The Megyn Kelly Show - Trump Associates Raided, and Victimhood in America, with Sharyl Attkisson and Vivek Ramaswamy | Ep. 389

Episode Date: September 12, 2022

Megyn Kelly is joined by Sharyl Attkisson, host of Full Measure News, to discuss allegations that Trump associates are being raided by the FBI, wild speculation about Trump's trip to DC, the loss in trust in our institutions, the disastrous situation at the border and VP Kamala Harris claiming the border is secure, Randi Weingarten now claiming she was for in-person school, latest in the BYU-Duke volleyball story, and more. Then Vivek Ramaswamy, author of "Nation of Victims," joins the show to talk about the rise in victimhood in our culture, the void of a national identity and the need for a new identity, Michelle Obama's recent comments, the path from victimhood to excellence, the "power structure" in the BYU-Duke volleyball story, inability to stop claiming victimhood, DEI initiatives in colleges and corporations, China's focus on merit which could force a reckoning in America, the value of forgiveness, dealing with rejection, anti-Asian discrimination, and more.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and happy Monday. How's your Monday going so far? You know, at least we're getting it over with. That's the bright side. Here in Connecticut, it's kind of rainy. It's kind of like, it's just overcast. That's how it looks. Overcast is almost worse than rain, isn't it?. It's kind of like it's just overcast. That's how it looks. Overcast is almost worse than rain, isn't it? It's just sort of like a bummer. Anyway, it's nice to be doing the news with you and be talking about what's going on. Let me start with this. Can I tell you? Last week, we celebrated our one year anniversary on Sirius. The podcast

launched two years ago, but the radio show launched one year ago. And the partnership with Sirius, as it turns out, has some lovely perks. Like they invited me and my husband this past weekend to the Apollo Theater and we saw Pearl Jam and it was unbelievable. My God, they were so good. Eddie Vedder is unbelievable. He's incredible. He hasn't lost a step. And we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. And I'll tell you, one of the best parts of it was the guys right in front of us, because they take the most ardent fans. And as you know, if you listen to Sirius XM, they engage in a competition or a lottery, and you have to call

in and so on. And if you get the tickets, if you're lucky enough, you get great tickets. I mean, there's not a bad seat in the house at the Apollo Theater. But these guys, and it was actually very nice, I will say of Sirius, because these guys won these tickets in March of 2020. But then as you know, that concert would have had to be canceled, right? Because everything was canceled in March of 2020. And they were telling me, the guys right in front of me, They just assumed Sirius forgot about them. You know, two years later, Pearl Jam comes back. They're like, okay. And the guys, this one guy, CJ right in front of me, diehard fan. This is his 32nd concert of Pearl Jam. He's like, I knew they weren't going to call. So I just kept calling, trying to win again. And he couldn't get through that time. He didn't win

this time. And then his phone rang and he just assumed, you know, it was like a solicitation or it was like, Hey, where's your money for your bill? And the guy from Sirius is like, don't hang up. This is something good. He's like, what is it? He says, you, we want to give you your tickets. They're coming. Anyway. So there was this guy right front and center CJ and his, and his buddies. And they made the thing even better. Cause you know, when you're around that kind of almost a religious fervor in a good way for a band or a show of any kind, it's contagious, right? And the dancing and just like they knew every lyric and the whole thing start to finish was totally enjoyable. It was a reminder to me to get out and see live music more. And of how much I love Pearl Jam. My God,

so good. I heard a lot of new music of theirs. There was one period where they had to reboot the computer. They had some sort of an issue. And that was my favorite part. Eddie Vedder just got out there and acapella, you know, unplugged, started singing really good songs and the one I'd never heard before. Anyway, enough about that. But I just wanted to tell you Pearl Jam's amazing. Loving the partnership was serious. And get out there and see some live music because it is like church in a way. You stand, you sit, you sway, you sing with your fellow human beings, and you feel just a little bit more connected than you did before. In any event, let's put that connection aside and start to bashing others. The nature of news. No, just kidding. But there is some new darkness to talk about, and that is the weirdness surrounding the feds and Donald Trump right now, thanks to the New York State Attorney General.

He got pardoned on these charges by Trump, but that doesn't mean that the locals, the state officials can't come after you. And that's what he's dealing with right now in an alleged fraud. But he was giving interviews about it last Friday and he alleged that nearly three dozen Trump associates that day or within days, had also been targeted by

the FBI via subpoena, via search warrant. This isn't the kind of thing that people always run to the cameras to report, so we don't know what the numbers are. But Harmeet Dhillon, frequent guest of this program, brilliant lawyer, she verified it in part on Tucker that same night, saying she had at least three clients who were swept up in this thing. So we don't know how big the numbers are or what the feds are up to or what specific thing they're targeting. But it seems to relate to election denials and, quote unquote, fake electors and pushback over January 6th, which Harmeet is pointing out in the media.

That sounds like a First Amendment issue. You're allowed to have whatever belief you want. You can come up with cockamamie plans on elections that are never implemented, and that's your business. So this is somewhat troubling, and it relates to the trouble that's been around President Trump and his reaction to the election. Meanwhile, it comes amid wild speculation about Trump and his current whereabouts and why. We think we know where he is, but why is the question. He was spotted near Washington, D.C. late yesterday, and the Internet has lost its mind. They think the guy's going to jail. That's what they think.

All right, we're going to get into all of this in just one second. A little bit later this show, we're going to be joined by Vivek Ramaswamy. His new book brilliantly analyzes how our society has fallen into a state of victimhood, perpetual victimhood, and how, guess what, that doesn't end well for the victims. You may be the victim today, tomorrow you won't be, and he's got thoughts on how to solve it. But we start today with Cheryl Atkinson, an investigative reporter and host of Full Measure with Cheryl Atkinson. Cheryl, so good to have you back in the program. How are you doing? Thank you. Good to be here, Megan. Great to see you. So the media is a flutter. I guess I should say social media is a flutter right now about President Trump being spotted on the runway. I want to get it right in any event. He's tweeting

about it right now at Dulles. Okay. He's spotted on the runway at Dulles Airport and he had his white golf sneakers on or tennis sneakers of some sort. And he had his white golf sneakers on or, you know, tennis sneakers of some sort. And he didn't look like President Trump normally looks like in his suit. So cue the Twitter lunatics who are like he's surrendering himself right now. He's in Washington to surrender himself to the federal authorities. Meanwhile, today he tweets out from his offices saying he's at the Trump Tower down in that area. And hold on, this is exactly what he said. Working today at Trump Washington, D.C. on the Potomac River. What an incredible place. He hasn't responded to this video. And so we have no idea what's going on.

But Cheryl, the Twitterati has him arrested and surrendering right now to Merrick Garland on God knows what. You know, I think if one thing we've learned, it's that all the leaks about Donald Trump, particularly the ones where he was about to be arrested, indicted, you know, taken as a Russian spy, the tape recordings that supposedly had him saying things that he never said. I think we learn that more often than not, in fact, up until now, almost every time, what is said or what is leaked turns out not to be true. So it signals to me, when you hear a leak of something that's pretty damaging against Donald Trump from prosecutors or prosecutorial authority, it usually means to me they're trying to make the most out of something because they know in the end

they're not going to have anything, but they want to create the swirl and the bad publicity and sort of this chatter in the meantime, because I think they think they can get something out of that. and maybe he doesn't want to broadcast it out to the world because it's none of our business because he's not the sitting president anymore. It'd be nice if we could get some more transparency into the current president's well-being. That's a different matter, however. So it's just, for me, it's an interesting, just look at the media and social media in particular about how they can get something going out of nothing, out of nothing, right? And also, Cheryl, as you know, as you just point out, this is wishful thinking. This is this is just the latest chapter in this is going to be the thing that brings Trump down. Right. It's their wishful thinking of now the downfall begins. The cuffs will be on soon. Well, and don't you think prosecutors, if you step back and not

study this from a minutiae standpoint, but step back and say, haven't they lost all moral and ethical authority to prosecute Trump and those around him based on their recent past, what they've done? I mean, they've never cleaned house after we know they were on the wrong trail, leaking false information, the FBI attorney that doctored a document, and yet they never got anybody else around it who also knew about that, didn't speak out when it became public. House has never been cleaned, and that same core group is still going after Trump and anybody surrounding him. In the big picture, it seems to me that the whole thing lacks moral authority and also legitimate justice authority because of the recent past. I don't know how you would get an independent person that could look at this instead because look what happened when Mueller was appointed.

People hoping that was an independent investigation turned out not to be. But I think that there's very little credence behind anything going on now. That's exactly it. That's why. And I don't know what Trump actually had down at Mar-a-Lago and what he didn't. And I've listened to lawyers that I respect, like Mike Davis, say whatever he had, he could have it. As long as they were duplicates and not the actual originals, he was allowed to have whatever he wanted and he was allowed to declassify whatever he wanted. And this is all made up. And I've heard other lawyers I respect say, no, he crossed lines. He shouldn't have had

those documents. It's problematic. But Merrick Garland shouldn't be doing this for some of the reasons you just outlined. And then there are lawyers on the left who are like full bore, get him. He's a criminal. You know, he's a spy and so on. I'm not exactly sure where I fall legally on that, but I'm with you on the even if this is the worst of the worst and he didn't have the right to have the documents down there, they've lost the moral authority to do it. They truly have been persecuting the guy for the past five or six years, and I'm done giving them the benefit of the doubt. Well, they certainly don't deserve the benefit of the doubt.

And I think this is the problem that comes with them not addressing problems as they go. We can go back decades. Actually, we can go back to the spying on me, the spying on others that took place that the Department of Justice never took care of to this day. My case against the government is in discovery. They're still defending the guilty agents instead of saying, this is wrong, let's root it out, let's issue an apology and make sure it doesn't happen again. So decades of not cleaning up their business and giving false information to Congress and doing things that are unethical and illegal have led to where we are today, where there is at least half of the

country that has no faith in the credibility of our top justice officials. And also when you go down to the state level and you see what crimes or alleged crimes they're prosecuting and paying attention to versus the ones that they're not. I know there are so many people saying this is not a balanced sense of justice in any respect going on in this country right now. So, you know, they've lost people have lost faith in their institutions, including the top prosecutors in this country. Let's talk about what Steve Bannon's claiming is going on now, separate and apart from his prosecution, which he's going to have to deal with, with, you know, the New York State Attorney General. The huge sweep, you know,

the dragnet, trying to get all these Trump associates caught up in the criminal justice system because they had questions about the January, sorry, the 2020 election, November 2020 election. That's that's potentially deeply problematic as well. Here's what Steve said on Charlie Kirk's show on Friday. There were 35 senior members of MAGA, Republicans, supporters of Donald Trump, that the FBI rolled in on when they didn't need to do it. Remember, all these people have lawyers. All their lawyers are very well known. No, the jackbooted Gestapo has got to show up at their door and make a big display of this. The FBI is the Gestapo right now. I know they hate when I say that, but they're the Gestapo. We're not going to back off calling them the Gestapo because they have Gestapo-like tactics.

Okay. Now, I don't know whether that's true or not. I have no idea what he's basing that on. And even though Steve Bannon's connected to MAGA world, that doesn't mean everybody calls Steve Bannon when they get a subpoena. I don't know how he would know those numbers. But as I pointed out earlier, Harmeet Dhillon, she does represent a fair amount of folks connected to this Trump inner circle. And she confirmed that she had at least two or three clients who received subpoenas or search warrants or something along those lines. So something's going on. And again, related to what we don't know, a federal grand jury, according to the Washington Post, sent subpoenas on Wednesday to a wide range of former campaign and White House staff documents and communications about opening the Save America PAC and every dollar raised and spent. At least one of the subpoenas also demanded information about the plan to submit slates of phony electors, quoting here, claiming Trump won pivotal states,

including all communications with several key lawyers and advisors, including Giuliani, Boris Epstein, Bruce Marks, Victoria Tunsing, and Joseph DeGeneva. At least one, two, three of those are lawyers. I don't know about Bruce. Boris, no, I don't think. And the Washington Post concludes this week's subpoenas were also the latest signs that justice has intensified its own parallel probe into January 6th. Again, this is troubling. This is troubling. If it's fraud, if it's financial fraud, that's one thing. Fine. Get them. I don't care who you are, Republican or Democrat. Sick them if they're committing a financial fraud. However, if we are once again criminalizing the belief that Donald Trump won, that's a different story.

Well, you know, we only have recent history to go by. And based on that, this sure looks like political enemies of Donald Trump are going after him and everybody connected to and surrounding him prior to him potentially announcing his next run for president. And I've spoken to some old time FBI officials. These are people who worked under various administrations over the decades who say there was a time when they would stay way far away from anything that potentially looked political. Even if they thought there was something there, they would be so careful and tread so lightly so as not to be accused of or appear as though they're doing some sort of political prosecution or investigation. That's all been thrown out the window.

I mean, it appears exactly like that. So even if there is a there there, people will ask the question, well, have they ignored similar alleged infractions by other people if they weren't surrounding Trump? And are they treating and handling this the same way that they have or would treat anybody else? And the answer so far has been absolutely not. So I think this is a problem for them aesthetically. Even if there is something there, it's going to be a hard sell to a great number of people in the American public based on what the

FBI and intelligence agencies have done in the past few years. Well, I also think it's very important if Steve Bannon stole funds from donors and misused them. OK, go after him. And then let's make very sure that when we have a Republican administration again, we do the very same thing to all the Democrat fundraisers who are misleading their donors, because in no way am I defending this practice. But this has been going on in Washington for time immemorial. And great, let's crack down on any alleged fraud, but it must be bipartisan. And I really hope the Democrats who are really enjoying what's happening to Steve Bannon have their checkbooks completely balanced and their accounting

completely in order. Because turnabout's fair play. I think Vivek Ramaswamy, he's going to come on and say the Republicans can't use all the same tactics that the Democrats use because, you know, somebody's got to take the high road. I don't know if I agree. Maybe it is high road to just go after everybody who's got accounting issues. But my point is, be careful what you wish for. Well, you know, we'll see, I suppose. But even when Republicans run things, it seems to me, if you're talking about, I used to not believe in what they call the deep state, I now do. The deep state is fairly consistently controlled. And I think they were universally, by and large, anti-Trump, even those who may have been pro-Republican.

You know, Trump would have that unique position where his enemies were among Democrats and also among Republicans. My view, because he was not elected by or beholden to the big money interests that were used to having the direct pipeline to the president of the United States, they didn't have the same access. They didn't want Trump in power. So this giant campaign was launched against him in part because of that. And I think that's an issue of what's been at play. Meanwhile, the vice president of the United States has very good news. And I wanted to ask you about this because I know you've recently been to and done an in-depth report on the border yes i the dog does not like the vice president i

understand you're not alone sweetheart he's adorable by the way um so kamala harris goes on meet the press and like like uh the homeland security secretary not long before her pronounced that the border is secure here's what she said. This is SOT6. Would you call the border secure? I think that there is no question that we have to do what the president and I asked Congress to do. The first request we made, pass a bill to create a pathway to citizenship. The border is secure, but we also have a broken immigration system, in particular over the last four years before we came in, and it needs to be fixed. We're going to have two million people cross this border for the first time ever. You're confident this border is secure?

We have a secure border in that that is a priority for any nation, including ours and our administration. But there are still a lot of problems that we are trying to fix, given the deterioration that happened over the last four years. We have a secure border in that that is a priority for any nation. What? So we don't. It's a priority, but we don't actually have one. Good for Tuk Tuk for at least pushing back a bit. And then she tries to blame whatever problems are there on Trump.

For all of Trump's controversies, not securing the border isn't really one you can lay on him. Go ahead, Cheryl. What do you make of it having just been there? did say, these statements that claim the border is secure are delusional. It's objectively false. You can see that they're overrun in their own words. They can't handle the influx. They have begged for visits from Vice President Harris, from Biden, from any representatives that would come and take a look and try to provide some assistance. I've never seen the border this open. Well, that makes sense because this is a record-setting time.

But in all my visits to the border, the border kind of has a personality. It changes a lot based on policies that are at play and what's going on from the highest level in Washington, D.C. And this is just unbelievable. But I hate to harp on these stories from the poor illegal immigrants because I know that's only a piece of this problem. But I spoke in great detail to the Venezuelans and others who are coming here now and making these perilous trips, and how they have to cross through a jungle to get through Colombia, and are almost all attacked by what they call the indigenous peoples who now have a pipeline in the jungle that they rob and rape people. I heard stories that I believe from the illegal immigrants saying that they watched 12-year-olds getting raped, that when the men interfered and

tried to protect the girl in one case, the men were raped. These people are robbed, so then they don't have the money to pay the checkpoints of the cartels to be allowed to progress to the Mexico-U.S. border, so they have to keep working. Family members may be kidnapped and tortured until they can come up with additional money to pay the cartels. We are making the cartels rich beyond our wildest imagination by allowing all of this. And then hundreds of them have drowned and died, a record number, trying to cross into the U.S. once they get that far. It is a disaster in every sense of the word for them, for the border towns and for the United States. I urge people, if they're interested, go to fullmeasure.news. My story that I aired on Sunday on my TV program lays out all of this in great detail and has

the video evidence too. Well, and one of the things addressed is where's the wall and where's the effort to stop the people from walking into the town? Like, why aren't we trying to stop that anymore? Because border patrols not. You know, one of the interesting things I found, I was there to see how the Texas state efforts were working because Texas deployed fourteen hundred National Guard troops and all kinds of rangers and resources of their own. And they've built one hundred miles of their own barrier at their own expense to try to secure the border. What did I learn? All of that money and effort simply goes to help process those who come in because they don't have the authority legally to turn them back or arrest them. They have to turn them over to border patrol. So all of that effort has resulted not in turning anybody away or quelling the numbers, but in a helping hand, as it was called

when I did an interview with an official there. All the resources just providing more hands to process more people to come into the United States. We have that. Actually, we have a soundbite from that. And again, we should check it out at fullmeasure.news as well. But here's a bit. This is soundbite eight from Cheryl's reporting. So there's nothing that can be done technically right now to keep the numbers down, to keep people from coming. No, ma'am. They have a free open range coming across the river right now. Do they climb over the fence? No, they let them through.

Border Patrol lets them through? Yeah, like right now, they've still got places where they haven't finished the fence. And they got gates. They let them through. I've never seen anything like that. This, been here all my life. What do you attribute that to? Mr. Biden. They're just letting them in.

I'm very disappointed in the federal government, to be honest. And I've opened the invitation to anyone in the administration, whether it be president, vice president, or one of his representatives, to please come to Eagle Pass, Texas. We are part of the United States. Here in Eagle Pass, before our local firefighters would have to deal with around 20, 25 drownings a year. Now they're dealing with over 30 drownings a month. You know, pulling babies out of the water is not normal. My God. And can we just hear again? This is the vice president of the United States who's been

placed in charge of securing the border. Here's her take on what's happening. Listen to it one more time. Would you call the border secure? I think that there is no question that we have to do what the president and I asked Congress to do. The first request we made, pass a bill to create a pathway to citizenship. The border is secure, but we also have a broken immigration system, in particular over the last four years before we came in, and it needs to be fixed. We're going to have two million people cross this border for the first time ever. You're confident this border is secure? We have a secure border in that that is a priority for any nation,

including ours and our administration. But there are still a lot of problems that we are trying to fix, given the deterioration that happened over the last four years. What specifically? I mean, truly, what is she talking about? What did Trump do to make the border less secure? Her answer is basically what we need is amnesty, which doesn't decrease immigration across the southern border. And we need to get rid of Trump, which we did, right? So she's blaming the four years prior. And it's secure in that it's a priority. There's zero

evidence that it's a priority. He's trying to undo the ability to turn people back under the COVID regulation right now. The only reason he hasn't done that is because of the courts. You know, Trump's last year in office, those numbers came way down. They were still bad, but something like 400,000 border encounters. Biden's first year in office, 1.2 million. We're working on 2 million already this year with time left in the fiscal year. And I can tell you, based on my investigation, one of the biggest immediate things that would make a difference and did make a difference under President Trump was that remain in Mexico policy, which said that if people wanted to claim asylum, they would wait for their court date in Mexico. And Mexico agreed to that, to take

them. And that immediately stopped a lot of traffic because nobody wants to go through what these poor people go through and pay the thousands of dollars and risk their lives only to have to sit in Mexico. So immediately, there was an effect with people not trying to come and risk their lives and pay the cartels to come to the United States. So that's a huge, people ask me what could be done. That is something that would have an immediate impact based on what we've seen in the recent past that has made a big difference when President Biden decided to stop that program. governor, the Texas governor, shipping busloads of immigrants to places like Washington, D.C., Chicago, New York. And it's really been amazing to see the Democratic politician reaction to this from those running these cities, which, like Chicago, declared itself a sanctuary city. So what's its problem? Why doesn't it want all of these illegal immigrants? You're supposed to say you love them. It's fine. You know, when they're down in Texas, it's fine. When they're actually in Chicago on Mag Mile, they feel differently. There was the D.C. council member who said, oh, what do you say? She's turning us into a border town. They're turning us into a border town. Oh, how do you like it now? I mean, that's the whole point. Like, how do you see federal policy when you are a border town, when you don't to place them in the sanctuary cities that have said that they are welcome. I mean, that just makes common sense to me. So

it's hard to understand why they're so upset by it. But I will also tell you, I spoke to, for a story that will be airing soon, quite a few of the illegal border crossers who came in, most of them from Venezuela, as it happens right now. And they want to go to these big cities. I thought Texas was just sending them there or maybe kind of convincing them to go there. But when I ask where they want to go, they say New York, Chicago, big cities like that. And I asked why. It's, well, it's something they've heard of, they know, they have friends and family who are already here that they want to be around. So a lot of them want to go to the big cities. And for years, as I've covered the border and I've spoken to officials from towns along the border, they have said exactly this, Megan, that

every state in this country is technically a border town or becomes a border town because they don't stay in Arizona and Texas. They fan out throughout the United States. The numbers are no longer, as you know, insignificant when we're talking about millions of people over a couple of years going to key regions and areas in this country. That is something that's going to be felt in terms of resources and impact on schools and jobs and pretty much everything. I'm telling you, if if you are a Republican politician and you really want to stop this problem, your main goal right now should be to

get all of those people somehow working for Republican politicians, for Republican policies. That is the only way the Democrats will crack down on this problem. The only way to convince the Democrats to stop this, because it's not crime that they may commit or that may be committed against them, the loss of life with the drownings or the rapes against these young girls, they don't care. All they care about is votes. And I'm telling you, if I were a Republican politician, I'd say, great, let's do amnesty. And then I get every Republican working for me to get these people registered Republicans and the problem would stop. Cynical, but, and somewhat humorous, tongue in cheek, but not 100%. Cheryl, stand by. So much more to get to.

I want to talk about what happened with this Duke volleyball player who now, who has accused BYU fans of calling her the N-word. The story has fallen apart and those in support of this player are doubling down. So we'll get to that in just one second. Cheryl, Randy Weingarten is at it again in an incredible burst of dishonesty, which she's been on a run of lately when it comes to her role and the teachers union's role in keeping schools closed during the pandemic. Whereas my kids made me watch this movie Me Time over the weekend, which was hysterical with Kevin Hart and Mark Wahlberg, the big pandi. That's how they referred to it during the big pandi. Okay.

She tweets out yesterday. Teachers want to teach. We have always known in person is best. In the midst of great uncertainty, we fought for safe in-person schooling. Now we're focused on helping kids recover and thrive, regardless of what is thrown at us. That is who teachers are. Okay, then she goes on to add in this article that's being written about her. says, blaming Trump for not reopening the schools. She says this charge is completely false and it's the kind of propaganda and demonization that they like to do. Pointing out her union, the AFT first released reopening guidelines in April 2020, including stipulations like six feet of space, blah, blah, blah. We did the best we could. OK. And then she goes on, by the way, to add, I understand what the right wing is doing here.

They hate public schools and they hate unions. They always have. Okay, so this is just a blatant lie, just a fact check. This is a lie. We all lived it. Those of us who wanted to see the schools open for our children know exactly who's to blame and she is very high on that list.

Here's just a couple of things. Okay. A couple of, um, a couple of fact checks for yahoo.com that did a piece on her and a good example on how cross-examination of a source who's misleading you might work. Um, September, 2020, Weingarten said schools need guidelines like mandatory face coverings and strict social distancing rules to reopen safely. If community spread is too high, as it is in Missouri and Mississippi, if you don't have the infrastructure of testing, if you don't have the safeguards that prevent the spread of viruses in the school, we believe that you cannot reopen in person. Okay. No one can prevent the spread of viruses, period. Right? So she's basically saying they cannot reopen, period. January 2021, she said, along with the New York State United Teachers president joint statement, New York must return to remote learning. We have a moral duty to follow the science and reopening. That's why New York schools should immediately go to remote learning. She goes on. The positive positivity triggers for a closing must be upheld. If they're exceeded, we must close buildings and then redouble our efforts to crush community spread so they can reopening. She goes on and on lobbying the CDC to tighten

their policy on school reopenings. She thought they were too liberal, managing to include an opt out for schools in high transmission areas. Time and time again, Cheryl, she was on the side of closing the schools, making them go remote, unless they could meet impossible standards that she knew very well they could never meet and that the children were the ones who would suffer. And now she has the nerve to look us in the eye and tell us it was Trump. She was in favor of reopening all along. Well, one of the most successful and incredible propaganda feats among many, I think, in the last couple of years was this transformation. Because in the very beginning, even government scientists and public health

officials who later turned around were saying kids were at least risk of having any serious effects, that we really didn't need to worry about them. We didn't need to shut the schools. That would be harmful. And the independent scientists who proved to be more correct in the long run than many of these other public health officials said that the schools never should have been shut down. We would have all been better off if they had remained open. So there was this turnabout all of a sudden that happened in the course of really just a couple of week period where all of the dialogue publicly went from saying kids need not worry to all of a sudden kids were at this huge risk and we had to be frightened and scared for the children.

And out of that was born, of course, the school closings and a lot more. I will point out, Megan, there are a lot of places that didn't shut the schools down. And I visited some of them and did stories on them that had no ill effects or certainly nothing worse than what happened when people shut the schools down. And yet they stayed open and didn't do the harm to the kids. And there was no effort, it seemed to me, from some of these other school systems to look at those results and see how much harmful disease did or didn't spread so that they had some hard facts to go on. But there are places in America that didn't shut down their schools and did quite well. And now she because she was one of that crowd saying kids are resilient. They'll be fine. Kids are resilient as though them not being a bunch of

whiners who even necessarily have the words to express how being socially alienated, being forced to wear the masks all the time, being forced to undergo vaccines that they didn't need and so on. They didn't even have the words half of these kids to express how it was damaging them as though their silence meant something for her side. She now comes out and says, kids need a sense of joy. What they need right now, what's keeping me up at night is that this year needs to be as joyful and as normal a year as possible. They need a sense of normalcy. Some of us knew that all along, and she was a massive impediment to our ability to bring that to the children.

And it wasn't because we didn't care about their safety as their mothers. It was because we understood that she was following some weird political line that had her supporting teachers in Chicago who were totally able-bodied, refusing to teach, even when the far left mayor there said, get back into the classroom and do your jobs. And especially with kids of underprivileged neighborhoods, black, brown kids, get in there and teach them. And these totally fine teachers who she supported were out there dancing, Cheryl, doing interpretive dance to show us how they couldn't possibly return to the classroom because it was just too risky to their health. We have the video because I love it. Here it is.

Make it make sense. Safety is essential. Oh my God. Keep our students and our teachers safe. Safe. They wouldn't go in. They danced.

They wouldn't go in. And people like Randy, that's her union, supported them. And now she wants to lecture us about how the kids need normalcy and joy. Well, and to try to dial back from all of that, I fairly recently have seen kids doing outdoor cross-country running, wearing masks. And I think some of them are wearing them voluntarily now,

not even required to do so. How do you dial back from the fear that was instilled in children needlessly? And then suddenly you turn around and try to tell them or convince them that none of that was necessary. I think that's going to be really hard to dial back from for a lot of kids whose lives have been changed by the rhetoric and the false information really that was put out in some cases by public health officials. Our pediatrician, who's as mainstream as they come, told us that is dangerous. Do not let your child run outdoors wearing a mask, period. I haven't let it happen

yet and I wouldn't let it happen. I don't think people, other people should let it happen. That's insane. All right. Speaking of young people making big mistakes, this BYU-Duke game has turned into a massive national story and there's just been an update. So there was a BYU versus Duke university women's volleyball match on August 26th, not quite a month ago, a couple of weeks ago, actually. And a Duke player reported hearing the N word yelled at her. She is black while she served coming from the student section during two different sets. So she says it happened repeatedly.

Let's see. Okay, so Lisa Pamplin tweeted that her goddaughter, Duke outside hitter Rachel Richardson, was called a racial slur every time she served during the match. And Rachel Richardson has come out now and said she was the one who allegedly heard this against her. Lisa Pamplin has been her biggest supporter. That's the godmother. She also said Richardson was, quote, threatened by a white male who told her to watch her back going to the team bus. Richardson's father said a student was yelling racial slurs towards his daughter, but was allowed to remain at the match. BYU initially apologized to Duke, banned the student who was accused of yelling the racial slurs.

And then Rachel Richardson later posted a three page slide describing the incident on Twitter with a hashtag more than a volleyball player, talking about how her fellow African-American teammates and she were targeted. They were racially heckled and they felt unsafe. Both the officials and BYU coaching staff were made aware, she says, but failed to take the necessary steps to stop the behavior. So the officials and the coaching staff. Then she goes on to say the BYU athletic director, he did the right thing. He was quick to act respectfully and genuinely. He's at the forefront of ensuring the BYU athletic staff and players undergo education now and training to better handle and prevent the racist, ignorant to her, have to undergo training to better handle racist fans. Well, guess what?

BYU did a comprehensive investigation. They spoke with the man who allegedly yelled the racial slurs. They looked at every single video they could get their hands on. They watched the man during the entire time this young woman was serving, both times, all times. They spoke with witnesses, black, white, everyone. They spoke with Duke fans who were right near the guy. Exhaustive. And they say the video shows this band fan scrolling his phone and not talking during Richardson's serving when she said the Rachel taunts began. They did not

find any evidence of racial slurs being yelled at this woman whatsoever, nor toward any Blue Devils player. That's the Duke mascot basically saying this didn't happen. She was either confused or she made it up, but it didn't happen. They've apologized to the fan now who was being said to be the perpetrator. And everybody's standing by their story. The woman hasn't backed down. Her aunt has come out. The godmother has come out and said, I expected this. You know, of course, they're going to stand by and they're not going to recognize racism when it's right there. Like, there's no more fact finding, Cheryl. It's just, no, I believe it. And even

though the evidence shows it did not happen, we can't let go of the narrative. Well, the canonization of people who claim to be victims of something has led to more people, I think, claiming to be victims of something. And they're rewarded for it, whether or not it's true or not. In the end, let me read you a couple of examples, which I put on my website. A week before Trump was elected, Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church in Mississippi was torched, and the words, Vote Trump, found painted on the outside, Mayor condemned the incident as a hate crime, but skip ahead, that it turns out to be that that was a staged attack to look like an attack by Trump supporters, staged by a member of the church who

happened to be Black. The day after Trump was elected, there was an incident in North Carolina, made national news. Hispanic students found a hateful note written on the classroom whiteboard reading, bye-bye Latinos. After the story made national news, it was learned that a Latino student wrote the message on the board. He was upset about the results of the election. I have a whole list of these. Sadly, the assumption almost has to be today that when somebody claims to be a victim of something like that, absent clear evidence, you have to consider the possibility that it's not true, because so often it's not. And again, like you say, people standing by their story in the in the face of lack of evidence or evidence to the contrary, you know, it's just a sad time, really. Yeah, it is a very sad time. And meanwhile, this godmother has had so many, so many racist, racist tweets of her own calling white people crappy ass crackers and they're scary talking about it was

about the uvalde shooting saying uh faux news breathing a sigh of relief it's not a white kid you poor white mother effers can't take it um ain't watching this cracker barrel bullshit um why does cnn constantly interview these dumb ass white women i mean i could keep going like this this this is the person who's speaking on behalf of the alleged victim and by the way they they did find that um the students who were yelling screamed at every duke player as college kids do at all the ball games to distract, trying to make you not make it. And not a racial slur, but they were reportedly yelling the Duke players' first names. Like, if you were up there, they'd be like, choke, Cheryl, you know, you can't do it, Cheryl, you stink. And there was one whose name was Nikki, Nikki. And so there's some speculation about whether she heard Nikki and instead

mistook that for the N word in some crazy way. But look, when they come to you and say, look at all the videos, we have video of the people you say we're doing it. He's literally scrolling his phone the whole time. There is no one, including black Duke fans who were seated right next to these people who heard what you heard. Okay. So it didn't happen. You're going to have to get over it. We understand you believed it. We're going to accept that you had a good faith belief, but no, you can't do that. And the media, Cheryl, as usual, is no better. Looking at how the media handled this, like in the Jussie Smollett story, they just ran with it. They loved it. And what they did was assume it was true and continue

repeating what an awful racist incident had happened at, you know, from BYU, MSNBC, racism on display at Brigham Young Friday fits a historical pattern. USA Today's race and inequity editor, Mike Freeman, he wrote that Richardson was a hero surrounded by a lot of people who failed her. ESPN said that Richardson endured racial abuse from the fans. She has the term anti-racist in her Twitter bio, by the way. The media piles on because they love stories like this. Well, the accusations, the false accusations are themselves racist in nature and certainly deserve some sort of mitigation or apology when it's revealed that they were not true. And yet it's hardly ever followed by that kind of response. Yeah. The media won't be apologizing the same way this godmother

won't be apologizing. And so she's just going to continue saying it happened. And this poor guy who was accused is going to have to live under this. If I were this guy, I'd be filing a lawsuit ASAP. Cheryl, thank you so great so much.

It's been so great speaking with you and seeing you again. Thank you for having me. We're going to have more on victimhood coming up by the guy who's literally just written the book on it, Vivek Ramaswamy. speaking with you and seeing you again. Thank you for having me. We're going to have more on victimhood coming up by the guy who's literally just written the book on it, Vivek Ramaswamy. And remember, you can find the Megyn Kelly show live on Sirius XM Triumph Channel 111 every weekday at noon east in the full video show and clips by subscribing to our YouTube channel,

youtube.com slash Megyn Kelly. If you prefer an audio podcast, go ahead and follow us and download the show on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts for free. And there you'll find our full archives, more than 385 shows. Our next guest is Vivek Ramaswamy, tech entrepreneur and author of the new book, Nation of Victims, Identity Politics, The Death of Merit, and The Path Back to Excellence, which is out tomorrow. Please support Vivek and buy this book. Welcome back to the show, Vivek. Great to have you. Good to be on, Megan. How are you? I'm very well. It's not that you need the money. It's that the viewers need to listen to the

message. That's what's important because you outline the problem brilliantly, brilliantly calling people out on their nonsense and sort of diagnosing how we got here and how it needs to stop. Oh, it needs to stop. Give us an overview. So my basic thesis in the book is I actually pick up where I left off my last book, Woke Inc., which was about the curious merger of political and social agendas with corporate America's interests. But the conclusion I came to at the end of the book is it takes two to tango, right? Companies cannot get away with politicizing their agendas if their customer bases don't ultimately want to go along with them. And so what I do in the new book is I ask the question of what's actually

going on in our culture. And I think where I left Woking Off was with the idea that there is a vacuum of national identity in America. There is a hunger for purpose and meaning and identity that isn't filled by the cheap fast food that corporations feed us. But what can we fill that void with instead? Well, right now, the case I make in the book is victimhood narratives. One's identity as a victim has become America's new national identity. Black victims, white victims, liberal victims, conservative victims. As a first generation American, I see it in second generation Asian Americans and Indian Americans too.

Victimhood has become America's new national identity. It's a currency. It's like a currency that's trading at a bubble and people are cashing in while the bubble is trading at an all-time high. But the case I make in the book is that what we really need is to fill that void with a different national identity instead, a national identity based on the shared pursuit of excellence. It is the reason why most immigrants come to this country. It is the reason why my parents came to this country. But the path reason why my parents came to this country. But the path from one to the other is a complicated one, and it runs through some uncomfortable places.

And that's a big part of what it took a book to explore. And that's why I chose to write it. I didn't think I was going to write a second book this soon, but I think of it as a sort of sequel to Woke Inc., asking ourselves how we can fill that vacuum of national identity with something more meaningful that doesn't just criticize the poison, but hopefully dilutes it to irrelevance by filling it with something I think far more rich and meaningful instead, which is this shared national identity that I propose built on the shared pursuit of excellence. I'm thinking about Sheryl Sandberg and her book Lean In, which encourage people to work

hard and go for it and make sure you have a seat at the table and don't just say like, oh, I can't or, you know, force yourself to raise your hand and be the one. And then Michelle Obama coming out and saying, you know, basically, you know, that shit, that doesn't work. Like sort of speaking back, pushing back on behalf of people of color like, OK, rich white lady, you don't understand that that doesn't work. Meanwhile, Cheryl, I think her dad was an orthodontist. It wasn't like she was she couldn't pay her family bills when she was growing up,

but she's gone on to become one of the richest women in the world. Thanks for her own hard work. All right. And with all due respect to Michelle Obama, she wound up at Harvard Law School. She was Princeton undergrad. She was at a white shoe firm in Chicago. She did pretty well for herself in America, too. But, you know, she sort of tried to push back on the push for excellence being like, it's harder if your skin is a certain color. Well, the problem is, it's what I call kind of the Heisenberg principle in quantum physics. It's the social equivalent of that. So what does the Heisenberg principle in quantum physics say?

It says that you can't measure a phenomenon like the spin of an electron while also actually not changing the way the electron itself spins. So the two are inextricably linked to one another. This is what we learned from in quantum mechanics. The principle in the social world is effectively you cannot at once describe the social world without actually affecting the way that social reality works. And so that's a long way of saying that when we describe ourselves as victims, victims defined in the form of racial identity politics, or gender identity politics, or even partisan politics, that actually contributes to the world you create. And so in some ways, what Michelle Obama says may become true, because the people who listen to her and she herself think of herself that way. And they are a victim of their own self-conception, of their own vision

of their own identity. And I think if you deny yourself human agency, then indeed you lack human agency. It's not because somebody else shackled you though. It's because you were shackled by your own psychological need to view yourself as a victim. So one way or another, as I say in the book, we see ourselves as victims of one another, but the reality is we're victims of ourselves. And I think it's the question of human agency that's at the heart of the book, at the heart of identity, is to say that either you are an immutable agent on a tectonic plate of group identity, a prisoner of whatever direction that tectonic plate moves, or you're an agent that can define for yourself your destiny in the world through your own hard work, your own commitment,

your own dedication. That's the path, right? That's the case for identity I make in the book. It's the case for American identity I make in the book. I think that's actually the vision that unites us or once united us as Americans. I think it can be so again, but the path to get there isn't going to be easy from where we're starting today. Well, while I'm on Michelle Obama, she's kind of a good example of all this because she claimed that she was the victim of racism sort of infamously. While she was first lady, she said that she was in a store and that somebody didn't recognize that she was the first lady and thinking she was a staffer at what was like a

Walmart or something like that, asked her to get the person something off the top shelf. Meanwhile, it's Michelle Obama is tall and she described this woman as short. And it was completely reasonable that the person saw a taller person and said, hey, would you help me out as many of us have done over time? And Michelle Obama had already told that story in a funny, lighthearted way and apparently forgotten, not claiming to be the victim of racism on a late night show. But she got in front of one of the

historically black college audience for a graduation speech and told it like, I too am a victim. I have been the victim of racism. And the media on the right wing start, you know, are like, who had long memories were like,

no, you can't get away with that. And honestly, remember, she she had some negative pushback because she said when her husband got nominated or when he won, it was the first time in the Obama's official portraits, you know, his his painting and hers. Even in that setting, she's been first lady twice. Her husband was reelected. He was elected. He was reelected. People want her to be the next president in large numbers. She had to go there about herself and our country. Here she is. This is Sat 13. So for me, this day is not just about what has happened. It's also about what could happen. Because a girl like me, she was never supposed

to be up there next to Jacqueline Kennedy and Dolly Madison. She was never supposed to live in this house, and she definitely wasn't supposed to serve as first lady. To me, it felt unseemly to go, it's an America bash. That's what it is. It was on Wednesday. Well, the thing that she misses is that the woman that looks like her did live in the White House for eight years. And at some point, there may have been a point in our history, somewhere measured in centuries plus decades ago, where that may have been an appropriate conversation to reckon with the past. But at some point, we ultimately have to engage in mutual forgiveness and decide that we're going to move on. That's actually the heart of the case I make in the book. The path from

victimhood to excellence runs through forgiveness. And that's uncomfortable terrain for a lot of people, but it's very difficult to give up your status as a victim. So there's a game theory problem here, even. I don't mean to be too philosophical about this, but one of the cases I make in the book is Immanuel Kant actually talked about a paradox of fishermen, where at the end of the day, if you want to fish, if you have a community of fishermen, if you overfish, everyone ends up with less fish. But every fisherman still has an incentive to be able to overfish himself. But his reason for not doing it is that ultimately the whole community would suffer if he took advantage of that for himself. I draw an analogy to the tales of victimhood that we now tell,

because when somebody gets a competitive advantage from seeing themselves or describing themselves and holding themselves out as a victim through an affirmative action program to get into college, whatever the case may be, everyone loses out. Our national identity is the air is sucked out of it. The size of our economic pie is reduced. So everyone is left as a net loser in the collective when we each individually describe ourselves as a victim. But when you have the incentive structure culturally that's been set up that at the end of the day, victimhood is what gives you cultural power. It is what gives you cultural relevance. Sometimes it actually pays literally, quite literally, financially to be a victim. Then it's a collective action problem where everyone has an incentive to describe themselves

as a victim. But at the end of the day, it's our national identity and the decline of our nation as a whole that we see as the net result of that game theory problem. And so there's numerous ways the surface does. And you see it, by the way, it's not just Michelle Obama. You see Kamala Harris. I was even just listening to that clip, Megan. I was remembering the moment where she was in that debate with Joe Biden and described herself as that girl in the context of busing and desegregation. People forget, this is a woman whose two parents were both tenured professors in the United States. And her own academic achievements, unfortunately, did not match up to actually what the cards that she was dealt.

That wasn't supposed to be a woman that ended up in the White House. Michelle Obama says, look, Kamala Harris, that was supposed to be a woman that actually was well-educated and performed academically well, like her older sister did going to Stanford Law School. I mean, unfortunately, Kamala could not actually step into those same shoes herself. So she had to invent this victimhood narrative instead, reinventing the idea that she weren't children of two tenured professors of liberal arts universities, of top tier liberal arts universities. And so one of the things that I talk about in the book, you were just talking about the Duke BYU example earlier, that's going to get dismissed soon as a conservative talking point. There's just a small fake hate crime hoax that was dismissed as a conservative talking point.

Actually, in the first chapter of the book, one of the things I detail is how many countless examples we have seen of these alleged hate crime hoaxes of academics who claim to fake their race, who claim to be one race, but not the another. This is an epidemic. And I think the question we have to ask is not to just partisanize it and point fingers, but just psychologically, what is going on in the national psyche that makes this not a one-off incident, but a repeatable pattern, a psychological epidemic of people going to the full length of falsely reporting what happened to them as a victim of a hate crime

or falsely reporting their racial identity. It's an interesting moment to take a step back and just reflect on what is it in our national psyche and our collective incentive structure that we've set up that causes this type of behavior to repeat itself over the last several years. I would prefer the fakers to the people who actually, like they glom onto something that's real and start cutting off their breasts to, to seem special. You know, I mean, they're not actually trans,

but they're going to say they are because they think they're going to get snaps. If they're like, I'd rather somebody just fake it. Like I'm black. Yes, I am. What do you mean? You know,

that works better for neither, but, but I can see, I can see. Yes, I am. What do you mean? You know, that works better. Yeah, I prefer neither, but I can see where you're coming from. So one of the things I discovered, Megan, though, is in the culture we live in right now, it is very difficult to persuade someone of a point of view that they do not already hold. So one of my methods that I try to bring to bear in this book to accomplish that otherwise, for me, at least lofty goal, is to actually look to history. History dating back to the US Civil War, to the Reconstruction era. Heck, even going back to Roman history. And one of the stories I tell in the book is the story of Septimius Severus. So he was famously known, I studied him in high school,

as the Black Emperor. That's what he was known as. Turns out it was only in the last half century that he started actually becoming described as the black emperor, where there was a TV series that they were launching that said it was the advertisement for the TV series was the first black man to walk England came not as a slave, but as a conqueror. And then they got people all riled up about this black conquest of this black emperor. In reality, if you go back to the Roman era, to the era of his contemporaries, people could see they had eyes, they could see he was dark skin, but they never thought of him as a black emperor, any different than the color of someone's eyes

or the color of someone's hair. Now, the funny cherry on top to this story, though, is that actually he happened to be one of the worst emperors in a very long time. He enslaved a lot of people in Africa. He was brutal as a tyrant. And he needed to do it because he had devalued the currency so much that he needed to plunder other places in order to actually replenish the silver that had otherwise been diluted in the denarius, the Roman currency. So one of the things, we can talk about that incident. That's pretty interesting. But I hope that's a way of bringing insights into the present to say that, look, we can actually talk about what is important about this guy, what his accomplishments might have been and what his failures might have been if we stop having to describe him as the black emperor, because then we're committed to one narrative that is a product of our anachronistic retrospective view through racial identity. When in fact, the Romans didn't see someone through the color of their skin. They saw them as the basis of either being citizens or not of that nation. Not like they didn't have a hierarchy, but it was a hierarchy based on

national identity rather than racial identity. And so my hope is we can use our study of history to at least be a way to break through the otherwise seemingly codified barriers in our dialogue where you can very rare anymore persuade someone who already has who had a different point of view anymore. So then you can at least, you know, galvanize the people who already agree with you. And one of my goals with this book is to, is to, you know, hopefully do something that I'm not sure I was able to do with Woking, which is to convince someone on the other side. I hope history is a tool and a vehicle to get there with this one. You know, we'll see if that's successful or not. Well, I think the discussion of Rome in the book is very interesting a tool and a vehicle to get there with this one. We'll see if that's

successful or not. Well, I think the discussion of Rome in the book is very interesting. And I definitely want to get to that. Just to touch on two things before we leave them. The BYU Duke investigation. Now, I mentioned the aunt, the godmother, the aunt, Richardson's godmother, Lisa Pamplin. She refuses to accept BYU's finding. So now they've done a comprehensive investigation. And again, BYU's initial instinct was to apologize. They felt awful. They believed her. But they said, we're going many others anticipated. Keep in mind, Vivek, this godmother, Lisa, likes to refer to white people as crackers and has marginalized people, economically disadvantaged people and disempowered people is shifted unfairly and without hesitation. She feels the burden of proof was shifted upon her goddaughter, who is so far as I can tell, wasn't required to do much of anything in this investigation. They just sat and reviewed hours and hours of videotapes, talked to everybody who was nearby. Maybe they took her testimonial as well. But the point is she crosses her arms and says, no, no. And if it comes out against me, you've unfairly shifted the burden of proof on me. So one of the things that I reject wholesale is this post Foucault worldview

of defining all human relations in terms of power structures. Okay. And she used the word disempower. So I reject that worldview. But in this situation, if you're going to embrace a power structure based description of what happened there, the disempowered person was actually the person who was accused. There's no doubt about it. And that might be different 30, 40, 50, 60 years ago, a century ago, the tables may have been turned in a very different direction. But today in the year 2022, there's little doubt in my mind that the person who was in the disempowered position was no doubt the accused. And even still, with the tilt of that investigation and BYU's initial posture going into it,

already ruining that person's life in many measures, still could not find a shred of evidence to support it. What does it remind me of? It reminds me of at the end of the Jussie Smollett case. Okay, so this is a guy who faked a hate crime hoax. The prosecutors initially actually closed off the case because it looked like it smelled really rotten, but actually had to be reopened by federal prosecutors. Speaking of Michelle Obama, by the way, I can't resist bringing this back in. She was a friend of Jussie Smollett's and it was an acquaintance, a chief of staff, I believe, of Michelle Obama who contacted the initial prosecutors in the case to get them to drop charges. It was only after President Trump then directed federal officials to reopen the

investigation that any of this even came to bear, came to light, we found a guy who literally was paying two other Black men, with one of whom he had a homosexual intimate relationship, to pose as white supremacists. That is how hard it is to find a white supremacist to beat up a famous Hollywood actor, is to have to pay them to be able to, you have to be in an intimate relationship with one of them. But the funny thing, the cherry on top is, I don't know if that's the full extent of what happened here in the BYU case or not, but the part that reminded me of it is when the godmother's quote you described reminds me of the defense attorney in the Smollett case, who at the end of the case, she was losing really badly. I mean, the trial was embarrassing, right? If you're in

the defense side here, this is Jussie Smollett is defendant for faking the hate crime hoax, that she then claims racism on the part of the judge who she claimed began to lunge at her because she was a woman of color in the courtroom. You remember that? It's amazing how this story, that were a one-off incident that I don't think it would be worth talking about, right? A lot of people do a lot of stupid things. They're not all worth commenting on. This is different. This is part of a pattern that repeats itself. And I think it's more interesting if we bring this up not to embarrass or call out any particular individual from a partisan perspective, from Michelle Obama to Kamala Harris to this attorney, to this godmother. It's more interesting if we're just curious about what is the psychological, pathological state of mind of an entire country that produces this same narrative

time and again. And one of the things that's uncomfortable for some of us on the right, I don't know how you feel about this, Megan, is that I actually see that pathology spreading to the right, actually, through the narratives of white victimhood identity or conservative victimhood identity. And that's how the woke left wins is not with a bang, but with a whimper, where I think conservatives fall into the narrative of saying, well, you're a victim. Well, guess what? I'm an even bigger victim. And now victim you, but Olympics. Wait, I have to say, but just one other point, because I let's get into that next. But just one other point, because you mentioned how you list in the it's I think is the first chapter of the book. Cases like Rachel Dolezal, where people pretend to be sort of a marginalized group, a member of it in order to get the same status. And you mentioned one who I'd never heard of, just so people know, this is a book full of interesting nuggets like this one. Neuroscientist Beth Ann McLaughlin, founder of Me Too STEM, everything gets Me Too, Me

Too STEM organization, used a similar excuse or tactic when she admitted to having created, this is amazing, Vivek, do you want to tell the story of what she did created this is amazing. Do you want to tell the story of what she did? Do you remember? Do you want me to just read? I actually got the I was just opening up to the page myself. You go ahead. You got the page. It's amazing. Okay, when she admitted to having created a fake Native American adjunct professor to defend her Bethann on Twitter, she she didn't pretend to be the Native American like Elizabeth Warren. She created a fake Native American friend to defend her on Twitter. McLaughlin's followers became suspicious that her defender was not real. When? Do you want to tell us what Beth Ann decided

to do to her fake Indian friend? So this is during the pandemic. So she created a Zoom memorial for her fake friend who she had managed to kill off with COVID-19. And Megan, this is part of the book where there are literally like seven examples of these back to back. I mean, this is not a one-off incident, right? The Jussie Smollett thing, you bring that up, they'll say that's a conservative talking point. By the way, questioning his narrative immediately after was victimizing the victim all over again. Talking about it afterwards, a conservative talking point. This isn't a conservative or a liberal issue. This is it's a bizarre, pathological state of mind that just repeats itself.

I kid you not, actually, in the editing process, we had to cut about half of the cases that i initially included texas which is too many of them to include something's going on in the country something's in the water so you it is you talk about these institutions in the first book and in this book and um and how sort of they've they've been taken over by people who are just committed to this victimhood and it's very tightly related to this DEI initiative that we see getting pushed from corporate America to education. Last week on the show, we talked about Trinity School and some of these public schools as well that James O'Keefe has been getting on camera, certain teachers or administrators from them talking about how at

Trinity School, the woman wanted to hire, she was joking, but to even have said the thought, a serial killer to come take out the white boys at her school who she thought were horrible, especially the conservative white boys who she wanted dead. It's not funny. And I've had a kid in a school just like Trinity in New York City where they had teachers who are insane like that when it comes to identity politics. Although I love most of our teachers at Collegiate, I'll tell the truth. It was the administrators who started pushing this nonsense. In any event, at Trinity, we covered it. There were some people who came to me and said, MK, don't pretend that it's an individual school issue. The National Association of Independent Schools, they're pushing this.

You can't even join now unless you submit to their DEI agenda. Same is true at the college level. And there was a tweet that I saw you tweeted about that also caught my eye on Twitter that brings home the point. All right. This is about Ohio State and what it's doing now to address racism and racial inequality. This is just to give an example of what we're dealing with here. This is a guy named John Saylor, who's a fellow at the National Association of Scholars, who had a whole thread on what Ohio State's doing. Okay. They recently released the report from their Task Force on Racism and Racial Inequities, which recommends far-reaching changes throughout the university. They'll likely be adopted. The first step is to create a university-wide

DEI plan. Okay, of course. They want increased mandatory DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion training throughout the university. Also, they want added DEI metrics to promotion and tenure evaluations. So I don't know how you're supposed to get into the DEI group if you're not already for your tenure application, but okay, good luck. They are doing things like at the College of Engineering, they've already added a DEI assessment to annual reviews and removed mandatory ACT and SAT math scores. Those are gone. College of Education and Human Ecology has issued a racial justice and equity action plan promising a curriculum overhaul and department level DEI

plans. The university began a massive hiring initiative aimed almost exclusively at faculty whose research addresses diversity, equity, and inclusion. Every faculty job listed by the College of Arts and Sciences includes this statement. Over the next few years, the Ohio State University is committed to welcoming 350 new faculty hires.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We want people who are committed to equality and inclusion, diversity statement. I could go on, Vivek. It's exhaust. It's exhausting, but it's required now to be an independent school, to be a public school, to be a university, to get anybody to apply to you. We could go on. It's the source of our national decline. I mean, ultimately the case I make in the book is that, look, at the end of the day, China actually believes in hiring based on merit. So the American culture of meritocracy has left oceans to lift up places like China, while it's their Maoist victimhood complexes that have in turn come back and left oceans to depress the United States. And I think that you take, I mean, this is a very pragmatic effect. And in some sense, Megan, I'm actually weirdly optimistic that it will be the rise of China that forces a reckoning here in the United States to revive the pursuit of excellence,

not because we wanted to, but because it was necessary for our very self-preservation, because that's what's going to come back down. When we ask ourselves 20 years from now, what were we doing when we were selecting our engineers and our doctors based on DEI quota systems rather than based on SAT scores or MCAT scores or ACT scores or based on their competence? And if you want any further evidence for this, not a lot of people talk about this, Megan, but let's just take one of these stories all the way through of a student, okay, who then to get into college did not have to take the SAT or ACT math. That was forgiven, and you're filling a quota system into college. Then that person goes to law school where they have the same systems again. Now, let's take medical school as an example, where the MCAT may be evaluated differently on the basis of race. So now you have already twice selected,

okay? You already have a 400-point differential. That's a lot on the SAT of race. So now you have already twice selected. You already have a 400-point differential. That's a lot on the SATs for people who aren't familiar with it, between the average Asian score required to enter a top school versus the average Black student's score required to enter a top school. You already got it on college once. Double count, number one, is then you do the same thing in medical school. Double count becomes a triple count when you do the same thing with USMLE step one, which is the test required to get your medical certification. The first of three steps required to get your medical certification, which just switched to pass fail recently, again, that among residency programs, there was rampant racism, supposedly, amongst engineering, amongst the fellows and amongst the attending physicians who are cutting the Black residents at a higher rate than white residents. So I wrote a note to

the author of the story. It relates exactly to the kinds of themes I talk about in my book. I thought it was fitting to ask the author. Have you considered the possibility that perhaps what's happening when these residents are actually responsible for treating patients in the hospital, that the thing that might be happening is that they're cutting out the residents who are underperforming, who correlate with the very residents who scored most poorly, starting with their SAT to their MCAT to their USMLE that were underprepared for their jobs. Might that be a different explanation for what's happening rather than systemic racism, which suddenly popped up only in the residency

part of the system when black residents were being systematically cut at a higher rate than white residents? I kid you not, she hadn't thought of that possibility. So this is somebody who was earnestly curious. She's like, I'm going to have to study that. That's a really interesting point. Oh my God, it's so on the nose. Which is staggering. But this is the tortured framework within which we live that any racial disparity has to be attributed to some type of invidious form of intention without recognizing that actually we created the very system that selects for that type of apparently disparate behavior. At the end of the day recognizing that actually we created the very system that selects for that type of apparently disparate behavior. At the end of the day, how are we going to figure

this out? It's going to be how many lives are lost at the bedside? How much less competitive are we going to be in the semiconductor industry, in any other area of technology where we're going to be quickly falling behind China and other parts of the world? I hope it doesn't come to that before we wake up. But at the end of the day, we may be so far down the path that one of the things I predict in the book, and this is part of when I trace the parts of Roman history as well. You know, the optimistic part of this, Megan, is that we often think about the fact that there was one fall of Rome. You know, I think the optimistic silver lining here is actually that's a false narrative of history. There were many rises and many falls of Rome. And I think for the folks

who say that we're now at the fall of the American experiment, I would say not so fast. I hope that there will be many rises and many falls before our experiment is done. But we're going to have to, we're going to have to have something that wakes us up. And usually it's either a war, the rise of a rival, an economic calamity or collapse. But whatever that shock to the system may be, I hope it doesn't come to it, but I predict it might before we have that kind of wake up call that revives our defining culture of excellence and merit in this country. Yeah, because you're also predicting, guess what? We may not be Rome. China may be Rome. We may be playing a bit part. And that may become all too

clear very soon. We'll pick it up there because I love the discussion about Rome in the book. It was very illuminating to me and I don't really love our supporting role. I hope it's not China, but we'll pick it up there in two minutes. Don't go away. More with Vic right after this quick break. So let's spend a moment on Republican victimhood,

which we touched on a minute ago. I try to stay objective on these things, but, you know, I maybe I'm not. You'll tell me. I actually see a lot of these Republicans forget election deniers. That's the thing in and of itself. OK, but like I see them as like actual victims. I really do think that the Republicans have been wrongly silenced and excluded from the public square, whether it's media or, you know, having their voices silenced or social media, Hollywood, they can't get any sort of, you know, purchase whatsoever. Corporate America now doesn't like their worldview. You're considered a bigot if you're pro-life. You know, it could go down the list. And it's not to say that there's no racism on the side of the wokesters or sexism and all that stuff. I acknowledge that that still exists in the country. It's just nowhere near as massive and widespread as they claim. So I won't say that they're fakers when they when they have their claims of victimhood. I just think there are a lot of fakers who are sort of glomming on to a dark past history

to try to make the problem seem much worse than it is. But I know. So so where am I going wrong? Because I know you have an issue with Republicans. You're I don't think you're going wrong, Megan. I mean, there's 11 chapters in the book. One of them is dedicated to conservative victimhood. I think that, you know, the ratio, is it asymmetric in the world the way that you, the way that exactly that you described? I think absolutely it is. I mean, I've been a vocal critic of woke culture through Woke Inc. and my other work over the course of the last year. But if I'm writing a book about victimhood culture, it was going to be incomplete without

putting a finger on, I think, a rising tide of, you know, if you want to frame it in a racial lens, which I prefer not to, but the counterpart to black victimhood is, I think, a rising narrative of white victimhood. And I think a conservative victimhood responds to liberal victimhood as well. I think it would have been incomplete without staring at that problem with clear eyes. And I think that there's two ways to take this discussion. One is a relative case for justification for victim hood, which is, I think, an interesting place to go. I think where I prefer to go with the discussion is where we move from here, whether or not you have a legitimate grievance. what does one do when everyone has a grievance emanating in 360 degrees, in a 360 degree direction? I think that that puts us in a permanently, it's an ossified place.

We're effectively flash frozen in a web of tangled web of victimhood. And the case I make in the heart of the book is a case for forgiveness. The path from victimhood to excellence runs through forgiveness. And at the end of the day, I see a greater opportunity. Why did I write that chapter? I see a greater opportunity for the Republican Party, for conservatives to be the party, the only one of the two major parties that defines itself based on the unapologetic pursuit of excellence, based on the rejection of victimhood identities, based on the revival of meritocracy. And I trace in that chapter, many of the ways in

which, look, I think a lot of the industrial victimhood narratives, white victimhood narratives, populist conservative victimhood narratives are grounded in some real economic realities. Look, there are some policy choices we have made in this country over the course of the last couple of decades that Donald Trump had his finger out correctly on the finger on the pulse of. Look, did free trade grow the size of the overall economic pie globally? It did. Was it arguably the right policy course for the United States to have taken at a certain point in time? Absolutely it was. But it also contributed to a world in which the dollar was the reserve currency of the world. That's a good thing for many, for the United States, for reasons I can get into. But one effect of the dollar being the reserve currency of the world is that that makes United States exports incrementally higher than the actual market clearing price would have made them if you didn't have the dollar as the reserve currency of the world, where there's a certain base, including manufacturers in the United States, who are left holding the bag. You layer on subsidies to knowledge-based industries through intellectual property. In my former industry, in biotech,

for that matter, that's, again, a subsidy from manufacturing industries to knowledge-based industries. And then you look at disproportionate representation in the military, whatever. There are strong facts to justify a strong case for conservative victimhood, even in the dimensions that I just described economically that go beyond the elitist discrimination that you laid out. But where from here is the question that I ultimately come to, Megan, is do we want to prove a point or do we actually have a nation left at the end of it. And I make a case for the revival of a shared national identity, because without that, we're just a bunch of, you know, we're just a bunch of human automatons, pounds of flesh roaming the plains of North America. Okay, I get it. But we're talking about tactics right now. We're talking about tactics. Okay, so why, like, we've been having this debate national and nationwide and on the show as well about, for example, cancel culture, which I know you're 100 percent against.

And you've defended a lot of people who have been swept up in it. Why not fight fire with fire? Why not go after the cancelers? Why not celebrate when Chrissy Teigen gets canceled because she celebrated the downfall of everybody on the right who went down? Like, here's a taste of your own medicine. How do you like it when one of yours goes down? Who's Chrissy Teigen going to try to cancel now? No one, right? Like, how are we going to get them to see the error of their ways without fighting fire with fire? I see the appeal of fighting fire with fire. I just tend to find that water is often more effective at fighting fire. And at the end of the day, if we engage in this victimhood Olympics that I was referring to earlier, this oppression Olympics, victimhood

Olympics, there is no gold medalist in the end. It is America that loses as a nation. And at the end of the day, it's going to fall on someone. We have a vacuum of leadership. I think the best fighting chance is for conservatives in this country to lead the way to filling that void of national identity with something far more meaningful than just an impeachment of the other side by hypocrisy. Because I can tell you from a we actually that much better off as a nation without laying out a path forward? And so I made some cases for some provocative ideas in the book, a revival of civic duty. I think that we talk a lot about freedom and liberty, and I talk a lot about reviving the path to excellence through the system of free market capitalism, where everyone can be the best version of their individual self. But I think we're missing half

the discussion if we don't also talk about the revival of civic duty and civic identity and the revival of the idea of what it means to be a citizen and the obligations and civic duties that come with that. The title of the book is entitled A Theory of Duty. It's a play on John Rawls' famous A Theory of Justice. That was a North Star for much of the liberal movement for much of the latter 20th century. I think that a theory of duty might be, as I call in the book, to borrow from an expression of David Hume, our missing shade of red in the conservative movement. It is easy to tear something down. It is a lot harder to fill what we've torn down with an affirmative new vision instead. I don't promise to have,

how could I, to have all of the answers in this particular book, but I do think that that's at least the conversation we need to start having more on the right, or else the thing that we actually care about, preserving and having a nation left at the end of it, we may have won the argument on the, what should we say, the fallen shackles of a Pyrrhic victory. And I think that at the end of the day, that's not what I think any of us want in our capacity, not as conservatives, but as Americans. That's going to have to start at some point. I figured we might as well start today. What, you mentioned forgiveness. How does, you write in the book about a young Indian friend of yours who had like the greatest grades and the perfect SATs and got rejected from everybody. I mean, for all the top institutions. How does this person forgive? How does this person

become part of the solution? Like what, what is that person supposed to elaborate in the story, if you don't mind, and then tell us what plays out. He's a, he's a young guy entering college now. So he's a guy who had whatever, I forget the exact score, 1550, let's call it in the SAT and above 4.0 GPA, call it a 4.5 plus GPA. Great extracurricular activities, appeared to be a good writer. And I'll preface this by saying as best somebody can tell, there's nothing wrong with this kid. Applies to 15 of the top 30 universities in the country, gets rejected from every single one of them. Now, put yourself in the shoes of somebody who's getting that rejection one after another. I mean, at a certain point, the question is, what's wrong with me? And we've set up the

system to work that way because Harvard, for example, my alma mater, and I think one of the worst perpetrators of this anti-Asian discrimination, has set itself up to justify and meet the standards of historical affirmative action laws to say that they're not discriminating based on race, they're just using other attributes like personality scores. Yeah, it's your personality. It's amazing. It's actually just codified. You thought you were making the problem better. You made it 10 times worse. And it's the same thing they did with respect to the so-called Harvard's words, not mine, the Jewish problem that Harvard had only decades ago. And so at the end of the day, put yourself in the shoes of this kid. It's not the end of the world. He's going to get into a perfectly fine state school. He's going to go on and

get a great education and live a normal life. Well, look, if you're in his shoes, he's still the same talent that should have gotten into one of the nation's top schools. Maybe we can even reinvent our definition of what it means to be a top school. The top schools are the schools that we call the top schools 30 years ago aren't meritocratic institutions. Why on earth should the places that I went, Harvard and Yale, be permanently crowned as the top schools for the next century when they're not actually behaving that way? Good question. Good question. So what do we do from here? It's not just forgiveness and some sort of passivity and some sort of, you know, I don't aim to be a theological figure here by my mind,

that's beyond my pay grade. But I mean, in terms of, I use forgiveness more as a self-interested form of that forgiveness. That's the sort of Kantian case, the Immanuel Kant self-interested rationality. People miss that Immanuel Kant's version of the golden rule came not from a belief in Christ or a belief in God, but a belief in cold-hearted rationality, that rationality demanded that you treat others as you want to be treated. Because that's ultimately what empowers him to say that, you know what, I might have gone to that state school, but you know what, the state school might actually become what it means to have gone to a good school because they were smart enough to accept me. And I was smart enough to be able to work hard and still make my own way in this world.

And so that story is still yet to be written. So the story isn't over yet. But I would prefer to see it go in that direction through the revival of meritocracy, through new structures, through new institutions, rather than to wallow in one's own victimhood and expect recompense or sorrow as a consequence. Yeah, the answer is to reject victimhood at every turn. By the way, tell that guy if he wants a job in media to call me when he's done with his state school education be happy to talk to him um so that leads us to what if we don't what if we what if we go the wrong way but if we stay wallowing in victimhood i mentioned this the other day i heard a great quote in a book i'm reading um it was suffering is universal victimhood is a choice and um so if we decide to choose victimhood more and more and more on both sides, we wind up changing the whole American experiment. We find out very soon we were never Rome. We were something

else entirely. We were Carthage, which I didn't go to Harvard. So explain Carthage and how we might be Carthage instead of Rome and China might be Rome. Well, so I draw an extended allegory in the book between the Punic Wars, between Rome and Carthage, the two great empires of their day. We indulge ourselves by asking ourselves whether we were Rome. Greg Popovich of the San Antonio Spurs famously said, you know, in a way that was supposed to be a critical assessment of America, that we might be Rome referring to the fall. I think I say in the book is the Roman empire lasted thousands of years. We should be so lucky as to be Rome. We might actually be Carthage, one of the other empires that Rome went on to defeat at many points along the way. This was one of them. And one of the islands that drew them into conflict was Sicily.

I worry that Taiwan might be our modern version of Sicily. And that if there's the famous thought experiment of the Thucydides trap, Graham Allison popularized it, which said that effectively when you have an empire in decline, another rising empire, they're inevitably destined to enter into physical conflict. Well, that maps on pretty well to where we are, not only with Roman Carthage a couple thousand years ago, but with America and China today. And so I do spend some time going into the book into some detail on what's at stake. I mean, why does China care about invading Taiwan? It's not just about national pride. It's not just about hubris. This is not Putin invading Ukraine. People miss this about Xi Jinping. They're playing a long game. Taiwan is the mothership of

the global semiconductor industry, Taiwan Semiconductor Company, and many other Taiwan TSMC, as well as many other companies in Taiwan. These are the world's leaders in producing the semiconductors that power our iPhones, that power our computers, that power our refrigerators, that power our modern way of life. And the United States is decades behind. China has, for their part, been decades behind too. So people forget this. As much as we might worry about the Chinese revival of meritocracy and they don't have DEI over there, that's a competitive advantage for them and their engineers. They do have a command and control system that doesn't actually work to spawn innovation either. But one of the things they do have increasingly is military might. They might use that, I predict, starting actually next month

starts the clock, Megan. I've long said this. Xi Jinping takes his third term, unprecedented third term as leader of the Chinese Communist Party. It's a two-term system otherwise. He wasn't going to rock the boat before that. He wasn't going to take the risk of going to Taiwan before that. But I think the window between next month and say January 2025, when the next US president could take office, that's the window we're talking about here. When I think China is likely to make a move for Taiwan, and that I think may call America's bluff over the course of the last several years, our bluff militarily. I go through some naval analysis in terms of comparing our strength of our Navy versus China's and comparing how that might come to a head over Taiwan. But even our educational bluff in terms of whether or not we were prepared with the technical and technological talent and prowess? That's our path to a millennium from now, being a bunch of maybe five centuries from

now, maybe two centuries from now, being a bunch of Chinese slaves that look like the ones in Shenzhen today. Shenzhen may be a preview of what's to come in the state of Indiana or the state of California. I say that to be provocative, but not because it's actually so preposterous. And at the end of the day, I said this before, I'll say it again, it may be necessity that compels us to actually get our act together to revive merit, to revive that shared pursuit of excellence. I hope that my book or other speakers on this topic, I hope efforts through the private sector, like what I'm trying to do through Strive in Our Economy, through others, I hope brave leaders who step up in our

different institutions can compel a better return to our path towards excellence in the meantime. But if it's not going to happen organically, it's going to happen out of necessity. And I predict that that biggest catalyst that I can see in the next couple of years is the rise of China, particularly catalyzed by its intentions coming to a head through its invasion or else a blockade of Taiwan, which is going to hit us here at home far harder than Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine ever did. I mean, if God forbid we ever find ourselves in a military conflict with China, we'll be well served if we can do more than just sit there and count the number of diverse members of their Navy. Well, they don't have as many people of color or trans soldiers as we do. So we should.

Well, no. Vivek, you have a way of shining a light on all these issues. That's unlike anybody else. It's nice and clear. I'm sad we didn't even get to the ESG corporate war that Vivek is single handedly fighting. But buy the book and support him for reasons that should be obvious to you having listened to him. This just in breaking news cnn reporting that the reason donald trump is in washington dc is golf so everyone who freaked out can sim the mer calm down he's golfing not getting indicted

um what a shock listen before we go i want to give you a preview of what we have coming up this month on the show because we have some great ones to celebrate our two year anniversary as a show and our one year on Sirius. We got Malcolm Gladwell on Thursday, his first time on the show since I moved to Sirius XM. Then his first appearance ever will be Russell Brand one week from today. Really excited for that. Cannot wait. It'll take place live in person at the SiriusXM studios. Later this month, we're going to celebrate our two-year anniversary with a guest like British Bridget Phetasy, who's not been on since December 2020.

Everybody loved that interview. Old pals like Ben Shapiro, Dave Rubin will be back. Just a taste of what we've got stored up for you. You're going to love it. Please subscribe in the meantime. YouTube.com slash Megyn Kelly or anywhere you get your podcasts for free. We'll talk tomorrow. Thanks for listening to The megan kelly show no bs no agenda and no fear