The Megyn Kelly Show - 20211110_rittenhouse-takes-stand-covid-overreach-and-lemons

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Nov. 10, 2021 - The Megyn Kelly Show

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20211110_rittenhouse-takes-stand-covid-overreach-and-lemons

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George's Wavering Testimony 00:15:19
	Welcome to the Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
	Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly.
	Welcome to the Megyn Kelly Show.
	We have an unbelievable show for you today, truly unbelievable.
	An extraordinary moment just happened in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial.
	They put him on the stand.
	No one was expecting him to take the stand, but he just did.
	And we've got a couple of just incredible highlights for you, which we'll play momentarily.
	And we happen to have the lawyer who was representing Kyle Rittenhouse up until a week ago with us today.
	So we'll get to that in just one minute.
	But we begin today with a very upset Don Lemon and his equally upset lawyer.
	Turns out they watch the Megyn Kelly show and feel rather unhappy about the interview we did with.
	The man accusing Don Lemon of assaulting him in a bar in the Hamptons in July 2018.
	Now, Don's lawyer doesn't like it when one refers to this case as an alleged sexual assault.
	We actually called it an alleged assault of a sexual nature on the show, which it is.
	But I am happy to just refer to it as Dustin described on this show on Monday.
	That time, Don Lemon allegedly put his hand in his pants, rubbed himself aggressively, and shoved two fingers into a stranger's face while asking, Do you like pussy or dick?
	P or D?
	P or D?
	Lemon's lawyer took to the press yesterday to try to portray herself as some sort of tough gal.
	Sad.
	I mean, I remember being that lawyer trying to sort of make yourself sound tough.
	I get it.
	I get it, sister.
	By claiming that she had fired off a nasty gram to yours truly, except she didn't actually do that.
	She just sent it to the press.
	Because that's what she really cares about, trying to convince the public that Don Lemon is not a pervert.
	I get it.
	These are deeply disturbing allegations.
	But we're not going to be threatened out of doing our job.
	We're going to continue to cover this story, including the January trial, because It's news.
	And we will continue, as we always have, to shed light on stories of alleged abuse and assault, irrespective of politics or threats or of the celebrity status of the defendant.
	As mad as the attorney, who, by the way, spends her spare time trying to make it as a legal commentator on wait for it, CNN, is at your humble correspondent, she's really ticked off at Dustin Heiss, who she accuses of lying about a number of things in our interview and in this case.
	Now, look, I have no dog in this hunt.
	I wasn't in that bar three years ago.
	And ultimately, it will be up to a jury to decide what happened that night.
	But I do appreciate evidence as a recovering lawyer myself.
	And Lemon's attorney pointed to some that we are happy to consider.
	It's quite piecemeal, selectively culled from the record, as lawyers do, with snippets of deposition testimony without the full transcript, photos with no context, and so on.
	But we wanted to know more.
	So we contacted all parties and invited them on.
	Lemon's lawyer, so bold in the press earlier this week, suddenly got very shy and didn't respond.
	Though the invitation is still open, you can come on anytime you want to.
	But Dustin Heiss and his attorney agreed to come back on the show and answer all of our questions.
	So, good news, Don and Don's lawyer.
	You want to talk more about this case in the press, and so do we.
	Joining me now, Dustin Heiss and his attorney, Robert Barnes.
	Hey, guys, thank you very much for being back, Dustin, and nice to have you here, Robert.
	So, let me just start with her first denial.
	You told me on Monday, Dustin, that Don Lemon's team offered to settle the case for $400,000.
	And in total, made three settlement offers.
	She has now denied that, saying they have made no settlement offers other than an $8,000.
	It's called an offer of judgment, basically nuisance value.
	So who's lying?
	She is.
	I got three separate settlement offers 400 grand in the first beginning before it all went to the public.
	And then sometime after that, another, I believe it was $25,000.
	And then the $8,000 nuisance or whatever she calls it.
	Okay.
	So one for $400,000, one for $25,000, and one for $8,000?
	Correct.
	Okay.
	So, but the $400,000 one was offered prior to you filing the lawsuit?
	Correct.
	Okay.
	Now, they say that you offered to pay a key witness in the case who we discussed on Monday.
	His name is George Gonales in exchange for his testimony.
	He's your main and I believe only witness other than yourself.
	I mean, you're going to testify that this happened to you.
	And George, we talked about this on Monday, and he gave an interview to FoxNews.com, has said he saw the whole thing and that you're telling the truth.
	They say that you offered to pay him for his testimony and that you failed to produce the The texts showing that in discovery.
	Okay, here's an example.
	On March 24th, 2019, they have a text where you write to him, You know, if I get money, I'll take care of you, my dude.
	And George testified at his deposition.
	I'm assuming that Dustin meant he'll give me something if he wins something.
	Then there's a text shown to George in his deposition where you say, Dustin, you say, We're celebrating after all this shit.
	George says, Any word on that?
	You say, I got you.
	I'm a man of my word.
	George again at his deposition.
	I guess he's insinuating if he gets anything, he'll take care of me money wise.
	And then another text, You, Dustin, to George, you're the star witness.
	LOL.
	George, I'm in.
	You, you know, I'll take care of you.
	So these do sound like offers to pay George for his testimony.
	Why did you do that?
	Well, George took a huge risk in speaking out on me.
	He had only known me for a few weeks prior to the incident happening.
	And, you know, and quite frankly, he suffered a lot of damage to this.
	He lost a job working for a celebrity.
	And one of the reasons why a lot of people don't want to speak out is because they're fearful of what the repercussions would be.
	So, you were aware of the fact that he might be reticent given the blowback he might get in the Hamptons with the celebrity community?
	Correct.
	Is that what you're saying?
	Blacklisted.
	If you speak out against celebrities, it's like taboo in the Hamptons.
	When you came on on Monday, you suggested that he'd been fired from a job with a very well known celebrity after the Fox News.com article with him hit.
	We now know from the deposition transcripts, the pieces that we've seen, that celebrity was Madonna.
	So, you're saying Madonna got wind of his Fox News.com article and fired him?
	Correct.
	How does he know it was related to the interview?
	From what I gathered, her publicist read, I Googled him or something, and his name came up as a witness, and she fired him because of that.
	Now, I'm going to ask your lawyer this in a second, Dustin, but why didn't you produce those texts between you and George in the course of discovery?
	They suggest this was you trying to hide evidence.
	Quite honestly, I had hundreds and hundreds of texts and Facebook messages, and I I gave my attorneys at the time my passwords to go through and look, find whatever they can.
	I produced everything that I willingly had and knew about.
	I wasn't trying to hide any evidence from them.
	Robert, what about that?
	Because they're asking for the case to basically be thrown out because they say Dustin hid evidence.
	Well, it's a case of confession through projection because the only party who has failed to produce meaningful text, DMs, social media information, emails, phone messages is Don Lemon, who's produced almost Nothing claims he has nothing at all that could possibly be pertinent or relevant to this case or to any other accusations or allegations that have been made against him in the past.
	So, the only person that's hiding information and hiding documentation is Don Lemon himself.
	Dustin has produced hundreds and thousands of text messages, DMs, personal accounts, social media accounts, everything imaginable.
	He has overproduced, quite frankly, whereas Don Lemon has produced next to nothing.
	So, it's mostly a case of them projecting onto Dustin what Don Lemon himself has been up to.
	But you did delete your Twitter.
	I think you told me that too on Monday, Dustin.
	But then you restored it, as I understand.
	Yeah.
	I mean, I did that to just avoid bully tactics from people.
	And, um, I, to my knowledge, I thought I was putting it like deactivating it where I could go back on, but I ended up deleting it.
	But there was nothing on there about CNN.
	Again, I had never paid any attention to CNN except for being bored one day and having a day in Atlanta where I went and toured the studios.
	And prior to that, I'd only watched Anthony Bourdain and never paid any attention to Don Lemon.
	Yeah, no, there's absolutely zero evidence that I've seen that suggests you had any sort of a focus on Don Lemon.
	Prior to this encounter in the bar.
	Okay, let's talk about Isabel.
	There's a witness named Isabel who was in the bar on the night in question.
	She's a friend of yours.
	And you texted George asking about what this woman, Isabel, might say about this case.
	And George responded, quote, she knows it happened, but she would 100% lie to protect Lemon.
	He then goes on, this is George again, I would try and move away from her.
	She's a C word and will try to ruin this.
	Ruin what?
	What specifically was the concern there?
	Well, so George and Isabel had a relationship, somewhat, I guess you could call it, over that summer.
	And she is a resident of Sag Harbor, as are her parents.
	And at her high school graduation, her parents know Don Lemon.
	They're friends, acquaintances.
	And at her high school graduation, they even got Don Lemon to speak at her high school graduation.
	So she's well aware of everything that's transpired.
	But, you know, because of their close relationship with him, I don't know if.
	George and her, they were not dating anymore.
	And he said, he implied that she would be willing to lie on his behalf.
	Yeah, I don't know.
	I mean, he says that in writing in the same text exchange.
	She would 100% lie to protect Lemon.
	But she will try to ruin this.
	Basically, what the other side suggests is that this kind of sounds like two witnesses settling on how to keep out testimony that may conflict with what you and George were going to say.
	Is that fair?
	Well, she's well aware of what happened.
	She was with us almost every night and the constant harassment and antagonizing I got from being out.
	She witnessed it, the lemon drops and people tossing lemons, full, like real lemons across the bar at me, jokingly, but to me, it wasn't very funny.
	What do you make of the fact that she apparently testified?
	She doesn't believe George did witness this exchange.
	She believes George was talking to her at the time this took place and that George is not actually an eyewitness to anything.
	Well, George was right next to me when it happened.
	So, I mean, I can't speak to her thoughts on her testimony.
	All right, let's talk about that because one of the things that they are pointing to is that George at his deposition wavered a bit on his testimony.
	He's your star witness.
	Again, you're the real star witness, but he's your best and only.
	He testified at his deposition repeatedly.
	I looked at just the pages that their lawyer submitted.
	I haven't read the whole deposition transcript.
	I'm sure there's stuff in there that's good for you, too.
	Anyway, he testified at his deposition repeatedly.
	Repeatedly, that he did see Don Lemon rub his genitals and then your face.
	But she kept coming at him over and over and over.
	And later he did waver, ultimately saying that he wasn't sure if he actually did see Lemon touch you, saying, I'm not 100% sure if I saw it or not.
	Point for Don Lemon, no?
	I mean, I can't speak to what to that deposition, but George saw it all happen.
	And he was, he actually was the one of the ones that teased me and antagonized me about it more than anybody because he was my boss.
	And every day I went into work and they'd be like, you know, two fingers up.
	And it, you know, I can't speak to that, but I can tell you that I did over 10 hours worth of deposition.
	And by the end, I was feeling a little shaken and despondent to say the least.
	Well, these things can be unpleasant.
	That's for sure.
	Robert, what do you make of that?
	Because, You know, George repeatedly said it happened, it happened, it happened, I saw it.
	And then as time went on, he did waver and started saying, I don't know, I'm frustrated.
	You asked me so many times, I'm not sure.
	You know, you think you see it, you say it so many times over and over, and then you're not sure whether you imagined it.
	He said that.
	Yeah, it's basically a case of a lawyer badgering about every tiny little subcomponent.
	And what George is talking about is just one component of it.
	What has been undisputed throughout this case is that George has, from the get go, long before any of the texts that they're complaining about, has always said, What happened is what Dustin said happened.
	Indeed, there's going to be evidence at trial that Isabelle said the same thing.
	So if she gets up and tells a different story now, even though she lawyered up in these proceedings, actually ended up with one of the magistrates assigned our case at one point, was part of the law firm that was representing her.
	So there's been a lot of interesting developments in this case.
	But what all of the evidence is that I have found supports Dustin's story 100%.
	By the way, we should tell the audience we asked George, we tried to reach out to George to get him to come on.
	No luck on that front, but he.
	We're told stance by his story that he is going to testify on your behalf.
	Let's talk about these pictures.
	So, you and Isabel, one night after the alleged assault, went while still in the Hamptons, summer of 2018, to Don Lemon's home, went on his lawn, and seemed to have a hell of a time posing with lemons.
	There's one shot of you with a lemon in front of your crotch.
	There it is.
	And his team is suggesting you, at this point in time, are suggesting you were undergoing severe emotional distress.
	That you suffered suicidal ideations, that you were in fear for your safety, and that these do not reflect a man in that mental state.
	What say you?
	Well, this is one of the darkest times of my life.
	And I know it might not seem like that through those pictures, but there is no guidelines or handbook on how to deal with what you're going through, especially when you're being harassed and antagonized and ridiculed and teased about something that happened to you and you're around all.
	Like all your peers.
	That particular night, if I remember correctly, we had been drinking and Isabelle knew where Don Lemon lived, and everybody's like, Oh, here's some lemons.
	And they threw it across the bar at me, and I was holding a lemon, and we walked about two blocks away and took some pictures there.
	And quite frankly, I can't tell you what my thought process was then.
	I just was trying to fit in in a place where I was kind of laughing stock and a joke.
	But, you know, again, there's no.
	Way that there's no guideline to like get through this.
	And when I finally got back to Florida and processed all the stuff that happened on a daily and nightly basis is when it really started to affect me.
	I have to say, I can understand Robert the need for a male, a straight male who's been approached in this way in a bar, according to him.
Mocking Sexuality at the Bar 00:14:37
	And all of his friends have started giving him jazz about allegedly having this encounter with a man who's openly gay, just trying to laugh it off.
	I mean, I don't know if he obviously shouldn't have gone on Don Lemon's property, but, uh, What do you make of it?
	Because it's those pictures in front of a jury, they may not play so well.
	Well, it's a very common defense tactic to take this path.
	And, but anybody that's, I've been representing victims of assault and abuse and harassment for more than 20 years.
	And this response is actually quite common.
	People are trying to get back the power that they lost when they were either assaulted, harassed, or abused.
	Because that, at core, almost all, whether it's sexual abuse, sexual harassment, sexual assault, all of it is more about power than it is about sex.
	And down deep, it's the power that's stolen from you and your ability to try to recover that.
	People respond a wide range of manners.
	So it's not a surprise at all.
	What's interesting is all of these stories that the defense is highlighting are stories where everybody, Believes what happened to Dustin happened to Dustin.
	And because otherwise the stories make no sense.
	Otherwise the jokes make no sense.
	Otherwise the harassment makes no sense.
	And so it's just further proof that Don Lemon is guilty and he should step up to the plate and accept responsibility for it.
	Well, why couldn't it be that Dustin, you know, I'll play devil's advocate, that Dustin made up this story?
	This is what his Lemon's lures.
	Dustin made up the story, told everybody the story, and that's why Dustin was getting mocked and Dustin was willing to take that bullet for an eventual payday.
	It's just why would people spend all this time mocking and harassing and making jokes and doing all of this over a story that's not true?
	It doesn't really make sense.
	And from my understanding of talking to all of the people that have been involved in this, all of them believed it was true.
	And so they may, one or two may be trying to change their story now.
	We'll see if they'll actually testify to that.
	But the net effect of it is their behavior only makes sense if the underlying story is true.
	And there's only one side in this case that's scared of a jury trial, and that's Don Lemon's side.
	They're the ones begging the court not to allow a trial by jury.
	If they think they're right, if they're this confident, they should want a jury to vindicate and validate their story.
	But instead, they're begging the court not to allow a jury to try this case.
	Dustin, you made some unkind posts about Don Lemon.
	One, forgive me, called him a cocksucker.
	Forgive me.
	And also, it appears, though I guess I should ask you, that there's one photo, it's the lower photo that's cut off in this picture we're showing, we'll show it to you, where it's AID.
	AID is written over.
	It looks like AID maybe is part of AID.
	I don't know, AIDS.
	I'm not sure what that means.
	And his team is sort of pointing at this, saying, you know, you were hostile.
	You were potentially mocking his sexuality.
	Can you respond to this?
	Why did you do this?
	Yeah, I mean, wouldn't anybody be hostile if they went through what I went through and what he did to me?
	I've gone through a range of emotions through this has happened.
	And it's ranged from anger and hate and just despising him.
	And although I don't like him anymore, I've just.
	Gotten past the point of anger because what's the point in putting posts out there in the echo chamber?
	And, you know, the other thing is, if, you know, when he rubbed my fit, his genitals, and then rubbed my face, if he had had some kind of STD or something like that, you know, that could be, he could have smeared it, for lack of a better word, on my face.
	And it's just something that was really disgusting.
	And I was angry and speaking out on it.
	I mean, you heard me say at the top, his lawyer's taking issue.
	What we described as an assault of a sexual nature.
	Do you consider this a sexual assault?
	You've sued him for assault, but do you consider this to have been a sexual assault?
	Absolutely.
	I mean, like I just said, if he has some kind of disease, then I could have put that in my face.
	And then on top of it, if I would have done that to him, they would have called this a hate crime.
	So it was disgusting and repulsive.
	And I've had to deal with it now for over three years.
	It just amazes me that they're fighting it like this and denying.
	Robert, CNN has.
	Inappropriately, in my view, it has injected itself into this controversy.
	It has no business representing Don Lemon in this way.
	It has a responsibility to its own employees not to telegraph that it does a knee jerk defense of someone accused of this kind of disgusting behavior.
	He needs his own PR person, his lawyer, or whoever else she wants to use.
	Fine, that's different.
	But CNN doesn't belong here.
	I wonder what you think about how CNN has behaved in this whole case.
	Well, I mean, one of the reasons why I got involved in the case is here you had one of the most powerful media networks in the world.
	Waging war against a bartender from the Hamptons who was assaulted.
	And by the way, the definition of the assault meets the definition of sexual assault under the federal rules of evidence, as we've already actually litigated in this case.
	And so I was offended by that because here you have a powerful media institution trying to crush a little guy, not try to investigate to get to the bottom of it, not try to resolve it, not try to mediate it if they're going to get involved, but instead come to bat for their million dollar anchor and to support lies against an innocent kid.
	And it's sort of deeply morally offensive how they've tried to leverage their power and their influence to sort of bully and intimidate just an ordinary person.
	And, you know, it's a story that happens in the Hamptons a lot.
	A lot of people get run over by the powerful and the privileged in the Hamptons, and it's time somebody do something about it.
	What do you make of it?
	I know you weren't his lawyer at the beginning of this case, but is it your understanding that Lemon's team offered $400,000 to settle this case?
	I can't speak to any settlements that might have confidentiality attached to them, and I was not part of it at the time.
	So, Unaware of what settlements were or were not offered anyway, beyond what might be privilege or confidential.
	But I'll put this settlement out there to resolve the issue.
	Don Lemon's people say that this case is about money.
	Dustin has authorized me to offer a settlement that if he confesses and apologizes, we'll dismiss the case entirely with prejudice without a penny, nickel, dime, or dollar being paid.
	So if they're serious about rectifying and remedying this, they can take action.
	This case isn't about money, it's about justice.
	How about the polygraph?
	Dustin says he took one that he passed.
	Have you seen that?
	I have not personally seen it, but I'm aware from prior counsel that that's the case.
	Okay.
	And what about, like, why did you take this case?
	You represented him.
	You're a legit lawyer.
	You've taken on very big cases.
	And often in a case like this, sadly, a guy like Dustin would wind up with sort of second tier counsel.
	You're not.
	So why are you involved in this?
	Because basically, what unites all of my cases, they're underdog cases.
	This was an ordinary, everyday person being crushed and bullied by the system, often lawyers helping to facilitate that.
	And that just offends me to the core of who I am.
	And so he needed defense.
	I wanted to see him get a defense.
	I can't always equalize the playing field, but I do what I can to do so, and particularly in circumstances like this.
	Was Don Lemon deposed in this case?
	Yes, he was.
	And do you believe his testimony was truthful?
	No, I believe he committed perjury in his deposition.
	I believe he will commit perjury again at trial because I'll be calling him as a witness and I'll be able to prove it.
	And so we'll see if he repeats the same lies at trial.
	But if he does, we'll catch him in a second act of perjury.
	Do you think this will go to trial in January as scheduled?
	Yes, I do.
	Wow.
	And do you have any surprises up your sleeve?
	I'm sure you don't want to tell us what they are, but do you have any surprises for Don Lemon at the trial?
	Yes, Don Lemon's people are talking a lot about witnesses.
	They should remember that impeachment evidence and impeachment testimony, I don't have to disclose until Don Lemon lies on the stand.
	But if he does, we will catch him and we will prove it at trial.
	Can you tell us how he perjured himself?
	I'd rather save that so that, see if Lemon repeats it at trial.
	Well, listen, I want to reiterate that the lawyer, the tough talking lawyer, look, I get it.
	She's trying to act, you know, I'm truly, I used to be that person.
	I used to practice law, and especially as a woman, you try to act super tough.
	Like, yeah, okay, whatever, it's fine.
	She can come on anytime.
	Dustin's come on twice now.
	Don Lemon, you're welcome too.
	Happy to have an open, honest discussion with you about all the proof in your case.
	And you can tell us whether you did or did not do what Dustin has alleged in great detail.
	Same for his lawyer.
	Both are welcome.
	And listen, Dustin, you're a stand up guy.
	You came back.
	We called you up and said, Do you want to come talk about this?
	You said, Absolutely, I'll be there.
	Robert as well.
	And we're grateful for your willingness to come on.
	Thank you.
	Now, listen, we want to tell you that Robert is staying with us for breaking news in the Rittenhouse trial.
	Robert was, up until a week ago, An attorney for Kyle Rittenhouse.
	And he has plenty of insight into what we just saw an extraordinary morning in the trial of Kyan Rittenhouse as he took the stand against all odds.
	Nobody believed this was going to happen in his own defense, and some fireworks taking place right now.
	Stay tuned, we'll get to it.
	In an extraordinary turn of events in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Kyle Rittenhouse has taken the stand today to testify in his own defense this morning.
	When asked about the circumstances that led to him shooting Joseph Rosenbaum, now keep in mind, he shot three people.
	Two were killed, one was injured.
	The third has taken the stand against Kyle Rittenhouse at this trial.
	And so we're talking about the first man that he did shoot and kill, Joseph Rosenbaum.
	Of course, Kyle says he was there to provide medical help.
	He wasn't there to cause havoc, but havoc did ensue.
	Kyle broke down on the stand while recounting being surrounded and cornered.
	Right before that shooting took place, this led to the trial having to be paused.
	Watch this.
	When you step back from Mr. Zeminski, what's your plan?
	My plan is to get out of that situation and go back north down Sheridan Road to where the car source lot number two was.
	And did you get back?
	Were you able to go in a northerly direction?
	I wasn't.
	Describe what happens.
	I once I take that step back, I look over my shoulder, and Mr. Rosenbaum was now running from my right side,
	and I was cornered from in front of me with Mr. Zeminski, and there were There were three people right there.
	Take a deep breath out.
	That's what I run.
	We're going to just take time for our break anyway.
	You can just relax for a minute, sir.
	My gosh, he's only 18.
	Still with me is Robert Barnes, who, in addition to his work on Dustin Heiss's case that we just discussed, has previously served as Kyle Rittenhouse's civil attorney up until recently, as a matter of fact.
	Robert, thanks for sticking around.
	My goodness, he is such a young kid and is in so much trouble as a result of this night.
	Let me just ask you first for your overall reaction to the fact that he took the stand and really struggled to control his emotions.
	Yeah, I mean, my view is I think people who recognized it correctly is it's PTSD.
	Kyle, that night, they saw him, you know, white as a ghost, as the witness testimony, pale.
	You know, sweating profusely.
	He spent the next three weeks when he was in jail awaiting extradition, vomiting every single night, couldn't keep anything down.
	So it's someone that experienced extreme trauma because he's a very naive, innocent kid.
	You know, he didn't really think anyone would cause him any harm.
	And everything that happened that night is still a complete shock to him, to his core.
	And, you know, he's been mischaracterized and lied about by the press extensively when he's just a nice, innocent, blue collar kid.
	Who's now, you know, put under the gun because of, in my view, a politicized prosecution?
	Can I just show the audience just a sample of the media?
	I mean, the media has been so, to say, closed minded on the possibility that he may not be this guilty killer.
	Here's just a sampling of how the media has handled its coverage of this Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17 year old vigilante.
	Kyle Rittenhouse, the vigilante.
	Kyle Rittenhouse, the armed teenage vigilante.
	The 17 year old vigilante, arguably a domestic terrorist.
	Picked up a rifle, drove to a different state to shoot people.
	Kyle Rittenhouse, a guy who's deeply racist, went with weapons to a Black Lives Matter protest, looking to get in trouble.
	He did.
	He murdered a couple of people.
	Rittenhouse, the 17 year old kid, just running around, shooting and killing protesters.
	You see, the 17 year old who was radicalized by Trumpism took his AR 15 to Kenosha and became a killer.
	A white, Trump supporting, MAGA loving, Blue Lives Matter social media partisan.
	17 years old, picks up a gun, drives from one state to another with the intent to shoot people.
	A 17 year old boy who drove across state lines with an AR 15 and started shooting people up, including a guy with a skateboard.
	My God, Robert.
	This is not even an attempt to be fair.
	And there's a lot of people that are going to face a lot of libel lawsuits, the only reason why they haven't been sued yet is because of the trial.
The Fifth Amendment Defense 00:10:28
	And once the trial is over and the acquittals that should come with it, I'm sure Kyle will seek some relief and remedy from some of those people if they refuse to correct and retract.
	But when even the Young Turks is admitting they got it completely wrong, maybe Joe Scarborough and some others need to start issuing some apologies too.
	Not bloody likely, not if history is any indicator.
	So Kyle breaks down in the stand.
	He's clearly struggling.
	PTSD is probably spot on.
	He talked about how the.
	Well, there was a lot today.
	The shooting of Rosenbaum was the first shooting and talked.
	You heard a bit about there about how he was threatened by him, how he had been specifically threatened by Rosenbaum.
	I want to get the specifics here.
	Hold on.
	He says Rosenbaum threatened to kill him two times prior to the fatal moment.
	He said, If I catch any of you effers alone, I'm going to effing kill you.
	I'm going to cut your effing hearts out and kill you, N words.
	Bulletproof vest, but he gave it to his friend because his intention was only to help people, to provide first aid.
	Can I ask you what he's doing on the stand?
	Because the trial to me has been going well for him.
	The prosecution's struggling to make its case.
	The witnesses, like Richie McGinnis of the Daily Caller, who was an independent journalist there, testified about how the probably most contentious, forgive me, shooting that took place was an attack on Kyle and really gave him grounds for self defense.
	And on and on, each one of the shootings.
	The defense has managed to get the foundation in for a directed verdict for self defense finding.
	So, why is he on the stand?
	Yeah, the two areas of disagreement I had with the defense team.
	Was I believe that there needed to be extensive jury selection.
	They chose to go otherwise and pick a jury in less than a full day.
	And the other was I didn't think there was any necessity to put Kyle on the stand.
	I believe that the testimony would be as it has been, which proves every aspect of self defense without the necessity of putting him on the stand.
	And particularly a young kid who's never been through this before, you're taking a lot of risks, putting him on the stand, subjecting him to cross examination of a long standing prosecutor.
	And the more innocent someone is, Generally, they struggle sometimes on the stand.
	Bill Clinton can lie very effectively.
	Your innocent kid can be telling the truth and people totally misunderstand it.
	And so that's why I was not in favor of him taking that risk.
	But hopefully it doesn't backfire on him because the kid's as innocent as any human being I've ever had the privilege of defending.
	There's the first guy who was shot, this Rosenbaum, who was a nutcase from the sound.
	And this guy was a convicted child molester.
	He was just out of the mental facility, he was running around looking for trouble.
	In a way, Kyle Rittenhouse wasn't even arguably.
	This guy was a troublemaker.
	And the testimony has all been that this guy threatened Kyle.
	He chased Kyle.
	The evidence just came out that he was hiding behind some sort of trash receptacle, like lying in wait.
	And then, I mean, I just don't think there's any chance of a murder conviction, intentional homicide on that guy.
	Then there's the second guy, Huber, who attacked Kyle with a skateboard.
	And, you know, that too is deeply problematic because he was attacking him.
	Whatever was in Huber's mind about whether Kyle was a good guy or a bad guy.
	I don't know that it's going to matter.
	And then there was this extraordinary moment with this third witness who he shot but didn't kill.
	Kyle shot but didn't kill.
	Gage is his first name.
	And the defense got a Perry Mason moment with this guy on the stand yesterday, I think it was.
	Watch what happened.
	When you were standing three to five feet from him with your arms up in the air, he never fired, right?
	Correct.
	It wasn't until you pointed your gun at him.
	Advanced on him with your gun, now your hands down, pointed at him, that he fired, right?
	Correct.
	And there's the reaction shot of the prosecutor with his head in his hands.
	I mean, that's ballgame on his count, is it not?
	Oh, great.
	I mean, between Richie McGinnis' testimony that Rosenbaum yelled, F you, and then went for the gun, and Kyle didn't shoot until then, Grossowitz' testimony that he was afraid Anthony Huber was going to kill him with that skateboard, then Grossowitz's own testimony that Kyle didn't shoot until he put.
	Put up his gun and pointed it right at him.
	You couldn't have a cleaner, neater case of self defense.
	And that's why he should be acquitted of all of those charges.
	And I didn't think it was necessary for him to take the stand, but hopefully the jury understands and sees him for the innocent kid that he is.
	Right now, just an update from my team on what's happening inside the courtroom.
	The prosecutor's trying to link Kyle's playing of the video game Call of Duty to the shooting.
	He's asking about Kyle's same gun as the one in the video game, and the purpose of the game is to quote, to shoot everyone.
	And Kyle's saying, It's just a game.
	It's not real life.
	I mean, if this is what they've got, you know, I mean, they're trying to paint him vigilante.
	You were going there enjoying, you know, just the prospect of randomly shooting people.
	But the evidence doesn't support that.
	Then my team's telling me the judge is currently yelling at the prosecutor, saying, I'm not sure what you're trying to do here.
	When the prosecutor asked Kyle why he chose to stay silent after the incident until now, the judge is saying that is part of the justice process.
	Kyle has no obligation.
	To speak out.
	It's called the Fifth Amendment.
	What's going on?
	What's the story with this judge?
	The judge is a no nonsense judge, been on the bench almost half a century.
	That's why he intersperses stories between Romans and the Bible.
	And when he was at a judicial conference 30 years ago, You know, old school judge.
	I call him a Southern judge who happens to be up in Wisconsin.
	And he's a no nonsense guy.
	And what the prosecutor just did is violate Kyle's Fifth Amendment rights.
	So basically, because you're not allowed to comment on a client or a defendant ever taking the Fifth Amendment at any point in time.
	And just because he's waived it now and taken the stand, you still can't comment on him taking it previously.
	So what he just did is guarantee that if there is a conviction, it will be set aside because of the questioning that Binger just did.
	Right, exactly.
	You're not allowed to do that.
	That's pretty steadfast.
	And the judge, well, maybe the judge just saved the case or a mistrial by saying, you got to stop that.
	That's not allowed.
	So, what's the story with the jury?
	I haven't read much about them.
	What's the makeup, and how do you think that plays in?
	Well, one of the areas of disagreement between me and defense counsel was I thought as long as a jury was picked that presumed Kyle innocent, Kyle would definitely be acquitted.
	But that required, because of the extensive pretrial publicity, When we polled it, two thirds of Kenosha jurors presumed Kyle guilty.
	So I thought it was very important to do a very probing jury selection and voidire the way that took place in the McMichael Arbery case, which took two weeks in Georgia.
	Unfortunately, they took less than a day.
	So they kind of got basically at the end of the day, they'd wrapped and they'd already picked their jury.
	There's 18 jurors, six of them are alternates.
	We don't know which ones publicly are the six alternates.
	It represents Kenosha.
	Kenosha is a very blue collar town, an ethnic immigrant, hot.
	Hodgepodge of, you know, substantial Italian, Polish.
	There's a, I know a Mexican American juror that's on there.
	So the, and that generally represents and reflects the community.
	It's like a blue collar extension of Milwaukee and Chicago that sits right in between the two of them.
	And so a random jury was usually a mistrial jury or a split verdict jury in the polling data.
	So hopefully they got a better jury than that.
	But they'll probably need a little bit of luck because they didn't, neither side put a lot of effort into jury selection that I could see.
	No, that's a cardinal rule in practicing law.
	You've got to know as much as you possibly can about your jurors and how it might be likely to go for you.
	We've got the soundbite now, the judge coming down and the prosecutor.
	Let's listen.
	Why would you think that that made it okay for you, without any advance notice, to bring this matter before the jury?
	You are already, you were, I was astonished when you began your examination by commenting on the defendant's post-arrest silence.
	That's basic law.
	It's been basic law in this country.
	For 40 years, 50 years.
	I have no idea why you would do something like that.
	And it gives, well, I'll leave it at that.
	Oh, boy.
	That's not a good moment for the prosecution, Robert.
	It's extreme misconduct.
	And this is a prosecutor that has misused and abused judicial proceedings to lie about Kyle all the time.
	In the name of trying to introduce evidence or argue bail when it had nothing to do with either, he was trying to inflame the court of public opinion with false news because he knew the local media could reproduce and reprint.
	And republish anything he put in a court file with complete legal immunity from libel, even though it was libel.
	And he himself couldn't be sued because he put it in a court file.
	And he's been lying about this kid all the way through.
	He's been violating basic rights all the way through.
	But that is egregious.
	That's worthy of disbarment and suspension.
	You go up and comment on a person's Fifth Amendment rights in the beginning of a cross examination in a way that every prosecutor has known, as the judge said, for 50 years not to do.
	He should be disbarred from the practice of law and he definitely shouldn't be a prosecutor anymore.
	Wow.
	That's a big one.
	So, any prediction at this point on how this case, I know how you want it to come out, but how it's likely to come out in your view?
	I still think that it will be acquittals based on the evidence.
	And I believe that even at worst, at this point, what the judge left off the table but was about to say was that the whole verdict can now be set aside if there's any adverse verdicts because of the prosecutor's bad conduct.
	And maybe the prosecutor deliberately threw the case because he understands the risk he faces from an acquittal.
	And he's getting hammered.
	I mean, the witnesses are hammering the prosecutor, suggesting that he pushed them to change their testimony.
	And you saw the cross examination by the defense of one of the prosecution's star witnesses, Gage, the guy who got shot and survived.
	That's not going well for the prosecution, and today appears to have been the worst yet.
	Robert, what a pleasure.
Kyle Rittenhouse on the Stand 00:02:43
	Thank you so much for being here.
	We really appreciate it.
	Thanks a lot.
	Coming up, a Megan Kelly Show All Star pairing.
	We're really excited.
	We got such A list guests today.
	I'm excited.
	Coleman Hughes and Cheryl Ackison, two of my favorite guests from our first 200 shows, because this, everybody, is our 200th show.
	So it's sort of a special day for us, too.
	Great day to have such an A list lineup of guests for you.
	I'm joined now by Cheryl Ackison, investigative reporter and host of Full Measure with Cheryl Ackison, and Coleman Hughes, author and host of Conversations with Coleman.
	I'm so excited to have you both here.
	They said, Who do you want for your 200th episode?
	And I said, I know, I know who I want.
	Just two different perspectives, two super smart, thoughtful people.
	And so thank you for being here on our special day.
	Thanks for having us.
	Thanks for having us.
	All right, let's kick it off with Kyle Rittenhouse because that's breaking news.
	He took the stand.
	We've played some of the sound.
	Here he is talking about, again, in total, he shot three people, two of whom died.
	Joseph Rosenbaum was the first.
	Anthony Huber was the second.
	And the third was this Gage Grossbaum.
	Forgive me, the last name's a toughie.
	Grossgreutz.
	Okay.
	Gage, I guess we'll just go with.
	And Gage is the one who admitted on the stand that he was not shot by Kyle until he, Gage, had pointed his own weapon at Kyle, which was a big moment for the defense.
	Here's Kyle, again, surprisingly on the stand today at age 18, talking about the first shooting, Joseph Rosenbaum, the man who was mentally disturbed, and what happened with him.
	Listen.
	The person who threatened to kill you, we now know, was Mr. Rosenbaum, correct?
	Yes.
	Before August 25th, 2020, had you ever seen him before?
	I did not.
	Had you ever done anything to upset him?
	No.
	Now, you said he threatened to kill you twice.
	Yes.
	Describe the first time.
	The first time was me and Ryan Balch were a little bit north, towards the north corner of 59th and Sheridan, and Mr. Rosenbaum was walking with a steel chain and he had a blue mask around his face, and he was just mad about something.
	Me and Mr. Balch were asking people if they needed medical help, and then he screamed, Sorry for my language.
	He screamed, If I catch any of you fuckers alone, I'm going to fucking kill you.
	And that was directed at you and Mr. Balch?
Video Games as a Dirty Tactic 00:09:19
	It was directed at both of us, what I believe.
	And there was a second occasion where he threatened you?
	Yes.
	The second time was outside of the car source.
	And I don't know if it was directed towards me, but I heard it.
	He said to, I believe it was Joanne Fiedler, Dustin, Colette, and another guy.
	He was screaming.
	He said, I'm going to cut your fucking hearts out and kill.
	I'm not going to repeat the second word, but kill you and words.
	Guys, I know that you're not lawyers, and we just had the lawyer on, but I will say the way the press has covered this is not being reflected at all by the testimony we've heard, even when the prosecution was presenting its case.
	Crazed vigilante, domestic terrorist, murderer, he's charged with intentional homicide.
	And I just wonder whether any of that will change now after this testimony.
	Cheryl, as a journalist, I'll start with you.
	You know, we have such a long, littered list of the media covering something in a one sided, terribly one sided fashion.
	No excuse for it if you're following basic journalism rules.
	And this is yet another one, and yet another reason why you cannot at the front end of any incident claim to know as a journalist, nor should you claim to know or judge what happened at an event, even when you have video of something.
	So often it proves wrong.
	The hands up, don't shoot narrative that was proven completely false by the Obama Justice Department said that that was false.
	A lot of people still think that that's true, that he was holding his hands up when he was shot.
	You want to go back to the FBI, the Atlanta bombing?
	The FBI blamed poor Richard Jewell for the bombing, only to later admit that he had actually tried to come to the rescue in advance when he saw a suspicious package.
	This is just yet another case.
	I noticed the same thing you did on the front end.
	There was a rush to judgment by many in the media, very unjournalistic coverage.
	And I'll be speaking to another journalism college next week.
	And these are the stories I try to tell them to get them to suspend the notion that they have to make a decision or tell the public what to think on the front end of an episode, just based on someone's usually.
	Ideological perspective.
	The thing here, Coleman, is I mean, Black Lives Matter, Jacob Blake, that's the man who was shot by police that led to the rioting in Kenosha.
	So while Kyle is white and the three people he shot were white, there is racism in the background here because it happened at a BLM march and it was in the wake of the shooting of Jacob Blake.
	And so that affects how the media covers it.
	Totally.
	And Part of the reason why people so quickly pounced on this story is because, on a superficial level, it seemed to confirm the Black Lives Matter narrative, which is, you know, on the same day that a black guy gets shot in the back, this white guy out here holding an AR 15 shoots three people, tries to turn himself into the police, and the police won't even arrest him when he comes, you know,
	asking to be arrested.
	So it seemed like, on its face, if those are all the facts you knew about the case, You'd say, look, just another example of the double standard that racist American police hold blacks and whites to.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	Too good to be true.
	And then the evidence came.
	We're just going to squeeze in a quick commercial break.
	I'd like to pay the bills here on Sirius XM Triumph, Channel 111, and pick it right back up right there in 60 seconds.
	Don't go away.
	I want to tell you the latest is the prosecutor has moved on to questioning Kyle Rittenhouse about the hollow point ammo.
	He used.
	Kyle's saying he doesn't know much about ammo, and now the judge has stopped the prosecutor again, calling for a lunch break, so they are paused.
	I think we have the soundbite of him going over the video games, which is such a weird angle.
	Let's just listen to this.
	The types of weapons that are used in first person shooter video games, correct?
	I don't really play first person shooter video games.
	I have, but I believe there's a variety of guns, including shotguns, pistols.
	There's guns in video games that resemble all guns.
	Isn't it true when you would hang out with Dominic Black, you'd play Call of Duty and other first person shooter video games?
	Sometimes.
	And those are games in which you use weapons like AR 15s to pretty much.
	Shoot anybody who comes at you, correct?
	It's a video game where two players are playing together.
	I don't really understand the meaning of your question, to be honest.
	Isn't one of the things people do in these video games try and kill everyone else with your guns?
	Yeah, in the video game, it's just a video game, it's not real life.
	Coleman, I'm looking at you as we run the soundbite doing.
	This is with your hands on your face, which is exactly how I. What is he?
	What?
	Well, he knows that there is this very shallow talking point that's been going around in the culture that anyone who plays first person shooter games like Call of Duty is, you know, has no way of separating the game from real life and is just being coached by video games to become a mass murderer.
	And it's so far removed from the reality of what it is to play a video game.
	But obviously, the prosecution knows that.
	Many people just have this idea in their head.
	So, if they can subliminally try to paint him as someone who's been desensitized and made into a psychopath by playing Halo and Call of Duty, then they can just lessen the sympathy for him, which is a very, very dirty tactic.
	It reminds me of the clip in Working Girl where Joan Cusack goes over to Melanie Griffith's character, who's pretending to be an executive, and she says, Sometimes late at night, I dance around in my underwear.
	Doesn't make me Madonna.
	Never will.
	Like a lot of us do fun things at home, like video games and watch movies and weird things that we do to entertain ourselves.
	And it doesn't have any reflection on what we're then going to believe about ourselves or do in real life.
	And I realize Kyle Rittenhouse showed up at that protest.
	But the fact that he played Call of Duty I mean, like, there are a lot of guys who played Call of Duty who don't then want to actually shoot real human beings.
	Cheryl, I don't know.
	I think that's this guy's been watching too much far left media because this is sort of how the left talks about guns.
	Like, if you see too much of them or you're around them, You're going to inappropriately use one.
	Well, I think it's fair to say that almost nobody who plays those types of video games becomes a mass shooter or mass killer, particularly because of the games.
	But just statistically, almost nobody who plays those games goes out and shoots people.
	So, you know, he seems to be the prosecutor.
	He's looking for any avenue, like Coleman said, that may resonate with one juror or two jurors who think maybe they think that about video games.
	Maybe that'll mean something to them and influence how they feel.
	The kind of person they think Kyle is.
	This is a case of government overreach.
	I realize I don't think Kyle Rittenhouse should have been there that day.
	He shouldn't have put himself in the middle of a very dangerous situation.
	He had no business as a 17 year old kid injecting himself.
	It was up to law enforcement whether they were prepared to do it or not.
	And he made a lot of bad decisions, and so did those around him.
	But this is not a murder.
	This guy should be acquitted, in my legal view.
	Megan, may I say something that when you have a situation, and this is what I've seen the last couple of years, Where the public at large loses their confidence in the idea that their law enforcement and their leaders are going to uphold the law and do the right thing.
	That's the sort of chaos I think that comes of it.
	It creates a situation in which people, some of them say, well, nobody else is going to do the right thing or what I think is the right thing.
	Therefore, I have to step in.
	That creates an eminently more dangerous situation.
	But I blame our leaders and our public officials for getting us to that place in the first place.
	I mean, but you could make the argument the other way too, right?
	Like, how many times are the cops going to break the rules or violate the law and take a man's life unjustifiably?
	And then we ask people in the black community to take it and not to riot.
	You know what I mean?
	Like lawlessness is lawlessness.
	And, you know, allowing more lawlessness because of the first lawlessness is not the solution.
	As a lawyer, I've always said what binds us together really is the rule of law.
	Like, what keeps us as a civil society other than the rule of law, this sort of agreement we have that we're going to follow it?
	And I realize that there are all sorts of breakdowns in the system, left, right, and so on.
	But the answer is not to take the law into your own hands.
	You take them to court, as they used to say on People's Court.
James O'Keefe and Project Veritas 00:08:48
	But listen, when it comes to government overreach, I want to ask you both about this crazy case today, this week involving James O'Keefe, right?
	The guy behind Project Veritas.
	He says he's an investigative journalist and he's done a lot of investigative journalism that's been extraordinary.
	He doesn't always get it 100% right, but he gets it right a lot of the time.
	The left hates him, the media hates him, and his targets are always, well, for the most part, left leaning CNN and others.
	But nuts what happened to him this week.
	His organization had two reporters see their homes raided by the FBI, and then James O'Keefe's home was raided by the FBI.
	What did they do?
	Did they steal government files?
	Did they somehow get CIA material?
	They allegedly had Ashley Biden's diary, which is okay.
	It was apparently she lost it or someone took it from her before he even became president.
	The question is what the FBI is doing investigating this at all.
	And here is James O'Keefe explaining what the heck happened.
	Listen.
	Late last year, we were approached by tipsters claiming they had a copy of Ashley Biden's diary.
	We had never met or heard of the tipsters.
	The tipsters indicated the diary had been abandoned in a room in which Ms. Biden stayed at the time, and in which the tipsters stayed in temporarily after Ms. Biden departed the room.
	The tipsters indicated that the diary included explosive allegations against then candidate Joe Biden.
	We took steps.
	To corroborate the authenticity of the diary.
	At the end of the day, we made the ethical decision that because, in part, we could not determine if the diary was real, if the diary in fact belonged to Ashley Biden, or if the contents of the diary occurred, we could not publish the diary and any part thereof.
	We attempted to return the diary to an attorney representing Ms. Biden, but that attorney refused to authenticate it.
	Project Veritas gave the diary to law enforcement to ensure it could be returned to its rightful owner.
	We never published it.
	Now, Ms. Biden's father's Department of Justice, specifically the United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, appears to be investigating the situation, claiming the diary was stolen.
	We don't know if it was, but it begs the question In what world is the alleged theft of a diary investigated by the President's FBI and his Department of Justice a diary?
	This federal investigation smacks of politics.
	Hmm, Cheryl?
	He's not the only one who's been the subject of government overreach under an administration that has Joe Biden at the top.
	Well, just an example of picking and choosing, which again, when the public starts to see they cannot trust.
	Or they don't think they can trust their public officials and law enforcement officials to do the right thing or at least apply justice even handedly.
	It creates this chaotic situation.
	And yes, I still have my lawsuit going over the government's intrusion of my computers.
	It's when I was at CBS News.
	And the Department of Justice continues to defend the guilty agents.
	They just about a week ago, according to court documents, authorized the hiring of private counsel.
	I would assume that's a taxpayer expense to defend one of the guilty agents, a former Secret Service agent who's been in prison for other corruption.
	Not even related to the spying on me and other Americans, but other corruption that he was convicted of.
	But he's being defended with your tax dollars.
	And I asked myself, why is the FBI not raiding the homes of the agents who took the word of unauthorized sources and started a political investigation against the president of the United States or a major candidate?
	Why aren't their homes being raided?
	Why aren't the homes of the FBI agents who falsified wiretap documents?
	You know, when there was an examination, To see if there were other lapses in wiretaps, in addition to what we know happened with one of them being doctored by an FBI lawyer, it was found that every wiretap application the FBI made had what they called deficiencies.
	Why aren't the homes of those agents being raided?
	Why aren't the people who were improperly wiretapped being told and being made whole and whatever was gathered on them destroyed?
	So, again, it's this picking and choosing.
	One thing, Megan, I note how, if as he describes it, is accurate, How careful James O'Keeffe was in trying to corroborate that information that he said came to him and why he decided not to publish it.
	Look at that contrasted to the media's behavior when it came to this uncorroborated information that they peddled for more than two years, they were so wrong about, and yet total lack of care on Russiagate.
	Yeah.
	The thing is, the media is not going to care, Coleman, because they don't like James O'Keeffe.
	People on the left.
	But if this had been Ivanka Trump's diary and Donald Trump sicked the FBI on a reporter who found himself the recipient of it, who had already called law enforcement to say, We've got it.
	Do you want it?
	The media would be covering this very differently.
	Yes.
	James O'Keefe, his content over the past year has really made him an enemy of the left.
	And sometimes that's just because he's actually getting really embarrassing videos that are just.
	Genuinely interesting.
	And other times it's because he's slanting and manipulating the truth in ways to embarrass people.
	But I mean, there's been a huge double standard with the treatment of Biden's family and Trump's family.
	I remember, obviously, the New York Post story about Hunter Biden, which got censored from Twitter because there was allegedly nothing there worth really looking at.
	Just if you change the name, Hunter Biden for Don Jr., you have to imagine how much the media would have been all over a story where Don Jr. was in Eastern Europe, potentially doing cocaine and all kinds of stuff.
	So, yeah, this is just another example of the double standard that's been used to treat the Biden family and the Trump family.
	And honestly, just executive overreach.
	And we were told that Trump was this terrible authoritarian who wanted to take control of all aspects of our lives and beware, beware the evil big orange man.
	And what we've seen so far with Joe Biden, the moderate, the guy who's going to be sort of, you know, just not Donald Trump, just be not Donald Trump and it'll be a win, is a lot of executive overreach.
	The FBI has no business doing this.
	She was not the daughter of a president when she lost her diary or left it behind and somebody took it, whatever.
	I mean, it's a nightmare.
	It's why most of us either don't write in a diary.
	As public figures, or would never take it out of our little bedrooms when we leave.
	But in any event, the FBI has no business being involved in this case.
	And Joe Biden, Cheryl, we've seen now, of course, he knew that the landlord eviction thing was extra legal, but he handed down that order anyway, stopping the evictions, even though he knew it was going to get overruled just because that's the policy he wanted.
	He knew it wasn't lawful.
	And then just this week, He lost in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals on his COVID mandate, the OSHA rule and so on.
	Finally, they put it in writing.
	It got challenged in the Fifth Circuit, which is the Court of Appeals for Louisiana, Mississippi, and a couple of other small southern states.
	And he lost.
	And he came out and said businesses should move forward with the requirements despite the court ordered pause.
	That's what the White House spokesperson said.
	So forget that court ruling.
	They paused it.
	They said it's not constitutional and we have to hold it until the courts can further adjudicate.
	And he's basically flouting that too.
	Well, can you imagine if that were President Trump and there had been a Lower court decision or an appellate court decision that was probably working its way somewhere else.
	And if he'd have just declared, don't listen to the courts, you know, that would have been just roundly discussed and criticized and dissected.
	And yet, when President Biden does it, it's just almost as if, well, I don't know from a legal standpoint, Megan, you know more than I do, if he has the right to do that.
	I was asked in the past couple of years when there is a court that makes a decision like that, does the executive branch have to go along or are they not?
	Co equal, and can the executive branch continue to resist something?
	No, they are not.
	The court has the ultimate say on what the law is Marbury versus Madison.
	And they have said the law does not allow this mandate, and it's been temporarily stayed.
	So it cannot be enforced until this goes up to the Supreme Court or the Fifth Circuit lifts its stay.
Amish Immunity and Vaccine Overreach 00:15:04
	And he knows that.
	He knows that very well.
	Well, I believe the whole game has been since the start.
	I believe President Biden announced this in September, and it was a long time before that temporary.
	Rule came out recently.
	And I think they know that even if this gets overturned ultimately in court, the game is that many people, in anticipation of this, have already gone ahead and gotten their vaccine.
	So a lot of money has been made, a lot of coverage has been had because of the anticipation that this would happen.
	Whether or not it's ultimately challenged and is a loser doesn't matter in that aspect.
	So the COVID overreach continues day by day.
	And thankfully, now we're starting to see a few more articles, even in the left.
	Leaning press, questioning the never ending mask mandates in particular for our children.
	And now the buzz about possible vaccine mandates for kids as young as five.
	We're seeing the city of San Francisco saying that you can't, your kid cannot, they cannot.
	Let me, I want to get my facts straight that they're, let me, I got it in front of me.
	They announced last week the city will require children in that age group, five to 11, to show proof of vaccination to enter restaurants, sporting events, swimming pools, and more.
	Mayor Bill de Blasio in New York said, yep, I'm looking at the vaccine mandate for your five year old too.
	Seems like a good idea.
	New York School of American Ballet informed parents via email on November 4th all students, and they enrolled children as young as six, must receive the COVID vaccine by January.
	But this is an experimental vaccine still for children.
	This does not have FDA approval, unlike the MMR vaccine and all the other things that we do have to get our kids to send them to school, which I happily did.
	And I wonder whether this is finally sort of the overreach that's going to stop the COVID madness.
	Coleman, I mean, I know you've been covering this a lot on your show with various doctors and experts about COVID and the ethics behind where we're going with this.
	What do you think?
	Yeah, well, I think the question of vaccination for adults and vaccination for children is very different.
	And I don't think we can just automatically apply our policy about whether it makes sense to get vaccinated as an adult to children.
	And certainly the masking, you know, there just has to be a line here somewhere.
	And we can all draw that line in different places, but ultimately we have to.
	Have a science based conversation about what the actual relative risks are for different populations, right?
	Not every population is going to need to be treated like 60 year olds, you know, 60 plus with an autoimmune.
	And so at some point, that line, the risk becomes so low that we really have to just allow people to live their lives.
	The question is is that 12 year olds?
	Is that, you know, who is that exactly?
	So But there are some people that are not even willing to have that conversation.
	It's just going to be vaccination until the end of time, masks until the end of time, because it's become a symbol of people's political affiliation at this point.
	And now there's mission creep.
	If I go into the grocery store and I say to Doug, can you just wait outside here with the car for two seconds?
	I'm just going to get a loaf of bread and some milk and, you know, whatever, some eggs.
	And then I'm in there and, you know, it's like exciting.
	And you see all like the food that you could get.
	And you could be this great mom who provides the best snacks and so on.
	And it takes too long.
	And I get the text from him that reads, Mission creep?
	I've gone off mission and he knows it.
	That's what's happening now.
	Rochelle Walensky is no longer focused on just fighting COVID.
	She just wants the mask for everything.
	Just more and more masks.
	Here she is this week with what I believe is a call for forever masking.
	Do we have a soundbite?
	Listen.
	The evidence is clear.
	Masks can help prevent the spread of.
	COVID 19 by reducing your chance of infection by more than 80%.
	Whether it's an infection from the flu, from the coronavirus, or even just the common cold.
	In combination with other steps like getting your vaccination, hand washing, and keeping physical distance, wearing your mask is an important step you can take to keep us all healthy.
	Get vaccine vets.
	We can do this.
	It's never going to end.
	The common cold.
	What?
	Business is it of hers if I get the common cold?
	She never interfered in my common cold before, and I don't want her to interfere now.
	Never mind flu.
	We've been managing to live on this earth for a long time before Rochelle decided we needed to be forever masked.
	And by the way, even like the mask now, the CDC is refusing to offer any guidance on when the masks can come off.
	They were refusing.
	They specifically asked and said, no, we're not going to do that.
	It's never going to stop without civil disobedience at this point, Cheryl.
	Well, there's so much to say.
	I'll just make a couple of points.
	Rochelle Walensky is the same person who falsely claimed that people who've been fully vaccinated cannot spread COVID.
	CDC ultimately had to retract that.
	Her agency is the agency that got caught by Congressman Thomas Massey, admittedly by their own admission in a phone recording, falsely telling doctors and the public that the studies from Pfizer and Moderna showed if you have natural immunity from COVID infection, you should still get the shot because it's effective.
	The studies didn't show that.
	And they kept, even after they admitted that was false, They kept telling doctors that and telling the public that.
	So there's a whole lack of confidence in the range of advice we're getting from CDC.
	It is so slanted and one sided to the exclusion of the discussion of natural immunity.
	CDC has been hiding its estimate.
	Of the naturally immune, those who've had COVID infection since May 29th, when it was at 120 million plus.
	Since Delta, it's obviously much higher.
	It's probably the vast majority of Americans.
	And yet, as they push the vaccines harder, knowing the vaccines are wearing off, anybody hoped, they're still at the same time refusing to address natural immunity, lumping all of the unvaccinated people in together to make the stats look as bad as possible without acknowledging that the safest.
	The vastly by far safest people, according to hard data and studies, including a lot from Israel, are the unvaccinated who have natural immunity from a COVID infection.
	That's what the study has said.
	Can I just ask you quickly?
	You've been reporting on the overstatement of the death numbers and actually had some fascinating stats out of, was it Arizona, the coroner out there?
	This was, oh gosh, where was I?
	I was in Colorado.
	So in a small town in Colorado, but the story branched out and showed that in California and in other places, they've acknowledged that their death stats are overstated.
	By, as in Colorado, 50%, if you count only the deaths that they really think are caused by COVID versus the deaths of people who happen to have COVID, like the murder suicide that this coroner said the state counted in her county, a murder suicide was counted as COVID deaths.
	And they would not take that off when she objected because they said, well, all the states are doing it.
	There are car accidents, there are heart deaths, there are alcohol overdoses, all counted as COVID deaths.
	And when you call those out, To Colorado's credit, they had so many coroners complain.
	At least you can see a subset of those on the website.
	The death count goes down about 50%.
	This is why you got to listen to Cheryl's podcast, too, and her show, because she goes into great detail about how this coroner sees an update for her county saying that there were these COVID deaths.
	And she's like, no, there weren't.
	There weren't COVID deaths.
	Why does it say that?
	She looks into it.
	She sees that a murder suicide has been categorized as death from COVID.
	And Cheryl went back and took a look at the death certificate to see, like, did the coroner put something on there, you know, suggesting it could be COVID?
	No, no, she didn't.
	And the coroner's like, this is bullshit.
	It was a bullet.
	It was not COVID.
	And yet, these are the numbers that are used to keep those masks on us interminably and mandate these vaccines for five year olds and so on.
	It's infuriating.
	Listen, we have much more with Cheryl and Coleman.
	So, Cheryl.
	You did an extraordinary piece of reporting because right now they're saying they've abandoned the search for herd immunity when it comes to COVID, that it's no longer possible.
	And really, we're just going to have to live with this as an endemic and so on.
	You took a hard look at the Amish, the good old Amish, and they went a totally different route than the rest of us when it comes to fighting this.
	Just set it up a little because I'm going to run a clip.
	Well, a couple of months ago, I had read in Associated Press and other publications that the Amish were the first to have achieved herd immunity.
	The Amish population in Lancaster, PA, because they don't do masking, isolation, vaccines, hospitals, nothing.
	And therefore, they had immunity.
	And by the way, when Delta came through recently, they claim they don't know the guy, my source, who's in contact with pretty much most of the people there, claims he doesn't know anybody who died of Delta or who even got sick in recent months.
	So they claim a very strong natural immunity reaction.
	I point out in my story, this is impossible to prove because they don't take tests for it.
	This is all just what they think.
	But there is no spike in their coroner records.
	There is nothing to disprove what they're saying, much as many people want to try to rein on this story.
	And by the way, Megan, this has been censored as out of context, all of the False things by big tech, but our YouTube channel for Full Measure, where this is posted, we don't publicize that channel because we try to drive traffic to the Full Measure website.
	It's got 1.3 million views now because people are finding this information when they know other people are blocking it from them.
	It was fat.
	I mean, just the shorter version of the report has got millions of views.
	You got to check it out, and preferably not on YouTube.
	Go to Cheryl's website.
	But let's just watch a little bit of her report on the Amish.
	We made more money in the last year than we ever did.
	It was our best year ever.
	Did the Amish really find a magic formula?
	They say yes, and they don't care who doubts it.
	Yeah, all the Amish know we got herd immunity.
	Of course, we got herd immunity.
	When the whole church gets coronavirus, we know we got coronavirus.
	Yes, we think we're smarter than everybody.
	I mean, shouldn't be bragging, but we think we did the right thing.
	He talked about Cheryl how they went to church, and similar to the way we used to do at the Catholic Mass, they all drank out of the same chalice.
	And he's like, We all got it.
	You know, we all got it.
	And that's the way we chose to deal with it.
	We didn't shut one thing down.
	He said the remedies that were being pushed by the government went against everything we stood for and we stand for hard work, being with family, taking care of the elderly, going to worship services.
	And so you can see why they were like, oh no.
	And was it the better course of action scientifically?
	And many, many people, including scientists, not the public health officials you normally hear from, but many independent scientists say yes.
	Not that anybody wants someone to get sick with COVID, not that.
	I'm advocating, or anybody's advocating, that you go try to catch it.
	But it's taking its natural course anyway, even with the vaccines.
	Many people are getting it.
	And the fact is, the unrecognized fact when it comes to public health officials, it leaves people with a great deal of immunity, according to a growing body and consensus of scientific research.
	But yes, in May of 2020, they had a very important church holy ceremony or holiday that they decided to go ahead and go to church.
	And as you said, they all drink out of the same cup.
	Many of them got sick and they assumed and believe it was COVID based on the symptoms.
	And they let this run its course.
	People stayed at home instead of going to the hospital.
	They took visitors because they said not taking visitors is worse than dying.
	Not working is worse than dying to them.
	And then they said, by and large, it was mostly done with in their community by about the fall time period without them ever having taken any extraordinary measures.
	I'm ready to become Amish.
	Who's with me?
	This sounds pretty good.
	Plus, it's just a simpler life.
	You have to work very hard, however.
	Meantime, today, Coleman, we saw Aaron Rodgers in the news.
	Of course, he's getting hit for suggesting he had immunity, but not actually having been vaccinated.
	And now, today, the ire of the media has turned on actor Matthew McConaughey, who's considering a run for Texas governor.
	And therefore, we've started to listen to his policy prescriptions.
	This is also kind of odd.
	Trump can do it.
	Why can't Matthew McConaughey do it?
	And here's what he said that has now had even our current Surgeon General respond to it.
	Listen.
	He just said we can vaccinate kids.
	Are we going to?
	Do we need to trust?
	I want to trust in the science, but I think that there's any kind of scam or conspiracy theory.
	Hell no, I don't.
	No, I don't think there's any kind of.
	We all got to get off that narrative.
	There's not a conspiracy theory on the vaccines.
	These are scientists trying to do.
	Right thing, and then people say, Yeah, if the big farmers are making the money, well, they can find that's as well if that's true, okay?
	Um, it's scary right now.
	I'm not vaccinated, mine, I'll tell you that you're not.
	I'm not vaccinating mine.
	I want to get some more.
	I've been vaccinated.
	My wife has been vaccinated.
	We have a high risk person in our household, my mother, who's 90, and she's immune compromised.
	So, why don't you want your kids to be vaccinated?
	We go slow on vaccinations anyway, even before COVID.
	Now, mind you, I've chosen, we've quarantined harder than any of our friends have and still are two years later.
	I don't want to.
	Maybe I'm trying to just keep it for my mom.
	Okay.
	So, we've been doing just a heavy amount of testing, went in everywhere we can.
	We even take the ones that take the ones with us out of the box where we can do them in our house, everywhere we can, with anybody we come in contact with, try to do things outdoors.
	I'm in a position, though, where I can do that.
	And I understand that not everyone can do that.
	I couldn't mandate having to vaccinate the younger kids.
	You can't mandate having to vaccinate.
Safe Outdoors vs Indoor Masks 00:02:01
	The funny thing is for the listening audience, in the middle of that, where he's like, Why wouldn't you vaccinate your kids?
	McConaughey pauses.
	He puts on his sunglasses in the middle of the interview.
	One of you guys has got to try that before this show is over and rubs his hair, which is slicked back.
	It's like, it's funny watching these actors, right?
	Like, you never know.
	Is this acting or is this the real deal?
	Anyway, the surgeon general comes out, Coleman, and says, Vaccinating your children is safe.
	I go by my friends, Marty McCary and Nicole Safer, both of whom have been on the show.
	They had a piece in the Wall Street Journal saying if you're agonizing about whether to vaccinate your child, your young child, be reassured.
	The risk is extremely low either way.
	If you haven't vaccinated, if you don't have them vaccinated.
	But man, we react to people like that as though they're the devil incarnate.
	Yeah, well, I think that is right.
	At the end of the day, it's probably going to turn out that for kids, the choice is not that important.
	And so, you know, if I had kids, I'd probably err on the safe side.
	I trust the vaccines, I think they're safe and effective.
	On the other hand, I'm not sure it's worth expending much energy trying to get other people to vaccinate their kids.
	I think we are getting to the point where we're focusing on lower and lower and lower risk parts of the population, and it risks very quickly becoming ridiculous, and it already has in many cases.
	You know, this is it's just so hard for people to walk the line between a rational, safe policy to protect lives and just idiocy.
	You know, it's the difference between masking indoors during 2020 and masking outdoors in 2021.
	Like these are one makes perfect sense, and one is just you being an idiot, basically.
	And people have a lot of trouble distinguishing A from B there.
Dog Whistles in Education 00:04:30
	It's time to let go.
	Just let it go.
	Now, one thing that nobody's letting go of is the election results from a week ago, a week and one day.
	The Republicans are still dancing in the streets, thinking that they have some sort of a mandate or they have a great harbinger of things to come as we head into 2022.
	And the Democrats, many of whom are, to me, sound like they're still in denial about why they did so poorly at the polls on Tuesday and whether the parents who went to the polls and said education is most important to me are just a bunch of white supremacists or actually caring parents who have legit concerns.
	And it seems like the Dem Party is sort of debating.
	Divided between the more moderates and the more progressives on a lot of this front.
	The media, however, not divided.
	The media has decided that what this was about was white supremacy, white rage.
	And we put together a little soundbite.
	In fact, we stole this, I'm going to admit, from my friends over at Fox.
	On talking about how what really happened on Tuesday was a bunch of dog whistles.
	Listen.
	And when he pushes talking points that are meant to flirt with and stoke white backlash, he does so in a coded way with dog whistles about education.
	The racial animus that is teeming with the dog whistle messaging, racial language, and dog whistles, quite frankly.
	Some of it was dog whistle.
	Yeah, right.
	Some of it was.
	Uh, dog whistle racism, horrible racist dog whistles from the GOP, dog whistling.
	So, Coleman, dog whistle your thoughts.
	So, I think there is a very real problem that parents all around the country are facing in the wake of 2020, which was a reckoning over race and racism, which is that there are rogue teachers that.
	Have been educated at highly, highly progressive teachers' colleges, which are sometimes even more progressive than elite colleges for students, for undergrads.
	And in the wake of 2020, have felt empowered to basically indoctrinate their students with their own personal values that have nothing to do with the curriculum.
	And parents understandably take exception to this because you're encroaching on.
	A parent's role, right?
	If you're my kid's history teacher, it's not for you to say, to say, a black kid, you are by definition a victim of white supremacy.
	All people of color are by definition victims of white supremacy.
	These are the kinds of things some of these rogue teachers will say in class as if that's relevant to their learning of U.S. history.
	And, you know, if you're a white kid, you have to acknowledge that all white people have white privilege.
	It's like, okay, these are discussions parents can have with their kids.
	It's not relevant to a history curriculum.
	And parents feel like they are losing control of how their kids learn about race to these teachers that present themselves as experts, but are really just radicals that newly feel empowered because of the climate of the country.
	And I think that's a major, that's a lot of what parents mean when they say they care about education.
	They're afraid to go to parent teacher conferences and Risk being the one person or the first person to say something about this because the magical accusation of racism is just too powerful.
	Like, if you get accused of being a racist, every word you say in defense of yourself seems to dig you in a deeper hole.
	And nobody really wants, you know, people, it takes a uniquely kind of brave person to speak up in that setting.
	So, I have a lot of sympathy with parents that feel like their children's educations are getting out of their hands and that are voting for that.
	In the ballot box.
	I wonder, Cheryl, because I don't think the media can be shamed out of its quote support or quote allyship of what they believe is a noble cause, you know, CRT or whatever you want to call it in schools, wokeness.
	Even though the media definitely wants Democrats to win, I just don't know that they can be shamed out of the way they cover these issues.
The Economy Takes Back Seat 00:02:24
	Well, yeah, I think it's a larger problem.
	It's more systemic than that.
	And you and I have talked about this in the past and I've written books about it.
	It's so ingrained in the way.
	News is being covered, and journalism students in many places are being taught how to cover news so different than when I went to journalism school and different than even 10 years ago that I'm not sure.
	They think it needs correcting because the goal is not necessarily to fairly represent different sides and views and facts.
	The goal now has turned into convincing people that there is a right path and that you, as the journalist or media person, know the path and they ought to take it.
	But I will ask you something, Megan.
	Wasn't there an exit poll?
	I have no doubt the education thing is big.
	I live in Loudoun County, Virginia.
	Oh.
	And I have no doubt there's something big going on across the country regarding these issues you bring up.
	But wasn't there an exit poll that said, The number one issue in Virginia was the economy.
	And I think education was like third.
	I thought it was second, but it could be right.
	Yeah, you could be right.
	For sure, it was on the top of the list where it's usually down low.
	But yeah, it wasn't at the very top.
	But I think the economy is still just such a big factor that kind of took a back seat in the news coverage.
	People have noticed, at least in my lifetime, I'm not a political analyst, but this is the biggest swing I've ever noticed in economic factors in the short time period after a new president was elected.
	And I think a lot of people are seeing that and worried.
	And I think one thing they're concerned about is that when asked, the administration has no described plan for fixing any of these things that are brought up.
	They seem to simply say this is just how it is and how things have to be.
	So that's a big factor, too.
	Their plan is to spend more.
	We went over this yesterday, spent the show on economics.
	But yeah, the inflation is going to go up.
	And the administration actually just said that again today.
	It's going to go up.
	They don't know when it's going to stop.
	Your prices are going up.
	The supply chain problem hasn't been solved.
	And they're trying to push through another several trillion dollar spending plan.
	So you're going to feel that too.
	This while we're fighting oil pipelines, trying to stop the flow of oil as the gas prices are up, we're begging Saudi Arabia for oil that we don't really need.
	All of that's factored into those concerns about the economy.
	But getting back to schools, Coleman, of course, we've known that this is the problem at the college level for a long time.
	And this past year, it's been really exposed at the K 12.
Anti-Teaching Standards for Kids 00:03:22
	But to me, I never failed to see the sort of innate racism.
	In the anti racism approach, there was a story in the news just yesterday about an Arizona State University professor who's getting rid of his traditional grading system.
	We're seeing this more and more, saying it's racist.
	And he says he's demanding an end to white supremacy by grading papers based on effort.
	He says white students have privilege because they embody the habits of white language already.
	He is a professor of rhetoric and composition.
	And he and his wife recently launched an anti racist teaching endowment.
	And he says labor based grading.
	Labor based, structurally changes everyone's relationship to domination standards of English that come from elite, masculine, heteronormative, ableist, white racial groups of speakers.
	I don't, I mean, I'm offended by this on behalf of all the friends I have who are people of color.
	Like, they're not able to participate in standard grading because why?
	Because it's white, ableist, and racist grading?
	It makes me emotional just thinking about that.
	I'm picturing myself as a kid and all the other students of color in the class not having the benefit of really an education.
	People come from different backgrounds.
	Some kids have their parents over their shoulder teaching them math better than, frankly, better than their teachers.
	A lot of kids don't have that.
	Are only going to get the rigorous training and how to think and the essential skills of the mind.
	They're only going to get that in school.
	And to say to kids of color, you actually can't compete.
	You can't compete with the white kids and the Asian kids.
	We are not going to expect you.
	We're not going to demand the rigorous standards of critical thinking.
	We're going to grade you based on this touchy feely bullshit, which really means if you fail, we're going to say that you passed because it makes us feel good right in this moment.
	And it just kicks the can down the road.
	And then everyone's sad when kids graduate from high school and they can barely read.
	And it's like this is really giving up.
	This is giving up.
	On kids of color.
	And it is, it's no laughing matter.
	It's really, really so, it just disturbs me to my core that this is preached in the name of anti racism because, in effect, it is the most racist thing possible.
	Right.
	It's looking at black kids and other kids of color saying, you can't, you can't do it.
	You do not like the way you give someone a gift is not to exempt them from all standards, in particular, the standards that are crucial to the development of their mind.
	Right.
	That is not a gift.
	That is an assault.
	Coleman Hughes.
	There's only one Coleman Hughes.
	He's a unique, special guy.
	And if you don't believe me, go back to my very first episode nine.
	I can't remember, but we had Coleman and Glenn Lowry on together.
	And I told a lovely story about Coleman.
Coleman Hughes Insights 00:00:46
	And everybody loves you.
	So it's a pleasure.
	Cheryl, always so great hearing your insights and people have got it.
	Check out Full Measure.
	I had so much fun going on there and just watching your reports and your videos.
	It's so great how you're so fact based.
	And she has a really great recent report on.
	The people who have made billions off of the whole pandemic.
	Some of those on the list are pretty surprising.
	Guys, thanks so much.
	Thanks, Megan.
	Thanks for having me on, Megan.
	You can check us out on YouTube as well, youtube.com slash Megan Kelly.
	You can download us as a podcast, any place you get your podcasts, and we'll do it all over again tomorrow.
	Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show.
	No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

Chapters

00:00:15 George's Wavering Testimony
00:15:34 Mocking Sexuality at the Bar
00:30:11 The Fifth Amendment Defense
00:40:40 Kyle Rittenhouse on the Stand
00:43:23 Video Games as a Dirty Tactic
00:52:43 James O'Keefe and Project Veritas
01:01:31 Amish Immunity and Vaccine Overreach
01:16:35 Safe Outdoors vs Indoor Masks
01:18:37 Dog Whistles in Education
01:23:07 The Economy Takes Back Seat
01:25:32 Anti-Teaching Standards for Kids
01:28:54 Coleman Hughes Insights