The Megyn Kelly Show - Trump's Huge Win, Haley Drops Out, and MSNBC Melts Down, with Vivek Ramaswamy and Rich Lowry | Ep. 739

Episode Date: March 6, 2024

Megyn Kelly is joined by National Review's Rich Lowry to discuss Nikki Haley dropping out of the presidential race but not endorsing Donald Trump yet, whether Haley has a future in politics, if Trump needs Haley's voters to win in 2024, MSNBC’s Joy Reid claiming Republicans only care about stopping black people from going to college, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow and Jen Psaki laughing about voters who care about illegal immigration and crime, and more. Then Vivek Ramaswamy, author of "Capitalist Punishment," joins to discuss the media “freakout” about GOP voters hating America and whether this is the "last election" ever, what Trump is doing right in the race, the need for the GOP to stop focusing on Biden because he could get replaced in late summer, Haley's place in the GOP, he learned from doing battle with the corporate media during the 2024 campaign, what Trump should do with the media during the race, what life looks like after Ramaswamy’s presidential run, and more. Lowry- https://www.nationalreview.com/Ramaswamy- https://www.youtube.com/@vivek-2024 Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to the Megyn Kelly show live on Sirius XM channel one 11 every weekday at noon east. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to the Megyn Kelly show, a massive news day, and we are going to try our best to get it all jam packed into today's show for you. Former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley officially bows out of the GOP presidential race. She was still running. I know we didn't talk about it a lot. She wasn't really putting points on the board. She won D.C. and yesterday she won Vermont. But it was obvious that this was over for her long before she actually made it official this morning. And guess who's here to discuss it?

Her campaign trail nemesis, Vivek Ramaswamy. He comes on live in just a bit. Plus, MSNBC's top anchors mocking voters who these losers who are worried about illegal immigration. Let me tell you that Rachel Maddow with her $30 million a year for one hour of work a week, she doesn't have to worry about the illegals the way you losers do. And she thinks it's funny that you're so afraid. Not just her, but her millionaire colleagues, Joy Reed and Jen Psaki. They also think your fear is funny. You amuse them with your fright for your children, maybe on college campuses, trying to get fit so they can go out and have a nursing career and have some fear about illegals. You're so scared. You're so weak. That's MSNBC.

As they like to say in their motto, this is who we are. We'll get to it a lot today. And Ashley Merchant, defendant Michael Roman's attorney in the Georgia case against Trump, testifies herself before a Georgia state Senate committee that's investigating Fulton County District Attorney Fannie Willis. And while there was actually a lot of interesting stuff that just happened in that hearing, it started off slow and then it got spicy. And we're going to bring you a second episode today just on that. We thought we'd squeeze it into the back of this show, but there's too much. So it's a packed day.

We've got a packed lineup and we begin today with Rich Lowry, editor-in-chief of National Review. Rich, great to have you back. So it's official. Nikki's out. She left. She did not actually endorse Trump, but she did mention him. Play a little bit of that here in SOT1. I congratulate him and wish him well. I wish anyone well who would be America's president. Our country is too precious to let our differences divide us. I have always been a conservative Republican and always supported the Republican nominee. But on this question, as she did on so many others, Margaret Thatcher provided some good advice when she said, quote,

never just follow the crowd. Always make up your own mind. It is now up to Donald Trump to earn the votes of those in our party and beyond it who did not support it. And just a nit, Rich, it's as somebody who reads a lot of prompter and has for, you know, the past 20 years, there really is sort of an art form to it and she doesn't have it, you know, every sentence can't sound like you're addressing a third grade class. As Margaret Thatcher said, this is the way it should be. That's a pretty good impression. Right. It's just annoying. You can tell she's reading and what it telegraphs is. This is not sincere. This is inauthentic. I don't believe she believes anything she's saying. This

is just something someone wrote for her. Maybe she does believe I'm just saying this is the effect of a listener. And truly it is one of the reasons why she didn't, she didn't resonate because this is how she kind of always sounds. But anyway, she's gone. So what do you make of it? Well, she overperformed. She ran a good campaign, a much better campaign than any of the other non-Trump candidates, including very much Ron DeSantis. I discounted her at the beginning, didn't pay a lot of attention to her. And she kind of shouldered her way in with some debate throwdowns with your future guest here, Vivek Ramaswamy, and then just owned a part of the party. Now, a 25%, 30% part of the party, but that was more than DeSantis had.

It was enough when the conditions were just right to get kind of close to Trump in New Hampshire and respectable in South Carolina. But she could spend a lot of money and a lot of time in those places. And she was from South Carolina. New Hampshire lined up ideologically for pretty well. But that wasn't true of the rest of the calendar. And as the contest started coming more quickly, then her results were kind of regressing towards her national poll standing against Trump, which is like 15 percent. So she was maybe she was there a couple of places last night, but she she did better than that. But that's where she was heading. And this was clearly there was nothing. There's no reason to stay in.

I'm surprised she lasted this long and she's gotten out. I'm not sure how this this non-endorsement, you know, Trump's got to earn it thing is going to work. Is he really going to earn it? You know, in her terms, is she just done with being a Republican politician is not going to endorse? I don't know. So she may have created a kind of a box canyon for herself there. She's a politician, so she's going to endorse eventually. And she's going to take a post in his cabinet or administration if he offers it. That's my prediction. Never put money on a politician holding to principle. That's just not where the smart money is. They protect themselves and their political longevity. And I get it. That's a different game they're in. But there's zero chance she's not going to ultimately endorse him and go back and kiss the ring if he wins. She wants a political

career. Yeah, I would think she wants to run again in 2028. And yeah, she has to endorse. Given that, I would have just endorsed today. I'm not sure how much leverage she has over Trump. I just would have done it the way DeSantis did, do it in a dignified way, do it in a way you know you're not going to be the veep, so you're not going to be standing behind Donald Trump like Tim Scott with pom poms and all that. But just do it and get it over with, and then the question is done and you move on. And Nikki Haley's proposition thought here is she'll be the I told you so candidate if Trump loses.

Now, there's some chance that he will lose, but no one's going to want to hear I told you so candidate if Trump loses. Now, there's some chance that he will lose, but no one's going to want to hear I told you so. It's going to be 10 years since she was UN ambassador. And, you know, her favorable ratings weren't that high this time around. I just don't see I don't see a future for her unless it's with a position with with Trump, which would be awkward given what she said. It's not just like I don't like the way he conducts himself or I don't like his trade policy. It's like he's not up for this anymore. You know, so that's a little harder to get around. And yet, you know, Trump is very good at forgiving people and moving on. Basically, the way it goes with Trump generally is he does something outrageous, then they say something not nice about him, and then he forgives them because

he wants them for some reason. And he's willing to look past their responsive slight after he attacked them. That's generally the pattern, but that's, you know, whatever. Um, so I think they'll probably make up because he really does need her voters. He needs every single Republican he can get to win this race and independents who were more attracted to her. I don't think he's going to kiss her ring, though, at any point soon. He didn't last night. He didn't mention her. He was posting on Truth Social

negative things about her. And so I think there's room for them to make up. But this is, for what it's worth, this is how he sounded last night. It wasn't about her. It was about how things are going to go for him on a go-forward basis. And he took a shot at Joe Biden. And here it is. I think it's SOT7.

And they're coming from rough places and dangerous places. And we had that shutdown. We had everything going so beautifully when Joe Biden goes to the beach because somebody on his staff thinks he looks very good in a bathing suit until he can't get his feet out of the sand or lift the chair, which weighs about nine ounces. Joe Biden, if he would have just left everything alone, he could have gone to the beach. He would have had a tremendous success at the border and elsewhere. He's so good at picturing, like he calls up the image we all have in there. You know, everyone saw that picture. Yep, the skeletal figure struggling with the lawn chair.

And that's fine. I think mockery has a place in politics. And he's absolutely right about the border. And this is just, I wrote about this the other day. February 2nd, 2021, within two weeks of being inaugurated, Biden issues this executive order. This is one executive order. This is one executive order. He had many others on the border, but must have repealed 10, a dozen Trump proclamations,

policies, statements. Most important, Biden made it his policy to repeal remain in Mexico and the safe third country agreement. Safe third country goes within days. Blinken says it's gone. And then there's a legal struggle over remain in Mexico. But they fought to end remain in Mexico. They fought in court to end remain in Mexico. Mayorkas had to reissue an executive order repealing it. And everyone knew it was going to blow up the border,

open it up, create a disaster. They were warned it was predictable and they did it anyway. And that's all going to be around Biden's neck in November. So Karl Rove was over on Fox News last night, and he's not a big Trump fan. He is a lifelong Republican, and he got George Bush the second, 43, elected twice. But he was zeroing in, and I realize Trump doesn't like this and Trump supporters don't like this, but let's talk about it, on the numbers that Nikki Haley did amass and sort of the missing Trump support in places like Virginia, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Maine and Vermont. Now, you know, Virginia matters in this race. North Carolina matters in this race. And, you know, he's pointing out, let's say in Virginia, a third of the vote went to Nikki Haley, a quarter of the vote in North Carolina

went to Nikki Haley. And his point was there really is still some work to be done to unify the Republican Party. Now, Rich, all along, I've been saying I get it. But you and I, in acute and memorable ways, both lived through 15, 16 and the Republican party. It was extremely divided over Trump back then. And the party came home. He got over 90, I think it was 93% of the Republican vote turned out for him. I would submit they are less divided over Trump now than they were back then. And I know if there's another option on the ballot, they're like, I prefer her. There's some 30%. They say, I prefer her. But this, I do not believe, tells us that when it's Trump v. Biden, that they will say, I won't vote Trump or I will

stay home and just allow Biden to ride in. Yeah. So I had this experience, this coming home experience in my own family in 2016. My mom, she was quite old early then, she would vote early in Virginia and she was kind of a moderate Republican. She didn't really like Trump, but hated Hillary. And she called me like, what can I do? I don't want to vote for either of them. And I looked and I didn't lobby her to do this or push her to do this.

I said, well, this guy, Ed McMullin's on the ballot there in Virginia if you want another option. So she goes, votes early, three weeks before the election, whatever it is for Ed McMullin. And then a week before the election, he calls me, Richie, who's that idiot you had me vote for? I want to vote for Trump. So she felt that coming home. And she was a suburban, relatively moderate Republican. And that happened all around the country. And it was enough to get him over the top. So I basically agree with you. The party's more united now. And Steve

Kornacki actually wrote an interesting piece over at NBC about this weird disconnect where you look at the primaries and Haley does well among independents or wins independents in these primary races. And then you look at the national polling as Biden and Trump is winning independents. So how does that make sense? And his explanation was the independents who are going and voting against Trump in these primaries are the most committed anti-Trump independents. The average independent does not share the same view. And I think the same thing is true of the Republicans voting for Haley. That's not the, you know, she's winning 30% in these states and Trump's winning 90% in

the national polls. So I think they're more committed to being anti-Trump, but a lot of them will come home anyway. But none of that's to say that Trump should be giving up any of these votes. He needs every single one he can, because unless something crazy happens, this is going to be a close election. Well, and not only that, I do believe Trump cares what happens to the country, but I know for a fact he cares about what happens to him. And if he doesn't win, there's a very good chance he's going to go to jail. So, I mean, he really does need to win. Although it is sort of an interesting question to think if he doesn't win and therefore he cannot pull Jack Smith's DOJ off of these two federal cases,

what happens to the, I think the Democrats see it through. I don't think the Democrats take the pedal off the floor, right, on the criminal prosecutions. They're committed to getting Trump, whether he's in the White House or not. Yep. Yeah. So if Trump loses, our friend and colleague, Charlie Cook, wrote a piece arguing this the other day. His legacy is totally wiped out. I mean, Biden will get Supreme Court appointments. You know, everything that's been reversed will stay reversed. And he'll be known, you know, not to all the supporters, because Trump will argue that the second election is rigged, too. But he'll be a two-time loser. And that's very unusual. It's hard to do that. You know,

a couple of people in American history can say the same. So the stakes are huge. Then there's the legal thing. I'm just, I've been radicalized against Jack Smith. This is so wrong, what he's trying to do. The idea that he would really have Trump in a courtroom, you know, whether it's in D.C. and or in Florida over the classified documents thing from July until November of a presidential election. It's insane. It's insane. And he knows exactly what he's doing. And you saw it in the reaction when the Supreme Court took up the immunity, please. You know, the left wing commenters are like, well, justice won't be done. And this is very bad. But they're also like, oh, my God, Biden could lose because Trump's not going to stand trial and be convicted. And that's just a rank distortion of our system. Oh, yeah, It was I mean, we talked about yesterday, Andy's piece where he was quoting Politico

and they're saying, you know, well, what could happen for is Chutkin could once she gets the green light, we assume in the summer by the Supreme Court to go ahead with these cases that Trump's not immune for everything and potentially not immune for the cases going up there. She could just, you know, floor it. She could floor it in that litigation. They could have the trial going on in October and all the way up through November 5th. And that Trump could be allowed to campaign potentially on weekends when he's you have to sit there as a criminal defendant. You have nothing happens on a Friday in Washington, D.C. Or they said, Rich, possibly they do half day trials and he could just campaign in the mid-Atlantic states.

Virginia, really work Virginia hard. It's insane. It's so it's so deeply wrong. And it's also going to delegitimize the election either way. So let's say he doesn't get the trial. Trial doesn't get off the ground. It doesn't happen before the election. What what are Democrats going to say?

This is an illegitimate election. He's an illegitimate president because this really important central trial to our history and to our fate of a nation didn't happen. And the Supreme Court helped stop it from happening, right? So let's blow the whole thing up. Trump, he doesn't have to have any other rigged argument, except if this goes to trial and he's convicted and he loses, he'll just say the justice system was rigged against me and he'll have a legitimate case. Yeah, he'll be right for sure system was rigged against me and he'll have a legitimate case. Yeah, he'll be right for sure this time. He'll have a far more legitimate claim this time around than he did the last time around. And it really was rigged against him. So he won't he

will definitely not be calling himself a two time loser. I think we can both agree on that. Yeah. Charles's piece is about, you know, the perception. OK, so in the meantime, or on the other side of the aisle, we're getting a report now. This is from Axios that Biden, first we heard earlier that CNN was saying Biden's direction delivered to his senior most staff is to significantly ramp up the campaign's efforts to highlight the quote, crazy shit Trump says, which we were mocking on this show. Cause it's like, Oh, no one's ever tried doing that before. Gee, I'm sure that'll get it done. OK, but now today there's a piece in Axios, Biden's new strategy, colon, go for Trump's jugular. Biden is privately pushing for a much

more aggressive approach to 2024. Go for Trump's jugular. He's convinced he will rattle Donald Trump if he taunts him daily. Biden has told friends he thinks Trump is wobbly, both intellectually and emotionally, and will explode if Biden mercilessly gigs and goads him, quote, go haywire in public, as one advisor put it. Other sources tell us that Biden is looking for a fight. Now, this actually is a little bit more interesting to me, Rich, because, you know, Trump does not like to allow attacks on him to pass unresponded to. And I do think he has a history of proving he can be easily goaded into these fights. Yep. It probably makes more sense than talking about infrastructure, right? Everyone's in favor of infrastructure. So polls strongly and they think, oh,

infrastructure is our trump card. But who really cares deeply about infrastructure, right? No one opposes bridges, but that doesn't mean you're going to vote for a guy because he's spending more money on bridges, certainly at the presidential level. So, this does make sense. Obviously, Trump hates being criticized. As he said in 2016, I'm a counterpuncher. He is. You know, he can barely let anything go. So I don't think this is a crazy strategy. The problem, though, maybe for the White House is having broadcast it, maybe you create an extra incentive for Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita and the smart people around Trump to say, Mr. President, don't go there.

See what they're trying to do. Look at this news article about what they're trying to get you to do. Talk about the economy tonight. Instead, I don't think they'll have 100% success on that if history is any guide. But Steve Bannon in 16, a kind of crucial final weeks, the reports, he was in the plane with Trump, on the plane with Trump, and kept on saying, they're trying to get you to say X, Y, Z. Instead, stay on message. Just talk about trade. Talk about how the elites ruined the working class. And he had some success there at the end. So it's never going to be perfect keeping Trump on message. But I think having broadcasted this, they want to get him off message. It might be a little easier to keep him on. Yeah, that's right. OK, so meanwhile,

I don't know if you're aware of this, but voters on the Republican side are not voting on the economy, so they shouldn't be touting that. They're voting on race and racial animus. So says Joy Reid. This is her big master takeaway from last night's basic nomination of Donald Trump. Take a listen. But Republican voters don't vote that way. They don't vote based on economics or based on the benefits they're getting economically from the president. They're increasingly from the Tea Party on. They're voting on race. They're voting on this idea of an invasion of brown people over the border.

The idea that they can't get whatever job they want. A black person got it. Therefore, drive all the blacks out of the colleges. Get rid of DEI. That is what they're voting on. They're just voting specifically on racial animus at this stage. It isn't about economics. No. You see, the blacks want to or the Republicans want to get all the blacks out of the colleges. Didn't you guys have an article on that National Review? How do we get the blacks out of universities?

This is so absurd. It's so insulting, but it's kind of hard to get insulted by Joy Reid now. She's just such a comical figure. Yeah, they look through everything and everything through racial means and want to preserve all these poisonous racialist arguments and structures in American life. And the idea that it's only like white people that care about border security is deeply insulting. I mean, plenty of Latinos care about it as well. Plenty of African-Americans care about it as well. And it's a top issue, maybe the top issue, depending on the poll, for a reason, right? And it doesn't just affect border states.

Rachel Maddow was mocking people in Virginia caring about the border. It's like, oh, yeah, Virginia has a border with West Virginia. But these migrants come in and they go everywhere, right? Why is Eric Adams exercised about illegal immigration? New York State isn't a border state, right? It doesn't border Mexico. So this is like totally out of touch. But it's a sign of where the left is. And

this is a reason Biden has gone on for three years or more now without fixing a totally unsustainable situation at the border that's bad for the country and and catastrophic for his political prospects. It's everything is reduced to race. We don't you don't you're upset about illegal immigration. You don't like brown people. You're upset about illegal immigration. You want blacks out of colleges. What what what are you saying? All the blacks in the colleges are illegal immigrants. I mean, if I said that, you'd be calling me a racist pig, Joy Reid. It's no better when you say it. Yeah. Then here's the comment that you just referenced. I mean, the most disgusting comment of the night. And that's saying something because MSNBC is really giving itself a run for its money each night. They all triple down on who could be

the worst. And in this particular clip, you've got three of the faves. You've got Joy Reid, Rachel Maddow and Jen Psaki scoffing. I mean, just sneering at this notion that Virginia voters are going to vote based on immigration or care about immigration. Look at this. I mean, if you look at some of these exit polls, I mean, I live in Virginia. Immigration was the number one issue. I mean, again, these could change in Virginia. Well, Virginia does have a border with West Virginia.

Very contested there. But you're thinking like, what? I mean, when I was in New Hampshire, people were talking about the northern border as a threat. Because Trump has indoctrinated people with this fear of people who do not look like them being a threat to them. But, you know, I mean, and every, you know, every election cycle, particularly when there's a Democratic incumbent, we get reminded about the borders. And the borders become a thing again. But the only difference now is they drop the every four years part. And now, I mean, all the programming about cities, the threat of crime and crime.

Meanwhile, on Earth one, the FBI reports that violent crime in America is at a 50 year low. And my crime is not a thing. And you live on earth one. I like there's so much to do there. Rich migrant crime is not a thing. Tell it to the family of the 14 year old girl in Campbell County, Virginia, who was just sexually assaulted by an illegal from Venezuela. Who's now been arrested and charged after he crossed illegally into El Paso, Texas in September of 23, which is past September and released into the United States by the feds. Stephen Miller online responds one in eight, about one in eight Virginia residents

today was born in a foreign country. One in four very young people has a foreign born parent in Virginia. In Fairfax County public schools, roughly 20% of students struggle to speak English. Migration has completely reshaped the Commonwealth of Virginia, where I used to live as well. This is, they laugh and sneer at their own peril. They'll learn in November what the truth is. Yeah, well, Rachel Maddow should go to the south side of Chicago and meet with the local residents who are outraged. We all saw these clips or clips from the community meetings or interviews on the street. Migrants are being moved into their community center, right? They want the community center for their teenagers, their at-risk

teenagers, the kind of people that Rachel Maddow is supposed to care about. And there's no reason that people from another country should just walk into the country and go to their community center. That's how they feel, and it's totally commonsensical and reasonable. Do they not listen to anything that Brandon Johnson says or Eric Adams says? These cities being overwhelmed with the housing and the costs associated with it from illegal immigrants. So this is a national crisis. It's not a manufactured thing. If Trump didn't exist and no Republican was talking about the border at all, people would still feel this way. Right. Because they see it all around them. And even, you know, Stephen is absolutely right about how immigration's changed the demographics of Virginia. But even if you never, you know, you're someplace in the middle of the country that literally never, you never encounter an immigrant,

it doesn't mean that you can still not be outraged by what's happening at the border, right? There are tons of people who are outraged and fearful of climate change who will never encounter a climate change event that's in any way threatening to them, right? So this is ridiculous. It just goes to just how radical they've gotten on this issue. Joe Biden, 20, 30 years ago, did not sound the way he does now on the border. He says we have to stop illegal immigration. Bill Clinton said we have to stop illegal immigration. But even doing that now is considered nasty and retrograde, and only people in the throes of deep racial fantasies believe in it. That's a crazy place. To say in the wake of Lake and Riley's murder, you know, days ago, a week ago on the University of Georgia campus, that migrants, they're not

linked to crime. They are. They are too. And we talked about this on our show yesterday, pivoting on what I heard on your show, The Editors, with Charles C.W. Cook, saying even one is too many. American citizens committing crime is one thing. We don't applaud it. We don't want it. We try to punish it in certain jurisdictions. But we don't have to deal.

We shouldn't have to deal with illegals coming over here and committing crime. Even one is too many. And as this girl, her family is still mourning that that grave is freshly dug and they are out there sneering about how migrants don't commit crime. Yeah. And it's entirely avoidable, right? That's what makes it so maddening and outrageous at any number of junctures that that guy, he never should have gotten the country in the first place. He should have been deported at any number of junctures. If we're just following our own laws, it never would have happened. And that's a huge deal to anyone who has an ounce of common sense, but that doesn't apply to many people on the set at MSNBC. Meanwhile, here's Karine Jean-Pierre on the subject of Lakin Riley's murder. Listen.

Will President Biden publicly address Lakin Riley's murder, allegedly at the hands of an illegal immigrant who was released by law enforcement multiple times on Thursday night? This is such a tragic story and obviously situation. I don't have anything to share about the president's speech as it relates to that particular question that you have. I would be remiss if I did not continue to say that Republicans rejected a bipartisan proposal that came out of the Senate. I mean, she's just going to keep doing it, by the way, just FYI, Bill Maluj in a Fox News reporting. CPB reports another 7,000 migrant encounters at the southern border yesterday. That's the fourth day in a row of 7,000 a day. The slow months are right now.

These are the slow months of January, February, early March. And he says now that's likely in the rear view and the annual spring surge is being teed up, which means we're going up from 7000. And I guess they're just going to sit there going, the Republicans, they didn't they didn't like the deal. Yeah, that's exactly what they're going to do. I don't think to get much mileage out of that a little bit. But this is one thing, you know, Trump says he's going to solve the war in Ukraine 24 hours. I can do that. But the border crisis will, at least initially, for like the first three months, if Trump's elected, end,

right? There'll be an enormous like biblical wave if Trump wins in November, December, January. Then as soon as he's in office, it'll just stop. And then it'll start up again and he'll have to actually implement policies for more rational order. But this is one thing, the difference couldn't be more stark. You either get a continued border crisis with Biden or it ends with Trump. And Democrats are so, I don't think they really, on top of having a kind of cracked lunatic morality when it comes to borders, they also don't know what happened. I think Pete Buttigieg was on Squawk Box yesterday and was pushed on Biden reversing Trump policies. And he said, either he was lying through his teeth or just doesn't know. So, you know, the only thing Biden ended was the separation of

child separations. Right. So Trump tried that for about a week. There was outrage over it. It was a debacle. And he ended it in about about a week, you know, years ago. This is the one thing that Biden didn't reverse because it was already reversed. He reversed all the stuff that was working and that didn't have any significant humanitarian consequences. But here's a guy who's supposed to be plugged in who thinks all they did was end child separations. And they kind of view everything Trump did as child separation. It was inherently wrong and had to go just because Trump did it without any sort of rational consideration of the consequences. Well, so, yeah, I mean, he changed it because he thought we were being inhumane. We wanted to be more humane when Joe Biden took office, not about the kids, but about the border,

about border enforcement. And we've seen what that's gotten us. You know, we've gotten deaths of American children, of innocents going for a jog. We've seen fentanyl crossing the border in record levels. We've seen record levelsl crossing the border in record levels. We've seen record level levels of border crossings to the point where, as you point out, school centers are being shut down. Schools are being taken over by illegals coming in. You can't even speak English in half of these classrooms because you have to have a different person who can speak all the languages, at least in New York. That's his humane policy. And same thing on crime. They wanted to do this out in San Francisco. We need to be more humane in our crime enforcement. And look where we are just a couple of years later. Chesa Boudin,

that prosecutor has been booted because crime was just too rampant. And now you see the ballot initiatives out in San Francisco that these that the San Franciscans approved to have to make it easier on cops to make arrests and to pursue felons. And there's a couple other ballot initiatives out there, too, that show that city's not quite as blue as it once was. So what did you think when you saw that? I mean, it just shows you can push anyone too far. You can push even San Francisco too far. And the level of disorder that they have to put up with on their streets and the sense of threat is just intolerable. And it doesn't matter whether you're conservative in the middle or progressive. If you're scared, if you're disgusted by what you see, if you see human feces on the sidewalk,

that's you're going to react. And so you've seen a reaction even in San Francisco. I don't think it's as, you know, we're not going to see it other places, unfortunately. Other cities are just going to seem content to think beneath the waves. But it is a sign that people can be pushed too far. On that front, just breaking New York Times, Governor Kathy Hochul, amid a series of violent crimes on the subway, said she would deploy 1,000 members of the state police and National Guard to the transit system. But there's no crime, Rich.

We're at 50-year lows. There's nothing to worry about. There's no, we don't know why they have every single deodorant in Walgreens locked up. It's a mystery that they're jumping off the shelves themselves. It's always a pleasure, my friend. Thank you for being here. Thank you so much. Talk soon. All right. See you soon. When we come back, Vivek Ramaswamy. So much I want to talk to him about, and we have more MSNBC Insanity queued up for him. Stand by. Joining me now, Vivek Ramaswamy, former 2024 presidential candidate and author of Capitalist Punishment. Vivek, welcome back to the show. It's great to have you. It's good to see you, Megan. So your main rival, I mean, I guess it's fair to say Nikki Haley in the presidential race

is now officially out several months after pretty much everybody else got out. Your reaction to her bailing out without endorsing Trump? Look, I'd say better her getting out of the race late than never. I'd say that she's irrelevant in this race going forward. So I prefer not to waste a ton of airtime, you know, adjudicating Nikki Haley. But I'll say I'll share with you what my thoughts are is she's a representation of a strand in the Republican Party that still continues to exist. I mean, Nikki Haley was a representation of many other candidates who filled that same ideological vision, which I think is more interesting than talking about her as an individual. I think that vision is one in which you have the United States playing an interventionist role in the world, taking actual

liberties and infringing on them at the margin when necessary to advance certain national security driven agendas, what you'd call the neoconservative vision. And that's different than I think the future direction of the Republican Party that I'd like to see and the direction that it's headed, which is more of a libertarian nationalist movement that says the people we elect to run the government should be the ones who run the government and that they owe their sole moral duty to the citizens of this country rather than another one. So I think that ideological divide continues to persist and continues to outlive Nikki Haley's candidacy. So I think that ideological divide continues to persist and continues to outlive Nikki Haley's candidacy. And I think will be an interesting area of intra-party

debate going forward. But for the rest of this year, I think you're going to see amended over at least temporary alliance to say that it's worth beating Joe Biden. And I think it is worth beating whoever the Democratic candidate is going to be. I personally think it's not going to be Biden. But I think that's what we're going to see for the rest of this year. But that's not going to change the underlying ideological fissure. And I do think it is that within the Republican Party that's going to have to be resolved, I would say, even more clearly in the years to come. Okay. So what about that? Because as the party is still somewhat divided, you know, America First, MAGA, that's a large portion of it. It's Trump's party. Clearly there's still this other faction. You know, there's definitely still a number of Republicans

who are more, I don't know if you want to call it Ronald Reagan aligned, George W. Bush aligned, but just sort of different policies. Certainly when it comes to international conflicts and so on, she would say she's in that vein. So that's why some people say, oh, he should make her his VP because the party must unite. The number one thing is to beat the Democrats. And if they have to swallow this medicine, they don't want to swallow to get the big W, then do it. What do you make of that logic? Well, I'd say a couple of things.

First is I do think we need to dispense with the Reagan analogy. George W. Bush, fine. Reagan, not fine. I think a lot of the neoconservatives of the modern 20 years have managed to co-opt and rewrite Ronald Reagan's legacy. Reagan was actually an America first conservative. He believed a catastrophe in Beirut. Today's neoconservatives would say that was running with them firing at your back. What Reagan actually asked in the face of a crisis was whether or not our presence there advanced American interests. And so this rewriting of Reagan's legacy in the modern neocon mold, I do think is an error. It's just factually inaccurate. And I do think the likes of Nikki Haley,

who have tried to appropriate that mantle, do it only to find that that mantle doesn't actually fit the vision they're advancing. I think it's much closer to a George Bush post 9-11 view. Now to the question that you asked about VP, look, that's Donald Trump's decision to make, who he makes as vice president. But I will say this is coherence is really important

in a governing agenda. I think one of the learnings from the first term, and I do think Donald Trump and many of the people around him appropriately have, I think, taken a lot of learnings from that first term to go even further to advance America first in the second term, is that you need people who are aligned with the core principles, right? There's good room for reasonable debate. Debate's always a good thing within any organization, including an administration. But if the fundamental principles aren't aligned, the John Boltons, the Nikki Haley's of the world that were in that first administration, I think that that's going to frustrate advancing the agenda of Donald Trump as the next president more than it will advance

it. So that's my personal opinion when it comes to a Nikki Haley. But it's less about her and more about the need for alignment to advance a coherent agenda. And I think Donald Trump understands that. I think it's actually going to be a unifying agenda. The beauty of the America First vision, Megan, is it's not strictly a partisan Republican versus Democrat divide. You go to places like the south side of Chicago, where I visited during the campaign, I saw more alignment for our view on making sure that we're funding American border protection more than Ukrainian border protection, making sure that we're actually funding American interests.

They better pay attention, Vivek, because Charles Barkley was on CNN saying he's going to punch any black person in the face who's going to vote for Donald Trump. If I see a black person walking around with Trump mugs, I'm gonna punch him in the face. Charles. No, Gil, Gil, Gil. You really can't say that, cuz A, you don't mean that. I mean that sincerely. I'm gonna just tell you something. And then you will be arrested for assault, and then what? I'm gonna bail myself out and go celebrate. Look, there's no question that Biden's gonna win the black vote. But there's no question Trump's share of it is polling higher than we've ever seen with a Republican presidential candidate.

Go ahead. Yeah. And look, I think that that's actually promising where this old school vision of the Republican Party of, you know, a narrow set of ideological agendas relating to economic policy and foreign policy intervention. And we expand that aperture to say, no, no, no, this is about all Americans first, actually. America first includes all Americans. That's a powerful vision. It transcends black versus white. I'll tell you, a lot of black Americans rightly look at illegal migrants in schools, ranging from Chicago to New York, being converted to encampments for migrants in the inner city, rightly asking, what the heck about me when you're spending $7,000 per migrant per month, forking over $200 billion to Ukraine while we have Americans struggling here at home? I think that's a powerful vision. It's a vision that goes back to even

George Washington's vision for this country in 1776, that are going to bring a lot of orphaned Democrats and independents and libertarians along with us, that I think that's actually far more promising as a future of the Republican Party than reciting slogans memorized in the post 9-11 era from Dick Cheney and George Bush, which is what certain Republican candidates I think today are still trying to cling on to. I think that's withering away and it's going to melt away to irrelevance. But I do think that that's, you're asking about the last candidate exiting from the Republican primary field. I think that's the most interesting takeaway is what it has in terms of implications for the future of a Republican party, where we're seeing that ideological vision kindly go to the dustbins of history where it should. Okay. We've got to get a little bit of the reaction that we

saw in the media last night to Donald Trump essentially securing the nomination, not officially in terms of delegates, but it's his, it's done. It was a freak out, but it it was. I've covered a lot of these, Vivek. I mean, I've covered a lot of Super Tuesdays. This is more like a snoozer Tuesday because we knew it was going to happen. And what happened, like the rhetoric being employed in this clip, you watch, it's got all of our favorites in there is beyond anything I've heard, even with respect to Trump. Here it is in SOT6. What's wrong with you people? Why do you hate America? Why do you vote for a guy that says America is terrible? That it's a third world country?

So this is not somebody who cares about anything other than himself. There's something so heavy about covering what could be the last election. We're not, you know, I think talking in hyperbolic terms because Trump is now running as a guy who said, quote, I'll be a dictator on day one. He has remade the party in his image. There are still some Republicans who are trying to take it away, like take it back. That's over. That's over. There's no back. That party doesn't exist anymore. And that we're actually going to be covering a general election

between these two men where one isn't running on a promise to continue to have elections at all. OK, kicks off with why. Why do you hate America if you're supporting Trump? And then you heard this is just so heavy. This could be the last election we ever have. He's not going to leave. We heard Rachel Maddow say the same the other night. Yes. So, look, I think that it's a bit Orwellian, a bit of projection here where you do have a political party in a movement that is literally trying, but for the Supreme Court, to remove

one of the two major candidates from the ballot in states across this country. And that means you don't have a nation left, right? If you want a patchwork framework where certain states can disallow certain presidential candidates while other ones allow them, we don't have a country left. So if we wanted to adopt the histrionics, I think we would have a stronger case in the reverse direction. A political party in power where literally the prosecutorial force of a Department of Justice reporting into the U.S. president, who's one of those two candidates on the ballot, is using the apparatus of that federal government to go after his political opponent in the middle of an election. So I think you're seeing a lot of projection here. The lack of self-awareness is stunning. But I do think, Megan, it's the beginning

of the next layer of histrionics you're going to see to do whatever they can to keep this man out of the White House. And I continue to believe that though people have a lot of complacency in the Republican camp after Super Tuesday, I think the real race hasn't really even begun. I don't think Biden is going to be the nominee. I think they are already planting the seeds, laying the breadcrumbs that make it evident that they're preparing to move him out of the way. What I see right now is the Democrats seeing an advantage, though, in prolonging that as much as possible. The more Republicans fall into the trap, and I do see it as a trap, and I do see some Republicans falling into it, of focusing the agenda on defeating Biden, talking about his age,

talking about his frailty, his mental errors, his lack of mental acuity, even some of the corruption relating to Biden, his relationship with Hunter, all worthy topics to interrogate about any U.S. president. But the more we fall into the siren song of that is our trap, as a lightning rod for our message, in some ways, the better it is for the Democrats if you get to this summer, all of that political capital, energy, messaging capital, and even just raw inertia, right? A force moving in a certain direction, if that's your message, and even just raw inertia, right? A force moving in a certain direction. If that's your message, criticizing Biden as your agenda, they pull the rug out. It's not Biden as the nominee. That then by the middle of the summer works to the Democrat

advantage. So I think that's exactly what's happening is they're slow playing the switcheroo that's coming this summer. Republicans to some extent are falling into that trap by focusing the message on Biden, when in fact, Biden's going to be about as irrelevant as Nikki Haley. That is so interesting. Well, we know that Biden's message is all about Trump and Trump will be the nominee. So maybe it's harder. There's no switcheroo coming on the Republican side unless Jack Smith manages to get Trump in jail before November, which is looking less and less likely and nearly impossible. But this is fascinating. I do want to talk to you about because I know you think the switcheroo is coming just this week. Michelle Obama's office

put out a statement saying she's not running. She's she does not want to be president. She's not running for president. So do you believe that? And if they do the switcheroo, how and with whom? Well, the lady doth protest too much, I would say right there. We'll see about that. And you know which lady is not protesting too much is Hillary Clinton. She is vying for this in every which way she knows how. It's kind of funny actually to watch, right? But I care less about which specific person it is. If you believe in the modern left's religion, it has to be somebody who checks off at least one identitarian box, which is why I think they're gonna have a tough time putting Gavin Newsom there unless they make Kamala Harris the VP again, which allows them to stomach that. But I'm not in this and I wouldn't, you know, I'm not some sort of analyst that has a particular opinion in the betting markets of whether it's going to be Gavin or Michelle or Hillary Clinton or somebody else. And I think in some ways, we still risk falling into that same trap if we obsess over that question versus what I think the Republican Party needs to be doing, which is focusing on our own affirmative agenda, irrespective of who we're running for, running against on the other side. And first of all, I think that's necessary because I think it's not going to be Biden. We had, even in the very debate that you moderated and I participated in, we had the beat Biden pledge. And I told Ronna McDaniel, this was a pretty silly pledge where we are not focusing on our own agenda or even focusing on our nominee,

but instead focusing on beating Biden when he's not going to be the nominee. I've thought this for a long time. But I think that that's a bit of a trap that the Republicans are falling into. And it's an easy trap to fall into because it's a lot easier to criticize an individual than it is to actually articulate and affirm an agenda and a vision of your own. But that's what I think we need to level up and do in these coming months, such that when that switch does come mid-summer, late summer, who knows when it is, it matters less who they put up, because we've already immunized ourselves against the effect of that, to say that, okay, you have that politic, internal democratic politic game going on over there. We're running there. We're focused on a

nation with borders actually behaving like a nation, on economic growth and the pursuit of excellence without apologizing for it, on a national identity grounded in the 1776 principles that set our country into motion. We'll go straight down the list. That's what making America great again is all about. You hear the subtext of that a lot in Trump's message, and I would say in the last couple of months, maybe even more clearly. And I think that's a good thing. I think of the Republicans out there, Donald Trump has been doing a better job about incorporating messages relating to free speech, relating to national identity, relating to national unity in his themes. Even in this past week, his reaction to the Supreme Court, I thought, was amongst the better speeches he has given.

I think that any candidate has given the way he handled that, I thought, was was well done. That's the direction we need to go even further in that direction to protect ourselves against the otherwise bait and switch trap that the Republicans are going to fall into. I got to tell you something. You mentioned the founding fathers. And at this moment, we have to say a little prayer as we go to break. Then we'll come back because little Thatcher Brunt, my 10 year old, is right now, right at this moment, starring in the afternoon performance at his school of the American Revolution. And he it's an all boys school. So the boys have to play girls roles too, but he is starring as Betsy Ross and he's going to have to wear a little bonnet, Vivek. And I'm sorry, but it's like basically all I can think about. I'm going to the evening

performance. I cannot wait. This is the theater event of the season. I'm excited. Tell him congratulations. And hopefully Nike doesn't cancel him for the Betsy Ross performance, you know, but that's good. You know, it's so crazy. It's like, thank God, as you know, we left our insane New York city schools, which are pushing all sorts of things, including to hate America on us and on our kids. And we're so happy that we're at this school that actually is teaching the children about the States and about the mottos and what they mean and about the founding fathers and doing a whole play called the American revolution and showing them, you know, who was King George, who's John Jay, who's Roger Sherman, all the stuff, even Betsy Ross. So, um, maybe I'll run a little clip that doesn't actually show, uh, the faces

tomorrow because I cannot wait. All right. Stand by because there's much, much more to do with you. I, I want to talk about you and what's going on in your life. And I got to get Vivek's take on that insane MSNBC clip. Stand by, uh, Vive with us. And remember, you can find The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM Triumph Channel, 111 every weekday at noon east. And go to youtube.com slash Megyn Kelly if you'd like to watch the show instead of just listen. I'm Megyn Kelly, host of The Megyn Kelly Show on SiriusXM. It's your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations with the most interesting and important political, legal, and cultural figures today. You can catch the Megyn Kelly show on Triumph, a Sirius XM channel featuring lots of hosts

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Go to SiriusXM.com slash MK show to subscribe and get three months free. That's SiriusXM.com slash MK show and get three months free. Offer details apply. So, Vivek, I've got to get your take on the sneering, ridiculous disdain showed by the MSNBC anchors last night on the subject of illegal immigration and how this is becoming a bigger issue in places like Virginia, which they refuse to accept. Look at this. I mean, if you look at some of these exit polls, I mean, I live in Virginia. Immigration was the number one issue. I mean, again, these could change in Virginia. Virginia does have a border with West Virginia. Very, very contested.

What? I mean, when I was in New Hampshire, people were talking about the northern border as a threat because Trump has indoctrinated people with this fear of people who do not like look like them being a threat to that. You know, I mean, and every, you know, every election cycle when there is particularly when there's a Democratic incumbent, we get reminded about the borders and the borders become a thing again. But they the only difference now is they drop the every four years part. And now, I mean, all the programming about cities, the threat of crime and crime. Meanwhile, on Earth One, the FBI reports that violent crime in America is at a 50-year low. And migrant crime is not a thing.

And migrant crime is not a thing. And you live on Earth One. Rachel Maddow makes $30 million a year for doing one hour of television a week. All those women sitting up there are multimillionaires. You and I well know they're not the ones who are going to have to deal with the consequences of what's happening at our southern border. The influx seven thousand a day right now. Never mind what's been happening since Biden took office. Look, I'd love for them to face down the mother of a 22 year old young woman who was killed by an illegal migrant who should have never been in this country in the first place and who was released, who should have never been released in the first place either. And that condescension,

the sanctimony around it, I think is what's bothersome. It's one thing if you're undereducated or if you have a policy difference to say that notwithstanding the cost of illegal mass migration, here's still the case for it. By the way, I haven't heard anybody make that case, but I at least respect somebody, even if I disagreed with them, who actually took the problem seriously and still made an argument for it. But that's not what we've seen from anybody on the left. What we now see is this level of derision.

And I'm the kid of legal immigrants to this country, Megan. And I can tell you that most kids of legal immigrants and most legal immigrants themselves find this type of discourse insulting. People have waited for years to come to this country the right way. And yet you have millions. Now it'll be close to 12 million, maybe more by the end of Biden's term. That's actually something that is an insult to the fraction of those numbers that we're actually recruiting to this country, who we'd actually want to have here. I played tennis the other day. Megan, you'll appreciate with my shirt on this time. It's a discussion for another day. But because I had some feedback on that the first time around. But I was playing. I was playing tennis with a guy who is he's like a phenom in every respect. He was top 200 in the world, much better than I am. Good pianist. He's a concert pianist. He does a Rubik's cube in 30 seconds. He's gone to Harvard Business School and Princeton, some of our best institutions. I don't like him. Too much.

I'm just saying, it's at the level of almost too much, right? But to be the kind of person who you would think if he's got a successful real estate job, whatever it is in this country, 15 years, has not gotten a green card. The sad part of this is the best advice somebody could give him if it were the legal thing to do would be to board a flight to Mexico and cross the southern border to get into this country. That's how broken immigration is in the United States. It's broken in both directions. And so anyway, I think that level of condescension for what I do think is appropriately the number one issue that the next administration, without asking Congress for permission or for forgiveness, by the way, the next administration can address by enforcing the laws on the books. That I think is insulting

to Americans to say that the administration doesn't have an obligation to do it. And I also think that that's part of why the Biden administration is now scrambling to reverse the script and pretend to care about this issue by putting up what I view as an artificial piece of legislation to say that a Republican shot it down when the real failure is to enforce the laws that are already on the books. And I think that that's something achievable. And I think it'll be a win for the country. The nerve to say, oh, they trot this out every four years. This is what the Dems do with some police involved shooting or unfortunate death of a black person being arrested. They trot that out every four years and put it on loop. This is their trick. That's why Rachel Maddow has it at the ready. And she's projecting it onto

Republicans saying they do this with immigration. The reason immigration has become the number one issue, even amongst Democrats, is because of the numbers you just cited, the 12 million who have crossed the southern border. That's why Mayor Eric Adams in New York City just said we have to stop being a sanctuary city now. We can't do it anymore. That's why you have Democratic mayors across the city saying, uncle, uncle, we give up. That's not a Republican talking point. That's happening. She can ignore it all she wants in her high rise condo and her multiple houses, however she's living. But the family of

Lake and Riley and others are going to have to live with it in a very different way. And it's disgusting that the absence of heart or any empathy they showed there. All right, let me move on because I don't have you for that long. And I want to ask you about this. Your battles with the press as you were running for president were among the best we've seen. It was my own personal favorite of just your campaign. You went into the lion's den repeatedly and you were very good at it. And no matter how disdainful the interviewer, this is how we found them. You took them on, you stood your ground and out on the campaign trail, your critics would come and fight with you and you'd welcome the men.

You'd say, come inside. Let's have the debate. I want to hear you. With the media, you knew how gross they are and you battled them. We put together some highlights that we thought we'd take you down memory lane. Here, let's watch. Do you believe punctuality is a vestige of white supremacy, Dasha? Look, if you don't, then you have a disagreement about many of the people who are defining those terms or the written word or the use or the nuclear family.

This is these aren't my words. These are the words of intellectual proponents from Ibram Kendi to the Iona Presley's to BLM that have said these are vestiges of white supremacy. So we can't have it both ways. We have to have an honest discussion. Great to replace a theory conspiracy theorist. What's wrong with what's wrong with people? First of all, let me just pause right there in a majority. Let me just pause right there. This is a legitimate discussion for us to have. And my view is I don't care about skin color. That language. They live like vermin. Do you believe that that is, as your Republican

colleague Chris Christie has said, neo-Nazi rhetoric. This is a classic mainstream media move. Pick some individual phrase of Donald Trump, focus on literally that word without actually interrogating the substance of what's at issue. If you are in black skin and you live in this country, then you can disagree with me, but we're not. You mentioned that there's three different shades of melanin here. I think we have to be able to talk about these issues in the open, regardless of the color of our skin. Black Americans today to say that, compare that to 1865 and 1964, absolutely have equal rights in this country. So good. All right. So what did you learn, Vivek? Because you were not a stranger to media before you ran for president. You've been out there, but not in this way. You know, contentious exchange after contentious exchange. So what how do you view

the media now, having been through that washing cycle? So I actually learned to draw a really important distinction, Megan, and you alluded to it where sometimes you'll go to college campus and you'll have somebody who asks a question from the audience or even not a college campus elsewhere who earnestly disagrees with you, maybe even a protester at an event. I view that as largely in a different category from the so-called disagreements you get from much of the mainstream media, because one of those is earnest and the other of those is cynical. And so the way I think to deal with earnest disagreement is to actually engage your opponent, to give them a chance to speak as long as you get to be heard in return, and actually

try to change minds. At the very early stages of the campaign, I wrongly approached my interactions with the media with that same assumption of good faith. Probably one thing I would do differently over the course of this campaign, if I were to do it again, is there's all these times you would spend having relationship building or off the record conversations with the person on the other side, treating them as though they're a human being. And many of them maybe individually are, but they're still in organizations that then won't print the kind of reporting that they otherwise are beholden to do. That was a mistake. And so

I quickly learned that over the course of the campaign. If you're dealing with a good faith actor who disagrees with you, the right answer is not to shut them down, but to give them the space to actually speak even when they disagree. By contrast, 99 out of 100 times, when you're dealing with the mainstream press, especially covering someone like a presidential candidate, you have to throw that assumption of a good faith assumption out the door and understand that everything they do is designed to achieve a cynical portrayal of either you or what you stand for, because that's their job. That's their function. That's what their bosses and their organizations and their incentive

structure is reward. And once you see it that way, you're able to actually smoke that out for the public to see. And I think once the public sees it, that itself is a, I don't mean to be self important about this, about me or anybody else doing it, that itself is a form of public service right now, revealing and holding the media accountable. Because the media is supposed to hold the government accountable. When the media fails to do that, the real question is who's holding the media accountable? And it comes back around, I think, to political candidates who are able to see through that smoke screen and call it out. And I tried to do the best job of that I could, especially in that latter half of the campaign. Well, it was very interesting to watch because you went everywhere and did battle, as I say,

in the lion's den. DeSantis did something else. He said, we're not dealing with these people. They're not honest brokers. I'm not even going to deal with them until his campaign was really flailing. And then he said, OK, I'll go everywhere. I'll try it. And kind of went back to the DeSantis we saw during covid where he was much more pugilistic. He would engage. And but it was too late. So we know that to pugilistic, that would be a fair term for Donald Trump. So what does he do with this media that you and I are describing from this point forward? I mean, I've never seen a media so dedicated to defeating a candidate. I mean, they notwithstanding their own self-interest, they know their numbers are going to go up if he wins.

They are going to do their level best to ruin him over the next nine months. So what would you advise him to do now? I'd say stay the course, because at this point, especially in the media's relationship with Donald Trump, the people of this country have seen through the act for what it is. And so in some ways, the more that mainstream press, especially against the backdrop of these politicized prosecutions, is unfairly depicting Trump. I think people have now been trained to see through it. I don't think people are sheep, not forever, at least, Megan. And so in 2015, that might have been one thing. I think today,

I think most people understand, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me, and understand a lot of what they've been fed about the Russia collusion hoax was a lie. The next lie they're fed, they're not going to be force fed that and swallowing quite as easily. They see through these prosecutions. I mean, look at the likes of Alvin Bragg or Fannie Willis, or the likes of, you know, even just the other prosecutors who are bringing these cases. These aren't the luminaries who we once thought they were presented to be. Letitia James.

I mean, think about just Fannie Willis, Letitia James, Alvin Bragg. You hear these people actually speak and make their case or look at the history of what they've said and then look at the way they're bringing these cases against Trump. I think people are able to see for themselves and draw their own conclusions what's behind this. And the same goes for the media's prosecution

of Trump as well. And so my advice would be, don't same goes for the media's prosecution of Trump as well. And so my advice would be, don't really fall for the bait of falling into the trap of airing the grievance against the media, because I think people already have that native grievance for themselves of having been duped once, eight years ago by a press that lied to them. And again, even four years ago, that suppressed stories that they were told were false. Russian disinformation like the Hunter Biden laptop story, or the fact that COVID, the origin was actually in a lab in China. People have been lied to enough that I think people have a good sixth sense now, much of our electorate does, to see that if that media is actually going after Trump with that

agenda driven of an angle, in some ways it has a reactionary backlash that could cause many independents to actually run to Trump rather than away from him. And so I think in that sense, at least, he's going to be in a good spot. It's already happening. So how about you? You were very, very busy over the past year and a half. I mean, you were running for president. You were everywhere. You went to every event. You spoke so many different places. You were doing a podcast at the same time. You still have your companies. You're a family man. I'm exhausted just thinking about it, Vivek. Honestly, I can't. So now it's somewhat the calm after the storm. I know you're out there stumping for Trump and

talking to him and his team, but it's got to be, instead of zero to 60, 60 to maybe 30. So how's that feeling for you? What does life look like now? So I'm not natural in this new temporary habitat. I've been in the last six weeks, but I have really enjoyed a lot of time taken with the family, maybe making up if I'm being honest with it for, I think, especially in the late part of last year, my kids are young and we don't get that time forever. And so now I'm doubling down and really making sure that we're getting the extra time that we might have missed in December and January. But I am enjoying that and relishing that for what it is. Look, a lot is going to depend on what happens in the next 10 months. I'm intensely focused on making sure Donald Trump is elected decisively as the next president. I'm doing whatever I can to be helpful on that front, and I hope to be involved in whatever future that entails in the next administration. But I think we can't take that for granted. I've also learned over the course of my life,

politics aside, Megan, that whenever I have made elaborate personal plans for myself, and I've lived in phases of my life where I've done this, okay, if thing X goes this way, then I'm going to do that. If not, I'm going to do this. It never works out according to that plan anyway. Most of your plans are stupid, or at least level of care and love of this country and gratitude to this country. I'm not in a phase of my life where I need to accumulate more things for myself. To the contrary, this country has allowed my wife and I both, independently and together, to have lived an American dream that either of our parents would have never imagined when they came to this country. That's what called me to run for president, to have the biggest possible impact that I could by using the gifts that I've been given. The people of this country made a clear decision that it's going to be Donald Trump leading the Republican Party to do

that next. But whatever I do next, I think is going to still be guided by that same purpose. And to tell you the truth, whatever specific form it takes, I'm open to that. Inside government, be that after Trump's reelected, and be it outside government in the meantime. Even this next year, there's a lot of impact to be had. And so I started Strive a few years ago. I'm proud of everything that Strive has accomplished. I have written a number of books. I enjoy writing. Maybe I'll write another one, even if it's not published, even if it's just for me. Writing is something that helps me, I think, anchor what my actual convictions are. spending time with family. That's going to be

plenty for a number of months ahead. You know, in a way, it was a blessing not to win and certainly not to win the presidency at this young age, because I look at somebody like Barack Obama or even Bill Clinton back in his day, and I almost feel like it came too soon for them. I'm all for young presidents. Don't get me wrong. I mean, we look at what's happening with Joe Biden now, but, but what happens when it's over? You know, Barack Obama's kind of kicking around out there. Like he did a podcast, which is fine. Obviously I have nothing against podcasts, but like he was the president of the United States for eight years. He was the leader of the free world. Bill Clinton's got the Clinton initiative. I just,

I think it's very hard to find that level of adrenaline flow and achievement and fulfillment once you've had at a very young age. So I, my own hope for you is that you continue with your businesses and maybe you continue in government, you know, serving in a Trump administration, what have you, and that you throw your hat back in the ring at a point where there's not so much runway on the other side that everything else is a disappointment. It's an interesting perspective, Megan. I've always lived my life in chapters where the chapters that I'm in are not necessarily resembling the chapters that came before. And so I thought about that before running for president. And I would have been, if I was elected this time after two terms, I would have been, what, 48 when I left the White House. Our kids wouldn't even be

in high school yet. And so I'm less worried about entertaining myself. Are you going to the R movies yet? I always forget just how young you are. No rated R movies. No, we're four years old. My older son just turned four. We took him to the Daytona 500 as his gift. And so he was thrilled about that. My younger son is about a year and a half. And so that's a- Are you 39, Vivek? I keep forgetting exactly. I'll be 39 in August.

You're such a baby. You're such a baby. You have so much you can do and already have done. It's insane to me that you've done as much as you've done at 39. You're the kind of person that makes my assistant Abigail fine and depressed. I'll tell you, you look, look to Thomas Jefferson or look to Alexander Hamilton. He was Alexander Hamilton was 21 or 22 when he was one of our founding fathers. Thomas Jefferson was 33 when he wrote the Declaration.

One thing is people are living longer. What happened to that? Let's start with that. Life expectancy has gone up. Although Jefferson lived, I think, well into his early 80s. I think part of what's happened is we have this culture that tells you you're not allowed to do certain things because you're in certain lanes at certain times. And think about Benjamin Franklin, right?

The guy invented the Franklin stove. He invented the lightning rod. It was actually a major discovery at the time. The Franklin stove was a big breakthrough in the field of thermodynamics. He invented the bi-focus spectacle. Absolutely. Dabbled in a remedy for the common cold. And he was a co-s that are credited to Thomas Jefferson. Nearly bankrupted himself, by the way, spending even on the library, public libraries in the United States, to the wine cellar in the White House. Today, you have public officials trying to enrich themselves privately. Here, this guy was using his limited private fortune, almost bankrupted himself several times over through his public service for the country. The Lewis and Clark expedition sending people out west. Betsy Ross, right? Of course, your son won't forget Betsy Ross today, right?

And so I think we're in a moment where we can bring back that founding spirit, especially for young people to tell them, your son included, and the people in that play with them, that you can achieve anything you want in this country. You don't have to be some expert that has a degree in whatever you're doing at a given time. You don't even have to define yourself based on what you do. You can actually define what you do based on who you actually are. And that might be something different at different phases of your life. Be it an entrepreneur, a U.S. president, a parent or a grandparent. You can have different phases of your life where you do different ones of those things.

And so I was never worried about what came after the post-presidency personally, but suffice to say, I take your well wishes in a good sense and I'm not going in. Yeah, silver lining. Is what I'll tell you. Yeah, maybe. Good. Well, and by that, what we really mean to say is you're going everywhere and we look forward to watching it and covering it. Vivek, all the best to you. Good seeing you. Thanks, Meg. Likewise. Wow. So great to talk to him, right? So I actually kind of love it when they get off the campaign trail and they go back to like normal human. That's not a politician where we can just have normal conversations. You know, everything changes when people run for president. As a journalist, you have to

you have to treat them differently. But it's great to have him back on because we started friends. Wonderful to see him. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.