The Megyn Kelly Show - 20220509_activists-target-justices-homes-and-meghan-markles
Aired: 2022-05-09
Duration: 01:39:33


=== Oprah Interview and Rocky Resilience (04:43) ===

[00:00:20]  Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
[00:00:31]  Hey, everyone, I'm Megan Kelly.
[00:00:33]  Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, and happy Monday.
[00:00:36]  As expected, abortion activists congregated outside of the homes of Justices Kavanaugh and Roberts over the weekend and on church steps.
[00:00:45]  They literally did go to the homes of the Chief Justice of the United States as well as Justice Brett Kavanaugh to their homes.
[00:00:53]  People tearing baby dolls apart, images of red hangers displayed and rather prevalent.
[00:01:00]  We still don't know who the Supreme Court leaker is.
[00:01:03]  I'm starting to doubt the Marshall.
[00:01:05]  But the story of what will happen in the wake of this ruling when it finally comes out and to abortion in America is not going away anytime soon.
[00:01:15]  Piers Morgan is my guest today.
[00:01:17]  He's the host of the new show Piers Morgan Uncensored, airing on Fox Nation here in America and in the UK and Australia.
[00:01:24]  And he's back with us today.
[00:01:53]  The sun is out.
[00:01:54]  It's actually quite warm in England, which for this time of year is unprecedented.
[00:01:58]  And I think it's almost warming up in time for the Queen's Platinum Jubilee, where the whole country will go start raving bonkers in the pubs for four days in about three weeks.
[00:02:07]  So we're gearing up for one hell of a royal party.
[00:02:11]  Here too, we finally have sunshine after weeks of rain.
[00:02:14]  It's been downright depressing.
[00:02:15]  So it's, I mean, I know it's always rainy over there in England, but it's nice to see a little sunshine.
[00:02:20]  So can I just, before we get into the news, can I just say I'm so proud of you for landing on your feet.
[00:02:26]  You left Good Morning Britain because they tried to make you apologize for a totally fair comment that turned out to be 100% right about Megan Markle.
[00:02:35]  You didn't believe she was telling the truth in her Oprah interview.
[00:02:38]  You called her a liar, Princess Pinocchio, and they wanted you to apologize.
[00:02:43]  You didn't believe her claims and you wouldn't do it.
[00:02:46]  And that's why your relationship with them ended.
[00:02:48]  And there was a while there where it was unclear what you were going to do.
[00:02:52]  You know, I had faith in you, of course, but you really have landed on your feet with a great deal.
[00:02:56]  So what is the lesson for other people in that story?
[00:03:00]  I think you've got to stand up for yourself.
[00:03:01]  You know, I remember the great Winston Churchill line, which is you've got enemies, good.
[00:03:05]  It means that at some stage in your life, you stood up for yourself.
[00:03:09]  And I think you've got to be true to yourself.
[00:03:10]  You've got to look in the mirror and be comfortable with what comes back at you in terms of principle.
[00:03:16]  And I had a choice.
[00:03:17]  I could have apologized for disbelieving Megan Markle and kept my job.
[00:03:22]  But if I had done, I would have kicked myself all day, every day, ever since.
[00:03:26]  Because as her tissue of untruths began to be unraveled by the world's media after the Oprah interview, it was quite clear that I was right, that you could barely believe a word she was saying.
[00:03:38]  So the idea that I couldn't express that opinion when it was so obviously true, I thought was extraordinary.
[00:03:45]  And the idea that a media company would bow to the Twitter mob who were baying for my blood and say, look, you either cave and issue a groveling apology or you have to leave, I thought was ridiculous.
[00:03:58]  So I took the option of leaving and I've been so pleased about that ever since that I was true to myself.
[00:04:03]  And I think you've got to also, and you know this better than most, Megan, you've got to back yourself.
[00:04:08]  It's no point expecting other people to back you or support you if you don't do it to yourself.
[00:04:14]  And I think we live in an era where I think people need to have a bit more of a backbone.
[00:04:19]  They've got to understand a bit like Rocky Balboa in the famous speech he gave to his son in the sixth movie of the franchise where the son's being a spoiled brat.
[00:04:27]  And Rocky Balboa says, look, life's not a bowl of a box of rosy.
[00:04:31]  It's, you know, it's tough.
[00:04:32]  It's hard.
[00:04:33]  And it's not about how many times you can hit something.
[00:04:37]  It's how many times you can get hit and get up and keep going forward.
[00:04:41]  That is what life's about.
[00:04:42]  And I think it applies whether you're in my position a year ago or what you went through or what everyone has to face at some stage in life.
[00:04:50]  You've got to dust yourself down.
[00:04:52]  My family's a bunch of tough women I grew up around, my mom, my grandmother, tough women who've been to a hell of a lot.
[00:04:58]  You've got to dust yourself down and just crack on because the world doesn't owe you any favors.

=== Moral Vacuum and Political Hypocrisy (14:24) ===

[00:05:04]  That's right.
[00:05:04]  And if you have talent, there will be another opportunity.
[00:05:07]  You know, if you have that willingness, you're willing to work hard, you know who you are, there will be another opportunity.
[00:05:12]  You'll create it.
[00:05:13]  So anyway, that's why one of the many reasons why I'm proud of you.
[00:05:16]  I'm rooting for you.
[00:05:17]  And I'm so happy to see you back at the helm.
[00:05:20]  And good morning, Britain.
[00:05:21]  It's to their loss because it was a special dynamic you had on that show.
[00:05:24]  And, you know, they haven't recaptured it.
[00:05:26]  Okay.
[00:05:26]  So onto the news over here.
[00:05:28]  I'll start with some domestic news, which I know you have been keeping an eye on.
[00:05:31]  And that is the insanity of people protesting at the homes of our Supreme Court justices.
[00:05:37]  First of all, these are dumbass protesters, Piers, because according to the reports, Chief Justice Roberts isn't even in the majority in this draft opinion.
[00:05:45]  He might actually already be siding with the liberals.
[00:05:47]  We're not sure where he is.
[00:05:48]  So they're just dopes, right?
[00:05:49]  So they just go to the Chief Justice's home for actually no reason.
[00:05:52]  Justice Kavanaugh seems to be part of the majority.
[00:05:54]  So they go to his house.
[00:05:55]  He's got two young daughters.
[00:05:57]  No one cares.
[00:05:58]  Let's go ahead and scare them.
[00:05:59]  There are other protests planned, including, we're told at Amy Coney Barrett's house.
[00:06:03]  She's got young children, including a 10-year-old who happens to have Down syndrome.
[00:06:06]  Great, great idea to go to that house and scare the child.
[00:06:09]  No problem.
[00:06:11]  So to me, it's disgusting.
[00:06:12]  And it's actually deeply problematic because I think it's an open attempt to intimidate a court that's currently adjudicating a really important matter.
[00:06:24]  A matter.
[00:06:24]  It's obvious intimidation or at least attempted intimidation.
[00:06:28]  You can make a very strong case that it's actually criminal for that reason.
[00:06:31]  It's not just a normal protest.
[00:06:32]  And our White House here continues to shrug it off like, protests is a good thing.
[00:06:37]  This is really just a run of the mill protest.
[00:06:39]  What do you make of it?
[00:06:41]  It's not a run-of-the-mill protest when you basically terrorize the senior judges of the country at their homes when they have young kids.
[00:06:48]  That's a form of domestic terrorism that's going on.
[00:06:51]  And you saw it in Wisconsin, I think, when an anti-abortion building was targeted overnight with a firebomb.
[00:06:57]  It's completely outrageous behavior.
[00:06:59]  This is domestic terrorism you're witnessing.
[00:07:02]  And yeah, I believe in fair democratic protests, but not in the homes of judges making these important decisions.
[00:07:08]  You know, abortion, I understand completely in America is an extremely emotive issue.
[00:07:13]  And it's very divided, this issue in America, far more than it is, say, in the UK, where I am now, where it got settled many decades ago.
[00:07:20]  And people have sort of accepted that and moved on.
[00:07:22]  In America, people feel incredibly strongly.
[00:07:24]  I come from a Catholic family, and a lot of members of my family feel very strongly against abortion.
[00:07:30]  I happen, for what it's worth, believe in a woman's right to choose, but that's just my personal opinion.
[00:07:36]  I certainly don't want to force that onto Americans who have to make their own minds up about what kind of laws they want in their country.
[00:07:42]  So having put all that on the table, surely we can all agree that whatever side of this debate you're on, whether you're pro-abortion or anti-abortion, and most people I know who support a woman's right to choose, they don't want to be seen as pro-abortion anyway, actually.
[00:07:57]  They don't want to be seen that this is something good.
[00:07:59]  I think we can all agree it's not a good thing.
[00:08:01]  No woman wants to go through it.
[00:08:03]  The argument becomes about whether it should be legal.
[00:08:06]  That's where you're wrong.
[00:08:07]  That's where you're wrong.
[00:08:08]  I know you took some guff on Twitter for saying that from the left.
[00:08:11]  I would say you're wrong.
[00:08:14]  You're giving too much credit in character to a lot of the loudest activists whose largest group over here is called Shout Your Abortion.
[00:08:23]  They are proud.
[00:08:24]  We had Letitia James, the Attorney General of New York, the gal who brought down Andrew Cuomo and went after Harvey Weinstein, literally say she was proud to walk into Planned Parenthood and get an abortion not long ago, right?
[00:08:35]  Right when she took over as AG.
[00:08:37]  Well, that's a lot.
[00:08:39]  I accept that actually.
[00:08:40]  I did get sent some tweets about that, which I wasn't really aware of what had been going on there.
[00:08:45]  And I accept that.
[00:08:46]  I think there are some people who are proud of it.
[00:08:48]  It's very likely.
[00:08:49]  That to me is completely that to me, whatever side you are on about the argument, that's wrong.
[00:08:54]  I don't think anyone should be proud of it.
[00:08:55]  I think it's something which is, you know, never a desirable outcome.
[00:08:59]  Nobody, nobody, I don't think, if you have a conscience or a heart, thinks this is a good thing.
[00:09:04]  It's whether you think a woman should have a right to choose.
[00:09:06]  I happen to think they should, but other people I know in America in particular, it's very divisive, very emotional.
[00:09:12]  And I think you've got to respect both sides of the argument.
[00:09:14]  What you can't have is people on either side using intimidation and arson and terrorism to try and enforce their view through.
[00:09:23]  And, you know, I think also it was a tragedy for American democracy that you had this leak about a first draft of such an important issue from the Supreme Court.
[00:09:32]  And we still don't know really what the motivation for that leak was.
[00:09:35]  Was it somebody on the left who wants to stop the overturning of Roe versus Wade?
[00:09:39]  Or was it perhaps somebody on the right who wants the judges and the court to keep to that first draft conclusion?
[00:09:45]  We don't know yet.
[00:09:46]  So the idea that you can, you know, act out these protests and forms of terrorism based on what you believe has happened here or what you believe they may end up concluding, I think is completely ridiculous.
[00:09:58]  And it flies in the face of what a free democratic society should be.
[00:10:01]  It shouldn't be predicated on people getting their own view because they use forms of terrorism.
[00:10:07]  Well, and it's so crazy because people don't seem to understand what the Supreme Court does.
[00:10:11]  They don't make the laws.
[00:10:12]  They say what the ultimate interpretation of the Constitution and the law is.
[00:10:15]  They don't make it.
[00:10:16]  And this is up to their legislatures.
[00:10:18]  So it's very democratic to have this go back to the states and have each state figure out what its citizens want.
[00:10:24]  And while it will result in probably the loss of abortion, if this opinion comes out as the draft looked in places like Mississippi, and I know it's, you know, it's easy for me to say, get up and vote with your feet, walk away.
[00:10:36]  That's the way the country works.
[00:10:37]  I mean, that's the way it was set up.
[00:10:39]  And people do it on all sorts of issues from guns to, you know, whatever taxes.
[00:10:45]  So that's where this is likely to land if the decision comes down.
[00:10:48]  You mentioned Madison, Wisconsin.
[00:10:50]  I just want to inform the audience what happened there was an anti-abortion headquarters was hit by a Molotov cocktail, by vandalism, by graffiti.
[00:10:59]  There was a slogan and a phrase sprayed, if abortions aren't safe, then you aren't either.
[00:11:04]  And the threat is starting to grow at places that are anti-abortion because the pro-abortion side is getting very upset, very angry, before we even know what the decision is, Pierce.
[00:11:17]  That's what's so crazy.
[00:11:18]  I was listening to my pals on National Review over the weekend, and they're sort of more establishment Republican types.
[00:11:24]  And they were saying, all of them, they hate, you know, Roe versus Wade and they're pro-life.
[00:11:29]  Not one of them believes this is going to come down the way it was written.
[00:11:32]  They're all, they're saying that there's, it's too good to be true.
[00:11:35]  That was an initial draft.
[00:11:36]  Chief Justice Roberts is probably going to break away a Brett Kavanaugh or somebody.
[00:11:40]  And the odds of Roe being over to Roe versus Wade being overturned are probably rather slim.
[00:11:44]  So what is all this about?
[00:11:46]  We have to wait to see what the actual opinion is.
[00:11:48]  Well, I think that's the problem with the leak, isn't it?
[00:11:51]  Because if you leak a first draft before it's actually gone through the normal due process of the court, then this is the kind of mayhem that can erupt.
[00:11:58]  And now whatever happens, there's going to be fury from one side or the other.
[00:12:03]  You know, I was really struck by, no, I learned when I was at CNN and did a lot of debating about gun control, for example, that Americans really don't want to hear someone with my accent tell them how they should be abiding by their own constitution.
[00:12:18]  So let me just say I accept that.
[00:12:20]  That you know I can have my personal views about some of these issues, but i'm not an American and i'm not an American citizen and it's down to American citizens to have this debate amongst each other and work out what they want.
[00:12:31]  Now I was struck by when I read all the detail in the fallout of this leak that actually a lot of uh, legal-minded people I don't know, you're a very keen legal brain a lot of legal people thought the original law which was laid down 50 odd years ago on Roe Versus Wade was flawed and that that has been the problem all along.
[00:12:50]  But that's the original opinion.
[00:12:51]  People in the legal world think that it should have always reverted back to states.
[00:12:55]  Now I thought that was quite interesting.
[00:12:57]  I thought it was interesting that Two-thirds of Americans in the polls do not want Roe Versus Wade overturned.
[00:13:02]  But if it then goes to a question about how would you see it if it went back to states, they then actually are more draconian in the kind of way they would want abortion laws than even Roe Versus Wade would be.
[00:13:15]  So it's an interesting inconsistency there which I think plays to The fact that I think a lot of Americans feel very, very strongly and are entrenched on their views and many other Americans are unsure about exactly where they think the line should be.
[00:13:28]  You know, should the term limit be here, here?
[00:13:30]  Should there be no term limit?
[00:13:32]  I think there's lots of debates to be had, but this is a debate that has to be had without the people involved in it being intimidated, because the moment you do that you you, are becoming a fascist, totalitarian state.
[00:13:45]  You're becoming like Russia, North Korea China, where this kind of intimidation and terrorism goes on all the time.
[00:13:50]  That's right.
[00:13:52]  The thing that suffers most is democracy.
[00:13:54]  It's crazy how we're not even hearing you know the sort of placeholder, the leak was wrong, but let's focus on the opinion from the left.
[00:14:01]  It's that no one's even condemning the leak at all.
[00:14:03]  In fact, the Washington POST this weekend did a pretty fawning piece on one of the protesters going in front of Brett Kavanaugh's or John Roberts House.
[00:14:11]  Like the press is loving it, get them they're.
[00:14:13]  They're in favor of the protest, they're in favor of the leak, and you know we have a sitting court right now that hasn't yet issued an opinion, and the reason this is so dangerous is because there are lunatics out there.
[00:14:25]  I don't have to tell you that.
[00:14:26]  You know.
[00:14:27]  They're in your country, they're in mine uh, and this is a 5-4 decision right now, at best for the conservatives, or so it looks.
[00:14:34]  And so there really is a limited number of Supreme Court justices, and who's to say, some lunatic's not going to get it in his head that before this thing comes out, he could take out one of those justices.
[00:14:44]  God forbid, i'm not putting ideas into people's heads.
[00:14:47]  It's already been spoken about in many forums and so the longer this sits with the, with the intimidation campaign ramping up, with the protesters essentially saying, we know where you live and we published it on the internet, the more danger the justices in justice itself is in and we can't get our White House to even shrug a shoulder.
[00:15:09]  I mean, here's what they just said peers, about the Wisconsin molotov cocktail attack on the anti-abortion uh facility that the White House just released.
[00:15:17]  This i'll read it to you, president Joe Biden strongly condemns the arson attack on a Wisconsin anti-abortion group.
[00:15:24]  The White House announced monday.
[00:15:25]  He released a statement roughly a day after an unknown assailant threw at least one molotov cocktail into the office.
[00:15:30]  President Biden strongly condemns this attack and political violence of any stripe.
[00:15:34]  He's made clear throughout his time in public life, that Americans have the fundamental right to express themselves under the constitution, whatever their point of view, but that expression must be peaceful and free of violence, vandalism or attempts to intimidate.
[00:15:46]  Why can't he say that about the protesters in front of the chief justice's home?
[00:15:53]  Justice Kavanaugh's home?
[00:15:55]  He the the longer he lets it go on without saying this is wrong.
[00:16:00]  Yes, it's public property, the sidewalk in front of the justice's home.
[00:16:03]  That doesn't change what they're doing, and there's a very good case to be made that it's illegal, because if you protest, even on public property, outside of a justice's home, in an attempt to change the outcome of a verdict or an opinion, you are violating a criminal statute.
[00:16:15]  So it shouldn't be that hard for our president to say it's wrong.
[00:16:18]  No, it shouldn't, and it's a.
[00:16:19]  It's a very straightforward thing for any president to say if they are inclined to say it.
[00:16:24]  I just don't.
[00:16:25]  Joe Biden wants to annoy his own side, as he would see it, by going that far, but he should.
[00:16:31]  If the situation was reversed, absolutely the same people defending this would be howling their rage about it happening.
[00:16:38]  So let's be crystal clear, there's a rank hypocrisy here and that is that's one of the problems at the moment.
[00:16:44]  I think, with the hyper-partisan, tribal nature of political debate now, not just in America but around the world.
[00:16:51]  We've certainly got it here in the Uk.
[00:16:52]  I see it in other countries.
[00:16:54]  I feel it very strongly in America now, where there are tribes whipped up by social media, you daren't deviate from your tribe's view about whatever the issue may be.
[00:17:04]  Facts don't matter, it's purely about winning and beating the opposition, and if you can intimidate them and terrorize them to doing that, all well and good.
[00:17:12]  But there's a lot of hypocrisy here too, you know.
[00:17:15]  I think the best thing you can do for a civilized democracy is you.
[00:17:18]  You take any issue like this and you reverse it and say, what would the people saying this about this say if it was the other way around?
[00:17:24]  It was their side, and almost invariably you reach the conclusion that they would be saying something completely different.
[00:17:31]  Joe Biden would be saying something very different.
[00:17:34]  That's the problem with this.
[00:17:35]  When our new Supreme Court justice comes on, Katanji Brown Jackson, who's the first African-american woman to sit on the Supreme Court, she's not on yet.
[00:17:42]  She's taking uh, justice Breyer's seat.
[00:17:43]  And justice Breyer's still on, and until the end of this term, which is next month.
[00:17:47]  Um, can you imagine if she were one of the justices being protested?
[00:17:50]  You think the White House would this white, this White House wouldn't be saying, you're racist misogynistic disgusting, mega Republican?
[00:17:57]  It would be outrage, right?
[00:17:59]  I mean it would be total outrage from the left.
[00:18:02]  If that was happening.
[00:18:03]  And that's my problem with the hypocrisy, because they're targeting a white middle-aged man who happens to be a Republican, a conservative, that's fine.
[00:18:13]  But if they were targeting, Targeting her, it would be an outrage.
[00:18:17]  And that's exactly what I'm talking about.
[00:18:18]  That's the hypocrisy.
[00:18:19]  There's no moral consistency to this.
[00:18:21]  In fact, it's the opposite.
[00:18:23]  There's a deliberate moral vacuum here where people aren't making principled statements.
[00:18:28]  They're just simply saying what suits their side.
[00:18:31]  It's not a problem.
[00:18:32]  I just think that is that way undemocratic hell lies, honestly.
[00:18:37]  It's for to me, what the president is doing is selfish.
[00:18:40]  He sees a chance to turn the national narrative, which has been terrible for him, given our 8% inflation rates, the crime rates, and so on.
[00:18:48]  And he sees a political opportunity to shore up his party before the midterms, not to mention his own poll numbers.
[00:18:54]  And that requires him to let the Supreme Court sit there endangered for him to provide absolutely no backout, not even a backup, not even a word of support or condemnation for people getting a little too close for comfort when it comes to our Supreme Court justices.
[00:19:08]  This is not speaking of protests at the high court.
[00:19:10]  That's always happened.
[00:19:11]  At the homes is a different thing.
[00:19:12]  It's selfish.
[00:19:13]  It's about him and his poll numbers, which speaks to the man's character.
[00:19:18]  Yeah, totally agree.
[00:19:19]  And it's exactly the kind of behavior.
[00:19:22]  If this was Donald Trump doing it on an issue that the left felt strongly about, they would be outraged by it.

=== Trump's Rigged Election Claims (09:02) ===

[00:19:28]  Yes.
[00:19:29]  They would call it cowardly and they would call it pathetic and shameful.
[00:19:33]  But because it's Joe Biden doing it to appease the left, because they think that Kavanaugh and the other conservative judges are easy pickings, then it's fine.
[00:19:43]  And it's just not acceptable to be that brazenly hypocritical.
[00:19:48]  They better pray, pray that nothing happens to these Supreme Court justices.
[00:19:51]  Pray.
[00:19:53]  And I believe as well that, God forbid, something were to happen to one of them.
[00:19:57]  I believe that Chief Justice Roberts, if he really is the sixth vote sitting out, he'd cross over.
[00:20:02]  He would vote as that person.
[00:20:03]  There's zero chance the Supreme Court Court is going to sit back and let their vote on this case be manipulated by protesters or violence.
[00:20:11]  So whatever the plan is, it's not going to work.
[00:20:14]  Now, you mentioned Donald Trump.
[00:20:16]  You had some experience with him recently.
[00:20:18]  You've had many years of experience with him.
[00:20:22]  Let me ask you this.
[00:20:23]  So just to bring the audience up to speed, if they have been living under a rock, Piers had Donald Trump on his show to launch it two weeks ago, and it was a two-night affair and it got gangbuster ratings.
[00:20:35]  But he claimed to be upset by the promo, which showed Donald Trump storming out, President Trump storming out of the interview.
[00:20:41]  Piers later said, you know, he did get up and was angry.
[00:20:45]  He didn't actually storm out of the interview, but, you know, he left under tense circumstances.
[00:20:49]  He's been complaining about it ever since.
[00:20:52]  And my question to you, because he's at a rally just this past weekend, ripping on you, Piers.
[00:20:56]  You probably saw I called you crazy, I think.
[00:20:58]  I did, yeah.
[00:20:59]  Okay, wait, we'll just play it so the audience has a soundbite five.
[00:21:02]  Here he is.
[00:21:04]  This crazy Piers Morgan.
[00:21:06]  Did you see that show?
[00:21:07]  Piers Morgan.
[00:21:08]  Thank you, sir.
[00:21:09]  Piers Morgan show.
[00:21:11]  You see Piers Morgan?
[00:21:12]  He sort of had it.
[00:21:13]  I think Piers is over the hill.
[00:21:16]  He opened the show with an interview of me.
[00:21:18]  I did him a favor.
[00:21:19]  I didn't want to do a stupid show.
[00:21:21]  It's on Fox Nation.
[00:21:24]  What is Fox Nation?
[00:21:25]  What is it?
[00:21:25]  They're going to love me when I say, what is Fox?
[00:21:27]  It's on Fox Nation.
[00:21:28]  He opened with great ratings when he did me.
[00:21:32]  And then after my interview was finished, he bombed and he's now down over 70%.
[00:21:38]  Okay.
[00:21:39]  So he's still ripping on you.
[00:21:42]  I've always wanted to be one of his rally his rally targets.
[00:21:45]  It's just so funny to listen to.
[00:21:47]  But anyway.
[00:21:48]  So here's my question to you.
[00:21:49]  Is this, do you think his purported anger is real or kind of a favor to you to gin up, you know, buzz around your show?
[00:22:00]  I think that, well, here's what I really think happened.
[00:22:03]  He was sent a document just before we sat down by a guy called Nigel Farage, who may be familiar to a lot of your viewers here.
[00:22:11]  And Nigel Farage is a conservative politician in the UK who works for a rival news network here to my show in the UK.
[00:22:19]  And he deliberately tried to sabotage the interview, sending Donald Trump a lot of very critical things I'd said about him in his last year of his tenure as president, about the way he handled the pandemic, about his refusal to accept defeat, about January the 6th and so on.
[00:22:33]  When, by the way, I wasn't the only one criticizing him.
[00:22:35]  And I've always tried to be fair with Donald Trump in the 15 years I've been friends with him, where I criticize him if I feel he deserves it.
[00:22:42]  And I praise him when other people are burying him.
[00:22:44]  So I've always tried to.
[00:22:44]  And it's not like you were quiet.
[00:22:45]  But this was a whole hunting job to stop the interview happening.
[00:22:48]  But you were publishing that in the Daily Mail.
[00:22:50]  I read a lot of that at the time.
[00:22:51]  It's not like you were keeping that a secret.
[00:22:53]  It wasn't a secret.
[00:22:54]  No, but Donald Trump hadn't seen a lot of it.
[00:22:57]  So he was sent the top line sort of worst lines.
[00:23:00]  And then he read them all to me in his office and was getting very angry about it.
[00:23:04]  And I said, look, you didn't make me your celebrity apprentice for sitting on the fence like some shrinking violet.
[00:23:08]  You said when I was made the winner that I was tough and ruthless and beat the hell out of everybody.
[00:23:14]  Of course, I'm going to criticize you if I don't agree with it.
[00:23:16]  But I've always tried to be fair with you.
[00:23:18]  Anyway, he agreed to do the interview.
[00:23:19]  We're supposed to do 20 minutes.
[00:23:20]  I got 72 minutes.
[00:23:22]  So clearly, he couldn't have been that annoyed with the interview if he sat there for three times as long as he should have been.
[00:23:27]  And with Donald Trump, if you interview him, you just keep going until he stops it.
[00:23:31]  It doesn't matter what his aides are all saying.
[00:23:33]  So the promo I did was very much in the style of The Apprentice, where I tried to make it as exciting and tantalizing as possible.
[00:23:40]  And he was completely honest.
[00:23:42]  I never said Donald Trump stormed out of the interview.
[00:23:46]  I just said in a piece I wrote in the New York Post for Company that the promo being put out, I said he left in a really bad mood, which he did.
[00:23:55]  And it wasn't about the promo and it wasn't about anything else other than the fact that I looked him in the eye and I said, I'm really sorry, President Trump, but I have to tell you this.
[00:24:04]  I do not believe the election was stolen from you.
[00:24:07]  I don't believe it was rigged.
[00:24:08]  And I don't.
[00:24:09]  It's an honestly held opinion.
[00:24:11]  And he told me seven times.
[00:24:14]  He lost his rag.
[00:24:15]  Then he calmed down.
[00:24:16]  Then he was going to leave.
[00:24:17]  Then he stayed.
[00:24:18]  And eventually he went off calling me dishonest.
[00:24:20]  It wasn't dishonest.
[00:24:21]  Ironically, I was being honest.
[00:24:23]  He just didn't like me being honest.
[00:24:25]  So that's what it was about.
[00:24:26]  But look, I've had ups and downs with him over the years.
[00:24:29]  I think the really strange thing about this is most people who watched the whole interview felt it was one of the best interviews he's done.
[00:24:36]  And people who I know don't even like him very much thought he came over very well.
[00:24:41]  So my message to President Trump is calm down.
[00:24:44]  You don't have to keep ranting about an interview people actually thought you came over well on.
[00:24:48]  And as for the promo, I learned all the art of exciting promos from you on The Apprentice.
[00:24:55]  So my experience tells me that he's not going to listen to that advice, Pierce.
[00:25:02]  I don't think he cares how long it goes on.
[00:25:05]  We'll have a cup of tea and settle it over some scones and a cup of tea.
[00:25:09]  But I also think, I also think President Trump likes a storyline.
[00:25:13]  And I, so I, my own impression sitting over here, and I watched the whole interview and I thought it was great, was, yeah, you're right.
[00:25:20]  That's what annoyed him.
[00:25:21]  He doesn't like being told that he actually lost the election.
[00:25:24]  And we had Bill Barr, his attorney general on the program talking about the same thing.
[00:25:28]  That's why Bill Barr got fired or basically forced to resign because he said, Mr. President, your fraud claims are BS.
[00:25:34]  And there's a whole host of people who he's sort of broken up with who have said what you said to him.
[00:25:39]  He doesn't like to hear it.
[00:25:40]  So I think the anger was real.
[00:25:43]  But I think, you know, the beating of you over and over is part of a storyline.
[00:25:48]  And on that front, so I think you will, you know, he'll settle down eventually.
[00:25:52]  But here's what I wanted to ask you about.
[00:25:54]  The New York Post did a headline about it, kind of, I don't know if it was taking sides, but if it was taking a side, it was more your side.
[00:26:02]  And then Morning Joe, sorry to ask you about these guys, but they went out there and Joe Scarborough was sort of bemused saying this, the Piers Morgan interview and then the New York Post kind of siding with Piers is the Murdochs turning on Trump.
[00:26:19]  This is like you're the Murdoch's puppet and the New York Post is the Murdoch's puppet and Rupert Murdoch is sitting up in the Ivory Tower saying, kill him.
[00:26:28]  We're going to take him out.
[00:26:30]  To me, this is so reminiscent of what they said about my debate question to him, which was all mine.
[00:26:35]  Rupert Murdoch had nothing to do with it.
[00:26:36]  He's got more important things to think about debate questions.
[00:26:39]  But what do you make of that theory that Joe Scarborough is suggesting that you and the Post have been set out to get him because Rupert's had it with Trump?
[00:26:46]  It's just complete nonsense.
[00:26:48]  I've had no instructions from Mr. Murdoch or anyone at the post or anything else.
[00:26:52]  It is what it is.
[00:26:53]  If you watch the interview, I agree with Donald Trump about a number of things that he said.
[00:26:58]  In fact, most things I found myself nodding in agreement because he's actually, his gut instinct about many things going on in the world is quite is quite sound, actually, despite the inflammatory rhetoric.
[00:27:08]  But on the central point of whether the election was stolen, I don't agree with him.
[00:27:12]  And he just couldn't handle it.
[00:27:14]  And as you said, a number of other senior Republicans have had the same issue with him.
[00:27:17]  Mitch McConnell, Mike Pence.
[00:27:19]  They've all been disenfranchised by Trump because they won't buy into his, in my view, false narrative with no substantial evidence to support what he's saying that this was a rigged election.
[00:27:30]  And I don't understand why he waste all his energy on this anyway.
[00:27:33]  Because to me, he doesn't need to.
[00:27:34]  If he wants to prove the point, wants to prove the point, run again and win.
[00:27:38]  That's the best.
[00:27:39]  Revenge is a dish, best tasted cold.
[00:27:41]  And there wouldn't be a more cold or delicious dish for Donald Trump than to get re-elected.
[00:27:45]  But I can assure you, this had nothing to do with any instructions of Rupert Murdoch, although he thought it was a very good interview.
[00:27:52]  And he thought it was, you know, it was a good, robust exchange of views and opinions for 70 minutes, which it was.
[00:27:59]  It wasn't really about the way it ended.
[00:28:02]  Albeit Donald Trump, I think, reveled in that, whipped up his base to think that it was a rigged promo and therefore a rigged interview.
[00:28:09]  But he's going to stop thinking everything's rigged.
[00:28:12]  He doesn't care about a rigged promo.
[00:28:14]  I'm just going to go out and say he doesn't care about the promo.
[00:28:16]  You're right.
[00:28:17]  It was that question that upset him.
[00:28:19]  And he doesn't care that he handled it just fine or not.
[00:28:22]  In the moment, he's mad you even raised that issue.
[00:28:25]  Ben there.
[00:28:27]  I think your relationship with him over the years will show you'll come back.

=== Royal Family Duty and Scandal (12:07) ===

[00:28:30]  You'll come back together.
[00:28:32]  And I think so.
[00:28:34]  NetNet, it's all great promo for you.
[00:28:36]  So, all right, more with Piers Morton coming up after this.
[00:28:38]  We're going to get into the latest from the palace and Netflix giving Megan Markle some rather bad news at the same time.
[00:28:44]  She gets some from the Queen.
[00:28:50]  All right, Pierce.
[00:28:51]  So your old pal Megan Markle had some bad news, double shot of bad news over the past week.
[00:28:56]  First, Netflix canceled her debut animated series, Pearl, which is going to be about some woke little 12-year-old discovering her wokeness, as far as I can tell from the descriptions.
[00:29:07]  Shockingly, even Netflix has decided that won't work.
[00:29:11]  So they pulled it and she's scrubbed it now from her Archwell Foundation website.
[00:29:16]  Nobody wants to see that.
[00:29:17]  They're absolutely right.
[00:29:19]  So first project does not even get off the ground before it's canceled.
[00:29:22]  And then secondly, the queen, you mentioned she's going to have her jubilee, her 75th anniversary on the throne in a couple of weeks.
[00:29:29]  And she has decided who will be on the official balcony, which, you know, you can explain to us why that matters, but not everybody gets up there with her.
[00:29:37]  And these two did not make the cut.
[00:29:39]  Megan and Harry are not on the list.
[00:29:41]  Neither is Prince Andrew.
[00:29:42]  And it almost seems like there's sort of an A list of royals now and a B or D list of royals now.
[00:29:47]  And these two are suddenly realizing they're on the ladder.
[00:29:50]  Yeah, well, and quite rightly too.
[00:29:53]  I think it's a very interesting double whammy because what these two have tried to do is set up a rival royal family, but without any of the boring bits.
[00:30:01]  They don't want to do any of the duty that goes with having royal titles.
[00:30:04]  What they've done is move out of the country, go to California, set up a rival royal entity, which exploits their royal titles, Duke and Duchess, for hundreds of millions of dollars to gullible companies like Spotify and Netflix.
[00:30:19]  You think they're interesting.
[00:30:20]  Well, they're not interesting.
[00:30:21]  They just, they just blather away with their hypocritical, pious, woke homilies on life.
[00:30:28]  And it gets very boring over time.
[00:30:30]  And as we now see, when she comes up with this idea of an animated series based on her own wondrously inspiring story, Netflix, who are having financial problems at the moment, have looked at the numbers and gone, no one's going to watch this.
[00:30:44]  Why would they?
[00:30:45]  Why would they want to talk about her being some iconic, inspiring figure?
[00:30:50]  She's not.
[00:30:50]  So they've canned it, which is, I would think, a really worrying moment for the Sussex brands because they rely on their nonsense being worth a lot of money to these companies.
[00:31:01]  Then you have the double whammy of the queen deciding that the balcony is not going to have them for the famous Trooping of the Color, which is a huge celebration of pageantry in the UK around the Queen's birthday.
[00:31:13]  And this time we'll be honoring, of course, the Platinum Jubilee, 70 years on the throne.
[00:31:18]  And if you're on the balcony, you're one of the top royal players.
[00:31:21]  And the royals, in the end, are probably the biggest stars in the world and have been for the last century.
[00:31:28]  So if you're on the top tier, literally, the balcony, you're one of the biggest stars in the world.
[00:31:33]  The moment you get shoved off the balcony, then you're deemed to be a lesser royal.
[00:31:38]  So they've got problems in their renegade royal life, and they've now got problems in the real world of their royal status because the royal family have gone, you know what?
[00:31:48]  We're only going to have people on the balcony who actually put a shift in, who actually do their duty, who earn their royal titles, who don't trash us and the monarchy morning, noon or night, who don't constantly give interviews, rubbishing everything that we stand for.
[00:32:02]  And I say, hallelujah, should have done that a long time ago, Your Majesty, and go a bit further and take away their royal titles altogether.
[00:32:10]  They don't deserve them.
[00:32:12]  And by their own yardstick, if the monarchy's that bad, they shouldn't want them.
[00:32:16]  There's reporting out right now that Tina Brown's got this new book out about the royals.
[00:32:20]  And her reporting is that Megan Markle didn't understand that Princess Diana, who she wanted to be just like, quote, had to work like a dog for more than a decade within the royal family before becoming a global humanitarian superstar.
[00:32:34]  She says, Tina Brown says, it was Diana's charisma that she brought to the job that made her so extraordinarily special.
[00:32:42]  But Meghan didn't realize that for 16 or 17 years, Diana was working like this, doing a great deal of very humdrum assignments before the world fell in love with her.
[00:32:51]  You can't just snap your fingers and be Diana.
[00:32:55]  No, you can't.
[00:32:56]  And she isn't fit to lace Diana's regal boots.
[00:33:00]  I knew Diana well, had lunch with her and William, just the three of us at Kensington Palace, used to speak to her on the phone quite regularly.
[00:33:07]  I knew her well.
[00:33:08]  She was the biggest superstar in the world that I've ever seen, actually.
[00:33:12]  Bigger than anyone you could think of, a mesmerizing beauty who captivated the world.
[00:33:18]  And when she died, it was one of the biggest shocks to the planet that any individual's death has ever caused.
[00:33:25]  So the idea that Meghan Markle is anywhere near that level of fame or reverence or that the public feel the same way about her is complete nonsense.
[00:33:36]  As is, by the way, her continued kind of, oh, I didn't know that's what royal life was like.
[00:33:40]  Yes, you did.
[00:33:41]  You just didn't fancy putting the shifts in.
[00:33:43]  She just didn't want to go to the north of England on a wet Wednesday and open a flower show.
[00:33:48]  But that's what all the royals do.
[00:33:50]  They do stuff like that.
[00:33:51]  They do dreary, dutiful work because in return, they live in palaces and have servants and the rest of it.
[00:33:56]  But Meghan Markle wanted all the good stuff.
[00:33:59]  She didn't want to do any work for it.
[00:34:01]  So instead, she thought, I'll take Harry back to California, set up a rival royal family, and we'll sell the royal status we have to the highest bidder, which is ruthlessly commercial and is now falling flat on their faces because these companies like Netflix have overstretched themselves with their commitment to these two, realize they're getting nothing of any value back.
[00:34:21]  And they're seeing the status of Megan and Harry diminished by the queen with this balcony decision.
[00:34:26]  So they're thinking, well, who have we got here?
[00:34:28]  We've got some lower tier royals who constantly whine about everything, produce very boring woke content at a time when we need more eyeballs.
[00:34:38]  No thanks.
[00:34:39]  So my prediction is that they will carry on losing their deals because they have nothing else of value other than trashing the family.
[00:34:46]  And the family's decided we're going to distance ourselves from these two.
[00:34:49]  And so they can't even get the access they want to their own members of their own family.
[00:34:53]  I mean, quite extraordinary situation.
[00:34:54]  But that's where we are.
[00:34:56]  So you're exactly right because Netflix is reportedly A, angry that Prince Harry gave an interview to NBC while he's on their payroll for $100 million, trying to give them, supposed to give them content about the royals and his life and so on.
[00:35:08]  The meanwhile, they got stuck doing some documentary about his Invictus games and the real dish he saved, apparently.
[00:35:15]  And there's a report that they want him and Megan to start talking about the royal family in order to earn that 100 million bucks.
[00:35:22]  And they don't want to hear about 12-year-old little Pearl.
[00:35:25]  And they're not that into the backstories of the Invictus games.
[00:35:28]  And in the same way, Spotify just dumped Michelle Obama, who didn't want to talk about Michelle Obama.
[00:35:33]  She wanted to talk about just whatever woke content she was pushing.
[00:35:36]  They dumped her.
[00:35:37]  Megan Markle's first project gets dumped.
[00:35:39]  And now they're reportedly under pressure by Netflix to deliver what they implicitly promised, which is stories about the royal family.
[00:35:48]  And now, Piers, you tell me, I'm thinking, because I read that the British Royal Guard or the Palace Royal Guard is trying to say, no Netflix cameras when you come over here for the Jubilee.
[00:35:59]  You're not going to be filming this.
[00:36:01]  But now, with or without those cameras, they're going to have to worry that everything these two attend is going to wind up on some Netflix show.
[00:36:09]  It's such a tacky, tacky situation.
[00:36:12]  And the Queen has to be protected from Miss Nonsense.
[00:36:15]  She's been so magnificent for seven decades on the throne.
[00:36:18]  One of the longest serving leaders in the history of this planet.
[00:36:22]  One of the most respected, even if you don't like the monarchy, people respect her.
[00:36:27]  Deeply beloved in this country, 96 years old, lost her husband after 70 years of marriage, Prince Philip, still grieving him, got the terrible scandal of her son, Andrew, you know, paying millions to pay off a woman who claimed that she was underage when he had sex with her and so on.
[00:36:43]  She's had a real series of batterings.
[00:36:45]  And the very last thing she needs are these two yapping, whining, moaning hypocrites, the Sussexids, cashing in on being royals, dumping on the royal family, dumping on the monarchy, making her look bad, making her life more difficult at a time when she's supposed to be celebrating the Platinum Jubilee, which makes her the longest reigning monarch in British history.
[00:37:08]  And this country wants to celebrate that, not have to worry about these two with their Netflix crew trying to exploit it for personal financial gain.
[00:37:16]  I was a queen, I just banned them from coming altogether.
[00:37:18]  That's no thing.
[00:37:19]  The same thing.
[00:37:20]  You stay in California.
[00:37:21]  You made your bed.
[00:37:22]  You made your bed with your soya lattes.
[00:37:24]  You drink those on your Montecito gardens and leave us alone, thanks.
[00:37:29]  Yeah.
[00:37:29]  Oprah's your new queen.
[00:37:32]  What do you make of the fact that they're dangling the grandkids now as the lure?
[00:37:36]  I guess the great-grandkids.
[00:37:38]  So they're saying they are shameless.
[00:37:40]  The little Archie and Lilibette, whose name they stole from the queen as they were calling her family racist.
[00:37:46]  They're saying, we're going to come back and we're taking the children too.
[00:37:48]  So more attention to them.
[00:37:50]  If you may remember, one of the reasons they left the country was to protect the privacy of their kids.
[00:37:55]  And yet, all they do is put them out there.
[00:37:58]  And you can bet your life they're going to pop up in their Netflix documentaries, right?
[00:38:03]  You can see it now, right?
[00:38:04]  Yes.
[00:38:05]  We already, when she did her one Spotify podcast, you heard one of the kids' voices on that.
[00:38:10]  They're completely shameless and rankly hypocritical.
[00:38:13]  They always do the opposite to what they say they're about.
[00:38:16]  They claim to be about privacy.
[00:38:17]  They do endless interviews.
[00:38:19]  They claim they want to protect their kids' privacy.
[00:38:21]  They constantly use them and they will continue to use them and so on and so on.
[00:38:25]  They're going to go full Kardashian with those children.
[00:38:28]  They don't want privacy.
[00:38:29]  I think they're already there.
[00:38:30]  Already there.
[00:38:31]  The one in front of them.
[00:38:32]  The Kardashians made them look almost regal.
[00:38:34]  One other question on the Tina Brown book.
[00:38:38]  She's reporting that the Queen's 2019 Christmas broadcast was the final straw for Harry and Megan before Mexic, Pierce, that they stepped down as senior working royals because their photo was not displayed during the Queen's annual Christmas broadcast.
[00:38:56]  This pushed them over the edge in their decision to leave because they understood they'd been kicked to the margins of the monarchy.
[00:39:03]  The year before, their engagement portrait had been displayed on her desk.
[00:39:07]  So they felt snubbed by Her Majesty.
[00:39:10]  Boo, boo.
[00:39:12]  I couldn't give a monkeys about it.
[00:39:15]  Are you familiar with the phrase monkeys?
[00:39:16]  Cast it means you just don't care.
[00:39:19]  Who cares about their bruised little feelings about a picture on the piano when the queen's talking or whatever, whatever it was, the sideboard?
[00:39:26]  The queen can do what the hell she likes.
[00:39:28]  She's earned that right.
[00:39:29]  She's a magnificent woman who's earned the right not to have to be bothered with the pathetic antics of these two.
[00:39:36]  And Prince Harry should grow up and show his grandmother more respect.
[00:39:40]  You know, the idea they won on Oprah Winfrey knowing Prince Philip was ill is unconscionable.
[00:39:44]  And the idea they've carried on all this knowing the queen's in mourning is unconscionable.
[00:39:49]  So I think they should just honestly, the whole thing is deeply unedifying for any member of the royal family.
[00:39:58]  And I think I fear they're going to come to London for the Jubilee and just try and hijack it with their Netflix crew in tow.
[00:40:04]  And they're going to try and make it all about them because that's what their currency is.
[00:40:08]  Their only value in America, where they now live, is if they're perceived to be really big, important members of the royal family.
[00:40:14]  So they're going to do everything they can, including bringing the kids, getting them on camera, trying to boost their royal status because that's where the money is.
[00:40:23]  But that's not how it works, I'm afraid.
[00:40:24]  That's called having a royal cake and eat it.
[00:40:27]  Well, we hope they go back across the pond and they stay there.
[00:40:30]  You can have them.
[00:40:30]  We don't appreciate this gift from England.
[00:40:32]  This is not one of your better gifts.
[00:40:35]  You can keep them.
[00:40:36]  I'm not having them.

=== Cancel Culture and Smeared Allegations (06:06) ===

[00:40:38]  All right.
[00:40:39]  Let's talk about speaking of woke.
[00:40:40]  Let's talk about a couple of news headlines that are out there on this.
[00:40:44]  You know, Frank Langella, the actor?
[00:40:46]  He's the latest.
[00:40:47]  Yes, I do.
[00:40:48]  He's the latest victim of wokeism or Me Tooism.
[00:40:52]  And here's why, here's why I have a problem with this story.
[00:40:55]  Deadline broke the story just last month about the fact that he got fired from this Netflix limited series, The Fall of the House of Usher, in which he was the star.
[00:41:05]  He was the star.
[00:41:06]  And he got booted because of an alleged Me Too situation.
[00:41:09]  And here's the problem I have: they won't name the woman.
[00:41:12]  They won't name the actress.
[00:41:14]  Her name has been scrubbed from the internet.
[00:41:16]  TMZ apparently initially reported it.
[00:41:18]  You can't even get it on the Way Way Back Machine.
[00:41:20]  So she gets her total anonymity.
[00:41:22]  He gets fired without an investigation, he says.
[00:41:26]  No one ever let him provide his side of the story, anything.
[00:41:29]  Just booted, publicly smeared, gone at age, I think, 84.
[00:41:34]  And the allegation is he, so he's now come out to say what his side of the story is.
[00:41:39]  And he says, look, my first instinct when they came to me to say like you've been accused was to surround myself by these professionals, these PR reps, these lawyers, all of whom said, you know, say nothing, you know, just be quiet.
[00:41:55]  At most, go out there and say you're sorry, do the talk shows, show contrition, feign humility, say you've learned a lot, apologize, apologize, apologize.
[00:42:05]  And he says, no, right?
[00:42:07]  Like that's, I didn't do anything wrong.
[00:42:09]  This is his description.
[00:42:11]  On March 25th of this year, I was performing a love scene with the actress playing my young wife.
[00:42:15]  Both of us were fully clothed.
[00:42:16]  I was sitting on a couch.
[00:42:17]  She was standing in front of me.
[00:42:18]  The director called Cut.
[00:42:20]  She said, the actress said, he touched my leg.
[00:42:23]  That was not in the blocking.
[00:42:25]  She turned and walked off the set, followed by the director and the intimacy coordinator, Pierce.
[00:42:30]  Glad we don't have that in our news sets.
[00:42:33]  She left the thing and they told him to give her some space.
[00:42:37]  He waited for an hour, was told she would not be returning, and we were wrapped.
[00:42:41]  Not long after, an investigation did begin, but it didn't include much input from him, apparently.
[00:42:46]  And one week later, HR asked to speak to him by phone.
[00:42:49]  They said, you were told where to put your hands.
[00:42:52]  It was brought to our attention that you said, that's absurd.
[00:42:56]  He said, of course I said that's absurd.
[00:42:57]  I'm an actor with a love scene on camera.
[00:42:59]  You're legislating the placement of hands.
[00:43:01]  It's ludicrous.
[00:43:02]  It undermines instinct and spontaneity.
[00:43:04]  They said, intention is not our concern.
[00:43:07]  Because he said, I didn't intend to offend anybody.
[00:43:10]  Netflix deals only with impact.
[00:43:13]  Long story short, he got fired and he thinks his reputation has been smeared and probably is not going to work again after this termination late in his career.
[00:43:23]  Meanwhile, we don't know who she was, what actually happened.
[00:43:26]  And you tell me whether any of this is fair.
[00:43:29]  I think if what he has said is true, it's completely outrageous.
[00:43:33]  And it shows just how crazy this situation now is.
[00:43:38]  I mean, the idea you have to have intimacy coordinators anyway on movie sets seems to me ridiculous when they're doing love scenes.
[00:43:44]  But a guy of that age and he apparently put his hand on the wrong part of her leg.
[00:43:50]  And that's it?
[00:43:51]  That ruins his entire career, his reputation.
[00:43:54]  He's branded a predator for the rest of his life.
[00:43:56]  Really?
[00:43:57]  Is that where we've got to?
[00:43:59]  You know, I just think I interviewed Brian Cox last week, Star of Succession.
[00:44:03]  Played Logan Roy, one of my favorite characters.
[00:44:06]  And he was bemoaning this whole cancel culture, talking about what happened with Bill Murray last week in a similar situation.
[00:44:12]  Said something inappropriate.
[00:44:13]  We don't know what it was.
[00:44:14]  We don't know why it was so offensive.
[00:44:16]  But, you know, Bill Murray, again, a guy in his dotage as an actor, hugely popular.
[00:44:21]  And he now gets smeared and may not work again.
[00:44:23]  You think, where does this end?
[00:44:24]  This sort of puritanical, slightly fascist in its nature, cancel culture, where the slightest deviation from perfection in terms of behavior or something you say means you have to be completely destroyed.
[00:44:38]  I think we've become an incredibly intolerant, unforgiving society.
[00:44:42]  And it's being driven by people who claim to be representing tolerance, but they're the least tolerant people on God's earth.
[00:44:49]  You know, the won't cancel culture brigade are a societal menace to me.
[00:44:54]  I want to hear what this woman wants to say about.
[00:44:58]  I want to hear exactly what she says happened.
[00:45:01]  Because if it's the same story that he tells, then I think we all just think, surely this is ridiculous.
[00:45:08]  And maybe we're doing her a disservice.
[00:45:10]  I also don't get the, why does she get to keep her anonymity?
[00:45:13]  This is not even arguably a sexual abuse victim.
[00:45:16]  This is somebody who's claiming he put his hand on her leg after the scene wrapped.
[00:45:19]  And another allegation is he allegedly told an off-color joke.
[00:45:22]  I mean, please, right?
[00:45:24]  So since when does the accuser get to keep her anonymity in a workplace sexual harassment complaint situation?
[00:45:33]  I mean, the same thing happened.
[00:45:34]  I'll defend Chris Cuomo here for a minute when he was hanging by a thread and some woman comes out and anonymously comes forward and levies a complaint.
[00:45:43]  And we get to know all the, you know, okay, so she's levied this devastating complaint that helps lead to his termination, but we don't get to know who she is.
[00:45:49]  So nobody gets to assess her credibility, her history of making accusations and so on, all of which are relevant.
[00:45:54]  This is very lopsided and it seems to me unfair, I have to say.
[00:45:58]  Well, it's Salem Wish trials, isn't it?
[00:46:00]  And it's, it's, you know, the trouble is anyone can make any accusation about anybody.
[00:46:04]  And that can be enough to ruin their entire reputation and career.
[00:46:08]  It cannot be fair.
[00:46:08]  It cannot be right.
[00:46:09]  It's got to be due process here.
[00:46:11]  And I think you're right.
[00:46:12]  If one half of the debate remains anonymous and is protected from having to reveal who they are and we can assess whether they are credible, then it's completely skewed against the person that the allegation is made against.
[00:46:25]  And like I say, if what Frank says is true about what happened, it seems preposterous overreaction and terrible that he's now having to fight for his career.
[00:46:35]  He writes, the indignities are, to my mind, the real definition of unacceptable behavior.
[00:46:40]  Cancel culture is the antithesis of democracy.
[00:46:43]  Couldn't agree more.
[00:46:44]  Quick story before you go.

=== Undermining Nonpartisan Institutions (17:27) ===

[00:46:45]  Brian Cox, who you just mentioned from Succession, Logan Roy, he used to be my neighbor in New York City.
[00:46:52]  When I first moved to New York, yes, when I first moved to New York, I rented like the second floor apartment in a little brownstone.
[00:47:00]  So I had just the second floor.
[00:47:01]  I had a neighbor downstairs and a few neighbors upstairs.
[00:47:04]  And he had the same apartment in the neighboring Brownstone.
[00:47:08]  And in this neighborhood down in Chelsea, in Manhattan, Halloween is next level, Pierce.
[00:47:14]  I mean, it's crazy.
[00:47:15]  So, you know, as one neighbor said to me, they said, whatever you're doing, it's too little.
[00:47:21]  So you go nuts and you put out a table in front of your brownstone and you get wine.
[00:47:25]  Yeah, cheese and crackers.
[00:47:27]  So Logan Roy and I were dealing, you know, candy out to the children and having some wine together years ago.
[00:47:33]  Little, I mean, I knew he'd been in Braveheart, which was exciting enough, but little did I know what he would go on to do.
[00:47:38]  So I'm jealous that you interviewed him.
[00:47:40]  It sounds amazing.
[00:47:41]  And you know what was great, Megan, about him?
[00:47:43]  What was great was he's so thrilled that at this stage of his career in his mid-70s, he's got the role of his life.
[00:47:49]  He loves playing Logan Roy.
[00:47:51]  He loves how big he's going.
[00:47:52]  He said, he walks out on stage now at events and he gets reaction like he's Mick Jagger.
[00:47:57]  He can't believe it.
[00:47:57]  But he also told me a wonderful little story, which we could end this with, which really moved me.
[00:48:03]  My middle boy is an actor, my middle son.
[00:48:06]  And he was at a big drama school in London called Lambda.
[00:48:08]  And that's where Brian Cox had gone.
[00:48:10]  And he went back as an alumni to speak to the current students when my son was there.
[00:48:15]  And he was asked, what's the most important thing we should all remember?
[00:48:18]  And he said, honestly, he said, do what I do.
[00:48:21]  He said, carry a picture of yourself when you were a child in your wallet and just look at it occasionally.
[00:48:27]  Remind yourself of the childlike enthusiasm you had for life so that you never lose it.
[00:48:32]  And I asked him on air about the story.
[00:48:34]  And I said, by the way, do you have, do you still have it?
[00:48:36]  And he pulled out his phone and there was the picture on his phone.
[00:48:39]  And he said, I look at this regularly.
[00:48:41]  And it was a picture of him aged seven or eight years old.
[00:48:43]  And I said, what would you feel if you were that boy now looking at what's happened to you?
[00:48:48]  Do you feel that you lived all your dreams?
[00:48:50]  And he thought for a bit and he said, you know what?
[00:48:52]  Yes, I've actually managed to enjoy all the dreams that I had as that boy and maintain my enthusiasm for life.
[00:49:00]  And I thought that was a wonderful little lesson.
[00:49:02]  Everyone should just get a picture of themselves as a kid, put it in your pocket and occasionally go, have I still got that childlike enthusiasm for life?
[00:49:10]  And if not, how do I go and get it again?
[00:49:13]  I think I'd be thinking, this is a testament to the modern medicine of orthodontics and hair dye.
[00:49:23]  Piers Morgan, the one and only.
[00:49:25]  Good luck with the show.
[00:49:26]  It's such a pleasure to catch up.
[00:49:27]  We'll be watching.
[00:49:28]  Thanks, Megan.
[00:49:29]  Great to talk to you.
[00:49:30]  All the best.
[00:49:30]  Up next, Tom Bevin of Real Clear Politics is with us on all the latest insanity in this country, and there's a lot to go over.
[00:49:41]  Many in the media have continued their hysterical reaction to the Supreme Court leak of their one-time draft opinion on Roe versus Wade and whether it should be overturned.
[00:49:52]  Something we have no idea whether it remains in that same form, whether that will be the final looking opinion, whether justices may still switch over.
[00:50:01]  And joining us now to discuss all of it is Tom Bevan, co-founder and president of Real Clear Politics.
[00:50:06]  If you don't go to realclepolitics.com every morning, you're missing out.
[00:50:09]  I've been doing it for 15 years.
[00:50:11]  I don't know how long, Tom, but it's really how I get my news in the morning.
[00:50:14]  I read the journal and I read the Times.
[00:50:16]  I like the New York Post, and then I go to realclearpolitics.com because you can see editorials from the left and the right.
[00:50:22]  And it allows your brain not to be corrupted by anyone's side, right?
[00:50:27]  And even if you're a diehard Republican or a die-hard lib, you want to know what the other side is saying.
[00:50:32]  Don't let anybody manipulate your mind.
[00:50:34]  Take in information from both sides.
[00:50:36]  You guys do a great, great job of that.
[00:50:38]  All right.
[00:50:38]  So let's kick it off here.
[00:50:40]  The latest news is that, yes, they're publishing the justices' addresses online.
[00:50:44]  Yes, they protested at Kavanaugh's and Roberts' houses over the weekend.
[00:50:47]  Yes, tonight they're planning to shut down D.C., announced a quote, vigil at Justice Alito's house.
[00:50:55]  I don't know what that means.
[00:50:56]  A vigil.
[00:50:57]  Okay, we'll see.
[00:50:59]  So far, they've been rather ugly and obnoxious.
[00:51:03]  And Justice Thomas spoke out saying the court will not be bullied.
[00:51:08]  According to Reuters, he went on to say, we are becoming addicted to wanting particular outcomes, not living with the outcomes we don't like.
[00:51:17]  And he goes on to say, we cannot be an institution that can be bullied into giving you just the outcomes you want.
[00:51:22]  The events from earlier this week are a symptom of that.
[00:51:26]  So what do you make of the fact that still today, the White House comes out, condemns the Molotov cocktail bombing of a pro-life organization in Wisconsin, but still cannot bring itself to condemn the protests at the homes of our justices.
[00:51:41]  Yeah, well, first of all, Megan, it's great to be with you and thanks for the kind words about RCP.
[00:51:44]  We do, we work pretty hard every day to try and bring a variety of opinions from across the political spectrum.
[00:51:50]  And I think now more than ever, it's more important for people to read both sides of an argument and to try and figure out for themselves what they believe because there's a lot of opinion now even in the news stories.
[00:52:06]  But to your point, Jen Socky just released a tweet, I guess, about an hour ago saying that POTUS strongly believes in the constitutional right to protest, but that should never include violence, threats, or vandalism.
[00:52:19]  Judges perform an incredibly important function in our society and they must be able to do their jobs without concern for their personal safety.
[00:52:26]  Great.
[00:52:27]  Fantastic.
[00:52:28]  Should have been said five days ago, six days ago, when these protests started to take shape.
[00:52:34]  I think it's too little, too late.
[00:52:35]  The signal's already been sent.
[00:52:37]  When she was asked at the White House podium about this directly and refused to condemn it, that was all the signal that people needed to know, at least folks on the left, that this was going to be tolerated.
[00:52:49]  And we saw a lot of that in the media as well.
[00:52:53]  A lack of condemnation of what is clearly an effort to intimidate justices.
[00:52:59]  You can call it free speech, but it is expressly prohibited by the law.
[00:53:03]  And so unless that law changes, what these folks are doing is illegal and should be condemned.
[00:53:10]  But it won't be condemned in any explicit terms.
[00:53:14]  It will be encouraged.
[00:53:15]  I mean, Barack Obama, his only, the Obamas are saying, get out there and protest.
[00:53:18]  They're not saying at the Supreme Court's house, but that's their answer.
[00:53:21]  Get out there and protest.
[00:53:22]  Get out there and protest.
[00:53:23]  And I don't know, I would say I think overall, it's been a little lackluster.
[00:53:27]  I haven't been exactly moved by the number of people I've seen out there.
[00:53:31]  I have been surprised at some of the lunacy that we've seen out there and the punditry.
[00:53:36]  Why this woman was on MSNBC in the first place, I have no idea.
[00:53:39]  It's somebody named Lori Kilmartin.
[00:53:41]  I guess she's a, she's a comedian?
[00:53:43]  I don't know what she is.
[00:53:44]  Why she's asked to speak on Roe versus Wade says a lot about the level of commentary we're getting in today's day and age.
[00:53:52]  But take a listen to this nutcase over on MSNBC, Soundbite 9.
[00:53:55]  Here's my feeling about the leaker.
[00:53:57]  I would like to find out who the leaker is so I could make sweet love to that person because that person is a hero to me.
[00:54:07]  Okay.
[00:54:08]  And if the leaker, a lot of people are saying it could be a conservative, if the leaker is a Republican and if I get pregnant during our lovemaking, I will joyfully abort our fetus.
[00:54:20]  Lovely.
[00:54:21]  Nice.
[00:54:23]  Right.
[00:54:24]  Look, I agree.
[00:54:25]  I mean, the level of hysteria and commentary around this has been ridiculous.
[00:54:31]  And again, going back to the specifically the leaker, I think we're going to find out who this person is pretty quickly and they should be condemned.
[00:54:41]  And they won't be in certain circles.
[00:54:42]  They'll be celebrated and probably get a book deal or maybe even a contributorship on MSNBC.
[00:54:50]  But they have definitely undermined the institution of the Supreme Court.
[00:54:55]  And that's something that all Americans, regardless of your political perspective, should be concerned about.
[00:55:02]  I will say this, Megan, too.
[00:55:04]  You read as we're going through, and if you can sort through the partisan hysteria on this, and I think one of the reasons Jensaki released that tweet is I don't think this is certainly not the silver bullet the Democrats think it's going to be for them politically as their savior for the midterm elections.
[00:55:24]  There's an article this morning in Reuters.
[00:55:26]  They went, walked around Scottsdale, suburb of Phoenix, and fairly well-to-do suburb and interviewed about 40 women.
[00:55:36]  And one of the women that they cite very prominently up high in the article is a 61-year-old woman who was a Biden voter who knew about the decision, had heard about the draft of overruling Roe v. Wade, and said she's still undecided on who she's going to vote for because inflation is the most galvanizing issue for her, not abortion.
[00:55:56]  And that was repeated over the course of these interviews with these 40 separate women.
[00:56:01]  And so I just think that this is not going to, it's not going to have the political impact that the Democrats think it's going to be, particularly if there's still $5 a gallon, $6 gallon gas in November.
[00:56:13]  And also if the, if all of the, all of the hysteria over, you know, if America does not turn into the handmaiden's tail over the course of the summer, then, you know, the world isn't going to come to an end.
[00:56:26]  And I think a lot of these conversations have already been happening in states around the country as people have had debates and laws have been passed and the like.
[00:56:33]  And so I just don't think it's going to have the potency.
[00:56:36]  It's going to be tough to keep the outrage machine cranked up for six more months.
[00:56:40]  Yeah.
[00:56:41]  Well, I guess that could arguably support the notion that the conservatives leaked it, that a conservative law clerk leaked it.
[00:56:47]  Just get it out, rip the bandaid off, get the buzz going on the opinion as soon as possible.
[00:56:50]  It's far away from the midterm.
[00:56:52]  Again, I still think it was a liberal law clerk, but it could be.
[00:56:55]  I'm open-minded.
[00:56:56]  On that statement, just to read it again, because this actually came in while I was on the air.
[00:57:00]  So Jensaki, she said nothing.
[00:57:02]  This is her first tweet since last Thursday.
[00:57:04]  Radio silence from the White House other than her generic statement last week, which was when asked whether the White House condones posting justices' addresses online, their home addresses, the most she could muster was, the president's view is that there's a lot of passion, a lot of fear, a lot of sadness from many, many people across the country about what they saw in that leaked document.
[00:57:25]  We obviously want people's privacy to be respected.
[00:57:28]  We want people to protest peacefully if they want to protest.
[00:57:30]  That is certainly what the president's view would be.
[00:57:32]  Protest and protest peacefully.
[00:57:34]  That's it.
[00:57:35]  Not to condemn going to the private homes of the justices.
[00:57:38]  And now today, POTUS strongly believes in the constitutional right to protest.
[00:57:42]  Same, but that should never include violence, threats, or vandalism.
[00:57:46]  Okay, the mere fact that you're protesting outside of their homes is a threat.
[00:57:49]  It is a threat.
[00:57:50]  And you look at what the messaging was last year about how they need new tactics in order to make the justices understand how angry people are.
[00:57:57]  Then she goes on to say judges perform at an incredibly important function in our society, and they must be able to do their jobs without concern for their personal safety.
[00:58:04]  She can't bring herself to do it.
[00:58:07]  Tell them to leave the justices' homes with their young children inside alone.
[00:58:13]  It's not hard.
[00:58:15]  She won't do it because they're that worried about muting the anger of this rather small section of their base.
[00:58:24]  Yeah, I think it's right.
[00:58:25]  And again, the thing about this too that bothers me is it's very clear that if this was conservatives protesting outside of Sota Mayor's home or Lenny Kagan's home, that this would be the end of democracy.
[00:58:39]  This is it.
[00:58:39]  It's over, right?
[00:58:40]  It would be just these authoritarian, fascist Republicans, and we need new laws and throw them in jail, the whole thing.
[00:58:51]  And here it's just glossed over.
[00:58:54]  And again, that's in some ways it's par for the course.
[00:59:01]  Given our current politics and how tribal everything is and everyone is.
[00:59:04]  And to your point, I think there is, I mean, there's great fear among Democrats.
[00:59:08]  If you talk to any Democrat in Washington or, you know, even around the country about the political landscape right now and where things are and what's coming their way in November, unless they're able to really flip the script.
[00:59:20]  And this is the only thing that was out there.
[00:59:23]  There is no legislation that's going to be passed on any issue between now and November.
[00:59:28]  There is no, even world events, Ukraine hasn't changed the landscape for the Democrats as some thought it would.
[00:59:36]  It might rally around the president.
[00:59:37]  That hasn't happened.
[00:59:38]  So they really saw this or see this as their one opportunity to really both energize their base, but also potentially win over swing voters because everything they've tried up until now, even student loan debt and the like, has pitted those two groups against each other.
[00:59:54]  Pleases the base, it alienates swing voters.
[00:59:56]  Pleases swing voters, it alienates the base.
[00:59:58]  And they thought this was going to be the issue that could do both.
[01:00:02]  But it's not looking, I mean, in the early stages, it's not looking to be that for them.
[01:00:07]  And so it is.
[01:00:08]  It's just great, great amount of fear and anxiety among Democrats in terms of their electoral prospects in November.
[01:00:15]  So I want to get more on that and whether people care about this as much as the Democrats think.
[01:00:20]  But before that, the subject of norms, of course, we've been lectured to by this group for a long time about norms, how much we need our norms and how much of a norm buster Trump was and how dangerous it was.
[01:00:31]  This is not normal.
[01:00:32]  This is not normal to go to the home of a Supreme Court, to post their home addresses online, to get groups over there, to start bombing pro-life facilities with Molotov cocktails before we even have a ruling.
[01:00:42]  We don't even know what the ruling says.
[01:00:44]  This is absurd.
[01:00:46]  Not normal.
[01:00:47]  And to your point of like, you know, just the tribalism, we don't want this to become a norm.
[01:00:55]  We don't want the right to then respond in kind when Kagan and Soda Mayor and, you know, our incoming justice, Katanji Brown Jackson, come together with two other court members to issue a 5-4 decision the other way.
[01:01:10]  This is dangerous.
[01:01:10]  And 100% they will be yelling misogynist and racist.
[01:01:15]  If you go to Katanji Brown Jackson's house, forget about it.
[01:01:17]  Forget about it, especially as a white man protesting out there.
[01:01:20]  No, no, it will not be allowed.
[01:01:22]  Very different messaging from the White House.
[01:01:23]  But we don't want that to become the norm.
[01:01:25]  You know, I personally, as a court watcher and fan, revere all nine of them.
[01:01:29]  I don't agree with all nine of them.
[01:01:30]  I think some are smarter and better than others, but I really respect all nine of them and not for nothing.
[01:01:35]  But you see the houses, you know, where they live on these pictures online.
[01:01:38]  These are not rich people.
[01:01:39]  They're not.
[01:01:40]  Most of these guys could have made, trust me, they could be making $8, $9 million a year in practice at any of these law firms they wanted.
[01:01:47]  They could have the nicest home in any town, but they live in pretty, but not like huge mansions.
[01:01:52]  They're making a couple hundred thousand bucks a year.
[01:01:54]  So screw these people for getting out there and endangering them and their children before we even know what the opinion is and for taking the protest beyond the steps of the Supreme Court, which where it's totally fair game.
[01:02:03]  It's not fair game in front of their homes.
[01:02:05]  It has a different effect, especially with those who have young children.
[01:02:08]  And they're breaking a norm that they're going to wish they didn't break.
[01:02:12]  Yeah, I think that's right.
[01:02:13]  I mean, look, part of the broader landscape that this election and the last few elections, quite frankly, have the backdrop has been this loss of trust in institutions, right?
[01:02:23]  Whether it's Congress, whether it's the presidency, whether it's the media, obviously, my God, the loss of trust in the media has just been outrageous.
[01:02:31]  But the Supreme Court is there.
[01:02:33]  Gallup tracks this.
[01:02:34]  And even since 2000, with the Supreme Court decision there of Bush v. Gore through 2021, the Supreme Court does not have majority of people who say they have quite a lot of trust or a decent amount of trust in the institution and has lost about 12 points.
[01:02:52]  It's a downward trend.
[01:02:53]  It's probably going to continue.
[01:02:55]  And the problem is Democrats have been actively, since they've lost control of the court, they've been actively trying to undermine it.
[01:03:03]  I mean, let's just be honest.
[01:03:04]  I mean, whether it's, you know, Chuck Schumer standing on the steps of the Supreme Court, you know, threatening the justices by name, whether it's this push among Democrats in Congress to, you know, court reform something that Joe Biden backed when he came into office, which is basically packing the court.
[01:03:19]  They're going to add as many justices as they deem necessary to win back a majority on that court to get the decisions that they want.
[01:03:27]  And so this has been a constant barrage.
[01:03:30]  And to your point, it is undermining an institution that we very much need in this country to be as nonpartisan.
[01:03:41]  But unfortunately, the court's been politicized, become politicized, as has everything, including all aspects of our government, the Justice Department, all of our intelligence services and the likes.
[01:03:51]  And so it's an unfortunate trend and it's going to continue because that's just where we are.
[01:03:56]  And Democrats have been the ones, at least as far as the Supreme Court goes, that have been actively undermining it for the last few years.
[01:04:04]  So on the subject of whether abortion is the thing that will appear to the Democrat base and the swing voters, I don't think it is either.

=== Federal Rights and Legislative Battles (14:45) ===

[01:04:12]  I think if this is your issue, you're pro-choice and your hardcore pro-choice and like this is your single issue voter thing.
[01:04:22]  You don't live in a red state.
[01:04:23]  You don't.
[01:04:24]  You wouldn't.
[01:04:25]  Your values wouldn't align.
[01:04:27]  I'm not saying in every single case, but in the vast majority of cases, you did not choose Mississippi as your home to settle down with your family in.
[01:04:34]  And there's a reason why generally in the red states, the voters are pro-life.
[01:04:40]  And in the blue states, the voters tend to be more pro-choice.
[01:04:43]  The laws of each respective state tend to reflect the will and opinion of the voters.
[01:04:50]  And that's as it should be.
[01:04:51]  And that's as you would expect it to be in a federalist society like ours, in a republic, a Democratic republic where the states get to make up their own minds about on most issues about how things are going to go.
[01:05:01]  So maybe they're going to rally like more Democrats to go to the polls in New York, but they don't need that.
[01:05:09]  It's like, you don't really need that at the federal level.
[01:05:11]  This isn't going to be a federal issue.
[01:05:13]  So I don't think this is going to be the issue.
[01:05:15]  I also think that in no scenario, realistically, is this going to be illegal on a national basis?
[01:05:21]  No matter what rattlings we're hearing about what the feds might do, it's not going to go national one way or the other.
[01:05:26]  So this is going to maybe spur turnout in the local races, but not in the congressional midterms.
[01:05:33]  I mean, am I wrong, Tom?
[01:05:35]  Well, I think, again, where Democrats think that they can win some ground back, which they've lost, is in the suburbs, right?
[01:05:43]  This is particularly among moderate suburban women, right?
[01:05:47]  You look at a certain age.
[01:05:50]  Yeah, well, of a certain age.
[01:05:52]  No, no, no, because this is my theory.
[01:05:53]  This is what, this is part of my theory.
[01:05:55]  Younger women tend to care more about abortion rights.
[01:05:57]  Younger women, women who are in their 20s and 30s, who actually might need an abortion, are the ones who are the biggest advocates of abortion rights.
[01:06:04]  And as women tend to get older and they tend to have their own families, I've seen this anecdotally and in polls, it just seems like it's less of a top priority.
[01:06:13]  I think I would agree with that.
[01:06:15]  But again, you look at a state like a purple state like Arizona.
[01:06:18]  We just mentioned the Scottsdale suburbs, suburbs of Phoenix.
[01:06:21]  You look at a place like Georgia, suburbs of Atlanta.
[01:06:25]  I mean, this is where the Democrats, and again, those are areas that they made up a lot of ground during the Trump years, but have given background over the last year and a half, the first term of this administration.
[01:06:36]  So, but to your point, I think, you know, we've already seen the story that I mentioned earlier, and we've seen prior to the leak of the draft, polling showed, Quinnipiac had a poll out last week that showed that inflation was the number one issue by far, 31%, an order of magnitude higher than anything else.
[01:06:58]  The next highest was immigration, like 10 or 11.
[01:07:01]  Abortion was tied for ninth out of 13 issues listed.
[01:07:04]  It's just not an issue now.
[01:07:06]  Is that going to jump up?
[01:07:07]  Of course it will.
[01:07:08]  We'll see how high it rises.
[01:07:09]  We'll see how long it lasts.
[01:07:12]  But as other issues have sort of risen up in the mind of the public, whether it's been Ukraine, for example, or COVID, which was the number one issue for a long time and is now at the bottom of the list, we'll see how that issue probably fades, particularly is it going to sublimate the economy?
[01:07:32]  Is it going to sublimate inflation as the number one issue?
[01:07:36]  Very, very, very unlikely.
[01:07:37]  I don't see that happening.
[01:07:38]  And so there are just bigger concerns out there.
[01:07:42]  And again, when people see this guy isn't going to fall or the states that they live in aren't going to necessarily outlaw abortion altogether or what have you, it's not going to become the handman's tail.
[01:07:53]  I think it'll be even more of or even less of an issue for voters as they approach the midterms.
[01:08:01]  But again, in some swing states, this is where Democrats think they can recover some ground.
[01:08:05]  It's not just blue states.
[01:08:06]  It's in those suburbs.
[01:08:08]  But we'll see whether happens.
[01:08:10]  I think it might happen on the margins, but it's not going to be enough to do much of anything.
[01:08:14]  A lot of the political cake is already baked.
[01:08:18]  We're just about five months away from the election now.
[01:08:20]  And unless until something changes with inflation, I mean, that's the ballgame.
[01:08:24]  Yeah, you talk about kitchen table issues driving elections.
[01:08:27]  That's been a phrase in politics forever.
[01:08:29]  And that's like you picture the woman sitting at the kitchen table looking at the bills thinking, I'm stressed.
[01:08:36]  I don't know how I'm going to pay these.
[01:08:37]  I can't pay my gas bill.
[01:08:39]  I can't pay my electric bill.
[01:08:40]  I can't pay my grocery bill.
[01:08:42]  I'm making the same money as I used to make, but my expenses have gone way up.
[01:08:46]  I mean, that's what's happening right now.
[01:08:48]  And especially to my point of like the older women, abortion's not front and center.
[01:08:52]  That's not their main issue at that point in their life.
[01:08:54]  Even 40s and beyond tends to be less of a thing, just given the way biology works.
[01:08:59]  Are those people, and those tend to be the voters, right?
[01:09:01]  Young voters are traditionally hard to get to go to the polls and so on.
[01:09:04]  So are those people really going to change their vote when they're mad about the inflation and they're mad about the crime rate in their neighborhood from red to blue?
[01:09:14]  When abortions are not about to be banned in all 50 states and they know that if they're paying any sort of attention, that's not what's going to happen.
[01:09:23]  I just don't see it.
[01:09:24]  But did Mitch McConnell hurt the Republican argument this weekend?
[01:09:30]  Because the left-wing media is really enjoying this soundbite of his, where he came out and said, this is the headline.
[01:09:39]  He acknowledges a national abortion ban is possible if Roe is overturned.
[01:09:46]  I don't know if I agree with that characterization, but here's what he said.
[01:09:49]  He told reporters, hold on, let me jump.
[01:09:53]  Okay.
[01:09:53]  He was speaking with USA Today.
[01:09:55]  If the leaked opinion becomes the final opinion, legislative bodies, not only at the state level, but at the federal level, certainly could legislate in that area.
[01:10:06]  And if this were the final decision, that was the point, that it, that was the point, that it should be resolved one way or another in the legislative process.
[01:10:17]  So in response to the question of whether a national ban is possible, he said, yeah, it's possible.
[01:10:26]  And then said, no carve out on the filibuster, even if the Republicans take over.
[01:10:31]  In other words, if the Republicans take over the Senate, he would not end the filibuster to pass legislation on abortion.
[01:10:36]  The same situation the Democrats are in now, where they can't get legislation through that would make abortion legal in all 50 states because there's a filibuster and they can't break it.
[01:10:45]  And Jensaki says, even if they break the filibuster or get rid of it, she says we still don't have the votes.
[01:10:51]  Anyway, I'll tell you, as I look at those remarks, I say, why would he say we wouldn't have the power at the federal level when the Democrats are talking about doing that right now?
[01:11:03]  My guess is as the Republican leader of the Senate, he doesn't want to say what's good for the goose.
[01:11:08]  You know what I mean?
[01:11:09]  He wants to say, we've got that arrow to fire too if you decide to go crazy and try to make this a national issue when it should be a states issue.
[01:11:18]  But maybe I'm being too generous.
[01:11:21]  You might be.
[01:11:22]  Look, Mitch McConnell is a smart guy and he knows what's going on, but even smart people sometimes say stupid things.
[01:11:26]  And this is one of those cases, I think, as he's sort of pontificating and opining about legislative bodies in the state at the federal level and what they can and can't do.
[01:11:35]  And that this decision would just open it up for bodies, legislative bodies to make laws.
[01:11:42]  I think he sort of put his foot in it there.
[01:11:43]  And as you mentioned, the media is making hay of it because they're very much aligned with the Democrats, I think, on this issue.
[01:11:51]  But yeah, I mean, the line for Republicans should be in Washington and everywhere else is that this is, you know, it's going to be left up to the states, which is where it should be, right?
[01:12:01]  And if Democrats want to pass a national legislation codifying Roe v. Wade, then they absolutely have the right to do that and they're welcome to give it a go.
[01:12:11]  And as you point out, they're going to try and do that, even though they know they don't have the votes to do it.
[01:12:18]  And the question is, you know, are they going to are they going to nuke the legislative filibuster or try and do that?
[01:12:24]  I don't think they would have the votes to do that if the ensuing vote wasn't going to pass.
[01:12:29]  So that would be invoking that option for, you know, for no reason or for nothing.
[01:12:35]  So yeah, I think it was a mistake by the majority leader to prattle on about that.
[01:12:40]  He probably could have been more succinct and helped Republicans.
[01:12:44]  But again, a lot of these conversations have already been happening around the country.
[01:12:49]  It is definitely going to be, there's no question the Democrats are going to try and use this as best they can during the election.
[01:12:55]  They will run ads on it.
[01:12:56]  They might even use Mitch McConnell's soundbite saying yes.
[01:13:01]  So we'll have to see.
[01:13:03]  But again, I just don't think it's going to matter much at the end.
[01:13:06]  You mentioned, I mean, immigration, I mentioned, is number two issue among people.
[01:13:09]  That is a much bigger issue for people than abortion is right now and will probably continue to be, particularly because right now it's an issue.
[01:13:17]  We've got Title 42 coming up and it splits.
[01:13:19]  It's an issue that splits Democrats.
[01:13:20]  It's coming at the worst possible time.
[01:13:22]  And then you throw crime and education on top of that.
[01:13:24]  And those are the issues that voters care about most.
[01:13:28]  And right now, Republicans have an advantage on all four of those issues, according to the latest Washington Post poll.
[01:13:34]  Okay, but this is all very interesting to me because those issues, you're right, they've been driving the poll numbers for a long time.
[01:13:39]  I've been watching it too.
[01:13:42]  They're about to be shoved down in the national media in a major way because the Supreme Court's got more decisions to issue.
[01:13:48]  June's going to be big.
[01:13:50]  And this is a conservative court now.
[01:13:51]  And they've got gun rights.
[01:13:52]  They've got religious rights, First Amendment.
[01:13:55]  And then, of course, the abortion decision, which I remind the audience, is not yet out.
[01:13:59]  That was a draft that was leaked.
[01:14:00]  We don't know what the court is actually going to rule.
[01:14:03]  So all these sort of, forgive me, I'll refer to them as like old school culture issues.
[01:14:07]  These are like yesteryear's culture issues, you know, that used to make like the Rudy Giulianis of the world say, well, I'm like a more socially liberal Republican.
[01:14:17]  You know, I'm fiscally conservative and I'm pro a strong national security sect, but I'm pro-choice and I'm pro-gay marriage.
[01:14:25]  That was sort of the old Rudy Giuliani.
[01:14:28]  The Republican Party and the partisan wars have changed since then.
[01:14:32]  And now the Democrats have been saddled with wokeism, which is like, I've got to not put boy or girl down on my birth certificate now, or otherwise I'm a bigot.
[01:14:40]  You know, I've got to let my kid figure it out, despite the fact that we can see a penis and all this weird radical race essentialism and so on.
[01:14:49]  So the Supreme Court's kind of giving them a gift if these cases go the way we think they're going to.
[01:14:54]  I think they're going to line up almost uniformly on the Republican side, the conservative side, and the press will have a heyday with it.
[01:15:00]  And I think we're going to have a summer of trying to make today's Republicans who are emerging as like working class warriors and fighting back for parents' rights against weird wokeism in school and so on into yesteryear's Republicans who want to like take away your contraception, take away your right to an abortion, take away gay marriage, bring prayer right into the schools, walk around every city in the nation sporting a gun and open carry.
[01:15:30]  That's how the left will portray all of this.
[01:15:32]  What do you make of it?
[01:15:34]  I just don't think it's going to work.
[01:15:36]  I just don't, you know, Republicans, I'm sorry, Democrats have been have been running that playbook for a long time.
[01:15:42]  And you remember, you know, not too long ago, it was the year of the woman.
[01:15:46]  Remember Mark Udall in Colorado?
[01:15:48]  They called him Mark Uterus because he talked about women's rights and abortion the entire time.
[01:15:52]  It just, it didn't work.
[01:15:55]  If those issues aligned with the public's concerns, then perhaps it would have more traction, more purchase, right?
[01:16:04]  But when inflation is the number one issue and you've got a situation where, again, gas prices, food prices, all of these things, people are having trouble.
[01:16:14]  And Democrats are talking about culture issues.
[01:16:21]  They're going to come across as out of touch with the American public.
[01:16:26]  And that's not where you want to be.
[01:16:27]  And so the other thing that the problem the Democrats have is there's no one else to blame.
[01:16:31]  I mean, they control the House, they control the Senate, they control the White House.
[01:16:35]  And so even if there was, you know, even if Republicans had won those two Senate seats and had a slim majority in the House or in the Senate, you know, at least Democrats could try and blame Republicans for something, but there is no one else to blame.
[01:16:50]  And so I just don't think that, you know, we've already seen Biden has now taken to calling Republicans the ultimate, the Ultima MAGA movement, right?
[01:16:59]  They're going to try and invoke Donald Trump's name.
[01:17:01]  They're going to invoke January 6th.
[01:17:03]  They're going to talk about how authoritarian, how fascist Republicans are.
[01:17:07]  They can't be trusted to be put back in power.
[01:17:11]  It didn't work in Virginia.
[01:17:12]  It didn't work in New Jersey.
[01:17:14]  It hasn't worked in some of these special elections.
[01:17:16]  I don't think it's going to work in November.
[01:17:19]  It might work in some of these races, depending on who the candidates are, but across the board, it's not going to work because it's not addressing the issue that people are most, whether you're Republican or Democrat.
[01:17:31]  And this is the other thing.
[01:17:32]  I mean, it's more of a these days in the Republican Party.
[01:17:36]  I think this is one of the things that Donald Trump has done is we've seen Hispanic voters fleeing the Democrats.
[01:17:42]  We've seen numbers that suggest African Americans, some are as well, because it's more of a class issue.
[01:17:48]  It's more of an economics issue.
[01:17:50]  It doesn't matter what race you are.
[01:17:51]  It's, are you better off than you were before economically?
[01:17:55]  And who do you trust to better handle the current economic situation?
[01:18:00]  And Democrats are not, they're not inspiring a lot of confidence in the public right now.
[01:18:06]  The other thing is, Mitch McConnell just gave the Democrats a gift with that soundbite.
[01:18:11]  However, he meant it.
[01:18:13]  It'll be bastardized and used against him and other Republicans at the national level because this is about to become a state's issue, as it used to be, as it should be in my view, if the Supreme Court opinion goes as the draft suggests.
[01:18:25]  So he's the one who now sort of says, well, maybe the federal feds will ban it.
[01:18:30]  That, again, in my view, is because the Democrats are now saying at the federal level, they're going to try to make it legal nationwide.
[01:18:36]  So of course he'd keep in his back pocket, if we get control, maybe we'll make it illegal nationwide.
[01:18:41]  Okay, so just saying.
[01:18:42]  So he's given them a gift on that front.
[01:18:44]  But I do think it matters who's in the Senate, right?
[01:18:49]  And we are seeing that now with respect to the Supreme Court.
[01:18:53]  The reason these justices got on the high court is because there was a Republican president, the last three, who nominated them.

=== JD Vance and Ohio Politics (15:33) ===

[01:18:58]  And there was a Senate, a Republican-controlled Senate that got them in and approved them.
[01:19:04]  And you look back at each of the Trump confirmation hearings, Trump nominee confirmation hearings, and it's crazy.
[01:19:10]  Like Neil Gorsuch, that's a Mitch McConnell gift to the Republican Party, right?
[01:19:15]  It was supposed to be Merrick Garland under Barack Obama.
[01:19:18]  McConnell wouldn't give him the hearing, saying it's an election year.
[01:19:21]  This is, we're not doing that.
[01:19:22]  There's historical precedence for this.
[01:19:24]  That's how we got Neil Gorsuch on the court under Trump.
[01:19:28]  Then comes Justice Kavanaugh, Brett Kavanaugh, who the Democrats did everything to try to stop.
[01:19:34]  He was going to change the balance.
[01:19:35]  They pulled out every stop possible to try to get him.
[01:19:39]  Trump would not be bent.
[01:19:41]  It was a pivotal moment for a lot of us watching.
[01:19:44]  He would not cave.
[01:19:45]  He stood behind his nominee, who is now one of the five votes.
[01:19:49]  So is Gorsuch.
[01:19:50]  Then comes Amy Coney Barrett, right before Ruth Bader Ginsburg dies, right before the election.
[01:19:57]  They didn't want it to go through.
[01:19:59]  Trump pushed it through.
[01:20:00]  In four weeks, they got Amy Coney Barrett on.
[01:20:04]  I mean, it was kind of a miracle.
[01:20:06]  And those three are all in the majority confirmed by Republican Senate.
[01:20:11]  So, I mean, elections do matter, Tom.
[01:20:14]  We're going to be hearing a lot about that.
[01:20:15]  That's why the Democrats say it's an illegitimate court.
[01:20:18]  Well, it was craftily done, but it's not illegitimate.
[01:20:22]  But that actually could potentially inspire some voters, I guess, if this is your big issue, these types of cultural things, and you're doing okay in the wallet, which would be the only way you're paying attention to this stuff.
[01:20:34]  Yeah, I mean, the court is always a rallying cry for both sides.
[01:20:39]  And look, under a Democratic administration, you know, it's a Republican Senate would be able to perhaps stop some folks.
[01:20:51]  But the Senate's a little bit, you know, is going to be, I think Republicans are still a favorite, but not as much of a heavy favorite as they are in the House.
[01:20:59]  And if Republicans get control of either chamber, right, along with that comes in the Senate, obviously, you have the judiciary.
[01:21:06]  And to your point, that is a big deal.
[01:21:08]  But if you get control of the House, there will be oversight.
[01:21:11]  And that's another thing that, you know, it's going to be a different world in November if Republicans win one or both of the chambers.
[01:21:20]  It'll be a completely different political landscape, different issue mix.
[01:21:23]  And obviously, this administration is going to be subject to the kind of scrutiny that it has not faced to this point.
[01:21:30]  I do want to pick it up there right after this break.
[01:21:32]  I mean, Justice Thomas is in his 70s.
[01:21:35]  Brear, I think, is the oldest and he's retiring.
[01:21:38]  And then there's Justice Thomas.
[01:21:39]  And, you know, I don't know whether he is going to stay for another administration.
[01:21:44]  If Joe Biden or the Democrats were to win a second term, would Justice Thomas stay?
[01:21:49]  I'm sure he would never willingly pass the baton under a Democratic administration.
[01:21:54]  But look, Ruth Bader Ginsburg felt that way and life does what it does.
[01:22:00]  In any event, even if one justice on the Republican side were to retire or pass on, it wouldn't change the balance right now.
[01:22:07]  The Dems need two.
[01:22:09]  Okay, we're going to pick it up with what the midterms look like and what will it mean if the Republicans take back the House and or the Senate.
[01:22:17]  More with Tom Bevin, the man in the know, right after this quick break.
[01:22:23]  All right, Tom, all eyes are on the midterms.
[01:22:25]  The terms were, what, you know, six months away or so.
[01:22:29]  And there was big news last week in Ohio when JD Vance, the Trump-backed candidate, won against two other Republicans with whom he'd been slugging it out.
[01:22:37]  The Trump endorsement really seemed to help him.
[01:22:39]  It's funny how much the liberal media is like, it's a test.
[01:22:41]  It's the Mar-a-Lago primary.
[01:22:43]  It's a test of Trump.
[01:22:44]  And then when JD Vance, the Trump-backed candidate wins, it's like crickets, crickets.
[01:22:49]  They wanted to be able to say Trump's run out of power and influence.
[01:22:52]  They're dying to be able to say that.
[01:22:53]  And they cannot say that.
[01:22:55]  And people now looking at Dr. Oz in Pennsylvania.
[01:22:58]  What does it mean for him?
[01:22:59]  What does it mean for other Trump-backed candidates going into the midterms?
[01:23:03]  What say you?
[01:23:04]  Well, it was a great night for Trump last week.
[01:23:07]  I mean, he went 14 for 14 in Ohio.
[01:23:09]  Not just JD Vance, but other Republicans that he backed in these House races won some of them big upsets and convincingly.
[01:23:18]  And so, and you're right.
[01:23:20]  I mean, he picked JD Vance up off the floor.
[01:23:22]  He was languishing in third place, you know, in the middle of April and went straight to the top.
[01:23:27]  Now, JD Vance was a good candidate, though, in some ways.
[01:23:30]  I mean, he obviously said some nasty stuff about Trump, but Trump addressed that by, you know, in his famous way.
[01:23:38]  Dr. Oz.
[01:23:39]  If I didn't back anybody who had ever criticized me, there'd be nobody.
[01:23:43]  Yeah.
[01:23:44]  Said he said some nasty stuff, but he didn't use the word stuff.
[01:23:48]  But Dr. Oz is a little different.
[01:23:49]  I mean, you can definitely sense that, you know, Republicans, even people who like Donald Trump a lot in Pennsylvania were mystified by his choice of Oz over David McCormick and also Kathy Barnett.
[01:24:04]  Don't sleep on her.
[01:24:05]  The latest poll, Trafalgar poll came out yesterday, has her at like 22%.
[01:24:10]  Oz is up two points, but it's a three-way race there right now.
[01:24:15]  And I think it's within the margin of error.
[01:24:17]  So anything can happen in Pennsylvania, which is a week from tomorrow.
[01:24:21]  And so, you know, and the other race that people point to about Trump's influence is the governor's race in Georgia, where, you know, Trump very much wants to have Brian Kemp not win re-election, but Trump's candidate Purdue is not doing as well as many people thought he would do.
[01:24:40]  But yeah, this whole month, I mean, we've got beyond Pennsylvania.
[01:24:43]  You've got North Carolina.
[01:24:44]  You've got Arizona, Missouri.
[01:24:47]  Sorry, Arizona's in August, Missouri.
[01:24:50]  But a lot of Trump endorsements are going to be on the line this month.
[01:24:53]  So I think we'll see when the dust settles how well he does.
[01:24:57]  But he certainly got off to a good start in Ohio last week.
[01:25:00]  And do we think Ohio is an outlier just given its demographics and it's turning more and more red and has been for some time?
[01:25:07]  It wouldn't surprise anybody to see Trump's influence still big there.
[01:25:11]  But what do you, what are the early signs in terms of his influence in these other states, even outside of Pennsylvania, which is more purple?
[01:25:20]  Yeah, I mean, the candidate he endorsed North Carolina, Ted Budd, is sort of running away with there.
[01:25:24]  And that's a state that's been trending Republican, you know, over the last couple cycles.
[01:25:30]  I mentioned, you know, I mentioned Georgia.
[01:25:33]  That's obviously now a famously purple state.
[01:25:36]  Herschel Walker seems to be holding up pretty well thus far.
[01:25:40]  Obviously, in the primary, he's crushing it.
[01:25:44]  But there are questions about whether he'll be, you know, he'll be one of those general election candidates that is able to get it done or not.
[01:25:50]  I mean, we've seen this in repeated cycles that Republicans will invariably shoot themselves in the foot in one or two Senate races.
[01:25:58]  You think of Sharon Angle in Nevada.
[01:26:00]  You think of Christine O'Donnell in Delaware or Todd Aiken, Richard Murdoch.
[01:26:03]  I mean, you can go down the list.
[01:26:05]  They invariably nominate a candidate for whatever reason, because of their profile, their past, or things they say on the trail, just cannot get the job done, even in a good Republican year.
[01:26:19]  And that's certainly what this is going to be.
[01:26:20]  So I think when all is said and done, Trump's going to end up his endorsement.
[01:26:26]  He may not, he's not going to be perfect, I don't think, but he'll be close to it.
[01:26:30]  I think his strength within the Republican Party is still very real.
[01:26:35]  And I think the folks who are establishment-backed candidates are fighting an uphill battle at this point.
[01:26:43]  But meanwhile, both sides do it because you just had this guy, Ryan, the Democrat in Ohio, suggesting to run against JD Vance now, suggesting to Brett Baer that he's for abortion all the way through the ninth month, which is just be up to the mother, which is definitely not in line with Ohio voters.
[01:26:59]  So, you know, both sides say these outrageous things where you're like, wait, what?
[01:27:02]  What did he just say?
[01:27:03]  And like, they don't take them back.
[01:27:05]  They don't try to, you know, they don't do a very good job of cleaning them up.
[01:27:08]  So you got to, you got to believe that they stand by them.
[01:27:11]  All right.
[01:27:12]  So what's your feeling right now?
[01:27:13]  On you still feel like the Republicans are definitely taking over the House, yes?
[01:27:18]  Oh, yeah.
[01:27:19]  I mean, there's a political article this morning that said, you know, Democrats, you know, these are the races they need to have a chance at holding the House.
[01:27:27]  And I tweeted that famous Jim Carrey GIF of him in Dumber Dumber.
[01:27:33]  We're saying, you know, you mean there's still a chance?
[01:27:36]  You still got a chance?
[01:27:37]  What you're saying is there's a chance.
[01:27:39]  Yeah.
[01:27:41]  Look, I don't think there's any pundit or prognosticator or political watcher who thinks that the Democrats have a realistic chance.
[01:27:48]  I mean, you just look at the, you look at the toss-up races, go to Cook Political maybe and check out their ratings.
[01:27:54]  They've got 18 Democratic toss-up races, eight Republican toss-up races.
[01:27:58]  So if Republicans just manage to split the toss-ups, they lose four of theirs and they win nine of the 18 Democratic seats.
[01:28:06]  There's your five seats.
[01:28:07]  I mean, there's your Republican majority.
[01:28:10]  And on top of that, you've got eight more seats that are Democratically held that are rated leans or likely Republican and only one going in the other direction.
[01:28:22]  So it's just incredibly hard for Democrats to have any chance of maintaining a majority.
[01:28:28]  I mean, to lose only four seats in this environment with redistricting and as I mentioned, you know, inflation, economy, all that driving the day.
[01:28:37]  I just think they have, if the election were held today, now things could still change.
[01:28:41]  Six months is a lot of time.
[01:28:42]  I always like to throw that caveat in there.
[01:28:45]  But right now, I mean, it's, yeah, they have very little chance of approaching zero.
[01:28:51]  I'll just give the Senate one second.
[01:28:52]  But when you mentioned redistricting, you know, the Democrats did a very good job of it.
[01:28:57]  The Republicans tried to do some as well.
[01:28:59]  The Democrats have seen some of theirs knocked down by courts, which has been kind of interesting to watch because they've been too clever by half in their attempts.
[01:29:09]  And the courts have been like, yeah, no, these lines make absolutely no sense.
[01:29:14]  So I'm sure you've been keeping a closer eye on it than I have, but how has that shaken out the attempts to sort of jerry rig the election by changing the voting lines, Democrats versus Republicans?
[01:29:27]  Yeah, I mean, Democrats were really aggressive.
[01:29:30]  I mean, in my home state here of Illinois, they drew some crazy districts.
[01:29:34]  New York, too.
[01:29:36]  Yeah, New York, too.
[01:29:37]  Maryland is another one.
[01:29:39]  You know, and Republicans, Republicans did the same in some of their, you know, North Carolina and obviously what Ron DeSantis did in Florida.
[01:29:47]  And I think that's going to be challenging courts.
[01:29:48]  So we'll see.
[01:29:50]  You know, part of my gripe about this, which is always my gripe, is the media, you know, and the idea that when Republicans gerrymander, when Democrats do it, it's just, you know, it's them exercising power.
[01:30:03]  When Republicans do it, it's it's the, you know, it's, it's racism, it's voter suppression, it's the end of democracy.
[01:30:10]  Look, this is what parties do.
[01:30:12]  And it is an unfortunate feature of our democracy that you, that this is the way that we do it.
[01:30:18]  And it's leading to less and less competitive districts.
[01:30:21]  I mean, personally, I would like to see, you know, I was always held up as the gold standard.
[01:30:26]  They've got a nonpartisan commission that redistricts or sets their districts.
[01:30:32]  And we'd love to see more of that so they're not drawing these ridiculously crazy districts and keep them more compact and uniform.
[01:30:41]  But that's just kind of not where we are.
[01:30:44]  But I think the net of this is that Republicans ended up with a slight advantage on redistricting.
[01:30:49]  Initially, it looked like Democrats were going to come out with a little bit of advantage.
[01:30:52]  And then that kind of got wiped away with what happened late in Florida.
[01:30:56]  So, and again, only having to win, I mean, you go look at the historical average of first-term incumbents, you know, they're facing their midterms.
[01:31:06]  It's like 28 seats that the party typically loses in about two and a half Senate seats.
[01:31:11]  So historically speaking, it'd be very, very tough for Democrats to get to a point where they, you know, held their losses even to 10 or 15 seats.
[01:31:23]  That would even be a miracle, but that would also mean a Republican majority in the House of Representatives.
[01:31:27]  That's right.
[01:31:27]  That's right.
[01:31:28]  And there's all sorts of investigations already being promised into Fauci and others.
[01:31:33]  The Senate is the big question and a lot tighter.
[01:31:37]  How's that looking right now?
[01:31:40]  You know, it's better for Democrats, but still not great.
[01:31:44]  You've got seven toss-up seats.
[01:31:46]  I think four Democrats, three Republicans.
[01:31:49]  And, you know, the Democrats are the ones that we've been talking about.
[01:31:51]  It's Mark Kelly in Arizona.
[01:31:53]  It's Catherine Cortez-Masto in Nevada.
[01:31:55]  It's Raphael Warnock in Georgia.
[01:31:57]  And it's Maggie Hassan in New Hampshire.
[01:31:59]  And then on the Republican side, you've got an open seat in North Carolina, which we talked about the primary there, open seat in Pennsylvania.
[01:32:07]  And then you've got Ron Johnson, who's running in Wisconsin.
[01:32:10]  That's considered a, you know, Wisconsin's been a 50-50 state.
[01:32:14]  I would, you know, Ron Johnson is an incumbent, which makes it, you know, a little bit better for Republicans than an open seat.
[01:32:22]  But, you know, again, these Democrats are all in very, very tough races because, you know, I think Democrats would like to look back to recent history, 2018, where, you know, Republicans really got thrashed in the House, 40 plus seats in the House, but picked up two Senate seats.
[01:32:39]  And you go back and look at that.
[01:32:40]  And, you know, this is what Trump said, it was a red wave.
[01:32:43]  It was a blue wave in the House.
[01:32:44]  It was sort of like a red ripple in the Senate.
[01:32:47]  And the reason that was, is, is the states that were in play, Like Missouri, for example, they could really sort of flex their partisan muscles, right?
[01:32:57]  You know, in rural areas, it wasn't just in the suburbs where Republicans lost a lot of these House seats in 2018.
[01:33:05]  They were in more red states.
[01:33:06]  The problem for Democrats is these states are not blue states.
[01:33:09]  They're very much purple states.
[01:33:11]  I mean, Arizona and Georgia and Nevada and New Hampshire are states that are basically two, three-point states, maybe even less than that.
[01:33:20]  And so there isn't a lot of, and they have, they have Republican DNA in them.
[01:33:24]  So I think they're going to be, it's going to be a struggle for Democrats to win those seats.
[01:33:30]  And, you know, if the landscape is as bad in November as it is right now, people aren't even talking about Bennett in Colorado, which is another seat that could potentially come on the board late and be a real struggle.
[01:33:47]  You've got Washington state's another one that is considered probably safe for Democrats.
[01:33:54]  But in this kind of environment, we don't know.
[01:33:57]  We know it's bad, but we don't know how bad it is, how bad it'll be for Democrats.
[01:34:02]  Right now, in the House, you're looking at anything that's like a, you know, any Biden, any district that Biden won by 10 points or less is potentially, you know, in play, given what we saw in Virginia and New Jersey about a 10 to 12 point shift.
[01:34:18]  So I think it's, I think the Senate is, the Republicans are the favorite to take the Senate.
[01:34:22]  There's no question.
[01:34:22]  They're just not a strong favorite as they are in the House.
[01:34:26]  And meanwhile, the issue that you keep mentioning, inflation, they're doing very little about, right?

=== Inflation Concerns and Republican Strategy (03:55) ===

[01:34:32]  The Fed raises interest rates a little bit.
[01:34:34]  They're not nowhere near enough to actually change what's happening on the inflationary front.
[01:34:39]  And immigration, we're about to go in the wrong direction.
[01:34:42]  We're lifting Title 42.
[01:34:43]  We're going to, at the end of May is when that's happening.
[01:34:45]  So things are not going to get better.
[01:34:47]  Maorkis keeps telling us, so we've got it under control.
[01:34:49]  No one believes that.
[01:34:50]  If you have it under control, why is it so bad?
[01:34:52]  Why is it at record levels of bad?
[01:34:54]  Before we lift that, those are issues people really do care about and that drive voters to the polls.
[01:35:01]  Not as much abortion, but on top of that, you've got a very woke administration that's very luxury and judgy and interfering with parents in the school boards and so on.
[01:35:12]  And you've got disinformation departments, stuff that hits people in their personal lives in a way that maybe the abortion motivates some Democrats.
[01:35:21]  This stuff motivates a lot of Republicans.
[01:35:23]  That's why we saw Glenn Young surge to victory in Virginia.
[01:35:29]  That's right.
[01:35:29]  And we're going to get another inflation number on Wednesday.
[01:35:33]  It's expected to be a little bit less than March, which was 8.5.
[01:35:37]  It's supposed to be 8.1.
[01:35:38]  But 8.1 is still disaster territory for Democrats.
[01:35:44]  I mean, that number has to come down a lot between now and November for this.
[01:35:49]  And Biden's going to give a speech about it.
[01:35:52]  He's talking about it more often, which I think is probably smart and good.
[01:35:57]  But to your point, there's not a lot that he can do.
[01:36:01]  Some of the things that he's, you know, that have caused inflation, you know, first the administration, I mean, they've literally just bungled this from the beginning.
[01:36:08]  When inflation started percolating as an issue last spring, they said, no, it doesn't exist.
[01:36:13]  And then they said it's, you know, oh, it's temporary.
[01:36:15]  At the end of the year, Biden said it had peaked at 6.8%.
[01:36:19]  And then, as I mentioned, it went up to 8.5%.
[01:36:23]  They've taken sort of a dismissive attitude that, you know, oh, well, that's an upper class problem.
[01:36:28]  Remember, Jen Sock, even to supply chain issues.
[01:36:32]  They just haven't.
[01:36:33]  And then they were blaming it on Putin, which clearly, you know, the American people didn't buy.
[01:36:38]  And now, you know, Trump's going to sort of shift it and try and blame Republicans for it and say they can't be put in power.
[01:36:46]  So I just think the administration has not, meanwhile, it rose quickly to the top concern among Americans as they dealt with higher gas prices.
[01:36:56]  And, you know, it's one of those things when you fill up your tank and it costs $70 or $100 the first time, it's like, whoa, you know, wow, that's a lot.
[01:37:07]  It's more shock.
[01:37:08]  When you've done it 10, 20, 50 times, there's a cumulative effect and it turns to anger.
[01:37:16]  And why am I still paying this much?
[01:37:18]  And so we've gotten into the anger territory now where people are, and the Washington Post poll that came out last week showed this.
[01:37:25]  I mean, I think it was like 44% of people are not just concerned about inflation.
[01:37:29]  They're upset by it.
[01:37:30]  I mean, it really is starting to piss people off.
[01:37:32]  And the administration, again, hasn't done what I think is matched the level of urgency.
[01:37:38]  I mean, Joe Biden should have set up a commission.
[01:37:40]  He should have an inflation czar.
[01:37:42]  He should be talking about it every day.
[01:37:43]  Here are the things we're trying to do.
[01:37:44]  It should be all over it.
[01:37:46]  Should be all over it.
[01:37:47]  And just to show, because even if you don't believe there's a lot the administration can actually do to bring inflation down, they can at least match the urgency of the American people on the issue.
[01:37:57]  So communicate to them every single day.
[01:38:00]  We're not sleeping until this thing, you know, until we fix this problem.
[01:38:04]  I see it like you're in this svelte 120 pound body and you let somebody else control your body.
[01:38:11]  You let somebody else control your body for a period of time.
[01:38:14]  And before you know it, like in a year, your body comes back to you at 860 pounds.
[01:38:20]  860.
[01:38:21]  You're like, what did you do to my body?
[01:38:23]  And then the next month he says, well, now it's 810 pounds.

=== Show Closing and Listener Thanks (01:05) ===

[01:38:27]  What?
[01:38:28]  I'm not satisfied.
[01:38:30]  And yes, I'm angry.
[01:38:31]  I'm more than concerned.
[01:38:32]  I'm angry.
[01:38:33]  They're going to have to deal with that.
[01:38:35]  No amount of saber rattling about, you know, social issues is going to be enough to turn the tide.
[01:38:41]  Tom, such a pleasure.
[01:38:42]  Thank you so much for what you do.
[01:38:44]  Love Real Killer Politics and your whole team there.
[01:38:46]  Thanks, Megan.
[01:38:47]  Great to be with you.
[01:38:48]  Thanks for joining us today.
[01:38:49]  Tomorrow, my old pal, Judge Napolitano, will be back with us.
[01:38:54]  We used to do, oh, gosh, so many segments together when I was on Fox News.
[01:38:57]  He's always entertaining.
[01:38:58]  I haven't talked to him in forever.
[01:39:00]  Looking forward to our discussion.
[01:39:02]  In the meantime, go ahead and download the Megan Kelly show on Apple, Pandora, Spotify, and Stitcher.
[01:39:06]  Go ahead and leave me a review and a five-star rating there while you're on Apple Podcasts because I read them all and really, really appreciate your feedback and guest suggestions and all of it.
[01:39:16]  And then you can go over to youtube.com in your spare time and slash Megan Kelly and subscribe to the video edition of our show.
[01:39:23]  Thanks so much for listening and we'll talk tomorrow.
[01:39:28]  Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show.
[01:39:30]  No BS, no agenda, and no