The Megyn Kelly Show - 20201202_rich-lowry-greg-kelly-briahna-joy-gray-and-erick-e Aired: 2020-12-02 Duration: 01:34:43 === Boost Your Credit Score (02:19) === [00:00:00] And now, what's up from Kix? [00:00:01] Kix can afford the grants with selfies. [00:00:04] The suit can also be used to crush the details. [00:00:08] We are going to the beauty store at the Nurstres. [00:00:10] And you can also have a kit kit. [00:00:12] So, welcome to the beauty store in your kit. [00:00:17] Kix Beauty Unlimited. [00:00:21] Fiken presentes here at Super Enkele Trends Class Program. [00:00:24] For your ascend-facture and for your drifting. [00:00:27] That's it. [00:00:29] Fiken at Super Enkele Trends Class Program. [00:00:35] Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. [00:00:41] Today, where the election battle and our political future now stand with Trump and Biden. [00:00:47] We've got a packed show for you. [00:00:49] Rich Lowry of The National Review, Greg Kelly of Newsmax, Brianna Joy Gray from the Bernie campaign, and Eric Erickson, political commentator down in Georgia with all the latest there, starting now. [00:01:01] Hey, everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. [00:01:02] Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. [00:01:04] I've got a packed show for you today, but first, I want to talk to you about Scoremaster. [00:01:08] I love the name Scarmaster. [00:01:10] Just makes it sound powerful. [00:01:12] The average American has 97 points, people, three short of 100, that they can quickly add to their credit score. [00:01:19] You know how you've got the stress about your credit score? [00:01:21] Go to Scarmaster. [00:01:23] They will help you out. [00:01:24] Their credit scientist discovered an algorithm that will super boost your credit score. [00:01:29] Not just a few points, but 97 points fast. [00:01:32] Imagine 97 points on top of your credit score. 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[00:02:15] That's scoremaster.comslash MK. === The Election Conspiracy Theory (15:06) === [00:02:19] And now, I want to get right to our guest, starting it off with the latest in electoral election challenges with Rich Lowry of the National Review and Greg Kelly, host of his own program on Newsmax. [00:02:36] Rich Lowry, thank you so much for being here. [00:02:39] Of course. [00:02:39] Thanks for having me. [00:02:40] All right. [00:02:40] So let's talk about where we are right now. [00:02:43] And we'll start with the election litigation because Trump filed a bunch of challenges and they seem to all be wrapping up except for a couple. [00:02:52] He's lost virtually all of them. [00:02:54] And there's two lanes. [00:02:55] One is the Rudy Giuliani lane where they're attacking individual voting processes like you didn't let the observers get close enough. [00:03:05] You let some voters fix their improperly filled out ballots, but not other voters and so on. [00:03:11] And then there's the Sidney Powell slash Lynn Wood, another lawyer, lane, which is Dominion voting systems that The voting machines themselves were corrupted by foreign actors. [00:03:21] Votes were switched. [00:03:22] Massive fraud. [00:03:23] So almost all of the Giuliani claims have been thrown out now. [00:03:27] Dominion voting fraud claims continue to live on. [00:03:31] I think in Georgia and Michigan, I think, but definitely in Georgia. [00:03:35] And that's the thing that could throw out, you know, the whole thing. [00:03:38] I mean, if by some measure Sidney Powell can prove this, we've seen nothing suggesting she can. [00:03:44] That's the only thing that could really save this for Trump, in my view. [00:03:48] And you guys just came out with an editorial saying this. [00:03:51] This challenge by Trump, these arguments at this point are disgraceful. [00:03:56] Why? [00:03:57] Well, he lost. [00:03:58] I mean, he just. [00:04:00] Clearly lost. [00:04:01] And in the scheme of things, it was a narrow loss. [00:04:04] I mean, he stormed back at the end and, you know, losing Georgia by 12,000, whatever it was, and Arizona by something similar, and, you know, Pennsylvania by 80,000. [00:04:16] The scheme of things, these are relatively narrow loss. [00:04:18] But in terms of like post election litigation and recounts, they're huge losses, just huge. [00:04:23] And a couple of weeks ago, I think it was Rudy was pointing out in Wayne County, you know, when there was a dispute over whether to certify or not. [00:04:32] There was something like 70% of the precincts, that's where Detroit is. [00:04:36] 70% of the precincts had mismatches between the number of people who were signed up and the actual votes that were tallied. [00:04:42] I was like, holy crap, are you kidding me? [00:04:45] This is terrible. [00:04:46] What's going on here? [00:04:47] And then I looked into it a little bit more, and almost all of them were like one vote. [00:04:50] So it added up to 386 votes or 387 votes, and he lost Michigan by 150,000. [00:04:57] So there's just this vast mismatch between when you get to push to shove and what they really have complaints about. [00:05:04] And the margins they need to overturn. [00:05:07] And in the devastating Third Circuit decision in the Pennsylvania suit, they pointed this out that these cured ballots, where some counties said, you know what, you didn't sign it correctly, or you don't have the second envelope on, or you didn't put your address, or whatever it is. [00:05:25] Some counties went back to you and said, hey, Mr. or Mrs. Voter, this is wrong. [00:05:29] Do you want to fix it? [00:05:30] Other counties didn't. [00:05:31] But, and they're challenging, I think, seven counties that let People cure their ballots. [00:05:37] And it added up to probably less than 10,000 votes. [00:05:39] And he lost Pennsylvania by 80. [00:05:41] So you're just not even close. [00:05:43] So that's why I believe, and as we said in the editorial, this is just driven fundamentally by Trump's inability to say two words I lost. [00:05:52] There's no outcome that he would have accepted where he was defeated, just none. [00:05:57] You could have had UN special rapporteurs at every single polling place in America, and he still wouldn't accept it. [00:06:03] You could have Don Jr. monitoring personally every single polling place. [00:06:07] In America, and if it didn't go his way, he wouldn't accept it. [00:06:09] And I think that's what's really driving this. [00:06:13] What do you make of the Sidney Powell lane? [00:06:15] Because the thing that has confused me all along about Sidney Powell is she's a badass lawyer. [00:06:22] I mean, she's legit. [00:06:23] This is not some loon. [00:06:25] This is somebody who is a U.S. attorney who has won something like 80% of the federal appeals that she's filed. [00:06:32] She knows what she's doing, she's not a hack. [00:06:34] And she did well with Michael Flynn, but What she's alleging, if this is not true, like if she can't close this deal, and so far it doesn't seem like she can, she's lost all her credibility forevermore. [00:06:50] I just, to me as a lawyer, it's baffling. [00:06:52] Yeah. [00:06:53] The way I add it up is it may have taken someone who's kind of out there to go back in and fix the Michael Fun case because he'd pled guilty, right? [00:07:02] Like twice, didn't he? [00:07:03] And actually, they had a back and forth with a judge where he's like, Are you sure you're really guilty? [00:07:08] Yes, sir, I am. [00:07:10] And so maybe it takes, Takes someone who's a little out there to go back and know I'm actually going to get them off, which you did, which is amazing. [00:07:17] She deserves credit for. [00:07:19] But the Dominion thing, first of all, it just sounds like if you just heard it, top of your head, you say, oh, that's a conspiracy. [00:07:26] It's just a conspiracy theory. [00:07:27] It sounds like a conspiracy theory. [00:07:29] And so far, there's zero evidence of it. [00:07:31] And Georgia, where they use these Dominion voting machines, the way I understand it, so you use the machine to mark your choices and then it spits out a paper record. [00:07:42] And if you voted for Trump and the paper record says Biden, you're going to notice. [00:07:47] At least some people are going to notice. [00:07:49] And then you take your paper record and you scan it and it's counted. [00:07:52] So there's this paper record, which I think is very important, is one of the lessons that we should take away from this. [00:07:57] Places that don't have a paper record. [00:07:59] Record of what happened, need to do that because it's just really important for accountability going back afterwards. [00:08:05] Yeah, can I stop you there just to just to so you go in, just walk, let's walk through it just so people understand why this seems not possible. [00:08:12] You because you know everybody votes differently, you know, the voting systems across the country are not uniform. [00:08:17] So, in this in Georgia, in using Dominion voting systems, you what do you do? [00:08:22] Like, walk us through it. [00:08:23] Step one would be what? [00:08:24] So, my understanding you get you step into this little machine and you say, I'm voting for Trump and Purdue and Leffler. [00:08:33] You mark it and then it prints out a paper record. [00:08:38] This is a. [00:08:38] So you mark it and then you feed it in? [00:08:40] Like you mark your ballot, then you feed it into the machine? [00:08:43] Right. [00:08:44] My understanding is that you mark it, it spits out a paper record, receipt, or whatever, and then you take it to a scanner and it scans in the paper record of it and it's recorded. [00:08:56] So there are three steps you choose, you get your paper, you scan your paper, and then the precinct has that paper. [00:09:03] So you do a hand recount and you're looking at all the paper. [00:09:06] Records. [00:09:07] So it's not just an electronic or online system. [00:09:10] There's this hand recount, which should have, if someone was playing with the software behind the scenes, there should be a drastic million vote or whatever it was mismatch between the paper and the computers. [00:09:24] And that just didn't happen. [00:09:26] And the other thing that just, there's been a lot of talk about anomalies and what weird patterns there are in this election. [00:09:35] I just think 30,000. [00:09:36] Foot level, not at all. [00:09:38] Because the day after Trump won in 2016, the most likely scenario, obviously, he narrowly won the blue wall state. [00:09:45] So the most obvious scenario for him losing in four years would be narrowly losing those states instead of narrowly winning them. [00:09:52] And basically that's what happened. [00:09:54] There was like a one or two point swing all around the country, except for Florida, where Trump really overperformed, I think, in part because of his strength among Cuban Americans. [00:10:05] And he did, you know, he knocked it out of the park in the rural areas, as you'd expect. [00:10:08] He got wiped out in the urban areas, but actually did. [00:10:11] Better in some of the major cities, a little better than he did in 16. [00:10:14] I think he was a little better in Philadelphia, a little better in Detroit, some others, and then lost the suburbs. [00:10:19] And just that's not an unusual outcome. [00:10:22] That's what you would have expected to happen. [00:10:24] That was kind of the conventional wisdom of what would happen. [00:10:26] And he lost the suburbs everywhere. [00:10:28] It wasn't just in these states contesting. [00:10:31] Yeah, this election was driven by what happened in the suburbs. [00:10:35] That seems pretty well accepted. [00:10:37] And the other thing that's implausible about Sidney Powell's theory is if there is some mastermind. [00:10:44] You know, connected to Biden or somebody else, the latest allegation is maybe Iran or China sitting back and manipulating votes. [00:10:54] Why would they let the Democrats lose anywhere? [00:10:57] Like, why wouldn't they bolster the seats that they had in the House? [00:11:00] Why wouldn't they make sure that they captured the Senate? [00:11:02] Why, you know, like if you're going to mess with the ballots, why don't you mess with them a little bit more? [00:11:06] Make it a one party government if you're going to get in there. [00:11:09] Um, I don't know, nothing, none of that has been explained. [00:11:13] And then, and then there's a disconnect between the Sidney Powell theory and the Rudy theory, which you're Correct, separate, and say they're slightly different. [00:11:20] And the way she squared the circle at the notorious RNC press conference was she said, well, the software was rigged to give the election to Biden, but then there was this massive Trump turnout. [00:11:30] So Trump broke the algorithm of the software. [00:11:34] And that's when they had to stop the counting and bring in paper ballots by the barrel full to get Biden over the top. [00:11:42] So I think it's completely implausible. [00:11:45] I will say, all along, there's just been a slight Sliced bit of me is like, okay, you know, I've been wrong about so many things the last four years that dismissed as crazy. [00:11:55] Maybe, maybe, but I just see zero indication of it. [00:11:59] Do you think part of the reason that some of the Trump voters, most of the Trump voters, I think, are having trouble accepting the results, as outlandish as the Sidney Powell theory is, and again, you know, the Rudy Lane is dying. [00:12:12] It's dying really quickly. [00:12:13] I mean, the Third Circuit just shut down, as you point out, all the legal challenges in Pennsylvania, they're over. [00:12:18] So Pennsylvania is gone. [00:12:20] There's not a still alive dispute there. [00:12:22] But do you think the reason not only the Trump voters, but most Republicans are kind of at least holding on to the thought that there might be massive voter fraud, that maybe Trump didn't win, that maybe there was funny business here, is just how badly the Democrats have behaved with respect to Trump's presidency over the past four years. [00:12:37] You know, he, his election wasn't legitimate. [00:12:39] He was a Russian asset. [00:12:41] He needs to be impeached. [00:12:44] He didn't actually win, right? [00:12:46] The popular vote should somehow control just at every turn. [00:12:49] And now, now they turn around and want to lecture us about democratic norms, accepting results. [00:12:57] You know, David Marcus had a great article on this in the Federalist, basically saying they gave Trump absolutely no chance, but now I'm supposed to embrace Joe Biden for the sake of the country. [00:13:07] He writes, the glorious rediscovery of high mindedness is infuriating and says the left destroyed any semblance of decency and fair play. [00:13:15] How much of that is going on? [00:13:18] I mean, he's totally right about that. [00:13:19] It is completely infuriating. [00:13:21] My take is it was wrong for them to do, and it's wrong for Trump to do what he's doing here. [00:13:26] But I think what's really driving the suspicion is one, Trump is winning on election night. [00:13:33] You go to sleep, you wake up, and all of a sudden he's losing. [00:13:37] In the dead of night, the vote switched around in Wisconsin and Michigan. [00:13:42] And in Pennsylvania, it took a couple days for Biden to overtake Trump, but you saw where it was headed. [00:13:48] And that's just going to raise suspicions. [00:13:50] Now, I think there are legitimate reasons for why that happened. [00:13:52] And it was kind of expected that the count would go that way. [00:13:55] But that's going to stoke suspicions. [00:13:58] Two, we just live in an era where no one really accepts anyone else's legitimacy. [00:14:02] We saw it, as you just outlined, with Trump in 2016. [00:14:06] But it goes back further than that. [00:14:07] Republicans never really accepted Bill Clinton's legitimacy because he was a draft dodger and a womanizer. [00:14:14] This was a more innocent time. [00:14:16] And he only got 43% of the vote in 1992. [00:14:20] And then because of the Florida vote controversy in 2000, Democrats didn't accept Bush's legitimacy. [00:14:26] And then a lot of Republicans never accepted Obama's legitimacy, including Trump and the birthers. [00:14:32] And they were the most extreme version of that. [00:14:34] So no one accepts anyone's legitimacy anymore. [00:14:37] So that's the second thing. [00:14:38] And the third thing is Trump's pouring fuel on the fire. [00:14:41] So I think 50% of Republicans probably would think there was something funny and wrong with. [00:14:46] With the election, regardless of what Trump said, even if he was being really extremely careful and gracious about it. [00:14:51] But, you know, it's 70 or 80 because he's fueling the fire. [00:14:55] And there are a lot of people that just are really bonded to him. [00:14:58] And this goes to his incredible power as a politician. [00:15:01] I mean, to come out of nowhere in 2015, identify this coalition within the Republican Party that no one really thought existed, completely bond it to himself and mobilize it in a massive way in two national elections is an extraordinary thing, just an extraordinary thing. [00:15:19] So, even though I've been critical of him and I don't like the way he's handling himself now, you got to give the devil his due. [00:15:28] Well, how much does this make you worry, if at all, about what's happening in Georgia? [00:15:33] Because while the president's not calling for voters to boycott this Senate runoff, there's two races yet to be decided down there, and the Republicans could lose and they could not have control of the Senate. [00:15:46] The president's not calling for a boycott of it, but he's sure is going after the The Georgia governor, the Georgia secretary of state, and Lynn Wood, the guy working with Sidney Powell, the other lawyer, very well respected lawyer, he's calling for a boycott. [00:15:59] He's saying President Trump's voters should basically thumb the nose at these runoffs as a punishment to the elected officials down there who they don't think are being supportive enough of Trump in his quest. [00:16:12] I'm really worried. [00:16:13] I think it's entirely conceivable they could lose both of those Senate seats, which would be a total debacle, and hand Senate control over to Joe Biden for no good reason whatsoever. [00:16:25] And these seats, I think, absent what's happening right now, you Favor Republicans, but you wouldn't favor them by a massive amount. [00:16:33] Trump lost Georgia. [00:16:34] Georgia's been changing for a while. [00:16:37] John Ossoff's candidate has appeal in the suburbs, the Democrat running against David Perdue, the Republican incumbent. [00:16:44] And this guy Warnock, a preacher, a black African American preacher, has a lot of appeal to the black vote. [00:16:50] So those two candidates, they kind of match up well. [00:16:54] So these aren't gimmies. [00:16:56] And then to have the party potentially torn apart and a lot of people discouraged and thinking that their votes didn't count the first time around, it Just could be a total debacle. [00:17:06] And I think the president seems of two minds about it. [00:17:08] One, he's going to hammer Kemp and Rapsenberger and promote the theory that they've done terrible things down there. [00:17:15] At the same time, the other part of him realizes that it's really good for his legacy if Republicans win these seats. [00:17:22] So you have Don Jr., you're starting the super PAC, and it's going to be really involved down there. === Major Political Anomalies (16:11) === [00:17:25] I welcome that. [00:17:26] I think that's good. [00:17:27] But I think it'd be much better if people weren't saying, including the president, that the Republican governor, the Republican secretary of state are enemies of the people. [00:17:37] It just, it, it, Can't be good. [00:17:40] And if Republicans lose those seats, it's going to be a major part of it. [00:17:45] Yeah. [00:17:46] You point out, you know, to put it in terms that Trump would understand, his legacy is in danger. [00:17:51] It's much better for him if the Republicans control the Senate and don't have uniform government to push through a Biden agenda that, you know, if for no other reason, might start undoing Trump's undoing of the Obama Biden administration's legacy, right? [00:18:08] It's just like one, it's like nuclear war. [00:18:12] One end does the other, one end does the other. [00:18:14] Absolutely. [00:18:15] And it's still Trump's party. [00:18:17] And it's going to be Trump's party for a while here. [00:18:21] So defeats in those races will be attributed to him. [00:18:26] But as I say, he's of two minds. [00:18:29] And this is one reason that Senate Republicans are so nervous about saying anything about the election controversy they don't want to offend the president and potentially prompt him to say, you know what, guys, screw you. [00:18:43] I'm taking down your. [00:18:45] Your Senate candidates in Georgia. [00:18:47] That's the worst case scenario they want to avoid at all costs. [00:18:51] Yeah. [00:18:52] And the legal challenges will play out. [00:18:54] Sidney Powell will get her day in court, and we'll see. [00:18:57] A judge will decide whether she's got proof, adequate proof, to make this claim or not. [00:19:03] And then the Republicans, I think, once it's settled, they should come out and say, okay, we can do better on our election processes. [00:19:10] Obviously, there's room for reform. [00:19:12] But this is the decision. [00:19:13] It's been handled by courts of law, in federal courts, by Obama appointees, by Trump appointees. [00:19:20] And that should be the end of it. [00:19:22] Okay, let me ask you about what we're already seeing. [00:19:25] The media love fest with Joe Biden has already begun. [00:19:29] He announced some of his cabinet picks. [00:19:31] To me, they seem pretty milquetoast Obama types. [00:19:35] They seem kind of moderate. [00:19:37] Nobody too far out there except for Nira Tandon, who we can get to for OMB. [00:19:43] But to hear the media discuss these picks, you would have thought Jesus has come back. [00:19:50] He's going to. [00:19:51] He's going to be the Secretary of State, the Chief of Staff, the National Security, but he's going to do it all. [00:19:55] Here's just a clip courtesy of Grapeian Media of some of the reactions. [00:19:59] They are experienced. [00:20:00] They are well prepared. [00:20:02] Boy, how refreshing is that? [00:20:04] And it's very refreshing. [00:20:05] I was talking to a Democrat who just said this also felt like the Avengers. [00:20:09] It felt like we're being rescued from this craziness that we've all lived through from the last four years. [00:20:14] And now here are the superheroes to come and save us all. [00:20:17] This is like being at the end of the Wizard of Oz. [00:20:19] This is like the 1980s Celtics basketball team. [00:20:23] Trump really had the Z team. [00:20:25] This is really the A team. [00:20:26] The A team for the country. [00:20:27] They are manifestly experienced. [00:20:29] And competent. [00:20:30] The word competence has been thrown around, qualified, very coherent. [00:20:33] Calmness, deep knowledge, kindness, deep commitment. [00:20:36] Professionalism is back. [00:20:38] Expertise is back. [00:20:39] And it's also nice to take a look at a group of appointees that don't look like a restricted all white country club. [00:20:45] Jake Sullivan, as the leader of the band, is the perfect choice. [00:20:50] She is perfectly suited. [00:20:51] With Alejandra, you're going to get competent, gifted leader, kind, thoughtful, brilliant. [00:20:56] I can't think of a better person. [00:20:57] Let me get your thoughts about Tony Blinken. [00:20:59] I can't think of anybody better. [00:21:00] I think tonight, maybe I'll be able to. [00:21:03] Start going to sleep. [00:21:05] Stop it. [00:21:05] Stop playing that clip. [00:21:06] Stop. [00:21:07] I can't take anymore. [00:21:09] We can finally sleep again, Rich. [00:21:12] Oh my gosh. [00:21:14] Yeah. [00:21:14] I mean, it's just horrible. [00:21:16] And Biden is the first president elect ever to be praised for breaking his ankle. [00:21:20] You know, he even got that right, according to the media. [00:21:23] It's a brilliant move. [00:21:25] So, this is where we're going to see, you know, that the media had a love fest with Barack Obama that was really sincere. [00:21:32] I mean, they had just, they were smitten. [00:21:35] With this guy who is kind of a once in a generation political talent. [00:21:39] There's no excuse for being smitten. [00:21:41] No one's really smitten with Joe Biden. [00:21:44] They just hate Trump and they hate Republicans. [00:21:46] So they're going to praise everything that Biden did. [00:21:49] And they did everything they could to put their thumb on the scale in the election. [00:21:54] They took it as their role to help get him over the finish line by any means necessary. [00:22:00] And that's going to be their approach going forward. [00:22:04] It's a disgrace. [00:22:05] And I'd have more respect for these people if they just admit they're not objective journalists. [00:22:10] You know, and I'm an opinion journalist. [00:22:12] It's okay not to be objective. [00:22:14] You know, you have newspapers in Britain, the Guardian and the Telegraph, that aren't objective. [00:22:18] They're still good newspapers and worth reading. [00:22:20] And I think we'd be much better off if we admitted the same here in the United States. [00:22:25] This is not a fair media. [00:22:27] And to me, it's kind of nice just to have it set up before we go into the Biden administration. [00:22:33] Just a reminder to the people of where the media stands, right? [00:22:37] The A team, manifestly experienced, competent, professional, perfect, gifted, brilliant. [00:22:42] Okay, that's what the media. [00:22:43] thinks of the incoming administration. [00:22:46] So, you know, to the, a word of warning, right, to all the viewers out there who hopefully at this point are not unsuspecting, but that this is not a fair group. [00:22:55] They are 100% rooting for Joe Biden and his, and his cabinet, you know, to, to get their agenda through, not just rooting for them as leaders of the country, but rooting for them to push through his agenda. [00:23:06] And, and the last question I'll, I'll ask you before I let you go is, what do you think of that agenda? [00:23:11] Let's say the Republicans do hold on to the Senate, but I mean, even if they do hold on to both of those seats, it's going to be a very thin, Margin by which they control that Senate, and the Dems still have the House. [00:23:22] So, what do you think his agenda is going to look like? [00:23:26] Just one last point, Megan, on the media, if you don't mind, because I think it dovetails with something we were discussing earlier. [00:23:32] Why do so many Republicans think the election was fraudulent? [00:23:36] Well, another reason is that every time the media says that these charges have no evidence behind them, most Republicans are like, okay, well, then I believe them. [00:23:43] If you say that, if you say there's no evidence, there must be evidence because you've misled me and you're completely biased. [00:23:50] And I know what you are. [00:23:53] So that's another factor playing into it. [00:23:56] I would expect we're going to get on Biden's agenda just a lot of spending. [00:24:00] Basically, that's something that you can usually get a bipartisan consensus for in Washington. [00:24:06] I think there'll be some sort of stimulus bill, one way or the other, whether Republicans control the Senate or whether the Democrats narrowly control the Senate on a 50 50 tie. [00:24:18] And I do think we need another COVID relief bill. [00:24:22] I think it needs to be intelligently crafted and it shouldn't blow the doors off the joint, but there's a legitimate need there. [00:24:28] But they'll try to layer on as much. [00:24:31] Spending as possible to bail out the cities and the states and to get as much extraneous stuff in there, climate change spending and all the rest of it. [00:24:41] But then, with a narrow, really narrow Democratic majority or a Republican majority, I don't think there's the Green New Deal is not happening. [00:24:49] They're not going to end the filibuster. [00:24:52] The more ambitious parts of the Biden agenda won't happen. [00:24:56] And then he's faced with the choice is he going to do the pen and phone governance the way Obama did, which will Make Mitch McConnell even less inclined to work with him, or is he going to try to cut some deals with McConnell? [00:25:09] And it is true that in the Obama years, when the Obama people wanted to cut a deal with McConnell, they sent Biden, and McConnell thought Biden was like the only one in the Obama administration who actually knew how to negotiate. [00:25:21] So there is a history there. [00:25:23] So maybe there's some deals around the margins. [00:25:26] But this is basically the American people saying, All right, Democrats, you said Trump shouldn't be president anymore. [00:25:31] We agree with that. [00:25:32] But we don't trust you with power. [00:25:33] We're not going to give you enough control to do any of the big agendas. [00:25:37] Items you talked about. [00:25:39] And we're going to elect this 70 year old guy who is kind of out of it and has these bipartisan impulses left over from a bygone era. [00:25:48] And if he has to do anything, he's going to do it with another 70 year old guy who's a Senate institutionalist and have fun and joy. [00:25:54] And that's basically what we're looking at. [00:25:56] Excellent stuff, Rich. [00:25:57] Thank you so much for offering your perspective. [00:25:59] And we'll see you over on the editors. [00:26:01] Appreciate it. [00:26:02] Thanks for having me on. [00:26:05] My old pal, Greg Kelly, great to have you. [00:26:08] Megan, great to be with you again. [00:26:11] A long time, folks. [00:26:12] Megan and I shared an office for a day in 2004. [00:26:15] That's right. [00:26:16] It was before or after you'd been in Iraq and that crazy videotape of you all bloody trying to cover the war for us over there. [00:26:25] Yeah, it was just about six months later. [00:26:27] And it was your first day on the job. [00:26:29] And there was a guy named Ben Ginsburg in the office who had just gotten fired by the Bush campaign. [00:26:34] And you, as the attorney, were sent in there to calm him down because he was. [00:26:39] I think he was losing his stuff over what had just happened. [00:26:42] But anyway, yeah, Megan, it's so cool to see, to have followed your journey. [00:26:48] And I love this podcast. [00:26:50] Well, you're amazing, Greg. [00:26:51] You've always been a great friend. [00:26:52] And you're killing it over on Newsmax now, which is a story unto itself. [00:26:57] But before we get to that, let's talk about one of the narratives that's driving Newsmax's success at the moment, which is this election litigation. [00:27:06] We just talked to Rich Lowry about it. [00:27:07] National Review is not in favor of the Trump lawsuits. [00:27:11] They think it's, quote, disgraceful. [00:27:13] Rich Lowry likes the Trump agenda, but just doesn't believe in these challenges. [00:27:17] And you've heard some of that from some Republicans who aren't diehard Trump fans. [00:27:22] Just so you know, so we set it up that there's sort of the one lane, which is the Giuliani lane, that is more item by item challenges. [00:27:31] You know, like you didn't let the voters, the observers get close enough to the vote count. [00:27:36] And then there's the other lane, which is the Sidney Powell, Lynn Wood lane of Dominion voting systems are corrupt. [00:27:41] They were corrupted and millions of votes were changed for Joe Biden from. [00:27:46] Donald Trump. [00:27:47] So, what do you think? [00:27:48] Why do you have more of a belief that they could prevail on these challenges? [00:27:54] Well, look, here's my frustration overall. [00:27:58] You know, Rich and those guys, they're great. [00:27:59] I mean, there is deep seated resentment. [00:28:02] And resistance toward Trump, and there always has been. [00:28:04] And I think a lot of them see this as an opportunity to get rid of him. [00:28:07] But I went into the media because I am a curious person. [00:28:13] I went in with a sense of wonder that every day could be an adventure, that you could learn something new, something you didn't know before. [00:28:22] Yet over the past, I would say, 10 years, 15 years, whatever, it's turned into I don't want to learn anything, I just want to show people what I already know. [00:28:33] I mean, that's what we see from people on TV, people in this business, people who write. [00:28:38] And now you can get maximum exposure for minimum effort. [00:28:42] So you can sit there and opine on this stuff from New York, from Washington, D.C., talk to people you agree with, and make a name for yourself. [00:28:51] In the old days, you had to go out and do something. [00:28:53] Now, regarding the current situation, I am deeply frustrated. [00:28:57] Look, I don't know how this is all going to work out. [00:28:59] You mentioned a couple of avenues that may or may not be open. [00:29:03] I think there are probably three dozen more. [00:29:06] Mainstream media, for all of their resources and equipment and knowledge and intelligence, these are not dumb people, but they are self satisfied, incurious, and they're not looking into this story the way they ought to be. [00:29:23] There are major, major anomalies, in my opinion. [00:29:26] I'll just look, I can't give you a technical blow by blow, in part because the mainstream media are letting us down. [00:29:34] So, just from 50,000 feet, You know, I once thought about going into politics, and the guy told me, this is like 18 years ago, you know, you can't beat somebody with nobody. [00:29:44] And I was not a name, and I could not take this person out, given my current, what then was my stature. [00:29:52] I feel like the same applies to Donald Trump. [00:29:55] He was somebody, and Joe Biden is a shell of a man. [00:29:57] And I just can't believe that it got 80 million votes. [00:30:00] I can't believe that somebody like Donald Trump, who got 95% of the Republican vote in the primary, I think voting, voter mail in voting was rushed. [00:30:10] I saw a report by Cynthia McFadden, Memorial Day, and she raised this is before it got truly politicized, like this is extremely hard and states don't know what they're doing. [00:30:22] And so all of that leaves me with a great deal of skepticism and questions that I'm frustrated that more people are not seeking the answers to. [00:30:31] Right. [00:30:32] I mean, I've heard people say, how is it possible that Joe Biden, who Virtually no one felt enthusiastic about receiving more than 15 million more votes than Barack Obama received in 2012. [00:30:44] Like, how is that possible? [00:30:46] But I understand the response too, which is Trump, right? [00:30:50] He motivates people both ways. [00:30:52] And while on paper it may not seem possible, the tallies are not working out the way Sidney Powell suggested they would. [00:31:04] You know, they're doing the hand recount in Georgia right now, but they're saying they've only found a small number, nothing that's going to really. change his Biden's 12,000 plus lead over Trump. [00:31:15] And the thing about the Dominion voter machines is if there were this massive conspiracy, that wouldn't be happening. [00:31:23] The hand recount, the going back and looking at the paper receipts of the ballots would not match up with what the machines had said. [00:31:31] And so far it is. [00:31:34] So I'm very open-minded as a lawyer to proof and to, you know, I don't believe in people's inherent good nature. [00:31:41] I believe they would cheat, especially when it comes to Trump. [00:31:44] I just do. [00:31:45] But I want to be, I want to see it proven. [00:31:48] I believe in our country and I want to see it proven. [00:31:51] So far, I don't, show me. [00:31:52] Like, where is it, Greg? [00:31:53] Show me. [00:31:54] I understand. [00:31:55] And, but that, and I respect what you're saying. [00:31:59] But to the broader point about the media, what you just say there, show me. [00:32:02] Bring it to me. [00:32:04] Show me the evidence. [00:32:05] And we put it all on Sidney Powell. [00:32:07] And let's face it, she's not a gifted storyteller and she probably gets carried away with herself. [00:32:13] So it's so easy to dismiss. [00:32:15] Now, I heard something yesterday that was quite interesting about Dominion voting systems that they pledge to be offline, not connected to the internet, where they're actually connected to the internet. [00:32:25] Look, but I don't know the technical ins and outs. [00:32:28] I will say this 20 years ago, when we were watching the recount in Florida, The zone was flooded with reporters from all over the world in Tallahassee and Palm Beach watching this thing and pursuing every single lead. [00:32:43] If you go to Pennsylvania, if you go to Arizona, the hearing yesterday, there's no one covering this stuff. [00:32:51] They're all sitting back for a couple of reasons. [00:32:52] Number one, they don't have the capacity to travel, no one's paying those bills anymore. [00:32:57] And they're not inclined because the network, they all call this finished and they want to move on. [00:33:04] So Look, show me the evidence. [00:33:06] Yeah, but whatever happened to, let's go find the evidence. [00:33:11] Now, I'm the first one to admit I'm not in a position to find the evidence. [00:33:15] Okay. [00:33:15] I've got this show on. [00:33:16] It's on every night at seven o'clock. [00:33:18] I'm based here in New York. [00:33:20] Yet there are people and there's an industry that still has the capacity to pursue this, and they've decided not to. [00:33:29] You can't convince me that they've adequately investigated the possibility that this thing was stolen. === Possibility of a Third Party (06:50) === [00:33:37] Yeah, they don't care. [00:33:38] I mean, for sure. [00:33:39] If it were the other way, you're 100% right that they would be taking a much harder and more serious look at the claims. [00:33:46] It's not their job to find evidence for the complaining lawyer, but that doesn't stop them when they think it's going to help, quote, their side, which is always Democrat when it comes to the media. [00:33:56] No, so you're not wrong about that. [00:33:58] But I will say, just as an impartial arbiter, and that's how I see myself in this, I'm, you know, the lawyer, I don't see it. [00:34:05] I don't, unless Sydney, Powell really does have the Kraken hidden someplace to prove that Dominion voting machines were actually manipulated. [00:34:13] And she's saying, I mean, Dominion's saying they were not connected to the internet, that there are ports that are not accessible from the outside, that they're not connected and that you couldn't get to them, that the ports, because they're inside the machines. [00:34:26] Who knows, right? [00:34:27] This is all going to play out in an evidentiary way in court. [00:34:30] But what do you think in terms of, you know, how does this bode for what's going to happen? [00:34:35] Let's say Biden is certified the winner, he's inaugurated in January. [00:34:40] What does this do to the Republican voters who believe that this was stolen? [00:34:46] And even those who don't believe it was stolen, but they're just ticked off because, you know, Trump was, they impeached him. [00:34:52] They accused him of being a Russian asset. [00:34:54] They questioned his legitimacy from day one. [00:34:56] And now we're getting lectured to about how that undermines democracy. [00:34:59] And what we really need to do is support our president and unify. [00:35:02] Yeah. [00:35:03] You know what? [00:35:04] I think that there's a possibility of a third party. [00:35:06] I know those haven't gone anywhere in the past, what, 50 years or so. [00:35:10] But I think a third party, a Make America Great Again party, People might start talking about something like that. [00:35:16] There's a huge, you know, Trump is what 95% support in the Republican Party. [00:35:23] The Republican Party is Trump. [00:35:25] I think Trump takes that support with him. [00:35:27] Trump is, I believe, 74 right now. [00:35:30] He'll be 78. [00:35:31] He'll be Biden's age in four years. [00:35:34] So if this does not work out, I think he becomes a candidate day one and he starts commanding attention all over again. [00:35:41] I'm seeing some signs that the media are getting anxious to cover. [00:35:46] Biden, the way they should have covered him during the campaign, really scrutinizing him. [00:35:52] I have a feeling that's going to start happening should he get into office. [00:35:56] So I don't think so. [00:35:57] Who do you think is going to scrutinize Biden other than Fox and Newsmax? [00:36:01] Well, you know, there is the far left that is already dissatisfied with how Joe is performing. [00:36:09] The appointments so far are incredibly lackluster in their view, conventional run of the mill swamp creatures, forgive me, not catering to the far left as sufficiently as I think they were promised. [00:36:25] So the far left media, to the extent that there is one, and, you know, sooner or later, I think, actually, I know that some in the mainstream media, some are. [00:36:35] Regretting how they played this so far. [00:36:38] That look, if they made it more of a dog race, a dog fight, as it is right now, it'd be better for business. [00:36:46] So even the mainstream media may realize, look, what do we owe Joe Biden? [00:36:51] I mean, what do we really owe this guy? [00:36:53] And they'll have to figure out for themselves. [00:36:57] They'll never actually be called out on it. [00:36:59] But why didn't we scrutinize him the way we do every single candidate? [00:37:03] Why didn't we give him the treatment in 2020 that we did in 1987? [00:37:08] There are no good answers for that. [00:37:10] And so I have a feeling they may reset and just go out. [00:37:15] The Times put out a statement today, actually, saying they'll cover a Biden administration with the same vigor they covered. [00:37:22] Oh, please. [00:37:23] Yeah, good luck with that. [00:37:25] I don't believe that for one second. [00:37:27] They've got Kamala Harris waiting in the wings, who is definitely to the left of Joe. [00:37:32] And I don't know, stranger things have happened. [00:37:36] Well, you raise a good point, though, because in a minute, we're going to be joined by. [00:37:40] The former national press secretary for Bernie Sanders, Breonna Joy Gray. [00:37:43] And, you know, she's not a fan, like Crystal Ball. [00:37:46] These folks are on the established left, the more progressive left. [00:37:49] They're not huge fans of Biden, but I would say the media, I don't know. [00:37:54] I don't know. [00:37:54] I don't expect them to cover Trump, sorry, Biden in any way near the way they covered Trump, who they thought was a demon. [00:38:02] You know, they made pretty clear they thought he was the worst you could be. [00:38:06] So let me ask you, though, about Newsmax, because it's been an interesting phenomenon to watch it go from. [00:38:12] It's a very respected online property and Chris Ruddy has been trying to build the cable news presence and has made investments in talent like you. [00:38:22] But man, it's exploded since the election because you guys have not called the election. [00:38:28] Newsmax has not said that Joe Biden has won the election yet. [00:38:31] They're waiting for certifications and for the legal process to play out. [00:38:36] And now your show's beating a lot of the, like your show's getting over a million viewers, which beats a lot of the daytime programming on some of these other channels. [00:38:44] And what do you think is happening? [00:38:45] Do you think you're getting the disaffected Fox News viewers who are ticked off about the Chris Wallace debate, the early call in Arizona, and some of the other things that we've heard people complain about there? [00:38:58] Yes. [00:38:58] The short answer is yes. [00:39:00] We are getting disaffected Fox viewers. [00:39:03] We were seeing a rise over the past, I would say, started in September and October for sure. [00:39:11] My show, we've been at it since January, and it's evolved. [00:39:15] We had what we call a soft launch, or what they call a soft launch. [00:39:18] We didn't call a lot of attention to ourselves, wanted to figure out how this show would be presented, what worked, what didn't. [00:39:24] And we ironed that out over a couple of months, which was a real luxury to be kind of hiding in plain sight and figuring out what this show was and what it wasn't and working on it and working on it. [00:39:35] And I think it really started to come alive in May, certainly after the protests started across the country, the George Floyd protests. [00:39:43] And when viewers found us, whether they were from Fox or somewhere else, They found something to really watch that they could really engage with. [00:39:52] And I think we were providing something very unique, saying things that no one else was saying. [00:39:58] So I'm proud of the product. [00:39:59] Yes, disaffected people, and then wow. [00:40:02] They're seeing something that's like, wait a second. [00:40:03] This is, this is really, this is, you're onto something here. [00:40:07] So I'm very proud of what we've created. [00:40:10] And we'll see what happens. [00:40:13] Well, I have to say, of course, people are taking shots at you now because the mainstream media wants you to declare for Biden and they want you to get behind, you know, their declarations. [00:40:23] But I will say for the record, I've been watching your coverage and you as a journalist for a long, long time. === Energize Without the Jitters (02:20) === [00:40:28] You're very fair. [00:40:29] You're not in the tank. [00:40:31] I know you're a Trump supporter, you've owned that, but you are not in the tank. [00:40:34] You're a fair guy. [00:40:35] And so, They can just pound sand, Greg. [00:40:38] I'm with you. [00:40:40] Well, bring it on. [00:40:42] What do they say? [00:40:43] Dogs only bark when you're advancing. [00:40:45] I love it. [00:40:45] It's, hey, look, it's all part of it. [00:40:47] And, you know, I even love Twitter. [00:40:49] There are some smart people out there. [00:40:51] There really are people who don't agree with you, people who agree with you. [00:40:55] And I just, I love the dialogue and to be continued. [00:41:00] Yeah. [00:41:00] Yeah. [00:41:01] I got another one. [00:41:02] They only tackle you when you have the ball. [00:41:04] A sports reference, Greg Kelly. [00:41:05] Look at me go. [00:41:06] I'm evolving. [00:41:08] Very, very impressive. [00:41:09] Good luck with the show. [00:41:10] We'll continue talking, I hope. [00:41:11] Thank you, Megan. [00:41:12] All the best. [00:41:14] Coming up in a minute, we're going to be joined by Brianna Joy Gray, who was the former national press secretary for Bernie Sanders, who's got a warning for the Biden administration about how exactly obnoxious she is about to get. [00:41:27] Before we get to that, though, let's talk about Super Beats soft shoes. [00:41:31] They really are tasty. [00:41:32] If you haven't tried these things, you're missing out. [00:41:34] I love Super Beats soft shoes because they make me feel more energized without the jittery feeling you get when you've had too much coffee. [00:41:41] More than that, they're packaged conveniently, so you can just throw them in your bag before you head out to work and have them on the way or while you're in your office. [00:41:48] Super Beats Soft Chews combine non-GMO beets with a powerful new ingredient, grapeseed extract. [00:41:55] Even sounds good. 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[00:42:47] You wanted Bernie, of course. === Fighting for Average Americans (16:29) === [00:42:49] It turned out to be Biden. [00:42:51] He got it done from the way it looks. [00:42:54] But you're not exactly a huge fan. [00:42:55] So, how are you feeling right now? [00:42:57] Well, look, even before the global pandemic we're all living through and the economic crisis that has come along with it, there were ongoing crises in this country, right? [00:43:08] We are living at a time of enormous wealth inequality, the kind of inequality we haven't seen since. [00:43:15] The Gilded Age, with six people owning more wealth than the bottom 50% of Americans. [00:43:22] And now the kind of insurance crisis, health crises that existed before the pandemic are exacerbated. [00:43:30] We've seen 12 million Americans lose their employer based health insurance over the course of the pandemic. [00:43:36] And a lot of the problems that Bernie Sanders was talking about have only gotten that much worse. [00:43:40] So it's, yes, frustrating and disappointing to know that while it's obviously an advantage to have. [00:43:48] Gotten Trump out of the White House, Joe Biden is still signaling that he is not going to meet the crisis with the level of policy engagement that a lot of progressives and, frankly, even conservatives believe is necessary. [00:44:03] To meet the moment. [00:44:05] What do you make of it? [00:44:06] There seems to be in the postmortem a discussion by Democrats that the progressives are to blame for the fact that the Democrats didn't get more seats in the House and didn't capture the Senate. [00:44:21] That, you know, you heard the now infamous call amongst House Democrats right after the election saying, no more defund the police and no more socialism talk, or we're never going to increase our numbers. [00:44:36] What did you make of that? [00:44:37] Yeah, I think in the words of our next president, I'd say that's a bunch of malarkey. [00:44:42] The reality is that what you saw across the country was that progressive policies, progressive issues on the ballot did a lot better than the Democratic candidates themselves, right? [00:44:52] So you had Joe Biden lose in Florida, but a $15 minimum wage went there. [00:44:58] You saw drug legalization pass in several states across the country, and it did better than Joe Biden. [00:45:07] In fact, in Florida, where the $15 minimum wage passed, The Florida Democratic Party decided that Joe Biden should distance himself from that issue because they thought it was going to be too radical and a drag on the ticket, when in fact, the opposite was true. [00:45:21] And not a single Democratic incumbent, not a single candidate who supported Medicare for All lost their race. [00:45:27] What you saw was a lot of these moderate candidates that refused to fight for their constituents. [00:45:33] Remember, and this is, I think, a really crucial point that gets lost an overwhelming majority of Americans support Medicare for All, including a slim majority of Republicans. [00:45:42] These are not polarizing issues. [00:45:45] And candidates weren't running on defund the police. [00:45:47] Candidates were more often tied to negative ads to people like Nancy Pelosi, Democratic Party moderates, not to people like AOC or issues that are arguably on the fringe. [00:45:59] So, what you saw was Joe Biden at the top of the ticket, who said, My pitch is that I'm appealable to Republicans, right? [00:46:07] Come out and vote for me, conservatives. [00:46:09] And he did, in fact, succeed in driving out turnout for a lot of never Trump Republicans who were frustrated with us. [00:46:15] The president's way of running the country. [00:46:17] But what happens is a lot of those people might want Trump out of office, but they're still Republicans and want to vote Republican down ticket. [00:46:23] And that's what was toxic to the ballot. [00:46:25] It was Joe Biden being at the top of the ticket that I believe was ultimately the cause of Democrats failing so poorly in the House races. [00:46:33] What do you make of that? [00:46:34] We had James Carville on the show last week, I think it was, and he said Medicare for all is a loser in the Democratic Party. [00:46:41] He said, not the Democrats who won, notwithstanding their embrace of that. [00:46:47] won in districts that are just incredibly heavily Democratic. [00:46:51] They're plus Dem by 20 points. [00:46:53] So he was kind of saying, show me a Democrat in a tight race who won endorsing that position. [00:46:57] They don't exist. [00:46:58] And that's not a winner for our party. [00:47:01] He was pushing away not just from the AOCs of the world, right, who have sort of a more woke approach to life versus the Bernie's of the world, which, you know, that's where the sort of socialism accusation comes in. [00:47:16] Yeah, I mean, that's a hard case to make when every single Medicare for All supporter in a And his swing district won. [00:47:22] I mean, there's just no statistical basis for what he's saying. [00:47:25] And when you look at the polls, it's obvious why. [00:47:29] Again, I mean, I know this feels like a, you know, it's difficult to over rely on polls. [00:47:34] And, you know, given how pervasive the media narrative is to the contrary on both sides of the aisle, it's hard to believe. [00:47:42] But poll after poll, and increasingly so during the pandemic, show that this is what Americans want. [00:47:48] And it's no wonder why, right? [00:47:50] The average American changes jobs 12 times in their lifetime. [00:47:53] And each time you change your job, you are at risk of losing your insurance coverage, not just for you and for your family. [00:48:00] The average American family before the pandemic was paying. [00:48:03] Upwards of $20,000 a year in premiums for coverage that doesn't even guarantee that your costs are going to be covered, right? [00:48:10] You still have to pay out of pocket costs for co pays and deductibles. [00:48:14] And many of us have experienced avoiding healthcare service because our deductibles are so high that basically we use our insurance only for catastrophic outcomes, right? [00:48:25] And this pandemic has proven how unsustainable an employer based model is. [00:48:30] It just doesn't make sense to only be able to. [00:48:33] To be treated, to have cures for diseases and to come out with something like cancer or diabetes, like so many Americans suffer with, not to mention COVID and the very expensive treatment that is required for COVID, and to not be able to get treated just because you've also lost your job because of the pandemic. [00:48:50] And I think it's getting harder and harder for Americans to swallow the idea, especially coming from people who disproportionately and overwhelmingly are being paid by the pharmaceutical industry. [00:49:05] When you look at Joe Biden, In his strident defense of the private healthcare industry, there is a direct connection between that and the fact that he took more money from that industry for his campaign than any other candidate in the race, more billionaire dollars than any other candidate in the race. [00:49:19] And his chief advisor is a healthcare lobbyist. [00:49:22] That's not someone who is putting the healthcare interests of Americans first. [00:49:27] Yeah. [00:49:28] Well, it's, I mean, it's obviously something that Bernie ran on and he wasn't selected as the ultimate nominee. [00:49:34] And then you could take that as a rejection of that position by Democrats. [00:49:39] But The bigger picture is an interesting one because the Democratic Party has been getting linked more and more to big money, right? [00:49:46] Like, what is the Democratic Party right now? [00:49:48] We talked about this not long ago. [00:49:50] Is it the party of elites, media, and otherwise, and big business, you know, Wall Street, big pockets, deep pockets? [00:49:59] Like, the working class that used to vote Democrat pretty reliably seems more aligned with the Republican Party now, even though Trump lost at the presidential level. [00:50:09] So, what do you think? [00:50:10] I mean, is the Democratic Party. [00:50:12] The party of the elites now? [00:50:14] Yeah, I think that the problem, the fundamental problem with this country is that we have two corporate parties. [00:50:21] There is no party in America that is truly beholden to the American people. [00:50:26] And I think Democrats don't fully embrace this as part of the impetus behind Donald Trump's election in 2016. [00:50:35] But I think it's really core here. [00:50:37] I mean, Thomas Frank is an author who wrote Listen Liberal and What's the Matter with Kansas. [00:50:43] And he really lays out historically what happened to the Democrats, who, as you point out, used to have organized labor as its primary constituency and really served the interests of working Americans. [00:50:57] And after a series of losses throughout the 70s and 80s, Democrats decided that they had to reconfigure. [00:51:04] The argument goes that the rise of television ads and the persuasive value of those ads meant that Democrats felt the need to invest more in big money. [00:51:12] And they decided to play the same game that the Republican Party had been playing for some time. [00:51:17] And courting big money donors. [00:51:19] And so that when you, what you got, it was the quote unquote third way with Bill Clinton being the first successful third way candidate that, in many people's eyes, validated that political choice to, you know, abandon Americans for corporate interests. [00:51:33] And so what you have now is the shell game where Democrats pretend to be the better, you know, and I think they are the better alternative to Republicans only because they at least pretend and superficially will give nods to the interests of, The more vulnerable people in this country, working class people, poor people, various historically marginalized groups, et cetera. [00:51:58] But the reality is that there are. [00:52:01] Both parties take the money from the same constituents. [00:52:04] The same corporations give to both candidates in a presidential cycle because they know that their interests are going to be served no matter who wins. [00:52:11] And that's how you get this enormous gulf between polls that show most Americans want common sense gun reform, most Americans want universal health care, most Americans want marijuana legalization, overwhelmingly, Republicans want marijuana legalization, but you don't have anybody in either party fighting for those things. [00:52:33] I think people saw with Donald Trump was an outsider who could potentially act on what folks actually were desiring on a grassroots level because he was financially independent. [00:52:46] And of course, he didn't ultimately end up ruling in that way at all. [00:52:50] But that was the promise of a Trump. [00:52:52] And that was, I think, more sincerely, the promise of a Bernie Sanders candidacy. [00:52:55] And that candidacy was derailed largely by a concerted effort from the Democratic establishment, who is very deeply financially invested in maintaining the corporate status quo. [00:53:08] Including the media. [00:53:10] That was one of the crazy things that brought together the more left-wing branch of the Democratic Party and conservatives. [00:53:17] Just the obvious bias and agenda of those who control the microphones toward not just the left, but a certain kind of Democrat. [00:53:25] That's not the Bernie kind, the Joe Biden kind. [00:53:28] And to pretend that they didn't have a hand, the media, in getting Biden the nomination and ultimately the presidency is to ignore reality. [00:53:38] I mean, I know I read that you said, With respect to Biden's term, this is the quote I'm about to be so obnoxious, you're going to pray for the days I was on the payroll. [00:53:49] And every other leftist should do the same thing. [00:53:51] What does that mean? [00:53:52] I love that quote. [00:53:53] It's fun. [00:53:53] But what does it mean? [00:53:55] Well, what I was talking about was the fact that if you raise at this point, even the most mild or timid critique of Joe Biden's candidacy, there's a certain cohort of online media establishment. [00:54:11] I'm not talking about voters when I'm talking about people, Republicans or Democrats, but media figures, political actors who, if you criticize Biden, will say that you support Trump or that you somehow aren't playing for the right team. [00:54:29] And during the primary or during the general election, rather, the argument went, okay, you can push Biden to the left. [00:54:35] You can make your point after he's in office. [00:54:37] And now what you're seeing is that even after he's been elected, they're still acting as though. [00:54:42] My critique can somehow be damaging to his ability to, you know, quote unquote, defeat Trump. [00:54:48] So, what I was pointing out was that I'm not going to stop fighting for the interests of average, everyday Americans just because political operatives find it to be inconvenient for folks to point out that Joe Biden has had a long career of threatening to cut Social Security at a moment when Americans had never needed the social safety net more. [00:55:07] I'm not going to be quiet about the fact that the kids in cages that everyone You know, highlighted rightly as a priority during the general election campaign, those cages were built under the Obama era, who in Obama deported more people than Donald Trump ultimately did, you know, in his first term. [00:55:23] And that these aren't issues, you know, if we cared about these issues, we should care about them not because it was a way to make Donald Trump look bad or to highlight the ways that Donald Trump was genuinely bad. [00:55:33] We should care about those issues because those issues matter, no matter whether a D or an R is in the White House. [00:55:38] Mm hmm. [00:55:40] I admire your principles. [00:55:42] The administration, as it's currently shaping up, seems to be going. [00:55:46] Another way, given the way he's sketching out his cabinet picks so far. [00:55:53] They look like mostly former Biden and Obama advisors. [00:55:56] And the one who's taking most of the heat. [00:55:59] Some people, so much so that some people think this is like a head fake to just be the lightning rod to draw all the heat away from everybody else. [00:56:05] But there's a real question about why he would have picked Nira Tandon for OMB. [00:56:09] This is, she heads up the Center for American Progress. [00:56:11] It's a center left think tank. [00:56:13] John Cornyn of Texas, Republican senator, has said this woman stands zero chance of getting confirmed. [00:56:19] Why is she so controversial? [00:56:22] I think that among your average Democrat, she's not very controversial. [00:56:27] I think that most people probably don't know who she is. [00:56:30] But For people who are online, perhaps terminally online like I am, she is in fact one of the more toxic people, I would argue, on the internet. [00:56:46] She has a very long history of being openly hostile to what I would describe as progressives. [00:56:53] Of course, she describes herself as progressive, but I don't think someone who, again, has a long record of entertaining cuts to, you know, What she and conservatives describe as entitlement programs, what actual progressives describe as the social safety net and the New Deal programs that make America a great country, is a progressive. [00:57:18] So she has a long history of antagonizing progressives, of being openly disdainful of people like Bernie Sanders, of courting and cultivating friendships with toxic online figures who engage in bigoted, hateful, ableist speech online. [00:57:37] It's particularly distressing to a lot of Bernie Sanders supporters because of the way that we were targeted and marked as quote unquote Bernie bros who had an online problem. [00:57:49] When Bernie Sanders never described people who told jokes about autistic girls as her friends, right? [00:57:56] Like this is the kind of person that Mira Candin is. [00:57:59] She's notorious for having, for example, assaulted Bernie Sanders' campaign manager, Faz Shakir, when he was a reporter. [00:58:11] For Think Progress, because he asked Hillary Clinton a question about her Iraq war vote. [00:58:17] And Mira Tandon felt apparently more strongly about protecting her candidate than vetting issues that are important to Americans or protecting her employee. [00:58:27] You know, there was another. [00:58:28] She was on record as saying, I would do whatever Hillary needs, always. [00:58:32] I owe her a lot, and I am a loyal soldier. [00:58:35] I mean, she's this is a Hillary Clinton person, and she's made no bones about it. [00:58:41] From the media, the biased media perspective, the Podesta emails revealed that she was one of the ones who was orchestrating a cadre of Black and female journalists in particular to weaponize their identity against Bernie Sanders and really push this idea that he was somehow against the interests of historically vulnerable groups in this country. [00:59:06] Even while she and Hillary Clinton famously instigated conflict in Libya that resulted in You know, slave markets and all these other kinds of human rights abuses. === Weaponizing Both Sides (02:11) === [00:59:18] You know, the hypocrisy, the kind of wanton brazenness of the way that she's operated. [00:59:25] She is the quintessential, in many ways, visible Democratic Party corporate operative. [00:59:31] And it's just a real kind of thumbing of the nose at progressives for Joe Biden to even float a pick like this as he's pretending to be interested in unifying the Democratic Party, the bulk of which, frankly, Are progressives who agree with a much more to the left version of politics than he's advocating? [00:59:56] And I just want to say it's not to the left, it's actually. [00:59:59] Again, these are what should be called centrist policies because majorities of Americans support these things. [01:00:05] Do you think Biden promised to have some of the Bernie wing in his cabinet? [01:00:08] I mean, do you think he's going to live up to that? [01:00:10] No. [01:00:11] You know, as evidenced by his picks, there's not a single Bernie supporter among any of his picks, not one. [01:00:18] Meanwhile, Republicans, of course, have gotten nods. [01:00:21] John Kasich, Sidney McCain have gotten nods. [01:00:25] But it was obvious from the way that he ran that he was more interested in. [01:00:30] Courting Republicans than he was in the constituents that fought and door knocked and donated to get him elected. [01:00:38] Can I ask you a question about woke culture? [01:00:41] Because I've been railing on that. [01:00:42] I'm not a fan. [01:00:43] And I don't like wokeness and I don't like cancel culture at all. [01:00:48] And I think your wing, the Bernie wing, has been sort of put around your neck. [01:00:56] And I don't know whether you think that's fair. [01:00:58] You know, obviously, Bernie. [01:01:02] He's got his economic positions, and that's one thing. [01:01:04] And I know that's what attracted people like AOC to him. [01:01:07] But I wonder if you think that's an okay thing to align with, sort of the wokesters, or whether you think that wing of the Democratic Party could get rid of that, what I think is an albatross around you, and just sort of break out on economic policy, which might be a lot more appealing to those same working class voters that went Trump. [01:01:26] The average Republican voter is not online. === Republican Voter Habits (16:20) === [01:01:29] They're not concerned or voting on. [01:01:33] The specifics of any particular third rail issue at any moment. [01:01:39] And to the extent that sometimes Republicans will try to highlight some of those issues in order to distract from, let's say, the fact that their political priority is a tax cut, 85% of which benefited, you know, went to the top 1% instead of for working people, you know, that can be of use to conservatives, right? [01:02:00] And so there's a way that both sides weaponize. [01:02:03] Third rail issues, and in order to distract from the fact that two corporate parties aren't, uh, you know, actually addressing the core needs of their constituents. [01:02:12] Now, the reality is that I think most people don't care about what might be described as fringe issues. [01:02:18] I would point to someone like Danica Roam, who was the first trans woman I believe elected to um uh state office. [01:02:26] And what she often says is, Look, the people in my community didn't care that I was trans, I ran on bread and butter issues, I ran on traffic. [01:02:35] Lights and infrastructure and fixing roads. [01:02:38] And ultimately, nobody cared if I didn't make, you know, if, you know, I wasn't running on being a trans woman, I was running on fixing communities. [01:02:47] I agree with you that these issues can be a distraction, but it's a distraction that is weaponized, I think, in a bipartisan way. [01:02:54] Brianna, so good to talk to you. [01:02:56] Same here. [01:02:57] Thank you so much. [01:02:59] Our thanks to Brianna Joy Gray, host of the Bad Faith podcast. [01:03:03] And in one second, we're going to be joined by Eric Erickson. [01:03:06] He is host of the Eric Erickson radio show, which is based in Georgia. [01:03:10] So he's got an insider's take on what to expect in these two key Senate races that are having their runoffs there. [01:03:16] Before we get to him, though, let's talk about Norton 360 with LifeLock. [01:03:21] You need this. 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[01:04:03] You can get a VPN for your online privacy and Lifelock identity theft protection that will alert you to potential identity threats. [01:04:12] No one can prevent all cybercrime and identity theft or monitor every single transaction at all businesses, but this is a very, very healthy start. [01:04:20] Norton 360 with Lifelock can help keep your holidays happy with powerful protection against cybercriminals. [01:04:26] Save 25% or more off your first year at norton.comslash MK. [01:04:31] 25% or more off. [01:04:32] That's norton.com slash MK to save 25% off. [01:04:37] Check it out. [01:04:43] Eric Erickson, thank you for being here. [01:04:45] Thank you for having me. [01:04:46] All right, let's talk Georgia. [01:04:48] This is your state, and you know everything that's going on there. [01:04:52] Let's just start with what just happened, which is Trump just tweeted out a message to the Georgia governor, Brian Kemp, saying, Do something. [01:05:02] You allowed your state to be scammed. [01:05:04] We must check signatures and count signed envelopes against ballots, then call off election. [01:05:11] It won't be needed. [01:05:12] We will all win, presumably, meaning call off the special election we're about to have that, you know, yeah, the runoff election for the Senate seats, meaning if you just do it my way, I'll have won and the other Republicans will have won and we don't have to go through this whole thing. [01:05:29] Now, of course, that's not going to happen. [01:05:31] But what do you make of that Trump tweet? [01:05:34] Yeah, well, I don't know who's giving the president his information about. [01:05:37] Georgia, but one, the governor here literally has no power under the Constitution to do any of this stuff. [01:05:43] The Secretary of State is the constitutional officer for elections, so the governor can't order a recount. [01:05:49] He can't do signature checks. [01:05:51] The other thing is that people are missing is under Georgia law, there was a time to allow the parties to oversee signature checks done by local governments, but that was up until the day before the election. [01:06:02] And the Republican Party here never did it. [01:06:05] They say the Secretary of State blocked their effort, but You got a Republican Secretary of State blocking the Republican Party from looking at signatures. [01:06:14] I don't find it plausible, particularly when the law allows you to do it. [01:06:18] If there were screw ups in the election, it's not that the election was stolen, it's that people dropped the ball before the election to oversee the integrity of the process. [01:06:26] And the governor's hands are dry. [01:06:28] He's suggesting if you count envelopes mailed in and ballots, you're going to have more ballots than envelopes. [01:06:34] In other words, somebody dropped a bunch of ballots for Biden into the count. [01:06:40] That weren't in fact mailed in based on what we don't know, but that seems to be his implication. [01:06:44] Well, so, you know, they are going back and looking at that in Gwinnett County, which is the county that's shifting the most rapidly in the state demographically towards the Democrats. [01:06:53] There have been some allegations from some poll workers that are about that. [01:06:56] They're looking. [01:06:57] The Secretary of State's office, though, I've talked to them about this, they say they find it very implausible because when you go in to vote, your name is added to a list of you coming in to vote. [01:07:07] And the number of votes cast matches perfectly to the number of names listed as people who voted. [01:07:13] So, They're not sure how this is coming up, but they are going to check it. [01:07:17] Okay. [01:07:19] I mean, what is really going on here? [01:07:21] Because I'll tell you from the outside, I'm in New York. [01:07:24] It seems like Trump is turning on two loyal Republicans who absolutely wanted to see him reelected. [01:07:30] These are not never Trump types because he doesn't like the result. [01:07:35] But there's only so much they can do. [01:07:37] I mean, you tell me, is there more they can be doing to help him with his claims of fraud, et cetera? [01:07:43] I think people from outside of Georgia don't understand our process here where. [01:07:47] We have these Dominion voter machines, but they actually print out a paper ballot that shows who you voted for, and you carry that paper ballot to a scanner that then scans your vote. [01:07:58] And so you've got time. [01:07:59] In fact, when I went and voted, they told me, look and make sure it's right. [01:08:03] And it was. [01:08:03] And I stuck it in the machine and it scanned. [01:08:06] And they hand counted the paper ballots and they matched identically to the machines across all 159 counties in Georgia. [01:08:13] When you point that out, suddenly the argument shifts to absentee votes and says, well, they might have been the absentee votes. [01:08:19] Well, maybe, but your time to contest that was before the election and no one bothered to contest them at the time. [01:08:25] So, yeah, the president is the first Republican since the 90s to lose the state at president. [01:08:30] But the Republicans swept every other seat in the state when people actually thought they were going to lose seats, which is another reason they think it must have been fraud on the president's part. [01:08:37] But actually, when you examine where the vote came from, it was North Metro Atlanta Republicans who they're not really socially conservative. [01:08:45] They just want a good 401k. [01:08:46] They voted for Joe Biden and then voted Republican the rest of the way through the ballot. [01:08:51] So, what do you make of these speculations that Georgia's really purple now? [01:08:56] It's not solidly red. [01:08:59] Do you think that's true with Trump not on the ballot? [01:09:02] Not really. [01:09:03] When you actually add up all of the votes that were cast in congressional races and legislative races in Georgia, the Republicans got 51% of all votes cast in congressional races, 53% of the votes cast in state House races, 54% of the vote cast in state Senate races. [01:09:19] And when you add up, there were 21 candidates in the Leffler Warnock race originally. [01:09:23] When you add up all the right of center candidates, they got 53% of the vote. [01:09:27] So it's not really a Democratic state. [01:09:29] It certainly demographically suggests it's trending that way. [01:09:32] But David Perdue got 45% of the Hispanic vote in Georgia. [01:09:36] If he gets That shuts the Democrats out in the state. [01:09:40] If he gets what percent? [01:09:42] If he gets 50% of the Hispanic vote, he got 45% in the general. [01:09:45] If Purdue gets 50% of the Hispanic vote, and the odds are he can, it shuts the Democrats out from this demographic shift in Georgia. [01:09:53] They just can't compete if Republicans make inroads with the Hispanic community. [01:09:58] All right, let's talk about the Senate runoff because that's what everybody's looking at, right? [01:10:03] As interesting as the Trump legal challenge may be, I don't think as a lawyer we're going to see that go anywhere. [01:10:09] But the Senate runoff is going to happen. [01:10:11] And it's so it's David Perdue versus John Ossoff and Kelly Loeffler versus Raphael Warnock. [01:10:17] So the Democrats are Ossoff and Warnock, and the Republicans are Perdue and Loeffler. [01:10:22] And you tell me, but I saw the latest poll shows it's tight. [01:10:26] It's really tight. [01:10:28] There was an insider advantage poll that shows Ossoff and Perdue tied, and one that showed the Democrat, Warnock, up one over Kelly Loeffler. [01:10:37] And then there was another poll that showed her up. [01:10:39] Plus four over Raphael Warneck. [01:10:42] So it's tight. [01:10:44] Yeah, it's tight, and the polling has been bad. [01:10:46] You know, historically in Georgia, if you look at 2014, 16, 18, and 20, the Democrats are always ahead of the Republicans in the polling, and yet the Republicans always seem to win the state. [01:10:56] What I would say that is most notable is you look at the actual voting on the ground. [01:11:00] North Metro voters voted for Joe Biden and then voted for David Perdue and a Republican. [01:11:07] And then the most interesting aspect of this, And completely ignored is that in South Georgia, in overwhelming precincts, they voted for Joe Biden and they would not even vote in the David Perdue, John Ossoff race. [01:11:19] They voted for Raphael Warnock, but not for Ossoff. [01:11:21] Ossoff has a real problem connecting voters. [01:11:25] And a lot of people think, well, people are just going to show up and they're going to vote in both. [01:11:28] But actually, in South Georgia, that didn't happen with Black voters. [01:11:31] And then North Metro voters didn't vote for Raphael Warnock. [01:11:35] They voted, a lot of them, for Democrats, just not for Warnock. [01:11:39] So the Democrats have some latent problems here. [01:11:41] The Republicans, though, have a real problem too. [01:11:43] That is, when you've got the president of the United States saying you've got a Republican controlled state and yet the vote could still be stolen, you're going to have a lot of people say, Well, I'm not going to go show up in January because they'll just steal it again. [01:11:55] Well, exactly right. [01:11:55] I mean, the question of Demoralization of Republican voters who believe the re election was stolen from Trump or who believe they can't trust the voting system. [01:12:07] I don't think the Democrats are feeling that way, but a lot of Republicans are. [01:12:10] So, how does that affect this vote? [01:12:13] Well, it's going to be interesting to see how internalized this becomes with the GOP. [01:12:18] And right now, the state party is in this weird position where they're trying to affirm that, yes, there were election anomalies. [01:12:24] We need to check this for the president, but also, please, Republicans, go vote. [01:12:28] I think the most telling number in the state is 20,000, though. [01:12:31] There were 20,000 Republicans who voted absentee ballot in the primary and they never showed up at all in the general election. [01:12:39] If the Republicans can get those people to turn out, that gives them a 20,000 person edge over the Democrats. [01:12:45] They just got to go, they know who they are. [01:12:47] They got to convince them to vote. [01:12:48] A lot of these people didn't vote because the president said don't vote by absentee ballot. [01:12:52] And then they just forgot to show up on election day. [01:12:54] So if they turn out, that helps the GOP. [01:12:57] Think about that. [01:12:58] God, that's crazy. [01:12:59] You know, I'm sure the Trump campaign is revisiting all that messaging. [01:13:02] Yeah. [01:13:03] Now, and And then some in states other than Georgia as well. [01:13:07] So let's just talk about the. [01:13:09] You mentioned like John Assoff has problems down there. [01:13:11] Can you explain that? [01:13:11] What I saw in the paper recently was he ate a vegan burger and then David Perdue tweeted out a picture of himself eating bacon. [01:13:20] That's Georgia politics. [01:13:23] He doesn't relate well. [01:13:24] This is what people seem to don't understand. [01:13:26] There's a community in the Atlanta area around Emory University, DeKalb County, Decatur. [01:13:31] It's very hyper progressive, and Assoff comes from that area. [01:13:36] He ran in the sixth congressional district, not living in that district. [01:13:40] It was overwhelmingly had a massive Democratic fundraising advantage. [01:13:44] That district went to the Democrats a year later. [01:13:47] But in the special election in 2017, he lost it. [01:13:50] Black voters don't resonate with him. [01:13:52] He doesn't sound like he's from Georgia. [01:13:55] He doesn't seem to have Georgia values. [01:13:57] He's actually kind of funny. [01:13:58] The other day, he was on MSNBC talking about gun control. [01:14:01] Well, literally at the same time I'm in Macon, Georgia, there was an ad on television on a different station about his pro Second Amendment position. [01:14:09] So he just doesn't align well with Georgia voters. [01:14:12] Now, okay, so if you had to put money on Purdue versus Assoff, what do you think is going to happen? [01:14:18] I absolutely think Purdue wins. [01:14:19] I mean, what people ignore is that David Purdue got 49.8% of the vote to Assoff's 46%. [01:14:25] Assoff trailed Joe Biden by 100,000 votes. [01:14:28] Purdue actually got more votes than Donald Trump in Georgia. [01:14:31] It was a libertarian candidate who got 3% of the vote. [01:14:34] I know the libertarian voters in Georgia fairly well. [01:14:37] They're mostly Second Amendment rights activists, and they'll come back for David Purdue. [01:14:43] And that would give the Republicans control of the Senate. [01:14:47] They only need to hold one of these. [01:14:49] They can afford to lose one, but they'd rather win both. [01:14:52] And so, do you think Kelly Loeffler is more vulnerable than David Perdue as a Republican incumbent? [01:14:57] I do. [01:14:58] She's not as strong a candidate. [01:14:59] She's not as well known. [01:15:01] She was appointed in January to replace Johnny Isaacson, but she's also a billionaire with a lot of money to spend between now and January to boost her appeal. [01:15:10] Okay. [01:15:10] And her opponent, as you point out, he's. [01:15:14] Popular in the black community. [01:15:16] He was a popular reverend there, but he's also said some things in that role from the pulpit that have gotten him in trouble. [01:15:25] Like the one that recently resurfaced from a 2017 sermon was he said that racism is America's pre existing condition. [01:15:34] So he said it's a sickness that's impacting political discourse and so on. [01:15:39] And if you listen to him, it seems like he's pretty much on board with America's a racist country. [01:15:45] It's systemically racist. [01:15:46] It's You know, whatever. [01:15:48] It's the original sin that we're going to have to deal with that. [01:15:50] Now, that's how a lot of people feel, but not most Republicans. [01:15:55] So I don't think he's going to get a ton of Republican vote. [01:15:57] Votes on that, but does that rally the Dem base? [01:16:01] To a degree, except the latest revelation came out today, actually, was that he's also ridiculed gun owners. [01:16:08] You have a huge gun owning community in Georgia. [01:16:11] He's also called police thugs and bullies. [01:16:15] He's referred to them in pretty derogatory terms. [01:16:18] And if you look at the exit polling, forget the opinion polling that was all wrong, the exit polling was pretty reliable. [01:16:23] And it showed in the Atlanta suburbs, which is where 55% of the turnout for this election is going to be. [01:16:30] Overwhelmingly, the voters there, one, support divided government, but two, were really turned off by the Democrats' socialism, defund the police agenda. [01:16:39] And Warnock has been very aggressively in support of the defund police agenda, which will alienate him with independent suburban voters who are going to turn out. [01:16:47] He's got problems different from John Ossoff. [01:16:50] Ossoff has problems relating with black voters. [01:16:52] Warnock has problems relating with North Metro white voters that are going to turn out 55% of the vote in the runoff. [01:16:58] All right. [01:16:58] So, what as a Republican keeps you up at night about this race? [01:17:03] The president's language about Georgia, the Sidney Powell lawsuit, which, if you read it, is a very frivolous lawsuit. [01:17:11] But there are a lot of activist supporters of the president. [01:17:13] Actually, I get death threats now on a regular basis from some of them for being dismissive of these claims. [01:17:19] And if they internalize this too much, they're not going to show up and vote. [01:17:23] And that could hand the race to the Democrats when really the numbers support the Republicans. [01:17:27] Well, that's the thing it's like, if you have to take, even if you're a diehard Trump fan, you have to take a hard look at what he's actually alleging and what he can prove. [01:17:35] I mean, Even his most diehard fans have to know that. [01:17:38] It's about what he can prove. [01:17:40] That's where we are. [01:17:42] And if he can't prove what Sidney Powell in her typo written lawsuit, I was stunned, I have to say, a lawyer of her caliber, to have submitted what she submitted. === Cash In on Trump Name (15:16) === [01:17:50] She, just naming the district court, she spelled district wrong twice at the very first header of the very first page of the pleading. [01:17:58] Shocking. [01:17:59] I mean, that's stuff a first year lawyer would get fired for from a procedural standpoint. [01:18:04] What Paul claims is that the certification for Dominion voter systems in Georgia has no date on it. [01:18:09] And that state law requires her to be a date. [01:18:11] And she has the exhibit. [01:18:12] I think it's exhibit E in her complaint, shows the certification, but it's cropped. [01:18:18] If you look at the original, there actually is a date on it, and that's left out of the lawsuit. [01:18:22] I mean, all of these sorts of things. [01:18:24] It's very much like these hearings in Michigan and Arizona. [01:18:27] I was an elections lawyer in Georgia for a number of years. [01:18:30] There's always fraud in elections, just not enough to shape the outcome of the election. [01:18:34] But it's notable that in these hearings in Arizona and Michigan they're having right now, none of those people. [01:18:39] Filed affidavits and went to court, the Trump lawyers didn't use them in court. [01:18:44] I have a hard time accepting the statement of someone when the Trump campaign itself wouldn't use those people in court. [01:18:52] Well, but let's talk about that then. [01:18:53] Let's just talk about the Dominion voter theme, because I don't see any way forward for them on the vote by vote theme. [01:19:01] That's definitely not going to get them across the threshold. [01:19:03] But if you look at the Sidney Powell allegation, it's much more sweeping. [01:19:08] And she's saying, look, I have an affidavit from somebody. who says these are not trustworthy, that they can be hacked. [01:19:15] I have an affidavit from somebody who was there when they were created and said they really were designed to help Hugo Chavez never lose an election in Venezuela. [01:19:23] Not that he's controlling it right now. [01:19:25] He's been dead for several years, but that it was designed to be hackable. [01:19:29] And then another person saying, I can confirm it's hackable. [01:19:32] And then she's got somebody else saying, although it's much more ambiguous, and it was hacked. [01:19:38] And that, I just, I don't understand how you get there. [01:19:41] So, first of all, they're conflating the Smartmatic software with the Dominion voter machines. [01:19:48] And Smartmatic is a company that was developed by a Venezuelan immigrant to the United States, not for Chavez, although the machines were used there. [01:19:55] They're completely separate from Dominion. [01:19:57] But what they seem to gloss over is that Dominion was used in 14 counties only in Pennsylvania. [01:20:03] The president won 12 of those 14 counties. [01:20:06] In Pennsylvania and in Georgia, they actually print out a paper ballot showing who you voted for. [01:20:11] And unless they were somehow printing out the wrong person on your ballot in Georgia and you just ignored your ballot, the hand count in Georgia matches the machines perfectly. [01:20:21] I just don't see any of this stuff adding up. [01:20:23] And it's one thing to say a machine can be hacked. [01:20:25] I've got a Mac in front of me. [01:20:27] I know how to hack a Mac, it can be hacked, but it hasn't been hacked. [01:20:31] There's no evidence these machines have done. [01:20:34] I know. [01:20:35] I don't really understand the theory that if you go into the voting booth, there's an electronic screen, you hit Trump, then it spits you out your receipt. [01:20:45] And your receipt, unless you have tens of thousands of people or at least over 13,000 people who got a receipt back that then said Biden and they didn't check it, that's the only way this scheme works because the receipt, I don't even think they're alleging that they had people go in there and change out the receipts. [01:21:05] Like in the middle of the person's voting process, because the receipt then has to be fed into another machine. [01:21:10] It's not like you have it for a long time. [01:21:12] Right. [01:21:13] And so, you know, when I vote and I take my receipt, they tell me to look at it. [01:21:18] And everyone I know, my wife included, they said, look at it, make sure it's right. [01:21:21] And then when you scan it into a machine, it doesn't go through a machine and they can snatch it on the other side. [01:21:26] It falls into a locked box that you have to then have the supervisor of the elections open that box because no one there at the polling location has a key to get into the box. [01:21:36] They seem to be saying that the Smartmatic software design was adopted by Dominion, that ultimately was adopted by Dominion. [01:21:44] Not that they're working in tandem, but that Dominion piggybacked on this Smartmatic software that was the Chavez creation, and that that's where things got vulnerable, that these machines can be manipulated. [01:21:57] And they've spent a lot of time in their affidavits talking about how they can be manipulated, but they kind of skip past without proof that they were manipulated. [01:22:06] The quote from the affidavit is that. [01:22:08] There is, or from her motion, is there incontrovertible physical evidence that the standards of physical security of the voting machines and the software were breached and machines were connected to the internet? [01:22:25] And Dominion saying the machines were not connected to the internet, absolutely not, and that the standards of physical security of the machines and the software were not breached, and no one knows exactly what she's talking about. [01:22:40] Right. [01:22:41] Look, any machine that has computer code can be hacked. [01:22:45] There's no evidence they were hacked. [01:22:47] If they were hacked, how did they throw the vote to Donald Trump in so many places? [01:22:52] That makes no sense. [01:22:53] And then, of course, you've got the physical paper trail of the ballots. [01:22:56] You know, ironically, the complaints that are being raised by Sidney Palmer are very much what the Democrats were complaining about with these machines after 2016 that the Russians hacked it. [01:23:07] But there literally is no evidence these machines were connected to the internet. [01:23:11] In fact, in Georgia, given the way that these polling locations work, there's no way they could have been connected to the internet. [01:23:19] I mean, my local precinct is actually across the street from my house. [01:23:22] It's at a church, and the machines aren't connected into fiber lines or Ethernet cable or anything. [01:23:27] I mean, they literally are not connected to the internet. [01:23:30] Right. [01:23:30] I mean, the people who run these systems understand perfectly well how dangerous that could be and how not smart it would be. [01:23:37] So, this has all been anticipated and provided for. [01:23:41] And, you know, as Sidney Powell, she's got proof to the contrary. [01:23:44] We need to see it. [01:23:45] What do you think is going on right now? [01:23:46] Because I understand Trump does not like to, he would never say, I lost. [01:23:51] It's just not in his DNA. [01:23:53] But I'm surprised at how many of his voters are really just. [01:23:58] Willingly going along with this. [01:23:59] I can understand the media screwed him. [01:24:02] I can understand big tech has censored him to the point where he probably lost probably millions of votes. [01:24:08] You know, you Google something, it only brings you up messages that are pro Biden versus pro Trump, or there was an allegation that there had been a message, go vote, sent out by Google, but only to Democrats. [01:24:19] I don't know how it all works, but I understand those arguments as sort of a massive systemic attack on Republicans and support. [01:24:28] You know, an attempt to generate enthusiasm for Democrats, never mind the Hunter Biden stuff. [01:24:33] I am surprised to see so many going along with the specific Sidney Powell allegations of fraud that there's just no proof for. [01:24:41] Yeah, and look, I am too. [01:24:43] And part of it is I have this recurring theme when people call in very angrily to my radio show here in Georgia that they don't know anyone who voted for Joe Biden. [01:24:52] Therefore, Joe Biden couldn't have won, which is the Pauline Kahle argument about Richard Nixon back in the 70s. [01:24:57] She didn't know anybody who voted for him. [01:24:59] I knew that progressives tend to live in urban areas where they're in a bubble, very difficult for them to interact with conservatives on a daily basis. [01:25:07] But I think conservatives increasingly are too. [01:25:09] And because they don't know anyone who voted for Joe Biden, they can't understand how he could win their state. [01:25:16] There also is, I really do think, this increasingly unhealthy grievance mentality. [01:25:20] It crosses partisan lines now in the country where you're a victim of the other side, and everything you do as part of team sport is, well, they stole it from me. [01:25:30] Just like if you're a UGA fan here in Georgia and They lose. [01:25:33] Well, it's the refs called the game wrong and it's all their fault, not your team's fault. [01:25:38] So, do you think Trump runs again in 24? [01:25:41] You know, I don't think so. [01:25:43] And now, listen, I didn't think he was actually going to run in 2016, full disclosure, nor did I think he could win. [01:25:48] And he did. [01:25:49] So, maybe he will in 24, but he'll be what, 78, 79 years old at the time. [01:25:54] I, given his ridicule of Joe Biden and his age, I don't know that he'll do it. [01:26:00] I also don't know if in four years, if it settles, for example, let's say the Republicans win Georgia in the runoffs. [01:26:07] Which is very likely. [01:26:08] Suddenly, that debunks the whole idea of a fraud in the election because how come the Democrats couldn't steal the Senate if they could steal the presidency? [01:26:15] And then I think that settles in with Republican voters over the next four years. [01:26:19] And Republican voters have a history of rejecting losers for when they come back again a second time. [01:26:25] In the meantime, though, Trump is going to Georgia. [01:26:28] He's trying to help the two senators in their runoffs. [01:26:32] And Don Jr. is heading up this pack now that's going to try to help them get reelected. [01:26:37] So the Trumps, including the big man, Notwithstanding his rhetoric on Twitter, they are trying to help. [01:26:43] So I don't know how long the resentment would last, certainly if they win. [01:26:49] So, what do you think happens if it's not Trump in 2024? [01:26:52] Where do you think the Republican Party goes from here? [01:26:55] Gosh, I get asked this question a lot. [01:26:58] And my theory is no one really knows what Trumpism is per se. [01:27:03] What are the issues that define Trumpism other than what Donald Trump says they are? [01:27:08] My suspicion is what you will find is a bunch of Republican candidates. [01:27:12] All claiming to be the heirs to Donald Trump, repackaging whatever they already believe in populist rhetoric, making it sound Trumpy. [01:27:21] And that's what you're going to see. [01:27:22] You'll see a Nikki Haley, a Josh Hawley, a Tom Cotton, a Ted Cruz, a Marco Rubio, probably a Doug Ducey and a Ron DeSantis, maybe a Christy Noem all running, trying to put their gloss of populism on whatever issue they already believe. [01:27:37] And you'll have a very messy primary. [01:27:40] But I do think Donald Trump is going to be the kingmaker. [01:27:43] I don't think he'll run in 2024. [01:27:45] But I think he'll be the kingmaker for the party. [01:27:47] So it puts him in a very powerful position for the next four years. [01:27:50] I know. [01:27:51] I just feel like, yes, he might want to return to power if he gets, you know, if it gets confirmed, as we believe it will, that he lost this. [01:27:58] This round. [01:27:59] But Trump's probably going to go down to Mar a Lago and have a nice time with whomever. [01:28:05] And I just don't know if he's going to want to return to the White House. [01:28:08] He had a pretty good life prior to running, as much as people love power. [01:28:12] You don't get speaking fees when you're the White House. [01:28:14] So he's going to have been former president getting speaking fees. [01:28:17] He's not going to want to give that up to go back to the White House and take a pay cut. [01:28:21] What do you think about Jr.? [01:28:22] Does Don Jr. have a political future? [01:28:24] You know, I'm intrigued by his super PAC firing up in Georgia. [01:28:28] He came down here very aggressively. [01:28:29] He and Eric Trump both did. [01:28:31] Don Jr. were on the ground. [01:28:33] I think he wants a future in politics, and he may very well, but they may set him up to be the heir to the Trump legacy. [01:28:40] I don't know if he can win the presidency, but I certainly think that he will have some serious influence within the Republican Party and can get something out of it. [01:28:48] Here in New York, there is a story every other day about how the Trumps can't come back to New York City. [01:28:54] New York City hates the Trumps. [01:28:56] And you know what? [01:28:56] They're probably right because the city went 87% for Biden. [01:29:00] So it's not even middle, right? [01:29:02] It used to be, I think, a little bit more moderate. [01:29:04] It's not anymore. [01:29:05] But What do you think? [01:29:07] Because I think, notwithstanding the fact that the Democrats hate them, I admit that, the Republicans don't. [01:29:14] And I wonder what's the future for Ivanka Trump? [01:29:17] Eric Trump wasn't as out in front. [01:29:20] His wife, Laura Trump, was a little bit more out in front. [01:29:22] But what do you think about the Trump kids, all of them, and where they go from here? [01:29:28] Listen, I think that they have the opportunity now to cash in on the Trump name in a way they couldn't while their dad was president. [01:29:34] Even though the media attacked them for it, they really couldn't do it as much. [01:29:37] They've got the opportunity to run a great global. [01:29:40] Franchise with the Trump name. [01:29:42] Maybe they can't move back to New York. [01:29:44] I think Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, they probably will. [01:29:47] They've got enough property interest there. [01:29:49] There are parts of New York that they could probably settle comfortably without being harassed all the time. [01:29:54] But at the same time, Eric Trump's already there with his wife. [01:29:57] They're not constantly getting harassed. [01:29:59] But man, if I were them, I'd move. [01:30:01] I just love the Trump Hotel in Chicago. [01:30:02] It actually is one of my favorite hotels. [01:30:04] I'd move there or go down to Florida. [01:30:07] You've got plenty of states that went overwhelmingly for the president, including Florida. [01:30:10] It's a great place to live and it has no income tax. [01:30:13] Yeah, exactly. [01:30:14] I don't, I would not recommend they come back to New York. [01:30:16] I don't think they're going to have a positive experience. [01:30:18] And I think their kids won't have a positive experience. [01:30:21] You know, that's the other thing. [01:30:23] Even if Ivanka and Jared can take it, you don't want their kids growing up hearing about how what a demon grandpa was, right? [01:30:29] Like they're going to get that a little bit no matter where. [01:30:32] But, you know, I don't know. [01:30:34] I think if you can raise your kid in a place that has shared values to your own, it's probably going to be easier. [01:30:39] Obviously, I'm right in the midst of trying to do that myself because I've announced that we're going to leave New York. [01:30:46] Maybe it's not perfect. [01:30:47] And I don't think you should go all one way or the other. [01:30:49] And I think Ivanka and Jared are probably, you know, they're secretly kind of Democrats. [01:30:54] But I just think New York City is not the place for really anybody who's a Republican right now. [01:30:59] They fit in perfectly here in Atlanta. [01:31:02] Is that right now, given the changing demographics? [01:31:05] Yeah, I think so. [01:31:06] With the changing demographics, it's still slightly more Republican. [01:31:09] You can be a Democrat or a Republican and not get heckled in Atlanta unless you're me. [01:31:14] So then they might as well come down. [01:31:16] Great. [01:31:17] Well, I'll tell them that you're going to arrange the dinner party. [01:31:20] Absolutely. [01:31:22] So good to catch up, Eric. [01:31:23] Thank you so much. [01:31:24] Great analysis. [01:31:25] Thank you so much for having me. [01:31:26] Our thanks to Rich Lowry, Greg Kelly, Brianna Joy Gray, and Eric Erickson. [01:31:30] Today's episode was brought to you in part by Scoremaster. [01:31:34] See how many points Scoremaster can add to your credit score today. [01:31:37] Visit scoremaster.comslash MK now. [01:31:41] Don't forget to go and subscribe to the show if you haven't already. [01:31:44] Now would be the perfect time to hit that subscribe button and download the episodes. [01:31:49] Also, rate five stars would be great and review if you feel so inclined. [01:31:54] And that would be a good thing to do because you don't want to miss Friday's episode. [01:31:57] We've got Andrew Sullivan. [01:31:59] He was at New York Magazine for a number of years. [01:32:03] And then suddenly, in the wake of the George Floyd death and the protests this summer, we were hearing less and less of Andrew Sullivan at New York Magazine. [01:32:10] He was being encouraged maybe to hold his pen for the time being. [01:32:15] And before we knew it, Andrew Sullivan was out of New York Magazine, which had an admonition for those who want to write anything that might be challenging of liberal doctrine. [01:32:27] Well, Andrew Sullivan is not one to be silenced. [01:32:30] And he's coming on the program. [01:32:31] This will be the first time I've ever spoken to him. [01:32:33] Back in my Fox days, I attacked him, he attacked me right back, and it was kind of tense, but I respect and admire the guy as a journalist. [01:32:39] And he's coming up. [01:32:41] So don't miss it. [01:32:42] That's Friday. [01:32:43] Subscribe in the meantime, and we'll see you soon. [01:32:45] Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. [01:32:47] No BS, no agenda, and no fear. 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