The Megyn Kelly Show - Trump Warns Iran and Israel on Ceasefire, MAGA Divide, and NYC's Potential Socialist Rapper Mayor, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 1094
Episode Date: June 24, 2025Megyn Kelly is joined by Kmele Foster, Michael Moynihan, and Matt Welch, hosts of "The Fifth Column," to discuss Trump's actions in the Middle East, the state of the ceasefire deal between Israel and ...Iran, whether America should stay involved in the conflict, Trump dropping an f-bomb over his frustration with how Iran and Israel are acting, where Trump's foreign policy falls in the political spectrum, Emily Jashinsky’s news-making conversation with Tucker Carlson on the premiere episode of "After Party," how he unloaded on Ted Cruz and Mark Levin as the MAGA and GOP civil war continues, the fracturing of the MAGA movement over the past week, whether recent events will raise President Trump’s approval rating, the bizarre moment we're in where Jeb Bush and Trump are praising each other, remembering the wild moments of Trump vs. Jeb from 2016, socialist millennial candidate Zohran Mamdani potentially becoming the next NYC mayor, his weird rap career and shifting accents, his terrible policies that could further destroy New York City, and more. Fifth Column- https://wethefifth.substack.com/ Tax Network USA: Call 1-800-958-1000 or visit https://TNUSA.com/MEGYN to speak with a strategist for FREE todayHungryroot: https://Hungryroot.com/MK | Get 40% off your first box PLUS a free item in every box for life!Kars4Kids: Call 1-877-kars4kids or visit https://kars4kids.org/MKLean: Visit https://TakeLean.com & use code MK20 for 20% off 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
Transcript
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Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on SiriusXM channel 111 every weekday at noon East.
Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly.
Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.
The news on Iran and Israel and President Trump's involvement in brokering a ceasefire
deal has been quickly developing.
I mean, like don't leave your phone if you want to stay up
in the latest because it changes every 60 seconds, it seems. President Trump announced last night on
Truth Social that Israel and Iran agreed on a, quote, complete and total ceasefire that would
take effect in six hours. But shortly after that was set to take effect, Iran launched a wave of
missiles at Israel
reportedly killing at least four.
Okay, so it hadn't yet kicked in, but it was about to kick in.
And Iran decided to do a bunch of killing before it officially kicked in.
What the F?
Israel responded by targeting the sites from which those bombs had been launched.
They've got four dead in Israel, 26 wounded as a result of those pre-ceasefire,
for good old time's sake, bombings by Iran. Again, WTF. So Israel responded before the
ceasefire and then there was a couple of collateral incidents. There were a couple of collateral incidents right after the ceasefire kicked
in.
Where Iran, question mark, launched two separate missile barrages at Israel, none of which
hurt anybody and both of which appear to have been stopped by Iron Dome or in some other
way by Israel.
And Trump is unhappy, he's unhappy because Israel responded to those two,
bombing those sites.
And the ceasefire, look, in the Middle East,
ceasefire, it's basically, it's paused
and there might be a few extra bombings.
We have to wait to find out,
but like you could still be in a ceasefire, but they just love bombing so much. I mean, truly they just bomb, extra bombings. We have to wait to find out, but like you could still be in a ceasefire,
but they just love bombing so much. I mean, truly they just bomb, bomb, bomb.
This is like what it's like. I mean, so, so many of my friends, my Israeli friends or my Jewish
friends are like, Megan, do you want to go to Israel? We'd love to take you. I don't know. I
do not want to go to Israel. Thanks. But no, why would I want to go to Israel right now? I'm sorry.
I love the Israeli people, but I have zero desire to go to Israel, just like
I have zero desire to go to the Iranian nuclear sites, right?
I don't want to go places where people are getting bombed.
And what I do at night is pray.
I pray for my friends in Israel.
I have dear friends who have family there, but this is no way to live.
And Israel's been trying to stop it for many,
many years. They can't stop it. There's many nations around them and factions that want them
dead and wiped off the face of the earth. And it's going to be really hard to talk Iran out of it.
The best we can do is get them to at least on paper, maybe say that they'll stop,
which Trump has achieved. But you know, there's obviously a question as to, is it worth the paper it's printed
on?
President Trump signaling he's not happy with Israel and he's not happy with Iran.
I have to say what you're going about to hear, you'll hear it here and then we have a longer
sound bite in a minute.
With him taking aim at Israel too is very unusual for US president, but it's good.
It's good for Trump because he understands in order for this deal to have support, he needs, he needs middle Easterners to be behind it. He
needs some of our middle East allies to be behind it. And it can't always be just a knee-jerk reflexive.
We're with Israel. We're with Israel. We're with Israel. And they can do no wrong. That's what Trump
is trying to signal here. Uh, so he's not happy with either party. And here he was on the White House lawn this morning,
just about to take off for a NATO meeting. Not mincing words.
We have, we basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard
that they don't know what the fuck they're doing. Do you understand that?
what the fuck they're doing. Do you understand that?
I mean, those are terms you might hear on the Megyn Kelly show, but it's very rare to hear the president drop an F bomb. Very rarely he'll do it like in one of his comedy bits at one of his
rallies. But I don't remember him doing it when, you know, commenting on a serious policy matter
before.
And he knows what he's doing.
I mean, he's expressing his frustration at the way things go in the Middle East and the
way these players respond.
And he also really wants the ceasefire.
You know, it's kind of like Trump thinks this deal is done and that should be it. You should hang the deal toy off the ceiling at the 21 club and have a steak.
21 club is no longer, thanks to COVID.
In any event, that's how deals used to get done here in New York.
And actually, if memory serves, is Trump featured in Wall Street when they go into the 21 club?
He might be.
He's in so many of New York movies featuring New York.
Anyway, my point is he's frustrated and who could blame him? Aren't we all? It's like,
they're never going to stop fighting. That's how this feels. They're just never going to stop
fighting. Look, we did our part. He did our part. He protected the United States. He bombed the
nuclear facilities. It's what every president has said needs to be done in terms of stopping them. Only Trump had the balls to do it. Matthew Contenetti,
who's a great writer. He's writing over the free press among other places now and he's on the
commentary podcast. He had this post and here's part of it. He writes, George W. Bush, Barack
Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden all said a nuclear Iran was intolerable.
Yet only Trump paired words with deeds. Only Trump sent Ayatollah Khamenei reeling.
The promises were clear enough. Quote, I take the threat of Iran with a nuclear weapon very seriously,
Bush 2007. Quote, we will not Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon period. Biden in a vice presidential
debate 2012. Qu quote, the goal for
these negotiations is to reach a mutually agreed long term
comprehensive solution that would ensure Iran's nuclear
program will be exclusively peaceful, Obama, 2015.
Kamala Harris, just last year when she was running,
as president I will never allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon.
Continuity goes on, and how have Trump's living predecessors and his 2024 rival reacted now
to Operation Midnight Hammer? Crickets. Not one has issued a statement at this writing
on the most significant foreign policy action in a generation. Why? Too busy at Huma Abedin's wedding to Alex Soros? Great point. All right,
Trump did what was necessary to protect the United States of America. Iran cannot have
a nuclear weapon.
All those statements were not just because we care about Israel, which we do. We care
about ourselves. We care about our troops in Middle East posts, not far from Iran.
And it was very clear across partisan lines that Iran could not have a nuclear weapon,
but only Trump actually did something about it.
But in terms of actually stopping these two from fighting and launching missiles at each
other and bombs, I'm not hopeful.
I'm sorry.
I wish I were. I'm not.
I think it's still a major win that the conflict that was starting between us and Iran appears to be
off for now. They launched those attacks on our bases in Qatar and one in our base, on our base
in Iraq yesterday when we were on the air together.
And then they stopped.
That was it, it was symbolic.
They gave us a heads up.
Trump leader and his true social laid it out saying,
thanks for the heads up so that nobody got killed.
We understand you sent 14 bombs, 13 of which we intercepted
and one of which we allowed to land
because it wasn't gonna hit anything or anyone
and nobody was hurt or killed.
Thanks, we appreciate it.
And nothing else has happened
with respect to the United States.
For us, at least now, given the posture we were in
72 hours ago, that's very good news.
So Trump now is off on a long flight to the Netherlands.
He has his phone and he's truthing away.
So we'll bring you some updates on what he's saying.
Plus the New York Democratic primary for mayor is today.
And by the polymarket odds,
it appears that socialist candidate Zoran Memdani
may beat disgraced former governor Cuomo.
I mean, I never thought I'd say these words,
but go governor Cuomo.
I can't believe it.
Janis Deane, she's got a shiver down her spine somewhere.
But we can't have this lunatic, Mom Donnie.
We cannot have him running the world's greatest city.
New York City is the greatest city in the world,
even as hobbled as it's been by years of Democrat control.
And it cannot be in the hands of an avowed socialist.
It cannot.
It's already hobbling along thanks to many years now
of Democrat rule post the Bloomberg Giuliani,
delightful 12.
So that's what we're gonna be watching today
as the poll results come in.
First, we're gonna be joined by our guests here to discuss it all and more.
Camille Foster, partner at Freethink, Michael Moynihan, host of the Moynihan Report on Two-Way,
and Matt Welsh, editor at Large for Reason.
Together, they are the hosts of the Fifth Column podcast, which you can find at weethefifth.com.
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Guys, welcome back.
Hi, how are you?
Good to have you with us.
Great to see you. All right, let's just start with, before we get to Mondami,
because there's a lot to talk about with that lunatic. And two out of three of you are still
in New York, so like really have a dog in this race. But let's talk first about what I said at
the top about the Middle East and the ceasefire, is it on?
Is it not off?
Trump dropping the F-bomb at these two out of frustration.
You know, let's just kick it off
with what you make of my take on it,
which is like, we should just be happy
they're no longer launching bombs at us
and that the retaliation for our bomb dropping
appears to be done and that they're back
to sort of launching these mini bombs at each other or not and maybe
pausing and maybe not unclear. Your take?
Well, let's start. Go ahead. Well, let's start with this,
Megan. I mean, the response from the Iranians. There's two things
about this. One is that they telegraphed it to everybody. They
sent out like this is what we're going to do.
And by this is what's going to happen.
This is how many missiles because they don't really want to provoke us.
But they want to symbolically say we're going to attack one of your bases in Qatar.
The Qataris are, of course, not an ally, but as close as you can be to an ally with Iran
in the region.
And the Qataris, by the way, responded by shooting them all out of the sky
and saying, well, we leave open the possibility to respond to this,
which was pretty remarkable.
So what they did was what they could do, which was not much.
So that's pretty reassuring.
As you pointed out, Megan, down the road, we'll see what happens.
The Iranians have been hitting Americans and American citizens and American military targets
since 1979 from taking hostages
the second they took over in the American embassy
in Tehran in 79.
So they have a long history of doing this,
but right now they are absolutely defanged.
And you have somebody like Brett McGurk,
who was the Biden White House's coordinator
for the Middle East or something,
saying that this is the best possible place
that we could be in and congratulating President Trump
for managing this crisis, good Lord.
I mean, talk about, you know,
when you're getting Brett McGurk
to say you're doing a good job,
these are people that never say anything positive
about Trump.
And one final thing is that
I think you're absolutely right about something that I, for one, who have been incredibly critical of Trump, I mean, the podcast has been incredibly critical of Trump for where we think he deserves
it. I'm been praising him for this, but I think that you're right in the thing that people don't
understand. You have to keep so many people in the Middle East on board.
Everyone is pointing out that so many of these countries
in the Middle East, like the Saudis, like the Qataris,
and like the Jordanians, are quietly saying, go Trump,
but not doing it publicly because they have a,
you know, restive population that are not huge fans
of the Israelis, that that moment when he's like,
these guys, they don't the fuck they're doing,
which is like, I don't know exactly what he's saying.
But when he's telegraphing to those people that look,
we're gonna criticize this real too.
We're not on board entirely.
You guys have been been lovely and quiet about this,
not criticizing us.
We're gonna kind of reciprocate.
I think that was a, yeah, is he mad at Netanyahu?
But as you pointed out, Megan,
that was a response to the Iranians breaking a ceasefire that first
of all, everyone said that they didn't really agree to and then
said that they did. But yeah, I think that that was definitely a
wise decision. Because of the way Trump presents so many
things, we just tend to think that he's flying, you know, the
seat of his pants and just, you know, you know, kind of ad
living. I think that that stuff is is very well calibrated to say,
let's throw a little dart at the Israelis,
make sure that everyone understands where we are here.
We're not doing this on behalf of Israel,
but on behalf of us and for you guys too,
in the Middle East who actually don't love the Iranians.
My fingers are crossed that all of this is true and good
and we're in a good place and the bad things didn't happen.
But I would really caution everybody not to get too optimistic about this because we have
been similarly in moments of temporary euphoria about the exercise of American power in the
Middle East and then things didn't go out so well.
In August of 2011, a lot of Democrats over the opposition of Republicans were crowing that they
got rid of the Gaddafi regime in Libya. And wasn't that the use of American power at its best? In
Hillary Clinton's words, we were a bit triumphant in March of 1991. My God, we won the Gulf War so
fast, people's heads snapped. And wasn't it great? And then that led to a thing that we should think about now,
which is for the rest of the 90s, more or less, the US created no fly zones over Iraq. So it was just sort of this low level kind of war, we kind of control this. What is Israel going to do in Iran
right now? Israel controls the airspace of Iran and doesn't want them to get a nuclear weapon and
doesn't want them to develop a missile technology. Are they going to patrol that with the U.S. help over the next stretch? We don't know
because you don't know what is going to happen next either in the Middle East or after a big war.
There's a lot of things to be concerned about going forward. I'm less convinced as you are
and Michael are that the use of U.S US power in this case was the correct one.
I think that we should be more skeptical in general about the use of US force against
people who haven't attacked us this week or anytime recently because we have the biggest
power, most powerful military in the world.
And when you are using it against sovereign crappy countries that are nonetheless sovereign, you open up a lot
of potential downstream effects that you can't predict for now, but that could be negative.
So my fingers are crossed and there's a you can see the window into how this was work.
Everyone seems to be kind of deescalating right now. It's possible that the mullahs
are so terrified that they are willing to make some kind of deal to protect their survival. They don't have allies, really. And that's a part.
Where are their friends?
Not many friends. And Israel, I mean, you're a little bit pessimistic, Megan, about the
state of Israel or its ability. Israel has absolutely, not absolutely, but has like very
impressively defanged the ring of fire.
And I know that's a mixed metaphor around it that Iran has created through proxies over
time.
It's been kind of an amazing tactical success on their part.
So fingers can be crossed on this, but I'm not skeptical about Israel's ability to fight.
Not even a little.
I'm skeptical about the prospects of a lasting ceasefire in the Middle East,
that Israel will stand down, that Iran will stand down, that one of Iran's proxies will
remain down. Someone's going to keep launching bombs into Israel and Israel always responds.
That's what I'm saying. I know Israel can do it. What their military's done over the
past couple of years has been spectacular. It's been actually, I mean, I'm not endorsing the level of death. I'm saying they're very,
very competent at killing their enemies, that we've seen. So I have no doubt there.
I just, it's like it's nonstop. It's nonstop violence in the Middle East. This is why I don't
really want to go to Israel. This is why I think a lot of people don't want to go to Israel. And it's
why, I think a lot of us who've want to go to Israel and it's why like,
I think a lot of us who have been paying attention
to the Middle East for a long time,
feel exactly how president Trump felt this morning.
What the fuck, these people don't know what the fuck.
It's like, right?
Like that's the right attitude
when it comes to the Middle East matters.
Sorry, Matt, go ahead.
No, just that, just that they've defanged Hezbollah
from firing those a hundred thousand rockets over the northern border.
That's a huge change.
Hezbollah is a completely Iranian created subsidiary and they're like, ah, we're going
to sit this one out.
So that's a sign that they have actually made progress in having fewer missiles go at them,
even though they had missiles kill people yesterday.
I mean, progress in this part of the world is awkward and
incremental at best but but there has been meaningful progress and I'm a
little bit surprised here because I think I might be not the least skeptical
person about whether or not the Trump administration made the right decision.
It seems like they made a pretty pragmatic calculation that at this
particular time given the pressure Iran was
under, given the fact that they didn't have anyone who was likely to come to their defense
here, that the Americans could sneak in and carry out a pretty devastating attack on these
nuclear facilities that have long been a concern.
And it is not yet clear how much, how effective those bombings were.
And we'll learn more about that in the in the days and weeks to come we hope
but what is pretty clear is that there was a
concerted effort on the part of the administration to broadcast to Iran this could be it
and that that message was well received by the iranians and even the the kind of
Calibrated use of profanity this morning because it did seem pretty like a pretty deliberate choice on the president's part the fact that he's
Directing some of the criticism at Israel as well
Being that he they seem to be navigating this very difficult situation
Pretty well all of that said I will say that once it gets to the point where you're
Lobbing bombs at people as opposed to using the tools of diplomacy
This is it I suppose by definition something of a failure if someone hasn't lobbed a bomb at you already.
But they do seem to be making some progress here and one has to hope for a good outcome
and, again, a really difficult protracted situation that we suspect this is probably
an interregnum as opposed to a durable lasting piece.
But it could be a really useful interregnum as opposed to a durable lasting peace. But it could be a really useful ignorant interregnum.
And it could very well be the sort of thing that creates substantial problems
for the Iranian machine.
And it's one of those things where it's like, it's not our job to create peace
in the Middle East.
It's really not.
Right.
And it is our job to protect American interests and the American people.
And I think Trump consistent with all those other presidents, as I just went It is our job to protect American interests and the American people.
And I think Trump, consistent with all those other presidents as I just went through, citing
the Continetti piece, and we did some of this yesterday too on the show, believes truly
that Iran cannot get a nuclear weapon.
They're too crazy.
They're too jihadi.
They're too, they're a little too keen on killing the Western infidels in order to trust
that.
So given how weak they've been,
they are right now, Trump saw an opportunity and he took it and was also given intel. Yes,
by the Israelis, that's got an asterisk on it as always, but also by the IAEA's assessment that
they'd reached 60% uranium enrichment and that there had been an acceleration in the number of
centrifuges over the past seven, eight months. So he did have data in front of him and who knows what else?
We don't get to see what President Trump gets to see in terms of Intel.
So I trust him that he thought that it was a valid intelligence assessment, that they
were speeding up toward the nuclear bomb.
And it makes sense to me too, given how weakened they were.
I mean, when you corner an animal, it lashes out.
It doesn't usually just fold and ask for peace.
It will tend to bite you from that corner.
And so it makes sense to me in any event.
But the larger question of peace in the Middle East, I mean, like, okay, how many presidents
have tried that?
Some have gotten Nobel peace prizes only for the whole region to wind up, wind up in under missile fire again. It's just that that's just too big. I applaud him for
trying. You know, when we were talking about possibly a deal yesterday, I was saying to
Emily Jushinsky, well, like, what is the deal? What's the deal? Like, we said, stop trying
to develop a nuke. They slow rolled us. Then we bombed their nuclear facilities. It's kind of done. We got what we
wanted. And the big announcement was ceasefire between the other two. Great. I mean, I care
about that too, but that's really between them in the same way like the fighting since 10-7 has been
between Israel and it's many, many haters over there. And on this show, we haven't really covered
the day-to-day battles because it's really not America's over there. And I on this show, we haven't really covered the day to day
battles because it's really not America's fight.
But look, I understand Israel's our ally.
Iran's not its proxies aren't.
But it's really not exactly our fight.
Go ahead, Michael.
Well, a couple of things about this, I mean, to your point about
Trump's intelligence and what he has and what we haven't seen and, you know, just kind of bouncing off of what Matt said, there are a lot of lessons to learn
from Iraq and to be skeptical. And I agree with Matt, by the way, it's like this is
a momentary success, but let's not think this is a lasting success.
And there should be no spiking the ball in the end zone relating to anything in the Middle East.
No, if you defeat Grenada in 1983, spike the ball.
If you break the Middle East, no spiking.
But the difference is this, is that in 2003, leading up to the Iraq War, you couldn't find
a lot of Republicans who disagreed with the Bush administration's desire
to go into Iraq and dislodge Saddam Hussein.
Trump is doing something that is actively going to fracture part of his coalition or
runs the risk of fracturing his coalition.
He did it anyway, which is pretty interesting and pretty impressive.
Look, there's a couple of political points here. I mean, he put on
true social, something about some congressmen who had
nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize. It just in by the
way, to get nominated, you just need somebody from a
legislature anywhere in the world can nominate. So he I
think that's how he sees this. And that's perfectly fine to
see it that way. Because what happened in 1995,
Congress passed a bit of legislation,
what was the, I think it was the Jerusalem Embassy Act.
And what was it 23 years later after, as you said, Megan,
according to the great Matt Contenetti,
who's a friend and I think he's brilliant,
is that everyone said they were gonna do it.
And then 2018, Trump does it.
Everyone says they cannot have a nuke
and people are shocked that Trump has done this.
It was pointed out, and I hadn't even realized this, that Golden Escalator's speech, the very
speech, he said that evening that Iran can't get a nuclear weapon. So he's pretty consistent on
this issue. And I think it's, you know, to his incredible credit, again, as someone who's been
very critical of him, I think it's to his credit, to his incredible credit, again, as someone who's been very critical of him, I
think it's to his credit, that he's actually said, this is what
I'm going to do. And I did it. And I've seen a lot of saw
someone this morning, saying, you know, it is it is right, why
isn't it not their right to enrich uranium and create a
nuclear weapon is the same thing as the Israelis, Duns, et cetera, the United States, Pakistan.
They're too crazy.
Well, that is what you said. And that's right.
It reminded me of what William Buckley once said.
He said, if you see someone pushing an old woman out of the way of the car
and another one pushing a woman into a car, they're not both people
who push old ladies around.
This is a different thing where they have a nuclear weapon.
And so look, I don't in any way,
I'm not celebratory about this.
I am happy, but as you point out,
this is the most important point for everyone to realize
is that what Israel tries to do is to push back
the capabilities of people trying to destroy them.
The people of Hezbollah, the leadership has been destroyed,
the IRGC leadership in Tehran has been destroyed,
the Assad regime has been destroyed,
Assad is now in Moscow.
These are great victories.
It has not changed the idea of the people
that followed Assad, the people that signed up for Hezbollah,
the people that are allies of the regime in Iran,
that Israel must be destroyed. That is something that you cannot necessarily bomb into submission.
So when people say like Trump said the other day, what's the problem with regime change?
They're a bad regime. I'd like to see them change. It's like me too. I oppose us getting involved in
that. But if it precipitates the failure of the disgusting,
horrible, murderous regime in Tehran
that has been oppressing its own people since 1979, great.
But I don't wanna be involved in that.
As you guys know, we've discussed,
Trump actually proposed Gaziera, Mara Gaza.
Trump looks at this region like anything's possible.
Yeah, let's say let's make everybody rich and we'll build instead of destroy and things
will be so much better.
Like just let's just do that.
And it's like he's a sunny optimist in so many ways.
And then when people don't live up to his optimistic vision and like version of them,
he's like, what the fuck?
What's wrong with you? and like version of them. He's like, what the fuck?
What's wrong with you people?
I mean, I bought a time share in con units
cause I was like, this is probably a bad investment.
I think there's one problem or at least one caveat
we should think about in terms of the Matt Continenti
perplex, which is you could make the exact same clip job
of statements by US presidents, every single
one, saying that about North Korea.
And we didn't press the do something button.
We have the mother of all do something buttons, which is the US military.
We didn't do that.
So should we have?
Should we now?
That's a difficult question.
I think my answer, being sort of a constitutionist, libertarian, semi-peace-nick, is no, we shouldn't
bomb North Korea.
North Korea is arguably more psychopathic, but has much less reach than Iran.
Iran has been an active menace in the Middle East for the last half century.
North Korea has thrown some cannon fodder into the Russian-Ukraine war, but otherwise
is pretty ineffectual, generally speaking.
But whenever, you know, part of diplomacy is saying,
well, you shouldn't have this, we refuse to have that,
but do you really mean by that,
that if the other actor doesn't abide by those words
that we're going to press this incredibly lethal,
destabilizing, do something button against a sovereign country. I recognize
that diplomacy and especially diplomacy between people who
are antagonists is absolutely frustrating, messy,
ineffectual, and bad. That is what it's always been. That's
kind of the point of it is that people who disagree with
each other are trying to come up with some kind of way to
coexist without shooting each other, but it is that people who disagree with each other are trying to come up with some kind of way to coexist without shooting each other. But it is kind of a failure of diplomacy when
you end up in a war situation. And we should be skeptical. I think we should be reticent
to hit that do something button. Even when psychopathic regimes are developing nuclear
weapons. I have no love for Pakistan. Don't they sheltered Osama bin Laden last time I
looked for quite some time. There is a lot of problems with that country. Um,
and I'm going to start it with my I agree. You don't go around bombing the
bad countries. I know, but but the situation is much more layered than
that. You know, I mean, what happened? I'm not going to go through the whole
thing. I did at this top of the show yesterday, but the short version is the
thumbnail version is Iran attacked Israel on 10-7 through
its proxy Hamas. They funded Hamas. Iran was funding Al Qaeda. Iran has been funding a lot of
deaths of Americans and people Americans love for a long, long time now. Iran funded that attack
against Israel and through Hamas. Israel gets attacked and Israel spent the next two years taking down everyone who attacked it, you know, mob style, like everyone, you, the entire family,
like the Godfather style, like him, his entire family, dead, dead. And they did it, both Hamas
and then Hezbollah and then the Houthis and then we helped with the Houthis and so on. And then the
Assad regime falls. And then you have all these Iranian proxies that are now gone or their heads have been
chopped off.
And at this point, there's some intel saying Iran is now accelerating its bomb because
I think because it's like a cornered animal and it's starting to panic.
And I actually believe the reports that it was ramping up.
And I said yesterday, Bibi is not really, he has no credibility
for me. I mean, I just, I've watched him every year say there's six weeks away. There's six
months away in 2012. I was on the air when he held up his little picture of the bomb
that you'd see like in a Disney cartoon as like the round bomb with the little fuse at
the top, trying to show us that they were about to have it within months. That's 2012. He is to the bomb claims
what the leftist Greta Thunberg's are to the climate catastrophe claims. That's true. I'm
sorry, but that's true with Netanyahu. His defenders will say, oh, but Israel intervened
to slow it all down. I okay. I don't really believe that that's what stopped. I think
he overstated time and time again how close they were. That's my point. Anyway, my point, I'm just simply saying
that it was more complicated than this
because Israel had created conditions in fighting back
that made this an ideal time to achieve the goal
that all these other presidents agreed we needed to do.
Go ahead.
Go ahead.
Yeah, well, first off, I wanna make sure
that no matter how much you hate Benjamin Netanyahu, please don't compare anyone to Greta Thunberg. Because that's just like a slap in the face. I mean, like, I don't know why he's going to give a speech that can Yeah, a couple things like to slightly disagree with my co-host here, Matt.
I mean, the thing about the North Korea comparison, and I get the idea that there's different
times for this when you say no one's done anything in the way that Matt Contenetti wrote.
But if there is a moment in which the South Koreans were in an active war with the North
Koreans, and the North Koreans had lost all of its allies couldn't do anything was
Totally defanged and at the same time you could actually liberate the people of North Korea
Who have been living under the most oppressive regime on earth at the last kind of Stalinist dictatorship?
It's a slightly different scenario, right?
I mean the fact that Brett McGurk is saying this and some other people mark Ruta the
secretary general of NATO, who's sending Donald Trump a signal message, which Trump then posts
on True Social this morning, which might be the most hilarious thing he's ever done.
It was like this sycophantic message like, we love you, President Trump.
But the reason they're saying this is that this is a moment to do it. I mean, can you imagine this
horrible regime that we've all been so afraid of, and rightfully so too, can't even control
its own skies, hasn't thrown up a single plane against not the B2s, but any American-made
Israeli plane. It's the time in which you do something like this or consider something like
like this especially if the intelligence is saying as i tend to believe i don't have all the evidence
this i've talked to some people about it megan i'm sure you have too that this was an actual serious
point but when you do this you have a thing that so many people matt says i'm a half peacenek i think
that's probably true that's about a half peacenek he sometimes loves war I'm a half peacenek. I think that's probably true. That's about a half peacenek. He sometimes loves war. But Matt, the peacenek, the people who say
blowback, this is something that you hear from the Noam Chomsky's of the world. People used to be
just on the left, but you see it here on the right too. This is also blowback. Blowback is
bi-directional. They have been doing this for so long, intimidating, attacking. Look, you can think that America shouldn't have been involved in the war in Iraq.
I unfortunately, and I criticize myself for this, took too long to get to that conclusion.
But I did, and it was a bad thought that I had, but I was much younger.
But regardless of whether or not we should have been there, we do understand that the
Iranians killed 600, 650 Americans. That's
the kind of estimate through Iranian proxies that they were funding and arming roadside
bombs that were built by the IRGC, IRGC people on the ground in Iraq. Suleimani also killed
by Trump. Where? In Iraq. I mean, so they've been fighting a direct war against us. Should
we have been there? No, we shouldn't have.
But do we say, because we shouldn't have been there,
kill American troops with abandon hundreds of them?
This is blowback.
You guys got overstretched and you left yourself open
and the Trump administration responded
not by killing Iranians,
not by killing Iranian scientists,
the Israelis did that,
blowing up your nuclear program in various places.
You F'd around and eventually you found out.
You found out.
And to quote Colonel Jessup,
you F'd with the wrong Marine.
It had Donald Trump in there.
Joe Biden's gone.
We didn't have some feckless loser leader with no spine.
He tried.
He loves peace.
He went, Gazira.
And he looked at you folks in Iran and said, let's have a great relationship and stop all
the killing.
And then he started to realize, as any good deal maker does at some point, when he's getting
stiffed, when somebody's slow rolling you and doesn't really mean to be there in good
faith.
And then he dropped a bomb on their nuclear facilities. That's how it went down. Wanted
to offer this. I didn't get to it yesterday. But a guy named Jamie Metzel posted this.
You mentioned Brett McGurk as follows, quote, I served this is on X. I served on the National
Security Council under President Clinton. I was Joe Biden's deputy staff director of
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I voted for Kamala, and I'm the president of the United States and the president of the United States
and the president of the United States
and the president of the United States
and the president of the United States
and the president of the United States
and the president of the United States
and the president of the United States
and the president of the United States
and the president of the United States
and the president of the United States
and the president of the United States and the president of the United States for 46 years. Its regime has murdered thousands of American citizens. Its slogan, Death to America,
was not window dressing but core ideology.
It was racing towards a nuke
with every intention of using it to threaten America
or allies or the Middle East region as a whole,
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And then he goes on to say,
although I believe electing Kamala
would have been better for our democracy, society,
and economy, as well as for helping
the most vulnerable people in the US and around the world,
I also believe VP Harris would not have had the courage
or fortitude to take such an essential
step as the president took last night.
Wow.
I mean, it's remarkable.
That's room and credit to him for saying it, Camille.
And he might be right.
And you know, if I were trying to paint a alternative scenario here where the Trump
maybe achieves the same ends
without necessarily having to carry out the military strike. It would have
involved him going to Congress very formally and and loudly and dramatically
and theatrically seeking authorization to use force and broadcasting to Iran
very clearly. If we don't get a deal, a deal where we get to come in thoroughly
expect these inspect these sites with our personnel, then
a strike is coming.
But get congressional approval, do things the right way.
Not quote unquote literally.
I think that there's a possibility at least that you could have achieved a very similar
outcome.
In fact, what would have been better is that you wouldn't have had to have the expense
of the bombing, but you'd also have the knowledge of exactly what was in that facility and who was in the facility
and be able to go in there and dismantle things in a very direct way.
I mean, it's at least a possibility, but that is definitely different and it's more complicated
and it requires a lot of strategically that they might not have been able to pull off. But at the same time, I do think that at least getting Congress involved in the decision
is something that is worth flagging them for.
But the outcome does seem quite good overall.
Congress doesn't help with anything, ever.
Congress is the problem.
Congress is not the solution to anything.
And certainly not military action.
Yes, if you're going to declare a war, you need them.
But the whole, go read John Yoo's piece
over at National Review today.
He's so smart.
This guy's been so brilliant.
Yes, he justified some of the torture under George W. Bush.
But he was right about that too.
I'm sorry.
Anyway, no, I'm fine with it.
I defended the torture when it was happening too.
We thought we were gonna get attacked every next week.
We wanted to do anything necessary
to protect ourselves and our children.
It's like fine, judge it now all these years later.
But okay, anyway, John Yoo has got a great piece up today
about the founding fathers and about Alexander Hamilton
and about why they created the structure they did
with an emboldened executive
who could make split second decisions,
who could make in second decisions, who could
make in the moment decisions on how to protect the homeland and how Congress, of course,
is a much more deliberative body.
And they understood that and that's got its place, but it's not when it comes to warfare
in the moment, like where actual decisions need to be made and they need to be made fast.
That's why you have an executive who's commander in chief too.
He did not need to go to Congress.
You can argue about whether he should have.
I still don't think he should have.
Like if you want to, whatever.
Okay, but no, Congress fucks things up.
They don't fix things.
Sorry, go ahead.
The Hamilton and Madison agreed on nothing.
They didn't agree on what color the sky was,
but they both agreed that the power to declare war
should rest in the Congress because they didn't want-
To declare war.
Yeah.
That's not what happened.
We're now in the Obama 2011, like,
it's just a kinetic military action.
That's not a war.
And I don't agree with that.
You really think we started a war with Iran?
Is that what you think we did?
JD, JD Vance said that we declared war
on Iran's nuclear program, which is still a war.
Not on the Iranian people, not on the country of Iran. It's
different. It's not it's not it is not the same.
I think it's not exactly the same. It's narrow.
Yeah, you're doing a war like
totally disagree. That is agree with you.
And also like the the of course, there is the power invested in
the president to respond to attacks. This isn't a response
to an attack to prevent attacks. This is't a response to an attack. To prevent attacks.
This is a preventative attack. Yes, it is.
That's okay.
That's not like, oh gosh, 24 hours.
It's okay.
It's not enough time to notify anybody.
It doesn't have to be imminent. Constitutionally, it does not need to be imminent. No,
it doesn't, Matt. What's your authority for that?
My, it's not my authority. It is, for me, I think that when you say that you should,
I think the dropping of a bomb is an engagement
in a warlike activity.
And if you're doing that,
you should be doing that in defense and not in-
So you're talking about should not must.
I mean, I'm trying to defend the president's power
to do what he did.
There's no question as these people talk about impeachment,
et cetera, that it's utter folly.
He had 100% had the legal authority to do what he did.
But my side would lose because successive Supreme Courts have given the president broad authority
in the war-making power to be clear. But I think to look honestly at the intention of the founders,
including Alexander Hamilton, I don't think it was the president should have the ability
to go out and wage preemptive war
farther along. They understood that having a president with that much war making power would be a temptation towards power and lead to more. And I think we've lived through this
over the last 20, 25 years. What he did was try to prevent a war. He tried to prevent a war. That's
what he did. He dropped a bomb on a nuclear facility that could have killed us all with Intel that
they were ramping up and getting ready to use it. So, I mean, like we can go around and around on this all day,
but number one, the AOC calls for impeachment,
which Trump and she are arguing back and forth
on right now online are absurd.
There's zero grounds for impeachment.
He's taunting her now saying, go ahead and do it.
Make my day.
He's given her one of those.
And I also think now, you you know then we're spilling over
into okay well even if he had the power should he have exercised it and we definitely have
a disagreement on that but people can make up their own minds. I want to play you I said
I'd play the longer sound bite of him dropping the F-bomb because he actually gets into a
couple of other subjects and I want to do that now here it is.
I'm not happy that Israel's going out now. There was one rocket that I guess was fired overboard.
It was after the time limit and it missed its target.
And now Israel is going out.
These guys got to calm down.
Ridiculous.
I didn't like plenty of things I saw yesterday.
I didn't like the fact that Israel unloaded right after we made the deal.
They didn't have to unload.
And I didn't like the fact that the retaliation
was very strong.
But in all fairness, Israel unloaded a lot.
And now I hear Israel just went out because they
felt it was violated by one rocket that didn't land
anywhere.
That's not what we want, I'll tell you.
And I'm telling you, I'm not happy about that,
Israel, either.
I think they both violated it.
I don't think they — I'm not sure they did it intentionally.
They couldn't rein people back.
I don't like the fact that Israel went out this morning at all.
And I'm going to see if I can stop it.
Yeah, I do. They violated it, but Israel violated it, too.
Israel, as soon as we made the deal,
they came out and they dropped a load of bombs,
the likes of which I've never seen before.
The biggest load that we've seen.
I'm not happy with Israel.
So I'm not happy with them.
I'm not happy with Iran either.
But I'm really unhappy if Israel is going out this morning because the one rocket that
didn't land, that was shot, perhaps by mistake, that didn't land.
I'm not happy about that.
You know what?
We basically have two countries that have
been fighting so long and so hard that they don't know what the fuck they're
doing. You understand that?
Never gets out in the voice. There's always a good tell for him. You're gonna,
you're gonna miss him when he's gone. I know this. I love the classic Trump overstatement
that the response was the biggest response,
never seen anything like it.
It's like, well, it was just kind of a response.
I'm not sure about that.
Can we just be clear on that point of hand?
I just want to, cause like my information,
this is what I think happened via Fox News
and the New York Times.
The ceasefire was about to take hold.
Five waves of missiles came at Israel
before it had kicked in. One got
through the Israeli defenses and hit a target in an Israeli town called Be'er Sheva. Then that's
the one that killed four people at least and injured 26 Israelis. After that missile strike,
Israeli fighter jets located the launchers that had launched those missiles
over Iran and fired on them. Now, so far, the ceasefire hasn't kicked in, so no one's violated it, though not a classy move by Iran. Okay, later the ceasefire is four hours old, and the IDF says
two Iranian missiles flew into the north of Israel, but that they were intercepted with no injuries.
Iran is denying that they were the ones who launched those missiles.
But Israeli intel is usually pretty good on who's firing the rockets at them.
Okay, so I think when Trump says, and they dropped a bunch of bombs, I think he's talking,
I don't know what he's talking about, to be honest, because what then happened was Israel was flying a bunch of planes according to the Trump tweets in retaliation.
I think they were about to drop bombs and Trump sent out a bunch of tweets saying you
better not do that.
I don't want to see that.
From Air Force One, he said he spoke to Netanyahu, um, and he said he told Netanyahu,
bring back those military aircraft that Trump indicated were on the verge of attacking Iran.
He also declared that the last thing on Iran's mind now is a nuclear weapon.
And then you had a Trump tweet at 728 AM today saying Israel is not going to attack Iran.
All planes will turn around and head home while doing a friendly plane wave to Iran.
Nobody will be hurt. The ceasefire is in effect. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Donald J.
Trump, President of the United States. Go ahead, Moynihan.
Thank you for your attention to this matter. It's the greatest punctuation of that ever. Yeah, look, to what
we were saying before, there's obviously some serious telegraphing going on here. God knows
what was said in that call between Trump and Netanyahu. I mean, we all know the relationship
that Obama and Netanyahu had, which was incredibly bad, particularly when Netanyahu came and
addressed Congress. It all sort of fell apart after that. And it had already been tattered before.
But the relationship that the two of these guys have,
we're gonna wait for the reporting
and for the historians in a couple of years on this
because it seems, you know, not the easiest one.
It seems contentious because Trump is a huge personality
and knows what he wants and usually gets it
and particularly in foreign affairs.
And so you see these people out there
that drive me absolutely bananas and say,
oh, look, America's B2s are in the air.
Israel controls American foreign policy.
Israel does not control American foreign policy.
And this is, I think, not proof of that
in Trump saying go turn around.
If that happened, I imagine it's very likely that it did.
I do though, very much disagree with the idea that,
well, Iran did this, but Israel shouldn't have responded.
What the Israelis do is when they launch those missiles,
and you know, four people killed in Beersheba,
and you know, buildings destroyed,
and lots of people grievously injured too,
is that they respond because they can very quickly target
where those are coming from.
And then they blow up those missile launchers,
which I think is a completely fair thing to do.
So I think that what's happening here
is Trump is rounding on the Israelis
when it seems to me and to any observer,
as you said, Fox, I read both the Fox and the New York Times
account, Wall Street Journal and the New York Times account,
Wall Street Journal and the account of this too,
which seems like your telling of this from multiple sources
seems to be what happened,
that I think he's being not very charitable
to the Israelis, but I suspect there's something else
going on here that we don't know about,
that he's trying to put Netanyahu
in a very particular position.
Maybe it's a broader thing.
Again, this is total speculation,
a broader thing that like, cause they were resistant, both sides were resistant
to the ceasefire. It wasn't as if everybody came to the table. They had a round of negotiations and,
you know, UAE or Oman or something. This was kind of a Dick talk from Trump. So there might be some
sort of difficulty about what this entails. And this is him firing a warning shot at the Israelis,
because when it comes to how they responded,
I don't think they responded in an unreasonable way at all.
Yeah, when he says they came out Israel, as soon as we made the deal, they came out and they dropped a load of bombs,
the likes of which I've never seen before, the biggest load we've seen.
I'm not happy with Israel.
I don't know what he's talking about because what Israel did is they responded to the to the one that had been launched in bear Sheva and in the way that we just discussed.
And then they were about to respond to the possibly errant being very charitable to missiles
that had been intercepted post ceasefire.
But then Trump said they didn't actually do it.
He got the planes to turn around after his conversation with Bibi.
So I mean, I don't exactly know what Trump is referring to there, but I'll say this,
I have 28 seconds till the break.
Last night, we do AM Update, the morning podcast that we drop, it's just news headlines for
the audience.
And we, I mean, we went back and forth hour after hour, we met again to update AM Update
because it was like the Iranians agree there's a ceasefire.
The Iranians just told CNN there is no ceasefire.
Oh, wait, no, they say there is a ceasefire.
All the Iranian TV is reporting there's no ceasefire.
It was like, oh my God, that we put it to bed.
There is a ceasefire.
We wake up, of course, it's like everyone's violated the ceasefire.
OK, so it's not going that well.
All right. Stand by.
Got to take a quick break.
The guys are with us for the full show.
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So guys, Emily Jashinsky launched her MK media show last
night after party with Emily, which has like a fun
bonus of sounding kind of naughty.
But it's totally above board.
Anyway, she launched it last night.
It's live on YouTube at 10pm, two nights a week.
And her inaugural guest was Tucker Carlson.
And it's a great time to get Tucker Carlson.
Of course, he's in the news every day because he's in the interesting position of being one of
Trump's main supporters and yet very very critical of really all war but this
one, yes including, and had tried to talk Trump out of it to the point where Trump
when I was on vacation last week referred to him as kooky Tucker Carlson
and then made a shot
of like, well, if he's going to credit, if he had something like, what does he have to
say?
He should, he should go buy a television network.
So somebody would listen to him.
Maybe somebody would listen to him.
Something like very cutting.
I was like, whoa.
And then they talked and Trump says Tucker apologized to him for going a little hard
on him.
And so I don't know what exactly happened.
I haven't spoken to either one of them.
But Tucker's been under a lot of fire from people
who now say, and on top of all that,
you were wrong because Trump nailed it.
And so all your doom and gloom predictions were wrong.
But again, like just don't make predictions either way
in the Middle East.
Like don't say his doom and gloom predictions were wrong.
It's only been about two minutes
and don't say they were right.
Like, let's just don't predict anything in the Middle East.
Like that's a golden rule.
Anyway, he went on with Emily
and they had a couple of interesting discussions.
Let me give you the overall in which he responded
to some of the attacks he's been facing from guys like he had an extraordinary interview
with Ted Cruz, which I highly recommend you listen to very entertaining on a number of
levels. And he's been fighting with Mark Levin of Fox News. Anyway, take a listen to SOT
11.
I don't really care what people think of me at this point. I'm 56. You were wrong. Well,
yeah, I've been wrong many, many times. I'll
be wrong many, many more times. But the one thing I am is sincere. I really mean it. I
don't care about the effect on me. I just I don't want to relive Iraq. And I know the
people who did it. I've lived among them. I defended it. I repeated their talking, but
not doing that again. And we came really close to doing that again, because of Mark Levin
and Laura Loomer and the rest of these morons who've never even left New Jersey.
Like, they don't know anything about the world.
That's the other thing. They're dumb.
They don't know. They don't know the population of Iran.
They don't know anything.
They don't know the nations that border it.
They just don't know anything.
And I'm not making an argument for expertise
or having been there,
but I am making an argument for being responsible
when you demand that the
US military do certain things. Because we were just in a crisis for a week, we saw who
people are, we saw what they cared about. And I've got nothing against Ted Cruz personally.
I feel sorry for Ted Cruz, obviously a totally hollow person taking instructions. But I do
think we learned this is not someone who should be influencing wars because he
just doesn't know anything.
He doesn't care.
And he's not putting America's interests anywhere near the top of his priorities.
Okay.
So that's, that's talk on Ted Cruz.
By the way, she, she, she's on a 10 PM on Mondays and Wednesdays.
So you can check her out tomorrow night.
She's got Rand Paul, who's one of the detractors
that the president's seeing on this front in the US Senate.
So what do you make of what's unfolded
within the Republican party over the past 10 days or so?
I just think it's really, you know,
it's kind of a low blow from Tucker
to assume that Ted Cruz has dual loyalty with Canada,
just because a guy is born there to really make instructions.
The great white North.
I'm 56 to Tucker and I don't care what anybody thinks either.
And also I, I had done what he did in Moscow.
I wouldn't be telling people like, like using people of not having been to a
place very, very, uh, grocery store.
Moynihan will point.
Will point.
Yeah.
The grocery store that the subway is the cleanest in the world.
Makes you feel like America's dirty and bad.
Um, Russia is bigger than the nicest, uh, the, uh, grocery store in Moscow.
Um, and also there's comparative dollar.
There's just a whole bunch of stone obvious things
that he could have learned from his father.
I do, I've got to just say quickly,
I'm gonna give you back.
Just flying in a JFK on the way home.
It's Calcutta.
It's disgusting.
It does make you wanna say like, why?
Why are we so bad at this?
Sorry, go ahead.
No, Moynihan will tell the story about Steve Bannon
that I think is interesting.
I think the bottom line is that Trump is correct
when he says, at least as a matter of politics,
that MAGA is whatever he says it is.
It's not whatever Tucker Carlson says.
I'm actually heartened that some people like Tucker,
even though I disagree with him about many, many things,
I enjoyed his Ted Cruz interview.
You're right, people should seek it out.
The exchanges were valuable,
as was just the spirit of them on both sides.
Like just going at each other,
there should be more exchanges like that.
I think it was a useful thing.
But, and I'm heartened that there are people
who have been MAGA, who are bummed out
by this use of US military force.
At least they're hewing to some amount of principle.
I think among the broader pro-Trump and also Republican electorate, I think Trump will
be broadly correct as a matter of politics.
But I know more than that has been following Steve Bannon on this, among other things for
a while.
Well, I like what you said.
I think that's right too.
I think it's to Tucker's credit that he didn't abandon what appears to be a sincerely held
belief of his just because his friend got elected.
He voted for him and wanted
it and disagrees with him on this. Like it would be worse if he just suddenly said, okay, all that
stuff I was saying, forget about it. Like that would be, that would be odd. A lot of this week as well.
Yeah, we absolutely have. I mean, look, I can, I understand the Tulseys of the world and the JD
Vances of the world, who I think probably secretly share Tucker's think that JD Vance probably is much closer to Tucker than he's letting on.
I think that also those people in the MAGA universe,
I think that they're not going to be able to do anything about it.
They're going to be able to do it.
And I think that's a great point.
I think that's a great point.
I think that's a great point.
I think that's a great point.
I think that's a great point.
I think that's a great point.
I think that's a great point.
I think that's a great point.
I think that's a great point.
I think that's a great point.
I think that's a great point.
I think that's a great point. I think that's a great point. I think that's a great point. I think that's I think that's right. I think that JD Vance probably is much closer to Tucker than he's letting on I think that also
those people in the MAGA universe as
Commentators and people who make a good deal of money off of it a lot of them no naming any names have
softened their very isolationist rhetoric when Trump did this and said well
Oh, I guess he must be right. I think a lot of it's about about audience capture, but I will agree with Matt.
I disagree with Tucker on
a lot of things, almost everything these days.
But I do appreciate the fact that he doesn't back down and say, well, you know,
Magga is Magga and he's the one, as he said, who decides Magga.
So I'm going to I'm going to carry water for whatever he does.
I think he's wrong.
I love the fact that Tucker's always like, Ted Cruz, and it doesn't matter who it is,
like Ted Cruz is a nice guy. He's a, you know, hollow-eyed devil who's an idiot, but like,
it's how he does it. He's a friend of mine. He's like Jeffrey Epstein and probably a Nazi, but whatever. Uh, people like that. Um, no, he didn't say that. I said that.
Um, but, like, and also, uh, like, Matt,
I think that, um, it was a good interview
because when Tucker's, the problem with Tucker's show
has been, it's been so many people
since he, uh, left Fox.
It's just been kind of an echo chamber
of this is what I think Maga should be.
This is kind of my version of the Maga ideology, and it's been kind of an echo chamber of this is what I think Maggot should be. This is kind of my version of the Maggot ideology.
And it's a bit of an echo chamber. So to see him in that combative role,
I don't want to ever agree with Ted Cruz. I'm not a fan of his at all. Um,
but also I think that it was actually,
people had that interview a bit wrong because the clip that was played and they
put it out before where Ted Cruz didn't know the exact pop or he didn't he didn't offer any population number. I think you by the way you can say that
Iran shouldn't have a nuclear bomb and think they have 50 million people rather than 92 million
people. I don't think it's the real knockout punch that people thought it was. But the entire
interview was actually quite good. I mean, they gave it as good to each other. It was very hostile
in certain places. It was certainly very enlightening.
And I encouraged Tucker to do more of those
in fewer people he agrees with,
because I get kind of bored by the echo chamber stuff.
And I think he's very, very good when he's debating people.
So, but I think the bigger-
It was very funny to listen to him be like,
you know, oh, oh really?
That's what you're thinking.
And then Ted Cruz goes, a little less snark.
And Tucker goes, I'm sorry.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, that's bad habit.
So they get kind of charming on both ends.
Yeah, I was like sitting across from somebody
and like fighting at a restaurant.
I was like, oh, this is getting interesting now, listen.
But the thing about it, I think is also this fracturing
of the MAGA movement is if you look at Donald Trump's
true social feed in the past 24 hours,
you would see somebody who most of
these people, including Tucker, would probably call a neocon. I mean, he was posting-
Oh my God. Moynihan, did you see what just, my producers just sent this to me, including Jeb
Bush. Jeb Bush put out a tweet saying, President Trump's decision to neutralize Iran's regime's
nuclear program is a watershed moment.
It reasserts US strength, restores deterrence,
sends an unmistakable message to rogue regimes.
The era of impunity is over.
My full statement here.
And then Trump retweeted it saying,
thank you to Jeb Bush, very much appreciated.
Which is like, what?
Pigs, they're flying. If some of you out there listening and Megan
Kelly land or getting your political education, I don't remember 2016 go watch those exchanges
between Donald Trump and Jeb Bush where he is absolutely hammering him, particularly
on the Iraq war and his brother.
But this is the interesting thing about Trump.
No one should be surprised by this.
Who in Trump's cabinet, first time around,
this time around, has not, including J.D. Vance,
called him like Hitler?
And he does not care.
He's like, if you're on my side now, great.
He does not, I mean, one of his great qualities
is that he doesn't hold these endless grudges,
which I think is pretty fascinating.
But he also tweeted this guy,
this young American Jewish Instagram star,
he's like a pro-Israel guy,
like humiliating this woman in a keffiyeh
at like a pro-Palestine protest.
That's something that you would be like,
I know, Megan, you listen to, skeptically listen to
and like the guys at the commentary podcast.
That's something that those guys would retweet.
And I saw that on Trump's truth social today.
There's a lot of stuff there that if you took that from all the people who've
been trying to direct MAGA like this, I think.
And one final thing not to go on too long, but there's there's two types of this.
There's people who believe this is what MAGA is.
And there are people who are trying to direct MAGA.
I think that's what Trump that's what Tucker does.
But there's a lot of people that say like,
oh, he never, you know, no foreign wars.
That's not what he's interested in.
It's like, I think that's a fundamental misunderstanding
of Trump and how Trump views American power.
He does not want to start new foreign wars.
He does not want an Iraq situation,
but that does not mean that he's gonna, you know,
let's dismantle the B2s.
Let's put all this stuff away.
We don't need it. We have no business anywhere in the world.
That's not how he sees the world.
In the first administration, they went after Syria.
They seventy five Tomahawk missiles into Syria.
Yeah, it wasn't a huge war, but this was not this was not some, you know, peacenik.
They killed Soleimani, and that was at the same time going to usher
in the hell that all these people expected.
I mean, Tucker said that this might,
and again, we have to wait on this,
he said this will probably result
in thousands of American deaths.
So, I mean, I think Tucker is trying
to directionally push MAGA somewhere,
and I think he's had some success at that,
but it kind of falling apart at the moment.
And I think that there's other people
who believe that MAGA has always been
a kind of Lindbergh, Taft, old old school Republican isolationism, which it isn't,
it just simply isn't the evidence doesn't show that.
I have to say, um, I know Tucker's against what's happening in the Middle East
right now. And I understand it. He, he was right about Ukraine.
Tucker was right about Ukraine. He took a lot of heat.
That war has been lost for a long time.
It's been stuck in this unsolvable intransigence,
and it needs to be ended.
Trump's not wrong.
There's just so much death on both sides.
It just, we need to admit reality.
I know you guys may feel differently,
but I think Tucker was right about Ukraine
and deserves, yeah, but I think he deserves a fair listen
on his predictions, though, again,
don't make predictions about the Middle East
because it's just folly for anybody.
What do you guys make of it?
Because it's not just Tucker.
He's now warring with Laura Loomer,
who's, you know, she's been out there attacking him
and he fought back.
But Tucker and Levin are really, really going at it.
He's both as good as they get it.
And that is like, and then they both,
not only do they argue their points when it comes to Israel,
then they both one up each other
on whether they actually love Trump.
Like Levin's bringing up those texts
that were unearthed from Tucker
that he sent somebody within Fox News
after the election in 2020 when he lost,
saying, I can't stand Trump and I can't wait
until we don't have to talk about him every night.
Something for which I think Tucker did apologize to Trump.
They made up, they definitely talked about those texts
and Tucker explained them
and Trump was fine with everything.
Anyway, you can see these two factions
of the Republican party, Matt, really fighting.
And the one that thought it had Trump is not winning.
And the ones who hated Trump and were brought along kicking and screaming The one that thought it had Trump is not winning.
And the ones who hated Trump and were brought along kicking and screaming
to vote for him over Kamala Harris are doing okay.
They've had a couple of setbacks, they'd like regime change.
But they're, I mean, I heard my friends
over at National Review praising Trump in a way I,
and commentary too.
I try to get my news from everybody.
So I have all sides represented it.
And it's been amazing to hear like the more dejected side
that thought they had Trump as their isolationist buddy
in their tone.
And then like the guys at commentary, like Cottonetti,
he's on commentary, like they're elated.
Rich Lowry who I love, he's actually been fair to Trump,
but he has a piece right now up on national review called president bad ass.
I mean, it's like, something's happening.
Let's remember though, that, uh, uh, you know, this is the same Trump who was it
two months ago, we certainly talked about on the show with you, Megan was in
Saudi Arabia and he gave a speech that that exact same crew, the Continetti
a wing was not so happy with, where he
called neocons out by name on foreign soil in Saudi Arabia, which I think last
time I looked was the country from which 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9-11 came from.
And he used that as an opportunity to denounce the Bush family and the
neocon wars and the nation building and all of this and saying that we are not
sitting in judgment of all of you, We just want peace and et cetera. So there is always,
you know, it's the whims of one very politically talented and interesting person. But when
you, when you, when you do what you kind of understandably want to make it, which is to
tell Congress to go take a long walk off a short pier, you end up with one man deciding
what things are. And that man's
win depends on who he last talked to. So yes, it's a good day to be an artist formerly known
as a neocon. But I predict that in the sooner rather than later future, that group of people,
there's not going to be a lot of Jeb exclamation point tweets in favor of Trump as he drops more F bombs at Bibi Netanyahu.
As he says, look, this ceasefire is the most important thing, which is not what the most important thing is for Israel at all.
As they figure out who gets to control the airspace under what terms, what America is going to allow and not allow in terms of the use of the American supplied weapons
and network systems, which Israel needs American tacit support for. I think we're going to be
seeing a lot of different versions of what Trump's Middle East foreign policy is going to be and
pushing for expanding the Abraham Accords into countries and making deals with countries in
order to do that. And I think the Abraham Accords was a great triumph in his, in his first administration,
uh, among the handful of the best things that happened under him.
So what does it mean now? Who gets next and under what conditions, what is it?
What kind of deals are America is America going to do with Saudi Arabia to get them into the
Abraham Accords? I think commentary magazine might not be as stoked a couple of months.
They might not love that.
Yeah.
So you say they're going to be upset as he drops more F bombs on Netanyahu and the corollary
is fewer actual bombs on Iran.
So that's probably the future.
Camille, what do you make of it?
Because I do think the internal war on the right is interesting.
Of course, the left is loving it.
They're bathing in it.
They're rubbing it all over themselves.
They love the war.
I don't know.
I think it's healthy to have these debates.
I don't think they need to get super personal and nasty.
I'm not sure why they always have a tendency to do that,
but I find it really fascinating
to listen to the different positions.
I would look, there's always a few exceptions
who are just nutcases or out there saying like,
you should be impeached over this. And then there's the people who always go to how evil
the Jews are. Like those people I just write off and I try not to even mention them. It's not
worth it. But like mainstream, smart, invested, America loving commentators are interesting to
me. You know, they're interesting to me. And I think we're learning from like the Tucker Ted debate, the Tucker Levin debate now. And some of the back and forth we've seen on X from
lesser known players, but probably everybody who you know, everybody on this screen knows.
Yeah, I think since the beginning of this administration, there's always been a lot
of questions about how this very diverse cast of characters manages to get along with each other over the long run.
And we certainly saw a lot of this consternation around the Elon Musk fallout and the just broader kind of tech bro faction of MAGA, which is a third Welch pointed out, the fact that the president can give a speech that seems to point in one
clear direction and then take an action that points in what seems to be the polar opposite
direction makes it hard for any of these factions to think that they own him completely.
It probably does, I think, make people a little more reluctant
to imagine that they can push the cart
in one direction or another.
So it'll be interesting to see
if there's another opportunity for say Tucker Carlson
to have to take a position publicly
that is in sort of strident opposition to the president.
I think a lot of Republicans
have kind of had to hold their nose
while supporting certain things
like the great big beautiful bill, which is supposed to curtail spending but also contains a hell of a lot of spending
It doesn't really seem to be curtailing it
It's it's been interesting to see how they've had to navigate all of these different tensions and how they've managed to survive them
unscathed certainly if the
Current circumstance with Iran and Israel if if that manages to hold, that's great.
It certainly seems like we've kind of insulated ourselves
from any kind of potential fallout from the strike,
at least in the short run.
But had things been protracted a bit longer,
had there been more kind of looming questions
about whether or not the United States
would get more deeply involved,
then perhaps there'd be even more tension.
But at the moment, they seem to be weathering this storm and the folks are falling back
in line.
And I suspect that'll probably continue to be the case, irrespective of what happens
going forward.
Well, we'll see.
I'm sure they'll be pulling out any day now on how Trump's doing.
Going into this, like last Friday, he was, I think, at 56%.
He's crushing it in the polls right now.
Higher than Obama was at this point in his term.
Definitely higher than Biden.
Like, his approval ratings have been extremely strong, higher than they ever were for Trump.
We'll see whether this is increased or decreased.
The numbers, I think it's going to increase, even though people are not in favor of war
with Iran and in advance of the dropping of the bomb
We're not in favor of dropping the bomb. So but Trump is so transparent about everything and yeah, I think it's gonna go well
I just want to say one other thing
the Jeb Bush thing is I have a personal connection to this because
When he was running for president against Trump in 1516. He gave me his first interview.
I believe we were at Liberty University.
We sat down and I asked him, knowing what we know now, would you have authorized the
invasion of Iraq like your brother did?
He said yes and didn't say that it was a mistake.
Many people would later say at that point his candidacy was killed in its crib because
that was the wrong answer by 2016.
It was very clear to most Americans by 2016 that the Iraq war was a mistake and that it
shouldn't have been undertaken anyway.
So then he went out on the presidential debate stage
and Trump, you know, this outsider comes in from nowhere
and starts hammering him on it.
You shouldn't, you couldn't say it was a mistake.
It was an obvious mistake.
And Jeb Bush was really caught there
because he'd given me that terrible answer
which he tried to clarify a couple of days later
saying he'd misunderstood me
even though the question was super clear.
And it's his brother's war,
so he doesn't want to throw him under the bus.
And it's Trump, so no one wanted to bend the knee to him
and say this outside weird guy with the weird hair,
he's right and I'm wrong and my brother was wrong.
So it was like, it was totally fraught.
Obviously the war in Iraq was a big fat mistake, all right?
Now you can take it anywhere you want.
And it took Jeb Bush, if you remember,
at the beginning of his announcement,
when he announced the president,
took him five days, he went back.
It was a mistake, it wasn't a mistake.
Took him five days before his people told him what to say.
And he ultimately said it was a mistake.
The war in Iraq, we spent two trillion dollars, thousands
of lives, we don't even have it. Iran is taking over Iraq with the second largest oil reserves
in the world. Obviously it was a mistake. I could care less about the insults that Donald
Trump gives to me. It's blood sport for him, he enjoys it and I'm glad he's happy about
it. He spent 22 million dollars in that. I am sick and tired of him going after my family.
While Donald Trump was building a reality TV show, my brother was building a security
apparatus to keep us safe.
And I'm proud of what he did.
He's had the gall to go after my mother.
World Trade Center came down during the brother's reign.
Remember that.
He's had the gall to go after my mother.
That's not keeping us safe.
Look, I won the lottery.
And that really helped propel Donald Trump,
that debate and him hammering Jeb Bush
straight to the nomination and then the presidency.
So it is kind of a remarkable full circle moment now
to see Jeb Bush praising Trump
for an aggressive military action in the Middle East
and Trump accepting the compliment and,
you know, sort of glad handing with now what is clearly a high energy Jeb.
And where was that debate? It's important to point out it was in South Carolina,
a big military state of all places to go after the Bush family, to go after John McCain. You're
going to do it in South Carolina. And Trump said, yes, F yes.
I think that one of the things that annoys me most about some of these
debates is the, the, the, you know, endless stupid use of the word neocon,
which suggests that anyone who wants to have any military action or any
military response to anything is a neocon.
So I don't think there's actually, yeah, I, yeah, or like a warmonger or the, you know,
when Tucker's, I really disagree with him,
that, you know, Mark Levin enjoys when people blow up.
That's what his like, you know, guiding ideology
is watching people die in the battlefield.
I think that this is both crazy and wrong.
And I also think that Trump like acknowledges that
he can go to Saudi Arabia and denounce Neocons
and Neoconservatives and do what he did in Iran
and actually keep those two thoughts in his head
at the same time, mostly because when Tucker
is on Emily's show and congratulations to Emily
who's great on her new show and everyone should watch
and listen, I think that the thing that's
when he brings up Iraq,
much of the way Matt did earlier and I did too,
is that yeah, there's lessons to be learned from that,
a million lessons to be learned from that.
But I think that what, how Trump sees foreign policy
as a neocon thing or not a neocon thing,
this specific thing, and again,
you don't wanna get into a boring definitional argument
about what a neoconservative is,
but it's
it's that we can come in and, you know, create democracy, we
can install things that people are just desperate and waiting
for democratic institutions to be created by the Americans.
What Donald Trump is saying in Iran is that we're gonna blow up
your nuclear facilities that are in Florida under a mountain,
we're not going to go in there and try to create a new parliament.
We're not going to try to come in and create elections. I think that's a very,
very distinct thing. We don't want to stay. We don't want to stay.
We don't want to be there at all. I mean,
so the boots on the ground is the thing that Iraq is all about.
There's no threat.
I think there's a 0% chance of boots on the ground and Iran American totally agree. Nobody no Americans would mean
as you pointed out, it's actually an important thing to
point out the polling suggests that people weren't psyched
about this mostly because there are a lot of people that aren't
psyched about Trump in certain ways, particularly amongst
Democrats. But if you look at the polling and our pal Harry
Anton was breaking this down the other day amongst and this
shows you something about the supposed split between the kind of isolationists and the more traditional
Republicans or so-called neocons. That's a kind of Twitter debate in a lot of ways, because
if you look at the polling that Harry showed, it was like 75% of Republicans were on board
with the strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities. I don't know if those polls, how accurate they are,
if they'll stay, but it suggests that, you know,
the people that are not interested in neoconservatism,
not interested in American adventures in the broad,
or, you know, installing new governments,
are okay with what Trump did,
because Trump isn't acting like a neoconservative
in that traditional sense that we can over-
And he doesn't sound like one,
like you'd know if he were, you know, you'd have a different
feel.
He's just so direct on everything.
He kind of, he doesn't try to hide anything.
And I was like, Hannity said to me many years ago, the problem with Trump is not that he
lies too much.
It's that he tells the truth.
Like it's all out there.
Just, you know, good, bad or ugly for the beholder.
All right.
He's been reaching Hannity all day and Hann is the the one in the kind of Tucker universe
Who's you know, one of the bad guys at Fox who's who's pushing for war and Trump has been?
Retweeting read truth thing, whatever you say
His stuff in the past 24 hours. So tells you something
Okay
We have to talk about the mayoral race and there's another thing we have to talk about what's happened with the supreme court
I really hope I can get this in there. It's this crazy ass boston judge tries tries to defy the US Supreme Court. He's about to get his ass handed to him. So I'll do them in that order because I really want to get to the mural thing and the other one can hold if we needed to. First of all, is it 110 degrees in New York City today?
city today.
It is a hundred and seventy degrees.
I want them to be happy and I don't want them to hear the zooming and the buzzing of the of the air conditioner.
So I am literally in like a Finnish hot
like it's the I've never been as hot as I am right now.
So if I say that we should bomb Alaska
110 degrees in New York, it's unbelievable.
It's so hard here down at the beach. It's so hard. Here down at the beach.
It's a lot.
It's like 10 degrees cooler and it's I don't know low 80s here.
But in New York in New York, what is it today?
It says it's going to be what a hundred degrees.
Go ahead Matt.
Yeah, and I have just Albert Brooks and broadcast news, you know,
when you go to the continent map map is gonna start to wave behind
us. It's a great day to go out and vote for people who belong
to the Democratic Party. Thank God that's not me. But yeah,
it's the Democratic primary today. I've seen pictures,
actual pictures of people lining up enthusiastically ahead of
time to vote.
What people need to understand about New York, too, is those concrete buildings
hold the heat, right?
It's like it's like walking next to an oven, you know, gives off heat.
And so just be standing there waiting to vote.
And for what? For this democratic socialist, which is a nice way of softening
socialist who looks like he's going to win.
I, we have to talk about this crazy guy.
His name is Zoran Modani.
I keep messing up his last name.
I don't know.
Mom, Donnie.
Mom, Donnie.
And he is a strange man who wants a $30 minimum wage.
It's just over half that right now. Wants a $30 minimum wage. It's just over half that right now.
Wants a $30 minimum wage.
He wants no more police.
He wants social workers instead.
He wants free bus rides,
which would cost almost a billion dollars
for New Yorkers or somebody.
I don't know who's gonna pay that.
He wants to make sure rent stabilized departments can't have any
increase in their rent. Not sure who's going to pay for that either. He wants a lot of government
handouts. He basically, when it comes to police and law and justice, looks like Chesa Boudin,
the booted out of office DA in San Francisco. And when it comes to his philosophy on running a city,
when it comes to cops and social safety net and also just give up giveaways,
he looks like just like Brandon Johnson in Chicago.
He's terrifying and the New York community,
pathetic as it is, just rolled over and let it have,
they rolled over.
Charles Gasparino has a great piece in the post today,
New York post about how these feckless MFers
who run New York business, you know, what a town.
They're too afraid. They're like, you know what, he's probably going to win. So I have to keep my
mouth shut because I need to kiss the ring and have favors done for me. And this guy, according
to the latest polls is steamrolling toward the W today because if somebody doesn't get over 50%
of the vote and it's between him and Cuomo, then they go, it's ranked choice.
So they eliminate the lowest person on the list
in terms of vote getters.
And all those people who vote for that person,
their second choice gets their votes,
which could put and is predicted to put this guy
over the top, this Mamdani.
And Mamdani is such an odd duck.
He wasn't born here.
I think he was born in Uganda and lived there for the first seven years and then came here.
But I mean, you come to a country at age seven and now you're 33.
You sound like American.
You don't sound like a Ugandan at that point.
I mean, it's been 25 years plus.
But listen to him.
This hit today as he was doing an interview with, forgive
me, I don't know who it was. Looked like local news to me. And listen to what a faker this
dude is with his Kamala Harris in his switcheroo's, NBC4's Melissa Russo. Listen to this.
Because I think that New Yorkers, more than they hate a politician they disagree with,
they hate a politician they can't trust.
On the subject of trust, you've adopted different speaking accents in different scenarios.
But they go to their local bodega.
Is there one that's real and one that's affected?
What I would say is, as any immigrant knows, having been born in Kampala, Uganda, and then
raised in South Africa and moving here when I'm seven years old, is there different parts
of my life?
Worldwide tour is a worldwide tour is a worldwide tour.
Mom Donny was talking about a worldwide press tour back when he was a rapper.
Bring the flavor to the fish, bring the flavor to the rice.
In a Disney movie directed by his mother.
Nepotism and hot work goes a long way.
Here in New York City.
This is how I speak.
This is how I am.
Oh my God.
If I switch that accent, it's a real thing.
Do you think I'd get in trouble if I did his accent?
Like if I was like in different shows?
I do it on the fifth column.
Actually, that's that's the best detail of that is like in the rap video directed by his mother, which is which is really hot tracks that are dropping. I know Matt has a lot to say that I'll just say quickly that it is interesting today, as you point out, Megan, it's 40,000 degrees in New York, and it feels like Cuba,
and people are gonna go vote to make it more like Cuba
in almost every way.
And it's like super depressing.
But yeah, you missed a few ones,
like where he suggested using empty spaces
and disused train stations.
And I actually think some that are actually used trains to house the homeless, which if you know anything about New York and you
ride the subway in New York as I do, know that that's not a problem that's already
happening. Also the same thing is true about the free buses because we
have to make the bus... buses are already free. Nobody pays for the bus in New York
and nobody pays for the subway.
And one of the great things is like how incompetent
and feckless the government in New York is.
They've now spent billions of dollars
to have this allied international,
whatever the company is,
that provides guards there who don't do anything.
There's just a guy getting paid to watch people
go through the subway and not pay for it every day.
So I don't know where they think this stuff
is gonna come from, where the money is gonna come from,
who's gonna pay for it, free childcare, rent freezes.
Like this is a collection of voodoo economics
that every economist on earth knows doesn't work.
So yeah, I mean, if they-
I have another objection.
I don't think that's a Ugandan accent anyway.
That sound like an Indian accent to me.
Wo ba tu, after wo ba tu.
That's, so it's cultural appropriation
on top of all the other problems.
He's also an exploiter because remember that
the Indians in Uganda, many Indians came from Uganda
because in 1971 or 72, Idi Amin, the dictator,
when he took over Uganda, kicked all the Indians out. And the reason
being is they were about 1% of the population, they controlled
like 60% of the wealth, because there was a huge population of
Indian doctors, etc. So that's why he he is Indian, and he was
actually born in Uganda, because in the sort of DSA, democratic
socialist view of the world, he was a horrible exploiter. So
yeah, that's that's
do we have to give him a pass? I mean, we have to give him a pass on that,
but I don't give him a pass on that
because he's an American who sounds like an American
in every other interview he gives, right?
It's only when he needs it, like Kamala Harris,
have you no empathy man, that it's my sorrow.
Camille, you know how to approach it.
I mean, well, it happens, but it doesn't usually happen in context where I'm doing media.
If I'm around family and everyone has the heavy patois, I might slip into it a little
bit.
But for the most part, because they will ridicule me because I don't do it well, I try my best
to police it.
I'm usually aware of it when it's happening.
I don't make a conscious choice, but I at least know that I'm doing it.
And I don't know, I think for both him and Kamala,
you can kind of see the switch almost take place.
You know the context in which they're about to go
into this particular style of oration
for persuasive purposes.
Camille, can I interrupt you?
I frown on that.
I can't deal with this lying
on one of the greatest podcasts
in America.
It might be true that when you are
amongst your Jamaican family, you're like, oh, you lazy
blood clotting, you do stuff like that.
Fine.
But I have seen you on the New York subway
in a different situation, code switch into a different accent.
Is that not true, Camille Foster?
Let's hear it.
Where?
Let's hear it right now.
I know that you don't.
Yeah. So if someone steps on your brand new Yeezy.
Well, yeah. Well, no.
What are you going to say, Camille?
It's well, yeah, you want me to slip into my urban vernacular.
Yeah. Right.
Yeah, let's hear that.
And I do I do has to do that sometimes.
But that is under particular circumstances.
And it is not usually to confront someone
who stepped on my shoes.
Sometimes it's to evade detection in circumstances
that I would rather you not know
that I'm very clean and articulate.
Yes, yes.
For people to call you like you are,
you look like my uncle, my Uncle Thomas.
Like for instance, when I've heard people say that.
I've heard that before. I've never met the man, but I've never met the man.
Yeah. But a lot of people say you remind your mind.
Yeah.
Cross examining Camille. Can we get a vote Camille on, uh, mom, Donnie's, uh,
rapism houses? How was his rhyming?
Well, Matt, I was watching your face. Had you not seen the clips of him rapping?
No, it's, it's so bad. It's so bad. But also, I will say
this. Afrobeats is kind of a big
thing.
And it is it is interesting.
And there are great Afrobeats
artists, but he is not one
of them.
It's good that he gave that career
up. It's unfortunate that he's
decided to run for mayor.
So, yeah, exactly.
Wait, Steve Crackauer wants us to
he wants us to take a look at
another clip. I don't know what it
is. Just roll it. Let's see. Oh, no. Wait, Steve Krakauer wants us to he wants us to take a look at another clip. I don't know what it is. Just roll it. Let's see.
Oh, no.
Damn you, Steve.
Our future will not be different until we make a different choice.
We have to fill out the entire ballot and do not rank Andrew Cuomo.
New York City, we need a new day.
We deserve a chance. A New York City that centers working people.
Centers concepts are just ideas in the clouds if we do not bring them home.
Alex Zahran, your mayor.
Leave him in the clouds.
Did you hear her doing the Obama thing?
Like she does. She's another code switcher.
Yeah. Yeah. I was I was waiting to see which one of those affects
she was gonna bring.
I expected the wise Latina,
but we didn't get that in that particular ad.
But you know what?
I hate this idea of working people,
like the only people who work just do like jobs
that don't pay very well and it's like manual labor.
The rest of us don't work.
We're not working people.
But one of the things that,
the reason I don't know about the rapism
in his code switching is that I've been
paying attention to his outrageously shitty ideas. And
one of them. That's what makes you racist. Yeah, I do. Well,
clearly because I don't want to give my money to the MTA to set
on fire, which they already do. Um but you see guys like John
Katz and Matides who's like a perennial candidate in
New York. He has a show on the, I think he owns WABC. And he owns, yeah, he owns Gristides
supermarket. He had a comment the other day, which is true. He's been talking to his fellow rich people
who definitely don't work because they're not working people. And about particularly in like
the financial services industry, this stuff is portable, man. They don't have shops.
They don't have like, you know,
we have a store on the corner.
Can we move?
Like they can move to Miami as so many people during-
Very easily.
Very easily.
So I know you hate those guys, but it's your tax base.
And the number of people who say,
well, they got to pay their fair share.
Look who pays the taxes in New York city.
And on top of it, people should know this,
who don't live in this, as you point out Megan, the best city on earth, but also the worst
at times too, is that we don't pay federal tax only we don't pay state tax only there's a city
tax in New York, which is also punishing and you increase that on people. The number of people
who are not working. We paid over 50% taxes easily between federal, state, city. Then they lob on extra taxes, like just if you're rich enough,
just like extra random fees that you have to pay.
That's an additional like your rent tax and all that.
Like there is so much taxation already in New York.
So much.
And people are fleeing.
They've already been fleeing.
There's only so many people Ron DeSantis can house.
I just I'm not sure what the plan is here because it's insane.
So we'll watch.
He has to house.
We'll see.
How about the center?
You know how we hate platform?
Isn't centering also equally annoying?
Worst verb.
It's not a verb.
It's too.
You can't.
They make fun of rich people for saying they summer places.
Right?
Yes.
Centering is worse than summering, okay?
Years ago, we knew this family
and the woman who was like,
we saw these boats lined up and we're like,
oh wow, that's really cool.
It's like this big motorboat and she goes,
I prefer a sailing vessel.
And that's the same kind of person
who uses the term center.
A sail vessel. Wow.
I'm glad you mentioned Brandon Johnson in Chicago, Megan, because it's a good example.
I think that Mom Donnie is trying to Chicago, New York, where really, really awful democratic
and democratic socialist governance treats an existing great city. Chicago is a wonderful city
that still throws off a lot of wealth.
They just treat it as something to act as a predator on.
Like, okay, cool, we've got a guaranteed revenue stream.
I'm going to get more of it, use it to accumulate power,
and use it to enrich my buddies,
usually in some kind of public sector union context.
And in the process, you're going to have levels of debt and obligations
to pensions. People are going to run fleeing because the combined taxation of the place
is just insane. That's what's happening here. It's what's happening to way, way, way too
many large cities in this country. I know there's a couple of guys out with a book called
the abundance agenda, you know, trying to convince democrats to be more, I don't know, useful on public
policy, heathered to results. And they're getting tons of
pushback, by the way, from the left, like, how dare you? How
dare you say that government work? It's a really bad sign
that there is a large number of people in New York who look at a
guy who's never worked a day in his life, as far as I can tell,
in the private sector.
Yeah, he's been working for his mother.
Wrapping his hard work there.
Come on, Matt.
Wrapping for his mom.
My kids do that in front of me all the time.
I had no idea it was a natural job.
I want to say this, back to the Tucker-Ted Cruz debate.
Tucker said, and he said this many times, like, I want my country to be nice.
And he was talking with him about how disgusting
Washington DC is, back to my JFK thing.
You know, like, it is true.
You have a lot of moments, sadly,
if you live in a blue state in particular,
where you look around and you're like, ew,
this is disgusting.
How is there this much trash on the way to the airport?
Where are the sanitation workers?
You know, it's like a slow crumble that we're seeing in blue controlled cities, in often blue controlled
states, but it can happen in red controlled states too.
Usually it happens in the blue controlled cities of those states.
And this is why, like Tucker wants us to take the money we gave to Ukraine and spend it
on America.
I just don't believe that.
If the federal Congress kept the money that we gave to Ukraine, I don't believe they'd well spend it. I don't believe they'd clean anything up. I feel like
it'd be somehow would wind up in Nancy Pelosi's next mansion. However, I do think local leaders
are to blame. And that's why it's so upsetting to see this happen in New York City. Like we just keep
electing far left Democrats who are ruining the country. They're ruining the country with their terrible
open border policies and leftist economic policies. Mayor Bill de Blasio ruined New York.
He ruined it. We were thriving under Giuliani and then Bloomberg, who was a Republican slash
Independent. And then, you know, he called himself an independent
and eventually not.
But my point is they were right leaning.
And that's really the solution to Tucker's problem and our problem.
We need responsible fiscal leadership in there.
We need people who understand what that kind of taxation will do to the actual money earners.
They will flee.
It's a free country.
You can go to other states.
And this guy, Mamdani, is exactly
the opposite of what we need, who has a very good shot of taking over as the mayor of our biggest
and one of our best cities. Go ahead. That's why the Bannons of the world drive me crazy when
you can... I like debates within the Republican party, as we were talking about, particularly
when it comes to foreign policy. But people like Steve Bannon, who are democratic socialists in their own way,
they, you know, hate the financial industry. That's fine.
Trump has been skeptical of them, too.
But the idea that New York City needs more money is insane.
It's completely ridiculous.
All you have to look at is focus in on the MTA, which is the transit authority
that runs the buses and the subways and
the trains, and then go to a place that has insanely high taxation like Sweden and ride those subways
and trains and be like, wow, this is amazing. You do not get that feeling flying into Orlando airport
in Stockholm that you got Megan flying into JFK. It's like we are, we have these like strangle
holds of the MTA union. And you know, you look at these people, there's a
story The New York Times did like five or six years ago,
maybe even longer, that was really good reporting about the
insanely inflated salaries of everybody who works in entry. I
mean, they're like a couple $100,000 salaries for just like
these, these not very impressive jobs. Look at the Second Avenue
subway, how long has it taken to try to build
the Second Avenue subway?
What are we on, 50 years now?
I'm not even joking.
It's like insane.
Like as if the money is not there.
There is bureaucracy.
There is union, truculent union members and union bosses.
It's impossible to get anything done in the city.
Buy an apartment and say,
I've never bought an apartment in the city,
Camille has, and try to get anything done.
Cause there's layers and layers and layers of red tape.
Oh, God forbid, terrible.
God forbid you need a Renault.
And layers and layers of government.
This government's the problem here, it's not money.
My recommendation to anyone, if you want an easy comp,
is first look at a chart of the average level of taxation
or government expenditure in Florida and in New York state.
Don't even like use New York City,
although they have the extra income tax.
Florida and New York State, it's completely lopsided.
Next, get into your car in both places
and drive for two hours.
Starting in New York City and you can take it upstate,
starting in Miami, take it anywhere.
The roads in Florida are great.
Highways are fantastic.
You can take high- speed train in Florida,
believe it or not.
And in New York, soon, especially when you cross
into the border of New York City,
your tires are going to be shredded
after driving for like 30 minutes.
They haven't fixed any road as far as I can tell.
They've just done construction forever,
but they haven't fixed anything for decades.
And you know what's so annoying too? Is it, it wasn't always like this.
Like when I lived in Chicago in the mid 1990s,
they had, they were under Democrat rule.
It was Bill Daley.
And he was a very famous, well-known mayor.
You know, Daley was like responsible for Chicago.
And it was, you could eat off the sidewalks.
It was so clean.
But the Democrat party has lost its mind
and doesn't understand what to prioritize anymore.
They're much more worried about pronouns
and putting the homeless people,
taking them out of the subway car
and putting them on the subway platform as a real solution
than they are about solving real people's problems.
So that's what needs to happen,
better leadership in the cities and the states.
Stand by, I'm gonna take a break.
And then I have one subject I need to discuss with you guys.
And it's not the Supreme Court thing,
I'll get to that tomorrow.
It's a tweet I sent out this morning.
Stand by.
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I'm Megyn Kelly, host of the Megyn Kelly show
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That's siriusxm.com slash mkshow and get three months free. Are you guys practicing your accents without me?
What are you talking?
Don't talk, Megan.
Are we on the air?
I can't do accents.
The only accent I can do well is just drunk accent.
I can't do that.
Yeah, that's because you're an alcoholic.
That's because I spent so many years
covering Kamala Harris, so I nailed it.
Okay.
I don't know if we're on the air,
because if we were, I would do a lot of accents,
but I can't do it. We are.
Let's hear it.
Yeah, you guys be one, two, and the best young one
back on, let's go.
You have to subscribe to the fifth column
because there are three episodes I don't even do them.
You have to pay to get me canceled.
I feel like you did one.
What was your, do you have like a favor that you've done?
Because you've definitely done one for me that I liked.
I can't remember what it was.
Jesse Jackson is a fan favorite.
Jesse Jackson's a fan favorite.
My daughter always asked me to do an Indian accent,
but she once did an Indian accent
because she loves the Simpsons,
and she was like seven years old.
And I said, darling, you cannot do that accent.
In her response, I swear to God,
one of the funniest when I knew that my daughter
was the best, she looked at me and she said,
Papa, why?
That's how they talk.
And I said, well, yes, that is true.
But you just can't, I don't know why.
I don't make the rules, I'm just trying to protect you.
No.
But you did a very good job, very good job.
The Moynihan's Melania accent is a.
I do a lot.
Yes, yes.
I don't even.
Oh, let's hear a little of that.
That's my favorite.
The Melania accent is not a real accent. It is always like, if there's like Melania's doing some,
you know, fundraiser and she'll be like,
I love the children, they're so cute.
And it's not based on Melania.
It's just a totally-
No, it doesn't sound anything like her.
Nothing, nothing.
No.
You, well, but the best one has been Barron,
the video of him as a child,
where he sounds Slovenian like her, because his father clearly has never talked to him.
I love that when he's saying like, mommy, where is my suitcase?
I love that video so much. It's so great. It's so fantastic.
Yeah.
Mom, Milani, obviously was very, very attached to Barron
and is a great mom.
We quote her all the time with our kids.
This is from some interview they gave
and how they talked to Barron.
But we quote them all the time at the dinner table.
It happens almost once a night.
Small bites Barron, small bites Barron.
This is Trump and Melania.
I guess I kept saying that to him.
Like most teenage boys or young boys,
he's like trying to shovel the whole thing in his face.
Small bites, Baron.
I say it to all three of my kids
because they're also big biters of food.
Okay, I needed to discuss this very important tweet
I sent out that has gotten some hilarious responses.
So I'm at the beach for the summer and we're in a rental.
It's a long story, but our house had to have some renovations
and this is now the second summer that we had to be in a rent,
a rental because this reno is taking forever.
So we're in a rental and the rental doesn't come
with any linens.
So you get here, there's nothing, there's no sheets.
We're here for two months. There's no here, there's nothing, there's no sheets. We're here for two months.
There's no sheets, there's no beds.
There's beds, but there's no comforters.
And there's no towels, which I'm sure somebody told me
in advance and then I just forgot.
That's like Momgony's house.
So, so I'm running around getting linens,
getting like, you know, all the stuff that you need.
And I go to Target.
Thankfully there's a Target, so I go to the Target.
And I decided to get a little rug for the bathroom
because the bathroom floor is too cold.
And I like the bathroom floor to have a little heat on it.
And so I bought a little area rug.
I went a little crazy at Target, I'm not gonna lie.
It's not the prettiest rug I've ever seen.
I'm gonna show you a picture of it, but it's fine.
It's a rental and it was cheap.
It was like 25, no, not this.
Show the picture of the actual rug, standby.
It was like $25.
It was relatively inexpensive for a big rug.
Okay, there it is.
Can you see it?
It's fine.
It's not terrible.
It's not terrible.
Sure. It's fine for a few months,
then I'm sure we can find a place for it after that.
But I get it home and I'm pulling all the tags off of it.
And I take a look at the one tag
and it caused me some alarm, fellas,
because it reads as follows.
Fiber, colon, made of miscellaneous scraps
of undetermined fiber content what's
that miscellaneous scraps of undetermined fiber content. What are you hiding? Yeah, where's it made? Where is it made in India? Oh
It says made in India slumdog millionaire
I'm concerned
That it says vacuum regularly do not use beater brush blot spills promptly
Spot clean with mild cleaning solution do not bleach
Professional rug cleaning now. What does that mean?
Do have a professional rug cleaning or vacuum regular? I don't understand what what is in the scraps?
Because it will fall apart is that if you hit it with a stick Well, yes, I know but I have to tell you something very bad very bad. I
Was standing on it doing my makeup and my feet started to itch
Something's in the rug. Yes. Do you know why they use the word undetermined?
Because they don't know what it is, so maybe put it out you're're in New Jersey. You're right. Just put it out on the beach
Just put it out. I'll take it. Yeah, just I don't think I can do you know get my dollars
Like a nice you can by the way when the Renault is done Megan you can take
The nice one and bring it to the new one. You don't have to buy a cheap garbage one. I know. That occurred to me too late. I did. I think there's a possibility.
Rugs are portable. There's a possibility that what's going on is that it's recycled fibers,
in which case they would actually combine a bunch of stuff.
You don't see that warning anywhere else where you get recycled stuff.
Well, maybe it's the tariffs they have to label this stuff as what it is.
Because I'm telling you, clearly, they're like, Indiana
fingers and toes are in my rug. Well, that's something dark.
possibility. Yeah, I know. I bet the rug's got to go. I like
not only am I having an allergic reaction, I'm allergic to
penicillin. Do you think there's penicillin in there? Why are my
feet itching when I'm standing on it with naked feet? I have
very raw craziest things, Megan is that you're still Do you think there's penicillin in there? Why are my feet itching when I'm standing on it with naked feet? Something's very wrong.
I have to say one of the craziest things, Megan,
is that you're still questioning
whether you should get rid of the rug.
Yeah. I know.
It's like a hassle to get there.
It's on cost fallacy.
Don't breathe close to a rug.
That's not, you don't want that.
Maybe I'll send it to you guys.
You could, we could have a rotation.
It could be like on a visiting,
you know how a museum sends out a museum piece?
We could set, everybody could have a week with it
and then the next time you're on, we could debrief.
You think it's gonna be just more than two weeks?
I don't know.
We would frame it, we would mount it, frame it,
and we would put it up in the new studio.
That is what's gonna happen.
Why don't you have an auction for this?
Let's do an auction for this rug
and whoever gave the money to charity. It would the money to charity. That's a great idea.
Megan, do not mount it.
Don't mount it.
Don't send through the mail.
So maybe don't have a.
I don't feel like I'd get through TSA.
I'm not sure, but there's something deeply wrong with my rug.
I just thought you guys could help me diagnosis.
I think we've come to a conclusion.
It needs to go.
It needs to go.
Guys, thank you.
It was a pleasure as it always is.
And we'll see you after we know
which terrible person is running New York.
Great.
Sounds good.
Stay cool.
All right. Thanks, Megan.
Bye. Thank you.
And thanks to all of you for listening today.
The guys from the fifth column never disappoint. Tomorrow tune in.
We've got Charlie Kirk.
That'll be fun too, right?
He's one of the MAGA faithful.
What does he think of the whole civil war inside of the Republican party?
Lots to discuss.
We'll talk to you then.
Thanks for listening to the Megyn Kelly show.
No BS, no agenda, and no fear.
