The Megyn Kelly Show - 20210628_britney-spears-vaccine-mandates-central-park-karen
Aired: 2021-06-28
Duration: 01:22:14


=== Inside Scoop on Giuliani (14:25) ===

[00:00:00]  Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
[00:00:12]  Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly.
[00:00:13]  Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.
[00:00:15]  Today, our favorite legal eagles, Arthur Idala and Mark Iglarsh, are back to deconstruct a bunch of cases in the news that you're going to find really interesting.
[00:00:23]  What the hell just happened to Rudy Giuliani and his law license?
[00:00:26]  And was this a political hit job?
[00:00:28]  Arthur is representing him and has got the inside scoop.
[00:00:31]  Then we'll get into Britney Spears and her emotional testimonial in court last week in California, trying to get this conservatorship taken off from around her neck, the albatross that it has been.
[00:00:42]  We've got her testimonial, so you can hear some of it if you haven't already.
[00:00:46]  And now, kids, young college age students, fighting back against these vaccine mandates we're seeing pop up at these colleges saying they're not constitutional.
[00:00:55]  You can't force these kids to stick a vaccine that still only has temporary emergency use authorization.
[00:01:02]  on it into their bodies as a condition of returning to college.
[00:01:06]  That plus a couple of interesting updates in that Central Park Karen, forgive me, the Amy Cooper birdwatcher lawsuit, that case, you remember that?
[00:01:14]  And also Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who wouldn't let any white people interview her.
[00:01:17]  Is that legal?
[00:01:18]  The guys are full of opinions today.
[00:01:19]  You're going to be interested in these cases and we'll get to them in one minute.
[00:01:23]  First this.
[00:01:29]  Hi guys.
[00:01:29]  Hello.
[00:01:30]  Good morning.
[00:01:31]  How's it going?
[00:01:32]  I've been a little busy with Mayor Giuliani.
[00:01:35]  But you're trying to get his law license reinstated?
[00:01:38]  Horrible what they did to him.
[00:01:39]  It is like it's crazy.
[00:01:41]  I was really surprised to read that.
[00:01:43]  It was, you should have seen the two judges who work with me, who are both retired judges, and this is their area of expertise.
[00:01:50]  And they were flabbergasted.
[00:01:52]  You know, two guys who were in their mid 70s, one who was a lawyer before he was a judge advocating doing these proceedings, and the other, Judge Leventhal, just resigned in January 1st.
[00:02:04]  He, for 12 and a half years, he's the one who ruled on these types of proceedings, and he just Basically, the word is unprecedented.
[00:02:11]  What they did is.
[00:02:12]  Is this a political hit?
[00:02:13]  Is this a political hit on that?
[00:02:15]  It couldn't be more than 100%.
[00:02:16]  Whatever, more than 100%.
[00:02:18]  That's what it is.
[00:02:19]  But it's really scary for those of us, like Mark and I, who kind of represent people who aren't very popular.
[00:02:27]  And if they want to then attack the advocate for the unpopular person just to silence them, it's not the way we should be going, not the direction we should be going.
[00:02:35]  Can we talk about this?
[00:02:37]  What happened?
[00:02:38]  Has he been disbarred?
[00:02:39]  What happened?
[00:02:40]  So basically, a group of lawyers, many of whom are outside of the state of New York, filed an official complaint with the Grievance Committee, the New York State Grievance Committee, at the time that Rudy Giuliani was challenging the results of the presidential election, saying that he was telling lies.
[00:03:00]  And there are ethical rules that a lawyer can't knowingly be telling a lie, even during the course of the zealous representation of a client.
[00:03:09]  Yeah.
[00:03:10]  Spin is one thing, a lie is something else.
[00:03:12]  Correct.
[00:03:13]  So the grievance committee took up the complaints and then they took the extraordinary step of asking for not just a hearing from the appellate division, but an immediate suspension.
[00:03:28]  And Mayor Giuliani retained my firm to respond.
[00:03:34]  And in a 40 page response, not only did we address each and every statement, but said we have either sworn affidavits or eyewitness testimony.
[00:03:44]  Saying that what the mayor said at the time that he said it, he had a good faith basis to say so.
[00:03:50]  He wasn't just making this up, it wasn't his imagination.
[00:03:53]  Someone told him that dead people voted, and this is why they knew that people who are no longer living voted in the election.
[00:04:00]  And the appellate division, before they saw any evidence, even though we said we're ready, willing, and able to present the evidence, they suspended him.
[00:04:07]  And now it'll move over, it'll move towards a hearing, and we will present the evidence.
[00:04:13]  But I got to tell you, Megan, and I say this really with sadness in my heart I think this is such a political hit job that it blinds the judges, it blinds the lady justice, who's supposed to be blind, but she's not here.
[00:04:29]  And the vitriol towards Trump, and therefore Trump's lawyer, Is just, it's palpable.
[00:04:36]  I have a question for Arthur.
[00:04:37]  I'm curious, and I'm sure the public wants to know too.
[00:04:41]  What is one thing that he said that you have the least amount of evidence to corroborate?
[00:04:47]  I don't know if there's one thing that he said that we have the least.
[00:04:51]  Basically, the evidence is the same on every word that he said, which was either he has sworn written affidavits or he has human beings who are willing to come in and say, yeah, I did see them.
[00:05:05]  Take a box of ballots and go out the back door with them and come in with another box of ballots.
[00:05:09]  And when those ballots were counted, they were 99% for Joe Biden.
[00:05:13]  And so someone told that to Rudy Giuliani, and then Rudy Giuliani said it publicly.
[00:05:18]  And basically, they're saying, well, he didn't have enough foundation to make those statements.
[00:05:24]  That's a weak sauce.
[00:05:26]  That is weak sauce to go after a lawyer.
[00:05:28]  I mean, if his case was weak, it should have been thrown out.
[00:05:32]  Oh, wait, it was.
[00:05:34]  That's the end of the matter.
[00:05:36]  You don't then try to get the lawyer.
[00:05:39]  Disbarred or sanctioned, unless there's no colorable basis.
[00:05:43]  I mean, there really has to be no good faith basis for the allegation in order for the lawyer to get in trouble.
[00:05:50]  And just having covered it day to day, I know that's not true.
[00:05:52]  I mean, now we could talk about Sidney Powell, but Giuliani didn't say all the stuff that Sidney Powell said.
[00:05:58]  And this is an extraordinary measure.
[00:06:00]  I mean, normally, Megan, what would happen is the court would say, okay, there's enough here to go forward, almost like a grand jury indictment.
[00:06:07]  Okay, there's enough probable cause that we are going to have a hearing.
[00:06:11]  To see whether Rudy Giuliani said things that were blatant lies.
[00:06:15]  But before they even got to that point, they ruled that he is a danger currently, presently, a danger to society.
[00:06:24]  And therefore, they need to take his law license away.
[00:06:26]  And just to give you an example of when they usually do that, it usually has to do with a lawyer who is currently stealing escrow funds, currently taking other people's money and going to Atlantic City and gambling it away.
[00:06:39]  Correct.
[00:06:39]  That's, they say, hey, this guy is currently doing something.
[00:06:42]  That's hurting us.
[00:06:43]  They're ruling on statements that Giuliani made in December and January.
[00:06:48]  And quite frankly, once he knew that this was filed, as his lawyers, we were like, Mr. Giuliani, you can't address the election thing at all.
[00:06:56]  And he hasn't.
[00:06:57]  And they're not saying that he has.
[00:06:58]  They said since they filed the claims, he hasn't said anything new, but he could.
[00:07:02]  He has the potential to say something.
[00:07:05]  And therefore, we're suspending him from the practice of law.
[00:07:09]  And it's really upsetting.
[00:07:10]  And here's how we can end Norman Siegel, who here in New York is.
[00:07:15]  As far left as you can imagine.
[00:07:17]  He ran the Civil Liberties Union here.
[00:07:20]  He can't stand Rudy Giuliani on every level.
[00:07:22]  And yet he called us yesterday and said, This is a miscarriage of justice.
[00:07:26]  I want to join your team pro bono to represent Rudy because this is, we're just inhibiting free speech on a level now that is just, he said, I just can't sit on the sidelines and watch this happen.
[00:07:39]  Megan, it is a dangerous slippery slope.
[00:07:42]  Arthur and I go to court every single day.
[00:07:43]  We have four seconds to talk to certain people and we make representations all day long.
[00:07:48]  We can't vouch for the accuracy.
[00:07:50]  You know, I've said many times my client has never had any contact with the criminal justice system ever.
[00:07:54]  And the prosecutor then says, Yeah, what about his record dating back to the disco crisis?
[00:07:58]  You know?
[00:07:59]  So, and I'm relying upon, you know, people telling me stuff all day long.
[00:08:03]  If that's what happened with Giuliani, then I join Arthur's plight in freeing him.
[00:08:10]  It's like, I get that people didn't, you know, especially in New York, did not like Trump and did not like Giuliani as Trump's lawyer, but get over it.
[00:08:18]  Take the W.
[00:08:19]  They won.
[00:08:20]  Move on.
[00:08:21]  I mean, this constant just need to go back and investigate everything that Trump ever did and now expand the web to his attorneys.
[00:08:29]  And what are, Do they want ultimately to disbar the guy, Arthur?
[00:08:33]  Is that the ultimate remedy?
[00:08:34]  That would be the nuclear remedy.
[00:08:37]  I mean, typically something like this, you would get some form of a suspension, six months or a year.
[00:08:43]  But I will tell you, and I know he wouldn't mind me saying this.
[00:08:47]  When I spoke to Mayor Giuliani, he said, if they picked up the phone and called me and said, Arthur, we're going to suspend him for one day, as long as he accepts it, we'll suspend them for a day and it'll be over.
[00:09:00]  Rudy said, I won't take it a day.
[00:09:02]  He goes, Everything that I said, somebody who I found to be credible at the time told me it was true.
[00:09:08]  I didn't make anything up out of thin air.
[00:09:12]  And what Mark is saying is so true.
[00:09:15]  I mean, him and I, this is how we make a living.
[00:09:18]  And sometimes, you know, my client says, I didn't do it.
[00:09:20]  And he goes to trial and he's found guilty.
[00:09:23]  Could I then be suspended from the practice of law because I said something that 12 jurors found to be not true?
[00:09:31]  I had a good faith basis to say it.
[00:09:33]  My client said I wasn't there.
[00:09:35]  I didn't do it.
[00:09:36]  So it is a slippery slope and it's scary.
[00:09:39]  It's all pop.
[00:09:40]  Look, just to be clear, there were five judges.
[00:09:42]  All of them were appointed by Democratic administrations and they all probably just can't stand Trump.
[00:09:50]  It starts with him and then it rolls down.
[00:09:53]  I mean, if Rudy was representing some senator, some obscure senator somewhere, trust me, this would not be happening.
[00:10:00]  But it's because it's Trump and he's still a viable threat, I guess they look at him as.
[00:10:06]  They're just, they're going scorched earth and Rudy's collateral damage.
[00:10:11]  So, how does it get resolved now?
[00:10:13]  So, you've lost in the initial injunction phase.
[00:10:16]  What the appellate court does, which is the intermediary court, it's not the lowest court or the highest court, it's the middle court.
[00:10:22]  What they do now is they will assign a retired judge to act as a hearing officer.
[00:10:28]  And we will do a mini trial in front of this hearing officer.
[00:10:32]  And then the hearing officer will make recommendations to the appellate court.
[00:10:36]  Which they are not bound to follow.
[00:10:38]  So, technically speaking, the hearing officer can say Mr. Giuliani came in.
[00:10:44]  He did present human beings who testified who I found credible.
[00:10:48]  He did show me affidavits that I found credible.
[00:10:51]  And I do believe that he was telling what he thought was the truth at the time.
[00:10:54]  And none of these should be substantiated.
[00:10:57]  And the court still has the ability to say, well, we smell something wrong here.
[00:11:03]  We're still going to suspend him.
[00:11:05]  And that's not what usually happens.
[00:11:07]  Usually, they follow the recommendation of the hearing officer.
[00:11:11]  But Megan, because of this situation, we're looking at every possible remedy in terms of taking us into the federal court, which maybe would be a little less politically inclined to rule on this.
[00:11:23]  It's a sad day, obviously, for Rudy Giuliani, who had a storied legal career before he got into politics and never had one complaint filed against him in 52 years of practicing law.
[00:11:35]  Never once did anyone complain about his lawyering.
[00:11:38]  But it's a scary day for Mark and I, where if they're really going to start going after advocates, Because they have an unpopular client, then, you know, then we're all in big trouble.
[00:11:50]  Well, and that's, you know, of course, that's really the nature of criminal defense work.
[00:11:55]  You don't tend to have very popular clients, but you're a, you're a, A doorstop against big government, against abuse, against a system that's rigged in favor of the United States or the state of New York to make sure that they really have their proof.
[00:12:10]  And so criminal defense attorneys are incredibly important.
[00:12:14]  And it's not about whether your client's popular or well liked or is going to win anybody, you know, most favored nation, you know, contest.
[00:12:24]  It's about the system.
[00:12:26]  And this is wrong.
[00:12:27]  This is what's happening to him is wrong.
[00:12:29]  This shouldn't be happening.
[00:12:30]  The issue, as Arthur says, is not necessarily whether it's true, but whether he had a good faith basis to say it, because we can't always be accurate.
[00:12:39]  It's about whether we said it in good faith.
[00:12:41]  And if what Arthur's saying is true, and I believe Arthur, then he can back it up.
[00:12:44]  He doesn't have to be right about the information, but people told him in conclusion he relied upon it.
[00:12:49]  That's what a lawsuit's for.
[00:12:51]  You get discovery, you figure out whether these allegations are true or not.
[00:12:54]  Nobody goes in knowing whether everything they allege, that's why it's called an allegation in the complaint, is true.
[00:12:58]  That's what discovery proves to you, one way or another.
[00:13:00]  And that's why cases either fall apart or get made.
[00:13:03]  In that process, in his cases, it fell apart for all sorts of different reasons, but doesn't mean it was improper to make the allegations.
[00:13:10]  Okay.
[00:13:10]  I have to move on because we have much more important things to talk about, like Britney Spears.
[00:13:14]  Did you guys see the documentary by chance prior to this week's events?
[00:13:18]  Yes.
[00:13:18]  I did.
[00:13:20]  I did not.
[00:13:20]  I read about it.
[00:13:21]  I went on Wikipedia and I read what the doc, I read that she didn't watch it.
[00:13:25]  She only watched little pieces of it and some of it she found disturbing.
[00:13:28]  Well, her creepy dad was probably like, You're not watching it.
[00:13:31]  That channel's blocked.
[00:13:32]  I mean, the dad is, he comes off as the worst character.
[00:13:35]  So, I want to ask you what you think about what happened in court this week.
[00:13:39]  It's been since 2008.
[00:13:40]  We saw her public meltdown.
[00:13:41]  She shaved the head.
[00:13:42]  She went after the paparazzi with the umbrella.
[00:13:44]  She had some drug issues, some alcohol issues, and she was clearly melting down.
[00:13:48]  So, that's when they imposed the conservatorship when she was in the midst of crisis.
[00:13:53]  It's normally something that they use for elderly, infirm people who are losing their minds, right?
[00:13:58]  So, it's like, don't let Sumner Redstone spend away the trillion dollar family fortune.
[00:14:04]  Let's get a conservatorship going to make sure he's protected.
[00:14:07]  That's normally how we see this used.
[00:14:09]  It's kind of extraordinary to see it imposed against somebody who's going through a mental health crisis, but that's what happened.
[00:14:15]  But 13 years later, it's still in place.
[00:14:18]  And now she's finally been heard from.
[00:14:20]  In all that time, we've never heard a testimonial from her one way or the other on this.

=== Ending the Conservatorship (15:41) ===

[00:14:25]  And she's against it.
[00:14:28]  And I wonder what you guys thought when you listened.
[00:14:30]  They didn't have visual, they only had audio of her testimonial the other day.
[00:14:34]  What you thought of where she is mentally?
[00:14:38]  And whether she has a point that this thing ought to end.
[00:14:41]  Go ahead, Mark.
[00:14:42]  Well, in my defense, I only watched the documentary because five different networks asked me to comment on this thing, which I knew nothing about.
[00:14:49]  So I had to watch it.
[00:14:50]  My wife's watching me.
[00:14:52]  Why are you watching Britney Spears?
[00:14:53]  Okay.
[00:14:54]  So, first of all, she spoke.
[00:14:57]  Let's just stop there.
[00:14:58]  Do you know that most people who have conservatorships entered against them can't even speak?
[00:15:03]  They can't write.
[00:15:04]  They're stroke victims, they're dementia, they are in comas.
[00:15:10]  So that's the first thing.
[00:15:11]  She spoke.
[00:15:13]  Secondly, what she was saying made sense.
[00:15:16]  You can understand it.
[00:15:17]  She had a home run in the court of public opinion.
[00:15:19]  But here's the problem the problem is my understanding is the petition that was filed by her lawyer doesn't ask to end the conservatorship.
[00:15:29]  It merely seeks to replace her father as the person in charge of her finances.
[00:15:34]  Therefore, what she was doing was essentially asking for something that wasn't petitioned for, like when Arthur goes into McDonald's and asks for a filet mignon.
[00:15:43]  It's not on the menu.
[00:15:44]  You're not going to get it, Arthur.
[00:15:46]  Stop it already.
[00:15:46]  Well, unless you get the McRib.
[00:15:48]  The McRib, maybe.
[00:15:49]  The McRib is filled with well.
[00:15:51]  But, Mark, let me ask you do you think that that was a compromise move, a strategic compromise move, asking for a different conservator?
[00:16:01]  Saying, look, if you don't feel comfortable just eliminating that position altogether, could you at least appoint somebody who's going to give me more than $2,000 a week as my allowance when I have $60 million plus sitting in a bank account?
[00:16:14]  But that's not what her pleadings said.
[00:16:17]  Her pleadings didn't say get rid of the conservatorship and, in the alternative, at a minimum, get rid of my dad and create a different system in this conservatorship.
[00:16:26]  I have a theory.
[00:16:27]  You want to know why?
[00:16:28]  Because if it was me and Arthur representing Brittany, we'd say, Okay, let's do it.
[00:16:33]  Let's go after the conservatorship.
[00:16:35]  The judge is going to take some additional evaluations.
[00:16:37]  And she would have said, Stop.
[00:16:39]  I don't want it.
[00:16:40]  As we heard yesterday in her 24 minute discussion with the judge, she's saying, I want out of this, but I will not be evaluated anymore.
[00:16:48]  Well, wait a second.
[00:16:49]  She said it over and over.
[00:16:51]  Right.
[00:16:52]  And so then the lawyers are going, We're not going to win.
[00:16:54]  This is not going to happen.
[00:16:55]  So we might as well at least pull Dad out, whose every financial endeavor has failed, who declared bankruptcy, and who has really a conflict of interest in managing her finances.
[00:17:05]  All right, so stand by because we have a soundbite of her talking about how she didn't know that she could end the conservatorship, but she makes clear in the soundbite she does not want to be evaluated in order to end it.
[00:17:16]  Listen.
[00:17:16]  I want changes and I want changes going forward.
[00:17:19]  I deserve changes.
[00:17:20]  I was told I have to sit down and be evaluated again if I want to end the conservatorship.
[00:17:26]  Ma'am, I didn't know I could petition the conservatorship to end it.
[00:17:29]  I'm sorry for my ignorance, but I honestly didn't know that.
[00:17:33]  But honestly, I don't think I owe anyone to be evaluated.
[00:17:37]  I've done more than enough.
[00:17:38]  I don't feel like I. Should even be in a room with anyone to offend me by trying to question my capacity of intelligence, whether I need to be in this stupid conservatorship or not.
[00:17:49]  I've done more than enough.
[00:17:52]  Well, I can only speak for New York law, where here it's actually called guardianships, but the judge in those cases have tremendous discretion.
[00:18:01]  Whether you plead for something or you ask for something in your papers, they're allowed to make decisions, quote unquote, on the fly.
[00:18:09]  So, you know, my guess is that that may have been what took place here.
[00:18:13]  In a little way, Megan, if you ask me, if I'm her lawyer, I feel like she just threw me under the bus, maybe rightly so.
[00:18:20]  But, right, by saying I didn't know I could end the conservatorship.
[00:18:23]  I mean, that's what I would have gone in there with the strongest possible position.
[00:18:29]  And then, if the judge feels to cover her own butt, has to maybe doctor it down a little bit and say, okay, well, I'm not going to end it altogether, but I will change it from your father to, and they usually hire either a retired judge.
[00:18:44]  Or, like a very veteran person of the bar to take over.
[00:18:49]  So, you know, if I'm her lawyer, I'm like, you know, I either tell her, Brittany, what are you saying?
[00:18:55]  You don't know.
[00:18:56]  I've told you this 100 times we could end it.
[00:18:58]  Or I've been put my head in the sand and say, oops, I guess I forgot to tell her she could end her conservatorship.
[00:19:03]  But it doesn't look good for her attorney.
[00:19:06]  It doesn't seem plausible that the lawyer would not have told her that she could end the conservatorship.
[00:19:12]  It just doesn't seem like any lawyer would be doing his job if he hadn't informed her.
[00:19:17]  That was a possibility and how they could try it.
[00:19:21]  Because if you look at the history, back in 2019, she did speak to the courts in a closed door hearing.
[00:19:29]  She said she felt forced by the conservatorship to stay at a mental health facility.
[00:19:33]  She felt it was punishment.
[00:19:34]  She felt she was forced to perform against her will.
[00:19:37]  Her lawyer said she was afraid of her father.
[00:19:39]  He said the conservatorship comes with a lot of fear.
[00:19:42]  She said her father was obsessed with her.
[00:19:44]  Again, this is back in 2019.
[00:19:45]  She said she can't make friends without his approval.
[00:19:48]  She said there was nothing wrong with her.
[00:19:51]  It goes on and on.
[00:19:52]  And still in 2020, the judge, Brenda Penny, declined the request to suspend the dad immediately.
[00:20:02]  And she left the door open to consider removing him in the future.
[00:20:06]  But she did not kick Jamie out.
[00:20:08]  She did not end the conservatorship.
[00:20:10]  She did, at that time, appoint Bessemer Trust, a wealth management firm, to serve as co conservator of the money.
[00:20:16]  She saw enough to realize the dad might not be all that trustworthy on the dough.
[00:20:19]  But Brittany has been speaking to the court to some extent and has made clear she doesn't like this thing.
[00:20:26]  And this judge hasn't been all that persuaded over the past few years.
[00:20:31]  She probably just meant, and again, I don't know what she means, but she probably just meant, I didn't know that I can have it set aside now because she was probably told by others, well, no, that's not what this is about.
[00:20:43]  So when she thought that there was that opportunity in her 24 minute speech, she probably thought about it.
[00:20:48]  But here's the problem also we don't know what we don't know.
[00:20:52]  Now we saw publicly her meltdown in 2008.
[00:20:55]  So we can then surmise okay, she probably had some mental health issues.
[00:20:58]  She probably had some maybe alcohol or drug issues.
[00:21:01]  But we don't know what the latest shows, we don't know what's really going on behind closed doors.
[00:21:06]  So that's number one.
[00:21:07]  The second part of that, though, is okay, so what, though?
[00:21:10]  She's choreographing routines.
[00:21:12]  She's done world tours.
[00:21:14]  She's done albums.
[00:21:16]  Like, if the criteria was anybody who's had a breakdown or mental health problems shouldn't handle their money, then most of Hollywood would be in her predicament.
[00:21:26]  I know.
[00:21:27]  I think you just nailed it.
[00:21:28]  Maybe the legal profession as well.
[00:21:30]  We're all losing our minds.
[00:21:31]  No, no, but isn't that right?
[00:21:33]  Because I listened to her testimonial and I thought, to me, she actually did not sound well.
[00:21:38]  I thought this is a person who's Been heavily medicated.
[00:21:41]  You can hear her anxiety.
[00:21:43]  You can tell she's not used to sort of advocating on her own behalf.
[00:21:48]  That's just my layperson's assessment of her.
[00:21:50]  It doesn't mean she can't function on her own as a human being in this world.
[00:21:54]  It was just, I didn't think she sounded like a well person.
[00:21:58]  But there are a lot of people out there who are not well.
[00:22:00]  And if Britney Spears wants to make and lose several fortunes or marry a guy who's a loser, I have no idea whether the guy she's dating is.
[00:22:08]  There seem to be some concerns.
[00:22:10]  Or get pregnant with a third child.
[00:22:11]  That's up to her, right?
[00:22:13]  In the normal world, unless she's incapable of functioning, we would say that's up to her.
[00:22:18]  She's an adult.
[00:22:20]  Yeah.
[00:22:20]  And in New York, again, I'm only speaking because that's the law that I know.
[00:22:24]  I mean, the threshold to get a guardian, and that's what we call them, a conservator appointed, it's very hard.
[00:22:31]  It's very hard.
[00:22:32]  It's, you know, I mean, you're taking someone's basically their life away.
[00:22:35]  I mean, what makes us human beings the ability to make our own decisions about who to date and who not to date and who to be friends with and who not to be friends with?
[00:22:43]  To take that away from somebody, the threshold is very high.
[00:22:47]  And as you said in the beginning, I think Mark said in the beginning, it's usually for elderly people who have been diagnosed with some sort of mental disease or defect and they can't handle their own affairs.
[00:22:59]  But we live in such a CYA atmosphere that I'm sure this judge is concerned.
[00:23:04]  Well, if I just let her roam and something happens to her, I'm going to be on the cover of all the newspapers.
[00:23:11]  Judge who let Britney Spears out.
[00:23:13]  And, you know, she got into a car accident because she was drinking and driving and blah, blah, blah, blah.
[00:23:18]  And then their law license goes up in smoke.
[00:23:20]  That's a good point, Arthur, because, you know, you don't know what she's going to do, right?
[00:23:25]  I mean, and it is on the judge.
[00:23:27]  But isn't it ironic that we have her father in place to ensure she doesn't lose her money, you know, like her father did?
[00:23:36]  Yeah.
[00:23:37]  Right.
[00:23:37]  He filed for bankruptcy.
[00:23:38]  He filed for bankruptcy right before she hit it big.
[00:23:41]  Yeah.
[00:23:42]  And the dad has been earning a mint off of her in 2014.
[00:23:47]  He was granted 1.5% of the gross revenues from her piece of me residency in Vegas.
[00:23:55]  He got 1.5% of the gross revenue.
[00:23:57]  In 2011, he got 2.95% commission.
[00:24:02]  For her Femme Fatale tour, he was getting $16,000 a month to manage her life.
[00:24:08]  Meanwhile, she was getting $2,000 a week in an allowance while she was earning $138 million across 250 shows.
[00:24:17]  He, this guy, is like a barnacle.
[00:24:20]  He sees his daughter as the boat that's going to take him to the promised land.
[00:24:25]  And he, to me, seems like a financial barnacle.
[00:24:27]  Yeah.
[00:24:28]  And so it's no wonder why she was forced to perform with 104 temperature.
[00:24:35]  Right?
[00:24:35]  She's a machine for all of them, right?
[00:24:37]  Yeah.
[00:24:38]  Conflict of interest with all these folks.
[00:24:40]  Well, but okay.
[00:24:41]  But back to the point you made first when you made your two points, Mark.
[00:24:44]  We don't know what we don't know.
[00:24:46]  The thing that bothered me about her testimonial was we didn't hear the other side.
[00:24:51]  And this judge, especially when I found out that Brittany has been pushing to end this thing and objecting to it for many years, the judge has heard this before.
[00:24:59]  The judge has had reason to question whether this should stay in place for many years now.
[00:25:04]  And she's allowed it to.
[00:25:06]  There has to be a good reason for it.
[00:25:08]  What we don't know, we don't know what kind of mental state Britney's actually in.
[00:25:12]  We don't know whether she's attempted suicide over and over, whether she tried to hurt others.
[00:25:16]  I'm just making this up just to be clear.
[00:25:18]  We just don't know.
[00:25:19]  They're there, and they, the other side, the dad's side said almost nothing in response, just something to the effect of through his lawyer.
[00:25:26]  Sorry to see his daughter suffering so much.
[00:25:28]  So we're not sure why the judge has kept this in place for so long.
[00:25:32]  But at the very least, Megan, at the very least, the relief would be to just get the dad out of the picture.
[00:25:37]  Just to say, fine, we're not going to have the dad.
[00:25:40]  You have a therapist, we're going to have the therapist do it, or whomever, some responsible individual.
[00:25:46]  But the dad has to go.
[00:25:47]  I mean, the dad is saying, I'm sorry to see my daughter suffer.
[00:25:50]  Clearly, he's at the center of her suffering.
[00:25:54]  And in the light most favorable to the dad, even if he's doing everything right, if she's suffering from such a mental defect that she sees him as the evil guy, whether that's true or not, then just let's move the cause of her pain.
[00:26:09]  All right, let's move the cause of her pain.
[00:26:11]  Clearly, the guy's made tens of millions of dollars.
[00:26:13]  He's not, no one's crying for him.
[00:26:16]  And, you know, before I like to look at the history, Megan, and before Britney Spears became Britney Spears, he was a, there's plenty of testimony evidence that he was a disconnected guy who kind of came in and came out.
[00:26:28]  He made that statement like, oh, I think my daughter's going to make it big and she's going to buy me a boat.
[00:26:32]  I mean, that's what you think about.
[00:26:34]  Hold on, let me defend it.
[00:26:37]  The barnacle needed a boat.
[00:26:38]  Hold on, I want to defend him just because I feel like it.
[00:26:41]  It'd be really interesting.
[00:26:42]  Ready?
[00:26:42]  And okay, so if the petition is to get him out, the only relevant issue then is did he represent her best interest, right?
[00:26:53]  So I pull out the charts.
[00:26:55]  If I'm representing him, I say, see this arrow?
[00:26:57]  This is what she made.
[00:26:58]  This represents how much she made.
[00:26:59]  Look how much she's made.
[00:27:01]  I've turned this into a fortune.
[00:27:03]  Also, there's no evidence that I've mismanaged anything that I didn't look out for her best interest.
[00:27:09]  And that's really the sole issue here.
[00:27:11]  Okay, so Jamie, why are you only giving your daughter $2,000 a week as her allowance?
[00:27:17]  Give me an answer to that.
[00:27:18]  So now we get into the stuff that you guys don't know.
[00:27:20]  And I don't know it either, but my guess is that there's a history of her being subjected to undue influence, her overspending, a drug addiction.
[00:27:30]  Listen, she was prescribed lithium for a reason, right?
[00:27:34]  So something led up to that.
[00:27:35]  Let me jump in on that because, as I say, it turns out there is a long history of her trying to get out of this conservatorship.
[00:27:42]  I mean, people are like, oh, she didn't want it.
[00:27:44]  Now we know she hasn't wanted it for a long time.
[00:27:47]  In 2014, it was the earliest recorded opposition from her.
[00:27:50]  She questioned her father's fitness to manage her life.
[00:27:53]  She sought to remove his conservatorship, citing his drinking problem.
[00:27:57]  Her lawyer said she was upset, that her concerns were not taken seriously.
[00:28:01]  Her lawyer raised her urgent desire to terminate the conservatorship.
[00:28:05]  Jamie's lawyer responded, saying he had been taking alcohol tests, he had never failed.
[00:28:10]  And the judge said she would consider ending it if Brittany established a healthy relationship with a therapist and returned one year's worth of clean drug tests.
[00:28:18]  So clearly, in 14, the judge is seeing evidence that Brittany may be on drugs and is not seeking enough mental health or any mental health services.
[00:28:27]  Then flash forward two more years, 2016.
[00:28:31]  The court Again, take a look at this.
[00:28:33]  Brittany was interviewed by a probate investigator working for the judge, said she was very angry about the way her life was being run, described security around her at all the times, complained about the numerous drug tests she has to undergo weekly, said her credit card is being held by her security team or her assistant.
[00:28:47]  Her father restricts everything from whom she dates to the color of her kitchen cabinets.
[00:28:51]  She articulated that she feels the conservatorship has become oppressive and a controlling tool against her.
[00:28:56]  She wanted it terminated as soon as possible.
[00:28:59]  What did the court do?
[00:29:00]  Said the conservatorship stays.
[00:29:03]  Based on Britney's complex finances, quote, susceptibility to undue influence.
[00:29:09]  Isn't that what you just said, Mark?
[00:29:10]  And intermittent drug issues.
[00:29:13]  So she did also at that time, the judge called for a pathway to independence and eventual end of this thing.
[00:29:18]  But all this tells me Britney doesn't like this.
[00:29:22]  And the judge sees something that says it needs to stay in place anyway.
[00:29:26]  And that's been the status quo for years.
[00:29:28]  Megan, as Mark said earlier, you could look, and I don't want to start naming names, but they're in the newspapers every day.
[00:29:35]  Who's struggling with drug addiction?
[00:29:37]  Who's struggling with alcoholism?
[00:29:39]  Who's overspending and buying a $21 million apartment?
[00:29:43]  I mean, so many of the Hollywood folks fall into that category.
[00:29:46]  And we're going to start ripping everyone's rights away because they're going to spend too much money or do their own drugs.
[00:29:51]  It's still America.
[00:29:53]  And if you want to make $100 million and just blow it, you're allowed to do that.
[00:29:59]  I mean, you're allowed to.
[00:30:00]  And if you get the drugs legally, you're allowed to take the drugs.
[00:30:03]  What about Hunter Biden?
[00:30:05]  Does Hunter Biden need a conservatorship?

=== Who Controls Personal Matters (10:04) ===

[00:30:07]  What's he doing out there, free?
[00:30:08]  There's a whole list of people.
[00:30:09]  Look at the look, Ben Affleck, right?
[00:30:11]  Who's in the news right now.
[00:30:12]  He's back with JLo.
[00:30:13]  He's been in and out of rehab countless times.
[00:30:16]  He's a hot mess.
[00:30:17]  Right, right.
[00:30:18]  I don't see anyone stepping in saying we're going to take away his right to choose the color of his kitchen cabinets.
[00:30:23]  So, as I said, in the world that I practice law in, it's really a very high threshold to take someone's opinion and a choice and choices, life choices away.
[00:30:36]  But as Mark said, I don't know.
[00:30:38]  Maybe the doctor, maybe the judge has some reports or multiple reports from these doctors or these people who are coming in and interviewing her for four days on end.
[00:30:48]  She's going to kill herself if we let her go.
[00:30:50]  Exactly.
[00:30:51]  If they have something like that, it matters.
[00:30:52]  Let me ask you a simple question, which will help answer Will they free Brittany?
[00:30:57]  Okay.
[00:30:57]  Do either of you believe, and I say this rhetorically because I know the answer, do either of you believe that this judge will terminate this 13 year conservatorship without her being evaluated?
[00:31:10]  Zero chance.
[00:31:11]  Zero chance.
[00:31:12]  And I have to be honest, I found it kind of suspicious that Brittany kept insisting that be the condition.
[00:31:17]  Right.
[00:31:18]  Well, then there you go.
[00:31:19]  If she's not going to see anybody, and I understand her paranoia every time she's ever seen someone, I'm guessing it didn't go her way, either because she really does have some issues andor, you know, it's sinister.
[00:31:33]  The machine that benefits from her financially wants to somehow ensure that she doesn't do well on those psych tests.
[00:31:40]  So that's true.
[00:31:41]  The lawyer, her lawyer is making a mint off of her.
[00:31:44]  I think just the recent, the most recent bill, I'm trying to get my facts straight, but it was like 200 plus thousand.
[00:31:51]  And, or the most recent bill was like 153,000.
[00:31:54]  He was like, well, I reduced it from 154,000.
[00:31:57]  He took off a grand, but he's made millions off of her, millions of dollars over the past few years or You know, since he's been involved as her appointed lawyer, she didn't select him.
[00:32:06]  That was another thing she said.
[00:32:08]  Can I select my own lawyer, please?
[00:32:09]  And she's paying for the lawyer on the other side.
[00:32:12]  She's paying for the conservatorship's lawyer.
[00:32:13]  She's paying for everybody in the courtroom, basically.
[00:32:15]  She's paying for all of her security guards.
[00:32:17]  She's paying for the chefs who make her the meals, for the therapists who give her the lithium.
[00:32:21]  She, like, for the people who parade her off in front of the paparazzi, who she does not wish to see her crying after her therapy sessions.
[00:32:27]  This poor girl's been so exploited, it just feels unseemly.
[00:32:31]  And that's why she's saying that she doesn't want to be evaluated again.
[00:32:35]  You know, Mark mentioned earlier all of her success.
[00:32:37]  During this 13 years, her records, her tours, she had a regular act at Vegas, which was like knocked it out of the park.
[00:32:47]  Like, she's saying, What are you talking about?
[00:32:49]  I can't handle myself.
[00:32:50]  Look at what I've accomplished compared to the entire planet Earth.
[00:32:53]  Look at the things that I've been able to achieve.
[00:32:56]  And you're telling me I can't pick the color of my kitchen cabinets and pick who I want to go out with?
[00:33:01]  I'm not being evaluated.
[00:33:03]  She can't have a child.
[00:33:05]  She's basically been rendered unable to have a child against her will.
[00:33:10]  This was one of the most, if not the most disturbing part of her testimonial, is her talking about the IUD inside of her.
[00:33:16]  Listen, I want to have the real deal.
[00:33:17]  I want to be able to get married and have a baby.
[00:33:20]  I was told right now in the conservatorship, I'm not able to get married or have a baby.
[00:33:26]  I have an ID inside of myself right now, so I don't get pregnant.
[00:33:31]  I wanted to take the ID out so I could start trying to have another baby, but this so called team won't let me go to the doctor to take it out because they don't want me to have children, any more children.
[00:33:44]  An ID.
[00:33:46]  It is the driver's license.
[00:33:47]  It's the father's driver's license.
[00:33:49]  That's horrible.
[00:33:50]  Call the police.
[00:33:51]  This is horrible.
[00:33:53]  But sad that she doesn't even know those initials.
[00:33:55]  And, Megan, look, I agree with you that she definitely doesn't sound cool, calm, and collected.
[00:34:02]  I mean, I think anyone would agree with that.
[00:34:04]  I will just credit to some degree, as Mark and I know, when our clients have to speak before a court, as much as she's an entertainer, she's in a very foreign place.
[00:34:14]  I mean, I'll never forget when I had to put Lawrence Taylor on the stand.
[00:34:18]  And he was on for two days.
[00:34:19]  The first day, he was horrible, horrible.
[00:34:21]  And I was like, Lawrence, what happened?
[00:34:23]  He goes, I was so nervous.
[00:34:24]  How could you be nervous?
[00:34:25]  You won two Super Bowls.
[00:34:26]  He goes, Hey, man, I know what was going on on the field in there.
[00:34:30]  You're screaming objection.
[00:34:31]  The other people are doing this.
[00:34:33]  He goes, I don't know what was going on.
[00:34:35]  Now, after he calmed down the next day, he was maybe the best witness I ever had on the stand.
[00:34:39]  But we take for granted, those of us who kind of live in the courtroom, that our nerves are at a certain level.
[00:34:46]  Here, not only is she a nervous wreck, To her, this is her whole life.
[00:34:50]  I mean, she's 39, and I mean, she does want to have a child.
[00:34:53]  She's kind of in prime time if she's going to make that happen to have it done now.
[00:34:57]  So there's a lot of stress and pressure and anxiety on her in a foreign atmosphere.
[00:35:02]  And she was so personal with her revelations from the IUD to just how unhappy she is.
[00:35:08]  And you could feel it.
[00:35:09]  She did a very good job of conveying how awful this is on her.
[00:35:13]  We have just a little bit of that color where she talks about how she was lying all these years when she said publicly she was okay.
[00:35:19]  Listen.
[00:35:19]  I've lied and told the whole world I'm okay and I'm happy.
[00:35:23]  It's a lie.
[00:35:24]  I thought I just maybe I said that enough.
[00:35:26]  Maybe I might become happy because I've been in denial.
[00:35:29]  I've been in shock.
[00:35:30]  I am traumatized.
[00:35:32]  You know, fake it till you make it.
[00:35:34]  But now I'm telling you the truth, okay?
[00:35:36]  I'm not happy.
[00:35:37]  I can't sleep.
[00:35:38]  I'm so angry.
[00:35:39]  It's insane.
[00:35:39]  And I'm depressed.
[00:35:40]  I cry every day.
[00:35:41]  And the reason I'm telling you this is because I don't think how the state of California can have all this written in the court documents from the time I showed up and do absolutely nothing.
[00:35:50]  She kind of rambles there at the end, but you get the point, Mark.
[00:35:53]  So, what does this judge do now?
[00:35:54]  Because the public attention to this is also now a factor.
[00:35:58]  Well, first, The judge should not be susceptible to what the public does.
[00:36:04]  I don't like that.
[00:36:05]  Although now the judge feels more comfortable ruling in her favor if she wanted to.
[00:36:09]  But secondly, the judge has to make Brittany feel that these tests are for her benefit and we just need to do a couple more reports and then maybe you'll get what you want.
[00:36:26]  The dad's gone.
[00:36:27]  The dad's got to go altogether.
[00:36:29]  It's good that Bessemer's there for the money.
[00:36:31]  But the dads no longer have control over the day to day.
[00:36:34]  I don't know.
[00:36:34]  Wait, wait, hold on.
[00:36:36]  Back to my.
[00:36:37]  Yes, personally, I want him gone.
[00:36:39]  But what single thing have you heard that he did that mismanaged the money that didn't work for her?
[00:36:47]  Forget about the money, though.
[00:36:48]  She's miserable.
[00:36:48]  She's miserable.
[00:36:49]  She hates it.
[00:36:51]  That's what the judge is supposed to be there for.
[00:36:53]  The judge is supposed to be Britney's advocate.
[00:36:55]  The judge is supposed to be.
[00:36:57]  This is not a fair and impartial judge.
[00:36:59]  This is supposed to be a judge who's helping the person.
[00:37:02]  Who's the subject of the conservatorship?
[00:37:04]  Wait a second.
[00:37:04]  I don't particularly love my accountant, but my accountant does a good job.
[00:37:08]  In other words, he doesn't tell you you can't buy that, Mark.
[00:37:11]  Or you can't have a child.
[00:37:13]  How about that?
[00:37:14]  Hold on.
[00:37:14]  That's not his role.
[00:37:15]  He's not saying that.
[00:37:16]  He just handles the finances.
[00:37:17]  There's a separate person handling her personal matters.
[00:37:20]  He used to handle the finances.
[00:37:21]  Stand by.
[00:37:21]  Now, let's hear from the witness herself.
[00:37:24]  This is the first soundbite about her father.
[00:37:26]  Listen.
[00:37:27]  Over the two week holiday, a lady came into my home for four hours a day, sat me down, and did a psych test on me.
[00:37:32]  It took forever.
[00:37:34]  But I was told I had to then, after that, I got off.
[00:37:38]  Oh, wait.
[00:37:39]  I was told I had to then, after I got a phone call from my dad saying, after I did the psych test with this lady, basically saying I had failed the test or whatever, whatever.
[00:37:50]  I'm sorry, Brittany, you have to listen to your doctors.
[00:37:52]  They are planning to send you to a small home in Beverly Hills to do a small rehab program that we're going to make up for you.
[00:37:58]  You're going to pay $60,000 a month for this.
[00:38:01]  I cried on the phone for an hour, and he loved every minute of it.
[00:38:05]  The control he had over someone as powerful as me, as he loved the control to hurt his own daughter 100,000%.
[00:38:13]  He loved it.
[00:38:14]  I packed my bags and went to that place.
[00:38:16]  I worked seven days a week, no days off, which in California, the only similar thing to this is called sex trafficking.
[00:38:22]  She hates him.
[00:38:22]  I mean, he loved it.
[00:38:25]  These two, they should not be forced to be together in this way.
[00:38:28]  Are we talking as human beings?
[00:38:30]  The answer is yes.
[00:38:31]  Anyone with a pulse who's not a sociopath would agree with you.
[00:38:34]  But I'm thinking as a lawyer.
[00:38:36]  And in front of the judge, I'm sure there's precedent.
[00:38:39]  I don't practice in this arena, but I'm sure there's precedent.
[00:38:42]  And does the person like the person handling the finances is probably not at the top of the list or on the list at all for criteria as to whether that person should be removed.
[00:38:53]  I think whether they can work together, that's not relevant.
[00:38:56]  Whether the person whose life is being controlled can't stand to see the other person, of course it's relevant.
[00:39:02]  I think it's broken beyond repair.
[00:39:05]  I'm not disagreeing with you.
[00:39:07]  I don't disagree with you.
[00:39:10]  Just go ahead, Arthur.
[00:39:11]  I'm going to give you the last prediction on this.
[00:39:13]  And then when I want to move on.
[00:39:14]  I mean, usually, again, in the forum where we do practice, because one of the judges who works for me was in the guardianship part, there is a cadre of lawyers who are appointed the guardians over the person.
[00:39:26]  So they're the conservators or whatever.
[00:39:29]  They're the ones who are overseeing people.
[00:39:30]  And if an individual comes in and says, I can't stand this person or I'm not getting along, and there's some credible evidence that shows that, They're just the judges because it's going to swap them out and say, okay, you don't like Mr. So and so, let's try Ms. So and so.
[00:39:45]  And I think that's the obvious solution here, at the very, very least, to give Britney stumbling relief is just to say, look, we're going to take your dad out of your life.
[00:39:55]  Vesemir is going to control your money.
[00:39:57]  And this lawyer or this retired judge.
[00:39:59]  Is going to look over your other affairs and make sure you just stay on the straight and narrow.
[00:40:03]  I'd like to see that happen too, just so we're clear, even though I played devil's advocate.
[00:40:07]  Yeah, we need changes.
[00:40:09]  I don't know whether the whole thing should end.

=== Threats Against Her and Dog (11:10) ===

[00:40:11]  I really don't.
[00:40:11]  I want to hear more about her mental state and why it was denied so many times.
[00:40:16]  I trust the judge to take all that stuff under advisement, but the dad's got to go.
[00:40:21]  Up next, we're going to talk about Amy Cooper.
[00:40:24]  She was derisively referred to as Central Park Karen.
[00:40:26]  She's the one who had her dog in Central Park and she threatened to call the police on a black man there.
[00:40:31]  Who was birdwatching?
[00:40:32]  He videotaped it.
[00:40:33]  All hell broke loose in her life.
[00:40:35]  She's now filed a lawsuit, and we'll tell you why.
[00:40:37]  Don't go away.
[00:40:42]  Can we just talk about so called Central Park, Karen?
[00:40:45]  This is Amy Cooper.
[00:40:47]  And Amy Cooper was the one who got caught in Central Park in May of 2020, threatening to call the police on an African American, saying, I'm going to tell them an African American man is attacking me, is threatening my dog and attacking me.
[00:41:01]  Her name was Amy Cooper, and the man she was going to call the cops on, the birdwatcher, his name was Christian Cooper.
[00:41:06]  No relation.
[00:41:06]  He was black.
[00:41:07]  She was white.
[00:41:08]  She was an insurance portfolio manager.
[00:41:10]  And it happened on May 25th, 2020.
[00:41:12]  Okay.
[00:41:13]  So this went viral.
[00:41:15]  Over 45 million people have seen the YouTube video of her freaking out.
[00:41:19]  And he videotaped her.
[00:41:20]  And she was known as a Karen because everybody thought that she was racist because she mentioned his race when she said, I'm going to call the cops and say an African American man is threatening me and threatening my dog.
[00:41:32]  Okay.
[00:41:33]  So long story short, she gets publicly embarrassed.
[00:41:38]  The guy forgives her basically, um, and but she gets fired.
[00:41:43]  I think we have a little soundbite of her, Amy, and Christian back to back.
[00:41:47]  Listen, please don't come close to me.
[00:41:52]  Please don't come close to me.
[00:41:57]  Please, please call the cops.
[00:41:59]  Please call the cops.
[00:42:00]  I'm gonna tell them there's an African American man threatening my life.
[00:42:03]  Please tell them whatever you like.
[00:42:05]  I'm sorry, I'm in the ramble, and there is a man, African American, he has a bicycle helmet.
[00:42:10]  He is recording me and threatening me and my dog.
[00:42:13]  I'm sorry, I can't hear you either.
[00:42:15]  I'm being threatened by a man in the Ramble.
[00:42:17]  Please send the cops immediately.
[00:42:19]  Okay, so she looked ridiculous.
[00:42:21]  And my own take on it is the moment where she lost the whole thing was when she said, even if she had just called the police and said, there's an African American man threatening me.
[00:42:29]  Okay, I could have lived with that.
[00:42:30]  You describe, if you think you're being threatened or attacked, you would describe the person.
[00:42:34]  But when she told him she was going to tell the cops, an African American man is threatening me, that's when she lost America.
[00:42:41]  I mean, that seemed like a threat based on race and cops and all the rest of it.
[00:42:45]  However, I think it's really interesting that now she's going after her employer for firing her, saying that they had no right to.
[00:42:53]  And did you guys know prior to getting ready for this segment about Jerome Lockett?
[00:43:00]  No.
[00:43:01]  First of all, I have a question for you, Megan.
[00:43:03]  Why do we call them Karen's?
[00:43:05]  I genuinely don't know.
[00:43:06]  Like, where did this name come from?
[00:43:08]  Was there an original Karen?
[00:43:10]  I mean, I really don't know.
[00:43:12]  It's like, it's a little ridiculous.
[00:43:14]  And the only thing I was going to tell you when I thought about this is if it was me, Who was bothering her when she called 911 and said, There's a bald man here who's coming after me.
[00:43:24]  In other words, she's describing me.
[00:43:26]  Would she have described me as a bald man?
[00:43:28]  There's a bald man threatening me in the ramble.
[00:43:30]  I don't know.
[00:43:31]  But the second time she gives the description, she doesn't, or she makes the complaint, she doesn't say African American.
[00:43:36]  She just says, This is the man.
[00:43:37]  Hurry up.
[00:43:37]  Send the police right away.
[00:43:39]  But this whole thing, in my opinion, got so blown out of proportion in the middle of a pandemic that I, you know, I just thought it was ridiculous.
[00:43:47]  And here's what was more ridiculous the Manhattan DA's office was looking to Prosecute her, and he, in fact, wouldn't really follow up on it for making a false statement.
[00:43:58]  If they prosecuted everyone who made a false statement, boy, oh boy, would the court system be overcrowded.
[00:44:04]  You kind of seem to be letting her off the hook a little bit much.
[00:44:06]  In fact, Megan, I was surprised when you said if she had just said African American.
[00:44:09]  Megan, in that context, it was racist.
[00:44:12]  It wasn't racist.
[00:44:13]  No, because when I said, when calling the police on him, if she said, there's a man, he's African American, he's here in the bramble and he's threatening me, then I can understand that.
[00:44:22]  Saying it to him as like a threat, I'm going to tell the police, basically, that a black guy is threatening me, that's not okay.
[00:44:30]  That had a different implication.
[00:44:32]  That's a given.
[00:44:33]  That second part, and I think Arthur's being real kind to this woman.
[00:44:37]  I think that she deserves everything that she's getting.
[00:44:40]  And worse, instead of just saying, Boy, I'm really grateful that they're not going after me criminally because the African American, as she calls him, didn't want to prosecute her.
[00:44:51]  So she got a gift.
[00:44:52]  My people call what she did by suing her employer chutzpah.
[00:44:58]  To go after the employer now and claim that they erroneously made her out to be a racist?
[00:45:03]  No, those are things you did, honey.
[00:45:05]  You did that, Karen.
[00:45:07]  Nope.
[00:45:08]  Let me say this.
[00:45:09]  I'm upset.
[00:45:09]  I'm upset, Megan.
[00:45:11]  The NYPD charged her in July with filing a false police report.
[00:45:17]  They dropped the charges after Christian Cooper declined to cooperate with the prosecutors and after Amy Cooper completed therapy that included instruction on not using racial bias.
[00:45:26]  But I have to say, I think she could have won that case.
[00:45:29]  It wasn't a false police report.
[00:45:31]  If you go back and look at what he admits he said, he was threatening her.
[00:45:37]  I'm not saying that she didn't have race playing in this for her.
[00:45:41]  But what he said to her was a threat.
[00:45:44]  I mean, he said very clearly that he was going to get her dog and she wasn't going to like it.
[00:45:49]  Megan, there's also the fact that many people don't know he took dog treats that he carried with him.
[00:45:54]  Yes.
[00:45:55]  And he was luring her dog over to him.
[00:45:59]  I mean, that's a little weird.
[00:46:00]  Who walks around with dog treats in their pocket who doesn't have a dog just in case of her walking around?
[00:46:07]  He was mad she didn't have her dog on a leash and he was doing his bird watching, and dogs are annoying.
[00:46:12]  Well, too bad.
[00:46:12]  Welcome to Central Park in New York.
[00:46:14]  Go move to the suburbs if you don't want to deal with people in the park on the basis like we have in CP.
[00:46:18]  So he told her to leash up her dog.
[00:46:21]  She said, No.
[00:46:22]  He called the dog over with a treat and said, And this is undisputed Look, if you're going to do what you want, I'm going to do what I want, but you're not going to like it.
[00:46:32]  Okay.
[00:46:32]  As he's offering her dog a treat and she doesn't know what's in that treat.
[00:46:37]  And he's saying, Come here, puppy.
[00:46:40]  This is according to him.
[00:46:41]  This is his testimonial.
[00:46:43]  He says he then was like, come here, puppy.
[00:46:45]  And she said, he won't come to you.
[00:46:47]  And he said, we'll see about that.
[00:46:49]  This is his testimonial.
[00:46:50]  I pull out the dog treats I carry for just such intransigence.
[00:46:53]  I didn't even get a chance to toss any treats to the pooch before Karen scrambled to grab the dog.
[00:46:58]  Her, don't you touch my dog.
[00:47:00]  That's when I started videotaping with my iPhone and when her inner Karen fully emerged and took a dark turn.
[00:47:05]  All right, that's his account of this whole thing.
[00:47:07]  I don't think there's any question he wasn't behaving nicely and he shouldn't have threatened the dog.
[00:47:12]  And I think she would have defeated this had they actually.
[00:47:15]  Had she chosen to fight it in court.
[00:47:16]  But what's happened now is she's suing her employer, Franklin Templeton, claiming they portrayed her in a false light as a racist, that they telegraphed to the world that they had performed a legitimate investigation into her when they hadn't.
[00:47:31]  And they fired her.
[00:47:32]  They fired her without even interviewing her or anyone else.
[00:47:36]  And her evidence this is what brings me to this guy, Jerome Lockett.
[00:47:42]  I mean, I saw the Karen tape, Central Park Karen.
[00:47:44]  Her name is Amy Cooper.
[00:47:46]  I never heard about this guy, Jerome Lockett.
[00:47:49]  The next day after this story broke, black man, dog owner, New York City, came out, and her lawsuit recounts this.
[00:47:59]  Came out and said he had a Christian Cooper incident prior to this.
[00:48:05]  He said Christian Cooper came up to him, Jerome Lockett, these are two black men, yelling at him, You need to leash your dog.
[00:48:13]  They can't be off leash in here.
[00:48:14]  Then Jerome Lockett refused to engage with Christian Cooper, turned his back to walk away.
[00:48:19]  And Jerome says Christian Cooper then escalated his aggression and attempted to lure Jerome Lockett's dog away from Jerome.
[00:48:27]  Christian Cooper said, If you're going to do what you want, Then I'm going to do what I want, but you're not going to like it.
[00:48:32]  This is like, this is his M.O. Christian Cooper had to be physically separated from Jerome Lockett's dog by Jerome Lockett, she alleges in her statement.
[00:48:42]  And if you go back and look, Jerome Lockett's statement the day after the Amy Cooper incident was, stay with me.
[00:48:49]  As a black man, I am not scared of another person because of their race or ethnicity.
[00:48:54]  But this man is threatening with his body language and screaming.
[00:48:57]  I don't know Amy Cooper at all.
[00:48:58]  I've said hello to her because that's what dog owners do to other dog owners at the park.
[00:49:02]  But when I saw that video, I thought, I cannot imagine if he approached her the same way, how she may have genuinely been afraid for her life.
[00:49:11]  She may not be like me, willing to physically defend herself or her dog.
[00:49:14]  I understand the optics of this video are not great, but people need to understand this man is a dick and probably did threaten her.
[00:49:24]  And he goes on from there saying she had no idea if he'd be pulling out a knife, a gun, a treat that's laced with rat poison.
[00:49:32]  You know, he said, I know two other dog owners.
[00:49:35]  That have had similar situations with this guy, but they don't feel comfortable coming forward because they're white and they think they're going to be called Karen or something.
[00:49:43]  He says, I obviously don't have that fear.
[00:49:45]  I'm a liberal man.
[00:49:46]  I voted for Barack, for Bernie, for Bernie again.
[00:49:48]  I'll be voting for Biden in the next election.
[00:49:50]  I'm not a right wing nut job trying to push an agenda.
[00:49:52]  I just think it's unfair and uncool how the world is pushing their own agenda with this story.
[00:49:56]  I like, it's unbelievable.
[00:49:59]  I never heard about this guy.
[00:50:01]  Well, you know, that area is, it's now known for bird watching, but Since we're always honest on this program, Megan, if the September 13th, 2012 edition of the New York Times, the Ramble in Central Park, which is where this took place, has long been known as a place where people prowl for anonymous sexual encounters.
[00:50:22]  What?
[00:50:23]  Yeah, that's Megan.
[00:50:24]  I grew up in the city.
[00:50:25]  That's you knew as a kid you didn't go to the Ramble, it was not where you went.
[00:50:30]  That's what it was known for.
[00:50:31]  And I walk my dogs there.
[00:50:33]  Oh my God, I would I have not been praying for a sexual interlude.
[00:50:36]  Well, before I go down, I just double checked it.
[00:50:39]  I said, okay, let's see who agrees with me.
[00:50:41]  And as I said, it's the September 13, 2012, New York Times article talking about the Ramble has long been known as a place where people prowl for anonymous sexual encounters.
[00:50:51]  Now, I do know people also go bird watching there.
[00:50:56]  The whole thing about the multiple encounters, having dog food or dog treats in your pocket, it just, the whole thing is just very, very odd.
[00:51:06]  And I do give them credit for not pursuing this with the authorities.
[00:51:09]  But he may have his own reasons why he's.
[00:51:13]  But talking about unequal justice, they are not letting, they're not prosecuting the looters who wrecked Manhattan.
[00:51:21]  They're letting them go.

=== Consequences of Unequal Treatment (02:52) ===

[00:51:22]  And they were going to go after this woman.
[00:51:24]  I mean, that's really unequal justice on any way you look at it.
[00:51:29]  You know, it's one thing if she called the police and dropped some big racial bomb, there's an N word guy who's here.
[00:51:35]  She didn't even say a black guy who's here.
[00:51:37]  She said the most politically correct term.
[00:51:39]  African American.
[00:51:40]  She said it once.
[00:51:41]  She didn't say it the second time when she says someone's threatening me.
[00:51:45]  She just said it's a man.
[00:51:46]  You know, whatever.
[00:51:48]  A slap on the wrist, maybe.
[00:51:49]  But to prosecute her criminally and then she loses her job, I mean, she's probably going to lose.
[00:51:55]  Probably going to lose a lawsuit unless they just want to settle and they'll just.
[00:51:58]  They may just give her some money just to make this quietly go away.
[00:52:01]  They better not give her a dime.
[00:52:03]  You guys are being so damn soft on her.
[00:52:05]  First, let me just say I don't know.
[00:52:07]  Christian Cooper may be a dick, as Jerome Lockett says.
[00:52:12]  That's not my word.
[00:52:12]  That's his word.
[00:52:13]  Let's put that to the side.
[00:52:15]  So, what?
[00:52:16]  The issue was when she said what she said about an African man assaulting me, whether you believed at any point that that wasn't racially motivated.
[00:52:28]  If you're being reasonable, that's what you felt.
[00:52:30]  And as a result, the company had.
[00:52:32]  Every reason to fire her for her suing them is baseless.
[00:52:37]  And I hope that they make her pay for the lawyers that they're going to have to use to defend them.
[00:52:42]  I agree that the lawsuit's going nowhere.
[00:52:44]  I mean, unless she had some contract in place, they could fire her because they didn't like her hair color.
[00:52:51]  I don't know what, I'm not sure that there was anything other than an employment at will relationship, but they had no obligation to stand by her given the tape.
[00:52:59]  And I don't know that they created an impression they did some big investigation.
[00:53:03]  They just didn't think it reflected well in the company.
[00:53:06]  But I do feel this woman paid a very, very high price for that incident, especially now that we know this guy's backstory.
[00:53:12]  And I do think he behaved threateningly.
[00:53:13]  She's probably unemployable.
[00:53:15]  That's why the lawsuit is here.
[00:53:16]  She's got nowhere else to go, Mark.
[00:53:17]  I mean, this woman hands in her name.
[00:53:20]  I mean, luckily, she's got a little bit of a common name, but if they dig a little deeper, who's hiring her?
[00:53:25]  She can't, literally, she couldn't get a job at Home Depot.
[00:53:28]  Arthur, we call those things consequences.
[00:53:30]  Oh, that's a heavy penalty for one.
[00:53:33]  Consequences of what?
[00:53:34]  Of what?
[00:53:35]  Because she said the term African American, so she should be unemployable for the rest of her life?
[00:53:40]  It's a lot worse than that.
[00:53:41]  What she did was very, very abhorrent, in my opinion.
[00:53:46]  Think about what she did.
[00:53:47]  Think about it.
[00:53:47]  Where do you live in marshmallow land?
[00:53:49]  That's abhorrent.
[00:53:50]  Me watching people break the windows of Cartier and Tiffany on Fifth Avenue because they were upset about what happened to George Floyd.
[00:53:57]  That was abhorrent.
[00:53:58]  Hold on one second.
[00:53:59]  Hold on.
[00:54:00]  Hold on.
[00:54:00]  From the NBA store.
[00:54:01]  That was abhorrent.
[00:54:03]  Those are people who should be prosecuted.
[00:54:05]  Sorry, I got to go feed my unicorn.
[00:54:07]  Hold on one second.

=== Hard Work for Better Product (05:15) ===

[00:54:14]  Up next, we're going to talk about these vaccine mandates at a growing number of schools.
[00:54:19]  Does it matter whether it's college versus K 12?
[00:54:22]  Does it matter whether it's public or private?
[00:54:24]  Can they force you to do this to your kid?
[00:54:27]  The guys take that on, along with Mayor Lightfoot in Chicago requiring anybody who has light skin to sit out at the opportunity to interview with her.
[00:54:38]  We'll get into whether that's legal in a minute.
[00:54:40]  Before we get to that, though, I want to bring you a feature we have here on the MK show called Asked and Answered, where we attack.
[00:54:45]  Some of our listener mail.
[00:54:47]  Steve Krakow is our EP.
[00:54:49]  Who do we have today, Steve?
[00:54:51]  Hey, Megan.
[00:54:51]  Yeah, this one is from Sonia Patel, and it comes to us from questions at devilmaycaremedia.com, where we get all sorts of listener questions and we read them on a weekly basis on the show to get your answer.
[00:55:03]  Sonia is a big fan of the show, and she says she's always so impressed by the amount of research and prep that goes into an episode.
[00:55:08]  She wants to know what's your normal process for getting prepared, who helps you, and she also gives shout outs to Abby and Canadian Debbie.
[00:55:16]  Oh, that's nice.
[00:55:17]  Sonia, thank you.
[00:55:18]  Well, I mean, the answer to your question is multifold, but I would say, chief, you know, above all, it's Canadian Debbie who gets me ready.
[00:55:26]  And she has always done this for me, and she is a gem, which I will let go of with my cold, dead hands.
[00:55:33]  This is why she's worked with me now since my early, early days at Fox when I was, when I launched America's Newsroom in 2007 with Hemmer.
[00:55:40]  We were together.
[00:55:41]  I've taken her with me every place I've ever gone, and thankfully she's come.
[00:55:45]  And she's just so important because she gets me editorially.
[00:55:48]  She knows what stories I'm going to be interested in, and she knows what angles on.
[00:55:51]  On the stories I like.
[00:55:53]  So she gives me these very thick, dense research packets.
[00:55:56]  She works her ass off.
[00:55:58]  She's a mother of young children.
[00:55:59]  You know, she, as I say, she works in damn Canada.
[00:56:02]  She works very hard, but she finds the time to put together these very dense research packets for me because she knows I like them and I'll read them.
[00:56:09]  And then I'm off to the races, right?
[00:56:11]  I read every word, I bother her.
[00:56:13]  She tracks down more information.
[00:56:14]  She gives me stats.
[00:56:15]  She'll clarify factual issues, but she gives me a ton of links too.
[00:56:19]  So, like when we do GADSAT, she'll send me a bunch of links to YouTube videos of GADS or interviews of GADS that she thinks I might want to watch.
[00:56:27]  And she's got a team of interns who she works with too, who will help her.
[00:56:31]  They do some of that legwork.
[00:56:33]  And then when she puts it all together, she'll run it by Steve, too, our executive producer, and he'll sort of say, This is great.
[00:56:38]  And these are the angles I think might be interesting.
[00:56:40]  And I'll add some of those to my list.
[00:56:42]  And then I just sort of go on the internet, sort of enjoy the pleasures of being in this line of work where you have time to prepare.
[00:56:49]  You know, you have time to get to know somebody and start watching their TED Talks or downloading their books, you know, and giving them a read.
[00:56:56]  I always do the digital if I can.
[00:56:58]  It's just easier.
[00:56:59]  You can just read it wherever you are, right?
[00:57:00]  Or the audio read to you.
[00:57:02]  That's always nice.
[00:57:03]  And I just try to stuff my brain with as much information about the person I'm going to interview as I can because I figure that's my job to separate the wheat from the chaff for you guys so you can get the good stuff.
[00:57:13]  You only get the wheat to have an interesting and enticing exchange, right?
[00:57:17]  Like that's my job.
[00:57:18]  That's my job is to try to find interesting angles on people and highlight them.
[00:57:22]  And that's, I think, what creates a connection with an audience, right?
[00:57:25]  If the way I do it aligns with your taste, then we have a connection.
[00:57:29]  Then you like me, you like this show.
[00:57:32]  I will hold on to you.
[00:57:33]  I'll hopefully continue to be pleasing to you because I can apply those methods.
[00:57:37]  To all the interviews, right?
[00:57:38]  That's how we stay connected.
[00:57:39]  We used to joke about on the Kelly file, you know, you work harder to deliver a shorter product, a tighter product.
[00:57:46]  And the harder we work, the better the product gets for you.
[00:57:48]  It may sound super simple by the time it comes out of my mouth, but that's because of all the hours of work that went into making it super simple.
[00:57:54]  So you don't have to work too hard to understand it.
[00:57:56]  And that's kind of what we're still doing.
[00:57:58]  Anyway, so it's a team effort, long effort, long way of saying it's a team effort to get the editorial to you in a way that works.
[00:58:04]  But the truth is credit where it's due.
[00:58:06]  Debbie Murphy is my secret weapon.
[00:58:09]  Cold dead hands.
[00:58:11]  Canadian Debbie, do you want to weigh in on this at all?
[00:58:13]  Do you have any thoughts on this?
[00:58:14]  Well, I feel like, you know, we should just go on a little bit more.
[00:58:18]  Tell me more.
[00:58:19]  This is a Canadian Debbie episode.
[00:58:21]  It's a pleasure to get you prepped.
[00:58:22]  And it's like going to college every day, learning everyone.
[00:58:25]  And I start with, I know nothing about this person, even if it's someone you've interviewed before.
[00:58:29]  And I just go back to the beginning like, who is this person?
[00:58:32]  And we're getting ready for Marcus Luttrell next week.
[00:58:35]  And, you know, his book came out in 2007.
[00:58:37]  But I'm like, I'm going to breeze through the book and get some good quotes out of it because there's always just like, That one moment, right?
[00:58:43]  You're always just looking for that one moment that's so different than any other interview.
[00:58:48]  So I think that's what we try to do.
[00:58:50]  Well, you're so genius at finding it.
[00:58:53]  And not everybody, not every producer knows how to do that.
[00:58:56]  That's one of the reasons why you're so talented and you're so valuable and you work for me, even though you're in damn Canada.
[00:59:03]  You could move to China, I'd still work with you.
[00:59:06]  China.
[00:59:08]  Anyway, it is a team effort, but it does take really talented people.
[00:59:12]  Just as a lesson in life, that's one of the reasons why it's important to keep people with you who know you and whose skills have been developed over time with you.
[00:59:21]  Like it's just, you get into a rhythm where it's almost like being great.
[00:59:24]  What I imagine it's like to be a great basketball player, you know, you do the behind the back pass, you don't even have to look at each other.

=== Vaccine Mandates at Schools (10:32) ===

[00:59:30]  That's where we are.
[00:59:31]  So hopefully you guys feel the results of this team having been together for a long time in one way, shape, or form, just knowing what resonates, how to make it sing, right?
[00:59:42]  Anyway, Sonia, thank you.
[00:59:44]  Canadian Debbie, thank you as always.
[00:59:46]  And now, after this ad, back to the guys.
[00:59:55]  I do think these vaccine mandate lawsuits are interesting.
[00:59:57]  Now, there's one coming in against.
[01:00:00]  Indiana University, and this is not going to be the only one.
[01:00:03]  Eight students have filed a lawsuit challenging Indiana University over its requirement that students be vaccinated before returning to campus.
[01:00:10]  They're claiming it's an equal protection clause violation.
[01:00:13]  And they also say it violates the state's anti vaccine passport law.
[01:00:17]  That's one of those states that said you can't mandate travel be conditioned on somebody having been vaccinated.
[01:00:23]  And the lawsuit alleges that even those who are granted exemptions from the vaccine are going to be subjected to extra requirements like They have mitigation testing twice a week.
[01:00:35]  They have a mandatory quarantine if they're even exposed to somebody who tests positive, and mandatory face masks in all public spaces.
[01:00:42]  And the university is standing by the mandate saying, too bad, you have no right to go to this university.
[01:00:47]  But if you want to come here, you have to get the vaccination.
[01:00:50]  And they say the Supreme Court's long upheld mandatory vaccination so you can pound sand students who don't like it.
[01:00:57]  What do you guys think?
[01:00:58]  I think the FDA role plays a big piece of this puzzle because these vaccines have not been.
[01:01:06]  Have not been sanctioned, I don't know what the right word is, by the FDA.
[01:01:12]  I mean, look, we live in New York City where our kids can't go to school unless they have the measles, the mumps, polio, now it's chickenpox as well.
[01:01:22]  But here, I believe when it's an emergency use and not FDA approved, I believe that you cannot say you have to do it for an entity that you have a right to go to.
[01:01:37]  So, in other words, a public school.
[01:01:39]  I don't believe the New York City public schools are saying you have to be vaccinated because they can't say you have to be vaccinated until the vaccine has FDA approval.
[01:01:49]  And then I believe they can say the way you can't start school without polio, real FDA approval, without polio.
[01:01:55]  Not the emergency use.
[01:01:57]  Correct.
[01:01:57]  I think the lawsuit's going to go nowhere.
[01:01:59]  I'm going to cite Jacobson versus Massachusetts going back to 1905, which I believe is still good law.
[01:02:07]  And the case upheld the power of the states.
[01:02:10]  And other governmental entities to enforce compulsory vaccines in the interest of public health.
[01:02:19]  But the precedent does not include cases where the vaccines were only authorized for emergency use on a temporary basis.
[01:02:28]  That all those other vaccines had the bigger long term approval, as far as I understand.
[01:02:35]  And so there is something different about this because all this happened so fast, and all the side effects that are coming out now, like the inflamed hearts.
[01:02:43]  For young men under the age of 30.
[01:02:45]  All that's starting just breaking now.
[01:02:47]  So, and just this week, I just went through this because it looks like our boys' school, I think, they're going to mandate vaccines for all age eligible kids.
[01:02:56]  And the WHO literally just came out and said, we don't recommend the vaccine for kids under the age of 18.
[01:03:02]  The WHO.
[01:03:03]  How about this?
[01:03:05]  Someone, I forget who, and you probably know Megan, just got banned from Twitter because they retweeted that the WHO bans, is not recommending the vaccine for children.
[01:03:16]  And obviously, the Twitter people want everyone to be vaccinated for whatever reason, want everyone to be immunized for whatever reason.
[01:03:22]  So, yes.
[01:03:23]  And my own son, the doctor is like, look, he's been his pediatrician since he's born.
[01:03:29]  He goes, look, he's right in the heart of puberty.
[01:03:31]  I just, he's not going to die if he gets this.
[01:03:34]  I don't want him to get it.
[01:03:35]  And he's not going to get it.
[01:03:37]  That's right.
[01:03:37]  Same.
[01:03:38]  I don't want my kids to get this.
[01:03:41]  And I don't want my school telling me I have no choice as their mother and Doug has no choice as their father.
[01:03:49]  It's absurd.
[01:03:50]  And at our school, and I'm sure it sounds like at Indiana or other places, it's like if you say no, it's going to be, oh, no problem.
[01:03:57]  You don't have to.
[01:03:58]  But you have to have double masks and you can't go to any activities.
[01:04:00]  You can sit at your desk and do math and social studies, but anything beyond that, you can't partake in.
[01:04:06]  So they try to force it on you.
[01:04:07]  For what?
[01:04:08]  For what?
[01:04:09]  There was an op ed in the Wall Street Journal recently by a professor of psychiatry and a doctor, I think, at the University of California, Irvine, and then a law professor, Notre Dame, saying these mandates are unethical because this is an experimental vaccine.
[01:04:28]  And it hasn't been fully approved.
[01:04:30]  And for those who are under 30, the risk of serious morbidity and mortality are close to zero.
[01:04:36]  And what we're really doing here, what we're really doing is we're using young people.
[01:04:42]  We're forcing the vaccine on healthy young adults who are at minimal risk in order to increase the numbers on herd immunity.
[01:04:50]  And for the benefit of the elderly, right?
[01:04:52]  Like we're saying young people have no risk, but the old people do.
[01:04:54]  So we're just going to vaccinate it.
[01:04:56]  That's not ethical medically.
[01:04:57]  That's not the way medicine is supposed to work.
[01:04:59]  Go ahead, Mark.
[01:05:00]  I'm not going to disagree on this one.
[01:05:02]  I don't want my kids to be forced to do anything the government says.
[01:05:06]  So I support your arguments.
[01:05:09]  And the part that's upsetting is what you said is how they kind of bully you.
[01:05:14]  So if you're the kid who's not vaccinated, and there won't be one, but the other five kids who aren't vaccinated, yes, they want you to wear the double mask.
[01:05:23]  Yes, and you have to get tested every 15 minutes.
[01:05:25]  And yes, you can't participate in the outdoor sports unless blah, blah, blah, blah.
[01:05:30]  And what does that do for a kid's psyche?
[01:05:32]  Like, look, this isn't even his parents who made this decision, Megan.
[01:05:36]  This was his pediatrician who said, I don't want him to get it.
[01:05:40]  I'm going to tell the doctor.
[01:05:41]  Well, no, I'm the lawyer.
[01:05:42]  I'm going to tell you what's best for my kid.
[01:05:44]  No, right.
[01:05:44]  The doctor said it's like some suit in the administration of the high school said he should.
[01:05:50]  Well, does he have a medical degree?
[01:05:52]  Yeah, exactly.
[01:05:54]  What do you guys think the outcome would be?
[01:05:56]  What do you think a court's going to do?
[01:05:57]  I'm noting the precedent that generally sides in favor of governmental entities.
[01:06:04]  To protect the public, do you think that they'll carve out an exception because it's not FDA approved and thus it's not lawful to do?
[01:06:15]  I think it's going to come down to the judge's politics.
[01:06:18]  I think if this went to the Supreme Court, it would go our way, mine and Arthur's and yours, Marks.
[01:06:25]  I can't see Clarence Thomas upholding a mandate that forced this on parents who don't want it when it's only experienced.
[01:06:34]  Or would they say, hey, it's a private institution?
[01:06:37]  They're allowed to enforce whatever, like they're allowed to enforce a dress code if they like.
[01:06:42]  So maybe they're allowed to do this.
[01:06:44]  They're a private institution.
[01:06:46]  Well, not a public institution can't do it.
[01:06:48]  A taxpayer sponsored institution can't do it.
[01:06:50]  But a private institution can do whatever they want.
[01:06:53]  Yeah, that's exactly right.
[01:06:54]  That will be important.
[01:06:55]  Private employers versus public employers and private schools versus public schools.
[01:07:00]  You're better off, basically, if you want to challenge these mandates, if you're at a public institution versus a private.
[01:07:05]  Because if you're at a private, you're basically just supposed to jump up and down and say, hey, I pay you a lot of money.
[01:07:09]  You shouldn't do this to me.
[01:07:11]  But, you know, even that doesn't work if you're in a blue state like we are.
[01:07:15]  You know, it's like you just got to suck it up.
[01:07:18]  Okay.
[01:07:18]  So we don't feel so good about the vaccine mandate lawsuits, but anything could happen because this whole thing's in its infancy.
[01:07:24]  And, you know, even we'll see over the summer how the reports come out of these side effects because they've only just started giving it to children.
[01:07:32]  And now they're testing it on babies, babies through age 12.
[01:07:37]  Who the hell is giving their kid over for that?
[01:07:39]  Who is doing that?
[01:07:40]  Right?
[01:07:40]  Great.
[01:07:41]  You want it to be mandated for my kid?
[01:07:42]  Good.
[01:07:42]  Your kid can go first.
[01:07:43]  Okay.
[01:07:44]  Let's see how it works out for your kid.
[01:07:45]  I wonder if it's ethical for there to be a financial aspect to it.
[01:07:50]  Like, in other words, we're giving out $5,000 to whoever wants to have their kids, you know, be the guinea pigs for this vaccine.
[01:07:57]  I mean, I don't know if ethically they're allowed to do that or not, but I agree with you.
[01:08:01]  Who the heck would give their kid over to do that and beat the heck out of me, man?
[01:08:06]  Yeah, let's see.
[01:08:07]  Let's see if there are any fertility problems.
[01:08:09]  Just retire it out of my kid.
[01:08:10]  I mean, and of course, we all know.
[01:08:13]  We just saw a little thing.
[01:08:14]  Our school released this testimonial by a doctor at Yale, and he was like, oh, the reports of fertility problems have not been supported.
[01:08:23]  There's no reason to believe that.
[01:08:25]  What child did you check?
[01:08:27]  For fertility problems caused by this experimental vaccine.
[01:08:31]  How are you able to say when COVID is only a year and a half old that the vaccine, which we've had for far less time, poses absolutely no risk to fertility?
[01:08:41]  You don't know that.
[01:08:43]  You can't possibly know that.
[01:08:45]  And there is some reporting now about possible concerns.
[01:08:49]  I'm not going to get into that here because I haven't done my homework on it yet.
[01:08:51]  But my point is, we don't know.
[01:08:53]  So go ahead and figure it out on somebody else, not minors.
[01:08:57]  Right.
[01:08:57]  I mean, I feel the same way.
[01:08:58]  I want to be a grandfather one day.
[01:09:00]  Right?
[01:09:00]  I don't, and it's like, God, can you imagine looking at your kid and trying to explain that they lost their ability to, God forbid, to something as profound as have children because you really wanted them to participate in gym class and sports?
[01:09:14]  Like, no.
[01:09:15]  And everyone needs to use their own judgment.
[01:09:17]  Like, my sister has a son who's 17, but, you know, he's juvenile diabetes.
[01:09:22]  And they've, they've, it's clear that if you have diabetes as severely as he does and you get the coronavirus, you get COVID 19.
[01:09:31]  It's not a good thing.
[01:09:32]  It's very, very bad.
[01:09:33]  It's not like a typical kid getting it.
[01:09:35]  So, my sister made the option of getting him vaccinated as soon as possible.
[01:09:38]  But her daughter, who's just a few years younger, who's healthy as an ox at 14 years old, they're not giving her the vaccine.
[01:09:45]  But that's what you call individual decisions based on reality and based on what makes sense.
[01:09:52]  But they're individual decisions, not mandated decisions.
[01:09:55]  I've got to call one of the most prestigious high schools in Brooklyn.

=== Diversity in Newsrooms (10:00) ===

[01:10:02]  They're mandating.
[01:10:03]  The kids come back vaccinated, and all the parents are calling me, Is this legal?
[01:10:07]  Is this legal?
[01:10:08]  Is this legal?
[01:10:09]  They said, I think they it's a private school, you're paying them $50,000 plus to go there.
[01:10:15]  If they have a rule that you have to wear a college shirt and you can't wear jeans and you can't wear sneakers, so the way they're able to enforce those rules, I think they can enforce the rule that listen, kids who come in here, the school starts at this time, ends this time, you're paying for them.
[01:10:30]  If you want to go to PS 185, you don't have to worry about these things, there is no dress code.
[01:10:36]  There is no vaccination code except for what the FDA has already approved.
[01:10:40]  At least not yet.
[01:10:43]  Don't leave me now.
[01:10:44]  We got more coming up in 60 seconds.
[01:10:47]  Okay, let's do Lori Lightfoot quickly.
[01:10:50]  She's the mayor of Chicago.
[01:10:52]  This is the woman who decided not to grant interviews to any white people to celebrate her second year in office.
[01:10:58]  Meanwhile, it's like, get over yourself.
[01:10:59]  Who wants to talk to you about that?
[01:11:00]  No one cares.
[01:11:01]  Chicago is a hot mess, thanks to you and your policies.
[01:11:06]  The deaths.
[01:11:06]  Rate there, the number of African Americans are getting shot on a daily basis.
[01:11:09]  Let's keep our eye on the ball, right?
[01:11:11]  Like, that's what I'd like to talk to you about, not your two year inaugural anniversary, as she assumed everybody wanted to discuss.
[01:11:18]  Anyway, so the local reporters out there, to their credit, complained saying, What are you doing?
[01:11:23]  What are you talking about?
[01:11:25]  You're going to base our ability to interview you on our skin color?
[01:11:30]  More than 1,200 people have been shot in the city this year, okay?
[01:11:35]  And that's more than twice of what it was this time last year.
[01:11:37]  Let's have some answers for that, not What my melanin looks like.
[01:11:42]  Okay, Mayor Lightfoot.
[01:11:44]  So now, to their credit, some have filed a lawsuit.
[01:11:48]  Daily Caller News Foundation, filed by Thomas Katanachi, the Daily Caller News Foundation, and Judicial Watch in federal court, Northern District of Illinois.
[01:11:59]  And they are saying that this guy Thomas was denied an interview by her.
[01:12:03]  He's a Daily Caller reporter.
[01:12:04]  He's a white male.
[01:12:05]  And they're saying this was a violation of the Constitution.
[01:12:08]  His First Amendment rights as a member of the press and his 14th Amendment rights, which include equal protection, that she, a state official, used race as the basis to deny him a professional opportunity and that that's not allowed.
[01:12:23]  The same way you couldn't have some white mayor say, I'm not giving any interviews to black people.
[01:12:30]  Would anybody challenge that that would be inappropriate and unlawful?
[01:12:34]  Can she do this because she's a black woman to white reporters, Mark?
[01:12:39]  I'm not defending her at all.
[01:12:41]  In fact, be careful what you wish for.
[01:12:43]  If this goes through the legal system and the decision is in her favor, then what stops a white politician from doing it against someone of color?
[01:12:53]  Exactly.
[01:12:53]  Well, what would stop them would be the public outrage.
[01:12:56]  But, you know, Megan, just the way we tied in a minute ago about Private institutions having their own rules, there is a limit.
[01:13:04]  So, a private school, high school, can't say, okay, we're not letting in white kids or we're not letting in black kids.
[01:13:09]  They're allowed to say you have to wear a college shirt or you have to be fully immunized by FDA, but you can't.
[01:13:16]  There is a line, I believe it's called strict scrutiny, that the Supreme Court would look at here and say, you can't say I'm not interviewing with you because of the color of your skin.
[01:13:25]  Race is one of the protected classes.
[01:13:27]  And I do think that he has a very viable suit here.
[01:13:33]  And look, her point was, While she was a candidate for mayor and as the mayor, the whole press corps is so predominantly white in a very mixed culture city that she was trying to make the point that let's try to get some more people of color into the press corps.
[01:13:53]  They got much bigger problems in Chicago.
[01:13:56]  I know.
[01:13:57]  I'm sorry.
[01:13:58]  But boo effing who?
[01:14:00]  That is not her job to work on the diversity of the newsrooms.
[01:14:04]  That is the newsroom's job.
[01:14:06]  It's not up to the politicians to say, I'm not getting the right mix.
[01:14:10]  In the interview pool.
[01:14:12]  You need to send me different people.
[01:14:14]  Bullshit.
[01:14:14]  That's up for the news media to decide.
[01:14:17]  They may indeed need to do better.
[01:14:19]  She can say it in a microphone.
[01:14:21]  She can't start making discriminatory actions and decisions based on her preferences.
[01:14:27]  I agree with you on the manner in which she chose to bring attention to this issue, but isn't there an issue?
[01:14:35]  And doesn't desperate times cause for desperate measures?
[01:14:38]  I'm not saying that I'm.
[01:14:39]  Illegal measures?
[01:14:40]  I don't think you say they have to be legal.
[01:14:42]  Stop it.
[01:14:42]  Stop it.
[01:14:43]  Let me finish.
[01:14:43]  I'm not okay with it.
[01:14:44]  I'm not okay with it legally.
[01:14:46]  But I understand her frustration if assuming this problem is legitimate.
[01:14:51]  Assuming, right.
[01:14:52]  I don't know.
[01:14:52]  I look, I'm not on another chat.
[01:14:54]  I'm not on another chat.
[01:14:55]  Well, I'll give you one.
[01:14:56]  According to the 2018 Pew Research analysis, 77% of newsroom employees are white.
[01:15:03]  About six in 10 are men.
[01:15:06]  So they tend to be white men.
[01:15:08]  So, yeah, of course, more diversity.
[01:15:10]  Sure, that would be great.
[01:15:11]  But It's not up to the politicians and the people we cover to solve that problem.
[01:15:16]  Who is she to determine the makeup of the newsroom?
[01:15:20]  She said, and I quote, we must be intentional about doing better.
[01:15:23]  I believe that when I was running for office, I stand on that now.
[01:15:25]  It's time for newsrooms to do better and build teams that reflect the makeup of our city.
[01:15:29]  Okay, fine.
[01:15:30]  You said you had your piece, but now you don't get to be discriminatory to solve an issue you think of discrimination.
[01:15:38]  And to their credit, the Chicago Tribune had a reporter who's Latino who was among those who'd been granted an interview.
[01:15:44]  And the newspaper and this guy, Gregory Pratt, the guy, canceled it when she refused to lift her ban on other reporters, saying, You don't get to do that.
[01:15:53]  I'm not defending what she did, but I disagree with you.
[01:15:57]  I think on one point, I think that if she believes that there's a significant problem in the newsroom, it's not being represented by people of color, then she's a politician.
[01:16:08]  I don't necessarily like what she did here, but I don't mind her speaking out about it.
[01:16:11]  In fact, I would encourage her to.
[01:16:13]  You know, Megan, from a purely legal point of view, talking about strict scrutiny and Supreme Court review, I believe there's a new national network called the Black News Channel.
[01:16:25]  And I would love to see their charter.
[01:16:28]  To see how they tiptoed around, you know, what their hiring practices are going to be.
[01:16:33]  Because, you know, you can't just say with a black, which is fine.
[01:16:37]  This is great.
[01:16:37]  I mean, there was an Italian news channel and whatever, that's fine.
[01:16:40]  Except you can't say, okay, but we're only hiring Italians or only hiring African American people.
[01:16:46]  So, you know, this is a delicate situation, but I agree.
[01:16:51]  Mark, I understand she's trying to make a statement, but she can make a statement by making a statement and saying, look, you know, here's my second anniversary and I'm here.
[01:16:59]  God bless all you white people, but I wish there were more people who look like me in the news division.
[01:17:06]  I know you threw out all those statistics, Megan, but I would love to see how many people of color applied and were rejected as opposed to they just didn't apply.
[01:17:16]  In other words, it's not the industry that they're being pulled into right now, the way there aren't a lot of fat, bald Italian guys playing NBA basketball.
[01:17:25]  It just may not be where they're looking to work right now.
[01:17:29]  I would be surprised if you.
[01:17:31]  I would be surprised if you saw a lot of African American people being rejected from newsrooms versus the fact that they're just not applying.
[01:17:39]  So that's why they're not there.
[01:17:40]  It's just not what's in there.
[01:17:43]  What's the cool thing to be right now in the world?
[01:17:46]  Well, listen to this.
[01:17:47]  So I'll tell you, you're 100% right.
[01:17:49]  But of course, you're not allowed to have that opinion in today's day and age.
[01:17:51]  You're supposed to, if there aren't enough women in science, it's because science is sexist.
[01:17:55]  You can't just say, well, maybe women made a different choice.
[01:17:57]  Maybe they didn't.
[01:17:58]  If there aren't enough women CEOs, it's always about sexism.
[01:18:01]  It could just be.
[01:18:01]  You know what?
[01:18:02]  We made different lifestyle choices that are actually kind of smart and we like them.
[01:18:06]  Here is Tulsi Gabbard, who went after Lightfoot for this.
[01:18:10]  And I quote Mayor Lightfoot's blatant anti white racism is abhorrent.
[01:18:15]  I call upon President Biden, Kamala Harris, and other leaders of our country of all races to join me in calling for Mayor Lightfoot's resignation.
[01:18:22]  Our leaders must condemn all racism, including anti white racism.
[01:18:26]  And that, you know, it does bear repeating anti white racism is not lawful.
[01:18:33]  The anti discrimination laws that protect Black people from being discriminated against, Hispanic people, and so on, also apply to white people.
[01:18:40]  If you get discriminated against, depending on the setting and the facts of your case, but if it's because you have white skin, you're protected.
[01:18:47]  Like, she's not, this is not allowed just because whites still have a numerical majority in the country.
[01:18:54]  Yeah, we learned when we were like seven two wrongs don't make a right.
[01:18:57]  I'm sure she knows that, but she's frustrated, you know?
[01:19:00]  Single tier.
[01:19:01]  I don't care about her frustration.
[01:19:03]  I don't.
[01:19:03]  You uphold the law or you don't.
[01:19:05]  You believe in the Constitution.
[01:19:06]  Or you don't.
[01:19:07]  And by the way, when she announced this, according to the Chicago Sun-Times, that weekend, Chicago had been hit with its most violent weekend of the year.
[01:19:15]  A two-year-old girl, a 13-year-old boy, two Chicago PD officers, all among the 48 people who were shot.
[01:19:23]  Okay.
[01:19:23]  And at least six of them were killed.
[01:19:25]  The Tuesday after, 14 people were shot in Chicago, leaving two dead.
[01:19:29]  In the midst of this, she's focused on the diversity of the newsrooms.
[01:19:34]  This woman is a disgrace.
[01:19:35]  She's been terrible.
[01:19:36]  I can't believe she's let this beautiful city become such a hellhole.
[01:19:39]  We talked about this the other day.
[01:19:40]  She's focused right now on what to rename Lakeshore Drive.
[01:19:44]  She wants it to have a more diverse name.
[01:19:46]  My God, 1,200 people have died.
[01:19:49]  Yeah, it's sad.
[01:19:51]  Real quick, when Bill de Blasio first became the mayor of the city of New York, like his first weeks, I confronted him.
[01:19:58]  I said, Bill, There's been 20 years of Republican rule in the city of New York.

=== Shutting Down Lakeshore Drive (02:11) ===

[01:20:02]  And your biggest issue out of the gate is whether we're going to have horses in Central Park giving people tours around here.
[01:20:09]  Is that the biggest issue facing the city?
[01:20:12]  And it's the same thing here.
[01:20:13]  Except back then, the city was in great shape.
[01:20:16]  So there was no other issues for him to tackle.
[01:20:18]  But here, my goodness, again, Megan, I really would scratch my head if there is any statistic that shows an overwhelming number of people of color are applying to newsrooms and they're getting rejected.
[01:20:31]  I bet you the statistics would bear out.
[01:20:33]  Just the opposite.
[01:20:35]  Just the opposite.
[01:20:36]  That they're coming in in droves.
[01:20:38]  Yeah, I'm sure back in the day it was a problem.
[01:20:41]  But in today's day and age, I have my doubts as well.
[01:20:44]  You guys, it's always a pleasure.
[01:20:46]  Thank you for the scoop on Giuliani, Arthur.
[01:20:49]  And thank you.
[01:20:49]  I'll let you return to your unicorns and your marshmallow world, Mark.
[01:20:52]  It's been a pleasure.
[01:20:58]  All right, don't forget to subscribe to the show if you haven't yet.
[01:21:00]  And if you haven't yet, why haven't you?
[01:21:02]  Please, it's getting offensive at this point.
[01:21:04]  And make sure you download the episodes because that's, I guess, how I get credit for them.
[01:21:08]  I don't know, but it's important to download.
[01:21:10]  I know that.
[01:21:10]  And give me a review.
[01:21:11]  I'll give me a five-star review and give me and write something, write your thoughts about the cases or what have you or anything you want to share with me.
[01:21:17]  And don't forget to do all of that because on our next show, we have Victor Davis Hansen.
[01:21:22]  Yay!
[01:21:23]  He's amazing.
[01:21:25]  He really is the Charles Krauthammer of our time now.
[01:21:27]  He's got that level of wisdom, right?
[01:21:29]  When you hear him talk, you just shut up.
[01:21:31]  That's my job on our next episode on Wednesday.
[01:21:34]  Just shut up.
[01:21:35]  I love those interviews.
[01:21:35]  They're so easy for me.
[01:21:37]  They don't require that much intense prep because he knows everything.
[01:21:40]  So you just sort of tee it up and he hits it.
[01:21:42]  But Victor's coming on next.
[01:21:43]  And if our past episodes with Victor are any indication, you're going to love it.
[01:21:49]  We'll talk to you Wednesday.
[01:21:51]  Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show.
[01:21:53]  No BS, no agenda, and no fear.
[01:21:58]  The Megan Kelly Show is a devil-may-care media production in collaboration with Red Seat Ventures.
[01:22:14]  Thank you.