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Dec. 17, 2021 - The Megyn Kelly Show
01:35:00
20211217_bombshell-report-on-masking-kids-and-little-house-
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Arizona Study Flawed 00:15:20
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Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
Hey everyone, I'm Megan Kelly.
Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show.
We've got a great show for you today, and happy Friday!
It is Friday, right?
You kind of forget.
I'm really excited for both of our hours.
It's kind of a hard turn after the first 60 minutes.
We're going to get to David Zweig of New York Magazine and The Atlantic and many other places in just a minute with his exclusive reporting on the CDC's dishonesty.
All right, that's my word, his lack of transparency.
And our second hour, we have someone exciting coming on.
Karen Grassley from Little House in the Prairie is here.
Yes, it's my dream.
She just released a tell all book, and there's so much to go over.
In this book with her, you would not believe what she says about Michael Landon, what she says about an affair she had with which character on the show.
Oh, my goodness.
If you were a fan of the show, you're going to love this.
Okay, so we'll get to the fun stuff in about an hour.
But first, we got to start with some business.
And that's where we start with a very simple but disturbing question about whether the Biden administration is being transparent, is being honest, and is following the science in the mandates it's handing down and recommending, in particular when it comes to masks.
At least that's the focus today.
A troubling new report from The Atlantic by David Zweig on masking and kids just out.
And it raises serious doubts about the CDC's transparency.
Earlier this year, the CDC widely promoted, Rochelle Walensky touted a study out of Arizona that suggested mask requirements in schools in particular had a dramatic impact, really, really helped stop COVID outbreaks.
This moment.
Make no mistake about it, is being used by maybe your school, my school, and other schools all around the country as the reason your child has a mask over his face all day.
All right?
So, this is an important moment.
The author, the journalist, David Zweig, he's both conducted a months long investigation into this study, so beloved by Rochelle Walensky, and has concluded with the help of some eight or nine experts that it is, in his words, quote, profoundly misleading.
David is back with us now to talk about his latest reporting.
David, great to see you.
So let's just, before we get to your research, set the stage for us on you just sort of open the piece by saying, when they approved the vaccines for five to 11 year olds, many of us, I know I did, heaved a little bit of a sigh of relief thinking, oh, okay, at least the masks can come off.
The mask will come off.
Guess again.
And you compare how the United States is with its children in the pandemic versus other countries.
Let's start there.
Yeah, there were a number of experts who started pointing out once they approved, once the FDA approved the vaccine for five to 11 year olds, that this would be kind of Here's the line where we draw in the sand.
Even the people who are really pretty staunch pro mask or pro other mitigation measures, they said, look, now that the kids have the opportunity to be vaccinated, once X amount of weeks go by or months where everyone's had the opportunity to do so, that's it.
It's time to start unwinding some of these things.
I should point out, by the way, that even children who are unvaccinated are at lower risk of hospitalization and severe disease than.
Many vaccinated adults.
So that's huge.
Not every expert was saying that we had to pin this on that.
But nevertheless, just focus on that.
But wait, wait, wait, wait.
I do.
And I'm going to let you finish your point, but we don't spend enough time on that because we see all the kids sitting outside eating their lunch in 39 degree weather.
And then you see the grown ups, Kathy Hochul, the governor of New York, many other officials, maskless inside, enjoying their meal right next to somebody.
And we say, this is BS.
And the response you always get is, hello, it's called a vaccine.
That's the difference.
She's been vaccinated.
Your kids haven't.
And number one, a lot of the kids have been vaccinated who are forced to sit outside on those buckets.
But number two, your point just now, even unvaccinated, those kids are less likely to contract and spread COVID than a vaccinated grown up is, like Kathy Hochul.
That's correct.
The age stratification of risk is so extraordinary.
It's hard to even visualize or process for most people.
So it's understandable, perhaps, that a lot of parents would think, hey, I need my kids vaccinated.
I understand kids are at lower risk.
You know, that message kind of.
Made it through, but nevertheless, they still needed that security of the vaccination for them.
So I could see why people had been thinking that.
But the fact of the matter is, the data simply show otherwise, which is that even unvaccinated children, there's really excellent data out of the UK on this.
And we see some data on this as well in the States and different places that it's very clear that even unvaccinated kids, particularly unvaccinated healthy children, statistically are still at a far lower risk of severe disease or hospital.
Hospitalization than many vaccinated adults once you get past a certain age.
So, we should just kind of clear that up right now that, to my mind and that of many experts, we shouldn't be pinning any of this on child vaccination simply because the risk for them, even while they're unvaccinated, is still less than the adults.
And the fact of the matter is that I think you pointed out that you have adults who are, you know, in New York State, for example, who have the liberty of eating in a restaurant without a mask, who have the liberty of conducting their lives in a relatively normal way.
Yet the children in school don't have that same liberty.
And you cannot pin that on the notion of vaccination because the statistics simply show otherwise.
So the United States is cracking down on its children in a particularly aggressive way.
And to many of us, it feels cruel and abusive.
And they continue to do so no matter what, no matter what the data show.
They just continue to mask them.
Now it's mandatory vaccinations.
The LA Unified School District has just had to postpone its mandate on vaccinations because some 30,000 children.
Hadn't gotten it.
So it was like, they're not doing it.
Parents are reluctant.
They don't want to go first.
A lot of parents have reluctance when it comes to their young ones.
So that's where we stand with respect to the children.
America's doing it in a really aggressive and I think unkind and cruel way.
So enter the second piece of this, which is well, the science, the science.
I mean, we don't mean to be cruel, we don't mean to be more stringent than the other countries, but the science says this is going to keep your kids safe.
It's going to keep your kid from bringing COVID home to grandma.
And that is why we have to put the cloth over their face all.
Day long.
And they have been citing in particular this one study from where?
Right.
So, what my feature in the Atlantic focused on was this particular study that was conducted in Arizona, roughly a thousand schools there.
And they compared schools that had mask mandates in place from the beginning of the school year to schools that didn't have mask mandates.
And the takeaway finding from the study was that the schools without the mask mandates had three and a half times.
More outbreaks than during the study period than the schools with mask mandates.
So this was, you know, a really startling statistic.
And it's something that was covered widely.
It was in every major media outlet in the country.
And Rochelle Olensky, the director of the CDC, was on television talking about it.
She did mention it multiple times in White House briefings over and over and over again.
You keep kept hearing this statistic three and a half times.
And that's kind of where I where I begin my story.
All right, so we have her.
She went on, as you point out in your preview, she went on CBS Face the Nation.
She went to the White House briefing.
She tweeted it out.
She went back on TV in October.
She was on, this is the soundbite, with Chris Hayes of MSNBC in late September.
Here is her message.
You know, the big finding is that masks in school work.
We've only had in some school districts about six weeks of school, and we've already had in a different study that was published today over 1,800 schools closed.
Nearly a million children have been out of school because of school.
Closures.
But the study that you're referring to in Arizona demonstrated that schools that had masks were three and a half times less likely to have a school outbreak than schools that didn't have masks.
Just as a follow up, are we sure that's not a correlation issue and not a causation, which is to say, like, there's higher levels of community transmission in the school districts that are also the ones most inclined to not have a masking policy?
See what I'm saying?
Yeah.
And that's actually been studied as well.
And we've examined those.
Correlations for exactly the concern you raise.
This is an independent effect of masks.
Wow.
Go ahead, David.
I hadn't seen that interview.
That is astonishing.
The study uses the word association.
So, unless I misunderstood what she just said, she seemed to be implying that it wasn't merely an association, but rather something causal.
And a number of experts would beg to differ.
So, but boy, I'm still kind of taking it in from that interview.
I mean, that really exemplifies kind of the broader thesis of my feature and kind of the larger idea that the CDC really has doubled down on, and we see this in a variety of areas, but specifically with masks.
The evidence is incredibly shaky.
We don't know.
I'm not definitively saying they don't work.
What I am saying is, by me saying, from what all the experts I interview are saying, is that the evidence.
Simply does not say what the CDC is suggesting.
And again, the language in this study itself, they specifically use the word association.
Another one of the big studies which I had written about before, the authors of that study similarly say this is not meant to infer causality.
So these are important nuanced words.
Explain that for those of us who are only paying half attention to this.
What are you saying right now?
Okay, so I mean, basically, Many things happen when you're doing a study in the real world.
And the magic is being able to tease out what are sort of these confounders or these variables that might be influencing something you're seeing versus what are the actual cause.
So that's causal versus just an association.
We might see that kids in school have fewer cases of the flu and they are all wearing masks, the windows are open and they're running HEPA filters, but they also are all wearing sneakers.
And we say, look, by wearing sneakers, that reduces the case incidence of the flu.
It's not a perfect analogy, but it's the point that we don't necessarily know what's causal.
So that's one element of this, but that's really kind of the tip of the proverbial iceberg regarding this study, which is why I became so fascinated with it.
Began investigating it.
And she seems to be saying in that soundbite with Chris Hayes, no, the masks, they are the cause, the absence of masks, that's what caused the COVID outbreaks, or the other alternative, that's what prevented them.
She seemed to be suggesting that.
Yeah, I hadn't seen that interview before.
I'm going to watch it again after we talk because I'm quite curious about it.
But so the main, you know, sort of soundbite is this three and a half times that she mentioned there.
And I linked to a handful of other times where she mentioned it.
And the thing is, There's really nothing in this study to support that finding.
And I try to methodically run through the reasons why.
And now, look, every study can be critiqued, no matter what you publish, and that's appropriate.
You know, other experts in whatever field are going to look at it.
And this study is not, you know, removed from that same scenario.
What they mention in the study itself is that they did not control for vaccine status of the staff or students.
That's amazing.
That has an enormous impact on things.
But, and there's that, and there's a whole other long list of things, Megan, that they actually, which again, this is normal to have limitations in a study.
That is typical, and people can discuss those methodological limitations, and that's fair.
To me, what really caught my attention and what I became so engaged with were the things that they didn't disclose in the study.
Those are the things that the experts on Twitter and wherever else weren't commenting on because they didn't know.
And the first one that you took a look at is when were the schools open?
The schools where the kids wore the masks, when and for how long were they open?
And when and for how long were the schools where the kids did wear the masks open?
Right.
So the study says it ran from July 15th to August 31st.
So any regular person would assume, okay, that means all the schools are being studied for roughly six weeks from July 15th to August 31st.
But I started looking at the calendars for some of these schools and I thought, That's weird.
I'm seeing a whole bunch of schools that aren't opening until August.
And eventually I ran through, and it turns out almost 90% of the schools weren't even open in July.
So, how could you say a study went from July 15th to August 31st when close to 85 or 90% didn't even open in the month of July?
So, this was something that was really worrisome because what it does is that suggests a robustness that wasn't there.
Confusing School Timeframes 00:15:08
It suggests a certain timeframe.
We looked at them for this long timeframe when actually the timeframe Was truncated heavily for many of the schools.
In addition to that, it wasn't six weeks, it was more like four weeks or three and a half weeks.
Okay, yeah, I got it.
Right.
And not only is it in the study, but this is something that Rochelle Walensky mentioned multiple times in her public statements, talking about these schools began in July.
One of the authors in an interview to the New York Times talked about we have this great advantage with our study here in Arizona, the schools are beginning in July.
And it just simply was not the case for 80 plus percent of the schools.
It simply wasn't true.
And then, when you look at the dates, and here's where things begin to get more interesting is that the schools.
In the study, you get an indication that the study looked at two counties, something called Maricopa County and Pima County.
And the schools in Maricopa appear, when you look at the tables in the study, they appeared to be more associated with being the schools disproportionately those without mask mandates.
And when I was looking at these school calendars, I was like, huh, I noticed that also those schools happen to be the ones that appear to be more often to be opening earlier.
So, what does that suggest?
It suggests that.
These schools without mask mandates possibly were looked at for a longer period of time, but that seemed not possible.
How could they possibly do this in the study?
So I emailed with the corresponding author on the study and I said, Hey, I've been looking at the calendars.
I know your study says it runs from July 15th to August 31st, but I'm seeing a whole bunch of schools that on their official calendar says they weren't even open until August 10th.
And to my amazement, she did confirm yes, there are many different start dates.
Many of the schools in the study did not.
Run for the full six weeks.
And ultimately, what we found was that there were schools, I think you just mentioned this, Megan, that were only open for three weeks.
So we had some schools that are open for six and some that are open for three, double the length of time that they're looking at this.
And here's where the kicker is she did acknowledge to me that the schools without mask mandates were studied for a longer period of time.
Wow.
So I just want that to sink in.
This is an invisible thumb on the scale.
No one knew about this except me because I looked at the calendars.
But all the media reports, all the stuff just saying, oh, three and a half times, it's a study, it went for six weeks.
This is epidemiology 101.
You can't compare two different groups looking for the incidence of something, but have one group that you're looking at for a longer period of time.
I mean, any fifth grader could understand this concept.
Now, I need to mention the authors claim that even though they looked at schools for a longer period of time, With the without mass mandates, that they said that wasn't a meaningful difference and that it wouldn't affect the outcome.
But here's the thing according to multiple experts who I talk with and who I cite in my article, they said very clearly if you're looking at one group longer than the other, you must adjust for that.
You can't just like put it in there and not do a special calculation to equalize things.
And that also should be disclosed in the paper.
But there's no way to know that their defense, that they're saying, oh, no, no, no, this doesn't matter because they've refused.
To share the data set with me over and over and over again.
I kept asking for it and they refused to share their data set that they used to share.
And what do you mean by data set?
Okay.
So any study looks at a pile of data, so to speak.
So for this study, they looked at outbreaks, the number of schools, the enrollment sizes in the schools, and their mask policies.
So those are important pieces of data to keep track of.
There is no way.
To know to verify any of the findings in this study, unless you see all those pieces of data.
Now, ultimately, after they beat me up for a month or so, and I eventually did a public records request where I compelled the state of Arizona to send me the damn list of schools, I was able to force one thing, which was getting the actual list of schools.
But no one actually has the data on the number of outbreaks and the enrollment sizes or the mask policies.
No one can see it.
So when I emailed back and forth with the authors, and by the way, I looped in like five different people at MMWR, which is the CDC's official journal, who published this study.
I brought in the editor in chief.
I had a list of people on these email exchanges, and they all backed up the idea.
They wrote, you can read the quote if you have it.
They essentially said, There are no errors.
And I wrote back, I said, No offense, but I can't just take your word for this.
How can anyone know this to be true when I'm seeing, I'm literally telling you, and your lead author has acknowledged to me that there are different start dates?
This is totally different from what's written in the study itself.
Totally different from what you've all been saying publicly about when the schools begin.
We don't know what happened because you won't share.
And they said, Yeah, we're good.
We're not sending you anything.
Wow.
This isn't like, you know, Tucker Carlson calling up and asking for the data, right?
This is the Atlantic.
They don't want a bad piece for them in the Atlantic.
So there must have been a good reason for them, not good in our view, but good for them, not to send it to you.
Just a quick follow up, though.
If one of the things in the data set that they won't give you is the number of children.
Enrolled in the classes, then it could be a situation where there were many more children, possibly, in the classes where people were not masked by mandate versus the classes where the kids did have to wear masks.
So you could have a smattering in one classroom wearing their masks and then double that size in the classroom without their masks.
That's exactly right.
You know, this is all conjecture.
You can look at clues from the information they do give you in the study.
They break the schools into four.
Four population categories.
But from the experts I spoke with, that is not nearly precise enough to adjust for different enrollments.
Now, remember, imagine you have a school without a mask mandate that's looked at for, say, two days longer than a school with a mask mandate.
But if that school without a mask mandate has triple the number of students in it, maybe that's a huge school with 2,000 students, and the other one only has 600 students or something like that, those two days in effect.
Become six days for actual per person exposure time that you're looking at, because in the end, that's what we're looking at.
So, again, the image I think of is there really was this invisible thumb on the scale.
And had they disclosed this, now people could then argue about it and say something publicly and push for things.
But to me, the thing that bothered me so much was that, at least to me, and I think to any regular person, when you see a study that says it runs from July 15 to August 31st, that certainly suggests.
That they're looking at all these things together for that same duration of time.
And it was just amazing that this kind of talking point about beginning in the middle of July was something that was repeated over and over when it simply was not the case for 80 plus percent of the schools.
It just didn't make sense.
No, it's dishonest.
And there is much, much more.
David did his homework more on what he found and on whether we should be trusting the CDC and Rochelle Walensky right after this.
Don't go away.
In addition to the other problems that you found, let's go over a couple of more.
One that I confess in reading the article, I didn't totally understand.
You said critics note the study's use of school related outbreaks rather than cases per student per week.
This somehow undermined the data.
I don't get that.
Can you walk me through that at a 101 level?
Yeah, it's a granular point, but.
The more precise you can be, generally, the better.
And what you really want to look at.
When you're looking at the incidence of something like COVID cases, you want to look at the per person per week or per person, some block of time.
But instead, they looked at outbreaks, which they define, by the way, the word outbreak is very, very deceiving to most people.
An outbreak simply means two cases within 14 days of each other that they say are epidemiologically linked, which could mean the kids were in the same classroom.
That's it.
So get that out of the way to begin with.
When we hear the word outbreak, that has kind of like a scary connotation to it.
But outbreak doesn't technically mean what most of us probably think it means.
But when you're looking at outbreaks, those cases aren't necessarily linked in the manner that that word suggests.
So it's far more precise to look at the number of individual cases you're getting in each school in that period of time.
Again, because imagine you have a school with 5,000 kids and you have another school with 1,000.
What's the likelihood you're going to have two cases?
In the 5,000 school versus two cases in the 1,000, particularly, even if you had five schools with 1,000 each and one school with 5,000, you're still more likely to have that outbreak in the one school with 5,000 than you would having any two cases in one of those five schools with 1,000, if that makes sense.
But I'm not sure.
Bigger populations will lead to bigger numbers of cases and bigger numbers of bad results.
Yeah.
And the way, and they didn't adjust for it in a manner that actually, That equalizes that discrepancy out.
So, that was something that a number of the people who I interviewed for the piece pointed out that there is this, you know, again, it's a bit granular for a regular person, but this, they, here's the main point.
There are so many decisions along the way when you conduct a study.
People think science, it's one way.
There are an infinite number of ways that researchers can conduct a study.
The methodology can vary incredibly widely, and then the analysis itself.
So, there's not only the There are many choices that happen along the way.
And these particular choices, every single step of the way, it seemed like the choices they took in this study seemed to err in one direction.
Yeah.
Oh, what a shock.
That's the takeaway that when you put all the pieces together.
There was another one that I couldn't believe, which was when you finally, so you wanted to get, you know, give me the list of schools that you looked at.
They wouldn't.
So you finally just went to the state and got a list of, well, give me all the schools that are in Maricopa County.
And they had to give it to you.
And what you found that was in particular was, first of all, All schools were not in Maricopa County.
Number one, they were not using all schools within Maricopa.
And some of the schools, or at least one, we don't know how many, were virtual.
So they were counting virtual kids doing remote learning in this study, which is absurd.
I mean, you're going to explain it to me, but my thought was all right, so little Johnny sitting there doing his Zoom school, wearing, like, I don't know whether he's wearing, I assume he is not wearing a mask.
He's not wearing a mask.
He's spending all day with mom and dad and brother and sister inside of a home, unmasked because he is at home all day.
Maybe he's going to get COVID.
How are we counting that against schools that, for the most part, have opened up with ventilation, with distancing, with teachers who are vaccinated, and all these other protocols?
So this point falls into that bucket that I talked about where there are things there.
Remember, Cheney, there are known knowns and there are known unknowns.
This is.
These are the things that were not disclosed.
So we know that they didn't control for vaccination status, despite what the director Walensky said that no, no, no, we know that it's definitely from the mask.
They didn't control for vaccination status.
We know that already, though.
That's listed in the study.
But the things that aren't listed were the dates that I talked about, this July business.
And then, as well, the other thing that wasn't listed is that they said there were 782 schools in Maricopa County that they had involved in the study.
However, and I kept going back and forth with them asking for the data.
And then I gave up on asking for enrollments or outbreaks.
I said, just give me a list of schools that's publicly available.
But, and I had found that this got cut from the article.
I had found a list online from the county, from the superintendent, and it said there were 757.
I'm like, that's strange.
The study says there's 782.
How can there be 757?
I then spoke to the superintendent of schools in Maricopa.
He confirmed for me, yeah, 757.
In fact, it may even be lower because some of the schools aren't open anymore, blah, blah, blah.
Eventually, I got the list from the state.
And then eventually, even after that, Finally, they stopped responding to me, but my editor emailed them and they sent him their sort of winnowed down list.
But even on that winnowed down list, there still were preschool, virtual schools.
In the initial list I got from the state, and by the way, in my public records request, I said, I want the list that you gave to these authors.
Whatever list you gave them, give that to me.
And they sent it to me and they said, This is the list.
And on that list, there were schools that were closed.
There were preschools.
And the biggest one is there were something like 80 or 90 vocational programs that they were categorized as schools on this list from the state, but they are not schools.
It's merely a program that you go to, you know, whatever, XYZ high school, and you're taking an automotive class.
They called that a school, but those kids were still there.
They could go to a campus of these vocational schools.
There were a few campuses where the kids could go there for part of the day and then they come back to their home school, but those were only.
Like two to four campuses.
So you have 80 entries for regular high schools that they just call it an additional school, but it was not.
And I went back and forth with the authors and back and forth with the editors.
I know this term gets thrown around a lot gaslighting.
Missing Community Context 00:14:53
I thought I was losing my mind.
And I talked with all of my experts behind the scenes.
I'm like, we had spreadsheets where I'm comparing everything.
I'm calling schools in Arizona.
I spoke to the people at the vocational schools.
They don't exist.
And the question then remains, as you pointed out, how do you calculate the number of outbreaks in schools that don't exist?
Those are not schools.
Yet they have doubled down and they are insisting that they said, nope, this is correct.
No matter what evidence is presented to them, they ultimately, in the final communication with my editor, they said, well, if there's another error in the categorization, you need to take that up with the Department of Education.
That may be so, but you conducted this study where you're saying there are 782 schools, but yet there are not those schools.
How can you have more schools in the study than actually exist in this county?
It's like, how does that happen?
No one knows.
Yes, so their statement was MMWR, and again, this stands for Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, which is prepared by the CDC, is committed to quickly correcting errors when they are identified.
We reviewed the specific items that you described below and found no errors.
Which is, I like that.
I'm going to start doing that.
Like, no matter what.
I found no errors in what I did, notwithstanding the fact that they maybe stare me in the face, right?
Like, no, there aren't.
There aren't.
Okay.
That's not normally the way this works.
I basically told them, I'm like, look.
It's raining outside.
And not only am I telling you that, here's my proof.
I'm soaking wet.
And they wrote back and basically said, you know, F you, it's not raining.
I mean, that's essentially what the correspondence was.
I mean, this was not, so that's the thing I keep mentioning.
This is not about different academics, as they always should do, sort of critiquing and reviewing each other and saying, I don't like this methodology.
You know, you should have controlled for vaccination status.
They also didn't control for community rates over time in this study, by the way.
They only looked at it.
Pegged to the first week of school.
So, if community rates started to skyrocket in some of these areas after the first week of school, that wasn't controlled for.
So, those things were known, but it's when I'm presenting, there's actual evidence, and it's not me, this pesky journalist.
I'm like, this is from the state.
I have their list.
This is not me making stuff up.
This is not me complaining about your methodology.
These are the actual figures from the county of Maricopa and from the Arizona State Department of Education.
And they are giving me different numbers.
That what you have in your study, there are 80 phantom schools.
I don't understand how you can tell me.
Okay, so now let me ask you about this.
Going back to Rochelle and the CDC, because they really have been touting this.
I mean, I really want to call the superintendent of our school today and say, have you been reliant on her?
Have you been depending on her information?
Because I want you to read this.
Let's put up the tweet so the audience who's watching on YouTube can see it, and I'll read it to our listening audience.
This is just a Another representation of how she was putting it up.
It's the CDC September tweet I'm asking for my team.
And she tweets out, let's see, why do I keep doing this?
I can't actually read what it's.
Is it, there's still quite a lot of suffering going on.
Yeah, I'm trying to, oh yeah, no, okay.
Yeah, can you read?
I'm trying to read it and it's too far away from me.
Go ahead.
Yeah, so this is the tweet from the CDC, which Director Walensky ultimately retweeted herself a couple days later.
It says, the new CDC MMWR finds schools.
In two Arizona counties without a mask requirement, were three and a half times more likely to have a COVID 19 outbreak than schools requiring masks from the start of the school year.
CDC recommends universal masking for all K 12 schools.
All right, three and a half times.
And one of the points you make in your article is three and a half times, like the masks are that effective, they're going to give you throuple and another half the protection of not wearing a mask against getting COVID.
And you said that right there should have raised alarm bells.
For people, why?
So, one of the reasons I got started on this journey of this investigation was that I'm often texting and in correspondence with a variety of infectious disease people and epidemiologists who I'm just in touch with every day.
And when this study came out, my phone exploded with people saying three and a half times.
What?
That's like way out there.
And this type of comparative study, it seemed completely to be an outlier type of result.
Based on where you're comparing these things, as you're suggesting, that's you know 350.
By comparison, another study which I dismantled, one that took place in Georgia schools, found something in the 30s percent, and that was for staff and for students.
The percentage was 21 percent, and it wasn't even statistically significant.
So, when you're talking about 30 something percent, and there's a big randomized control trial in Bangladesh, wasn't on schools, but even that found something like an 11 percent.
So, when something about this just was like, whoa.
That it started ringing alarm bells, and my phone started blowing up.
I'm like, maybe I should look into this.
When something seems more dramatic than what typically makes sense, you want to look at it and figure out what's going on.
And sure enough, when you know, to use a cliche, once you looked under the hood, things started to look very worrisome.
So, the thing to me, Megan, that I found, and I didn't get to go into this in my article, but I felt a sense of betrayal.
I was surprised at how I'm continued this.
I felt this way for the past, you know, almost two years.
I'm surprised at how naive I've been for someone considering how cynical I am that I still felt like hurt and surprised.
I remember I was talking to my wife the night I got that response from the editors at the journal from the CDC when they're like, Thank you.
There are no errors.
I was just like, I could expect this maybe from like the CIA or something in our intelligence apparatus.
I was like, This is a public health agency.
Like, what are they doing?
And when I sent that response to several of the experts who were working with me, everyone, we all just felt the sense of betrayal and astonishment.
At the way their messaging played out with this, even with me.
So, that to me is obviously the broader point than just this one study, right?
It's the notion of.
Well, it's infuriating because we have millions of American kids with masks over their face all day, and it's not necessary.
And we have yet to be shown the science that proves otherwise.
This is the quote, science.
Dr. Fauci, I am the science.
This is the science.
Well, the science doesn't hold up.
This is junk science.
This does not justify my kid wearing a mask over his face all day.
So, show me something that does.
But you're right that the The larger point, apart from the inconvenience and the social distraction and the just soul killing nature of children having these masks on their faces all day, is we don't trust our public health officials and for very good reason.
I think that's ultimately what this comes down to.
And look, whether people think we should wear masks or not in schools, okay, that can be debated.
That's a policy decision, but policy and science are two different things.
So the CDC is welcome to continue to make the argument that they think masks are important in schools.
But they simply can't use this study to make that argument in the way they did over and over.
And they can't use a variety of the other studies that they have been using.
But what it shows is that they're willing, I'll be charitable, to push the envelope.
They're willing to bend the truth if they think it's in service of the greater good.
They believe already that masks have to work, masks are the answer.
Masks do work.
And therefore, they do the study, they overlook the flaws, they don't care when it's brought to their specific attention, they put their heads in the sand.
Because they believe this is what's right.
If we put something out there saying anything other than they work, it can undermine what's right.
It is exactly the same thing as Fauci and his noble lie about the masks and noble lies about what levels we need to reach herd immunity.
They've done it over and over.
And most of us are done trusting them.
Yeah, that to me is the beginning.
And there's a quote from Jonathan Ketchum, who's a public health economist who I interviewed for the article at the end, where he said, you know, ultimately, This is really about a loss of trust.
You know, it's not about this one particular study.
It's when, and by the way, I said, hey, if you don't trust me as the pesky journalist, I have a list of highly credentialed experts who are very concerned about this study.
And I can have the request come from one of them if you don't want to give the data set to me.
Give it to, so I even offered that up.
I was like, hey, I get it if you don't want to send it to me as a journal.
Give it to the, but what people need to know is MMWR, the CDC's journal, does not have external peer review.
Which is considered kind of the rock bottom standard for most of our top journals in the country.
So there's no review.
So when you have someone presenting you with very Specific evidence from highly legitimate sources like the state of Arizona and the county of Maricopa.
And I'm showing them this evidence and they say, nah, it's fine.
And there's no way for anyone to verify any of this, Megan, if they don't give the actual data set and let other researchers look at the underlying data.
And the little bit that I actually got when I looked at the list, lo and behold, there were schools that were closed.
There were schools, kids into virtual academies on this list that are in their study.
It's a black box.
No one knows how they came up with their ultimate findings on the study because none of this makes sense or adds up.
And it's just, it is so demoralizing and to know that a public health agency has been acting in a manner that we would more typically associate with something like bad corporations or something in the defense department or whatever.
It's like, yeah.
So I think a lot of people, Distrusted the CDC before this, but it is important to see actual proof, right?
It's like, no, my instincts were right.
No, they were lying, and now they're lying more.
And, you know, I've said this before, but in the law, if you catch a witness in a lie, you can ask for a jury instruction to the jury.
It's basically falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus.
My Latin's falling apart, but it's, you know, if they lied in one thing, you're entitled to determine that they're a liar overall and disbelieve their testimony.
Gotcha, Rochelle.
Gotcha.
Gotcha, Fauci.
Over and over.
But I want to do more with this.
I want to replay that soundbite and ask you somebody specific.
And then I want to ask you about what they're doing with the vaccines because Biden is sidelining the officials when it comes to pushing through these boosters and things for children.
And given the fact that already they're sort of jumping right over things we might want to be concerned about, that's alarming too.
I'm going to pick it up there right after this quick break with David Zweig, one of the last few honest journalists out there, legit.
And remember, folks, you can find the Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM Triumph channel.
111 every weekday at noon Eastern.
Okay, that's for my YouTube and my podcast followers.
If you want to catch me live, that's where to do it.
If you like to watch the show, just go to youtube.comslash Megan Kelly.
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All right.
And you'll also find our full archives there with more than 220 shows.
Thank you for doing all those things ideally.
I want to go back and take another look at Rochelle Walensky and what she said, because what he's trying to get to at the end, as you point out now, is okay, so great, there's a study, all the kids should be masked, got it.
But is it just something like, did the data show masks help?
Masks are one of five things that help reduce the spread of COVID?
Or were you able to specifically say, no, it's the masks that caused this three and a half time reduction in COVID?
Let's listen to it one more time.
You know, the big finding is that masks in school work.
We've only had in some school districts about six weeks of school, and we've already had in a different study that was published today over 1,800 schools closed.
Nearly a million children have been out of school because of school closures.
But the study that you're referring to in Arizona demonstrated that schools that had masks were three and a half times less likely to have a school outbreak than schools that didn't have masks.
Just as a follow up, are we sure that's not a correlation?
Issue and not a causation, which is to say, like, there's higher levels of community transmission in the school districts that are also the ones most inclined to not have a masking policy.
See what I'm saying?
Yeah.
No, and that's actually been studied as well.
And we've examined those correlations for exactly the concern you raised.
This is an independent effect of masks.
That was a lie.
Well, what I can say is every single one of the experts who I interviewed for this article, I think there were at least three or four or five quoted in the article.
And I had a list of them who consulted with me off the record for the article as well.
Every single one of them.
Was very specific and scathing in their assessment that this study absolutely did not say what the CDC claimed it was saying.
They didn't control for vaccination status.
They didn't control for community rates over time.
There was the way they did their adjustments for population correlations.
I mean, the list goes on and on.
So I'm not going to use those words, but I will say that what the director Walensky is saying is in 100% direct contrast to what every single expert I interviewed.
About this study said to me.
And if you read in the article, I think it's a fairly persuasive case that they are correct.
Booster Data Ignored 00:02:01
Yes.
I'll be charitable here and say it's not true.
Her best case scenario is she was mistaken over and over and over and over and over again.
And then when confronted with that mistake by you, she refused to give you a statement.
The CDC refused to comment.
When confronted with your article and your reporting by us, They refuse to give us a statement or to clarify in any way.
That suggests a lie.
I mean, look, you're too nice to say it, but I've been around this for a while.
If you won't explain it and you won't correct it, you lied.
And you're standing by your lie because you think it's noble, I guess.
But it plays into what's happening right now.
And I'll just get you to comment on it quickly.
In the past couple of weeks, we've had three important decisions on vaccines.
WAPO has an article on this today.
FDA authorized boosters for all adults.
Everyone under 18 now should get a booster shot, they say, and booster shots for 16 and 17 year olds.
Without the standard practice of convening standing outside advisory committees, whose members would have objected.
They're now bypassing objections at all for their favored policies, David.
I think it's downright alarming.
I'll give you the last word.
Yeah, I would share your alarm with that assessment.
The boosters certainly appear to be a really good idea for people who are older and people who have various vulnerabilities.
But from, and again, I knew I was coming on, so I double checked with a bunch of my experts this morning.
There is no evidence that they are aware of that giving a 16 year old a booster offers anything.
Remember, you're dealing with a population when you're talking about kids and adolescents where something at least around 50% of them are asymptomatic.
That is an incredibly high bar to clear.
And they're not facing any serious, they're not facing virtually any risk at all of hospitalization or death.
David Zwag, you're an important person in the national conversation.
I'm grateful to know you and for your reporting.
Thank you.
No Evidence for Kids 00:03:12
Thanks for having me, Megan.
Wow, we got to get an answer from Rochelle.
Up next, we're going to get answers from Karen Grassley, which is going to be amazing too.
Little House on the Prairie, next.
Well, the holiday season has me feeling nostalgic, as it always does.
Do you get that way?
So I am delighted to be taking a walk down memory lane this hour, revisiting two of my favorite childhood memories Little House on the Prairie and later Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
Boy, do I have an update for you on that.
We begin with one of the stars of Little House.
From 1973 to 1984, Karen Grassley played the role of Ma, Carolyn Ingalls, the matriarch of the Ingalls family.
And she has now, after all this time, released a book called Bright Lights Prairie Dust, detailing her life on the prairie and the behind the scenes struggles and triumphs that helped create one of the most beloved TV shows in history.
She joins me now.
Karen, so nice to meet you.
Well, Megan, thank you for having me.
Oh, my gosh, this is thrilling.
So, when I was on NBC, I got to interview Allison, who played Nellie, and Melissa Gilbert, who, of course, played Laura Ingalls.
And this is like, I'm completing the family.
I'm thrilled, thrilled to meet you.
Thank you so much.
Like so many other little girls, but at the time I watched your show religiously, I learned a lot of moral lessons from it, life lessons from it.
And you, your character, I just don't remember another time in my own television history, 50 years of watching, where I found a character who was more loving, a softer place to fall, more welcoming, someone who every child in the country would look at and say, That's An ideal mom.
Was that like, what was your role model?
Who was your role model for it?
Well, my role model was my mother.
Your own mother.
My mother was not a soft place to fall, but she was strong, she was honest, she was hardworking, and she gave us such tremendous values.
And there were times that I had with her, Megan, like after school in the afternoon, if my little sister was out playing.
Where I might tell her, Oh, this bothered me at school, and then she would give me a life lesson while we were preparing dinner, for example.
And I felt that I could bring that to Carolyn.
You did, I felt like you were the perfect person for that role.
And I know you wound up having some issues with the size of the role, and we'll get into all of that.
But just a bit of background before we go there you were raised in California, a California girl, wound up Going after a brief stint in Louisiana to Berkeley.
At the time, I thought you were going to be a ballerina, then no.
And then ultimately settled on acting.
And how'd your parents feel about that?
From Ballerina to Star 00:10:23
Well, the day that they really got it, I was 19 years old.
And my mother went to bed crying and said, anything but politics or the theater.
And my mother was not a weeper, you know, this was.
Just crushing to her.
They wanted us to have a safe, secure life.
They would have liked me to be, you know, a school teacher, something like that.
My dad, on the other hand, was sitting in the kitchen smoking a cigarette.
And I went in there and lit up a cigarette of my own.
And he said, Well, I've been trying to talk you out of this for 10 years.
Now I'm through talking.
And that's when I got it.
That they had known all along, but that I'd been hiding this from myself because I knew they didn't want it.
And you just didn't do that when you came from my little town.
So, this is late 1960s, early 70s?
Oh, no.
That would be 1961.
Okay.
Okay.
Well, you look so young, I can't figure it out.
All right.
So, that's the idea.
Right.
Well, you're dealing it.
You look amazing.
Okay, so you try your hand, you act on the stage, and so on.
And then I love this part from your book.
You talk about how, I'm going to get it in front of me, about how.
You were considering for a time giving up showbiz.
You didn't have a lot of money.
Your mom loaned you some dough and you got new photos for your acting job and decided to take them to the talent agency.
And Karen, would you please tell Ma Ingalls, could you please tell the audience what was in those photos?
Well, among other things, there were a number of different poses, Megan, but also I was naked from the waist up.
And in the 60s, that was nothing.
I mean, nothing.
You know, we had the show, Oh, Calcutta, that was entirely nude.
It was the days of the sexual revolution and all that.
So I didn't think anything about it.
But when I look back on it, I feel embarrassed taking these photographs over to the talent agency for them to look over and tell me which ones we should use.
Well, so that leads to the $64,000 question, which is, Did they send that one in for the role on Little House?
Because you know what we know about Michael Landon, I mean, that might have been helpful.
Not at all.
Michael wasn't a ladies' man.
I don't know where that rumor got started, but he was a loyal husband, first to Lynn, and then later to his new wife, Cindy.
But as far as the picture was concerned, it was, you know, yours truly, wholesome and.
Direct and got me the audition.
So, when, of course, you played the part from the beginning, so you had no idea whether this would be a huge hit or a flop.
I mean, we now know it was one of the greatest hits of all time in American television history, but you didn't know that going in.
And what was the perception on your part?
What was your hope in trying to land the role?
Well, first of all, I just wanted a job.
I wanted to earn my living and I wanted to stay in show business.
So I was really thrilled when I got the part.
But I thought, well, it will be a hit.
And my idea of a hit, not being from Hollywood, was three years maybe, you know, it'll run.
And now we're coming up on almost 50 years.
People are still watching.
Yes, I have my kids watch it.
My kids are so excited I'm doing this interview.
Yes, of course.
I've seen them all.
And can I tell you something?
This is actually kind of silly, but.
Maybe you've heard this kind of story before.
When I was a young lawyer, I graduated law school in 95 and I was practicing in New York.
I was by myself.
I was very stressed out.
Well, at first I went to Chicago and then I came to New York.
And I was stressed out.
New York is tough on a young, I was from upstate New York.
That's very different, bucolic farmland.
So it was stressful.
And in the morning, instead of putting on the Today Show or the morning news, I put on reruns of Little House on the Prairie.
And then I'd go off to do my law job where I was a killer.
Right, but it calmed me, centered me, made me feel connected to home again.
Yes, and that's what I feel good about now.
At the time, I thought, well, you know, these lessons are good and everything, but I like a more complicated, dramatic kind of show.
And I like to deal with dysfunctional families and all that.
But now I really appreciate how this brings this serenity into people's lives.
And during the pandemic, it's been even more so.
Is that right?
Yes.
A whole audience has found the show during the pandemic that never knew about it before.
Oh, wow.
I didn't realize I'm so happy for them.
I have the whole box set, of course.
You don't need it anymore because you can get it online, but I've got it in many versions.
Okay, so you met with Michael Landon, according to the book.
You talked with him.
And did you know right at that moment, like, I got this?
No, I told them my background, my training in London, and my Broadway debut that closed in five days, and my Shakespeare in the park, and all that.
And it all amounted to, after all that, that I still had no career.
So when I left, I thought, oh my God, I told them I'm a loser.
And then I said, no, Karen, you told them the truth.
So if they don't want you for this, then it's not the right place for you, which was such an insight of faith, you know, at a moment when I really needed work.
And then before I even got home, they were like, come back to the studio and pick up.
The sides.
We want to read her tomorrow.
It's exciting.
What an exciting point in anyone in any young actress's life.
So, you did get the part and you would come into our homes and into our hearts for 11 years as Carolyn Ingalls.
And you are very honest in the book about the highs and lows of it and how you and Michael Landon, who he went into this series as a star, he was Little Joe on Bonanza.
I remember those days too.
And, um, He was so good looking.
I mean, every woman in America, you know, he's one of those.
My mom describes him as one of those men by whom you know whether or not you're old.
There's a period of years where you want him to be your dad.
And then it crosses over into, I want him in a different way.
That is so funny.
Whenever I would go out on the road to promote the show, the question I would get so often is, What is it like to kiss Michael?
I mean, so many girls had grown up with fantasies about him.
Yeah.
But, you know, and you discuss the good about Michael, but it wasn't all good, and no one is.
And you write about how complicated people are sometimes difficult to work with, you know, because super talented people are complicated, you write.
And that's been true in my experience, too.
So you and he collaborate on the first season, and Ma's a big character, and so on.
And then things take a bit of a left turn between the two of you.
Tell us why.
Well, it's very common in Hollywood that if a show succeeds, then the actors renegotiate their contracts based on the fact that it's a hit.
When I got the job, I had no name, I had no reputation.
And so when my agent showed me the contract, I said, wait a minute, this isn't what people get paid.
And he said, no, no, don't even worry about that because if it succeeds, we'll renegotiate.
At the beginning of the second season.
So I began work with that understanding.
But when my attorney and I went to see Mike to talk about that, he deflected in every way.
He just did not want to discuss it.
And we left there with nothing satisfied.
And then my attorney said, Well, you know, I'll talk to the network, and without you there, maybe we can do business.
And this began a cycle of Diminishment and punishment and retribution that I could not believe.
Wow.
And I never have really understood, Megan, why Mike.
Was so determined not to pay me a fair salary.
But it went on for over a year.
I did almost two seasons not knowing what I was going to be paid and having my part cut and having insults made on the set.
And then finally it got settled.
And I was like, now we can go back to just being colleagues, you know.
And do our work because we actually liked working together very much.
Did you go back to that place?
It came and went.
From then on, I never knew whether we were going to go back to that place, which we sometimes did, or whether he was going to be cold and dismissive.
Struggle with Alcoholism 00:03:43
This, you're very open in the book, was particularly difficult for you because it reminded you of what it's like to be the child of an alcoholic.
And your dad was.
And it is very inconsistent, right?
And that's how it sounds like Michael was, too.
Well, that was the echo, you know, what you picked up there that my dad, whom I adored, we were all crazy about him, but he could turn and he would turn on me in a vicious way.
And this was reminiscent of that.
So it really cut through my defenses.
And I was very, very vulnerable.
And this contributed, I must say, To my own feeling of being a victim and drinking more and really running myself into the ground.
I was shocked to read that you were, I think it's fair to say, becoming an alcoholic from the early years of the show.
And that, you know, you wrote about sort of waking up with the puffy eyes and breaking the ice on the counter and putting them on your eyes and trying to find something stronger than Visine.
You know, it's so otherworldly to think back on that version of. Carolyn Ingalls and think she was having real struggles like everyone does.
And some were dark.
Yeah, yeah.
I had always struggled with depression.
And from time to time, I had had these bad episodes when I went out drinking.
But because I was now successful, I had more money.
We went out to nice restaurants, we bought bottles of fancy wine.
And drinking became more of a lifestyle thing.
But when the contract conflict started, then I began to sink into that, you know, and go home and feel sorry for myself and drink and say, you know, you'd drink too if you had these problems and rationalize my own bad behavior, really.
So, what you're saying is, you love the scenes with Mr. Edwards.
I do.
His moonshine.
Victor was a wonderful actor, you know, and we had a real intimacy in the scenes, and I loved playing with him.
Well, who else did you love playing across?
I mean, I, of course, Mrs. Olson was always a favorite for those of us.
Yes, did you and she get along?
Oh, we were such good friends.
She was such a friend to me.
Oh, yeah.
She was great during all this struggle.
And, Right after my dad died, we went over to Tucson to shoot some scenes for the show.
And Scotty invited me to come in and have dinner in her room.
She said, Yeah, just come on and have dinner in my room, you know, it'll be quiet.
I just felt like I needed protection from the crew at the bar and all that going on.
And we just formed this bond because we loved to rehearse.
We loved our egg scenes.
We loved to have fights with each other.
You know, it was so gratifying.
Oh, she was always telling you your eggs were too small.
And then you sometimes would take a stand say, I'm going to bring them someplace else.
It was great.
She was one of the best characters, and your relationship was fun to watch.
Bonding After Loss 00:06:13
But listen, I've been there too.
I understand what it's like to be one of the only women at an all men's table and the dynamics there.
And it can be awkward and uncomfortable.
And if you're not with the right guys at that table, it can be very stressful.
And I'm sure even more so in the early 1970s.
Well, I think there are things that went on then that can't go on now, thank heavens.
And isn't it fantastic?
That these brave young women spoke up and the hashtag MeToo movement got going.
I mean, it really is marvelous.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that Mike ever assaulted me or harassed me sexually by touching me or anything like that.
But there's an atmosphere of put down, there's an atmosphere that is denigrating to a woman.
That's recognized too under sexual harassment law as a hostile work environment.
I mean, that's That's a real claim that can be filed.
Exactly.
And I would file it today.
Is that right?
I mean, what?
So, what about that?
Because one of the questions people have is why now?
Why would you come out and tell a story now after all these years?
Well, I didn't know that's what I was going to do.
You know, I started writing my memories.
I started exploring the whole form of memoir as a kind of book and took classes.
And It began to evolve, and I realized that if I'm going to tell my story, I'm going to have to tell my story.
You know, I can't leave out the tricky parts.
And if I have anything to offer, it's my honesty and the lessons I've learned, you know.
So I've got to put it out there.
And I really didn't mean for the book to take so long to get published.
But part of it was it took me a long time to write it, but also it just got rejected everywhere.
What insane lunatic rejected your memoir?
There's a list.
And yeah, so I didn't know it would take so long for it to come out.
So it wasn't that I planned for it to come out now.
I mean, this is just the way it turned out.
Yeah, it was an organic thing.
All right, now let me stand you by for one second.
We're going to squeeze in a quick Break and on the opposite side, I want to ask Karen whether there's been any blowback to her from other members of the cast and saying, oh, not the perfect things about Michael Landon.
And also about the character on Little House with whom she had an affair.
Maybe I'm the last to know.
I did not know this happened.
I'll tell you who it is.
And then, amazing, amazing update for you on my love affair with Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
So, Karen, one of the things I saw.
You write was interesting to me.
I wanted to ask you about it because you were talking about how when you got the part, you mentioned this earlier, you weren't sure you wanted to play a dramatic role, and maybe Carolyn Ingalls didn't have all the layers that you would have liked as an actress.
But there is a line in your book that reads, I'd be stuck in a TV series playing a negative woman who, at least in the writing, showed no sense of her own strength.
That's fascinating to me.
A negative woman.
What do you mean by that?
Well, in the original pilot, the character was reluctant to leave home.
She was kind of prudish when the father figures.
Talks about the gender of the horses.
She's just, you know, disapproving.
When he's looking out at the vast land and says, Carolyn, we're home, she's like, oh, really?
So I thought, hmm, he's this young, vivacious, handsome, violin playing father.
And she's like, tsk, tsk, you know.
But what happened was that on the very first day of the pilot, and you know, I didn't know these books before we started, so I was playing catch up, reading while we were shooting.
On the very first day, there was this little cabin where Carolyn's parents supposedly lived, and she was going to be saying goodbye to them and probably never see them again.
And I got it.
Oh, my word.
And now she's going to take her three little girls and put them in the back of a wagon and go God knows where with all kinds of dangers out there.
So all of a sudden, I realized this is a woman who is being very brave, very loyal to her husband's wish to move on.
And my respect for her began right there.
That's so interesting.
Fascinating.
Equally interesting is the fact that that loyalty would not necessarily last, Missy, because Carolyn Ingalls had her eye on the handyman in one episode.
Rather, he had his eye on her.
And I'm very familiar with the episode.
And I learned from your book that there was something going on behind the scenes there between you and Gil Girard, better known to the world as Buck Rogers, who guested.
On the show, I'm going to show the audience the scene.
They can listen and the YouTube audience can see because Gil was pretty nice to look at.
And Karen thought so too.
Watch this.
Finding Therapy Help 00:14:28
I hope I didn't start you, ma'am.
Who are you?
The name's Nelson, Chris Nelson.
I answer easier to Chris.
And you'd be Ms. Zingles now, wouldn't you?
I heard you might be needing some help.
I'm a handyman, General Carpentry.
I bet you are.
That went really well between you, as it turns out.
That was so much fun for me.
Really, wasn't I lucky to have these really handsome, charming leading men?
I mean, really unbelievable.
So, what happened?
Because you were your character in that episode, Michael Landon's character is a woman.
We started to date, you know, what can I say?
We started to date, and he was really a great guy.
And then we became friends.
It did not last.
But this was not all positive for you.
This wound up becoming sort of an aha moment in your life, from what I read.
Why is that?
Well, this was at the end of my drinking, Megan.
And so this behavior of Rushing from a drink to a man to other solutions, whatever I might be thinking I needed, had to stop.
I needed to stop and take a deep look at Karen and see my part in what I thought were my troubles and stop looking outside of myself to blame other people, stop rationalizing, you know, you'd drink too if they didn't settle your contract and stuff like that.
And come to terms with myself and get honest.
And so I had to face my alcoholism.
Is it true that you initially did therapy, but then your program grew?
I did a lot of therapy over my whole life.
I've had more help than most people, but I've needed it.
I needed a lot of help.
That serene look that Ma has required a lot of help.
Right.
That was great acting.
Right.
So I'd had a lot of therapy over the years.
And when it was time for me to stop drinking, I knew I had to go to the people who knew how not to do that because I didn't know how.
My dad didn't know how, you know.
So did you go in Hollywood as a star?
Yeah.
Was that hard, right?
And you walk in, and most people have their anonymity, but you do not.
Well, I won't go too much into that.
But I knew that I had to get humble about my need for help.
And I had to put it first.
And everything else had to fall behind that.
Good.
And you managed it.
I mean, so many people try and fail and try and fail and try and fail again, and then ultimately do succeed.
But yours has been a success story.
Had you managed to get sober by the end of the series?
Oh, no, I got sober right away.
Okay, so it was right then, right after Gil.
Right.
I would say about two weeks after the handyman was shot, I was sober and in withdrawal.
So I began my new life then, and I had just moved into my first home.
So I had a completely fresh space.
All the walls were white.
I had a swimming pool and I could take really good care of myself, you know, and build this new life.
What did you make of the dynamic on the set between you?
I mean, explain it to us between you and the actors and actresses who played your children.
And full disclosure, one of them is one of my closest friends, Melissa Francis, who came in as a second wave of Ingalls children and played Cassandra.
So you've got to give me some dirt on her at some point, but let's just start wide.
Melissa Gilbert, Melissa Sue Anderson.
I mean, I feel like I grew up with them.
What were they like?
They were incredibly talented.
Incredibly talented.
And being raised under so much pressure, everybody says, oh, you know, the Little House set was just like a big family.
And I didn't miss my childhood and things like that.
But from my point of view, having had a childhood that was free, where I didn't have hours.
And I didn't have work, and I wasn't required to be on it when they said action.
I don't think that was.
A very free childhood.
And I think if you ask them now, they might say something different.
Yeah.
So I love these children.
I mean, I was very fond of kids all my life.
And it meant a lot to me to be able to have kids in my life.
You know, you don't always get that in the theater.
So I felt like I was watching them grow up and to whatever degree I could.
Offering them some safety, some support as things went along.
Melissa Francis, my friend, she worked with me at Fox News for years and at CNBC before that.
But her book was called Diary of a Stage Mother's Daughter.
And she certainly does talk about how she was very much pushed into this line of work.
And she wound up pairing with Justin Bateman on Little House as the sort of next wave of Ingalls children once the first wave got a little too old.
To play the cute little children in the cabin.
But it makes me wonder whether you keep in touch with any of them.
When you see Jason Bateman in these movies, do you still know each other?
Well, first of all, I want to say that Melissa Francis' book is excellent.
Oh, I'm so glad you read it.
I read it.
I admire it.
I couldn't find where to write to her, so I didn't write to her, but I wanted to congratulate her, not only on the excellence of the writing, but also on what she says about parenting.
That with each child, a different style of parenting can be necessary.
I just thought it was so insightful.
My heart went out to her.
As far as Jason and Melissa Francis are concerned, you know, they came on at the very end of the show when I had already given my notice and I knew I was out the door.
So I did not really get that close to them because it was going to be one more goodbye.
So I never really, you know, I had one season with them.
It didn't really become like friends.
Yeah.
You know, I liked them.
They were sweet.
I remember her with her little Persian cat.
She needed that little cat.
Anyway.
Yeah, go ahead.
Anyway, the other girls, you know, and Matt.
You know, it was years with them.
So I had much more of a relationship with them.
Matt played Albert.
What was difficult sometimes was that I couldn't be their parent.
I couldn't bring them my understanding.
I had to keep certain boundaries because they had parents of their own, you know, who made decisions about their careers.
Their hours, different things, you know, that maybe I would have had a different opinion about.
Can I tell you something interesting?
This is, I'm just going to report from what I read in the newspaper here.
But Melissa Francis, you might be interested to know, went on to allegedly file a pay discrimination claim against Fox News for not being paid what she claimed was an equal amount to her male counterparts there.
And It's just now striking me that the parallels, if that is true, between her situation, your one time television daughter, and your situation.
And it's like, Here we are, a generation plus later.
Women are still dealing with this in some corners, not everywhere, but they're still dealing with it.
But it did take people like you to, at a time when it was far less favorable to stand up for yourself, to do that, right?
To sort of give people the idea that it was doable.
And I love Michael Landon, I'll always love Michael Landon, notwithstanding any of this, but I think we can still love him, appreciating warts and all.
I think it's important to expose those, though.
It's okay to talk about the downsides.
Of working with him and being with him, and you can still wind up loving him.
Exactly.
I mean, I cared for Michael, and I am no way dismissing his contribution.
I'm just saying this is what happened, and this is what I had to do about it.
You know, this was also the price I paid for doing something about it.
The incredible shrinking part where it was just Ma serving coffee in this entire episode.
Bring the coffee while everyone else is the star.
And then, you know, when you lower your demands, maybe you can actually have lines again.
Can we talk about whether there's anybody who you didn't like?
Now, I know you and Michael had your problems, but was there anybody like, tell me, Miss Beadle was a bitch, wasn't she?
Come on, you can give it to me straight.
You know what?
They were all nice people.
Reverend Alden.
Doc Baker, somebody.
Reverend Alden was like a saint.
He took care of his own mother, you know.
I mean, Yeah.
Charlotte Stewart and I became friends on the show as well.
That's Miss Beatles.
And the children were amazing.
There was no brat.
Oh, no.
It's amazing because Allison, who played Nellie Olson, she's the farthest thing you can get from a brat.
Her book is also amazing Confessions of a Prairie Bitch.
And she had a hell of a childhood as well, but she's got a sense of humor about it, right?
She's great.
And she backs you up in what you said.
Well, you know, the kids were mostly not around when this behavior went on.
If they were to look at the shows and see what was happening with my part, maybe they would notice it.
But in fact, I didn't want to air this with them or with the press because I felt if you're on the show, you're on the show, you know, you hold up your end.
So I guess the thing about the girls was that I felt very protective of them.
And there were so many ways in which I couldn't protect them.
Well, because the book also exposes that Michael, you know, the atmosphere on set, you know, there's an example of him talking about women's body parts and dropping the C word.
And, you know, there's lots of things.
But not around them, never around the children.
No, Little House was really clean.
Whenever the children were present, people weren't even swearing.
I mean, we all smoked cigarettes like it was going out of style, which was terrible for them.
No, there was an atmosphere that was wholesome, specifically for the children.
What about, speaking of cigarettes, Michael Landon and his untimely death at age 55, too soon of pancreatic cancer?
And had you gotten the chance to talk with him prior to his death?
Oh, yes, fortunately.
I had written to him.
I was living out of state, and I had written to him just to say, you know, this is where I am and what's going on in my life.
He wrote back and he said, Give me a call sometime so we can talk over old times.
Before we both forget them.
And so I did give him a call, and we had such a nice visit.
We didn't relate at all to the old stuff.
We just picked up right where we were.
And it was so great to hear about his new life, his new family, how happy he was.
He had a new hit series, and everything was right with his world.
It was so sad.
Because we mended our fences.
So I didn't have that residue of regret or recrimination when he was diagnosed.
I was like, oh my God.
Thank God we've already settled this.
Thank God.
What about your real life?
What does your family life look like now?
I have a son.
I'm very proud of him.
And, oops, sorry.
And this book has taken up a lot of my energy for the last six months or a year, getting ready for the release and talking with people about it.
Willy Wonka Memories 00:09:02
And it's been so rewarding because I really, I really didn't get it that Ma had imprinted on people's hearts and that the character had.
Come through in this powerful way.
So that when the book started to be released, I started to get this tremendous wave of appreciation for Ma.
And I, you know, it's very rewarding, isn't it, Megan, when you find out your work matters to people?
It's just, yeah.
Well, I originally read some reports saying some of the other actors were mad about shots at Michael Landon.
And then when I had my team do some digging, all we found was support for you, Karen.
Actor after actor who is involved in the series saying, I know what she's talking about.
That's legit.
But overall, having a great experience on the set and certainly with you.
I love this.
I love meeting you.
All I can say to you is thank you so much for so many positive experiences.
It was next to church in my book for me, my best friend Kelly, my mom, my older sister.
We watched you religiously.
So it's a real thrill to know you.
Megan, thank you so much.
Good luck.
All the best.
You too.
Okay, this is like the most amazing hour for me because up next, we are going to revisit my interview one year ago with two of the stars from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and what I did just a few weeks ago.
I promise you, you are not going to want to miss this.
Stay tuned.
This past Thanksgiving, I traveled to London to make one of my childhood dreams come true.
As some of you might know, I am a Huge fan of the movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
Huge.
Possibly the biggest fan ever.
The music, the morals, the mischievous smile of the late Gene Wilder.
There is nothing about this film that I do not love except perhaps Charlie Bucket's mom's solo, but onward.
Ever since I started in this business, on my all time dream guest list, the stars from the original cast.
I don't need no Johnny Depp.
Don't apply.
So last December, my team surprised me with the news that we had booked.
Peter Ostrom and Julie Dawn Cole.
Charlie Bucket and Veruca Salt, OMG.
For the first time ever in an interview, okay, I sat down with them.
This is before we had camera, so it was just audio.
For the first time ever in an interview, I cried before I even got out the first question.
And before the interview ended, I was given the chance of a lifetime a golden ticket, if you will.
Watch.
Come with me, and you'll be in a world of pure imagination.
It's hard to believe it's been over 50 years since the release of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
A story about a sweet, young, down on his luck boy named Charlie Bucket, who, against all odds, finds one of the coveted golden tickets and wins a tour of Wonka's mysterious chocolate factory.
Oh my god!
Hello, Megan.
Oh my god.
I'm literally crying.
I'm crying.
I have been looking forward to this my whole life.
Peter Ostrom and Julie Dawn Cole were both 12 years old when they won the Rolls of a Lifetime.
Don't care how I want to go!
Mr. Wonka, they won't really be burned in the furnace, will they?
What happened there?
Did you really go down something?
What was underneath that little.
It tracks how old you are if you ask that question, because that's the question that lots of the kids ask me.
Where did you go to when you went down the chute?
So I get asked that a lot.
So if you're a child, I will say, well, luckily the furnace wasn't lit.
You know, it's every other day.
In reality, I landed on some cardboard boxes.
I first discovered the film in the 1980s.
It taught that good things happen to good people, that bad kids finish last, and that miracles do happen.
And when I lost my dad as a teenager, it was a movie that let me escape.
People have told me stories of this movie got me through some dark times.
So it's sort of the chicken soup of movies.
There's countless stories like that.
A year and a half ago, two years ago, I was at the Syracuse airport and this guy, he just came over to me and he goes, I just want to thank you.
And I just smiled and he smiled.
Yeah, you did something that mattered.
Charlie, my boy, you won!
You did it!
You did it!
I knew you would!
I just knew you would!
We watch it on my birthday every year and my sweet.
Daughter, she's nine.
She just said to me, because I just had my birthday in November, she just said to me, Mama, she's like, when I'm a grown up, I'm going to watch this every year on your birthday and think of you.
Invite us next year.
Wait, did she just say invite us?
Fast forward to a few weeks ago, I hopped on a plane to London with my family.
We stopped by Buckingham Palace.
I hadn't said hello to the Queen since the royal wedding in 2018.
And then we entered a world of, you guessed it.
Pure imagination.
Oh my, oh my gosh.
OMG.
I met up with Julie and with Wonka bars galore, flowing chocolate fountains, and a little champagne toast, we sat back and watched the movie together.
Yay!
Woo!
Forget the chocolate!
Go, Charlie!
Now some tons of ice cream.
And if I don't get the things I am after, I'm going to scream.
Julie shared more memories of her time on set.
Her infamous I want it now routine took 33 takes.
I have a question.
What was your favorite line in the entire movie?
My favorite line Snowsberry, whoever heard of a Snowsberry?
I don't.
At one point, we even called an Oompa Loompa, chatting with Rusty Goff, OMG, and then there was Julie sharing.
Memories of Mr. Wonka himself, Gene Wilder.
This is my original copy of the book, which I read from for my audition, and I had everybody sign it.
Gene is somewhere.
To my dearest beloved Julie, whom I shall love forever.
Julie says when it came to Wilder, the camera never lied.
The warmth he showed that I always felt and still feel to this day was real.
He didn't really want to over discuss Willy Wonka because he didn't want to break the magic.
The magic that Julie helped me relive in a night I will never forget.
But, Charlie, don't forget what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he always wanted.
What happened?
He lived happily ever after.
It got me again.
I can't.
Do you have one of those films in your life that just.
Makes you feel totally emotional.
To have watched that with Julie Donkol, I cannot tell you how much that meant to me, to my family.
I'm so grateful to her for saying yes.
She's such a doll.
She, in no way, disappointed.
To the contrary, I think we're going to be lifelong friends.
I should thank the Browns Hotel.
Unbelievable job on the Wonka Room.
So grateful to them.
And by the way, I want to give a shout out to the little Mini Cooper company, too.
If you ever go through London, check out Small Car, Big City, because it's a super way to see the town with your friends.
And if you want to hear my full interview with Peter and Julie from last year, it's episode 41 in our archives.
More crying there and more goodness.
Grateful Holiday Farewell 00:00:32
Thanks for joining us today.
I want to tell you next week, it's True Crime Christmas Week on the show.
Don't miss it.
We've taken some of the biggest cases of all time and done explosive, really interesting interviews.
You will love it.
Please download the show.
Enjoy your holidays.
Merry Christmas.
Happy New Year.
God bless.
Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show.
No BS, no agenda, and no fear.
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