The Megyn Kelly Show - VP JD Vance on Deportations, Greenland, and Don Lemon, PLUS Latest on Savannah Guthrie's Mom's Abduction, with Ashleigh Banfield and James Fitzgerald Ep. 1245

Episode Date: February 4, 2026

Megyn Kelly is joined by Vice President JD Vance to discuss the most absurd parts of Washington DC, the ego of politicians, Trump Derangement Syndrome of the media, the huge drop in the murder rate and crime in America, the pace of deportations, Don Lemon's arrest, Tom Homan's new tactics in Minnesota, the challenge of deporting all illegal migrants, what happens if the GOP loses the House in the midterms, how hating Trump and the right unifies Democrats, what the Trump administration does next in Iran, why they will avoid another Middle East "quagmire," what happens next with Greenland, Europe's decline and a "new world order," efforts to fix election integrity, the GOP's messaging problem about the economy and affordability, how his family is adjusting to life in DC, and more. Then Ashleigh Banfield, host of Drop Dead Serious, to discuss the latest details in the suspected abduction of 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie, why investigators may be zeroing in on her son-in-law as a "prime suspect," all the strange evidence at the home, the importance of the 2 a.m. window tied to Guthrie's disappearance, why police are looking closely into her family, the key details of the missing or destroyed camera footage, and more. Then James Fitzgerald, co-host of "Cold Red Podcast," to discuss the crucial pieces of information at the disturbing Guthrie crime scene, what the police actions mean so far, the focus of the investigation from what we can tell, and more. Banfield: https://www.youtube.com/@DropDeadSeriousFitzgerald-https://www.youtube.com/@ColdRedPodcast-tb2lb/featured PureTalk: Save on wireless with PureTalk—get unlimited talk, text, and data for just $25 a month, plus 50% off your first month at https://PureTalk.com/KELLYDone with Debt: https://www.DoneWithDebt.com & tell them Megyn Kelly sent you!Relief Factor: Break up with pain—Relief Factor targets inflammation so you can move better and feel better; try the 3-Week QuickStart for just $19.95 at https://ReliefFactor.com or call 800-4-RELIEF.Masa Chips: Ready to give MASA a try? Get 25% off your first order by going to http://masachips.com/MK and using code MK.  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 Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to The Megan Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East. Hey, everyone, I'm Megan Kelly. Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show. We are in Washington, D.C. today, and we are officially in the old executive office building, which houses a bunch of different offices related to the presidency, including this office that we're in right now, which is the vice president's ceremonial office. It's very fancy. It's ornate, and it's lovely.

and we are sitting down with the vice president himself today. We just wrapped the interview. It's fascinating. He's in rare form. He's funny. He's in-depth. He's interesting. And we cover everything from Iran to affordability, to immigration, and what's real, to Don Lemon.

So I had to subject the poor man to that. It's sort of coming home for the two of us in a way in that it was nine years ago that I went out to Ohio and interviewed. back then just a regular old J.D. Vance, who didn't have the title Senator, wasn't even running for Senate, never mind Vice President. And he had just left a stint with Peter Thiel out in San Francisco, which was not for JD. He told me at the time, Samfram. He and Usha were newly married. They were expecting their first baby, living in a small little apartment. And look at him now. What a change in his life in just those nine years. We talk about that too. I think you're going to enjoy this exchange. Without further ado.

Vice President J.D. Vance. You know Pure Talk's favorite holiday? President's Day? Because they believe wireless service should only cost you a couple of presidents. Just a Jackson and a Lincoln, to be exact. For just 25 bucks a month, Pure Talk gives you unlimited talk, text, and plenty of data. Now, compare that to Big Wireless. They'd rather celebrate Benjamin Franklin Day so they can charge your family hundreds every month. Pure Talk is an American wireless company that supports our veteran,

all of them, and invests in a U.S. only customer service team. So when you call, you are talking to someone right here at home. Pure Talk uses the same towers as the big carrier, so enjoy superior 5G coverage without the inflated price. Just 25 bucks a month for talk, text, and plenty of data. No contract, no cancellation fee. What are you waiting for? Go to puretalk.com slash Kelly, and you will get 50% off your first month, 5.0% off. Again, that's puretalk.com Kelly to make the switch to pure talk. Mr. Vice President, thank you so much for being here. Of course, good to see you.

Thanks for having us here. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. This is my ceremonial office, which I use mostly for interviews. But it's actually the most, I think the most beautiful office in the complex, which is, it's sad that I never used it. But I'm glad I got to show it to you. You're a long way from the holler. I'm a long way from the holler.

That's right. How's it feeling? How are you enjoying it? It feels good. I mean, look, it's the coolest job in Washington because I always joke with the president that I get to be involved in everything, but he's the one who actually has to make the decisions. I get like all of the benefit, but not nearly the same level of pressure as the president. So we're really enjoying it.

The kids are doing well, families doing well, and just the job. I mean, there are very few things you ever get to do in your professional life where you feel like you have such a big impact. And we're trying to use it as wisely and as well as we can. It happened so quickly for you. Yes, it did. You know, it felt like overnight. And your life has changed so dramatically. I have a lot of substantive questions for you, but let me just start with, this is the thing I really wanted to know.

What's the most absurd thing about Washington? Oh, that's a very tough, tough thing to answer. So many to choose from. I mean, the thing that's absurd just from our personal perspective is that whenever I go anywhere, I'm surrounded by a motorcade of like 20, 30, 40 cars, right? And so just you get like this amazing mixture of people like tourists from Kansas or Ohio who are some. sweet and nice as you're driving through Washington, D.C., and then you get the really angry, kind of crazy radical who's running after your car flipping you off.

And just like the performative politics of Washington and a lot of the people who live in Washington is very weird to me. I think it's a town of people where it's like everything is kind of transactional, but people try to pretend that it's not. And I think that really warps things. And then just not from our perspective, not from of the administration or from us personally. But if you think about Washington, it's a place that almost nobody is from.

So there's like, you know, historically middle-class black population. It's small and it's getting smaller because most of them are sort of selling their houses now that they're inflated and moving out to the burbs, right? So what you have is most of the residents here are not actually from here. And I think it just has like a psychologically warping effect. So you go to a nationals game and everybody's rooting for the nationals, but they don't actually care if the nationals. Nationals win, whereas if you go to a Reds game, every person there is going to sob at the end of the game if they don't win. It's just a weird, it's like a placeless place.

And I think that's the most bizarre part of Washington. I can't picture you in it. I mean, obviously, I can see you in it. But I can't picture it because there's so much insincerity. I mean, I lived here for three years and everyone takes themselves so seriously. Oh, absolutely. Oh, the egos. That must be so hard to bond with.

Well, it's definitely true that you have people who are sort of super huge egos. So a friend of mine, he's actually like a think tank intellectual. He told me once about the United States Senate when I was thinking about running for the Senate. He said, the thing you have to realize about the United States Senate is that it's 100 people who wake up every morning, look in the mirror and think to themselves they're going to be the President of the United States. And that is absolutely true, right? But enough about Ted Cruz. We have plenty of time for him later. It is a place of very intense egos.

But the problem is people take themselves too seriously, right? So nobody in Washington can really make fun of themselves. Nobody can tell a joke at their own expense. It just, it is an odd place. It's one of the reasons why I think they have a love, hate relationship with your boss. Yes. Because they can't stand him because they don't like his politics. Correct.

But I think at some level, even the press corps is so relieved to have somebody who will crack a joke every once in a while. Yes. Who will say, we have to cut this cabinet meeting short because it was boring the last time. Which, thank God for that. No, I mean, I mean, the president, he is just, if, Washington is an insincere place. I think you said that and said it well. He is like the polar opposite.

He just says what's on his mind. He doesn't care how anybody's going to react to it. What you see is what you get. And people always ask, well, what does he like in private? He is in private exactly like he is when he's in front of a camera. And I think that that, you're right. There are some members of the press who kind of like him for it, then some members of the press who don't.

And I think for most members of the press, it's a little bit of both. Like they admire the game, even if for some political reason, and they can't, they just can't admit that they actually like them, but most of them actually do. They hate themselves for laughing. Exactly, exactly. I mean, like, there was a moment in the Oval Office. I wasn't even in there, but, you know, I was in the West Wing, and somebody sent me where he was talking to Caitlin Collins, who's the CNN anchor. And I have, like, a decent relationship with Caitlin Collins, which is unusual, given that she's from CNN.

But the president, she's asking a question. The president says, why don't you ever smile? Yeah. And it's actually, like, so perceptive. even if you're asking a tough question, even if you take your job very seriously, like why does it always have to be so antagonistic? Well, I laugh because I saw online everybody was calling him sexist for saying that, and I literally said the same thing about Caitlin Collins a year ago on my show.

She never smiles. Every once in a while you have to smile. Roger Ailes used to tell us that. Every once in a while you remember smiles, show the viewers they have a heart. Have some fun, right? Like life, you can't always take yourself too seriously. You're going to have a heart attack, and that's too much of the Washington Press Corps. And, of course, they don't act like that when the other people.

guys are in power. So it is, there is a political bias angle to it. But I just, I think that the press would have a much higher, like, the media is one of the least trusted institutions in the United States of America. More people would trust them, more people would like them if they actually express the range of emotions. Like, I'm not saying you have to agree with everything that me or President Trump do, but nobody is angry all the time. And when you come across as angry all the time, it's just fake. And also, fake, confused, or befuddled about, for example, the lowest crime rate in 125 years. Absolutely. Absolutely. We may never know how it happened. Yeah. Well, okay, so just on this. One, lowest crime rate in 120 years, a massive drop in murders.

That is human beings who are fellow citizens, in some cases our family and friends, who are walking around America's cities, who but for, the pro-law and order policies of the Trump administration would literally not be with us. Like that's one of those things where when you measure it in human lives, you realize how powerful and important this is. There are many, many dozens of people in most of America's major cities who are walking around right now, who get to go home to their kids, who get to play with their dog because we have actually brought some common sense back to our crime policies. But just going back to the media. Okay. So I remember this question I got from a New York Times reporter I was doing one of these long-form interviews.

And she asked me, she said, well, you know, sometimes you give these speeches and you're like happy-go-lucky and, you know, you play around with your kids and you're obviously very happy when you're doing that. But sometimes you're like really annoyed or really angry. Like, what is the real JD? And I remember thinking to myself, what human being isn't sometimes pissed off at what's going on in the country but also can laugh about it? What human being doesn't enjoy playing with their kids, but maybe gets annoyed when they're dealing with some bullshit at work. The idea that you have to be, like, one dimensional is, I think, one of the reasons why the media is so broken. And it's one of the reasons why they can't tell the true stories that are out there. You talk you guys about the crime.

Okay. Why is the crime rate so low? There are a lot of reasons. One is that we've empowered local law enforcement. Another reason is because we've deported a lot of criminals in the United States that should have never been here in the first place because they were illegal aliens. So the media cannot even express an ounce of nuance. It's never, oh, well, maybe this, we disagree with this. Let's have a conversation about that.

But like, let's tell the truth about the fact that there are Americans who are alive today because of Donald Trump's crime and immigration policies. They can't do that. It's always just shouting, angry all the time. You're Gestapo. You're the fascist. And it's just crazy. And it does the American people a real disservice.

It's frankly why, you know, you probably have. I don't know, five times as many viewers, 100 times as many viewers as the average CNN show, because people are fed up with the bullshit. Sorry, I'm not sure if I'm supposed to say that. You're allowed to. Yeah, no, our YouTube feed on a monthly basis beats all of CNN. Just our show.

100%. That doesn't surprise me at all. And we know why. Yes. Let's talk about the illegal immigration. Sure. So this year we've had 2.2 million self-deportations and about 675,000 actual deportations.

Yep. Under the Trump Vance administration, that's about, let's call it 3 million. the self-deportations, we're assuming we're going to have more on the front end than the back end because the people who are willing to take the deal are going to take it now and go. So unfortunately, it could be that that number could go down. And people who really want those 10 to 12 could be as many as 20 million illegals who are here, most of whom came under Joe Biden.

They want them all gone. But at this pace, it's not going to happen. So to those people who think this is going too slowly, what do you say? Well, I say a few things. First of all, there are ways in which it will accelerate. You're right. There may be some front-end self-deportations that you can't replicate in years two and three. There are also maybe some people who wanted to do it in year one but couldn't get in the line.

I mean, self-deporting two and a half million people, that's a lot, just bureaucratically. So I think those numbers will continue. They may taper off a little bit. Number two, all of the immigration enforcement officers that we hired because Biden gutted immigration enforcement, most of them are in training right now. Most of them have not even hit the street. So there are a lot of ways in which we were doing a slow ramp of immigration enforcement because we inherited a deportation operation that was so broken.

And then the third thing that I'd say is the left has fought us so aggressively, but many of our victories are starting to bear fruit. I mean, like just yesterday or the day before, you had a left-wing judge who said that we could not end temporary protected status for illegal Haitian immigrants. Now, this is a program that was put in place illegally, I believe, in the Obama administration, and now a judge is saying that we can't end it.

Well, we're going to appeal that. We're going to win. But some of this stuff has taken where judges have tried to stop us from deporting illegal aliens, that's had to work its way through the appeals process. Some of those cases, I believe,

are at the Supreme Court right now. So it just takes time. To do this in the proper way, to do it in the legal way, it's taken time, especially when the left is fighting us so aggressively. But it's going to keep on happening.

I mean, the president has been very clear. We're not going to stop enforcing our immigration policy. We're going to keep doing it, but I think, frankly, we'll probably be in a better position to do it a year from now than we are today, and we're certainly in a much better position today than we were a year ago. That's actually because the legal landscape will have been cleared of some of these hurdles thanks to the Supreme Court. No, I mean, Megan, sometimes Stephen Miller is one of my closest friends in the administration. He and I go way back. Sometimes we'll exchange messages, and it's like, can you believe this judge did this? It's going to delay this thing another three months or another six months. But then you realize, okay, three months, six months, but we keep on winning these cases, right?

So yes, you have radical judges who are slowing things. They're not going to be able to stop things so long as we in the administration maintain our posture on it, and we're going to. Do you find it shocking? Like the judge who issued that order saying you cannot end temporary protected status is the same judge who tried to stop Trump's ban on transgender serving in the military. And both times she said it's animus. Yes. The administration either hates transgender people or now in this case, it hates black people from Haiti. And both times, I mean, she was overruled on the first case.

She's likely to be overruled on this case. But you're a lawyer. Do you find it shocking how opinionated, how personal these judges make it? Yes, I do. And there was the one judge who was like the administration should read the Declaration of Independence. I guarantee you that our president and the Trump administration is aware of the Declaration of Independence and has actually read it. I don't think Biden could have cited the first ten words of the Declaration of Independence. So there is this weird judicial animosity towards the administration, but we kind of knew we were going to do this.

I mean, I remember during the transition, we talked through, okay, we know there are some far-left judges who are going to do nationwide injunctions, which, by the way, I think are illegitimate, but set that to decide. And we know we're going to have to power through this stuff. We're only a year-in to a four-year term, so we are making progress. But this animus point is really interesting because I think to the extent that there are still, and I'm fundamentally optimistic. about human nature. There are still some good faith people on the far left who are trying to, who hopefully would try to understand where we're coming from. Here's what I would say. So I got an email from a classmate of mine a couple of weeks ago, and I didn't respond to it, but I did read it. And it was basically like, you know, it was a plea to sort of stop the chaos

and to calm down the chaos. And I read it and I thought, okay, this is a good human being, even though I disagree with this politics. And of course, we don't want immigration enforcement to be chaotic. It's one of the reasons why we've encouraged state and local officials to work with us. But fundamentally the question is, are we allowed to do what the American people elected us to do? Biden lets in call it 20 million illegal aliens. If the courts tell us that we're not allowed to deport the people that the American people elected us to deport, that's fundamentally not about even immigration anymore. That's about democracy. Are the American people still sovereign if one administration can do something and the other administration can't do

what the American people elected them to do in order to reverse it. And you think about even, there's another layer to it, which is nobody elected Joe Biden to open the border. If you actually look at what Joe Biden said on immigration during the 2020 campaign, he sounded a lot more like a moderate, even conservative Republican. And then, of course, they got into power and they opened the border. So doesn't it cast into doubt the legitimacy of our system if one president running on reasonable immigration enforcement opens the border, and then another president is not allowed to close it and deport all those people who came? I think that's fundamentally what's at stake here, is do judges control,

does the far left control the American constitutional republic, or do the people? And I believe the people are sovereign, which is why we've pursued the policies that we have. The example of Minneapolis has been troubling to both sides. The left has used it to say ICE is out of control and the Trump administration's out of control. And the right is frustrated that, that by some accounts, we appear to have bent the knee there. Yes. In other words, gnomes out, homans in, now we're only focusing on the criminals. He says we're focused on the non-criminal illegals.

I realize they've all committed crimes by coming here illegally. But my point is the far right, definitely, or the right, I think, wants all illegals gone. And actually, the polls show that the majority of the American people still want that. They want all of the illegals gone, not just the ones who have committed additional crimes upon getting here. And I think a lot of us are wondering, what is the plan for getting them? Because it seems that the left has effectively exercised its veto by its terrible behavior in Minneapolis. Such to, you know, Homan is very focused on getting the illegals out. All of the reforms he's announcing are with respect to getting the illegals who have committed additional crimes and notification of them before they leave the local jails, which would be great.

That would be a compromise of sanctuary city policy there. We don't yet have an agreement on that in Minneapolis, which is the biggest area. Maybe we'll get it. But the point is simply, what about all the others? Yeah, yeah. So I actually, I kind of like that our side is so insistent on this issue. I like the pressure. I like people saying, we recognize you've done a lot, now do more. I think that's kind of how this should work, is that fundamentally, you know, the president and I and the entire administration, we work for the American people. And so I hear these complaints. I hear these criticisms. I guess I'd say a couple things. So first of all, again, you have an entire legal landscape, but also a deportation enforcement mechanism.

these additional ICE officers that we brought in as part of the one big beautiful bill. That's getting online now. They're not going to Minneapolis. Well, some of them will. Some of them certainly will. Homer just announced a drawdown of 700 troops out there. So, Holman announced a partial drawdown, but because the local authorities are cooperating with them.

And this is why it's important to segregate, what are we talking about, immigration enforcement or everything else. We're not drawing down immigration enforcement. We're drawing down some of the federal officers that were helping the guys. doing immigration enforcement. And this is what, I think, frankly, the far left and also some of our guys on the right didn't fully appreciate, when Holman says we're drawing 700 people down, those are the people who were protecting the ICE officers as they went out and did deportations and immigration enforcement. Most of the people that we have in Minneapolis, they're not doing immigration enforcement.

That's true even after the 700 drawdown. Most of them are protecting the immigration officers from the mob that's forming around them. So as we get more, more and more cooperation from Minneapolis and from the state of Minnesota. And we are, we are starting to get real cooperation from them in a way that we haven't. We don't want people there doing effectively police work so that they can protect our immigration officers. We want the immigration officers to go and do their work. And if they get into a problem, they can call local police. As that happens, I think you're going to see some of that law enforcement shifting to the local police, which is exactly what we wanted. And by the way, well before the

Freddie shooting or the Renee Good shooting, that, That's what we were asking. Because if you look, even in very blue places, like Memphis, Tennessee, or a number of other cities, you see the system working as it should. An immigration officer goes in, arrest an illegal alien, that person gets processed and deported. And if, God forbid, you have a mob forming, the ICE officers can call the local police and say, hey, these guys are threatening us, they're harassing us, they're maybe even assaulting us. The reason why Minneapolis was so chaotic is because we had to have all these extra officers

doing the job the local police wouldn't do. If the local police are willing to step up a little bit, I think that's a good thing, not a bad thing. And, you know, I don't want to give this talk of surrender because I know that we haven't surrendered. But if they're in Minnesota doing the very thing that they said they refuse to do, I don't think that's a surrender on the part of the Trump administration,

especially as we continue on immigration enforcement. What about the secret option of E-Verify, where we go after the employers and we find them if we find out that they're employing, illegals. It seems there's been a reluctance to do that even by the Trump administration because there are a lot of employers who, let's face it, like employing cheap labor through illegal immigrants. Yes. So I, you know, I supported e-verify legislation when I was in the Senate. It's been an issue. I actually campaigned on it when I ran for the Senate. It's funny, I've never talked to the

president about e-verify specifically, but it would require an act of Congress. And that is something that, look, I would like to believe that Congress would support e-verify legislation. I frankly don't know that we have the people that would make it happen. But look, if Congress wants to do it, then they should do it. And then, of course, that would give us some additional immigration enforcement tools. We would love that. But fundamentally, that is something that Congress has to fix. We've done a lot, by the way. We've made it harder for employers to hire illegal aliens. We've made it harder for illegal aliens. And frankly, some legal visa holders to get access to the benefits that should go to American citizens. So there's a lot that we can do

administratively, certain things like fully verify you do need Congress. You mentioned Congress. It's not looking so good for the Republicans to hold on to the House. We'll see. At least in the midterms. I mean, now some people are worried about the Senate, which would really be a calamitous for the right. Yep.

What will happen? If the Democrats do in control the House only, will anything change? I mean, I realize you're going to have an investigation coming your way every two weeks. But we haven't had a lot of legislation pushed through the first year, just given the 60 vote threshold in the Senate. So realistically, what do you think would change? change? Well, I think a couple things. One, Democrats will try to spend more money, particularly on their targeted populations. You'd see a lot of legislation saying, we're going to shut down the

government unless we give more health care benefits to illegal aliens, more federal-backed loans to illegal aliens. So that would definitely be a fight that we would have. And I think we would win some of those fights. But if the Democrats control the House, we probably wouldn't win all of them. The bigger thing that would happen is just impeachment, impeachment, impeachment, impeachment. Like, if you look at, go back to 95. Okay, so Republicans win. Bill Clinton does what's called the triangulation, and you have this great bipartisan compromise on welfare reform and on tax policy and on regulatory policy. Anybody hoping that Democrats win and you see a lot of bipartisan legislation, you need to stop taking the drugs because that's not going to happen. Democrats are not interested. They have said they're not interested in doing any big bipartisan legislation for the American people. What are they interested in? Impeachment.

They are interested in getting Trump and getting the people in his administration, and that's what we would have. For two years, we would have a government, we would have a Department of Justice, we would have a White House, where we'd still be able to get a lot done, but fundamentally, there's a lot that wouldn't happen because we'd be so focused on sham impeachment trials, where the Democrats, by the way, would know they weren't going anywhere, but that's all they have. Like, actually ask yourself, what is it that unifies the Democratic Party in 2026 America? You might say it's men and women's sports, and, okay, nobody really cares about that, or if they do care about it, they hate it like we do, okay? You can't run a national party on men and women's sports. Raising taxes on hardworking Americans, a lot of Democrats believe that. You can't run a campaign on that.

The only thing that they have is they hate Donald Trump. That's what unifies their party. They hate the Trump administration. That's what unifies their party. And that's what their legislative agenda would look like if we gave them. power. Also hating Trump and hating abortion. I mean, loving abortion, those two things.

Yeah, I mean, they're really solid on that. They like, again, I don't think this is true of most Democrats in our country, but most elected Democrats, it is a weird obsession with a culture of death, gender ideology, affirmative action, diversity, equity, and inclusion. It's like all of the things that divide Americans against each other, that make Americans hate one another, and that make Americans poor and less safe, that is the operating focus of elected Democrats, but they're smart enough to recognize they can't run on that. They can't run on any of their actual policies.

So they're not going to try to enact this stuff. They're just going to try to attack the president. We mentioned the press a minute ago. Someone who claims to be a member of it is Don Lemon, who's been arrested now. The dumbest man in television? Yeah, I mean, and that's saying something. He's under arrest because he stormed a church in the middle of a Sunday service, along with a lot of other rioters, and disrupted people.

people trying to worship. He's trying to cloak himself in the First Amendment saying this is an attack on freedom of the press. And you say what? Well, I say first, Don, no one's objecting to you standing outside of a church and protesting. No one's objecting to you to, no one's saying you can't protest the Trump administration's immigration policies or frankly are policies on anything else. What you cannot do is go into somebody's house of worship and prevent them from exercising their First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion. what happened. By the way, there's a federal law on the books that says you're not allowed to interrupt churches, you're not allowed to prevent people from entering or leaving a church. And the Biden

administration aggressively prosecuted people. Where was Don Lemon when people were getting aggressively prosecuted for sham violations of the face act? We have a rock solid violation of the face act, which is you were sticking a microphone in the face of a minister during the church service while the people you were with were preventing people from leaving. That's a violation of the the law, that's not about the First Amendment. You care about criticizing our immigration policies, then stand outside the church and protest. You don't get to violate other people's rights.

And if you do, the Trump administration, we're going to try to do everything that we can to make sure you suffer legal consequences. The administration is trying to decide right now what to do about Iran. And that's a tough one too, because you actually have a split within the Republican Party as you do on so many things,

because Republicans love to disagree with each other, unlike the Democrats. And I love that. I love the diversity. I love the dynamism. I think it's great too. But just how aggressive should we be with Iran? There's a very large faction of the Republican Party that says, what are we talking about Iran for?

What do you mean? America first. Let's focus on our own problems, affordability, all these things. They think President Trump spent too much time focused on overseas issues anyway, and they definitely don't want to get involved in Iran. And then there's a larger faction, another faction that is also large. That's more Nio-Kani that says we missed an opportunity. We let those protesters down. you know, the window's closing, we should be more aggressive militarily there right now.

Where do you fall? Well, so first of all, I hear the criticisms out there that the administration is too focus on foreign policy. I just have to defend the president. I don't think that's true. I think that certainly when you're the president of the United States, you do have to conduct foreign policy or the most powerful country in the world. But what I see him every day, he's laser focused on how do we make the American people

more prosperous and more secure in their own country. That's what our immigration policy is about, which we've taken a raft of crap over. That's what our crime policy is about. That's, you know, even the foreign policy stuff, much of the president's foreign policy has been focused on reshoring industry, on using tariffs to force people to reinvest the United States of America. So the global criticism, I just don't think people, look, the president is going to have to engage in foreign policy,

but this president, I think, is much more focus on the home front than any president at my lifetime. And he's gotten a lot, I mean, look, $18 trillion in new investment. The country's finally starting to reindustrialize. 18 trillion from other countries who are investing in. investing in the United States of America. That has been the exact opposite. Building companies.

Our entire lives, Megan, it has been American money building factories overseas. Now it's other money coming in to build factories for American workers and the American people. That's big. By the way, we're not going to see the full benefits of that for years, maybe even a decade, but that's the sort of investment in the country that really pays long-term dividends. Now, Iran specifically, like, what should we do with Iran? Okay, a couple of things. First of all, it's the president's decision.

He will ultimately decide how we handle this particular Iranian. situation just like he decided on Operation Midnight Hammer. What he has been very clear on, if you go back to 2015, 2016, 2021, 2025, the president has said consistently, we can't let these people have a nuclear weapon. Now, why? Why does that matter to America? Number one, the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism. Like, you think it's bad when we have a domestic terror attack where a couple of people

die and you're right. What happens when the same people who are shooting up a mall or driving airplanes into buildings have a nuclear weapon? That is unacceptable. And it's not just them. Because if the Iranians get a nuclear weapon, you know who gets a nuclear weapon like the next day, the Saudi Arabians, and then somebody else in the Gulf Arab state.

And so you have nuclear proliferation on a global scale. The biggest threat to security in the world is a lot of people having nuclear weapons. So what the president has said is Iran's not going to get a nuclear weapon. We're going to work with China and Russia in any country, whether they're a friend or whether we're a little more competitive, to try to draw down the amount of nuclear weapons that exist in the world. I think that's the most important thing you could do for peace and stability. And the question is, what do you do to enforce that red line?

Iran can't have a nuclear weapon. That is the stated policy goal of the President of the United States. It's so funny, sometimes you have people who are saying, well, the President's too belligerent. And then sometimes you have people who say, well, the President, he's talking about diplomacy and he's talking about negotiating with the Iranians. We shouldn't negotiate, we should just bomb them. What the President's going to do is he's going to keep his eye.

options open. He's going to talk to everybody. He's going to try to accomplish what he can through non-military means. And if he feels like the military is the only option, then he's ultimately going to choose that option. I can't, obviously, even if I knew what we were going to do, I would not tell you in your many millions of listeners. But I feel like people have to remember this is not about like, look, I grew up in the Iraq generation. I literally, I enlisted, I enlisted in the Marine Corps as an idealistic young kid right after 9-11. I went to Iraq in 2000. I enlisted in 2003, I went to Iraq in 2005.

I am very cognizant that the Middle East leads to Quagmire's. Trust me, so is the President of the United States, and we're hearing that. We know that's out there. But more importantly, we know the history, and the president does not, he has no interest in repeating the history of Iraq. What he does want to make sure is that there's a totally separate issue, which is you don't let crazy people get nuclear weapons and then lead to a nuclear arms race all over the world. I mean, you tell me whether this is about nuclear weapons right now or not.

But what we're seeing in Iran is these protests on the street, not as much anymore because they've been killing a lot of the protesters. But it's should we go in there and help the protesters get rid of this regime, like get rid of the Ayatollah, which, let's face it, it's much different in Iran. The regime goes well beyond the Ayatollah. It's not like Venezuela where we take Amadouro. It's a lot more complex. Even if we got rid of the Ayatollah, there'd be a whole bunch of others just like him, part of the regime.

And so the last thing most Americans want to hear is what we heard in Venezuela, which is now we're running Iran. Yeah. The president is very aware of all this stuff, Megan, but I'll tell you, you know, protests, you know, counter regime. I mean, look, in a perfect world, would I love it if a bunch of freedom-loving Iranians,

who, by the way, are amazing, they're brave people. If you know anything about the Persian people, they're like an incredible group of human beings, If they took over their own country and had a government that was much more friendly to the United States of America, would that be a good thing? Absolutely, that would be a good thing. But fundamentally, what the president has always been focused on, even with this most recent round of protest, you saw, I think it's most recent truth, or at least one of the more recent communications he made about Iran, it's nuclear weapons base. We are still focused on this question of ensuring they don't get a nuclear weapon. And here's a good thing.

Because of what happened last summer, I feel 100% confident that even if the Iranians were roughly, rushing towards a nuclear weapon. They couldn't get one during the Trump administration. But we're not worried about the next three years. We're about the next 30 years. We have to make sure that you don't look. What I really worry about, and I think this is, you know, obviously I disagree a lot with Bill Clinton,

but Bill Clinton fundamentally decided, you know what, we're just going to let North Korea have a nuclear weapon. We're not going to do anything to stop it. What happens if 30 years from now, the number of nuclear countries, it's less than 10, maybe about 10? What if it goes to 100? What if every military in the world has a nuclear weapon? What if a crazy person gets elected in some random outposts of the world that you and I couldn't even find on a map? And now all of a sudden a crazy guy has access to nuclear weapons.

Nuclear proliferation, that is very much a bad thing and something in America First foreign policy should focus on. That is certainly where the president is most worried about. When it comes to defending the homeland, the president's been looking, northward to Greenland and to Canada. But he's been very focused on Greenland. Yes. And you tell me what we got that made him say, okay, now I'm happy. Because he gave that speech at the UN, like, we need to have Greenland and we need to own it because

no one would defend something on lease. Yeah. But then by the end of the UN summit, he came out saying that we're satisfied. But we seem to only have gotten permission that we might have had already to build more military bases on a couple of their outposts. No, we definitely have gotten much more than we. What do we get? So first of all, again, it's important to define the interest here.

Greenland is very important to America's national security. Our entire missile defense system, by the way, would be inoperable if the Russians or the Chinese controlled Greenland. So God forbid, I don't think this can happen to be clear, but God forbid some foreign country launches a missile, an ICBM at the United States of America. We couldn't defend ourselves if a foreign country controlled Greenland. And by the way, the Chinese and the Russians have both expressed an interest in controlling Greenland. Okay, so what is the defensive mechanism for Greenland?

You have a population of about 60,000 people on a massive territory, right? That's like the size of my hometown, and I didn't grow up in a big town. And then on top of that, you have Denmark, which has been one of the better NATO allies, to be clear, but has still radically underinvested in security compared to the Russians and the Chinese. So the president has said very simply, we are on the hook for this island. It's one of those unwritten rules that everybody knows that if the Chinese or the Russians affected one of our critical missile defense systems, we would necessarily defend that, but we're not getting anything for it. This is an unfair situation. The United States has no ownership over this island, and we don't get any of the benefit.

So let's actually rewrite the rules here a little bit and say if the United States is going to protect the entire world's missile defense system, primarily our own, but other people benefit from it. we should get some benefit from the bargain. Now, it's interesting because I actually was sitting in this room, one of the rare times I've used this ceremonial office for official business, me and Marco and a lot of the leaders from Denmark and Greenland had a great conversation. And it's funny when you see... Is this one where they ran for their cigarettes when they exited the building? Maybe.

Yeah, I think they did. They were stressed. I did not follow up. I did not see what they did afterwards. We had a good meeting. It's so funny to me because the Europeans, they're so friendly and private. it and they're willing to make a lot of accommodations, and then publicly they attack us and they say, we're not going to work with the Americans, we're not going to do anything with the Americans.

I'm sorry, it's all bogus. We all know, everybody knows that this situation is going to come to a resolution. I think it's going to be a resolution that's good for Europe. Most importantly, it'll be a resolution that's good for the United States of America. But the idea that they haven't made any accommodations or concessions to the United States, it's not true. Are we at the beginning of a new world order where we move away from Europe and toward anything else? maybe even potentially Russia, if we can get past what's happened here? I mean, there's a real question about that given some of the speeches you've made to the European Union,

some of the speeches that President Trump has made, what's happening culturally in Europe, what's their crackdowns on free speech. They just look less and less like we do. And there's a real question about whether there's a massive shift happening now in terms of world alliances long term. Well, it's definitely, I think, a new world order. I think the president has sought to it. There's a new world order in trade.

There's a new world order in globalization and the way that we invest, in our economy versus foreign supply chains. There's a new world order and that the president is willing to shake up some old alliance structures. I mean, NATO, I think, is much different because of the president's leadership than it was 10 years ago. It was sort of coasting. It was effectively a protector of the United States of America.

Obviously, you saw what happened in Venezuela. So yeah, the president is putting a stamp on world history, but fundamentally in America first way. That is the orienting focus. And so when people say, well, you can't work with Putin on anything because you just with Ukraine invasion. Well, the president said very clearly, Putin should not have invaded Ukraine. We're going to try to work and bring that to an end, but there might be some areas of

cooperation, too. His attitude is not, you're our friend, you're our enemy, we're going to go to war with our enemies, and we're going to be, you know, we're going to give our friends everything without asking questions. His attitude is we're about alliances. And you could have a country where we have a 90% aligned interest, but we're going to disagree on 10% of issues. Meanwhile, we may disagree with Russia on a lot, but when we agree on some things, and I do think that is a fundamental reorientation. The other thing that's much different, Megan, about the president's foreign policy and just the way that he does business. And it's, look, there's a lot that I've learned from, but this is nearly at the top of the list of the things I admire about the president of United

States, is he will talk to anybody. Like, you know, when he was thinking about who'd make his vice president, he was talking to the gardener at Marlago. He told me that. And I said, well, sir, what did the gardener at Marlaug and said this really matters to my life. And, but, you know, when people say you shouldn't talk to this person, right? You shouldn't talk to Kim Jong-un of North Korea because that's, that gives him something for nothing. It's, no, I'm going to have a conversation. We're going to actually conduct diplomacy. If we have to use the military, he's obviously not afraid to do it when he feels like he needs to.

But the willingness to just communicate and break down barriers is very important. This is, by the way, Megan, one thing I would say about the Iranians that is just really weird to me and I don't understand their system and I frankly think that it makes diplomacy with them extraordinarily difficult is the person who makes the decisions in Iran as the supreme leader. Okay, the president, our sense is doesn't have a lot of juice. It doesn't really matter. The foreign minister seems to talk to the Supreme Leader and that's mainly the person that we've communicated with. But it's a very weird country to conduct diplomacy with when you can't even talk to the person who's in charge of the country. That makes all of this much more complicated.

and it makes the whole situation much more absurd. Like he can pick up the phone and call Putin. He can pick up the phone and call Xi. Even countries that we have very hostile relations with, he can pick up the phone, you know, North Korea. He met the guy at the 38th parallel. It is bizarre that we can't just talk to the actual leadership of a country. It's really, it makes diplomacy very, very difficult.

Why are we letting 600,000 Chinese students into our universities? It was 300 and change. Larry Ingram asked President Trump about this and he said, oh, we need to do business with China. It seemed like some sort of a deal had been cut where we gave them a bone of allowing double their students. Nobody wants this. No, it's not, the president's view is we don't want to create an unnecessarily antagonistic relationship with China. Like there are certain things, some disagreements.

There are some things where our interests collide. But we can protect our intellectual property in the president's view without creating an unnecessary conflict with the Chinese. Every slap filled by one of these Chinese students is one lost by an American. What the president is trying to do is, I think, create the situation where we can have good relations. Now, we're not radically, and this has been misreported, I think, we're not like radically increasing the number of visas that we give to China. That's just not true. I've seen that reported. It's not true.

What we are doing is trying to preserve a very delicate diplomatic balance. Like anything, there are risks and rewards and costs and benefits. But the president is trying to balance a very important relationship for the United States. How about election integrity here at home? There's a bill right now. Let's get the save act. Let's get the save act. But what's going to happen with that?

Well, we're working very hard right now to get the Senate to approve it because of the Senate approves that we think the House would approve it too. Now, that would require, I think, some Republican senators who maybe they're a little too attached to the filibuster, maybe they're a little too attached to Senate procedure. This is about the integrity of American democracy. Like, do the people control who they elect or do. some shady people. It's like, who actually controls the people who cast the ballots or the people who count the ballots.

We want the sovereignty to be with the people who cast the ballots and that's why we have to get the Save Act passed. So you'll hear people say all the time, and I love this argument. They'll say, well, if you look at this precinct, you know, only three illegal aliens voted in this election. Number one, that's three illegal aliens too many. And number two, if it's not a big problem, then why not just allow us to check ID and exercise some basic precautions to prevent illegal aliens from voting.

I never quite understand the person who says, on the one hand, this never happens. And on the other hand, your effort to prevent it from happening is a threat to American democracy, which is fundamentally the Democrats' argument. By the way, it's like an 85-15 issue. Most Democrats want voter ID because they want to protect their own vote. But the elected leaders don't want to vote for it.

Because they know that the more control they give to the people who are counting the ballots, as opposed to those who are casting the ballots, the more controlled they will have because the deep state is the left. Is this where the rubber meets the road, like on the filibuster and whether we get rid of it, which John Thune doesn't want, a lot of Republicans don't want. That is what we're working very hard to make happen. Now, there is also some in-between solutions we're working on, like, for example, can you allow the Democrats to preserve the filibuster, but actually force them to go and do a real filibuster? Like not where a procedural paperwork filibuster, but stand there? A procedural paperwork filibuster,

But stand there and talk. If you really want to prevent us from checking ID before votes, if you really want to ensure that illegal aliens have the right to vote, then stand on the Senate floor, Corey Booker style for 30 hours, and defend that to the American people. At the very least, then we'd have a real debate. We're working on it. I can't tell you how it's going to turn out because I can't predict 51 GOP senators,

but we are making its progress. Let's talk affordability for him in here. A lot of people are still suffering. President Trump says, like, we've made a lot of progress, but, you know, the average American sitting at home doesn't feel it. Because the polls show that the numbers are not good for the administration on the economy. And that just reflects what people are feeling. Of course.

So what can actually happen, let's say, between now and November, speaking in the midterms, so that people actually feel better about what's happening in their wallet? Yeah. So I will say if you look at the numbers on affordability, they're starting to move in our direction. A little bit. But there's clear movement from where there was, say, four or five. five months ago, I think that's a good thing. But here's the way that I think about it, Megan,

is if you go just dollars and cents, the average American household lost about $3,000 of net wages during the Biden administration. That's through inflation, that's through higher taxes. The average American household, now this is about a month old, but had gained about $1,200 during the Trump administration. So there's a good news, and there's a bad news. The good news there is that compared to last year,

you were $1,200 richer than you were. The bad news is that compared to four or five years ago, you're about $2,800, I guess $1,800 poorer than you were. Okay, so we recognize there's still a lot of work to do. I don't think that there's anything to do, Megan, other than to do the work. You know, we continue to have a lot of capital coming into the country. That means higher wages, more jobs for the American people. We continue to see grocery prices, I think, starting to come down a little bit.

There are a couple of categories. You know, we really worry about beef in particular that we're working very hard to bring down, not for the midterms, but just because we want the American. American people to buy some ground beef and to buy some steak, if they so choose. You know, there are things like cars and houses where we're seeing some real progress. Rents have now declined five months in a row. That's a big thing that's happening. So it's one of these things where I don't think you're going to be able to trick the American people.

They know they got $3,000 poor during the Biden administration. I think they're going to judge us by how much we've made them wealthier. And I think that come November, the verdict there is going to be positive. But we just have to keep working at it. The number one question that my audience wanted me to ask you. Oh, God. I know. I was actually surprised by it was they think the Republicans suck at messaging.

Okay. They want to know what the administration is going to do to get their arguments out more strongly on immigration and on the progress that they've made. I think there's a frustration, actually, amongst the GOP base, that there have been a lot of wins, but people don't know it. And that there actually is a sound immigration policy, but they let the left run with this narrative, and the media is only too happy to spread, lies about the five-year-old boy who is wrongfully deported and all that, right? Is there a plan?

There is. I mean, one is the president and I are just going to get on the road a lot more in the next eight, nine months. And part of this is you've got to, look, CBS, NBC, ABC, there's always going to be an editorial slant to those networks, but they're also declining in power. I do things like this. I talk to you. I talk to your viewers through this conversation. But most importantly, we get out on the road constantly because most people still consume their news

through their local affiliate, right? If their local CVS guy is saying, oh, the vice president came to town, the president came to town, this is what they're talking about. That's how you get the message out there. It's non-traditional media. I think we were very good about this in the campaign in 2024. It's something we want to get back to in 2026 is actually taking the message to people. going on a lot of podcasts and a lot of the non-traditional media, which frankly, I think, has more narrative power than the traditional media does. You know, that's part of what we just have to do. I think the first year we're so focused on governing,

now we've got to go out there and talk a little bit more about what we've achieved. I do think there's a lot to hang our hat on, to be proud of, that the American people should be proud of. But you're right, we're going to get out there and talk about it more. Somebody who's not shy about talking at all is Gavin Newsom. He's been everywhere. Vogue really loves him. I don't know if you saw the Vogue piece on him, but they're real.

I don't make it a habit to read Vogue or to read about Gavin Newsom. Let me, I kid you not. This is the lead line of their piece. Let's get this out of the way. He's embarrassingly handsome. His hair seasoned with silver at ease with his own eminence as he delivers his final state of the state address. It must drive Trump nuts. Newsome, life, ardent, energetic, a glimmer of optimism in his eye, Kennedy-esque.

Do you expect Vogue to give you this same treatment when you sit down with that, Mr. President? unbiased reporting. That is like something out of Provda. Yes. That's what Pravda would have written about Stalin. This is what you're up against. Yeah, but I mean, how many people read vote? Nobody.

But it was just a segue into 2028. And whether, whether you think there could be a square off with the Kennedy-esque Gavin Newsom, possibly yourself. Well, we'll see. I mean, look, I'll give you the answer I've given to other people, Megan, which is it's so far in the future. I don't want the answer to you giving to other people. Yeah, but it's the truth.

And all I can tell you is the truth is, look, I think that if we take care of business, the politics in 2028 will figure itself out. And if we don't take care of business, there's no amount of salesmanship that is going to change that. You've just got to actually do a good job at the job that we have right now. And I think the American people, hopefully, in two, three, four years say, you know what, we want another term. of the governance of this agenda. We don't want to go back to the crazy woke Democrats. We want to double down on reinvesting in America, on rebuilding the American middle class.

I think that's ultimately what they're gonna decide. I can't predict the future, but it's why I'm focused on the job that I have now. The thing, Megan, is I meet this observation and I think that it would be so warping. And because of that, very bad for the American people, if I woke up every day and thought to myself, how do I maximize my chances in 2028?

Because sometimes the answer to that question, in fact, probably most of the time, is going to be a little bit different than how do I maximize the chances of giving the American people a win? Right? I got to focus on this job or I'm going to hurt a lot of people who really depend on me. Can I just ask you about the personal considerations that go into it? You're expecting a fourth baby. Yes. You have a young, vibrant, very smart and successful wife who had a big career before you guys got here. Sure.

So what will factor into whether you actually do run? Oh, I mean, a huge factor. Look, if we ever have that conversation seriously, it's, you know, do the kids actually want to do it? Do they like this? Right. I mean, so far, they're very happy. They've actually thrived in.

And I think our eight-year-old struggles more with it than our two younger kids because, you know, they're both, you've met them, but the two younger kids are extroverts, right? He just says the two younger kids are like me and the other kid is like her. So he doesn't like the attention. He doesn't like the cameras. He doesn't like that people are always offering to do special things for him. Even when the special thing is nice,

he just kind of wants to blend in a little bit. So I think the question is going to be, can the family support it happily? Can we keep our family healthy? And if the answer is yes, then obviously, that's a notch in favor of doing it. If the answer is no, I'd say that's pretty dispositive towards not doing it.

But again, we'll have that conversation in a few years when we've actually done a good job here and can have that conversation with, I think, a little bit more of, first of all, it's there staring you in the face. It's not three years in the future, it's now. But also just where we have a little bit more sense of what is good for the kids. I mean, my first obligation, as much as I love the American people, it's to my wife and my kids. And we've got to keep them happy. And so far, so good. I'm going to wrap it up because I know you've got to go. But how are you going to prepare for this fourth baby?

I don't, I mean, at this point, we're getting so many kids that they just kind of take care of themselves. So I guess we'll train the others to change diapers and do a bottle. I mean, I don't know. It's going to be chaotic. The thing is, we, Usha and I have this conversation. There are certainly sacrifices that come along with this life. But there are also a lot of good things. Like we live in this beautiful, very protected mansion that the American people have gifted us.

So thank you. You're a taxpayer. Thank you for that. You know, we also, most of our meals are prepared for us. So we don't have to worry as much about cooking we did when baby number three came along. So there are a lot of things that in some ways make having a baby easier. You don't have to worry about TSA lines when you're the Vice President. Air Force II makes transportation pretty easy.

So there are all these weird little ways where I actually think it'll be a little bit easier. It'll obviously be harder in some ways. But I just, my attitude towards kids, I remember after we had you and our oldest, I was like, what the hell have we gotten ourselves into? No more kids. And then we had a second, then we had a third. Now both of us are just like, what's one more?

Whatever. I'll share with the audience. I don't think you'll mind that we were with you guys personally at this one point, and your kids were outside, and you just sort of called from afar, please don't create any ruination and despair. I loved it. It actually made me think, Mr. Vice President,

what do you think Mamma would think of all this? Oh, man. I don't know. I think she would. I ask myself that question a lot. I think she'd be amazed by it. And, you know, she was fundamentally just such a patriotic person. I think she'd be in this room right now looking up at the molding and the beautiful imagery

and just saying what a blessing it is to be here. But I think the thing that she would just most like about our life is the kids. Mammal always just loved kids. She loved grandbabies. And she loved the weird little things that they would say. She loved how, you know, they were. one minute super caring and affection at the other minute completely rebellious. And I think that's what, you know, as much she'd be impressed by the pomp and the circumstance of the professional role,

if male were alive right now, she'd probably be living with us and she'd be much more worried about the kids than anything I was doing at the White House. I feel like she could really, you know how Marco Rubio's got every role in the administration? I feel like she could have done him. She could have taken any one of those off of his hands. We would have been in very good hands. Oh, that's right. No, I mean, that's another thing that will make the new baby much easier is is Marco has agreed to be nanny to our fourth kids. So, you know, what's another job? He can do it.

Or we got to go, I forgot to ask you quickly if you'll allow me. Please. Savannah Guthrie is in the midst of a national crisis right now. It sounds very sad. It looks awful. It looks awful. Just wanted to give you the chance to comment on it because the White House sent out of a tweet yesterday asking people to call in if they have any information.

Well, obviously thinking about her and praying for her, and I believe it's her mother-in-law. Is that right? It's her mom. Okay, so praying for her mom. And the whole situation just seems, you know, very scary. So what we've done at the White House is basically offered every resource that we can to try to help. And, you know, what can you do? But help where we can and pray that it all turns out right.

But certainly knows, I hope she knows we're all thinking about her at the White House because sort of the worst, one of the worst situations you can imagine personally. So we'll just keep tabs of it. Keep on helping out where we can and hope that it goes okay. We're praying for her. We're praying for you every day. I appreciate it. Thank you for the sacrifice that I know it takes to do this job.

Good to see you, Megan. Yeah, you too. Thanks. All the best. If you are stressed out about getting out of debt, it's go time. This is one of those moments where timing matters, and let me tell you about done with debt. 2025 was a record year for them. People who collectively had more than $102 million in debt turned to them for help.

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our attention to News of the Day and the latest in the search for Nancy Guthrie, the missing mom of Savannah Guthrie, NBC News host. Ashley Banfield, who hosts her own podcast called Drop Dead Serious, is breaking exclusives on this case like nobody's business. And yesterday, she had quite a doozy. I'm going to bring her on. She's going to explain what she learned, but she reported exclusively that they actually do have a potential suspect in the case. And the identity is rather shocking. I'm going to bring her in now. Ashley Banfield, thank you so much for joining us. So tell us what you say very reliable law enforcement source told you about a possible suspect in the case? Sure. So after almost four decades in this business, I've collected a few friends at the FBI and in local law enforcement all over the

country. And the source that I have is impeccable. And he said that not only were the cameras smashed, plural, plural cameras smashed, so that the suspect likely knew about the locations of them, but that the car belonging to the sister of Savannah Guthrie, Annie Guthrie, was towed and pounded and taken into evidence. And this is the wording. It's very important. The wording is very important. He said, they now believe the son-in-law may be the prime suspect. Those are the words.

Son-in-law may be the prime suspect at this point. And I'm very mindful. I covered the Elizabeth Smart case. I was out in Salt Lake City for five weeks while Elizabeth Smart had vanished. And I recall specifically a lot of language saying Ed Smart is likely the prime suspect here. And so you got to be really mindful that, as you know, Megan, you're a lawyer. Police investigations start in the middle of the circle, and they go out in concentric circles in terms of investigating family members, right?

You start in the middle of the family, you investigate out from there. Then you go to contractors and friends and workers and everybody else who's had some contact. and then there's the randoms. So it is not surprising that someone in the family is being looked at. That language, to me, was pretty strident, though. It's surprising to me because there was forced entry. And from the beginning, I thought, well, they must have ruled out the family pretty quickly if this is a case of forced entry because the family wouldn't need to do that.

The family would presumably have a key, and if they didn't have a key and they wanted to get in, they'd just knock on the door and Nancy Guthrie would open it. So this is super interesting. And I had a long conversation with my former colleague Brian Enton about this because Brian identified blood drops at the front door, right? And he's shown the video of it's pretty impressive. However, my source says the back door is wide open. Back door left wide open. That's what my source said. I had a, Megan, half hour conversation two days ago. I watched it. The sheriff, yeah. And I specifically said, so are you telling me, when you said that she did not walk out of that house on her own, I said, are you telling me that she might have been carried out of that house? And I used the word over the threshold of the front door. And he said, I didn't say front door. But he didn't say, he didn't say no, carried. But when he said, I didn't say no to the front door, and then, you know, the next day I'm getting information about the back door, it's pretty safe to say, well, that makes perfect sense. However, Why is there blood at the front door? And Brian Enton said he couldn't find the trail continuing past to the walkway that would take you to the driveway. Now it is, you know, gravel, a little harder maybe to see any blood, but not impossible.

So I'm trying to go. Couldn't they've gotten her in the car, Ashley? I mean, like, I'm picturing a scenario where couldn't all those facts be consistent with? They came in through the back door. Then they got her. Then they brought her out the front door after injuring her. Could. Then the blood trail continued just to the driveway.

Well, it didn't. Where they then put her in a car? That's the problem. It ended well prior to the driveway? Yeah. The blood trail is just at the front door on those tiles. Then the gravel starts right away, and it's a walkway to the driveway. And it's not close.

I mean, it's a bit of a ways. Nancy Guthrie can't walk 50 feet, 50 yards, pardon me. Nancy Guthrie can't walk 50 yards on her own. So she would need assistance. And if you're bleeding and you've been in some sort of a melee, that would be even less. So I was going through the scenarios in my mind. Okay. maybe the front door camera is smashed and the doorbell is wrong to get Mrs. Guthrie

downstairs because that would be difficult in the middle of the night. It would get her down those stairs. So the confrontation might happen at the front door right there at the tiles. There's a struggle. And then because the car is not parked right out front where all that could be visible potentially, maybe the car is around the back and that's why they go out the back door. Is that a possibility? Struggling.

I have no idea. I'm surmising. I don't know because I've been trying to see with drone video, whether the car could get out into a darker spot or maybe out of camera view because the smashing has to happen. But I was told that the cameras were smashed and plural. So if there's a camera in the back, camera in the front smashed. And then, of course, Brian Enton noticed it and said,

asked the sheriff, did you take them or did you think the guy or the suspect took them? And the sheriff had a funny answer. He said, yes, I noticed that you were looking into it. Yes. So what he saw, Brian Enten saw was like the remnants of a nest camera, not even the nest camera, right? Like it was clear to him that they had been removed, which is not the same thing as destroyed. The sheriff is saying that they were destroyed right before we got to them. So he made it sound like they were destroyed by the perpetrator here, by the bad guy. Sheriff didn't say on the news conference that the cameras were destroyed.

Brian Enten shot that video and asked, the cameras are missing. Did law enforcement take them or did the perpetrator take them? And the response from the sheriff was, yes, we noticed that too. We're looking into it. And so, look, I can tell you, you know this. Pima County, there's not a lot of crime there. I'm trying to think of the last major thing that happened.

I think it was Gabby Giffords being shot there, what, 15 years ago, 20 years ago. And so I think he's working in real time. you know, and trying to protect his investigation, keep the integrity, and answer real questions he wasn't expecting maybe, and couching, you know, his verbiage as best he can. But he didn't say, oh, we don't know that we took the cameras or, no, there never was a camera there. He said, yes, we noticed that too, and we're investigating that. We've got them. It's your reporting that has added that they were destroyed. And multiple. I don't know the location of the other one. My guessing, and it's just me, would be backdoor. But my source also said, and this is musings, not evidence or information, who takes an 84-year-old woman who can't walk well on her own? It is a burden. It is a troublesome endeavor. It makes you more susceptible to being caught. You now have a problem on your hands. What are you going to do with this person without anybody seeing? And it stands to reason. It's very unusual for some random.

burglar to take the person if something happened. It's not a random burglar. No, I agree. So it's either somebody who's kidnapping her and wants money for a ransom or is kidnapping her as a revenge because they dislike her or maybe Savannah or another family member or it could have been a murder. It could have been a murder that they were then removing the body from the crime scene. That's even worse because again, now it's on your hands to get rid of the body and the evidence is now in your car and all the rest. It's not that it hasn't happened. It has. It's more likely that a random person would leave that body in the house

and get a clean getaway with no DNA evidence in the car if that's possible. But the other random musings was that something like this, and again, these are the random musings, this is not evidence. This kind of a crime typically requires a benefit. And like you mentioned, the ransom notes, musings are baloney. that, you know, you don't email a ransom note to DMZ or a local, you know, station. It's not normal. It's not usual. And that time frame as well. Ransom notes usually come pretty quickly. This was 72 hours later. So, and look, I can't wait for that investigation to yield some idiot

that thought that they were going to get some Bitcoin out of a tragic situation. It makes me, they're just festering parasites when they do this. I mean, it does, we still don't know, though, whether Savannah Guthrie has received a ransom demand or law enforcement has because they've been very cagey about the ransom question. The first day he was asked, which was Monday, Sheriff Nanos said, no, I haven't heard anything like that. And he was kind of forthcoming. And then, as you know, yesterday, Tuesday, he was much more tight-lipped. He wasn't as forthcoming with answers. And the question of whether a ransom note had been introduced seemed more ambiguous on day two than it did on day one. You know, it's funny, I'm looking back at my notes for my conversation.

I said, has there been a, and this was the Monday, as you said, has there been any demand for ransom? And he said, we don't know. He said to me, we don't know. Those are the words. However, this came out yesterday. You probably saw it. This was the QR code and the statement from Chris Nanos, the sheriff, saying we were aware of reports circulating about possible ransom notes, parentheses S, right? Note parentheses S.

Regarding the investigation into Nancy Guthrie, we're taking all tips and leave. leads very seriously. Anything that comes in goes directly to our detectives who are coordinating with the FBI. We encourage anybody use this QR code. So I think, and also our friend, Harvey Levin, at TMZ, broke it yesterday. They got the email yesterday. So I don't think Harvey had it on Monday, and I would highly doubt that the local TV station had it Monday, didn't report it until Tuesday. All right, but separate that, that's sort of a red herring, we think, on the side. But the news about Savannah's brother-in-law is huge. I mean, if that's, Look, I have to be honest, a lot of people initially thought should we be looking at the family

because just that's 90% of the time. Yeah, exactly. That's who it is. Usually crime is not committed by some random person coming into a home and kidnapping an 84-year-old. Usually it's a tragedy that knows where both cameras are. Yeah, exactly. It knows where both cameras are, front and back, and possibly manages to get her to open the door or somehow maybe has a relationship with her. And, And but of course the thought of Savannah's not on the table. She was in New York. She had to fly out there after this all happened. The sister, I mean, like, it's just, it just seems beyond possibility that the sister had

something to do with it. But now we're talking about the sister's husband. Yeah, you go. Spidey senses, Megan, with all your experience in being a lawyer and being in the media, do you think that they would seize the vehicle of Savannah Guthrie's sister and impound it, To it. Not ask for it. Come in. We want to take a look. Toot it. Impound it. The words that were used are, it is in evidence. If they didn't have a little stronger feeling about this. Because that sends a massive message early in the investigation. If you are taking the daughter of the victim's car. And a famous daughter's sister. That was another thing that I just... I'm just putting a lot of pieces together. No, you're right. And the other thing the audience should know, they probably already do know, is you're not some whack reporter.

Like, this is your beat. You've been covering crime. For 20 years, you're very solid. Your reporting standards. 38, but who's counting? 38 years this year. Reporting for many, many years. But your reporting standards are very high.

So you understand very well the gravity of reporting something like this. This is not just some slap dash operation. And you trust this source that told you right now he's the prime. High level. Yeah. High level. So, no, you're right. They wouldn't.

And when was it that they seized the car? Why was it they seized the car? When, when? I don't know the answer to that, but I do know that the FBI, according to Brian Anton, was over at Annie Guthrie's house yesterday for several hours. Is Savannah staying at Annie Guthrie's? I have heard that reporting. Nancy Lewitt News Nation reported that Savannah was staying there.

And somebody else told me today, I think Savannah is staying there. I don't have that myself. I mean, it's, it's. One does wonder why Savannah hasn't said anything. If this were my sibling and my sibling were, I believed, wrongly accused, I might say something. I mean, I might come out and say something. Go back two days ago.

I would never walk in Savannah shoes. My heart has been absolutely breaking for Savannah in all of this in so many ways right from the get-go. But I don't know that I would say something publicly if this was my mom. I have an 87-year-old mom. No, no, no. But if your sibling now were offered up? But even before. I'm going to take you in stages.

So you give a statement to NBC early saying we're worried and we're working with law enforcement. Then you give a statement the next day saying, please pray. Again, I don't know that I would make a public statement or come out. But if my mom was missing, I think I would. I think I would be everywhere saying, please, if you've seen anything, help me. Help me. If you've seen a car, if you've seen anything, this is where we lived. you would make it such a bigger media event and so many more eyeballs.

And crowdsourcing is one of the best ways to solve crimes. It's how if Gabby Petito's body was found, for God's sake. So if there were some concerns, I could understand silence, but I can also understand silence out of just utter grief. Mm-hmm. I know, me too. I'm just picturing if Savannah's at her sister Annie's house yesterday and Annie's husband is there, Tomaso,

and the sheriff shows up, the FBI shows up and seizes his vehicle. Like, that's an OMG moment. They'd have to have a warrant. Obviously, they had to go into court and show that there was probable cause to get that warrant. What was in that probable cause affidavit from the law enforcement officer that suggested they had the right to seize his car. We know that we believe, right, that Annie's car, right, but she's married to him. So it's six one way. But was it Annie or was it to Masso or was it both?

Do we know, Ashley, that dropped off the mother, Nancy on Saturday night. I believe it was a church mahjong event. And they brought him, they brought her home. So I've heard it both ways. I've heard Annie dropped her off. And then I've heard that Annie and her husband dropped her off. And I've heard that both ways multiple times from the sheriff himself in news conferences too. So it is a little bit unclear.

and I don't know if they're unclear. And quite frankly, I don't know if this many-hour meeting over at Annie's house yesterday where the FBI was there yielded a conversation because most people would say, I think I need a lawyer here. This sounds weird.

At least most people should say. Everybody should say. I need a lawyer before I say hello. And that's innocent people. That's to protect the innocent. Let's be really clear. I'm always very mindful. It's not about guilty people

trying to cover up. although often it is. But innocent people need to protect the way their words can also be used against them, even when they don't mean it a certain way. I shot the sheriff. Well, just put that in writing. It now says, I shot the sheriff. You don't hear the inflection. Yep. So, okay, so we know that they must have gotten a probable cause affidavit to go in there and seize the car, which they did, Annie's car. And now, why do we believe, is it just from the source that the focus is on Annie's husband, whose name is Tomaso Cioni. He, I believe he's a native from Italy.

He's Italian-born. And he's 50 years old, but he's been married to Savannah's sister for quite some time. He's 50 years old. He's from Tucson now. I mean, he's been living in Tucson. Do we know anything more about him? Let me tell you about the strange thing that we found. He's got a bio that appears on a website for the Tapper Rule,

and cultural association. That's a non-profit based in Cremona, Italy. It's focused on promoting contemporary artists. It's about a, started in 2004. And this is what he quotes in his bio on that website. I was born in San Giovanni Valdano on June 18, 1975. Since 2006, I have lived in Tucson, Arizona. I write when I have the chance. I study lizards. I play the electric base. I make homemade pasta. LinkedIn has them as a teacher at basis of Sorow Valley School from 2007 to today. They say he's a primary instructor for sixth grade science and AP Biology. And Reverb Nation, which is a website based on music, says he put out an album with a three-man music group called Early Black. That music's still out there. But again,

I've seen some pictures when he's with the three together, two guys. I don't know if that's the band. It kind of looks like a band picture. But yeah, apparently he's this bass player, Electric Bass, who's in a band called Early Black. Do we know how long they've been married? I don't know that. No. Isn't she an older sister to Savannah or no? I'm not sure.

I think Savannah's my age exactly. I think she's a little younger than me. If I'm 50, I think she's like 56, 55, something like that. Well, I'm 55. Oh my God. When did that happen? Oh, God, right? How?

Look at this. This is crazy. I'm pretty sure she's my age exactly. Savannah actually have a lot in common. It's kind of eerie. We work to court TV together. other. I know. I remember, I remember being in the bathroom, the ladies' room at Court TV, and Court TV was getting shut down. They were very kind to us. They gave us nine months to find

other jobs. And Savannah got a contact over at NBC, and I said, well, you got to call my friend, so-and-so, and you're getting that job. You're getting that job, girl. And then she said to me later, I got the interview and I got the job. I'm going to work at MSNBC. And I said, oh, no, you're going to host the Today Show. Mark my word. And we always talk about that. Whenever I talk to her. I'm like, yeah, don't ever question me again, sister, especially in the ladies' room. Well, it's funny because I'm down here in D.C. today to interview the vice president. They allowed us to do our second hour from his ceremonial office here. It's beautiful. But when I first met Savannah Guthrie, it was at the Supreme Court because she was doing

high court coverage for NBC, and I was doing it for Fox, or she was an MS at the time. And now all these years later, it's very strange. I was just back down here covering the Supreme Court for the big argument on boys and girls' sports. two weeks ago and here I am covering this terrible tragedy for her. And it's like at this point, Ashley, it's like, I don't know if there can be a good outcome. If they can find Nancy Guthrie and she's fine, that's it. And by the way, we do have a soundbite on that. The sheriff says he's holding out hope that that could still happen. This is played on the Today Show this morning. Here's SOT Zero. This morning, the desperate search for 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie now entering its

fourth day with the Pima County Sheriff saying he's holding out hope, Savannah's mom is alive. We have nothing else to go on but the belief that she is here. She's present. She's alive and we want to save her. NBC News is aware of two reports of ransom notes sent to news organizations that reference Nancy Guthrie. NBC News has not seen those notes and so far no law enforcement agency has substantiated them. The Pima County Sheriff's Office saying it's also aware of the reports, adding we are taking all tips and leads very seriously. The leads we've got coming in are critical to us. They're valuable. And we're sharing those with the FBI and others. FBI agents are now working closely with local authorities. The sheriff's department says Guthrie had several

cameras at her home, but it's still unclear if there's any footage from the overnight hours when she was believed to be abducted. They're also still trying to find any usable video from neighbor's homes. From any usable video from neighbors' homes. And he seemed to speak to Sheriff Chris Nannos, whether they did find any usable video from Nancy's home or elsewhere. In a way, again, that was cryptic.

He's not the most clear on his communications. This is CBS morning. Watch this here in SOT 3. The sheriff also says surveillance video from Guthrie's home has led them nowhere so far. None of the camera images have revealed to us anything of substance of nature. Really? Anything? No, it only goes so far back.

And so we're giving it to those camera makers and saying, can you do something more with this? I think I know what you mean. Yeah, please tell me. So, and I'm not a tech guru, but I know about nest cams. And my source said they were nest specifically, said they were smashed and said they were nest. And so my conversation on Monday with Sheriff Nanos was that they were working. working with the tech companies to get what's in the cloud, but that there were warrant issues. And it was taking a long time, and he was very frustrated working with the companies.

He thought he'd have it back sooner. And by Monday night, he was annoyed that he didn't have it. Yesterday in the news conference, he seemed still to be frustrated waiting on these images. And I believe that's because perhaps the device itself may hold maybe just the last hour. And they're looking for the history. And for that, maybe the family doesn't have the past. word, whatever it is to get in. That's my guess. But the fact that they know they're smashed would at least give you the last image of it being smashed. That doesn't mean it was smashed

from the front. Maybe someone came in the back door and smashed that front camera from inside. So then you don't see who's doing it. Or they were completely draped in black because everybody knows. Porch pirates noticed draped themselves now because of cameras that can catch you coming up to them. Smashing them doesn't reverse what you've already seen. That's what I was thinking about. that. But the other thing that I think is super key, and my source said to me, specifically, 2AM is the focus, and that's because of the pacemaker separation. The sheriff wouldn't go that far. He kept saying, well, we're still leaving it open a wide window. I'm not going to narrow that window down for the public here. But my source said, oh, no, it is the separation of the pacemaker

from the Apple devices that we believe is the moment she went out that doorway and was spirited away. Yes. I mean, I think the rest of us had gleaned that, even though the sheriff wouldn't say it explicitly, but now your source is saying yes. And so can you just reiterate, was there any sort of caution given to you about saying Savannah's brother-in-law is, or may be the prime suspect? Like, is that as good as saying, you know, Savannah may be, I may be, you may be. I mean, what's the worth of it? The, well, I want to tell you one other thing he told me because there was some reports that were pulled back. Somebody reported, I think, on Monday that Mrs. Guthrie was dragged from her bed. And the sheriff said that. The sheriff said that. He said, I didn't want to take it literally. Yeah.

And he said, I didn't mean to be literally. And then he walked back that. And I couldn't get him to pinpoint an epicenter of the crime scene. Is it in the bedroom? Is it in the living room? Is it in the kitchen? Is it the front door? I couldn't get him to pinpoint that.

He also wouldn't, on Monday, when I did the interview, he would not confirm there was blood inside the house. But my source has confirmed there was blood inside the house. Antenna has confirmed that there's outside. My source said outside as well, but we saw the pictures. So there's blood inside the house, and there's blood outside the house. And as far, and I want to be so careful with this, because on my podcast, I said it over and over. Watch yourself, this is the language that's used. Son-in-law may be prime suspect now.

Meaning, that's where the focus is going. This is where they're thinking. But is he, is he going to be named? Is he going to be released? Is he going to be arrested? He did not go that far. But he said, without question, when he towed the daughter's car, impounded it, put it in evidence, son-in-law may be prime suspect now.

And that's the language. Did he say anything about, do we know if this man has a criminal history or anything about, you know, why? Was there any color as to why? No, the only color I surmise is because they've gone to the point where they've towed the vehicle of somebody very prominent or connected to somebody very prominent in a very prominent, widely viewed case. I think you've, I'm trying to. to figure out, look, yes, you've got to get a warrant if you're going to tow it against their will. Would they have agreed? Would they have said, sure?

My God, take the car. Of course. We've nothing to happen. And they just towed it rather than having the integrity of it messed up with someone driving it. You know? Yes, I guess. I mean, that is certainly what you would do. But it's been impounded too.

Into evidence. That's different. Yeah. It's not great. Okay. Last question, Ashley. The sheriff, Chris Nanos, the one that we've been discussing, actually issued a statement, apparently, in response to your news,

that reads as follows. At this point, investigators have not identified a suspect or person of interest in this case. Detectives continue to speak with anyone who may have had contact with Mrs. Guthrie. Detectives are working closely with the Guthrie family. While we appreciate the public's concern, the sharing of unverified accusations or false information is irresponsible and does not assist the investigation. No suspect or person of interest has been identified at this time, which is not exactly a denial of what you reported, but seems aimed at you. Your thoughts on it? I've had it happen a million times, and they don't want to release that publicly at this point. They're not naming him publicly at this point. That's how I look at that. Listen, I said very carefully, may be prime suspect at this point. I did not say they've got their suspect at this time. That's not what my source said. The source says that he may be the prime suspect at this time.

And I understand that. I understand that they're doing their work and they want to probably keep them talking. You know how it works. The minute somebody stops talking and they get a lawyer, it's harder. The work is a little bit harder. But it is odd as well, and I know you probably picked up on this. The answer to the question is there a danger to the community? I remember that with Coburger.

No, nothing out there, nothing to see here. Well, yes, there was. A maniacal random murderer who slaughtered four children using a knife, K-bar knife, was out there for over five, six weeks. And so to say we don't get, this is how the answer was from the Pima County Sheriff's Office. To say that we don't have somebody out there, you know, kidnapping 84-year-old ladies every day. And we don't believe that that's happening. We don't think there's a sort of serial event happening. But, you know, we want to figure out what's going on.

That was an odd answer as well. I would have thought we have no idea who did this, and this is terrible. So yes, whoever it is is out there. And until and unless we can figure out if it's targeted, I would say, lock your doors. But there wasn't even a warning to anybody. Lock your doors, you know? Have you spoken to your source since the sheriff issued that statement? Yes, I have.

And I got an interesting response, and that was everybody's clamming up. They're really worried about getting, you know, reverb from the sheriff. But no wiggling from this source. No, nothing changed. Nothing changed. And again, there's a lot of law enforcement communities down there right now. There's Border Patrol. There's FBI.

There's, of course, Pima County. And probably neighboring counties have been alerted. Right? So there are a lot of, there are a lot of people who have their hands in this pot. My source is one of the highest. Okay. Very good. Thank you. Not a kid. Not a young guy. Not a not a gunslinger. Not somebody who's dipping in, dipping out of the office. Not someone in the administration, you know, administrative aspects of the offices that are, that are involved with somebody who's actually very high. Been around the block. All right. Well, as always, Ashley, you are ahead of everyone else on this crime story.

your great reporting. I watched the interview the other night. Even before you had this exclusive, I thought you asked such good questions and I learned a lot. So thank you. Well, we learned from the best. You're a good colleague of mine and I watch you all the time and you know how much I admire you. Oh, right back at you, sister. We'll talk soon. Cheers. Okay, we're going to pause for a second. We're going to bring in James Fitzgerald. He's an FBI, former FBI profiler. He was on with us yesterday for reaction to this breaking news. That's next. Ever been in a bad relationship? You know, the kind of just wears you down, you settle in, even though deep down you know this is not how it's supposed to be, well, that's what daily aches and

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offer. Don't feel like ordering online. Masa is now available nationwide at your local Sprouts supermarket. Stop by and pick up a couple of bags before they're gone. Hey everyone, it's me, Megan Kelly. I've got some exciting news. I now have my very own on SiriusXM. It's called the Megan Kelly Channel, and it is where you will hear the truth, unfiltered, with no agenda, and no apologies. Along with the Megan Kelly show, you're going to hear from people like Mark Halprin, Link Lauren, Maureen Callahan, Emily Dushinsky, Jesse Kelly, real clear politics, and many more. It's bold, no BS news, only on the Megan Kelly channel, SiriusXM 11, and on the SiriusXM app. Welcome back to the Megan Kelly show. We're joined now by James Fitzgerald.

He's former FBI profiler. He's worked on several huge cases for the FBI. He joined us yesterday in a riveting exchange as well. Jim, a lot has happened in the past 24 hours since we last spoke, so we wanted to get your reaction to all of it. Let's just start with the biggest piece. Ashley Banfield reporting exclusively, based on what she describes as a source high up in law enforcement,

someone who's been around the block, who says that the brother-in-law of Savannah Guthrie, whose name is Tomaso Sione is quote may be the prime suspect and with respect to Mr. Cioni we have not had any interaction with him we have I'm assuming that he denies this vehemently

we haven't heard from the family at all and he's not been expressly accused as being the suspect but maybe this the prime suspect was the wording that Ashley Bannfield's law enforcement source gave her and on top of that law enforcement sources told Ashley Banfield that police have now towed and impounded the vehicle belonging to his wife, Annie Guthrie, who is Savannah's sister and the missing woman,

Nancy Guthrie's daughter. Batchfield went on to report that there was some connection to Annie Guthrie's car and to the son-in-law. So that's, again, take it for what it's worth, because it's one reporter with one law enforcement source, unconfirmed and unresponded to by the actual target of the report. The sheriff's office has come out, just to reiterate to the audience, and tried to dismiss the report somewhat. It wasn't expressed denial, but they did say there is no suspect or person of interest who's been identified at this time.

Yeah, that's it. We have not identified a suspect or a person of interest. We continue to speak with anyone who may have had contact with Ms. Guthrie, and we're working daily. We appreciate public's concern, but sharing of unverifference. accusations or false information is irresponsible. It does not explicitly deny that they've, that they're looking at the son-in-law or that they towed and impounded Annie Guthrie's car. So your reaction to all that. Okay. A lot there and a lot. I listened to your interview

with Ashley, very informative. When we started yesterday talking, you and I, victimology was the first term I mentioned. And in victimology, we said family, friends, then we broke it down to, you know, repairmen and visitors at a house, whatever. And family always has to go first and actually brought it up to concentric circles. You know, 80 to 85 percent of murders are committed by someone who knows the victim. How well they know them, you know, in passing tangentially, or actually, you know, a close, you know, very specific close family member. So it's nothing unusual about family members being looked into in this sort of investigation. impounding a car, either through consent of the owner or certainly with a search warrant,

which covers them more legally down the line. Those would ever go to trial or pretrial motions, whatever, you know, makes the most sense there. So they must have had probable cause for something to bring in this car and consider this person. If they did it be a warrant. She's not sure whether he just gave it over. Sure. Which they would sign the consent forms. I've done that hundreds of times in my law enforcement career.

People, if they have nothing to hide, or even if they do sometimes, they would still sign the property over whatever it is. So in a consent form. So that happens all the time. And I'm a linguist, too. We can talk about that a little bit later with maybe these alleged ransom letters. Yeah, we definitely want to get to that. Interesting qualifier that this word may, may be a prime suspect. And I get it. The source, whoever it is, is sort of covering their tracks in that regard. because maybe they're very close, but not that close, that they have more information than that. But again, quite frankly, looking at an immediate family member would not be that unusual.

Now, why they were perhaps interviewing one or more family members, the sister, the brother-in-law, perhaps they were also running cell phone tower checks, and they see some activity late, you know, two in the morning, Sunday morning. So let me ask you that. Part of the probable cause. Exactly. This is where I want to go with it because forget Ashley's report for a second.

If you're a law enforcement out there and you know that it was Annie, I think it was Annie Guthrie, and I don't know whether the husband was with her or not, but I think it was Annie Guthrie that brought the mom back from playing Majong. We were also told that it was a church event, so I'm assuming it was Majong at the church on Saturday night at 945, hence the interest in her car potentially. but you would, of course, even though you assume a loving relationship between a mother and a daughter, that's not how cops work. They actually don't assume loving relationships with anybody. Everybody's on the table until they're not on the table. So they would have.

Wouldn't they, as a matter of due course, Jim, have done a search on her phone and where it was all night long and on her husband's phone and where it was all night long? And Megan, besides that, she's the last person ostensibly that saw her alive, certainly on the record. So it makes every sense and every common sense from an investigative perspective to look at that phone. And then while they're looking at her phone, you know, look at the husband's phone too, meaning Savannah's brother-in-law. And that makes perfect sense. And maybe something came up investigatively, calls, you know, incoming, outgoing, maybe text messages,

but if nothing else, just the pings on the local towers that said, hey, you know, this car was here. And if the mother was dropped off at 9, 10, even 11 o'clock at night, It seems like everyone's sort of signing into the fact that whatever bad happened to her was around 2 a.m. give or take. So that's when the pinging would have to start again. Maybe very normal for the daughter, Annie's car to show up there at, again, 9, 10 o'clock when mom's being dropped off. But if then goes back at 2 o'clock in the morning, that's when questions have to be asked. And the phone may not even indicate, well, it probably wouldn't indicate what car is being used. Who knows how many cars Annie and her husband have.

And it's interesting, we only hear one car being taken by the search warrant and impounded, and not multiple. And there's no indications that the home was searched. So perhaps the police is going one step at a time, stick with the obvious thing. Maybe they know the car was the one that dropped her off, or that's the one that was out at 2 a.m. And that's why they're looking to search it for. Little graphic here, but, you know, obviously blood, tissue, anything that could be found. and connected to Mrs. Guthrie.

Of course, they would say to everyone who had had interactions with Nancy within the hours leading up to her disappearance, you tell me, but I think as soon as they sat down with Annie and Tomaso the next day, they would have said, can we have your phones? Wouldn't they, Jim? I mean, isn't that standard, of course?

Can we have your phones? Like, just to rule you out? Well, two things, yeah, for exclusionary purposes, of course, asked for the phones. But I hope when the early interviews were done, and you don't know yet, but I hope they separated husband and wife and did separate interviews, and that way you could find out any kind of conflicting stories there. We don't know.

I mean, everyone was probably crying, upset. The police go in there, and who knows they may just interviewed people on a couch, and Annie and her husband were there at the same time. I'm hoping at some point we have separate interviews, and they can actually break down and really get into the weeds about who was where, when. And, of course, that is if they haven't lawyered up yet. If it's true, as Ashley's one law enforcement sources told her that they have now towed and impounded Annie's vehicle, what does that tell you?

Okay, so let's assume they didn't get a warrant. Let's assume they just asked Annie if they could take her car and they took it and they impounded it. What does that tell us? Well, the word impounding doesn't really mean anything from a legal perspective. I mean, you could argue it could, but just if it's consensually agreed to, they could just take it to the parking lot of the police or the sheriff's department and they have their evidence response team go through it. They probably would bring in the FBI and those who do this stuff all the time. And of course, they're vacuuming. They're taking any kind of liquid samples, whatever they may be. And they may have a cadaver dog. We talked about that a little bit yesterday, Megan. They're doing all kinds of forensic searches. They have, you know, material they spray. They have, you know, laser lights and all this stuff to look for, we'll just say, remnants of someone being in there, you know, most likely against their will.

I'm thinking in the trunk or the backseat, not just riding in the passenger seat. The mother may have very well been in that car. So her DNA in that car in and of itself touched DNA. I think we know she was in. Of course, yes. When Annie dropped her off. Now that would be the front seat or maybe the back seat. Was she in the trunk?

Was she in some other part of the SUV? I don't even know what kind of car it is. That you wouldn't have an 84-year-old person riding in. And that's what they'd be looking for some of this very specific forensic material. Well, of course, we know that she was bleeding. We know that from the blood spatter. But before I get to that, is there any reason, if they didn't suspect Annie or her, her husband, I haven't heard that they suspect any.

If they didn't suspect her spouse, Tomaso, is there any reason they would take that car? Like, why would they take that car, Jim? I'm trying to find like a benign explanation for why they would, again, reportedly, according to one law enforcement source, take their car. And it wasn't denied in that sheriff's statement.

Investigatively, they're trying to cover every possible lead, every possible potential they can. And they certainly want to make sure it's not damaged or somehow, you know, cleaned out or something else done with the car. that could cover up evidence. So someone came up with the idea. And again, I'm listening to the denials that you related from the sheriff's spokesperson and that, you know, no prime suspect, no one is a person of interest. But they felt let's cover all our tracks here. Let's get the only

car that we knew, at least that Saturday night, you know, before midnight that the mother was in. Let's go in there and see if perhaps any of those forensic materials there. So on the grand scheme of things, Megan, I don't think it's all that unusual that this car would be taken. I don't want to jump the gun here and right away point the finger at Tomaso. You know, we've been all been down the path before of cases like this and well, this guy looks really good, but you know, it turned out not to be that person. So, you know, I'll respect Ashley's source. I've never a big fan of sources. I was never one while in the FBI, but that's another story. So, and I know they got, I'm familiar with cases I worked, including the anthrax case, where an high-up source got things really wrong.

And that didn't actually help the case when Chief Moose was not supposed to release the information from the tarot card. That's a piece of history there for your listeners. So the source information is not always correct. But assuming that he's onto something there or she through Ashley, it's not that unusual to take the closest people to a missing victim or a murder victim and just search out everything about them. And that way you can safely say you've ruled them out. And Megan, you're an attorney. I can see the investigator, the detective in court two years from now.

Well, did you ever even consider searching the car of the brother-in-law and then the sister? And they say, no, they didn't. Well, in front of a jury, that can create a whole sort of exculpatory sort of situation. So they're covering all their tracks here. They may have 100% grounds for doing this, or it may also be, of an exclusionary thing, let's get it out there. Exactly. So maybe, so it's possible they just took that car to say we tracked down every lead and it's possible this guy, this law enforcement officer, as you point out, we don't know if it's a

guy or gal, saying the brother may be, the brother-in-law may be the prime suspect, could just be him speculating this is on the opposite side of the ledger. We should do both because we have no idea whether this is going to bear out or not and we don't want to wrongly condemn this man. Nor does Ashley Banfield, by the way, but she's a very solid reporter. So we're following. following the investigation step by step. I'll just end this part or I'll go on as long as you want, but I would actually say at this point, the investigators would be remiss if they did not take that car

and do a thorough search of it. Turn it back and say, hey, you found nothing in there and go from there. That doesn't mean they won't find anything. I don't know. You and I are on the outside. So it's actually technically, oh, she's talking to someone on the inside. So we don't know, but I feel that's a very logical

investigative step for them to take, including the phones, as you said earlier, and say, folks, this is very routine. you have no problem with this, right? There's some other cases. I know the John Bonae Ramsey case, their parents fought tooth and nail, and we don't have to get into all that,

but there are some parents or some family members that don't want to give up information or they fight it for months, interviews, things like that, and you wonder why. Well, this would have been so strange. I mean, I just can't imagine

that Annie and Tommaso would have said anything other than, please take our phones and look at them, even if there were something to hide in this, you know, whatever scenario. Because they called the cops at noon on Sunday. She had only been, they'd only been alerted at 1110 that she hadn't shown up at mass. So the sheriff has been pointing out they took about an hour to look for her themselves.

They were worried. They realized, like, this is very strange. She's not where she's supposed to be. She's not in her home. But my point is, like, the sheriff then shows up at noon. And, you know, at some point during the day when they realized they actually had a missing person, he might have said to them, can I see your phones? He might not have.

He might have just been treating them as just complete victims. But it would have been so bizarre if he said, hey, can I see your phones just because you were last with her? So bizarre at that point for somebody to be like, no, you can't. Like, I feel like they would have been handling the whole investigation differently if somebody had said that. So, okay, let's just keep going, because that's all a discussion about what we don't know

and what it might mean, which is not that helpful. But we do know that we've now seen blood out in front of the house it is true that the nest camera is gone from the front of the house. Ashley's reporting that there was one there and then there was one behind the house and that they were destroyed. So what did you glean from the blood evidence in the front? I mean, obviously, Mrs. Guthrie didn't go of her own accord. I mean, that's very simple to stay there.

We kind of discussed that yesterday. And that is clear a blood spatter to some degree. it looks like it's falling from a gravity perspective straight down. I don't see the brush stroke, so to speak, going off in different directions. I didn't really look at that closely. So it looks like someone's being carried out or at least supported under their arms because we know this woman can't walk all that far on her own. And if someone punched her in the nose, punched her in the mouth,

of course she's going to need help walking or she has to be carried. So somehow the blood from a gravity perspective is flowing downward. who knows how the body was repositioned in some way, shape, or form. Was it was a cover, you know, did the person have a, you know, whatever, paper towels, whatever, put it over mouth or nose to make sure the blood hopefully wouldn't get in the car. They probably didn't care about it on the street or the driveway, whatever that is, the pavement, but they probably didn't want it in the car. Now, the odds are it still wound up there anyway. There's going to be trace evidence. If that, if Mrs. Guthrie was put in the car, there's going to be trace evidence of her. certainly what she was wearing, et cetera.

So without seeing more of a longitudinal from inside the house to outside the exact length and breadth of the blood droppings, I'm not sure what else to make, although the body just could have been repositioned where the blood came down more on top of Mrs. Guthrie, whatever she's wearing, and for the moments from wherever it stopped at the front door into the car, we have an absence of it. And it could be a very logical explanation, having to do with physics and gravity. Yeah, you raise a good point about how it's blood droplets. There's not a smearing of it.

And there's a significant amount, but I don't, it could be from like a nosebleed. That to me didn't look like somebody had been, you know, shot in the femoral artery, right? It wasn't that level of blood. No, and it doesn't look like arterial bleeding as you just intimated there. But, you know, someone had to slap this, and I hate to, you know, get this graphic. but, you know, probably to control her, she may have started yelling, screaming, who knows? We discussed yesterday, did someone ring the bell, knock on the door, did they have a key to the door? This brings in the family situation.

We can't roll anything out at this point. You know, is it that stranger? Is it a stranger that she kind of knew that knocked on the door and recognized, oh, can you help me? And they let her in. And then, you know, she's cold cocked by somehow hiding, someone be hiding, you know, behind the door jam, whatever. So it's a, there's still a lot of scenarios to look at here. but the blood itself, I'm not going to put any high level of sophistication that the, you know, special bandages were used to stop it. It could have just very well been, let's just pick the person up and put in the car.

And you raised the point early on with Ashley, and I think both of you agreed on it. And if this was a stranger and somehow she was killed, just leave the body there. There's no reason to take the body, especially now that there's been no kidnapping demand, certainly of which we're. we are aware. But if somebody knew the person, that's a whole different set of criminal activity. There's then staging involved. And stage does that be real sophisticated where you pull out drawers and you take some jewelry to make it look like it was a burglary of some sort. It could simply be just removing the body or the person. And that could be the sort. So if you're if you know the person, and again, we're now talking that it's not a kidnapping for ransom, if you know the person

and you think you could be a logical suspect, you do a lot of things different when you commit a crime to avoid being named in that suspect for. It's just so strange that she was removed. I mean, if this isn't a kidnapping for money, why was she removed? Like, we talked about yesterday, maybe it was a kidnapping for money all along,

but she passed once she was kidnapped because she's an old woman and she isn't in great health. But either way, you were pointing out they could still try a ransom demand, and that does not appear, to have happened so far, which I'm going to get to those ransom notes in one second, but I'm still on the house.

Ashley's also reporting that there were two nest, not ring cameras. We saw one, used to be at the front door, and her reporting is at the second one. I think she believed it the second was at the back door, and that the back door was open. She reported that as well from her law enforcement source. So it is interesting that the two cameras, her reporting is that they were destroyed, and then we believe, though it hasn't been confirmed, that then law enforcement took them. So is that a sophisticated thing or no?

And what does it tell you? Like, I would imagine, if I'm going to break into a house, I don't know, I'd probably only worrying about the Ness camera that's on the door that I'm using. I mean, it's kind of interesting that they're both allegedly destroyed on front and back. You know, I like throwing in quasi-historical elements sometimes when I'm looking at these cases

and when I was a young police officer, their FBI hindberries, the betterers do to unscrew the lock on top of the door, you know, the front door. Wait, can you repeat that, Jim? I miss that. Sure. As a young police officer and then FBI handling burglary cases, big ones, little ones, sometimes the bad guy would go up and unscrew the light on top of the front door. And that just gives them privacy. They may do it the night before or sometime during the day, then come back. So that's not what happened here, but it shows that someone's thinking a little bit in advance.

But I didn't use the word yesterday, but I truly believe that the term that this person was mission-oriented. They went there with a purpose. And they knew enough, you didn't have to unscrew the light bulb, like I said, before all these cameras were out there. But they knew enough to take one or both cameras. Perhaps they did both cameras first because they weren't sure how they would get in, ingress and how they would get out, egress. So they wanted to cover, you know, both angles, so to speak, and just take out both cameras and smash them. I'm not sure why the police wouldn't say, either they have the cameras or they don't have the cameras, but, you know, smashed or not, but whatever, that they're not admitting to that. So perhaps it's evidence they know they can find one of the person, although you think there'd be no reason for them to keep the cameras if they took them with them, meaning the kidnapper, the abductor.

So again, a little bit of sophistication I'll give to this team, person or team, but I won't put them in some sort of, you know, ultra level of criminal mastermind. They knew to smash a camera, maybe take it and do whatever with it. In the old days, they would have unscrewed the light bulb on top of one or two doors leading into the place. So, yeah, why not do it? And again, it's just one extra step you can take. as a criminal to hopefully prevent something bad from happening. Let me add this, Megan. I learned this years ago.

When people are arrested early or it could be two or three before they get arrested, they do some time, they realize they made one mistake. And whatever that mistake was, they will not repeat again. So you have to ask yourself, and I know we talked about family members, maybe not long-term criminals with lengthy rap sheets. But even someone else, perhaps they got caught before, or they did prison time with someone who got caught before with the use of a door camera, a security camera.

And the first thing they learned is just take that thing out. In the old days, they would leave DNA behind. They got caught with that, and they made sure to protect themselves, like on a rape scene. Or left fingerprints, they know to wear gloves. They got an eyewitness ID, So they wear masks after that. And we would talk to these guys and we eventually arrest them, or even as a profile,

we go back into prison and interview them years later after the conviction. And they would, you know, tell us, yeah, my buddy got caught for that. And I swear I would never do a crime and make that mistake. So is what I know from being a member of the press for a while is there is such a thing as the stupid criminal files. And I wouldn't be surprised at all if it turned out there was actual video of whoever did this walking up to the camera, unmasked, undisguised, and slamming it.

Like, we have seen what seemed like sophisticated criminals make the stupidest mistakes leading up to the crime or in the aftermath of the crime. And I'm really hoping that was the case here. Like some idiot didn't realize that would be on tape and that it could be retrieved. You know, we just don't know. Fingers crossed. But let's keep going because I do want to talk about the ransom notes with you. Ashley, you heard she didn't think much of it.

It doesn't sound like anybody she's talked to, thought much of it, at least three different media outlets, TMZ, and CNN Tucson affiliates, K-O-L-D, and K-G-U-N, that's three, have reported that they received ransom notes earlier this week. It is interesting that two of them are in Tucson, and then the third is TMZ. The outlets say the notes describe specific evidence in Nancy Guthrie's home, where authorities say she lived alone and was last see Saturday night. They said, we received a no referencing Guthrie. It makes a specific demand for several million dollars in Bitcoin. This is KGUN by Thursday, meaning tomorrow, and threatens to kill her if payments not received by Monday. Okay, I don't know.

It's like a payment plan Thursday to Monday. It also makes specific reference to two pieces of evidence at the crime scene, which we cannot authenticate as legitimate. We forwarded the full contents of the note to investigators. and the authorities, and then the sheriff put out a statement saying that they, they're looking into all of this, all this stuff goes directly to our detectives. Okay, your thoughts on the ransom notes? Yeah, along with being a profile, I'm a profiler. I'm also a forensic linguist. I was a guy that used language in the Unabom case to, you know, positively identify Ted Kaczynski

and go from there, and that's where I've been working a lot in that field ever since then. So these notes will be very interesting to me or any forensic linguist. Of course, a linguist is one who studies language, forensic you do it within the confines of the criminal justice system. So I'd be very interested to see these. A few things about these notes or whatever they are, emails. I'm not sure they came through the U.S. mail, posted somewhere, dropped off somewhere. I think TMZ got it via email. Okay.

Obviously, there's all kinds of computer work they can do, and the FBI has a team that they can trace everything where it goes back to. were originated, hopefully. There are anonymizers that some people use it. You can't get through to the origin, the actual origin, the email. But I would love to look at the language of it itself. And I would like to see, if the language is similar, then the, we'll say the kidnappers, sent them to the same multiple sources just to make sure someone got it and they saw it. If it's different language usages, I don't mean, they'd be English, no doubt.

But if they're different content, different stylistic features, then we know one of them is fake, or at least two of them, and the other one is similar. Or it could be conceivably the real deal. So we would see if people are just on their own doing this. And the Daniel Pearl case, I was asked to, there was one email that came in with his pictures. Of course, he was the Wall Street Journal journalist in Pakistan in 2002 with the pictures of the gun to his head and all. And that was published in the media, that email, that sort of, abduction email and I was the one asked to rule out all these copycat emails. There were dozens of them and we could and said the only authentic one is the one with Daniel Pearl's pictures hooked to them.

So I've done that in other cases too. So a bureau or someone hopefully has a forensic linguist looking at these documents, first of all to compare them to themselves and see if they're written by the same person. Then secondly, the information contained therein, how authentic is it? Are they accurately describing the inside of the home? Are they accurately describing perhaps what Mrs. Guthrie was wearing? And these are all factors that would then serve to authenticate the letters themselves. But you just don't know in this particular case how often these letters are legitimate because it's such a high-profile case. How are they going to figure that out, Jim?

I know Bitcoin is a red flag, but that's what else would the kidnapper ask for? Bitcoin actually can't be traced. It's as good as anything else. I mean, if I were going to kidnap somebody, I suppose I'd consider a Bitcoin payment because truly it's like once you, we've done series on fraud, and it's often the method of choice because once you put like 10 grand into that Bitcoin machine, it's gone forever and it's not traceable. So I kind of, I don't know, a fraudster writing a fake note could be asking for Bitcoin, and the real kidnapper could also be asking for Bitcoin. So how do they figure out whether this is real? Well, first of all, they'd want to ask for proof of life. I think we discussed that yesterday, send some kind of a picture, a video that

hopefully can be determined not to be AI. And I would suggest no one in the family, I can't tell them what to do, but you would need some proof that she is alive. And of course, the kidnappers, and again, we're going down this kidnapping route. If, in fact, that's the case, we can, you would want to kind of make sure you work it out that way. That she is in fact still alive if the family's going to put the money out there. They can play hardball and say no, just give us the money and we'll let her go. So that's where that whole strategy you could do like a Q&A, Jim. I mean, you could ask like questions only Nancy could answer, you know,

like we talked yesterday about the old like holding up the newspaper, but there's other ways of making sure they have her without actually requiring that. Yes. The other thing is the FBI doesn't put money up. It would have to be the family that does it. We're going to assume Savannah has the means to put up some money or the family somewhere does, if need be. That's interesting. I won't go any further than that. That actually reminds me. The reward that they said they're posting right now is $2,500, which what's that about? Obviously, I'm sure Savannah would give any amount of money if she actually believed it would lead to the return of Nancy.

So there must be a reason why she's not saying it's a $5 million reward. That is odd too. I mean, that amount is so low. I just helped post a reward for a 30-year-old homicide of a friend of mine. And it was substantially more than that. But so, yeah, I think if a reward ever comes into play here, they are going to, in fact, up that amount and take it from there. But the police who are investigating this, the FBI are going to be giving guidance in that regard. I wonder, there must be some reason they told her not to do it yet, because there's no question she has it. and would post it if she thought it were going to crack open this case. But back to the ransom notes. So they, proof of life, is that basically it? Like, you look for that. And then I guess you track down the provenance of the communications, if you can,

and see if that looks like anybody who's legitimate. I mean, it kind of sounds like it's, well, I don't know. I mean, I was going to say maybe it's somebody in Tucson, but really we just know that two Tucson news outlets were targeted, along with TMZ, which that's got to tell us something. I don't know what. And you have to ask, you know, why wasn't a note of some sort? It could be very carefully written without fingerprints or DNA,

why that wasn't left at the crime scene itself and why it took 48, maybe even 72 hours for any kind of a note to show up and then to news outlets, which has happened before, but it's just, it's just highly unusual and other kidnapping of which I am aware. Now that I think about it, because you and I have talked about your work on the Unabomber case many times, you know, Ted Kaczynski, he wrote to the media. Like, at some level, we talked about did he want to get caught? Was he mad that all these dopes in the media couldn't figure out it was him? Like, could that be what's happening here?

That this really is the kidnapper and that we're dismissing it too quickly. Yeah, but of course, Kaczynski, well, he had his own psychological issues, which I've discussed in my most recent book and other things. But, you know, he wasn't in it for money. He was dealing with the media. His ransom demand, so to speak, was the New York Times publishing his article, which everyone else called manifesto. And that's what he wanted in that regard. And of course, his letters were mailed back from the San Francisco Bay Area. We could trace it there.

So, yeah, I'm not here without looking at these letters. I can't say they're legit or not. They're probably not all legit if they're differently, different styles to them or came in from different addresses, but one of them mixed in there may be. and you would hope that there be some kind of a code or some kind of a singular aspect to it that if the law enforcement does have it, they know that this is the real person and this is not some copycat.

And that, of course, would never be released. And I'm also a fan of that we do have, if it's a few, even a few hundred words of this demand, I'm a big fan of putting it out there. They can leave some signature stuff off, but put it out there for anyone who may recognize. Maybe it's a non-native English speaker, A forensic linguist could tell that.

Male, female writing styles, forensic linguists can do that. I'm asking this all the time in my private business with threatening type things and harassing type things. So I'm hoping they do bring someone on board to look at these and determine their provenance. They may be legit. They may be bogus.

They're not all going to be legit. One's going to be legit unless they're identical communication sent to these different outfits. Yeah, it could be one, especially, I don't know, it could be one guy just trying to get as much coverage of his. demands as possible sent the same thing. And there are wacky people out there. That's another thing we discussed in your Unabomber coverage is that, or investigation, is that it wound up being a good thing that his manifesto or letter, his article was published because it was his brother who saw it and eventually said, that writing looks kind of familiar. This sounds like my brother, Ted.

So, yeah, you're right. There's an argument in favor of making these ransom notes public and letting us all see what the person is demanding. And by the way, I don't know. To me, it seems odd because if I really had Nancy Guthrie and I wanted millions of dollars in Bitcoin, I think I'd include a picture of her in my note or something that was just absolutely bulletproof that I had or some sort of fact that she would only reveal to me. So this does sound like BS to me, but, I mean, we'll see. Let me ask you this. So now we're on day four, if she was stolen technically in the wee hours of Sunday, which would be day one.

This would be day four. What is your prognosis for this investigation right now? As an investigator, when I work these types of crimes, I always work them with the assumption that the person is still alive. And, I mean, it could be a potential kidnapping scenario. It could be an abduction. It could just be a kid that walked away or a teenager who ran away. Other parts of the investigative team can go on the fact that she's probably dead.

Let's turn over every rock, sometimes literally, that we have to. like to look at these is if it's still a search and rescue mission and in an attempt to determine where she is. And I would be very careful if I was the one doing the public speaking, which I've done in the past in certain cases, where if I'm advising the people going in front of the cameras, to be careful what they say. And I think that's, I think, I think Savannah has probably been advised right now, let's not say anything. We'll determine, you know, the prayers are fine. the post she put out there. But other than that, she's not putting anything out public.

She's probably being advised not to do that. And that's a smart thing. So when the time is right, they will know what to say and how to say it. But I'm going to assume that she's, I would work this case as that she's still alive. And we're trying to get her back. Because you put the negative feelings out there as the spokesperson, or this negative, you know, connotation that she may be dead. then it could become a self-fulfilling prophecy by the bad guys. I said, well, I think she's dead anyway.

So let's just, you know, so let's hope she's alive. Let's hope we keep talking. Let's hope we keep humanizing her. She's an older woman. She needs her meds. She's a loving mother, et cetera. Grandmother, let's get this person back safely. The other two things I forgot to mention are yesterday, Brian Enten and other reporters

on scene at the house saw a local sheriff's house. a helicopter come over the property and that it lingered there. They said for about just over 30 minutes. That's kind of interesting, Jim. I mean, they had searched the area extensively Sunday and Monday. So I don't know what that means. Maybe they thought they'd get an aerial view, though they had fixed-wing aircraft and they had helicopters out there as well on Sunday.

It's kind of odd that it returned to the scene. And the second thing I wanted to mention is kind of strange that the police turned back over the house to the family leaving the blood evidence there. That's how we've seen it because Brian Enton, a great reporter for News Nation, actually did what few others did. He went up to the front door and saw what was there, what was there to report. And sure enough, found a lot. And now, reportedly, they do have a cop or a security person stationed there to keep reporters and looky-lose away. But what do you make of that helicopter and or the fact that they didn't clean up the blood evidence before they turned the house back over to the family? Yeah, two things there.

I mean, it could be another investigative team came in and they said, hey, look, can you take us up? I've done a case out in Oklahoma or wherever. And there's some things about the terrain. Maybe you can help me. They could put a drone up there too and take aerial photos, but maybe they just felt seeing it in real time sort of in person. So there could be a lot of reasons what the helicopter was up there and hovering for, you know, 30 minutes or so. I'm not sure what to make into that, make of that. But as far as giving the house back, I suppose they feel the law enforcement feels they got the evidence out of there.

They can. They've done all the forensic sweeps. And I'm hoping, I mean, I sort of laughed, but I don't mean it in a funny way. I'm assuming every square inch of that house has been searched. I'll never forget the Ramsey case. The little girl was down in the sub-basement for six hours after the parents called. And so I'm assuming every square inch, the pool house, you know, wherever they keep the filter and the chlorinator for the pool, all those things have been searched. I know we have blood out front, but nonetheless, which looks like an egress of Mrs. Guthrie.

So, I mean, you reach a certain point and the family just want to say, hey, can we have our house back? And as long as all the evidence has been taken out of their forensic evidence, it's time. If they had it for 48 hours or so. They don't do clean up. Yeah. They don't get it up. And they don't do that either. There's companies that do that. Wow. All right. Well, I'm sure we'll have more developments, Jim. We'll probably be needing to talk to you again soon. Thank you so much for sharing all your expertise and your time with us.

You're welcome, Megan. You have a nice day. You too. Wow, what a day. What a couple of, what a shift, right, to go from J.D. Vance to the Guthrie case and such. but we care about it. We care what happens. We're obviously praying for Nancy Guthrie and for the whole family, and it seems like they might be getting closer now, praying that they're getting closer.

So we'll talk more about it. We'll certainly talk more about J.D. as well. Tomorrow, I'll say my one observation that I wanted to share with you before we go, I'll try to raise this tomorrow, too, if I remember, is just how different he is. He'll talk about anything. Nothing's off limits. Like he went from subject to subject with ease.

think of our last vice president and how stilted she was on everything. It was like her weird transgressions into Venn diagrams and burdens and stuff. Like this guy was like, boom, boom, boom, he could make fun of himself, he could get serious, he could talk in-depth on policy, he could, you know, be funny about Don Lemon and so on. It's just these, I'm not even sure these, These two are like the same species. She's like an alien being who doesn't totally understand the English language. I miss her. I'm not going to lie.

I kind of hope she gets the nomination and that we get to see those two debate. But in any event, what a difference. And looking forward to your thoughts on all of today's program. You know, you can email me Megan at Megan Kelly.com. Thank you for listening. Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly Show. No BS. No agenda.

and no fear.