| Time | Text |
|---|---|
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Air France Baggage Nightmare
00:14:12
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|
| Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. | |
| Hey, everyone, I'm Megan Kelly. | |
| Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show. | |
| We begin today with air travel and automation annoyance. | |
| One family's story. | |
| Perhaps you decided to travel this summer after two summers of COVID restrictions that made it seem more trouble than it was worth. | |
| Our families right there with you. | |
| With our kids now 8, 11, and 12, this summer seemed like the perfect time to take them on their first big trip overseas. | |
| After comparing air fares and schedules, we decided to fly Air France to Italy. | |
| And despite all sorts of airline troubles in the news, from a pilot shortage to high gas prices to a passenger surge, we got to Florence with virtually no problems. | |
| Had a great time. | |
| Kids got some culture, amazing food, educational sites, and we got to experience the joy of the Italian people, towns, and seaside. | |
| So far, bat in a thousand. | |
| Then came the trip home. | |
| I will spare you the details of Air France's disorganization, lack of communication, long delays, and so on. | |
| The good news is we landed safely at JFK and were grateful for our safe return. | |
| By the way, the Air France airport and airplane staff were all lovely. | |
| Then we went to baggage claim. | |
| For the first time, we had traveled with five bags. | |
| Normally, we do three: one for me, one for Doug, and one for the kids, but they're getting older, and so we got them each their own little roller bag so they could pack their own things and be responsible for their own stuff. | |
| Seemed like a good idea at the time. | |
| Thus, we checked five bags. | |
| At JFK that Saturday evening, we waited at the baggage carousel. | |
| You know that feeling when the bags finally start pouring out of the feeder down onto the conveyor belt, anticipation, trepidation, some pressure to get a good spot on the receiving line, testing your reflexes in order to ensure that you can get in and get out when your treasure rolls by. | |
| We waited patiently as time and our bags we hoped would pass. | |
| And bit by bit, our discouragement swelled. | |
| We waited and we waited. | |
| And can I tell you, not a single one of our five bags appeared. | |
| Not one. | |
| I mean, you have to hand it to Air France. | |
| It's not like they failed on one tiny kid's roller. | |
| All five bags narrow a trace. | |
| We obsequiously approached the baggage claim agent. | |
| If we kill him with kindness, it will surely improve our chances of recovery, right? | |
| He was a nice enough guy, but it turns out he did not work for Air France. | |
| He worked for JFK Baggage Services. | |
| He told us we needed to fill out a claim for each bag and that JFK would deliver them to us once they arrived. | |
| Good news, the team there told us. | |
| It looks like your bags are on Air France 8. | |
| That's the very next flight. | |
| They'll be here in three hours. | |
| Great! | |
| Phew! | |
| What's more, JFK Baggage Services said that they would deliver the bags right to our home once they arrive. | |
| You will? | |
| Really? | |
| That's awesome. | |
| Thank you so much. | |
| We left the airport feeling confident we would be reunited with the bags shortly. | |
| JFK Baggage told us exactly that. | |
| I mean, why wouldn't we be confident? | |
| All in all, a great trip and a safe ride home. | |
| And we knew our bags would be home shortly. | |
| Woke up the next morning, and like a kid looking for the first winter snow, I anxiously peered out the window. | |
| Sure, I would see our five old banged up friends sitting at our front door, no worse for the wear. | |
| Not one, as it turned out, not even one bag was out there. | |
| So much for Air France 8. | |
| I tried calling the JFK baggage services, got the number they had given me, ready with my claim and my baggage numbers, and no one picked up. | |
| Got voicemail, left one with all the relevant details. | |
| No one called me back. | |
| Couple of hours later, left another voicemail, and then another, and then another. | |
| And then I stopped leaving voicemails and just kept calling, hoping a human would eventually pick up and calling and calling. | |
| Guess how many times I called? | |
| 83 times. | |
| After nearly 100 calls, someone finally picked up and had absolutely no idea where our bags were. | |
| There was no record of them in the system at all. | |
| Only Air France knew you're going to have to call them. | |
| Click. | |
| Okay, Air France. | |
| How exactly does one call Air France lost baggage services? | |
| We googled it and found there is no calling them. | |
| There is only their online baggage search tool. | |
| Okay, we'll do that. | |
| And we'll keep calling JFK Baggage Services just in case something shows up there. | |
| My call is to that number, by the way, at JFK, looks like something out of a criminal stalker file. | |
| I'm not proud. | |
| It would not pick up. | |
| Now, it's not like we had the Mona Lisa in our bags, but we were sad at the thought of losing them. | |
| Lots of mementos in there from the trip, the kids' travel journals with their little handwritten notes and memories. | |
| Got a caricature of the three kids in Rome. | |
| My little guy's mini statue of the David. | |
| There were Father's Day presents that the kids cobbled together, which were super fun because we realized too late that Italy doesn't celebrate Father's Day in June. | |
| It was stupid stuff, really, right? | |
| But also kind of sentimental. | |
| And obviously plenty of clothes and jewelry and so on. | |
| Day after day, we waited, waited for word. | |
| I called the JFK baggage services relentlessly, only to get the answering machine each time and waited and waited for word on our Air France claim. | |
| Our travel agent friend tried to contact Air France for us too, with absolutely zero luck. | |
| No one could break through their fortress of non-humans. | |
| On the bright side, one bag did arrive at JFK. | |
| Hooray! | |
| On the dark side, the JFK folks still had zero record of our other bags and had no idea where they might be. | |
| Finally, I did something I have only done one other time in the 14 plus years I have been on Twitter. | |
| I tweet shamed a company. | |
| On Tuesday, June 28th, I tweeted the following at Air France. | |
| Me, hey, at Air France, you managed to lose all of our bags. | |
| Of course, it is impossible to get a human being to help us. | |
| I realize you're busy disappointing, well, everyone, but how about some assistance? | |
| I checked and checked my replies. | |
| Nothing. | |
| Looks like my teenage years all over again. | |
| Finally, as the day ended, a response. | |
| Someone from Air France, a guy named Guillaume. | |
| He told me how sorry Air France was to read my tweet. | |
| And then an offer to help. | |
| Can you please send us a DM with as much information as possible and include your reference number and full contact details? | |
| We will do our best to solve this. | |
| Signed, Guillaume. | |
| Nice. | |
| Now we're getting somewhere, the personal touch. | |
| Just Guillaume? | |
| Just Guillaume and me. | |
| Like we're on a first name basis now. | |
| But wait, how could I DM Guillaume without his last name? | |
| Hmm. | |
| That's a problem. | |
| Oh, wait, he wants me to DM Air France. | |
| Well, that's not as good. | |
| Well, maybe he checks their Twitter account and maybe he's promising to personally follow up somehow. | |
| Now that Guillaume and I are first name basis friends, I do feel better. | |
| I do as instructed. | |
| I send him everything. | |
| The whole story, the claim number, the baggage numbers, all of it. | |
| A response pops up immediately. | |
| Guillaume? | |
| Hello. | |
| I'm Louis, your Air France virtual assistant, and I'm here to guide you. | |
| Smiley Face, what can I help you with today? | |
| Me, where is Guillaume? | |
| He asked that we contact him directly. | |
| Air France, do you have a question about an existing booking? | |
| Me, did you read our earlier DM? | |
| Air France, you can talk to one of our assistants who will do their best to answer you as soon as possible. | |
| Waiting time may vary. | |
| For an immediate and personalized answer, you can also chat with me, Louis, Air France virtual assistant. | |
| Chat with, and then the message ends. | |
| Chat with whom? | |
| What's my other option? | |
| There's no knowing because it's blank. | |
| Just chat with dot dot dot. | |
| Me. | |
| How can we reach Guillaume? | |
| Air France. | |
| Okay, let me pass you over to one of our agents who will get back to you as soon as possible. | |
| I'm thinking, okay, maybe, maybe we're getting somewhere. | |
| It's not exactly Guillaume, but they are passing me on to one of our agents. | |
| That's something, right? | |
| One of our agents is something. | |
| More from Air France, they write. | |
| Please note that due to a large number of requests, we are unable to respond to you within a satisfactory timeframe. | |
| I mean, on some level, you have to respect their honesty. | |
| We are unable to respond to you within a satisfactory timeframe. | |
| Not like we might be unable. | |
| You know, we hope we're able. | |
| Just we can't do it. | |
| A point for candor, though, it does also look a little bit like a typo, so I can't be sure. | |
| Anyway, back to the good news. | |
| I have a new and promising relationship with, quote, one of our agents who will be getting back to me as soon as possible, albeit not within a satisfactory timeframe. | |
| I'll take it. | |
| Wait, more comes in from Air France. | |
| If you wish to modify, cancel your trip, or request a refund, you can do so on our website in the My Booking section. | |
| Me, wait, what? | |
| Air France, for all other questions related to COVID-19, click here. | |
| Me, COVID? | |
| What? | |
| Air France, for any other subject, please renew your request here. | |
| And then absolutely nothing follows. | |
| No link, just more blank space. | |
| Nothing. | |
| Me, what happened to one of our agents? | |
| Where is he or she or they or Zay? | |
| I'll take any one of them. | |
| Shockingly, no one contacted us. | |
| Back onto public Twitter, I go. | |
| Me, Guillaume of Air France sent me this message below to make it look like they were helping. | |
| I DM'd him and got their terrible AI, which just keeps asking me if I want to make a reservation. | |
| Um, no, I want my four lost bags. | |
| Incompetent. | |
| Where is a human to help us? | |
| I'm starting to get annoyed by this point in the process. | |
| Back onto DM as well, restating the back and forth that we had had with fake news, Guillaume, and fake human Lewis. | |
| An Air France reply pops up. | |
| Surely, this is, quote, one of our agents. | |
| A personalized response, letting me know that they're on the case. | |
| I click on the message, the message. | |
| All of our assistants are very busy at the moment. | |
| If you want to keep waiting, we'll keep your spot in the queue. | |
| Do you still need assistance? | |
| Please note, if you do not respond to this message within 24 hours, we will end the conversation. | |
| What? | |
| It turns out one of our agents is rude. | |
| I do still need assistance. | |
| I am responding to the messages. | |
| What do you mean you'll end the conversation? | |
| Like, this conversation is not working for me. | |
| Where are our bags? | |
| Where is a human? | |
| Guillaume? | |
| Louis? | |
| Anyone? | |
| Me. | |
| We want to speak to a human being within the next 24 hours. | |
| Air France, you got it. | |
| Our assistants are working hard to get back to you as soon as possible. | |
| We'll keep your spot in the queue. | |
| Our spot in the queue? | |
| What queue? | |
| The queue is aligned to nowhere. | |
| Back to public Twitter I go, where I tweet about fake news, Guillaume, terrible AI Lewis, and the incompetent Air France. | |
| Guess what? | |
| That finally earned a real response. | |
| Only my public shaming of them got me anywhere, which is deeply problematic since most people do not have this ability. | |
| Air France on public Twitter. | |
| Hello, At Megan Kelly. | |
| Artificial intelligence is only used to start the conversation and respond to the most common requests. | |
| A human agent takes over after a few hours to provide more complex answers. | |
| Be assured we are doing everything possible to solve your baggage delay. | |
| Okay. | |
| They tell me that they think they've found one bag and that JFK will contact us if it arrives. | |
| And it does. | |
| Two out of five now. | |
| Nine days after our arrival back home, but hey, we'll take it. | |
| Two is better than none. | |
| Then, radio silence. | |
| For over a week, nothing. | |
| I'm over the denial and the anger and the bargaining now, and I'm settling into acceptance. | |
| They're lost. | |
| They're gone. | |
| I get it. | |
| It happens. | |
| But three lost bags is kind of a lot. | |
| And still not a single conversation with a real live person. | |
| No one who can answer my questions. | |
| Like, what are the odds the others will show? | |
| Is there no way of knowing where they are with the little tags? | |
| Like a computer system that could tell you they're sitting in Paris? | |
| What's the reimbursement policy? | |
| Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. | |
| Then, on Sunday, like a miracle, a text. | |
| Yes, a text to my phone. | |
| They've had my cell phone all along, those bastards. | |
| A text pops up that reads: All three bags will arrive to your house today. | |
| It's Christmas in July. | |
| Our clothes, our kids' journals, our memories, everything, three bags. | |
| Later that day, sure enough, a delivery. | |
| And guess what was there? | |
| Two bags. | |
| It's not over. | |
| It's never going to be over. | |
| What if I try texting back on my phone? | |
| Okay, sure. | |
| Right. | |
| Yeah, right. | |
| I return to my only option, Twitter DMs. | |
| There I go again. | |
| When I get there, a message is already waiting for me. | |
| What's this? | |
| Could they possibly be on top of the two out of three bag situation? | |
| Air France. | |
| We can see that the rest of the bags have been delivered. | |
| And then, are you satisfied with our social media service? | |
| Me, are you fucking kidding me? | |
| What I actually wrote was: no, we are still missing one bag. | |
| A quick response from Air France. | |
| And what is it? | |
| Hello, I'm Louis, your Air France virtual assistant, and I'm here to guide you, Smileyface. | |
|
The Missing Third Bag
00:03:33
|
|
| What can I help you with today? | |
| Me, OMG. | |
| Your note promised three bags were coming. | |
| Only two arrived. | |
| Air France, do you have a question about an existing booking? | |
| Lewis! | |
| Lewis! | |
| I write back, no, no, I want a human to respond. | |
| Air France, hello, Megan. | |
| Could you please advise the tag number of the bag which was not delivered? | |
| We await your reply. | |
| Me, yes, they use my name. | |
| That's progress. | |
| That's real progress. | |
| Their comment is situation appropriate. | |
| A human might be here. | |
| We're back on track. | |
| I provide the tag number. | |
| Maybe they will now tell me where the last bag is or something. | |
| A message pops up. | |
| Here it is. | |
| My answers. | |
| Air France. | |
| Hello. | |
| I'm Lewis, your Air France virtual assistant, and I'm here to guide you, Smiley Face. | |
| What can I help you with today? | |
| Me, please see all of my earlier correspondence. | |
| Air France, hello, I'm Lewis, your Air France virtual assistant, and I'm here to guide you, Smileyface. | |
| What can I help you with today? | |
| And that's where things stand as of today. | |
| Now, is it a world tragedy that Air France lost our bags? | |
| No. | |
| The country has bigger problems. | |
| I get that. | |
| But the reason I am telling you this story is that I know it's happening to millions of people who feel as frustrated as I do. | |
| Folks who do not have the ability to publicly shame the airline over and over to get some kind of a response. | |
| People who don't have the time to deal with fake agent Lewis and his inane requests and incessant smiley faces. | |
| We are nearly three weeks out now from our return to the U.S. | |
| And would you believe in all of that time, I have never spoken to a single Air France employee, not one, for five lost bags, despite the public tweets and all of it. | |
| Air travel, as you know, is not cheap, right? | |
| Neither is checking bags. | |
| The airlines do their level best to make you pay however they can. | |
| Half of them charge extra for a snack now, never mind a meal, or if your bag is too heavy, or if you want the crappy headphones. | |
| The CEO of Air France, who took a bailout from the French and Dutch governments during the pandemic and then went on to reportedly pocket over 3 million bucks in salary and bonuses last year, actually bragged in the press two weeks ago, quote, the ability to pass on higher costs to customers is unbelievable. | |
| Really? | |
| Maybe you could put some of that money into customer service, into baggage location technology, into Guillaume's pocket. | |
| So he's motivated to follow up, into your terrible AI, which gives false hope and then harassment. | |
| My point is, I realize the airlines are under a lot of strain, but business is great for them right now. | |
| They're on track for record profits. | |
| Air France clearly feels zero guilt about charging its customers exorbitant fees, and its customers have a right to expect basic services like safety, on-time departures and arrivals, and yes, our bags in a timely manner. | |
| Air France, you failed. | |
| Au voir, Guillaume. | |
| Frowny face, Lewis. | |
| And that's it. | |
|
Why I Never Fly Again
00:06:54
|
|
| Joining me now, the hosts of the fifth column podcast, Matt Welsh. | |
| Hello, Megan. | |
| I am sorry this is happening to you. | |
| Dear Lord, that's good, Matt. | |
| That's like the length of a Ken Burns documentary. | |
| All the sadness of the Batan death march. | |
| That is really terrifying. | |
| I just want to get more dating tips from Guillaume. | |
| I think there's a lesson for all of us. | |
| I think it might have been Robert who played Benson. | |
| I'm not sure. | |
| Who died four years ago? | |
| It could be that. | |
| It's Matt Welsh. | |
| It's Michael Moynihan, and it's Camille Foster right there. | |
| Okay, the guys who host the fifth column podcast and our friends. | |
| I'm sorry, but like only in taking the time to outline it in the detail in which it happened brings home the pain that I know so many of us go through when this kind of stuff happens. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | |
| No, it's totally, it's totally fair. | |
| And I share your pain. | |
| I actually had a very similar situation going to Rome, but I lost our bags at the beginning of the trip and only ended up recovering them because I insisted on going back to the airport for consecutive days in a row to search for the bag myself and found it on the fourth and final day in Rome. | |
| See, I did not have that option because I believe they were lost in Paris. | |
| We flew out of Naples. | |
| We had a like a layover at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, and then we flew to JFK. | |
| So I'm pretty sure that's where they lost them in Paris. | |
| But I have no idea since I have never spoken to a human. | |
| Megan, I want to just show my Irish appreciation for somebody named Kelly who has the same level of rage that all Irish people have. | |
| It produces 83 phone calls, which is illegal in most places. | |
| You know, you're a little off, but that's fine. | |
| I'm not well. | |
| I do the same thing. | |
| I do it all the time. | |
| And the people around me, from my daughter to everybody else, is like, could you please stop it? | |
| And I'm like, no, no, no. | |
| This is how you get things done because they're not going to pay attention to me. | |
| There's so many things that were surprising about that story. | |
| Number one, that you have a travel agent friend. | |
| I didn't know that it still existed. | |
| And I love the fact that we're not going to get back to you in a satisfactory manner. | |
| It's like they already know it's so bad that it cannot possibly be satisfactory to you. | |
| And then you, you still don't. | |
| So let me be clear. | |
| You still don't have the final bag. | |
| Is this correct? | |
| I am still down in bag and have no idea when, if at all, it will come. | |
| Unbelievable. | |
| Here's my tip. | |
| I'm going to give you a tip on this. | |
| Air France is a Delta partner. | |
| Call Delta and book with Delta because they have a dedicated number for those who have status, which, you know, you got to have. | |
| And they, you got to push on the phone every time. | |
| You're Megan Kelly. | |
| Come on. | |
| You have status. | |
| You have to. | |
| You have some stuff. | |
| But you know what? | |
| That's that's like what's interesting about the story and great about the story. | |
| Like I had no status. | |
| I got they couldn't have given a shit that I was a public figure or not. | |
| And that's fine. | |
| That's that's actually good because that's what gave me the window into how they treat everybody and how wrong it is. | |
| You know, like normally, if this were like a small deal, I would have just pawned it off on Abby, my assistant, and made her do it. | |
| Like that's why I implore her. | |
| Oh, she lives for this stuff. | |
| Are you kidding? | |
| She's so much more efficient than I am. | |
| But like this one was mine. | |
| It had happened to me. | |
| I'm like, I need to handle up. | |
| I'm the one who filled out the baggage claims and all that stuff. | |
| I'm like, it's just easier if I stay on it. | |
| And it was kind of like, it was good. | |
| In the same way, it was good that I got sued as a result of a fender bender in law school because it gave me the perspective of what it's like to be on the receiving end of the lawsuit. | |
| It is good to get into the mud every once in a while on these awful customer service things and not just pawn it off on my assistant so that I can better understand how fucking annoying all the automation is, how terrible the airlines are, and why all these people are having babies with Elon Musk. | |
| They can just fly private. | |
| I think his name is Louis and not Lewis. | |
| And Louie speaks to somebody in Sri Lanka or Pakistan. | |
| It's like there's no French people involved in this. | |
| Even when I, when I finally got through to JFK baggage claim, I believe I was speaking to a woman in India. | |
| I do not believe that the woman was actually at JFK baggage claim. | |
| She could, of course, couldn't answer anything. | |
| I'm like, I'm like, I talked to the guy and I chose not to say the guy's name on the air because I don't want to publicly humiliate the JFK baggage guy, who was very sweet. | |
| But I'm like, he told me the bags would be there three hours later. | |
| They're on Air France 8. | |
| She was like, he's new. | |
| He's new. | |
| He's just made it up. | |
| Panicked. | |
| We have in the fifth column, a phrase that emanates from Camille due to his status issues called a never fly coach, which is his approach to NFC. | |
| NFC and everything. | |
| But from this summer's air travel nightmare, which I've been a participant in as well, I think I'm going to start appending that to never fly. | |
| And right now, it's actually literally the case. | |
| I took a bunch of airplanes the other week and my ear hemorrhaged. | |
| So that wasn't like that. | |
| Who is this? | |
| Steve Madden? | |
| Wait, not Steve Madden. | |
| He's the shoe guy. | |
| John Madden. | |
| He hated flying. | |
| He would only take the bus. | |
| God may he wait. | |
| But it is so awful right now. | |
| The stories coming out of Heathrow right now are just like, it's like the evacuation of Vietnam in 1975 at the U.S. Embassy. | |
| It sounds just absolutely at least they got people out. | |
| Exactly. | |
| They're just marooned there. | |
| It's like the Tom Hanks movie, right? | |
| They couldn't bring their bags, though. | |
| It's awful. | |
| So here are some stats for you. | |
| In June, there were 3,000 cancellations over the July 4th holiday. | |
| Airlines canceled 1,200 flights on Friday, another 1,200 on Saturday, 325 on Sunday and Monday, July 4th, respectively. | |
| Now, don't worry, because Pete Buttajedge is on the case. | |
| He tell Fox News Sunday that the Department of Transportation has launched about 10 investigations into consumer complaints about airlines not giving the refunds after the canceled flights. | |
| There's a pilot shortage because a bunch of them aged out and then over the pandemic weren't used and retired and they didn't backbail them. | |
| So I realize the airlines are dealing with a lot. | |
| But when you've got the CEO of Air France bragging on how easy it is to pass on their increased cost to the customers like me, and then you can't get a human, screw him. | |
| I don't have any sympathy for him. | |
| You know, it's like you agreed to run the business, run it. | |
| Well, remember that you pay for bags. | |
| You didn't have, you remember, you didn't have to pay for bags in the past. | |
| Right. | |
| You had to pay for bags because there was a fuel surcharge because the price of a barrel of oil was like $140. | |
| And they said, you know, because of that, we have to make you pay for the bags. | |
| We're losing a lot of money and it'll keep your base fare lower. | |
| They never changed that when oil plummeted. | |
|
CEO Brags on Cost Cutting
00:02:15
|
|
| So once they allow, once they get that way of ripping you off and they see that you'll pay it, they never take it away. | |
| And that's the thing that people forget about the baggage fee, which is ridiculous. | |
| And how about the fact that you have to pay for a meal now? | |
| Isn't that ridiculous? | |
| It's like you're on a flight. | |
| It's like six hours long and you don't get a free meal. | |
| You got to pay for like the lame little snack pack that the flight attendant is. | |
| It's like, my, you know, whatever the price is, it could be domestic, it could be foreign, but it's, they're always expensive. | |
| Doesn't even get me like the shitty little sandwich with a fake ham in it. | |
| Megan, this is also the most Irish thing in the world. | |
| Why are you not flying first class? | |
| I don't. | |
| Well, it was overseas and we were five of us. | |
| It was like, we're not doing that. | |
| That's expensive. | |
| Oh my God. | |
| Megan. | |
| No, no, no. | |
| That's when you need it most of all. | |
| This is why you make the money so you can spend it on air travel in between. | |
| I don't want my human rights violation. | |
| I have my indulgences like Abby, right? | |
| She's my assistant. | |
| She takes care of a lot for me. | |
| But I don't want my kids growing up being spoiled brats either. | |
| So I try to moderate it. | |
| You know, I try to moderate it. | |
| Make them sit in economy. | |
| You sit in first class and check the bags under your name. | |
| They put the special tags on them. | |
| Exactly. | |
| Guillaume wants to get lost. | |
| But I don't check anymore. | |
| No, but sometimes we'll do business class with them. | |
| We don't do first class with our kids. | |
| They don't deserve that. | |
| Don't put them in the back. | |
| Put them in the back. | |
| Yeah, but you can still go. | |
| Put them in steerage. | |
| That's right. | |
| We're still a little young to really separate. | |
| Although, can I tell you something on Air France? | |
| That was another thing. | |
| You're not allowed to separate from your little guy. | |
| Like my little guys, he wants me to tell you he's almost nine, not just eight. | |
| He's almost nine. | |
| He turns nine on the 23rd of this month. | |
| But like, you can't even like, like, I couldn't sit across the aisle from him. | |
| I had to be right. | |
| I'm like, literally, he's right across the aisle. | |
| If something happens, I just grab him. | |
| They're like, nope, you have to be right next to him. | |
| I'm like, this is what, why? | |
| He's stupid people. | |
| I'm not going to run away. | |
| I mean, that's very strange. | |
| He's going to hijack the planners. | |
| What can we possibly do? | |
| I mean, it might be a pain, but that's a little much. | |
| Megan, confess, if the doorbell rang, if the doorman shouted up the elevator shaft towards your penthouse and said, Madame, it's Guillaume. | |
| You're the sprint. | |
|
Separating From My Little Guy
00:10:04
|
|
| You're going to be so nice. | |
| I would. | |
| He'd be my new French lover. | |
| Yes. | |
| And by the way, Guillaume doesn't exist and everyone on Air France is probably on strike. | |
| So you're not going to ever talk to anyone. | |
| You know what? | |
| Doug was laughing with me because wouldn't you know the very first bag that we got, and you know, we were waiting forever for the others, but the very first one we got was Doug's bag, which you guys can probably relate to. | |
| It was absolutely the last bag we needed. | |
| Doug literally wears one outfit the entire summer: a Mickey Mouse shirt and like a pair of shorts. | |
| That's it. | |
| He literally wears a Mickey Mouse shirt in Europe. | |
| He's literally wearing a Mickey. | |
| Oh, God. | |
| Is he flying in Europe? | |
| He's just not, he's not a thread kind of guy. | |
| He just has beautiful, but he doesn't have a huge sense of style. | |
| And I've just chosen to live with that. | |
| But I'm just my point is: why couldn't it be my bag? | |
| Why did it have to be Doug's bag? | |
| But your Guillaume dress is nice. | |
| In Megan's clothes. | |
| Gonna come back covered in green with a bunch of wine stands on it. | |
| Well, look, here's my promise to America: if you have a problem with Air France or anybody else, and if you want to tweet at me and see if I can help you publicly shame your airline to try to get some results, I will use my Twitter power for good. | |
| I understand what you're going through, and I am here for you. | |
| That's a good business idea. | |
| Wow. | |
| I'm just adding check marks. | |
| Wow. | |
| That's great. | |
| I'm going to do that. | |
| I'm going to rent it out. | |
| Wow. | |
| There's actually news happening today beyond my bags. | |
| And we're going to get to that next as we discuss Dr. Jill Biden and her compliment to the Latinx community, calling them just as unique as a breakfast taco. | |
| That happened, and it's next. | |
| So, Dr. Jill Biden was apparently sent to the southern border to shore up Joe Biden's poll numbers there, which have been sinking like a stone with the Hispanic population. | |
| So they send in Dr. Jill, thinking she will be more popular than Joe. | |
| And what they sent her to was, quote, the Latinx Inclusion, spelled X-I-O-N. | |
| Get it, it's a play on the X, the Latinx luncheon. | |
| The Latinx Inclexion luncheon. | |
| Keep in mind, literally, the polls showed that 2% of Hispanic voters use or like that term. | |
| Okay, two. | |
| So that's who they're appealing to when they say Latinx. | |
| She was giving the headline speech at the luncheon. | |
| And this is a luncheon at which they provide the opportunity to learn about and collaborate on issues ranging from housing to health, racial equity to education, diversity, and inclusion, to owning our narrative as a community. | |
| And this is how Dr. Jill Biden thought that the Latinx community could, quote, own their narrative or what she thought their narrative was. | |
| She stepped in it. | |
| Here it is. | |
| But we can't get those things on our own. | |
| Raoul helped build this organization with the understanding that the diversity of this community, as distinct as the Bogadas of the Bronx, as beautiful as the blossoms of Miami, and as unique as the breakfast tacos here in San Antonio. | |
| Oh, the Bogadas? | |
| I don't know if she's actually trying to affect like a Latinx or Latinx. | |
| I actually don't, I have no idea what's going on there. | |
| I don't know if she's trying to affect her accent there or if it's just never actually said the word bodega out loud before. | |
| Can we pause this broadcast for a special announcement? | |
| Could you come over here? | |
| I just texted my husband, Doug. | |
| He's in the house. | |
| I don't know if he's. | |
| Is he wearing a t-shirt? | |
| Oh, my God. | |
| Can you look at this? | |
| Look at him. | |
| Oh, my God. | |
| He's wearing a Mickey Mouse t-shirt. | |
| Oh, my God. | |
| He's very real. | |
| USA. | |
| Thank God. | |
| USA. | |
| I'm taking you shot. | |
| I'm glad they got it back. | |
| Air France got your case of t-shirts back. | |
| They're very happy that. | |
| No, it's not a case of t-shirts. | |
| It's just the one. | |
| Yeah. | |
| You guys are very frugal. | |
| That's great. | |
| Well, he's Scottish. | |
| You know, he's always pointing out his Scottish roots. | |
| He's not a spender. | |
| He's really not. | |
| But in his defense, he never gives me a hard time for spending. | |
| Like, he doesn't care. | |
| He's not like a materialistic guy. | |
| Okay. | |
| So back to Latinx and your Bogodot. | |
| Like Bogoda. | |
| Bogoda. | |
| She's like a Bogoda. | |
| And you all being just as unique as a breakfast taco. | |
| Oh, my God. | |
| That is really. | |
| Dr. Jill, shouting out the Dicabodas in the Bronx. | |
| I mean, I tell you what, I'm going to defend Dr. Jill. | |
| She's a doctor, right? | |
| I mean, she's a chiropractor. | |
| Did we figure that out yet? | |
| But either way, if you're hurt, she's going to come to your aid. | |
| But she said this in a way, in that whole kind of sentence there, because it's the first time I heard it. | |
| As I said to your producer, I made sure not to listen to it so I could be completely shocked and horrified in real time. | |
| And I was, but at the same time, we allow this for pretty much every other culture. | |
| If you look at every comment, speaking of the Irish again, Megan, as a fellow Irishman, every president of the past like 10 have made jokes about the Irish being drunken losers, which is true. | |
| That's why it's funny. | |
| I mean, like, and they do, and it's funny. | |
| And, you know, this, like, just to say, this is your food. | |
| This is your taco. | |
| I get it. | |
| It's not the worst offense in the world, but I know people really love to get offended. | |
| But it is really funny when the people who, you know, are in the kind of ideology or in the party who are always enforcing these really weird dictators get bitten by it. | |
| That's why that's why I kind of like it. | |
| It's just so comedy. | |
| It is so condescending. | |
| Like, you're just as cute as a little taco. | |
| She should have said like a, at least she didn't say like a chalupa, which is like not real and a taco bill thing. | |
| That would be great. | |
| I should read you the response by the, hold on, let me find it. | |
| Oh, where is it? | |
| La la la. | |
| The National Association of Hispanic Journalists, which responded, is that in today's update? | |
| Why am I not finding it? | |
| It must be in today's. | |
| Yeah, yeah, here it is. | |
| Here it is. | |
| Okay. | |
| They put out a Twitter statement. | |
| Using breakfast tacos to try to demonstrate the uniqueness of Latinos in San Antonio demonstrates a lack of cultural knowledge and sensitivity to the diversity of Latinos in the region. | |
| Our group encourages Dr. Biden and her speechwriting team to take time to better understand the complexities of our people and communities. | |
| We are not tacos. | |
| As Latinos is shaped by various diasporas, cultures, and food traditions. | |
| Do not reduce us to stereotypes. | |
| We are not tacos. | |
| I'm finally someone said it. | |
| Also, not using the word Latinx, though. | |
| No, they're not using Latinx. | |
| Yeah, they use Latino. | |
| She's had to apologize. | |
| Now she's sorry for her. | |
| Like, you know, she stepped in it. | |
| She basically said, I love everybody and I'm sorry that I offended anybody, you know, that kind of thing. | |
| But all I could think was, can you imagine if Melania Trump said this? | |
| Days coverage. | |
| Well, she brought it up. | |
| Look at all your tacos out there. | |
| I cannot believe it. | |
| I mean, look, I say it's a very good thing in this country that we've progressed so much when the outrage about racism. | |
| Yes. | |
| Someone talking to a Latino group and invoking tacos. | |
| Yes. | |
| It used to be a lot worse than that. | |
| We used to say really nasty things. | |
| And this is comparatively not bad. | |
| I love that. | |
| You've got to search for the offense. | |
| Go ahead, Griffith. | |
| Marco Rubio said, this is the breakfast taco that I self-identify with. | |
| And he showed a picture of a hard shell Taco Bell taco. | |
| He's a Cuban. | |
| He's probably never eaten a taco in his damn life. | |
| And then does the hard shell taco, which invented by the great fast food visionary trailblazer, Glenn Bell. | |
| Yes. | |
| Taco Bell. | |
| There's a great book I can't recommend highly enough by our friend Gustavo Arellano called Taco USA. | |
| We ran a piece in Reason covering. | |
| Reddit? | |
| Yeah, yeah. | |
| It's a book on the history of taco. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Oh, okay. | |
| It posits that the taco has replaced the hamburger as the quintessential American food because it's actually not all that popular necessarily everywhere in Mexico itself. | |
| It's become this sort of mongrelized thing as all great American foods are. | |
| It sort of takes a foreign thing and makes it its own. | |
| And that's part of why it's great. | |
| And all the people who are looking to, as they said in the setup, Megan, of this piece, like we're going to control the narrative about our people. | |
| It's like, or you're in America and there isn't a single narrative about any single people and it's not yours to control or not and to say what is the right taco and what is not. | |
| It's like. | |
| But you know, when someone's stepped afoul of the narrative, like you cute little taco, what a cute little taco you are. | |
| Like that, I agree with them as standing up. | |
| It's just a stupid line. | |
|
Undifferentiated Masses and Tacos
00:08:27
|
|
| I'm offended that her writers are so terrible. | |
| And by the way, keep in mind, she was there to, I think, shore up the numbers. | |
| As I said, his numbers, he went from a 55% approval rating amongst Hispanics to 26. | |
| His approval rating with Hispanics right now is 26. | |
| So what does he do? | |
| He uses a term, no Latino people like Latinx and sends his wife down there to offend them. | |
| Well, it's funny because the response from the journalist organization does actually weirdly hit on something. | |
| The reason his numbers are plummeting and the reason Democratic numbers, Democrats' numbers are plummeting amongst Hispanics is because they actually do think of Hispanics or Latinx or Latinx or however you pronounce it as an undifferentiated mass. | |
| And so when the journalists respond and say, well, you know, there's a whole, you know, bunch of different Hispanic cultures, it's like, well, yeah, I mean, you're getting wrong at the, you're getting mad at the wrong thing. | |
| But the fact that, you know, Cubans and Nicaraguans and Venezuelans who are all quite conservative, you know, Mexicans, Hondurans, they're all very different. | |
| There's no commonalities between them except for language. | |
| And when you treat them like that, when you treat them as an undifferentiated mass, as a voter bloc, you start losing them because they don't give a shit about Latinx or Latinx and this nonsense. | |
| They care about sort of normal bread and butter issues that Americans care about, which is why his numbers are plummeting with everybody. | |
| That's right. | |
| Okay. | |
| Now, speaking of those numbers, let me give these to you for your reaction that we talked about yesterday, but there were more bad poll numbers today. | |
| The New York Times, Sienna College poll showed 64% of Democrats, okay, of Democrats do not want Biden to run. | |
| Again, they want a different nominee. | |
| If you're under 30 and you're Democrat, 94% want someone else. | |
| Virtually every young Democrat in America wants a different Democrat to be on the ticket next time around. | |
| The approval rating is at a record low. | |
| I think it's record 33% approve. | |
| That's incredible. | |
| I mean, that is just basement dregs kind of stuff. | |
| More than two-thirds of independents disapprove. | |
| Nearly half of them strongly. | |
| So he's going down. | |
| That's what this is telling us. | |
| He's going down in flames. | |
| They have to sub out their nominee if they want to maintain the White House second term. | |
| By the way, white voters, he tried to make inroads with them, try to get back some of those sort of white no college degree Democrats who went Trump. | |
| How's he doing? | |
| 20% of them approve of the job he's doing, 20%. | |
| And according to that New York Times poll, his base is black voters with whom he has a 62% approval rating, but still more black voters prefer he leave and to sub out somebody, sub in somebody new than to see him run again. | |
| So even his base doesn't want him on the ticket next time around. | |
| It's a dumpster fire and it's a five-alarm dumpster fire that they have to do something about or they're going, he's going to lose. | |
| They're going to lose the House, possibly the Senate and the White House come 2024 unless something massive happens. | |
| And think about it. | |
| He's unable to do what Bill Clinton did in 1994, which is, or even Barack Obama to a very mild degree did in 2010, which is pivot. | |
| Dude's too old to pivot, right? | |
| When he pivots, he falls off a bike. | |
| It doesn't, it doesn't really work. | |
| He doesn't have another like political gear to go towards right now. | |
| So it's over. | |
| And he's like him loudly insisting that he's going to run over and over again. | |
| As I think there was a progressive caucus just today said, you know, we encourage the creation of other options. | |
| The only, I mean, he's got a story that he could tell Democrats, which is, I beat Trump. | |
| I did the job you liked me to do, which is to win. | |
| And we vanquished, you know, the wicked witch. | |
| And he could step aside. | |
| But the problem is he steps aside and we get word salad vice president to come on and talk about the things that we believe in. | |
| This is the saving grace. | |
| Here she comes. | |
| Don't worry. | |
| Fear not. | |
| People who are worried about his mental acumen, you got a great secondcomer right behind him. | |
| Here she is in all her glory on Friday talking about abortion. | |
| I do believe that we should have rightly believed, but we certainly believe that certain issues are just settled. | |
| Certain issues are just settled. | |
| Clearly, we're not. | |
| No, that's right. | |
| And that's why I do believe that we are living, sadly, in real unsettled times. | |
| Wow. | |
| I believe, lyrical. | |
| I believe the children are our future. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Let them lead the way. | |
| In fairness, you get word salad from both of them. | |
| It doesn't matter who you actually wheel out there. | |
| It's her nodding, though, Camille. | |
| She's stumbled on profundity as she's saying the word police 75. | |
| With respect to the polling, though, like it does sound like Biden is still beating Trump in the polls. | |
| He is there. | |
| Saving Grace might be that he matches up with Trump again and manages to Mr. Bagoo his way through that campaign as well. | |
| But I don't know how likely that is. | |
| Yeah, I can see that Matt. | |
| Yeah, Matt's point, I think, is a good one about the pivot and the, you know, just total inability to pivot. | |
| And people kind of didn't appreciate this about Trump. | |
| And I used to see this all the time when I would go to Trump rallies and cover them, is that a man who understood the room so brilliantly and so quickly and knew when a line worked and he would start repeating it in that actual arena. | |
| And then it would become a line that he repeated throughout a campaign or throughout his presidency. | |
| Biden is just kind of glassy-eyed and doesn't know what is going on and can't actually pivot and stuff. | |
| And the incredible thing about the numbers of black voters at 64%, which is wild. | |
| I mean, that's, you know, I mean, you usually expect 90%. | |
| The number of his approval rating with a generic Democrat approval rating is 70%. | |
| Black voters are below that, which is kind of a unique thing. | |
| And I can't remember a time it has happened. | |
| And then, of course, he does have to win over like non-college educated whites, which was the domain of Democratic Party. | |
| And that is one of the great flips in American politics over the past 50 years is that it's become the domain of Republicans. | |
| He's doing nothing to get those people in. | |
| And, you know, he's just build the wall or any, all he has is MAGA, super MAGA, super MAGA. | |
| Well, that is a quote end quote, repeat previous line, which is that resonates with a certain demographic, I'm sure. | |
| Repeat line. | |
| Repeat line. | |
| To the point one of you guys just made about a progressive caucus now pushing for a different nominee next time around. | |
| There's this group, rootsaction.org. | |
| That's a left-wing group that worked in 2020 to persuade progressives to support Joe Biden. | |
| And now it's preparing to turn on him, according to Politico. | |
| They're going to spend six figures on a hashtag Don't Run Joe campaign. | |
| Yes, prepared a statement that they shared with Politico that reads, unfortunately, President Biden has been neither bold nor inspiring and his prospects for winning reelection appear to be bleak. | |
| With so much at stake, making him the Democratic Party standard bearer in 2024 would be a tragic mistake. | |
| So he doesn't have to, I mean, the Republicans would love to see him run again. | |
| He's going to have to worry about things like this when it comes to getting back on the ticket. | |
| The tragic mistake would be that if he tried to run with these numbers and then listened to these people and decided to become more left-wing, I mean, that's not what the American people want if you look at other polling numbers. | |
| And also when you're in the grips of a recession and like runaway inflation, spending more money from the government is going to make all of that worse. | |
| One doesn't need to be an economist to figure this out. | |
| This is kind of basic 101 economics. | |
| So if the argument is you need to be more like AOC, well, I mean, you see, you saw the White House. | |
| I can't remember who the spokesman of the White House is saying, you know, the pro-choice people, you know, they got very upset about this of saying, you know, they're doing this wrong. | |
| And everyone freaked out. | |
| And like, well, you know, they're saying that because Roe v. Wade, that decision is people are kind of in the middle about a lot of it. | |
| And if you were just to do the activist version of that, you don't make any friends. | |
| And, you know, going to the kind of net roots or whatever these people, that's what they used to be called, that that is not a recipe for success for Democrats. | |
| Well, in that New York Times poll yesterday showed that literally abortion is the most important issue for 1% of people. | |
|
Whipping Migrants Accusations
00:15:14
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|
| 1%. | |
| 1%. | |
| Now, that's not to say it's not an important issue for more than 1%, but like what's going to drive people at the polls in November on the midterms and beyond, it's the economy. | |
| That's what they all say. | |
| It's the economy. | |
| And he just gets up there and tries to, I mean, like his press secretary is out there saying, we've got the strongest economy. | |
| Did she say that we've ever had? | |
| We've got a stronger economy than we've had. | |
| Like, well, like when? | |
| Is that the relevant metric? | |
| I, you know, they're gaslighting. | |
| That's, that's really their only tool. | |
| All right, standby. | |
| There's so much more. | |
| I want to talk to you about Elon trying to pull the plug in his Twitter deal and whether or not that's going to work and a dust up he seems to be having with Trump. | |
| So much more to get to with Matt, Michael, and Camille right after this. | |
| And remember, you can find the Megan Kelly show live on SiriusXM Triumph Channel 111 every weekday at noon East and the full video show and clips by subscribing to our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash Megan Kelly. | |
| If you prefer an audio podcast, follow and download on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcast. | |
| If you leave me a comment on the Apple comment section, got an airline story, got a thought about mine, leave it there, or you can leave it on YouTube. | |
| Sometimes I go and I'll read those too and I will see what you think. | |
| And I would love to hear what you think. | |
| There, by the way, when you're on the sort of podcast archives on Apple, you will see all of our archives with more than 350 shows. | |
| So thank you for that. | |
| Finally, they happened in September. | |
| Here we are in July. | |
| They've come to a conclusion, an official conclusion about those Border Patrol agents accused of whipping migrants down at the southern border when we were dealing with a crisis and an influx of some 15,000. | |
| Even the Reuters photographer who took the footage said at the time, that is not what I saw. | |
| I don't know why people are saying that they saw them whipping migrants. | |
| That's not what happened. | |
| And yet the left went with it. | |
| Just as a refresher, here's a soundbite, a mashup of how that incident was described. | |
| It's soundbite number four at the time. | |
| To see people treated like they did, horses barely run them over, people being strapped, it's outrageous. | |
| I promise you, those people will pay. | |
| I was outraged by it. | |
| It was horrible. | |
| Haitian lives are black lives. | |
| And if we truly believe that black lives matter, the Biden administration must immediately halt all deportations of Haitian migrants. | |
| I'm not just unhappy with the cowboys using their rays to whip them. | |
| There will be consequences. | |
| There will be consequences. | |
| It's an embarrassment. | |
| Human beings should not be treated that way. | |
| And as we all know, it also evoked images of some of the worst moments of our history where that kind of behavior has been used against the indigenous people of our country, has been used against African Americans during times of slavery. | |
| It's dangerous. | |
| It's wrong. | |
| It sends the wrong message around the world. | |
| It sends the wrong message at home. | |
| It's simply not who we are. | |
| Literally. | |
| Literally not who we are. | |
| It is literally not. | |
| It's unbelievable that basically the vice president of the United States compared them to slave owners, these border patrol guys who are totally outmanned down there, were doing the best they could. | |
| And then you have the president of the United States. | |
| Remember the days when the president didn't weigh in on cases before they'd been investigated and concluded? | |
| Those days are gone. | |
| But anyway, you have him coming out explicitly and saying it's outrageous. | |
| I promise you they will pay. | |
| There will be consequences, an embarrassment beyond an embarrassment. | |
| It's dangerous. | |
| It's wrong. | |
| It was horrible. | |
| The fix was in. | |
| And last Friday, a 511-page internal investigation within the Border Patrol, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol's Office of Personal Responsibility concludes, number one, they were falsely accused. | |
| They did not whip anyone with the reins used on their horses. | |
| That was fake news. | |
| But they've still been, four agents have been referred for discipline. | |
| They now face punishment, facing, ranging from a letter of reprimand to potential termination for the following two alleged misdeeds. | |
| One is poor judgment. | |
| Apparently, one or more of the guys allegedly instructed the non-citizens, quote, to go back to Mexico, or words to that effect. | |
| The second charge is that one of them, it looks like one, committed unsafe conduct by maneuvering that agent's horse in a way that caused a non-citizen to fall backward into the river, thereby compromising the safety of those involved. | |
| Okay, that's what this wound up being. | |
| And Joe Biden gets to say they were bad and he exacted punishment. | |
| And this whole whipping slavery narrative, where do you go to get your reputation back? | |
| Not to this administration and not to this press. | |
| This reminds me of the Ferguson case of Michael Brown at the press coverage and treatment and the memory holding. | |
| To some degree. | |
| If you recall, Michael Brown, uh was shot by a police officer um, and that became uh that he had said hands up, don't shoot, which he never said, and the the Justice Department uh, Camille I think did at least one, maybe two big grand juries, two huge investigations. | |
| Yeah, there were two separate reports, yeah and um, that were absolutely conclusive and convincing, that the popular narrative about what went down there, which triggered a whole bunch of of protests um, some of which are, you know, I agreed with the purpose of the protest, not necessarily the underlying cause uh, talking about over policing in certain communities or whatever um, but the basic narrative was wrong and there wasn't a whole lot of oh whoops, uh kind of uh self-examination there, | |
| just as there wasn't with the Covington kid who was posing out in or standing in front of a Native American weirdo um uh, and not because he's native American, because he's weirdo, uh out on the uh in Washington Dc. | |
| Um, people went to this rush to judgment and then, when all of the conclusive evidence weighs in, there's a lot of crickets and I recommend, in addition to watching that uh clip that you just played Megan, go on twitter, follow a guy named Drew Holden 360 because he collects receipts for how UH media commentators, politicians and blue check marks react in these moments, and what they do is that they immediately presume that the underlying thing is true and then just spread it, | |
| and then it's a competition to the highest possible dudgeon about this thing that they never proved. | |
| Um, and check those, check back with those people over the next coming days and see which of them, if any of them say ah, you know what I, I was a little bit too quick. | |
| They won't do it, they never. | |
| They never stop. | |
| They never stop in real time. | |
| This story was fact checked as, as you pointed out, Megan and the Biden administration and its various allies in in the media and in public policy who were in elected office were still having these uh press conferences, were still talking about slavery and whipping people, which it's one thing if it's an honest mistake, in which case you ought to wait for the facts to come in. | |
| It is another thing entirely when you are making these assertions repeatedly, and it's not just an absence of evidence. | |
| There is evidence to the contrary and you refuse to acknowledge it, and we've actually seen this numerous times. | |
| And when it was Trump, people were quick to say, suggested without evidence, or he suggested this and it's it's a lie. | |
| They would say so clearly. | |
| Now, when NPR runs a story about this report um, the. | |
| The headline on the story is the agents on horseback who chase migrants, used unnecessary force or report fines. | |
| That's the headline. | |
| Yeah, not not the fact that the whipping that everyone was so animated by didn't happen. | |
| And this use of force appears to be precisely what you described like using a horse to obstruct someone's passage. | |
| But, of course, no one was actually sent back to Mexico, which is what the reports also says. | |
| By the way, the whole process is built on what like when, when illegal migrants come across the border, the whole process is, should you be sent back to Mexico? | |
| That's the. | |
| That's the big question that they're going to have to wrestle with anyway. | |
| Maybe it's not the most sensitive comment to make, but give me a break. | |
| I mean this smacks of political hit Hit job, which is what the head of the Board OF Patrol said. | |
| It's not, you know, maybe it's not the right thing to say, but it is in fact their job to make people go back to Mexico and not come into the country illegally. | |
| I mean, it's very strange that you, when somebody states what their job is, that that is an offense. | |
| But, you know, as you pointed out, and I'm glad you did, Megan, because nobody is pointing this out, is that, as you said, the fixes in, I mean, when the president of the United States says this demands an investigation and they will be punished. | |
| That is not an investigation. | |
| You are saying what is happening at the beginning. | |
| That is not an investigation. | |
| When I talk about government wasting money, how long does it take and how many people does it take? | |
| And what are the resources to produce a 511-page report that was precipitated by bad media coverage, which, as you point out, Reuters said at the time, we were here. | |
| This is not what happened. | |
| And then you have someone like the half-witted vice president saying that this evokes times of slavery. | |
| Well, Madam Vice President, what is the major difference between times of slavery and this beyond the fact that nobody was whipped? | |
| Well, these are people desperate to get into the country, black people who are trying to get into America versus people who were brought here against their will as chattel slaves. | |
| This is, I mean, the main reason for this happening is people wanting to get to America and they do so illegally. | |
| And these people are trying to do their job. | |
| And of course, you know, they're handcuffed at every at every turn. | |
| And, you know, the union that is representing Border Patrol is outraged by this. | |
| And, you know, it's funny to me because it's not getting a lot of coverage because it's the only fucking union in America that people that, well, the police unions and the Border Patrol unions that people on the left don't care about. | |
| They don't like those loads. | |
| They're bad. | |
| That's exactly right. | |
| And this is, you know, Border Patrol, that's an executive branch agency. | |
| I mean, that's, I think it's under technically DHS. | |
| But my point is, their boss, their boss's boss's boss said, they will be punished at the outset. | |
| So it's like, oh, gee, I wonder what we're supposed to do here. | |
| It does feel like a political hit job. | |
| But if these guys, if one of these agents, they haven't publicly released the names, I don't believe, but if one of these agents gets fired for improperly maneuvering his horse and they don't even allege any injury or for saying go back to Mexico, which is literally, as you point out, what we're employing him to make sure happens, there's going to be, there actually will be national outrage, at least on the right in the middle. | |
| There will be. | |
| That's deeply wrong. | |
| And this, of course, comes in the context of record, record numbers coming across the southern border. | |
| 2021 was already a record at 1.73 million coming across the southern border or trying. | |
| And we set another record in May and are on track to continue doing so. | |
| We don't have June's numbers for some reason yet. | |
| In May, it was 239,000 plus arrests along the Mexican border, which is an increase from April, which is already a record. | |
| And now they're on pace to exceed 2 million detentions. | |
| That's the word between or during fiscal 2022. | |
| 2 million. | |
| Okay, up from the record 1.73 million last year. | |
| It's crazy. | |
| Like this is, these guys are outmanned, trying to do a really difficult job. | |
| And this is what we do. | |
| We publicly attack them, humiliate them, rush judgment against them. | |
| And then even when the evidence doesn't pan out, instead of saying we're sorry, we try to find one bullshit comment or mismaneuvering one's horse that we can hang the whole case on. | |
| And I can recall from this thing happened on a weekend. | |
| I record the Reason podcast on 11 o'clock on Monday morning. | |
| And so I referenced it at the time. | |
| I didn't say whipping, just said disturbing images, right? | |
| Because they were kind of disturbing to look at. | |
| It's actually a great news photograph, by the way. | |
| It's just like an action photograph, a credits photographer. | |
| But by that afternoon, by the time we released it, it was already like, oh, okay, enough doubt has crept in to this. | |
| So it was in the first 24 hours that we had enough to know that you can't say X or that there's no evidence for X. | |
| And that didn't stop anybody from the top, from the media, from the politicians, from so on. | |
| We have this culture of where there isn't a built-in sanction for saying or spreading something that isn't true, including the most vile of all possible accusations that someone is acting in a violently racist way and abusing their power. | |
| That is an accusation that is so freely available to people. | |
| And there isn't a lot of pushback, legal or societal or cultural journalistic against people who do it. | |
| And it's a real problem that we face right now. | |
| That's such a good point. | |
| It's like, well, you got Jill Biden out there apologizing for saying, you're as unique as a breakfast taco, but where's Joe Biden apologizing for, you know, this is this is this will be punished. | |
| This is terrible. | |
| It's an embarrassment. | |
| It's outrageous. | |
| And the vice president saying it's just like slavery. | |
| Like, where's it? | |
| Why aren't they apologizing? | |
| Just this, just this week, I think there was a story in the Washington Post about this account of a 10-year-old girl who had reportedly been raped and told in Ohio that she could not have an abortion and was going to be forced to have this child. | |
| And this Washington Post story is a fact check. | |
| And it is all about how this story, which could only be sourced to one party and had only been reported in one paper and then was kind of regurgitated by everyone else, ended up being something that the president references during some official remarks about Roe versus Wade. | |
| And it is interesting that the conclusion of this fact check is something along the lines of with news reports around the globe and now presidential presidential support. | |
| However, the story has acquired the status of fact, no matter its province. | |
| If a rapist is ever charged, the facts finally would have more solid grounding. | |
| That's a pretty good faction of this fact check. | |
| Acquired the status? | |
| It's absolutely crazy. | |
| And of course, it's in quotes. | |
| Facts is in quotes there, but that's astonishing. | |
| It isn't a fact. | |
| This is unsubstantiated. | |
| And when they tried to substantiate it, when this journalist tries to substantiate it, they can't figure it out. | |
| No, it really does put the point to how little they fact check before they send the president out there to make comments on very sensitive issues, whether it's something in the national news that has tempers flaring or, well, I mean, both of these are instances of that with the alleged whipping and this alleged case of a 10-year-old who needed an abortion, which may be a big lie. | |
| We don't know, but it's certainly not reportable. | |
|
Journalists Must Prove Lies
00:14:31
|
|
| And it certainly shouldn't have wound up in a presidential address. | |
| Yeah, and follow up. | |
| Now, into the Washington Post credit, they were the first to note that there was only one source for the story. | |
| Then Jesse Waters had somebody on. | |
| It was a top law. | |
| It was the Attorney General of Ohio and asked him, has there been any report? | |
| Because it was Ohio in which the 10-year-old allegedly lived and couldn't get an abortion, who then had to allegedly cross date lines to Indiana. | |
| And he, and again, if this is, if a 10-year-old is pregnant, they're alleging this is a rape victim. | |
| And he said, has there been any sort of reporting about this? | |
| And the AG said, we have regular contact with prosecutors and local police and sheriffs. | |
| There's not a whisper anywhere about any of this. | |
| Now, it doesn't, that doesn't mean it didn't happen. | |
| Sometimes the caregivers to a 10-year-old, I don't know, might not go to the law enforcement. | |
| I'd love to know why not. | |
| There's a duty to report in most circumstances. | |
| But all the more reason to check it out. | |
| Like your spidey senses should be going up, certainly as a reporter, never mind as a politician who doesn't want to get too far out. | |
| And nobody did because it fits the narrative. | |
| It's an almost perfect story, too, because you can say, as this woman who was the one source, who is apparently quite an activist, too, which I think that was making people's spidey senses tingle a little bit too. | |
| And again, like you, Megan, I don't know if this story is true or not, but it's one that's very difficult to shoot down. | |
| So, why? | |
| I mean, if you're going to make something up, this is a perfect one to do because you can't, you know, there's HIPAA, you can't betray, you know, a 10-year-old who's reporting something like this, and which is understandable, but in such a front political environment, I mean, we've mentioned how many cases here, you know, between all of us, Covington Catholic, Michael Brown, you know, this, this, the horse story, all of these things. | |
| The reason that Joe Biden is going to apologize for something like that, because it's a learning experience, it talks about how good you're trying to be good, you're trying to get better on these issues of race, and you can get some credit for it. | |
| These ones you don't apologize for because it fits the narrative. | |
| The point that everyone should always keep in their mind when they're looking at news coverage, seeing these stories that might not add up or something, it's not that people are necessarily coming out and lying about news stories. | |
| They just aren't going to check these things out because narrative matters a lot more than truth to most people in this business. | |
| And that is just a fact that I've seen in this business for years. | |
| It depresses me. | |
| And I think that, you know, on our podcast, we were pretty schizophrenic when it comes, and that may be offensive to schizophrenic people. | |
| I apologize. | |
| We're very schizophrenic about ideology because we don't really subscribe to, I mean, we just kind of are always investigating what the media is saying about certain things. | |
| And sometimes it's on the right, sometimes on the left. | |
| But there's always this overwhelming instinct to feed a narrative and then later see if it's true. | |
| And you're not going to be the one who investigates, but if it isn't true, you just shut your mouth and you, you know, the damage has been done. | |
| That repeats what you said and what Matt said just reminded me of something on the Michael Brown thing. | |
| So I was on the air covering that when it happened and you know, had been questioning the story and you know, raising issues all along. | |
| And there were in the end, there were five black witnesses who told Eric Holder's DOJ the guy did not have his hands up saying don't shoot. | |
| He charged at the officer and that's when he got shot. | |
| Michael Brown did. | |
| Anyway, one of those, remember the CNN panel that then they put their hands up and they held little signs that read hands up, don't shoot. | |
| One of them was Sonny Hostin, who was with CNN at the time and now is one of the hosts of The View. | |
| And I listened to her a couple weeks ago say, I don't get facts wrong. | |
| I don't get and Joy Behar chimed in going, she's Sonny Hostin. | |
| She doesn't get facts wrong. | |
| All I could think of was that stupid ass hands up, don't shoot. | |
| I mean, please, we could go through all day her facts and her errors and her facts, but that one's so egregious. | |
| You know, I don't remember the big apology on that. | |
| I really don't because it didn't happen. | |
| And not just that, we're living through a presidency right now, a Democratic presidency, right after a whole bunch of mainstream elite journalistic outlets went through this kind of spasm of saying we need more moral clarity. | |
| We need to call a lie by its name there. | |
| And so now we have Joe Biden. | |
| What's Joe Biden doing? | |
| Joe Biden is saying, I'm going to the Middle East. | |
| It's the first time we haven't had active combat troops in the Middle East since 9/11. | |
| Well, that's not true. | |
| Okay. | |
| He just said that thing. | |
| It's not true. | |
| He's saying that all of inflation is because of Vladimir Putin. | |
| That's not true. | |
| He says things that aren't true every day, or at least every week, but I'm guessing every day. | |
| And it is not treated with anything like the same level of scrutiny and dudgeon and Chirons at the bottom of your screen watching cable news as Donald Trump. | |
| Now, I think Donald Trump lies more than probably any politician I can think of in the last 25 years. | |
| But that's also my memory starting to fog up with age. | |
| And so he's a special case. | |
| He treats things a little bit differently. | |
| But as we had frequently said during the Trump administration, like, okay, we're glad the people are really on high alert to call out Donald Trump's lies. | |
| We hope that they're accurate when they do that. | |
| And they're very frequently not. | |
| They're so ready to believe every single thing is a lie that their reporting standards stumble. | |
| But the most important thing that we wished for, knowing that it would never happen, is that that same level of scrutiny would survive a change of team in the White House. | |
| It has not. | |
| The next few years are going to be interesting. | |
| The next few years will be interesting because they're turning on him. | |
| They don't want him anymore. | |
| They want younger, fresher blood. | |
| They want newsome or booted judge. | |
| Okay. | |
| So it'll be that this will be interesting, especially with CNN saying that it's going to go back to, you know, straight news now. | |
| It's going to take its foot off the partisan pedal. | |
| Will they, to cover their asses and to get rid of this guy they've turned on, try to act like they're now truly, you know, objective reporters? | |
| Well, it's an it's an interesting thing. | |
| And a quick point to what Matt was saying. | |
| I mean, I made this prediction while Donald Trump is still in office. | |
| It was a pretty obvious one. | |
| I'm not an Ostradamus or Resputan here. | |
| The phrase that you saw in every news story was without evidence. | |
| Donald Trump said, comma, without evidence. | |
| And that was like, this is our moral clarity, as Matt was talking about, is that what we discovered very quickly, and anyone who was paying attention knew this, is that the moral clarity was political clarity. | |
| Nobody who said that this was actually a thing that we had to do in the service of truth can actually defend it now and say that we believe in this supreme truth. | |
| The only thing that they were doing was making a political point, but they were, you know, couching it in this language of we care about truth, because all of that language is gone. | |
| And with, I mean, I don't expect even when they want somebody else, they will not do it with Biden. | |
| They will do it in a slightly, you know, more kind of subtle or underhanded way to kind of push him aside. | |
| But all of that stuff, democracy dies in darkness, et cetera, et cetera. | |
| Trump to them was so uniquely, and I think that he was a uniquely dishonest person. | |
| But at the same time, to be a politician is to be a uniquely dishonest person. | |
| It kind of comes with the territory. | |
| And as a journalist, one should be checking that stuff. | |
| So they made such a kind of show of it in saying every in the, like we never saw this before. | |
| The Chirons on CNN, that lower thirds there would always say, Donald Trump says this lie, this without evidence. | |
| And as Matt points out, Biden does this all the time and it's just disappeared. | |
| Remember when they used to pull the pressers? | |
| CNN just in the middle of Donald Trump's pressers used to just say, we're done. | |
| We're cutting away. | |
| The president of the United States is just too full of lies. | |
| It's like, why don't you either just fact check him at the end of it or like just shut up? | |
| Like either way, not putting the president on while he's having oppressive oppressor on COVID is not for you to do. | |
| Like one thing when he's a candidate running against 10 other candidates, now he's the sitting U.S. president and you're not going to let us hear from him. | |
| I thought that was really wrong. | |
| Well, it shows you what journalists think of the American people. | |
| We have to ban words. | |
| We have to ban books. | |
| We have to ban speech because if it hits the ears of certain American people, they will believe it. | |
| You have to take Alex Jones off, who's a complete lunatic. | |
| But you know what? | |
| I mean, both you and I, Megan, have been to his studio and interviewed him. | |
| It's like I sat down with him and I challenged him and it was a good, robust interview. | |
| And no one said at the time, because that was actually 2016, no one said at the time, you were doing a great disservice to this nation. | |
| When Donald Trump became president, you couldn't talk to these people because if people heard from them, they might be convinced of their ideas. | |
| Now, how much contempt do you have to have for the American people to believe something like that? | |
| And that can't be the standard. | |
| That can't be the standard. | |
| Because when Joe Biden is making claims about inflation and doing the kind of typical spinning that you would expect to get from any number of politicians, do you then cut them off as well? | |
| Insist that they don't have an opportunity to say anything. | |
| If this person is going to lie publicly and say things that are provably false, it is your job as a journalist to demonstrate the degree to which that is true or not true and give the American people an opportunity to be able to make up their mind on the basis of the actual evidence, not to insist that they can't hear things because this is beyond the pale. | |
| This is too false for anyone to hear. | |
| You just can't. | |
| By the way, it reminds me of Hannity once said to me, Donald Trump's problem is not that he doesn't, that he lies. | |
| Donald Trump's problem is that he tells the truth. | |
| That, gosh, that reminded me of something. | |
| What was it? | |
| Oh, yeah, the January 6th committee. | |
| Okay, so they're having another meeting today. | |
| And that's another, right now, actually, it just started. | |
| That is another group that wants to look us in the face and say, we are the standard bearers for truth. | |
| We are about truth, justice, and the American way. | |
| You can trust us. | |
| Like, we're, we just want to get to the bottom of how January 6th happened. | |
| Trust us, not biased. | |
| Yes, we're Democrats. | |
| We've got a couple of Republicans. | |
| We know they're anti-Trump, but truly, we're after facts. | |
| Okay, this is a little convoluted. | |
| So stay with me because I'll bring you there. | |
| But what they're doing with this Pat Cipollone testimony, the White House counsel under Trump, who was there on January 6th, is puts the lie, like so many things do, to that claim. | |
| So Pat Cipollone gave an informal interview to the committee prior to the testimony of their star witness, Cassidy Hutchinson, the other week. | |
| And my understanding is they had that before she took the stand. | |
| But then they rushed to get Pat Cipolli back under oath this past Friday. | |
| And they did. | |
| So this guy testifies to them, not in front of the cameras, but to all of them under oath. | |
| And the rush was because they wanted, ostensibly, to get confirmation of what Cassidy Hutchinson had said about what Pat Cipollone had told her. | |
| Namely, oh my God, if he goes down to the Capitol, we are going to be hosting or facing a host of legal problems like you've never seen before. | |
| And that he begged her to make sure that Donald Trump didn't go to the Capitol. | |
| I remember making fun of it the next day because it was like, where are her notes? | |
| Because you're 23, 24 years old, and the White House counsel comes to you as the 23-year-old and you're like, don't let him go down to the Capitol. | |
| You're like, it's my job. | |
| Right? | |
| So Pat Cipollone is brought in to confirm Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony. | |
| Did he or didn't he? | |
| The New York Times does the write-up. | |
| And Annie McCarthy had a great piece talking about what gamesmanship is in this piece and for a reason. | |
| So did Pat Cipollone corroborate Hutchinson's account? | |
| The Times says the panel did not press Cipollone to either corroborate or contradict Cassidy Hutchinson. | |
| What? | |
| Well, why not? | |
| Isn't the whole point of bringing him in what she said and then to ask her whether in fact Pat Cipollone did those things? | |
| Well, they say no. | |
| They've focused mainly on Mr. Cipollone's views on the events of January 6th and did not ask about his views of other witnesses' accounts. | |
| Okay, so I get it. | |
| So you could just say to Pat, did you say if he goes down to the Capitol, we're going to be facing more legal charges than we've ever seen before? | |
| Did you ask Cassidy Hutchinson not to let that happen? | |
| Like you could do it that way, as opposed to saying, she said this, true or false. | |
| Okay. | |
| So I can give him that so far. | |
| But then you find out that The committee had reportedly been told in advance that if he were to be asked whether he could corroborate what she said, i.e. that we would get charged with every crime imaginable if they went to the U.S. Capitol, he told them in advance he would not confirm that particular statement. | |
| All right. | |
| So basically they had a heads up, according to these reports, that he wasn't going to go there and he was getting ready to disagree with her. | |
| So rather than ask him. the specifics that would have shown a divergence in their views, they just stuck to what happened on January 6th? | |
| What did you do? | |
| What did you say? | |
| And they didn't go there, right? | |
| This is how they cover their asses. | |
| And then they come out. | |
| Here's another piece of it, a little bit more color, an excerpt from the Times report. | |
| Two people familiar with Mr. Cipollone's actions that day, Cipollone, say he did not recall making that comment to Cassidy Hutchinson. | |
| Those people said the committee was made aware before the interview that Mr. Cipollone would not confirm that conversation were he to be asked. | |
| He was not asked about that specific statement on Friday, according to the people with the questions. | |
| This group is so biased, they didn't ask him because they knew he would contradict her. | |
| And they wanted Zoe Lofbrin to be able to go on CNN and say he didn't contradict anybody. | |
| Nothing he said. | |
| He did not contradict Cassidy Hutchinson. | |
| It's a lie. | |
| They're biased. | |
| People should not be treated as objective fact finders. | |
| And I'd really, you can watch this for entertainment and pull and call whatever you may find mildly interesting, but you must remember, none of it's been cross-examined. | |
| None of it's been challenged. | |
|
Watergate Style Documentary Bias
00:05:38
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|
| This is not an adversarial proceeding. | |
| And the fix is in there too with the so-called finders of fact. | |
| It's a very difficult situation because I think the investigating January 6th is important and worthwhile. | |
| I think that President Trump's behavior around the election, his narrative about a stolen election is fraudulent and awful. | |
| It is one of the most despicable things that an outgoing president has done in my lifetime and perhaps before that. | |
| And then the January 6th committee, in terms of the way that it's conducting this investigation, is simply not covering themselves in glory. | |
| And so many of these things seem like obvious cell phones. | |
| I know, Megan, you know a little bit about how these things work. | |
| I'm trying to imagine a judicial proceeding that has all of the interrogation of witnesses or the interviews with witnesses happening behind closed doors. | |
| And then the presentation of the facts for, in this particular case, the public, the jury, is only these manicured or select interviews in public, but or manicured presentations of clips from those conversations. | |
| It is really a rather bizarre and obviously theatrical exercise. | |
| And it can't be construed with an actual presentation of the evidence, an actual, as you mentioned, adversarial process, wherein someone gets to interrogate what's being said here. | |
| And I think the material things that people ought to know, the real conversations that we should be having about the state of the polity, about what happened, about what's led to the profound distrust that so many Americans have in the electoral process. | |
| We're not having those conversations at all. | |
| And instead, we get this political theater. | |
| And really very similar in terms of the last conversation we were just having, the way that the press responds to this in many instances is also very, very disconcerting. | |
| Yeah. | |
| No, the headline is, oh, Pat Cipollone doesn't contradict Cassidy Hutchinson. | |
| It's like, that's a statement from someone who is on the committee. | |
| Right. | |
| Today they're going to be releasing little snippets of Pat Cipollone and the testimony that we didn't get to actually witness live in full on Friday. | |
| That of course, once again, went uncross-examined by anybody. | |
| Which is, you know, technically true, because if they don't ask him about it, he didn't contradict it. | |
| Right. | |
| So, I mean, that's like the Watergate story. | |
| How it's how it's constructed. | |
| And, you know, I agree. | |
| Which, which part of it? | |
| Because the Watergate jury is like, he would have confirmed if only they'd asked him. | |
| They forgot to, nobody asked him. | |
| Hold him in. | |
| Sorry. | |
| I mean, this is the Watergate committee is actually, if you go back and look at after Jaworski is fired and look all those, watch all that stuff. | |
| It's like pretty fascinating because you actually have Republicans turning on Nixon. | |
| And of course, famously, Barry Goldwater walks over to the White House and says it's time to go because they actually had a process. | |
| And look, I get that Republicans should share a huge amount of responsibility for this for not for not participating. | |
| But of course, that's a complicated issue too. | |
| But what we're seeing here, and I think that there's some useful stuff that comes out of this, but it's in the same way that if you're a historian and you look at a series of documents that come from one side of an issue or another historian who's biased in a particular way, you can find interesting things, but you have to kind of cross-check it and make sure that it's real. | |
| And what you have now is essentially a real-time documentary. | |
| Because what documentaries do, I mean, people tend to think documentaries, well, that's the truth. | |
| Well, no, think of Michael Moore and think of people who are ideological and have a direction they want to take with the Al Gore. | |
| Yeah. | |
| I think it was a thing about mules. | |
| But yeah, like I got thoughts on that, though. | |
| We took a hard look at that. | |
| That's not all bullshit. | |
| That's not to say that it proves a stolen election, but it did raise some interesting questions about videos on these Dropbox situations. | |
| But anyway, I get you. | |
| I'm skeptical of Dinesh. | |
| I've interviewed him and I'm that's a different show. | |
| But you know, the thing about this is, I mean, you're making a documentary in real time means that you interview people. | |
| And what happens when you interview people for a documentary? | |
| I mean, I usually do this and they take about two hours. | |
| The people get maybe 60 seconds, if that, sometimes 20 seconds. | |
| And you actually have somebody who's a television producer producing this. | |
| I mean, it's more of a documentary than it's not even just kind of an analogous situation. | |
| It actually is that situation when you have a television producer doing this and they're plugging things in for political purposes. | |
| Now, I get the fact that these things are always going to be a political, a political show trial in some ways. | |
| And I mean, show trial is the wrong thing because that sounds too negative. | |
| But yeah, well, yeah, it's not Stalinist. | |
| But if you look at what happened in 73, 74 with Watergate, obviously Democrats have a very specific goal here. | |
| But they get at the truth at the same time. | |
| When you see this documentary production, and my concern is not that we're not going to get anything truthful or anything interesting because we are getting those things. | |
| It's the fact that the no interrogation allows people in the media to present a very specific narrative that came out of this august institution in Congress and they're investigating this stuff. | |
| It's like, yeah, but most people don't know that there is nobody actually saying, because I saw you, Megan, with Cassidy's testimony, had a pretty viral clip of going through all the things. | |
| And because I was thinking the same thing listening to it, I was like, some of this doesn't make a ton of sense, but it shouldn't take you to do that. | |
|
Elon Musk Buying Twitter Bots
00:08:17
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|
| And it shouldn't take every someone looking on Twitter and seeing this, because most people don't consume news that way. | |
| Most people in my life don't. | |
| And they hear the stuff as a headline. | |
| They say, oh, you know, Trump throttled a guy and then tried to drive the SFV himself to the Capitol. | |
| It's like, well, I don't know about that. | |
| It might be, there might be some complicated things there. | |
| So that was the best part of all. | |
| All right, wait, let me stand you guys by because we have one more segment and there's so much more that I want to get to. | |
| I've been teasing Elon Musk and I really do want to go there. | |
| Could he possibly be going to jail? | |
| I'll tell you what I think. | |
| And then much more to get to with the guys from the fifth column right after this quick, quick break. | |
| So Elon Musk is now not buying Twitter, though it could still change. | |
| It's all be like the attempt to renegotiate a better price on the deal because the stock market and Twitter stock has fallen precipitously since he agreed, since he made his offer and they accepted it. | |
| He says it's because they failed to provide accurate information about the number of bots on Twitter. | |
| See, I too, I am upset about the bots at Air France and he is upset about the bots. | |
| They close. | |
| Lewis. | |
| Anyway, so he, Twitter's board has said it's going to sue him. | |
| They've already lawyered up. | |
| They want this deal to close at the original 54.20 per share sale price. | |
| I think their share right now is at yesterday it closed at 32 bucks and 65 cents. | |
| So it's like way down. | |
| My God, that's more than $20 down. | |
| That hurts. | |
| So you can see why he wants to get out of it. | |
| He says it's because of the bots, but really the only issue is legally will that hold up. | |
| Twitter says he made them a promise of quote specific performance, which in the law means you promised not just that you'd pay us the billion dollar fee if this falls apart. | |
| You promised that if you pulled this deal for a bullshit reason, we could take you to court and make you actually buy us specific performance. | |
| We can make you buy us. | |
| And the only way you can just get out of it for that billion dollar penalty is if financing falls through. | |
| So one wonders whether Elon Musk is spuriously calling all of his financers being like, oh, it doesn't look so good, right? | |
| You're probably thinking about pulling the deal, which wouldn't be proper. | |
| But anyway, so they're about to go into a massive lawsuit. | |
| And that is what led CNBC's David Faber to say the following. | |
| Then the question is, well, okay, you're forcing Mr. Musk to buy the company. | |
| Does he actually agree to do it? | |
| There's this argument that being said lately that, well, maybe he won't comply with that. | |
| Right. | |
| Well, then we'd have a switch in with him where they could put him in jail. | |
| That's not going to happen. | |
| I'm not. | |
| I did some M ⁇ A when I was a litigator, but he's not going to jail. | |
| They're going to settle this one way or the other. | |
| And it could still wind up with Elon buying Twitter, but at a lower price. | |
| It's not going to be $54. | |
| I don't see him in any world buying this for $54 a share. | |
| But what do you guys make of it? | |
| I mean, at this point, I wonder if he even wants Twitter at all at any price. | |
| Doesn't really seem that way. | |
| I mean, he's gotten to prove his point in some respects in that he has been berating Twitter publicly all throughout this potential transaction and continues to do so. | |
| And it sounds as if if they do have some sort of judicial proceeding, they're very likely going to have to disclose things that are likely to be really embarrassing for the company and will probably hurt them pretty substantially. | |
| If these bot numbers are nearly as bad as I suspect they actually are, as opposed to what they've been declosing, what they've been reporting, then it's going to have a huge impact on their underlying business, which is already severely overvalued, even at the depressed stock price is incredibly overvalued. | |
| He tweeted out this meme. | |
| The first one, the first picture is him smiling and it reads, they said I couldn't buy Twitter. | |
| The next is, then they wouldn't disclose bot info. | |
| Then the next one is, now they want to force me to buy Twitter in court. | |
| And the last one with him hysterical laughing is, now they have to disclose bot info in court. | |
| So he's going to get his bot info. | |
| And even if it's not in the form of papers, he's going to get to take the depositions of all of the Twitter executives and unearth all of the dirty laundry, the shadow banning, the bot info, all of that. | |
| And Twitter, so Twitter's got skin in this game too. | |
| Yeah, I mean, it's a pretty interesting play because I don't like, you know, don't, I don't think he wants this at this point. | |
| And the initial enthusiasm that he showed has waned, if not completely dissipated. | |
| But I mean, obviously, there's two issues here. | |
| I mean, agreeing to buy this at such a healthy share price, which was overvaluing at the beginning before the price crashed, was a way of kind of getting around the fact that nobody wanted him, right? | |
| So it made the actual Twitter board say, no, no, no, we're going to take this deal because we're going to make a lot of money and this is actually a good deal. | |
| Because the thing is, and to reiterate Camille's point, it's a bad business. | |
| It's not a smart business in any way. | |
| I mean, we expect so many of these things that we have used in time, like Facebook has kind of faded out. | |
| Snapchat has faded out. | |
| These things come and they go. | |
| Twitter has a little bit more staying power because of the political class and the media class that use it so much. | |
| And, you know, Donald Trump and this stuff of like, you know, adjudicating free speech issues via Twitter and who can be on the platform. | |
| And, you know, before this, Musk wasn't a very political guy. | |
| And now you see him like endorsing DeSantis and you see him saying about Trump, who had a pretty funny quote. | |
| He's like, you know, another bullshit artist, which is like, you know, it takes one to know one. | |
| And they, and that thing is like Musk's response is like, yeah, you know, I don't hate him. | |
| Like, I don't have anything against Donald Trump, which is not something that most people in positions like Elon Musk are ever willing to say, even to say something that's even partially sympathetic to Donald Trump. | |
| So it's kind of been an interesting time because, however, it ends, and there's no way of knowing this, it has recast Elon Musk in all of these people who I know, and I was at a dinner party probably a month ago, in which somebody erupted in their hatred of Elon Musk. | |
| And there was a chorus of people that agreed. | |
| And I was kind of sheepishly at the end of the table going, don't make me do this. | |
| Don't. | |
| And of course, I did it. | |
| And I just like put my knives down and I was like, look, you morons. | |
| And that was the thing because we actually had a listener who sent us a great email about why Elon Musk is a great liberal hero, you know, from fighting climate change with Tesla, going to space, all these amazing things that he's done. | |
| And he's become this villain just because of his political opinions. | |
| And because when he said, I'll buy Twitter, I will allow like almost unfettered free speech. | |
| And, you know, he proved his point. | |
| So if he has all the money in the world, either way, I think he's a winner at the end of this. | |
| And the rest of us are still stuck with these biased losers who'd moderate the Twitter discussion. | |
| So we're losers. | |
| He may be a winner. | |
| And go to dinner parties with me, yes. | |
| Right. | |
| I keep going, Matt. | |
| Sorry. | |
| Just that one thing that he did demonstrate in addition to this is that, and I think he's the only one who's really done this, is that after Trump, there still is a possibility to colonize everybody's brain pans for about two months. | |
| It was amazing how much everyone needed to have an opinion about Elon Musk during the spring. | |
| Didn't really see that one coming. | |
| I don't think Trump could do it again. | |
| Honestly, even if he runs for president, which I doubt, he just, you know, he's lacking the new factor, right? | |
| Like for someone to come to waltz in and suddenly seize everybody with panic. | |
| Max Boot has to wear adult diapers to like try to deal with the idea of Elon Musk owning Twitter and what that means for incipient fascism in America. | |
| I mean, people have their brains broke in half thinking about the accusations on MSNBC of his horrendous, obvious, you know, love for apartheid. | |
| The kind of crazy thing. | |
|
Nuclear Attack Panic in NYC
00:04:56
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|
| Wasn't it Joy Reed that said that he's a man who's nostalgic about apartheid? | |
| Yeah. | |
| Just because he was from South Africa, as I pointed out, he was like when he lived over there and wasn't able to stop it. | |
| Well, when he left, he actually gave an interview at the time and he said, I'm leaving because I don't want to be drafted into this army of conscripted into this army that I find to be a racist organization. | |
| He literally MSNBC goes and calls him complicit and nostalgic. | |
| All right, listen, we got to end with this because you think Max Boot's not the only one who's going to be wearing adult diapers. | |
| Now, I know, Welsh, you live in New York. | |
| Who else? | |
| Who else lives in New York? | |
| I just left New York. | |
| Well, listen, let me tell you Roger Ailes, when I first worked at Fox News, this is 2004, so it was not long after 9-11. | |
| We all had red fanny packs that read Fox News on them. | |
| And inside it was our survival kit. | |
| If a dirty bomb or a nuclear bomb were to hit New York City, they were like protective glasses. | |
| And Roger Ells once had a staff meeting where he said, all right, you know, whatever this happens, you can use the goggles. | |
| This happens. | |
| You can use the face mask. | |
| This happens. | |
| And he said, nuclear bomb comes. | |
| You can take those two aspirin and kiss your ass goodbye. | |
| That was our fanning pack. | |
| And he was 100% right. | |
| He needs to tell us a New York City. | |
| No, no, that's not even the protocol, Camille. | |
| That's why I'm here for you. | |
| The New York City officials just released how to survive a nuclear bomb to Manhattan residents, not Manhattan, the five boroughs. | |
| Here's a little bit of how to do it, just in case you weren't aware. | |
| Watch. | |
| So there's been a nuclear attack. | |
| Don't ask me how or why. | |
| Just know that the big one has hit. | |
| Okay. | |
| So step one, get inside fast. | |
| You, your friends, your family, get inside. | |
| Step two, stay inside. | |
| Shut all doors and windows. | |
| Have a basement? | |
| Head there. | |
| Step three, stay tuned. | |
| Follow media for more information. | |
| Don't forget to sign up for Notify NYC for official alerts and updates. | |
| That'll do it. | |
| That'll do it. | |
| And don't go outside until officials say it's safe. | |
| Yeah, I know. | |
| All right. | |
| All right. | |
| 2150. | |
| Go outside again. | |
| That's amazing. | |
| But it costs them a half a million dollars to say stay inside repeatedly. | |
| Don't ask me what happened because I don't know, but just get inside. | |
| By the way, I live in New York. | |
| I'm more worried about going to the fucking bodega than I am a Russian nuclear. | |
| Tell me how to survive getting milk or the dobega or whatever it's called. | |
| Pagoda again. | |
| In Pagoda. | |
| I don't want to hear another word from another official in the city of New York ever again about how they don't have enough money. | |
| We just, you know, we've cut down to the bone. | |
| We can only spend $500,000 on absolutely useless. | |
| I mean, on the bright side, maybe they're focusing on this instead of COVID now. | |
| A city official went on 1010 wins. | |
| And the question was, what are you doing? | |
| What's happening? | |
| Like, I realize tensions are rising with Russia and, you know, Saberite rattling from Putin like months ago. | |
| But what's this about? | |
| And she said, well, the likelihood is extremely low, but it's very important. | |
| And we do a lot of preparedness events. | |
| And we really think it's important that this is an event the people of New York feel prepared for because this is the one they feel the least prepared for. | |
| That's because it's a nuclear bomb. | |
| Yeah, there's also, I mean, I think alien invasion, rogue asteroid impact, these are other possibilities. | |
| You know, it's out there, but we should at least be talking about that. | |
| I'm not prepared for that. | |
| Can I point out that they didn't prepare me? | |
| They just told me to go inside. | |
| No, shit. | |
| The bomb went off. | |
| What are you thinking? | |
| I was fucking staying in the street taking pictures. | |
| I'm going to go inside. | |
| Do you have a basement? | |
| No, I live in a fourth floor. | |
| What am I supposed to do then? | |
| You're paranoid. | |
| Getting into a basement. | |
| I don't have the key to that. | |
| Yes. | |
| Lord. | |
| Waste of money and time. | |
| I hate all of you. | |
| That's so true. | |
| There's no basement anywhere. | |
| There's a basement. | |
| It's not wealthy. | |
| Well, Westchester wasn't bombed. | |
| Then they say you're supposed to go to the middle of the room. | |
| You go to the middle of the room, Michael. | |
| Good luck. | |
| Don't say I never did anything for you. | |
| You guys are the greatest. | |
| So great having you on. | |
| Thank you again. | |
| Thanks, Megan. | |
| Thank you, Malik Megan. | |
| All right. | |
| And don't forget, go find them on Substack and wherever you get your podcast. | |
| They're well, well worth a listen. | |
| So what will Elon Musk wind up doing? | |
| We're going to ask one of his close pals, David Sachs, who's back with us tomorrow. | |
| Don't miss the show. | |
| We'll see you then. | |
| Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly Show. | |
| No BS, no agenda, and no | |