The Megyn Kelly Show - Tone-deaf Green Activism, and Absurd COVID Authoritarianism and Kyrie Irving, with Victor Davis Hanson and Adam Carolla | Ep. 280

Episode Date: March 15, 2022

Megyn Kelly is joined by the Hoover Institution's Victor Davis Hanson to talk about John Kerry's tone-deaf focus on green activism, Biden's misguided push for green energy and how it empowers Putin, the morality and religion of green activism, elite snobbery on inflation and gas prices, how civilizations survive, America's obsession with race. Then Adam Carolla, host of Truth Yeller and The Adam Carolla Show, joins to discuss absurd COVID restrictions and Kyrie Irving, Naomi Osaka and dealing with haters, The View defending Kamala Harris over criticism of her, the backlash against Sam Elliott over Jane Campion (then backlash against Jane Campion), and more. Finally a dad and lawyer who is suing over NYC mask mandates for toddlers, Michael Chessa, on the science behind masking young kids, his lawsuit, 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, live again from Montana. Two of our favorites are here on the program with us today. Adam Carolla coming up just a bit later in the show, but we begin today with the latest on Ukraine and Russia with Victor Davis Hanson. Victor, thank you so much for being back. Let's let's get right into it and talk about where we are right now. And the reaction in particular to what's happening in Ukraine from John Kerry, who never fails to disappoint when it comes to his reactions to world events. He has one pair of glasses through which he sees everything, even the murder of hundreds and thousands of people on the Ukraine and the Russian sides, respectively, in Ukraine. Your thoughts on him? Well, you remember during the Iraq war, he said, you better go to college and do well in high school and get to college or you're going to end up in Iraq. That was right when you were trying to conduct the surge and we have all

these brave people fighting and he acted as if they were the losers in the global race. But he's tone deaf to people that don't have his money and influence and status. And it shows you that he's emblematic of the whole green movement. I mean, they're not taking any culpability for shutting down all of these assets that we have from nuclear power to pipelines, to oil fields, to gas and oil,

to job-worn lending agencies, not to help finance frackers and horizontal drillers. And the result of that was about 2 million barrels less. But more importantly, we had the option in the last administration to go up to 3 more million barrels. So it might have been 4 or 5 net that we lost. And they don't have an exegesis for it, Megan. They can't say, well, Iran or Venezuela or Saudi Arabia or Putin, they produce oil far more ecologically sound than we do.

Therefore, we would prefer that they drill it since we're in a global village and we all share the same heat heating up atmosphere. Or they can't say, well, we don't really want the middle class to get good wages. We'd rather have them do it or we would like to have less strategic options abroad. We want to be more dependent on these illiberal. So I can't figure it out. And then when you add into the matrix, the Biden administration dropped the sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which was enriching Russia. But there was another alternative that was in the works, the East Mediterranean pipeline from Cyprus, Greece, and Israel. And unlike the Nord Stream, it was our allies who were going to profit from it. We could depend on to supply Southern Europe with natural gas. And yet Biden did his all to stop that and cancel it basically by sheer force

of US influence. So it's kind of incoherent, chaotic. I don't know how you'd call our energy policy other than we have empowered Vladimir Putin. It's so confusing to watch the way they handle this, right? You pointed out in your piece, John Kerry responds, this is how you phrased it, climate change envoy, multimillionaire and private jet owning John Kerry laments that Russian President Vladimir Putin might no longer remain his partner in reducing global warming. Quote, you're going to lose people's focus, Kerry frets. Quote, you're going to lose big country attention because they will be diverted. And I think it could have a damaging impact. Impact ask what does he mean by impact what like are we solely focused right

now on green energy concerns as people are dying in ukraine i mean that's where his head is and it's it is more evidence that the green energy thing is religion for these guys even back at home they continue to tout the solar panels and the windmills rather than talk about drilling to solve our inflating prices, especially at the pump. Yeah, I think it's a psychological, kind of like medieval penance. They feel that the more they can be in the abstract, morally green or superior to the deplorable classes, the more they can enjoy their lifestyle by coastal lifestyles without, you know, worry about. And the second thing is they have no contact with the middle class. So, you know, I'm here in Fresno County and I go to the service

stations and now they've lowered the $100 limit in California to $75. And if some of these guys are very poor, they're landscapers or they're field tractor drivers and they drive 40, 50 miles, they have 20 gallon pickup. They can't even fill their gas. $75 doesn't do it. So, you know, and many of these people's pickups, so they go around from service station to service station, hopping around to find gas. But that's a world away from, you know, somebody in Palo Alto where I work. And I think that's a lot of it. They're not confronted with the ramifications of their own ideology. And they don't really care. When Biden said this was Putin's inflation,

and this is Putin's gas. And I'm thinking, if that were true, why a month ago, or even, you know, three and a half weeks ago were you blaming inflation? He was blaming inflation on Trump. He was blaming it on it was just going to be transitory. He said it was an elite fixation exercised by supply shortages. So that kind of damns his own explanation that he understood that before Putin went into Ukraine, he was being criticized for inflation he was looking for any excuse he could to follow it off on somebody else

and then suddenly he says forget all of those people they weren't really the culpable ones that not it was now trump that post facto did all this you know and a lot of people as you know megan when we say 7.9 annualized inflation in February, but you look at the stuff of life, gas, cars, houses, lumber, meat, and you look at those prices, they're up 10 to 20 to 30 percent per year. So this, I think, if we use the old consumer price index of the 1970s, this thing could be 15 percent. That's, I mean, that's eye's eye popping and obviously election losing. That's what they that's what they need to be worried about. I'm not sure what they're worried about right now, whether they think any of this helps or hurts him in the midterms, whether that's guiding any of his behavior. But something you said reminded me of something that we haven't

yet discussed on the show about our elites and, you know, just how the snobbery when it comes to gas prices, inflation. And it is from the top on down in the Democratic Party, as evidenced last week by Stephen Colbert, who was out on the set bragging about how he would be willing to pay $15 a gallon because he drives a Tesla. So he doesn't have to worry like the losers, the rest of the losers out there who have gas-fueled automobiles about these issues. And ha ha ha, isn't that so funny? And isn't he so lucky? It's like, you know what?

Very few people in America can afford a Tesla. Even if they could get one, they couldn't afford it. And it's no laughing matter for them as these prices go up to these levels. Yeah, I mean, here out in Central California, there's a waiting list of about eight months, and there's a markup to about $70,000 for the initial market, over the market. But what I'm getting at is that what's happening out here in the rural areas of California, the poor areas, Megan, there's these kind of ad hoc car marts where people just sort of scrounge around and they get used cars and they put them in a chain link fence behind their corner store or gas station and they're sold out immediately. But these are cars that get, I don't know, 16 miles of the gallon because poor people can't afford a car that's economical.

And so people are trying to make do. And here the price of gas is $5.90 a gallon and diesel fuel $6.10 today. And so these people have no, it's not that they don't have any experience with the other, the so-called other, but they don't want to have any experience. This is highly ironic because we've been lectured for 50 years that the Democratic Party was a party of working people, but actually it's the party of wealthy zip codes, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, professional sports, corporations, Wall Street. It's a party of the very poor subsidized and the upper, upper middle classes and wealthy that don't really care about taxes or regulations because they always have ways of getting around them. Well, you point out that in the meantime, what are what are we doing back at home? We're not untapped or tapping into Alaska's oil reserves or elsewhere.

We're going begging to the Saudis to venezuela to iran i mean it's insane right and these are all regimes that we demonized but joe biden demonized that have some of which we're sanctioning right now um and now suddenly they're fair game it's totally fine to deal with them you know i went through all them. You know, I went through all the, you know, Colin before I went through all the bad things that can happen when we're doing what we're doing. So then I said to myself, well, because they're doing these bad things, what maybe they're naive or delusional, what are the good things they think accrues from that? And all I could think of was two things. They're going to make energy so expensive that they'll realize, so remember Energy Secretary under Obama, Stephen Chu's dream that he wanted gas to be the same price

as it was in Europe. I think it was $9 a gallon. It's getting close. And therefore, people would drive less, or they believe that they want to be the moral superiors of the rest of the world and say, we don't touch that filthy fuel that you drill, but we quietly want you to get your hands filthy and send the filthy fuel so that we could put it in our filthy cars for a while and win the midterm elections. I don't know. That's sort of what they're talking or thinking about because otherwise it makes no sense. And boy, when you look at oil wells, and we still have them in california you go down to elk hills or bakersfield area or you look at offshore for all the characters it's very

careful the people work on there is so much more careful than you see in the middle east or in russia and so they should be saying every barrel that is produced under Western auspices comes out of the ground with less environmental damage than it does when we import it and subsidize it from Venezuela or Iran or Russia or the Middle East. Can we talk about the Iran deal for one second? Because this is why I say earlier, our policies just seem a little crazy right now. Right now, we're unleashing all these harsh sanctions against Vladimir Putin, trying to hurt him as much as we can. But we're using the Russians to try to get this Iran nuclear deal done. There are backdoor allies over there. Pay no attention to what we're doing to you over here in the front door.

And then with Iran, we're going to them saying, could you help us out on the oil front? Nevermind that we have plenty of reserves here. We don't need Iran, but we're going to them saying, could you help us out? That would really be great. Thanks so much. Meanwhile, sanctioning them and trying to get them, I guess, to help us out with the Russians. It makes no sense. I don't know what we're doing. Does it make any sense to you? No, it doesn't. Other than there was a crackpot dream, remember, in the Obama administration. And the point man on that was the deputy national security advisor, Ben Rhodes. He was the one famously who said, I created an echo chamber and these 20 something reporters know nothing. And bragging about how he just gave them these false talking points that they reverberated in the media.

But I think the idea was, among the Obama-Biden administration, was that they wanted to create an antithesis to the Sunni Arab dominance that they felt was somehow illiberal. It is illiberal in many ways in Saudi Arabia. And they thought that they had very naive ideas about the Iranian revolutionary regime, but nevertheless, they thought it was revolutionary and they were Shia and they were Persians. And they could have a Persian Shia crescent that would include Syria and Lebanon and go all the way to the Mediterranean. And therefore, it would balance off Israel,

it would balance off the Arab Sunni states, And the United States would be the broker and say, now, on the one hand, you guys, and on the other hand, these guys, rather than be allied with people they didn't like. And that was the Obama administration. They don't like Israel and they don't like the moderate Arab world. That's the only thing I can think of. But it's a pretty big wage to pay because we're using the Russians and the Russians are telling the Iranians, don't you could, and you're not going to embargo their oil, then you're not going to embargo our oil either. We're not going to participate. And then, of course, in the middle of all this, they send missiles into Erbil and say to us, oh, maybe you have an embassy going in there, or maybe this was because of an Israeli strike. And so it's almost that all these people that were

bad actors, if I could use that overused term, North Korea, Iran, Putin, they were all within the parameters, within the sidelines that we had, we didn't have them sort of contained. And North Korea was not sending missiles over Japan or South Korea anymore. And Iran, we got out of that deal. We killed General Soleimani. We had killed Baghdadi, destroyed ISIS. They understood that we were unpredictable, were capable of anything. And they were sort of behaved after we got out of Iran. And the sanctions were killing them. And the same was true with Putin. And then we, I think, I don't think, Megan, we've really fully digested how bad Afghanistan was. That sent a message to all

those players that we are not going to deter you, that we have no confidence ourselves, that we've just gone through a woke military reform movement and we got out of afghanistan and to this day we gave more arms to the taliban terrorists about 80 billion dollars according to some reports than all of the west nato in the united states has given to ukraine and that that makes an impression on people and when you add in joel biden's cognitive challenges or the fact that he requested not too long ago for Vladimir Putin to stop hacking in terms of, well, if you're going to hack, let's put these 16 quote unquote entities off the hacking list rather than stop it entirely. So, and then begging Putin to pump oil right

before he went into Ukraine, you add it all up. And I guess you can say that deterrence is very hard to create and maintain. It takes years and you can lose it. You can lose it in weeks and we've lost it. That is such a good point. Right. Things were just, they weren't perfect, but they were steadier. They were more stable. We weren't dealing with so many international crises. And that is a very strong argument that it's directly linked to weakness in the American leadership. and uncouth and crude as they thought he was, understood classical strategy going all the way back to Machiavelli or Sun Tzu or Aeneas Tacticus that always said, when you're dealing with a deadly adversary, unpredictability, bouts of restlessness, even crude language tempered with

praise of your enemy, all of that keeps someone off their guard. But predictability, serial habituality, and that's what Biden is. They know he's not, you know what he's doing now? He's just saying all the things he's not going to do. I'm not going to have a no-fly. I don't think we should have a no-fly zone either, but I wouldn't tell him that. I don't think we should send warthog either, but I wouldn't tell him that. I don't think we should send warthogs in. I wouldn't tell him that.

I'm not sure I'd even exchange the planes because I wouldn't tell him that. I would send in Patriot batteries so they could get back air parity, but I wouldn't tell him that. But he tells him almost everything he's not going to do, and that makes Putin assured that he will do those things. Meanwhile, we have news this week that there was a missile strike near the U.S. consulate in northern Iraq, courtesy, we're told, of the Iranians. So once again, and was that retribution for Soleimani? Did they wait until Trump was out of office to do something, some saber rattling? You know, the old America, the one I grew up in, wouldn't have it wouldn't have happened under President Reagan. I don't think it would have happened. Right. That they would have been so provocative towards us by bombing close to our consulate. It's they're trying to see how much they can get away with from the Iranians to the Russians.

And the list will only grow. I mean, if Iran actually gets a nuke. Right. Then what if if our message to the world is basically, if you're a nuclear power, you can get away with a lot, because that's what we're saying to Vladimir Putin right now. You can get away, and I'm not advocating we go in with helicopters or no-fly zone, et cetera, but we've been so weak with respect to him. And we say, well, he's got a nuclear arsenal. Well, if Iran, then what? What are they going to do? And what are we going to do in response? Things are getting less and less safe by the minute. I think part of that, what you're talking about is that people in the United States and the West

in general have this very arrogant view of themselves that they've somehow transcended ancient laws of deterrence, good and evil, how you stop aggressors that we, I don't know, whether it's our technology or we have Snapchat or Twitter or Facebook or the UN, but whatever the delusion is, we say things that are just incredible. John Kerry is always saying, we're not going to go back to the 20th century. Well, did human nature change suddenly, John, in the 21st century? Suddenly got better people? You lose your wallet in Manhattan in 2022 and people give it back to you now and they didn't do it 40 years ago? I don't think so.

And so human nature is constant and you have to study it. And it's not necessarily an optimistic appraisal when you study human nature, but you can control it. And so when you start to make fun of deterrence or disarm or allow NATO not to pay their 2% or predictably talk about how you're going to have a pride flag in Afghanistan or George Floyd, you know, and have all of this, it is a green woke imperialism, but unlike the old fashioned British imperialism, it lacks any force behind it. We just lecture people and sermonize them, but we don't have any, we can't make up any force to back up our ideology. Not that I agree with

that ideology, but we suffer the wages of being ridiculous and weak at the same time. And so until we reestablish deterrence, and that would be defined as 4% of our military budget, no more waste workshops, promotion on the base of race and gender, and go back to military readiness as the prime criteria of promotion, enlistment, weaponry,

make our NATO allies be a full partner, become energy independent, and work with Japan, Australia, South Korea, Taiwan in a way that China doesn't like. And then I think we could restore deterrence. We've done every single thing opposite of that. And it's no surprise that we've lost it. It's going to be very dangerous to re it's always very dangerous to reestablish deterrence because you have no credibility. It's like somebody lies, lies, lies, or weak, weak, weak to a person. And then suddenly they say, I'm going to lie no more to you. I'm going to be a good person. And you think, okay, let's see. I want to see it. I don't want to hear about it. Well, and you've pointed out too, it's when you talk about, uh, in the military, I mean, of course, it's in the country as well.

And that the country has been in disarray for the better part of Joe Biden's presidency. And to some extent before that, but largely during the first year of his presidency with these woke policies that are dividing the country in two. And this faction on the left existed before Joe Biden, but he's caving to them. And a country that's focused on naval gazing as opposed to what it means to be an American, the things that bring us together, building up a strong military, understanding who we are and our place in the world. We haven't been doing any of that. It's Putin's dream, the way we've been behaving the past year plus.

It is. That's a very good point because, you know, a civilization survives or declines on the basis of about four or five things. One is their education system. Another is whether they have fuel. Another is whether they have food. Another is whether they have security. And another is whether they have unity. And when you look at the politicalization and weaponization of our schools from the Virginia chaos, and that's a school board meeting all the way up to the university. When you look at wheat now is at the highest in real dollars it's been in, I think, 50 years, and it's getting higher and higher. You take Ukraine off the market and you triple the price of nitrogen and base for fertilizers that require fossil fuels. And you look at our woke military and you're really destroying the sinews of a civilization that count. It's made all of these other things, Hannah Jones, Nick, um, her even Kendi.

Yeah. Kendi, all of their PC woke little diatribe zoom conferences about whether it's 1619 or 1776, these are just psychodramas melodramas. They have no, there's nothing to them. Or when, you know, Whoopi Goldberg gets on and says, basically, the Holocaust was a bunch of white people killing white people. Or Hannah Nicole Jones says something to that effect about Ukraine, or she doesn't even know when the Civil War. These are all things that we were focused on, and they mean nothing. Because the existential elements of life are, do we have enough wheat flour to eat our bread this year? Can we afford gas and oil?

Can we drive our car? Can we heat our home? Can we cool them in the summer? Can we count on our military to be very effective fighters to protect us? Can we send our kids to school without being Sovietly indoctrinated? And that's a big question mark. And I really look back, you know, it's so funny, this generation is so critical of these supposedly racist and sexist forebearers of ours. But these

people came out of the Depression, Megan, they had nothing. And yet they bequeathed to us when we were all growing up, you could get gas at affordable price. You could get electricity at affordable price. The United States did not have to worry about a non-secure border. The United States was respected abroad. So before we make fun of prior generations, we should take a look in the mirror because I think this generation has done more damage to this country than any generation in memory. I almost never cite this person because she's an absolute moron and doesn't really deserve our attention.

But there is a woman who hosts a show on MSNBC over the weekend. Cross is her last name. She sees everybody as racist. She's a black woman. She's, I mean, everybody's a racist, according to this woman. But she actually was railing this week

about the fact that Kamala Harris went to Poland because Poland is full of white supremacists. Okay, That's this woman has a show, a national cable show on MSNBC and thinks the point right now is why is the vice president in Poland? Because there are a lot of white supremacists according to her in Poland. Speaker 2 I, you know, I get, I heard that. I got really angry because these people are so arrogant and they're so ignorant. Poland was created and destroyed four times in the last two centuries. During World War II, Hitler killed three million and a half Jews on Polish soil, and he killed a million Poles on Polish soil. And after fighting the Germans and losing 60,000 people in September 1939,

they turned around and they thought the Soviets came in and helped Hitler, and they lost another 40,000. They got 20,000 officers killed, executed by Soviets in the Caitlin Force. And then it was all over, And all of Western Europe had freedom. We pretty much cut a deal with Stalin and said, sorry, you're not quite where we are that we can protect you. So you're going to be in the Soviet orbit. Then they endured 50 years of the Warsaw Pact. They have suffered more than that host could ever imagine. And that's another thing, not to get off topic, but so many people that say

they're marginalized, they grew up in the era. I'm not saying that there is not discrimination, but they didn't grow up in the era of Jim Crow or slavery. They grew up in the era of affirmative action. And we created this last 30 years as oppressive and everybody doesn't suffer like they do. And the Poles are these white people. They have no idea what Poland has suffered. It's one of the great tragedies in world history. And to say that about the Poles is really callous. Well, it's like Joy Reid, who's out there saying we're only interested in Ukraine because they have white skin.

And she, too. So she doesn't care about these, I guess, Ukrainian women in the maternity hospital being killed because they're white, who make absolutely no money at all. But she makes seven figures a year, went to Harvard, and we're supposed to look at her as oppressed and care about her complaints about our country. But as soon as we look at Ukraine and have some sympathy for what we're seeing, some empathy, we're racists because we only care because they're white. I can tell you that living in a Mexican-American community, that this entire obsession with race is being replaced by class.

I think 50% of the Mexican-American vote will go conservative. I think a lot of people are saying, you know what, I have more affinity with people who work like I do than people who are black or brown or white, if they match my particular racial matrix, that are very in this woke elite that run the country. And so I think that we're going to see people say to people like Joy Reid, you're an elite. I don't care what color you are. You're an arrogant elite. You're a snob. You're condescending. And that could apply to a poor black person, a poor brown person, but also a poor white person. You've had far more privilege in your 10 years on the screen than a forklift driver in Tulare who happens to be a poor white product of the Oklahoma diaspora.

So I think we need to get back to that and bring reality. And what I don't understand, just to get off on race very quickly, is that in the news, just every week, but this week, it was an African American person threw down a retired nurse down the steps and then threw her down again. And then we had another African American young man beat up 120 times, hit an Asian American elderly woman. And I don't have any problem not talking about these as emblematic of race, but they, in Black Lives Matter and others, see every single racial incident as race. Even when it's not, whether it's Kyle Riddlehouse, it's not, but they ignore Waukesha, which was. So my point is at some point, if somebody says white privilege, white privilege, and collectively generalizing stereotypes, an entire 240 million people,

somebody else is going to say, okay, so individuals are representative of group values. When, or Joy Reid or Al Sharp can say to the young black male urban community, you've got to stop killing each other. And your rates of interracial violence are about four times more likely that you're the perpetrator than the victim, even though you make up 15 percent of the population. And, of course, to say what I just said is considered racist. But everybody has been saying this. Glenn Lowry, brilliant, you know, black professor, Brown. Absolutely. He's been making this point over and over saying, could we just not start this?

Because we're not going to like where this goes. This is not the way to argue for equality or equity, what these Black Lives Matter activists claim to want. So you're in very good company in making the point. I think it's just suicidal for people to say that I have no individuality. I'm just a small tessera and a big racial mosaic. And then if people do that, then everything in that mosaic is culpable and can be criticized as it represents, you know, a group mentality, because that's what they're doing with other groups, but they never think it's going to revert back on them. And it used to in a racist country that we were in the 40s and 50s. That's what we wanted to get away with by saying all Blacks are the same.

And we got over that. And now we're kind of saying, well, all whites are the same. They have to confess their privilege. But boy, that's going to boomerang and we're going to go back and it's not going to be good. And everybody's afraid to say something. But I think finally the sheer weight of these examples of these terrible attacks, especially on Asian Americans, and we're not able to say that

you look at the statistics in particular cities, they're preponderantly African American males attacking female Asians. And it's not a good thing to just keep quiet about it. Yeah, you can't keep quiet about it. And it has ramifications, as we just discussed, domestically, internationally, not to mention it's just wrong. So you have to speak up no matter what they say, no matter what they call you,

you'll be in good company. When they call you the terrible names, there's plenty who they've unleashed on. I don't care about what this cross woman says on the weekends, but she's fun to make fun of. All right, listen, Victor, it's always a pleasure. I'm so glad you were here. Thank you for coming on. Thank you for having me, Megan. Coming up, Adam Carolla is here. Don't miss that. We always have a good time with our pal Adam Carolla, host of The Adam Carolla Show, as

well as host of Truth Yeller on The Daily Wire. Love that. Welcome back, Adam. Good to have you. Good to see you, Megan. Sorry, I'm in my car, LA traffic, daughter's doctor appointment this morning. So we're flying by the seat of our pants. Oh, if you are going to watch this later to the audience, you've got to see this because

Adam's literally showing us himself driving. His poor daughter got roped into this. Sweetheart, I'm sorry. It's okay. So much to go over, and I'm very glad you're here. Can we just start? Let's start with sports. Okay. Because Tom Brady had a fake retirement as it turned out. And I said to my husband, Doug, this reminds me of when someone throws their own funeral before they die, just so that they get to hear all the nice things about themselves before they actually exit screen left. And so what do you make of the fact that he fake retired? I don't know. It feels kind of un-Tom Brady, like Tom Brady stands for so much integrity.

And this feels like the opposite of that. This is something Cher would do, retire, have a farewell concert tour for 11 years in a row, right? So this is much more Cher than it is Tom Brady. Well, I love it because it's like Giselle got blamed when he retired saying it's her fault, you know, they called her Yoko Ono, that kind of thing. And now that he's gonna play

again, people are like, he spent two months at home with his wife and kids and was like, forget this, I'm going back to work. You can't win. Well, how can it? First off, you know, Yoko got with John Lennon and the Beatles broke up 10 minutes later. This guy's put in 23 seasons. How could she possibly be the Brazilian Yoko? And secondly, if he did leave football to spend more time with Giselle and you can't understand that, there's something wrong with you. It's not Tom Brady that has the problem. Also, they're living in a 13,000 square foot home. If you don't want to see your wife every minute of every day, you can just go to the racquetball court and drink a beer.

It's a good point. You got you got options. Well, it'll be exciting to see him come back and hopefully his last game, if it's this next season, will be a winning game. That's probably right. I think that last game of this past season was a losing game. OK, so let's let's keep it in the world of sports because something's going on with Kyrie Irving. Something weird. I mean, basically, Kyrie Irving is allowed to watch the games of his own team as a fan,

but he cannot play in the games because he's considered a New York City worker. His workplace is in New York City, the Brooklyn Nets. Right now, is he Brooklyn Nets? Yes. Okay, he's Brooklyn Nets. And so since he hasn't been vaccinated, he's not allowed to play inside of that arena. But if he wanted to attend as a fan, that would be no problem because he's not a worker, even if he's not vaccinated. This is the boneheaded place that our weird vaccine rules have gotten us. And I guess Kevin Durant, who's also a basketball player for the Brooklyn Nets, said Mayor Adams is basically just looking for some attention because this looks so stupid and absurd. Here's Kevin Durant defending Kyrie Irving.

At this point now, somebody's trying to make a statement or a point to flex their authority. But, you know, everybody out here is looking for attention, and that's what I feel like the mayor wants right now, some attention, you know. But he'll figure it out soon.

He better, you know, people didn't understand what was going on, but now it just looks stupid. So hopefully, Eric, you got to figure this out. Yeah, you got to figure this out. What do you think of it? Sorry, just hit a pothole. Look, nothing is consistent about this entire COVID era, right? You know, wear your mask in the airport, wear it in the plane. Here's some Fiesta mix. Go ahead and take your mask off while you eat the Fiesta mix.

Now put your mask back on. I mean, the list goes on and on and on. You need to get vaccinated, even though I'm vaccinated. You need to get vaccinated to protect though I'm vaccinated, and you need to get vaccinated to protect you from me or me from you. It's all been one circle talk. And I have a theory behind the things that don't make sense, which is to say, if you want to control somebody, and you want to exact your power and authority over somebody, ask him to do things that make sense.

That's not really you using your power and authority. So, you know, when the state says you need to wear your seatbelt when you're operating your motor vehicle, that's authority, but it also lives in some reality and it makes sense and it doesn't make them dictators. But if the state says when you're walking in your neighborhood and you pass a flag pole, you have to circle it three times before you can go on, then that's true authority. It doesn't make sense. And what they're doing in the states that want the most power is the things that make the least play because he's an employee in New York City, he's sitting on the bench. And let's say you're an unvaccinated player from some other team outside of New York City.

You're allowed to play. That's OK. The New York City rule says players from other teams that don't work in New York City full time, that they're OK coming into the arena. But if you happen to be so it's absurd, right? The unvaccinated, if he has like a purple jersey on, he can play, but not Kyrie Irving because he technically works in New York City. Well, I was just watching the Ivy League basketball playoffs last weekend. And everyone on the stands was wearing a mask. Everyone on the bench was wearing a mask.

The refs were wearing a mask. But the players, the ones spitting and grunting and sweating on each other, weren't wearing masks. It's all theater. I mean, they closed down outdoor dining in Los Angeles. They closed down the parks. They bulldozed the skate park so the kids couldn't skateboard outside. They took down the nets at the beach for outdoor volleyball, vitamin D, exercise, the best thing you could do for COVID. None of it made any sense. This is just the last of the part that doesn't make sense. And in L.A., I'm sure you know, they've just announced that the mask mandate for the kids is staying up and operable until the end of the year. They're not taking it down.

Yes. Thank you, L.A. Unified School District. And thank you, teachers unions. They're a bunch of cowards. And here's the other thing, too, and hypocrites. And there is no science to what they're doing. But I want you to remember this phrase, Megan, because you say the kids, the kids, the kids, the mask, why? Why can the adults go anywhere? Or why you can go maskless in a movie theater, an arena, concert event, Trader Joe's. Why the kids

and why the emphasis on the kids? This hasn't been dangerous for kids. We've known this. This kills sick people, old people, obese people, comorbidity people. It doesn't ostensibly affect kids. They're in the safest category. So why drilling down on the kids? Why the constant conversation about the category of people this ostensibly doesn't affect? Well, just remember this phrase, Megan, crate training. You cannot train a dog when it's middle age. You got to get them when they're puppies and get them trained up and into that crate. And that's what we're doing with kids because this will not be the last emergency and it will not be the last time the government and the governor and the mayor need to exact their power. And so let's get the kids into the crate.

Let's get them coached up and then they'll be ours. We can do whatever we want with them after that. They'll listen to anything. They'll be good subjects. That's why it was important, I think, during this pandemic as it rolled on and on to sort of speak to your children about how this is absurd, how it is a time to fight. It crossed over from a time to comply and to see what's what at the very beginning, which everyone did. The whole country did that willingly. People lost entire businesses out of concern for others and because they were going to be compliant, not just the one jerk who said, I'm doing it. And then bit by bit, people got to the end of their rope or their

breaking point earlier than others. But eventually, most of the country, even Democrats, got to the point of realizing this is nonsense and it's a time to fight. OK, let's talk about in the world of sports still Naomi Osaka. My old pal Naomi Osaka is making headlines again. So she played at the Indian Wells tournament, which is out by you. This is in California, so I think Palm Springs by there. Lo and behold, Adam, you're a stand-up comedian. Do you ever get heckled? Anybody ever yell anything not nice at you? Yeah, this is the longest I've actually ever went

speaking in front of my daughter without her heckling me. She's going to step it up. She pulled a tomato out of her backpack we may have an issue here well most of us in the public eye whether we're news journalists or comedians or professional athletes have had to face a heckler a time or two and And one person in the stands at Indian Wells yelled out at Naomi Osaka, you suck. So what did she do? Did she keep playing? Did she, you know, was she the consummate professional? No. She went over to the umpire and asked if she could have the microphone.

This is in the middle of the match to address the heckler. So the umpire says, you got to be out of your mind. No, you are not getting the microphone to try to manage a heckler in the middle of a match and sway the crowd basically over to your side in the middle of this match, which would not be fair to your opponent. So no, you can go back to the court and play the game. And that's that. So she did. She went back, she played the game and she lost. And she went back and wanted to try again and said, I lost the match, but I want to speak. And it was at Indian Wells 20 plus years ago that they were heckled, Venus and Serena and their dad. And, you know, it really affected her. And, you know, she doesn't want to be heckled at Indian Wells. And it was very emotional for her. Meanwhile, it's like, OK, what happened with Venus and Serena had absolutely nothing to do with you.

Absolutely nothing to do with you. It was something that happened, you know, as I say, two decades ago in which Venus claimed she was injured and couldn't play Serena in the semifinals match. And the crowd was mad because they believed that the dad, the controlling dad, had orchestrated it so that Serena could be guaranteed a spot in the finals. And like it was basically Venus letting her sister shine, you know, move on, have them. And I don't know whether it's true or not, but fans believed it and that's why they booed them and serena later came out and said oh it was it was like a lynching all these older white people uh you know rich people yelling down at me and my sister and booing and they refused to play there for some i don't know a decade plus as a result this the sisters

anyway naomi osaka decides to launch in this big thing about trying to compare one person yelling you suck to that in tears and blah and to me Adam is like even Nadal came out Rafa Nadal and was like look I have sympathy for her but the players have to be ready for hecklers it's part of being a professional athlete or comedian etc your thoughts you know, if you're going to put yourself out there, then you're putting yourself out there. You're doing what you do in front of a crowd. Again, you know, comedians, singers, performers, tennis players, golfers, like whatever that is. The problem is we need to, and I'm just going to drop my daughter off now and continue my journey with you. So it's uninterrupted. So try to turn around and finish this.

So what we've done is we've decided for young people that we need to remove all gravity from their world and from their life. You know, my kid, my son came home from school the other day and just showed me a picture of a screenshot of a whole symposium they did on if somebody says something and it's a joke, but it doesn't feel like it's a joke. How should you feel and what should you do? And what if the person said it was a joke, but your feelings are still hurt? And it's like, hey, we're taking astronauts, we're putting them up in the space station for six months, and they're losing all their muscle mass and bone density because they're living in a zero gravity environment. You've got to get some gravity in your life. That's going to be some bumps and some bruises, some people who disagree with you, some criticism, some critiques. How the hell are we going to grow this self-esteem movement and trying to raise these kids in a terrarium so that no out? And it's all up there. It's the same physically. It's the same with your immune system. Wear double masks, wipe everything with Purell, wipe down every counter, disinfect everything. You're making weak kids. You're making them biologically, they're weak with the immune system because now they're allergic to everything and hay fever and all that stuff because there's nothing to push

back against. There's nothing to fight against. And that's what's happening psychologically as well. I mean, the thought that, you know, she was somehow victimized by one person yelling something at her or she needed to share her trauma with this audience is really indicative of that mindset. You're exactly right. Like we've all had people get in our faces. Public figures are not public figures. You've had somebody undermining you or calling you a name. And most of us just try to stay classy, forge forward and not take it on. Just do the job you've been paid to do. Only this set of new age victims and victim lovers wants to make a thing out of it. Yes, I've been victimized. Let me tell you how it makes me feel. Let me tell you what it brings up for me and the places that it took. Could you just play tennis? Just get back on the court and play the game, just like your opponent is doing, who undoubtedly was heckled to by one person? Well, all roads lead to narcissism. That's something that I've really been thinking about lately. And it's a very

narcissistic endeavor to stop. But also, here's the thing. If I was playing tennis and someone yelled, I suck, I might stop and think, maybe I'm not that good at tennis. First thought would be, does that person have a valid point? Second thought would be, I'm getting paid. I must do my job. I'm not allowed to stop and address things. As you said, I've been on stage a thousand times. Yeah, I've talked to, you know, many drunken people. I hear out in the audience, you know, talking to their wives or texting on their phone or

whatever. Fine. It's a couple of people. And then there's 300 other people that want to see my act. So you must be a professional and forge on. It's like tennis, like a lot of these sports is a very mental game. And the thought that she would, you know, that she would think it's appropriate to go over and address the crowd via microphone, the umpire's microphone in the middle to try to win the crowd back over or silence the hecklers, who I agree are rude, but it's part of sport, is just it is narcissistic. It's like, why would they allow that? I'm sure your opponent, who seems like a very nice person, doesn't really want you having a private moment with the crowd right now. Her name is veronica

kudermatova and by the way naomi was defeated in straight sets she actually hasn't been doing very well she of course wouldn't play in the french open because she didn't want to deal with the press there was another time where she wanted the rules bent for her just for her everyone else has to deal with the press but she didn't want to have to deal with them. She said that it was annoying. And then she claimed mental health. She missed Wimbledon. She came in third round, third round loss, I should say, at the U.S. Open. And she went from being number one to number 78 in the world. So whatever she's going through, she should she should work it out with her therapist and not with the crowd and not with the umpire's microphone. That's my two cents. Now, speaking of heckling. Also, just just to put a button on that. Speaking of the press, you know, I remember when she dropped out and everyone rushed to her defense, you know, and I think everyone is sympathetic to emotional and mental issues. On the other hand, making someone into a martyr or a hero because they pull out of a tennis tournament, I don't think that's quite the right answer. And I don't think she was served by this.

I think there's plenty of room, and anyone who's a parent knows it for someone going, hey, get back up on that horse. Here we go. You get paid a lot of money. Suck it up. Rub some dirt on it. We got a game to play. Because I think I'm right. I think she got worse as

more people went, oh my God, what's wrong? Like, oh my God, what's wrong? Are you okay? You should sit down. So I don't think she was served by that part of the pun. Well, and nicely done. Well, and what she said originally on that whole withdrawal from the French Open and, you know, she didn't want to deal with the press, as she said, she found the press annoying. She said that they get in your head by asking you questions about why you can't play so well on clay. Clearly, this woman has a problem with letting her critics rent space in her head. That doesn't mean she's got a mental health issue. It means she's one of

those athletes who's got to work harder with a sports psychiatrist or psychologist or what have you to try to tune out the negative haters, the doubters, which can affect you in any profession, but in particular in professional sports. It doesn't mean all the rules of professional sports have to be changed to accommodate your problem. Like you therefore don't have to do the press conferences and you therefore get to address the hecklers right in the middle of the match because you have an inability to tune them out. That's not how life works. They don't change all the rules just to accommodate you and this particular weakness that you may have. Part of the test of professional sports is whether you can perform under extreme conditions, a lot of stress with hecklers, with jerks in the media, all of that. Right. Like I can see just in

my role, all of that goes into it because honestly, in what I do, there's a factor of that, too. You know, I remember after that one presidential debate with Trump where he was most unhappy about my question on the women, he was walking out of the arena. I was there doing live interviews and he, you know, the next president of the United States, he was the number one in the GOP field at the time, was literally yelling at me from 10 feet away while I'm doing the live broadcast. Megyn Kelly is not nice. She's no good. Right.

Like I'm like, what the hell is going on? But did I did I fall apart? Did I say I want to address Mr. Trump right now? That's not fair. No, I just did my job. That's what we get paid to do. That's what, you know, that's what everyone gets paid to do. I mean, you know, roofers and, you know, captains of battleships, you know, it's like you choose a profession, you get paid. And that's how it works.

Yeah, and you don't ask for a bunch of special exceptions. Okay, yeah, I want to talk to you about Sam Elliott getting called the B word for making fun of this new Western and The View saying that criticism of Kamala Harris is racist. Okay, we're going to pick it up there. Don't go away. Much more with Adam Carolla. Okay, Adam, so I grabbed part of this soundbite from my pal Dave Rubin, who was going off on his

show, which I also enjoy. And Kamala Harris, as you know, has been sent to solve the war in Ukraine. And it's not really going that well. Actually, the truth is that even the White House was like, she's not going over to solve anything. We're just kind of sending her over there. And she's been doing her weird cackle and making sort of weird, inappropriate responses to questions when asked. Actually, here's just a little sample of it. And then I'll get to what the view said. Listen. I'd like to know if you think, and if you asked the United States to specifically accept more refugees. Okay. A friend in need is a friend in need.

Okay. Okay, so this time. So I will say what I know we all say, and I will say over and over again. The United States stands firmly with the Ukrainian people in defense of the NATO alliance. Ukraine, not part of NATO. It's kind of one of the issues that they're fighting over okay so uh fair game for criticism under any rational person's view but here speaking of the view is um there's a guest host and then there's sunny hostin responding listen i don't know that it's about her laughing because i agree i think that would be very inappropriate and that's something that they do to women.

I think that she has gone on multiple occasions a little bit underprepared with some of the questions that she's been asked. Lester Holt asked her a pretty basic question that she couldn't answer. So I don't know if it's a staff thing. She's not prepared enough. Perhaps she's not expecting the questions. I don't know what it is, but I think that's the issue. This is like the fourth or fifth time. What it is is that they constantly question the qualifications of black women, and that's why people are saying that she's unprepared. Oh, I disagree. You can disagree, but that's the truth of it. And so this is based in racism.

This is based in misogyny. We're talking about a woman that has extensive experience abroad, extensive experience as an attorney, extensive experience as the chief legal officer of one of our largest states in the country. And I think this is just much ado about nothing. I mean, we didn't talk about Vice President Pence's, the right didn't talk about his handling of the COVID epidemic, which I think, or the AIDS epidemic, which I think led to, you know, thousands and thousands of deaths. And what we what they're talking about is her left. She was there as an emissary, really. And she wanted to reassure the NATO allies that that as Russia steps up its attacks on Ukraine, that the United States was going to be supportive. In fact, she's in, I think, Bulgaria right now. She is prepared. She is seasoned abroad. She gets wonderful marks across the board. But this is just something that I think happens to women and especially black

women. Adam, your take on it? Well, look, I don't I don't get the rules. So are the rules that, so we're not, so we can elect someone to the second highest or appoint someone to the second highest office in the land. And then if she speaks gibberish, but is black, then we can't have a critique of that person because that's racism. So according to Sonny Hostra or however last pronounced, Hostin, we're not allowed guess, that in particular, you know, the cackle, the response, the response to her weird laughter at every turn. You know, it happens to women. You know who it used to happen to? Hillary Clinton. These are both politicians who put themselves out there. And if you have a weird cackle or like a knee jerk response of laughter to difficult or tense situations, as a politician, people will see a pattern and you will get mocked for it, no matter what you have between your legs. Yeah, I concur a macro than a micro here, which is, so we're in this era where you can announce, as a feeble old president, Joe Biden, I'm going to make the person that's a heartbeat away from the Oval Office, I am going to pick a woman of color. So I'm not going to choose the person that I think is best suited to run

the country. I'm going to narrow it down to this group, and then I'm going to nominate that person or I'm going to have that person be my VP. And then if she's incompetent, whether it be Ukraine or the border or her crazy answers, you know, Lester Holt asking her if she's been to the border and her saying, I've been to the border and then switching it to we've been to the border. And then the most, but you know what people don't really drill down on, on that particular exchange with Lester Holt is she said, she sat down for an interview. So, sorry, we're just listening to the ladies from The View. And they said, maybe she's not being prepared well enough for these interviews. She did an interview with Lester Holt and he said, have you been to the border? And she was completely flummoxed. What kind of preparation does that take? You bet you haven't. Yeah. So, but here's the thing that was most

telling about that. He said, have you been to the border? She said, you know, we've been to the border. Then you've been to the border. But the most telling part about that is at the end when she said, and I haven't been to Europe either. And then she went, well, I don't get what this is. Like, what are you saying? Like, I'm confused. You're confused by a reporter asking if you've been to the border when you were made the border czar, then you shouldn't be confused by that. She's not up to the challenge, but the new rules are we will appoint someone based on their gender, their sexual proclivities, their heritage, whether they're man or woman, we'll do that. And then if they don't perform, you're not allowed to

critique them. That's basically what the ladies from The View think, which is a recipe for disaster. That's true equity. You can get the job because of your skin color or your lady parts, but then you are inoculated against any criticism because you get to play the skin card or the gender card whenever anyone tries it. So it's a both a sword and a shield. It works out so perfectly. But by the way, it only works if you're a Democrat. Just FYI. Don't try that if you're a Republican. By the way, the the sword and the shield is a good kind of euphemism for the man parts versus the lady parts, as I think about it. The shield. I don't I'm going to leave that alone. I had something to say, but I'll say it privately to you or my husband at another date.

OK, let's move on. Before we leave the news entirely, can we just spend one minute on this? MSNBC, apparently, according to Keith Olbermann, was trying to hire him to take over for the semi-retiring Rachel Maddow. I mean, she's semi-retiring, but she's getting $30 million a year. So it's a pretty good deal. She's just not going to do her nightly show every night. She's going to do documentaries or something nobody wants to watch. So her show's up for grabs and keith olbermann is on the record now saying that i was in talks for that they wanted to hire me and the only reason the talks fell apart uh is rachel maddow didn't want it he was her mentor but this guy he's been fired he was fired by msnbc he was fired multiple times by espn he was fired by MSNBC. He was fired multiple times by ESPN. He was fired by Current TV. He keeps getting fired over and over. And they actually were getting ready to put him back on the air. Apparently, she's the only reason it didn't happen. psychodynamic standpoint, because he says things that are insane, but he's clearly bright.

Yeah. I mean, he says things that are insane, but he's not a dumb person. You know, I'm curious, and maybe COVID has made me think this way, like epidemiologists, doctors, politicians doing patently insane things and saying insane things and wanting America to do insane things, but yet clearly educated and clearly bright and clearly articulate. It's kind of scary, isn't it, that there's so many smart people that say dumb and insane things out there? Yes. Well, being smart is no requirement to getting on MSNBC. That's obvious. Rachel Maddow is smart, but completely misled her audience for two years over Russiagate, never took any responsibility for it. But, you know, we talked earlier in the program about this. What's her

first name? Anyway, her last name's Cross and she has a show on the weekends and she was, she was criticizing Kamala Harris for going to Poland because she says it's full of white supremacists. So that's the Cross lady. Then there's Joy Reid, who's out there, you know, every other night, everything's through a prism of race. We can't feel for the people in Ukraine because that's our, that's our white supremacy, identifying with white people. So this, I mean, the MSNBC line of, can you imagine Keith Olbermann, these other two gals, Nicole Wallace, the fake Republican who's still trading off of the, you know, stint she had under the Bush

administration in which she gave us, you know, Sarah Palin. Just the network is collapsing. Its ratings are terrible. And there's a reason why. And to the fact that this is linked to the NBC brand and they do nothing about it says a lot about the mothership as well. Yeah, you wonder if a lot of these people in these news outlets, first off, they have no ability to pump the brakes or to even push in the clutch. It's always grab the next gear and speed forward. Three years of Russian collusion. And then when the Mueller report came out, that was your time to pump the brakes. That was the time to be intellectually honest. That was the time to try to reconnect with your audience and say,

you know, we do the best we can, but sometimes we make mistakes. Or even something like Ivermectin and CNN and Sanjay Gupta. You know, go ahead and take one for the team. Just pump the brakes. Let us know there's some intellectual honesty going on in your head instead of going right back on the air and talking more about ivermectin being horse-paced. It's why they're losing their audience. People don't believe them. I work with a lot of young people. I say to them, if you heard something on CNN or MSNBC five, eight, 10 years ago, would you believe it? They said, of course. And then I said, what about now? And they said, no, I'd have to go investigate. You know, if I'd heard the can't say gay or ivermectin or whatever COVID news, it's like, I'd have to go online and figure

out what was really going on. That's a bad sign for a news, for a news organization. That's a bad sign. Yeah. I mean, it used to be and I'm not sure, but it used to be we didn't want to be misled on facts. We might want might have wanted to get our worldview affirmed by the cable news anchor we listened to. But we didn't want to be misinformed on the facts. Right. You'd want to hear them argued by someone articulate on your side, but not have fake news shoveled at you all day. And we are well past that point. OK, let me let me shift gears because I want to talk to you about what's happening with

Sam Elliott, like the ultimate cowboy in American media, in American films and so on. He's gotten into some weird fight with this very well-known director, Jane Campion. And the story, as I understand it, let me see. Check my notes here. OK, so she directed Power of the Dog, a Western film on Netflix in 2021, which has been nominated for 12 Academy Awards. Sam Elliott, again, he's like the Western guy. He went on Mark Maron's WTF podcast and was asked if he had seen the film. Elliot said, you want to talk about that piece of, and I can't say the word because I'm not swearing for Lent, doing very poorly, but trying.

And here's just a bit of what he said that led to a fight with her. That's what all these cowboys in that movie look like. They're all running around in chaps and no shirts. There's all these illusions of homosexuality throughout the movie. But what the is this woman from down there come? Oh, New Zealand. New Zealand. Right.

Know about the American West. And why not shoot this movie in New Zealand and call it Montana? And say this is the way it was. So now she fires back, Adam, saying and by the way, he did say she's a brilliant director. But she fires back saying he was being

a B-I-T-C-H. She actually spelled it out. That wasn't me. She said he's not a cowboy. He's an actor. She says the West, the West, the West of the mythic space. The West is a mythic space. And there's a lot of room on the range. And it's sexist, she says, of him to do this. She said she flatly views this as a slight against her as a female artist because there are others who have made westerns in places other than montana like in spain who are men and she said i consider myself a creator i think he thinks of me as a woman or something lesser first and i don't appreciate it. So she played the woman card. Thoughts on it? Well, I mean, again, sort of circling back to Kamala Harris, like you're going to put yourself into these powerful positions. You're going to speak into microphones or create art. And then

if people don't like what you're saying or don't appreciate your art, then it's because you're a woman or because you're a woman of color or whatever that is. It's untenable. So it simply means if you're a director or if you're the vice president, you just do whatever you want to do. And nobody can take any umbrage with any of your work, your art or any of your stances or what you've said into a microphone. And it'll all be blamed on that. You know, and look, I don't know if they believe it. They've been convinced to believe it or they're just playing a sort of card that's convenient for them but i've always said as a white heterosexual male my my ultimate dr drew is calling me on the other line by the way the ultimate uh the i'll call him later. Comforts the man.

He'll have thoughts on this too. The ultimate white privilege is just never thinking someone is saying something about you because you're black or because you're female or because you're homosexual. I can assume that if you don't like my work, it's because you don't like my my work. It's a slippery slope. They will find it everywhere if they're looking for it and they're all looking for it. So that's this woman, this director, Jane Campion. I mean, she you're exactly right. And there's further evidence of her seeing everything through the gender card, through the woman card. And she she got herself in trouble after this mix up with with Sam Elliott because she was at an event venus and serena but then she kind of played the woman card and like how tough she's had it in her industry versus in tennis we have it on tape don't we yes we have the soundbite let's play it here's what she said

that now she's getting hit for it you know serena and venus you are such marvels. However, you do not play against the guys. Like I have to. Okay, so now she's got a one-up. Venus and Serena, who actually have played against guys many times in mixed doubles. Hello. She's stronger. She's got it like, look look at me i've gone up against the man in hollywood and made it and so somehow i mean like then she later had to apologize of course now she's mortified at what she did because she's getting all the blowback but that she can't take off the lenses. Everything's about gender. Well, not only that, but I mean, you know,

first off, all roads lead to narcissism. It's like, you know, every time Oprah gets up there and says, you know, basically, look how successful I am and look what I've had to overcome as a female, as a female of color. Well, she's really just saying, I beat you guys on foot race with a sprained ankle. Essentially, look how much better I've had to be. Look, I work in Hollywood. I have to deal with Netflix. What do you think? Here's a hypothetical.

If there is a piece of work, a documentary, a Western or whatever it is, and Netflix has their choice between a director, middle-aged, heterosexual, white male or female of color, they're going to give the nod, the female or the female of color, a single time and twice on Sunday. That's the town we live in. So this notion that she's had to do battle over, you know, with males to get, you know, her Netflix deal or her next Netflix project, I would argue that it's quite the opposite. You get you are immediately pushed to the front of the line if you are something other than a heterosexual white male. Well, that's the thing. So it's like historically it may not have been the case, but present day we all know the truth and they're not even making films. been pitching shows and so on. And this person has told me you can like don't even bother pitching a show or an idea unless you've got like the main one of the main characters has to be black. There has to be a gay character. Somebody has to be like you've got to have all the woke boxes

checked. And if you happen to be a white guy doing the pitch, you better go in there with somebody who's connected with some more traditionally marginalized group. I mean, it's absurd, right? So it's like, okay, I get it. It may have been a struggle. But like, where we are today is you have a much better chance of getting your films made than some unknown white male. We all know that. Anyway, okay. So Adam, it's been a pleasure going with you on your family journey. And I hope you're safe. Thank you for squeezing us in in the middle of a busy day. I love doing your show.

I love you. And it's always a pleasure. And I'm sorry for the family related snafu. But I think we made lemonade out of lemons. Nailed it. It's always great. To be continued and to the next time. Okay, well, you think that COVID's over, right? It's like finally the Democrats are starting to relent on it.

Guess again, because in New York City, they are still mandating masks on toddlers. OK, on toddlers. And New York is not alone. In L.A., they just announced they are not taking down the mask mandate on the schoolchildren for the rest of the year. They're insane. Coming up next, a dad and a lawyer who's fighting back in court. An interesting lawsuit. We'll tell you about it. Children in the country's largest city can finally go maskless if they're five or older. That's right. Toddlers are still toddlers are still being forced to mask up in New York City. The mayor says it's about science and protecting our babies. But my next guest says enough is enough. This is absurd. So he and other parents are suing now to end the so-called toddler mask mandate. Words I never thought I'd have to utter. Michael Chessa is a dad and an attorney, and he is the man behind this lawsuit. Michael, how are you doing? Thank you so much for being

here. I'm good, Megan. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Good for you for doing something about it. One of my good friends who's been as outraged about the mask mandate as you and I have, she's a New York City mom. We celebrated the fact that our kids got unmasked. And the first thing she said to me and I said back to her was, we can't forget about the littles. We can't just forge on without the littles, the ones who need these things the least. You must have been infuriated when you heard he wasn't lifting it for them. I was.

My wife and I were devastated. And I'm not exaggerating. I think if you know parents who have kids and they want the choice to send their children to school without a mask and it means something to them, like it does for so many of us. When Mayor Adams announced that he was lifting the mandate for everyone but the littlest, we were we were actually devastated. We really were. Right, because it's so easy for people outside of New York to be like, well, pull your kid, you know, don't send your, it's like the damage being done to kids from having no school at all is severe too. And it's not that easy to just, oh, I'll just find a new job and I'll move away right now. You know, it's not that practical. Of course.

And, you know, now that I've gotten some engagement on Twitter and social media, there's also this line, oh, what about active shooter drills? Or what about the war in Ukraine? You know, people throw these things at you as if as a parent, every single day, your child walking out of your house is not maybe the most fundamental important thing in your life. So it's a silly game. But, you know, we're, again, just want the choice for the parents. Right, Megan? We're not talking about anti-mask bills. We're not talking about banning masks. We're talking about parental choice. Right. It's your it should be your decision what's best for your little one.

So tell me about your family situation. How many kids and how old? So I have we have three kids. I have a 15 year old son, three year old daughter and a two year old daughter. So we kind of have a mixed situation that happened when the masks came off my my 15 year old. And yet I had to send my three year old to school. We've been frustrated the whole time for the past couple of years. We've we've gotten to know parents who are in our situation through some great advocacy that's going on in the city. You know, Barry Weiss wrote an article you may have seen called Revenge of the COVID Moms. I'm living that article. I don't need to read Barry. There you go. So we've been working with and kind of advocating for behind the scenes with a lot of

parents who feel the same way as we do. It's something that is so fundamental to a kid's life. And to think that my three-year-old for the past year hasn't seen any of her teacher's faces in full, hasn't seen her friend's faces in full, and is still there right now as we're talking, sitting in class all day with a cloth mask on her face. It's infuriating. So you hear this a lot. They don't complain. You know, they don't, they're not complaining. It's the whiny parents who are complaining. And I thought you've been making a very good point on this, on this argument. Yeah, thank you, Megan. You know, at the beginning of my career, I was a prosecutor at the Brooklyn

DA's office. And when you deal with children, they trust adults. They are compliant beings by nature. They look to us for guidance. They don't come out questioning things that we tell them to do. And having been a prosecutor, I've seen children suffer some of the worst harms you can imagine, and they don't make a peep, right? They go about their lives because that's the nature of a child. So those arguments, that's one of them that just the hair on the back of my neck stands up. Yes. Inability to give voice to their distress does not mean there is no distress. Yes. Perfectly put. It's infuriating. It's mad it's maddening right exactly and they just want to keep looking at us and telling us that they know better it's like great you do you when it comes

to your kid that's the beauty of our society i have a different judgment but mayor adams you know now he everyone has such high hopes for him um he says this is this this is a science this is what's prudent he gave us a big lecture about how this is what's prudent. Let's hear a little bit about this sound bite. Debbie, you know, the one that we were just talking about, about following the science. Number six. That's why it's so important to follow the science and listen to the doctors, because when you looked at those under five, they were they were more likely to be hospitalized. And, you know, I said people wanted to say let's lift it across the board, but that's not what the science was showing us. And so I know some people are concerned.

I would rather people complain against me than having losing my babies in our city. We got to follow the science. The science states that that age group cannot be vaccinated. And they have among children, they're some of the highest hospitalization rates. So we have to save our children. Your reaction to that? You know, Megan, there's a lot of different ways to react to that. One of them is that just in terms of the science, because that's what we're talking about right now. If you separate out the ages of zero to one years old from the hospitalization rate that Mayor Adams is talking about, you find that the hospitalization rate of two and up, up to five years old, corresponds exactly with kids who are five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. It's the same, which, of course, is infinitesimal, which we all know. Kids that are younger than one, anyone who's had a child knows that if there's a fever,

you may bring that child to the hospital, right? You get a doctor's involvement much sooner than you do when the kid turns one years old. So the science on that is off. And it's not only off, you know, just look at the rest of the world, right? Look at the WHO, look at other states, look at other cities. The science is just not there for Mayor Adams. And frankly, it's confusing. It's confusing to parents. And I think it sends a terrible message. It really does. And he's talking about five-year- olds and up as though they're universally vaccinated.

And, you know, that's the difference. Those kids are eligible for the vaccine and therefore they don't need to have the mask on. That's a lie. Very few people have actually chosen to vaccinate the five to 11 crowd. Right. Right. And that also goes to the arbitrariness of this toddler mask mandate, which we've called it. the child that's four and the child that's five vaccinated or not at five interacted school. They pass in the hallways. And yet there could be a couple of months difference with the four year old in a mask all day. Right, exactly. So what what is it about the magical age of five? They just blame it on the vaccines. But it's like the point is, even when they turn five, if you look at the stats, 70 percent of the parents are going to say, no, I still don't want them to get to get the vaccine. And then if the child gets covid and a lot of them have already had it,

they're probably nothing's going to happen to them unless they're immunocompromised. Right. It's like and if you have an immunocompromised three year old, then don't send them to group school. Of course. And before now, with that catchphrase immunocompromised, right? It's like, and if you have an immunocompromised three-year-old, then don't send them to group school. Of course. And before now with that catchphrase, immunocompromised, which has become a term suddenly everyone knows about, which none of us even heard until a couple of years ago. If you have the tragedy of an immunocompromised three-year-old, then you've been dealing with a life that is different than all of ours for a long time. And you always will have to, frankly, and it's sad and it's terrible, but it doesn't mean that the rest of our children should be in masks all day at school. Have to suffer for it. That's exactly right. So what about, let's talk about the lawsuit because you're a lawyer. What's it based on

that Eric Adams, the mayor doesn't have the power to do this? So our lawsuit does not focus on the science at all. Even though I think a lawsuit that did would be viable, certainly, and successful, our lawsuit focuses strictly on the constitutionality of these city mandates, right? There is a lawsuit right now that a great attorney, his name's Chad LaValia, we've worked together in this case, filed in Nassau County against the state. And he won that suit, if you've been following it, at least in the state courts. It's now an appeal. And it challenges the state mandates under the same framework, which is that these are mandates issued by an administrative agency. This is a

situation where we have children in school being regulated by what is really a law that should be passed through the legislature. It should go through the city council. There should be public hearings. There should be parental involvement. There should be experts who are available to testify in the hearings. This isn't something that some administrative agency of unelected officials should be able to pass that affects all of our daily lives. That's the basis of the suit. In the Nassau case, they said you issued this mandate after your emergency powers expired. And therefore, by any standard, even if you were granted those powers lawfully, they were over when you issued this extended mask mandate. So this, and they won at the trial court level.

And then she, of course, sued to say no, you know, and now it's on appeal. But she's lifted the mask mandate for now, you know, but it does need to get resolved because I'm sure that she'd love to bring it back on the first wave of the next variant. But what about in, with respect to the mayor, you know, the like he

has his own emergency powers. This is why New York City parents have to deal with not only Kathy Hochul's whims, but Eric Adams feelings about masks and so on. So many layers to get through. Does he do you have a similar argument that his emergency powers expired? Well, they should have expired. Right. I mean, it's it's kind of high school social studies 101. You can't live under a permanent state of emergency under, you know, to have the separation of powers that is the bedrock of our democracy, to not have a person in power who has autocratic abilities in terms of policies like this. So yes, it's the same argument that the emergency situation in the state of New York should not be carrying over in perpetuity to give the mayor this kind of power. You know, in the spring of 2020, it was a different story. Right.

But we're far, far beyond that. And the fact that our kids are living under this this mandate that the mayor thinks he should just have the ability to use forever is something that they're going to have to answer to in court. Now, he says, hold your horses. I'm doing this sequentially. So I took the masks off. It's so infuriating to even talk about it like this. You don't control my children. Don't tell me you did me a favor by taking the mask off my second grader. You know, it's like that's his right to have his naked face out there in the world. It's not some benevolent gift you gave to us. But OK, enough about me. But he says I'm doing it in phases. Here's the soundbite. I'll let him put it the way he did, which is soundbite 10. I made it clear we're going to do this in waves. The first wave is to lift the masking of our children that was K through 12. The second wave, we will go to our children that are four of under five. It would be irresponsible of me to do it all at once. Now we're going to see after

lifting, do we have a spike? If we don't have a spike, we're going to live for your babies as well. What do you make of that? You know, what's the spike that he's talking about? What are the metrics that the mayor, the Department of Health or whoever else in city government is looking at to make these decisions. Parents are just left sitting at their computer waiting for the email that's going to come that, like you say, we should act like we're grateful for. You know, what we need is a clear bill introduced through the city legislature that says, when the cases reach these levels, when the hospitalizations reach these levels, it needs to be something that we have some sort of public engagement on. So we're not

just waiting for another press conference from the mayor to declare whether or not there's been a spike. You know, last time I checked, that wasn't, you know, medical terminology that we should be, you know, putting the daily lives of our children in the balance. No, it's a good point because they refuse to set the criteria openly for when when can the mask come off? When what what are you looking at? They won't because it's really just gut on their part and quote science, which we all know can find an expert to say whatever you want. And they have. So what happens now? Because I noticed one good thing about your lawsuit, which does need to just like the Nassau case, it must continue even after he lifts the mask mandate because he's going to try it again. You can't stop these Democrat politicians from

they love their mask mandates. So what you're getting some support. It's not just like you against the world. I saw 20 top early education programs in New York City signed a letter calling on him to end masking. That's good. So where does it stand? Has it actually been filed? And what procedurally is how's it going to play out? We filed last week. And what we asked for is what's called the TRO, temporary restraining order, as you know, which is where we're asking for the court to make a preliminary decision and lift the mandate. Because our argument is every day of the week, every moment of this child's life, they go to school with the mask on, they're still enduring this injury, this inability

to live an open and free life, and the parents are suffering too. So the court is going to make that decision tomorrow. We have oral arguments tomorrow afternoon in Richmond County, the courthouse in Staten Island. They'll make a decision just on the TRO, just whether or not based on the submissions that we filed last week, we're going to be granted a lifting of the mask mandate. Regardless of that decision, there's going to be a briefing schedule where the city can answer. The court will hopefully give us time and a chance to respond to the city. And then a decision will be made in maybe a month or so as to the full merits of our lawsuit, which of course, like you said, is making sure that they can't do this again. What we want

is a change in the policy itself. We want the courts to say the city has to go through this legislature. This is inappropriate for the Department of Health to pass a regulation like this. there is a legislative process. And there's a reason for that because lawmakers up and down the line, both at the top of the executive branch and in the legislature, answer to us. We get to fire them if they do things we don't like. And so it's not okay for the mayor to, with the sweep of a pen,

just change lives, right? It's like we get to fire him eventually too, which he needs to bear in mind. But there's a whole group of people who need to be held accountable if they sign on to this madness. I admire your tenacity. I'll give you the last word. Yeah, Megan, I was just going to say that there's a reason that, you know, I've spoke about this with lots of people. And it's something I think that should be important and a value to people,

even if they don't have an opinion on masks on kids, even if they're for masks on kids. What we're talking about is the separation of powers, is making sure that elected officials are not given free leeway to pass whatever regulations they want without being held accountable by the public, without involving the public. And we want that not just for this case, but in every case. Amen. Michael, good luck. We'll follow it. Thank you, Megan. All the best. And I want to tell you before we go that Carol Swain is coming back with us for an in-depth conversation tomorrow. She has lived a fascinating, fascinating life.

We had her on for a brief time not long ago, and I was like, we've got to do a profile with Carol. That's tomorrow. In the meantime, download the show and subscribe on YouTube and we'll talk to you then. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.