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April 21, 2022 - The Megyn Kelly Show
01:32:44
20220421_biden-confused-again-and-cnn-plus-already-getting-
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CDC Mask Mandate Struck Down 00:06:44
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.
Oh, my gosh, we have an unbelievable program for you today.
News just broke that CNN Plus is shutting down after three weeks.
The official close date, according to the New York Times, is April 3rd, I think.
It lasted one month, April 30th.
Okay.
It literally just launched.
They're in their third week.
No one subscribed.
No one wanted more CNN.
Absolutely no one.
So it's shutting down.
We'll get to that with our guests in a moment.
And there's so much more to go over today, including this.
We'll have a story that you will hear first right here on our show.
As you know, we have been covering the Leah Thomas controversy for months, many have, but now the debate over transgender swimmers is beginning to impact younger children too.
In Seattle, a prominent summer swim league is expected to vote on a plan that would allow biological boys to compete in the girls division.
We're going to speak with two parents who are sounding the alarm.
But first, we begin with the CDC's mask mandate.
The Biden administration is appealing the decision, striking down its mask mandate and all federal transportation, including airlines, buses, trains, and so on.
This, despite the ubiquitous images of people literally dancing in the aisles of airplanes, celebrating the end of this pointless thing.
Not only is this appeal a colossally stupid political move, it is also a legal loser.
The left had a meltdown this week over the judge who killed the mandate.
But I've now had the chance to read the entire decision.
And the reason they are attacking the judge and not her judgment is that the opinion was entirely sound.
It is well-reasoned.
It is methodical.
It is well supported legally.
And in its descriptions of this administration's executive overreach, it is absolutely devastating.
Here is what the judge, Catherine Kimball Mazzell of the Middle District of Florida, found.
First, the CDC had no independent authority to issue such a sweeping mandate.
And any powers it did have would have to have been granted to it by Congress.
So did Congress empower the CDC to enact such a broad mandate?
No found the court.
See, back in the 1940s, Congress authorized the CDC to enact regulations aimed at preventing the spread of communicable diseases.
This is what the DOJ relied on in arguing the CDC does have the power to mandate masks on federal transportation.
But the law at issue provides examples of what the CDC could regulate.
And it doesn't come close to gargantuan powers like forcing private citizens to wear garments on their faces for hours at a time.
It covers things like fumigation, disinfection, sanitation, and so on.
Sanitation, that's our hook.
So thought the CDC.
That's how we'll get a masked up.
But the court was not convinced that a mask sanitizes anything.
Sanitize, it found, means to clean something, which a mask clearly does not.
But zoom out a bit, all right?
And it is clear that neither Congress nor the CDC themselves ever envisioned powers like this for this regulatory agency.
Prior to COVID, this law had been very rarely invoked.
The most radical thing it had been used for was to prevent the import of small turtles due to salmonella risks.
That's it.
Then COVID hit and the CDC was suddenly drunk on its own power, using this 75-year-old statute to shut down the cruise ship industry, to stop landlords from evicting tenants who hadn't paid their rent, and then to enact this mask mandate.
All three moves have now been struck down by the courts.
The court looked at the CDC's behavior and said to agree that it has such power would be to bestow the CDC with newly discovered, quote, breathtaking, unheralded authority.
Something more akin to state police power than to an agency regulation over cleaning.
So no, Congress never intended to grant little Rochelle Walensky or her predecessors with the powers of a king.
And even if it did, the CDC went about it all wrong, found the court.
You see, it would have had to provide the public with a chance to comment on this proposal for a period of 30 days.
Why didn't the CDC do that?
The CDC claimed, quote, given the public health emergency of COVID, it simply couldn't.
Judge Kimball Mizzell saw right through that lie.
This mandate was not issued until nearly a year into the pandemic, 11 months after the president had declared COVID a national emergency and at a time when COVID cases were on the decline.
30 days now couldn't be spared for the public to weigh in on an agency rule that had the power to send them to jail?
Nah.
Nor did the CDC comply with a requirement that in dispensing with that 30-day notice and comment period, it provide a brief statement of the reasons why involving the peons of the public was allegedly impracticable.
Instead, it offered a single conclusory sentence about this being a public health emergency.
And that's it.
The court pointed out that when another federal agency mandated that certain healthcare workers get the vaccine, that agency provided four pages of reasoning.
And four justices of the Supreme Court would later find even that was insufficient.
The CDC here, one line, public health emergency.
They didn't respect the public enough to even explain why the people should have no say whatsoever in, quote, a regulation that would constrain their choices and actions via threats of criminal and civil penalties, including a thousand dollar fine, a year in jail, and civil penalties from the FAA for quote, unsafe behavior.
Finally, the court found that the CDC failed in its obligation to explain why it rejected viable alternatives to mandatory masking.
The CDC's only response was to repeat its oft-cited belief that universal masking reduces transmission of COVID.
Unelected Judge Oversteps Agency 00:04:02
Okay, said the court.
But this mandate did not require universal masking.
It allowed anyone under two years old not to mask, people with certain disabilities not to mask.
It exempted people who were, quote, eating, drinking, or taking medication, as well as those who were, quote, experiencing difficulty breathing or feeling wounded.
The court pointed all of this out, getting right to the heart of what we've all known from the start of this thing.
How does any of this make sense when we can have the mask down for long periods while we're eating and drinking?
What you knew was nuts while on board that airplane, the court saw too.
You weren't crazy.
It was all a farce.
And the court saw right through it.
Thus, the court concluded that in addition to being not authorized by Congress and not being appropriately enacted because it skipped the necessary notice and comment period, this rule could not stand because it was arbitrary.
It was capricious.
It was unnecessary.
It was nonsensical.
For all of these reasons, the mandate was found unlawful, which is why I believe this ruling will be upheld on appeal.
It'll go up to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, which is a more right-leaning court.
And the U.S. Supreme Court is more right-leaning these days as well.
So one, if not both of those courts is going to wind up upholding this.
I do not believe the Supreme Court, if it gets there, will strike down this ruling.
Finally, a word on this judge.
Her left-wing critics excoriated her because she never tried a case before reaching the federal bench.
But the real problem they have with her is that she was a Trump appointee who once clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas.
As Glenn Greenwald pointed out yesterday on this program, you know who else never tried a case before getting to the federal bench?
Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, who's now two levels above Judge Mizell on the federal bench.
Don't remember the liberals complaining about that then.
It is true that the American Bar Association rated Judge Kimball Mizell not qualified, despite her extensive experience clerking for federal judges in the most prestigious courts in the United States and her time litigating at one of the best firms in the country.
But make no mistake, the ABA cannot stand conservatives.
It has a long history of rating as unqualified conservative judges whose positions on abortion, affirmative action, and the like it opposes.
Its bias toward conservatives has been the subject of books, articles, endless commentary, and so on.
It has deemed not qualified some of the most respected judges in the country and has a particular penchant for doing so to conservative women and minorities.
Because as we all know, the left reveres identity, skin color, sexual identity, gender, gender identity, unless the person is a Republican or not woke.
But Judge Kimball Mizell does not seem to care about currying favor with the left, the ABA, or any particular group.
She cares about the law.
And thank goodness, by the way, for Mitch McConnell and President Trump, who despite their differences, worked together to get judges like her on the federal bench.
Joining me now to discuss that and much, much more, the hosts of the fifth column podcast, Michael Moynihan, a correspondent for Vice News Tonight, Matt Welsh, editor-at-large for Reason Magazine, and Camille Foster of Free Think Media.
So happy to have you back, guys.
How's it going?
Thanks, Megan.
Thanks for having me.
Okay, so now do you get it?
Do you understand the ruling and see why everyone's just attacking the judge?
I mean, you said it exactly right.
No one is talking about the actual ruling, which is usually a good sign.
They talked about two things, that she was appointed by Trump and that she's 35 years old.
And then sometimes a very clever legal analyst would say, I can't believe that an unelected judge bypass the will of a federal agency.
I'm glad that people have realized that judges are unelected.
That's interesting.
Why Masks Are Not Needed 00:14:55
But the point being on her ruling that if people wanted elected officials to pass a law, that's how you should do this, rather than have an administrative agency just make some ruling that sanitation is going to be upheld by a mask, which doesn't make any sense, then Congress, go ahead and pass it.
You got Democrats run Congress still.
Pass that law.
You must wear a mask on airplanes and on trains and in the subway forever and then run for reelection in November.
Let's see how that goes.
The fact is they're not.
And because they know that they would get hammered because of it, they're trying to use the administrative state to tell people what to do with their lives.
And the judge was right to tell them to go take a long walk off a short period.
Isn't it amazing that prior to this, the most expansive thing the CDC had ever done with this law that now it claims it can mask us all interminably was to say the little turtles can't come in.
I mean, that's 75 years.
That's as far as they went.
And now it's like we have unending powers.
We can, I mean, the rent, the cruise ships, the federal mat.
Like, who do they think they are?
Well, I mean, the weirdest thing about this, as Matt was pointing out, is that you're not talking about the ruling.
We've also given up on the idea of the science behind this.
I mean, we have not had super spreader events on planes.
This is not a place where people are getting COVID.
Trust me, if people are getting COVID on planes, you'd hear about it.
And so, like, you know, in New York City, of course, you know, Eric Adams were keeping the mask mandate on public transportation, which, by the way, your biggest worry on New York City subways?
Absolutely not COVID.
I mean, I've been on so many times recently.
I'm like, oh my God, COVID is really not my concern.
They're not enforcing a knife at me.
They're not enforcing the pants mandates on the mask mandate.
I mean, it's 50% of people on the subways aren't wearing them.
I mean, I just took a 10-hour flight in which everyone gave up on the mask.
It was a transatlantic flight and it was an Eastern European airline where they're like, it's fine.
Take mask off.
No problem.
And like everyone did.
And so when everyone was celebrating the other day, Jen Saki was asked about it.
And she said, you know, this is not data.
This is anecdote.
And it's like, they do understand that this is a popular move.
People at airports go do this and just go tomorrow, go the next day, the next flight you're on.
You're not going to see people wearing masks.
You can wear them.
There's a woman on Twitter.
I'm an epidemiologist and I am just going to flout this regulation.
It's like, yeah, of course you can.
Nobody's telling you you cannot wear a mask.
That is not the ruling.
It is saying that the rest of us who understand that we're not at risk in a situation like this aren't going to wear them.
Right.
And you got people like Roland Martin who tweeted out yesterday.
You saw this, right?
He's got his double mask and goggles protecting.
No, but they're not even goggles.
There were glasses.
It's just, you can get under them.
He was wearing like shooting glasses and then five Roland Martin t-shirts and hats.
Well, you didn't know it was Roland Martin because who the hell knows who Roland Martin is these days?
Is he on CNN Plus?
Do you think he dresses like that every day?
Do you think he dresses like that every day?
Or he plans to take this shot in order to try and put it out there.
I'm not sure.
I'm not sure YouTube later.
Please go to YouTube and look at this picture.
You've got to see it.
Wait, let me read his tweet.
I don't give a damn what some grossly unqualified Donald Trump judge said because Roland has a, you know, a prestigious history on the bench.
I'm double masked and wearing goggles on this Nashville to DC flight.
I had COVID in December.
Y'all can kiss my ass about me.
Nobody get COVID in December.
Nobody.
Any fool saying they don't matter is a damn liar.
Okay.
All right.
I want to know how he got COVID if he's wearing seven masks and goggles and Roland Martin t-shirts.
That doesn't make sense.
I did see one of the replies in that tweet thread was someone who said they saw him at like the new edition concert and he wasn't wearing a mask there.
We don't know if that's true, allegedly.
Allegedly.
It was like Valerie Jarrett.
Valerie Jarrett did the same thing.
She tweeted out as follows, wearing my mask, no matter what non-scientists tell me I can do.
She's sitting alone, it looks like in her car.
I don't know.
It's like, okay, no one gives a shit what you do in your own private car by yourself.
But she was at the, what was it?
South by Southwest.
There she is.
Look with Jonathan Capehart together.
Really close.
Three inches.
She's like less than six feet.
I'm not sure.
Last month.
No masks, right?
Like, so spare me.
Spare me your virtue.
Yeah, something about the timetable here is just uniquely frustrating.
I mean, we, we're talking about the beginning of last year.
This is the first thing that Biden does when he comes into office.
It was already the case that most of the airlines were already requiring folks to wear masks.
They'd already been doing the spacing, which they actually started to phase out by that point.
And there was not an urgent demand for this.
There was this desire for some sort of performative muscle flexing, some kind of COVID public health theater.
And he keeps doing this sort of thing over and over again, like pushing the executive branch to, in any way possible, bend the law, forcing the courts to take some sort of action.
But in this particular case, the new wrinkle is, I can't imagine that he actually wanted the CDC to reach the conclusion that, yeah, we want these mandates.
Let's go to, let's go to court.
Let's appeal this.
You saw all of these videos of Americans on planes celebrating of every race, color, and creed, like ripping their masks off, throwing them in the trash, airline attendants walking through the aisles, singing songs, collecting these disgusting things from people.
I'm flying tomorrow.
I am, I am delighted to not have to wear the mask, although it's a fairly short flight.
But in either case, it's people have been over this for the longest time.
And I imagine one or two extensions ago, if the Biden administration had decided we're not going to do this, they could have owned this victory instead of been at odds.
And you know, here's what's exciting to me about this.
I'm, I'm all for this.
Appeal it.
Do it.
This is a great appellate court and Supreme Court to be hearing this issue.
You guys would agree as a bunch of libertarians.
They're not going to reverse this judge.
And so as the ruling goes up, it only gets more important and more difficult to ignore.
Let's make it Supreme Court precedent with the 11th Circuit decision upholding this will be a lot tougher to dismiss than a federal district trial court, basically, is what she is.
So, and this is what Jensaki said to it.
Okay, this is what she said to Chris Wallace in his three-week old show that is dying in a week.
She said, the appeal is important not only to preserve the mask requirement, but also, quote, to ensure the CDC's authority and ability to put in mandates in the future remains intact.
The CDC does not want to lose any of its newfound alleged power.
It's like we used to deal with the fucking turtles and now we can mask everyone.
It's amazing.
Let's fight.
And no one's going to figure out they're not going to get this decision reversed.
Do you know who that sounds like to my ear immediately?
It's Dick Cheney.
Dick Cheney, even before 9-11 and certainly afterwards, said repeatedly that one of our purposes by hour, he meant him and George W. Bush, but I don't know if George W. Bush had really thought that one through, is to imbue the office of the presidency with the executive power that it had lost after Watergate.
Like we want to, we want to build more power for the ability to have more power's sake.
And we're going to look for opportunities to it is.
I mean, he thought that it was, we were defrocked after 1974 and Watergate.
That's what she's doing here.
And that should be even a bigger alarm for the Neil Gorsuch's of the world.
My God, Neil Gorsuch's career is all about trimming the sails of a runaway administrative state that can just point to any law enabling regulation or a regulatory agency from 50 years ago and start inventing stuff, start inventing laws.
Neil Gorsuch rightly has said over and over again, well, you can't do that.
Congress has to pass actual laws that affect the thing that you're talking about directly.
So this is a warning shot from Jen Saki.
And it's why we should be celebrating this regardless of whether we think the underlying policy is good or bad.
I have to think the underlying policy is terrible and laughable, but that is a power grab.
And even if you are a super Roland Martin pro masker, just imagine President Trump having the power to do whatever he wants in any kind of next avian flu coming your way.
Now, listen, in defense of the president, Jen Saki, that was just her opinion.
How does President Biden feel about this appeal?
What does he say this is all about?
Well, he was asked about it today.
Okay, he was, oh, yeah, so yeah, actually in my team, I followed his same confusion.
He was asked about Title 42, the immigration basically rule that says we, when we're in a pandemic, we don't have to entertain anybody's asylum claim down at the border.
Okay, this thing that he's going to lift in May.
And it's controversial because we're already having a crisis at the southern border and so on.
Okay, so he was asked about Title 42.
And you tell me because I heard an answer about the mask mandate and they've spent now hours trying to clean it up.
And I'm deeply concerned.
Listen here.
No, what I'm considering is continuing to hear from my first of all, there's going to be an appeal by the Justice Department because as a matter of principle, we want to be able to be in a position where if in fact it is strongly concluded by the scientists that we need Title 42, that we'd be able to do that.
But there has been no decision on extending Title 42.
Thank you.
Oh my God.
Thank you.
He's going to run.
Oh my God.
Is that real?
Yeah.
Is that a deep fake?
I thought that was a Megan Kelly deep fake.
I wish my audience could have seen the three of you while that was playing.
One by one.
The faces were.
I thought he was going to start talking about Pearl Harbor.
The man is just not in the same universe as the rest of us.
I mean, you remember how many jokes?
I mean, we should, there's probably some service that can tally this for us.
How many jokes there were about the dumb things that came out of George W. Bush's mouth, right?
I mean, it was every single night.
And, you know, justifiably so in some ways.
I mean, he's a president.
You should make fun of him if he's, you know, misstating things, using the wrong words.
You know, was it the one that became part of the lexicon, one of George Bush's malapropisms?
But this was never mentioned by, you know, late night hosts, by anyone.
It's the unspoken thing is that this man, it's kind of concerning that the president does not seem to know what is going on about 50% of the time and has a person in a bunny suit pulling him away from questions about Afghanistan.
Which sounds like some acid trip fever dream in a Jefferson airplane song.
There's a giant rabbit taking the president away from a question about Afghanistan.
This is the place that we live now.
As long as it's not Donald Trump, we're fine.
Well, no, I mean, Donald Trump is in the rearview mirror for me, and I'm concerned about the current president who doesn't seem to have his faculties about.
We're going to show the bunny tape, but before we get to that, I want to issue, I want to read you the statement that President Biden issued clarifying what we just heard.
I want to clarify that in comments at the conclusion of my remarks this morning, keep in mind, this is today.
I was referring to the CDC's mask mandate.
We know.
And there is no Department of Justice action on Title 42.
We know.
You're the only one who didn't understand.
So, okay, the Easter bunny thing.
We haven't discussed that yet on this program.
And it's too delicious not to spend some time on.
So he was at this event.
He's working the rope line and he's talking to somebody in the audience about Afghanistan.
And, you know, he's not allowed to talk about Afghanistan for all the obvious reasons.
Don't revisit that and don't say how you really feel and stop spewing nonsense about how it was the greatest success ever.
And apparently it was a press aide inside of the Easter bunny costume who goes over to like literally pull him away and start like jumping up and down like, oh, look over here, over here.
You can gather some from the listen and you can certainly gather some from watching it.
It is.
The bunny literally started waving in front of his face.
There's a big bunny in front of me.
I have to leave now.
Did someone even ask him about Afghanistan, or was he just volunteering his insights about Afghanistan at the road there?
It doesn't seem like that kid.
Those kids in the masks asked about Afghanistan.
They needed that bunny and his comments about title 42.
No no, no different controversy.
Where's the Bunny in the line of succession?
That is what I want to know.
Can we just go back for one second though, because I do have to.
Don't you think it's a free?
We talked about why it's.
It's legally just foolish to appeal the ruling for them, but politically, I mean, I know the far left is still holding on to their Covid restrictions.
They love them, but you know, more sane liberals are against this.
All of the conservative party and independents are against this.
So truly, like what?
And I realize okay, preserve the mandate, preserve the power of the CDC, but for Joe Biden, doesn't he think this is politically, this is stupid?
Like why?
Why would they do it?
This is the thing yeah, that they're constantly talking to twitter.
I mean, they're constantly talking to a very, very small number of people on twitter, which is their echo chamber, and this actually works out perfectly for them because, as you mentioned Megan, this is going to go up the appeals chain, it's going to get knocked down and it's going we're going to not have masks on plane.
That mandate is going to be gone and they kind of slide out of it right, so they get to say to their their uh, you know twitter fans that we tried and we failed.
It was a 35 year old Trump judge and then it was more conservative judges above us that are just screwing us, and then you know they get rid of it because it's not terribly popular, but it's something that's incredibly popular with the people that they care about, which aren't in any way reflective of the American people as a whole.
So look, Joe Biden doesn't seem to have it all together.
CNN's Legacy Cable Package 00:08:36
I don't know if he's not making the right call there, politically or legally.
He clearly doesn't understand what he's talking about when he gets asked questions by a robeline, by members of the press.
But we have the vice president.
We've got vice president Kamala Harris and she.
The benefit of Kamala Harris is she can explain everything to us in a way that even a two-year-old could understand guys, that's what people love about her in and even when speaking to the actual Space Force right that the Trump created Space Force guy.
Like I first heard this clip, i'm like she sounds like a moron and then i'm like, wait a minute, she was talking to actual Space Force guys.
This is her explaining space to members of the Space Force.
Yes listen, Abby's Horrified listen.
Whether it is, satellites that orbit the earth, humans that land on the moon or telescopes that peer into the furthest reaches of the universe.
Space is exciting, so exciting.
It gets worse after that, by the way Megan I don't know if you guys listening and it gets less and less coherent.
We at the Fifth Column did, in an episode not too long ago, have a bit where we just did Kamala Harris speeches off the cuff because they're so wonderfully weird and incoherent.
The rejectations.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You just talk about things are we things are great.
And, you know, how great that is to me, the feeling that I get, it's like, wait, if this woman's the vice president, this, it's, it's, it's pretty alarming.
She's the coherent one, by the way.
Yes.
I want her to explain the decision we just got on mask.
It's a big decision and a bad decision because masks are good.
Now back to the present.
Is why we're here about the masks.
There's like the nod and the slow.
It was, but it was October of last year, right?
Where there was that weird drama that played out where they had this YouTube original series and featured Kamala Harris.
And she was with these four or five kids who all turned out to be actors.
Actors, yeah, that's right.
Child actors I've ever seen.
It was so clear that these were questions that they had been fed and been practicing and rehearsing.
And she was the one who was supposed to be natural.
And I do have some of that copy here.
I just love the idea of exploring the unknown.
We're going to learn so much as we increasingly are curious and interested in the potential for the discoveries and the work we can do in space.
Yes.
What are you talking about?
What does that mean?
Stop it right now.
Where's the community scripted?
By me back here.
You know what?
This just in CNN Plus has offered her a show.
Oh, that's funny.
She's going to rock it for the next week.
All right.
That's where we're going to pick it up after we squeeze in a commercial break.
CNN Plus is dead after three weeks of launch.
Turns out nobody wanted more of CNN.
Are you shocked?
More with the fifth column, guys, in just one second.
Okay, so CNN Plus, it's unbelievable.
It's done.
It just launched.
It's in its third week.
The reports were absolutely devastating about the lack of interest in this thing.
They said 150,000 total subscribers, only 10,000 watching on any given day.
I mean, I've seen it promoted so many different places.
They are doing their level best to get people to watch that Chris Wallace show.
Mostly it's the CNN anchors doing things other than their normal show, like Don Lemon had a talk show, which apparently nobody wanted to watch.
I'm shocked.
Brian Stelter.
Brian Stelter was given a daily show.
I can't, how did this fail?
Running so much new talent.
So they fired the head guy, the guy, the guy who was running it because Discovery just took over CNN.
I guess they're basically like, we never agreed to this.
You shouldn't have launched this right before we took over.
We didn't want this.
And clearly the American public didn't want this.
It wasn't even like a, I don't know, they didn't even give people CNN.
So it's like, at least you could watch it digitally, you know, if you're a CNN fan.
It's just weird offerings by random people on CNN.
And Wallace is probably the biggest question because they're paying him reportedly $10 million a year.
He left Fox.
Now what?
You know, they're not going to put Chris Wallace in Chris Cuomo's old spot, which is still open at 9 p.m.
No, no one would watch that.
So they're not dumb.
So I don't know what happens there.
I do feel for all the people who are now laid off, who went over there in good faith and thought, oh, great, a good opportunity.
You know, this used to be a great brand and now we're out of a job.
What do you guys make of it?
Hundreds of millions of dollars spent by the corporate entity to try and achieve something in the space.
This is obviously just a difficult time for streaming.
I suspect most people listening or watching know that Netflix is also struggling with some of its subscriber numbers.
But the reality is that the space has just become a heck of a lot more competitive.
And what you actually have to be able to do is deliver some original content, some unique value, or have a significantly important like archive of content.
And CNN Plus didn't offer any of those things.
Like these are, these were total retreads of the same shows that you could get for free, featuring most of the same people.
And to the extent they even had like other kinds of documentary content there, most of that stuff you could get on other platforms.
This is just not interesting.
Yeah, the one horrifying.
Somebody tweeted out, guys, even New Coke had a longer lifespan than faster, at least.
No, it's there's, I think, a new thing that people are trying to tap into, which is, for lack of a better word, the affinity economy of media.
People like Megan Kelly and like what she does.
Let's pretend she's not here.
And so they affirmatively will subscribe to it because they want to like give you a high five.
They identify with you personally in some way.
And that is a lot easier for an individual or a small group of individuals like us to do than it is for a big corporation that's been around forever.
Most big media organizations are kind of like eat your weedies, you know, democracy dies in darkness.
If you don't subscribe to this newspaper, we'll shoot your dog.
And that works for a couple of titles.
It works at this moment for the New York Times, arguably for the Washington Post, but not for very many legacy media outlets.
Certainly has no reason to work for CNN or MSNBC.
I don't even know if they could work exactly for Fox unless you change the models or offering a lot more documentaries.
I guess that's what Tucker's been doing.
Getting it out of the tanning industry over there.
Yeah, it's tanning your balls.
That's what he's saying.
To have more testosterone, you got to tan yourself.
That I would subscribe to.
I do want to point out, by the way, because neither Matt nor Camille did two-dar on horn here.
We do have more daily listeners than CNN Plus, and it did not cost us $300 million to do so.
Although I would like to have $300 billion that we could still do.
If anybody wants to give it to us, I mean, I would do better than them for sure.
Does anyone remember Quizzie?
They were just talking about this off air.
Do you know how much money they raised?
Three quarters of a billion dollars.
Yo.
Yes.
$750 million.
Katzenberg.
It was Jeffrey Katzenberg.
Yes.
And it shows you one thing that has been apparent to a lot of us for a long time.
People at the tops of these companies have no idea what the American people want.
How long did it take for Spotify to sign Joe Rogan?
Joe Rogan was running the tables on everybody for years, but nobody wanted to reach out and say, well, those are the icky people that listen to Joe Rogan.
Either they're the MMA types or they're these kind of libertarian conservative types.
We don't want them.
Because Matt says, it's the eat your weedies time.
We have, we know what's good for you.
And we're going to tell you what you should like and what you should listen to.
And you know what?
I mean, CNN is getting their money as part of a legacy cable package.
People know the brand.
That's why they survive.
It's not because everyone is champing at the bit to watch Don Lemon every night, please.
And they definitely aren't going to pay five bucks a month for it.
$5.
I paid more for that, like for my coffee this morning.
And I still.
Stephen L. Miller tweets out as follows.
Libs of TikTok is alive and CNN Plus is dead.
Pretty good.
Pretty good.
Libs of TikTok Scandal Explained 00:12:55
And that brings me to the Libs of TikTok scandal.
I'm dying to get Camille's thoughts on this because I know you did some battle with or at least had some thoughts on this Taylor Lorenz.
Okay.
This, this, I don't, I don't even know if we call her a reporter.
She calls Glenn Greenwald Pulitzer Prize winning Glenn Greenwald, an online influencer.
An Oscar winner, too, by the way.
Okay.
So Taylor Lorenz makes her living by doxing and outing private citizens whose identity she wants us to know more about, teenagers, young girls who are big on Insta, who don't want you to know that their mom is a right-winger.
They need to be outed.
They need to be canceled.
She loves the cancellation and the doxing when it is Taylor doing it.
However, when it happens to Taylor in response to her nasty, mean girl reporting, she plays the victim because there's so much currency in doing that in today's day and age.
Here's just a reminder, our audience was here literally this month stopping about what is it so hard when people say the mean things soundbite three.
I've had to remove every single social tie.
I had severe PTSD from this.
I contemplated suicide.
It got really bad.
You feel like any little piece of information that gets out on you will be used by the worst people on the internet to destroy your life.
And it's so isolating and terrifying.
It's horrifying.
I'm so sorry.
It's okay.
You can laugh.
Gosh, you guys are terrible.
No, it's laughing.
I'm laughing at the so-called reporter who feeds her another line.
She's like, I'm terrifying.
I'm glad you mentioned that.
I'm glad you mentioned that.
That's Morgan Radford of NBC, who she was a nightmare when I worked there.
Here's more of that exchange where Morgan, the reporter, has to make herself a victim of the story as well.
Watch.
Lorenz and digital reporter Kate Sausson say these types of attacks have changed their lives and their work.
There's reporting that I know that I would like to do or that other journalists would like to do that we're not able to do because it's not safe enough for us to do them.
And they're not alone.
This is after I did a report on an increase in the number of white supremacists running for office.
Condescending journalists, C word, deserves a rope.
Obviously, I'm a person of color.
Obviously, there's a reference to a noose.
Okay.
So let's not break.
I'm a victim.
I'm a bigger victim.
I'm a worse victim than you are.
Raise your hand if you're the worst victim ever.
Right.
Like it's a, it's a, who can out victim one another?
And it's fine.
Okay.
Fine.
If that's what you want to do, that's not my jam, but that's their jam.
But then don't run around victimizing other people, right?
Because if you really want us to feel sorry for you and care about internet harassment, then don't do it.
Don't be a purveyor of it.
And Camille, that's, that's what Taylor Lorenz's history is.
Yeah, I've had a couple of encounters with Taylor in her capacity as a journalist or professional tattletale, which I think is probably a better job description.
And really the difference between like libs of TikTok and Taylor Lorenz is libs of TikTok, for the most part, surfacing stuff from TikTok that people are posting publicly and putting that video out.
And it's not as though it's being robbed of context if it's just a 15-second video.
Sometimes there are things on there that are a little less than savory and people respond to it.
Taylor Lorenz, on the other hand, is working at mainstream establishment, these storied media organizations, is a highly compensated journalist using all of the power and prestige of these institutions to, in many instances, go after individuals,
publicize embarrassing moments of theirs, in some cases, unmask them, rob them of their anonymity, and present them as the worst possible monsters while insinuating all sorts of things without substantiating it about how influential and important they are to the conservative movement as a whole and making assertions about how they're endangering trans people or how they're constantly going after trans people or generally opposed to gay people.
And there's something very disingenuous about the way that she goes about this.
But I do think it's worth saying that there is an online culture that can get pretty aggressive.
I suspect that every single one of us present here has been harassed, has been threatened, has received abusive comments online.
That actually comes with the territory.
And there are things that can do to shield themselves from that.
But it becomes a very different thing when the Washington Post is doing a story about you, is pursuing all of your personal contacts and family, is interested in outing you so that they can embarrass you and is doing things like publishing your address on the internet and then denying that they've done this.
That is something else entirely.
That is a miscarriage of justice in some respect, because there is supposed to be some kind of code, some sort of honor associated with the work that journalists do.
And for whatever reason, institutions like the New York Times, like the Daily Beast, now the Washington Post, where Taylor works, have all decided that this is the kind of person that they want working for them.
And this is the kind of reporting that they're going to be doing.
And let me add on to this because Taylor, in her piece, Going After Libs of TikTok, relies as a source on Media Matters, an organization designed to take down any, you don't even have to be right, Republican, like right-leaning non-leftist in the news.
That's what they were born to do.
That's what they've been doing.
No one would ever look at them as a fair source to be cited in a Washington Post article.
And she relies on them.
And guess who else relied on them?
Morgan Radford in a piece she did on me when I left NBC and it appeared on nightly news.
So those two out of those three people sitting in that segment both went to a conservative hating joke of an organization called Media Matters to try to make sure that the grave was buried, you know, that the person was buried in the grave in doing their supposedly straight news journalism.
So I have zero sympathy for them.
Zero going out in their little cry session talking about how sometimes the internet, which as you point out, has much lower standards for what it says about you, is mean.
None.
And by the way, here's the kicker.
So the third person who was there is now mad because NBC apparently misgendered this person in the Kate was her name, but she goes by they anyway.
They misgendered her.
So she's bad.
They are mad.
And Taylor Lorenz is mad again.
She claims she was victimized by even that segment.
She comes out and says, instead of using me for clickbait, NBC News needs to educate their journalists on how to cover these types of campaigns.
Their segment lacks crucial context and only serves to fuel the right-wing smear campaign I've been dealing with for a year.
The media must do better.
If your segment or story, an online harassment leads to even worse online harassment for your subjects, you fucked up royally and should learn how to cover these things properly before ever talking about them again.
Complete battle.
That's utterly incoherent.
I mean, the thing about it is I laugh when watching that segment.
And I don't think it's funny that people get beaten up online.
I laugh because I see somebody who traffics in this herself.
And, you know, as you pointed out, Megan, it was not just Media Matters.
It was Media Matters and the ACLU were the two sources mentioned in that so-called story.
And I imagine at a big reputable newspaper that does, you know, says it's not politically biased or anything outside of the opinion page, if I were going to write a piece about an anonymous Trump hating Twitter or TikTok account, and I used as my two sources, like National Review and the Federalist.
I didn't think that would be true.
I mean, we, we, yeah, Breitbart, something like that.
We know that that's not going to happen.
I mean, the thing about Taylor Lorenz is, you know, she's when she's crying and that thing, she says, you know, it's they're trying to ruin my career.
Good Lord, do you know the journalists who would love to have the career of going from the Daily Beast to the Atlantic to the New York Times to the Washington Post?
I mean, good, I mean, your, your career is not being affected by this.
You're being elevated every time you write one of these stories.
And if, and I think story is being very generous with what that sort of scribbling was all about.
It was typing, it was not writing.
It was literally something that said, this is the woman's name.
There was no context.
There was no, you know, this is quantifiable, that this is actually having this effect on policy, et cetera.
There was nothing about the actual account and the effect it has on policies.
It was just an excuse to out somebody.
It was something she doesn't do.
That's her reporting, Regina George Burn Brooks.
That's Taylor Lorenz's approach to, quote, the news.
So hopefully people understand that now and she turns her ire on you.
She deserves no sympathy for any blowback she gets.
And I was with you on the laughing because it's laughable for them to paint themselves as victims, given what they do for a living.
And I said yesterday, if she can't take the heat, she should get out of the kitchen.
Get out of media.
It's not being bad, right?
It's a tough profession and there's a lot of toxicity.
Sorry, that's the way it is.
Okay.
Can we talk, speaking of media, about Nicole Wallace?
Actually, okay, maybe I should just let it play and let you guys hear it.
Can you just listen to Nicole Wallace from MSNBC?
Listen to this.
I worry that in covering Glenn Yunken and his politics of parental choice, all the focus was on how well it worked.
And even in our conversations about DeSantis, it's about how well they're serving him.
The truth is, dehumanization as a tactic for politics is from war.
Dehumanization is a tactic.
It's being used right now.
The Russians get their soldiers to rape children by dehumanizing them.
Dehumanization as a practice is a tactic of war.
You guys, again, I wish the audience could see this because all three of you look like my little Strudwick.
You know, when I say like Strudwick, no, no.
And you do the head cock, like, huh?
You heard what she did there.
It's a paragraph where it starts with Glenn Young and parental input on public education and ends with Russian soldiers raping children.
That's a short paragraph.
It's like 30 years.
Wow.
Yeah, that was an attempt of a moron on cable news.
And she certainly ranks up there, somebody who was a Republican when it suited her job prospects and who decided that she was no longer a Republican.
I don't know people who shed that much politics in such a short period of time, but when there's a good paycheck on the other end, I understand that people do.
But, you know, she's trying to say, I guess she's trying to sound like academic or something, that this is, you know, this is dehumanization.
Like, I literally have no idea what she was talking about.
That's almost as bad as Biden's Title 42 mask mandate soundbite.
Almost as bad.
It was a version of that.
Yeah, but Glenn 50 years younger.
Who did Glenn Young dehumanize?
I followed that race kind of closely, and I don't recall him talking about any group of people as, I don't know, cockroaches or saying these big, wide-sweeping things.
What I do recall is that just prior to that surprise victory from a Republican in a seat that boring old Terry McAuliffe was supposed to buy his way into, as he usually does in a Democratic-leaning state that has voted Democratic presidents the last four presidential elections, the only like broad dehumanization I saw in that was from media commentators, especially on MSNBC, saying that, well, this is just an example of white supremacy.
Like this is, I'm not, I'm not exaggerating.
No hyperbole here that this is an this electorate here is just showing that this whole parental uh choice and input stuff.
No, that's just a dog whistle, another phrase that was used for whites.
If you're calling people whites or huge broad swaths of Americans as white supremacist supremacists, is that not dehumanizing?
This is one of the worst things that you can say about a person in America is that they are racist, that they're white supremacists, that they're Nazis.
This is a way to make you hate a huge group of people.
I saw that on one side in the Virginia election, and it wasn't coming from Democrats.
Introspection.
All right, guys, I got to leave it at that.
Camille, Michael, Matt, you were awesome as always.
So fun talking to you.
Parental Choice vs Biological Reality 00:15:42
Please come back soon.
Thanks, Megan.
All right.
We'll be right back after this.
We've been covering the Leah Thomas controversy for months now, but now that debate over transgender swimmers is impacting young children.
One example is in Seattle, where a prominent summer swim league is expected to vote just days from now on a plan that would allow biological boys to compete in the girls' division.
The policy has divided parents and not only raises questions about fairness to little girls, but whether or not biological boys should be forced to take drugs if they identify as female, which some suggest this policy encourages.
Joining me now, two members of the Greater Seattle Summer Swim League, Ken Alfonso, a coach, and Lisa Marcourt.
Both are parents and former college athletes themselves.
Let's just start with outlining what happened here.
Ken, you're a coach, in addition to being a parent and a former swimmer in the league.
So what happened?
I guess it was October of 2021 that the swim league, this is like a rec league that has kids in all the grades in it, formed, this task force formed.
And what was the purpose of this task force that you were not on and you were not made aware of?
Right.
So at the time, as I understand it, the task force was formed to create a policy to be compliant with the state of Washington's laws and the WIAA, which is the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association, and to be compliant with their law with regards to transgender and non-binary athlete inclusion.
And so yeah, the task force was formed from the league board that had a fall meeting back in October.
And so they formed, created a policy, and then presented that policy to the board, I believe March 1st.
And then I was made aware of it as a coach later that day.
So all these months, they're meeting, they're debating what's going to happen with the children, with the trans policies.
And do the parents know anything about it?
Do the coaches know anything about it?
At this point, no.
Just to hand, just the folks who are on the board.
It's about seven or eight, seven or eight people.
Now, as I understand it, those on the board include only one woman.
There's someone who I think is trans, and then biological men.
Correct.
One woman on the task force.
There's at the time three women on the board, but only one woman on the task force.
So, I mean, that's relevant because the people who get, you know, who arguably could get hurt from allowing biological boys who then say that they're trans to swim against cisgendered girls or girls who are biological girls who still identify as girls are biological girls.
Like you need a biological woman.
You need more than one, in my view, on the task force to sort of be bold and say, let me represent what some of the concerns might be.
And they only had one and she was not on, she was very pro having the trans swimmers swim in the lane.
So as a coach, what concerns you about this?
Because I could see somebody saying, well, they need to have a policy for sure, because this is happening more and more.
So somebody's going to have to sit down and have a policy.
Right.
As speaking as a coach, really the main concern to me is a couple of things.
One, if we're going to have this policy, it's worth doing, then it's worth doing right.
I think the policy's a bit rushed, a bit too quick.
It's missing some things.
There's some flaws in it.
And then the biggest thing for me, really, as a coach, too, is just fairness.
The WIAA policy has zero, for example, zero restrictions with regards to hormone mitigation.
There are no requirements.
Our task forces try to create something a little more restrictive by implicating or implying a hormone mitigation therapy for at least one year.
For example, if you're a transgender girl swimming against biological girls, you have to be on this therapy for at least 12 months in order to participate if you've made specific qualifying postseason times, you know, faster times, so more elite swimmers.
But to me, it completely ignores the bulk of our population in this rec league are not elite swimmers.
The bulk of our kids don't qualify for the postseason.
And half of our some 2,000 or so swimmers are biological girls.
And so they're tremendously impacted by this.
So let me just try to ask you to explain.
So if you are not an elite swimmer and you are 13 years old under this new policy and you're a biological girl, you could definitely be swimming against biological boys who will not have had any testosterone like suppression, no puberty suppression, nothing.
They're going to be allowed to swim against you at 13, 14, 15, just as long as you don't all cross over to elite athletes.
Correct.
That's correct.
Yeah, I see the problem.
And then the problem on the flip side is in a way, by saying those who are elite who then have to take the puberty blockers or what have you, it's almost like encouraging them to take the puberty blockers, because if they want to, if the trans kids, the kids who think they might be trans, want to swim at the elite levels, they have to now take some sort of a drug.
Right.
You're exactly right.
Many of the parents and other coaches feel this way.
The language within the policy does state that they don't encourage that to happen.
However, again, if you want to participate as a trans athlete and you're an elite swimmer, you're going to have to take these hormone suppressants.
It's really fraught.
It's just, it's very fraught.
And I know, Lisa, one of the things you've been objecting to is there's no doctor involved in this at all.
When we became aware of the policy and the policy changing over time as well, that was certainly one of our questions as parents that are concerned on all points of view on transgender and swimming.
But it's a much richer issue than simply putting the policy out there.
Yes, we have yet to see medical review.
Is this the right thing to mandate hormone therapies?
At what age is that appropriate?
How do we accommodate for that?
How is this gender inclusive task force going to monitor therapies?
We as parents do not have any of those answers to those questions.
And in fact, we've been trying to find some spaces to ask these questions, have them answered by professionals.
We're trying to look at this comprehensively.
We don't want to have just one perspective.
We are all families that care, but we have not been able to have this platform to sit down together and really look at the issue.
I mean, that's one of the things that jumped out at me in reading the background on your stories is you guys, you live in Seattle.
It's not exactly Texas.
It's not a conservative bastion.
And I would imagine most of the coaches and the parents are pretty progressive and open-minded to, you know, how to find a way forward on this.
But it seems to me they're treating you like you just don't get a voice unless you automatically subscribe to the most progressive thing possible.
And any objections on behalf of cisgendered or biological girls will be treated as bigoted, will be treated as you're somehow anti-trans as opposed to these are complex issues and they require thoughtful debate and discussion.
What do you think, Lisa?
I think they absolutely command thoughtful debate and discussion.
I have yet to meet one family that is exactly the same as another.
We present with different needs.
We have children that are unique and to be shut out from the discussion is a red flag.
I'm for every child.
I'm for every family.
That is a part of my life principle.
And when I see families knocking on my door, which is why I'm here, they said, Lisa, are you aware of what's going on?
And I used to coach in the league.
I have multiple children myself.
And they said, did you hear about this policy?
They asked me that.
No, I haven't.
And then as Ken mentioned, some of this was going on months ago during COVID while we were all shut down.
And yet the policy to be implemented is going to take all of us.
And yet the families where my children will be, they'll dive into this pool literally of families that are required to implement a policy that we do not yet understand.
And what Lisa do they say, like when they come to the door, what is it they're worried about?
They're afraid of having a face to questions related to transgender.
They're afraid that their asking of a question will be put out there publicly saying that because they're asking a question of concern, for example, they wanted some medical data, they are afraid of being labeled as transphobic.
And it didn't seem to me, my producer Kelly put together sort of a mashup of when they finally had this meeting and they allowed some parents to comment, some coaches to comment.
But to me watching it, it didn't really seem like they wanted your input.
It seemed like the parents and the coaches got shut down whenever they poked the bear, even mildly.
The one that jumped out at me was somebody saying something like, what about the fairness to cisgendered girls?
And there was the one guy like, well, they don't need to worry.
There's no problem to the cisgender girls.
The trans girls will be swimming in a different lane.
It's like, well, we're not saying it's like wrestling where there's a biological boy who's going to, you know, hurt.
No one's saying that about swimming.
It's just about biological advantages.
We have a little soundbite, a mashup of what happened so the audience can hear for themselves.
Standby.
No one is asking anyone to be trans or non-binary.
It's not appropriate to be asking about why a swimmer is swimming in which category.
What if my team doesn't have any transgender swimmers?
Kind of like what I was talking about earlier, you probably do.
Even if you don't, you're going to swim against a team that does.
But he's diverse in multiple ways, obviously.
There's always going to be someone faster or stronger or more committed.
This is not the NCIA or the Olympics.
Believe it or not, several people have asked us, how will people compete in this?
And it's the same that you always do.
You get behind the blocks, you get up and you swim.
The next one was, have we considered an open gender category?
The answer is no.
Girls aren't harming cis girls by competing.
They don't work.
They're swimming in separate lanes.
So if somebody is choosing not to participate, that's the choice that they have.
So somebody asked about how many reports have the GSSSL received from trans athletes so far about experiencing discrimination.
And so we have not received any at this time.
Okay, so there's a lot in there.
But let's just start with the one comment.
There will always be someone faster.
This isn't the Olympics.
Like calm down.
You know, there's a lot of disadvantages.
Somebody's taller than you and she's a cisgendered girl.
Get over it.
Stop your whining is basically what he was saying.
I mean, as a coach, Ken, who watches these kids train and helps them, what do you make of that claim?
Oh, yeah, that one really stuck out.
Of course, there's always going to be someone faster, stronger.
I was taught that as a young swimmer myself within a category, though, right?
There's always going to be a bigger guy, a faster guy, or a bigger girl, faster girl.
But they're completely ignoring the fact that biological boys and biological girls aren't, especially after puberty, don't start with the same, at the same level.
It's just science shows that.
And so to just sort of, you know, off it as, hey, look, you know, there's always going to be someone faster, you know, get over it.
Just it didn't sit well with a lot of folks, especially biological girls.
Yeah.
And the claim that, you know, that I introduced it with Lisa of no one's harming anybody.
They're going to be in another lane.
It's like such a dodge.
That's just such a, like, why wouldn't he just confront the actual issue of our concern is that the biological girls will not have a meaningful chance of winning.
That's, that's, it's not about someone's going to hurt me.
It's about I will no longer be in a fair competition.
That's correct.
I think that that's a good point.
However, I can actually understand the statement made by that gentleman.
And I'm thinking a little bit deeper on this.
Okay, well, maybe there are people that are faster and bigger and stronger.
And I'm saying this as a former swimmer.
It's true.
But the issue right now is we are not in a place to culturally as a community to say that's how we want to race.
We as families haven't been able to say this is what we agree to.
Are we competitive swimming, competitive GSSSL?
Are we using the WIAA competition rules so that we're trying to find the fastest and having the racing be equitable?
Okay, well then let's talk about that.
Or are we trying to have more of a rep perspective where everyone is open to all?
I think both of those perspectives are valid.
And I think that the people that are using their voices are trying to use their voices because they care.
What we're doing though is we're dividing Seattle even more when we're already feeling divided and people are becoming very defensive and trying to say that one way is right when if you ask and you look at the process, we haven't even sat down with one another to say this is what we want our league to look like.
This is what racing in the GSSSL is like.
People are just assuming that we're all on the same page and we're not not yet.
Not yet.
Activist Leads Trans Task Force 00:04:37
What do you make of the 13 years as a somewhat arbitrary point at which they would have to use some sort of hormone suppression therapy if they wanted to compete at the elite level?
To me, I mean, I have a 12-year-old boy and I have an 11-year-old girl.
So I have kids right in this sweet spot here.
And while my 12-year-old boy is, he hasn't reached puberty yet, one of his best buddies is well into it and is, he looks like a man.
You know, he's got the, he's like growing a mustache and he's got a foot on my kid and he's got the hair.
I mean, like this, he looks like a man.
And so he's just started puberty earlier.
So that kid under this policy, I think, could swim against a biological girl and nobody would be objecting to it, Ken.
As it stands now, yes, that's exactly right.
And it's interesting in our in our swim league, if you look at the times that are needed to qualify for the postseason, to move on after the regular season, 12 and under boys and 12 and under girls have exactly the same qualifying times.
You touch on it.
It's right when that 13 and over happens, you start seeing a dramatic difference in how much faster boys swim.
The qualifying times to get the postseason are drastically different.
And in a sport where fractions of a second can really be in an eternity, I mean, some of these times are 8, 10, 15 seconds faster than the fastest girl.
So yeah, that just speaks volumes to, like Lisa is saying, we need to figure out, is this how we want to swim?
Is this exactly the way we want to do it?
And there hasn't been a discussion.
The meeting you showed, the mashup there was, it was a Q ⁇ A, but it was controlled.
Only the task force was allowed to speak.
They were, in a sense, cherry-picking some questions, but there wasn't a free-flow dialogue.
There was no, you know, there was a few follow-up questions that were able to be answered.
But again, there hasn't been a dialogue as to, is this what we want for our parents, for our community, for our kids?
Yeah, somebody said in one of the prepared questions, did you consider a division for sort of open gender?
And the answer was just no, like no discussion, Lisa.
It's just like that's not happening.
Yeah, they even made a slide that just said, nope.
And you tell me.
There was nothing to support that answer at all.
It looks to me like you have the lead person on this task force looks like an activist.
Like this, this, the jury seems rigged.
Yes, I do think he's an activist and I know him.
You know, we swim against each other.
And I respect him and admire him.
And I think it's great that he has a voice, but he is, and this is a personal opinion, of course, I think he is operating as an activist here.
And in fact, I think the entire task force really kind of is.
You know, there's a feeling that this is more about social change than actually implementing a sound swim policy.
That's the feeling that some are getting.
I'm not saying that's the intent necessarily, but the optics of it and the sound of it really, it just feels that way.
So his name is Brennan, the lead of the task force.
And he is also, as I understand it, a public school teacher in the city of Seattle.
Is that right?
Is that right?
Is that right, Ken?
I believe he's the health specialist for Seattle Public Schools.
So I don't think he's a classroom teacher.
Okay.
So he's been, you know, he's on tape introducing himself to kindergartners and talking about what it means to be trans and at a very, very young age.
I mean, there's, you know, that's what Ron DeSantis is trying to ban right now in Florida or did ban discussions of gender identity at the very, very young age, thinking it's better for parents to discuss that with their children if they think that's an appropriate thing to do.
This is, I think we have a sound bite of him 19 or 20, sort of showing young, young children a trans book.
And he's, you know, got the purple hat on.
Here it is.
Now take a look at this picture.
We see here on the cover of this book a really sad looking teddy.
This teddy has a little sad face and has a bow tie.
Banning Gender Identity Discussions 00:06:45
We see a mirror here and then we see a teddy with a bow and a really big happy face.
So what do you think this story might be about?
I'm very excited to share it with you.
It's a very special story.
So the thing is, Lisa, I used to practice law.
And what you would do if you have, and it's fine for him to have the positions that he has, you would get a more J.K. Rowling type representative to be on the task force as well, just so you have both opposing views represented.
And it seems to me they didn't do that.
And then they shut down parental views that might have raised questions about that.
And in your case, it would have been really great to hear from you.
And it would have been really hard to shut you up as someone who can't stand trans people, because I know you've shared with our producers that you actually had and sadly lost a baby who was actually non-binary, who actually had just an X chromosome.
So can you share a little bit of that with us and how that affects the way you view all of this?
Oh, absolutely.
Wonderful, wonderful human life.
And born as far as I knew at the time as a little girl.
But lo and behold, she was truly a single ex.
She would have been in that umbrella, that medical umbrella of needing some type of hormone therapy.
And I think one of the lessons as a mom who sat on the other side and can relate to where all of us are as parents on this issue is I have yet to meet any parent that doesn't want the best for their child and for other children.
And when we are starting to talk about hormone therapies, we are also talking about the involvement of psychologists, social emotional supports.
How do we work as families, nuclear and extended to support the well-being of children?
What do the medical professionals say?
When is the right time to introduce therapy?
Do you want to wait until it truly is the child's choice or not?
These are big questions.
And I sat in rooms with multiple professionals debating these very questions.
And not one of us had the exact same answer.
Yet all of us had the same value, which is we wanted the very best for this child.
And I still, if she were still alive or he, whatever Ella would have chosen, I still would have wanted the best for Ella.
I would have loved for her to have raced in the GSSSL if that was what was wanted.
But to think that one group knew what was right for Ella, absolutely not.
These decisions are not made in silos.
These children do not grow up in isolation.
They grow up with their families over time in family-based organizations like all of these pools are.
And it requires all of us.
It requires consistency in how we implement policy.
And you bet when it came to the well-being of Ella, I wanted people to ask very hard questions because I did not, nor do I, have all the answers.
Ken could have been Ella's coach, and I would have wanted Ken to be asking very hard questions about what it means for Ella to succeed in racing, just as I would want my other kids to succeed.
And I would want to hear from the medical professionals as well.
These are big commitments.
And if we think that this is small potatoes and that the decisions can be made by five people who volunteer out of good faith to try and do the right thing, but if we think that that is healthy policy and we haven't heard from families and we haven't heard from medical professionals, big red flag to me, big red flag.
I know you, you have four children in addition to Ella, three boys, 14, 16, 18, and a daughter who's 12.
She's a swimmer and Ella was your fifth.
May I ask you a follow-up question about sweet Ella?
I'm so sorry.
Absolutely.
So I don't think most people understand what that means, you know, to be born with just an X chromosome and how, like, how would that have manifested in her life?
She looked like a girl.
I guess they did a blood test that showed this, but you tell me, but how is it identified?
And how would she have developed, you know, if she had lived?
Great question.
A lot of how she would have developed, and I'm an advocate of the social emotional first, would have had to do with partnership with her family in the community settings where Ella was growing up.
That means her school.
That would have meant the summer swim league, because that takes months out of the year.
That was the first, that's the very first space.
Could she have developed into a woman that had children of her own?
No.
Could she have developed into a man that would have had children of his own?
No.
But could she have eventually developed into a beautiful human being with or without some of the hormone therapies?
We don't know.
She didn't get the opportunity.
But I can say that what I learned is as big of ideas as I've always had.
I did not know enough.
I knew that my job was to be a loving, loving mother who could help Ella navigate a very difficult environment.
And that would have been in school, that would have been in sport.
And I would have wanted my community activated and I would have wanted them to know her or him or they now.
We didn't have those options when Ella was younger.
But I would have been, I would have had to have been a part of the picture too.
And medical professionals would have been a part of her life throughout her life.
I hope that answers your question.
It does.
To me, what I'm feeling is she was born to the right mother, first of all.
Well, thank you.
Puberty Blockers and Swimming 00:14:44
Secondly, how sad it is that no one wants to listen to you.
I mean, why wouldn't they listen to you?
With all due respect to Ken.
I mean, like, you are the perfect person to weigh in on this.
So empathetic toward kids who are struggling with some of these issues, but having cisgendered kids who could, you know, like your daughter, who could be on the losing end if the policy isn't handled in a certain way, but with empathy toward all.
Like, why wouldn't they listen to you?
What do you think the reason is?
I think you're asking a really good question and trying to come from a very optimistic perspective of problem solving.
I think we see a need.
I think people want to make the right decisions.
But you know what happens when you see a need and you rush all of a sudden, oh, I can do that.
I'll jump right in.
Let's do this.
I know what's right.
Well, we're not listening because we're not slowing down and we're not providing places of meeting where we're assuring that we're hearing different perspectives.
Right now, we're dividing people and we're rushing.
We're rushing, rushing, rushing.
And when we rush and when we provide a webinar versus an open discussion platform, we prevent voices like myself from being heard.
And we have great fear, certainly here in Seattle, of speaking up out of concern that someone with some other potential agenda is going to say, because we use our voice, we're saying that we are phobic of some group of people, which is not the truth, but that has happened to others in this area.
And I suspect that's at play.
You know that's a tactic, right?
I mean, you know that that is used as a tactic to silence dissenting voices.
And that's why it does take a lot of courage to speak up.
I mean, we're seeing it now with the swimmers at UPenn who are up against Leah Thomas, who have found every way they can, other than coming out themselves, to register their objections to what's happening.
You know, they've gone through their parents writing letters to the school.
The school's response was, here's the number for the school therapist.
Like your daughters can go to therapy to deal with their anger, but no one's going to address the actual complaints.
That literally happened.
And some have spoken out anonymously, like one here, one there to a various publication or another, but they're terrified.
And if anybody, you know, has the right to say, here are my concerns, it's those girls.
They're at the most elite level of swimming you can get.
So of course parents are feeling nervous because we've seen a pattern of that.
Listen, Ken and Lisa, there's so much more to go over, including what they're asking the young coaches to do, many of whom are teenagers themselves, who are supposed to be enforcing some of these policies when it comes to the bathing suits, the pronouns, all of it.
It's complicated and it's fraught.
Ken, let's talk about what's happening with the coaches now.
The task force had a little bit of a little bit to say on the coach's role in all of this.
This is Soundbite 15.
Another question we got was, how do we know if someone's telling the truth?
And I think like the best place to come at this question is from a place of sort of love and trust.
I mean, the likelihood that someone is trying to like game the system, poke fun, You know, if that were to happen, then that's something that a coach hopefully would have a relationship with the athlete and be able to kind of interrupt.
The policy requires that a young person is consistently asserting this truth about themselves.
Coaches will be trained in our trainings on how to make those determinations and provide support.
All right.
So the kids are, the coaches are going to be trained in how to assess whether somebody's actually trans and living their life as a trans person or not.
Is that realistic?
Well, I don't know.
I think that's part of it.
It's the, you know, the task forces created their own training.
I think they're basing it off of OSPI, the public school system, and the training there.
I know the task board, the task force lead has been trained in that and I think is certified to be a trainer in that.
But, you know, a lot of our coaches, I'm an old coach.
There's a few of us.
But some of our coaches, my assistants are 19 and 20.
I know there are some clubs who literally have teenage coaches.
They're 18 and even participate on the team as well.
They're coaching and swimming at the same time.
But I'm not sure when and where these trainings are supposed to take place in a very busy summer season anyway.
Other coaches do have, I have a daytime job.
We coach in the morning.
We have swim meets at night.
What that training looks like, that in and of itself has not been vetted.
What is the procedure of this?
How do we go about obtaining it?
They just have basically said, hey, there's going to be some training available and you can take it.
But also training for swimmers who are having some issues with handling the policy as well.
They can be available for some or they can be trained on kind of how to cope.
That's a lot to ask, no matter what your age of these folks who are just trying to coach swimming and have a good time with the swimmers.
That's a lot to ask.
The issue of Leah Thomas has come up.
We've had coaches in Division I swimming come on this show and talk about how they think Leah Thomas is that what's the way that's been handled is wrong and that there's no way that these cisgendered girls competing against her biological girls can realistically win.
There's a lot of thoughts about whether Leah Thomas threw a couple of her meets so that she wouldn't look like the dominant force she is.
This was addressed in part from this one guy, Rob on the task force.
Here's what he said on the subject of Leah Thomas.
If we tell them that they can compete, but what they do doesn't count, we're just telling them that they don't matter.
And that to me is goes against everything that we believe in in terms of including and supporting these young people as human beings.
So I think personally with the Leah Thomas press and stuff, people have been so fixated on something that is so small, so unlikely.
And also Leah Thomas made their team as a male.
Like Leah Thomas worked hard as a swimmer and was an amazing swimmer, male and then female.
And so I think that people are not really looking at the bigger picture in that case.
So we've covered that case a lot in this show.
Leah Thomas, in the last season, she competed as a member of the Penn men's team, ranked 554th in the 200 freestyle, 65th in the 500 freestyle, and 32nd in the 1650 freestyle.
As she moved over to the women's team, she moved up to fifth, first, and eighth in those respective events while swimming as a woman.
Now she says she plans to compete for a spot at the 2024 Olympics.
And I mean, now that's next level, right?
It's like now these women have been working their entire lives to make to get into one of those lanes.
And they will have to compete against somebody who's gone through male puberty, who's got male femurs, you know, male height, male muscle advantages, and yes, has done some testosterone suppression, has done some hormone therapy, but still looks like a biological male, even though she doesn't identify as one.
And, you know, for him to even be defending that as perfectly fair and Leah was amazing when she was a man, she really wasn't.
She's been amazing while swimming as a woman.
To me, it shows this guy's, he's a dishonest broker.
What are your thoughts?
Yeah, to a degree.
You know, I'm not here to cast aspersions on a volunteer, but his initial response was with regards to record setting, meaning if a transgender girl swimming against girls sets a record, that the record should stand.
And his response was, well, yeah, it should stand because if we tell them they can compete, but that their effort doesn't count, then we're telling them that they don't matter.
Well, the other side of that coin is, you know, if that transgender girl, the biological boy, beats out a girl for their record, that's the exact same message we're telling that biological girl that, hey, you did your best.
And if it wasn't for this biological boy, you'd have the record.
So now you don't matter.
So that particular argument really was just empty for me.
That was one of the moments of that meeting that really stuck out because it's such a, you know, we have the bulk of our swimmers as well swim in exhibition heats.
We have a ton, you know, most clubs have, like my club has about 140, 150 swimmers.
There's only three official swimmers in each event.
I might have five to eight, even 10 exhibition swimmers.
Well, the exhibition swimmers don't score points in the meet, but they swim and they're there to do their best.
And it's part of learning and being a lifelong swimmer.
But we don't tell them that their effort doesn't count because they don't score points.
So it was just a really feckless argument, if you ask me.
Is the exhibition swimmer what this policy says you can be if you're 13, 14, and you don't get that hormone there?
Like if you choose not to go on puberty blockers, there was something they said you could still do.
You could still swim and you could swim in your preferred genders lane, but you'd have to be, what was it, an exhibition swimmer?
I'm trying to remember.
Yeah, it's a little confusing.
So you can swim in a scoring heat.
And then if you reach a qualifying time, then from that point on, you need to swim in an exhibition heat to not score any points.
However, you would still be eligible for the postseason because you've made that qualifying time if you can prove that you've been on these hormone suppressants for at least 12 months.
Now, back to the question of no MD.
And I'm going to finish up on the coaching in one second, Ken, but you raised puberty blockers and we were talking about hormone, you know, puberty blockers basically is what now even the Biden administration is recommending these for kids who are unsure.
Am I a girl?
Am I a boy?
And this very controversial.
There's a brand new study out saying this tends to be a transitory thing for kids.
You know, suppressing puberty actually can have lifelong consequences on genital development, on fertility and so on, on how you look for the rest of your life.
I mean, it is not a harmless thing, as some would suggest.
So there is no medical doctor advising this task force.
A question about the use of puberty blockers was asked.
Here's how they handled it.
It's Soundbite 16.
One person said, like, well, is there a doctor on the task force?
No.
So we, what we have instead is like proof of consistency.
Our elite athletes would be required if they are assigned male at birth, would be required to show proof of puberty blockers for at least one full year.
This was a really hard part for us to kind of get our head around and our hearts around.
But I think that it comes from a place of wanting to find a place where the league can come together.
What's also really interesting about hormone blockers, puberty blockers, excuse me, is that they are 100% reversible.
Puberty blockers are only effective if somebody hasn't reached puberty or has only reached the beginning parts of puberty, at which point all of the prog, that's not the right word, all of the changes that have begun to happen in the body, like don't like continue to persist.
So after that point, puberty blockers wouldn't be effective necessarily.
So that would be like a doctor wouldn't wouldn't prescribe that.
So we still require proof of medical intervention.
And so if like a doctor wouldn't prescribe puberty blockers to somebody who's already been through puberty, so we still need proof of medical intervention, which would be de facto, like hormone replacement therapy.
And so they wouldn't be eligible if they didn't have that proof of medical intervention.
Okay, so they're talking about this like it's an aspirin.
And, you know, we went to the Mayo clinic to figure out, is there, is, is it like an aspirin?
I mean, are there real risks?
And while they say that for a child who's genuinely confused about his or her gender identity, suppressing puberty could improve one's mental well-being and reduce depression and anxiety and so on.
It also does have possible side effects that need to be factored in.
By the way, you typically get it through injections or an implant, so it's not like an oral pill.
They say that this will, I'm just looking at the list, decrease the growth of facial and body hair, prevent voice deepening in a boy.
These are boy side effects, limit the growth of genitalia in somebody who's biologically female.
It will stop breast development.
It will stop menstruation.
And then long term, and while you're taking them, you can suffer weight gain, hot flashes, headaches.
Long-term effects can include like the depression of growth spurts, bone growth and density can be affected, future fertility, depending on when the puberty blockers are started.
And then they go on to say if children with male genitalia begin using this early in puberty, they might not develop enough penile and scrotal skin for certain gender affirming genital surgical procedures later.
So whether you decide to have a surgery for that or not, the absence of sufficient penile and scrotal skin stands out as something that really needs to be discussed by a doctor.
And in addition, they say delaying puberty beyond one's peers can be stressful.
Children might experience lower self-esteem if they're the only one not going through it.
Implications for Parents in Leagues 00:02:53
So this is, to me, it's crazy that they wouldn't have included medical professionals on this task force.
What do you make?
I'll speak to that.
You're exactly right, Megan.
And one of the questions that I had had on this, where did the data come from to make their choice?
For example, why the 12-month timeframe?
And when I asked the question, the response was, well, we consulted other policies.
Well, what other policies?
Have those policies ever been reviewed?
What science were those policies using?
What research?
Because there's current updated research on this.
And as far as puberty blockers, again, to say that they're 100% reversible, that to me is reckless.
I don't think the science has settled on any of this.
There's just not enough data to even make a decision from the research that I've done.
Back to the coaches.
What do you make of the fact that they're saying to the coaches, you, you have to say your pronouns at the beginning of every season.
You have to ask everyone on the team to say their pronouns.
Um, you have to use the proper pronoun.
It's like right, in fact, that the the term there is.
You know that these kids have a right to that.
Um, I didn't know that was a granted right per se, but uh yeah, that's certainly something that's that's been talked about, that you know.
We need to acknowledge whatever pronouns that may be illegal.
That may be illegal.
Some guy just filed a lawsuit about this because it doesn't comport with his Christian beliefs, and he won.
Um, that sort of forced speech is potentially legally problematic and I know you guys are looking at the legal implications of all of this as well.
You know, forcing this on parents in the swim league could have implications one way or the other.
Lisa, let me.
Let me ask you uh, last word, because this vote's coming up on the 26th, what's the one thing you want this, the board, the task force and the people of Seattle to think about as we approach the date of the vote?
Oh, that's a.
That's a great question, I think.
I think Seattle, as progressively minded as it is and as love all as it is focused, needs to ask this question.
Have we heard vigorous discourse on this issue and are we hearing from different members of our community, the medical professionals and the families, particularly prior to our voting?
We're voting in a policy that requires or incentivizes even the interventions of hormones, and we have a task force that has a potential position of oversight on our children and Seattle.
Are You Afraid to Speak 00:00:43
Are you using your voice or are you afraid to speak?
Because if you are afraid to speak, we have a problem with policy that we're going to introduce to our, our community.
So where there's fear, we do not have healthy policy, and right now I think we have fear.
Well said, thank you both so much for coming on telling us this story.
We'll watch it, the votes in five days.
Ken Lisa, all the best to you, thank you.
Thank you.
Tomorrow, tune into this show because my good friend Stephen Crowder is back.
Everyone loves Crowder.
You're gonna love it and we'll see you then.
Thanks for listening to THE Megan Kelly SHOW.
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