not that you've been a cop supporter, but you've been just calling out disinformation about them. You'd be all over television. You know, you're smart, you're fearless, you happen to be a person of color. And somebody like you would be all over MSNBC, CNN, Fox News, whatever. But you won't get any invitations from ABC or NBC or MSNBC or CNN because you're not saying the things that they like. And this drives me nuts. It drives me nuts, whether it's Thomas Sowell, Jason Whitlock, you, Glenn Lowry. I could go on because I see really amazing people who happen to be black, totally silenced by the mainstream media, because you don't go along with the narrative being pushed. So if I see a good tweet or whatever, I'll retweet it.

And it's both because I tend to agree with this stuff and also because I just try to amplify voices that are being ignored. So believe it or not, there are some students at my home high school, my high school in Bethlehem, New York, Albany, New York, which is the town of Bethlehem, Bethlehem Central High School. And they complained about me retweeting you and retweeting Jason Whitlock and said it was insensitive to me that these tweets added pain and offense to the national conversation. And my school, to its credit, didn't just say, oh, we're afraid, we're afraid we're going to, and they want to be bounced out of the Bethlehem Central Hall of Fame. Now, it's not that this was a hugely important role in my life, but it was kind of bullshit because it's a free speech matter,

right? It's like, it's about so much more than just whether you agree with the tweets that I retweeted. And so to my school's credit, they reached out to me and said, do you care to defend yourself? And I responded and said, look, I will respond to your questions out of respect for my Bethlehem school community, which I love. And I'm just going to I'm not going to read the whole letter, but I read I wrote in part. The fact that I'm asked to explain anything that I post or discuss on my podcast is a reflection of the dangerous times in which we're living. Free speech is under assault. Divergent viewpoints are being disallowed. There's only one way to look at or discuss subjects like race, gender, sexual identity, sexism, and more without becoming the target of the woke outrage mob,

which derives its power by canceling people for the thought crime of disagreeing with them. And I wrote, my position in the Bethlehem Hall of Fame was delightful to receive, but I wish to be clear, nothing will stop me from enthusiastically engaging in the ongoing free and open exchange of ideas. Not folks claiming offense, not the threat of an honor being revoked, not anything. Here's paragraph two. For what it's worth, the two tweets you raise, for which I make no apology, are in fact retwe by those who disparage Black Americans at sellouts if they do not tow a certain political line. I say I believe this shaming of alternative viewpoints is deeply wrong. And on and on I go and wound up saying this at the end. The bottom line is that this country, by its very design, was meant to celebrate and encourage divergent viewpoints, not punish them.

That remains my mission, one I pledge to continue in the many public venues in which I appear, reporting all news without fear or favor, a principle I first learned at Bethlehem Central. And I heard back from the school, Leonidas, and guess what? They sided with me. Oh, good. I'm glad to hear that. I know, me too. Yeah, yeah. I appreciate you retweeting me. Oh, good. I'm glad to hear that. I know. Me too. Yeah. Yeah. I appreciate you retweeting me first of all, and then concluding me with all those great minds.

My gosh, that's that, that was a compliment in and of itself. Uh, but you know, it's funny people, people accuse me of having internalized white supremacy and I'm sure, uh, Jason Whitlock and, and Glenn Morey, they, they get the same kind of thing. And so what happens is if white people retweet me, if I have a view that goes against the accepted narrative, and somebody like you retweets me, then all of a sudden, since I have internalized white supremacy, that means that you're supporting white supremacy. So in this twisted view, even though you're retweeting a black guy, you're actually supporting white supremacy because that makes sense in this upside down world. That's how they silence you. They silence you at every turn. You don't get an invitation to appear. And then when somebody like me who has a large platform tries to amplify your voice,

we get shamed because they don't like you being amplified in any larger form than the one you happen to have. Right. Exactly. Exactly. And like I said, they don't, like I said earlier in the show, they don't believe what they say. They only use what they think they can use in the moment to, to exert control over you. So it is what you had, what you said in that tweet, where, what I said in the tweet and what you retweeted, they probably, it was probably not an issue that what they just disagreed with it and then wanted to silence you for it. Well, and let me, let me read your tweet. Let me read your tweet. Okay. This is how controversial it was. I'm so sick of talking about race. I'd be ecstatic to never talk about race ever again. This religious cultish obsession with

racial issues and racial identity and victimhood inevitably drives racial hatred and hostility. It is quite literally making the world worse. That's it. That's it. You're not allowed to have that viewpoint as a black man in America. And I'm not allowed to think it's worthy of amplification. Yeah. It's incredible that that's even a controversial viewpoint. Like, hey guys, let's stop talking about race. Let's get past this idea that race has a massive impact on our identity. And let's start treating each other like Dr. King wanted us to by the content of our character. It's like, oh, that's a white supremacist viewpoint. It's like, what are you talking about? It's unbelievable that that's even even controversial. But, yeah, I mean, this is where we are. Like when you, when you have these kinds of ideas and you have this obsession

with racial identity, uh, it, it only ends up driving enmity. And, you know, I, I really am like, well, like I said, in that tweet, I really am tired of talking about it, but I feel, but we have to, we, we can't stop talking about it, uh, because the other side is talking about it all the time. And that's all they And that's all they care about. So I've actually had people accuse me of being obsessed with race myself. And I'm like, listen, I'm not obsessed with racial identity. I'm only trying to push back on what the other side is saying. I'm trying to offer a counter viewpoint here because they won't shut up about it. Everything they say has some racial element to it. And yeah,

it is making our world worse. It's making everything worse. It's toxic and it's divisive. And yeah, we need to get past it. And I can't, like I said, I can't believe it's controversial. Whenever I tweet something that, you know, pushes back on any female's narrative, any woman's narrative, whatever it is, I tell somebody to toughen up, what have you, then I get accused of internalized misogyny. That's my intern. So this is what they do to anybody sort of who's not woke or pushes back against these narratives. And you do have to be okay with these names. I'm sure you have been called an uncle Tom and all the other names. And it's not pleasant, but to other people like you who would like to speak out, but don't want to be called the names, what's your message?

You have to have tough skin. You know, you have to if you want to, then, you know, it's not going to go well because they're going to come for you. Anytime you disagree with the narrative, like you said, whether it doesn't matter if it's race or gender or what it may be, as soon as you disagree with it, they're going to bring out the bring out the gloves and they're going to they're going to attack you for it. So you just have to find some tough skin and you have to know that their opinion doesn't matter. If you know the truth, speak the truth. Skin matters, but it's not the color. It's the thickness. Leonidas, what a pleasure.

So great finally getting to talk to you. Thanks so much for being here. Yeah. Thank you. Very good to talk to you. And thank you to Bethlehem Central for standing up for free speech and the divergence of ideas. Up next, we're going to talk to two stars from the viral Amazon documentary Lula Rich, a company that promised women financial freedom through the sellings of leggings that quickly turned into a cult-like multi-level marketing or a pyramid scheme. That's next. Welcome back, everyone, to The Megyn Kelly Show. We're taking a break from politics for the moment to talk deception, fraud, and lies. I swear it's a break from politics, but I'm bummed. A few years ago, the clothing company LuLaRoe became wildly popular for their colorful leggings. I am so into this story. The company promised women who sold their products the dream of working from home

and seeing their kids more often. You could have it all. You could raise your kids, you could be with your husband, and yet you could still make a fortune. You could actually wind up supporting your family even better potentially than your working spouse, all from the comfort of your own home. In the end, however, it wound up costing so many of these women their home, their life savings, and even their marriage. And the company is now the focus of a must-see Amazon docuseries called Lula Rich. Watch. I had achieved the dream. I was selling magic leggings.

This is a huge opportunity in America. Women were selling breast milk so they could afford startup costs. It had just become a circus. Mark starts spouting off passages from the Book of Mormon. A mass delusion. Oh my God, I'm in a cult. Did any of them have a clue how to run a company of this size? No.

What is the real story of LuLaRoe? We want to see women succeed. That's where the business started. There's magic in the air. But most people have not sold anything. There became the push to put off a successful image dn says i got the weight loss surgery i can hook you up what the they wanted them to drink the kool-aid let's just shower people with events in 14 months we experienced two billion dollars worth

of growth they're using cheap language of feminism we were empowered and then the husband was supposed to take over what inspired the empowering women for you Can I jump in there and then you can talk? 85% of the sixth floor was their family. We show up every day and say what problems need to be solved. The whole house smelled like dead fart leggings. Little did I know this was going to end up looking like a penis. It's the definition of a pyramid scheme. Oh my goodness. If you're just listening and didn't actually see that trailer, you can just click on it on Amazon. It's well worth watching. Joining me now, Roberta Blevins, a former retailer for LuLaRoe and Daryl Trujillo, a former LuLaRoe employee.

Roberta, thanks for being here. Daryl, thanks to you as well. So Roberta, you're in that trailer as saying, oh my God, I'm in a cult. And when we say retailer, what it basically means is you were one of the women who was at home saying, you know what, I'll do this. I'll spend five to 9,000 bucks on an initial supply of these leggings that I then will sell to women at house parties, on Facebook lives, what have you, and maybe improve my family's bottom line. So that's that's basically how it started for you. Yes. Absolutely. And how much did you invest initially? It was around nine thousand dollars after all was said and done. Wow. All right. And what what was so attractive about LuLaRoe? It's like, at first I thought it was a play on Lululemon, but LuLaRoe kind of coincides with

the grandchildren of these two people who founded the company. Why did women love these items so much initially? You know, I think the problem here was that they targeted women who were stay-at-home moms who maybe already felt a lack of community. And these leggings came with what they called a sisterhood, a community. It was a really amazing opportunity or so it looked. And it was very easy to sort of fall into it and say, you know what? I can do this. And when you've got every single person in the company behind you saying you definitely can do this, girl, you know, you have this sort of like false feminist women empowerment that makes you think that this is a really good idea when in fact, we find out that it was not. Because this isn't going to a good place as the

audience has already surmised the fact that we're doing a story on it and Amazon did a documentary on it and you two are here. Um, so let me ask you, Daryl, because you got, you're, you're like the star of the documentary. You're, you're so like matter of fact, and all your comments, you're very amusing. And, um, you said that you were a referee before you got, you saw an ad on Craigslist for data entry, right? What were you refereeing? I was a high school volleyball referee at the time. I had made a couple straight CIF Southern Section Final Fours as a line judge. I'd started breaking into college assignments. At the time, my real, I guess you could say, adult job was working at a Steve Madden. So I was working Steve Madden retail and refereeing at the same time and making it work. But, you know, I just needed something

full time for benefits and for, you know, all those things. Yeah. You get sucked into this company run by this very dynamic. You can't take that away from them. Couple Deanne and Mark Stidham. They founded it. I guess it was founded in 2012. She started making maxi skirts in her own home and selling them like crazy. And the couple realized, hey, we're onto something. You know, there's a there's a business to be had here in women's fashion. And here you heard a little bit of the soundbite in that trailer. But I just want the audience to see them and hear them. This is a question. This is from the documentary where they're being asked about the empowerment of women, female empowerment. Listen to Mark and Ian. What inspired the empowerment of women for you? Can I jump in there and then you can talk? Yeah. Because, yeah. Yeah. No, I have something. No, I watched my wife shatter glass ceilings.

I mean, there was no, she was able to make the money she was willing to go out and make. I was there, I did. I shattered a ceiling. I was trying to think of when I did that. No, she literally went out on the road and sold 20,000 maxi skirts and made hundreds of thousands of dollars profit in a very

short period of time. And so the empowering women came from me being married to a powerful wife. I love that he steals the answer. So, all right, so let me get back to you and ask you, Roberta. So you're like, okay, cool. I'm going to sell these leggings. I'm going to make some extra cash. But there was a second secret, not really that secret, strain of income that was really what the business was all about. And it didn't really have to do with you getting out there and pushing the leggings on people. What did it have to do with? Recruitment, just like any pyramid scheme, it was 100% about recruitment and getting more people involved, more people on board than I thought there was about sales. Explain what that would entail.

So the recruitment for LuLaRoe was basically to get more people to join underneath you and to create your own team. You would get a percentage of sales or a percentage of their their sales, essentially. But the way that it was structured, it wasn't. As you learn, there were a lot of sort of nefarious things going on. But what happens is you you get people to join underneath you 50 people to spend $5,000 on LuLaRoe leggings that they're then supposed to go out and peddle, do you get a percentage of their initial purchase or do you have to wait until they actually start selling? Oh, no, you definitely get anything that they purchased, you would get a percentage done. So that first initial onboarding package between five and $9,000, you would get a nice, I want to say it was probably $400 minimum in a bonus for one person. So when it was at the height, you were getting so many people joining at once. Those bonus checks were super duper padded. Plus you would get percentages on people that joined under those people at Infiniium.

It was just really, it was all about building the most powerful pyramid possible. So this is what they say. And I should say that the couple denies this is a pyramid scheme and we'll get into that. But the thing about a pyramid scheme is the only people who make money, and you can make money, are the people who join early. You got to be at the top of the pyramid and have all those people underneath you because eventually you reach the point of saturation where there's just too many people out there doing it. There's not enough people to recruit and the market won't warrant 50,000 sellers of LuLaRoe leggings in Cincinnati. And so if you're at the bottom of that scheme, it's not going to work out for you. And that's

kind of how this came to the light of the authorities and the lawyers and even the people pushing the leggings. Daryl, so you worked, you take a job for data entry, and you're dealing with emails. And tell us about the family, because it wasn't just Mark and Deanne, it was like their entire family running this thing. And this winds up being a billion dollar company. Yeah. So yeah, lo and behold, we jump into, you know, LuLaRoe, we start working for this company and we find out that basically the entire upper management structure is their family and a couple of, shall we say, close hires, I guess is probably the way to describe it, but as we start to, you know, you start to watch the documentary and I live this personally, you start to figure out that none of them have a clue how to run a corporation of this size. I mean, look at, look at their backgrounds. Mark was a concrete, uh, contractor before, uh, becoming LuLaRoe's, you know, COO or president or whatever you want to call them. And you look at the issues that they've had,

no credible retailer has had these issues. Look at the fact that they've been sued by the state of Washington that settled out for 4.75 million. Look at the fact that they're under lawsuit by the state of Alaska for improper sales tax collection, which if Alaska wins, the maximum penalty is $36 million. Actually, it's like $36.5 million. Because they were allegedly charging sales tax in states where you can't charge sales tax. Correct. That's one way of making money. They deny it.

And the maximum penalty under Alaska law is, I think it's like 500 bucks per occurrence. So it could be a big number. So you're walking around, you're like, there's nobody here who really knows how to run a billion dollar company, but success came quickly. They say they did $9.8 million worth of sales in 2014 with 750 distributors. I think that means people like you, right? Is that, that means people like you, Roberta, right? When they're using

distributors is you. Yeah. So they had 750. Okay. Then, so that's 2014, uh, 750 people helping them out. 2015, 2000 distributors, 2016, 26,000 distributors and a billion dollars in sales. By 2017, they had 80,000 independent distributors, meaning women, mostly women, some guys selling their product. And it peaked and who knows what the sales were, but I'm sure it was over a billion dollars that year. So it wasn't just, okay, you're going to make a bunch of money. It was several things that are a little cult-like, like the cruises, the celebrity, the sisterhood, the empowerment talk. Can you, can you talk a little bit about that, Roberta? Yeah. Um, you know, it was very culty and

I didn't really notice it at first because I was so vulnerable when I joined and I was just so happy to have a community of women who supported me and thought I was awesome and thought I was just as cool as I thought I was. And so in the beginning, I sort of ignored it. You know, it was just like, yeah, I have friends. This is awesome. As I got deeper into the organization and sort of climbed the ladder, so to speak, I started to have a pretty good vantage point of things that were happening and I could see things. And there was a lot of culty stuff that was happening and it didn't sit well with me. And I have friends who have left cults. And so I sort of was seeing a lot of red

flags. Like what? And it started making me feel very uncomfortable. And so I started asking questions and in a cult that is not allowed, I've learned the hard way that asking questions and in a cult that is not allowed. I've learned the hard way that asking questions was not going to get me anywhere in this organization. What were some of the things that you thought were culty? Well, so if I started researching Stephen Hassan's bite model after I left LuLaRoe, and so a lot of things that I experienced in LuLaRoe, I didn't even realize were culty until I had educated myself after the fact. The fact that they control what we wear, that's a cult tactic. The fact that they control what we do, who we spend time with, the amount of time that we're on Zoom calls and conferences, the sleep deprivation that you get, these are all cult

tactics. These are all tiny little things when put together equal a gigantic cult. The fact that LuLaRoe can never be at fault for anything and every single thing that goes wrong is someone else's fault and never LuLaRoe's fault. That is a huge cult tactic. And when you first signed up, can you tell us a little bit about your family situation? Yeah. When I signed up, um, I, I had joined the MLM complex, which is what, what we call it, the MLM complex about a year or so earlier selling a different company. Um, my father MLM stands for multi-level marketing, which is very common in the United States. It's not always a pyramid scheme, but it's at least a red flag. If you find out you're working for an MLM company, sorry, go ahead. Of course. So, um, I was a young mom. I want to say my daughter was about three or four at the

time. My father had just recently passed away. I was still a newlywed. It was a very, very tumultuous time in my life. And I just really was looking for something that made sense. And what did your husband think? I felt like I was just a mom. I was just a wife. I had felt that I had lost my identity as a woman. And I was looking for something that could give that to me. And I was a hairstylist and I was traveling all over California from San Diego to Los Angeles doing hair. And it took me out of the home a lot. And I really just wanted more normalcy in my life. Ironically. Did your husband like this idea or no? No, he, he didn't. He was not interested in it. He said that if I was going to do it,

it needed to be 100% my thing. He was not going to be involved in it. And any failures would be mine. So, you know, I said, okay, I think I can do this. And I went and joined. So then you, you start doing it. And the reason I asked you that question is because in the documentary, there's another gal who's on camera saying, my husband was like, this is a pyramid scheme. And the woman's like, and I told him, this is a pyramid scheme. And the woman's like, and I told him this is not a pyramid scheme. And what the documentary missed was the soundbite from the husband going, I tried to tell her that's what I wanted to see. But anyway, so you start actually doing it and talk to us about the kind of dough you were making. And like,

as the riches started to come in, what you and your husband start thinking about this whole gig? Well, I will say that I was not one of those people in the documentary that was making $100,000 checks. I was right in the middle of that Kool-Aid flavored primordial ooze, right in the middle. So I made decent money for a normal person that lives in Southern California. It was nothing astronomical. I want to say I was selling five to $10,000 a month. And my bonus checks were anywhere from, I think my smallest was 400 and my biggest was 6,000. So I was definitely not one of those big people that was building dream houses and buying, you know, vacation homes or anything like that.

It basically allowed me to quit traveling and going between salons through Southern California and be able to just stay home. And so leaving that one job, LuLaRoe replaced that income. So I was never rolling in the dough. It really, it just sustained my current life and brought me home. Well, what's crazy is the women who really crushed it. And again, there were a few men, but the ones who really crushed it, to me, this is like, oh God, they seem to take advantage of how social women are and how really one of our ways in which we are powerful is our ability to connect socially and emotionally with other people. This is why women are very good at the get out the vote campaigns, right? Like they

know a lot of people, they stay connected to a lot of people through their kids' schools, through the PTA, through whatever it is. And a lot of women themselves saw that as an opportunity, like, okay, this is working out well for me. I sold my $5,000 worth of inventory like that. So I'm going to tell my other, you know, moms in my book club, in my wine club, in my school club about this. And then each one of those moms is kind of under that woman. She gets a piece of their sales and then they recruit women and she gets a piece of their sales, sort of the grandchildren and then the

great grandchildren and down and down it goes. And so if you're at the top of that, you do become Lula Rich, as they say. But as we saw with Bernie Madoff, it only lasts while people are still putting into the pyramid and then it can come down in tatters. Okay, I'm joined today by Roberta Blevins and Daryl Trujillo. They star in Amazon's new documentary series, Lula Rich. Up next, we're going to talk about what happened when these leggings started to smell and realized that all over them, certain things had what looked very much like penis designs, which is not really what you want on your leggings. And coming up in

just a little bit, we're going to be taking your calls. Are you a daycare worker forced to shove masks on the faces of young children? Are you feeling ticked off at the Emmy hypocrisy? Give me a call. 833-44-MEGYM. 833-446-3496. Welcome back to the show, everybody. We're joined today by Roberta Blevins and Daryl Trujillo, stars of the new Amazon documentary Lula Rich. And by the way, we're going to be taking calls in our next segment. If you want to talk about this poor little guy, we'll play the soundbite for you again in a minute. And the masking of our children against their will when they're two. I mean, OK, we can talk about the 17 year olds, the two year olds. Anyway, we're upset about it. And we're taking your calls at 833-44-Megan, 833-446-3496. Okay. So Roberta, I'm reading your numbers here.

And this is from the documentary. You say, I purchased like 78,000 worth of wholesale inventory in the year and a half I was there. And I sold 83,000. So you really didn't make much money selling the leggings. But in bonuses, I made over 65,000, you say. So the bonuses are from recruiting the other people. So, I mean, the reason that the owners say this isn't a pyramid scam is because they say you got inventory. You had goods to sell. You did make some money. There's, you know, there are goods being exchanged.

Some people were better at it than others. Why is that not true? Well, you know, the deck was stacked. There are a lot of issues and even things that weren't shown in the documentary. There's so much to the story and we've been working on it for so long. There's just so much to tell. And there just didn't seem to be enough time, but a lot of things happened. You know, these were stacked.

This was stacked against a lot of women. I was never encouraged to sell. I was always encouraged to be building my team and training my team. Um, and just have one sale a week, just have a sale, just have like one sale a week. Don't worry about it. You're focusing on a team. You're focusing on training. And so I never worried about that kind of stuff. This, the sales kept my boutique afloat and the bonuses, you know, took care of my bills. So for me, it really, it worked in that way because I didn't understand what was happening and I didn't understand what was going on. And those numbers

were actually evidence in the lawsuit in Washington as proof that this is a pyramid scheme. Because if you can't get enough recruits below you, you're not going to make any money is really the allegation once it gets too ubiquitous. But the problems as I understand it with these leggings wasn't just that it became too ubiquitous, that too many women were trying to sell in these communities. And there's only so many women you can get below you and so much inventory you can peddle before people are like, all right, there's not enough market for that. The other problem was the quality. And you tell me, did it, because I saw in the documentary that it was not so good, but did it deterior like that. Um, and sometimes I got stuff that stunk so bad, uh, my entire house smelled. Um, and so for me, you know, I, I still had,

when I left, I still had inventory from my initial inventory purchase. Oh, wow. So it wasn't all that popular. All right. So, so what they say in the documentary is that once there was so much demand, when you have all those, quote, retailers out there, women selling it at their little parties or on Facebook Live but they weren't doing so great in the sales as it turns out. But they say the allegation is that they had to supply so many of these quote retailers with the product that they started cutting corners and the product became super thin and it would rip all the time. And some of the, they didn't have room in the warehouses to store the product before it got shipped.

And so therefore some of the products got wet before it got shipped. It sounds like you may have been on the receiving end of that as in the trailer there, we heard you talking about it smelling like, shall we say dead gas, the smell of gas, someone who's particularly gassy arriving in your home. How bad was it? It was so bad. In the numerous interviews that I've done in the last four years talking about these leggings, I have called them a variety of things, but they've always somehow included the word dead. Oftentimes we talk about rats, the way that dead rats smell

or chlorinated items, something like being in pool, being in pool chlorine. It just, it felt very chemically smelly. It just was, it was really bad. And I wish that I could come up with a more eloquent way of saying what they smelled like than I did in the documentary, but I've tried and I can't. No, you nailed it. I have to say, really brought it home, your terminology. So did you, well, you'd call them up. You'd call the home office and say, I can't sell these. They smell like dead rats. So, and what would they tell you?

So I didn't actually call them. It was very hard to get through on the phones. Daryl can probably attest to that as he was on the other end of them. Hour long wait times. I realized that it was a waste of my time to even try to do that. So I always went with email. Hour long wait times. I realized that it was a waste of my time to even try to do that. So I always went with email. I sent an email. I said, Hey, I can't sell these.

They stink really bad. They asked for photos of the damages, which I thought was just ridiculous. I said, I don't know how to take pictures of stink, but they stink real bad. They told me to put them in the freezer. They told me to wash them. They told me to sell them at a discount. None of those things seemed like a viable professional option for somebody running a business. So I just sealed them up and kept them and they've served me well. Oh my God. It's like Monica Lewinsky in the blue dress. You never throw out the evidence, but you're, you raise a good point. Who the hell wants to put leggings that smell like bad gas in their freezer right next to their kids' popsicles? That's disgusting. That is sick. Okay, so now I will offer the defense of the company, among others, is that, you know, some people know how to hustle and some people don't. Some people are good salespeople and some people aren't. And if you couldn't manage to sell the, you know, the leggings that occasionally were too thin or didn't have the greatest design, that's on you. Here is Mark, Mark Stidham, sort of making that point from the documentary. Listen.

I have threatened to lobby Congress to pass a bill that in every single maternity ward of every hospital, you have to put a sign over the door that says, welcome to life. Your experience may vary. We have equal opportunity. We do not promise equal outcome. What people did with it, how they saw it, how they participated in it is up to them. What do you what do you make of that? It's just the same rhetoric that Mark always

is talking about. It's the same rhetoric you'll get from any MLM when anybody decides that the 99.7% loss rate just isn't for them. So you're going to get people from the top of all of those cults telling you that you're the reason that this didn't work. And it's just simply not true. In a system that is systemically designed for you to fail, that has a 99.7% loss rate. That's worse than gambling. That's worse than actual pyramid schemes that are actually illegal. The odds are stacked against you. It's unfair for somebody to tell you that you're a failure in an industry that is designed for you to fail. Yeah, the whole thing is based on it. And what's so infuriating about the language he uses there is I think a lot of people in this country right now agree you're entitled to an equal chance and not to a perfectly equal outcome and equity versus equality, all that he's sort of stealing terms that are being that are being used in the public debate right now and applying them to justify this scheme that was used against women who are just trying to

help their families and the the term used in the documentary and i think it's apt is gaslighting that you're being gaslit because whenever you go to them and say smells really bad the ripping women don't want something. What looks like penis is all over their leggings. I think we have a picture of that. It was supposed to be a little Eiffel towers, the Eiffel tower placed in the wrong part of your body can look an awful lot like it. Yeah, there it is. Can look an awful lot like a penis. And they're looking at you saying you're a shitty salesperson. Yeah. it's on you. It's your fault. It's your fault you can't smell, or I'm sorry.

It's your fault that you can't sell stinky clothes. It's your fault that you can't sell things that have holes in it, that are soaking wet. It's your fault. You should be trying harder. So what was happening internally, Daryl, during all of this? Like as the lawsuit started coming, because finally the women started to get smart as they always do. We might not always get there immediately, but we get there

eventually. They start connecting with lawyers and class actions start to get filed against the company, which was all over the place. First it said, oh, give us your $5,000 and we'll give you our leggings and we guarantee you get your money back. If you want to exchange them, you decide you don't want to be a Lulu, Lula Rose. I shouldn't say Lulu. That's totally different company. Lula Rose seller. We'll give you your money back. And then suddenly when like the shit was starting hitting the fan and people started bailing, they were like, yeah, forget about that. You're not getting your money back. And they started gouging the people who are at the top of the, you know, scheme and sort of saying, you're not getting any commissions, blah, blah,

blah. Lawsuits came. You were internal in the company for some of this. What was the reaction inside by the family? The reaction inside from the family was they were the ones who came up with this, the, you know, the whole revocation of buyback from 100 to 90. And my floor was the one that had to deal with the, uh, outcome, which was between that and any number of issues that this company was going through at that time, you could conceivably clock in at seven 30 in the morning, go home at four 30 or five o'clock in the afternoon. And every call you took in the time in between minus your lunch, you would get yelled at by an angry retailer.

Um, these people didn't care. This family did not care about the welfare of their employees that were making pittance wages for defending their policies. They just cared about their greed as evidenced by the fact that I saw numerous breakdowns on the retailer services floor. My own supervisor during a power outage on a Monday morning, somebody in our own department, probably I want to say a week or two before that, and the head of accounting, Deanne's son, Michael Brady wall and these people were all about their greed and being celebrity and not about taking care of the women that signed up to sell these clothes. The documentary does a good job of talking about the thing with celebrity like they hired Mario Lopez for one of their events. They hired Katy Perry for something reportedly in the piece, around $5 million, even though they were already falling into some trouble. They hired Kelly Clarkson. And you had an issue with that. You had one of the lines in the movie, Daryl, when you're talking about Kelly Clarkson, how you're never going to go see Kelly Clarkson

again. Why is it Kelly Clarkson's fault? I didn't understand why did you change your feelings on her? Megan, for me, it's not her. It's the PR people. Know who you're performing for if you're at that level of celebrity. All it would have taken was probably a two-minute Google search for that PR person to figure out, Hey, Lula Rose and the crapper. They've had got, you know, 40, 50 some odd lawsuits against them in a span of, um, let's see, at that point it would have been 2018. So three and a half, four years.

Um, and then you look at what they're being sued for. And then at that point, all he would have had to say is, look, this doesn't align with us. Let's not do it. Or she would have had to say, Hey, this doesn't align with what I want. Let's not do it. But no, that's not what happened. That PR rep probably did not do that two minute Google search that, that PR rep probably cared about what Kelly's check was going to be for that concert. Um, and said, okay, we'll do it. And obviously, three years later, look at where we are. Well, it was 2017, early 2017, that the Better Business Bureau downgraded the company's rating to an F,

to an F in response to all these complaints that started coming in from customers about rips or holes or what have you. And Daryl, can I ask you about the designers? Because the filmmakers got one of the designers who, you know, the patterns on the leggings were one of the things that made them so attractive to a lot of women. I'm from New York, so we only wear black, brown, gray, or navy. But most people in America like colors and patterns and fun, happy clothing. And the designers, the woman in the piece was talking about the incredible

pressure she was under. She kept talking about having the figurative gun to her head to come up with so many designs per day and they could never be the same. Yeah. And that's how it was in any retailer services department at LuLaRoe and probably how it still is right now. Um, for like, for example, my department and the email department, we had to hit 150 emails per day and they didn't care if you were answering the person's question on the other end. They didn't care if, um, you were completely resolving their issue. They just wanted their 150 emails in eight hours and go home at the end of the day, um, whether you were taking care of somebody or not. And, um, like my whole team, we cared about trying to take care of the folks that we were trying to serve. Um, all they cared about upstairs on the sixth floor was the number. Um, and we,

we, we would take a hits on numbers just to be able to solve things. And that would get us, you know, reamed into by our supervisors, our supervisors because they were hearing it from upstairs. We had to help enrollments, the enrollment folks, when there was that mass onboarding of 2016, 2017, which if there's time, I do have a story about that, which is in the documentary. What do you mean? You talk about mass onboarding, they got a lot of people to come in like Roberta, the people under Roberta, that when they were saying, well, we'll guarantee everything. We'll give you a refund. You know, it's no problem. You know, there's basically no risk to you be part of our family, mass onboarding. And what's your story? So, um, they have come in on a Saturday.

Uh, it was like a eight to four 30 kind of thing. Lunch was catered. Whoever wanted to come in on a Saturday. It was like a 8 to 4.30 kind of thing. Lunch was catered. Whoever wanted to come in, it was optional overtime. So I'm like, okay, I'll jump on the overtime, right? And at one point towards the tail end of the afternoon, I remember placing a call to Florida and literally getting a hold of a lady to enroll in this company in the middle of her bachelorette part. So obviously I'm hearing the sounds of a club in the middle of her bachelorette part. So obviously I'm hearing, you know, the sounds of a club in the background and all that. And she steps out to take the call. We complete the onboarding call and, you know, I hang up the phone and then I just, I start to

chuckle to myself and I look at the rest of the floor and I'm like, I just enrolled a lady in the middle of her bachelorette party. I just chuckled for the next hour and back, basically. It was a huge deal. Roberta, you talk about that in the film. They made it feel like it was hard to get. So you felt like you were being led into an exclusive club. Absolutely. They use FOMO or the fear of missing out as a way to manipulate dopamine. It's like Bernie Madoff. Bernie Madoff never went around and said, please, please invest your money with me. He made it seem like you couldn't get in, like he didn't need your money. And if you hinted, he'd be like, no, that's all part of it.

Not, you know, we'll see how it plays out. But these guys have now settled to your point earlier, Daryl. They've settled with the state of Washington, which is was accusing them of all sorts of bad things. And they've got several class actions against them. One of them, by the way, is suggesting that they was reported in the documentary that they inappropriately took designs off of Google because their designers were under so much pressure to come up with new designs, 100 a day and so on. But I mean, the number of class action lawsuits goes on and on. So your thought now, because Roberta, they're not out of business. They're not out of business. They've taken a big hit in the PR campaign. A lot of women like you left. There's some in the documentary talk about how

they lost their husband. They lost their house. They had to give back those big cars. They got repoed. So lives have been destroyed, but they're still in business. And your thoughts on that or what? I mean, you know, that's why I continue to speak out. And that's why I continue to be a voice for the victims of not only LuLaRoe, but multilevel marketing. You know, I have a podcast where I talk to victims of multilevel marketing and we share these stories. And Megan, they are all the same. They are all the same from inception to the end. These women and men, 76% of women, or I would say it's about 76% of participants in multi-level marketing are women. So there are men in this as well. And they're targeted in a completely

different way. That's just as disgusting on the other side of the coin. It's heartbreaking to me that people continue to think that this is the answer to their prayers, to their desperation, to anything that they've been looking for. They think that these businesses are going to change their lives for the better. And they will change your life, but it's not going to be for the better. And so, yeah, I know, I speak out. I share my story. I share the other stories. I think a lot of people are probably sick of hearing mine.

So I like to share other people's stories because it is so unbelievably important that we know and we understand what these companies are capable of doing and the fact that they're allowed to continue to exist through these, you know, basic loopholes. Yeah, there's an expert in the film saying nine times out of 10, they get away with this, that it is legal if sketchy. And that's why they don't get immediately shut down. And if you're making revenues like they're making, maybe five million dollars in a payout isn't so bad, though. They've got some master or massive other lawsuits still pending. And those will play out in the courts. Watch the documentary because it's got interviews with Deanne and Mark giving more of their side and with a lot of the women who got sucked in. And Daryl, I do think that you were the star and I'm not going to steal your closing line. I'm going to let the audience

enjoy that as I did organically as they watch the film. Thank you both so much for being here. All the best to you. Thank you so much, Megan. And don't forget, you guys, Lula Rich is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video. Again, the same people who did Fire Festival, which is another documentary you absolutely should watch. And up next, we are going to take calls on this video that we showed at the top of the show and our crazy mask policies. Whose side are you on? Mason or the crazy teacher insisting on enforcing this policy that's been handed down to her?

I mean, I don't... You tell me. Call me. 833-44-MEGYN. 833-446-3496. We're taking your calls right now. Welcome back, everyone. The phone lines are open.

I'm ready to take your calls. It's 833-44. It's an homage to Syracuse University where I went. Megan, M-E-G-Y-N, 833-446-3496. And we're going to take our first caller, who is Michael from North Carolina. Michael, what's on your mind hi megan i'm on uh i'm definitely on mason's side on this whole thing with the masking because uh i think what these teachers were so happily doing is indoctrinating these children and indoctrinating our kids all over all over the country because, it worked very well in China.

A good example of this was in 1990 and 1992. The idea of a homosexual serving openly in the military was unheard of. But after President Clinton's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy went for 20 years, pop culture started plugging homosexuality into comedies and dramas and TV shows everywhere. And over that course of 20 years, everybody just came to accept it. And now nobody thinks twice about it. It's just part of life. So I think what they're doing is they're indoctrinating our kids to think everybody has to wear a mask. You have to comply. You have to obey. I think it's atrocious. That's fascinating. I mean, I don't know if you're if you're complaining about gay and lesbian serving openly in the military.

I happen to think that's a great thing, because I do think that that's that they should have equal rights and they should have the right to marriage. And I realize not everybody agrees with that, more conservative Christians in particular. But this to me doesn't feel like the same thing because it isn't good to have the hand of big government over your face all day. You know, I don't want my kids or Mason to have what is it does seem almost like a stand in for the hand of big government over their faces all day should be up to me, especially given that the science is not there to support it. Exactly, exactly. Yeah, because in response to what you said,

honestly, homosexuals have been serving in multiple armies for hundreds of years. It's just they were quiet about it. There's no issues with anybody serving because if they're going to step up and serve, it's fantastic. But the hypocrisy that we're seeing, like you were pointing out, where the mayor is going to go out and party at the Black Cat and be unapologetic about it and say, oh, look, I have my own rules, but you all have to do what I tell you because my, you know, me and my influential friends all tell you to. Right. And meanwhile, she's in California where the governor's office specifically sent out a tweet saying, we expect you to pull your mask

up in between bites and in between sips, which is absurd. And by the way, if you've flown at all lately, you know, the policy is the same on all of our U.S. airlines. And if you don't, you get this the flight attendants coming down like your mask has to be up in between bites. Your mask has to be up in between sips. It's like, are you kidding me? I mean, it's like, well, what about when I'm actively chewing? I've put the peanuts in my mouth. Now I'm chewing up or down, up or down. Let's let's go through it together. We're at that point of micromanagement of ourselves and our kids. And it's infuriating. Michael, thank you for the call. I want to get down to Tony in Texas. Hey, Tony, what's on your mind? Hey, Megan, I'm glad to hear you're back. I wish you were back on the networks. You have a great voice. Thank you.

And a very reasonable person. I'm sorry, whatever happened, happened. But I just think it is, I know everybody says it's not right or left, but I do think it is a party issue. And I do think the Republicans have demonstrated a resistance to big government and the Democrats have, you know, pushed it further and further. I think you could see that by the governors across the country as we've dealt with COVID. And it's really up to the American people, in my view, you got to vote and you got to vote people out, you know, who want to run your life. Or, you know, I guess we'll just become a country where the government runs everything.

Well, of course, it depends on the Republicans. Right. There was a story. It's like, where was it? I feel like it was in New York State or it was a Connecticut. But it was the Northeast where they just bounced out three Republican members of the school board because they were too weak and they weren't standing up against some of this nonsense. It was either on CRT or covid. I think it was CRT. And so some some stronger Republicans came in and said, we got to get rid of them. So I do think when the Republicans are weak need, people have to stand up. When the Democrats are pushing this nonsense, people have to stand up. But I'm always careful not to sweep in all Democrats to this nonsense, because whether it's critical race theory or the COVID lockdowns, because one of my dearest friends, she was diehard, diehard Democrat. She describes herself as a flaming liberal with flames on her

Twitter emoji. She's not on board with any of this. And now, you know, she sends me pictures of her hanging out with David Marcus of The Federalist, who I love, because all this sort of big government overreach has brought them together. She's seen the world through a different lens. And I don't want to I don't think we should sort of alienate people who want to be on our team of reason just because they have a different team sweater on. Anyway, thank you for the nice comments. I want to go to Robert in Oregon. Hey, Robert, what's happening?

Hi, Megan. Thanks for calling. What's on your mind? Basically, I don't really have a question for you. I just wanted to compliment you because I listen to a lot of podcasts and you're kind of like a trifecta where it's beauty, intelligence, as well as humbleness. And I just wanted to compliment you on that because I think your political and ideological views, along with mine, where I describe it as I'm like an investigator. I don't really care who the murderer is, but I want to make sure I get the right one. That comes to the subject, you know.

Yes. Thank you so much. That's a lovely compliment. And I especially appreciate it out of Oregon. Must be tough for you to live there with this kind of approach to the news. We tell you something about Oregon. I live in Southern Oregon and the majority of Oregon is red. However, we've got a big blueberry up north called Portland. Yes. And so there's a slogan that's on T-shirts around here and it says,

I'm from Oregon, not Portland. I can understand why you wear that, because I look at a state like that. I think, how can you possibly live there? I mean, if you're anything, you know, to the right of AOC, it feels like an inhospitable state. But maybe I've been misjudging the southern part of the state. Southern, middle, east, west. It's mostly just Portland and kind of Eugene. Okay, well, this is good to know for my future travel plans. Thank you for the kind words.

I want to squeeze in Matt from Ohio. Matt, what are your thoughts? Well, first off, I want to say I'm a huge fan. I actually told my wife the other day that you were my celebrity crush, and she made fun of me by saying that I'm closer to your age than I am to hers. So I just thought that was really, really witty of her. That's awesome. I work at a college, and we have a mask mandate where we are, but it's one of those things where everyone in the office, they don't have to wear a mask.

But I work in janitorial, so I have to have it on all day. It's this thing we've been talking about, right? Like you're part of the surf class. So you have to cover your meaningless face, as Glenn Greenwald criticizingly said. It's absurd. I hope, Matt, you find a way out of it. I hope we all do. Thank you for watching. Thanks to your wife for supporting your love.

I'll take it however I can get it. And listen, don't forget to watch the show tomorrow because we've got Dr. Drew Pinsky back with us today. He's actually bringing his daughter, which will be fun. They have a book about wokeness. She's woke. He's not. It's going to be interesting. Download the full episode on any podcast and youtube.com slash Megyn Kelly to watch it. See you tomorrow.