The Megyn Kelly Show - 20211108_don-lemons-accuser-speaks-out-and-the-mediocrity-o
Aired: 2021-11-08
Duration: 01:31:06


=== Exclusive Interview With Dustin Heiss (01:59) ===

[00:00:00]  Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
[00:00:12]  Hey, everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly.
[00:00:13]  Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.
[00:00:15]  We begin today with an exclusive interview in connection with the civil case for assault, assault of a sexual nature, against Don Lemon, set for trial just two months from right now.
[00:00:27]  It is a case most of the media, seemingly obsessed with Me Too stories, When they are against a Republican or certainly anyone affiliated with conservative media, has chosen to ignore, despite a credible victim account and a supportive on the record statement by an eyewitness.
[00:00:44]  In the summer of 2018, a man named Dustin Heiss, then a bartender in the Hamptons, says he went to a bar named Murph's along with his friend and boss, George Gonellis.
[00:00:56]  There they encountered CNN's Don Lemon, and an event transpired that Mr. Heiss says would change his life forever.
[00:01:03]  Lemon, who CNN allows to fashion himself night after night as a Me Too advocate and a social justice warrior, allegedly committed an assault on Mr. Heiss that was sexual in nature and clearly meant to humiliate him.
[00:01:18]  After some time, Mr. Heiss decided to file a civil lawsuit against Lemon, accusing him of assault and battery under New York law, among other claims.
[00:01:26]  He has been called a liar and an extortionist by CNN, which oddly has inserted itself in this lawsuit, despite the fact that it has no proper role here.
[00:01:38]  And Mr. Lemon denies the allegations.
[00:01:41]  Today, Dustin Heiss goes on camera for the first time to detail what he says happened to him that night, why he says Don Lemon is a predator being enabled by CNN, and to tell his story on the record in advance of the trial this January.
[00:01:56]  Dustin, welcome to you.
[00:01:57]  Thank you for being here.
[00:01:59]  Hey, Megan.

=== The Assault Allegations Against Don Lemon (07:47) ===

[00:02:00]  Thank you for having me.
[00:02:01]  So let's start at the beginning.
[00:02:03]  You are in the Hamptons in the summer of 2018, and what were you doing there?
[00:02:10]  I got a job bartending for the summer and I moved up there at the end of June and was planning on staying through Labor Day.
[00:02:21]  Okay, so a lot of people go to the Hamptons for the summer to enjoy themselves or for some dough.
[00:02:27]  And so it was a temporary situation where you're going to bartend for the summer?
[00:02:30]  Correct.
[00:02:30]  It's an opportunity to make a lot of money in a short amount of time in the hospitality industry.
[00:02:36]  Okay, and what bar did you work for?
[00:02:39]  I worked for a bar called Old Stove Pub in Sagatonic.
[00:02:43]  And that's where George was.
[00:02:45]  George was your boss there, the guy who I just mentioned.
[00:02:48]  Correct.
[00:02:49]  Okay.
[00:02:50]  So you and George one night, this is July of 2018.
[00:02:54]  Do you remember the specific date of the incident?
[00:02:56]  It was July 15th of 2018.
[00:02:58]  Okay.
[00:02:59]  You and George wrap up your shift at your bar and decide to go out for a late night drink.
[00:03:06]  Well, we had worked almost two weeks consecutively because Fourth of July fell in the middle of the week that week or that.
[00:03:13]  That year, and we had worked for almost two weeks straight.
[00:03:19]  So, Sunday we came into work and we had very little, if any, reservations on the books.
[00:03:26]  So, our boss, George, gave us the night off, and so we went to Montauk for a little bit and then we came to Sag Harbor, and that's when I encountered Don Lemon.
[00:03:38]  Okay, and those are towns in the Hamptons that are very popular with folks.
[00:03:42]  So, you walk into this bar called Murphs.
[00:03:45]  Which I understand is very popular and sometimes with the celebrity set, though it's described as kind of a dive bar.
[00:03:51]  Like it's not a fancy place, it's just popular amongst people who are well known.
[00:03:55]  And did you see him right away when you walked in?
[00:03:59]  So I walked in and I saw him right out of the corner of my eye, sitting over to the right, and he was with a group of a couple other men.
[00:04:07]  And I said to George, I said, Look, that's Don Lemon right there.
[00:04:10]  And I decided to approach him and I said, Hey, Don, let me buy you a drink.
[00:04:16]  And before he could even respond, I looked at the bartender and I said, Let me get two lemon drops.
[00:04:22]  And if anything, that was an attempt at humor.
[00:04:26]  And I didn't mean anything derogatory or, you know, I wasn't trying to harass him or, you know, And Don looks at me and says, I'm just trying to have a good time.
[00:04:37]  And at that time, I said, Okay, I'm sorry.
[00:04:40]  And I walked away.
[00:04:41]  And I thought that was the end of it.
[00:04:43]  Okay.
[00:04:43]  And so, what, why did you do that?
[00:04:45]  Had you been a fan of his?
[00:04:46]  Like, what made you offer to buy him a drink?
[00:04:49]  Honestly, I was just being cordial.
[00:04:52]  I, you know, I work as a bartender, and part of your job is to engage with your guests and, you know, just have a good time.
[00:05:01]  Everybody typically, when they're at a bar or a restaurant, they're, Uh, trying to just enjoy themselves, and I was just being friendly, it was just a hello, and I didn't mean anything derogatory towards it.
[00:05:13]  But as soon as he said, I'm just trying to have a good time, I walked away.
[00:05:17]  That was that.
[00:05:18]  What time of night was this?
[00:05:20]  Uh, approximately about maybe 10 p.m., maybe 9 30.
[00:05:25]  Okay, and could you tell at this point, this particular point where you had offered to buy him a lemon drop, um, whether he was intoxicated?
[00:05:36]  I mean, it seemed that he had had a few drinks, that's for sure.
[00:05:40]  How could you tell?
[00:05:42]  He just was kind of like shaking his head.
[00:05:44]  And he was like, he looked at me like, I just, you know, you're a bartender.
[00:05:48]  You pick up on these things.
[00:05:49]  People sit at your bar and drink all the time, you know?
[00:05:51]  And he did not look sober by any means.
[00:05:55]  Okay.
[00:05:56]  So he declined your drink.
[00:05:57]  And then, how far away were the two of you from one another at this point?
[00:06:02]  Three feet at the most.
[00:06:04]  And I'll ask you this because it becomes relevant shortly.
[00:06:06]  But for the record, are you straight?
[00:06:10]  Oh, yes.
[00:06:11]  I have a girlfriend.
[00:06:12]  And, you know, once this is all behind me, we hope to get married one of these days.
[00:06:16]  Okay.
[00:06:16]  So, in no way was this a sexual come on by you, a drink.
[00:06:21]  Okay.
[00:06:21]  And Don is openly gay and either engaged or married to a man.
[00:06:25]  So, and that's been well established.
[00:06:27]  Okay.
[00:06:28]  So, it was basically just a friendly gesture.
[00:06:30]  He declined it.
[00:06:30]  And then what happened next?
[00:06:32]  So, I walk around the bar and about five minutes go by and he walks, he comes around the bar and comes up to me and he says, Pardon my language, but he says, Do you like me?
[00:06:45]  Is that why you're with me?
[00:06:47]  And I said, No, I just wanted to say what's up.
[00:06:51]  And I was just like, What's this guy's problem?
[00:06:53]  And I looked at my boss, and in that moment, he puts his hand down his pants and starts aggressively.
[00:07:02]  Can you start that over?
[00:07:02]  You're talking about Don.
[00:07:03]  Go ahead.
[00:07:04]  Yeah.
[00:07:04]  So after he says, Do you like me?
[00:07:07]  Is that why you're effing with me?
[00:07:09]  And I said, No, just wanted to say what's up, man.
[00:07:12]  And I look at my boss, and I look back and he has his hand in his pants, rubbing himself aggressively.
[00:07:18]  And he shoves his two fingers up underneath my mustache, thrusts my head back, and says, Do you like pussy or dick?
[00:07:26]  And he said it like two or three times after that.
[00:07:29]  And I just said, What the hell, man?
[00:07:31]  And I just ran out the back door.
[00:07:33]  So forgive my indelicate question, but when you say he put his hands down his pants, what kind of pants was he wearing?
[00:07:42]  And how do you know what he was doing in there?
[00:07:45]  He was wearing shorts, and I mean, it was pretty obvious to everybody that saw what he did that he was just rubbing himself and, you know, with impunity, just pushed his hands up under my face enough to thrust my head back.
[00:08:00]  And degrade me.
[00:08:04]  So he was rubbing his genitals and then he shoved the fingers that he was doing it with in your nose and your face.
[00:08:10]  Correct.
[00:08:13]  Did it strike you as something he had ever done before?
[00:08:18]  I don't know.
[00:08:19]  Anybody that acts like that in public and without any fear of what it might do to somebody or the consequences it might have, that's a pattern, you know.
[00:08:32]  I don't know.
[00:08:33]  I wouldn't be surprised.
[00:08:34]  I mean, he's protected by the fact that he's an African American gay man on television, and I'm just some nobody.
[00:08:46]  When he touched your face, did he actually make contact with your face?
[00:08:51]  Yeah, he pushed my face back completely.
[00:08:54]  Wow.
[00:08:55]  And so did you stumble back or did you maintain your footing?
[00:09:00]  At this point, I had turned around and my back was to the bar.
[00:09:03]  And he pushed me so forcefully that I was leaning up over the bar.
[00:09:07]  And, you know, after about two seconds of that and him repeating, you know, what he said, P or D, P or D.
[00:09:16]  Yeah.
[00:09:17]  And after all that, I just was like, what the hell?
[00:09:20]  And I just ran out the back door.
[00:09:21]  And, you know, in certain circumstances, you know, a lot of men would have reacted aggressively.
[00:09:26]  And that, you know, in that split second, I had to make a decision.
[00:09:30]  And, you know, when you go through something like that, it's either fight or flight.
[00:09:34]  And I chose flight.
[00:09:36]  And how does that.
[00:09:37]  How does that make you feel?
[00:09:38]  I mean, I know we've talked about your case on this show before, and I know some guys are like, I would have beaten the hell, but like, how does that make you feel now?
[00:09:45]  Oh, it resonates.

=== Why I Chose Flight That Night (07:43) ===

[00:09:47]  Not a day goes by where I, you know, think about it.
[00:09:50]  And, but then on the other side of the coin, if I would have reacted violently, you know, they would have come after me as some aggressor, and I didn't, you know, I composed myself and I handled it the way, you know, anybody put in that situation.
[00:10:09]  Quite frankly, I hope it never happens to anybody, but if you're put in that situation, you have a split second to make a reaction.
[00:10:17]  And if I had been heavily intoxicated, or if I wasn't with my boss, whom I'd only known for about two and a half weeks and I worked for, it might have been a different outcome.
[00:10:28]  But that's what happened that night.
[00:10:30]  And I ran out the back door and tried to compose myself.
[00:10:33]  And I even said to my boss that night, I said, Should I go back in there and confront him?
[00:10:38]  And he's like, You can't do that now.
[00:10:40]  But My only regret is that right next door to Murph's Tavern in Sag Harbor is the police station.
[00:10:47]  And if I would have been thinking more clearly and not in a state of shock, I would have gone next door and said, I just got assaulted next door.
[00:10:54]  Come look at the videotapes.
[00:10:56]  And this would have been three years of my life that I hadn't had to go through this.
[00:11:01]  And he would be facing other kinds of legal situations instead of just a civil case.
[00:11:07]  Had you been drinking prior to this, Dustin?
[00:11:10]  I had maybe two beers in Montauk.
[00:11:12]  And so I was pretty sober.
[00:11:14]  I mean, okay.
[00:11:15]  You remember it clearly?
[00:11:17]  Yes, very clearly.
[00:11:18]  You don't forget something like this.
[00:11:21]  Who, if anyone in the bar, do you believe witnessed it?
[00:11:26]  The bartender witnessed it, and he even contacted me through text messages saying, I remember everything that happened that night.
[00:11:34]  And he even offered to go look for the videotapes for me.
[00:11:38]  And then after some time.
[00:11:41]  This is a guy named Nick, as I understand it.
[00:11:43]  Nick?
[00:11:43]  He's the bartender at Murphs, not your boss, George from the other bar.
[00:11:47]  Nick, I'd only met like once or twice prior to that, but I didn't know him from anybody.
[00:11:53]  And he witnessed it and he says, I remember everything.
[00:11:57]  I have the text messages to prove it.
[00:11:59]  And he said, I'll look and see if I can get the videotapes for you.
[00:12:04]  And then after I reached out, I gave it a couple days and I reached back out to him and he just started ghosting me.
[00:12:09]  I just couldn't get a hold of him anymore.
[00:12:13]  Did you ever ask to see whether there were videotapes?
[00:12:16]  Oh, yeah, absolutely.
[00:12:18]  And what'd you find out?
[00:12:20]  Nope.
[00:12:22]  I mean, I've heard whisperings through, you know, you hear rumors and stuff, but I don't know if it's a fact or not.
[00:12:28]  I can't speak to it, but I've heard that they were deleted.
[00:12:33]  So, they had a video camera.
[00:12:34]  Oh, they Murphs has cameras all in it.
[00:12:37]  Yes.
[00:12:38]  And so, like through the lawsuit, did you demand copies of any videotapes that they had?
[00:12:43]  We attempted to retrieve them and there was none.
[00:12:47]  They said nothing.
[00:12:48]  Okay.
[00:12:49]  That they didn't have any.
[00:12:50]  So, in addition to Nick, the bartender who said to you, I saw it all, were there any other witnesses?
[00:12:58]  As far as in the bar, I don't really recall.
[00:13:02]  Those were the two that I know saw it all and they were like, you know, After it all happened, everybody in town knew about it within a day.
[00:13:11]  So I don't know about in the bar, but Nick saw it from behind the bar.
[00:13:16]  He was right in front of us when it happened.
[00:13:18]  And George, my old boss, was standing right next to me.
[00:13:22]  And so, can you set it up for me now?
[00:13:24]  I'm picturing you with your back against the bar, which you further stumbled into when Lemon shoved his fingers in your face.
[00:13:33]  So, Lemon's presumably right in front of you, you're eye to eye.
[00:13:37]  And where was George?
[00:13:38]  Because he's come forward as an eyewitness for you, but where, so where was he?
[00:13:43]  He was standing on my immediate right, about two feet away.
[00:13:46]  So nothing impeding his view of what happened?
[00:13:49]  Oh, he, he, Lemon and I were like this, and he was right next to, he saw the whole interaction happen.
[00:13:55]  Okay, so you and Lemon are face to face.
[00:13:57]  George is basically the point of the triangle seeing it all.
[00:14:01]  And how many feet, how many feet away was George from you and Don?
[00:14:07]  I mean, one or two feet away.
[00:14:09]  He was standing right next to me.
[00:14:11]  And was he intoxicated?
[00:14:13]  No.
[00:14:14]  I mean, we had gone to Montauk, and one thing you don't want to do in the Hamptons is drive when you're drinking.
[00:14:20]  And so we just went down to Montauk and enjoyed the afternoon.
[00:14:23]  And then we came back to the Hamptons or to Sag Harbor.
[00:14:27]  And no, George maybe had one or two drinks with me throughout the day.
[00:14:33]  But this was, we left East Hampton earlier in the day, went to Montauk, enjoyed walking around, and then we came back to Sag Harbor.
[00:14:42]  Okay.
[00:14:43]  So after this happens, and I'm going to get to the feelings, but after this happens, you said you ran out.
[00:14:50]  Did you run out the front door, the back door?
[00:14:53]  What happened?
[00:14:54]  Okay.
[00:14:54]  And why?
[00:14:54]  Why the back door?
[00:14:56]  I just, because there was a clear path to my right.
[00:14:59]  There was a pole to my left, and there was a clear path to my right.
[00:15:02]  And it was just the quickest way for me to get out of that situation.
[00:15:07]  Was it crowded or was it sparse?
[00:15:10]  Well, it was a Sunday night.
[00:15:12]  So it wasn't like a Friday or a Saturday, but there was a lot of people in there.
[00:15:15]  Yes.
[00:15:16]  And do you remember seeing anyone as you ran out, Don, his friends, or anyone else?
[00:15:22]  Honestly, I was in a state of shock.
[00:15:24]  So I wasn't paying attention to anybody else.
[00:15:27]  I ran out the back door, sat on the AC unit, and just sat there with my hands in my head and was like, oh my God, what just happened?
[00:15:34]  And then George followed me out and came up to me and he was like, oh my God, what just happened?
[00:15:40]  And he was like, I can't believe that.
[00:15:41]  And that's when I said to him, should I go back in there and confront him?
[00:15:45]  And he said, no, you can't do that now.
[00:15:47]  But, you know, A lot of, you know, 99% of men would have reacted violently or aggressively when something like that happened to them.
[00:15:55]  And I've had to think about that every day and, you know, what kind of self respect do I have for myself?
[00:16:00]  I didn't stand up to that man, but.
[00:16:04]  What would the story have been distorted to if I had?
[00:16:08]  So, this is how it played out.
[00:16:11]  And it is what it is.
[00:16:14]  There are lots of ways of standing up to someone, and they don't have to involve fists.
[00:16:19]  Sometimes they involve lawyers.
[00:16:22]  Can you just, I don't want to skip past this, and we're going to get to more of it later.
[00:16:25]  But what did you feel when he did that to you?
[00:16:31]  Do you remember in the moment what that felt like?
[00:16:35]  Disgust and insignificant, and just degraded and humiliated, and just I mean, every emotion running through your body anger, shame, guilt.
[00:16:48]  I mean, there's a plethora of emotions that go through you when something like that happens, especially being the new guy.
[00:16:55]  I'd only been in town for like a little over two weeks, and now I'm the lemon drop guy.
[00:17:01]  Why shame?
[00:17:04]  Just because.
[00:17:06]  The feelings and like, like disgust and what he did to me.
[00:17:11]  I like, I just, I didn't do anything to deserve that.
[00:17:14]  And I was just, I mean, I didn't ask for this.
[00:17:17]  I was being cordial to him.
[00:17:19]  I was offering to buy him a drink, you know.
[00:17:21]  And if anything, it was a failed attempt at humor, you know.
[00:17:25]  And after he said no, I said, okay, I'm sorry.
[00:17:28]  I apologized and I walked away.
[00:17:30]  And I thought that was the end of it.

=== Overcoming Sexual Assault Stigma (15:16) ===

[00:17:31]  And apparently not.
[00:17:34]  Do you have any idea what his motivation was?
[00:17:37]  You know, an attempt to humiliate, an attempt to come on to you?
[00:17:42]  Like, do you have any idea?
[00:17:44]  I don't know.
[00:17:45]  I mean, he was with two or three other men and they weren't his fiance or husband because now I know what he looks like.
[00:17:53]  I can tell you he was not there, but I can't speculate on what he was thinking or feeling, but I definitely felt that he was trying to belittle me and degrade me and humiliate me in front of my peers with impunity and just.
[00:18:08]  Without any care about what the consequences it might have on him or the repercussions it might have on me.
[00:18:17]  Dustin is not the only one telling this story.
[00:18:20]  George, his friend and one time boss, has gone on the record with FoxNews.com in an extraordinary report, which I am going to bring to you right after this break.
[00:18:30]  And we'll have more with Dustin on that and on CNN injecting itself into this controversy and how NBC late night host Jimmy Fallon plays into the story.
[00:18:39]  Don't go away.
[00:18:50]  So, I want to tell the audience that George, with whom you'd only been working for a couple of weeks, it's not like you and George had some long term relationship, he went on the record with Foxnews.com in August of 2018 and said as follows.
[00:19:16]  Yes, I managed Dustin at the Old Stove Pub.
[00:19:18]  He was the bartender.
[00:19:19]  The two of us went out one night.
[00:19:21]  We were both standing there.
[00:19:22]  You said, Hey, there's Don Lemon when you went into Murphs.
[00:19:24]  He said, You approached Lemon to strike up a conversation with him and offered to buy Lemon a drink, which he declined.
[00:19:29]  Said a few minutes later, Lemon came up to you.
[00:19:32]  And this is a quote from George to FoxNews.com Lemon has now come around the corner and is standing face to face with us.
[00:19:40]  There's a beam, a pole in the place.
[00:19:41]  Don's standing up against the pole, face to face with Dustin.
[00:19:44]  I turn around and I'm standing right there between the two of them.
[00:19:48]  He is saying, So you like me?
[00:19:50]  Is that why you're bothering me?
[00:19:52]  To Dustin.
[00:19:52]  Heist responded, Nah, man, I just wanted to say what's up.
[00:19:57]  Lemon then said something along the lines of, Is that why you're bothering me?
[00:20:01]  You want to F me?
[00:20:02]  Says Lemon appeared pretty drunk.
[00:20:04]  This is again George to FoxNews.com and then, quote, put his hands down his pants inside his board shorts, grabbed his genitals, and then came out with two fingers and, like, clipped Dustin's nose up and down with two fingers, asking, Do you like P word or D word?
[00:20:20]  I mean, it's pussy or dick.
[00:20:22]  People heard it.
[00:20:23]  Gonellis laughed and immediately mocked Dustin as gross because of Lemon.
[00:20:28]  But Dustin did not think it was a laughing matter, says George.
[00:20:31]  He was, quote, in shock, saying, Bro, did that just happen?
[00:20:35]  That was disgusting.
[00:20:36]  And then George admits that you were regularly teased about the incident, including by George, who said, I feel bad now.
[00:20:44]  He said, everyone knew Dustin and knew what happened to him.
[00:20:46]  And every time we went out, every bartender would offer him a lemon drop shot, making fun of him.
[00:20:51]  He got shit for it.
[00:20:53]  He was messed up from it, says George.
[00:20:55]  This is the only thing he could talk about and not in a good way.
[00:20:59]  Does that accurately convey what happened?
[00:21:02]  Absolutely.
[00:21:04]  Is there upsetting to hear?
[00:21:06]  Yeah, I mean, it's just a reminder of how bad of a summer that was.
[00:21:11]  And I mean, you know, what was I going to do?
[00:21:16]  Like go back to Florida with my tail between my legs or just laugh it off with everybody?
[00:21:20]  And I just, I tried to stick it out as long as I could.
[00:21:24]  And eventually I just was like, I'm not, I can't take this anymore.
[00:21:27]  So I left sooner than I was anticipating.
[00:21:30]  But it just got old, you know, I'm sick and tired of being the lemon drop guy and people snickering behind my back.
[00:21:36]  And I mean, I have a pretty, Like, I'm pretty tough when it comes to things like that, but I'm in a new town.
[00:21:42]  I'm the new guy, and now I'm known as the like this lemon encounter.
[00:21:47]  And that's basically the butt of everybody's joke.
[00:21:52]  People would come into my restaurant and order lemon drops and put their two fingers up.
[00:21:56]  And just it was just an ongoing thing that we dealt with all summer.
[00:22:01]  What do you say, Dustin, to people who say, eh, get over it?
[00:22:04]  Eh, whatever.
[00:22:06]  Is it really that big a deal?
[00:22:08]  Until something happens to you like this, which I hope it doesn't, you don't know how you're going to react.
[00:22:13]  And I'm not going to let them trivialize what I've been going through because not only was the encounter horrible and disgusting, but the aftermath of what happened has been a daily challenge for me.
[00:22:26]  And your life doesn't change when you speak out, your life changes when the assault happens.
[00:22:35]  And my life is forever changed.
[00:22:38]  I'm just, I just want to get this behind me.
[00:22:40]  You know, I want to be happy again.
[00:22:41]  I don't want to have to think about Don Lemon ever again.
[00:22:44]  Mm hmm.
[00:22:45]  Well, many people feel that way.
[00:22:48]  Is it true that, quote, everyone knew?
[00:22:50]  Because I know that there is a story involving celebrities like Jimmy Fallon, but there were a lot of people who knew.
[00:22:57]  And what happened with Fallon in particular?
[00:22:59]  Well, Jimmy was one of our regulars at the restaurant that I worked at.
[00:23:04]  And he's awesome.
[00:23:05]  He's stuff of legend in the Amptons.
[00:23:09]  Really good guy, and he would sing karaoke with at our restaurant.
[00:23:13]  He would, you know, we wouldn't even charge him, and he would make us charge him for a Diet Coke and he'd leave us a $500 tip just because that's who he is.
[00:23:21]  And he happened to be in my restaurant the very next day, and my staff was all running around saying, Jimmy, you're not going to believe what happened to Dustin last night.
[00:23:30]  And so he knows what happened.
[00:23:32]  And when they told him what happened, he put his hands on his face and was like, Oh my God, he can't do that.
[00:23:37]  He's all about the me too.
[00:23:38]  What is he thinking?
[00:23:40]  So he's aware of.
[00:23:41]  Of what happened.
[00:23:42]  He knows this story.
[00:23:43]  I mean, he was there the day after and saw me not very happy about it, but also just trying to go with the flow because, again, what was I going to do?
[00:23:54]  You know, leave the Hamptons and go home?
[00:24:00]  You know, I tried to make a go of it.
[00:24:02]  So, what about that?
[00:24:04]  Because, I mean, are people like Nick, the bartender, anybody else in the restaurant, coming forward, volunteering to be witnesses at trial?
[00:24:13]  Because, you know, even a Jimmy Fallon who saw you the day after could potentially be relevant to, you know, a trial.
[00:24:19]  Are people raising their hands?
[00:24:20]  Are they agreeing to show up?
[00:24:22]  So, typically in the Hamptons, celebrities are protected, and, you know, but 99% of them don't sexually assault people in public in front of everybody.
[00:24:34]  But as far as the staff and the other people, Nick and a few other people that witnessed it, they're worried about their jobs being jeopardized and being blacklisted in the Hamptons because they spoke up against a celebrity.
[00:24:50]  And so, you know, and I don't blame them.
[00:24:54]  One of the witnesses lost a job during COVID.
[00:24:58]  He was working for a celebrity as an executive chef and he got fired when they found out that he was, you know, had.
[00:25:06]  Spoken out against women.
[00:25:08]  So that's true.
[00:25:10]  Yeah.
[00:25:11]  And so they attack people that speak up against them.
[00:25:16]  And a lot of times these people are protected, but most times they don't do what he did to me.
[00:25:22]  It's disgusting.
[00:25:23]  It's the power imbalance.
[00:25:24]  I mean, in today's day and age, people look at you based on power or disempowerment, based on the color of your skin, your gender, your sexuality.
[00:25:35]  But in this situation, the person who is in minority groups in most of those categories.
[00:25:40]  Is actually the powerful one, and you are the one who has relatively little power.
[00:25:44]  And that is why people are reluctant and afraid.
[00:25:48]  Absolutely.
[00:25:48]  I mean, I'm nobody to them, you know, and the media, especially, is designed to protect these people.
[00:25:58]  They have the ability to control the narrative.
[00:26:01]  And when this all went public, they swept it under the rug, and nobody wanted to speak up against it, even though there's credible, you know, witnesses and allegations that unfolded.
[00:26:15]  You know, I'm just brushed to the side.
[00:26:18]  Oh, I mean, honestly, there was a paper thin lawsuit filed against some folks at Fox News, some personalities there, and it's since been dismissed.
[00:26:30]  But for the, you know, when it first came out, it got so much coverage because people love to see a Fox News anchor's name on the receiving end of one of these charges.
[00:26:40]  But this case, very different reaction in the media, despite the fact that.
[00:26:45]  As I understand it, Don Lemon has tried twice to get your allegations dismissed.
[00:26:49]  He's failed both times.
[00:26:51]  And unlike any of those other cases, you have an eyewitness, George, who has gone on record with the media and is prepared to take the stand at trial.
[00:27:01]  You tell me and testify on your behalf.
[00:27:04]  Well, sexual assault is not a partisan issue.
[00:27:06]  I mean, it happens to all walks of life, including men.
[00:27:10]  You know, there's a stigma about speaking out on sexual assault.
[00:27:13]  Will I be believed?
[00:27:14]  Will it even matter?
[00:27:16]  In fact, Don Lemon has a whole segment where, In 2018, that I saw, and it was one of the things that propelled me to speak up.
[00:27:24]  Where he says there is no standard way of reporting a sexual assault.
[00:27:28]  And, you know, he goes on to just basically try to be a champion of sexual assault survivors.
[00:27:33]  He claims to be one.
[00:27:35]  Well, if he really is a survivor, he's got some issues that he's never really dealt with.
[00:27:39]  But, you know, it's dangerous to only report one side.
[00:27:43]  It's the reason survivors don't come up and speak out because they fear of retaliation.
[00:27:48]  And anyone who's experienced sexual assault in any situation should feel.
[00:27:54]  You know, empowered to be able to speak up against this stuff.
[00:27:57]  But unless you, your idea, your views and your ideas and, um, align with with you know everything, then you're not.
[00:28:05]  It's, it's really.
[00:28:07]  You don't know if you're going to get, if it's going to get any air or any any press about it, and it's.
[00:28:12]  It's like Harvey Weinstein or the Matt Lowers of the world.
[00:28:15]  You know like it's.
[00:28:16]  It's crazy.
[00:28:18]  I mean, you know this firsthand from your experience.
[00:28:20]  So yep, although it's, it's interesting because you know, when I got sort of pulled into the Me Too movement before it really was a thing um, you know the, the person I was Opposed to, the person I was essentially asked about was Roger Ailes.
[00:28:38]  And the media was delighted to report on Roger Ailes having this kind of a history.
[00:28:43]  Delighted.
[00:28:44]  But he was an old, white, rich Republican, right?
[00:28:50]  Not a CNN star who happens to be black, who's openly gay, who calls himself a social justice warrior.
[00:28:58]  So the power dynamic here is much different in terms of the way the media now ranks people, the way they value people.
[00:29:05]  But I do want to talk to you about that moment because I know that there.
[00:29:08]  Almost a year or so, I don't know, went by from the time of the assault to when you filed the lawsuit.
[00:29:13]  Was it about 12 months?
[00:29:15]  Correct.
[00:29:16]  Okay.
[00:29:16]  Yeah.
[00:29:17]  So I went after I came back from the Hamptons early.
[00:29:21]  I was in Florida for a few months and my grandfather had a heart attack and he was in and out of the hospital.
[00:29:28]  And I just didn't feel it was appropriate to explain to my family when they were dealing with my grandfather being in ICU.
[00:29:34]  But I was actually in the hospital one night and Flipping through the channels, um, and Don Lemon came on the television.
[00:29:43]  And it was the night that he was speaking out on Justice Kavanaugh, and that's when he started going on and on about what sexual assault survivors go through and how he, uh, you know, there's no standard way and reporting it, and so on and so forth.
[00:29:58]  And as you can imagine, it just infuriated me.
[00:30:02]  And, um, I think we have that, Dustin.
[00:30:04]  Let me let me stand you by because I believe that we have that clip.
[00:30:08]  Let's watch.
[00:30:10]  There is no standard way survivors talk about sexual assault.
[00:30:15]  It isn't always a police phone call and a rape kit or a report filed with HR.
[00:30:22]  Sometimes they don't talk at all for years, even decades.
[00:30:26]  Sometimes a little comes out in a conversation with a friend, a partner, or a doctor.
[00:30:30]  And sometimes it comes out all at once.
[00:30:34]  Why is it so hard to talk about?
[00:30:36]  Well, part of it is fear and part of it is doubt.
[00:30:41]  Will I be believed?
[00:30:43]  Will I be blamed?
[00:30:45]  Will I have evidence?
[00:30:47]  Do I have to relive what happened?
[00:30:50]  Will everyone judge me?
[00:30:52]  And if I speak out, will it even matter?
[00:30:56]  People are tricky characters.
[00:30:59]  Innocent until proven guilty must remain the law of the land.
[00:31:04]  But at the same time, some guilty people do cloak themselves in innocence.
[00:31:09]  Remember, after all, Bill Cosby was America's dad not so long ago.
[00:31:14]  Are we interested in truth?
[00:31:17]  Are we interested in healing?
[00:31:19]  Or is there, as there always seems to be these days, a political game being played with people's lives?
[00:31:28]  Are we interested in truth, Don?
[00:31:30]  Are we interested in truth?
[00:31:32]  Yeah, I mean, that right there was pretty much the defining factor of me deciding to stand up for myself.
[00:31:39]  And not too long after that, he goes on to say that white men are the biggest terroristic threat in America.
[00:31:45]  And meanwhile, he's terrorizing me.
[00:31:47]  In front of all my peers in the Hamptons.
[00:31:49]  So the hypocrisy is just beyond me.
[00:31:52]  And not too long after that is when I spoke up to my loved ones and shared with them what has happened to me.
[00:31:59]  And my own mom, after, you know.
[00:32:02]  Obviously, getting very distraught, told me, she said, Dustin, you have to stand up for yourself.
[00:32:07]  You're going to carry this with you the rest of your life unless you do.
[00:32:11]  And, you know, if you would have done to him what he did to you, you would have been arrested, prosecuted, and registered as a sex offender.
[00:32:19]  And, you know, they would have crucified me and called me some white supremacist.
[00:32:23]  But I showed restraint in a very difficult situation.
[00:32:27]  And he took that situation to degrade me and humiliate me.
[00:32:31]  And I had to do something.
[00:32:34]  I couldn't just let this go on.
[00:32:36]  So, you, that clip from Don was in September of 18, a couple months after this alleged incident.
[00:32:41]  And by the following summer, you had filed your complaint.
[00:32:45]  Have you ever filed a lawsuit before?

=== Seeking Justice Beyond Monetary Damages (03:41) ===

[00:32:48]  Well, I had, you know, I was working for a company one time and they owed me a bunch of money.
[00:32:53]  So I had to seek representation on that, but that was a whole separate incident.
[00:32:58]  Okay.
[00:32:58]  So that time and this time?
[00:33:01]  Yes.
[00:33:01]  These are the only two times.
[00:33:03]  So, in the lawsuit, let me ask you it's a lawsuit for assault and battery, emotional infliction of.
[00:33:09]  Intentional infliction of emotional distress as well.
[00:33:13]  And the complaint alleges that you've been, quote, emotionally devastated, that this has caused even suicidal ideations on your part and placed you in fear for your safety.
[00:33:24]  Does that overstate things?
[00:33:26]  Well, in the beginning, not at all.
[00:33:29]  I've dealt with all kinds of depression and anxiety.
[00:33:33]  I mean, I'm dealing with something this serious and a powerful man that, you know, and I'm reading stuff online about people saying that I'm going to get murdered before it ever gets to trial.
[00:33:44]  Or I'm going to get Epsteined, or I better watch my back.
[00:33:48]  And, you know, I've had to take measures to protect myself.
[00:33:51]  And I've, you know, basically been living in the shadows for since this all became public.
[00:33:58]  So you are suing the complaint.
[00:34:01]  I don't know if the complaint actually alleges this number, but your lawyers at least have made public that the demand is for $1.5 million.
[00:34:09]  I know your lawyers came up with that number.
[00:34:12]  But has he offered to settle this case with you?
[00:34:15]  For any amount?
[00:34:16]  Yes.
[00:34:17]  So typically in a negotiation time, it's unethical to talk about money, but CNN quickly labeled me an extortionist and said I was trying to get $1.5 million from him.
[00:34:29]  And that's not exactly accurate.
[00:34:31]  My attorneys came up with a number.
[00:34:33]  I told them in the beginning, money is not what I'm after here.
[00:34:38]  I just want to not live the rest of my life in regret and to have a clear conscience and have closure from this situation.
[00:34:44]  I don't want to carry this weight with me forever.
[00:34:46]  I mean, there's no amount of money that.
[00:34:48]  Cancels out the emotional toll and the psychological toll that you go through when you're dealing with stuff like this.
[00:34:56]  And, you know, he's made three separate attempts almost at a half a million dollars to try and get me to be quiet, but my silence can't be bought.
[00:35:06]  This is not about me trying to get money.
[00:35:09]  So he did.
[00:35:10]  He made three settlement offers to you near the half million mark.
[00:35:15]  Correct.
[00:35:16]  And is there any amount that you would take to settle the case?
[00:35:21]  At this point, I just want my life back.
[00:35:23]  You know, without, I don't see any kind of settlement happening without an admission of guilt or an apology.
[00:35:32]  But I don't, I mean, I seriously doubt with his ego and pride that that's going to happen.
[00:35:38]  But that would be a start if he said he was sorry and admitted that he messed up.
[00:35:44]  You know, as much as the amount of motions that I've gone through, it's like a roller coaster.
[00:35:49]  You go up and down and highs and lows.
[00:35:51]  And as much as I'm, Don't really like him.
[00:35:56]  In order for me to get through this and to not carry this weight with me the rest of my life, I have to eventually forgive him and.
[00:36:02]  Even Don Lemon, as much as I don't agree with anything he really says, can be redeemed.
[00:36:10]  And hopefully he gets his life together.
[00:36:12]  I hope this is a reckoning for him.
[00:36:14]  Well, it's not.
[00:36:16]  It's not, because we've seen Don Lemon on camera since this happened, before this happened.
[00:36:21]  And I've said before on this program, I've made no secret of my view, that he sees himself as the moral arbiter of us all.

=== CNN's Complicity In This Scandal (03:15) ===

[00:36:29]  And that is one of the many reasons why your story is interesting, because as so often is the case, those who mean to lecture us the most.
[00:36:37]  On camera from these highfalutin anchor chairs, tend to have something that they don't want us to know.
[00:36:44]  And in his case, this may be one, I don't know of how many.
[00:36:47]  But we put together just a little flavor for the audience of Don Lemon and his moral preening, his mocking of half of America, and his obvious high opinion of himself when it comes to morals and doing the right thing.
[00:37:06]  Here's a little bit of that.
[00:37:08]  Donald Trump couldn't find Ukraine on a map if you had the letter U and a picture of an actual physical crane next to it.
[00:37:15]  He knows that this is, you know, an administration defined by ignorance of the world.
[00:37:20]  The people who aided and abetted Trump are stupid.
[00:37:22]  I've lived in several red states.
[00:37:24]  There are a lot of friends who I had to really get rid of.
[00:37:26]  Credulous boomer rube demo that backs Donald Trump that wants to think that Donald Trump's a smart one and they're, oh, y'all elitists are dumb.
[00:37:37]  They're taking down the statues and crime is rising and they fund police.
[00:37:41]  Oh, my gosh, it's so.
[00:37:42]  Bad.
[00:37:42]  You voted for Trump.
[00:37:44]  You voted for the person who the Klan supported.
[00:37:48]  You voted for the person who Nazis support.
[00:37:52]  You elitist with your geography and your maps and your spelling, even though my math and your reading.
[00:37:58]  If you're not going to get vaccinated, you don't want to social distance, you don't want to wear a mask, then maybe you don't want to go to the hospital when you get sick.
[00:38:05]  We have to stop demonizing people and realize the biggest terror threat in this country is white men.
[00:38:14]  Your geography, knowing other countries, sipping your latte, all those lines on the map.
[00:38:22]  Only the Melitis know where Ukraine is.
[00:38:24]  I think we have to stop coddling people when it comes to this and the vaccine, saying, oh, you can't shame them.
[00:38:31]  You can't call them stupid.
[00:38:32]  You can't call them silly.
[00:38:33]  Yes, they are.
[00:38:34]  The people who are not getting vaccines, who are believing the lies on the internet instead of science, it's time to start shaming them.
[00:38:42]  What else?
[00:38:42]  Or leave them behind.
[00:38:43]  Hold on, hold on.
[00:38:44]  Sorry.
[00:38:46]  That was good.
[00:38:47]  Sorry.
[00:38:47]  Rick, that was a good one.
[00:38:49]  I needed that.
[00:38:51]  What has it been like for you to see him on the air night after night saying things like that?
[00:38:57]  Just watching that montage makes me so, like, it just does something to me that I can't even.
[00:39:05]  I mean, the man, his moral compass points right into the gutter.
[00:39:12]  I mean, the things that he says, I don't know if it's just marching orders from Jeff Zucker and, you know, Because you look at the people that he works with, Jeffrey Tubin masturbating on Zoom and Chris Cuomo.
[00:39:26]  He had a producer that came out and said that he assaulted her.
[00:39:32]  This is who these people are.
[00:39:34]  And it's really sad that there are some people out there in the world that really take what they're saying as the truth because it's disgusting.

=== Questioning Media Power Brokers (15:04) ===

[00:39:45]  Up next, I'm going to ask Dustin whether he's taken a polygraph and also why he thinks CNN, which Bizarrely, it has inserted itself in the middle of this.
[00:39:54]  What does CNN have to do with this?
[00:39:55]  Don Lyman wasn't even arguably on company time when this alleged incident took place.
[00:40:00]  So, what are they doing?
[00:40:01]  Why are they injecting themselves into this?
[00:40:03]  We'll talk about their role in it and why Dustin says that they are complicit.
[00:40:07]  That's in two minutes.
[00:40:09]  First, though, I want to tell you, everyone, that you can listen to The Megan Kelly Show live on SiriusXM Triumph Channel 111 every weekday at noon East.
[00:40:17]  And if you want to check out the full video show or just clips, you can do so by subscribing to my YouTube channel, youtube.comslash Megan Kelly.
[00:40:25]  And there you can see some of the pictures that Dustin gave us in this case.
[00:40:28]  Or if you prefer an audio podcast, go ahead and subscribe and download on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher.
[00:40:34]  Or wherever you get your podcast, that's an easy way of sharing the show just in case your friends or family missed it when it aired live on Triumph.
[00:40:41]  And by the way, on the podcast version, you can check out our full archives with now more than 195 shows, edging up on our 200th show since we launched last September of 2020.
[00:40:53]  Okay, back to Dustin in one second.
[00:40:57]  Electroinfo Turn.
[00:41:00]  No, I'm not going to say anything.
[00:41:01]  The Costa is a very good team in the world.
[00:41:03]  And we see that the team is a very good team.
[00:41:08]  Elephant, we start, she clearly, son since we are going to go to the ultimate strum.
[00:41:15]  And apropos, we can't wait until we get to the next level.
[00:41:19]  Who's the next level?
[00:41:21]  Who's the next level?
[00:41:30]  Dustin, have you guys engaged in any sort of arbitration or mediation prior to this trial?
[00:41:36]  Yeah, there were negotiations going on with, you know, a settlement attempt and everything.
[00:41:45]  At the beginning of all of it going public, I went and took a polygraph and produced that to them.
[00:41:53]  But it just didn't work.
[00:41:55]  It fell through.
[00:41:56]  Well, what did you take the polygraph?
[00:41:58]  Yeah, I went down.
[00:42:00]  And if you've ever taken a polygraph before, you know how nerve wracking that is.
[00:42:03]  And I went down to Fort Lauderdale and got plugged up to this whole machine.
[00:42:08]  And as the guy was plugging me in, I was shaking a little bit.
[00:42:11]  And he said, Don't worry, if it was based on nerves, everybody would fail.
[00:42:15]  And I told him, I'm not.
[00:42:17]  I'm not nervous because I'm not telling the truth.
[00:42:19]  I'm just nervous because I've never done this before.
[00:42:21]  And I did the polygraph.
[00:42:23]  And when I finished, he said, there's, you know, technically there's no such thing as a perfect polygraph, but you're about as damn close to perfect as possible.
[00:42:31]  And it's obvious to me that this has affected you very much.
[00:42:36]  And I hope you get justice.
[00:42:39]  Wow.
[00:42:39]  And do you know whether your lawyers provided a copy of that to the other side?
[00:42:45]  To my knowledge, yes.
[00:42:46]  I mean, this was part of the negotiation in the beginning, you know, before.
[00:42:51]  We ended up filing the claim.
[00:42:53]  Yeah.
[00:42:53]  And just not to get legal on you, but mediation and arbitration are two terms of art.
[00:42:59]  You know, you have like a professional mediator trying to settle the dispute or a professional arbitrator where it's like a mini trial.
[00:43:06]  Those are two different things from just a negotiation attempting a settlement.
[00:43:10]  So, did you mean to say yes to an official mediation or arbitration?
[00:43:15]  To my knowledge, I don't know of any of that that happened.
[00:43:18]  Okay.
[00:43:18]  Okay.
[00:43:18]  Yeah.
[00:43:19]  So, there were settlement discussions.
[00:43:20]  Now, do you know whether he has sat for a deposition?
[00:43:25]  I think, I believe so, yes.
[00:43:27]  Lemon was very short and sweet.
[00:43:30]  He's failed to produce a lot of discovery stuff that we've asked for.
[00:43:34]  Basically, he has the I'm not gonna and you're not gonna make me kind of attitude.
[00:43:40]  I assume, to your knowledge, he has not gone under a polygraph examination.
[00:43:45]  I highly doubt it.
[00:43:48]  And can I ask you about CNN and its role in this?
[00:43:51]  You have sued Don Lemon.
[00:43:54]  Just Don Lemon, right?
[00:43:55]  Yep.
[00:43:56]  You have not sued CNN?
[00:43:58]  No.
[00:43:59]  Yeah, because you can't.
[00:44:00]  He didn't do this, even arguably, in his role as a CNN host.
[00:44:03]  It's not something, you know, if you were sitting across from him on the set while he was interviewing you and he did this, that'd be one thing.
[00:44:09]  But no, so you've sued Don Lemon.
[00:44:11]  And yet, what do I see in the press but CNN and its spokesperson commenting on this, denying your account in a statement to Fox News, saying that you seem to bear animosity towards CNN?
[00:44:26]  Quote, the plaintiff in this lawsuit has previously displayed a pattern of contempt for CNN on his social media accounts.
[00:44:32]  We'll get to that in one second.
[00:44:33]  This claim follows his unsuccessful threats and demands for an exorbitant amount of money.
[00:44:38]  From Don Lemon.
[00:44:39]  Don categorically denies these claims, and this matter does not merit any further comment at this time.
[00:44:45]  Let me just tell you something, Dustin.
[00:44:47]  I don't know what the hell CNN is doing injecting itself in this, making a comment on Don's behalf.
[00:44:51]  This is Don's problem.
[00:44:53]  This is not CNN's problem.
[00:44:54]  It may be their problem in the minds of viewers, but it is totally out of line for CNN PR to be injecting itself into this because CNN doesn't just represent Don Lemon.
[00:45:04]  CNN represents men and young women and others inside the building at CNN who need to understand.
[00:45:10]  That they have someone fair and impartial at the helm when cases like this may come up, even against their most powerful, most successful, richest anchors.
[00:45:19]  And what they are telegraphing and injecting themselves into this case about which they know absolutely nothing because they weren't there is that they don't give a damn about the employees who work underneath Don Lemon or who might feel intimidated by Don Lemon or Chris Cuomo for that matter, another problem on their hands.
[00:45:34]  All they care about is how they look in the press and how Don looks in the press.
[00:45:39]  And it's disgusting.
[00:45:40]  This statement was totally inappropriate and out of line.
[00:45:43]  What did you think?
[00:45:45]  Correct.
[00:45:45]  I mean, they're complicit in this.
[00:45:47]  Their comments have, you know, influenced people to the fact where they're calling me a liar.
[00:45:53]  And there's been many other websites that have taken their words and formulated their own narrative on who I am and what I've done and what I'm looking for and my intentions here.
[00:46:04]  And if they didn't, you know, they didn't know the facts, they might not have known that he's offered me almost a half a million dollars in settlement offers multiple times.
[00:46:13]  And they might not have known about that.
[00:46:15]  You know, who are they to speak up on behalf of what's going on between Don Lemon and I?
[00:46:20]  They inserted themselves into this.
[00:46:22]  And quite frankly, I think they're complicit in this.
[00:46:26]  This reminds me of the time when Linda Vester accused Tom Broca at NBC.
[00:46:31]  She'd worked for NBC for over a decade.
[00:46:33]  And she came out 20 plus years later and said, in the course of the Me Too movement, this is what happened between Tom Broca and me.
[00:46:40]  And NBC PR came out knee jerk, defended Tom, attacked Linda.
[00:46:46]  Attacked her.
[00:46:46]  And, you know, my first instinct there was too, you're not Tom Brokaw's PR shop.
[00:46:52]  You represent NBC News, not Tom Brokaw.
[00:46:55]  And this statement implicates far more than just Tom Brokaw.
[00:46:59]  It's out of line and it sends exactly the wrong message to your employees than the one you should be sending.
[00:47:05]  CNN ought to be embarrassed about this.
[00:47:06]  They ought to revoke it.
[00:47:07]  It's not too late.
[00:47:08]  And they ought to let Don Lemon, who has plenty of money, hire his own PR operative.
[00:47:14]  For the record, in the case, Don has denied the allegations.
[00:47:20]  Denied that he assaulted you in any manner and denied your damages, and says he's often the one subject to racist and homophobic harassment.
[00:47:29]  We're going to pick it up there right after this quick break.
[00:47:31]  Don't go away.
[00:47:52]  Just to pick up on where I left off, what they have said in their response to your lawsuit, Dustin, is this is Don Lemon, defendant through his lawyers, he says, is a public figure.
[00:48:02]  And is often subjected to racist and homophobic harassment.
[00:48:06]  Strangers approach defendant in public frequently, at times intrusively and repeatedly.
[00:48:11]  It is denied that defendant assaulted plaintiff in any manner.
[00:48:16]  Why do you think they're including that Don Lemon is allegedly often subjected to racist and homophobic harassment and approached frequently in ways that are intrusive and repeated?
[00:48:27]  I mean, just to change the narrative, take the focus off of what he did, you know, he.
[00:48:34]  He has no other truth, the truth is not on his side, so he's going to come up with other ways, either bullying or smearing or demonizing me, um, to control the narrative.
[00:48:46]  Can you tell me a little bit about how you've how Lemon's attorneys have handled themselves on his behalf in this case?
[00:48:53]  I know there was an allegation by you that they have made they may have released some of your confidential information publicly.
[00:49:01]  What happened specifically?
[00:49:03]  Um, we had a file sharing app during discovery, and um, both.
[00:49:07]  My counsel and their counsel would share this stuff and they opened it to the public and members of the public breached it.
[00:49:15]  What seems to be an attempt to dox me or to release my private confidential information.
[00:49:21]  What was in there without doxing yourself?
[00:49:23]  I mean, I'm not asking you to tell us specifically, but generally, what was in there?
[00:49:27]  I don't know exactly, but it was just stuff pertinent to our case and discovery stuff that they just let put out there.
[00:49:37]  Why do you think Lemon's attorneys put that out to the public?
[00:49:40]  Why do you believe that they made it public?
[00:49:43]  I don't know why they've done a lot of the things they've done.
[00:49:45]  No, but for what do you believe, based on what do you believe that they released it?
[00:49:53]  You know, everything they've done has been unethical.
[00:49:57]  We have to hire investigators to find witnesses.
[00:50:01]  They've intimidated witnesses.
[00:50:03]  My therapist, who I've been speaking to, had to hire her own attorney because she was worried, like she was getting threatening and harassing phone calls from.
[00:50:13]  His counsel.
[00:50:14]  It's just everything they've done is to, is just, and blows my mind that it's, this is can even happen in today's world, you know?
[00:50:21]  But information that you provided to them confidential via this sharing app that allows parties to a litigation to share information, did you, did you wind up seeing it in the paper?
[00:50:31]  Or I mean, what, what led you to believe it had been released to the public?
[00:50:34]  I don't know.
[00:50:34]  I just, my, my counsel told me that they, they made it available to the general public.
[00:50:39]  I don't really know the details behind that.
[00:50:41]  You would have to speak to my counsel.
[00:50:42]  What, what, what remedy was pursued then?
[00:50:45]  Did you go to the judge?
[00:50:46]  What, what happened there?
[00:50:48]  I believe that there were talks with the judge, and I'm not sure if there was a motion or not.
[00:50:55]  To be honest, I try to stay out of all the legal stuff because it's just too overwhelming, and I'm still trying to get through life.
[00:51:04]  I have a job, and I have a family, and a girlfriend, and if I get a daily update, it weighs on me, and it's hard to focus.
[00:51:13]  What about CNN's allegation in their statement, in which they injected themselves, that You had to display, quote, a pattern of contempt for CNN on your social media accounts.
[00:51:24]  They post their evidence, and I'm going to put it on the screen, is a post by you.
[00:51:29]  You know the one I'm referring to.
[00:51:32]  It's got you standing in front of the CNN headquarters in Atlanta, and your caption is touring the CNN Center today.
[00:51:39]  This is long before anything allegedly happened.
[00:51:42]  This is 2017.
[00:51:43]  Touring the CNN Center today, or as Trump would say, the home of fake news, lol.
[00:51:49]  That's all you wrote.
[00:51:50]  So, is there something beyond this, Dustin?
[00:51:53]  No, I've never posted about them in any other way.
[00:51:57]  That was a day that I was working a trade show in Atlanta and I had a free day.
[00:52:01]  If I was so anti CNN, why would I pay money and spend half a day touring and seeing how the news was done or what I thought was the news?
[00:52:09]  But the only attention I ever gave CNN in the past was watching Anthony Bourdain, Hearts Unknown.
[00:52:18]  I could care less about CNN or Don Lemon until what happened to me.
[00:52:22]  And then I started paying attention and seeing what he and the network was all about.
[00:52:27]  Well, certainly since you filed the lawsuit, you've posted about them, but they seem to be referring to prior to bringing this case.
[00:52:34]  You didn't like CNN.
[00:52:35]  After the alleged incident, everybody understands why you wouldn't like CNN.
[00:52:39]  But if you had a pattern prior to, they're suggesting that's why you brought this case.
[00:52:45]  Is there more than this post?
[00:52:46]  No, not at all.
[00:52:48]  There's one post, and it was me quoting what Trump said about the thing.
[00:52:52]  And if they want to make this about politics, I didn't even vote in the 2016 election.
[00:52:57]  So they can, this isn't about race or gender or political affiliation or sexual orientation.
[00:53:02]  This is about right versus wrong.
[00:53:04]  And they're trying to find anything they can to demonize me and slander me and smear me and make me look like the bad guy.
[00:53:11]  That's because they can control the narrative with their media outlet.
[00:53:15]  And this is how the mainstream media has done this for years.
[00:53:19]  This is not the first time this has happened.
[00:53:22]  Don Lemon, when he kicked off his newly named show, they renamed it with his name in it, vowing to hold people accountable for their words and actions, but with grace.
[00:53:34]  With grace.
[00:53:35]  Yeah.
[00:53:36]  Has he lived up to that?
[00:53:37]  No, I mean, he started a new podcast with Chris Cuomo, and he also has credible allegations against him.
[00:53:43]  And it's called The Handoff.
[00:53:44]  It should be more like the hands off podcast because it just blows my mind that these people are still on the air.
[00:53:51]  And after credible allegations, you know, whatever's going to happen to him will happen to him.
[00:53:57]  All I can do is speak my truth and stand up for myself and know that I stood up to that man.
[00:54:02]  And for the rest of my life, I'll have that.
[00:54:04]  But, you know, I don't have any faith that CNN's ever going to do the right thing.
[00:54:08]  I mean, look who they employ.
[00:54:11]  If you do go to trial, are you prepared to testify and take the stand?
[00:54:15]  Absolutely.
[00:54:16]  It's when you're telling the truth, it's easy.
[00:54:18]  And when you're lying, that's the difficult part.
[00:54:22]  So he'll have to get on the stand and share his story too.
[00:54:27]  So I'm ready for that.
[00:54:29]  Yeah.
[00:54:29]  What should happen to him if you get a jury verdict in your favor?
[00:54:33]  No, that's not up to me.
[00:54:35]  Again, I can just stand up for myself.
[00:54:39]  Quite frankly, do I think he deserves to have a platform to influence the minds of?
[00:54:44]  Of the world?
[00:54:44]  And no, absolutely not.
[00:54:46]  But again, I don't put anything past CNN.

=== What Happens If We Win (03:17) ===

[00:54:50]  I mean, they have just, they're rife with sexual predators and deviants and other people.
[00:54:56]  So I have no doubt that they're probably not going to do the right thing in this situation, no matter what the outcome is.
[00:55:04]  What do you think people need to know as they watch Don Lemon at 10 o'clock on CNN at night?
[00:55:10]  Just, I mean, he's, look at the way he comes at, Kanye West and Nicki Minaj, and just comes at these people.
[00:55:17]  He was just down here in Florida.
[00:55:19]  He's been bashing Florida for a year now during the COVID thing.
[00:55:23]  And then he comes down here and without a mask, and he's sitting out in Palm Beach by a pool at a hotel.
[00:55:28]  I mean, he's just the biggest hypocrite.
[00:55:30]  And, you know, this guy claims to be a champion of sexual assault survivors, but then he goes out in public and commits, you know, commits sexual assault.
[00:55:39]  So I just hope people open up to this and to who he really is and who this network really is.
[00:55:46]  This farce of a Me Too movement.
[00:55:48]  It can't be partisan.
[00:55:50]  You can't pick and choose who you decide to stand up for.
[00:55:53]  I haven't had any support by them because Don Lemon's part of their whole crew.
[00:55:58]  And this happens far and wide.
[00:56:01]  And it happens to men too.
[00:56:02]  I mean, me too should be for men too.
[00:56:05]  You know, like it doesn't, you can't pick and choose who you support.
[00:56:09]  And when, especially when they're going through probably the most difficult thing of their lives, anybody that speaks up, I give them all the credit in the world because I now know how difficult it is.
[00:56:21]  And mental health is a very real thing.
[00:56:23]  You don't, it's not like a broken arm or a black eye that you carry around and people see that you're hurting on the outside, you're hurting on the inside.
[00:56:31]  It's something that you carry with you, and I'm just looking forward to being happy again and putting this behind me.
[00:56:38]  I know it's been a rough year plus.
[00:56:40]  You've had lots of deaths in the family.
[00:56:44]  I can see the stress weighing on you.
[00:56:46]  The litigation is stressful under the best of circumstances, but I know you haven't had the best of circumstances over the past couple of years.
[00:56:53]  Walk us through what your life's been like.
[00:56:58]  I don't even know where to begin.
[00:56:59]  Well, you know, in the beginning, you start off with anger and rage, but As time goes by, you know, you find ways to cope and to navigate through life.
[00:57:11]  I've had, you know, people tell me that I'm going to get murdered before it ever gets to trial.
[00:57:14]  Like, that's something you carry with you.
[00:57:16]  You know, my family members have been through this.
[00:57:20]  It's not, it doesn't just affect the person that's going through it, it's the entire, all my support group and my loved ones, my family members.
[00:57:28]  They've all been going through this, my poor mom.
[00:57:32]  But if I didn't have the support system, That I have, and you know, I went and sought therapy, and that has been one of the best things I've ever done.
[00:57:43]  I used to think it was weak to be you're admitting that you're weak if you have to go see a therapist, but I realized it's probably the strongest, bravest thing I've ever done, and it's helped a lot.
[00:57:53]  Um, but you know, I'm just ready to put this behind me.
[00:57:56]  Um, but we're almost at the end, and I've it's been a long journey, and uh, what's going to happen is going to happen.
[00:58:03]  We're going to have a jury of our peers decide, you know.

=== The Impact On Family And Friends (15:53) ===

[00:58:08]  Justice.
[00:58:08]  And once this is over, I can just get back to being a normal person.
[00:58:14]  You know, it's, I don't, I don't, I didn't seek this limelight.
[00:58:17]  I've turned down countless amounts of interviews, but, you know, I just felt like the world needs to know who this man really is.
[00:58:26]  You just on a personal note, are you, are you doing okay just in general?
[00:58:31]  I know you left, you're not, you're not in the Hamptons.
[00:58:33]  And what are you doing for a living?
[00:58:35]  Like, how are you doing personally?
[00:58:37]  I work in sales and, you know, I mean, I'm doing pretty good.
[00:58:40]  I've gotten stronger.
[00:58:41]  You know, when something really horrible happens to you, there's also some good in it.
[00:58:46]  And, you know, I've reevaluated a lot of things in my own life.
[00:58:50]  My faith has never been stronger.
[00:58:52]  I have a beautiful girlfriend that, you know, once we get this horrible ordeal over with, we plan on getting married and maybe starting a family.
[00:59:02]  I just want my life back.
[00:59:05]  Dustin Heiss, it was even more brave of you to come forward and tell this story given the media's predilection against.
[00:59:12]  You, as somebody who's accusing a very popular CNN figure who's, you know, he's been untouchable thus far.
[00:59:19]  I mean, totally untouchable.
[00:59:22]  And it's obviously more difficult for a straight male to come out as the sexual assault victim of a gay man, right?
[00:59:30]  Because then everybody jumps to conclusions about your sexuality that, you know, may not be objectively offensive, but that you might find offensive as a straight male.
[00:59:38]  You don't want to be said that you're not.
[00:59:40]  And that's been another layer that you've had to overcome.
[00:59:42]  And then the complete blackout by most outlets of your story.
[00:59:47]  It's been something to watch.
[00:59:49]  It's been frustrating for me as somebody who's interviewed accusers of Republicans, of Democrats, of people on both sides of the aisle.
[00:59:55]  It's amazing how people shut down when the person being accused is this beloved, woke, Sort of figure on the left in particular.
[01:00:04]  You didn't deserve that.
[01:00:05]  You didn't deserve the blackout.
[01:00:06]  And I think we'll all be watching as this case goes to trial.
[01:00:09]  I will predict, you don't have to comment on it.
[01:00:11]  I will predict he settles this case and that Don Lemon will never take the stand because the last thing he wants is for this to go before a jury.
[01:00:20]  Dustin, all the best to you.
[01:00:22]  And congrats, hopefully, on your future marriage with your friend.
[01:00:25]  I appreciate it.
[01:00:26]  Thank you so much.
[01:00:27]  Take care.
[01:00:28]  Wow, it's unbelievable.
[01:00:32]  That's what's been so aggravating to me.
[01:00:33]  You know, whenever I do these stories, I'll get trolled online saying, I now do the Trump accusers.
[01:00:38]  Guess what?
[01:00:38]  I did.
[01:00:39]  Find me another journalist in America who interviewed both Tara Reid and the Trump accusers.
[01:00:43]  There isn't one.
[01:00:44]  I'm it.
[01:00:46]  You know, I put on the Roy Moore accusers and I put on the Chris Cuomo.
[01:00:50]  Well, they wouldn't come on, but I put on Janice Dean, who accused Chris Cuomo, or not Chris Cuomo, Andrew Cuomo of other things.
[01:00:56]  And I put on Chris Cuomo's accuser because he's been accused too, as Dustin points out.
[01:01:01]  It's not, it shouldn't be.
[01:01:03]  About partisanship.
[01:01:05]  That's how the Me Too movement jumped the shark, right?
[01:01:08]  The Democrats made it about partisanship when they said, believe all women, right?
[01:01:13]  And they said that in the context of Brett Kavanaugh.
[01:01:16]  But then as soon as Joe Biden was accused, it was, except for that one, don't believe that one.
[01:01:19]  And this guy's story's been all but blacked out, right?
[01:01:23]  I'm sure the left wing media, certain pockets of it, would have put him on to excoriate him and try to defend Don Lemon.
[01:01:29]  But for the most part, there's been a collective, eh, doubt it.
[01:01:32]  Why is that?
[01:01:33]  You know, you heard Dustin speak about it, and we're going to speak about it a bit more with somebody I've been dying to talk to.
[01:01:38]  Her name is Emily.
[01:01:40]  Now, I hear her say Szczynski, but I think it's Jasinski.
[01:01:46]  She's the culture editor for The Federalist.
[01:01:48]  I listen to you all the time, Emily.
[01:01:49]  You think I'd know by now, and director at the National Journalism Center and visiting fellow at the Independent Women's Forum.
[01:01:55]  Will you say it for me so I know once and for all?
[01:01:58]  Oh, of course.
[01:01:58]  It's Jasinski, but I'm not offended at all when people get it wrong because it's an easy one to get wrong.
[01:02:04]  Is it Polish?
[01:02:06]  Are you Polish by heritage?
[01:02:08]  Russian, as far as I know, but far back.
[01:02:11]  I mean, my first husband was Polish by heritage.
[01:02:14]  His last name was Kendall, but the original was, I think, Kozhakowski.
[01:02:18]  And it was spelled totally dissimilarly from what you would expect that to look like on papers.
[01:02:23]  Anyway, thank you for indulging me.
[01:02:25]  So I know you've been listening to the interview with Dustin, and that's sort of where I want to pick it up the Me Too movement and how it's so selectively applied by the journalists, the media, who really are the ones who make it.
[01:02:37]  You know, the case is or is not a Me Too case based on what the media decides.
[01:02:43]  Yeah, and I mean, this case and your interview, I think, illustrated this clearly and damningly so.
[01:02:49]  This meets the standards for a Me Too allegation that the media has set over the course of the last few years.
[01:02:55]  There's no question that Dustin's allegation clears the hurdle, but that standard is applied on a partisan basis, as you say.
[01:03:03]  But I think the partisan standard is downstream of a different standard, which is that you can sort of, it's the convenience, the convenient morality of.
[01:03:13]  The sort of media power brokers.
[01:03:14]  And so it's not even so much that they protect people who are Democrats, it's that they protect people in their circle who almost always happen to have this sort of left of center cultural worldview.
[01:03:26]  And I think that's what we see with Don Lemon.
[01:03:28]  I mean, that's why people are intimidated.
[01:03:29]  The videotape question how interesting was that?
[01:03:32]  The videotapes that almost certainly exist just disappear.
[01:03:35]  Well, it's because Don Lemon is a powerful person.
[01:03:38]  And if Don Lemon personally contacts you, you might be easily convinced to.
[01:03:44]  Just harmlessly delete some tapes, or so you think.
[01:03:47]  And so, yeah, I think that one of the very important things here that that interview illustrated is the standard of what constitutes a credible MeToo allegation for Don Lemon, for CNN, and for the broader legacy media.
[01:04:01]  Is met by Dustin's allegation.
[01:04:03]  Yeah.
[01:04:04]  And they would be, even if it were just Dustin.
[01:04:07]  But it's not.
[01:04:08]  He's got George, George Gonullis, who went on the record by name with direct quotes to FoxNews.com, who's got, you know, had a two week relationship with Dustin and his boss.
[01:04:19]  It's not like, oh, they're lifelong best friends or it's his mom.
[01:04:21]  You know, I mean, this is somebody who has no reason to lie for him.
[01:04:24]  In fact, to the contrary, he, you know, Dustin talked about how George suffered an employment penalty later once a very well known celebrity found out that he had gone on the record about the Don Lemon case.
[01:04:35]  You know, most Most of the people that George needs to be connected to would not look favorably on him testifying against Don Lemon, but he's going to do it.
[01:04:42]  He's going to show up at trial.
[01:04:44]  The point is not whether George and Dustin are telling the truth, though there's no reason to disbelieve them.
[01:04:49]  I mean, we've been given absolutely no reason to disbelieve them.
[01:04:52]  The point is is this a story that the media would normally be covering if Don's name weren't Don Lemon, but it were something like Tucker Carlson?
[01:05:02]  Oh my gosh.
[01:05:03]  They would be ravenous about the story for Tucker.
[01:05:07]  I mean, really.
[01:05:09]  I honestly cannot imagine because it would be such a feeding frenzy.
[01:05:12]  It's hard to even quantify what that would look like or even the scope of it.
[01:05:16]  It would be like a nonstop.
[01:05:17]  You know what it would be?
[01:05:18]  It would be a media, it would be a news cycle in and of itself.
[01:05:21]  It wouldn't even just be sort of a secondary story, it would be its own news cycle.
[01:05:25]  There would be a pressure campaign for every one of Fox News' advertisers, even if they're not on Tucker's show, to back out.
[01:05:31]  I mean, it would be like this sweeping campaign.
[01:05:35]  And the question also is the Me Too movement, I think, set a couple of standards.
[01:05:39]  And one of them I would say is objectionable.
[01:05:41]  That unnamed accusers can just go in.
[01:05:43]  The Aziz Ansari story, perfect example of that.
[01:05:46]  It did engender a lot of backlash.
[01:05:48]  But there were also other standards that said listen, this stuff is actually completely newsworthy.
[01:05:52]  These are powerful people who are getting away with sexual assault in some cases, sexual abuse.
[01:05:57]  And they're getting away with it because the media is too intimidated to talk about it because they send Noah Oppenheim a bottle of vodka or whatever it is, and they're able to sort of get away with it.
[01:06:09]  And that standard, where there was credible reporting, there were credible accusations.
[01:06:15]  That's an important standard.
[01:06:16]  And not only does Dustin's allegation meet the first standard, it actually meets the second standard, as you say, because he's got witnesses, he's got detailed, credible testimony.
[01:06:26]  He's going on the record, no ulterior motives, no matter how far CNN tries to scrape the bottom of the barrel with one single joking tweet.
[01:06:34]  And this is sort of immoral behavior.
[01:06:36]  And that's one thing not to get lost in all of this.
[01:06:39]  This is immoral behavior, A, from somebody, B, who tries to be a moral arbiter and has a nightly platform by a major corporate news network.
[01:06:47]  To do that day in and day out.
[01:06:49]  There's so much wrong with this story on just about every different layer.
[01:06:53]  And that's why the media's silence is pretty damning.
[01:06:57]  It's true.
[01:06:58]  And I have to say, I mean, if Dustin were just about shaking Don Lemon down, $400,000, almost $500,000 would probably be the number one would walk away at, right?
[01:07:07]  This guy, he's not backing down.
[01:07:09]  He doesn't want to be silenced.
[01:07:10]  He's ready to go to trial.
[01:07:12]  Again, I predict Don Lemon will pay him.
[01:07:14]  He'll pay him the full amount rather than take the stand at a trial.
[01:07:18]  It's just, I don't think that's ever going to happen.
[01:07:20]  But we are now into serious money and still the media doesn't cover it.
[01:07:24]  Now we're two months away from trial.
[01:07:27]  It survived two attempts to have it dismissed, this case, and still the media doesn't cover it.
[01:07:32]  I mean, at what point do you say the thing has legs and we're going to need to cover it the same as we would if it were Sean Hannity, right?
[01:07:39]  But they won't.
[01:07:40]  And the piece of it that hasn't gotten any attention is how CNN injected itself into this thing to try to say Don didn't do it and this guy's.
[01:07:51]  An activist against CNN, which isn't true.
[01:07:53]  There's no proof of that.
[01:07:55]  The same way NBC did for Tom Brokaw, it's totally, at every turn, CNN makes the wrong move.
[01:08:01]  When it comes to telegraphing to its young employees whose side they are on if an allegation comes up, I was so glad you made that point because it gets to this other element, which is that it's not even so much partisan as it is the partisanship is downstream of this like media clubbiness and powerful people being clubby.
[01:08:19]  And that CNN represents, to your point, women and men who would probably want to know that their allegations would be taken seriously.
[01:08:27]  And yet the network is going in on something they don't know anything about.
[01:08:31]  They weren't there.
[01:08:32]  And by the way, a completely credible allegation.
[01:08:35]  And weighing in on the side of its anchor, actually trying to smear the accuser.
[01:08:40]  I mean, it's so grossly inappropriate, but it does show that if you're Don Lemon, you actually don't just have Don Lemon and the super expensive, powerful attorneys Don Lemon can hire.
[01:08:50]  You have all of your friends in the media who you can give a call and say, listen, this thing's not true.
[01:08:55]  You can try to pressure them out of publishing it.
[01:08:57]  And you have your own major corporate entity that is going to go to bat for you because you would cost them money if you went somewhere or if something happened to your brand because it's.
[01:09:07]  Their brand.
[01:09:08]  Same thing happened with Chris Cuomo, right?
[01:09:10]  I mean, like, there's a pattern.
[01:09:13]  100%.
[01:09:14]  A pattern, and it shows how they sort of love to be the moral arbiters, the moral preening, and those clips you play just make people sick to their stomachs.
[01:09:22]  They absolutely should.
[01:09:23]  It also shows how the media doesn't understand how infuriating that is to the rest of the country.
[01:09:27]  They don't understand how that animated a lot of people to go to the polls in 2016 in ways that shocked them.
[01:09:35]  That's a perfect place to pick it up.
[01:09:38]  I'll let you finish your point and then I'll tell you because right after this, we're going to get into.
[01:09:41]  What Saturday Night Live did with respect to Tuesday's election, because that sort of moral preening and scoffing that you saw in that long Don Lemon montage continues.
[01:09:51]  It's in hint and fairness to him, it's far from just Don Lemon.
[01:09:55]  But go ahead, finish your point.
[01:09:56]  I was just going to say they love to be the moral arbiters, and they're some of the least moral people in our country.
[01:10:02]  Yes, exactly right.
[01:10:03]  So we'll show you that in one second.
[01:10:05]  We're going to play the SNL clip and get into some of the things that are happening culturally since Emily is the culture editor at the Federalist.
[01:10:11]  And I love listening to her on the podcast.
[01:10:13]  You used to listen to Ben Dominich, now he's not doing it as much.
[01:10:16]  And I love Ben, but Emily, I gotta say, you're an upgrade.
[01:10:19]  He's awesome, but you're an upgrade.
[01:10:29]  So, Emily, SNL comes out last night and plenty of things to discuss.
[01:10:40]  I mean, I for one really thought they should have taken that Microsoft opener with like, I am blonde with blue eyes and I have white skin and I did bad things to Native Americans.
[01:10:50]  Whatever that long period, but no, they left that goodness on the editing room floor and instead went.
[01:10:56]  This is just so telling.
[01:10:58]  This is their take on Virginia and why it happened.
[01:11:01]  Watch, Doug Janine.
[01:11:04]  Thank you for having me.
[01:11:05]  My win in Virginia proves that people are deeply concerned about education.
[01:11:10]  And who are most of your voters?
[01:11:12]  People who didn't go to college.
[01:11:14]  Excellent.
[01:11:14]  Now, critical race theory is something you talked about a lot.
[01:11:19]  What is critical race theory?
[01:11:21]  Uh, simple it's what got me elected.
[01:11:23]  I invited the leader of my parental task force to share her recommendations on dangerous material that should be banned.
[01:11:30]  When my son brought home the book Beloved by Toni Morrison, I put down my copy of Fifty Shades and said, no.
[01:11:39]  A woman named Toni, not in my America.
[01:11:42]  So a group of parents and I put together our list of books that should never be allowed in the classroom.
[01:11:48]  Polls?
[01:11:49]  Sounds sexual.
[01:11:51]  Pride and Prejudice?
[01:11:52]  Prejudice is fine.
[01:11:54]  But pride is a term that has been co opted by the gays.
[01:11:58]  That's disgusting.
[01:12:00]  That's what they think.
[01:12:01]  Of America.
[01:12:02]  It's also just the mediocrity of our educated sort of like elites in the perfect form because it's these jokes aren't funny.
[01:12:10]  They're not rooted in any reality.
[01:12:12]  This is like completely not what happened in Virginia.
[01:12:14]  Our team at the Firewalls was out in Loudoun County reporting on some of the parent activists.
[01:12:18]  Black Americans, immigrants I mean, there's so many people who were upset by the real things that were happening in Loudoun County and in their state that motivated it.
[01:12:27]  So to just, and the college educated barb, the people who didn't go to college jab.
[01:12:32]  Is also a perfect indictment on the contemporary left and how it sort of morphed from a movement that wanted to represent labor and the working class into a movement that actually actively has contempt for the working class because on these cultural issues, they look down on the working class and actually they actually regularly implicate the working class in all kinds of evil.
[01:12:55]  There's a tweet going around now saying if you're not black and you're using the term woke pejoratively, it's a racial slur.
[01:13:02]  It's like actually amazing how the way that we've inflated the definitions of racism.
[01:13:07]  Bigotry and hatred implicates everybody who doesn't happen to be an educated cultural leftist elite in all of these terrible things that we have worked so hard in this country, spilled blood, sweat, tears to stigmatize and to erase from our culture is remarkable.
[01:13:24]  And that I think really does show the contempt they have for people who are outside of their class.
[01:13:30]  They didn't even make a joke.
[01:13:31]  They just said they're not college educated.
[01:13:33]  There's not even a joke there.
[01:13:34]  That's the punchline.
[01:13:35]  The language policing, by the way, is so annoying.
[01:13:38]  So you can't say woke now unless you're.
[01:13:40]  Black, and you're saying it in a positive way.
[01:13:43]  If you say it in a way that's negative and you're not black, then it's a racial slur.
[01:13:46]  Well, woke, You don't control me.
[01:13:50]  I'm going to say what I want.
[01:13:51]  It's like, I remember years ago, I was talking to Bernie Goldberg.
[01:13:54]  This is like, you know, a harbinger of things to come.
[01:13:57]  And he used the term midget.
[01:13:58]  And I'm like, you're not supposed to say midget.
[01:14:00]  You're supposed to say little person.

=== Defining Woke Culture Today (11:31) ===

[01:14:01]  This is live on the air.
[01:14:02]  And his response was midget, midget, midget, midget.
[01:14:05]  And I was like, you know, because I'm on television, we're all like, oh, he said the thing.
[01:14:10]  But honestly, it's like, they leave you no choice.
[01:14:13]  The word policing, the Thought policing.
[01:14:16]  And to your point, that was the line, right?
[01:14:19]  Oh, it's people who did not go to college because they could not possibly give two shits what happens to their children in K 12 education.
[01:14:28]  They're too dumb.
[01:14:29]  It parlays perfectly to that Don Lemon segment.
[01:14:32]  Perfectly.
[01:14:33]  It's so perfect, actually.
[01:14:35]  Now, I was just going to go back to that because it shows how some of these people who are, and I think it's some mediocrity.
[01:14:41]  I think that's really the best word to use in the circumstance because their ideas go wildly unchallenged.
[01:14:46]  And that's why they think you just have all of these uneducated.
[01:14:48]  Rubes coming out to vote for Glenn Youngkin, white, uneducated rubes coming out to vote for Glenn Youngkin, who, by the way, the indications are that he did fantastically well with the Hispanic vote.
[01:14:59]  That's why they think this, because their ideas are never challenged, because they have created this world in which everything that is a challenge to them is actually bigotry and racism, and they don't have to listen to it.
[01:15:10]  And that's how this really sick ideology metastasized.
[01:15:15]  And it is our governing ideology, because it's coming from the heights of every major institution, whether it's Saturday Night Live.
[01:15:21]  Don Lemon, whose show is not very highly rated, but CNN is one of the top news websites in the world, one of the top websites in the world.
[01:15:29]  These are people with a whole lot of power, and they are the ones that are governing us with their entirely hollow and sick morality.
[01:15:37]  And it actually puts working people down, it puts normal people down.
[01:15:41]  People are getting really fed up with it.
[01:15:42]  That's how you get young.
[01:15:44]  So SNL using people's lack of a college education as a literal punchline is so counterproductive.
[01:15:51]  All you want parents who lined up for hours to speak out against mandatory masking or mandatory vaccines for young children or Really disgusting cultural filth in the library.
[01:16:04]  And we are not talking about pride and prejudice.
[01:16:07]  We are talking about, we've run the sound bite twice now.
[01:16:09]  I'm not going to do it a third time.
[01:16:11]  But books that actually glorify and lift up and encourage the rape of young boys, celebrate young boys performing oral sex on grown men.
[01:16:20]  I don't care who you are, that doesn't belong in a school library.
[01:16:23]  That's effed up.
[01:16:24]  And any sane person can see that.
[01:16:26]  You don't have to be Tipper Gore to say that's too much.
[01:16:31]  This is wrong.
[01:16:32]  They can diminish it until the cows come home.
[01:16:35]  Oh, the pride and prejudice.
[01:16:36]  Oh, the prejudice part is okay.
[01:16:38]  That's not what this movement was about.
[01:16:40]  And the real parents out there know it.
[01:16:43]  I mean, I look at it, Emily, and I know you're on the ground.
[01:16:45]  I think, okay, you can either learn this lesson right now on your own in the wake of last Tuesday, or you will learn it again next November when the voters go back to the polls in 2022.
[01:16:55]  I don't know if you had a similar reaction, but in the like couple of days after the 2016 election, I was like, So, is this the case now that the host of Celebrity Apprentice, literally somebody who was hosting that show not very long ago at that point, like 18 months ago, is it the case that if the host of Celebrity Apprentice defeats the former Secretary of State in a presidential election, like, is this what actually is the course correction that the media needs to embark upon?
[01:17:20]  Like, this has to do it, right?
[01:17:22]  And if anything, we saw the sort of like navel gazing and the reckoning for a couple of weeks.
[01:17:26]  You had Dean Bequat of the New York Times saying, we don't get religion.
[01:17:29]  But then after that first couple of weeks, They latched onto the racism, sexism, bigotry excuse and dug deeper and deeper and deeper into the trenches.
[01:17:37]  And that's where it's like, well, they can learn a lesson in November 2016.
[01:17:42]  They can learn it in Virginia, but they never internalize it.
[01:17:46]  And I don't know what could possibly make them undergo this course correction because it's a religion.
[01:17:50]  You know, this is like you're asking them to forfeit and to give up something that, in many good people's minds, and there's some people who are decent, they want to actually be fighting racism, but they have no idea what's happening in the rest of the country.
[01:18:02]  That is a good point.
[01:18:03]  That's a good point.
[01:18:04]  I can tell you, I have someone in my family who got addicted to drugs during the opioid crisis.
[01:18:09]  And dealing with that whole thing has just been very rough on the whole family.
[01:18:12]  But I would say, with respect to this person in our family, I describe my own behavior as if we could just, if we could just, if we could just, like that's how it is when you're dealing with an addict.
[01:18:22]  Like, if we could just get this person to go over this hump or get over this bridge or just get into this program or just, just, just, just.
[01:18:29]  And what you learn over the years is there's no gist.
[01:18:31]  There's just no gist that's going to be the solution.
[01:18:34]  It's a very tough nut to crack.
[01:18:37]  And you're saying the similar thing about the media.
[01:18:39]  Like Trump didn't help them be more self reflective.
[01:18:44]  In fact, he added to their own problems of, you know, blinders and not being able to understand the country and hating the working class at their own expense.
[01:18:53]  And Tuesday's election's not going to do it.
[01:18:55]  And this year's not going to, like, none of it's going to do it.
[01:18:58]  So basically, the country's got to forge on without them and vote out the people, not the James Carvels of the world, but the far left wokesters who want to police every thought and every word that we have.
[01:19:08]  Yeah, it's true.
[01:19:09]  And there also has to be, I mean, so what scares me, so I was born in the early 90s and I have, I live in a deep blue city.
[01:19:17]  And what I see is that it's not just sort of members of the elite media, there are a lot of people who have filtered through our system of higher education and even K through 12, as the Virginia case illuminated, who have this very deep, deeply ingrained sense of that empty morality that's not real morality.
[01:19:35]  They believe that all of these inflated definitions are not only accurate, but essential.
[01:19:40]  And there are a lot of good people who have been sort of Conditioned to see the world this way.
[01:19:44]  And that's a reckoning that goes beyond the media.
[01:19:47]  I mean, that's what happens if you talk to, as I know that you have, people at corporations.
[01:19:51]  A lot of times they say it's their own employees.
[01:19:53]  It's not even the threat of bad publicity from the media, but it's their own employees who are complaining.
[01:19:58]  About a heterodox thinker who might work for them or may have been hired to work for them or some sort of bad tweet.
[01:20:04]  It's their own employees that cause them to make these sort of woke decisions that end up resetting the standards for our entire society.
[01:20:12]  I have no sympathy for them.
[01:20:14]  Grow a parent.
[01:20:15]  Grow a parent.
[01:20:15]  Right, exactly.
[01:20:16]  Do what the journal did when they had some blowback for publishing Heather McDonald.
[01:20:20]  I'm so sorry you don't like it.
[01:20:21]  Bye.
[01:20:22]  Bye.
[01:20:23]  There are so many other things.
[01:20:24]  I used to say to my staff at all my jobs, they complain about the hours, they complain about working on the weekends.
[01:20:29]  I'm like, you know what?
[01:20:30]  There's this wonderful place, it's called Key Bank.
[01:20:32]  It's open from 9 to 4.
[01:20:33]  The hours are predictable.
[01:20:34]  You get to stand there all day long.
[01:20:35]  Nobody requires you to come in suddenly in the middle of the night to open up the cash register.
[01:20:39]  You go.
[01:20:40]  You got Keep It.
[01:20:41]  It's right there.
[01:20:42]  Go enjoy.
[01:20:42]  You chose to work at news.
[01:20:44]  It's a different environment.
[01:20:45]  And that's really what you need to say to people like, you want to go work at the perfect woke place?
[01:20:48]  I go work at MSNBC.
[01:20:50]  Great.
[01:20:50]  Or, by the way, NBC.
[01:20:52]  Go work.
[01:20:52]  It'll be wonderful for you.
[01:20:54]  Anyplace else?
[01:20:55]  Too bad.
[01:20:56]  This is part of America where we enjoy the free and thoughtful, even sometimes thoughtless.
[01:21:03]  Exchange of ideas, good, bad, and ugly.
[01:21:05]  All right, this is not without consequence because not only did we see last Tuesday, but today there's in the news a Suffolk USA Today poll.
[01:21:12]  The question is Do you hope Joe Biden will run for a second term?
[01:21:16]  63.7% of the populace says no.
[01:21:20]  Only 29% says yes.
[01:21:22]  By the way, they also asked Do you hope Trump runs?
[01:21:26]  58% said no.
[01:21:27]  We do not hope that he runs.
[01:21:29]  So those are still the frontrunners for each party, but it's not good for Joe Biden that.
[01:21:37]  Two thirds of the entire country does not want him to run again.
[01:21:41]  And I think actually the number in the crosstabs with independence was like 44%, which is terrible for somebody who wanted to build back better and restore a sense of normalcy.
[01:21:50]  And that was a huge part of his campaign.
[01:21:52]  He got into office and acted like he had a mandate to be a new Franklin Delano Roosevelt to implement a policy that was bigger than the New Deal.
[01:21:59]  And he's, I mean, that's not what people elected him to do.
[01:22:02]  And so the sort of recognition, I think the recognition among establishment Democrats that a lot of this.
[01:22:09]  Is bad for their brand and bad for their electoral chances, is the one thing where you can start to see the cultural arbiters, the tastemakers, the gatekeepers undergo a course correction.
[01:22:20]  And we saw sort of a preview of that last week where you had the Carvils of the world, you had Van Jones, you had the CNN panel sort of contemplating their echo chambers.
[01:22:28]  But then on the other hand, as the week wore on, sort of not unlike 2016, we saw everybody scapegoating racism and saying that even Winsome Sears, the Black woman who was elected lieutenant governor, even she's a foot soldier of white supremacy.
[01:22:43]  And so, you know, they always find a scapegoat because it's this religion.
[01:22:47]  But to the extent that elite Democrats start to see their power threatened, that might be the thing that drags them back.
[01:22:55]  I wonder.
[01:22:55]  So they've now passed the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill.
[01:23:00]  Nancy Pelosi managed to get that through thanks to the Republicans who crossed over to help her.
[01:23:05]  They haven't managed to pass the Build Back Better, the Triple B.
[01:23:10]  It's basically just social spending on the Democrats' wish list.
[01:23:14]  That's still.
[01:23:15]  Hangs out there.
[01:23:15]  And I do wonder whether it would be a gift to them if they can't get it through.
[01:23:21]  Like, if they get it through, I don't know whether Joe Biden's numbers go up or down because he wasn't elected with a mandate.
[01:23:28]  He wasn't elected to take the country far left, to spend trillions and trillions of dollars that we don't have while we're in the midst of an inflation problem.
[01:23:36]  And I do wonder whether, you know, some of these Democrats should be rooting for that to fail, for Manchin to really throw down or Sinema to say, you know what, on second thought, no way.
[01:23:46]  Because I, I don't know that that's going to help them.
[01:23:49]  Yeah, and that's a really good point because they are also used to having the entire media, entire legacy media be the support system for them.
[01:23:59]  So, like, it's their public relations arm.
[01:24:01]  So, if they pass something that Might be broadly unpopular with the country.
[01:24:04]  It's generally sort of popular with the media for ideological reasons.
[01:24:07]  And so they get this huge public relations boost.
[01:24:10]  But the legacy media is not what it used to be.
[01:24:12]  We're fragmenting into all of these little niches.
[01:24:14]  And so they're going to have, you know, if you have Joe Rogan reeling against your bill, if you have Megyn Kelly reeling against your bill, that matters a lot.
[01:24:22]  And so their PR arm is sort of disintegrating a little bit.
[01:24:25]  And I don't know that they fully realized that.
[01:24:27]  And they've also sort of screwed themselves with their own polling questions into thinking a lot of this huge social spending.
[01:24:33]  Is popular.
[01:24:34]  And those questions are asked in a way that, of course, the media would frame the issues.
[01:24:38]  But if that's not happening and people are just sort of actually finding the cold, hard reality of this, I think you're right.
[01:24:44]  I think it would be a gift for them if Mansion and Cinema Blockett, because this bill is just larded up with a lot of unpopular things.
[01:24:53]  That isn't to say parts of it aren't popular, but it's a huge, huge bill that can be spun and should be spun to show how negative it is in certain aspects.
[01:25:02]  I like larded up.
[01:25:03]  I'm going to use lard more in my In my daily vernacular, I think it's a surprising verb.
[01:25:10]  Yeah, it's very graphic.
[01:25:12]  It brings it home.
[01:25:13]  It really has a certain image.
[01:25:14]  It's not a good one, as we all know when swimsuit season comes around.
[01:25:20]  All right, so let's talk about the vaccine mandate because it suffered a blowback this past weekend when the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which oversees Texas, Louisiana, I think Mississippi, found the vaccine mandate unconstitutional.

=== Mandatory Vaccines For Children (03:34) ===

[01:25:32]  As the audience knows, Joe Biden refused to sort of put it in writing.
[01:25:36]  This executive order saying, you know, you've got to do it if you have 100 employees or more.
[01:25:40]  He finally did it.
[01:25:41]  And as soon as he did it, it was legally challengeable.
[01:25:43]  Like we couldn't challenge it until he actually put it in writing.
[01:25:46]  And now it's failed in front of the Fifth Circuit, which is a very well respected court.
[01:25:50]  Very bad for him.
[01:25:51]  But they have the solution, Emily.
[01:25:53]  They have the solution, and that is Big Bird.
[01:25:56]  He is going to sell it to us, even if our employer can't ram it down our throats.
[01:26:02]  Here's a little bit of the town hall CNN did with Sesame Street.
[01:26:08]  Hey, Granny Bird, question.
[01:26:10]  Have you decided if Big Bird's going to be getting the vaccine?
[01:26:14]  Yes, I did.
[01:26:15]  I asked my questions and I got my answers, and I've scheduled an appointment for my grandson.
[01:26:21]  We're leaving in a few minutes.
[01:26:23]  I'm a little scared to get the shot because I don't like needles.
[01:26:27]  Will it hurt?
[01:26:28]  Oh, it's okay to be scared and to have some of those big feelings, Big Bird.
[01:26:32]  Can I tell you something?
[01:26:33]  I'm a grown up and I don't really like needles either.
[01:26:36]  In fact, even as an adult, I don't like to look when the doctor puts that shot in my arm.
[01:26:41]  And I'm the same way too, Big Bird.
[01:26:44]  Well, but you're a doctor.
[01:26:45]  Yeah, but you know, even some doctors don't like getting shots.
[01:26:50]  Luckily, there are ways that we can manage some of those big feelings.
[01:26:53]  Oh, yeah, you know, one thing that I find is maybe singing a song to distract yourself, maybe the ABCs while you're getting your shot.
[01:27:00]  You know what I like to do?
[01:27:01]  I like to bring something from home that might make me feel safe, like a favorite toy, maybe.
[01:27:08]  Is it over?
[01:27:09]  Is it always?
[01:27:11]  It's never over.
[01:27:12]  It's never over.
[01:27:15]  This is, people are calling it propaganda.
[01:27:17]  I mean, I guess they did it with Big Bird and the measles back in the 70s.
[01:27:21]  You were not even close to being conceived then.
[01:27:24]  I was in a stroller.
[01:27:26]  But this is a thing, and this is the way.
[01:27:28]  So if they can't force you into it, they're going to guilt you into it.
[01:27:31]  I guess that's okay.
[01:27:31]  I'd rather be guilted than forced by a court.
[01:27:34]  Well, yeah.
[01:27:35]  But the other weird thing about that is it's clearly geared at parents and not children.
[01:27:39]  And so in the beginning, we're Granny Bird is saying, You know, I asked all of my questions and I've made my decision.
[01:27:45]  And it's like, Well, that's clearly not for the children.
[01:27:47]  That's for the parents watching.
[01:27:49]  And so they're now using, you know, anthropomorphic puppets to influence parents' decisions with state sponsored television.
[01:27:57]  I guess they're trying to get at the children watching CNN in the morning, which is like, Those kids have much bigger problems than the vaccine on their hand.
[01:28:07]  This is not a thing.
[01:28:08]  But I will say, I mean, already you're seeing vaccine mandates for the young ones for between five and 11.
[01:28:14]  And that's crazy.
[01:28:16]  I mean, that is truly crazy.
[01:28:17]  I mean, I personally emailed the head of our school and said, This is the hell a lot of us will die on.
[01:28:22]  Because look, I'm not saying never, but there's no way I'm offering my eight year old up first in the first round before this thing's even got it.
[01:28:29]  It's the emergency authorization, it's not even the permanent authorization.
[01:28:33]  But these schools are so in love.
[01:28:36]  With these mandatory vaccines, more and more it's happening.
[01:28:39]  And I do wonder whether that's going to be reflected in those polls we were talking about or in those on that voting day next November, too.
[01:28:47]  I don't think you are alone at all.
[01:28:50]  I think that's probably going to be a very common sentiment.
[01:28:53]  I'm sure it already is around the country.
[01:28:55]  And it's perfectly understandable and reasonable to anybody who doesn't live in the Fauci echo chamber, in the Fauci bubble, and has sort of been able to take a breath and say, listen, it's true.

=== Navigating Vaccine Mandate Fears (01:59) ===

[01:29:07]  As an adult, I'm comfortable and fine.
[01:29:09]  Kids, this is an entirely different question.
[01:29:11]  And so, yeah, I think this is sort of a big jumping the shark moment, a big overreach moment for the Biden administration.
[01:29:17]  And it's also amazing on the left that their labor coalition, where you have so many unions that are upset with this.
[01:29:24]  I mean, there's just normal people around the country that are upset with this, and they have no voice on the contemporary left or in elite media at all.
[01:29:32]  And so, that's how establishment Democrats and journalists lose sight of what is popular and what is reasonable because they don't listen to anybody who disagrees.
[01:29:43]  Exactly right.
[01:29:43]  It's one thing to say it's not great even to mandate it for adults, in my view, but it's quite another to say you must stick this needle in your five year old's arm before we've had adequate testing.
[01:29:54]  Ask any doctor, honestly, like doctors off camera will tell you the truth, which is there wasn't a big enough sample size.
[01:30:01]  And look, maybe you want to go, you know, six months into it.
[01:30:04]  I get that.
[01:30:05]  But to go first, all right, if that's your choice, that's your choice.
[01:30:08]  But you're not making my kid go first.
[01:30:10]  You are not making my kid or anybody else's kid go at the front of the line.
[01:30:14]  It's not okay.
[01:30:14]  Anyway, Emily, what a pleasure.
[01:30:16]  I seriously love the podcast with you at it.
[01:30:18]  I love the topics you choose, the guests that you have on, and you do a great interview.
[01:30:22]  So it's fun getting to know you.
[01:30:24]  You are too kind.
[01:30:24]  I love your show and the pitch band, so I appreciate it.
[01:30:27]  Aw, thank you.
[01:30:28]  In the meantime, check us out on youtube.comslash Megan Kelly.
[01:30:32]  It's always fun to see the new subscribers and download the show as well as the podcast.
[01:30:35]  Thanks for listening.
[01:30:37]  Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show.
[01:30:39]  No BS, no agenda, and no fear.
[01:30:53]  There are two really nice things that are happening in the world.
[01:30:55]  The best thing is that we can do a one call for a summertime budget.
[01:31:01]  30 gigabytes of bare 240 nikron.
[01:31:04]  One call, I will pay you more.