The Megyn Kelly Show - 20210727_covid-confusion-and-olympics-storylines-with-dr-jo
Aired: 2021-07-27
Duration: 01:27:16


=== Welcome to the Grensless Beauty (04:21) ===

[00:00:00]  And now, what's up from Kix?
[00:00:01]  Kix can afford the grensless mangy selfies.
[00:00:04]  The suit can handle both the axes and crush the tail.
[00:00:07]  Then we will go to the beauty here at the Nurstrasse.
[00:00:10]  And you can also handle the Kix.
[00:00:12]  So, welcome to the grensless mangy beauty.
[00:00:15]  Connect with your beauty.
[00:00:17]  Plus Kix Beauty Unlimited.
[00:00:20]  Fiken presentes here at Super Enkeld Renskaps Program for all the Renskapsgreinen that you're interested in.
[00:00:28]  And what do you think?
[00:00:30]  Fiken at Super Enkeld Renskaps Program.
[00:00:35]  Welcome to The Megan Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
[00:00:47]  Hey, everyone, I'm Megan Kelly.
[00:00:48]  Welcome to The Megan Kelly Show.
[00:00:50]  Today, we've got the latest on COVID, the Olympics, and Bill O'Reilly.
[00:00:57]  An interesting development there that Juliet Huddy is going to talk to us about.
[00:01:00]  But first, we're going to start with Dr. Joel Zinberg.
[00:01:03]  He's an MD.
[00:01:04]  He's a JD.
[00:01:05]  He went to Yale Law School and he went to Columbia University Med School.
[00:01:10]  And this guy is saying, Would you just calm down, just stop the panic over the Delta variant?
[00:01:14]  You're ridiculous.
[00:01:15]  There is no reason to be forcing new mandates when it comes to masks, when it comes to vaccines based on Delta.
[00:01:23]  And so, why are they doing this?
[00:01:24]  And why does he say we need to get back to reason and calm and that this is sort of an invented crisis?
[00:01:33]  Well, we just heard, like literally a minute ago, that the CDC, according to the New York Times, is about to recommend that.
[00:01:38]  Quote, some vaccinated people wear masks indoors again.
[00:01:42]  We're already seeing it happen in several cities, thus removing a large incentive that a lot of people had in getting the vaccine.
[00:01:51]  I know people say, well, if you get it, you get it to save your life.
[00:01:54]  Well, most of us don't fear losing our lives from COVID.
[00:01:56]  If you're not over the age of 65, it's not really a reasonable fear.
[00:02:00]  And really, if you're not over the age of 75, the percentages are very low of people who actually die from COVID.
[00:02:06]  So why?
[00:02:06]  So why should they get vaccinated?
[00:02:08]  Well, you have to find a way to incentivize them.
[00:02:10]  Maybe they don't have to wear the masks anymore.
[00:02:11]  They don't have to worry about that nonsense.
[00:02:13]  That's something most anti-vax people hate.
[00:02:15]  Well, they're going another way.
[00:02:18]  And now we're going to get some new recommendation that even if you get the vaccine, you should also have a mask on.
[00:02:22]  It's absurd.
[00:02:23]  Anyway, we're going to get into it with a doctor who's of reason and get his thoughts.
[00:02:29]  And then Juliet's going to join us, my pal Juliet Huddy from Fox News, who has got an update on what's happening with the Olympics.
[00:02:35]  Simone Biles just kind of falling apart.
[00:02:37]  What happened there?
[00:02:38]  That's a bummer.
[00:02:40]  And all this controversy over women's outfits on the handball team.
[00:02:44]  I didn't know that was a thing, but it is.
[00:02:46]  And the gymnastics competitions now.
[00:02:50]  Should they not have to wear those leotards?
[00:02:52]  These are all becoming things.
[00:02:54]  And then we will talk to her about Bill O'Reilly's original accuser.
[00:02:58]  This woman, Andrea Mackress, has finally broken her silence after 17 years.
[00:03:02]  And the war between those two is back on in earnest.
[00:03:06]  Juliet brought her own allegations against Bill O'Reilly and received a settlement from Fox News and just happened that she was coming on today.
[00:03:12]  So she's the perfect person to ask about it.
[00:03:14]  It's kind of interesting.
[00:03:15]  Mackress went on.
[00:03:16]  On the record, you'll hear her voice.
[00:03:19]  I don't know, this is tough.
[00:03:20]  These women who sign these NDAs in these sexual harassment cases don't believe that they should be silenced.
[00:03:26]  And, you know, Juliette's got a point on this, but these NDAs often protect women in those positions, not just the guy signing it, but the women as well.
[00:03:36]  And do we really want them going away, right?
[00:03:38]  And by the way, if it goes away for one party, it goes away for both, and then it's on, right?
[00:03:41]  It can be a verbal war.
[00:03:44]  And that doesn't always inure the benefit of either party.
[00:03:46]  We're going to get into all of that.
[00:03:48]  That's today.
[00:03:48]  You're going to love the show.
[00:03:49]  Very interesting, provocative, thoughtful.
[00:03:51]  Here we go.
[00:03:52]  One minute away.
[00:03:58]  Dr. Zinberg, thank you so much for being here.
[00:04:01]  Thank you for having me.
[00:04:02]  Okay, so we're starting to see it already.
[00:04:05]  Indoor mask mandates returning, even for the vaccinated in Los Angeles, now in Las Vegas, in St. Louis, and maybe again soon in New York City.
[00:04:17]  And you say, stop the panic.
[00:04:21]  Just stop this.

=== Two Shot Regimen Protection (02:52) ===

[00:04:22]  This is not necessary over the Delta variant.
[00:04:25]  Why?
[00:04:25]  Well, because we know that the Delta variant is.
[00:04:30]  Susceptible to the vaccines.
[00:04:32]  Every study seems to indicate that the authorized vaccines protect against Delta as well as they protect against the other variants.
[00:04:41]  We also know that Delta is no more deadly than the other variants.
[00:04:45]  In other words, if you come down with COVID, you're no more likely to end up in the hospital or to die than the other variants.
[00:04:51]  So, what we have is a situation where the people who are most vulnerable, that is, the elderly people over 65.
[00:05:01]  Are extremely well protected.
[00:05:03]  You have nearly all of them have gotten at least one shot, which provides significant protection, although not as much as the two shot regimen.
[00:05:11]  And 80% have received the full two shot regimen.
[00:05:14]  So those folks who have far and away the most severe cases and account for more than 80% of deaths, those people are protected.
[00:05:22]  Let me just stop you right there just to reiterate those numbers 80% of the COVID deaths have been in the senior population.
[00:05:31]  80% of seniors today have received.
[00:05:34]  The full vaccination and 90% have received at least one shot.
[00:05:40]  So, your point is that the population, the most vulnerable population, is extremely well protected right now versus where we were a year ago.
[00:05:50]  That's absolutely correct.
[00:05:51]  And moreover, if you look at the population that's eligible for vaccination, people over age 12, you've got nearly 60% of those people are fully vaccinated, and about two thirds of them have received a single injection.
[00:06:07]  So Those people are reasonably well protected.
[00:06:12]  So, you know, the only people who are not getting at the moment full protection from the vaccines are people 12 and under.
[00:06:21]  And the reality is that age 18 and less form a tiny, minuscule percentage of people who've been severely affected by COVID.
[00:06:31]  If you are a healthy young person, COVID, while I'm not suggesting you want to get COVID, you certainly would want to avoid getting it.
[00:06:40]  Does not prevent the kind of severe health threat that it poses to older people or to people with medical comorbidities.
[00:06:49]  So, what you're seeing is that the folks who are most vulnerable are protected.
[00:06:55]  The folks who remain vulnerable are probably not going to get severe disease.
[00:07:02]  And you're also seeing that people are starting to react to the rising cases that are due to the Delta variant.
[00:07:08]  The rate of vaccinations has started to tick up again, and that's completely normal.
[00:07:13]  That's what you would expect.

=== Responding to Rising Deaths (03:14) ===

[00:07:14]  That people respond to the.
[00:07:15]  So, what you mean there is that in the cities where we're seeing a rise in cases and hospitalizations, you're also seeing a rise in vaccination rates.
[00:07:26]  That's correct.
[00:07:27]  That's correct.
[00:07:28]  And that's been, frankly, an issue from the start that most of the modeling, most of the people who were pushing lockdowns, didn't want to account for people's individual behaviors in response to the risk of infectious disease.
[00:07:43]  And economists have known for a very long time that people actually do respond to incentives.
[00:07:49]  Do respond to risk.
[00:07:51]  And multiple studies have shown that people began to alter their behavior.
[00:07:58]  By staying home, by avoiding crowded areas, by not going to stores that would involve close contact before any kind of lockdowns were instituted.
[00:08:09]  That businesses began to alter their policies and procedures to try to minimize the risk of infection before lockdowns were instituted.
[00:08:20]  And that all the studies have indicated, multiple studies have indicated, that when you compare the impact of individual behavior with the impact of lockdowns, The individual behavior happened first and was far more important.
[00:08:36]  But the problem is the people doing the modeling from the start have been somewhat alarmist.
[00:08:41]  They over predicted the number of deaths, they over predicted the number of hospitalizations, and raised this specter of hospitals being overburdened and collapsing because they failed to account for the individual behaviors.
[00:08:55]  But you're now starting to see that again in response to the Delta variance.
[00:08:59]  Cities and localities that have high rates are responding.
[00:09:04]  Hospitals are responding by changing their allocation of resources.
[00:09:10]  So, what you saw, for example, early in the spring surge in New York City at my hospital, Mount Sinai, is that they were ingenious.
[00:09:19]  They found nooks and crannies to put beds, they turned recovery rooms into ICUs, they cut back on elective surgeries and elective procedures, all independent of what the government was doing.
[00:09:34]  And that's sort of what you're starting to see now in response to Delta.
[00:09:38]  But the good news is, and the reason I said don't panic, the sky is not falling, is because if you look at the curves of numbers of cases, numbers of hospitalizations, numbers of deaths, those all peaked in January of this year.
[00:09:56]  And it's been a steady downhill course since then.
[00:09:59]  What you're seeing now in July is an uptick in the number of cases, but the number of Hospitalization increasing has been much more modest, and the number of deaths is basically plateauing.
[00:10:12]  It's not continuing to decline, but you're not seeing a big jump there.
[00:10:16]  And, you know, we're three, four weeks into this Delta surge.
[00:10:20]  So, when I look at the number of deaths, to pick up on what you said, we're basically at 269 as of today.

=== Vaccine Effectiveness in Schools (14:27) ===

[00:10:29]  That's basically where we are, about 269 people dying a day in America from this.
[00:10:35]  About a year ago, it was a Thousand deaths a day, a thousand.
[00:10:38]  So, I mean, significantly bigger.
[00:10:41]  And I guess the people who want these lockdowns would look at 269 and say, that's still too many.
[00:10:48]  We have to stop that number from being as high as it is.
[00:10:51]  So, clearly, still, there's some in the elderly population who are in there, and there's some below 65 who are in there.
[00:10:58]  And so, you know, you always get, we have to do our part to prevent the spread so we can get that number down considerably lower than 269.
[00:11:07]  I mean, obviously, any death that we can prevent is lamentable.
[00:11:13]  And I would encourage everyone to be vaccinated unless they have some sort of contraindication to being vaccinated.
[00:11:20]  But we're at a markedly different place than we were just six months ago and where we were a year ago.
[00:11:27]  And the sky's not falling here.
[00:11:31]  How does that number grab you, 269 deaths today?
[00:11:34]  I mean, understanding we don't want any, but how does that compare?
[00:11:38]  As far as you know, to other illnesses, you know, can you give us a perspective on just how bad it is?
[00:11:44]  Well, look, every year we have a flu season, influenza, and you know, somewhere between 20 to 60,000 or sometimes even more people die from that.
[00:11:58]  We don't go crazy.
[00:12:01]  We carry on.
[00:12:02]  We have vaccines.
[00:12:03]  Unfortunately, their people don't avail themselves of the vaccines either, and I would encourage them to get the flu shot.
[00:12:10]  But we don't go nuts.
[00:12:12]  And the interesting thing, of course, is that with flu, that's a disease that affects sort of a broader range of people.
[00:12:21]  At the outset of COVID, no one really knew exactly who was going to, which age groups, which demographics were going to be affected.
[00:12:31]  But it became clear pretty quickly that younger age groups were not impacted the way they are with many other diseases.
[00:12:39]  So that's why I was alluding to earlier when I said that younger people don't seem to be impacted in the way they do for other diseases.
[00:12:49]  So if you look at age 18 and below, you have something like 350 deaths, which granted, it's a horrible thing if you're one of those people or the family of one of those people.
[00:13:01]  But you're talking about 70 million.
[00:13:05]  People in the population fall into that age group more or less.
[00:13:09]  And to have 350 deaths, you know, is not an outrageous thing.
[00:13:15]  We'd like to prevent those, but it's not, you know, you're talking about less than a tenth of a percent of the COVID deaths are in that younger age group.
[00:13:24]  Yeah, that's total, total over the course of the pandemic versus 81% and versus 81% for the 65 and older.
[00:13:33]  And just to look at the numbers, it says that.
[00:13:36]  Indeed, according to the CDC, among children, the mortality risk for COVID is lower than it is from the flu.
[00:13:44]  And that they say it's less than, you have less risk if you're under age 18 of dying from COVID than you do of dying from pneumonia, of dying in a car crash, of dying from drowning, of dying from heart disease, of dying from suicide, of dying from homicide, of dying from a birth defect.
[00:14:01]  We could go on.
[00:14:02]  And yet, still, we're at a situation here where we're looking at not just mandatory vaccine or mandatory mask mandates.
[00:14:11]  Returning to cities, but schools.
[00:14:14]  We're moving to Connecticut.
[00:14:16]  The Connecticut governor still has a mask mandate in place for all children inside schools.
[00:14:21]  And so when our kids go back in September, they're going to have to wear masks, our little kids in the single digits and 10 and 11.
[00:14:31]  For what?
[00:14:32]  For what?
[00:14:32]  There was a great piece in New York Magazine last week saying, The kids are safe.
[00:14:37]  They always have been.
[00:14:39]  This is theater.
[00:14:40]  Well, look, if you look there, there have been some studies published in the New England Journal coming out of Sweden and coming out of Iceland.
[00:14:48]  And, you know, Sweden was criticized consistently throughout this pandemic for not taking enough actions, not requiring lockdowns, not requiring masks in schools.
[00:15:01]  But what they found is they had 1.8 million kids in schools over several months period and not a single kid died.
[00:15:10]  And the risk of Of infection and death for the teachers was no higher in school than it was in multiple other occupations.
[00:15:20]  So the schools were not where it was a problem.
[00:15:22]  And the same thing was seen in Iceland.
[00:15:24]  You did not have high rates of disease and deaths, and certainly severe illnesses among school children or among the school population.
[00:15:37]  And we see that here.
[00:15:38]  I mean, every indication is that schools are not where transmission.
[00:15:43]  Would be taking place.
[00:15:45]  And that the cases that are being seen in schools are cases that were probably brought in from the outside.
[00:15:53]  People were infected outside the school, came to school, and that's where the diagnosis.
[00:15:57]  To place that stops disease transmission.
[00:16:01]  Why don't our health officials sound like you, right?
[00:16:03]  Why does the American Academy of Pediatrics say the kids should all be masked if they're over age two, even if you have a kid who you've chosen to have vaccinated?
[00:16:13]  They should be masked.
[00:16:14]  And Fauci taking it beyond children, saying, yeah, you know what?
[00:16:19]  We're seriously looking at mandatory masks coming back, even for the vaccinated.
[00:16:25]  We think that's where our public health officials are going to land.
[00:16:29]  And even the former Biden administration, his former COVID 19 response coordinator, the guy just left the office, said, We're going to look at more vaccine mandates.
[00:16:36]  They're very likely coming soon.
[00:16:38]  We think that they should be at the municipal level, the state level, employers should do it, venues, government agencies.
[00:16:45]  So we're hearing from our public health officials mask mandates are returning, vaccine mandates are returning.
[00:16:52]  That doesn't reflect anything you just said.
[00:16:55]  Well, you know, for what's the purpose of a mask?
[00:16:59]  The purpose of a mask is either to Prevent the spread of disease or to protect you from becoming infected.
[00:17:06]  If you've vaccinated, you have very high protection.
[00:17:11]  You probably do not need a mask.
[00:17:15]  All the approved vaccine, excuse me, authorized vaccines seem to protect against the transmission of disease quite well, better than any influenza vaccine we've had in recent years.
[00:17:28]  Moreover, in the cases where people have so called breakthrough infections, where they've Become infected after being vaccinated.
[00:17:37]  The cases are nearly uniformly very mild.
[00:17:40]  The viral titers those people have are lower, so they present less of a risk to transmit it to others.
[00:17:47]  So it doesn't really make much sense for people who are vaccinated to have to wear masks.
[00:17:56]  And yet, here we are.
[00:17:59]  Can we talk about the effectiveness of the vaccines?
[00:18:01]  I know you're saying the vaccines are effective against Delta, they are.
[00:18:05]  And they're not increasing the death rate as some feared it would.
[00:18:10]  But there was a headline in the New York Times this week saying that Pfizer has proven to be less effective versus Delta, that the effective rate was 95% in preventing systematic infection.
[00:18:24]  And now it's down to 84% after four to six months, looking at what's happened, I guess, in Israel.
[00:18:30]  They said that Pfizer's vaccine was just 39% effective in preventing infection.
[00:18:36]  Infection in that country in late June and early July compared to 95% effective in January to April.
[00:18:44]  So, should you be worried in particular if you have Pfizer, if the Pfizer vaccine, about Delta?
[00:18:50]  Well, look, the Pfizer vaccine is the most well studied because it forms the largest part of the vaccines that have been administered.
[00:19:01]  And it's also very well studied because the country of Israel undertook with Pfizer.
[00:19:07]  To study their results very early on, and they have a terrific database there and they're following it very closely.
[00:19:14]  But this is all very preliminary.
[00:19:16]  I mean, what seems clear is that the two dose vaccines, the Pfizer and Moderna, probably are not as effective after a single dose for Delta as they are against other variants.
[00:19:29]  But they still remain highly effective after the second dose.
[00:19:33]  The figure you cited coming out of Israel is very preliminary data.
[00:19:38]  So it's hard to know.
[00:19:41]  If that's going to hold up.
[00:19:43]  But every indication here is that the vaccines remain highly effective.
[00:19:49]  And the effectiveness that you have to be looking at is not so much necessarily the interfering with disease transmission.
[00:19:57]  But how effective is it against coming down with a severe case of COVID that requires hospitalization or ICU admission, intubation, or potentially leading to death?
[00:20:10]  And there it seems to be that the vaccines remain highly effective.
[00:20:14]  We're not seeing the surge in the hospitalizations like we did last spring and in the winter.
[00:20:20]  You're seeing surges in isolated areas.
[00:20:24]  Look, right from the start, I referred to this before the modeling that was undertaken.
[00:20:31]  By many epidemiologists, it was severely flawed because they didn't account for individual responses.
[00:20:37]  So, you know, the Imperial College of London model back in March of 2020 was predicting the hospitals would be overrun by April, that we'd have 2.2 million deaths by July.
[00:20:51]  And yet, if you really read their study, we saw they acknowledged that, oh, you know, they didn't take into account individual responses and they knew that they would be involved.
[00:21:05]  We're not seeing the, we didn't see widespread hospital problems then.
[00:21:10]  You saw isolated instances here in New York, for example.
[00:21:13]  We saw isolated instances, but you also saw hospitals like mine, Mount Sinai, adapt very, very readily and do a terrific job.
[00:21:22]  And you're seeing occasional instances here.
[00:21:25]  There are some hospitals in Missouri who are having difficulties.
[00:21:29]  But I think, you know, at the end of the day, this is going to be a problem for a few weeks.
[00:21:35]  And I think, Again, people will start to react by changing their behaviors, by increasing their vaccinations.
[00:21:43]  And of course, no one knows if there won't be another variant.
[00:21:46]  We know there are other variants out there.
[00:21:49]  New variants may be even more transmissible, they may become more deadly.
[00:21:54]  That's why it's important for people to get vaccinated so we limit the circulation of the virus and limit the opportunity for new variants to occur.
[00:22:04]  But at the moment, it is not really the sort of sky is falling type of.
[00:22:11]  Situation that it sounds like Dr. Fauci and some others are trying to make it out to be.
[00:22:17]  Up next, we're going to ask the good doctor about what's happening now with the unvaccinated.
[00:22:23]  They're being treated like the unwashed, right?
[00:22:25]  Like they're being publicly criticized, ostracized.
[00:22:29]  I don't know, it's making me kind of uncomfortable, I got to be honest.
[00:22:32]  So, what does he think about people who choose not to get the vaccine?
[00:22:35]  And we'll also ask him about how that vaccine hesitancy came around to begin with.
[00:22:39]  He was paying attention to what Kamala Harris said, to what the Biden campaign said, and has a different view of.
[00:22:45]  How we got here.
[00:22:46]  That's next.
[00:22:49]  We've had a lot of attention in the past couple of weeks on the unvaccinated.
[00:22:54]  You know, they're being publicly shamed, they're being attacked, they're being socially ostracized.
[00:22:59]  I mean, it's kind of, I don't know, to me, it's a little alarming what's happening to people who make their own medical choice about their own body.
[00:23:07]  I'm vaccinated, but I respect people who've made a different choice, especially when they've had COVID.
[00:23:13]  I mean, we're now making people who had COVID get vaccinated, and my own doctor.
[00:23:19]  Had told me early on in this whole thing that's not necessary.
[00:23:22]  That isn't necessary.
[00:23:23]  You have natural immunity.
[00:23:25]  Anyway, so what do you make of the number of people in the country who have chosen not to get vaccinated and the increasing push to shame them?
[00:23:33]  Look, I wouldn't shame anyone.
[00:23:35]  I would try to speak to them, convince them.
[00:23:40]  And I think what you've seen over time is that more and more people who in the sort of original polling had said they had doubts about it have moved over to get vaccinated.
[00:23:52]  But You know, there's been a lot of study of what makes People are vaccine hesitant.
[00:24:00]  What goes into their decision whether to be vaccinated or not?
[00:24:03]  And the considerations fall into two major areas.
[00:24:07]  The first is that people want to know and they're concerned about vaccine safety.
[00:24:13]  And the second area is they want to know how effective the vaccines are, what's the need for it, do I really need it?
[00:24:21]  And unfortunately, we had about six months leading up to the election of.
[00:24:28]  Highly politicized responses to the vaccine development.
[00:24:32]  So you had the Biden campaign, Kamala Harris coming out and casting doubt on how safe the vaccine would be, how effective it would be.
[00:24:43]  Kamala Harris said she wouldn't take a vaccine that was developed under President Trump.
[00:24:49]  Andrew Cuomo, the governor here in New York, was saying he wouldn't trust a vaccine developed under Trump.

=== Trusting Medical Professionals (15:48) ===

[00:24:57]  He was going to have state authorities.
[00:24:59]  Look into it and form their own conclusion.
[00:25:01]  The same, but state authorities, by the way, that did the magnificent policy move of sending positive COVID cases back into nursing homes.
[00:25:11]  These were going to be the people who were going to do a better job at assessing than the FDA.
[00:25:17]  Chuck Schumer, our senator from New York, cast doubt on the FDA, saying he didn't think they were independent, he wouldn't trust it.
[00:25:25]  Every time President Trump came out and said, We're moving along, we're going to have a vaccine by the end of the year.
[00:25:32]  The media came down on him, calling him a nut job, another choice.
[00:25:40]  And you even had science coming on board.
[00:25:44]  Many official scientific publications and societies unfortunately were casting doubt.
[00:25:51]  There was an editorial in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, that was casting doubt on the FDA's independence and whether a vaccine developed under the Trump administration would be safe.
[00:26:03]  So when you had this, Constellation of political figures, media figures, medical and scientific figures all passing doubt.
[00:26:13]  It's not a huge surprise that people had some sort of doubts about safety.
[00:26:18]  Then all of a sudden, as soon as the election was over, vaccines were the greatest things in sliced bread for those folks.
[00:26:24]  So true.
[00:26:25]  That's such a great point.
[00:26:26]  I mean, this has been one of my own lamentations about the state of our media and now, in the broader sense, the medical community, because it's all been so politicized, people don't know where to turn for valid. trustworthy information on public health.
[00:26:42]  Fauci has been, he's reversed himself so many times that he's not trusted anymore, certainly not by the right.
[00:26:50]  The CDC, same.
[00:26:52]  The WHO with that ridiculous report clearing China of having releases from a lab.
[00:26:59]  And I mean, that was absurd.
[00:27:00]  People are, they distrust these organizations now.
[00:27:04]  And even the greater scientific community, I think things like what's happening with trans kids and that you just affirm and then you perform surgery without questioning.
[00:27:13]  People are starting to distrust doctors in a way they didn't before because they see them as more politically driven, more agenda driven, and less driven by just pure data that's coming back to them in terms of public health.
[00:27:27]  And the media, too, the way they hated Trump, every story that might reflect negatively on him, including COVID, was played to the nth degree.
[00:27:37]  And people would start discounting the information.
[00:27:39]  All of these deteriorations in trust of these institutions that used to be at least higher, more highly regarded than they are today.
[00:27:47]  Have real life consequences.
[00:27:50]  And now those same groups look around and say, I don't understand.
[00:27:53]  Why don't the people trust us when we tell them they should take the vaccines?
[00:27:57]  During the pandemic and over the summer, you had groups that said any kind of public gathering of more than minimal amounts of people is dangerous, risks that just cannot be taken.
[00:28:15]  And then, as soon as there were George Floyd demonstrations, not only were those risks tolerable, but you had large groups of medical professionals signing on to letters encouraging people to participate in those demonstrations.
[00:28:30]  Now, you know, I'm not suggesting that people shouldn't be allowed to demonstrate.
[00:28:37]  I think they should, and they should be able to exercise their First Amendment rights.
[00:28:41]  But the medical risk had nothing to do with what your political views were, and that's unfortunately what it often became.
[00:28:49]  And it's really galling for that same group of people, the media, the medical professionals, to now turn around and say people who have vaccine hesitancy are a bunch of rubes whose lives must be dictated by us, the elect, the elite.
[00:29:05]  Because they're too dumb to understand what's good for them, right?
[00:29:08]  It's like you spend your life deteriorating the relationship, the trust, I don't know, the respect that these people once had for you.
[00:29:17]  And then it's the boy who cried wolf situation.
[00:29:21]  When you really need them to trust you, they no longer do.
[00:29:25]  And instead of trying to take some responsibility for that, what we're seeing is just more dismissal of these groups as just too stupid and an urge for a harder hand of government, a heavier hand of government.
[00:29:39]  To step in, right?
[00:29:40]  Like, what's going to need to happen is the officials in Vegas or the officials in St. Louis are going to have to show you what's good for you.
[00:29:47]  And I don't know, you tell me as a matter of public health whether that's going to work.
[00:29:52]  I think people resist that.
[00:29:54]  And obviously, we want to try to avoid mandates if at all possible.
[00:30:00]  And, you know, the good news here is that COVID is obviously a serious disease, it's killed over 600,000 people.
[00:30:09]  But It is not Ebola.
[00:30:11]  It is not a disease that kills half of the people that get infected.
[00:30:16]  It doesn't, you know, one has to gauge the response that's necessary depending on how severe the illness is.
[00:30:25]  And since we've now protected those who are most vulnerable, the push for mandates becomes less important than it was before.
[00:30:34]  You know, the one area that I think still is potentially an area where we're going to have to resort to mandates are.
[00:30:42]  Are medical professionals, and you're seeing that increasingly with hospitals around the country.
[00:30:48]  The VA have just come out and suggested that their staff is going to have to be vaccinated within the next eight weeks.
[00:30:56]  New York City has announced that staff at public hospitals are going to have to be vaccinated.
[00:31:03]  This is an area where you're dealing with vulnerable patient populations, people who have cancer, people who have immunosuppressed for other reasons, the elderly.
[00:31:14]  You know, have all sorts of comorbidities.
[00:31:16]  These people need to be protected against having becoming infected from the staff that's trying to treat them.
[00:31:24]  So, this is an area where you can argue that there is a case to be made for mandates, as long as we allow people to opt out if there's a legitimate medical reason to opt out, if there's some other legitimate reason, or if we make some kind of effort to accommodate them, whether that means consistently wearing masks or undergoing frequent testing.
[00:31:47]  But this is an area where mandates may make some sense.
[00:31:51]  So, thus far, what you've seen is that among medical professionals, physicians are.
[00:31:56]  Highly vaccinated, well over 90% are vaccinated, but unfortunately it's less so among other medical professionals, including nurses who are probably only about 60% or so vaccinated, and other medical professionals even less.
[00:32:12]  So, when I have a relative who's in a nursing facility where they're with a lot of other people and they see staff every day, I'd like to have some assurance that the staff taking care of them is vaccinated.
[00:32:28]  So, what let me ask you about the vaccines themselves because, you know, we've had a lot of people within the African American community, Latino community, and amongst Republicans, sure, who say, I don't believe it is safe.
[00:32:45]  You know, I know what the officials are saying, but I also have eyes and ears and can see that this is new.
[00:32:50]  It's still technically experimental.
[00:32:52]  Obviously, by definition, there's been no long term studies because they just came up with it within the past year.
[00:32:57]  And, you know, I'm young and relatively healthy, and therefore I just don't think I.
[00:33:02]  I want to do it, right?
[00:33:03]  That's what you hear from a lot of people.
[00:33:05]  So, do you worry about any of those things, right?
[00:33:08]  Like, I confess I had some worries.
[00:33:11]  I got vaccinated.
[00:33:12]  My husband and I have Pfizer, but I have some worries.
[00:33:15]  And my own worries were assuaged when I thought you've got such huge percentages of the population getting vaccinated.
[00:33:22]  God forbid there is some massive downside to the vaccines that manifests five years from now.
[00:33:28]  Those same people are going to solve it because if they don't, you're going to have hundreds of millions of people affected around the globe with some.
[00:33:36]  Horrible thing.
[00:33:36]  I mean, they're just, it's just the way innovation works.
[00:33:39]  But what is your thought and what is your message to people who have these concerns?
[00:33:43]  I'm a surgeon.
[00:33:45]  I got vaccinated as soon as I could.
[00:33:47]  My wife is a physician.
[00:33:48]  She got vaccinated as soon as she could.
[00:33:51]  My daughter is almost 20.
[00:33:52]  She got vaccinated as soon as she could.
[00:33:55]  I think it's, this has been heavily studied.
[00:33:59]  The original studies were quite large.
[00:34:02]  And now you have an experience that's stretching over, say, nine months or, well, More like about six, seven months with hundreds of millions of people having been vaccinated.
[00:34:13]  And there's really no indication that there's any kind of widespread side effects.
[00:34:19]  Sure, your arm hurts.
[00:34:21]  Many people report they get flu like symptoms the next day after the second shot.
[00:34:27]  But you're not seeing, with the exception of some extremely rare side effects, any widespread side effect that should give people pause.
[00:34:38]  You know, that doesn't mean that everyone's going to want to do it.
[00:34:43]  And as long as we have a, we protect the vulnerable, and between the number of people who are vaccinated and the people who have natural immunity, we have a large group of people who are immune, we're probably going to do all right as a society.
[00:34:58]  Nevertheless, I would still urge people to think it's safe.
[00:35:02]  Don't believe what you heard during the election.
[00:35:07]  From Kamala Harris, right?
[00:35:09]  From Kamala Harris and from the Biden camp.
[00:35:11]  I mean, you can go back.
[00:35:12]  I don't know if it's still up, but the Biden campaign website had stuff disparaging vaccine development.
[00:35:19]  So don't believe that stuff.
[00:35:22]  And unfortunately, we've had one or two instances where I understand the impulse for being safe that the CDC had, but I think they helped undermine people's confidence a little bit with the Johnson Johnson vaccine.
[00:35:38]  That's right.
[00:35:39]  When they had the pause for 10, 11 days dealing with the Blood clots in the brain situation, which in fact was really like a one in a million kind of complication.
[00:35:51]  It wasn't clear that it was any more common than when, if you were vaccinated versus.
[00:35:57]  Getting the disease, there's background incidents in the population of this happening.
[00:36:01]  That's again very rare, but again, not so clearly much lower than when we got the vaccine.
[00:36:08]  Yet, they had an abundance of overabundance of caution.
[00:36:13]  They paused it.
[00:36:14]  And I think that crippled the Johnson Johnson vaccine.
[00:36:17]  And then, of course, they announced more recently that the Johnson Johnson vaccine had some episodes of Guillain Barre, which is a neurological condition, which is known to happen in.
[00:36:30]  Many vaccines.
[00:36:32]  So, again, you know, they did the right thing in terms of letting people know.
[00:36:36]  But on the other hand, they've made it what could be a fabulous vaccine because it only requires a single shot.
[00:36:43]  It doesn't require the specialized transportation and freezers that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines require.
[00:36:52]  They've made that into a vaccine that no one really seems to want to take, which is unfortunate.
[00:36:56]  And people need to realize, too, that, you know, long COVID could be with you for a very long time and can really impact the Quality of your life.
[00:37:04]  And so you've got a way, you know, getting COVID is no walk in the park for a lot of people, even if you're young.
[00:37:09]  Getting COVID is worse, it's much worse than getting the vaccine.
[00:37:13]  I think that that has not been hammered home enough.
[00:37:16]  And I think we need more of the leaders in the community.
[00:37:19]  And, you know, frankly, I think President Trump deserves tremendous credit for developing the vaccine.
[00:37:27]  I think most of the country does not realize what an achievement it was to develop.
[00:37:33]  Three new vaccines in under a year for a brand new disease.
[00:37:39]  That's unheard of, unprecedented, never happened.
[00:37:43]  He deserved tremendous credit for that, but I think he could do a tremendous public service by coming out and promoting the vaccines, telling people that he got it, that it's safe, that you should get it too.
[00:37:55]  I think that would be extremely helpful.
[00:37:58]  Yeah, the media said it would take a miracle for a vaccine as fast as Trump got it done.
[00:38:03]  You know, and now everything's political.
[00:38:05]  And so he doesn't really want to do something I think that's going to help Biden.
[00:38:08]  And he knows some Republicans are skeptical.
[00:38:10]  So it's all about political messaging when you involve politicians.
[00:38:13]  Last question as a mother of three kids who are now 8, 10, and 11, they're not yet eligible for the vaccine, but my 11 year old soon will be.
[00:38:23]  And they're lowering the number.
[00:38:25]  You know, Pfizer is doing tests now on five year olds and up, and they're saying could be even lower than that soon.
[00:38:31]  For me, that's where I draw the line.
[00:38:33]  I am not prepared to give my kids this vaccine.
[00:38:35]  It's just too young and too.
[00:38:37]  Too quick.
[00:38:38]  We don't know enough about it yet.
[00:38:43]  I want to know more.
[00:38:44]  The majority of Americans feel as I do, according to the polls, but I know you're a father, your daughter's older.
[00:38:49]  But what do you say to people like me who have significant vaccine hesitancy when it comes to our kids?
[00:38:55]  Right.
[00:38:56]  No, I think that is something that parents are going to have to wrestle with on an individual basis.
[00:39:04]  And the government now appears to be asking Pfizer and Dermot to increase the size of their tribes.
[00:39:12]  Said that in kids under 12.
[00:39:15]  And to me, that indicates two things.
[00:39:18]  First, they're being very safe.
[00:39:21]  And I think that's completely appropriate because whenever they approve something like this that's going to be administered on a mass scale, they have to balance the benefits and risks.
[00:39:30]  And we know the risks are quite low in that age group.
[00:39:33]  So you want to bend over backwards to make sure that you're not going to expose.
[00:39:43]  Kids to a risk of a vaccine when the risk of getting the actual disease is pretty low.
[00:39:49]  So that's number one.
[00:39:51]  Number two, it means that we're probably not going to see these vaccines approved.
[00:39:57]  Quite some time.
[00:39:57]  I mean, Pfizer was predicting that they would have data on the five to 11 year old group by the end of September, and then in the succeeding months they'd have data on the other, even younger age groups.
[00:40:12]  That's probably going to be pushed back.
[00:40:14]  And Moderna was talking about the end of 2021 or maybe 2022 is when they would have their data.
[00:40:24]  If they have to expand their trials, that means that.
[00:40:28]  We're probably not going to see that data.
[00:40:30]  They have to first complete the trials, present the data, then the FDA has to go through the emergency use authorization process, which can take several weeks.
[00:40:40]  So, we're not going to see those very soon, certainly not in time for the school year.

=== Proof and Credential Standards (04:31) ===

[00:40:45]  So, by that time, we'll probably know a lot more and you'll have a lot better data.
[00:40:51]  But at the end of the day, it's going to be an individual decision with parents speaking to their pediatricians.
[00:40:58]  For their kids.
[00:40:59]  Each kid may present a unique problem because there are some kids that have underlying medical problems that make them more susceptible to COVID.
[00:41:09]  There are many other kids who don't have those problems but may present certain circumstances which would indicate vaccine is or is not appropriate for them.
[00:41:19]  Those are going to be decisions that parents are going to have to wrestle with, but it's going to be many months, I think, into the future.
[00:41:28]  Yeah.
[00:41:28]  Well, and in the meantime, they're going to be masking our kids as if that's necessary.
[00:41:33]  It's just infuriating to so many parents.
[00:41:35]  We're just kind of over this whole thing.
[00:41:37]  But listen, Dr. Joel Zinberg, I appreciate you coming on and giving us the straight scoop.
[00:41:42]  I mean, it's impressive that you have a JD and an MD.
[00:41:45]  So you can see it.
[00:41:46]  You can understand the legal challenges that will come from these massive mandates if they do what the Biden administration official said they're going to do push the mandates at the city level, at the state level, from your employer.
[00:41:58]  Oh, you know what?
[00:41:59]  Before I let you go, that reminds me, I did want to ask you one other thing.
[00:42:02]  So, I've gotten the vaccine.
[00:42:04]  And if I have to show a vaccine path, if I have to show my little card, what good does that do?
[00:42:09]  You know, I mean, I could go fake that card tomorrow if I want.
[00:42:11]  It's just a little piece of paper.
[00:42:13]  And it got me thinking as a lawyer myself, could these, are these employers allowed to access whatever government database has got my vaccination proof in it too?
[00:42:22]  Because when I went to CVS, you know, they, they typed all that information in.
[00:42:26]  And I wonder whether that's, can the government snoop in that way?
[00:42:29]  I mean, realistically, what kind of proof could they require of you that you're vaccinated?
[00:42:33]  Well, I mean, this was an issue simply because around the world people are talking about vaccine passports.
[00:42:40]  Many of the European nations are starting their own programs to create credentials.
[00:42:48]  Many of the airlines are interested in this.
[00:42:50]  They don't want to allow people flying.
[00:42:52]  It seems to go internationally, you're probably going to have to show some sort of credential.
[00:42:57]  And the major problem is that there is no one credential.
[00:43:04]  That is accepted and is tamper proof, which is what you alluded to.
[00:43:10]  So I have my card from the CDC, you probably have yours, but there have been instances of people apparently trying to fake that.
[00:43:20]  There's only so much you can do, but this is actually an area where if it becomes important that we have these sorts of credentials, that if it becomes necessary to travel, necessary to go into certain places, That the government, by promulgating standards that would be widely accepted, that would not lend themselves to counterfeiting, they could do a tremendous service.
[00:43:49]  And I'm not saying the government should require, I'm saying the government should adopt the standards.
[00:43:56]  That a lot of different private groups are developing, software makers and developers who are really good at this kind of stuff.
[00:44:06]  And they are trying to gauge the market and develop their own things.
[00:44:10]  So, IBM, for example, has a blockchain product that they're utilizing.
[00:44:15]  So, if the government can step in and say, these are the few products that we think are good, and we're proposing that if you're going to have this sort of credential, these are the standards we think would work.
[00:44:28]  That would actually be a service as opposed to requiring it.
[00:44:33]  Interesting.
[00:44:34]  I don't know.
[00:44:35]  I wonder because the hacker sort of dark hat tech community, they're always one step ahead.
[00:44:44]  They're going to find a way to create the fake vaccine passports, even if that's where we go.
[00:44:50]  But let's hope that's not necessary.
[00:44:51]  Look, the hacker community, if they want to know whether I got vaccinated or not, that's okay.
[00:44:58]  There are probably a lot of other medical issues.
[00:45:01]  They'd like to know or financial issues about me or about you that would be of much more interest and much more damaging than whether or not I had a lacrosse.
[00:45:08]  Look, all they need to know is I was in college, I was dating a lacrosse player, and I just, that's all I'm going to say.

=== Friends Asking Questions (03:53) ===

[00:45:17]  Mom is the word.
[00:45:19]  Doc, great to see you.
[00:45:20]  Thank you.
[00:45:21]  Thank you for having me.
[00:45:23]  In a minute, we're going to get to Juliette Huddy and have some fun girl talk.
[00:45:28]  I'll reveal to you the one beauty product.
[00:45:31]  You must have.
[00:45:33]  I'm telling you, I'm not getting paid for this.
[00:45:35]  I actually pay for this product regularly.
[00:45:38]  I love it.
[00:45:39]  And it's a game changer.
[00:45:40]  That's how we kick it off.
[00:45:41]  But first, before we get to that, we're going to bring a feature to you called Asked and Answered, where we get after some of our listener mail.
[00:45:48]  Steve Krakower is our executive producer.
[00:45:51]  He's got the question today.
[00:45:52]  Hey, Steve.
[00:45:53]  Hey, Megan.
[00:45:54]  Yes, today we are pulling questions from Instagram, our Megan Kelly show Instagram account.
[00:45:58]  We got a ton of great questions yesterday.
[00:46:00]  So we wanted to put one in front of you today.
[00:46:02]  This is from Domi Losen, and they want to know I've lost many friends to the far left.
[00:46:07]  Any advice?
[00:46:07]  It's a lonely time here for independents.
[00:46:10]  Yeah, I hear that.
[00:46:12]  You know, it's funny because a lot of my liberal friends are going through this.
[00:46:16]  You know, I think it's affecting mostly liberals, like center left people, this sort of distancing.
[00:46:24]  Because let's face it, you know, if you work at Fox News for 14 years, you probably already lost your hardcore, you know, far left friends.
[00:46:31]  They don't want that, they don't want that kind of messaging in their life, and that's fine.
[00:46:35]  That's not a friend, right?
[00:46:36]  It's no loss.
[00:46:37]  And that's kind of how I see it for you too, Domi.
[00:46:39]  It's like if your friends have drifted so far to the left that they no longer want to be with you, or frankly, that you no longer want to be with them, then that's the natural evolution of things and you should accept that reality, right?
[00:46:49]  Move on.
[00:46:49]  That's not a real friend.
[00:46:51]  You know, your true friends who know your soul, who know your heart, they don't give a damn about your politics, right?
[00:46:59]  So those are the ones you hold on to.
[00:47:01]  And look, I understand the way things are getting right now with.
[00:47:05]  Let's take COVID.
[00:47:06]  You know, you've got the shamers out there, and then you've got people who are really more committed to freedom and individual choices and liberty.
[00:47:13]  It's tough to get along on that issue.
[00:47:15]  It's either you don't talk about it or you put things on pause.
[00:47:19]  I can see how you couldn't reach common ground on that issue the way the dialogue has emerged in our country.
[00:47:26]  And we've seen a lot about that happening when it comes to woke and their constant judging of everybody versus people who don't see the world that way.
[00:47:35]  Look, it's not bad to find your own posse, your own tribe that.
[00:47:40]  Shares your worldview.
[00:47:41]  But I would say, to the extent possible, fight to hold on to people who don't as well, the ones who are reasonable, the ones who aren't so far the way, and certainly the ones who aren't too judgy.
[00:47:49]  Because it is good to be able to expose yourself to a variety of opinions, and it's just a reminder that there are so many good people.
[00:47:56]  In the world out there who are liberal if you're conservative, who are Republican if you're Democrat.
[00:48:04]  It used to be this way where we could look at each other and see one of those hearts through their partisan jerseys.
[00:48:11]  So, anyway, it's an individual assessment.
[00:48:13]  I guess my bottom line is don't feel too bad because I do think the universe has a way of shaking things out the way they need to be.
[00:48:19]  And the people who are really important to you, they won't leave.
[00:48:23]  And you won't leave them.
[00:48:25]  And I hope I'm one of them.
[00:48:27]  So thanks for listening, Domi.
[00:48:28]  And anybody else who's got a thought or a question, you can email it to us at questions, plural, at devilmaycaramedia.com.
[00:48:37]  Or you can go on any of our social media and drop it in on our Insta or Facebook or Twitter.
[00:48:42]  We check all of those.
[00:48:43]  And any thoughts on the show, too, because I check those and often get fun guest suggestions or, I don't know, just feedback on the show.
[00:48:50]  And I always love hearing from you.
[00:48:52]  Thanks.
[00:48:53]  And back to our guest in one second.
[00:49:00]  Juliet Huddy, how are you doing, lady?
[00:49:02]  MK, how are you?
[00:49:04]  I'm so good.
[00:49:05]  It's good to lay eyes on you.
[00:49:07]  You look beautiful.
[00:49:08]  Oh, thank you, my love.

=== Married Life with Ben Affleck (15:12) ===

[00:49:10]  Can I tell you, I found the most amazing eyelash product.
[00:49:16]  I have got to, I don't know what it's called.
[00:49:19]  I've got to, you know what?
[00:49:20]  Is it in a gold bottle?
[00:49:21]  No, it's in a white tube.
[00:49:26]  Would you go down in my makeup bag in my drawer and get that white tube?
[00:49:30]  It looks like mascara, but it's white.
[00:49:31]  I'm going to tell you what it is.
[00:49:33]  It's like eyelash primer.
[00:49:35]  You put it on your eyelashes and then you put on your mascara.
[00:49:38]  Wait a second.
[00:49:38]  Okay.
[00:49:39]  I actually think I have it.
[00:49:40]  It's a very thin tube.
[00:49:41]  No, it's the normal thickness to a mascara tube.
[00:49:45]  Oh, here it is.
[00:49:45]  Yeah.
[00:49:46]  Okay.
[00:49:46]  So here, this is it.
[00:49:47]  And these people are not paying me.
[00:49:48]  Obviously, this is spontaneous.
[00:49:50]  It's by Lancome.
[00:49:51]  Lancome C I L S Booster XL.
[00:49:54]  It just looks like a mascara tube and it's white.
[00:49:57]  And I'm telling you, it separates and lengthens your lashes like nobody's business.
[00:50:01]  And it looks like you have false eyelashes on by the time you're done with it.
[00:50:04]  Okay.
[00:50:04]  Well, I'm going to go to Sephora after.
[00:50:06]  After we hang out.
[00:50:08]  While we're on the subject of beauty, let's talk about the Olympics because there's already been a couple of beauty dust ups there.
[00:50:15]  I actually want to get to the, there's breaking news right now about Simone Biles, but let's just table that for one second because what's been in the news so far is the outfits, right?
[00:50:23]  The German gymnasts are not happy with the little, I don't know, the little leotards that they put on the female athletes.
[00:50:30]  And then outside of the Olympics, there's some Norway beach handball team that they don't like wearing the bikini, but I can't.
[00:50:39]  I don't know.
[00:50:40]  All the women are basically saying they don't want to be dressed for sexuality, you know, for sexiness now.
[00:50:45]  And do they have a point?
[00:50:47]  Okay.
[00:50:48]  So I'm just going to ask you to bear with me.
[00:50:50]  Well, first of all, as a 50 year old who has never been an athlete, like I would like to trade with them for just one day to have their problems.
[00:50:59]  If my butt looked like that, I'd be like, I want a thong.
[00:51:02]  I want it to be smaller.
[00:51:03]  Right.
[00:51:03]  Exactly.
[00:51:04]  I mean, I would be like, give me the Brazilian bikini.
[00:51:06]  I am going outside.
[00:51:07]  But in all seriousness, these women have fit.
[00:51:10]  Beautiful, healthy bodies.
[00:51:12]  And surely they realize that and they know that.
[00:51:15]  And I get it though, because I don't know, Megan, when you were a reporter out in the field, you were mainly covering politics.
[00:51:21]  So you probably weren't at too many events where there were a bunch of people behind you, you know, screaming like, I remember being at my first Jacksonville Jaguars football game covering it.
[00:51:31]  And I'm out in the crowd and all of a sudden, you know, I'm doing a live shot and some guy reaches and grabs my bum and he just, he grabbed a little bit more than my bum too.
[00:51:39]  You know, and that was sort of the beginning.
[00:51:41]  Of this perpetual situation throughout my career where you'd have some guy just do perverted things.
[00:51:46]  And I remember, and I'm sure that you do too, when we were at Fox, our good old days at Fox, when they had that, I don't even want to say what the website was, but some pervert.
[00:51:58]  Created some website where essentially he would just have us on all day long and he would try to get shots of the women on the anchor sets, that and crossing and uncrossing our legs.
[00:52:10]  And occasionally, you know, he would get a little shot and then he would blow it up and post it all over the place.
[00:52:15]  And it was degrading and humiliating.
[00:52:17]  And the reason I'm bringing this up is because, you know, these women have a job to do.
[00:52:22]  They're trying to win the Olympics, they're trying to win gold for their countries.
[00:52:26]  And you have this other level of like, Sexuality on top of it from these perverts out there.
[00:52:31]  And, you know, they're not just sitting on a desk, on an anchor desk, crisscrossing their legs.
[00:52:36]  I mean, these women are like leaping and stretching and, you know, bending and splaying all sorts of body parts.
[00:52:43]  So I kind of get it.
[00:52:46]  By the same token, I know that some female Olympic athletes from, I think it's the US women's volleyball team were saying, we're so hot out there that the fewer, the less amount of clothing we have, better.
[00:52:58]  So I think it's just a personal preference.
[00:52:59]  And I'm okay with it if they don't like wearing the bikinis.
[00:53:02]  I don't know why because they look amazing, but I do understand the sexuality part of it.
[00:53:07]  I was laughing because my husband, Doug, has got just a very muscly bottom.
[00:53:13]  Like there's no fat on it.
[00:53:14]  Like most men, they have more muscly bottoms than the women have.
[00:53:18]  I know.
[00:53:18]  And I was like, how do you get such a, I'm like, how do you do it?
[00:53:21]  You know, like I go, you could bounce a quarter off of that ass.
[00:53:24]  And then he's like, oh, honey, you know, you have a tight bottom too.
[00:53:27]  I'm like, oh, no, you bounce a quarter on my ass.
[00:53:29]  You'd be like, what happened to my quarter?
[00:53:33]  Oh my God.
[00:53:34]  Well, my husband, I have to say, we have the same problem because he has the same one too.
[00:53:38]  But I started doing Pilates.
[00:53:39]  And I actually, this is a complete aside, but I actually posted a video of myself on my Instagram with my Pilates outfit on.
[00:53:46]  And I'm like, I am challenging myself to three months of Pilates and I'm going to make my body better.
[00:53:51]  So these women, I get it, but I'm not doing it so that men are going to leer and try to get shots of me doing stretchies and doing all these things where they can probably make it.
[00:54:02]  But they are.
[00:54:03]  I'm thinking about this hand.
[00:54:05]  It's like the women's hand.
[00:54:07]  Norway Beach handball team refusing to wear bikini bottoms.
[00:54:11]  And this is so pink, the singer Pink said, I'll pay any fine you get for wearing your little boy shorts instead of your bikini bottoms.
[00:54:17]  And I'm thinking, I don't know.
[00:54:19]  Like, are people clamoring to see the Norway Beach handball team handball?
[00:54:23]  Like, I don't, maybe they are, maybe they aren't.
[00:54:25]  I think in a lot of the sports, they've sort of written sex appeal into the deal, whether women knew it or not in signing up.
[00:54:33]  And we'll find out.
[00:54:34]  I don't think that's really true.
[00:54:35]  Maybe I'm crazy in gymnastics where they just try to have like that tight.
[00:54:39]  Stuff that's not going to get caught on the horse and the beams and all that stuff.
[00:54:44]  And I think it makes sense to me that these German gymnasts want to wear a unitard instead of a leotard.
[00:54:49]  Who gives a flying fig?
[00:54:51]  Well, but the other thing is when you're out on the beach and you've got the sand and you've got the ocean, you know, sand is flying all over the place and you've got the sun beating down on you and your body is slick with the lotion and everything, it does add that extra little, you know, layer of sensuality to it.
[00:55:08]  So again, you want people to watch.
[00:55:11]  Well, yeah, yeah.
[00:55:12]  I don't know.
[00:55:13]  What if they go in like the full, you know, prairie girl dresses and hats and nobody shows up?
[00:55:18]  They're not going to be happy.
[00:55:19]  Yeah, the Marie Antoinette outfits.
[00:55:21]  No, I don't think that's going to happen, Megan.
[00:55:23]  I think we're okay with that.
[00:55:25]  I don't foresee them putting on, you know, one piece, one piece suits anytime soon.
[00:55:31]  I think these, I think for the most part, these women are just trying to say, look, you know, stop with the crotch shots, frankly.
[00:55:37]  I think that's kind of what it comes down to because it is just like.
[00:55:40]  Well, and you know, I read that the Olympics, like whoever runs.
[00:55:44]  Not NBC, but let me see who it is.
[00:55:47]  The Olympic Broadcasting Services, they are saying we actually are making a choice to try this year not to zoom in on women's body parts and so on.
[00:55:58]  So, it's like a perv alert.
[00:56:00]  They're willing to lose the pervs out of respect for the women.
[00:56:03]  So, that's progress.
[00:56:03]  I like that.
[00:56:04]  I think the pervs will probably still watch.
[00:56:06]  I mean, they still get to see the woman's full body.
[00:56:09]  It's not like they're just not getting the stretchy, all the sensual stuff.
[00:56:14]  I want to make the point that on that weird guy's website, there is a crotch shot of yours truly.
[00:56:18]  I remember I was wearing a magenta dress and it's photoshopped.
[00:56:22]  It didn't happen.
[00:56:23]  Oh, see, that doesn't surprise me.
[00:56:25]  That's disgusting.
[00:56:26]  I mean, when I first found out about this, I was like, Give me his email, I'm gonna play this guy, but you know, then you just encourage them, so it's just pretend like they don't exist and hopefully it won't get all over the place.
[00:56:36]  But it's really messed up when these guys do that, it really is.
[00:56:39]  I know there's one on YouTube of me with some terrible bout of alleged gas, and it's totally made up.
[00:56:44]  And even one of the makeup artists at Fox was like, Oh, but it seems so real.
[00:56:48]  I'm like, Oh, come on, are you crazy?
[00:56:51]  Horrific, I mean, that is that's pretty awful.
[00:56:54]  I would be devastated, but it's kind of funny.
[00:56:56]  I know, I just have to watch these things, I totally have to avoid these things, but like I said, it.
[00:57:01]  When I started to see that, that again, I don't want to say what the name of the website was, but the crossing of the legs thing, I was so paranoid after that about crossing my legs on set that I would turn this way, you know.
[00:57:12]  And it's just one layer that you have to add while you're already trying to pay attention to so many other things and focus on your job, which is what we're there for.
[00:57:19]  It's the old Ginger Rogers, right?
[00:57:21]  Everything you're doing, Fred Astaire, I'm doing backward and in heels.
[00:57:25]  Okay, so some mobiles.
[00:57:26]  There's breaking news on her out of the Olympics.
[00:57:29]  Apparently, she had a disastrous vault.
[00:57:32]  I guess it was a vault.
[00:57:33]  It's just coming into me.
[00:57:34]  And now it's done.
[00:57:37]  We lost to the Russians.
[00:57:39]  The US took silver because of this fault.
[00:57:42]  I guess she flubbed her vault.
[00:57:44]  And what happened?
[00:57:46]  She did a vault that was too low in point value.
[00:57:49]  And it wasn't what she intended.
[00:57:50]  She just kept, when she jumped off, from what I understand, when she jumped off, she was doing the, she took this huge step back and then did these little steps.
[00:57:58]  And then she did another thing where she slid off the side of the, almost like off the side of the mat.
[00:58:03]  I think going into this, she just seemed.
[00:58:07]  She seemed off.
[00:58:08]  She seemed erratic.
[00:58:09]  And I'm not exactly the expert when it comes to women's gymnastics or the Olympics at all.
[00:58:14]  But I was curious about her because going into it, I mean, she had, excuse me, a few months ago, her brother was acquitted of murder and it was this whole thing.
[00:58:23]  So she's had a lot going on.
[00:58:25]  But even deeper than that, I mean, if you actually look at her history, she's had a really complicated childhood.
[00:58:32]  I mean, just a really tragic childhood, frankly, in foster homes and all this business.
[00:58:35]  So to achieve what she's achieved, And at this level, I mean, she is arguably the best gymnast that has ever lived, from what I understand.
[00:58:45]  But she, yeah, she kind of fell apart.
[00:58:47]  And I don't know, maybe she's in pain, maybe something's going on privately, but she definitely fell apart.
[00:58:54]  And unfortunately, it shows us that she's not superhuman.
[00:58:57]  She's human like the rest of us, and we tend to fall apart sometimes.
[00:59:01]  That's right.
[00:59:01]  And she had just tweeted out the day before something like, I sometimes feel like I have the weight of the world on my shoulders.
[00:59:06]  And then what happened today was weird because they were like, oh, it was a mental.
[00:59:10]  Error.
[00:59:11]  And then they changed it to no, it was a medical issue.
[00:59:16]  So I have no idea what actually happened with her, but it was a little sketchy.
[00:59:19]  The messaging from Team USA, she could still come back and compete in the individuals.
[00:59:24]  And she's, I think, our best hope for a gold medal.
[00:59:26]  So fingers crossed, I know she does that.
[00:59:28]  Yeah, it just seems like even when she was on the mat and she had screwed up and she kind of looked at the camera and she made these faces like that normally that I do constantly, like, oh my God.
[00:59:41]  And it's just, it was very unlike her.
[00:59:42]  It was sort of very anti.
[00:59:45]  Uh, Simone Biles behavior, so I don't know, something clearly seems to be rattling her, and that's okay.
[00:59:50]  As we as we touch on certain matters of culture and otherwise, I've got to ask you, I this I confess sometimes my team says, Let's do this subject, and I say, Okay, sometimes it's It's me.
[01:00:00]  And this one's me.
[01:00:01]  Okay.
[01:00:02]  Can we just spend one minute on Bennifer?
[01:00:04]  Yes.
[01:00:04]  Oh, please.
[01:00:05]  Yes.
[01:00:06]  Yes.
[01:00:07]  No, this is, I completely relate.
[01:00:09]  First of all, Megan, you're a little younger than Jen and I, but JLo and I, I like to call you.
[01:00:13]  No, I'm not.
[01:00:14]  I'm 50.
[01:00:15]  You're 50.
[01:00:16]  I'm 51, almost 52.
[01:00:19]  Big difference.
[01:00:19]  She's older than us, though.
[01:00:21]  So that's fine.
[01:00:23]  But she's, no, look, I think she's one of the most beautiful women in the world.
[01:00:27]  I think she's absolutely phenomenally beautiful.
[01:00:29]  I don't know her.
[01:00:30]  I don't know what she's like personally, but I mean, she's clearly, she maintains herself.
[01:00:35]  Absolutely stunningly.
[01:00:36]  I just don't understand.
[01:00:39]  Jennifer Lopez, my God, you're so incredible.
[01:00:42]  You have money and power and fame and beauty, everything.
[01:00:46]  Why are you continuously screwing up in the male department?
[01:00:50]  And believe me, as you know, I think I've actually beat her in the husband market.
[01:00:55]  I mean, this is my fourth marriage.
[01:00:57]  Thank God it's the happy one.
[01:01:00]  She's been married again, the last one, absolutely.
[01:01:02]  And she's been married a few times.
[01:01:04]  I think if she would get married again, it would be her fourth time.
[01:01:07]  But I mean, she almost married that crazy one.
[01:01:09]  A Rod, that horrible human being, I can't stand that guy.
[01:01:13]  And she just, and then she runs right into Ben.
[01:01:15]  Like, what?
[01:01:15]  That's the thing that's right here.
[01:01:17]  And why, to me, the whole thing seems like a PR event.
[01:01:22]  As soon as A Rod got caught having some weird text exchange with a reality TV person, she was like, okay, out.
[01:01:30]  And then the next thing you know, she's all over the media with Ben Affleck.
[01:01:33]  And to me, as a journalist, I'm like, this is an obvious PR move to try to change the headline.
[01:01:40]  I don't think it's real.
[01:01:41]  I really don't.
[01:01:42]  I think it helps her to sort of be on the yacht with Ben Affleck.
[01:01:47]  And if it is real, it's bizarre because she was supposed to be in this four year relationship with A Rod about to get married.
[01:01:52]  And now I'm reading a couple weeks later, she's in love.
[01:01:55]  It's love again with Ben Affleck.
[01:01:57]  It's irritating.
[01:01:59]  This is what I did my entire life.
[01:02:00]  I was bouncing from one relationship and marriage into the next one.
[01:02:04]  Some of us do this kind of stuff.
[01:02:06]  And then finally we grow up one day and we meet a long haired heavy metal guy who has a devil tattoo and we settle down.
[01:02:12]  I mean, I don't know.
[01:02:14]  I truly think if it's a PR stunt, it's absurd because she's making herself look like a loser in love.
[01:02:21]  And she's far from that.
[01:02:24]  She's above that.
[01:02:24]  She's worth reportedly $400 million, which is more than Ben Affleck, by the way, and more, I think, than A Rod.
[01:02:30]  Although I don't know how A Rod's net worth, because he's probably pretty rich from all those Yankee games.
[01:02:35]  But he's on his yacht with all these girls in bikinis, and she's on her yacht with Ben Affleck.
[01:02:40]  And by the way, he has a terrible tattoo as well.
[01:02:42]  And I'm just looking at this thinking, why doesn't anybody like.
[01:02:46]  Why must we just be so celebratory?
[01:02:48]  Can't we say, like, how does this person go from one relationship where she was about to get married right into this other with this guy who's had all these problems?
[01:02:56]  I just like, I don't get it.
[01:02:58]  Because she is like the way I used to be.
[01:03:01]  She's in love with love.
[01:03:03]  And I mean, literally, people have asked me, why did you get married when you were 21?
[01:03:06]  Why did you get married when you, you know, it's like because I was focused on my career.
[01:03:10]  My career was everything.
[01:03:11]  And I was just in love with the idea of romance.
[01:03:14]  And I'm going to give her that.
[01:03:16]  I think that that's what's going on here.
[01:03:18]  Because to me, it just doesn't make any sense that she would make herself look so.
[01:03:21]  Flighty and flaky by just literally going out of this relationship with A Rod and then right into Ben.
[01:03:28]  I just think it's not flighty.
[01:03:29]  It's a game changer in terms of the press.
[01:03:31]  The press went from she got cheated on by A Rod to look at her on the yacht with Ben.
[01:03:38]  I'm so cynical.
[01:03:39]  I am.
[01:03:40]  It's true.
[01:03:41]  Do you not know this about me?
[01:03:42]  I'm very cynical.
[01:03:43]  I'm a skeptical, cynical reporter.
[01:03:45]  But don't you know me?
[01:03:46]  I'm a typical reporter, but I'm, you know, again, I'm looking at myself and just thinking this is the kind of stuff that I used to do.
[01:03:51]  It's familiar.
[01:03:53]  By the way, my team tells me, according to celebrity net worth, which I have to say is a bunch of BS because I've seen people try to estimate my net worth too.
[01:04:00]  So off.
[01:04:01]  Anyway, they say he's worth 350 million.
[01:04:03]  The point is, they're both very, very rich.
[01:04:06]  I will make one other point about Jennifer Lopez.
[01:04:09]  I hate when they show her Juliet and they're like, this is what 50 looks like.
[01:04:14]  It's like, okay, this is what 50 looks like when you have hundreds of millions of dollars, right?
[01:04:19]  Like all those treatments cost a lot of money.

=== Lawyers Switching Sides (15:48) ===

[01:04:22]  Oh, yeah, exactly.
[01:04:24]  And look, I mean, I'm not, I am all the power to her.
[01:04:26]  I've had the little nips in the thing.
[01:04:28]  I have no problem admitting it because I want to keep myself looking, you know, looking good.
[01:04:32]  And if I'm comfortable, who cares what anybody thinks?
[01:04:34]  But let's be honest.
[01:04:35]  Yes, she has the best of the best, and she has access to do it whenever she wants.
[01:04:39]  And so, yes, it's not what 15 years ago.
[01:04:41]  I don't know if this is true.
[01:04:42]  I start with that, but I have heard that she's got one of these.
[01:04:46]  It's called Ulthera.
[01:04:47]  I had it one time on my neck.
[01:04:49]  It hurts like a mofo.
[01:04:51]  And it's supposed to tighten your neck.
[01:04:53]  And it's only one time because it hurt.
[01:04:55]  But I've heard she's got one of these things in her house, and she uses it all over her.
[01:04:59]  Now, if you put that Ulthera on your back, you're.
[01:05:02]  I would be a tight dress.
[01:05:03]  If they had like mobile, I would just be like this all day long.
[01:05:07]  You wouldn't, though, because it hurts.
[01:05:08]  It really hurts.
[01:05:09]  It's pain.
[01:05:10]  Oh, beauty is pain.
[01:05:11]  Beauty is pain.
[01:05:12]  Megan, you know that.
[01:05:13]  Yeah, that's true.
[01:05:14]  God dang.
[01:05:15]  Anyway, so enough about her.
[01:05:17]  I just felt the need to discuss it.
[01:05:19]  Okay, I'm glad about that.
[01:05:20]  The other thing that we've got to discuss, and you're the perfect person for this, and we were going to just do culture issues with you, irrespective, but man, talk about nailing it.
[01:05:28]  Oh, I knew.
[01:05:29]  Andrea Mackris, the Bill O'Reilly original accuser.
[01:05:33]  This is the woman, when I first joined Fox News, it was 2014.
[01:05:37]  No, no, sorry, 2004.
[01:05:38]  And this was all the buzz.
[01:05:40]  This is all the buzz that this woman who had worked for O'Reilly had sued him for sexual harassment and got a big payout.
[01:05:46]  And the thing that made all the news was her complaint went public.
[01:05:49]  It was released.
[01:05:50]  And so I remember sitting at my desk in my office, I shared with Major Garrett, pouring through the complaint.
[01:05:56]  No one did any work that day, Juliette.
[01:05:58]  Do you remember this?
[01:05:58]  No one did work at Fox News.
[01:06:00]  We were all reading the complaint.
[01:06:01]  And the biggest surprise out of our pod was she makes $86,000 a year.
[01:06:06]  No one cared about the second or out.
[01:06:08]  They were like, holy crap, she makes more than all of us.
[01:06:11]  Oh my God.
[01:06:12]  Well, apparently, you know why.
[01:06:14]  Yeah, can you tell the audience why she's back in the news?
[01:06:18]  Well, she's back in the news because she decided to break her NDA, her non disclosure agreement, and come forward.
[01:06:25]  And when you do that, you are at risk of paying a lot of money, hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not more, because you've chosen to break a legal agreement.
[01:06:36]  But I think she kind of, I really respect her for doing this because, as you know, I essentially broke my NDA when I went on.
[01:06:43]  One of your previous incarnations, a show back in 2019.
[01:06:46]  It's on YouTube right now.
[01:06:48]  YouTube.com slash Megan Kelly.
[01:06:50]  It was our reaction to the bombshell film.
[01:06:52]  That's exactly, yeah.
[01:06:53]  And, you know, oh, no, it was there was even one before that.
[01:06:57]  And it, you know, I was terrified.
[01:07:01]  So I understand how it took her so long to come out.
[01:07:04]  But by the same token, there's almost this feeling after a while that being silenced and having everybody tell your story for you is almost even worse.
[01:07:13]  And you're just like, at least in my, In my case, because I did go through a sexual harassment situation with Bill O'Reilly and with Fox News, and I did have a settlement, and it certainly wasn't as much as all these other people I've come to find out.
[01:07:27]  But the thing is, I felt like, you know what, when I was going to speak out, I was so angry because I don't know that I would have signed an NDA.
[01:07:35]  I mean, it's easy to say, look back and say that, but I don't know that I would have signed an NDA had I known that there were other women that he did this to consistently.
[01:07:44]  I remember when the Andrea Macker stuff came out, but I also remember being cynical about her.
[01:07:50]  And which is terrible.
[01:07:52]  And I hate to admit it.
[01:07:54]  I just remember the falafel thing.
[01:07:56]  And that I just thought was well, you know, these two were probably just dating and things got a little haywire.
[01:08:03]  Now, I don't agree with that at all.
[01:08:04]  But my feeling was when I came forward and when I started to talk, when I broke my NDA, it was because they couldn't.
[01:08:10]  And I've told you this before, they took everything.
[01:08:13]  I mean, they took, I lost my home.
[01:08:16]  I had to dip into my 401k pretty significantly to pay off bills and to pay off my agents, my former agents who dumped me.
[01:08:23]  And it was horrible.
[01:08:25]  And I lost the most important thing to me, which was my career, my television career.
[01:08:29]  So I think there's just, for some of us, we just sit there and we say, Come at me.
[01:08:35]  Come at me, bro.
[01:08:36]  You know, come at me.
[01:08:37]  What are you going to take now?
[01:08:38]  Nothing left to lose.
[01:08:41]  Thanks for staying with us this far.
[01:08:42]  The end of the episode.
[01:08:43]  And who's coming up on our next show is right after this quick break.
[01:08:50]  She gave an interview to the Daily Beast, sort of breaking her NDA and pretty open about the fact that this is contrary to the NDA.
[01:08:57]  But she's got arguments that, from what I read, he breached it first.
[01:09:02]  He's been calling her a liar in the press, she alleges.
[01:09:04]  And therefore, she's going to have an argument that he committed a prior material breach, which released her from the NDA.
[01:09:10]  That's a legal argument that could fly.
[01:09:12]  That could fly.
[01:09:14]  But she spoke to the Daily Beast, and then she was going to go on The View, but O'Reilly got a temporary restraining order stopping it.
[01:09:21]  And there was actually supposed to be a hearing in the case just yesterday.
[01:09:24]  We're taping this on Tuesday.
[01:09:25]  So just yesterday, Monday.
[01:09:27]  Don't know how that came out.
[01:09:28]  But I will bet that the court will uphold it until they have an actual trial and say she can't do any more press until they rule on whether he committed a prior material breach.
[01:09:37]  Anyway, she also spoke.
[01:09:39]  You can on camera, on audio at least, to the Daily Beast.
[01:09:43]  And here's a soundbite of her explaining why she did it.
[01:09:46]  I never released a statement.
[01:09:47]  It was part of the forced NDA in which I was bullied and coerced under duress, screaming, crying, shaking uncontrollably, saying, No, no, no, I do not want to sign this.
[01:10:00]  I want to go to trial.
[01:10:01]  I'll walk out of here.
[01:10:02]  I'm not doing this.
[01:10:04]  And they cleared the room and left me with one of my lawyers, David Ratner, who pounded his fists on.
[01:10:10]  This shiny long lacquered table and said, No one believes you.
[01:10:14]  You'll never be hired again.
[01:10:17]  If you walk out of here, you got to remember we were sued too.
[01:10:20]  And if you walk out of here, no lawyer.
[01:10:22]  Who's going to want to work with you?
[01:10:23]  And then he slammed his hands down.
[01:10:25]  He said, You didn't hire us to go to trial.
[01:10:28]  You hired us to stop him.
[01:10:30]  This is as good as it gets.
[01:10:31]  And he slammed his hands down and he said, Take the money and move on with your life.
[01:10:37]  Screamed it at me.
[01:10:38]  And I swear to you, I wasn't in my body.
[01:10:41]  I think I blacked out.
[01:10:44]  Well, I mean, there have been things that have come out since about her lawyers and switching sides during the middle of the whole.
[01:10:52]  I mean, it just seems like it was a very, it was still really sketchy situation that she got herself into.
[01:11:00]  And I don't know if you're the one.
[01:11:02]  I should say that guy, Brett.
[01:11:04]  Wait, no, no, David Ratner, not Brett Ratner.
[01:11:07]  That's a different case.
[01:11:08]  David Ratner denies this.
[01:11:10]  Yeah, he denies it and he says he's concerned that her memory is so faulty.
[01:11:13]  So he's denying that he strong armed her into signing the deal and that there was any sort of self dealing.
[01:11:19]  She's trying to make her sound like she's mentally ill.
[01:11:21]  Is that what's going on?
[01:11:22]  Yeah, I mean, basically.
[01:11:23]  Like the fact is, you can, you can, the bottom line is Bill O'Reilly still has a career.
[01:11:28]  Okay.
[01:11:28]  He's still out there.
[01:11:29]  He's still making money.
[01:11:31]  The women that accused him, the multiple women that accused him of sexual harassment, none of us, as far as I know, work in television anymore.
[01:11:40]  You know, some of us have, thank God, found other realms, other arenas in which we work and have really thrived, not just survived, but thrived.
[01:11:50]  I'm very lucky.
[01:11:51]  I got a job at WABC, 77 WABC in New York, and I am thankful and appreciative of that.
[01:11:58]  It's not my television career, which I miss, but The fact is that he's still out there.
[01:12:03]  He still has somewhat of a career and he still has an audience and he still has ways of talking about himself in a way that makes him look like he is the Mr. Family Values guy.
[01:12:14]  And I think many of us just sit there and go, that's absurd.
[01:12:18]  All you have to do is look at the multiple accusations, all of us, the same accusations throughout all of these allegations.
[01:12:26]  The same accusations.
[01:12:27]  That's the thing that's jumped out at me if you read her new report.
[01:12:31]  where she gets into more detail about what went on between them allegedly.
[01:12:35]  It mirrors what you told me.
[01:12:37]  It mirrors your allegation.
[01:12:39]  And it's amazing, you know, if all of this is true, he didn't stop his old patterns.
[01:12:44]  You'd think after having to pay $9 million to Andrea Mackress to settle this suit, $3 million of which went to her lawyers who did two weeks worth of work, he or anybody in his position would then stop the behavior because you've already paid such a high price PR-wise and financially for it.
[01:13:02]  And yet and yet, Laurie Dew, Rebecca Gomez, Juliet Huddy, I think Andrea Tantaros might have, I don't know.
[01:13:12]  There's just a litany of people, Lease Wheel, I mean, $32 million that he paid her himself.
[01:13:16]  It's just, I look, I look at this and I say, there's still an appetite and still an audience for Bill O'Reilly.
[01:13:24]  Yet, the people that cheer and clap for him, many of them are the same people that say, oh, look at that.
[01:13:30]  Matt Lauer dared to show his face out in the Hamptons or Charlie Rose dared to show his face.
[01:13:34]  I mean, what's the difference?
[01:13:36]  It's hypocrisy at its best.
[01:13:39]  That's America for you.
[01:13:41]  I should point out that O'Reilly has denied these claims.
[01:13:45]  He said that he paid out women, millions of dollars to six different women because he wanted to avoid trials that would hurt his family.
[01:13:54]  And Andrea Mackress, at the time of her settlement, actually released a statement, or actually, there was a statement that said there was no wrongdoing whatsoever by Mr. O'Reilly, but she now says that had to happen pursuant to the NDA.
[01:14:06]  That was a term of the deal and is denying it.
[01:14:08]  So, in any event, You know, Bill's pushed back on these.
[01:14:11]  Fox News has said, look, things have changed since then.
[01:14:14]  Different management and under in control, different environment, new human resources efforts by us, and so on.
[01:14:19]  I wanted to ask you one thing though about this.
[01:14:21]  I thought a lot about this, Juliet, and I do think the breaking of the NDAs is fraught because the NDAs get women deals as well that they might not otherwise get.
[01:14:34]  So a woman who files a lawsuit against a guy, there could be the genders could be reversed, whatever.
[01:14:39]  Forget just for now, I'll just say a woman against a guy.
[01:14:41]  She might not want to see it through to trial.
[01:14:43]  She doesn't want to go and testify against him on a stand necessarily.
[01:14:46]  She might want it to go away quickly.
[01:14:48]  So there's an incentive in most cases.
[01:14:51]  Yeah, there's an incentive in most cases for there to be an NDA.
[01:14:55]  Make it go away, keep it quiet, don't make it a national event.
[01:14:59]  And I worry because in New York, we've changed the law as of January 2020 that an employer cannot, an employer may not include an NDA in a sexual harassment case unless it's at the request of the plaintiff.
[01:15:11]  And they can find a way around that, by the way.
[01:15:15]  We had this conversation over dinner about a year or two ago.
[01:15:19]  And you made good points.
[01:15:22]  And I get it because I just wanted to move on with my life.
[01:15:25]  And I didn't think people would believe me.
[01:15:28]  And I was going up against, I've told you this before, I was going up against the Fox News machine and the Bill O'Reilly machine and lawyers and PR people and all the publicity and all that.
[01:15:37]  And I just wanted to go away quietly and get another job in television.
[01:15:41]  And that's why initially I thought, well, this is a good thing.
[01:15:46]  You're right, it's fraud.
[01:15:48]  I think that's the best way to put it.
[01:15:52]  It's hard to say one way or the other, but I think that if those of us who signed NDAs who now want to get out of them, and I know that there's a big Action from Julie Roginski and Gretchen Carlson and so forth.
[01:16:07]  They've got their own little thing going on.
[01:16:09]  I mean, I just think that it's a very strange, very slippery world.
[01:16:15]  But if you, right now, if you see that a man has or a company has settled over and over and over again, something's wrong there.
[01:16:24]  Just something is wrong there.
[01:16:26]  Well, that's exactly right.
[01:16:27]  I think Bill's not wrong that public figures get attacked and not always justifiably.
[01:16:32]  But if there's a pattern and the Employer is in a position to know it, right?
[01:16:37]  Because, like, the one thing that the women had in a lot of these cases is that they were siloed away from one another.
[01:16:43]  They weren't allowed to talk about it.
[01:16:44]  You know, there's a culture that kept it quiet, but the employer knew, right?
[01:16:49]  That's what changes the dynamic to where the NDAs do become like a sword that gets used to protect a serial predator.
[01:17:00]  Right.
[01:17:01]  And look, they had certain people had audio.
[01:17:05]  Um, you know, it was in multiple situations, at least in the O'Reilly situation and the uh Roger Ailes situation, um, who also, of course, left Fox News, uh, pretty much the same way sexual harassment allegations.
[01:17:19]  Um, there were audio tapes, and that kind of stuff is devastating.
[01:17:24]  And I know that they are out there, and supposedly some of them were ordered to destroy them, but these executives of Fox knew this, they heard the tapes, and it's just um.
[01:17:37]  It's just a real problem.
[01:17:38]  And I really think it's starting to change, but not fast enough.
[01:17:42]  Well, and that's the thing.
[01:17:43]  So it's like Andrea, she took the $9 million, she only got $6 million.
[01:17:48]  And you calculate that out.
[01:17:49]  I mean, it's a whole hell of a lot more than you got.
[01:17:51]  It's supposed to reward her or make her whole for losing her career, right?
[01:17:56]  So let's call it she was making $100,000 a year.
[01:17:59]  That would have gone up.
[01:18:01]  Yeah, she lost her job.
[01:18:05]  Right, exactly.
[01:18:06]  She thought she'd be rehired, but you're supposed to make the person whole, right?
[01:18:08]  You're supposed to put them back.
[01:18:10]  In the law, in the position that they otherwise would have been had you not committed the bad act.
[01:18:14]  And if you just sort of calculate out her earning capacity of 100, 150, 200, whatever, that's what the money's supposed to be, supposed to say, okay, let's say you never work again.
[01:18:23]  This is what's going to make you whole.
[01:18:25]  So I understand the point of like, well, you can't take the money and then come out and break the deal.
[01:18:29]  But I also heard her pain at not being able to pursue as a practical matter the career she had loved so much and at which she was pretty good.
[01:18:39]  I think we have a second sound bite from Andrea Mackress.
[01:18:42]  Talking about it.
[01:18:42]  Let's listen.
[01:18:43]  My why now, like, why am I doing this?
[01:18:45]  Like, even if it's really scary, I'm at the point that no matter what chaos this might bring me, I have to take the risk to live my fullest life without fear.
[01:18:53]  Because something sort of broke free in me.
[01:18:55]  It's like spiritual atrophy or an existential death to try to avoid this pain of being silenced, because then it's only magnified.
[01:19:01]  And, you know, so I accept the cost of what's on the other side of this because it's better than this alternative.
[01:19:07]  Even if I have to pay a breach, it's less than the cost of the past 17 years.
[01:19:11]  And my act of breaking it is almost an act of self defense.
[01:19:14]  No matter what he tries to do to me, I'm going to be okay because I won't be able to be, it'll be useful now.
[01:19:19]  It gives this pain a purpose to add my voice into this.
[01:19:24]  You know, what is an NDA?
[01:19:26]  Well, now you can read mine and now you can hear what it was like in forced arbitration, and it has to end.
[01:19:31]  There should not be one, you know, NDAs are for the recipe to the secret sauce or, you know, the trademark information or, you know, different bits of consulting you might have done, you know, in the back rooms with people on a project.
[01:19:45]  It's not about confiscating.
[01:19:47]  A woman's First Amendment right to tell the truth of her own story.
[01:19:53]  Well, I mean, as a lawyer, she's wrong about that.
[01:19:56]  It is in part that they use them in settlement agreements all the time to make a case go away.
[01:20:00]  And often it's the defendant's only incentive to settle, right?
[01:20:03]  I mean, you're O'Reilly, you don't want this coming out.
[01:20:06]  So that's his only incentive.
[01:20:08]  Once you file a lawsuit, the cat's out of the bag.
[01:20:10]  He has less incentive.

=== Settlement Agreements and NDAs (04:09) ===

[01:20:11]  I think the thing is, you also feel like you're dealing, you want to know that the people that you're dealing with are giving you a fair landscape.
[01:20:20]  And when you sign something and think, again, in my case, I signed because I thought nobody's going to believe me.
[01:20:26]  I'm going to go up against, again, the machines.
[01:20:29]  And then I come to find out a few months later, oh no, it wasn't just me.
[01:20:33]  It wasn't just me.
[01:20:35]  Hell no, it wasn't.
[01:20:36]  It was several other women.
[01:20:37]  And, you know, had I known that again, things would have been a lot different.
[01:20:42]  And I think so.
[01:20:43]  It's almost like you feel like you were under duress because you were dealing with a completely different scenario of facts.
[01:20:50]  And the people that were supposed to protect you, your employer, weren't.
[01:20:53]  And they were lying to you.
[01:20:55]  They were sure you knew over.
[01:20:57]  It's more like it's not that they didn't believe you, it's that they wouldn't have cared.
[01:21:01]  Well, they didn't care.
[01:21:02]  Yeah.
[01:21:02]  Well, they said that they didn't believe you.
[01:21:05]  Well, I don't know.
[01:21:06]  I mean, I think the whole Me Too thing is so complicated, right?
[01:21:10]  It's like it's gotten bastardized, it's gotten politicized, and it's, yeah, right?
[01:21:14]  It makes me uncomfortable because it's like, it's such bullshit, Juliet, because the Me Too movement, I think, was really meant to protect women in the workplace who are being forced to choose between their own dignity and their job, right?
[01:21:27]  Like, you give me sexual favors or you're not advancing, that kind of thing.
[01:21:31]  And it's just gotten so, I don't know, that it is being used.
[01:21:35]  It gets used improperly and inappropriately and in the right way.
[01:21:38]  Political context, but not the other political context.
[01:21:41]  Now, I don't know where we are, but I didn't want to shy away from discussing this just because it's Bill and he's popular, I'm sure, with a lot of my audience.
[01:21:50]  It shouldn't matter who the person is.
[01:21:53]  We should be able to talk about this stuff openly.
[01:21:56]  Yes, and that's what's so great about your show you've kind of got this no holds barred.
[01:22:01]  We're not going to be canceled because we're still going to be talking.
[01:22:04]  You can try to cancel us all you want, which I love.
[01:22:07]  And I think it is really important.
[01:22:09]  I mean, when I go to work, There are still some of my guy colleagues that say, they'll say, Oh, you know, you look amazing today.
[01:22:16]  And then they're like, Oh, I'm sorry.
[01:22:17]  I'm sorry.
[01:22:18]  It's like, Oh, come on.
[01:22:19]  Yeah, come on.
[01:22:19]  I mean, no, you've never been that way.
[01:22:21]  That's the irony for you to come out and say this happened.
[01:22:24]  You've always been so fun and easygoing, and never somebody who's been uptight in that way.
[01:22:28]  So, I mean, I never had any trouble believing one word of what you said, especially given, you know, all the knowledge I had about him anyway.
[01:22:35]  But yeah, that's those women are ruining for the rest of us because some of us don't want to treat men like they're lepers.
[01:22:42]  And they walk into a room guilty, right?
[01:22:46]  Like some of us love men and want to give them the benefit of the doubt and don't mind being complimented.
[01:22:50]  Sometimes too much.
[01:22:51]  No, but I think the difference is when a man is lording your career over you, lording your position over you, that's when it's a problem.
[01:22:59]  When a man is being degrading and harassing, and that's a problem, there are differences.
[01:23:04]  And when some guy tells me I look nice and he happens to be a colleague of mine, or he calls me hun because he's so used to calling his wife hun and he slipped, I mean, I'm walking around my office all the time and I'm saying it right now.
[01:23:14]  I call everybody sweetie.
[01:23:16]  I've done it my entire life and I can't stop myself.
[01:23:18]  I'm like, okay, sweetie, hang on.
[01:23:20]  And I'm like, you know, am I going to get my big head sued because I'm calling you sweetie?
[01:23:25]  Who wants to live like this?
[01:23:26]  You know, who wants to live like this?
[01:23:27]  It's gotten out of control.
[01:23:29]  It really has.
[01:23:29]  I totally agree with you.
[01:23:31]  By the same token, there have to be rules and there has to be a lot less hypocrisy out there.
[01:23:38]  And I think that's really the important thing.
[01:23:41]  I still think, you know, to this day, I'll get letters from women at Fox.
[01:23:45]  Women who I had no idea were having any sort of an issue, women in tech, women in production, women who, you know, not on the air who say, you know, thank you, right?
[01:23:54]  Like you and the other women, like you.
[01:23:56]  You don't, you'll never know what a difference you made.
[01:23:58]  And I think about that stuff, Julia, because it's like, I don't know.
[01:24:01]  There's so much, such a shitstorm comes down around you when you take a stand in a case like this, whether it's filing a lawsuit or whatever my role was in all this.
[01:24:11]  Gretchen, Janice, it's just a shitstorm can come down around you at the time, after the fact.
[01:24:17]  People look at you differently.
[01:24:19]  I still say it was worth it.

=== Intermittent Fasting Benefits (02:55) ===

[01:24:21]  It was.
[01:24:22]  It was completely worth it because I've never been happier in my life.
[01:24:26]  And I guess that's the crazy thing.
[01:24:27]  So thank you, Bill O'Reilly, for screwing up my life for a few years.
[01:24:31]  But hey, I'm better than ever.
[01:24:33]  So.
[01:24:34]  All right.
[01:24:35]  And people do, they should listen.
[01:24:36]  You listen to Bill, that's fine.
[01:24:38]  That's between you and Bill.
[01:24:39]  You should also be listening to Juliet.
[01:24:41]  You have to get up early.
[01:24:41]  You have to wake up early.
[01:24:42]  She's on five.
[01:24:43]  Is it five to seven or five to?
[01:24:45]  It's five to 6 30 a.m. on 77 WABC.
[01:24:48]  You can download the app.
[01:24:49]  And I have a great time.
[01:24:50]  Well, my colleague is amazing, Frank Marano.
[01:24:52]  We just, we have a great time.
[01:24:53]  And the good thing about it is that I don't have to give my opinion all the time.
[01:24:57]  So I'm not getting all the calls yelling at me because we're a pretty right leaning station.
[01:25:01]  So I'm not having people scream at me every day, which is kind of nice.
[01:25:04]  I feel like it.
[01:25:05]  That's another thing is like you weren't pro Trump, so you lost some of the diehard Fox supporters who thought that you should have been supporting Trump.
[01:25:12]  But you're very reasonable in your politics.
[01:25:14]  You're not some hard lefty.
[01:25:16]  You just didn't really love Trump.
[01:25:18]  Get over it.
[01:25:19]  Why is the right, like that faction of the right, turning into cancel culture, right?
[01:25:23]  Get past it.
[01:25:24]  That's a great point.
[01:25:25]  Yeah, it's crazy because I'll say one little thing about Trump, but it didn't matter that the previous half hour I was just lambasting Governor Cuomo.
[01:25:35]  So it's just.
[01:25:38]  It's ridiculous.
[01:25:40]  Listen, it's wonderful catching up with you, my love.
[01:25:42]  It's great to see you, and I hope we do it again soon.
[01:25:45]  Definitely.
[01:25:46]  I miss you.
[01:25:47]  Thanks for having me.
[01:25:48]  Maybe I'll get a yacht one of these days.
[01:25:49]  I'm going to save up.
[01:25:50]  I'm going to get a yacht, and you and I are going to go on it and show our bouncy bums.
[01:25:53]  Please, it's my favorite thing.
[01:25:56]  You can rub lotion on my bum all you want.
[01:25:59]  That is going to be the creepiest soundbite that's taken place in Tiger in the movie, by the way.
[01:26:02]  I accept.
[01:26:08]  Do not miss our next show.
[01:26:10]  By popular demand, finally doing a show on the thing I use to stay relatively, I don't know if fit is the right word, but thin, on the thin side.
[01:26:21]  And you don't have to diet.
[01:26:22]  You don't even have to exercise.
[01:26:24]  You don't have to do anything.
[01:26:25]  It's called intermittent fasting and it works.
[01:26:29]  I'm going to walk you through how it works.
[01:26:31]  We're going to have a woman who's an expert in it and, you know, how you can wean yourself over time if you want to, or you can continue it as a lifestyle and the many benefits to you and your health. from doing this.
[01:26:43]  So it's summer.
[01:26:44]  People are worrying about their, you know, physique, but we're always keeping an eye on it, right?
[01:26:49]  And I've mentioned it a few times.
[01:26:51]  We've had so many listeners say, please, please, please do a show on it.
[01:26:54]  So by popular demand, it's happening.
[01:26:56]  Next show, Wednesday.
[01:26:58]  Don't miss it.
[01:26:59]  Go ahead and subscribe to the show while I have you, and we'll talk about intermittent fasting tomorrow.
[01:27:05]  Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show.
[01:27:07]  No BS, no agenda, and no fear.
[01:27:12]  The Megan Kelly Show is a devil-may-care media production in collaboration with Red Seat Venture.