The Megyn Kelly Show - VP Harris' Relief "Equity," and NFL's Concussion Issue, with Rich Lowry, Chris Nowinski, and Chloe Valdary | Ep. 403

Episode Date: October 3, 2022

Megyn Kelly is joined by Rich Lowry, editor of National Review, to talk about VP Kamala Harris' disaster relief "equity" ideas, the latest COVID vaccine mandate absurdity continuing to hurt Americans, Stacey Abrams' election denialism, attempts to make crime critiques a race issue, Fauci's finances and a new grant for Peter Daszak, and more. Then Chris Nowinski, CEO of Concussion Legacy Foundation, joins the show to talk about the truth about concussions and CTE, the dangers of the injuries Tua Tagovailoa sustained, how dangerous a second concussion is after the first one, the Dolphins' latest statement on Tua, whether kids should be playing football, and more. Finally Chloe Valdary, founder of The Theory of Enchantment, joins to talk about using love to overcome past harms, our cultural impulse to segregate rather than integrate, the major threats that can unite us as a country, controversy over "The Woman King" movie, the uproar over Jordan Peterson and the left's masculinity hypocrisy, and more. Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. I hope you all had a great weekend. I had so much fun. Yesterday I did something that I rarely do, and that is I went to an NFL football game along with my family. And it was super fun. We went to see a New York Giants game. They were playing the Bears. Go blue. We won.

New York Giants won. That was my dad's team. So it's my team too. And it was really thrilling. It was like, I have to tell you, it was like you're out there. You're with regular folks who are just tailgating and enjoying themselves. And it doesn't take a red carpet. It doesn't take fancy martinis. It doesn't take a bunch of celebrities.

I'm thinking about some of these events I went to in New York, like the Met Gala or, let's say, I don't know, the Vanity Fair party out by the Oscars in Hollywood. Screw that. Any day of the week, I would take the tailgating at the Giants game, one of those delicious beers. My husband chose the kind. A burger. It was overcooked, but somehow it tastes delish. And time with the family and friends. You know, it was just super fun.

And the fact that the Giants won made it even better. Sorry, Bears fans. But the game actually wound up making headlines, not just for that reason, but also because two quarterbacks for the Giants were injured, one with a possible concussion. Now, you know, we covered this on Friday, what happened to Tua. And now we're seeing this past weekend an overcorrection the other way, which is good. Taking care of all these players who were injured as possibly concussed during the Sunday games yesterday. And what a swing. And I have to tell you, I'm very glad that they've had the swing because I was there with my kids. My seventh grader is now playing tackle football as part

of his seventh grade sort of mandatory sports introduction. And I'm fine with that. But I don't want him, the little boys on his team or any of their parents to have to worry that this is a sport in which they don't give a damn whether you get a concussion. They're going to send you back out there and brain injuries be damned. They want to make a dime off of you. Right. So that's what we were looking at last week. Has the NFL shifted? We're going to get into all of this in just a bit as we're joined by one of the world's foremost experts on traumatic brain injuries. Okay, first, though, there's a lot to get to politically today, including President Biden praising a hero in the aftermath of Hurricane

Ian, a Coast Guard worker who did some incredible stuff, I'll tell you what, who is about to be fired thanks to President Biden's vaccine policy. Can you believe? We'll tell you the story. Also, we're learning that Anthony Fauci's agency has officially just granted a new round of taxpayer money to EcoHealth Alliance. That's the group run by Peter Daszak. That's the guy who was one of the first scientists to push officials to reject the lab leak theory. That's the guy who was doing gain of function research in the lab in Wuhan, China. That guy, Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance, who just got another 600 grand from Anthony Fauci,

which many people believe is how we got into this mess to begin with. How is he getting more of our money? There's been no accountability whatsoever. We had learned a couple of weeks ago that he was considering doing it. Now we know he did it. Fauci doesn't give a fig. He's got his middle finger up to everyone. He will continue funding Peter Daszak, EcoHealth Alliance, and this type of dangerous research until the

American populace tells him no, which amazingly we're not doing, at least not loudly enough. So we're going to get into all of this. I'm very fired up about that story, as you can tell. Joining me now to discuss it all is Rich Lowry, Editor-in-Chief of National Review, the great National Review. Rich, great to have you. How are you? Hey, thanks so much for having me. I've never been to the Met Gala, but I have been to a Giants game. It's so fun. I rarely go to that kind of thing like NFL. I don't saw my thing. I'm not a sports person. I'll keep doing it. It was so fun, just outdoors. It was going to rain, but the rain kind of held off. And it was just like it was church like again, it was kind of

church like like a concert where, you know, we stood together, we sat together, we cheered together. We didn't really boo, booed a couple of bad calls, but not the other players. And, you know, you saw people who are obviously wealthy, right? And like the fancy boxes, you saw people who clearly didn't have a ton of dough, who carpooled there't, you know, when you're watching at home on TV, well, you wander out to the bathroom and wander out to get another beer. But in a stadium, you're just sitting there with nothing happening. And also, you were, you know, good, good, still warm weather this past weekend. But I was at an event last week with Governor Scott Walker, who has a PhD in attending Green Bay Packers games. And he says there, when it gets cold, you got to bring a piece of cardboard to put beneath your feet. So you're not actually on the concrete because all the cold comes up. You bring your own seat liner and you bring electric heaters in your pockets. Then you're all set and you look incredibly rugged on TV. But it's really because you're not an amateur and you're pro and you know what you're doing. Well, I mean, frankly, any parent who sits on the soccer sidelines all fall long probably has those same. I'm thinking about getting one of those little tents. You know, you can get like an individual tent and you can sit in it.

They probably wouldn't allow that at MetLife Stadium where we went to the Giants game. They will allow it on my daughter's soccer sidelines. Yeah. So anyway, it was super fun. And I have to say, I know you've got kids too, but this whole NFL thing is really disturbing. You know what happened to Tua last week? And apparently they got rid of that neurological consultant. That guy's lost his job, but like too little, too late already. You've got a deep scare through a lot of the parent community about what is football? Is it about just getting

the W and putting points on the board? Or do we factor in the health and well-being of the players from age seven to 37? Yeah. I mean, they just have to, I'm not an expert on the protocol, but I think it needs to be totally taken out of the team's hands. And you just have to have a third party doctor charged with having the truly the interest of the player at heart, no matter what the score is, no matter how desperate you are to get your star quarterback back in the game and go on his or her judgment. And also, I think this is why a lot of parents, lacrosse is a good option. You know, it's, it's not, there's not the constant head collisions and lacrosse rough. It has as much action, especially in the Northeast.

But I think it's spread around to the rest of the country as well as a potential alternative to football. But there's no total alternative to football. It's the dominant sport in our national life. And parts of the South, it's a religion on Friday nights. It's just the most entertaining game. I'm a big baseball guy, but I admit it, you know, college football in the NFL, you just can't beat it. It's why, you know, the 50 top rated programs at the end of any year, they're all, you know, 48 of them are football games. So it's a big part of our national life. And this is something we

should get right just for the welfare of the players. And as you say, for the peace of mind of parents. You're right. It's such a fun game to watch. And, you know, for most of us, it has history in our families as well. You know, every Thanksgiving it's on all fall it's on and, you know, you get the memories of your parents rooting for this team and, you know, that's what lures you in. Doug and I are in a very, we're in like a cage match on this because I'm from a Giants family and he's from a Philadelphia Eagles family. And the near the twain shall meet, Rich. I mean, it's like we're, it is an all out battle now. In fact, for Yates's birthday, our son just turned 13.

I got this enormous balloon display and it was a field goal of the New York Giants. My dog came downstairs. He was like, what is that? You're so right. These memories just get caught up with your family's life. I remember I grew up in Washington, D.C., and everyone in D.C. was obsessed with the Redskins. I decided not to be a Redskins fan. But still, on Thanksgiving Day, you'd wheel out the TV. That's how old I am, you know, at dinner. And you'd watch the Cowboys versus the Redskins. And it was just I remember there was one epic game where the Redskins were way ahead

and Roger Staubach, the great legendary Cowboys quarterback for some reason wasn't playing that game or got knocked out. And then this no-name Cowboys quarterback brings them all the way back and wins the game, crushing and ruining the holiday of all the DC metropolitan area. I remember when I was a kid watching Joe Montana of the 49ers, just because A, I thought he was kind of dreamy. And B, he was incredible to watch, even for a girl in the single digits or close to.

And you get these legendary figures who really draw you in, sometimes irrespective of what teams they're on. And that was another thing. Kurt Warner, I talked about him on Friday because I interviewed him about CTE. But he had another incredible story where, kind of like Tom Brady, he was like the backup nobody. Nobody wanted Kurt Warner. And then the, you know, Division I or whatever, the lead quarterback got hurt and he got put in. Everybody's like, oh, no.

I think it was the Rams that he started with because it was my first husband who loved him he loved the rams anyway they're like oh no and he completely turned it around there's a feature film yeah he was like a checkout clerk or something right and then and then you know very soon after as an nfl star i almost almost watched this movie on a plane this weekend, but didn't play. Well, I have to watch it because I like the guy. As memory serves, I think he married his wife. They adopted a child with special needs. He worked in the grocery store.

It was just like an all-American guy who just believed in hard work and loving his family and God, and great things happened for him, and as a result, for the Rams later. Anyway, we'll get to more about football in a minute. Now on to darker subjects. Hurricane Ian came through absolutely devastating. Heard you guys talk about it on the editors with Charlie, who thankfully wasn't there. But, you know, there are friends on the Gulf Coast of

Florida just really dealing with absolute devastation, Fort Myers in the area. And Joe Biden, as presidents will often do, made some phone calls to some of the standouts in the rescue effort. And that included a military hero, a Coast Guard diver, to say congratulations for a job well done. And, you know, we appreciate you. And Joe Biden actually mentioned this publicly. All right. On camera, he was out there praising Zach Lash. Here's a bit of the president in soundbite one. I also spoke to aviation survival second class technician, second class Zach Lash, who described how difficult the decision is for people to leave everything and come to safety.

I told him how proud of him I was and thanked him for all the work he and his coasties are doing to save lives. First of all, something's going on with Biden's speech. Like he's more slurry and mumbly, right? It's like getting worse. Don't you recognize it? Yeah. I mean, that was difficult to understand at the beginning. Yeah. All right. So another day. Secondly, so this guy, I believe it's pronounced Lash because that's how Dana Lash spells her name and you pronounce it Lash. This guy saved a disabled woman and her husband from a bedroom during in their home that they'd been trapped in. He had to kick in a wall to get to them. He strapped the woman and her wheelchair to his body

and hoisted her to a waiting helicopter. This is like the stuff movies are made of. He saved the lives of several pets in the area as well. Then Breitbart News caught up with him. It was not on camera. This is a print interview. And he told them he is due to be kicked out of the Coast Guard in the next 30 to 60 days due to Biden's vaccine mandate that affects all members of the Coast Guard in the next 30 to 60 days due to Biden's vaccine mandate

that affects all members of the U.S. armed forces. He tried to get a religious exemption. It was denied. They asked him, why you didn't bring that up in your phone call with President Biden, which would have been quite a moment. He said he didn't think it was appropriate to bring it up to him. But he said, exactly. Exactly. And he said, it just sucks that he thanked me. Yet the vaccine mandate is what's kicking me out. I just love my job and I'm really

good at it. It sucks. I feel like this is the job I was born to do. And then he says, if I had asked any of the people I saved yesterday, if they wanted to come with me, even though I'm unvaccinated, every single one of them would have said yes. Oh, yeah. So this is a policy that never made any sense. You know, I thought the vaccines are a great blessing. People should should have gotten vaccinated. But the idea that underline these mandates that unvaccinated people were a threat to vaccinated people made zero sense, zero sense ever, right? I mean, to the extent unvaccinated are a threat to anyone, it's to themselves, right? But this is a, you know, a hale and hearty guy who's lifting people on his back out of

harm's way. So obviously he's not at major risk of COVID and he's made this decision and we should respect it. And also, even if there was a justification, seemingly at the beginning of the pandemic, the pandemic's over, right? I mean, Biden himself has said it's over. So how possibly can you justify kicking a guy out like this? And I have a buddy, old Marine Corps officer who's just texting me like an hour ago before came on here, same thing. He has all these friends who are still getting kicked out totally arbitrarily from the Marines.

And why? And this isn't the biggest and most important example, but I'm a big Yankee fan. I watch nearly every game. And in the broadcast booth, they have Michael Kay as a play-by-play guy, another color guy, and then Paul O'Neill, Yankee great, does color, who can't come into the studio, who can't come into Yankee Stadium because he's unvaccinated. So they have this side shot of him at home in Ohio or wherever he is. It makes zero sense. And again, maybe, you know, in the initial blush of, you know, all the unknowns we had at the beginning of the pandemic, maybe you can justify doing this. I don't think it made sense then. It certainly doesn't make sense now.

And it's just lunacy that's, you know, like a runaway train that no one can stop. And it's one thing when it's, I don't know, like our school, our school still has a vaccine mandate when the kids turn 16. I'm very much hoping they'll see the light before my son does. But but all these other parents have to deal with that this this year, the ones who are a couple of years older than we are. And it's wrong. But that's one thing. It's another to be dealing with the U.S. military, where this year alone, the army didn't make its recruiting goals. They fell about 15000 soldiers short.. That's 25%. Yeah, 25%. And the only the other branches only made to dig deep into those pools, which puts them behind now for the next year's recruiting. But they're playing funny business with the numbers. That's

basically why they made their numbers. So we're falling at record lows between the woke military and the vaccine mandate and the four branches of the military while Vladimir Putin's threatening nuclear war. OK, because it's something that, as you point out, may never have made sense, but really makes no sense now where it doesn't prevent transmission. And these are the youngest, most able bodied Americans we have. They're at almost no risk from covid. Yeah. What what athlete again, going back to sports, what athlete have we heard that got covid

that was ever in any trouble whatsoever? None. None. Because you're going to be in trouble. Maybe there's a freak thing. But otherwise, if you have some serious underlying health condition or you're quite elderly. So, again, this is science. These are facts.

And the people who pride themselves supposedly being just driven by science and wholly devoted to it can't or won't absorb this. You know, I'm no fan of Marjorie Taylor Greene. But last year, one reason she got suspended permanently from Twitter is she said vaccinated people were getting the virus, which was a fact, right? It was clear almost from the beginning. Initially, there's a little over optimism about, OK, the vaccines can protect anyone from getting it. But then, you know, the Omicron wave comes in. Everyone who's vaccinated gets it. And she can't say that again by the arbiters who who pride themselves on being fact based. But there are just certain truths they refuse to acknowledge because it doesn't line up to what their preferences or ideology.

And can I tell you something? I talked to a rumor, a rheumatologist about this. to acknowledge because it doesn't line up to what their preferences or ideology. And can I tell you something? I talked to a rheumatologist about this. It matters that these vaccines don't prevent COVID because that means you could get a vaccine and very shortly thereafter, you could get COVID. And that double hit to your immune system that close in time actually can and is causing potential autoimmune problems. And I heard that directly from one of the top rheumatologists in New York City. So the fact that they don't prevent you from getting it does, I mean, it's like, so if you get the vaccine, unless you're going to go in lockdown, you are at risk for this double dose of COVID. It's basically getting COVID down twice, sort of, in a very short amount of time.

So no wonder these top athletes and our Navy SEALs and guys like, you know, Lash don't want to do this. He's busy saving actual lives and having to strap women with their wheelchairs to him. Can't afford to be compromised in that way. Yeah. So again, based on the initial information we had, I was still happy to let people be unvaccinated and have no mandate because i just think our society should have uh the widest possible latitude for people to make their own individual choices and we should accommodate eccentrics on such questions you know i i thought it made sense to get vaccinated i got vaccinated boosted and got the virus so i got the triple dose i guess but some people disagreed and why the virus. So I got the triple dose, I guess. But some people disagreed. And

why would you want to crush them or chase them out of their livelihood? And especially now. And circling back to the military recruitment thing, this is a serious issue that has really important repercussions for the health and defense of our society. You know, I think if you, once you subtract all the people who are disqualified for various reasons from the military, either they physically, they can't do it, or they don't have the educational credentials, or they smoked pot, or they have tattoos, it's only about a quarter of the population that you're talking about. And then you have a tight labor market. And then you have a military that's very unattractive. You know, that they're cracking down on people on the vaccines, they have all this woke

stuff. And on top of that, you have patriotism kind of at a low ebb, or at least our lead institutions constantly pushing back against it. And then you get, maybe, if this keeps going, you know, the meltdown or degrading of an all military, all voluntary military, which has been a pillar of our self-defense for, you know, 40 or 50 years now. That's a huge deal. It's depressing. Well, that was not the only depressing news coming out of the hurricane in response. The fact that this guy is going to get fired and we have to continue to follow this to find out whether they actually have the balls to do that. I mean, really, I feel like if we had an honest press

score, they'd be asking Biden this question every day. Are you firing him? Are you firing him? Is he going? You feel like we're better off if we get rid of this American hero? Okay, why? When is it happening? Let's use him as the window for this policy as we continue to follow Zach Lash and his experience. But the other depressing thing that happened was Kamala Harris was interviewed by that well-renowned journalist Priyanka Chopra. Honestly, I can't tell you one thing that Priyanka Chopra has done. I don't even know if she's an actress or a chef. I'm not sure.

I think she's married to a Jonas brother. She interviews Vice President Harris at the democratic national committee's women's leadership forum okay at which they discuss climate change again because priyanka chopra i guess that's our issue um and vice president harris in the wake of you know or i don't know the the death toll in Florida last I looked was 81, but they expected it to climb higher. In the wake of that, she wants to talk about climate change. And Harris had a reassurance for the people of Florida and nationwide, I guess. And here's how that went. Listen, stop four. We are all thinking about the families in Florida, in Puerto Rico, with Fiona, and what we need to do to help them in terms of an immediate response and aid,

it is our lowest income communities and our communities of color that are most impacted by these extreme conditions and impacted by issues that are not of their own making. And so we have to address this in a way that is about giving resources based on equity, understanding that we fight for equality, but we also need to fight for equity, understanding not everyone starts out at the same place. And if we want people to be in an equal place, sometimes we have to take into account those disparities. Well, it's about giving resources based on equity. Equity is how she suggests we're going to be

dictating where the hurricane funds for Ian and Fiona should go. This resulted in the FEMA director, Rich, having to come out and say, that's not true. We're not doing that. We are supporting all communities in need. Yeah, we're still a race neutral disaster aid agency. It's unbelievable. First of all, exhibit A, why she's very unlikely ever to be president of the United States unless for some reason Biden can't finish out his term and she takes over. This is disaster relief. It's a no brainer. All you say is this administration is totally committed to this. We're we don't care. It's a Republican governor in Florida who's criticized this administration. That doesn't matter to us. And we're going and helping every single person we can possibly reach.

And our prayers are with everyone in Florida. We're going to stay on this for as long as it takes to rebuild every single house. You know, it's not hard, but she couldn't do it. And she couldn't do it because this kind of Oberlin-esque woke ideology has seeped in everywhere, including the highest levels of government with the second ranking elected executive officer of the government thinking it's appropriate to say that you're going to use disaster relief to write alleged historic inequities. And one of the more astonishing things about this, she got applause at the end of this answer. It wasn't like everyone at that DNC event. Oh, shouldn't have said that. Like, oh, yeah, of course, this is wonderful. And this is just an ideology that is eats people's brains. And it has ripped through every elite institution. It's ripping

through the Democratic Party as we speak. And this is a prime example. Can you imagine someone hurting right now on the Gulf Coast of Florida, trying to fill out the already cumbersome, you know, red tape to get the disaster relief and being asked, are you white? If you're white, forget about it. You can go to the back of the line. Yeah, it's profoundly un-American. And Florida officials were pushing back on it as well just to make sure, no, it's available

to everyone and providing the numbers, the phone numbers to call. But again, this is who she is. This is what she believes. And it go into stores that have been flooded and steal things. And there were some pictures on Twitter of signs down in Florida like you watch it like with a gun or I can't remember how clever they were, but they were good. They were sort of I shoot. Yeah, you loot. I shoot. Okay, so now that's racist, okay? Because it was said back in the racist past by somebody who had a connection to Bull Connor. And so you can't even threaten somebody who's looking to steal from you after your home has been ravaged by a hurricane or your business, and they want to steal. And if you say, I'll shoot you, if you try to break in here, you're racist, because it has some connection. So this is what's going on now, because Ron DeSantis warned against looters. Here's what he said. It's soundbite too. The other thing that we're concerned about, particularly in those areas that were really hard hit is, you know, we want to make sure we're maintaining law and order. Don't even think about looting. Don't even think about taking advantage of people in the state of Florida. You never know what may be lurking behind somebody's home. And I would not want to chance that if I were you, given that we're a Second Amendment state. Joy Reid, never missing an opportunity to

racialize everything, points out that segregationist Miami Sheriff Walter E. Headley, 1967, said when the looting starts, the shooting starts. She tweets, didn't take DeSantis long to return to form. And then she linked to a 2020 NPR article, the history behind when the looting starts, the shooting starts. So you can't threaten lawbreakers. By the way, if they come on your property and start looting you, who wouldn't pull out their gun to try to defend? Doesn't mean you actually have to shoot them, but you are in danger if you decide to do this in Florida. And he's pointing it out. And that means he's a bigot. What do you think? Yeah, look, it's people protecting their property. And racist, you know, said this 50 years ago with racial intent, but there's none on the part of Ron DeSantis, or I believe the vast majority of people who have those signs out, they just don't want anyone to come and take their stuff. And, you know, the critics of this, do they really believe that every criminal is African-American and every potential looter or someone who might be tempted to take something is African-American? That's not true. You know, they're white people who steal stuff as well.

And this is just part of the culture of Florida. I was talking to a friend. Remember the horrible case, the guy, he killed the girlfriend when they're out in a national park somewhere. And then he came back in Florida and he disappeared. And my friend was talking to- Gabby Petito. Yeah. Why did he, he went to like a national, you know, wildlife preserve in Florida and as could be predicted, died and got eaten by a bunch of stuff. Right. I think they had to rely on dental remains to, to, you know, discover who, who he was. And my friend was talking to someone, why don't these people, you know, why don't they

just hang out in some neighborhood or something, you know, and as Stanton says, you know, go in someone's backyard. It's because someone might shoot you. Someone might shoot you because people have guns and they defend their property as is their right. So you go to the wildlife preserve never to be heard from again. So you see that sign. Don't loot. No one's going to get shot.

Nothing's got stolen and everyone should be happy. Now, this is a pattern as the Republicans regain their spines and remember that crime is a good issue for them leading up to these midterms. Right. They they took the bait on Trump, Trump. Oh, that's shiny. Let's talk about Trump. And their numbers started falling in these polls before the midterms. And then they remembered the economy and inflation and crime. And now their numbers are getting tighter. And of course, consistent with our theme that we've just been discussing for the past 20 minutes, the Democrats are playing the race card, saying attacks on Democrats as soft on crime are racist. Rich has been writing about it. We're going to talk about it. I'll squeeze in a two minute break and then we'll pick it up right there. More with Rich Lowry just two minutes away. Race is an issue now in apparently not just in this Wisconsin race, but also in several other races where Republicans are raising crime stats as an electoral issue.

But let's talk about it through the lens of what's happening in Wisconsin. I know you've written on it and it's very telling. So there's a 35 year old African-American lieutenant governor in Wisconsin, Mandela Barnes, who's challenging Ron Johnson, the Republican incumbent for that Senate seat. And Ron Johnson has been on unsteady ground in the polls, but now he's looking better and better. And this is potentially one of the reasons he's reminding people of crime and the fact that his opponent has been arguably soft on crime. I mean, he's pushing very controversial policies like defund the police and cash bail. So that's fair game. That's fair game.

Those are definitely issues. And Mandela Barnes and his surrogates, i.e. The Washington Post, are are calling Ron Johnson and the GOP that's running these ads racist. Now, here's just a couple of things that they are calling him rich that they're calling Mandela Barnes in the GOP ads. They call Mandela Barnes dangerous, a dangerous Democrat because of these policies. They say he wanted to defund the police and they show his name, Mandela Barnes, in graffiti. By the way, the Washington Post quoted a guy who worked for Obama saying that's Willie Horton 2.0. They're attempting to ghettoize.

They're trying to ghettoize him by doing that in graffiti. And they also show Mandela Barnes, again, this is the GOP, with the squad. And the critics are mad because all members of the squad are a minority. Here's just an example of the ads that have come under fire. What kind of Democrat is Mandela Barnes? He's a defund the police Democrat. The minute you talk about reducing a police department's budget, then it's like all hell breaks loose. Our reallocating funds. Catch that. Reducing about defunding the police. Now, murder is up in Milwaukee 40 percent, the fourth highest increase in the country right? I mean, that that voiceover woman, I think she does have every attack ad that's voiced by a woman. It's her, right? She has a great threatening voice. But there's nothing out of bounds about an ad like

that. Again, it's it's standard. And he's a you know, he's he's a winsome guy, a 35 year old charismatic Democrat swept a victory in the primary, but he is a would-be member of the squad. He went and had an event with Ilhan Omar and tweeted how wonderful she is and how she's fighting for justice in just the right way. That's fair game, right? I mean, he's associating himself with the very most far-left element of the party. And it's not Ron Johnson's or the NRSC's fault that all members of the squad are non-white, right? Maybe the squad should recruit some more white members and make it more diverse. And we can remove this issue from the pushback on crime. And then he has advocated for defunding the police, not the way they did in Minneapolis, which is flat out abolishing it, but doing it the way it's been done around the country, which is you cut police budgets and you allocate it to something else that you say is going to diminish crime.

It's been a disaster around the country, totally fair game. And ending cash bail when he was in the state legislature, he advanced a bill to eliminate it in Wisconsin, and his campaign said that he favored eliminating it nationally. We're very familiar with this in some cases have committed heinous crimes. And that's what he favors. So that's not a legitimate issue. We're just saying we can't talk about front, which would be an idiotic policy. And they just don't like it because it's it's working. And Ron Johnson, someone was saying to me the other day, I haven't checked this out myself, but he basically never led in any public poll ever, despite winning twice. So to have him up five points or four points as he is in a couple of polls now for another candidate, that's like being up 20. So it shows this is people care about this issue. They should care about this issue. They consider it legit. And the best thing would have been for Barnes never

to have had these positions, but instead he's on the defensive. Well, it's a game, right? Because they're pretending that Barnes is, I guess, the only politician who's taken these positions and been hit by Republicans on them. There are plenty of white Democrats who are getting hit with the same type of messaging. John Fetterman, a big white guy, a big shaved head, tattooed white guy in Pennsylvania is getting hit by basically the same ad. It uses the same language, a dangerous Democrat or a dangerously liberal on crime. And Fetterman also has supported the same kind of policies Barnes has. So you're right. If there's some racial element or racial disparity, Fetterman would just get a pass because he's white. So it's OK for him to be soft on crime and

it only be directed at Barnes. It's not. And this has been a attack Republicans have used around the country since Joe Biden. The effective they've used it on Joe Biden, who last time I checked remains white, not lucid, but white. Whiter than I am and getting whiter by the day. He's just getting leeched out. I mean, he's making you just might disappear eventually. You might become translucent. That's what Doug says I am.

Doug's like, my God, you're so pasty. Your skin is like translucent. What do you mean? That's me with self-tanner. I feel totally bronzed. Okay, let's shift gears to Stacey Abrams because what's happening with that story is just, it's kind of delicious. I'm not going to lie. People forget that election denialism, which Rich is against and I am against, did not begin with Donald Trump. You could make a very strong argument that the first person to really bring it into vogue was Stacey Abrams in Georgia. And we all know that she has refused to accept the results of that election ever since she lost the gubernatorial race down there. But man, not if you ask her. Here's a butted soundbite of her on The View about 10 days, two weeks ago, on what she now claims, butted to what she actually said in the past.

I have never denied that I lost. I don't live in the governor's mansion. I would have noticed. I do have one very affirmative statement to make. We won. So in response to what I believe was a stolen election, and I'm not saying they stole it from me, they stole it from the voters of Georgia. Is he the legitimate governor-elect of Georgia? He is the person who won an adequate number of votes. You're not using the word legitimate. Is he the legitimate governor-elect of Georgia?

He is the legal governor of Georgia. Will I say that this election was not tainted, was not a disinvestment and a disenfranchisement of thousands of voters? I will not say that. I mean, the best in that montage, Rich, is her this month. Well, September. I have never denied that I lost. I've never denied that I lost. But it, too.

I have one affirmative statement to make. We won. We won. Yeah, absolutely. She's going to suffer the most humiliating defeat, I think, of anyone on Election Day, unless there's some miracle down there for her. Because one, she had to back off this stuff, which she obviously, as those clips demonstrate, she said she denied that she lost. Every Democrat in the country, by the way, backed her up on that and felt they had to say the same thing. And she backed off a couple of weeks ago in The View because I think the juxtaposition of Democrats rightly criticizing Trump for his denialism, the same time she's being an election denier, just didn't work. gotten slammed in this federal court ruling, an Obama judge. There are three or four big aspects

of the Georgia election system from 2018 that were issued in this case that Abrams has talked about extensively. She wrote about them in her book. And part of the reason that she said the election was stolen, and the judge looked at it and was like, you've not given me one person who didn't vote, was prevented from voting for any of these things, not one. And they're all entirely reasonable just to focus on one really quick. So some people would, they apply for an absentee ballot and then they get worried. You know what? I might not be able to send this back in time. I might not get the actual ballot in time. I'm going to vote in person. So this creates an issue for a poll worker. Right. Wait a minute. You request an absentee ballot. Now you want to vote in person. Are you voting twice? Can you prove where's the ballot? So there's just kind of legitimate confusion about this. And it's not voter suppression. It's not the poll workers want to keep these people from voting. They're just puzzled and you need to do the right things to cancel your absentee ballot. Her group presented seven voters who said they're disenfranchised by poor training around this issue. Six of them voted. And there was one poor lady who

didn't vote. She lived in the senior care facility. And for whatever reason, the facility gave her a 15 minute window to vote. She shows up at the polling place. The person at the desk says, you know what, you got to talk to this manager over here to straighten this out. He's on the phone. Maybe she was too modest or abashed or shy or the guy was too busy. For whatever reason, she didn't talk to him by the time he was off the phone and she felt she had to get back on the bus and go back to her facility. As the judge points out, that's just something that happens in life. That's a circumstance. That's not Jim Crow. Anyways, 288 page ruling utterly obliterates all this stuff that was spouted by her, accepted by every Democrat in the country, and also accepted and broadcast by almost every media outlet. I mean, all these glossy magazines. She's going

to save our democracy based on these lies she propagated that did not hold up in court. It does obliterate her. And again, this is an Obama appointed U.S. District Judge Steve Jones, who just absolutely levels every argument she brought a quote from the opinion. He writes, saying that the fact that you had to show an exact match between your voter registration and your ID was this huge impediment, especially to black and brown voters. And the judge said, absolutely not. You have not proved that at all. And not only that, but if you look at the sort of numbers for African-American voting in Georgia, they've only gone up. They've gone up, up, up, up, up from 18 to 20 by huge, huge numbers. So, so much for her claim that black and brown people are totally So, you know, there might be a mistake. You're, you leave out an initial that's on your driver's

license or whatever. So your registration doesn't match and you're thrown into this, this status, this intermediate status that she's made a big deal of. And she's made it sound like, you know, 60,000 people are put there. They couldn't vote. They were overwhelmingly non-white. But what she never mentioned and was just shocking to me, media reports would never get to, you're still a registered voter in that status and you can vote. You just have to show your ID and there's a few more requirements doing an absentee ballot. So the whole thing was obviously absurd, but no one bothered to do their homework on this and just took her word for it. Shame on them. And great for this federal federal judge speaking the truth.

Yeah, they they did not subject Trump to that same treatment. They did not take Trump's word for it. They did parse through. And that's I mean, the absurdity, right? Because it's like she set the standard. I'm not excusing Trump's denialism, but I'm just saying the media's had two very different standards, most of them on the left when it comes to these two examples. All right, let's talk about Fauci. Two things on him. Number one, Fauci's rich. Fauci's got a lot of dough. It's come out now. Thanks to, forgive me, Adam, because he's been on the show, Andrzejewski, I think it is. This is the guy who he said Forbes canceled him after he reported for Forbes for eight years. But once he started to touch the Fauci financing, that was too much for them and they let him go, which they denied.

But in any event, he's found out that the Fauci household net worth, it exceeds 10.4 million. And that during the pandemic, he made a ton of dough including a million dollar prize for quote speaking truth to power from the dan david foundation in israel then this group open the books.com received fauci's 2021 fiscal year financial disclosures from the national institute of health and found that now his net worth exceeds 12.6 million, which is up 5 million from 2009 through 2021. Salary increases, cash awards, royalties, and so on going down the list.

So he and his wife have a lot of dough, Rich, and it's somewhat disconcerting that he's the highest paid federal bureaucrat now and where all the money has come from, his investment accounts, his patent research and all that. Yes, some of it is investment. And this just was a marvelous time, this period for the stock market, for anyone who's in it seriously and investing somewhat competently. That's not going to be the case in coming years. But the thing that really stopped me and I kind of wonder about, so you're a federal employee, like in a really sensitive position, and a nonprofit can just give you a million dollars? Really? I mean, assume there are rules around it. And I guess he abided by them. But that was really shocking to me.

And, you know, he's been in this job forever. He makes more than president United States. He's going to get a sweet retirement package. His wife also works at the N I A D, I believe with a, with a comfy salary as well. So anyone who's worried about Anthony Fauci, you don't, you don't have to pay. He He's doing just fine. For speaking truth to power. Okay. Speaking of Anthony Fauci and who he's speaking to, Peter Daszak is still on the list. EcoHealth Alliance. This is the group. When we say that Fauci's group funded gain-of-function research, we're talking about EcoHealth Alliance.

This is the group that did it with the Wuhan lab through Peter Daszak, who runs it. And absurdly, he then got on the WHO commission investigating how COVID began. And even 60 Minutes called BS on that, saying it's totally inappropriate. What was he doing on there? But now we find out, even after all that has been publicized, it's out there. Fauci gave EcoHealth another $600,000 dollars to do what exactly this same thing a multi-year study identifying multiple viruses and hosts relating to infections uh from bats in this very same region in southern china ultimately it's a 3.3 million dollar study which ego health will get if it continues this work for the next few years how does this this happen? This is our money, bat discovery research in Southeast Asia, high risk. Yes. First of all, I mean, what Daszak did, it's a little bit like what a villain in a superhero

movie would do. You see him on stage at some global forum and everyone's at his feet and thinks he's a wonderful authority when he really has this deep, dark secret that he's hiding from everyone. And I mean, can he cover this up? And look, maybe it wasn't a lab leak. I don't think we'll ever know, but you should wonder. And as someone at UnHerd was writing about this, how, imagine there was some nuclear researcher who was involved in a terrible accident that killed millions of people and then tried to cover it up. Would we just like funnel money back to that researcher without getting to the ground truth of what happened with the initial grant and and how

he reacted when it became controversial? So Republicans are definitely going to take the House. And there are a number of things that should be really at the top of the list to investigate and to the extent possible to get to the bottom of it. And this and what these research dollars go to and what should be the protocols going forward, all of that has to be a top priority. This has to stop. This can be stopped, this EcoHealth Alliance grant. This apparently only one year of it has been approved thus far, but he's going to get the other funds unless we go, you know, we freak out on them.

The press has to, the American public has to. This guy, Peter Daszak, shouldn't get one more dollar of your money or mine, not one more, not least of which because he's obfuscated from the start, Rich.

He's been like the chief obfuscator. Yeah, even if everything that happened in the lab was fine, it had nothing to do with the virus. The fact that he tried to cover it up and distorted the scientific community and process to do that and play the press for fools, that alone should be disqualified. And the fact that Fauci continues to fund him, despite all that, tells you everything you need to know about Fauci and his role in it too. They're partners in this effort. And I think we will, we will finally get something.

We'll get something that proves it came from the lab and that these guys were funding even more probably than we know. Rich, what a pleasure. Thank you, sir. Reagan, take care. Have a great week. All right, you too.

In just a short time, we're going to discuss in depth the NFL's concussion issue with an expert who played college football and actually is at the very heart of this whole thing within the NFL by subscribing to our YouTube channel, which is YouTube.com slash Megyn Kelly. If you prefer an audio podcast, follow and download on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, wherever you get your podcasts for free. There you'll find our archives too. We get tons of downloads from the archives.

Some of you guys just like to peruse and find the one that most speaks to you, which we appreciate. And by the way, we started launching a Friday email from me. We call it the American News Minute. If you want that, I think you'll find it highly amusing, and there's a personal message in it this week. You can subscribe at megankelly.com. We're turning our attention now to the serious issue of concussions in sport and the awful injury we saw last week with the Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tungavailoa. Tungavailoa. Been working on it. I hope that's it.

Joining me now is one of the leading concussion experts in America, Chris Nowinski. Chris is a former Harvard football player as well as a WWE athlete. And now he's the CEO of the Concussion Legacy Foundation. Chris, welcome. Thanks, Megan. Thanks for being here. All right. So what, if any, role do you have with respect to the NFL, the players, and advising them on concussions? I'm an advisor to the NFL Players Association on this issue. Okay. So you've been steeped in this for how long? Since 2009, when I convinced the NFL Player Association to get their own experts because

they were being lied to about concussions. So yeah, I go back to 2007 on this issue probably. So you played yourself at Harvard? Yes. Okay. So in what position? Defensive tackle, second team all Ivy. Nice. Nice. And I assume you love the game. Yeah, I did. I did love the game. You know, a little torn these days, but yeah, I did a long show on this on NBC, you don't know until after you've passed. They have to dissect a human brain to know whether it's affected by CTE for sure. Yeah. So I'll give you two data points on my concern. It goes up as we go longer. I used to be a guinea pig for our studies. And so I jumped into a bunch of scans, you know, back, you know, 10, 15 years ago.

And at the time, everyone said your scans look pretty normal. But now that we're learning so much with our research team at Boston University CT Center, we've learned that some things on an MRI that we used to think were nothing are actually signs of CTE. And so I have some old MRIs that I don't like to go back and look at because while they're not definitive, they certainly have some things that could suggest CTE. Then on top of that, I got to deal with the fact that one of my college roommates and teammates at Harvard went on to play in the NFL. He passed away in December and we're studying his brain now and he'll give a good window into what the rest of us might be going through. Oh my goodness.

And he had a horrible spiral that we associate with CTE. For the listeners at home, what is CTE? CTE is chronic traumatic encephalopathy or what you used to call punch drunk, the idea that your brain can slowly fall apart from too many hits to the head. So what we're finding is that it's absolutely caused by repetitive heart hits to the head. So what we're finding is that it's absolutely caused by repetitive hard hits to the head, and you get tiny lesions around blood vessels, usually at the depths of the sulcus, right about here in your dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and also in parts of your brainstem. From these hard hits, we don't exactly know why some hits

cause it, some hits don't, but once it starts, it keeps spreading through the rest of your life and into new areas of the brain. And so symptoms evolve over time. So you walk, when you get it, you think you're fine. And then 10 years later, 20 years later, you could start having symptoms that progressively get worse and will end up with dementia. The biggest problems are cognition, sleep, emotion, disinhibition, behavior changes, personality changes. I mean, it's really something what this does to people. Brett Favre on that show I mentioned told me, he was 48, I think at the time, that he was already struggling to find words. Even in the interview, he was having the, you know, can't find my keys and yet i'm holding

them a lot of people have had that even younger people sometimes have that but 48 would be a little young to have repetitive problems of that nature you see that more in like a 70 something person less than a person in his late 40s and he told me he believes he had thousands of concussions once they redefined concussion for him he he thought it would have to be a major event like we saw with Tua the other night, as opposed to what he later was told, getting his, quote, bell rung. And he said, you know, if it's like, you know, so you hear bells ringing or so you see the stars, he's like, I've had thousands of those.

Yeah, yeah. No, it's interesting. So I went back to school at 30 to get a PhD in behavioral neuroscience. And I was one of those people, one of those people who thought, oh, you know, everyone forgets their keys once in a while. You actually what I learned is that, you know, your memory changing severely doesn't happen normally. It has to be caused by something. It's really not normally part of aging. If you start to have changes, it's because you could have Alzheimerheimer's disease or vascular dementia the beginnings of these things so when you know when nfl players are forgetting things in their 40s or i am um it's not normal and it's probably caused by something in a lot i mean brett farve was known

for being the iron man the toughest guy who played every game through all sorts of injuries i mean i think the odds that he doesn't have it are infinitesimally small. I mean, it's just, we've now studied the brains of nearly 400 NFL players. You know, we published it, the 110 of the first 111 had it. And we're not finding a ton of negatives in that group of people. You know, 20 years of football is probably too much to play to expect to avoid developing this disease. And we have to be frank about this. It's so alarming. And it's, you know, we started the show by talking about how I went to a Giants game yesterday and how euphoric it was, not just because they won, but it's just such a

classic American experience. And it's, I mean, most of us have grown up loving it, watching it, we associate it with good memories. And yet, there is a very dark side, you know, where we are mistreating these players. And I realize that they're willingly, no one's making them play, but there's a deal. I think there's a deal in place where the officials, the coaches, these independent neurology experts are supposed to be looking out for players who we know have been raised to play hurt, to be tough, to say, put me back in, coach. We know that's the dynamic. That's why we have these fail safes, and they're not working. You're exactly right. It's a little bit of a deal with the devil. The show has to go on. And what happened with Tua was such a disaster because it was just so obvious

that he had a concussion. And the idea that nobody stepped in, the medical people who just made a terrible misdiagnosis, but then the coaches and the ownership and nobody stepped in to protect him, that was just really shocking to see. And even the NFL, the whole reason I tweeted and predicted that Tua was going to have a second concussion that could end his career was because the NFL was promoting the big Thursday night matchup, Tua versus Joe. What I thought would be happening in the background was the NFL and their chief medical officer calling down the Dolphins going, you can't call what you saw not a concussion. That's insane in 2022.

But they got bought into the circus too. They wanted viewers on the game, and it's come back to bite them because I think everyone now realizes the veil's a bit lifted. That the NFL, you know, these policies aren't in place necessarily to protect the players. The policies are in place to protect the reputation of the NFL with the idea that, well, we put them through a protocol. You know, the protocol is going to be wrong X percentage of the time. If this was about the players, you know, players would never be returning once they've been removed because you're only removed because you're showing signs of a concussion. So, you know, we just have to be honest about this because they also set the example for kids. So now we've gotten a place where we're just

going to pretend you didn't have the concussion because if they had said he had the concussion, he clearly would have been out. And so now they've defaulted to, let's just pretend it was a back injury or an ankle injury. And for the viewers who haven't seen it yet, because I explained I'm not really a sports person in a game in which he was knocked down and he clearly stumbles. We're going to play it. But you can see it seemed clear to even, you know, my layperson eyes. The guy had a concussion. Virtually everybody was saying that, including most notably Chris. And a tweet we'll get to in one second. All right.

Hold on a second. Here's the video of that. No, let's just show the first injury alone. He's getting hit right now for the listening audience. Ooh, slams his head. Gain of eight. Oh, he's rousing. Stumble, shakes his head. Tries to run. Goes down. Crumbles. Gets back up. Mess messing with his helmet. All right. So what did you see, Chris, in that? What did you what did you glean from that? Yeah, I saw five distinct signs of concussion, grabbing his helmet, taking two bad steps when he stood up. The classic shake off the cobwebs, which anyone who's been around sports knows you have a concussion 100 percent of the

time. And then the falling and having to be held up by his teammates. Like there was no doubt anywhere. And no one should have been surprised if Tua said, well, my back hurt and that's why I fell. Athletes, A, will sometimes purposefully lie and distract the doctors because they will think they're supposed to rush back out there and put themselves at risk, which they're not. But number two, they also, it's like asking a drunk driver if they're good to drive. You're not a good judge of your own brain impairment when you've had a brain injury. And so the fact that they floated an alternative story, not the only time the NFL has done that. They did that a couple of years ago with Patrick Mahomes when he fell down walking off the field

and they tried to make up some sort of bizarre nerve neck injury that luckily we shot down in the press because i was worried they're going to try to put them back in it's um but it's a classic thing my god that is just so scary so you tweeted out before thursday's night's game because many people were like there's no way two is going to play on thursday night's game after that after what was clearly a concussion and by the way just for the record if you do if that was a concussion on last sunday how long should he have been kept in your view, kept out for? So the NFL sort of created a guideline that you have to be out a minimum of six days. So the idea is that, you know, partly, you know, some doctors would say you should be out at least a month

because, you know, you can use research brain scans to say your brain's not normal for a month, but the clinical judgments or what everyone's agreed on is that a minimum of six days, but part of that's driven by the fact that most games are played seven days apart. So you should never play in a Thursday game, but Derry could play on a Sunday. And I guess I should ask you as well, why is it that the second concussion is so scary, right? Like concussion's bad, but second concussion close to first concussion is in a league of its own. Correct. So there's two things happening with concussions. One is

the microscopic brain damage that we're only beginning to realize and we sort of forgot about. And so those sort of add up linear. But what can make things exponentially worse is there's also chemical and metabolic changes. Basically, you get this massive ionic flux and your neurons are acting abnormally. And it takes your brain really at least a week or two or three to sort of right the ship on those neurons, and they're damaged. And so if you have the second crazy neurometabolic cascade of concussion before the first one's resolved, think of it as taking cells that were on their way to recovery and just wiping them out.

So they put Tua back in for the second half in that game eight days ago. Far from taking him out for six days, he went right back in and finished the second half. And then there was speculation about whether he would play on Thursday night. And before Thursday night's game, Chris tweeted out, if Tua takes the field tonight, it's a massive step backward for concussion care in the NFL. If he has a second concussion that destroys his season or career, everyone involved will be sued and should lose their jobs, coaches included. We all saw it. Even they must know this isn't right. And as of last look, which was yesterday, that tweet had close to 200,000 likes had been retweeted 55,000 times and so on. And then after he got injured on Thursday night, you tweeted, this is a disaster. Pray for Tua, fire the medical staffs

and coaches. I predicted this and I hate that I am right and went on. So let's go to Thursday. They put him back in and I don't, I mean, like, I know you were sort of touching on this earlier, but does one concussion make it more likely that you will be injured? Like you were saying you, you speculated they'd be putting them back in just because ratings and Tua and the rivalry, but like, was he at greater risk to get injured a second time? Yeah, absolutely. And we haven't had time to get into this in other interviews. So I appreciate you giving the time. What no one's talked about is the fact that Tua may not have been in the situation to get his head slammed off the turf if he was thinking more clearly or moving faster.

Cause I, you know, I have watched that second hit a bunch of times, you know, we're talking about a big old lineman who chased him down. And I feel like I remember that in most cases, Tua saw that coming and he runs right around the guy because he's a way better athlete. But the fact that this guy was able to catch him and then throw him off the ground so hard, it might've been because he just had a concussion

and he couldn't move as quickly and think as quickly as he would have a week before. You may not you may not be as sharp mentally and as a result physically as you normally would be, because it was weird. Like, I swear you you knew it was like you knew that tweet is just prescient. And it was like, how did he know? And now you're explaining there are a couple of reasons because you understand the NFL and what motivates them and what motivates a player and the risks of being concussed in the first place. Well, I mean, you know, I like to think people are saying I'm Nostradamus. But if you look at the statistics, like basically every quarterback has a one in 10 or one in 20 chance every week of having a concussion. So they're already rolling the dice there.

And I think basically the NFL said, look, look, there's a 90% chance he won't get another concussion and we'll get away with this. And unfortunately, the less likely outcome happened. And why that matters is that that outcome really and truly can be life changing. You can die from second impact syndrome when you have that second hit before your brain's recovered. You can develop permanent concussion symptoms, which I did from a concussion in 2003. I've never been the same, but I'll tell you what, I did not want to have a 15-year headache, and that can really mess with your head. And then there's just the idea that he could just be a worse player afterward because he has so much brain damage. We're paying quarterbacks $50 million a year now, so the amount of money that he could be out if

his play is impaired going forward is sort of amazing to think about. Yeah. You'd think that they would care if not about him, then about that, save their investment by not letting his head get dinged up again. Well, they're not paying him that much yet, and that might have something to do with it. Oh, God. So let's get to Thursday night. he goes back out there and this is the one that's so disturbed and they're awful they're both awful but you can see with your own eyes that his hands do something normal hands cannot do without some override by some deep recess in your brain no one's hands can do this without an override and so he gets hit we'll play it uh and his hands go into some weird like convulsion or

like weird double-jointed sort of frozen motion in front of his his helmet he's sort of looking at them in a very eerie frame we'll show it his ability to make adjustments at halftime to a rolling left with the grain and down he goes. That's hard. Slung down on his own 48-yard line. Josh Tupou. And uh-oh. The hands. Well, we saw last week and he went down, he got up.

It was wobbly. The training staff comes out. And, of course, the last thing the Dolphins wanted to see. I mean, last week it looked for all the world. Everybody thought head injury, concussion, passed the protocol, came back second half, led him to a victory. And Al Tupo slams him to the ground. I mean, it's the thing about the back, the ankle, but he gets thrown to the ground. Slammed down. And wrenching that back, which is the issue last week.

Yeah. So they work on him. We'll step away. You can hear Al Michaels repeating the backstory, which is what we were all told. But his hands look like. It's obviously driven by the brain. Right. He suffered what's called decorticate posture.

So it's different than the fencing posture because his arm wasn't straight out. It was more the idea that it would convulse like this. And it's been interesting talking to scientists this week about it because what they reminded me is this is most often seen in strokes. Right? Like when your brain gets damaged from a lack of blood, you'll find somebody often has their arm stuck

like this. So he basically had a temporary, you know, his cortex basically went offline and he had damage to his midbrain at that point. And so you just saw this sort of primitive response to brain injury. So you mentioned the NFL, the coaches, there was this independent, quote, independent neurological consultant who cleared him, said, okay, back and ankle, you're cleared to play. The word independent suggests to me, this is somebody who's supposed to be making calls just based on medicine that person's been fired now it sounds like the right decision but how does the

independent guy make a decision like this and why do you say the nfl and the coach in particular are not off the hook well it's sort of interesting to see the the order of information being leaked out because the nflpa sort of worked aggressively on this. And whatever their investigation said, they said, this is not the right person to be covering our athletes. But we shouldn't let the unaffiliated neurological consultant become the scapegoat because actually they don't make the final call. They advise on the call. And in theory, 100% of the time, both doctors should agree, but we don't actually know what call that person made. But by the letter of the rule, it's the team physician's choice. And so we don't actually know what call that person made. But by the letter of

the rule, it's the team physician's choice. And so we haven't yet heard from the team physician on this. It's much harder to fire them because then the Dolphins would be admitting they did something wrong. So I don't expect that to happen because you'd expect way too many lawsuits and reputational damage and all those things. So we're going to pretend like, you know, they're off the hook. Regarding the coaches and the owners, you owners, the other message we're trying to get out there is that, look, doctors will make mistakes. It's inevitable. And you as a coach, as a football guy, you saw Tua's hit. You know better.

You know the truth. The players have been honest during their careers, like, yeah, I got dinged, but I lied about it. A coach should have been able to recognize by themselves that was a concussion. And even if Dr. Kiewap said he's fine, no, he's not. I'm counting on Tua to take us to the Super Bowl. We're 3-0. I'm not risking him in week four. So the idea that they both put him back in the game and then let him play on Thursday

shows me that the coaching staff does not understand this issue well. I mean, it's hard to say a question of caring because you'd think they'd want to win and they don't want to risk their star player, but they clearly don't get it. And that's an error of training. And then the owners, you know, I don't put anything past the owners these days.

We've been fighting them for 15 years. So I don't know if they just saw Tua as replaceable or whatever, but they could have stopped it too. I mean, they're the ones paying them. They're the ones drafted. They're the ones who are counting on them. So, you know, even if someone makes a mistake, we all have a role to protect athletes, you know, from themselves and from traumatic brain injury.

We need to start remembering that. That's the thing. Like they all defer to the medical expert and unaffiliated, not independent, unaffiliated. But that would suggest he's going to make the right call. I defer to him. I don't have a medical degree. This is a reminder. Everyone's got it.

Like you say, they should be able to overrule the unaffiliated guy. If it's on the side of player safety, that they should be able to do that. By the way, this just breaking. Dolphins head coach Mike McDaniel announced that Tua Tango Viola will be out this week against the New York Jets. He is still in concussion protocol. I mean, hello, you're laughing, right? It's a joke. What a shocking announcement. I mean, I have to say he should be out the rest of the season because I can't remember the last NFL player had three diagnosed concussions in one season. But the reality is that's the thing that, you know, if two isn't going to end your career,

three in three months very well could. And he should be like he he has opportunity to blame the dolphins for messing up his care uh and sitting out so he can get that 50 million dollar a year contract and have a nice long life but they're going to pressure him and he feels pressured because 24 to go back and if the dolphins never admit that first concussion was a concussion well then suddenly we're only doing we're talking about two concussions a year, which happens very frequently. So deciding whether or not retrospective that was a concussion and them admitting it is really key to doing the right thing here. I brought my three kids to the game yesterday. My oldest, my 13-year-old, has just started to play tackle football at school.

He's never played it before. They had to pick between three sports and he did flag football, you know, where you don't know he gets tackled. So he's like, okay, I'll try this. And we've been worried, you know, we've been worried. We want him to learn how to be tough. Want him to love football because he loved flag. This, I think I speak for a lot of parents when I say this scares me.

It scares me. Should it? Absolutely. If you don't have a healthy fear when your child's getting hit in the head 500 times this fall, we're not paying attention, right? So we just launched a campaign in September called Stop Hitting Kids in the Head. We said, forget it. We shouldn't be exposing children to all of these concussions and repetitive head impacts and CTE, at least till they're 14. And so we encourage parents, no heading in soccer, no tackling in football, rugby, all these other sports, no checking in hockey, which is sort of already in place, thank goodness. But, you know, if you think, I mean, think about it this way, with all the Kings horses and all the Kings men, 30 medical professionals in the Dolphins game,

they messed up his care and put his life at risk. Your child is not going to have 30 medical professionals looking out for them, and they're not going to be old enough to recognize their own concussion and self-diagnose. So it is very risky to be hitting kids in the head that frequently in a sport like football, where we aren't going to be able to manage their concussions right every time. And those concussions, even if they were managed right, can lead to long-term changes into who they are. My days are full of taking care of ex-athletes. I literally, right before this, was coordinating a psychiatrist and a counselor for somebody in crisis. So yeah, we need to be concerned. I'm not saying you're making the wrong decision as a parent, but we need to pay far more attention. No, and I want to do that. I want to know more.

It's sort of like you sign up blindly. It's not like I wasn't aware of CTE, but you think it's kids, seventh grade, what could go wrong? Things can go wrong. Can you give me the website again? You can go to concussionfoundation.org to learn more about this. Here's a test for your kids program. Ask the coaches if you can invite me to come speakation.org to learn more about this. Here's a test for your kid's program. Ask the coaches if you can invite me to come speak to the coach and the team about concussions and CT. Most programs do not want me in there because they don't want their players knowing the truth. And if they say no, I would pull your kid out in a heartbeat.

Oh, wow. Well, they don't want them to be scared. But it's like, well, if they know the risk and they assume it, that's one thing. But not knowing the risk at all and just playing blindly is another. Listen, I appreciate the great work you're doing, Chris. And it's not just football, as you point out, you know, soccer and other sports, baseball. I talked to a guy who got it from all the hits in the baseball helmet. We got to pay attention. All the best to you.

Thanks, Megan. We are very excited to welcome back someone who is fighting the DEI agenda in a provocative way. She's got a different kind of program that is changing lives with an uplifting message about diversity and what that means. I first spoke with Chloe Valdory about two years ago. Since then, she has worked with and spoken to many of our favorite people, including Jordan Peterson, about the ways the woke left is fostering animosity and resentment among Americans. She's also concerned about what we're doing to our men, an ongoing theme that we've discussed in this program as well. Chloe Valdory is the founder of the Theory of Enchantment. I love that. I even love the the way it sounds the way it makes you feel is how the actual course makes you feel she's also host of the heart speaks chloe welcome back hi megan good

to be back great to have you so the the theory of enchantment is like it's caught on like wildfire since i last had you on you've been all over the place at different universities this is inspiring to me because for people who don't know about it, the theory of enchantment does discuss America's past when it comes to racism, it discusses diversity, but not in a way that divides us and blames and is awful about human nature. It's something that's more uplifting. It uses pop culture. It speaks to young people in a way that's meant to bring us together. Yeah, that's absolutely the case. I mean, I really created the theory of enchantment to try to teach people how to love fundamentally. And I think that if you're talking about how to overcome

our impulse as human beings to be prejudiced towards each other, to discriminate against each other, you have to include the question or the challenge of learning how to love. And so Theory of Enchantment is really rooted in a principle and in a practice that has that fundamental aim, teaching people how to love. And you can only learn how to love others if you learn first how to love yourself. To me, it's basically the opposite of the Ibram X. Kendi. The only answer to past discrimination is more discrimination against just different groups in modern day America. Is that fair? Yeah, I would say that's fair. I will say that in the past, I've had a more reactionary response to Ibram Kendi. And the theory of enchantment has helped me to, well, you know, having certain critiques of his whole ethos and his approach, more focus on this idea

of integration within my own self and helping other people integrate. And what that means is really realizing how we project our own insecurities onto others. And a way to reverse that is to get in right relationship with ourselves, get in right relationship with our full complexity, with our own diversity. We say at Theory of Enchantment that there's so much diversity within a single human being, let alone an entire group of people. So if we can learn how to do that and get in right relationship with ourselves, we'll be less likely to see diversity as a threat and more likely to see diversity as a source of wonder because we will have seen diversity within ourselves as a source of wonder first. And so we'll be able to see that

in the other, in that same lens or through that same viewpoint. I like that. I wonder, like when you, in the first block, we had Rich Lowry of National Review on, and we were talking about Kamala Harris, reassuring, I guess, I'm not sure what her goal was in speaking to some DNC women, that hurricane relief funds were going to go to historically disadvantaged neighborhoods first. And to the point where the head of FEMA had to come out and say, that's not true. That's not true. They go to the areas that are hardest hit, period, without thinking about equity, which is how she put it. We're going to be focused on equity issues.

Why, in your view, is she doing that? Well, I don't know specifically why Ms. Harris might be doing that. I think that there's, in general, this sort of cultural impulse, like you mentioned Ibram Kendi's whole fighting against discrimination with more discrimination. There is a cultural impulse and a human impulse to respond to past wrongs committed in a way that might actually manifest in more wrongs being committed. Unfortunately, that's a part of human nature. And I should also say that there's probably some type of compassion that's likely influencing Ms. Harris, albeit probably being manifested in a wrong way. So I can't speak to her motivations. I don't know her personally. But I do hope that we can, as a country,

do the very difficult work of making real our sort of national ethos, which is out of many one, right? E pluribus unum. And again, that requires a great deal of integration. And obviously, that word has a lot of cultural cachet, given our nation's history. But it's not just integration on a societal level, it's integration on a psychological level. And again, that goes back to understanding how we project things that we might not like about ourselves, right? Those insecurities, those things that we might not be willing to take responsibility for within ourselves, onto other people. Because how that manifests, and this is certainly probably present perhaps in Ms. Harris's comments, how that manifests when we fail to do that is what we end up doing is we end up seeing the world in black and white.

We end up seeing the world as if, we'll say, like all these people over here who look like me or who hold my political viewpoint or who fall into this category are good. And all the people over there who don't fall into this category are bad. So we split the world in black and white in that way. And we think that by categorizing, this will help us make sense of our world and help us sort of make meaning. And I think we really have to overcome that rather segregationist paradigm within ourselves interpersonally and how we relate to others. And that will be able to scale up on a societal level. I mean, as you know, I would say the woke left, I mean, I don't think it's, I don't think it's Republicans. They're going in a different way, though. Republicans are becoming more tribal for all sorts of reasons. But the woke left doesn't see the world at all through that lens.

And I'll give you an anecdotal thing. I'd love to get your reaction. I think people who are, you know, more my my age, my generation, Gen X, grew up at a different time when, you know, black and white, we were all together everywhere. I don't, it's like we were at a time where we were much more about MLK. We weren't focused on color as much. And it was like, whatever, you know, we got issues. They're, they're not steeped in the Jim Crow past for our generation. It's not that it was totally irrelevant or didn't affect anybody. I just think I grew up in the generation that was much more following MLK. And I was at this football game at the Giants yesterday. And I saw, I mean, a couple of instances, but the one that I loved was there was this white, heavyset guy. He looked like maybe 45 to me, decked out in Giants gear,

had this stubble on his chin, you know, clearly hadn't seen a razor in a couple of days, had the big beer. He's walking with a black guy of equal size, also decked out in the Giants gear. And they had some hearty laugh over something. And the guy, the white guy puts his hand up like the way guys do, where they like, I don't know how guys like greet each other with like the hand clasp up high. And he's like, I've missed you, man. I've missed you. And the black gentleman was like, I've missed you too. And they kind of did like a man hug. They kept drinking their beer. It was just a sweet moment. Okay. Clearly race had no role in this relationship. Then I hear stories from my friends who are at Dalton in the city where they've been hyper-focused on race with the young kids k through 12 the most progressive place you can go in terms of educating your kid and and literally this parent told me

that we're now at a point after all this dei education where the black students are sitting with the black students the asian students are sitting with the asians the whites are with the whites the latinas are and latinos are with that like i'm like what's happening this is the young people are choosing to sort of join these affinity groups that cross over into their real lives whereas like the older people who didn't have any of this nonsense are doing life the way it should be well it's interesting though because in the scenario that you described seeing there was a transcendent ethos, right? There was a transcendent function actually, uh, in the example of two men attending a football game, right? They bring people together. Yeah. So what, so essentially what you need is that transcendent function, uh, to actually bring

people together that can make them feel like they're a part of something bigger than themselves. And however, they may identify themselves. And that might be racial, that might be class, etc. But you need that sort of third function to bring people together in a larger circle. And it sounds like that that transcendent function is not present at Dalton, or at least in the way Dalton has, you know, unleashed its DEI program. That's a good point. I mean, I hate to say it in this way, but I have wondered with Vladimir

Putin threatening to drop a nuke on us, like something we need to pay some attention to. Yeah. Like, could this, because I think there's a reason Gen X doesn't focus on this stuff. Like we grew up with the Cold War and then we had 9-11 and we have had these other sort of threats that united us more as a country. And I mean, it's not like I'm rooting for nuclear war, but I do think if we had something massive that we really had to focus on together as a country in unity, it would help. It would help push some of these obsessive divisions to the side. We'd have that ethos you're talking about. certainly without having an existential threat as intense as nuclear war. This is something that not only I hope for, but I like to think I'm working towards in the theory of enchantment.

Because again, the entire ethos of the United States is e pluribus unum, out of many, one. And it's actually incredibly difficult to achieve that kind of an ethos, or to embody that kind of an ethos. Just being human makes it very difficult to achieve that kind of an ethos or to embody that kind of an ethos. Just being human makes it very difficult to do that. Our default is to go into that practice that I described earlier of splitting, of seeing the world in black and white, of seeing these people on this side of the aisle as sort of my team and the other people as sort of against me. So the question for me is like, how can we hack human nature to bring us to a better transcendent function without needing to rely on a threat,

without needing to rely on an external other? And I think my hypothesis is that the only way to do it, or perhaps one of the only ways to do it, is to constantly see the to do it, or perhaps one of the only ways to do it, is to constantly see the other as yourself, right? To constantly see what the other is exhibiting as a quality that is present within you. I mean, this was actually crucial to the success of the civil rights movement. One of the reasons why people in the civil rights movement refuse to hate people who

are being racist towards them is because they realized that they too were capable of being hateful, racist, prejudiced, etc. And they didn't want to descend to that level. James Baldwin wrote about this in several essays. And so my, you know, big challenge for humanity, if I might be so bold, specifically in the American context is can we rise to the occasion and start to see the other as reflections of ourselves? Because I think if we can, we'll be less reactionary and polarized and get to the space of relationship, which is fundamentally about how do you actually relate to your fellow neighbor as opposed to reacting and defining your identity as being counter to another person, depending upon the tribe that they live in.

All right. You had an interesting post about a movie that I have not yet seen that I wanted to ask you about this. It's called the woman King, which is like, okay, that's interesting. Cause you know, King, not queen. What's that about? It's in theaters now. It follows the story of an all female military unit. So, so far you're like okay that sounds cool what did they do so starts by stars viola davis this is where it starts to go south um the all female military unit uh guarded the west african kingdom of dahomey from the 17th to the 19th centuries and is apparently um i mean according to its critics anyway they say uh this is a movie about an African tribe famous for selling slaves to Europeans that was made into a female empowerment story by two white women writers. That's from Twitter Equality Ed, who doesn't like it and wants it to be boycotted. It was it's done by somebody, Dana Stevens and Maria Bello, both white women.

So to me, I kind of laughed out loud when I heard that description. Again, I haven't seen it, but it would be very much like Hollywood to say, so they were selling Africans into slavery, but look how fierce they were. They were amazing. Like girl boss, hashtag, let's celebrate these two women at the top and like, forget that what they were doing wasn't so great. Are we glorifying it? Are we going to be accused of glorifying it? But I really have no idea whether that's really what the story does. I know you've been interested in this movie and this controversy.

Oh, we actually have a clip from the trailer. I'll play it and then I'll get you to comment. Here's a clip from The Woman King. You are called to join the king's guard. No kingdom in all of Africa shares this privilege. Train hard, fight harder. We fear no one. And we fear no pain.

I offer you a choice. Fight or we die. All right, your thoughts on it, Chloe, because this is stirring up a bunch of controversy now on all sides. Yes, it is. I actually saw this movie last night, so I'm happy that we get to talk about it. I think that some of the conservative takes are actually a bit unfair.

The film does delve into the fact that the Dahomey tribe was involved in the slave trade. And so it's not whitewashing in that sense. It also is a film that is about a single year in the Dahomey tribe's existence. It's not about the entire history of the Dahomey tribe. And I think it's a bit ironic that in the same way, I would say many conservatives rightfully complain about the reduction of American history and the sort of portrayal of American history as nothing but something involved in the slave trade. It's a worse chapter. Right. I think it's ironic that the group of people who would complain about that would then reduce the dahomey tribe

and the history of this kingdom to nothing but a kingdom that was involved in the slave trade so there's a bit of irony going on there i think obviously this film takes poetic license in terms of portraying a particular tribe of female warriors, you know, challenging their king on this issue. But there is some history, I was reading about this a few hours ago, there is some history that suggests that there was internal dispute over the slave trade, at least closer to the end. And also, it isn't difficult to imagine that within a kingdom, there would be some internal conversations about it, considering that many of the women who made up that tribe were themselves captives, formerly slaves themselves. And also, the film portrays other African tribes being very explicitly into the slave trade. So I don't think it whitewashes

it. I think it's a pretty nuanced portrayal. And I, again, going back to the whole capacity of human beings to be reactionary, I would challenge some of my brothers and sisters in conservative circles to not be reactionary. First of all, make sure you go watch the film. But is it conservatives? Or is it some of the progressive crowd saying, because I'm looking in conservative circles should not be reactionary. First of all, make sure you go watch the film. But is it conservatives or is it some of the progressive crowd saying, because I'm looking at some of the tweets, they don't sound conservative. They're saying time to boycott it. It's about this tribe that traded slaves into the transatlantic. This may be the most offensive film to black Americans in 40 to 50 years.

Like stuff, I don't know. I'm not sure if it's conservatives who are just trying to like drag liberals, you know, for like, Hey, if, if this were a movie about Thomas Jefferson that even just mentioned the fact that he had a slave,

you'd be freaking out that he had slaves, right? Like this one's all about like celebrating people who helped sell people into slavery. Again, I don't actually think that's what the film does i will say to your point that it's it is both conservatives and progressives i think they're reacting to each other i think you have like certain progressives

who are being like oh what an amazing you know liberating film about black women fighting the white man and it's my read of the movie was that like it's actually not it's it's far more nuanced than that and then you have conservatives being like at least in my twitter feed um this is a whitewashing of history and that's not my read either so i think both of these factions are kind of caught up in this reactionary loop. And both are giving unfair takes, basically. It's like, it's in a way it sort of pits one woke group against another. It's like, are we doing feminist heroes? But wait, what are they doing? Wait, wait, wait, what's the backstory? Those situations are always very interesting to me, because you wonder what's the hierarchy,

right? If that's how you view the world, what the hierarchy and where do you fall within it um let me shift gears to jordan peterson uh who i know i think he you either went on his show or he came on your show you definitely have interviewed with him yes i was on his show okay and um we talked about this on friday because speaking of hollywood and and female made movies, Olivia Wilde made this movie, and she claims that she based the bad guy in the movie on Jordan Peterson. And because he's beloved by all these disaffected white guys that she says are incels who believe women should be sex objects and only sex objects to them. This is not at all a representative of what Jordan Peterson actually means in life. But this is her take. And Jordan went on Piers Morgan's show and actually shed tears over it.

She, you know, he was definitely emotional about it. I thought she was out of line and I really think we need to be more empathetic to our men. We can push for female empowerment and full equal rights and all those things where, you know, we've traditionally had struggles getting ahead, like, great, STEM, good. Let's make it more available to girls without forcing all girls into stem some of them don't want it you know things like that

anyway i took issue with her but this is an ongoing issue because now i guess some liberals are making fun of jordan peterson for crying they hate him that much and what was your takeaway because i know you've had conflicting feelings on him yeah I will just say from the from the outset that I you know I love Jordan Peterson's work I'm a fan of his I'm a fan of his family I do have some critiques of some of his more recent takes that he has you know tweeted out and opined upon on the on the interwebs but i am a general fan of his work his book maps of meaning was really moving and impactful in my own personal life uh i do think it's i haven't seen this particular film let me just say that but i do think it's sort of ironic that we are in some ways trying to promote a much more positive form of masculinity, a much more mature form of masculinity. And I actually think a lot of Jordan Peterson's work has been in service

of that. But at the same time, we make fun of someone like Jordan Peterson when he cries, when he shows emotion. So it's unclear to me what precisely are the signals we're trying to send here. Is emotional expression good or is it bad? I mean, I am tempted and I will say it here. There's a sort of, the thing that falls into my head right now is the sort of moniker from Ben Shapiro, facts don't care about your feelings. Right. And I think that you could say a whole bunch of you could you could glean a bunch of implications from that statement. And it's like we're seeing that sort of moniker be reflected by some of Jordan Peterson's critics who are saying, don't cry, don't express yourself. You're weak for expressing yourself,

for expressing your feelings. I think, first of all, there's an ironic through line here, perhaps. Yeah, I just think that we have to really ask ourselves, what is it that we stand for and what is it that we're trying to promote when it comes to healthy masculinity? it's also the case that if we want to portray, certainly on film and in art, if we want to portray nuanced characters, and this is the human condition, this is the human experience, human beings are not caricatures, right? Then we have to get away, I believe, from portraying people or villains or characters on film in this very stock caricatured way, this sort of stereotype way, this sort of black and white way. All these people over here are good. All these people over here are bad, right? It's the same tribal mentality that you see playing

out in these films. And again, I haven't seen this film in particular. I would like to see the film, but any film director, any artist of all people should know this as a basic rule of art to not traffic in caricature and to not traffic in stereotype. Because that is not art. It's stereotype. Art is meant to, I think, speak to the sacredness of the complexity of the human condition and make us uncomfortable by getting us to wrestle with that. And so this entire commentary on Jordan Peterson crying, unfortunately, does not do a great job in promoting those values. It's been a fascinating, like, back and forth to watch it play out because it's like, I mean, I guess you can say I don't like Jordan Peterson, but of course, to like, go right to the attacking him for crying thing, like they attacked Kyle Rittenhouse for crying on the stand and just say it's fake and you you're so evil. Those can't possibly be real. It's like, well, wait a minute. You know, you the

left is the ones who've been lecturing us on sort of our more sensitive men. And they applaud that in virtually any circumstance, unless it's a conservative, you know, and or you get the white woman tears. It's like, OK, all right. which is it? Everybody's full of hypocrisy, Chloe, except for you. If you want to know more about the theory of enchantment, what's the website where they can go? Theoryofenchantment.com. Simple enough. So easy. So easy. I love this because if you really do care about what's happening in the United States, and all these discussions we're having on race and diversity and equity and all that stuff. Chloe is a bright light in all of this and all these discussions we're having on race and diversity and equity and all that stuff. Chloe is a bright light in all of this and has a very clear take,

one that is uplifting that any school could get behind. And I've recommended it to a lot of people. So Chloe, thanks for coming back on. Great to see you. Great to see you too. Tomorrow, we got my old pal Dave Rubin back on and then Adam Carolla and Mark Garagos will be on together.

That's some great star power. They host the Reasonable Doubt podcast. Among other things, we're going to talk about the demise of Trevor Noah as the host of that Comedy Central show that nobody's been watching. Download the show in the meantime and we'll see you tomorrow. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.