The Megyn Kelly Show - 20220930_bridget-phetasy-on-the-value-of-regret-who-can-get
Aired: 2022-09-30
Duration: 01:31:29


=== Breastfeeding Miracles and Family (03:37) ===

[00:00:00]  FICE presented super inkel transcos program for the factor for super inkled costume welcome to the megan kelly show your home for open honest and provocative conversations Hey everyone, i'm Megan Kelly.
[00:00:27]  Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show and happy friday.
[00:00:30]  It's the end of our two-year anniversary week and we have a great show for you today with a guest i'm so excited to welcome back for the first time in almost two years.
[00:00:40]  Bridget Fetisi is a comedian, a brilliant writer and host now of a couple of different podcasts and shows.
[00:00:49]  She has a hilarious show on Youtube called dumpster fire that's like such a great name.
[00:00:54]  In addition to her podcast, Walkins Welcome, and she recently launched a brand new podcast, this one's different.
[00:01:00]  She co-hosts it with her husband.
[00:01:02]  It's called Factory settings a husband, by the way, who the world learned about during the first time we had Bridget on this very show back in december of 2020.
[00:01:11]  We were, we were like her NEW YORK Times announcement, only better.
[00:01:14]  Uh wow, that was like a great, great episode.
[00:01:17]  We wound up rerunning that episode a couple of times just by popular demand, and everybody loves Bridget.
[00:01:23]  We talked about her family, about the Me Too movement, the media and so much more.
[00:01:26]  It was.
[00:01:26]  It was powerful, it was emotional, it was a hilarious conversation and so much has changed since then, so there's a lot to get to today.
[00:01:38]  Welcome back to the show, my friend.
[00:01:40]  How are you, Bridget hi, how are you doing?
[00:01:43]  It's so good to be back uh, so good to be with you, and now we're doing it via video.
[00:01:47]  The first time we didn't have video.
[00:01:49]  Yes, this is um a little unnerving, being the first media hit i've done.
[00:01:53]  I think postpartum are you?
[00:01:56]  You're not going to show us your boobs, are you?
[00:01:58]  No, we don't have the explicit warning on the youtube, only on the podcast.
[00:02:05]  They're uh, they're occupied by one little human.
[00:02:09]  Now yeah well, I mean that's, I will say, and i'm not embarrassed to tell the world as like a normal b cup.
[00:02:16]  I was so excited to go up to a cup when I had my kids.
[00:02:19]  I'm like yeah, this is awesome, I loved what happened.
[00:02:22]  And then, of course, was the come down after the fact deflate.
[00:02:26]  Kate, that occurs.
[00:02:30]  Yeah, it's been.
[00:02:31]  It's been wild.
[00:02:32]  As somebody who has shown her breasts and loves the boobs in general as a source of joy and happiness for the world, have you been pleased with what's gone on since you became a mother and started breastfeeding?
[00:02:44]  Yeah it's, it's really funny.
[00:02:46]  Like that you realize the body is actually functional, there's like a utilitarian aspect to it and not just some kind of vanity project.
[00:02:55]  That was really the.
[00:02:56]  The most amazing thing about pregnancy was just how.
[00:03:00]  What a miracle our bodies are, the female bodies they're just.
[00:03:04]  It is insane what we can do, and even just breastfeeding.
[00:03:09]  I've only she's been breastfed only luckily I, it came easily to me.
[00:03:14]  She latched right away.
[00:03:15]  It's, I know, I was worried because I've heard so many stories from women who struggle and it's not always that easy.
[00:03:21]  This was one aspect that was.
[00:03:23]  And just the fact that I can keep this little being alive just with the milk I'm making is so crazy.
[00:03:29]  And she's, she's a big, she's a little, she's a big little girl.
[00:03:33]  Aw, once again, your boobs came through for you.
[00:03:36]  Yeah.
[00:03:37]  Yeah.
[00:03:37]  I know.

=== San Francisco Gender Protocols (14:56) ===

[00:03:38]  It was really funny right after I. Right after I had her, they, the, the nurses were like, your nipples are amazing.
[00:03:46]  Do you know you have perfect nipples?
[00:03:48]  And it was like right, you know, in recovery.
[00:03:51]  And she's like, you have perfect nipples.
[00:03:53]  Does anybody know this?
[00:03:54]  And I had to stop myself from like the comedian in me was like, well, the internet knows.
[00:03:58]  The whole world, madam, knows this.
[00:04:01]  But are they so good, Bridget?
[00:04:03]  Are they as good as the nipples of that Canadian shop teacher, Bridget?
[00:04:06]  I mean, there's good.
[00:04:07]  And then there's like enormous protrusions coming out of the bottom of like two watermelons.
[00:04:13]  That's how that has to be a troll.
[00:04:15]  That's a good question.
[00:04:17]  A lot of people have asked that.
[00:04:18]  Do you think?
[00:04:19]  I mean, there was something going around and who knows what's real, because it was on the internet, where there's, there's some, someone said that this person was in their class and that this guy was actually hated by the like the teachers, and he was um, he was getting in trouble for his toxic masculinity and this was his way of trying to make the administration eat their own policies and his long game was to get fired and then sue for discrimination.
[00:04:49]  But who knows if who knows what's real?
[00:04:52]  I mean, either way, the point is this is bad for kids.
[00:04:56]  Either way it's horrible for the students.
[00:05:00]  But if that's true, I mean some some level of respect to the guy is owed, because he got international attention and Canada looks ridiculous and this school looks ridiculous.
[00:05:10]  So, but if it's true, the big reveal needs to come like a sap.
[00:05:15]  He needs to say, okay, come on your show 100.
[00:05:18]  I feel like I who's talked about it more than I have, if very few, if any.
[00:05:22]  I'm horrified by what he did.
[00:05:23]  He did.
[00:05:24]  If this is real, he's a sick mofo who belongs nowhere near children.
[00:05:27]  If it's a troll, some level of respect, because you know there are certain ways you can draw attention to stories like this and they don't get anywhere near as much attention as the way this guy went about it.
[00:05:38]  It's still bad for the kids, though.
[00:05:40]  How are they gonna learn anything unless they're in on it?
[00:05:42]  Like what, if the kids are in on it and they're also anti-woke little Canadian, like prisoners in this lunatic system?
[00:05:49]  Two of my producers work in Canada.
[00:05:51]  I'm doing this for their children, trying to save their children from being subjected to this nonsense.
[00:05:55]  When I heard that it was Canada, I was like, uh no, it's probably true, it's probably a real story.
[00:06:02]  Canada or San Francisco?
[00:06:03]  Do you see San Francisco just today?
[00:06:05]  No, they're not saying, you can parade around your giant false nipples as a man who's dressing as a woman, but they're, they're doing these.
[00:06:12]  They instituted this crazy gender protocol, that's.
[00:06:17]  I mean k through five, that the parents cannot opt out of saying the kids will be subjected to Gender ideology and sexual identity discussions, and you can't opt out, because this is important.
[00:06:30]  This is life.
[00:06:31]  So, you can't drag your kindergartner out of this nonsense, even if you want to.
[00:06:35]  I mean, this is part of the reason I need to get out of California.
[00:06:40]  Yes.
[00:06:41]  It's funny.
[00:06:42]  I was, you know, the culture wars were something I was able to mock and take us almost like that sneering 90s chick in the back of the class who's like, oh, everybody's such a, you know, cares so much.
[00:06:56]  And then I had a kid and now suddenly the culture wars come to you.
[00:07:00]  There's no opting out of it.
[00:07:02]  And there's, there's no, the kind of mama bear in me really got activated because I don't, I don't, I want her to learn.
[00:07:11]  I don't want her to be distracted about gender and all of this stuff.
[00:07:15]  I want her to learn math and science and why, why, why?
[00:07:20]  This, this hyper focus on this gender stuff is so, A, it just feels inappropriate.
[00:07:27]  I didn't think about any of that stuff when I was a kid.
[00:07:29]  It just feels like let them be kids.
[00:07:32]  I don't know.
[00:07:34]  I suddenly am like, maybe, maybe I'm a mom activist.
[00:07:39]  Becoming a mother does change you for sure.
[00:07:41]  And becoming a father.
[00:07:42]  I mean, it's just becoming a parent changes the way in which you look at the world.
[00:07:46]  But here's what they're doing in San Francisco.
[00:07:48]  And this is, this is the public school system.
[00:07:49]  Okay.
[00:07:50]  This is public.
[00:07:51]  They have created a system.
[00:07:52]  Chris Ruffo got his hands in these documents because people leak to him now.
[00:07:56]  God bless Chris Rufo.
[00:07:57]  They've created a system for facilitating child sexual transitions for the K through five students, telling children they may choose a different name and set of pronouns than the ones they use at home, and that this new identity will be kept secret from their parents.
[00:08:15]  Can you imagine?
[00:08:16]  I've got a third grader right now.
[00:08:18]  How dare you talk to him that way and tell him you can have a secret with him?
[00:08:22]  That's the road to hell, creating secrets between weird teachers and young single-digit children.
[00:08:30]  Again, parents don't have the right to opt out of the lessons on gender identity and sexual orientation.
[00:08:35]  And then in middle school, they begin promoting a program called Q Groups, which is designed to quote, connect students to mental health professionals and clinics.
[00:08:45]  And so far, I'm like, okay, mental health professionals, this is good.
[00:08:48]  Then it goes on and clinics that offer gender affirming health services, such as puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and gender surgery.
[00:08:56]  So they promote this program, which will connect your kid to the gender surgery clinic and effectively creating what one critic has called a school to clinic pipeline, beginning in elementary school with secret child sexual transitions and concluding in middle and high school with referrals to gender affirming medical treatments.
[00:09:17]  This is outright child abuse in the public school system.
[00:09:21]  If the people of San Francisco who recalled Chessa Boudin do not get this pulled, then they deserve what they get.
[00:09:29]  It's so unsettling because they're still pushing a lot of this transitioning and surgery when in Europe, they're backing off all of this stuff.
[00:09:38]  You know, the science is showing them that maybe don't give these kids puberty blockers.
[00:09:43]  Maybe you can't reverse some of these drugs that you put them on young.
[00:09:48]  Maybe the gender affirming care isn't the way to go and the best solution when it proves that it often doesn't have any effect on their mental health.
[00:10:00]  And in fact, sometimes things get worse.
[00:10:03]  So why, why in America does it seem like there are places where it's still full steam ahead?
[00:10:10]  I have to take back what I said.
[00:10:11]  They deserve what they get because it's really about the kids.
[00:10:13]  And it's like, this is abuse and no kid deserves to be abused.
[00:10:16]  And the parents who are allowing this are effectively allowing the abuse of their children.
[00:10:21]  So I'm less sympathetic to the parents who allow it, but I am sympathetic to the children who get pulled into this by authority figures and told, you know, pick your gender, like it's pick your socks.
[00:10:31]  And by the way, I thought of you, Bridget, because I'd read the whole packet.
[00:10:34]  You know, my team gets me ready for these interviews and they give me a big packet and I'd read yours and everything was interesting.
[00:10:38]  I've had so many of your articles, many of which I want to talk to you about.
[00:10:42]  But this article on the news was given to me after I'd read it all.
[00:10:46]  And this is, this part stood out to me and you'll know why.
[00:10:49]  This district, same thing, San Francisco now, not only do they have International Pronouns Day that they celebrate, but they teach the students, here's the term, that they can diverge from quote, vanilla sexuality and become part of the quote bisexual umbrella, which includes fluid, pansexual, omnisexual, homo-curious, and heteroflexible.
[00:11:15]  They are intent on, quote, affirming students who use the pronoun it.
[00:11:22]  It doesn't like it when you call it he or she.
[00:11:26]  It needs to go to the bathroom.
[00:11:28]  It needs to wear something other than the uniform today.
[00:11:32]  They say this.
[00:11:33]  It's disgusting.
[00:11:34]  They say this used to be a way of dehumanizing trans and gender nonconforming folks.
[00:11:40]  It was our N-word, but it can be reclaimed as African Americans have done with the N-word.
[00:11:47]  This is the district's messaging now.
[00:11:48]  So your kid could go to school, be told that he's potentially an it, be put on the gender affirming care clinic pipeline, and the promise will be made that no one will tell.
[00:12:00]  At the same time, they're talking to your daughter or your son, but your daughter, this is where it's relevant, about how she might diverge from vanilla sexuality.
[00:12:09]  And here are all the options available to her.
[00:12:14]  It's so toxic.
[00:12:16]  This stuff is just toxic.
[00:12:18]  There's no other word for it.
[00:12:20]  I'm, I, I guess this is a hill I'll die on.
[00:12:24]  I just don't think you should be teaching children about this, particularly at such a young age.
[00:12:29]  They're already exposed to so much in their teen years and on the internet.
[00:12:33]  But at this young age, when they're so innocent and impressionable, the first thing you teach your kid is not that if somebody says, you know, keep this a secret from mommy, it's they're, they're generally a predator.
[00:12:47]  So why is this suddenly okay for schools to do to keep these things?
[00:12:51]  This is basic stuff too.
[00:12:53]  What I'm saying should not be transgressive.
[00:12:56]  This is, this is, this is like parenting 101, I feel like, and raising a child to be healthy.
[00:13:03]  And it feels like we're, it's, it would be very confusing as a child to have all of this gender stuff taught to you.
[00:13:11]  And they, I mean, a lot of people push back and say, oh, no, they get it.
[00:13:15]  They're, they're not confused.
[00:13:16]  And I, I don't know.
[00:13:19]  I feel, I feel some, some compassion for the parents because I know in these situations when their kids are coming home and they're threatening to, you know, they're saying they're depressed and that they're maybe suicidal, that they're, these desperate parents don't know what to do.
[00:13:35]  And they turn to professionals who are giving them an oftentimes horrible advice.
[00:13:40]  And they're in a community that's very, you know, open to all of this.
[00:13:45]  And I, I feel like I just, what I don't understand is how it's become so institutionalized.
[00:13:52]  That's what is baffling to me.
[00:13:55]  And you point out the difference between us in Europe, San Francisco and Europe.
[00:13:58]  It's like Europe's liberal too.
[00:14:00]  It's not like they've abandoned their liberal values.
[00:14:02]  They're just open-minded to science in a way our liberals are not, whether it was COVID or these gender clinics.
[00:14:08]  Like, why has our left gone so crazy?
[00:14:11]  And their left is still willing to engage with real facts.
[00:14:15]  Yeah, that's, that's when people say, you know, it feels like a cult.
[00:14:18]  That's what why people say this, that it feels like a cult because you're not looking at facts and it's like everybody's just walking off the quit the cliff together.
[00:14:30]  And I don't know.
[00:14:31]  It just, it's so unsettling to me because I know people who work with the youth population and I see just how confused they are coming after two years of the pandemic where they're already seem so lost and they lost years of education and now this is the focus.
[00:14:49]  You know, can we make sure they're reading?
[00:14:51]  What are, what are the numbers in California for literacy and for math?
[00:14:55]  They're not good.
[00:14:56]  No, the proficiency on a national level for reading and math is in one third.
[00:15:00]  One third of eighth graders are at the proficient level.
[00:15:02]  Eighth graders in America.
[00:15:05]  And that puts us something like 22 on the list of international countries where we're not even top tier.
[00:15:11]  China's number one, by the way.
[00:15:12]  Okay.
[00:15:12]  Somebody recently said China is giving their children broccoli and they're exporting opium to our kids with all the yeah, exactly.
[00:15:20]  So we and we shove it down our kids' throats.
[00:15:22]  We willingly shove the opium down our kids' throats.
[00:15:25]  And this is a different form of it in schools where we poison them.
[00:15:28]  And the Chinese are laughing all the way to number one positions in education and soon the economy and the military and so on.
[00:15:35]  Just as a second point, Chris Rufo, again, was on Tucker the other day and he explained to Tucker that the NEA, the National Education Association Union, is quote, mainlining queer theory into the public schools, promoting a how-to guide on fisting for children, for children.
[00:15:54]  If you don't know what it is, you can figure it out.
[00:15:56]  Use your imagination.
[00:15:57]  It has no place in a classroom, in an education facility, or in front of children.
[00:16:04]  If we don't fight this, honestly, like moms, dads, get up, get up off your couch, make a phone call, get down to the PTA, raise hell.
[00:16:14]  We can't allow this to go on.
[00:16:16]  Do you think that people are fighting it?
[00:16:19]  Do you see from what you've been hearing?
[00:16:22]  And just, do you feel like people are fighting back?
[00:16:25]  Do you think we'll see that in the midterms?
[00:16:27]  I think we were for a while, you know, with the whole Center of Virginia thing and the mask thing that got people out there.
[00:16:33]  Like it spurred parents to action.
[00:16:35]  They were ready to fight because they could see that mask and the damage it was doing on their kids every day.
[00:16:40]  But I feel like we've taken our foot off the gas and we've kind of forgotten there's a lot to fight.
[00:16:44]  Like the deeply damaging things are ongoing.
[00:16:48]  Maybe we started to look away once the masks came off, but that damage is ongoing and hasn't stopped even a little.
[00:16:56]  Yeah.
[00:16:57]  I wonder too, do you think it's the rogue wade?
[00:17:01]  Did that have people take their foot off the gas or feel, do you feel like the momentum was lost a little?
[00:17:08]  Or I think parents, I think most people are not activists.
[00:17:12]  You know, I'm not an activist either.
[00:17:13]  They just want to live their life.
[00:17:15]  You know, they, they want their kids to be taught the right things.
[00:17:18]  And it's not like schools don't teach any math or history or reading.
[00:17:22]  So, you know, they're, they're going back to work.
[00:17:24]  They're trying to put food on the table.
[00:17:25]  They're worried about inflation, the economy.
[00:17:27]  I just think like, unless this is in your face, you're watching Tucker, you're listening to me, Ben Shapiro, you, you know, you're reading Chris Ruffo's tweets, which look, we're all doing well, but the vast majority of Americans are not consuming news like this.
[00:17:41]  They don't know.
[00:17:43]  They don't realize this.
[00:17:44]  And you've really, if you've got a kid, it's like your parental responsibility to stay tuned in right now because we have, in some cases, enemies of wellness teaching our children.
[00:17:57]  Is this just in public schools or are they finding this in private schools too?
[00:18:02]  Hell no.
[00:18:03]  I mean, that's, I came from the New York City private school system, which was as crazy as they were on race essentialism, they were even crazier on the trans stuff.
[00:18:12]  Our old boys' school doesn't refer to boys as boys anymore or sons.
[00:18:16]  They refer to them as your student, your student.
[00:18:19]  And that was another thing that came out of this San Francisco report from Chris Ruffo, which was one of his documents revealed that they urge teachers now to refer to parents as caregiver one and caregiver two.
[00:18:32]  Because God forbid you say mom and dad, you've offended somebody.

=== Biological Women vs Trans Men (05:03) ===

[00:18:35]  Meanwhile, it's like two of my best friends are in a lesbian marriage.
[00:18:38]  They couldn't give a shit whether you use the term mom and dad.
[00:18:41]  There's no normal person who's offended by that.
[00:18:44]  Yeah.
[00:18:45]  Yes, that's usually the case.
[00:18:48]  There's people getting offended on behalf of a population that's usually not offended and doesn't care.
[00:18:53]  And they're like, stop dragging us into this crazy shit.
[00:18:56]  Right, right.
[00:18:57]  You're lunacy.
[00:18:58]  Now, okay, so it's not just in the schools, of course.
[00:19:01]  You've got the trans issue.
[00:19:03]  I mean, it really has crossed over to like a place where, again, you can't worry about being called a transphobe to fight this stuff.
[00:19:10]  You will be called that.
[00:19:11]  You're not if you oppose what's being done.
[00:19:14]  They dragged this guy from Planned Parenthood in front of Congress the other day.
[00:19:20]  And his name was Dr. Kumar.
[00:19:22]  And they get into one of these discussions about who can become pregnant.
[00:19:26]  And I do think this is an important discussion to have.
[00:19:28]  It's about language and what's real, what is real.
[00:19:33]  The fact is only biological women can become pregnant.
[00:19:36]  That is a fact.
[00:19:38]  Okay.
[00:19:38]  Science people, that's a fact.
[00:19:40]  Listen to this guy who shows up in front of Congress on that question from Planned Parenthood.
[00:19:48]  Dr. Kumar, can biological men become pregnant and give birth?
[00:19:54]  So men can have pregnancies, especially trans men.
[00:19:58]  Somebody with a uterus may have a capability of becoming pregnant, whether they're a woman or a man.
[00:20:03]  That doesn't mean that it's a good person.
[00:20:07]  I can't believe it's necessary to say this, but men cannot get pregnant and cannot give birth, regardless of how they identify themselves.
[00:20:16]  Thank you, sir.
[00:20:17]  Thank you.
[00:20:18]  The question was, can biological men, biological men?
[00:20:21]  And the guy dodges it.
[00:20:22]  And I love men can have pregnancies, especially trans men.
[00:20:28]  What?
[00:20:29]  Especially?
[00:20:30]  So you're positing, doctor, that biological men can get pregnant?
[00:20:35]  Okay.
[00:20:36]  No, they cannot.
[00:20:37]  Goodbye.
[00:20:37]  Get out.
[00:20:40]  That's how it should have gone.
[00:20:42]  I just, this, again, this is, I don't know how it's got to this level.
[00:20:49]  I just, I don't understand.
[00:20:51]  I, it's like something is in the water.
[00:20:53]  I don't get it.
[00:20:54]  I don't understand how this is some, you know, I'll be called a TERF.
[00:20:58]  I get called a transphobe.
[00:21:00]  I, I, the trans women are women, trans men are men.
[00:21:05]  That mantra, you can repeat it as often as you want, but reality remains undefeated.
[00:21:11]  It is, it is, a biological man cannot get pregnant.
[00:21:15]  That is, that should not be something we are arguing about as a society.
[00:21:20]  It is bonkers that we are.
[00:21:22]  I don't, this is, again, I just always keep coming back to how is this something that we're fighting about?
[00:21:29]  What, what is your take on that?
[00:21:32]  They, they, well, I mean, they like to police language as a way of controlling us, the discussions we have and so on.
[00:21:39]  And then there's who should they be?
[00:21:41]  Like the AOCs of the world, the people who are, quote, woke, who are in this 10% of the left, who have this bizarre agenda that they want to shove down our throats and they want everyone to submit.
[00:21:52]  And their way of getting us to is to call us names that historically have been deeply offensive to try to silence us.
[00:21:58]  Here was AOC in response to that exchange.
[00:22:01]  I just played for you.
[00:22:02]  Here's how she responded.
[00:22:03]  Listen.
[00:22:05]  The same folks who tell us and told us that COVID's just a flu, that climate change isn't real, that January 6th was nothing but a tourist visit, are the same, are now trying to tell us that transgender people are not real.
[00:22:25]  And I would say that their claim is probably just as legitimate as all their others, which is to say, not very much at all.
[00:22:36]  So if you say only biological women can get pregnant, you're positing that trans people are not real.
[00:22:44]  What we're positing is that biological sex is real and that only women, only biological women can do one miraculous thing, which is give birth to a baby.
[00:22:55]  Sorry, that's the way it is.
[00:22:58]  Yeah, that is not the correct argument.
[00:23:02]  You're not saying that trans people aren't real if you're saying biological women can have children, only biological women can have babies.
[00:23:12]  Those two things aren't even the same.
[00:23:13]  That's not, I hate these arguments.
[00:23:16]  Also, it's good to know that AOC and I have a similar, like my background is about as good as hers.
[00:23:24]  Just want to say I felt a little bit comforted by her little bit, she's looking off to the side.
[00:23:30]  So she's clearly checking notes.
[00:23:32]  She's like Corrine Jean-Pierre.
[00:23:33]  She's not able to get through a 20-second little bit that she wants to go viral without checking her notes so she can read.

=== Dolphins, Sports, and Brain Responses (14:57) ===

[00:23:39]  All right, Bridget, let me stand you by because there's much, much more to get to.
[00:23:42]  And we're going to go someplace weird with Bridget next.
[00:23:44]  And that is to the gridiron.
[00:23:47]  We're going to talk football.
[00:23:49]  I'm really interested in what happened with this Miami Dolphins quarterback.
[00:23:52]  And I want to discuss it and we'll take it up next.
[00:23:55]  First, though, we want to bring you another of our memorable moments from the first two years of this show.
[00:23:59]  This one, oh, this one's personal.
[00:24:01]  And it's a moment that resonated, we are told, with you, our audience, because we asked a lot of people to weigh in on what moments they remember.
[00:24:09]  It's from the show after a traumatic event had my son Thatcher in the hospital last March after a spring break skiing accident.
[00:24:18]  And it remains our most viewed YouTube video ever.
[00:24:22]  You can watch the full video there if you just search my name with son.
[00:24:27]  It should come up.
[00:24:28]  Or you can download the full episode in our archives.
[00:24:30]  It's from March again of this year and episode 287.
[00:24:34]  Listen.
[00:24:37]  It wasn't until we walked out of the hospital and I hugged the nurse, Alyssa, that it finally hit me, right?
[00:24:46]  Like feeling it now.
[00:24:49]  You know, the amount of stress and the love that you have for your children and the fragility of these little bodies who totally depend on you and the enormous responsibility you have for their well-being, you know, for making huge decisions and the importance of family and friends, right?
[00:25:11]  And good colleagues.
[00:25:13]  I had Doug.
[00:25:15]  I don't know what people who are single parenting do.
[00:25:18]  God bless you.
[00:25:18]  God bless you.
[00:25:20]  It must be so hard, you know, and I'm sure you have the feeling of loving your friends and your family even more.
[00:25:28]  My two older, Yates and Yardley, were so delightful.
[00:25:32]  They were so supportive of Thatcher.
[00:25:39]  So, Bridget, I don't know if you're a sports fan.
[00:25:42]  My audience knows I'm not a sports person.
[00:25:44]  I only discuss sports if they cross over into my realm, which is news.
[00:25:48]  And every so often they do.
[00:25:50]  And one of those times was a few years ago when I was at NBC and CTE was in the news.
[00:25:57]  You know, it stands for chronic traumatic encephalopathy.
[00:26:01]  And it's this brain injury that you get if you're a sports player.
[00:26:05]  It could be a baseball player who gets hit in the head too many times, a soccer player who heads the ball too many times too roughly.
[00:26:12]  And most often, a football player who gets hit in the head as a part of the normal course of business for these guys.
[00:26:19]  And I had Brett Favre, Kurt Warner of formerly the St. Louis Rams, Abby Wambach, one of the most famous successful soccer players in American history, come on to talk about their CTE, their fears of it.
[00:26:35]  Brett Favre absolutely believes he has it.
[00:26:37]  So does Abby.
[00:26:38]  They all did.
[00:26:39]  But the thing about CTE is it can't be diagnosed until you die.
[00:26:41]  They have to dissect your brain to know.
[00:26:45]  So you can't say, I know I have it.
[00:26:48]  You just can suspect you have it.
[00:26:50]  This is they made the NFL made or the movie about the NFL was made concussion.
[00:26:54]  And the NFL has made reforms since it got outed for not paying anywhere near enough attention to the health of its players, just putting them out there like they weren't humans and over and over and over again, subjecting them to danger.
[00:27:08]  Brett Favre told me personally, made news, tons of news when he said it, that he believed he thought he only had three to four concussions in his 20-year career.
[00:27:17]  But 17 years into it is when they first started to test for concussions and learn more.
[00:27:22]  And he later found out that what's referred to in the NFL as being dinged as getting dinged, D-I-N-G-E-D, is like, you know, you get your bell rung, you get sort of like ringing in the ears.
[00:27:33]  That's a concussion.
[00:27:34]  And he said, once he learned that, he told me he believes he had thousands of concussions during his time playing as a quarterback.
[00:27:42]  And so it's a dangerous thing.
[00:27:44]  I've been thinking about it lately because I have, well, I have three kids and my oldest is 13.
[00:27:49]  He's in seventh grade and they had to choose one of three sports to play after school.
[00:27:54]  It's good.
[00:27:54]  I like that they're making him play sports.
[00:27:56]  It was like water, polo, soccer, or football.
[00:27:58]  And he'd done flag football.
[00:27:59]  So he's like, I'm going to do tackle football.
[00:28:01]  And I support this.
[00:28:01]  And I'm not worried about CTE from, you know, a year at seventh grade sports.
[00:28:05]  But it's been on my mind.
[00:28:06]  You know, he's a newswoman.
[00:28:07]  So I always think we're going to get eaten by sharks and we're going to get mesothelioma and we're, you know, going to get CTE in seventh grade.
[00:28:14]  I know it's not true, but it was that thing in your head.
[00:28:18]  Anyway, then this happens this week.
[00:28:21]  And this is the reason why participation in tackle football has gone way down at the pee wee and the lower school level because moms and dads don't want CTE happening to their kids and they don't trust officials like the NFL to take care of their kids.
[00:28:40]  And this is the reason why.
[00:28:41]  All right, so there's a guy, forgive me to the sports fans.
[00:28:43]  His name is Tua Tangoviola.
[00:28:47]  That's not right, Steve, is it?
[00:28:49]  He plays for the Miami Dolphins.
[00:28:50]  Tago say he doesn't have it.
[00:28:55]  Steve also doesn't have it.
[00:28:56]  T-A-G-O-V-A-I Loa.
[00:28:59]  Tago Violoa.
[00:29:01]  Forgive me, Tua.
[00:29:02]  And this guy's a star quarterback for the Miami Dolphins.
[00:29:05]  He's in his third year.
[00:29:06]  So on Sunday, Bridget, he goes out there and he plays a game as the quarterback and he gets knocked down.
[00:29:14]  We're going to show the video so that for those of you listening, go watch it on YouTube later.
[00:29:18]  And clearly the guy gets considerably hurt.
[00:29:21]  I mean, we'll play the video and react to it.
[00:29:24]  And then four days later, Thursday night, they put him back out there.
[00:29:30]  Now it's very clear.
[00:29:30]  We're going to play the videos back to back in a second.
[00:29:32]  But four days later, they put him back out there.
[00:29:35]  And it is the most disturbing tape I've seen in a long time.
[00:29:39]  He falls down.
[00:29:40]  And everybody knows after you have a concussion, you're not supposed to go back out there.
[00:29:44]  The second concussion is the one that can kill you and seriously damage you.
[00:29:47]  So most doctors looking at this were saying you should not go back out there.
[00:29:53]  And here is what happened when he went back out there last night and got hit.
[00:29:57]  And watch his hands after he goes down.
[00:30:01]  His ability to make adjustments at halftime.
[00:30:04]  To a rolling left.
[00:30:07]  Lift the grain.
[00:30:07]  And down he goes.
[00:30:09]  Slung down in his own 48-yard line.
[00:30:13]  Josh Tupu.
[00:30:15]  And uh-oh.
[00:30:20]  Well, we saw last week, and he went down.
[00:30:22]  He got up.
[00:30:23]  It was wobbly.
[00:30:24]  The training staff comes out.
[00:30:30]  And of course, the last thing the Dolphins wanted to see.
[00:30:32]  I mean, last week it looked for all the world.
[00:30:34]  Everybody thought head injury, concussion, passed the protocol, came back second half, led him to a victory.
[00:30:41]  And out Tupo slams him to the ground.
[00:30:44]  I mean, it's, you think about the back, the ankle, but he gets thrown to the ground.
[00:30:49]  Again, wrenching that back, which was the issue last week.
[00:30:53]  So they work on him a step away.
[00:30:55]  Oh, my God, Bridget.
[00:30:57]  So his fingers are like, they are bent back in a way I can't even do.
[00:31:02]  Can't even do on this set, but they're like flipped back.
[00:31:06]  And it's a brain injury.
[00:31:08]  I mean, what's happening to him is a brain response.
[00:31:10]  It's not that he broke his fingers.
[00:31:12]  They call it a fencing response, which suggests potentially a serious brain injury.
[00:31:19]  What did they do, the Dolphins that night?
[00:31:21]  They sent him to the hospital to be observed, and he was later released almost immediately so he could fly home with his team.
[00:31:28]  He was not kept overnight for observation.
[00:31:30]  The Dolphins coach, Mike McDaniel, is saying, okay, well, when I saw that just last night, he obviously had a concussion.
[00:31:38]  He was asking for me.
[00:31:40]  And then when he saw me, I could just tell that this was not the same guy I'm used to seeing.
[00:31:44]  And he and others are blaming this person called the unaffiliated neurological consultant who tested Tua on the Sunday game.
[00:31:55]  After the Sunday game, he went in there.
[00:31:57]  And after he got knocked down on Sunday, he tried to get back up and he stumbled.
[00:32:00]  He couldn't hold himself up.
[00:32:00]  He looked like he'd had, you know, singularly drunk a keg of beer.
[00:32:04]  So he's wobbling all over the field.
[00:32:07]  Then they sent him to the unaffiliated neurological consultant who's supposed to give you honest feedback.
[00:32:12]  That guy cleared him.
[00:32:14]  He returned to the game.
[00:32:16]  And there was all this hubbub online about why the hell did they return him to the game after anybody with two eyes could see the guy had what was clearly a head injury.
[00:32:26]  And they said it was his back and his ankle.
[00:32:29]  Okay, maybe that's true.
[00:32:30]  Nobody I've seen online believes that.
[00:32:32]  No football player I've been listening to online believes that.
[00:32:35]  He got sent back in.
[00:32:37]  And then the people were stunned.
[00:32:40]  They played him again Thursday night, four days later.
[00:32:43]  My daughter got a concussion one time.
[00:32:46]  They were like, she's done.
[00:32:48]  She will not be doing physical activity for a week, 10 days, maybe two.
[00:32:53]  Four days later to send him into an NFL football game as the quarterback.
[00:32:57]  But they did.
[00:32:59]  And now people are, the Players Association is saying, this unaffiliated neurological consultant owes us answers.
[00:33:08]  We don't care if he seemed lucid in the second half.
[00:33:12]  These players want to play and will play hurt.
[00:33:16]  They've had a lifetime of conditioning to do it.
[00:33:19]  It's up to the officials, the authorities, the medical personnel to say, I'm sorry, buddy, it's not happening.
[00:33:26]  It isn't safe for you.
[00:33:28]  And the whole situation just disgusts me.
[00:33:31]  I'm upset for this guy, for America's kids, for the sport, which is a great American sport.
[00:33:38]  I don't know.
[00:33:38]  What do you make of it?
[00:33:40]  I mean, I'm not a doctor, but, and I love football, and it's always just heart-wrenching to see these injuries and just soul-wrenching to watch them.
[00:33:51]  And It's, you know, they get paid a lot of money and know that it's their choice to play, knowing the danger.
[00:33:59]  But there does have to be somebody who's saying, like you said, they'll play no matter what.
[00:34:05]  These guys love the game.
[00:34:06]  They love playing.
[00:34:08]  And somebody has to be, there has to be kind of a grown-up in charge who's saying, no, you can't play.
[00:34:14]  You had a concussion.
[00:34:16]  It's dangerous for you because then it does start feeling very exploitative of these players and their health.
[00:34:23]  And it's, I don't know.
[00:34:24]  I wonder if football will survive.
[00:34:27]  You know, there's so much danger in that sport.
[00:34:30]  And like you said, more and more people are just opting out of letting their children play.
[00:34:35]  That's the same thing.
[00:34:37]  They did more damage.
[00:34:38]  They did more damage to their sport last night.
[00:34:41]  I mean, put Tua to the side for a second.
[00:34:43]  God bless the guy.
[00:34:44]  And I really pray for his recovery.
[00:34:47]  They're saying he's okay.
[00:34:48]  We'll see.
[00:34:49]  Again, you don't know.
[00:34:51]  And there's no way of knowing until much, much later.
[00:34:54]  And he's only 24, I guess.
[00:34:55]  I mean, you do wonder what the 44-year-old Tua is going to be thinking about this.
[00:35:00]  But they did more damage than he had to do.
[00:35:01]  Not just to him, but to the sport.
[00:35:05]  Yeah.
[00:35:08]  There was a player on ESPN, former player named Rob Ninkovich.
[00:35:13]  He is a former outside linebacker.
[00:35:15]  He's drafted by the Saints.
[00:35:16]  He played for the Dolphins and the Patriots for eight years.
[00:35:19]  He won two Super Bowls.
[00:35:20]  So this guy's been around too.
[00:35:22]  He was reacting to this.
[00:35:23]  And I looked at everything.
[00:35:24]  You know, I looked at what Dolphins fans were saying.
[00:35:27]  It doesn't seem to be like a partisan or a game, like a game lover's thing determining your opinion.
[00:35:34]  I haven't seen many people defending Miami on this.
[00:35:37]  They're mad at what happened to this player.
[00:35:39]  In any event, here's what Rob had to say about it.
[00:35:42]  For a player to go down, when you get knocked out, you don't know what happened.
[00:35:48]  I've been knocked out.
[00:35:50]  You get up, you're like, whoa, what happened?
[00:35:52]  I'm okay.
[00:35:53]  I'm okay.
[00:35:54]  I can go.
[00:35:54]  I can play.
[00:35:55]  It's up to someone else, a medical expert or someone that witnesses that to say, no, no, no, no, you just got knocked out.
[00:36:03]  You don't know what happened.
[00:36:04]  You might say it's your back, but we know, we saw it.
[00:36:07]  So the NFL has to do a better job in knowing what to do if they see someone get injured the way that he got injured.
[00:36:15]  It wasn't his back.
[00:36:16]  You don't sit up, shake your head to get the cobwebs out.
[00:36:19]  Stand up, do it again, start to run and stumble on yourself if you have a back injury.
[00:36:24]  It was a head issue on Sunday.
[00:36:26]  They say it's a back issue.
[00:36:28]  He plays Thursday night, four days later, and gets a massive concussion where he's froze up.
[00:36:33]  So that's a problem and it's a bad look.
[00:36:37]  I have children.
[00:36:37]  I have kids.
[00:36:38]  After you watch that, you don't want your kid to play football.
[00:36:41]  And you see all these commercials on safety of the game and future of the game.
[00:36:46]  Technology is shaping the future of the game with helmets.
[00:36:50]  But how do you protect the player on the field so where he doesn't have to fight through an injury to say, hey, you know what?
[00:36:56]  I'm fine.
[00:36:56]  I can go out here.
[00:36:57]  I can play.
[00:36:57]  I'm good.
[00:36:58]  It's the doctors.
[00:36:59]  It's your coaches.
[00:37:01]  It's the NFL.
[00:37:02]  They need to say, no, no, no, we need to have a better protocol in place to make sure that players don't put themselves in harm's way.
[00:37:08]  Because the 44-year-old Tua is going to look back at the 24-year-old Tua and say, why did I do this?
[00:37:14]  Now I have a family.
[00:37:15]  Now I have people that rely on me to be around.
[00:37:18]  And I've seen too many guys that are going through a lot of stuff.
[00:37:22]  And it's unfortunate.
[00:37:23]  I sat next Junior Sal was my locker mate next to me.
[00:37:26]  And I had to see things that you don't want to see that happen to people.
[00:37:31]  So I don't want families to go through it.
[00:37:34]  And you don't know what you don't know.
[00:37:35]  You don't know.
[00:37:36]  There's an unknown here to the future.
[00:37:38]  How long you played football with contact.
[00:37:41]  What's in store for me?
[00:37:42]  What's in store for everyone that played?
[00:37:44]  It's an unknown.
[00:37:45]  But it's your families that are going to be by your side down the road.
[00:37:49]  You know, the head coach can go up and tap you on the shoulder, give you, you know, hold your hand while you're going off the field.
[00:37:53]  He's not going to be there 20 or 30 years down the road when you're dealing with a problem.
[00:37:58]  It's going to be your wife and your kids.
[00:38:02]  Wow.
[00:38:03]  Powerful.
[00:38:04]  Wow.
[00:38:05]  Yeah.
[00:38:05]  He got very emotional.
[00:38:06]  I mean, he knows this on a cellular level.
[00:38:10]  So I really defer to the players and all the people who are outraged about this on this story.
[00:38:16]  I think, like you said, it doesn't seem like there are many people pushing back.
[00:38:21]  Would you do it?
[00:38:22]  Like you, you have a little girl now.
[00:38:24]  God willing, you guys will have future kids.
[00:38:26]  You might have a little boy.
[00:38:27]  Would you let him play tackle football?
[00:38:30]  That's a really good question.
[00:38:31]  You know, my husband and I were just talking about this because of this injury we watch football.

=== Trump's Mental State and Security (10:40) ===

[00:38:36]  And I'm that's a good question.
[00:38:40]  If he loved it, would I stop him when he was young?
[00:38:43]  I don't know, but it is so dangerous.
[00:38:46]  And I'm such a nervous Nelly as it is.
[00:38:49]  I don't know that I'd be able to even watch a single game.
[00:38:52]  It's got to be so stressful for all the wives and kids of these players to just even watch a game.
[00:39:00]  I can't imagine moms.
[00:39:01]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:39:02]  I, I don't know.
[00:39:03]  That's a that's a good question.
[00:39:05]  I'm not, I know a lot of, um, I have a good friend.
[00:39:08]  All of his sons are pretty high-level football players.
[00:39:12]  He coached it and kind of had to deal with a lot of just the anti-football.
[00:39:18]  Um, that there's a lot of just the losing ground this game is taking, but they love the game and they want to work hard at it.
[00:39:29]  So if I had a son who loved it, I don't know.
[00:39:33]  That's the other thing, as I point out, unless you're going to put him in like, I don't know, swimming, you know, the head can get hit.
[00:39:41]  You know, like I say, Abby Wambach was one of the women I interviewed on NBC about CTE.
[00:39:47]  I pulled up just to refresh my memory what she said.
[00:39:50]  This is the Washington Post writing it up.
[00:39:52]  She said, a cavalier attitude toward concussions early in her career reflected a real naive kid who didn't really want to face the truth about what her current situation was.
[00:40:04]  Kurt Warner, for his part, said there were numerous times he played through brain injuries because the prevailing stance among football players at the time was, I'll do whatever I have to to be out there.
[00:40:14]  And I remember Kurt Warner telling me, if you didn't, you were considered a sissy.
[00:40:19]  Like you, you play hurt.
[00:40:20]  And that's still the mentality of the players, no matter what the new concussion protocol is.
[00:40:26]  And he was not put in the concussion protocol, which they've instituted now under pressure after they were exposed for repeatedly endangering the players.
[00:40:33]  He was not because, again, this neurological consultant, I guess, said this is a back/slash ankle thing.
[00:40:39]  And but like, that's why they have the protocols in place because, of course, the player wants to play.
[00:40:45]  It's millions of dollars.
[00:40:46]  It's a lifetime of being told you play hurt.
[00:40:48]  It's a tough guy scenario for a lot of these men.
[00:40:51]  So there needs to be a layer of security behind them that said, and by the way, as that, as that other player was pointing out, you don't know what's happened to you.
[00:40:58]  You just got your bell rung.
[00:41:00]  So you need, you know, like you don't, you have no idea whether you're okay, right?
[00:41:03]  You need other unhurt professionals to say, you're sitting out.
[00:41:09]  Yeah.
[00:41:10]  Yeah.
[00:41:10]  And I think there's the pressure to just be in the game while you can.
[00:41:14]  And because there's always that fear of being injured, you want to make the money while you can make it.
[00:41:19]  And you see these career-ending injuries and you think, you know, what these people have devoted their lives to this, these moments.
[00:41:26]  And to then have they're afraid of losing that, obviously.
[00:41:31]  In that moment, that can probably seem bigger than thinking, you know, the long-term repercussions of these repeated brain injuries.
[00:41:40]  That second hit, the one that happened on last night, Thursday night, where his fingers bend back in a way that is not human without anybody touching them.
[00:41:50]  He's holding for the listening audience.
[00:41:51]  He's holding his hands in front of his face after having been knocked to the ground and his fingers are bending in the most disturbing angle.
[00:42:00]  It's clearly a brain injury.
[00:42:02]  And I'm with the majority online.
[00:42:05]  Sunday's injury appeared very much to be a brain injury as well.
[00:42:09]  All right.
[00:42:10]  I can't, I can't pass this moment without talking about, forgive me, but somebody else who clearly is suffering from the effects of maybe not a brain injury, but the deterioration of one's mental faculties.
[00:42:23]  And that is the sitting president of the United States.
[00:42:25]  All right.
[00:42:26]  I've got to talk to you about this because yesterday, President Biden was at the FEMA headquarters in D.C., right?
[00:42:30]  They're dealing with what's happening in Florida, now South Carolina.
[00:42:33]  Look at this.
[00:42:33]  He was seen walking, walking, wandering away from the podium the wrong direction.
[00:42:38]  Administration officials tried to stop him.
[00:42:40]  They could not.
[00:42:42]  Off he goes.
[00:42:43]  This comes after Wednesday when Dr. Jill had to help her husband at a White House event when he once again began wandering off in the wrong direction.
[00:42:52]  Look at him.
[00:42:52]  You don't know where he's going.
[00:42:54]  Last week, President Biden was at a Global Fund event.
[00:42:58]  He left the podium, began wandering around while he was still being spoken to by another person, Bridget.
[00:43:04]  Look at this.
[00:43:05]  He just decided to leave.
[00:43:06]  He just decided to peace out in the middle.
[00:43:09]  This is a pattern.
[00:43:11]  Back in April of this year, look at this.
[00:43:13]  He left a North Carolina Agricultural Academy event.
[00:43:16]  He started to attempt to shake hands with no one, no one, while wandering aimlessly around the stage.
[00:43:23]  And then we pulled this one from August of last year when he appeared to get lost while on his way back to his house, meaning the White House.
[00:43:31]  This is just a small sample of his pattern.
[00:43:35]  It's deeply concerning.
[00:43:37]  And honestly, Bridget, I don't know what to do.
[00:43:39]  Yesterday he referred to, where's Jackie?
[00:43:41]  Jackie's dead.
[00:43:42]  Jackie passed in August, and every person in there who still has their, you know, brain in order knew that.
[00:43:49]  And then we got top of mind.
[00:43:51]  She was just top of mind, top of mind, top of mind.
[00:43:53]  If she was top of mind, he would have known that she had passed in August and that he shouldn't be looking around the room for her.
[00:43:59]  So how disturbed do you think we should be?
[00:44:02]  I mean, the gaslighting that occurs in the aftermath of these events, like the one you just described, where the press secretary is asked about it and it's just, oh, top of mind, we all saw this.
[00:44:14]  Again, this is another instance where people are being told not to believe what they see with their own eyes.
[00:44:21]  And it's, we used to make a lot of fun of, you know, the deteriorate his gaffes on dumpster fire, but now it's not even funny.
[00:44:31]  It's really disturbing and it feels like elder abuse.
[00:44:34]  You know, you can't, I, I don't, how, how are people okay with this on a, on a human level?
[00:44:40]  Not take away what party you belong to, take away your ideology, whatever team you are.
[00:44:47]  How are you okay with somebody who clearly should just kind of be enjoying his grandkids and also running a country in a condition that is clearly not, you know, he's not functioning at 100% or firing on all cylinders.
[00:45:05]  Oh, my God.
[00:45:06]  And we're all just supposed to pretend this isn't happening.
[00:45:09]  I know.
[00:45:10]  That's the thing.
[00:45:11]  It's like the Democrats need to do what's right and save him from himself and save the rest of us from him.
[00:45:18]  He should not be in this office.
[00:45:20]  He should not.
[00:45:23]  For his well-being and the well-being of the country.
[00:45:25]  Yeah, no.
[00:45:26]  I mean, aside from the fact that he's running the country, let's take it down to just a human level.
[00:45:31]  This person should not be in this position at all.
[00:45:35]  He should be, somebody should be taking care of him.
[00:45:38]  It is that similar vibe of if somebody needs to say, you need to sit this game out, sir.
[00:45:45]  Yes.
[00:45:47]  You're not okay right now.
[00:45:48]  You're exactly right.
[00:45:50]  The well professionals on the side need to step in and say, you cannot do it.
[00:45:56]  Actually, you cannot.
[00:45:58]  Yeah.
[00:45:59]  Well, if you heard him yesterday, you know, you heard that soundbite of him.
[00:46:03]  Where's Jackie?
[00:46:04]  I don't know if we have that one here.
[00:46:07]  Like he can't even get the words out now, Bridget.
[00:46:09]  It was like, on top of the fact that he was calling for a woman who has been dead now for a few months.
[00:46:15]  He was like, well, she's August 6th.
[00:46:21]  Like Ben Shapiro makes fun of Joe Biden with that affect on his show.
[00:46:26]  And it's an exaggeration for humorous effect.
[00:46:28]  You understand this as a comedian.
[00:46:30]  It's become the reality.
[00:46:31]  That's how he speaks now.
[00:46:33]  Yeah, it seems like it's getting worse.
[00:46:35]  It does seem like there's been a big deterioration, even just in the past couple of months.
[00:46:42]  It feels, and I'm not sure how they really think that he's going to make it to 2024.
[00:46:50]  That's.
[00:46:50]  Well, maybe they feel as most people do, which is if he goes while he's still in his first term, like goes voluntarily, steps down, you know, we sort of declare him incompetent, whatever it is.
[00:47:02]  Look who we're going to get.
[00:47:05]  Right.
[00:47:08]  Pause.
[00:47:12]  Yeah, it's like it's like a curb your enthusiasm episode.
[00:47:17]  Boom, bottom, bottom, boom, boom.
[00:47:21]  Oh, we do have the soundbite.
[00:47:22]  Let's listen to it.
[00:47:23]  Listener, you can't even string the words together.
[00:47:24]  Here it is.
[00:47:26]  I want to thank all of you here for including bipartisan elected officials like Representative Governor, Senator Braun, Senator Booker, Representative Jackie, are you here?
[00:47:37]  Where's Jackie?
[00:47:38]  I didn't think she was supposed to be here.
[00:47:43]  Where's Jackie?
[00:47:44]  I mean, that really could be, that could be the bumper sticker of it anymore.
[00:47:48]  It's so sad.
[00:47:49]  Oh, and her family handled it so well saying we feel sorry for him.
[00:47:53]  We feel sorry for him.
[00:47:54]  Bridget, stand by.
[00:47:55]  Much, much more to get to with you.
[00:47:57]  We're going to dive deep into Bridget's latest feelings on motherhood, on a past that she would describe as perhaps more promiscuous than she would like.
[00:48:07]  She came really clean about it and in a very powerful essay, so powerful that speaking of Ben Shapiro, he read the whole thing live on his show.
[00:48:13]  We've got the real Bridget here to talk about it in moments.
[00:48:15]  She's staying with us.
[00:48:16]  And remember, you can find the Megan Kelly show live on SiriusXM Triumph Channel 111 every weekday at Noon East.
[00:48:22]  The full video show and clips by subscribing to our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash Megan Kelly.
[00:48:28]  If you prefer to get your news via audio podcast, follow and download us.
[00:48:33]  Somebody, I am following the comments.
[00:48:35]  Somebody said, MK, you've got to tell people to download because that's what helps you on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcast.
[00:48:42]  And that's where you'll find our full archives with now more than 400 shows.
[00:48:49]  Bridget, I agree with Ben Shapiro.
[00:48:52]  Your piece on Substack just about a month ago entitled, I Regret Being a Slut, is, as Ben said, a beautiful and brave piece.
[00:49:04]  It really was.
[00:49:05]  And something near and dear to my own heart, because I've said this before on the show, I was in a much different place than you were.
[00:49:12]  And our backgrounds are different, of course, too, but we're very aligned on virtually everything now.

=== Regret, Shame, and Hyper Promiscuity (15:22) ===

[00:49:17]  But the one piece of advice I give everyone's daughter going off to college is the same.
[00:49:21]  And it is, don't be a slut.
[00:49:23]  Don't be a slut.
[00:49:24]  Don't give it away so easily, girls.
[00:49:26]  Like make them earn it.
[00:49:27]  Remember your value.
[00:49:28]  Like having sex, you don't have to be in love, but it should be something really precious.
[00:49:33]  And you don't just want any Tom, Dick, or Harry jumping on top of you, so to speak.
[00:49:39]  You are there too, but you got there through a much more traumatic road.
[00:49:44]  And I will just read this one piece of your amazing substack piece to our audience.
[00:49:49]  You write, if I get really honest with myself, I'd say most of these usually drunken encounters left me feeling empty and demoralized and worthless.
[00:49:59]  I wouldn't have said that at the time, though.
[00:50:01]  At the time, I would have told you I was liberated, even while I tried to drink away the sick feeling of rejection when my most recent hookup did not call me back.
[00:50:09]  At the time, I would have said one night stands made me feel emboldened, but in reality, I was using sex like a drug.
[00:50:16]  You go on, the lie I told myself for decades was, I'm not in pain.
[00:50:21]  I'm empowered.
[00:50:24]  Wow.
[00:50:26]  So how did you come to that realization?
[00:50:29]  Like, how did you spend so much time in that dark place?
[00:50:32]  Was it sobriety?
[00:50:33]  Did that behavior continue after?
[00:50:35]  Like, what was it?
[00:50:38]  It was a lot of sobriety and a lot of therapy.
[00:50:41]  And I think, yeah, a lot of when I think about this, I, I know a lot of it is tied up with my drinking and drug use.
[00:50:51]  A lot of the, the, that behavior, I don't think I would have engaged in had I not been drunk or high.
[00:50:59]  And so those things are very connected.
[00:51:03]  Um, also post sexual assault, when I was pretty young, 18, I really felt dirty and ashamed.
[00:51:13]  And I felt like it was my fault because I was drinking underage.
[00:51:18]  And I felt like I was valueless now.
[00:51:22]  And it wasn't, it wasn't like I hadn't already lost my virginity, but I had really only just lost my virginity when this happened.
[00:51:30]  So I was still pretty early into the, into my sexuality.
[00:51:36]  And, and then I, I responded to it by being kind of hyper promiscuous, which is very common for women who have experienced trauma.
[00:51:45]  They'll often just become hyper, they'll go into being more promiscuous.
[00:51:51]  And it's a way to try and take control back, at least it was for me.
[00:51:55]  And it was also just a way of, and, and at the same time, feeling like I had no value and ashamed and saying like, oh, I don't care.
[00:52:06]  I just don't care.
[00:52:07]  And so it's been a really, I mean, the emails I've received from women and men and gay men since I wrote that piece, I'm still getting them.
[00:52:16]  It is, it is incredible.
[00:52:18]  The stories people are telling me, the response, the, I think that there was a generation, Gen X, older millennials, and we were raised with that kind of girl power.
[00:52:30]  You can sleep your way to empowerment and you can unyoke your heart from sex with no consequence.
[00:52:38]  And a lot of those women are coming back saying, you know, it's a trap.
[00:52:43]  Don't, don't go that way.
[00:52:46]  I always felt like if I have sex with a guy, he's always going to have that over me.
[00:52:52]  That's kind of how, I don't know if that sounds weird, but I just felt like it has to be with somebody who I trust to never misuse it against me.
[00:53:03]  And, you know, who's not going to like, whatever, if I wind up being a lawyer, I wind up being a journalist who's not going to be able to sit there being like, I did her.
[00:53:11]  You know, I never wanted to give that power to anybody who I didn't really trust.
[00:53:16]  Maybe I was just paranoid at the proper age.
[00:53:18]  You know, I don't know what it is.
[00:53:20]  Yeah, that's, that's interesting.
[00:53:22]  Where, where did you get your sex messaging from?
[00:53:25]  You know, well, I'm Catholic like you, for sure.
[00:53:28]  But I don't know.
[00:53:29]  I wouldn't describe myself as prude.
[00:53:31]  It's not like I wasn't fooling around.
[00:53:32]  I just was monogamous and I was judicious and how many people I, you know, offered that to.
[00:53:41]  I guess I don't know, Bridget.
[00:53:44]  I thank God I never did suffer a sexual assault.
[00:53:48]  And I did have, you know, great messaging from my parents and an example of a very loving marriage.
[00:53:55]  And my dad died when I was 15, but prior to that, my parents were very much in love.
[00:53:59]  And I guess I just had a good foundation in this department.
[00:54:02]  I was built up in terms of my ego and all, you know what I mean?
[00:54:05]  Like, not overly, but I think that is important.
[00:54:09]  And I know you talk very openly in this piece about how you had a very different experience.
[00:54:12]  You had a traumatic divorce in your family when you were young and an undiagnosed mental illness in your stepfather.
[00:54:17]  And things started to go south for you when you were on the same track I was on for a while there.
[00:54:24]  Yeah.
[00:54:24]  And I kind of get to the point at the end that you just said where I regret that those men can say they slept with me.
[00:54:32]  And that there's that's, I mean, I've dealt with that even after I went on Joe Rogan, the number of guys that reached out and were like, oh, nice to be able to say I like being someone.
[00:54:43]  I was like, oh, this is so uncomfortable.
[00:54:47]  I hate that.
[00:54:48]  I hate this.
[00:54:49]  And moments like that have made me reflect on, you know, having to look at that, that feeling that comes up when I hear from a guy who's like, I got to say that I slept with someone who was on Rogan.
[00:55:02]  It's just like, oh, God, I feel you.
[00:55:04]  That's not the dumber than I thought you were.
[00:55:07]  Yeah.
[00:55:08]  Shit.
[00:55:10]  But you know what?
[00:55:11]  In your case, I see it very differently because I feel like that was a younger me anticipating how, you know, I wanted my life to go and how I didn't want it to go.
[00:55:19]  But the older me looks at your life and says, there's zero point in regretting all of that.
[00:55:24]  You shouldn't regret all of that.
[00:55:26]  All of that went into making you this really thoughtful, wise, beyond your years person who, with this one essay, did so much good.
[00:55:36]  I mean, all the times I've said, don't be a slut, I haven't done anywhere near as good for women thinking about it or who might have been tempted to do it than you did with this essay.
[00:55:46]  But it's because I, I think partially and because I'm being honest about how I regret it.
[00:55:52]  And there's been a weird reaction to that word regret.
[00:55:55]  And I don't know if this is like an American thing where just kind of like, YOLO, and regret is almost a dirty word.
[00:56:03]  And people are like, you shouldn't, you know, one of the biggest feedback I get on this piece is the people reacting to me saying that I regret this.
[00:56:12]  And I think that, you know, I look at the arts and life is filled with regret.
[00:56:17]  I feel like that's an emotion that weirdly has become something we're not supposed to have.
[00:56:23]  And that's like a whole other piece that I could think about and consider because I do regret these things.
[00:56:29]  When I had those guys reach out to me and say, oh, I got to blah, blah, blah.
[00:56:36]  The feeling that I have is regret.
[00:56:38]  Like I regret giving that to you.
[00:56:41]  I regret not valuing myself enough.
[00:56:44]  And of course, I did the best that I could with wherever I was at and all of that stuff.
[00:56:49]  But there was always an intuition that I was ignoring.
[00:56:52]  There was always, and that's really what I would say to young women.
[00:56:55]  Don't ignore that intuition.
[00:56:58]  And having the culture be so, I grew up during Sex in the City.
[00:57:02]  I hated that show and didn't watch it, but all my friends watched it.
[00:57:06]  And everybody, the messaging there was like, have sex like a man.
[00:57:11]  You can.
[00:57:13]  And the double standard is something that really always bothered me.
[00:57:18]  And I'm not sure if I'm just now resigned to the double standard or I don't, I know that me getting naked and sleeping with men isn't going to change it.
[00:57:28]  Well, that's the thing.
[00:57:30]  So now we're getting to it.
[00:57:31]  Now we're getting to it because it's it's so what what do you regret about it?
[00:57:36]  Like if if it had worked for you, if you'd been working something out and you went to have sex with you know one night sand or some guy you didn't know and the next day you were like, I feel amazing.
[00:57:45]  That was awesome.
[00:57:46]  Peace out.
[00:57:47]  You wouldn't be having these feelings.
[00:57:48]  But so for those who think that that is the feeling you're going to get, you're sounding a different alarm.
[00:57:56]  Yes, I'm sounding a different alarm, but I'm also, you know, the book I want to write or somehow the essay I want to write, because there's a piece out there that anyone can access, which is what I learned from putting nudes online on Playboy.
[00:58:11]  And there's some stuff I read that piece before I posted I regret being a slut.
[00:58:16]  And there's still some stuff in there that I don't disagree with in my, what I learned from getting naked online.
[00:58:26]  And there have been moments where I felt like, yeah, you know, empowered by my own sexuality, but it was for the right reasons.
[00:58:36]  It was not because I was weaponizing sex because there's a, there's a whole, you know, there, there's a whole man-eater kind of side to my persona that I leaned into pretty hard for a long time.
[00:58:53]  And to, I'd be lying if I said that at the time, I didn't think there was some fun in that.
[00:59:00]  And it's just that over time, I realized that a lot of that persona, it was like my party girl image, that it was just a lie.
[00:59:09]  And at the end of the day, I was feeling pretty empty.
[00:59:13]  So yeah, there's a lot to work out there.
[00:59:16]  And it's kind of a, there's a lot of at the time, I didn't regret it.
[00:59:23]  I would have told you that I was killing.
[00:59:26]  Yeah.
[00:59:26]  And you write in your piece, there's a great line: the culture was right there to pick me up and dust me off every time you dealt with what you call the overwhelming shame.
[00:59:36]  And so I doubled down on being a proud slut, a proud slut, part of the divine feminine.
[00:59:42]  And then you write as follows: oh, this is so good.
[00:59:45]  Such a great writer.
[00:59:46]  You really are.
[00:59:47]  Thank you.
[00:59:48]  You write that the saddest realization is how low I set the bar.
[00:59:52]  A lifetime of allowing myself to be the other woman, taken for granted or treated like a doormat under the false pretense of being quote empowered, came to a head one night with the arrival of a text message from an on-again, off-again lover.
[01:00:06]  Quote, Good night, baby.
[01:00:08]  I love you, it said, quickly followed by, quote, wrong person.
[01:00:13]  Rock bottom doesn't always look like losing everything or ending up in jail.
[01:00:17]  Sometimes it can be that sick feeling in your gut when you know emotionally you're done.
[01:00:23]  Oh my gosh.
[01:00:24]  I was done.
[01:00:25]  I was done.
[01:00:26]  I remember that moment.
[01:00:27]  I remember, it's like I remember when I quit heroin vividly in my mind that moment, the rock bottom, whatever you want to call it, it's the same kind of moment.
[01:00:37]  I vividly remember walking.
[01:00:40]  He was coming to my place to, I forget why.
[01:00:42]  It wasn't even like a booty call.
[01:00:44]  I forgot why he was coming over.
[01:00:46]  And then I had to walk out and like give him something after he came to my place.
[01:00:52]  After this text message, I had to look him in the eye.
[01:00:56]  And so it's actually way worse than I actually even express in the piece.
[01:01:03]  And I remember walking back into my house feeling so, you know, they say in the 12-step books, pitiful demoralization.
[01:01:10]  And that was the feeling that I had.
[01:01:12]  It was just pitiful demoralization.
[01:01:15]  And my life changed a lot after that.
[01:01:17]  I just was, I was like, I'm done.
[01:01:19]  I can't do this.
[01:01:20]  I can't pretend that I'm okay being the other woman or that I'm okay just being someone's sex doll, basically.
[01:01:31]  And it took a lot of therapy and a long time because there's so much shame.
[01:01:37]  It's just shame is really hard.
[01:01:40]  And I think in women in particular, really shows up in our bodies.
[01:01:44]  And so there's just so much shame that I had to unpack and try and overcome.
[01:01:49]  And it still comes up.
[01:01:51]  I read the piece for YouTube and I hadn't read it since I had written it.
[01:01:55]  And I was getting, you know, fighting back tears the whole time.
[01:02:00]  There's still a lot of pain there.
[01:02:02]  Of course.
[01:02:03]  My God.
[01:02:04]  And that was there before and you were trying to heal it.
[01:02:06]  I mean, to a large extent, it was all about trying to heal pain.
[01:02:10]  And only once you realized, which many people don't, that that was not a cure, that in fact, that was an exacerbator, did you ultimately come to abandon it and try something else like love and taking care of yourself?
[01:02:24]  I think there's a real body count.
[01:02:26]  You know, I've heard from a lot of one of the emails that I read and the piece, when I read it, I talked about some of the responses I had received.
[01:02:34]  And one of the emails was from a man who said he had watched his mom deal with a lot of what I dealt with with drugs and alcohol and rotating cast of men.
[01:02:45]  And she died of an OD.
[01:02:47]  And I always get emotional.
[01:02:51]  Yeah.
[01:02:53]  I have a rule, though, like don't ugly cry on the internet.
[01:02:59]  That's why I could cry on your last podcast because there's no, there's no video screen.
[01:03:04]  Yeah.
[01:03:05]  I'm like, I don't need those screenshots to talk about shame.
[01:03:10]  It is hard.
[01:03:10]  Once it starts to come, it's really hard.
[01:03:12]  It's like a cough.
[01:03:13]  You almost have to let it out.
[01:03:14]  Otherwise, it's going to come out in an ugly way.
[01:03:16]  I know.
[01:03:18]  But this, the, I think that there's that expression there, but for the grace of God, go I.
[01:03:24]  And reading these stories from people about what I would say is kind of this body count to the sexual revolution.
[01:03:31]  It could have been me.
[01:03:33]  It easily could have been me.
[01:03:35]  Easily, easily, easily.
[01:03:37]  Had I not gotten sober, it's a miracle I was given the opportunity to get sober because in between getting sober for the first time and getting sober this time, I'll have nine years actually in a couple weeks.
[01:03:52]  There was 15 years.
[01:03:53]  There was plenty of time for me to OD or die or worse.
[01:03:59]  And there were little moments where I think I was able to pull myself back off the cliff, but I'm not really sure why I had that clarity at those moments.
[01:04:13]  Yes, our audience should know that while you had straight A's and were destined to go to Georgetown or some other equally revered school, you, we've talked about this the last time, but you started smoking weed, drinking daily at age 12 to 13, eventually led to heroin and you barely graduated from high school and you wound up getting drugged and raped, which we talked about as well the last time.

=== Tinder, Self-Lies, and Loveless Sex (03:55) ===

[01:04:40]  And then at 19 after high school, entered a state-funded halfway house in Minneapolis for seven months, by that point weighing just 89 pounds.
[01:04:48]  Well, you should have been at Georgetown and you were in a halfway house.
[01:04:52]  And so it really could have gone a different way for you.
[01:04:55]  I mean, the fact that you're sitting here telling your story and explaining the revelations you've had is in itself a miracle, but it's also a huge gift.
[01:05:05]  It's a gift to people who are following on that path without thinking, who are dabbling, dabbling on that path.
[01:05:11]  You know, you may have sort of path adjacent people who are like, oh, that's not me, but there's a piece of it that sounds familiar.
[01:05:17]  And one of the things I wanted to ask you about as somebody who's clearly much closer to, you know, women who are more out there, I guess, than I have been, is the following line.
[01:05:27]  You write, I'm not speaking for all women.
[01:05:30]  I know many women with a solid sense of self who happily have loveless sex.
[01:05:34]  Okay, now this, I've been having this debate with various people in my life after our friends told us a story about their 20-something year old son who was ordering Tinder dates to the house like a pizza.
[01:05:52]  And the parents were like, okay, that needs to stop.
[01:05:56]  You know, like you're going to move out and you're going to do what you're going to do in your home, but you're not going to be doing that in our home.
[01:06:01]  But they were describing how I was like, beautiful woman after beautiful woman, night after night was showing up at the house.
[01:06:06]  Meanwhile, half the audience is like, what was that website?
[01:06:09]  What?
[01:06:09]  Where is it?
[01:06:11]  Thanks to Tinder.
[01:06:13]  And my, I mean, I'm a sexist pig, I get, I guess, because my first reaction was no woman's actually enjoying that.
[01:06:19]  Like, that's a woman fishing for a husband, a boyfriend, you know, as a rich kid or a good-looking kid or a athlete or like you see something in that guy's Tinder profile that says, okay, I want to land him.
[01:06:31]  I could not get it in my head that a well-adjusted, healthy young woman would swipe left on Tinder and show up and just randomly have sex with a guy and leave totally happy.
[01:06:40]  And I got to be honest, I still feel that way.
[01:06:42]  And I've had many people be like, you're old.
[01:06:45]  You know, you don't understand.
[01:06:46]  I'm like, I don't know.
[01:06:47]  I believe what I believe about women and our own sort of inherent nature, but I'm very interested in what you have to say on it.
[01:06:55]  I know a lot of women who are very well-adjusted and they are happy to have sex and just walk away.
[01:07:04]  And I have to take what they tell me at face value.
[01:07:08]  I'm not a mind reader.
[01:07:10]  I can't, I can't project my own feelings about my, the lies I've told myself onto other people.
[01:07:19]  That's not fair at all.
[01:07:21]  And I, I mean, I know well-adjusted porn stars and they seem great and have businesses and seem happy and are in relationships.
[01:07:31]  And that's almost different to me.
[01:07:33]  Okay.
[01:07:34]  Like that.
[01:07:34]  So you're talking about just the like average, you know, run of the mill Tinder, Tinder gal.
[01:07:41]  Yeah.
[01:07:42]  I, I just don't believe that it's in a woman's nature to want totally loveless sex with a stranger one night and maybe a different stranger the next night.
[01:07:54]  I'm not saying women don't like sex.
[01:07:55]  I'm just saying I think we're built differently to where the way we really enjoy it is if there's an emotional connection with the person.
[01:08:02]  And I just don't see us becoming men in that way.
[01:08:06]  I get, I believe that men would like that.
[01:08:08]  I have no problem believing.
[01:08:10]  They're programmed.
[01:08:10]  They're biologically programmed to want to spread their seed to as many places as possible.
[01:08:13]  It's like those of us on the other side are like, no, don't do that.
[01:08:17]  Stay.
[01:08:18]  But we've been raised a different way for thousands of years.
[01:08:22]  And I just don't think you can get over it that easily.
[01:08:23]  And I do have a judgment and it could be totally wrong that those women are working something out and it's going to come back to haunt them.
[01:08:31]  I mean, maybe they're in their 20s.
[01:08:33]  So that's when you work stuff out.

=== Biological Programming and Vanity Projects (15:46) ===

[01:08:35]  And that's, but I, I still, I don't know if, yeah, if they'll come to the same conclusion inevitably that I came to.
[01:08:45]  Maybe, maybe they don't need to come to that conclusion.
[01:08:48]  Maybe like you said, they're, they're, I think so, so many times we just don't know what we want because we are so capable of lying to ourselves.
[01:09:00]  And that is, I guess, maybe what always makes me weird.
[01:09:05]  I feel insecure in this space that I'm in being a media personality or a pundit because I'm so hyper aware of my ability to lie to myself being in recovery.
[01:09:18]  And as we just talked about around my sexuality, I don't necessarily trust myself.
[01:09:24]  And I look at people like you and people who had well-adjusted parents usually, and they have this inner core of kind of self that I just don't have.
[01:09:38]  And I don't think I think a lot of people don't have it, but they don't even know that they don't have it, sometimes for decades, sometimes ever.
[01:09:46]  You know what, though?
[01:09:47]  What's so great about you, when I was reading your writing, as I read a ton of Bridget Fetti pieces in advance of today, and I was like, God, she's good.
[01:09:56]  I mean, I have writing, I have little notes on the sides of this packet.
[01:09:58]  Like, she's amazing.
[01:09:59]  She's brilliant.
[01:10:01]  Like that's where you've landed.
[01:10:03]  So I, I could never write the way you write.
[01:10:06]  I, I couldn't do it.
[01:10:07]  And I do think your life experience and having had a lot of this trauma, while not fun at all to go through along the way, has produced this beautiful creative person.
[01:10:17]  You know, I'm much more linear lawyer, fact-driven.
[01:10:20]  You know what I mean?
[01:10:20]  I have my own set of skills, but it takes all kinds, you know, to make beauty in this world.
[01:10:25]  And your lane is a really important one.
[01:10:29]  Yeah, I think it's funny.
[01:10:31]  I feel I was just talking to some editors and editors are always trying to get me out of memoir.
[01:10:37]  I don't know why.
[01:10:38]  They just want.
[01:10:39]  And I understand that because from their perspective, they want me to maybe do something more journalistic or maybe do something.
[01:10:47]  And I've done these pieces, by the way, but the pieces that always resonate with people are the navel gazy ones.
[01:10:55]  And I've always been insecure about this as a writer.
[01:10:58]  I would love to be a great, you know, journalistic writer who can write some piece that flows and has great prose and also has facts and is interesting.
[01:11:08]  And I try to write all kinds of different things.
[01:11:11]  I've tried to write scripts, but the pieces that just resonate and go out into the world, it's always when I'm self-reflecting.
[01:11:19]  And yeah, that's something that I, and I do love writing these pieces.
[01:11:26]  They feel, they come through me.
[01:11:28]  You know, this one took many years for me to be able to write.
[01:11:32]  And I think part of it was just, I didn't have the right framing.
[01:11:36]  I didn't have the courage to stand behind that piece.
[01:11:40]  And as we talked about in the last time we talked, having a loving husband and being in a nice relationship, those things are healing.
[01:11:47]  And that gives me the courage to have, to go out into the world.
[01:11:51]  And he's so supportive.
[01:11:53]  I mean, just so amazingly supportive.
[01:11:57]  And also it can give you the courage to examine your old self in a way that was too scary prior to having that, you know, having that support and feeling loved and feeling whole.
[01:12:06]  Like it's not as scary to look back on your old behavior and be like, what was I doing?
[01:12:10]  I mean, I've definitely had that.
[01:12:12]  Maybe not in the sex field, but just in terms of my own choices in life and things I've done that I'm like, why would I, I wouldn't have done that today?
[01:12:20]  I want to ask you about, well, a couple of things.
[01:12:24]  So we talked a little bit jokingly about the boobs, but how do you think that factors in, right?
[01:12:30]  So if you're saying, if it's like, don't be promiscuous, don't have loveless, well, or just meaningless sex with just any old guy.
[01:12:39]  But like, then there's something else, which is celebrating the human body, being titillating, owning your sexuality.
[01:12:46]  Like I love all that stuff in the, in that second lane, that second category.
[01:12:52]  But then for me too, that one can cross over to the place where I'm like, I never want to see another picture of Kim Kardashian again.
[01:13:00]  I am so sick of seeing her boobs and her ass every time I open the New York Post, the Daily Mail, whatever.
[01:13:09]  I'm sick of it.
[01:13:10]  And not just her, but all the sisters too.
[01:13:12]  Sick of it.
[01:13:13]  And I'm sick of these Hollywood actresses showing all their body like the stupid award show.
[01:13:18]  You're at a fucking, wear, wear some sparkles.
[01:13:21]  Cover your navel.
[01:13:22]  For the love of God, act like a woman, you know?
[01:13:25]  I just feel like it can cross over to the point where even though I love boobs too, and I have no judgment about where I feel like you're in that middle lane, you know, you're in that middle place, but it goes to the place where it just becomes like so in your face, it bothers me.
[01:13:40]  It's so, I think this is a really interesting, you know, we could talk for hours about this because, and I've been, I, I vacillate between, I've been having this conversation with this writer, Thomas Cezanotita.
[01:13:52]  He wrote this book, Mediated, and I'm talking to him chapter by chapter on Watkins Welcome because the book has been my Bible for a mediated world.
[01:14:00]  But he always tells me that I have to caution myself about the curmudgeon effect, as he calls it, where it's like, get off my lawn, you know, like the kids need days.
[01:14:10]  And I do have to, is that just us being, I remember talking to some young women, and it was during the whole Me Too era.
[01:14:19]  And they were, they, they were like, just because you old bags let guys grab your butt while you were waiting tables doesn't mean we have to do that.
[01:14:27]  And that was a kind of revelatory moment for me where I realized that I was just older and of a different generation and they weren't going to put up with some of this stuff.
[01:14:37]  And so is this just me getting older?
[01:14:40]  A, is this a culture that is hypersexualized and it's everywhere?
[01:14:46]  Yes.
[01:14:47]  And now, you know, we led off the show talking about how this creepy gender stuff and sex talk with kids is, it's so hypersexualized that that seems somewhat normal and it's not, it shouldn't be normal.
[01:15:02]  And I also think that we're weird in America.
[01:15:06]  You know, in Europe, they're not weird about boobs.
[01:15:09]  I don't know if they're just like, we've seen some titties in our time.
[01:15:12]  We're just an older culture.
[01:15:16]  Or, you know, why they're just, they don't have that weird, the weird puritanical kind of that we have in America.
[01:15:26]  So I think there's a lot to this and it has become a commodity.
[01:15:30]  You see so many women on OnlyFans.
[01:15:33]  And there was a teacher recently, I guess, who got fired because she was on OnlyFans.
[01:15:38]  And yeah, this is, this gets tricky.
[01:15:42]  And I have a daughter now.
[01:15:44]  And I recently did this.
[01:15:46]  I was on an interview when I was pregnant.
[01:15:49]  And the guy was pushing me.
[01:15:54]  It was Elijah Schaefer at the, who was at the Blaze.
[01:15:57]  He's not anymore.
[01:15:58]  And he was pushing me about getting naked and being pregnant and how I was going to talk to my daughter about that.
[01:16:05]  And, you know, I think it's a good opportunity for me to have conversations with her when she's old enough about if the school hasn't already had them for me to talk about things like sending guys nudes and, you know, all these hard conversations.
[01:16:22]  Not that I have any idea how I'm going to talk to her about this, but I'm out there.
[01:16:26]  She's going to be able to know this and it's uncomfortable.
[01:16:28]  And then I half jokingly said, and I hope to raise her that she doesn't feel the need to do that, which was revealing to me in that moment.
[01:16:38]  You know, there's, there's something to be said for that too.
[01:16:41]  So I'm, yeah, I'm, I'm in a bit of a sticky situation.
[01:16:46]  You're on a bit of a journey there, sister.
[01:16:49]  I get it.
[01:16:50]  I get it.
[01:16:51]  I, you know, I did a saucy picture.
[01:16:53]  I can't remember what magazine it was.
[01:16:55]  Trump sent it around to the world after we had our exchange on women.
[01:16:59]  But it was my 40th birthday and I was pregnant for this photo.
[01:17:03]  And they were like, do you want to sauce it up?
[01:17:05]  I'm like, why not?
[01:17:06]  I'm turning 40.
[01:17:07]  I'm pregnant.
[01:17:09]  I've got C cups.
[01:17:10]  I'm going for it.
[01:17:12]  Let's go for that.
[01:17:13]  And I loved it.
[01:17:14]  I thought it was really, I thought it was saucy, but it was classy and it wasn't too.
[01:17:18]  But I've had many journalists be like, that was a mistake.
[01:17:21]  I don't feel like that.
[01:17:22]  I just don't think it was.
[01:17:24]  I still enjoyed it.
[01:17:25]  It was the only saucy picture I've ever done.
[01:17:27]  And for me, it's like a keepsake.
[01:17:29]  You know, it's like I was still young enough that I still felt like I still got it, even though I'm having all these babies and all this.
[01:17:34]  I'm still a serious news person.
[01:17:36]  So I don't regret it.
[01:17:37]  And I don't want to be like, but everybody else sucks.
[01:17:40]  You know, I don't want to be that person.
[01:17:42]  But as you were talking, something occurred to me.
[01:17:45]  It might not be.
[01:17:47]  I mean, I do, I object to like JLo and Shakira showing their badge at the Super Bowl.
[01:17:51]  Like I did, I don't want that.
[01:17:52]  It's got to be a situation appropriate.
[01:17:54]  But I don't really object to just like women embracing their bodies or showing off their bodies, like the pictures you see.
[01:17:59]  Paulina Porotskova just had a really interesting post.
[01:18:02]  She showed her bottom.
[01:18:04]  She looks amazing.
[01:18:06]  What I object to back on the Kardashians is the unrivaled vanity, like the self-promotional, out-of-control focus on one's self, ego, clicks, likes.
[01:18:22]  They're hugely responsible for that in our society.
[01:18:25]  They didn't do it by themselves, but more than any other, they've had a terrible effect in that lane.
[01:18:30]  And I do blame them.
[01:18:32]  I do.
[01:18:32]  I asked them.
[01:18:33]  I interviewed them and I said, are you a force for good or are you a force for evil?
[01:18:37]  And they gave me their answer.
[01:18:38]  But the more I've watched them over the years, the more I think NetNet, it's evil.
[01:18:43]  I don't think this is healthy.
[01:18:44]  And that's what I object to.
[01:18:45]  It's like their disgusting vanity, which has spread like wildfire in our society.
[01:18:50]  The selfie culture is abhorrent to me.
[01:18:53]  I think that's what I'm responding to as opposed to some titillation from a beautiful woman here and there.
[01:18:59]  Yeah, again, so much.
[01:19:02]  I mean, I've been on record screaming on dumpster fire.
[01:19:05]  I blame everything on the Kardashians.
[01:19:06]  So I knew I loved you.
[01:19:10]  I'm always like, this is all the Kardashians' fault.
[01:19:13]  I'm like, she's your fault.
[01:19:14]  You guys have the owner.
[01:19:16]  But there's something I have written pieces in defense of her when everybody came after her for getting naked or something at one point.
[01:19:24]  And what I react to is that, like you said, you did this kind of tasteful nude.
[01:19:31]  And people.
[01:19:31]  No, I wasn't nude.
[01:19:33]  I wasn't nude.
[01:19:34]  Sorry.
[01:19:34]  No, just in a saucy little tasteful, saucy picture.
[01:19:40]  And the people in your amazing.
[01:19:44]  But people you feel, I was imagining like you as like the demi more, you know, when she was naked on the cover.
[01:19:50]  No, by the time I was as pregnant as she was in that photo, I looked like a house.
[01:19:53]  I was, that was not, nobody needed to see that.
[01:19:56]  Okay, keep going.
[01:19:58]  Yeah, I think that people in your field said that was a mistake.
[01:20:02]  Why did they say that was a mistake?
[01:20:04]  Because somehow it makes you a less serious journalist.
[01:20:08]  And that's something that I react to, that a woman can't be sexy and be taken seriously.
[01:20:14]  And I'm not sure, you know, Kim, Kim Kardashian is getting her law degree.
[01:20:19]  I mean, maybe she's shattering glass ceilings on that.
[01:20:22]  Oh, stop it.
[01:20:23]  She's getting a fake law degree after failing the bar three times.
[01:20:26]  I applaud her for admitting that.
[01:20:28]  But who is she kidding?
[01:20:29]  All right.
[01:20:29]  Kim Kardashian is never going to be a great legal mind.
[01:20:32]  It's fine to try to improve oneself, but it doesn't counteract all the damage she's doing on a daily basis.
[01:20:37]  Who's she trying to kid?
[01:20:38]  Her life is one long vanity project.
[01:20:40]  That's all it is.
[01:20:41]  And she's bringing our children down with her.
[01:20:43]  That's what I object to.
[01:20:44]  She and her sisters.
[01:20:46]  So like that.
[01:20:48]  Like just like the name of that family now brings up this like ramp in me where I'm like, no, I need magazines and newspapers to stop obsessing over them.
[01:20:58]  You want to follow them on Insta like the other hundreds of millions of Americans who do?
[01:21:02]  Go for it.
[01:21:02]  But I need them to stop holding up these women as an example to our young girls because you open the paper just trying to find the news and there they are again with another absurd self-promotion.
[01:21:15]  I mean, my instinct is like, don't hate the player, hate the game.
[01:21:18]  You know, that's a bit of my, they're playing a game and they're succeeding at it.
[01:21:24]  They're, they are masters of feeding the algorithm.
[01:21:27]  Everybody's trying to get clicks in whatever way they can.
[01:21:31]  All of us are looking for more followers, more downloads, and they're very successful at it.
[01:21:39]  I would say what bothers me the most is the lie that is their bodies usually.
[01:21:45]  And Nikki Glazer actually did a hilarious kind of call out on her Instagram.
[01:21:50]  She's a comedian about Kim had posted a picture.
[01:21:54]  She looked amazing, but Nikki was like, this is all fake.
[01:21:58]  This whole body is fake.
[01:22:00]  And if you think that you can look like this just doing squats and eating well, you can.
[01:22:06]  And that's what's so bothersome is that these girls, young girls and women are chasing after this ideal.
[01:22:13]  And really what they have is a crap load of money.
[01:22:17]  And I mean, you raise an interesting point.
[01:22:20]  Don't hate the player, hate the game.
[01:22:22]  Maybe I'm trying to ask myself, is that what I'm responding to?
[01:22:24]  I'm mad at America.
[01:22:26]  I'm mad at the game.
[01:22:29]  No, I'm mad at the Kardashians.
[01:22:32]  I'm not sure.
[01:22:33]  I'm going to think about it over the commercial break.
[01:22:35]  Let me squeeze that in and then we'll come back.
[01:22:38]  Don't go anywhere.
[01:22:39]  More with Bridget Fedesey right after this.
[01:22:41]  But first, another one of our memorable moments.
[01:22:43]  This one is from April of this year in episode 301.
[01:22:48]  You see, I decided, as you may remember, to give up swearing for Lent and it didn't go so well, as you'll see.
[01:22:56]  Listen.
[01:22:58]  You want to talk about that piece of, and I can't say the word because I'm not swearing for Lent, doing very poorly, but trying.
[01:23:05]  In his words, there's scary M effers.
[01:23:08]  Again, trying not to swear.
[01:23:09]  It's Lent.
[01:23:10]  They were like, this is bullshit.
[01:23:11]  There's, once again, I can't ring in my dirty mouth.
[01:23:13]  I gave up swearing for Lent, Paul.
[01:23:15]  Those who know anything about me know that I can take an enormous shitstorm in my life without panicking.
[01:23:20]  Once again, I swore.
[01:23:21]  It's still Lent.
[01:23:22]  Lord, forgive me.
[01:23:23]  He must have been sitting there learning all the lessons going, oh shit.
[01:23:27]  Oh, I swore against.
[01:23:29]  I mean, dang, dang.
[01:23:30]  It's so hard, sorry.
[01:23:31]  I only have two more.
[01:23:32]  What is it?
[01:23:32]  Two more weeks of Lent.
[01:23:33]  I asked somebody if you can sub in a new something to give up in the middle of Lent.
[01:23:37]  And the answer was no.
[01:23:38]  So I've just got, I got to see it through to the end, ladies.
[01:23:40]  And I was like, fuck these guys.
[01:23:42]  Sorry, I'm in Lent and I'm trying not to swear, but I'm really doing poorly at it.
[01:23:45]  He'll hit some agreement with the academy that has real teeth in it with money for some cause.
[01:23:50]  We cannot, not some bullshit woke cause that half of us hate.
[01:23:53]  I cannot stop swearing.
[01:23:55]  I've got to find something else to give up for Lent.
[01:23:57]  The greatest part of that clip is where Arthur Idala at the end is like, you gave up swearing for Lent.
[01:24:02]  I've given up booze.
[01:24:03]  I've given up this, that, the other, like, you're so weak.
[01:24:07]  I couldn't even live up to it.
[01:24:09]  That's one of the many things I'll raise with the priest when I finally find one who will absolve me of all my sins and not just the swearing.
[01:24:16]  If you listen to my episode with Father Mike, you know what I'm referencing.

=== Lent Swearing and Real Selves (05:49) ===

[01:24:21]  Remember the first time that it had been revealed that Justin Trudeau, for people who don't know, he's a Canadian prime minister.
[01:24:27]  Many people may not because Canada is a silly, inconsequential place, but he had done blackface.
[01:24:32]  And he's being interviewed by reporters.
[01:24:34]  So he's still in this press conference.
[01:24:35]  And he says, I did do this.
[01:24:38]  I did go in dress up one time and it was a very poor judgment, a mistake.
[01:24:44]  And I'm very sorry.
[01:24:45]  Thank you.
[01:24:45]  And as he's walking out, someone says, excuse me, Prime Minister Trudeau, yeah.
[01:24:49]  Was that, were there any other moments where you did blackface?
[01:24:52]  And he turns back.
[01:24:53]  He goes, there was one time where I did wear makeup and I sang Dal.
[01:24:57]  Thank you.
[01:24:58]  No more questions.
[01:24:58]  I'm like, wait, banana son?
[01:25:00]  And he just tried to skim over it.
[01:25:02]  Like he knew that was in his past.
[01:25:05]  And he was just trying to, and he has this.
[01:25:06]  So he went to Blackface going, Dale, it's worse than old minstrel shows.
[01:25:14]  And he had to answer the question because he knew they were going to find it.
[01:25:17]  People here, they thought I was going to need a ventilator.
[01:25:20]  I was laughing so hard.
[01:25:22]  That's the kind of stuff.
[01:25:23]  That's why I'm conservative.
[01:25:25]  I love seeing pompous authoritarians taken off their pedestal.
[01:25:31]  My God, if you don't love Steven Crowder, it's undoubtedly because you haven't exposed yourself to enough of his material because he is hysterical.
[01:25:40]  That was his first appearance on the show, episode 21 from November of 2020.
[01:25:45]  That one was emotional.
[01:25:46]  That it hit, we were, we laughed, we cried, it was great.
[01:25:50]  Anyway, check it out.
[01:25:50]  Episode 21.
[01:25:51]  I want to tell you that we're going to take your calls in a minute.
[01:25:54]  Call in.
[01:25:54]  Love to hear your thoughts about Tua's horrible head injury in the NFL or any of our two-year anniversary week interviews with Ben Shapiro, Father Mike Schmitz, Mike Rinder from Scientology.
[01:26:04]  All those are doing really well.
[01:26:05]  Call me.
[01:26:05]  Call me now.
[01:26:06]  Okay.
[01:26:06]  It's time.
[01:26:07]  83344-Megan.
[01:26:08]  That's 83344-M-E-G-Y-N, which is also 833446-3496.
[01:26:15]  Now, back to Bridget Fetisi.
[01:26:17]  So, Bridget, you tweeted on 926, recently had a baby, so I guess I'm a fascist now.
[01:26:24]  You did a satirical piece.
[01:26:25]  I apologize for my white baby.
[01:26:30]  This is actually quite hilarious.
[01:26:31]  You say, my husband and I talked about adopting, but after watching that fascist Amy Coney Barrett parade her black children in front of America at her Supreme Court confirmation hearing to prove she's not just a racist bootlicker for the patriarchy, we reconsider that piece was amazing.
[01:26:48]  How is motherhood going?
[01:26:50]  Motherhood is amazing.
[01:26:51]  It's so much more than I could have expected and everything that everyone tells you.
[01:26:56]  And yeah, my heart just burst open when she was born.
[01:27:00]  And I, I love, I love being mom so much.
[01:27:04]  I feel so grateful and blessed to be able to be her mom.
[01:27:10]  And it's overwhelming.
[01:27:12]  I feel like I'm failing.
[01:27:15]  I don't know how parents do it.
[01:27:17]  It is a shit show.
[01:27:19]  And I'm trying to balance being a mom and working.
[01:27:23]  And that is proving to be challenging, as you know.
[01:27:27]  And I don't have very much help at the moment either.
[01:27:30]  So it's just like, I got it.
[01:27:32]  I've got two hours to write if she's napping.
[01:27:34]  If even that she's, you know, she was colicky.
[01:27:38]  So there's that.
[01:27:39]  We had that.
[01:27:40]  I don't know if you had any of your children or colic, but the people who know no.
[01:27:44]  No, no, thank God.
[01:27:45]  No, that's a tough one.
[01:27:48]  Yeah, I'm really.
[01:27:48]  But I know that feeling.
[01:27:49]  I remember looking even just at my first, who was, I mean, in retrospect, the easiest baby, right?
[01:27:54]  But it's still your first, so you don't know what you're doing.
[01:27:55]  And I'm like bouncing him in the middle of the night and like you don't know who to call, like your village isn't there.
[01:28:02]  And I just remember looking at him going, I'm sorry.
[01:28:06]  I'm sorry.
[01:28:06]  You got stuck with me.
[01:28:09]  I'll be great later.
[01:28:11]  You know, like when you're a little older, it's really going to work out well.
[01:28:15]  Yeah, I felt very, yeah, all the advice and people are so kind.
[01:28:21]  You know, the thing that another like hard truth that I had to come to terms with was just how insanely self-absorbed I was when I was single.
[01:28:33]  When my siblings, sister-in-laws, friends, when they were all talking about their pregnancies, I'm like, why didn't I listen?
[01:28:42]  Why didn't I listen to any of this?
[01:28:44]  Why didn't I listen?
[01:28:45]  I don't know how any of them had their kids.
[01:28:47]  I don't know if they had C-sections or not.
[01:28:49]  Now I want to know every single detail.
[01:28:51]  And I didn't know what was required when you have a baby.
[01:28:57]  And just, it's something that really struck me in pregnancy and then in postpartum because it was a, we had a tough, it was, she was amazing and healthy.
[01:29:08]  And that's all that matters.
[01:29:09]  But there was just a string of, she was colicky and a string of events that my OBGYN tragically died when I was five weeks postpartum.
[01:29:18]  He had a heart attack.
[01:29:20]  And my dog, we found out my dog had cancer.
[01:29:22]  So I'm in postpartum.
[01:29:24]  And it's just like, it felt like I kept getting hit by wave after wave of grief, actually.
[01:29:29]  And I kept looking at her being like, I'm sorry.
[01:29:32]  I swear I'm not usually this sad.
[01:29:35]  Well, your hormones are raging anyway.
[01:29:37]  You're not your real self.
[01:29:38]  And I would say you're probably still not your real self.
[01:29:41]  You know, she's still little.
[01:29:42]  She says, what?
[01:29:42]  How many months is she now?
[01:29:44]  Yeah.
[01:29:44]  You're still not.
[01:29:46]  Don't base anything on this.
[01:29:47]  Yeah.
[01:29:48]  Don't make any big life decisions right now.
[01:29:51]  Yeah.
[01:29:53]  It's just, it was, it's just been so eye-opening in a different way.
[01:29:58]  And I, I really, you said it on one of your clips, you know, I don't know how single parents do it.
[01:30:05]  I have, God bless all of the single parents out there.
[01:30:09]  I do not know how you do it.

=== Community Growth and Better Futures (01:18) ===

[01:30:10]  You are.
[01:30:11]  Well, you know what they say to the LGBTQ community?
[01:30:15]  It gets better.
[01:30:16]  It gets better.
[01:30:17]  It gets easier.
[01:30:18]  I would say right around four or five, they become like much more independent.
[01:30:22]  It's not like, like I was just saying the other day about my Strudwick, my, my dog.
[01:30:26]  I'm like, it's like having a toddler again.
[01:30:27]  You know, you can't leave the room.
[01:30:28]  You got to have eyes on him at all times.
[01:30:30]  It's exhausting, but you do get to this wonderful point at which they're like really interactive.
[01:30:35]  They're not like the sweet, good smelling baby, but I love the current phase of motherhood.
[01:30:40]  And knowing you, you will too.
[01:30:43]  Good luck with all of it.
[01:30:45]  The one and only Bridget Fettisy.
[01:30:47]  My God, so brilliant in so many ways.
[01:30:49]  Such a pleasure to talk to you again.
[01:30:51]  Thank you for having me again.
[01:30:52]  This is so fun.
[01:30:53]  Yay.
[01:30:54]  All right.
[01:30:54]  Check her out at bridgetfetty.substack.com.
[01:30:58]  Dumpster fire.
[01:30:59]  You can check it all out and you will love it.
[01:31:01]  And thanks to all of you for joining us today and all week.
[01:31:03]  Want to tell you next week, got to run now, but we've got Dave Rubin.
[01:31:07]  We've got Gad Sad.
[01:31:08]  These are going to be so fun.
[01:31:09]  Chloe Valdery is coming back.
[01:31:11]  And then we've got Mark Garagos and Adam Carolla.
[01:31:13]  Such a good week.
[01:31:14]  Don't forget to download our show.
[01:31:16]  In the meantime, you do have to download, not just subscribe, download and follow us on YouTube.
[01:31:20]  And we'll talk soon.
[01:31:24]  Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show.
[01:31:27]  No BS, no agenda, and no