The Megyn Kelly Show - Zucker's Seismic CNN Exit, Whoopi's Suspension, and Canada's Freedom-Loving Truckers, with Rich Lowry, Melissa Cronin, Stu Burguiere, and Ezra Levant | Ep. 253

Episode Date: February 2, 2022

Major breaking news today! Megyn Kelly is joined by Rich Lowry, editor of "National Review," Melissa Cronin, reporter for Radar Online, Stu Burguiere, host of "Stu Does America," and Ezra Levant, founder of "Rebel News," on the breaking news that Jeff Zucker is leaving CNN, how his affair with another CNN executive became an open secret, how Chris Cuomo is connected to the situation, the credibility crisis the network faces, the vindictiveness of the Cuomo family, Whoopi Goldberg suspended by ABC for her Holocaust comments, attempts to fire Ilya Shapiro from Georgetown Law School, the coddling of Georgetown law students, Biden's failure to return to COVID normality, Dr. Fauci's poor performance in the media, latest terrible Biden polling, Canada's truckers protesting over freedom and vaccine mandates, Trudeau and media response to the Trucker protest, and more.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Major breaking news just a short time ago. The media world rocked as Jeff Zucker, the president of CNN, just resigned for, according to his statement, failing to disclose that he was having an affair with another senior executive, though an underling to him, at CNN. Radar Online actually broke this story not long ago. Shockingly, no one in the media touched it after Radar broke it. And now Jeff Zucker is

officially out. Joining me now is the reporter who broke the story for Radar, Melissa Cronin. Melissa, thank you so much for being here. How are you? Good morning, Megan. I'm great. Thanks for having me. All right. So you had this. I'm just looking back, in a report dated January 4th, 2022. And why don't you bring us up to speed on what your reporting showed? Yes, today's news is a long time coming. We posted this story back in January, on January 4th, but we actually have been working on this story and reporting it out for years. We had photographic evidence supporting this story back last year when we spotted Jeff and Allison at a Billy Joel concert together. So we really put in the groundwork to make sure that we were 100% confident with this story. And in January, we decided that there was just too much evidence and the world really needed to know about this.

Just because it was an open secret in the media world didn't mean that it was okay. And of course, no one was interested in it because he runs CNN and they didn't want to tick off Jeff Zucker. They want to get on CNN. They want to be seen. And I know you reported in your piece, you were told too, he's a vindictive guy and you better be careful. Absolutely. And one thing about Radar Online that all our readers know from over the years

is that we post stories without fear or favor and we are really dedicated to pulling back the curtain and letting people know what's actually happening in media. So it didn't scare us that he is a vindictive, nasty person. If anything, that was extra incentive to really show the truth about what he was doing. Let's talk about Alison Gallest in one second, because most people don't know who she is, though they know him. I just want to tell the audience, this is what Jeff Zucker's statement says.

This is how it reads. He says, as part of the investigation into Chris Cuomo's tenure at CNN, because you remember he just fired Chris Cuomo for allegedly buddying up to his brother, Andrew Cuomo and team a little too closely during the Cuomo sex scandal investigation. He says, as part of the investigation into Chris Cuomo's tenure at CNN, I was asked about a consensual relationship with my closest colleague, someone I have worked with for more than 20 years. I acknowledged the relationship evolved in recent years. I was required to disclose it when it began, but I didn't. I was wrong.

As a result, I am resigning today. And then he goes on about how grateful he is to everybody. And he's had such a joyful time there with gratitude and love Jeff Zucker. Okay. So Alison Gallist is the woman because she's released a statement now. And I mean, of course, this is the woman you reported about. She's released a statement now as follows. Jeff and I have been close friends and professional partners for over 20 years. Recently, our relationship changed during COVID. Recently, she says. I regret that we didn't disclose it at the right time. I'm incredibly proud of my time at CNN and look forward to continuing the great work we do every day. She's not yet resigned nor done anything other than

release the statement so far as we know. Okay, so let's pick it back up with Alison Gullis. First of all, according to your reporting, is it true that it was only recently that their relationship changed during COVID from professional to personal? Absolutely not. And that word is just a classic piece of PR spin coming from someone who's a PR professional. She joined CNN back in 2013.

And Katie Couric said in her book published last year that even that time, there were questions rumbling about their relationship. So, you know, like I said, I think everyone who knows anything about this story knows that it's been happening for a lot longer than recent months. They've known each other for over 20 years because my understanding is she was, I don't know what her job was, young at CNN, I'm sorry, at NBC when he was an executive there. Yes. So she was actually just like a public relations advisor, very young, very junior, like you said.

And she rapidly raised through the ranks at NBC, joined CNN, eventually became the executive vice president and chief marketing officer. So all of our sources and people inside CNN, and even Katie in her book have said that there are so many questions about the nature of her ascent at CNN. Was it really because of her talents or was it because of her close relationship with Zucker? She became, as you say, an executive VP of the company. She reported directly to him. We've seen executives at other companies get turfed for consensual affairs with underlings. McDonald's comes to mind. There have been others, I know. He admits he should have disclosed it and didn't. But the question is, when? Because he says, I acknowledge the relationship

evolved in recent years. I was required to disclose it when it began, but I didn't. So the question is, when was that? Because if they're still misleading, they need to come clean. If he began this affair a long time ago, prior to promoting her to being an executive vice president of the company, this is going to get ugly. It's going to get ugly for him and it's going to get ugly for her and for others at CNN, because you're really not allowed to do that without disclosing that you have a personal relationship with said person. Absolutely. You said it perfectly. This is a huge mess. And we're really only seeing the beginning of what's going to become an even bigger scandal. The reality is both of them met back in 2000, before even 2010, they both divorced around the same time in 2017. In 2017, they were spotted having what appeared to be a lover spat at a very public Hollywood reporter party. In 2019, Allison threw Zucker a 54th birthday party. None of that is normal behavior for underlings and their bosses.

They need to get honest about what was really happening. And if they don't, other people are going to do it for them. So in 2017, that's when Jeff Zucker divorced his wife and she divorced her husband to Alison Gales divorced her husband. Yes. Yeah. It was just about 12 months that separated the two of them. And perhaps that was coincidence, but with everything else surrounding it as context, it's hard to believe that. Well, and I don't know whether their divorce records are sealed, but normally, you know, you would, that would be reflected in some way in the, in the divorce records. I know, I know just anecdotally that he's got a good relationship with his ex-wife. I don't know about her situation with her ex-husband. And normally we wouldn't be discussing, you know,

an affair. People have affairs, whatever, they fall in love. They fall out of love. But this has an important second layer because he was her boss. And you cannot have an affair with an underling and continue promoting them up the line over other people without making that very clear. He should have had nothing to do with overseeing her or having her report to him if, in fact, they were lovers. That's very clear. Now, you report in your piece that not only all of this, but they lived in the same apartment building. Yes.

It's hard to believe, but it's true. They lived in the same apartment building. Their apartments were actually right on top of each other. Again, was it coincidence or was it another piece of evidence showing the nature of their relationship? Well, because Jeff Zucker lived the building you're reporting on is a very high end boutique building in Manhattan that's only got multimillionaires in it. I mean, it's strange to think of. I don't know what her husband does or ex-husband now, but a PR executive of CNN could not normally afford a place in that building. It's totally laughable. And Katie Couric is actually really good friends with Jeff's ex-wife. And she wrote about this in her book as well and said that she, you know, she even raised an eyebrow

out there with quote unquote cozy arrangement in the building. It's just not normal and it's not okay. That's fascinating. I didn't know that Katie was good friends with Jeff Zucker's ex-wife, Karen, because that makes Katie's disclosures in her book even more telling. Katie wrote, this is from your reporting on your Radar Online piece, you write as follows, Katie Couric, who had Zucker not only of course is her EP at the Today Show, but later at her daytime talk show, you write, hinted at the closeness of the pair's romance, meaning Zucker and Gallist in her recent book, Going There. Quote, at a certain point, Jeff made a huge push to bring on Alison Gallist to her daytime television show, she wrote.

They were joined at the hip. The problem was we, this is Katie talking, had already hired a PR person for the show. There really wasn't a role for Allison. Couric recounted how Zucker made her meet with Gollust anyway. She wrote, quote, I had to wonder why Jeff was angling so hard to bring Allison on board. She and her husband and kids had moved into the apartment

right above Jeff and Karen's. Everyone who heard about their cozy arrangement thought it was super strange. By that point, Karen, Zucker's ex-wife, had become a close friend and it made me really uncomfortable. And then she goes on to say, you write, Couric, who refused to hire Alison Gullis, went on to lament being overlooked for a job at CNN, despite pushing behind the scenes for Zucker to get for Zucker to give her the gig. And she writes his first hire, Alison Gullis over on CNN. Oh, and I never did hear from him about that job. That I mean, it's pretty obvious she's trying to telegraph something there. I mean, you know, we can only wish that she was a little bit more explicit with what she had to say. But this is another example of this cozy media club where people like Katie Couric saw wrongdoing happening in the corridors of power, didn't say anything about it, didn't do anything about it. And, you know, it's our responsibility as journalists to call attention to these this hypocrisy you okay because there's another layer to this that we have to talk about

because you also report that prior to becoming a pr person with for cnn etc at some point uh she worked as andrew cuomo's communications director andrew cuomo's communications director when was that do you know when that was in her history i don't know about the exact year it was in the early 2000s okay early 2000s she had worked for andrew cuomo and so you're the the point that you're making in your piece is that these two zucker and gallast and gallast she's not just like some PR hack now. She's basically described as his number two person at CNN. It's Zucker and Galldoing and conflicts of interest don't happen over years and years. She was communications director for Andrew Cuomo. And that's why Zucker has resigned now as part of the investigation into Chris, because as we know, Andrew resigned in August, 2021. Chris wasn't fired until December, 2021. And what our sources inside of CNN are telling us is that, you know, the word in the hallways of power is that, um, Zucker didn't act fast enough on Chris to, um, to discipline him because of pressure from Alison. And we don't know the full story on that

yet. But the reality is there's an obvious conflict of interest there compounded by the inappropriateness of their relationship. And, you know, we're going to see in when the results of that investigation become public, exactly how that influence played out. So in other words, if Allison was still close to Andrew Cuomo and is pressuring Jeff Zucker not to do anything to Chris Cuomo, it creates, A, another ethical problem for CNN, and B, I suppose, will be used against them in Chris Cuomo's lawsuit against CNN right now, right? Because it's like, if Chris Cuomo is going to say, hey, I wasn't the only one protecting my brother. So was your executive vice president and Jeff Zucker. Yeah, that's what our sources in CNN are telling us.

And, you know, legal sources who are familiar with the investigation and, you know, Chris's plans are saying that he would be absolutely within his rights to subpoena Zucker to tell the truth about his relationship, because it's absolutely relevant to what happened to him in the last couple of months at CNN. You know, this reminds me so much of the Gretchen Carlson situation at Fox, where it's like if roger hadn't fired her and stirred that hornet's nest you know he never would have lost his job and it's a good thing that that he did you know and all that was fine of course i i i can speak to that firsthand but it's kind of like that right if jeff zucker maybe if jeff zucker hadn't fired chris cuomo and I was in favor of the firing, don't get me wrong, this hornet's nest wouldn't have been drudged up for him. It is so fascinating to see, you know, these houses of cards that people build in media of secrets and lies and people covering for each other. You know, the one piece that brings it all tumbling down is something that

you can't ever really predict. But, you know, for us, it was just... Yeah, sorry, go ahead, finish with that. Yeah. So what are you hearing about the people, like from the people inside CNN? This is an open secret there. They've known about this because usually this kind of thing comes out. I mean, I guess not always. It didn't at Fox, but have they known about this inside CNN? Absolutely. I mean, everyone, we had multiple sources inside CNN. It's been kind of the scuttlebutt and the gossip and word on the street for years there. I think as we've seen in recent years with so many media scandals, there are a lot of really unethical, sometimes horrible things that are

open secrets within the halls of power. And just because they're an open secret doesn't make it okay. People like us are always going to be, you know, have to have the courage to bring that to public and bring these people to account. You say you write in your piece about how, boy, this was prescient. Years later, the heat is on for Zucker and Gallus to fess up about their affair and how it may have created conflicts of interest at their workplace. On its website, again, quoting from your piece, CNN wrote in 2019, In today's corporate world, especially in the wake of Me Too, boards are on high alert for anything that poses a reputational or financial risk to the company. It added, being in a relationship with the boss will make others at the company suspect that favoritism is at play, and that will undercut

the employee's professional accomplishments and reputation. This is unbelievable. And then you point out the CNN story also quotes a human resources expert, Johnny C. Taylor Jr., who said, it also undermines the idea of meritocracy and the idea that everyone has a fair shot. I mean, obviously not reviewed by Jeff Zucker or Alison Gullis before it went up on their website. I mean, maybe she wrote it. Who knows. But, you know, for me, honestly, finding that piece of information was one of the pieces that really pushed it over the edge to say we have to go public with this. Because that kind of hypocrisy of talking out one side of your mouth

one set of rules for everybody else, except for the precious view at the top of the pyramid. We have to be over that in the world of media and in our world today. There can't be different rules for different people. And this was just an example of how that kind of, you know, the decision to not go public with their relationship, an unethical decision can snowball into something

that potentially could have cost a man his entire career. Melissa, my blood is boiling. My blood is boiling. Over and over and over again, we are taught about the character of the people running America's newsrooms, and it never fails to disappoint. Absolutely. And, you know, we're dedicated to continuing to expose these bad actors and, you know, justice will happen as it happens over the next couple of months, but we're starting to begin to see that accountability coming for them today. You know, this reminds me a little bit of the John Edwards thing, right? Which was broken by the national inquirer and people were like, as the National Enquirer.

Bullshit. Right. And yet. Right. And yet that was 100 percent right and wound up bringing him down. And this story was dismissed. It's like radar. It's kind of a gossip online site.

People are like and listen, it's like not not that it's everything at Prince is correct. I can speak to that one firsthand, too. But you had it. And this story was really detailed and had clearly been well-reported and I, at the time I read it, I was like, whoa. And I was amazed. Nobody, nobody picked it up. Nobody went with it until now. We see the two principles involved confirming it. Not, if not every detail, the heart of your reporting so job well done thank you megan wow joining me now with more uh stew bergier are we going to go to him now we're going to take a quick break all right we're going to go to him now he is the host of stew does america on the

blaze tv and has followed the cuomo story very closely stew your reaction to this stunning shakeup in the world of news? continually protected for so long when he did so many things that were wrong. And we don't know exactly the details of how this unwinds, but we know that, you know, Zucker is in a relationship with a former Cuomo aide and the whole house of cards stands on Chris Cuomo maintaining his job and the reporting by CNN being totally irrational when it comes to looking at Andrew Cuomo's scandals, because the second all those protection walls break down, the entire thing collapses. And, you know, information is power here. You know, I don't know where this how exactly all this comes out. But we do know that this investigation, as Zucker said, came from the Chris Cuomo investigation. They were able to unfurl this information because of them being held responsible for the actions of their own employees.

And, you know, I thought there how many people joked about it all the time. They must have dirt on Jeff Zucker. What is going on? Well, this is what was going on. It's so layered, right? The fact that she worked for him for at least part of the time. I don't know if she was still his direct report, but I know for a fact she was his direct report for a number of years in the recent past. So she worked for him. She had worked for Andrew Cuomo and may have still had some sort of a relationship with Andrew Cuomo. I have no idea, but that's something I'm sure we'll learn more about. And Chris Cuomo, of course, has a relationship with Andrew Cuomo and they're brothers. So Jeff Zucker's at the top for a long, long time protecting Chris Cuomo and allowing him.

He was the one who allowed him to put Andrew Cuomo on the air, notwithstanding what had been a very smart rule, not letting the one guy interview his brother. But he bent the rule for ratings. Let him put him on. No hard questions, even though the nursing home scandal was already unfolding. No problem. He got away with murder with murder i mean truly in those interviews and then suddenly it was like oh you helped your brother more than i knew and you're fired and it was weird it was like well wait you you knew most of what he did months ago and you didn't care. So what changed? And we talked about this on the show. One of the things that changed was ownership changed of CNN. And it fell into the hands of John

Malone, whose company also happens to own Sirius XM among other media entities. And suddenly there was less of a tolerance for the chumminess between Chris Cuomo and the governor of New York, his brother, Andrew Cuomo. So one does wonder whether that was even Jeff Zucker's decision at the very end, whether his for his hand was forced or whether he just got finally just realized, you know, there's too many ethical lines and it's going to start to make me look really bad if I keep permitting this or looking the other way and fired him knowing this dirt could come back on him at any moment. Yeah, I mean, it's an impossible position really for Zucker to be in. He knows that there's responsible ownership about to come on board. He knows that pressure is coming, even if it wasn't the exact cause for this firing. It probably would have been in the coming months anyway. And so he's sitting here knowing that if he lets go of Cuomo, there's one thing we know about every member of the Cuomo family that at least I'm familiar with, which is especially the two men at the top here that we've talked about so often, is that they are vindictive. They don't care about other people. They only care about themselves. And over and over and over again, if they have information, if they have power, they think they can use over you. They will use it without any hesitance to crush your life

if it benefits them in any way. And here we are with, I mean, imagine the feeling of Jeff Zucker. This is not the feeling, this is not the day maybe to feel empathy for Zucker, but he's sitting here in an impossible situation. He knows every ounce of credibility of his network is on the line for the way he's handled Chris Cuomo and Andrew Cuomo over the past year or two.

He knows how bad he looks. I think he wants to keep this whole house of cards together, and he's realizing he's running out of ways to do that. And once you go to this point where you let Cuomo go, where you actually try to hold him responsible in even the slightest way, there's no way that either Chris or Andrew or someone else around them is going to expose every dark secret they have over you.

No way that they're not going to, yeah. Yeah, sorry. There's no way they're not going to miss that chance because this is the game they play. It is fundamental to their character, to their core, to utilize their power, their information, anything they can to destroy their enemies. So the second you cross that line and you say, hey, Chris, we have to hold you accountable, you become an enemy and you become

on the wrong side of that arsenal. And it seems like that's what happened with Jeff Zucker today. My respect for my pal and yours, Janice Dean, is growing by the second listening to you talk. Right. This is who she took on. The weather bitch, as Chris Cuomo dubbed her. Right. I should have worn that shirt on the air today. Shit. I meant to do that. I got her a shirt for Christmas that reads weather bitch and my shirt reads I'm with weather bitch. But I saw it and I have to have i'm with weather

bitch i got him i was giving him out for free um so anyway but the point is she did take them on and jeff zucker's hand was forced he had to take them on he he really had no other choice i don't know what the reason was i don't know whether he was forced to or whether he just realized there was too much industry pressure not to. But now you're right. He's now he's unleashed hell to quote. What is it? Russell Crowe.

Russell Crowe. And, you know, what's that movie? He's in the Coliseum and he's fighting. But gladiator. Thank you. He's unleashed hell now. And I'll bet they're not done. I'll bet you anything. They're not done. You know, Chris Cuomo, Andrew Cuomo, they are loyal to one another that we know. And so this story Zucker going down. You have the head of the human rights campaign going down. You have the head of Time's Up going down, all related to this. And you know there's more. Corruption usually coalesces around other corrupt people. You make your circles with

like-minded people. And a lot of times when that starts to break up, there is a spectacular collapse around the corner. None of this, as we've discussed, would have happened without Janice Dean. The most central person, I think, in all of this unfurling is Janice. She just sat there with her one little match, but she wouldn't let anyone extinguish it. She just kept relighting, kept relighting, kept relighting. She was threatened. She was warned. She was mocked. And hopefully she'll be back to talk about it right here. Stu, thank you for coming on.

I appreciate it. Thank you so much, Megan. You know, we just happened to be joined today by Rich Lowry. He's editor at National Review. And this is where we're going to pick it up when he joins us right after the break. The disgusting, dishonest, unethical media that lectures America about their behavior. Well, America, this is who they are. This is who they are. Don't go away. We've got a full plate of breaking news today. Whoopi Goldberg has been suspended now for two weeks in the wake of her dumb comments about the Holocaust. And and cnn chief jeff zucker is resigning admitting now that

he had what he calls a consensual affair with quote my closest colleague she's somebody who is under him in more ways than one sorry i couldn't resist um and that he's acknowledged the relationship he claims that it evolved in recent years. Questionable, according to our first guest, a reporter who's been broken, who broke the story earlier this month for Radar Online. And now he is resigning today. Rich Lowry's editor of National Review. He joins me now. Rich, this is a bombshell. It's it is something that has been I don't know if it's an open secret, but certainly there have been rumors to this effect. But this isn't just, OK, the guy cheated outside of his marriage, whatever.

This is somebody who's been promoted up the ranks at CNN to become an executive vice president under him as he was CNN chief. And it raises all sorts of ethical questions for him, especially when you factor in the fact that she worked for Andrew Cuomo before she came to work for him. My understanding now, my team just checked, she worked for Zucker at NBC, then Zucker left NBC and went to CNN. And at some point after NBC, she worked for Andrew Cuomo and then was brought over by Zucker to work for him at CNN, rising up the ranks. What do you make of it? I'd say I'm stunned, but nothing surprises me now. It's just the temerity of these people. How many years now are we into Me Too? So you should have gotten the message at this point, this kind of relationship, undisclosed relationship with a colleague, someone under you.

It's just not appropriate. And it's just, as you've discussed with your prior guests, it's just perfect, right? They cross this ethical line by having Chris Cuomo interview Andrew Cuomo, these chummy interviews that really don't disclose any new information. There are no tough questions, as you pointed out. They ignore the story as more and more reality intrudes on the mistakes that Andrew Cuomo had made, you know, that, that Janice pointed out with, with, with, with great determination. And then this whole thing unspools and destroys everyone, right? Everyone is brought down by it. And you, you have Andrew who, you know, is, is a bully and a thug and thinks he can get away with this kind of – and a sad guy and thinks he can get away with these comments to women.

And they have Chris Cuomo, thinks he can get away with advising him at the same time he's covering him, or at least was covering him for a time. And then Jeff Zucker presiding over the whole thing and thinking he can get away with this. And it's just – it creates this sense of cynicism. Cynicism is the wrong word because it's a, it's a deserved skepticism about the people who put themselves above everyone else, put themselves on a pedestal. They have the highest ethical standards. They can judge everyone else. They can tell us what is 110% fact and should never be questioned are not on the up and up. It's it's it's so clarifying and infuriating because anybody who's watched CNN over the past five or six years has seen what lecturers they are. one there, but so many of their anchors have turned into social arbiters who will tell America what's right and what's wrong and how bad they are for not following CNN's edicts and values.

And yet what's happening behind the scenes at CNN and maybe not even behind the scenes, Jeffrey Toobin decides to masturbate in front of colleagues on his conference call, his Zoom call with the New Yorker. CNN doesn't fire him. He does not get fired. Don Lemon gets credibly accused by a guy who's suing him. We had him on the program. There's an eyewitness to it who's ready to testify of fondling himself in a bar and then rubbing his hands all over this guy's face. They're involved in the litigation at this moment, right? Nothing happens with Don Lemon. Chris Cuomo. Then it comes out. Not only did an executive producer for Chris Cuomo apparently complain about him being too much of a bully and she got turfed. Then you have another former executive at ABC who worked with him then come out and say he he grabbed my behind in a room full of colleagues at a bar. No one says boo. Fine. No problem whatsoever. Then you find out that he's helping his brother tamp down on the sexual allegations against Andrew Cuomo. See, Jeff Zucker does nothing initially, nothing. And I I said on the air prior to Chris Cuomo getting fired, I said,

what's going on with Jeff Zucker? What what do they have on Jeff Zucker that I literally said? I think I have that exact thing. Hold on. My team actually just sent it to me because I was curious. Here's me. What is it? What's going on at CNN? What's going on with Jeff Zucker that he doesn't have a problem with any of this? Right. Well, now we know we know exactly what was going on with Jeff Zucker. They had stuff on him, too. And it makes it really hard to pull that trigger when that's the case. Yeah. And you get, you know, what tangled webs we weave. And as you pointed out, it bears a resemblance to what happened at Fox, where everyone was compromised and everyone had something on

something else. And then eventually it all came unraveled. But the thing was like, everyone at CNN was looking down at Fox as this terrible, unholy place. And not just over that, in general, at the same time, they're sitting on this web of lies and deceit. And again, it just creates a sense, what are the rules? And why are the people who are most insistent on enforcing the rules not willing to abide by them themselves, whether it has to do with double standards over cancellations, or it has to do with masks or whatever else. It's corrosive to our public life. We need everyone to do better. And especially if you're going to lecture people, just make some minimal effort to abide by your own standards. And they just don't, and they haven't.

Yeah, they don't. All right. And that leads me to another by your own standards. And they just don't, and they haven't. Yeah, they don't. All right, and that leads me to another couple of interesting stories. But before I leave the Jeff Zucker thing, I do want to say this, right? Today, I'm thinking about the CNN PR staffers, the people who were passed over for promotions within PR or for executive vice president roles.

And what they have to ask themselves now, right? If they didn't know about this now, these two and their behavior has compromised all of those people who now have to ask, maybe I maybe I should have been promoted. Why did she get promoted? She put herself in that position and he put her in it, too. And I wouldn't be surprised if we hear from one of those people in the next few days, because it's an outrage. There's a there's a reason why you don't do this and then continue promoting up the line.

There are really good reasons why you don't do it. So this this resignation, of course, was justified. But I'm telling you, Rich, there's more to this story. There's more that's going to come out. My my gut is a reporter. I'm just telling you. I believe you. Yeah.

You have the goods that you were onto it before. So I believe you, Megan. You don't have to convince me. Okay, so, but the Whoopi Goldberg and what's happening to Ilya Shapiro, it's kind of all connected, right? The media's holier-than-thou

lecturing of us. And then until it comes back to hoist you on your own petard in Whoopi's case, right? Okay. She gets suspended. It's a nothing. It's stupid. I said yesterday she shouldn't be fired. I don't agree with the suspension either. It's dumb. She said something dumb. She deserves the criticism. You host a show like The View. It's called The View. Your point of view is out there and you can be criticized for it. No problem. You say dumb things. You're going to get it. Been there. But it has an extra layer to it, Rich, because she

and her colleagues have been in the business of castigating everyone in public life for their missteps. Yeah. And look, this is anyone who's sitting watching The View and thinking, I'm going to get my views of important events in 20th century history, European history, and how to understand them from The View, that you're grievously mistaken. that, right? It's just, everyone understands these are women who don't know a lot. And it's kind of interesting because they're throwing out their opinions. I've never been a view watcher, but when Meghan McCain was on, I would at least watch the clips on Twitter because there's kind of interesting dramatic conflict, which just seems to lack now. I would say the thing that's most notable for me now about the Whoopi Goldberg episode, I thought when she initially said it, well, she just doesn't know anything. But then she was on Stephen Colbert, and it's not as though she knows a ton, but this is a considered view of hers, that the Holocaust was not a racial thing because it involved two sets of white people, and you couldn't necessarily identify a Jew walking

down the street the way you could a black person. So then it was kind of a different category, a different phenomenon. So this constitutes a bizarre kind of rehabilitation or whitewashing of the Nazis as non-racists on woke grounds. And she basically continued to defend this view on Colbert and at the end said, well, I understand people are upset about it, so I'm just not going to talk about it anymore, but seemed kind of angry and aggrieved about it. So again, I wouldn't suspend her. I wouldn't fire her. But this is something, there's something a little more poisonous here than just being stupid. Yeah, you're not wrong about that. And it was crazy because she kind of tried to reduce the the holocaust to you know people hurt people man hurts man it was one step away from hurt people hurt people

this is saying it's for the health self-help circles um so yeah you can't reduce the holocaust to that it's very clearly it was about race and hitler's belief that that jews were an inferior race and needed to be extinguished. And, you know, you're going to discuss it on the air. You could have researched it and then you're going to go apologize for it. You should definitely have done your research. And it's no accident she used Jonathan Greenblatt of the of the ADL, a group that was formed to stand up against anti-Semitism, anti-Semitism. She used him to rehabilitate her because he's now, as Ben Shapiro was saying, he's basically become a

Black Lives Matter advocate. I mean, his group is now BLM. It's not about defending against anti-Semitism. And they redefined the whole definition of racism recently, which dovetails perfectly with Whoopi's own. It doesn't have anything to do with your intent or your thoughts about Black people or people of any other race. It's about systems. Right. Yeah. It's a corrupt point of view. It bears some resemblance to what you were just talking about a little while ago about the Me Too groups being corrupted to try to defend Andrew Cuomo, you know, and then they have to resign. So obviously, the Nazis were fired by a racist vision of creating an Aryan neo imperial hegemony over Europe. You know, it's really not that complicated. And if we're going to have one standard, though, you know, I would not suspend and investigate Billy Shapiro over a poorly worded tweet that he sincerely apologized over repeatedly or suspend Whoopi Goldberg.

Now, the difference here is that Billy is still in serious danger of getting fired. I think this is more theater with Whoopi Goldberg. But why not, you know, just on The View today, have an hour argument over this? That would be interesting, right? You'd have open debate. But no one thinks that way anymore. Okay, so who is Ilyas Shapiro and how does his current story play into all of this? That is where we will pick it up right after a quick break. Don't go away as Rich Lowry stays with us on the craziness at Georgetown Law School. So Rich, who is Ilya Shapiro? So he's been a scholar at the Cato Institute focusing on the Constitution and legal issues,

classic libertarian, very into the Constitution. I don't know a lot about his policy positions, but very market oriented, probably, you know, like most Cato people, people are kind of favorable to more open borders, approach on immigration. So he's not like a classic hater, you know, or anyone's some populist firebrand. Sometimes you wonder, well, what's going on? Why are they so angry about something? He's not one of those types. And he tweeted after Biden said, well, he's going to replace Stephen Breyer with a black woman necessarily, no matter who else is out there. And there's an Indian-American judge in the D.C. circuit that he thinks is the best qualified progressive judge. He's like, choose him. Don't choose a lesser black woman. Now that phrase makes you cringe. It makes you wince. It's not really what he meant to

communicate. He just was meaning to say anyone would be lesser, not as qualified as this brilliant DC Circuit judge. And he deleted it and he apologized. And he's up for a job, not up for a job, been accepted for a job at Georgetown Law School as executive director of a center there. And the dean immediately denounced him. There are immediately calls for him to be fired over this. He's been hired. He was hired officially as of this Tuesday, but they immediately suspended him and are investigating whether his tweet violated their rules. But I mean, there's nothing to investigate. It was a bad tweet, poorly worded. Any person of good faith knows what he meant. It wasn't a racist position. If he was a racist, you know, he wouldn't be promoting an Indian American Hindu to make history on the

court. He was just wanted to apply a standard of, let's look just at merits and excellence as a jurist. And Georgetown continues to come down like a ton of bricks on him. The students are upset. They're asking for cry rooms and reparations and all the rest of it and braying for his head and and remains to be seen whether Georgetown will fire him or not. The Black Law Students Association at Georgetown Law demanding that he be fired. They wrote in a January 28th letter to the Georgetown Law Administration. I'm quoting in part, we, this group, write on behalf of the Georgetown University Law Center student body to demand the revocation of Elia Shapiro's employment contract and to condemn his racist tweets. At Georgetown Law, black students are haunted by the shadow

of imposter syndrome. Shapiro reinforced this phenomenon by reducing black women's accomplishments to small favors from heaven. Shapiro's tweets and apparent prejudice have no place at our university. The revocation of his employment is more than appropriate. And then I guess yesterday, there's video of a meeting amongst students meant to discuss Ilya Shapiro's alleged racism. And there was a demand, as you just pointed out, for reparations to the students just for having to sit through the meeting.

Here is a soundbite. In terms of coming back to the reparation things, because this is great, but we have to do so much work to catch up for all this stuff that we missed. All I'm saying is, I don't know if it's a couple of dinners or lunches or something,

but that would help us because I can't go home for lunch now because I need to study. I have to make up for this class that I lost. it's little things like that it doesn't have to be something that takes a year to figure out it's like we know our black students or whatever group is hurting and we're going to give them things today whether it's snacks whether it's counseling whether it's whatever but a part of that trust is to see an immediate reaction to what we are saying. But food will be great. We have food on the way.

Oh, my God. My God. First of all, thank you, because we got this from National Review's reporting. Second of all, naps and food as reparations for having to express their grievances at Ilya? What? Yeah. for having to express their grievances at Ilya? What? Yeah, so I don't know anything about this dean, but maybe he's a bad guy. Maybe he's just a coward.

But these people like him have invested a lot in their career. And I know once you get in a situation like this and meetings like this, you can't possibly say the wrong thing because then you'll be in the firing line next and you'll be destroyed. But the right thing to do is just say no.

You're an adult. We're all adults here. We favor open speech. If you're upset about it, talk to him about it. Write a letter to the newspaper. Express yourself in class. Whatever. But we're not going to fire someone over this.

And most people don't have this kind of intestinal fortitude. But I remember meeting with Thomas Sowell, and, you know, the great conservative Stanford economist, African American, of course, and he dealt with like, no kidding, racial discrimination in the course of his his life, you know, he's in his 80s now. And his attitude always was, if you're looking down on me because I'm black, F you, too bad for you. It doesn't affect me. I don't need naps. I don't need to cry because you're an idiot and an ignoramus. And that sort of attitude is on the wane, obviously, in this country. Instead, you have this kind of childishness that's encouraged, and people expect to get coddled. So it wasn't just this moment. You mentioned the other, where apparently they're in tears.

The students are in tears at Georgetown. I mean, honestly, having practiced law for 10 years, they need to toughen up. I mean, obviously, I haven't been the victim of racism in that way, but I certainly have been the victim of sexism. And they're going to see a whole lot more of it when they get out there as lawyers. They're going to see even way, way worse things than sexism and racism. And you've got to toughen up. You've got to function in the face of adversity, even dark, dark adversity. I mean, bad, bad things happen to very innocent clients and you're the one who has to advocate for them and you don't get a cry room. Here's soundbite two. It is really, really hard to walk out of class or anything in tears.

And you should always have a place on campus where you can go and feel like you're not then also under people's eyes and observation maybe you don't want to answer a question of what's going on or what's wrong and if you're finding that you're not getting the person you want to talk to or not getting a space that you need reach out to me anytime anytime so we will find you space oh my lord rich i, Rich. I can't. I can't. Space is one of those words also. I hate the word space. I never would have thought I hated the word space.

I'm sure the judges are going to give them cry spaces too. What's that? I'm sure the judges they appear before are going to give them cry spaces too. Yeah. Lawyering is all about space. Yeah. I mean, it's just it's indulging childishness. And this is the way

you speak to first graders. And there was, what is the school? Do you see this earlier this week, Megan? Someone took a picture of the sign. I think maybe at University of Boulder or something that if you or someone you know encounters free speech that upsets you, hear your recourses. And there are like 17 numbers and 17 offices you could call because you're upset you heard something you disagree with. How can I get my number on that list? I need my number to be on there. Rich, stand by.

Squeeze in a quick break. Come back with so much more. Don't leave. Just to continue with the Georgetown thing for a minute, Rich, the school has situational ethics. You won't be surprised to hear. Because a couple of years ago, there's this woman professor carol christine fair this is just 2018 when brett kavanaugh was uh going through the the confirmation process and she expressed her views on him and said as follows hold on stand by pulling it up um okay look at this chorus of entitled white men justifying a serial rapist's arrogated entitlement, she wrote, after calling Kavanaugh a rapist and a perjurer. All of them, quote, deserve miserable deaths while feminists laugh as they take their. Yes, swine. She called the GOP a fucking death cult

and also filthy swine. The filthy swine, I guess, is going to eat the dead corpses of the Brett Kavanaugh supporters. And guess who still has a job at Georgetown? Yes, of course, you guessed it. The Professor Fair. Yeah, hats off to Barry Weiss.

She unearthed this one and column. She wrote, I will say credit to this professor, Barry Weiss called her and she wasn't aware of the Ilya Shapiro thing. And she said, I don't know anything about that, but I support free speech. And I recommend you get in touch with a group called fire course, which is devoted to promoting and protecting free speech on campus. And she said, I support what they do. So I at least give credit to this woman to favoring economic, academic freedom, which she's benefited from, because again, if we had some consistent standard, she'd be on the firing line on the verge of being fired too. And I mean, those obviously are really

stupid and poisonous tweets. I have no idea, you know, of her academic work. Maybe she's, you know, a brilliant specialist in some field and students are benefiting from her. But, you know, I disagree with it. I can tell you why I disagree with it. I'm not going to collapse in a puddle of tears and neither should anyone else. Exactly right.

So she's got some controversial views. Most of them do. It's just if they're left leaning, they're permitted. And if they're not, they're not. You know, and does anybody think Whoopi, for that matter, would still have a job at all if she were not a woman, a woman of color and a woman of color who is a leftist? Yeah, it's a controversial view, a wrong view, an erroneous and radioactive view about the Holocaust for anyone who is on the right side of the spectrum would be instant career killer and you'd be socially ostracized and that would be it. And she, of course, isn't.

So different rules apply, which is a common theme of this conversation and unfortunately a common theme of like, you know, the last 10 years or more of our national life. Well, by the way, I mean, I love the view. It's like, OK, an ABC playing holier than thou, like she must be suspended. The same organization that proudly aired Joy Behar's blackface photo in 2016. And nobody thought to stop and say, well, should we put that up on the board? Right. And then that then those same ladies expressed, you know, shock and horror when I said, hey, you know, people used to wear this and it wasn't such a big deal. Right. It's like, well, you you you're shocked and horrified. You just put a picture of Joy Behar in blackface on the air and no one stopped to say, don't do that. So

spare me the holier than thou attitude. OK, let's move on, because in the same way that, you know, Whoopi Goldberg can't shake her intersectional definition of racism and race, Joe Biden doesn't seem to be able to shake his definition of what's normal in an era of covid in which the numbers are thankfully getting down to incredibly low in terms of the case numbers. They've fallen like 95% in New York City, which was once ground zero in COVID and so on. And it seems very, very tough now for those in power in these blue states and cities, with just a couple of exceptions, to admit that normalcy is either back or almost back, and it's time to embrace it, not eschew it. Why is that? Well, I think's time to embrace it, not eschew it. Why is that? Well, I think the ice is cracking here, actually. Leanna Nguyen, former president of Planned Parenthood, that didn't get that that organization is all about abortion, so she got fired and now

has become a COVID expert and alarmist on CNN. She was just on saying, I think these restrictions need to go. Scott Gottlieb, who I respect a lot, you know, who's been into these mitigation measures is now saying, you know, people aren't going to tolerate them forever. There's another doctor who's saying the same thing on masking at schools. Clearly, the ice is broken. You've had big pieces in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, NPR, New York Times, left-wing New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg saying that they need to go and they don't make sense anymore. So the lagging indicator to your right is the politicians and blue jurisdictions and Joe Biden. And just for me, it seems obvious Biden needs to hit a reset button

somewhere. That's conventional wisdom now. And he needs to play against type a little bit and kind of shake people and have them say, oh, that's kind of interesting. Why is he doing or saying that? And clearly, to me, this is just the obvious one to say, look, we're going to have to live with this. It's not going away. We need to embrace normality. And the most important symbol of that is masks. And lift the mask on federal travel, change the CDC guidance, which is totally unscientific and out of whack on masking kids at schools. That would be a huge step. And Biden kind of thinks he's he is in favor of normality because they have said, you know, various times, including when the Omicron surge started. Well, let's not panic. But that's because they swim in this progressive sea. And you have, you know, the most alarmist people started, well, let's not panic. But that's because they swim in this progressive sea.

And you have, you know, the most alarmist people saying, well, even Biden's betraying us. Even Biden's the equivalent of Ron DeSantis. But he hasn't gone nearly far enough down this path. And to me, it seems like a no-brainer. And maybe he'll actually, you know, as the change in the intellectual climate around this continues, maybe he'll actually get there. That Monmouth poll showed that 70% of the American people would would like to move on. They believe that COVID is here to stay, but they believe we need to get on with our lives. That includes Democrats, it includes it was something like 98% of Republicans, something very high on the GOP side, most independents and many Democrats. One of the things that though that I think it was 53% of those poll did not want to let go of is masks. Now that number has been

steadily going down in the Monmouth polling. It's much lower now than it was. But as a as a hardcore anti masker, I'm not an anti vexer, but I'm an anti masker. I know I've heard you describe yourself as sort of moderate on that issue. I'm against you. I looked into it more and there's zero case. There is zero case for masking young kids, especially. It's total theater. And the idea that, one, indications are kids don't transmit it and thank God aren't as susceptible to getting seriously ill from it. But the idea that you can sit in a classroom for six hours with someone who has COVID and this little cloth mask that you're probably not wearing properly, that you're taking on and off, that you're getting wet and degrading, that that's going to protect

you is crazy. It's just crazy. And the only reason to do it is because masks have become this totem of protection and righteousness over and beyond any of the facts or any of the science behind it. And this has been just a key part of the dynamic of the debate during this whole pandemic. There's science, which has been uncertain, which has gone back and forth. You get one study that says this, another study says that. And then you have the conventional wisdom, which is imposed on top of this science and doesn't necessarily always accord with it and is more certain and has kind of a religious fervor to it that the science doesn't support. And that's why, you know, I'm sure you've already talked a lot about Joe Rogan, but that's why someone like, a voice like

Rogan is important or a voice like yours on mask, you know, you're probably lucky not to get suspended by Twitter, you know, saying that that masks were wrong, or didn't work. But it's important to be able to, for people to test this conventional wisdom, and point out areas where they think it's flawed. And a lot of that kind of thinking, heterodox thinking has been has been vindicated through the pandemic. So again, this just goes to a common thing. Debate is good. Argument is good. Things that I thought are crazy over the last 20 years or crazy during this pandemic, I've come around on because that's what rational people do. They consider views that they might not agree with. They test their own

views against those counter views, and they might change their minds. And that's called being a human being in a free society. I mean, I would love to believe that's true. And I start to see the left fracturing in a way that's promising to me. But then I hear the prophet Fauci on the Daily the other day, and Michael Barbaro was giving him some good questions. He really was. And I mean, Fauci sounded almost like it was March of 2020. We're not there yet. Maybe someday. Not yet. Not with 2200 people dying a day. No, it's not time to undo any of the mitigation measures, which, of course, you know, just saying that we don't even know how what percentage of those people. Right. Like what number of those are actually dying from covid?

The hospitals thus far have refused to tally it up and divvy it up with only a couple of exceptions. And most of those, like the one in New York, had said it's basically 50 50, you know, half dying with and half dying of covid. So you can cut a lot of these numbers by, you know, a large margin. Anyway, my point is, he won't admit reality, Rich, and he's their God. He's the one, the people we need to convince to get back to normal, listen to. Yeah. So maybe I should revise and extend my remarks on mass being the most important symbol. Fauci actually may be the most important symbol. And if Biden would fire him or not even fire him, but just say, you know, look, Anthony, go do your job. You have this important

job at the NIH, right? And before you were a world celebrity that accepted every single interview, as far as I can tell, I don't know how he does any day work, you know, unless it's not left-wing media on TV and podcasts and everywhere. Just go do your NIH thing. You're no longer the chief spokesman or symbol of this pandemic. That would also be a really important symbol. And one says Fauci is doing his job. He's a public health expert. All he cares about is public health. Right. He doesn't he doesn't he's even admitted this at times. He doesn't consider the other factors. That's not his bailiwick. But only COVID health, only COVID health, not public health, only COVID health. He doesn't think about the people committing suicide and the drug addictions and the overdoses. None of that counts for him. Only those who die from COVID or with COVID matter to him. Right. Yeah. And this is another thing, people who've been saying this all along that actually, okay, COVID's serious, let's take it seriously, but there are these other things that matter. Jobs matter to people, and not just economically. Their psychological well-being is caught up in it. Interactions with human beings matter,

right? Because we're unhappy if we're isolated, and if we have an addiction problem or a mental health problem, it makes it even worse. The people who have said those things for about two years were smeared as being part of a death cult, like that Georgetown professor quoting a little bit, when they actually had the more holistic view of the cost and the benefits that always should have factored in these decisions and haven't for a long time in large part because of Fauci-ism and the way the media and social media companies have globbed onto Fauci-ism as the only perspective you can have on the pandemic and how to respond to it. When I heard him on the daily, when I've heard him in other interviews,

what was the magazine that did the big Fauci spread, made him like Rihanna? All I could think was he's enjoying being a star he's he's enjoying his time in the limelight too much it's it's compromised him i mean i don't trust fauci anyway and he's been wrong about so many things and he's lied to us and we know all that and he may have helped start this pandemic in an indirect way by funding gain of function research over in that Wuhan lab that we have no proof led to this direct virus, but certainly was leading to the study in a way that we believe may have preceded this virus if you think it started in a lab like I do. Anyway, my point is, he needs to be removed from the job because it's just part of human nature.

So I don't blame him necessarily, but it's for the people running the government and trying to keep people in the right lanes and get the balance right. It's up to those people to take them off this pedestal. And again, he has a really important job at NIH. And the gain-of-function research, they may have really messed that up. Certainly, he was either dishonest or was trying to hide the ball from the public on that, which is unforgivable. But he had a substantial job before he became this COVID celebrity. Go back and do that job. Exactly. Enjoy it. Or now he wants billions of dollars to create new vaccines for viruses he hasn't yet unleashed upon us.

No, just kidding. I have no evidence he did. I already explained that. But my point is, now he wants all this money to go do a different thing. Great. Go do that. Good luck. Godspeed. Leave us alone now on these crazy measures because he will not take his foot off the gas. And it's going to take a strong leader to ignore his advice. And we don't have that strong leader right now. And actually, Rich, that's my next subject, because the polls reflect the country feels as I do, that we don't have that strong leader. And you look at the numbers, latest numbers on Joe Biden. There was a poll out of Florida, Suffolk University, USA Today. And Florida is obviously critically important in

presidential elections. 39% of respondents approve of the job. Biden's doing 53 percent disapprove. Fifty seven disapprove of the job he's doing on the economy. And 58 to 28 are the numbers by 30 point margin. Florida voters believe the nation is on the wrong track. What do you make of it? Does it I know you watch the polls. Does it jive with the other polls you've

been keeping your eyes on? Yeah. I mean, that's what you see everywhere, various states, nationally, about 40% approval, which is just a debacle. And some of it has to do with conditions that aren't entirely in his control, right? He didn't create the Omicron surge, which accounts mostly for this losing 300,000 jobs in the last monthly report here that we just got this morning. Inflation, not entirely in his control. Their program made it worse. But if they're 2% inflation and no COVID, he'd still be underwater, but he'd probably be, you know, like 47, 48, like a more survivable number, but they're just in a deluge number. I mean, they're going to get totally wiped out in the fall, because not only have conditions been bad, his performance has

been bad, he's been incompetent and focused on things that the public is just not very interested in. You know, Democrats point out how the individual pieces of Build Back Better pull well. But is anyone out there really on the edge of their seats just waiting for Build Back Better to pass? No. What do people want? They want the virus to go away or at least a return to normality. And they want inflation under control and the job market to heal, you know, and he should be focusing on those sort of things every day, even if it's just symbolic measures.

But instead, he's been, you know, led around by from the nose by by the left. You know, he campaigned as someone who's going to be able to work with kind of the Joe Manchin's of the world. And he's been much more over and kind of the Elizabeth Warren AOC territory. And he's paid a price. A hundred percent. The poll shows that Biden would lose Florida if the election were today. And he's even trailing a hypothetical Democratic primary to Hillary Clinton, Rich. That's how bad it's gotten. What do you think of it? I mean, do you think there's any way because I mean, this is what everybody asks me, right? When I'm in my civilian clothes and not in front of the camera. Whether who's going to run like who will be the Democratic because most people don't think there's any way he can make it. And they know the Democrats can't run Kamala Harris because it's just like running nobody. There's no chance she can win. Yeah, I can't.

I can't see Hillary. I mean, I'm sure she's thinking about it and they'll be, you know, she'll have some confidence and and, you know, make a decision whether to go or not. And she's not going to go. It's just there's no way that's going to happen. But one of the more stunning poll results last couple of weeks is I think it was only 28% of people want him to run again, you know, and I think it was a majority of Democrats don't want him to run again. So what do they get? You know, if it's not him, well, usually look to the Veep, you're right, that would be a debacle. She pours polls more poorly than he does. And then, you know, Pete Buttigieg just

doesn't feel very realistic. You know, you could have some governors like a Jared Polis out in Colorado, relatively moderate Democrat, that might be really good for the party. Eric Adams, you know, we'll see, hasn't been encouraging so far in New York, but someone who's kind of interesting, someone who gets on the conservative side of a cultural issue. Polis has kind of done it on the COVID stuff, which has a cultural resonance. Adams obviously did it in crime, at least when he was campaigning. That's what the Democrats need.

Instead, kind of doubling down on the culture stuff, which Kamala Harris represents, would be a disaster for them. And they could easily lose to a third time around for Donald Trump in 2024 if they do that. That's exactly right. But here's what's crazy. So you would expect that more Democrats like Polis would run from some of these COVID policies at this point, you know, given the polling and understanding how angry parents are and having seen what happened in New Jersey. By the way, the New Jersey governor is starting to be more like,

we need to get back to normal. Because unlike all these other Democrats, he lived it. He almost lost this job that should have been totally secure for him. And then we saw it in Virginia, of course, with Youngkin. So I'm surprised we're not seeing more of them say, OK, how many months are we right from the next election? I need to get things right on COVID. No matter what I said in the past, I can still make it unclear enough, at least to convince my more centrist Democrats that I've been on the side of reason all along. Yeah, yeah, just try to take the edge off of it. And again, another thing that Biden could do, you know, he said the right things about keeping the schools open, but just hammer Randy Weingarten, you know, he said the right things about keeping the schools open, but just hammer

Randy Weingarten, you know, the head of the teachers union, we need you to be on board of this. And if you're not, there's going to be hell to pay, you know, something that's strong, you know, sister soldiers, the greatest cliche, but something like that, that's on the side of return to normalcy is like really, really important for Biden and really important for all these blue state Democrats who have have been most restrictionist on COVID. That's that's what I would tell them, but they don't they don't listen to me. They don't. Well, that's their mistake, because the editors is amazing. And National Review is a treasure. Great to have you, Rich. Thanks for coming on.

Thanks, Megan. Appreciate it. Have a great day. Coming up, we are covering the Canadian truckers' freedom protest over vaccine mandates. And how about Justin Trudeau, Mr. I've-worn-blackface-so-many-times-I-can't-remember, calling them all racists. Based on what? Do you believe the nerve? the breaking news continues this time it's along the u.s canadian border where there is a new and ongoing standoff happening right now between authorities and truckers as we've been covering the truckers are ticked off about vaccine mandates uh joining me now to discuss all of it is ezra levant founder of rebel news a conservative media outlet outlet in Canada. He's been covering all the protests. Welcome, Ezra.

Thank you so much for being here. Well, thanks very much. I'm in the warmth of our studio in Toronto, but we have two reporters embedded in the blockade at the Alberta-Montana border. There's about 500 truckers there who are just parking their big rigs, blocking that border crossing. And a group of farmers has joined them, bringing their large farm equipment. Yesterday, the RCMP, that's our Mounties, tried to shoo them away.

But you can't shoo away 500 big guys and their trucks. The Mounties retreated. I think we're on day four of the blockade now. Wow. It's amazing because I didn't know that it was meant to be sort of this long, but it seems like it's gathered a lot of grassroots support and it's crossed over from just about trucking to a lot more. Yeah.

I mean, remember Robert Peel's principles of policing. He was the great British police chief who really taught us that in a democracy, police need the consent of the people. If you're imposing laws that people think are unjust, if you're doing it in a capricious way, you're simply not going to have the support of the citizens. Unless you're a police state, you won't be able to do it. And I think that that's really come into play here. You have our version of the FBI, our Mounties are a federal police force that don't have the support of the people on the ground who are enforcing laws that were not passed to be criminal laws or things like that. They're public health orders with very little science behind them. I mean, seriously,

a vaccine mandate for a long haul trucker other than someone who works in a lighthouse. I can't think of anything more isolated. Why are you forcing them to get a jab? So I think that a lot of people said, you know what, we've had enough of this. And I think Canadians are generally pretty there's an independent spirit of truckers, especially in the prairies in Canada. And I think this is the line in the sand. And incredibly, yesterday, there was this physical showdown, and the Mounties turned tail and left. Now, they're not done. They blockaded the whole village. It's a little village right on the border called Cootes, Alberta. There's 500 men sleeping in their trucks. Like, there's not enough hotels for them.

The police have blockaded all the entrances to the village. And it really is a standoff. We've got two reporters in there and we've crowdfunded a lawyer to help represent the truckers to deescalate things, to negotiate with the cops. And we're on day four of that whole thing. Why there? Well, it's just one of the border crossings. Remember, this vaccine mandate affects people going back and forth with Canada. And, you know, Canada is a very large country, the second largest country in the world, but about 90% of our population lives within an hour of the U.S. border. So it really is the longest undefended border in the world. Our two

countries couldn't be more similar, especially those border states and the border provinces. You really wouldn't even know you're in the other country if you didn't see the street signs. So there's so much cross-border traffic, and suddenly, two years into this, the same truckers who kept us fed, brought us our personal protection equipment, you know, the truckers who we all relied on for two years, suddenly we're punishing them. Suddenly they're not good enough. Suddenly they're dirty people who need to be banned. So it's so abusive. They're working people who have not had the luxury of, you know, working from home on Zoom. You know, they have borne the brunt of everything and we're turning on them now. I think people have said enough.

They're independent-spirited people. Alberta and Montana are very freedom-oriented places. So it's the perfect storm. And speaking of storms, it's minus 20 degrees centigrade out there. It's brutal. So how are you even going to shoo 500 guys out of there? And they're big rigs, like a tow truck, a regular tow truck can't move some of these massive rigs. I don't even know what the police are going to do. Right. And meanwhile, they can't get a meeting with Justin Trudeau, who has tucked tail and run. We don't know where he

is. He's now saying he has covid, which is convenient and thus cannot meet. But he's made very clear on the record he has no desire to meet with any of these truckers to talk about this vaccine mandate. Just for clarity's sake, it forces unvaccinated drivers in Canada to observe a two-week quarantine and a COVID test before crossing into Canada from the United States. So if you're unvaccinated and you're Canadian or driving a truck, you can't deliver goods to the United States and then come back into Canada. And then the U.S. joined a week after that mandate was passed and said, yeah, we if you're not a U.S. citizen, you can't enter our nation at the Canadian border without showing us a vaccination card. So Americans can go up and come back, but Canadians cannot if they're not if they're unvaccinated. You know, and talk about hurting the supply chain. I mean, what is that word supply chain means? Well, it's how goods get to you from where they started. I mean, it involves ships, it involves trains, but pretty much the last leg of any journey for any produce, anything in a retail store comes by truck. Odds are, if it's a thing, it was on a truck. So imagine wiping out 10, 20, 30% of all trucking because you're trying to,

I mean, this is not a public health rationale here. This is about obedience and compliance. And I think you mentioned that Trudeau won't even meet with them. I think Trudeau wants to demonize these people to use them as a foil. They're grubby, working class, blue collar people who aren't fancy and they're the enemies. He's trying to whip up this fear that they're violent. He's called them racist. You know, by the way, a lot of truckers in Canada are visible minorities. There's a large Sikh community in trucking.

I'd say probably 20 or 30 percent of all truckers and indigenous people. Like, it's so weird that he's calling them racist. That's sort of his go-to card. And he's calling them violent. He's trying to paint them-to card. Yes. And he's calling them violent. He's trying to paint them as like January 6th rioters or something. They're not. Yes. He's only got that one card.

He calls everybody names. If you're not fully in support of LGBTQ, ABC, FY, I have no idea, then you're not as woke as Justin and therefore you are to be judged. Here he is the other day for the viewers who haven't yet heard it. It's really a despicable soundbite and it's based on nothing as far as we can see. Justin Trudeau on the truckers. I have attended protests and rallies in the past when I agreed with the goals, when I supported the people expressing their concerns and their issues.

Black Lives Matter is an excellent example of that. But I have also chosen to not go anywhere near protests that have expressed hateful rhetoric, violence towards fellow citizens. Okay, so we look, I got to tell you that we look for the evidence. I was trying. No, it's just gonna say we look for the evidence. This is what we found. Someone had a Canadian flag with a swastika on it well that's not good that would be the entirety of the evidence that these are a bunch of racists so he's dismissing thousands i mean today it's 500 trucks but he's dismissing thousands of people who are out there protesting as racists because of one guy with a flag. That's not going to work.

And he also said the word violence, which is a whole other thing. And I should tell you, I was in Ottawa for the first two days of that big trucker convoy there. Police did not arrest a single person. They did not allay a single charge. So when Trudeau says there was violence, he's making that up out of whole cloth. And by the way, even if there was one person or two people who were violent, that does not discredit the other 50 to 100,000 truckers who did converge on Ottawa. And the million people, literally a million, across Canada who came out to cheer the truckers on at the side of the highway at overpasses. This is the first massive, authentic, organic, natural uprising maybe in Canadian history. No political party backed this.

It was almost leaderless. There was a GoFundMe for some organizers, but I'm not even sure if those funds are being released. This was so real. And because no one in the establishment had access to it, they were all sort of panicked, even the leader of the Conservative Party opposition. By the way, he was ousted. The leader of the Conservative Party in Canada was ousted today in large part because he would not embrace this democratic populist conservative movement. This trucker convoy has already had amazing impacts. The province of Quebec was planning on taxing people

who did not get the vaccine. Yesterday, they withdrew that. This trucking convoy has done more for freedom than any politician in Canada. Last point, there's an Angus Reid poll, which is a large pollster in Canada, showed that in the last week, polls have moved 15% more towards ending the lockdowns. Well, what could that possibly be other than these truckers? These truckers are saving the country. It's what Orwell wrote in his book, 1984. If there's any hope, it lies with the proles. God bless the truckers who are freeing the frozen North. Right. Wait, what's the name of the conservative leader who was ousted? His name is Aaron O'Toole. And literally half an hour ago, he was voted out by the party because

he would not meet with the truckers. He would not endorse them. He was really a copycat of Justin Trudeau. And the conservative opposition in Canada just had a vote and booted him out. And the trucking convoy was the last straw. And let me say one quick thing, Megan. In the United States, you have lockdownists and you have anti-lockdownists. You've got your Ron DeSantis. You've got Texas and South Dakota. In Canada, every government of the federal government and

every provincial government and every opposition party are all in lockstep. They're all lockdownists. And so there's been no debate up here. It's unanimous. And that ended today when the pro lockdown conservative leader was kicked out from his party. So i this convoy can you believe it right truckers are freeing the country and may it spread may it spread to other countries i've seen little convoys in australia in the netherlands i hope the truckers save us all it would be just so poetic if they did freedom has a way of doing that spreading when people have had a taste of it uh one of the other accusations that's been hurled by your liberal media against the truckers and those supporting them is that they were out there with signs laced with obscenities. So we looked and indeed we did find an example of that, except the person holding the sign with obscenities is against the truckers and calling them bad names. And this one particular trucker, or at least a person in

support of the truckers, had the chance to respond on camera. It's a great clip. We'll play it now. So it says, F your white nationalist agenda. I am not a white. This has nothing to do with white. This has nothing to do with truckers. This is about freedom for all of Canadians. You can be brown, black, white, blue, whatever color you want to be. This is about freedom. And Trudeau has no right to put us in this condition of mandates throughout the country. Trudeau cannot go into school. It's a terrible thing to do. Amazing. That's from you guys. And it's a great clip that says so much, Ezra. I want to hug that guy.

You know what? Like I said, a lot of Canadians who are truckers are of the Sikh religion, and they're obviously not white nationalists. And I love the language of liberty. And I find that so reassuring. And obviously that guy sees through Justin Trudeau. And what's funny is when Trudeau first hit the stage in 2015, when he was first elected,

he had this phrase, sunny ways. He was the friendly, happy, light touch guy that everyone could feel affectionate towards. Now he's turned dark and intolerant. And I think he's lost a lot of his base. A lot of people who were new Canadians, minorities, young women, et cetera, would have voted for Trudeau in 2015. It's amazing to me how many people in this convoy and the anti-mandate protests are his former base, young women, women in general, I think are more skeptical of these vaccine mandates. Minorities, including working class people like in the United States, are the least likely to be back. So I think Trudeau, he thinks this is a winner for him.

I don't know. We'll see how it ends. But I think he's detonating his support amongst traditional liberal supporters like that gentleman you saw there. What's happening? I love the white nationalist. He's like, I am not a white. Hello? Keep looking. What, just give us like the thumbnail sketch of how bad it is in Canada right now. I mean, we know about the trucker problem at the border, but how locked down is Canada at the moment? It's different province by province. In Quebec, which has our second largest province, eight and a half million people until about two weeks ago, they actually had a nightly curfew from 10 PM till 5 AM. You could not go out. It was like you were all children and mom wanted

you home at 10. So that's how extreme it is. I'm in Ontario. There's no dining in restaurants. Still schools just opened about 10 days or two weeks ago. They just opened in Ontario and the kids all are forced to wear masks, you know, and or K-95 masks, I think they're called, you know. So for a long time, all kids sports was shut down, but professional sports was allowed. It really is a very abusive, it's slightly different province by province, like in America, it's different state by state, but every single jurisdiction has some form of lockdown. Let me throw one more, I know we're almost out of time, let me tell you something crazy that happened just five days ago. This convoy was rolling through

Nova Scotia, one of our provinces. The Nova Scotia government issued an emergency order under their health emergency laws, banning anyone from standing alongside the road or on an overpass. But only if they, quote, support the convoy. That's literally in the health order. If you oppose the convoy, you can go and protest. If you're for any otheroy, you can go and protest. If you're for any

other matter, you can protest. But they issued a, quote, health order under their emergency laws to ban support for the convoy. Clearly illegal, clearly unconstitutional. But that shows the mindset of Canada these days. And that's why these truckers are so important. And obviously, the other side realizes that. And they've just unleashed all the cannons. The government of Nova Scotia literally banned protests in support of the convoy. But that's the only protests that are banned. You know what? We're in a real battle up here, Megan. I'm really glad that you're covering it. And I should say, foreign media have covered it better than Canadian media because the Canadian media are completely in lockstep with the lockdowns. That is a horrifying stat. It reminds me of here in America where we were told to stay inside, stay inside, don't gather in large groups inside or outside. It can spread just as equally everywhere

where you're back in that phase, except if you want to protest in connection with BLM. The virus understands that you have a more noble purpose. In Alberta, where these truckers at the border are, here's a quirky rule. You won't believe this. You can be outside without a mask. But if you're outside for a protest, you must have a mask. If you're outside for any other reason, you do not need a mask. If it's a protest, you must have a mask. Doesn't matter how busy the sidewalk. That's simply a way to arrest protesters, obviously. Nothing to do with health. And that is in Alberta, which is supposedly the Texas of Canada, the freest province here. I'm so glad that you're shining a light on these things. Frankly, I know that sometimes U.S. senators speak out about, you know, Venezuela or Cuba

or places around the world that are authoritarian. I don't want to exaggerate and I don't want to cry wolf, but I tell you, we could use with a few U.S. senators saying, hey, Canada, what are you doing? You're our longest ally. I mean, you're NORAD and NATO and we're friends. And what are you doing up there, guys? We could use some scrutiny because I think that domestically, a lot of our checks and balances have failed. We haven't had any court victories setting back the lockdowns. The media is completely on board. The colleges of physicians and surgeons suspend

doctors who give mask exemptions or speak out. The chambers of commerce haven't fought back. There's nobody here. Maybe we could get a little help from our older brothers in America. Oh my gosh. What about Candice Bergen? I remember the name because she's also, that's the same name of a very famous actress. But I heard her giving guff to Justin Trudeau today, and I thought, right on, sister.

Here she is for the audience at home. Listen. I do get very defensive of Canadians who are outside today, patriotic, peace-loving Canadians who are called misogynist and racist by the prime minister. So again, I will ask the prime minister, who may I remind this House war, blackface on more times than he can remember. Apologize to the peace-loving, patriotic Canadians who are outside right now, just asking to be heard. Will he speak today? She's great. That was only in the last week when the Conservative Party finally rose up and said, we're not going to be silent anymore. That's the precursor to the ouster today of the conservative leader, because all the people like Candace Bergen there, who's wonderful,

and all the other Western conservative pro-trucker, pro-freedom MPs were gagged by their party leader. And that started falling. The convoy liberated MPs like you just saw there, and it culminated today in the ouster of the pro-lockdown conservative leader. So, yes, that was a wonderful moment. So there are little green shoots of hope for sure. But the bad guys still control all the levers of power. Yeah. Wow.

But things are starting to turn. And there's a question about how many people, even from America, will come out to support these guys and keep it going as it starts to wane just a slight bit in terms of the numbers and so on, but not in terms of the commitment and the principle. Ezra, thank you so much for your reporting. You guys have been doing great. It's a pleasure to meet you. Thank you. Likewise. Wow. And now it's your turn. What do you make of what's happening up north to our neighbors up north. My gosh, it's bad. And thank God for Ezra, right? Rebel News and people who are willing to shine a light. We're going to take some callers kicking it off with Bill in Pennsylvania. Bill,

what's on your mind? Hi, Megan. First, you're simply awesome. And I wanted to say great show. The fact that you and Rich pointed out the hypocrisies of what Whoopi Goldberg does, what Georgetown does, and just the general weakness really will help our fight pretty much in making sure that more people pay attention and see that how it's so hypocritical. Even the Canadian truckers that you just mentioned, how some you know, if you're on one side, you get to do this, on the other side, that. But I just wanted to say thanks for being such a great voice for it and really appreciate

the show. Thank you. My pleasure. That story Ezra told about how they only would give the permit to people you're not allowed to go out and protest if you're in support of the truckers was insane. It's just crazy up there. Bill, thank you for listening. Okay, let's talk to Kirk. Kirk's in Canada and has thoughts on what he's seeing. Kirk,

what are you seeing? Hi, Megan. Thanks for taking my call. Sure. What I'm seeing up here, and my whole family attended the Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa Saturday, and I went back in on Monday on the ground just to get a feel for what was being done for the truckers and if they needed any more support. And what really is rattling my cage is what the media in Canada is reporting on the ground. They're reporting, as you mentioned, about the swastika on the Canada flag and the Confederate flag. When I was down there on Saturday with my daughter, everybody was maskless, smiles, and you could see everybody's face. The only person in the whole

crowd, and I didn't see them. I was there for several hours. I didn't see anybody like that. The only person with their face covered was this person carrying this flag. And that's all the media up here wants to talk about. They don't want to talk about the two ladies that I met on the ground from the Ottawa area that are bringing wagons full of sandwiches and lunches for the truckers. They don't want to talk about the guys that are down on Parliament Hill shoveling the walkways because there's no city workers to be found except for the ones that are providing barricades. They don't want to talk about the guys that are down on Parliament Hill shoveling the walkways because there's no city workers to be found except for the ones that are providing barricades. They don't want to talk about the love that's bringing Canada together. And then on top of that, calling us racist and further insulting us by trying to make us believe one thing that the media is showing us over another

is also insulting. So that's really just what I wanted to get that out. Well, I love the firsthand reporting. You know, a couple of my producers are in Canada. My long-term producer, Debbie, I call her Canadian Debbie because she moved up there a long time ago with her husband.

She was saying, all you really have is Ezra. Like, if you want to get any sort of fair and balanced news, you got Ezra and you have very little else. And all the money, all the big news agencies and follow the money, you can see where the money's coming from. But all of those big news agencies are on the same side and they're against us. And it's frustrating and it's insulting. Yeah. Wow, Kirk. Thank you. Thank you for calling in. I appreciate it. it's frustrating and it's insulting. Wow, Kirk, thank you. Thank you for calling in.

I appreciate it. Let's head back to the States and David in Georgia. Hey, David, your thoughts? Megan, first of all, it's a blessing that you left that media outlet. We get to hear exactly what you feel and what you are standing for in this country. And thank you so much for doing that for us it's really enlightening i hope this this trucker thing needs to wake the people up in our country we've had enough it's time to get in our trucks our cars whatever it's time to take this country

back over from this liberal machine that is trying to destroy it. And we need to do something really fast because it's coming fast. And I got to tell you, God bless those truckers for standing up to what is absolutely a disgrace. And how can you tell me that when I go on an airplane, that the air is different in my seat for meeting a sandwich or a drink and getting up to go to the bathroom that I have to put a mask on. This is ridiculous. It's so true. It's inspirational, right?

When Ezra was talking about the green shoots of freedom, it got a little chill. Like, if they can do it in Canada, which is not exactly known for its commitment to revolution in the streets and freedom, why can't we do it here? Why don't we see more of it? You know, I think if these lockdowns continue to go on up there and if our treating of the children and the mandatory vaccines and all this stuff continues to go on, you are going to see more of it. Hope so. And I'm going to be on

the front line to defend this country that my father fought for during World War Two to defend this country that my father fought for during World War II to defend it from the hatred in Germany. So God bless you and keep going. Amen. Thank you so much. Oh, what a pleasure, David. I appreciate it. Thank you to all of our callers for calling in and to our listeners for tuning in. If you want to check us out on YouTube, you can do that as well.

As you can see, some of the Georgetown ones are amazing. And also, you've got to see that one soundbite with a woman holding the white supremacist sign. I am not a white. Go ahead and download the show as a podcast on Apple, Pandora, Spotify, and Stitcher. Leave me a comment on Apple. I read them all. We'll see you tomorrow. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show.

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