The Megyn Kelly Show - Trump's Looming Prosecution, and Fired For Not Being "Woke" Enough, with Alan Dershowitz, Dr. Tabia Lee, and Michael Cunningham | Ep. 513

Episode Date: March 16, 2023

Megyn Kelly is joined by Alan Dershowitz, author of "Get Trump," to talk about New York's prosecutor going after former President Trump over the Stormy Daniels payment, if it'll be a misdemeanor or felony charge, Michael Cohen's shady past, other potential criminal charges against Trump in Georgia and D.C., whether Alec Baldwin will be found guilty in movie set shooting death, and more. Then Dr. Tabia Lee joins the show, a former DEI director who was fired by her college for not being "woke" enough, discussing "gender neutral" terms actually being "gender oppressive," being labeled a "right-wing extremist" by her opponents, and more. Finally, we turn to China with Michael Cunningham of The Heritage Foundation, to talk about Xi Jinping getting a third term, the way Jinping is revealing China's plans for the future, how China is growing in influence and power around the world, who China is targeting in theri plan for becoming a superpower, why China is buying up so much farmland in America, ramifications of the Iran-Saudi Arabia peace deal, potential conflict in Taiwan, the future of TikTok in America, the state of America's COVID investigation, and more.Dershowitz's new book: https://www.amazon.com/Get-Trump-Liberties-Process-Constitutional/dp/1510777814Dr. Lee: https://www.fair-for-all.org/dr-tabia-lee/Cunningham: https://www.heritage.org/staff/michael-cunningham Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live from Montana on day four of our spring break. I have yet to ski. Every day after the show, I think I'm going to get out there, but we had this huge blizzard yesterday. And the day before that, my daughter's here with a sprained ankle. So I hung out with her for the two days prior. Anyway, I'm going. Today after the show, I'm going. And I'll let you know how it goes. Should be a great day because we had some sick, sick blizzards yesterday like you only get in places like this. It's fun being out here and it's fun bringing you the show from out here as well. And we have a packed program for you today. A diversity, equity and inclusion director fired from a California college for questioning the campus's

anti-racism policies. She says, quote, the school wanted a black person to do the job, but apparently I'm the wrong kind of black. We'll talk to her coming up. Plus a deep dive on China just a bit later in the show. But we begin today with President Trump, Stormy Daniels, speaking to prosecutors yesterday in Manhattan about the New York criminal investigation over alleged hush money payments. And now in new reporting out of Georgia, jurors, remember the grand juror who took took the she went on the whirlwind media tour, the foreperson. Well, now some of the other grand jurors are irritated by that woman's behavior. Who could blame them? And they have quietly spoken out, sharing some new details on the case against Trump down there, with one claiming the publication of their final report will be,

quote, massive. Joining us now to discuss all of this is the perfect person. Alan Dershowitz is a professor emeritus at Harvard Law School and author of the brand new book, Get Trump, The Threat to Civil Liberties, Due Process and Our Constitutional Rule of Law. Alan, so great to have you. Welcome back to the show. Well, thanks. Enjoy skiing. You know, I won't give you the greeting that you usually give actors when they go on the stage. Break a leg. Don't break a leg. We don't need that nonsense in our lives. No. So it's almost like they knew your book would be coming out this week and decided to ramp up the two most likely criminal prosecutions against Trump. Your book is the perfectly titled missive on this and takes a deep dive into all these prospective criminal prosecutions against him. So let's start with New York, where the case is about

an alleged payment of $130,000 made by Trump, allegedly, it was really made by Michael Cohen, his fixer, his lawyer, his conciliary at the time, to Stormy Daniels, the porn star, who allegedly had an affair with Trump or some sort of tryst with Trump. And they were paying her, the allegation is, to keep her quiet. Now, if this was so that he wouldn't lose the election, then he could be in legal trouble. That's what happened to John Edwards. If this was a payment that was indeed authorized by Trump because he didn't want Melania to find out or he was just embarrassed and it didn't have to do with winning the election, that's not really illegal. But this prosecutor in Manhattan, Alan, it seems hell bent on getting Trump.

And what have you gleaned from what he's revealed about the grand jury proceedings this week, which are underway right now. I think his main witness shouldn't be Cohn, it should be Sigmund Freud trying to analyze what part of Trump's brain motivated this action, whether it was a desire to keep his family from knowing about an alleged affair or a desire to win the election or both. I mean, it's so impossible to make those kinds of distinctions. Look, nobody in their right mind would believe that Bragg would be going after John Smith or even John Edwards on a case like this. It's obviously an example of get Trump. And it's so, so dangerous. And it asks the wrong question to ask, is he technically guilty of a violation? I don't know the answer to that question.

Maybe he is, maybe he isn't. I want to tell you how dangerous this is by reading a brief quote from probably the greatest attorney general in America's history, Justice Robert Jackson, who served as the chief prosecutor at Nuremberg and then was the attorney general of the United States. With the law books filled with a great assortment of crimes, a prosecutor has a fair chance of finding at least a technical violation of some act on the part of almost anybody. In such a case, it's not a question of discovering the commission of a crime and then looking for the person who committed it. It's a question of picking the man and then searching the law books or putting investigators to work to pin some offense on him. Could there be a better description of what Bragg has done,

what is going on in Georgia, what Letitia James did when she ran for office on the campaign promise to get Trump? This is the worst kind of danger to justice. You know, as Lavrentiy Beria once said to Stalin, I don't want to make comparisons to the Soviet Union, but he said, show me the man and I'll find you the crime. And that's what's going on with Trump. People are determined to get Trump. I'm not a Trump supporter. I have a constitutional right to vote against him for the third time. And I don't want to see any prosecutors prevent anybody from voting for him or voting against him. That's something the American public should do in a banana republic. We have former

banana republic head once said, for my friends, everything, for my enemies, the law. And that's what we're seeing done. Today, it's Democrats going after a Republican. Tomorrow, it could be Republicans going after Democrats, as they did with Hillary Clinton. So this is a nonpartisan problem that America is facing, the weaponization of the criminal justice system against political enemies. Just look at the number of investigations open against him right now, and he's out of office. And that's where they intend to keep him. I mean, that's what we believe these are really about. Just to stay on the New York case for a minute, I neglected to mention the second piece

of it, which is they're going to allege, it looks like then what Trump did after authorizing this $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels, who is going to take the stand and reportedly did so, I think, yesterday in front of the grand jury. They're going to say that instead of just recording properly in the Trump books, $130,000 paid by Trump to Michael Cohen as a payoff to Stormy Daniels. That would be stupid if you're committing a crime. But they didn't record it like that. What they did was document it as legal expenses because Cohen was Trump's lawyer, legal expenses paid by Team Trump to Michael Cohen. And this is the second piece of it that Alvin Bragg may have used to get Trump. My understanding is in most circumstances, you can twist the law in a way to make it a felony.

But in most cases, that's a misdemeanor. And it really does require one to ask, Alan, is this what it's come to the most likely indictment against trump is going to be a for a misdemeanor on his record keeping well first of all it's not even a misdemeanor to pay hush money and to try to keep it secret that's what hush money is many prominent people have paid hush money over the years. What turns it into a felony is if this was designed to cover up an unlawful campaign contribution. And this combination of statutes has never previously been used, as far as I know. And it's not the job of the criminal law to create new crimes.

You're supposed to prosecute people for things that were obvious. Thomas Jefferson once said, for something to be a crime, a reasonable man reading it while running should be able to understand the law. Reading it while running, that's a wonderful image. I'm sitting, and I can't understand how you can combine these two statutes and turn a non-crime into a misdemeanor. It's not a crime to pay us money. Then they turn it into a misdemeanor, and then they turn the misdemeanor into a felony simply in an effort to get Trump. And it might work because you can indict a ham sandwich,

as we know, and so there can be an indictment. In New York, you can probably convict Trump of anything. Or in the District of Columbia, where overwhelmingly people don't want Trump to run for election. Now it'll be up, therefore, to the courts of appeals. And that's that's probably a prosecutor. Oh, D.C. is the special prosecutor. OK, so wait. But so let me offer this. So just to clarify so that the viewers understand where we are. So they're going to say you misrecorded the reasons why you paid Michael Cohen those monies. That was not legal fees. That was to reimburse the $130 hush money. And the hush money itself

was illegal. That was the underlying felony that makes your sloppy record keeping go from a misdemeanor to a felony because you were covering up a felony. So in other words, we can get you on the bookkeeping if it was to cover up a felony. And we're going to allege that you committed a felony by paying hush money to Stormy Daniels. And the only way we can get you on that is to prove it wasn't just to avoid embarrassment or getting in trouble with Melania. It was to win you the election. So this is the long logic of Alvin Bragg, the D.A. in Manhattan. Michael Cohen has already served time. He admitted, this is what he went to jail for. He admitted that he did this because the prosecutors had him and he went to jail. And he's a sour grapes guy. I mean, this is the other problem. He went

on the mediator. He's now become a darling. I mean, can I just give you one piece of background on this, Alan? I remember when I went to make up with Trump at Trump Tower. He'd been coming after me in the whole debates and all that nonsense. So I went to Trump Tower and Trump couldn't have been nicer. He was totally gracious. And Michael Cohen saw me outside of the Trump office. And I mean, daggers in his eyes toward me. This guy was such a Trump loyalist. If looks could kill, I would have been dead on that floor. And frankly, vice versa, because I'd known what he'd been doing to me behind the scenes as well. Trump, totally magnanimous, let it go. We were over it. But Michael Cohen was such a fixer, he couldn't. Now he's done a 180.

Now he wants to kill Trump. He's got the daggers in his eyes for his old employer who didn't bring him with him to Washington, who didn't really think that much of Michael Cohen and had embarrassed him in a couple of settings. And now he's doing his MSNBC media tour, among other places. And here's what he told Nicole Wallace about what's happening at the grand jury and how this case is likely to go yesterday. I met with the DA's office 20 times for interviews and then two times for grand jury. Why are you cooperating so fully? Because that was the pledge that I made when I stood before Judge William H. Pauley and I said that I will cooperate.

Democracy is more important than anything. And I know it sounds hokey, but my goal is to ensure that truth comes out. If, in fact, that Stormy is someone that they are going to look at as a substantial witness for this case, I am certain that she will do a fantastic job. The most important thing that needs to be remembered here is that the truth is what will prevail. Not facts, not fiction, not not fiction, but merely the facts and the facts do not benefit the former president. OK, just one other piece on Michael Cohen. This is the same guy who said it's you can't rape your wife, can't rape your wife. So this rape your wife. This is Michael Cohen's character. Now he wants to come back in as,

I'm a man of truth and the law, and I just want to do what's right. I mean, give me a break. Yeah, well, the worst mistake the prosecution could make would be to use Michael Cohen as an actual witness in front of the jury. That would be the best thing that any defendant could have, because then it becomes an issue of, do you believe Michael Cohen? Do you like Michael Cohen? He's the main, main witness.

They're much better off just trying to prove it through tapes if they can. The biggest mistake the defense would make, and the lawyers already said he might make this mistake, is if he tries to prove that Trump did not have an affair with Stormy Daniels. The way to win a case like this is to persuade the jury that your side has credibility and their side does not. So if I'm the defense in this case, I don't put on Trump. I cross-examine both Stormy Daniels, but not try to disprove her story and cross-examine vigorously Cohen. But I think there's a temptation by lawyers to put everything on. And I think it would be a big mistake for the prosecution to actually use Cohen as a witness. But they may do that.

And in New York, who knows how it will go. They're going to put Stormy Daniels on the stand, who is also not a credible person. I mean, let's be real. It's like some porn star. Okay, how is she going to put Stormy Daniels on the stand, who is also not a credible person. I mean, let's be real. It's like some porn star. Okay, how is she going to go over? Not to mention that the other witnesses that they've reportedly talked to include Kellyanne Conway, David Pecker of the National Enquirer. I mean, this is going to be quite the cast of characters going in front of this jury.

I don't like the chances of this DA and I don't like the chances of this criminal prosecution at all, although I do think he's very politically motivated, Alan, and he's probably going to bring it. No, he's probably going to bring it and probably help him get reelected. But look, if he brings a case against Donald Trump in the eve of the election and Donald Trump is either acquitted or wins a reversal on appeal, what this does to the American criminal justice system, it turns it into a political weapon. And that's why any good prosecutor will tell you, you don't bring a case against a future

presidential candidate unless it's a slam dunk, unless you're going to win, unless you have them on tape, unless you have clear evidence. And this case just doesn't meet that criteria. So I think it's a terrible prosecutorial decision. And he should listen to Justice Robert Jackson, again, one of the greatest lawyers in our history, who understood this problem. He understood it because he looked at the prosecutions that were going on in the Soviet Union, in Nazi Germany, and we don't want to ever weaponize our criminal justice system. It's the glory, it's the glory of our Constitution that we have a Fifth Amendment and a Fourth Amendment and a First Amendment. And all these amendments, and I show this in my book, one after the other, in the book Get Trump, that the people on the other side

are so anxious to get Trump, they're willing to sacrifice the entire Constitution. They're willing to do things that they never would previously have done. For example, the Espionage Act. There are efforts to try to get him under the Espionage Act. Every liberal has hated the Espionage Act since it was used against all the liberal icons in the 1920s during the civil rights movement, etc. Now, these same leftists are saying, let's expand the Espionage Act. Let's change the law. Let's fit the law onto Donald Trump. That's the thesis of my book. You cannot fit the law and target an individual. And that's what's being done. And that's not a danger only to Donald Trump. It's a danger to every Democrat. And it's a danger to you and to me, because if they can do it to Trump, they can do it to anyone. You know what? Alvin Bragg's never seen a real

criminal he wants to indict in Manhattan. But this he's salivating over. And it's for exactly the reasons you're stating. It's about politics, which is really destructive. Your book posits, and I think it's smart, that we really should have an understanding that no criminal prosecution would happen of a presidential candidate or a former president unless both parties could get entirely behind it. That is definitely not the case in New York City with Stormy Daniels. And even down in Georgia, where these grand jurors may be so excited about this alleged phone call that Trump had. Now there's new testimony today by some of these grand jurors speaking out to, I think it's the Atlantic Journal Constitution saying, we have at least three recordings of Trump making these requests to the officials in Georgia saying, find me the fraud, urging the investigator to look for fraud in the 2020 presidential election, telling her she'd be praised for overturning the results that were in favor of Biden. They don't have it there either, because this is yet again something that's subject to interpretation the way he spoke on that call. It is not another non slam dunk.

And it's another one that's moving really close to actually getting filed against Trump. Yeah. And it would require proving beyond a reasonable doubt that when he said find, he didn't mean fine. He meant invent. Fine means something is there. Look for it and find it. What Trump was saying, at least the most likely interpretation, we don't know what he meant, but what he was saying was there may be votes that haven't been counted. Find them. He didn't say invent them. He didn't say concoct them. And you cannot prosecute a person based on an ambiguous statement, which the dictionary supports his interpretation. And you have to be creative.

The criminal law is not supposed to be creative. It's not supposed to be something that you create and invent along the way. It's supposed to be existing, and somebody knowingly did the to be or not to be, stood there and said, now I'm crossing the line. I am becoming a felon. Unless you can demonstrate that kind of mens rea, it is not appropriate to charge somebody with a criminal offense. Appropriate to use all this to vote against him. I intend to do that. I don't like that conversation. I don't like his January 6th speech. I don't like the way he handled classified material. I don't like the payoff to Stormy Daniels. That's why I'm voting against him. And that's why people have the right to make that decision. But to turn that into criminal conduct is to destroy protections of our Constitution because precedents, again, to quote Justice Jackson, lie around like loaded guns ready to be used by any politician against their political enemies.

That's not what we want to see happen in America. That's why I wrote Get Trump. People are going to be furious at me because they're going to think, based on the title, it's a pro-Trump book. It's a pro-Constitution. It's an anti-violation of civil liberties book. Trump happens to be the target today. But if it were somebody to the radical left wing in particular, which Alan posits is even more dangerous right now than the radical right wing for these reasons. We're talking about eroding constitutional principles. All right, let's spend one minute. Let's spend one minute on. Yeah, go ahead. OK, one other reason. The hard left are young. They're in college. They're the people who are shutting down Stanford University guests to speak. They're the future. That's why they're more dangerous than the right. The right is largely the past. And McCarthyism was largely

a thing of the past. But these young people, these woke people, these professors and deans, these civil libertarians that want to get Trump. They're our future. That's why it's so much more dangerous on the left today than on the right. Was that not horrifying what happened at Stanford, what they did to that Fifth Circuit judge? Wasn't it horrifying? Horrifying in what the dean did, essentially justifying it. By the way, it was all organized by the National Lawyers Guild. This was not just a spontaneous event. The National Lawyers Guild, which, as you know, started as a communist organization and still calls itself Marxist-Leninist, they organized this and they're going to be organizing these around the country. So Stanford is only the beginning. It's coming

to a university near you. Well, horrifying. Quickly, because I don't want to spend too much time on this, but do you think the prosecution in D.C. by the special prosecutor is going anywhere based on January 6th and Trump or classified documents down at Mar-a-Lago and Trump? Well, I don't know whether there'll be indictments, but there shouldn't be. January 6th, again, I hated the speech, but he said, obviously, peacefully and patriotically, the January 6th committee doctored the tape to leave those words out to create a false impression. I don't think they have it. I think it's protected by the First Amendment. And as far as classified material is concerned, I think that the best thing

that ever happened to Trump was Biden. Biden and Pence and others having this material makes it impossible, even if there are distinctions between the cases, the public will see the cases as sufficiently similar, so that unless there is an investigation and indictment of others who have done this, it will seem like selective prosecution if they only go after Trump, even if what Trump did was worse. In some respects, it was less worse because he does have the ability to declassify while he was president. In some respects, it was less worse because he does have the ability to declassify while he was president. In other respects, it was worse. That is, he didn't cooperate, whereas Biden immediately cooperated with the authorities. But I do not believe there

would be valid prosecutions in the District of Columbia, in Florida or in New York, although I think they could get convictions in the District of Columbia and perhaps in New York. Just given the jury pool, I agree with every word you just said. Totally agree with all that analysis. Last thing I want to ask you about is not in Get Trump, but it's interesting, is the Alec Baldwin case, which I know you've been following, too. And the latest headline today is that the special prosecutor has resigned. This is after Alec Baldwin's lawyers had been going after her saying, this is a woman who is assigned to be a special prosecutor. She was brought in. They say they may have multiple prosecutions. They needed help. She was brought in to prosecute me. This is Alec

Baldwin speaking. But she, in the meantime, ran for the state legislature and won. And you can't be both a member of the legislative branch and also as a special prosecutor, sort of one foot in the executive branch and one foot in the judiciary. And that was persuasive, or at least that she thought it was going to be. And so she stepped down in this involuntary manslaughter case against him. That doesn't necessarily mean the case is going away. They'll replace her. There'll be another prosecutor who presumably continues these charges against him. And I had a guy whose opinion I really respect as a lawyer, Andrew Branca, who runs the law of self-defense. He got Kyle Rittenhouse totally correct from the beginning

on the show a couple of weeks ago. And he he's always calls him like he sees him. He likes this case against Alec Baldwin. He likes it a lot. And let me play the soundbite as to why he likes it. And I started covering this the day after the shooting and pointed out that if you point a gun at another human being without first making sure it's not loaded and it discharges and you kill them, that's the dictionary definition of legal recklessness, creating an unjustified risk of death to another person, and then they die. That's reckless manslaughter every day of the week. So I've always felt the reckless manslaughter charge was pretty much an open

and shut charge from the very beginning. Wow. So how does that come out? If he goes to trial and he's found guilty on that what happens to him 18 months is the maximum sentence in new mexico so what do you know in the broader context not a lot of time for having killed somebody your thoughts on that alan well he didn't kill anybody uh he was not given he didn't have a gun and he didn't look to see he had a gun which he was given and told by the person responsible uh had no bullets in it look i consulted on the two previous movie cases the john landis case you remember that where a helicopter decapitated uh actor and two young kids and also the brandon lee case so i involved. So I was involved in both of those cases.

And both of those cases did not result in criminal prosecution. I think this was an accident. If there was negligence, it was broadly spread around. And I think the last person who can be held responsible is the actor who was told, he was told the gun was safe. You can point it at somebody. Somebody else had the job. Now, I would hope in the future, no weapons ever would be allowed on a movie set. I've argued that since the previous case, since the Brandon Lee case, we should be using CGI or whatever they call it. Every gun scene in a movie should be done without real weapons on the set. But that's not the responsibility of the actor or even the associate or producer who says, look, I have somebody whose job it is to tell me the gun is safe. And they told him the

gun was safe. So I don't think I think this case is very much tragically like the case of Kim Potter, who pulled the wrong gun and killed somebody with a real gun instead of a taser. And she's now serving two years. That's not a good precedent, obviously, for Landis for I'm sorry, for for our actor, but it it I think she was improperly convicted. And, and I think that the current case should be dropped or should result in an acquittal, but you never know. Cause once you're in a jury room, you're playing Russian roulette. Um, particularly when you're a famous person like that, fame cuts both ways. In this case, it could obviously hurt him. Um, but, uh, as a criminal matter,

as an element of the crime? You know, if this were a negligence case, you could argue, yes, technically, he caused the death of Helena Hutchins because he pulled the trigger or he was handling the gun, however you want to look at it, when she died. But then when you get to the next element of a negligence case, which is proximate cause, right?

Was he really the cause? Like, without him, would it have happened um it would fail i think in this case but this is not a negligence case it's sort of a super negligence case because it's recklessness it's involuntary manslaughter so could he get out alan on the the principle that while yes technically he was the cause and fact of her death if you actually look at what would have happened if Alec Baldwin had opened up the gun and checked to see whether it was loaded or what, in the perfect world, in the world in which this was supposed to go down, he would have seen dummy rounds. He wasn't expected to see nothing in there. The gun was supposed to have dummy rounds. It's a Colt.45. You're supposed to see the bullets. That's what a dummy round is. It's

like a model bullet. And what the prosecution's really arguing against him is he should have checked and he, unlike the armorer and anybody else who looked at this gun, should have been able to distinguish between dummies and live rounds, which if the armorer failed to make that distinction in looking at these things, how would the actor on the set be expected to do it? Yeah, and I think this is not a case that will turn on proximate cause because that's essentially the civil standard, even if there was proximate cause here.

The element that's missing is intent, and the element that's missing is the kind of gross negligence that sometimes substitutes for intent. The statute, if you read it, is the worst form gross negligence that sometimes substitutes for intent. The statute, if you read it, is the worst form of draftsmanship. And it would give nobody any kind of fair warning that you can have a criminal prosecution based on this lack of intent. And so I think a properly instructed jury will acquit in this case. But there's a death. And often the way jurors

operate is who killed Cock Robin? They first ask the question, somebody's dead. Somebody must be responsible for that. You point the finger at the armored person, you point the finger at the person who pulled the trigger, and a jury might make the mistake of thinking that there was criminal liability here. But having taught criminal law now for, 50 years, I think this is a paradigm case that falls on the not guilty side, but on the civil side. He should be held responsible civilly. Sure. But there are big differences and different standards for civil liability and criminal liability. In both previous cases that I did, the Brandon Lee case and the John Landis case, there was civil liability. So that distinction was made. But in

both cases, there was no successful criminal prosecution. In the Landis case, the jury acquitted. And in the Brandon Lee case, the prosecutor decided not to bring the case. I think in this case, they should not have brought the case But you raise a good point though Because in this case the shooter Is a big celebrity star Who people will come in with Preconceptions about that that wasn't The case in those other two film

Accidents so you know his celebrity is going To weigh potentially against him potentially For him I mean we'll have to do a Thorough voir dire of the jury pool I gotta leave it at that the book is called Get Trump from the one and only Alan Dershowitz, the most fair man in America. Don't believe what the left tells you. And it's out right now. Great to see you. Thank you. All right. And we'll be right back with a story on DEI that takes an unexpected twist.

Wait until you hear this. A diversity, equity, and inclusion director has been fired from a California college for apparently having a mind of her own. Dr. Tavia Lee questioned the campus's anti-racism policies. And for that, she says she was called derogatory names, accused of supporting white supremacy, and ultimately fired. She joins us now to tell her story. Welcome to the show, Dr. Lee. Great to have you. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. My pleasure. There's this unbelievable quote that they said they wanted a Black person to do this job. Apparently, I'm the wrong kind of Black. What do you mean by that? What happened? Well, you know, soon into my work at De Anza College, I was being accused of white speaking and white explaining and supporting white supremacy,

all for the offensive act of attempting to, you know, set an agenda for my team meetings and to collaborate on identifying projects that we could work on together. It was something that I never encountered in my lifelong track of teaching, especially in diversity, equity, and inclusion spaces. And from there, I had to unpack and uncover what they were meaning because I'm from the Central Valley, I was born in Stockton and raised in Lodi, California. And my understanding of white supremacy always had to do with organizations like the KKK and neo-Nazi organizations. So to have someone call me a white supremacist was something that I just never encountered in my life as a racialized black woman. My goodness. I mean, this is like the you know, this is the sort of the line that we hear all too often. Like what they said, Larry Elder was the black face of white supremacy. Now, even being black does not save you from being called a white supremacist with this sort of crazy leftist group that is so ideologically bent on injecting race and their

beliefs into everything. I understand one of the complaints they had against you was you had at one point been critical of Patrice Cullors, one of the founders of BLM, who is all over the news for having allegedly done some sketchy things financially when it comes to that group they were mad that you had that you deigned to criticize her um actually megan it was um oh it was alicia garza alicia garza yes um uh when i started my position in 2021 at dianza they were doing this program where the school, the president's office purchased hundreds of Alicia Garza's book, The Purpose of Power. And so when I came in, one of my first tenure track assignments was to, in very short order,

organize students to and to facilitate a fireside chat with Alicia Garza. And this would be on Zoom. And so I very quickly, without knowing very much, organized and reached out to colleagues who were kind enough to recommend students to me. I organized those students. We collaborated on how the event would flow. The students were very excited that Alicia Garza was going to be visiting and that they would get to directly ask her questions. We collaborated on those questions and ranked them. And we decided which student would ask theirs first. And there was just a lot of excitement around it. At the 11th hour, I was informed by the Dean of Equity and Engagement that per Alicia Garza's contract, she would not ask any questions, answer any questions that her management team did not write and that she did not have the prescripted answers for. And this was quite surprising. And I had to take this back to the students. And we were directed, we were given a

list of questions and we were directed to use those. The students were very offended by this. They said, you know, we developed our questions and they're very different than what they're telling us. And so I circled back to the Dean of Equity and Engagement and I said, hey, can I see the contract? You know, I'm familiar with speaker contracts and I've never heard anything like that. And she refused to allow me to see it. It actually took a Freedom of Information Act request from the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism, who assisted me with that, discover that, A, the contract didn't say anything about questions that could or could be answered. And then, B, that

Alicia Garza was paid $10,000 to come on to Zoom and to perform questions that she had written with her management and that she had prescripted her answers for. So I'm so thankful to Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism for helping me to get to the truth of the matter, you know, a little after it happened. Now, the disrespect that I was accused of by one of my tenure review members was that during the event, the compromise I came with to the students, they said, we're not going to do this because it's fake and it's not real. I said, well, maybe we can ask the questions they're giving us. And then as follow up questions, you can kind of, you know, work your questions in. And so they agreed to do that. And because that took place and the tenure review committee member was aware of that taking place, I was accused of

disrespecting Alicia Garza. Now, during the event, there was no sign of it unless you, you know, noticed when Alicia Garza, when it did get off script, when the students weren't asking the questions she was asked, she became visibly uncomfortable if you were looking from a back channel. But as the 400 plus participants that were there, they thought it was a wonderful event and they didn't see any disrespect. And they said, wow, it was great, you know, that she came here. So I was accused of disrespect because of the back channel things that happened. And because I wanted to support the students in their freedom of speech and freedom of expression to engage an author in an authentic way. And they were very respectful

about it. And so was I. That's unbelievable. It's not like she was sitting down for an audience at Fox News, you know, a focus group. This would presumably be an audience of fans who were supporting her. And yet, no, she couldn't do it, but got the 10,000 bucks anyway. And the university running cover for her, as you point out, because they were misleading you about what was required and what wasn't by contract. Just to tell the audience again, this about some of these sacred issues, which presumably they knew about, Dr. Lee, when they hired you. You're not keeping your views a secret and you weren't prior to this job. Yes, that's exactly correct, Megan. I went through a very rigorous interview process. I did teaching demonstrations, multiple panel interviews, and something that the panelists, not all of them, but some of them did

mention was that the office that I would be potentially serving in was a little too woke and that they had alienated some of the faculty, uh, because they would, you know, call them out and, uh, accuse them of being racist and, and so forth. And, and I assured the panel, uh, that, you know, I did not identify as, as woke, um, and that what I do through my work is I try to create spaces where people, whether they're woke or not, or, you know, something else, uh, whoever they are, if they're in the space space in the learning community, that their perspective is able to be heard. And that even amongst these diverse and like divergent viewpoints, we could identify points of commonality in order to best serve our students. And so and they selected me, you know,

based on that very transparent, you know, understanding of my teaching approach and of how I approach things. Yeah. Until they actually saw it and said, well, what are we doing? And of course, if you get any complaints as an administrator in today's day and age, they bow almost immediately. They bend and they break that. One of the issues, as I understand it, was you were asking for definitions of terms like anti-racism. What do we really mean by that? And your refusal to use terms such as Latinx, and this was a new one to me, Philippinx, Latinx or Philippinx. You can pronounce it either way from what I understand. You also wanted to know why the B in black was being capitalized, but not the W in white. Now

I see why they called you a white supremacist. This will do it in today's day and age. Yes. And I, you know, Megan, I was not an administrator. My role is a faculty role. And so and that's why I took this role as a faculty director. And so I thought I would be afforded, you know, all of the academic freedom protections and freedom of speech and expression, you know, protections that a tenure track faculty member would be afforded. my ideological extremists, and they were very open about it and very biased against me because they did not want me, you know, creating these spaces. I did over 60 hours of needs assessment conversations when I first started. And a constant theme was people identifying that, you know, this the space here isn't one where we really talk about differences of opinion. You know, there's kind of just one view that, that folks push and I didn't give much credence to it, but I heard it more and more. And then as I started to experience it, I knew why I was

getting those warnings initially. And it's really unfortunate, you know, that things that have happened around it in terms of those some people are calling them gender neutral terms, I call them gender oppressive terms. And why I say that, Megan, is because those words like Latinx or Philpinks or, you know, however folks want to pronounce it, they're inventions of the ivory tower. I worked for 10 years in East Los Angeles public middle schools. Not once did any student or community member in the working class communities that I serve ever use those terms to describe themselves. And then I was very experienced with the California Department of Education and other state system data dashboards. And they do not use those terms. So when I came to De Anza and I saw those terms being used to report from our Office of Research to report on students and perspectives, I was saying, where is that coming from? Because it's not from the state of California.

It's not from anywhere else. Like, where are these terms coming from? They're not from communities. I grew up in the Central Valley in Stockton and Lodi, which has one of the largest Filipino populations in America. And nobody had ever told me, you know, addressed me as Philippines or Philippinex or this X Indian thing. And really with my background as a professor in helping teacher educators of speakers of other languages. You know, I knew that the X at the end of Latin isn't something that originates from the culture or the language of Spanish speakers. So it's definitely something different. And when I would ask people, why do we rename the data from the data dashboard? And why are we renaming groups of people and telling students they should identify themselves that way? We're really shaping identities, unfortunately, by doing that. Nobody could give me an answer. Nobody could give me a cogent answer when this started at De Anza,

why it started. I couldn't find an academic senate resolution or a student government resolution. It was just a shift, a cultural shift that took place. So is it true that they were calling you names? I read that you said I was just a shift, a cultural shift that took place. So is it true that they were calling you names? I read that you said, I was called a bitch. I was called dictatorial for, well, for what? You tell me, why were they calling you those names? And the right-wing extremists. I was told that in a division meeting for one of the largest divisions on campus, you know, one of the faculty members stood up and said that I was working with the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism, that I was a plant for them and a right-wing extremist, and that I was

on their payroll. And that was just so strange to me, because it's absolutely, you know, not the truth. But you know, once things are said, you know, people kind of latch on to them, and they run with them. And so this is a situation at the end, a very toxic environment, where there's a lot of duplicitous people. And that's what happens in toxic, you know, organizations and environments. You know, people who say one thing, and then the moment later, they're saying something different to another person. And unfortunately, people who were seated on my tenure review committee, you know, they openly stated that they were, they identified themselves as a third wave anti-racist. They said that, you know, my activities that I designed, which didn't push any ideological perspective,

because that's not what I do and not what my work's about. They said they were deeply offended by them. One workshop in particular, I literally, Megan, all I did was I took direct quotes from Ibram Kendi's book, How to Be an Anti-Racist. And I put them on the slide with the page numbers so people could verify, you know, and I didn't alter them. I didn't comment about them. I didn't editorialize. I didn't give my perspective. What I did was I just created space for people to take a look at even Kendi's perspectives on various issues. And then I had discovered a foundation against intolerance and racism's pro-human approach. And so I had that on foundation against intolerance and racism's pro-human approach. And so I had that on the other side, it was a Venn diagram. And I created space for people

to look at that and to look at the different quotations and the different, you know, perspectives. And then I said, you know, we have people who are potentially working in one or the other, or maybe sometimes in different contexts, even using pieces from the other. And I said, you know, can we identify some points of commonality? And even though these seem very divergent, like what are some common points that we could take away from both to best serve our students? And that was deemed deeply offensive and got me marked as being unable to accept criticism. And that that rating stayed with me. It was unfounded. It was based on, you know, one person's perspective. And that person didn't even talk to me in post-observation

conversations. They actually terminated the conversation. I'm on the advisory board for FAIR, the group that you've been referring to, and that's helping you in this litigation. And of course, that quote, that's a Daryl Davis quote about being pro-human, pro the human race, not this race, not that race. And of course, this is a man who's he's been on the program. He's turned KKK members the other way. He's gotten them out of the KK. So, I mean, to suggest that affiliation with that group makes you a right winger is wrong. To suggest that quotes from that group are somehow offensive to people who are pro any race is a lie and just shows their ideological bias. And they were bent on getting you. So then the ultimate insult, right? Then they let you go. Now, understanding who you were.

And by the way, I do want to mention that I know you were one of the founding members and board of directors of Free Black Thought. Just quickly, is that the Twitter? Is that your Twitter, Free Black Thought too? Is that your part of that? So yes, I'm on the board of directors for Free Black Thought. And that's another group that has been just amazing, Megan. I love them. I've been following them on Twitter for a long time. You learn a lot of great things. Yes, there's a lot of experts. And for folks who are looking for solutions Journal of Free Black Thought are identifying solutions that, you know, can help folks to move past, you know, the current moment where we find ourselves. You know, it's one thing, Megan, to like just say, oh, you know, these things are wrong. Like, what can we do? And what are some positive things we can engage with? And I encourage people to check out both Free Black Thought and Foundation Against Intolerance.

I love Free Black Thought. I've gotten so many great thoughts and been introduced to so many great people from it. Last question, we only have a short time left. You are going to sue them, I assume. I haven't ruled it out. You know, I still have this hope that folks are going to do the right thing, Megan, because I've made a lot of friends at De Anza. Most of the people at De Anza are good people. They're just quelled into silence by authoritarian extremists who counsel people if they don't agree with them. We know so many people in academia, they need to scoop you up. This is the kind of diversity, equity and inclusion approach everyone can get behind. And it's nonsense that you lost your job because you really did want a free black thought. You really are somebody who's lived it.

Dr. Lee, we're going to continue to follow your story. Please let us know how this works out and how we can help amplify it. Thank you. All the best to you. Wow. Unbelievable and infuriating, isn't it? It's infuriating. How does a woman like that wind up fired when she's trying to actually speak to young college minds who want to hear from her because of biased administrators? That's the reason. When we come back, we take a turn to China and there's a lot of news breaking out of there, including on TikTok. Now we shift to China. Last week, Xi Jinping was handed an unprecedented third term as president, becoming China's most

powerful leader in generations. What does this mean for the world and for us? We're talking now with Michael Cunningham. He's a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and he's lived in China. He knows all about China. A true expert now to answer all our questions about what all this means. Michael, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Megan. Yeah, the pleasure's ours. All right, so let's just talk about what this means, because it's basically Xi Jinping for life now. He's going to be the leader. He's the leader of the Communist Party. This was just a formality making him for a third term president. Good thing? Bad thing? Concerning from the U.S. perspective?

Well, you know, different people have different opinions about that. I actually am of the opinion that it's not a bad thing for the United States to have Xi as opposed to someone who's a little more likable. And the reason I say this is that for decades, American presidencies, administrations, the government generally, and really civil society as well, has viewed China as, you know, it is going to become like us as they develop, they are going to, and they actually desire to become like us. And the Communist Party is going to democratize the country eventually as it becomes richer. And that has really been baloney. It hasn't been true. But we still have many elements in the government and in business circles that still want to bring things back to where they were

before Xi Jinping, to a China, a US-China relationship that is more cooperative. But what was happening is the US was losing a lot of our advantages to China, to a China that is increasingly assertive on the global stage. And so with someone like Xi in power, I mean, our enemy is not, you know, it's not the Chinese people, certainly, but it's also not Xi. Our adversary is the Chinese Communist Party. It has always been a Marxist revolutionary party. And under Xi, the US as a whole and also the international community sees that a lot clearer than they did previously. I do fear that if we had someone that, say, the establishment in Washington and the business community really liked, that they thought, oh, this is our type of person, that they would want to go back to sort of these softer, more dovish policies that would only buy China additional time to surpass the U.S. in military and technological capabilities. So take us back, for those of us who don't know the history about China, take us back to when did it start that we started looking at them differently?

We said, we'll open up trade to China. We're going to democratize China. You know, it's a kinder, gentler the United States trying to make China in our mirror image. And it can be done. When did that happen and what's happened since then? Yeah, it essentially happened in the 1970s. I mean, we wanted an ally to oppose the Soviet Union. We finally realized that that China and the Soviet Union, despite both being communist countries, they were not on the same page. They didn't even like each other. And so our government played the China card, as it was called. And so gradually we established diplomatic relations with China by the end of the 1970s. And we really, at the same time, China had a change

in leadership. Mao Zedong ended up passing away. And Deng Xiaoping, he had this great strategy of let's lay low, bide our time, not exert leadership, not threaten the international community, but let's rise through the international system. And he implemented a lot of reforms to China's economy to open it up just enough that it could benefit from the international system. And so throughout the decades, there were many reasons to believe that that wasn't actually going to happen. But we were told by thanks to academic theories, philosophies that, well, a country cannot become wealthy without democratizing eventually. And also that, you know, all democratic countries are, by definition, peaceful. And so if we if we have, we open up, we engage China, they are going to democratize,

and they are going to be peaceful. And really what this meant to the CCP, the Chinese Communist Party, you know, we were telling them, oh, we have your best interests in mind. And I think the US was sincere about that. And we want you to become democratic. But what that sounds like to a totalitarian party like the CCP is we want a regime change. We want to kick you out of power in China. And that's what they heard. And so everything that we did, we welcomed them in the early 2000s. We welcomed them into the World Trade Organization. And basically what we did was we said, here, you can have all of the benefits of the international community, but you don't have to keep all of the same rules that everyone else has to. And somehow some brilliant people in Washington thought that this was going to, that once China became powerful and rich, they were going to somehow impose those rules that they

weren't being required to keep. They were going to impose them on themselves. Um, kind of a crazy idea if you ask me, but that was, um, that me, but that was how the thinking went. ascension to power. We're seeing it in so many different quarters. I mean, just yesterday, I was talking about them creating all sorts of relationships in Latin America. Their trade there has just exploded down there. We know that they've been buying up US farmland. We know that they now control Hollywood and what gets made and what doesn't get made. Now they're brokering peace deals in the Middle East and potentially even with respect to Russia and Ukraine. I mean, China never had this role before. But this is I don't know what phase this is of

the master plan, but we're clearly beyond the keep your head down as we grow and become economically powerful. And they are expanding into a true, you tell me, could we use the term superpower? Well, it would be premature to use the term superpower right now, but that is their ambition. They do want to develop into a superpower. And a lot of people are using that term already to describe them. But I do want to confirm something you just said, actually. I have a quote here. So Deng Xiaoping, his period, he had essentially an equation that he told. It was the strategy, the strategic advice was, observe calmly, secure our position, cope with affairs calmly, hide our capabilities, bide our time, be good at half a million, the Chinese

version of it had like half a million search results in Google the next day. And no one is really paying attention to it here. But what he said was, this is China's strategy under him, be calm and maintain determination, seek progress while maintaining stability, actively accomplish things, be calm and maintain determination, seek progress while maintaining stability, actively accomplish things, unite, and my favorite one, dare to struggle. That is China under Xi Jinping compared to the Deng Xiaoping, Lalo, bide your time era. This to me feels like the moment where the Clark Kent is pulling the white shirt off and you're starting to see these S underneath,

like the revealing of what they hope will be some sort of superpower, a next super phase. And they've been paying the dividends toward that for decades now. And so as you look at what they're doing, can you just give us a broad base before we get into the specifics of what they've done recently? Give us a broad based view akin to the one I just ticked off of what they've done recently. Give us a broad-based view akin to the one I just ticked off of what they are doing globally to grow and expand their influence. Yeah. So China actually, they view power different from the United States and most of the world. They're obsessed with this concept of power, but they're not only focused on military and economic power, they're focused on political leadership throughout the world. So they see it very much as a numbers

game. They see most countries are not liberal democratic countries. Most countries are not necessarily even aligned with the United States. And what they're hoping to do is really get the majority of countries slowly to sort of back them. And so I guess it's one way you could look at it is, well, they're rolling out tons of new initiatives. Just yesterday, they rolled out what they call the Global Civilization Initiative. They have the Global Security Initiative, the Global Development Initiative. And all of these are very vague initiatives. We don't necessarily know what they mean in practice. They're not clear. But what they're doing is they're trying to appeal to three types of countries. One are the rogue states that detest America's leadership just as much as they do. The next type are authoritarian countries that may be aligned with the US, like you talk about Saudi Arabia and countries like that, but they're not necessarily comfortable with the liberal norms, human rights norms and whatnot that the U.S.

stands for, and with the U.S. exerting and sort of promoting these norms internationally. And then there's the third type, which is the global south or the developing countries that haven't really benefited as much from the global order led by the US as North America, much of Northeast Asia, and of course, Western Europe. And so a lot of what China does to us sounds like, oh, there's no way anyone's going to align with that. There's no way anyone's going to see them as a constructive party with regards to Ukraine and Russia, for example. But we're not their target. Their target is actually much more susceptible to their overtures and their messages. And so you can really think of them as almost, they're more interested in messaging than they are in substance and and i would say just one last thing about that is it's it's also sort of related to how the communist party took power in

china the first in the first place no they it was a prolonged struggle they almost were defeated several times but in the end they managed to take power and they did that by appealing to the masses, which were the workers and peasants, against the minority landowners and political elites and economic elites. of countries, trying to peel them away from the US-led system little by little in an international community where one country gets one vote in most international organizations. What they managed to do then is use political and economic leverage to get individual states to vote according to their desires as well. Toward what end exactly? That last answer sort of got to it, but then what, right? If they can align these America-hating countries or people who are just not that thrilled with the way we operate, what's the end goal? Yeah. Yeah. It's well, it's, it's,

it's an alternative world order where China is the dominant power. Um, and basically what they say goes, I mean, you know, in substance, they don't really have anything, um, that is different really. I mean, they talk about common values. They reject the idea of universal values that we stand by. But they talk about common values, which are just different names for the same values, except the difference is they define them. And if they're not obeying those rules, well, we have a misunderstanding of what those rules actually are, because they define them. Could this happen? It very well could. I mean, it's is actually counting on us to remain the leaders, the global leaders. And so, you know, we have China making incredible inroads in the developing world.

We should really be worried about that. We're not going to compete with them when it comes to the rogue states that hate America. Those are basically on China's side. There's not much we can do unless we can manage to drive a wedge between them. But what we should really be focusing on is the developing world. China has incredible influence in Africa, and they're making a lot of progress in Latin America in our own backyard. I know previously John Kerry, when he was Secretary of State, said that the Monroe Doctrine no longer exists. I think many of us in America would disagree with that. We need to maintain American influence and superiority in the Western Hemisphere, for sure. Why are they buying up so much farmland in America?

Well, that's actually a pretty complex issue. I mean, the simple answer is, who is buying the farmland? And usually it's Chinese companies or Chinese individuals, I think mostly companies. And, you know And China has a food security problem. They have lots of concerns with that. They have 1.4 billion people to feed. And so that's one of the reasons. What's really concerning, though, is that some of this farmland happens to be in very sensitive areas close to American military bases. And that strikes me as just, well, it strikes most people in America, apparently, as very dangerous, that they would buy land close to a sensitive military base here. And we don't really know what they're doing with that land. We don't have the same processes in place. If I wanted to buy farmland in China, it probably wouldn't be approved.

But if it would, I would have to fill out a very in-depth application about every single thing I'm going to use that farmland for. And they would, you know, review it for national security considerations, food security, all sorts of different policies. And if they approved it, they would hold me to it. But what happens here is I think, you know, if they get approval to buy this land, I mean, they might be setting up technology to surveil our military sites. I don't think we have any oversight of what they do once they buy that land. So it's extremely dangerous. Yeah, we're going to get a whole lot more balloons if we continue to look the other way on this. Or they might not even need balloons, right? Yeah, they just use their binoculars or their eyes. How strong are they militarily and economically? Because I've read some fierce debates on whether we are overstating the threat that in both of those departments, they don't hold a candle to us. But here's the problem. America's military is declining. We no longer have the Navy that we used to have. That's going to be the most important thing if we have a war

with China at some point. So we have to maintain the strongest military, especially the strongest Navy in the world. And right now, China is pretty far behind us, but they're advancing very rapidly. Whereas in Washington, it seems like we're sitting on our hands and just waiting until they've reached parity with us before we panic and try to do something about it. China is producing ships very fast. And we no longer have the industrial capacity if we were in a worst case scenario, if we were in a war with China, that we are no longer able to. We used to have the workshop for democracy or whatever it was called during World War II, where we just mass produced ships. Well, China's doing that now, and it's definitely not for democracy, right? So we need to be able to sustain a war if we were to have one.

And the concern is that we're not doing that. Meanwhile, our reckless spending is not making us safer. It's not giving confidence to our allies either that we are going to be able to really sustain a conflict if one should break out. And so that's, I think, one of the main concerns here. China is facing some pretty serious economic challenges. But, you know, it's coming from a pretty low baseline right now. It's still catching up. It's still, you know, it just released an economic target, growth target for this year, which is 5%. That would be massive in most countries, but that's the lowest target they've set in forever. So that's, you know, they and they have they're doing a lot to actually suppress their economic growth because they're

trying to restructure their economy. They're cracking down on a lot of sectors. They're trying to eliminate risks. And if push comes to shove, they can back off of some of that to stimulate growth. And if push really comes to shove, the economy is just a political tool for China. It's a tool for the CCP's political power. And so if they have to divert economic resources to the military, it's much easier for them to do that than it is for us in a democratic system. Now, you don't have to be an expert like you are to understand that you cannot attain or maintain power without more people coming up your ranks, children and teenagers and the next generation. And China's one child policy, which was in place for most of

those last 50 years we've been talking about, has really come back to haunt them. And especially given the preference for boys and how there was, I mean, there was infanticide, there were abortions, there were all sorts of things when it came to birthing baby girls. You've got this very weird, disproportionate situation of men outnumbering women by, I don't know, you probably know the ratio, but it's something alarming. And even the Chinese government now is recognizing that this was folly and that there are going to be real penalties as a result of this to their economy, to the ability to take care of the aging. How is that one China policy, one child policy, you know, rearing results for them now?

Well, I mean, basically what you just said, I mean, they're they're struggling now. But, well, I should say they're not struggling yet, but they do see the writing on the wall that their workforce is going to decline significantly. And at the same time, their economy is going to, their growth is declining as well. And so, yeah, they're going to have a lot fewer working age people to support the elderly, which is a challenge for their social stability as well. They are very concerned about that. Now, they weren't concerned when the rest of the world was warning them, saying, look,

you're going to have to do something about this one China, this one child policy. But now, you know, it is going to have implications for their ability to fight a war in the future. But, you know, there are more Chinese people. I mean, like, where are the women? We are still at the point where you need a woman to make a baby. Yes, yes. And and, you know, they're trying to incentivize now women to have more babies. But, you know, the women really aren't buying it.

They're saying, look, you didn't let us have babies before. Now you're trying to incentivize to do this. Do we just exist to reproduce at your whim? And so that's one of the concerns they're going to face. Wow. That's so interesting. What a bizarre social experiment they've been in the midst of. And now, as I said, reaping not the rewards, but the punishments from it. Okay. So all of this is very interesting to me. And it does help me see what's in the news today under a different light. I don't know about you, but this news that they brokered, this, should we call it peace with this deal between iran and saudi arabia was big news it went

undercovered over here but it's it's huge that they brokered it it's huge that it happened it's huge for our friends in israel who definitely were not rooting for that um you know iran wants to wipe israel off the face of the mat, Iran and Israel does not want them to get closer to the Saudis who Israel was hoping it would get closer to in the wake of the Abraham Accords, which should not include Saudis. In any event, so Israel had sort of a hope, thanks to the Trump presidency and the Abraham Accords, that looks less good today than it did a couple of months ago. And so can you speak to that news that China brokered that deal? Yeah. I mean, that's the interesting thing, right? China brokered that deal. Now,

the U.S. wouldn't have been able to broker a deal like that because we don't have relations with Iran. But I think the point here is the U.S. wouldn't have either. I don't claim to be a Middle East expert, but I would say that part of me wonders if part of this was not Saudi Arabia really sending a message to the Biden administration saying, look, there's another guy in town as well. We don't have to just do, you know, just align with the U.S. We do know that the relationship has been struggling between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, especially under this administration. But I would say, you know, this is really a sign of things to come in China. China saw an opportunity to exert itself in another region of the world to show its leadership and to present its image as a great,

responsible leader of the international system. And it was able to declare a pretty major victory. Now, how big of a difference will this deal make in the end? Ikraine crisis, where they're trying to say, look, we're the responsible ones. We're not selling weapons to anyone. We're calling for peace. And their peace deal is a joke to those of us who actually read it and actually understand how international relations works and how much that deal would really only benefit Russia. But to those countries that are more susceptible to these types of narratives, it really bolsters China's image, and they are going to be relentless in Xi's third term, especially. Forgive this question, because it's just so tired, but I am curious. Do you think this would be happening if President Trump were in office? Well, that's a really good question. You know,

I am not so sure that what happened in the Middle East would be happening if Trump were in office. I do have to say, though, that what she is doing in China, he would be doing that anyway. So he didn't have a good second term in office as far as I mean, he had a great second term as far as consolidating his power goes. But as far as what he wanted to do on the international stage, he was locked down in China for most of that time. China was dealing with its own problems and didn't do as much diplomatically as he would have liked. And so now he's really he's he's coming out swinging from his, you know, winning his third term over the party last fall and now over the state winning the presidency again. And so that would be happening no matter who's in power. China would be a challenge no matter who the president was. But but I am sure we would have more coherent policies if Trump were still in office. And I think some of the huge

blunders that Biden has made that have hurt the US standing like Afghanistan and whatnot, I'm pretty sure would not have gone down the way they did. You're an expert on Xi and China and so on. We had somebody on yesterday who used to work at Treasury and worked under George W. Bush, who said the reason he thinks we need to stay involved actively in Ukraine is if we are to cut and run there, if we're going to abandon that conflict and just sort of say, oh, well, you know, just live with the borders as they are and buy, it will signal weakness to Xi and it will be provocative to him in a way we don't want. Do you agree with that?

To an extent, I do. Yes. You know, China only understands power. They don't really understand this whole, you know, let's all get along. They talk the talk, but they understand power. And if the U.S. is showing weakness, it does sort of is the reckless partner in that partnership but um china is much more careful but it's uh it's very active diplomatically and now to an extent that would be happening anyway but there would probably be more pushback um under you know, a stronger administration. We haven't talked about Taiwan, TikTok or a number of other things. And we'll do that

right after this quick, quick break. This is so interesting, Michael. Thank you so much for being here. Stand by more after this. Michael Cunningham of the Heritage Foundation is here. He is an expert on all things China. So let's go through a few of them. Russia and China getting closer and closer. Pretty much everyone is concerned. The polls show that while Americans weren't that concerned about Xi winning a third term, the majority into the 60 percent are worried about this alliance getting tighter and tighter. Are they right to be? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, China, China and Russia are not allies. That's for sure. They're partners, they're strategic partners, and their partnership is to an end. They are both very uncomfortable

with US global leadership. They both want to see a world order that is not dominated by America. And so that's what they're really working together on. And they're both very much dedicated to that. And whereas there's question as to how coordinated they are, and probably not too coordinated, except they have similar goals and objectives, but they are sort of complementary to each other. Russia tends to be more- How are we supposed to disrupt that, Michael? It's quite difficult. We, I mean, partly, to an extent, there's really not anything we can do because they are dedicated to the same

goal. But at the same time, if it's possible to somehow drive a wedge between them, that's quite difficult. That would take people with much more brilliant intel on the ground in Russia and Russia's and China's political circles than than most of us have to to decide whether and how that's possible. What how does Taiwan play into all this? Because more and more people predicting with our disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, with what's happening in Ukraine, and we're focused over there, the odds are higher than ever that conflict will happen between China and Taiwan. And we've said already, our president explicitly, that we would get involved in that if he were to do it. Yeah, I believe we would. And so Taiwan, the likelihood of conflict is rising,

and it has risen quite dramatically over the past several years, the past seven years especially. But that's more because of China's sort of, well, the militarization of the Taiwan Strait more than anything, China's activities, China's military provocations there, that the possibility of escalation and miscalculation on either side becomes much higher. As far as some plan to take Taiwan goes, China fully expects to take control of Taiwan at some point. But we have to remember, they are much smarter about this than a country like Russia is. They are very calculating. And the way they see it is that the US and the West are declining as powers and China is rising and

the time is on China's side. And that if they can just stay out of a fight right now, then they will be able to take Taiwan without even firing a shot at some point in the future. They are playing a long game. And I do know that some in the US are saying, well, their window of opportunity is going to close at some point. That may be true. I don't subscribe to that idea. But the most important thing is Beijing doesn't subscribe to that idea. They believe that they cannot afford to go after Taiwan and lose it. But if they have 100% certainty that they are going to succeed, that is when they would make a move. Wow. I mean, this is just like they're so smart and strategic in everything they do.

And we just don't feel that way. I don't mean to underestimate the United States. I realize we also have some smart people who are watching this and calculating the risk, but it just feels that they are way more cunning than we are. Yeah, absolutely. Cunning, I think, is the perfect word to describe them. So let's talk about TikTok, because that's something that 100 million Americans use. We do not have it in our house. We don't let our kids use any social media. And that's in part, the TikTok thing is in part because you don't know who's going to be accessing the data. They have these parental controls and so on that they try to push, or you can try to limit who's got access to what your kid is doing and so on. But it's a much bigger problem than that. And today, it's in the news that we may actually be insisting that

ByteDance, the Chinese owner of TikTok, sell off the US arm of it or that we're going to ban it in the United States. I mean, to me, it seems impossible that the Biden administration, I mean, it could be a bipartisan thing. There's now a bill introduced by bipartisan senators to sever the relationship. And it just seems impossible that they would say to the American people, 100 million of whom want to follow this account. It's gone. You can't anymore. Could that actually happen? Well, it needs to happen. Hopefully it does. But I mean, there are the two risks here. One is just the content. And that's a social media risk anyway. You're very smart, Megan, not to let your kids use social media. I mean, we see what happens with TikTok and these other, really other social media that kids are on. But two is you mentioned the data issue. That's a huge

risk. It's a national security risk. It's a data security risk. But I think, you know, you're right to question it as well. You mentioned the bill, the bipartisan bill that's out there right now. It essentially, it doesn't force the government to do anything with regards to TikTok. It gives them power, too. It gives the Commerce Secretary power. But the current Commerce Secretary is on record saying, the politician in me thinks you're going to literally lose every voter under 35 forever if you ban TikTok. So when political expediency is driving policy, that really pulls into question whether such an act would actually work.

Right. Would we do it? And so you've got the bipartisan bill in the Senate trying to give more power to the administration to make sweeping moves with respect to TikTok. And then you've got a report in the Wall Street Journal yesterday, which now several news outlets have confirmed that the Biden administration is threatening a potential ban on TikTok in the United States right now if the Chinese owners refuse to the Chinese and that the Chinese are denying that TikTok poses any sort of a risk to the national security of the United States. How does it? How does it if nothing happens and you know, ByteDance continues its ownership in this TikTok that we're all using over here, what's going to what is happening to compromise national security?

Yeah. So they are able to access, for example, so I say they, I mean, ByteDance people in China are able to access American user data. The news that has come out is really with the click of a button. And who is ByteDance really? Okay, ByteDance is a privately owned Chinese company, but they were so successful and they're in such a sensitive area in China. You know, they deal with media, connecting people, information. The Chinese Communist Party could not not take a piece of that. So what they did was they bought, they forced the company to sell them a golden share. It's called a golden share. It's 1% ownership, but they get a board member, they get get veto power. So they have the Communist Party through the government entity that has a stake. They actually wield incredible influence. And given that they have access to American user data as well, ByteDance being a Chinese company, it is required by law to hand over any data that the government demands of them.

And so any number of things could happen. We talk about Americans with security clearances now or in the future that China needs the ability, they need information so that they can compromise them. We're talking government officials in America who we know several of them are on TikTok. So lots of risks. I do want to say, though, would a sale of TikTok from ByteDance to an American owner, would that make any difference? Well, according to TikTok, it wouldn't. TikTok actually has come out and they said that, well, they just said it won't make any difference. It will not fix the national security issue. They have their own proposal, which seems like a half measure. So what should we be rooting for?

Because there isn't some clear solution where we get to use TikTok, but we don't have to worry about Chinese infiltration of our private data. Yeah, I mean, really, we should be rooting for banning TikTok. I don't see another way around it. And, you know, I know a lot of young people would be disappointed by that, but they probably thank us at some point in the future. I mean, it's it's rotting their brains. It's how capitalism works, for better or for worse. Let's talk about energy, okay? Because there was this bizarre statement by Jennifer Granholm the other day who suggested that what we really need to do is applaud China and take a look at China's example when it comes to cleaning up our energy problem. I mean, China? really um here's what she said and then we can get into it the countries all are susceptible to pressure to peer pressure they don't want to be the outlier i mean there's a couple countries that we know are outliers and don't care but but i think china has done um has been very sensitive and has actually invested a lot in their solutions to achieve their goals.

So we're hopeful that, you know, we can all learn from what China is doing, but the amount of money that they're investing in clean energy is actually, you know, encouraging. We can all learn from what China is doing when it comes to green energy. China, you know what they're doing? They're building six times more new coal plants than other countries. What is happening there? Well, I have to agree that we can learn from what China's doing. What is China doing? They have an abundance of coal. That's traditionally been how they got a lot of their energy. And they started to move towards cleaner energy, not necessarily renewable energy, but they

started to move towards cleaner solutions like natural gas and whatnot. And they found that they were having problems with their energy security. Kids in schools in Northern China were having to go to school without heating because they just didn't have the energy resources for it. And so what we're seeing is China is recognizing that energy security is national security and that they have to use the resources that they have. And so they're really tapping into those coal resources. Meanwhile, in the U.S., what we're doing is we could be energy independent. We have abundant oil and gas resources.

And instead of using those resources, what we're saying is, you know, we have to transition completely away from that. And we have to move over to these renewable resources that, oh, by the way, China controls the supply chains for these resources. So we're going from being essentially having the capacity to be pretty independent as far as our energy resources go to being dependent on China, which which I think is is not something that China would do if they were in our place. They're showing us that they take their energy security seriously. So from from that perspective, yeah, we can learn from them.

You'd think the energy secretary would know better. I'm not sure if that was a pander. Josh Rogin of The Washington Post had a great piece on how the State Department more and more seems to be pandering to China, cleaning up its language. Instead of saying China's doing this on human rights, they talk about East Asia and saying it's a problem. We need to stay tough on them and we need to be honest about who they are and what they're doing and not trying to prop them up, whether it's when it comes to their not green energy plan or what the State Department is doing. It's kind of interesting. I need to ask you about what's happening on the COVID investigation, because in a pretty

extraordinary development, you've got the entire U.S. Congress voting to declassify the investigation into the origins of COVID and to tell the American people what we know about how this thing started. Lab leak, natural origin, whatever it is. Karine Jean-Pierre was asked whether Joe Biden is prepared to sign that legislation. It's almost not even important other than politically because with these kinds of numbers, they'll override his veto if he vetoes it. But it is interesting the position he's in and why they're not saying explicitly.

Of course, he'll sign it. Raises questions, too. If we get this, if we get this declassification of all documents relating to the origins of COVID, do you think it's going to get us anywhere given how secretive the Chinese have been, how hard they are to infiltrate,

how even the FBI's assessment that it was a lab leak was only moderate. The Energy Department said, was it Energy? I'm trying to remember, said low confidence. So do you think it matters? Well, I will say it matters from the public health standpoint. It is very important that we know how the virus started. But from the hold China accountable standpoint, I think it's a distraction, to be honest. So by all means, you know, they should pass this bill. It's very important. Biden should sign it. But will it make a difference as far as holding China accountable? directly from China, they're going to say, oh, that's falsified. That's not true. Whereas in reality, who is responsible for the pandemic? Well, regardless of the origins, it's China. It could have come from a bat. It could have come from Mars. But either way, China is the one that clamped down on information, that covered it up at the

beginning, that turned a localized outbreak into a pandemic. There have been lab leaks in China before. SARS escaped from Chinese labs multiple times, and never did it turn into a pandemic. The reason is they took it seriously. They clamped down on it. They nipped the infection at the bud. And what we saw this time was whistleblowers that came out and they just said, hey, everyone, be careful. Just doctors speaking among themselves, be careful. There's a new SARS-like virus out there, they were silenced by the Chinese government. And then they were not forthcoming to the international community. They knew it was transmitted from human to human way before they admitted that. And so that's really how we ended up with the pandemic that we have today. China is responsible regardless of origins. And

so I do think we shouldn't be focusing only on the origin of the virus, but the origin of the pandemic as well. All right, tough assignment. But in the last 30, 40 seconds we have, sum it up. How should we be thinking about China in America? Well, we need to demand that more action and less talk, less tough talk and more effective bipartisan action from our lawmakers. Good luck with that. I do not feel hopeful, but I am enlightened thanks to you, Michael. Thank you so much. Really appreciate the discussion. Thanks a lot, Megan. All right. So tomorrow I want to tell you that we are coming back with the guys from the fifth column and we have so much goodness to discuss with them. There are so many topics that we've been sort of going over with, over with each other in reserve for them. So I think you're

really going to enjoy tomorrow's show. Don't forget to tune in. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.