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Feb. 1, 2022 - The Megyn Kelly Show
01:28:58
20220201_whoopis-crazy-holocaust-comments-and-the-value-of-
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The Power of Self Compassion 00:14:47
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 a great program for you today.
Coming up next hour, Whoopi Goldberg is apologizing, sort of, for comments she made about the Holocaust and how it had nothing to do with race, according to her.
And Gavin Newsom, maskless yet again, while he imposes an indoor mask.
Mandate on those in his state.
But we are going to begin the show by diving into the topic of regret.
Our first guest is New York Times bestselling author Daniel Pink, and he has a new book out today called The Power of Regret How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward.
I have so many thoughts and questions about this.
Daniel, thank you so much for being here.
How are you?
I'm good.
Thanks for having me, Megan.
All right.
So this is fascinating to me.
This is one near and dear to my heart.
And I learned in reading your book that.
I might be a psychopath because I can explain.
Okay, I'm either a psychopath or I have something called orbitofrontal con.
You have lesions on your orbitofrontal context?
I have lesions on my, yeah, on my orbitofrontal context, right?
I might have something called.
We have breaking medical news here.
Because I am in the 1% of never regretters.
And I know you spent a lot of the book talking about how that's kind of bullshit.
You know, a lot of people, a lot of celebrities say, like, no regrets, no regrets.
And I've given so much thought about this as I've read your book and read my team's summary of you.
And I've really been reflecting on whether I am kidding myself or what.
And what I think is we might just have different definitions of regret, but just different ways.
I think I'm kind of at the end of the Daniel Pink book.
I'm that person who's like processed it and come out at a good place with it as opposed to.
I just buried it and said, no regrets, no regrets.
That's what it could be.
I mean, it could be that you're on either end of the spectrum.
I hope that you don't have lesions on your orbital frontal cortex.
And I hope you don't have Parkinson's disease or a sociopath or other kinds of things that prevent people from having regret.
But it could be that you've processed it.
It could be that you've processed it well.
And it could be that you're actually better adjusted than most people.
The problem with regret is that it feels terrible, it's painful.
And our tendency is just simply to bat away.
Negative feelings.
And when we can't fully bat them away, we end up getting captured by them.
The healthy approach is to look our regrets in the eye and deal with them.
So the philosophy of no regrets is not an act of courage, it's an act of denial.
What's courage is looking at your regrets dead in the eye and learning lessons from them.
Is that what it sounds like that's what you might have done?
Well, I, you're going to help me and others figure it out, I guess, because when I, to me, there was almost a distinction between timing.
So if you make a decision and it doesn't work out for you, There's an immediate period of wrestling with Did I make the right decision?
It led to some bad things.
Maybe it was the wrong decision.
Okay, now what?
Right.
And then you grow.
And then hopefully, with reflection and a greater context, you get to the point where you're like, It wasn't all bad.
There were some things I could take away from the failure, some things I could take away from the bad consequences.
Why did I make that decision?
That tells me something about myself.
And I think that's sort of how I've processed everything to where I do wind up saying, I'm good.
I don't regret doing even the things that weren't, quote, great, you know, or weren't always perfectly ethical, right?
It's not like I've never misstepped ethically, et cetera.
I just have forgiven myself and I've learned to take away from it the lessons that are available.
Well, I mean, that's really, Megan, what 50 or 60 years of science tells us about how to effectively deal with regret.
And I think that, you know, one of the most important things in dealing with regret is your initial view of yourself.
And a lot of times, the way that we talk to ourselves is so brutal.
We criticize ourselves in ways that's cooler than we would ever talk to somebody else.
As gooey as it sounds, there's a concept called self compassion.
If we treat ourselves with kindness rather than contempt, that's the first step.
A second step is actually disclosing our regrets to people.
One of the things about disclosure is that it helps us make sense of it and unburden it and then draw a lesson from it.
And so the trouble is that most people don't do what you're doing.
Most people either say, I don't have any regrets, I never look backward, I always think positive.
And then that ends up hobbling them because regret is one of our most common emotions.
It's our second most common.
It's our most common negative emotion.
And there's research showing it's the second most common emotion that people express overall, second only to love.
So it's this incredible.
That was a hopeful piece of information in your book.
But the point is, it's like, but I think it is hopeful in a weird way because it depends on how we deal with regret.
If we feel bad, okay, regret feels bad, it feels crappy, right?
It makes our stomach churn.
And so we naturally want to avoid it.
It's how you treat regret.
Do you treat regret as a stranger walking down the street?
Blah, I don't care.
Do you treat regret?
That's a bad idea.
Do you treat regret as St. Peter at the gate forming a final judgment on your worth as a person?
That's a bad idea.
Or do you look at regret as a teacher?
And when people look at regret as a teacher, there is a pile of evidence showing it is our most useful emotion.
It helps us make better decisions.
It helps us solve problems faster, become better negotiators.
We become better strategists, and we find a better sense of meaning.
And so, what I'm trying to do here is Reclaim regret, get over this no regrets philosophy, which you very appropriately called bullshit.
It's a bad idea.
And instead, let's treat our regrets like grown men and grown women, think about them, extract lessons from them, and move forward.
Because in this emotion of regret, I'm convinced is the path to a life well lived.
Okay.
But if I look back on a decision I've made that I think was, in retrospect, not a great decision, and I wind up saying, No, I would not reverse the decision.
If I had it to do over again, I wouldn't reverse it because a lot of good came out of it.
You know, some bad, but a lot of good.
I don't really chalk that up to regret.
You know, I don't, and I've been really wrestling with this because you've raised very interesting and provocative ideas in your book, which I loved.
It fired up my brain, my possibly lesioned brain.
And the one that I've always gotten stuck on, and I realize people have all sorts of regrets.
The book was very interesting and sort of outlining some of what they are most commonly.
We'll get to all that.
But for me, there is one thing in my life that I have always, let's say, lamented.
We'll start with that word.
And it was not to get too personal with you after seven minutes, but it was the night that my dad died.
And I was 15 years old.
He was 45.
It was 10 days before Christmas, 1985.
Did not expect him to die at all.
He wasn't having any health problems.
And the Christmas tree was up.
And I complained to him that my school ring wasn't.
He wasn't going to be nice enough.
He wasn't allotting a big enough budget for the one I wanted.
And I was mad and wanted a nicer one.
And we argued over it, we had a back and forth.
And he just kind of turned and walked out of the room.
He'd had it with my brattiness.
You know, he turned and walked out of the room.
And I went upstairs and I went to bed and I saw him.
I saw him sitting in front of the Christmas tree alone that night.
You know, and within two hours, I would be asleep and my sister would then be waking me up telling me he had had a heart attack and he never recovered, he was dead.
And so that, when I think of something like a regret, that's the thing that comes to mind.
And then, but if I kept talking about it, Dan, I'd get to the point of, okay, but can I forgive myself?
Yes, I can.
I was a, I had just turned 15.
I was a young girl.
I had stupid priorities, which we often do when we're that age and I grew out of them.
My dad would never have wanted me to live with guilt or regret or sadness over that moment forever.
The same way I know my kids love me and are good, notwithstanding moments of brattiness.
He knew that about me.
You know, I can walk myself through all of it.
But is it a moment I would have undone?
Yes, it is.
So, like, I can get there on that.
Other than that, though, I can't really answer all those questions the same.
Most of the things I'd say, no, I'd still do it because it made me a more interesting person.
I learned lessons from it.
I'm more layered.
It's something I would never do again.
So, I did it in a smaller state.
You know what I mean?
So, I'm really kind of wrestling with are people running around with that level of darkness around a moment that I have with that one, but on a much more massive scale?
It depends.
And I'll tell you why it depends.
I know both of us are trained as lawyers, so we know that the answer to every question is it depends, but it depends.
Now, here's the thing what you were talking about there in that regret, which is very poignant, and the way you dealt with it is in some ways textbook and how one deals with it.
So treat yourself with some kindness.
Do you think that you're the only 15 year old girl who's ever been bratty to her father?
No.
Disclosing it is a way of unburdening and making sense of it, and then drawing a lesson from it, which I think that you have.
But there are two in the architecture of regret.
There are two big distinctions.
One are regrets of action.
That's what you're talking about.
And others are regrets of inaction.
We regret things we did and we regret things we didn't.
Regrets of action are often easier to resolve because we can make amends.
We can put it in broader context.
We can see the silver lining in it.
What I found in my research and what comes out in the academic research as well is that most people's regrets are regrets of In action.
There are regrets of if only I taken that chance, if only I had done this thing.
And so action regrets are easier to resolve.
And one of the things you're doing with that, one of the things that we can do with action regrets is that we can find the silver lining in them.
And this is part of how our brain works.
Let's talk about the Olympics.
There's a famous example from the Olympics where there's research that's been replicated multiple times where if you show photographs of Athletes on the Olympic medal stand.
You would expect the gold medalist looks the happiest, the silver medalist looks the second happiest, and the bronze medalist looks the third happiest.
And you would be wrong.
The gold medalist looks the happiest, the bronze medalist looks the second happiest, and the silver medalist is often not looking very happy.
Why?
It is a counterfactual.
The silver medalist is saying, if only I kicked a little harder, I'd have a gold.
The bronze medalist is saying, at least I beat that schmo who finished in fourth place and got a And so, one of the ways that we deal with certain kinds of regrets is we can at least them.
We can find the silver lining in them.
We can imagine how things could have turned out worse.
But for many people, The regrets that plague them are regrets of inaction.
If only I had done such and such.
And those are harder to resolve.
All right.
So, to stay on the same sort of theme of my life, I think I have, maybe this is why I don't have very many real regrets.
I have almost none.
I have none of the inaction ones, none.
And there is a reason for that.
And it relates to the story I just told you.
If there's one silver lining to losing a parent at a young age, or even anybody who's very close to you, It is that you, it's a reminder that stays with you forever if you're paying attention to lessons.
That it's not a dress rehearsal, it's time limited, you don't get doovers.
Every day's a blessing, no tomorrow's promised, all of the things.
And if you can internalize that, it does make you shake it up in your life when you recognize this situation is not working for me.
And I look back on my own life, it's like I got out of my first marriage because I realized that I left Fox News because I realized that.
Did things work out well for me at my next job?
They did not.
But I actually had a lot of great experiences at that job and learned a lot of lessons and met a lot of nice people.
Some of the skills I developed there I use to this day.
I've taken very big risks because I know that there's, you're not going to get another chance.
Like better to try and invite change and fail than not to try at all.
That's generally been my approach because of losing my dad young.
You're right.
To have not tried at all would be very hard to accept.
I mean, in some ways, Megan, you are verifying the core idea of this book, which is that regret makes us human.
All of us experience it.
But if we process it correctly, it makes us better.
It leads us to make better decisions.
It allows us to learn and grow.
What concerns me is that a lot of people don't do that.
Instead, what happens is they lead a life of delusion by saying, I have no regrets and never look backward.
Or they become so hobbled by these negative feelings, they don't know what to do about them.
And if we, to me, if we can model the approach that you have taken, which is built very sturdily on rich bodies of science, we can use this emotion to actually find the way to a better life, which sounds like what you have done.
And that self compassion is huge too.
I would say that I'm a Catholic.
You know, I was raised Catholic.
I'm not the most religious person you've ever met, but I am a practicing Catholic.
And we're all about forgiveness in the Catholic Church.
Judgment, yes, absolutely.
And then forgiveness, including of oneself.
And I practice it toward others.
I'm very, very quick to forgive.
Learning from Our Regrets 00:03:28
I mean, humanity is so frail and fraught.
And I can turn that same lens on myself.
And it's one of the things that drives me crazy about society right now because at the moment, we're so unforgiving of one another, right?
It's like we want everybody's scalp.
It's like, oh, it's exciting.
Somebody could lose their job, pile on, join the mob.
You know, it's one of the things that drives me nuts because we should just be.
More kind and loving and forgiving and understanding that everybody makes big mistakes.
Yeah.
And one of the things that comes out again when you look at the substance of people's regrets is that there are a lot of, I mean, for me personally, it's the same thing.
There are a lot of regrets about basic kindness, about doing the right thing and being a kind person.
For instance, when I collected all these regrets, I have hundreds of regrets around the world from people who bullied kids.
I have people who 10 years later, 20 years later, 30 years later, regret bullying kids in school.
And a ferocious act of unkindness.
For me, one of the things that got me on this topic was thinking about my own regrets.
And one of my big regrets was kindness, but it was a different kind of regret of kindness in the sense that I wasn't a bully.
But here's the thing.
I was always like a writer, observer on the periphery kind of guy.
And I would see people being left out.
I would see people being mistreated.
And I didn't do a damn thing.
And that still bugs me today.
But if I reflect on that, if I say, oh my God, no regrets, never look backward, that's not a good idea.
If I say, oh my gosh, I'm the worst person in the world, I'm just a horrible human being, that's going to be debilitating.
But if I say, wait a second, I feel crappy about that.
What is this teaching me?
It teaches me to be kinder in the future.
And that's something that I've tried to do.
And then, do you have the next step of forgiving the young you?
You know, like that kid who was more comfortable being on the outskirts, like more of a writer.
I'm married to this man, right?
Who's more, not like on the outskirts, but just a writer, more of an introvert in certain circumstances.
This is, it's hard for a kid like that to inject himself into every situation.
This is at the core of self compassion.
This is at the core of self compassion, which is built on the work of Kristen Neff at the University of Texas, which shows that when we, When we evaluate ourselves on our own, if I look back on my, let's say, 18 year old self or 17 year old self, I can say, oh my God, you're such a freaking idiot.
What the hell was wrong with you back then?
You should have stepped up and flown in like Superman to save the day.
All right.
If someone else told me that story, I would say, okay, I understand.
Like that happens to us all.
If I look at myself, am I the only nerdy 17 year old who didn't step up to stop a bully?
No, absolutely not.
Does that not stepping up to stop a bully when I was 17 fully define who I am?
No, absolutely not.
The trouble is, is that, and that's what, that's what exactly self compassion is.
And that's the first step in allowing us to make sense of our regrets and use them as forward seeking lessons.
The problem, Megan, is that people don't do that.
They are hobbled by negative emotions.
And one of the reasons for that is they think that they're the only one.
And I had this experience myself.
I got into this book and this whole topic and spending years studying regret because I, Started reckoning with.
I had an, I'm at it.
There's no way I would have written this book in my 30s.
I didn't have enough mileage on me.
Why We Don't Step Up 00:06:39
But in my 50s, I had enough mileage behind me and I had enough mileage ahead of me.
And I started thinking about my regrets and just sheepishly started talking to them about them to some people.
And I found that people leaned in.
People didn't recoil from this topic.
People wanted to talk about this that we need to bring these negative feelings and regret in particular out of hiding and have an intelligent conversation about it because.
Again, it is a powerful, powerful source for forward progress.
I love this.
Something you said reminded me yesterday.
I went for my annual physical, and I love my doctor in New York.
He gives me such a hard time, but in a great way.
And he always tells me, so now I'm 51.
He always says, Oh, yeah.
So you're a Mercedes Benz with 51,000 miles on you.
That's what he says, right?
And he's been saying for years, you have 46,000 miles on you.
But he said, The problem is these bodies of ours were only designed to go 35,000 miles, were cars that were meant to expire at 35,000 miles.
So every mile after that, Got to be extra careful about exercising, taking care of yourself, and all that crap.
It went downhill after that, Daniel.
All right, we're going to pick it up.
There's so much more I want to talk to you about, including the opening story of the book and this French singer whose song or whose lyrics you may very well know.
And Daniel tells a great story about her and how it ended.
More with Daniel Pink, the author of The Power of Regret How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward, right after this.
You open the book with a scene, it's dated October 24th, 1960, in France, and a composer named Charles Dumont.
arrives at the Paris apartment of Edith Piaf.
And tell us the story, because it's great.
Pulled me right in.
Well, Edith Piaf was a very well known French singer at the time.
She was not in great physical shape.
She was even in her early, she was in her early 40s.
She had a, she had a, even though her Mercedes Benz had only 40,000 miles on it, it looked like it had like 80,000 miles on it.
And she was in, she was in pretty bad shape.
And she was this notoriously kind of annoying person.
And this composer who she thought was beneath him brought a song for her to sing.
And the song was called in French, Je ne regret rien.
And I regret nothing.
And she listened to it.
She ended up loving that song.
And it actually reignited her career and became this anthem for this no regrets philosophy.
And then three years later, she died penniless.
But she, and so you hear this song, I don't regret anything.
Television ads and radio ads all over the place.
And what's curious to me is like, here's this person who has created this anthem for the No Regrets philosophy and had led a life choked with regrets.
Yes.
One of her, she was married multiple times.
She left her husband penniless.
She was addicted to drugs.
She was addicted to alcohol.
She had a baby when she was 17 that she gave up that ultimately died.
So this woman is choked with regrets.
And even on her deathbed, she expressed regrets, but she's known for this song.
Je ne regret rien.
I regret nothing.
I was fascinated by the whole thing.
So you guys have got to buy the book because Dan does a great job.
This is the reason he's the number one New York Times bestseller.
But she doesn't want to see the composer.
She's kind of antisocial.
She really doesn't want anything to do with him.
But then he starts playing this song and she's like, what?
And she goes out there and she hears it.
She's like, oh my God.
She makes him play it over and over and over and over and over that night.
And then she winds up singing it very famously at some.
Popular venue in Paris and the Olympia, like the premier Parisian concert venue.
And how many curtain calls were there?
Oh, there were 20 something curtain calls.
I mean, it was like two dozen.
It's hard even to imagine.
It's like that Bruno song, basically.
That's how big it was.
So she and we actually, in preparation for your visit here today, cut a clip of it.
Now it's in French.
I don't speak French.
So I'll play it in one second.
But I'm going to tell the audience basically what the song says so you have a general feel of what she's singing.
I wrote down the lyrics and it starts with No, nothing of nothing.
No, I don't regret anything.
Neither the good things people have done to me nor the bad things.
It's all the same to me.
No, nothing of nothing.
No, I don't regret anything.
It's paid for, swept away, forgotten.
I don't care about the past.
With my memories, I lit up the fire.
My troubles, my pleasures, I don't need them anymore.
The loves, the lovers are all swept away.
And all of their drama swept away forever.
I start again from zero.
And then she ends it with, No, nothing of nothing.
I don't regret anything because my life, because my joys today, that starts with you.
So they went nuts.
Everybody loved it.
It spoke to so many people on a number of levels.
This isn't the whole song, it's about a 40 second clip of it.
And it is beautiful and it may be familiar to our audience.
Take a listen to Edith Piaf.
No, rien de rien.
No, je ne regrette rien, ni le bien qu'on m'a fait, ni le mal, tout ça m'est bien égal.
Rien de rien, non, je ne regrette rien, c'est payer, balayer.
Wow.
Beautiful song.
Amazing.
And then, as you just pointed out, three years later, she didn't die by suicide.
She was just so frail and in such bad health.
She died, according to what I read, from cirrhosis and some other related liver disorders.
And her last words were and I quote, Every damn thing you do in this life, you have to pay for.
Clarifying Life's Values 00:10:41
Holy shit, what a reversal, Dan.
Well, that's what I'm saying.
And it's, you know, it's like a lot of this idea of no regrets.
When we say no regrets, it is a performance.
It's not really who we are.
And if we're actually a little bit more authentic and say, yeah, I got some regrets and here's how I'm dealing with them and here's how they chart the way forward, it's a lot healthier than dying in your mid 40s, penniless, sticking your husband with all of your debts.
You know, and also just revealing at the very, very end of your life that you actually.
Had a lot of regrets.
And those regrets were actually, in some ways, why you were in your deathbed way before your time.
Right, exactly.
Obviously, it had to be related to her abuse of substances and so on.
I mean, that's how a lot of people self medicate their way through regret and hopelessness.
Anyway, it's a fascinating story.
And there's lots of them in the book.
You'll get to know a lot of interesting characters who, a lot of whom do the tattoos, no regrets, no regrets.
And then you find out, well, maybe just a few, like Frank Sinatra said.
Yeah, this is great.
The No Ragrettes.
We have a full screen picture for the people who are going to watch this on YouTube.
And this was somebody actually.
Is this the picture of the actual woman from the story, or is this because she did this in homage to a movie, or was this from the movie?
I can't remember.
Yeah, no, this is from that movie, We're the Millers, where Jason Zdekis plays his character who is sort of escaping some bad guys, and he has this fake family, and his fake daughter has a date with this dude.
And the dude has this tattoo that says No Ragrettes.
And he's like, What is that?
He's like, well, that's my credo.
I have no regrets.
It's like, really?
You have no regrets?
Like, not even one letter.
And so, again, it's part of the ridiculousness of this.
I got a guy in the book, Megan, who was in the military, lovely guy, went to the military in order to show his macho ness, got a no regrets tattoo on his arm, the arm that he would see when he was shooting, on his left arm, the arm that he would see when he was shooting his rifle.
And 14 years later, he realized he had regrets and he went to have his tattoo removed.
So, you know, so, and he goes into the dermatologist's office, and every time there's a new technician, he says, Okay, I get it.
I'm having a no regrets tattoo removed.
The joke is not lost on me.
You know what I find?
I forgive me if this doesn't apply to you, audience out there, but I do find the more somebody says, You know, I am this, I am this, I am a strong anti whatever, the less likely it's true.
You know, like my one friend's nanny, My friend is buttoned up.
Her nanny got a tattoo on the forearm that reads in big black letters Fighter!
My friend was like, um, fighter!
And the truth is, she wasn't, you know, like usually you get something like that because it's more aspirational than a statement about what's true.
And I think that's a nice way to put it.
I think that for, you know, all these people with no regrets tattoos, all these people singing the song No Regrets, they would be much better off not performing their lives, but living their lives, thinking about their regrets, reckoning with them, using them to extract lessons to lead a better, more fulfilling, more successful life.
And, you know, and what's interesting about all of this is that this is not, there's 50 years of science telling us.
Precisely how to do this?
There are, you categorize it into four groups, generally, you know, a person's regrets.
And well, tell us what they are, first of all.
Sure.
Well, let me tell you how I got them.
Because so one of the things that I did for this pile of research is that I did something called the World Regrets Survey, where I invited people around the world to submit their regrets.
And in a blink, we ended up collecting 16,000 regrets from people in 105 countries.
It's unbelievable.
And what I found is that over and over again, people kept expressing, as exactly as you say, Megan, these same four core regrets.
And what was interesting about that is that the way that academics had been dealing with regret, sort of categorizing regret, I think turned out to be a little bit off.
We tended to think that something is a career regret or a financial regret or a health regret.
And what I found beneath the surface is something else.
Let me give you an example of this.
So I had in this database of regrets, Huge numbers of regrets about people who didn't ask somebody out on a date years ago.
There's this person who I was really into.
I didn't ask him or her out, and I've regretted it ever since.
That's a romance regret.
Then you have people who regret not starting businesses.
Then you have people who regret not traveling enough.
And all of those regrets are the same.
All of those regrets are exactly the same regret, even though one of them seems like a career regret, one of them seems like a personal regret, one of them seems like a romance regret.
All of those regrets are the same.
It's if they're boldness regrets, if only I'd taken the chance.
And so around the world, these same four regrets keep coming up foundation regrets, if only I'd done the work.
People regret not saving money, not taking care of their car, not taking care of their bodies.
I was still in my doctor's office by the Mercedes Benz.
Yeah.
But really, but sort of what your doctor's talking about, saying your car is not in good enough shape because you haven't been changing the oil.
And I'll stop the automotive metaphor right now.
Not taking care of your health, not saving money, not working hard in school.
That's a foundation regret.
If only I'd done the work.
Boldness regrets.
Over and over again, people regret not taking the chance in any domain of life.
Third one, moral regrets, which you and I have talked a little bit about here, which is if only I'd done the right thing.
These are regrets that people have.
We mentioned bullying earlier, but these are regrets that people have about infidelity and other kinds of things based on their own moral code.
They were at a juncture they could do the right thing or the wrong thing.
And they end up doing the wrong thing and they regret it.
And finally, there are connection regrets, which is the biggest category, which is where you have people who have a relationship or should have had a relationship.
The relationship comes apart and they usually come apart in profoundly undramatic ways.
They just drift.
Somebody wants to reach out, they don't reach out.
They think it's going to be awkward to reach out, they think the other side's not going to care, and they drift apart again.
And so connection regrets are if only I had reached out.
And what's so interesting about this, regardless of age, nationality, Race, gender.
These same four regrets keep coming up.
If only I'd done the work, if only I'd taken the chance, if only I'd done the right thing, and if only I'd reached out.
And I think what's interesting about these regrets, Megan, and this is this.
Led me to a place that I didn't expect to go to is that these four core regrets operate as a photographic negative of the good life.
If we understand what people regret the most, they are telling us what they value the most and what we value in life some stability, a chance to learn and grow and do something.
We value goodness and we value love.
And so, in this weird way, this negative emotion, the thing that we've tried to shy away from, is actually giving us clues.
About what makes life worth living.
Yes, clues.
Yes, yes, yes.
I love that.
I can relate to this 100%.
When I was an unhappy lawyer, it was after 9 11.
It was, let's say, 2002 in Chicago, and 9 11 had happened.
And I watched, in particular, Ashley Banfield that day on television.
She was magnificent.
Oh, yeah, I remember that.
Then with NBC News.
And not only did I admire her and appreciate the public service she was providing, but I had another feeling it was envy.
Which must be a close cousin of regret somehow.
I don't, I think they're somehow related.
But I considered instead of just wallowing in my envy, I flipped it and decided and understood, like, on an inherent level, envy is a tell.
Envy is an opportunity.
Envy is something, it's my own brain and heart telling me you took a path, you want to take a path that you haven't yet taken.
Like, you want to get to a place that you're not yet at.
And it was still possible, right?
It was still possible for me.
And then I took it, right?
And here I am 20 plus years later, very glad that I did.
But, right, it's a clue.
If you can take these quote unquote negative emotions like regret, like envy, and instead of just wallowing and feeling bad, say, oh, it's a clue.
It's a little mystery, the mystery of me.
I'm solving it.
I like that.
I like that mystery of me.
That's a good phrase.
I mean, I think that that's what it is.
I mean, when we feel, here's the thing when we feel the spear of regret, when we feel that negative emotion, The world is trying to tell us something.
We are trying to tell ourselves something, and you can't ignore the signal.
Now, the trouble that people have is that regret is painful and it's instructive, but you can't have just one.
You can't have the instruction without the pain.
You have to use that pain and discomfort as a signal.
And when we do that, it points the way.
Because the other thing about this emotion of regret is it is clarifying.
Just as the 16,000 people around the world who submitted regret, It is a chorus telling us what they care about in their life.
And what they care about in their life is not whether they buy a blue car or a gray car, whether they live in a super big house or a modestly big house.
What they care about is some stability in their lives.
They care about the chance to lead a psychologically rich life and do something in their limited time here.
They care about being good.
I'm convinced most people care about being good and they care about love.
And that's why this emotion that instead of denying it or wallowing it, if we stare it in the eye, It's going to instruct us and it's going to clarify what makes a good life.
It's a reminder of your values.
I got that.
But also, you make the point in the book that it can also be an exercise.
If you run it through your regret, if you see it through to the end, it can be an exercise that you've been doing in unnecessary self flagellation.
Like you write in the book, and I love this, and I totally agree with it that we have this combination when we think back on the things we regret of time travel and fabulism.
You say it's a human superpower.
Time Travel and Fabulism 00:02:41
I wrote, ha ha ha.
I am good actually at not doing this.
And the thing that I'm good at not doing is the fabulism.
Like, I'll go back and say, well, remember me making that decision.
What if I had done a different decision?
But you have to be realistic.
Let's say you did.
Call the guy who you wanted to call or the gal, right?
You didn't let that person get away.
People lament not having made the call to the person they thought should have been their spouse.
And then that person married somebody else.
It's like the fabulism is they would have accepted my invitation.
We would have hit it off brilliantly.
We would have had this amazing life together.
Well, how do you know?
You don't know any of that.
That's your super, your human superpower kicking in and it may not be serving you very well.
Well, what really bugs people though is that, is that.
They don't know the answer to the story.
And so there's a guy who I wrote about in the book who he's a 62 year old guy in Spokane, Washington.
He graduated from college in the early 1980s.
He goes to Europe for a year to work on a farm in Sweden.
His final days in Europe, he's taking a train and he's taking the train through France.
He's sitting on this train and there's a seat open next to him.
A young woman comes on and sits next to him on this train.
He's an American, his French is not very good.
Her English is much better.
They start talking.
They start laughing.
They start playing word games like, you know, hangman on pieces of paper.
It's a pre wordle world.
They start leaning into each other.
They start holding hands.
And he said, it's like I'd known her my whole life.
The train, she's Belgian.
She's working as an au pair in France.
The train gets to Belgium.
She says, this is my stop.
They don't know what to do.
He doesn't know what to do.
He madly scribbles his parents' mailing address in Texas.
On a piece of paper, hands it to her, they kiss.
She steps off the train, and he, 40 years later, says, I've always wished I stepped off the train.
Now, is he certain that he would have had this passel of Belgian American kids later on?
No.
But what bugs him is the what if that at that moment in his life, he didn't take the chance.
It might not have worked out, but that what if has bugged him for 40 years into what is now a very unsatisfying marriage.
And once he disclosed his regret to me in this survey, and I ended up interviewing him a couple of times, he ended up acting on it to try to get to the end of the story.
He ended up posting things in Paris Craigslist looking for a woman named Sandra who was riding on a train in 1983.
Reclaiming Personal Agency 00:08:11
And so this is it.
It's the what if that really, really gnaws at us.
So, but this is where I would say, you know, it's very rare to look back at a situation like that with regret if you're very happy in your current relationship, or very rare to look back on your inability to save.
You know, or do better with your paycheck when you first read it out if now you have a full bank account, you know, and so it can be used also as a tell.
Like, if it's still bothering me, there's probably a reason for that.
And maybe I can use this as a, you know, something that spurs me to action right now that could effectively help erase that regret or assuage that regret.
It can be, you're right, like something that you can use for good.
And also, I do think sort of the cognitive behavioral therapy of I like your word of tell.
It's a tell, it's a clue.
It's a signal.
It's a knock at the door.
And you can either ignore it or you can answer the door.
And what 50 years of science tells us, along with the hundreds of interviews that I've done, is that when we answer the door, we're better off.
So interesting.
Okay.
Quick break.
More with the one and only Daniel Pink.
Isn't he interesting?
This is so great.
You got to buy the book.
It is called The Power of Regret How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward.
And don't forget, while I have your attention, you can find the Megan Kelly Show live on SiriusXM Triumph Channel 111.
Every weekday at noon Eastern, and the full video show and clips by subscribing to our YouTube channel, youtube.comslash Megan Kelly.
If you prefer an audio podcast, subscribe and download on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Check them out.
You get to another thing in the book that's wrestled with this too free will versus fate.
And when you were telling the story about the man on the train, and how she got off and he never found her.
You know, I felt like if that man were sitting across from me, I would have said something like, if it were meant to be, the universe would have brought you back together.
Like if this person is meant to be in your life, you know, one of the souls that's meant to be in your life, the universe will make it happen.
And then I laugh because I do believe in this sort of power, whether it's God, the universe, energy, whatever it is.
And yet I totally believe also that I'm the one who will make the good luck happen to me.
I don't knock on wood.
I will make the good thing happen.
I don't have to rely on the universe.
So, how do I square those things?
Well, let me just start by saying you're not alone.
I did a big public opinion survey where I asked people, do you think we wanted to know what people believe?
Do we have free will or does everything happen for a reason?
And 80% of people said yes.
We have free will and everything happens for a reason.
And I found that as this hyper rational guy kind of annoying because I thought it was a contradiction.
But then I realized it was actually kind of insightful because I think that that's really the secret of our lives, right?
We have to figure out what we can control and what we can't, and focus on the things that we can control because we do have free will, but also recognize that a lot of things are out of our control.
And in a way, regret clarifies that as well.
That it teaches us that there are some things that we can control, there are some things that we can do.
We can take that chance, we can make that call, we can do the right thing.
But there are many things where they're just out of our control.
And so don't get wigged out by those, focus on what you can control.
And ignore what you can.
Um, you know, at the same time, I mean, again, the thing is, I just got led like even these four core regrets that I was talking about before, they're partly about opportunity and partly about obligation.
So, is a good life all opportunity?
No, I think that's kind of hollow.
If your life is all about opportunity, is your is a good life about obligation only?
I think that's a little stricken.
What is a good life?
A good life is about opportunity and obligation, and so this.
With this emotion of regret, is just to my surprise, just clarifying really what life is about.
We want a life of opportunity and obligation, and we want to be able to focus on what we can control and let karma or fate or God or the spirit do the rest of its work.
Do people who have a stronger belief in fate, again, whether you want to call that the universe, God, whatever it is for you, have fewer regrets, right?
Because it's sort of like turning it over.
There's some evidence that in cultures that are more fatalistic, That they have fewer regrets because they don't feel that sense of agency that is necessary for regret.
And again, there are cultural differences there.
I think that for Americans, Americans, I think in one way, partly being American is actually feeling that sense of agency and feeling that sense of responsibility and recognizing you do have some sovereignty over what you do and how you do it.
And so I think Americans might be slightly more prone to at least the initial spear of regret because we believe in individualism and we believe in individual agency.
It doesn't mean we're less happy than people who are in authoritarian countries where every decision is made for them.
Oh my God, no, no, no.
People in authoritarian countries aren't happy because they're living in authoritarian countries.
But you have a country like India, which is, well, not that authoritarian, but where there's a greater sense of fatalism and you might have fewer regrets, but you also have less agency.
And one of the things I think is interesting about regret is that it reminds us that we actually do have agency over things, that we're not merely at the fate of others or the fate of the world, that we can't exercise some sovereignty over the course of our life.
And on the question, going back to the fabulous thing, a guy who I did a lot of reading of his books when I was younger, Dr. Phil, he used to say, and this actually very much helped me answer the what if question.
You know, what if I had done it differently?
What if I had made a different choice?
What if I go ahead and answer it?
Nine times out of 10, you don't know, or it would have had downsides, or it's unclear.
Or even if you get to the place where you're worrying about the future, like what if I do this and it winds up You know, turning out poorly.
Okay, then what will you do?
Will you pick yourself up and you dust yourself off and you'll hopefully have learned something, right?
Like answering the what if question can be very beneficial.
I agree.
And the problem, what happens is when we don't answer the what if question, when we're hobbled by that sense of what if, we are less happy.
We contribute less to the world.
We are not as capable partners and parents.
And so, but when we reckon with these things, this is the whole point.
Regret is our teacher, it is our instructor.
It is a, to use your words again, Megan, it is a tell, it is a clue, it is a knock at the door.
And the more we just, again, get past this idea that having no regrets is an act of courage and recognize that what is really courage is staring your regrets in the eye and doing something about them, then I think we'll all be better off.
It reminds me of someone I used to care very much about who got in some trouble.
And I was talking to him about, you know, what happened and whether he was okay.
And instead of talking about all this, like the true feelings, he kissed his bicep.
This is back in my 20s, and said, You know, did the this one's iron, this one's steel.
And it's exactly the wrong place to go, right?
It's what you're saying that that is the no regret tattoo where you're sweeping everything as opposed to the true process.
Kissing your biceps is a tell that you should get a different kind of friend.
Well, which I did.
He was a good man.
He was just in pain and not quite sure how to deal with it.
And yet, your book, Speaks to people exactly like that.
Daniel, I did not expect to fall as in love with this as I. At first, I was like, this is a bullshit book.
Toxic Atmospheres on TV 00:15:27
He's not going to have a good time here because I totally reject his whole premise.
And then I read it and I felt totally differently.
Thank you so much for sharing it with us.
Thanks for having me, Megan.
I appreciate it.
You bet.
Daniel Pink, The Power of Regret.
Check it out.
All right, up next, Emily Jashinsky and Ileana Johnson coming up to break down Whoopi Goldberg's latest comments on the Holocaust, the endless parade of maskless politicians and celebrities, and more.
Don't go away.
Whoopi Goldberg says the Holocaust was not about race, and California Governor Gavin Newsom is caught yet again breaking his own mask mandate and caught in a lie about why he did it.
We'll get to that in one second.
First, joining me now to discuss all the hot headlines happening right now Emily Jasinski, culture editor at The Federalist, and Eliana Johnson, editor in chief of the Washington Free Beacon and co host of the podcast Ink Stained Wretches.
Welcome back, ladies.
Good to have you.
Thanks for having us.
Emily, I continue to butcher your last name, Jashinsky.
That's right.
No, it's not butchered at all.
I listen to you every day.
I love the Federalist.
I really honestly, Jashinsky, Jashinsky.
Okay.
I just, I get nervous when you come on, then I screw it up.
Okay, let's start with Whoopi.
Whoopi Goldberg has stepped in it.
And let me just start with this.
Of course, they're like, she should be fired.
The internal ABC nasty staffers.
Whoopi, been there.
So she should not be fired.
She stepped in it, right?
She's in a controversy, but I hate the like, fired, fire, fire, fire.
Here's what happened.
She went on The View yesterday and made comments about the Holocaust that were really boneheaded.
I mean, crazy ass boneheaded.
And this is how it.
The controversy got started.
Listen to what she said yesterday.
If you're going to do this, then let's be truthful about it because the Holocaust isn't about race.
No.
No.
It's not about race.
Yes, it is.
It's about a different race.
But it's not about race.
It's not about race.
What is it about?
Because it's about man's inhumanity to man.
That's what it's about.
But it's about white supremacy.
Well, it's about white supremacy.
It's about white supremacy.
But these are two white groups of people.
How do we have to black people see them as white men?
But you're missing the point.
You're missing the point.
The minute you turn it into race, it goes down this alley.
Let's talk about it for what it is.
It's how people treat each other.
It's a problem.
It doesn't matter if you're black or white, because black, white, Jews, everybody eats each other.
Okay.
So before we get to the attempt at cleanup, let's start.
Let me start with you on this, Eliana.
What was wrong with what she said?
Where do we begin?
I'm with you, Megan.
She should not be fired.
Everybody has an unfortunate statement.
We can fault her for ignorance, okay?
This is what happens when you live in a color of your skin, race essentialist world.
The Holocaust, of course, Jews were not considered a part of the Aryan race, even though their skin color matched that of their Aryan German counterparts.
Hitler had Different theories about what made one pure blooded.
In the race essentialist view of our liberal contemporaries, Jews are white privileged people.
And that is obviously the view that Whoopi Goldberg has embraced.
And it was interesting in her apology, she cited the Anti Defamation League, and they too talk about Jews of color and white Jews.
So that's the problem with what she said yesterday and why there was so much blowback on it.
Perfectly said.
Okay.
So now.
Let's get to her attempted cleanup.
First, she issues a statement, a written statement, apologizing yesterday.
It was a tweet that basically where she said, you know, I stepped in it and I'm sorry.
Then she made the mistake of going on with Stephen Colbert and talking about it live.
And it's very clear she does better when somebody is controlling her written apology than she does when she actually is going back to how she really feels.
And here she was last night on Colbert.
I feel being black when we talk about race, it's a very different thing to me.
As a black person, I think of race as being something that I can see.
When you talk about being a racist, I was saying, you can't call this racism.
This was evil.
This wasn't based on the skin.
You couldn't tell who was Jewish.
They had to delve deeply to figure it out.
If the Klan is coming down the street and I'm standing with a Jewish friend and neither one, well, I'm going to run.
But if my friend decides not to run, They'll get passed by most times because you can't tell who's Jewish.
She actually finished that one clip, Emily, where she was like, you know, talking about.
Figuring out how the Nazis had to figure out who was Jewish.
And she actually said, they had to do the work.
Oh my God.
Like one of those woke phrases used on Hitler.
I like my head's going to explode.
But so she dug herself in deeper there.
And it actually was a perfect example of what we were just talking about, right?
Like the race essentialism.
Like if I can't see it, it must not be as you say.
Yeah.
And Eliana explained it perfectly.
And that's exactly what it is.
And what Whoopi Goldberg sounds like to me is somebody who's grappling really poorly with.
This fringe academic theory that has been really popular in sort of radical circles, especially among radical activists for a very long time, that has sort of slowly crept into the mainstream.
But Whoopi Goldberg is just has a very tenuous understanding of it and isn't able to express it because when it is in the sort of light of day, it's really hard to actually defend.
It's one of those ideas that you can sort of defend in your own circles when everybody agrees with you, but then when you're confronted with challenges to it, it just absolutely punctures.
But that's the benefit, and that's why you should never fire people.
Who are in sort of situations like this because these ideas fester unless they are out here in the light of day and you can have somebody like Eliana come on a show like this and explain exactly why it's wrong and why it's so obviously, like clearly wrong.
Because otherwise, these ideas just sort of circulate in areas where they aren't getting challenged and people need to hear the debate on them.
Well, that's the one thing.
Like, whatever she sees with her eyes, there's no question that Hitler saw Jews as, quote, an inferior race.
I mean, there's like, That's just knowing your basic history.
So she was confused.
She didn't understand it.
I get it.
And she keeps digging.
And today, what happened on the show was she went out there and said, and I quote, yesterday on our show, I misspoke.
Okay.
That's not what misspeaking is.
Misspeaking is when I called Mike Huckabee Mike Fuckabee.
That is misspeaking.
One of my best moments on the air.
She spoke.
Intentionally and in her head correctly, but she was wrong.
That's what she needs to say.
Then she said, I said the Holocaust wasn't about race and was instead about man's inhumanity to man.
It is indeed about race because Hitler and the Nazis considered Jews to be the inferior race.
Words matter.
Mine are no exception.
I regret my comments.
I stand corrected.
And she had the CEO of the Anti Defamation League, this guy, Jonathan Greenblatt, who's just been terrible.
I mean, he's just been terrible.
He's changed the ADL into something that used to be noble in its purpose to just this crazy woke organization that.
It doesn't know what it stands for.
It just redefined the definition of racism this week to something absolutely insane.
But it's consistent with the woke ideology of basically any system, any system that discriminates is racist.
Anyway, he was there, and now he's calling for the view to add a Jewish co host, right?
You need representation to solve problems like this.
What do you make of that, Eliana?
Well, I will answer your question, but I just wanted to say I mean, this goes to show we now do this ritualistic apologizing when we make decisions.
Mistakes are asked to, and the whoopee thing shows how absurd that is.
Where she issues this apology on Twitter and then goes on Colbert and doubles down essentially on her original comments, and it just shows what a complete sham these apologies are.
But, um, it you know, Megan, uh, remind me your question I've now got about now this ADL guy, Jonathan Greenblatt.
Oh, the ADL, uh, he basically agreed with you.
Uh, we need to point out that Jonathan Greenblatt, as head of the ADL, has teamed up with Al Sharpton, one of the most notorious anti Semites now laundered into the mainstream. to go after Facebook and has embraced the ADL put out a statement I think it was just last week about a scholarship for Jews of color embracing the idea that there's a difference between Jews with more melanin and Jews with lesser melanin, which is what Whoopi Goldberg is talking about and how she stepped in it.
Wow.
Well, it's probably no accident.
She booked him.
So now back to the cattiness within the walls at ABC.
I mean, this is like, I'm reading the story and partly I'm like, trigger, trigger.
This is like, I remember what it's like to have the nameless, faceless staffers speaking out to places like the Daily Mail, like, she's going to be fired.
Why hasn't the company said or done more?
And, you know, it's, There's always a platform for these people to try to stick the knife in when somebody who's as rich as Whoopi is, successful as she is, stumbles, as opposed to saying, teachable moment.
She screwed up.
She's owning it.
Let's move on.
I mean, I realize it's because of the way her mind is built and all the things that we've just been talking about in terms of the way, you know, her wokeism.
But like, fine.
That actually is totally consistent with the staffers at ABC and the way they see the world.
I don't, I don't, we go right away, Emily, to fire, fire, fire.
Well, yeah, and the view is sort of that people have literally written books about this, but the view is one of those atmospheres where leaks are sometimes worse than at other times, and it's sort of many seasons, but it's one of the worst places because there is this cattiness behind the scenes that doesn't exactly disabuse people of the stereotypes about women that they may hold.
I was going to say, Emily, you're just playing into some noxious gender stereotypes here.
Yes, you're right.
We need Wilfie Goldberg to come on here and explain sort of feminist theory to us so that we can speak.
Oh, wow.
More moral clarity.
Who wouldn't watch that?
But no, I mean, The View is like one of the worst places for this.
And it's just actually just sort of baked into the way The View is run.
It's a huge part of it is run via media leaks.
This is how they actually litigate their workplace problems.
And so to me, it just speaks to a lack of leadership at the show that people, you know, one way to stop people from leaking is to make them not want to leak.
The Trump White House, in fact, suffered with this problem.
And so when you have those issues, I think that they actually really, the view needs is pretty desperate for a shakeup.
And I think that is imminent because this is just not sustainable.
It's the caddiest place to work in television.
I mean, just the knives are out from the moment you step onto the set.
If you happen to be the more moderate person, right?
Never mind conservative, just the more moderate.
Even Meghan McCain, who hated Trump, you would have thought that would have been her ticket in to being at least acceptable to these ladies.
Nope.
I mean, God, they had it in for her every day.
There was a leak, some nasty leak about her every day in the press.
Now, I will say this.
When it comes to anti Semitism, the mainstream media does give people a pass.
It's the one sin against a group, a religious group, an ethnic group, a cultural group, a race, that the mainstream media is very quick to forgive, right?
Very quick.
And if this had been a white woman making similar comments about Blacks, about Asians, about gays and lesbians, anything that was just sort of tone deaf or factually inaccurate, I think there'd be a very different reaction from ABC.
But you tell me, because there's been a history of tolerance when it comes to remarks that are anti Semitic on mainstream media.
Eliana?
That's of course true.
And I think the reason for it is that so often we see anti Semitism crop up in minority communities, which is uncomfortable for the mainstream.
And beyond that, often crop up in diversity inclusion bureaucracies, precisely for the reason that Whoopi Goldberg said, which is that Jews are often They are considered white, they look white, and as a result, are not treated as minorities and are not favorably treated by members of the diversity inclusion establishment.
And the mainstream is reluctant to slam the bureaucrats who staff.
That establishment.
Okay, so now Greenblatt wants them to add a Jewish panelist to the mix.
I mean, it would be amazing to see somebody like Barry Weiss sitting on the set when a remark like that was made.
That really would be fun.
But most people like Barry Weiss have full, rich lives and they don't want to spend their days fighting, having cat fights that are surface level with women who hate them, right?
Who can't stand them.
Like, why would you do that to yourself?
I could also shoot bamboo shoots underneath my fingernails all day, but I don't want to do that.
But that's like the craziest thing about The View right now is that it's not like if they want to, and this was Barbara Walters' original mission with The View, was to have a place where women's views would be represented and could sort of clash and be debated and all of that.
That's actually like what she said explicitly the ambition of the show was.
And it hasn't even been around that long and it collapsed so quickly because, and you can go back years, The View was really a glimpse into the future of the legacy media at how intolerant they were of anybody who said anything wrong or anything that sort of transgressed the boundaries of cultural left.
And that's really what this is about.
And Whoopi Goldberg is basically talking about the logical endpoint of wokeism and sort of critical theory.
This is really where it goes.
And people are deeply uncomfortable with it, but it's what they are mainstreaming every single day by paying lip service to this and by sort of virtue signaling in all of these different ways.
They are opening the gates for this really noxious ideology that is ultimately not good for anybody.
But the view that's what's so crazy about this is just such a situation where you're.
You're feeding the hand that bites you.
Like they are the place where this was mainstreamed in the first place.
And here it is.
And it's not good for them.
And they're finding that out the hard way.
Well, that's the thing.
I mean, I think most conservatives are against cancel culture, Eliana, but there is something that's tempting about it when the person in the crosshairs has been so incredibly judgmental and called for other people's jobs and absolutely refused to extend anyone the benefit of the doubt during their controversies.
Reality TV Virtue Signaling 00:04:52
You really have to work hard to muster up your.
Wait, remember, we're not in favor of this.
Wait a minute, right?
I really can only speak for myself.
I'm not sure what the views of most conservatives are on that, but I rarely believe that firing or going after somebody's employment is the answer to a lot of these problems.
In fact, I think having this conversation on the view would be incredibly interesting and constructive, mostly having these discussions that the Firing avoids the firing is normally a silence and saying these are things we can't discuss.
This is outside the realm of polite conversation is detrimental, and that most of these things are better off being discussed out in the open rather than silencing by simply getting rid of somebody.
Well, I have to tell you guys that that's why you know independent media is doing so well because we've had to take these conversations to a different place.
You can't have them on network television anymore in a meaningful way.
You can't, you could never have a situation in which whoopee stood her ground and said.
Let me explain to you why I really think I'm right.
And then have somebody come on and say, like, you're 100% wrong.
This is why I'm deeply offended, right?
Like back and forth and sort of get to the end earnestly and honestly.
That just doesn't happen.
Doesn't happen even in cable.
All right.
So, speaking of firings and controversies over, you know, stepping in it, Emily, what happened with the real housewives on Bravo?
And this one was Salt Lake City.
First, there was, I only watched a few episodes of this, but the one gal turned out to be like a fraud and she got in trouble criminally.
Now, there's another gal who just got fired because she had non woke tweets.
Yeah, and there's arguably another one that has a weird situation going on with her Pentecostal church that.
What's happening with Salt Lake City ladies?
I don't know.
I don't know how this happened.
And it's even weirder because Bravo vets these women so thoroughly.
And that's one of the cases with Jenny, who was recently fired from the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City.
And by the way, I should say the last time I saw Eliana right before the pandemic, I think we spent like an hour talking about the Real Housewives, which was only appropriate.
That was New York, though, because I don't watch Salt Lake City.
I'm into that, too.
Yeah.
Salt Lake City has been amazing.
But Jenny, in the course of 2020, posted a lot of like, I would say, crudely expressed.
Memes, which are what memes are, that are not outside the mainstream of what a lot of people put on their Facebook news feeds about sort of pro police and anti BLM, anti protester.
One of them was just a couple of days after the Jacob Blake shooting in Kenosha, not far from where I grew up.
And it said something like, if you, this is a good sort of representative sampling, it said something like, if you follow the officer's orders, you won't get shot.
So again, I actually have, well, yeah, I have it here exactly.
If you follow the officer's orders, you won't get shot.
And there was one earlier where she had written, I'm sick of people saying cops need more training.
You had 18 years to teach your kid it's wrong to loot, steal, set buildings ablaze, block traffic, laser people's eyes, overturn cars, destroy buildings, and attack citizens.
Who failed?
Who?
Go ahead.
Right.
And so what she's basically saying is that there's a cultural problem instead of, you know, this is more about a culture instead of the cops.
And she's taking the police's side of the argument, which again is hardly outside the mainstream.
It's certainly harsh and it would certainly be an uncomfortable conversation in a green room in Manhattan.
But it's like pretty normal fare.
And she got fired.
All of her castmates sort of dramatically denounced her.
She has since come out and made some weird excuses.
Trigger!
Again, trigger!
Right, right.
And she has since come out and said, basically, like, I'm not ashamed to be a Republican, which is really interesting too, and would make the show a whole lot more interesting as well.
But there's so much weird stuff going on with the situation, and that one of her castmates, Mary Cosby, had said that she liked her slanted eyes.
Jenny is Asian.
She escaped Vietnam on a Boat.
She says she was captured by Thai pirates.
She came over to America as a refugee.
Christians brought her over to this country.
And here she is getting axed by Bravo over reality TV.
I mean, the whole thing is just ridiculous.
And the last point I'll make is that if you are watching reality TV to see people behave virtuously, you are doing it wrong.
These are anti heroes.
They are not protagonists.
And if you see them that way, it says something about how you're approaching the world and where you're finding your heroes because these are supposed to be.
Things we laugh at.
And when we laugh, we reinforce those boundaries of what's right and wrong.
This is about decadence, about what fame and money does to women.
And if you're looking to them for moral representation or moral values, you're gravely mistaken.
Right.
And we're like, what are they saying?
That you have to be woke and talk about all these tough issues in the exact right woke way in order to be on Bravo?
The Masked Liar 00:08:52
I mean, in order to be on the real housewives?
Who are they kidding?
First of all, who the hell would watch that?
Right?
Not me.
Not me.
And it's like, why are we firing people from Vanderpump Rules for being bad people?
That is the point of Vanderpump Rules.
It's why it's fun to watch.
Yes, that's exactly right.
You watch it so that you can feel like a better person.
That should be the tagline.
So they better stop firing all the people who are controversial.
Otherwise, it's not going to have that soothing balm.
All right, wait.
There's so much more to go over, and I cannot wait to get to Gavin Newsom, caught maskless at the Bigfoot.
Football game last week, and then he tried to explain why, and now the lie has been put to that nonsense, and we'll show you the proof.
Okay, so Gavin Newsom.
He goes to, I guess it was the NFC championship game at the stadium.
I think it's the same stadium where the Super Bowl is going to be.
And this is just last week.
And he gets caught on camera without his mask on.
And like in one of the pictures that was circulating, I was like, oh, there's an indoor mask mandate in California, thanks to you, Governor Gavin Newsom.
You're the one who imposed it.
And there you are inside with your mask off.
That's not right.
That's rules for thee and not for me.
And you've done it before.
French laundry, you know, it was a big scandal.
This was the picture.
That's Gavin Newsom and Magic Johnson.
So people were mad and he was called out for his hypocrisy and he tried to handle it with the following soundbite.
Listen I was very judicious yesterday, very judicious.
And you'll see the photo that I did take where Magic was kind enough, generous enough to ask me for a photograph.
And in my left hand's the mask and I took a photo.
Rest of the time I wore it.
As we all should.
Not when I had a glass of water or a thing, and I encourage everybody else to do so.
And that's it.
Oh my God, that has to go down in the annals of the most obvious lie ever.
It's amazing.
It's such an obvious lie.
It's spectacular in every way.
I love that so much.
So, Phil Houston, I have to have Phil Houston, the guy who authored Spy the Lie, and he was the CIA deception detection guy for 25 years.
He literally wrote the book, Spy the Lie.
And he talks about how, so that placeholder.
The rest of the time I was wearing it, you know, not when I had a glass of water or the rest of it.
That's a liar.
That's a liar who knows he may have been caught on camera not wearing the mask and he's trying to do a little cover, like an advanced cover.
That's what liars do.
If he actually had the mask on the whole time, he would have said, the rest of the time I had it on, period.
The nervous laughter, the attempt to do too much detail.
It was in my left hand, as you can see, like liar, liar, liar.
And now we know he's a liar because the magic of cameras has brought us multiple images of him without the mask on.
Okay, so the first one.
Is, hold on a second.
Is it a picture, Debbie, or is it a video?
I can't remember.
It's a video of him going over to Magic Johnson without the mask on.
Look, no mask, no mask, no mask.
Okay, there it is.
He did not have the mask on.
It was not like he met Magic and then Magic said, let's take a picture.
And then he took it off as he lied about yesterday.
He lied.
Okay, and then Clay Travis tweeted this out today.
There he is sitting in the box.
It looks like he's next to Tom Hanks.
Look as they zoom in, not only does he not wear his mask, Tom Hanks or whoever's next to him doesn't have it, and nobody in the box seems to have it.
Look.
Nobody's got a mask.
Look at him, all smiles.
The mask is off his face.
Can we zoom in again?
Can you play that again?
I want the audience to see it again.
People who are listening to this, watch it on YouTube later.
You'll see.
You're zooming, zooming, zooming.
He's sitting in the box.
No one in his box has their mask on.
Nobody.
It's off.
Okay, maybe he considers that outside.
I have no idea.
But at this very same stadium at the Super Bowl, they're mandating KN 95 masks for every single person in the stadium because that's what's safe.
So who would like to take it from here because it's too fun?
I mean, I didn't realize in this legislation, is there an asterisk for like.
Taking pictures?
Yeah.
We need to ask new people.
If you're a star, right?
To quote Trump, if you're a star, they let you do it and you get away with it.
If you're approached by celebrities to take a picture, you can take the mask off.
I didn't realize.
I mean, he must be like the slowest learner ever because he's really learned this lesson the hard way at every turn in the road.
He's such a liar.
And by the way, it wasn't just him.
Los Angeles Mayor Garcetti, he was there.
Also maskless.
I mean, on it goes, Emily.
And yet they still want.
My kids to sit in school all day long, and more accurately, the kids of California.
Look at them.
Look at them.
There's another picture.
That's Garcetti, but it's sitting there all day long with masks on their faces inside.
Yeah.
And I mean, even in that game, like little kids who might have had great memories of that game are now going to have been masked up while Gavin Newsom and Eric Garcetti and London Breed were maskless in their luxury box.
And I think to Eliana's point about Gavin Newsom, like it's inexplicable and sort of maddening in a sense after the French laundry situation that we are now here and it's happening again.
But I just think it speaks to how utterly shameless he is.
He knows that he's lying, he doesn't care that he's lying.
He genuinely Thinks he is better, and that the sort of masses, the unwashed masses, they must be saddled with the burden of masks because they're the ones who can't be trusted to live their lives responsibly and hygienically.
But Gavin Newsom, he can do it.
He's the governor, so it's fine.
And my favorite thing about his non apology and his statement was he was literally like, No, no, no, no.
The problem is not with Gavin Newsom.
Gavin Newsom is actually very, very judicious.
The problem, if anything, is that Gavin Newsom is too great.
Yes, yes.
It's so true.
We have to hear it again.
Can you guys?
Play the Gavin Newsom soundbite number four again.
I must have another relationship with it.
I was very judicious yesterday, very judicious.
And you'll see the photo that I did take where Magic was kind enough, generous enough to ask me for a photograph.
And in my left hand's the mask, and I took a photo.
Rest of the time I wore it, as we all should, not when I had a glass of water or a thing.
And I encourage everybody else to do so.
And that's it.
I nailed it again.
Pretty sure he wasn't drinking water either.
Yeah.
My God, Californians, take your masks off.
Your leaders are mocking you.
They think you're stupid.
This is outrageous.
And by the way, how about that Super Bowl thing?
Can you imagine paying all that money to go out to the Super Bowl?
I mean, it's not cheap to get tickets for the Super Bowl, and it's a dream come true for most people.
And to be told, because at first it was like, we're going to give everybody a Can 95 mask and we really hope you'll wear them.
Now it's been made clear.
You must wear them.
They all have to wear the KN95 mask.
Your kids, two years old, they have to have it on if they want to sit there in this, what I gather is an indoorslash outdoor stadium to watch the Super Bowl.
It's insane.
It's unthinkable.
And it is that Gavin Newsom, you're right, Megan, he's mocking the people of California at this point who have made so many sacrifices.
Kids, the sacrifices to kids learning, not just the discomfort of wearing it in school, but the actual, like, demonstrable effect that being masked in a school.
Contributes to people's learning, especially at younger ages.
It's insane.
I mean, it's completely beyond.
I mean, it is Marie Antoinette, it's all of that.
And yet there seems to be absolutely no talking sense into Gavin Newsom because of the utter shamelessness.
He doesn't care.
And if this was so important and if COVID was so dangerous, he would be wearing a mask, of course, because if Gavin Newsom is anything, it is self interested.
And we know that that's not the case because we can see it.
If I had a kid in a California school right now, Eliana, I'd say, here is a bottle of water.
I want you to walk around with this water all day and your mask off.
And as soon as you get in trouble, you can tell your teacher or whoever bothers you, no, no, I'm very judicious.
You know, I always have my mask on just, you know, just when I have a little water and all that.
Yeah, I like your style, Megan.
And a nuisance comment was amazing when he said, I like magic, was kind enough to essentially recognize my greatness and ask me for a photograph.
Gross.
Just amazing.
So gross.
I'm so over him.
And Jen Saki is somebody who a lot of people may be feeling that way about as well.
Talk about tone deaf.
She went on Pod Saved America, which is a left wing podcast, very successful with a bunch of Obama top aides, former Obama aides.
Gun Crime and Bigotry 00:08:38
And so she went on there and mocked Judge Jeanine Pirro of Fox News for being, in Saki's view, apparently, too focused on crime.
Like it's an absurdity.
She just plucked crime out of the ether as a relevant story.
Like, can you believe people are listening to this as if crime isn't actually a massive national story right now?
Here's what Jen Saki said.
If you look at Fox on a daily basis, I mean, do you remember the four boxes that we had on all the TVs, right?
Which is on my TV right now.
So, right now, Just to give you a sense.
So, CNN, Pentagon, as many as 8,500 U.S. troops on heightened alert.
Okay, true.
Same on MSNBC.
CNBC is doing their own thing about the market.
And then on Fox is Janine Pirro talking about soft on crime consequences.
I mean, what does that even mean, right?
So, there's an alternate universe on some coverage.
What's scary about it is a lot of people watch that.
Wow.
Just a few stats.
At least 16 major cities across America broke a record for homicides in 2021.
24 police officers across the nation were shot just in the month of January.
There's been a 510 percent nationwide spike in carjackings over the last year.
We've had left leaning, soft on crime DAs elected in several of our major cities, from LA to San Francisco to Chicago to New York and beyond, who are absolutely reversing written laws on the book, making felonies into misdemeanors, choosing not to prosecute crimes like resisting arrest and certain armed robberies or armed burglaries.
I could go on.
Just in New York this past month, two people were pushed onto the Subway tracks with oncoming trains coming.
One was killed.
One had non fatal injuries.
And, you know, we could keep going.
What is she doing?
Eliana, what is she.
Talk about ignoring the gambling going on in the casino, right?
Don't pay any attention to your eyes.
Well, that's a real foot in mouth moment that Republicans are going to be putting in ads ahead of the November 2022 midterms.
What's amazing is that the Biden administration is aware of this problem, which is a real political liability for them.
It is why Joe Biden, ahead of the 2020 election, said, I do not favor defunding the police.
It is why Merrick Garland, not a week ago, was talking about steps the Biden administration is taking to tackle the rise in crime.
And I think if the Democrats were smart, Joe Biden would run on a platform of what he's doing to tackle this problem.
You can be certain Republicans are going to be running on it and talking about it in the coming months.
And that Saki clip.
Will not be going away.
You know what he's trying to tackle?
He's not trying to tackle crime.
He's trying to tackle, quote, gun crime.
That's what the White House's response to all of this has been.
It's about the guns.
And if you look at his initiatives, it's all about like how we can roll back on guns.
I want to combat gun crimes with a comprehensive strategy.
These murders of these cops, these carjackings, this is about way more than too easy access to guns.
You could make a strong argument, it has nothing to do with.
With the too easy access to guns, but it has to do with soft on crime DAs and a couple of years of very negative coverage about police in the mainstream media and so on, and a media that's still devoted to covering up critical details about certain crimes.
I mean, just last week when those two cops in New York were killed in Harlem, those two police officers, 22 and 26 years old, the MSM, the New York Times, covered it and talked about the suspect who also was killed by a third cop who was there.
They did not mention anything about the guy's long criminal record.
Right?
Like they don't talk about this, this is a career criminal who did this.
We have criminals who we let out with a slap on the wrist with new no bail policies that don't protect the people in Chicago.
The sheriff out there says he's got 100 accused murderers sitting at home right now awaiting trial with just a little anklet on to ensure public safety.
None of that ever gets mentioned, Emily.
It's all about the guns.
Well, and this is why all of this is happening in deep blue cities because they have no answer to crimes.
And that's the democratic policies, the democratic platform, and the liberal ideology that informs those policies and platforms has absolutely no answer.
They use guns as their scapegoat, but they cannot grapple with any of the sort of roots of the problem because, in a way, their ideology.
Fuels and worsens them.
But that's why you see this.
And it gets even more disgusting when you realize Jen Psaki is sitting in Washington, D.C.
I don't think she lives in Washington, D.C. I'm pretty sure she lives out in the suburb in Arlington.
But Washington, D.C. is one of those cities, I'm here right now, where crime is spiking, particularly violent crimes like carjackings, as you mentioned, Megan.
And she's sitting there and she can't even talk about it.
It reminds me of one of a tweet that I have saved for years that I use with all of my journalism students.
It's a great one from Judd Legum.
It was in 2017.
He has all four squares of what's happening on every single cable network, cable news network.
He has MSNBC, CNN, and Fox.
So he says MSNBC is talking about Russia, CNN, Russia, Fox.
Hey, how's that weather we're having?
And it was a man reporting on tornadoes that were sweeping through Oklahoma and the Midwest.
Like they are so out of touch that that's why this continues to happen year after year after year.
They have no idea how crime is affecting people in their own cities, less than a mile from where they're sitting when they give these ridiculous interviews.
They're completely.
Completely divorced from the reality that the country is experiencing.
Much of the country is experiencing.
That's so true.
And now, I mean, just like during the Trump administration, they want the focus back on Russia.
She can't understand why Fox News is talking about Russia.
By the way, Jens Saki, that wouldn't go much better for you either.
You don't look particularly good in that situation either.
At least your boss doesn't, right?
It's like yet another.
All right, let's go up north of the border here to Canada and Canada's version of Gavin Newsom.
Isn't he?
Are they the same person?
That's perfect.
Seriously.
Is Justin Trudeau actually.
Gavin Newsom, I think they might be the same man.
Like attractive, right?
Like pleasant to look at.
And then until they start speaking.
So Justin Trudeau, rather than meet with the truckers who have come, some 50,000 of them, according to what I read, to sort of make their point that they're against these vaccine mandates that don't let them deliver goods across the Canadian US border, has tucked tail and run and has refused to meet with them.
It's, I guess, not particularly surprising, Eliana, but.
This, we have played a soundbite of him yesterday saying he won't meet with them because he objects to their offensive views, their offensive viewpoints.
So he can't speak to them.
Much like Newsom, he's expressing contempt for them.
But what amazed me in sort of digging into this was that the truck drivers who are protesting a vaccine mandate requiring them to be vaccinated if they're going to cross from the US into Canada, they have the same vaccination rate as the rest of Canada, which is 90%.
So it is amazing to me.
We're talking about a mandate targeting an incredibly small group of people here.
And I just can't imagine that the public health impact of this policy outweighs the repercussions that we're seeing across Canada right now.
Listen to what he said, Emily.
This is him, Trudeau, on camera talking about certain protests and rallies he just loves.
This is Soundbite Seven.
I have attended protests and rallies in the past when I agreed with the goals, when I supported the people.
Uh, expressing their concerns and their issues.
Black Lives Matter is an excellent example of that.
But I have also chosen to not.
Go anywhere near protests that have expressed hateful rhetoric, violence towards fellow citizens.
Where do you begin?
He likes the protests he agrees with.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There was definitely no hateful rhetoric at any BLM rally ever.
That in and of itself is hateful rhetoric.
I mean, it is dismissing people who disagree with you as bigots.
It's a form of bigotry when you talk like that.
And this is a problem the left consistently runs into is that they cannot get over this one huge hurdle that the people who disagree with them on vaccinations, on masks, are not bigots.
They think they're awful, unhygienic, the unwashed masses who are ignorant.
Protest Rhetoric Explained 00:04:35
And you can go down the line.
They have a million different insults for them and different deeply held beliefs.
And if you can't get past that, you end up in these pickles like Justin Trudeau and Gavin Newsom, who are very, very judicious, but not quite judicious enough to understand the actual situation at hand because they can't even dispense with their very important biases and prejudices to see the reality of what's happening.
All right, while we make our way around the world, we went to the Southwest and California.
We went north to Canada.
And now I would like to take us over to the UK, where news was made today by Victoria and David Beckham.
Now, I don't know if you ladies saw this, but I will get you up to speed just in case you didn't.
David Beckham, they seem to have a very sweet relationship, by the way.
It's nice to see these super mega successful, very rich people still be able to have fun.
He tweeted, he gave her some note in her lunchbox not long ago that said something like, come home in a better mood.
Signed, don't be such an asshole.
And she tweeted it out, which I thought, I'm like, that's good.
I like these two.
But shocking fact about Victoria Beckham.
According to David Beckham, she has eaten the same food every day for 25 years and has only tried something else one time when she was pregnant with their child, Harper.
Quote This is David.
The only time she's Even she's ever shared something on my plate was when she was pregnant with Harper, and it was the most amazing thing.
It was the most amazing thing.
So, what does she have?
She eats grilled fish and steamed vegetables, and that's it.
It explains so much about that tiny body.
I couldn't do it.
It all makes sense now.
It all makes sense now.
But it seems like it also might be the secret to their long happy marriage and that he doesn't have to get upset with her for stealing things off his plate, which can actually cause a lot of friction.
No, he enjoyed it.
Listen to him.
It was the most amazing thing that time when she actually tried food off of his plate.
Now, the Daily Mail tells me that she has, quote, previously admitted that she will not eat food cooked in oil, butter, or sauces.
She does not eat red meat.
She does not eat dairy.
And Apparently, her comfort food is.
Are you ready?
You're not going to believe this.
Her comfort food is one piece of whole grain toast with salt on it.
What a mess.
Megan, we got to send her, we got to send Posh and Tom Brady out for like a binge.
This would be a good reality show.
I was going to say, I would watch that.
Yes.
This will be awesome.
She's going to be like 150 years old because she has the perfect diet.
Or she'll die like tomorrow.
No, because our ancestors, you know, they didn't eat as much as we do.
No, but it's crazy.
And by the way, when she splurges for her birthday, guess what she has?
A piece of fruitcake.
Fruitcake!
I like this is why she always looks so unhappy in all of her photos.
I was going to say it was probably the best day of his life when she ate off his plate because she was like in a good mood for 45 minutes after.
You know?
I was amazed.
She would imagine the smile we'd get if somebody introduced her to the glories of a cheeseburger.
Pizza, yeah.
Come on.
Come on.
It's insulting.
You live in the time when there's all this variety of food and it's as best as it's ever tasted.
It might not be great for you, but.
Just live a little.
Nope.
I don't know.
I guess it's like this is why we don't look like Victoria Beckham.
And you know what?
I'm okay with that.
Ladies, it's been a pleasure.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Don't forget later this week, Jason Whitlock is going to be back with the program.
Love him.
In the meantime, download the show on Apple or elsewhere and youtube.com slash Megan Kelly to watch it.
Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show.
No BS, no agenda, and no fear.
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