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Oct. 27, 2022 - The Megyn Kelly Show
41:03
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My Sister Suzanne's Story 00:14:41
Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
Hey everyone, I'm Megan Kelly.
Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show.
We have got a lot of news to get to today, and we intend to do just that.
But first, if you'll permit me a personal moment.
My sister, Suzanne Crosley, was a firecracker.
Strong, funny, wise, but still vulnerable.
She was born on June 5th, 1964 in Nyack, New York, just north of New York City.
My mom grew up not far from there, and my dad was from Brooklyn.
They met and they married young while my mom was in nursing school.
My sister was their firstborn, and from the start, Suzanne was beautiful, big blue eyes, perfect alabaster skin.
She used to pride herself on having a great nose and perfect feet, and she was right.
My brother Pete came along 13 months later, and I followed five years after that.
So there were about six and a half years between my sister and me.
She often felt more like a mother figure than a sister.
When I was little, she was an incredible caretaker to me.
My mom was in school and working full-time getting her degrees in psychiatric nursing.
My sister would later look at any school photo of me where my hair was combed nicely or I was in a cute outfit and say, that's thanks to me.
I made sure you look good, like my hair here and my cute little dress.
My mom laughed and agreed.
It was just one of the many ways in which Sue took care of me.
She helped teach me how to tie my shoes, how to read, how to find and apply the right makeup when I was a teenager, botching it.
From letting me sleep on her floor when I had nightmares as a kid to introducing me to the wonders of Robbie Benson, John Travolta, and Sean Cassidy, my sister often found ways to improve my life.
One time when I was in second grade, I wrote about this in my book, I was looking forward to bringing home the class bear, Clancy.
Each kid got to take Clancy home on successive Fridays, and my turn had finally arrived.
Except I didn't feel well that day.
And I told Miss Clancy, who had named the bear after her, that I felt nauseous and I wanted to go to the nurse.
She didn't believe me.
Well, sure enough, I soon threw up in front of everyone.
I was embarrassed.
And Miss Clancy was angry.
She sent me to the nurse's office and I asked her if I could still take Clancy.
No, she said coldly.
I was devastated.
When I got home and told my then 13-year-old sister what had happened, she was outraged.
She went right down to the mall and bought me my own Clancy.
It was an exact replica.
I couldn't believe it.
I was absolutely thrilled.
My very own Clancy that I didn't even have to share.
Suzanne had erased the sting of my teacher's cruelty.
One time she was babysitting me and my friend at the friend's house.
The friend's parents were out to dinner, and my sister let us watch Saturday Night Fever, which was rated R, but we were dying to see it, and it happened to be on TV that night.
The parents unexpectedly came home while it was on, and my friend's stepfather was visibly angry.
He grabbed my friend by the arm and yelled, get upstairs.
The sleepover is done.
I started upstairs too, to get my stuff.
He threatened my friend on the way up saying, you are going to get it.
I couldn't believe his anger over a stupid movie a couple of nine-year-old girls sneaked on the TV.
And Suzanne went right over to him and said, don't you touch my sister.
Meg, let's go.
Off we went.
And as I so often did, I felt relief that my sister was there.
It was Suzanne who was home with me and my mom the night our 45-year-old father died, December 15th, 1985.
It was near midnight when she shook me in my bed saying, wake up, daddy had a heart attack.
What followed was the most painful night of our lives.
I was 15, she was 22, and it was the beginning of a very hard year.
Suzanne and I would find ways to make our mom laugh, to commiserate when we felt powerless, to help her to pick up the slack around the house when my mom was in too much pain to do it.
Whenever I needed to feel better about things, I called Suzanne.
She had this special power of knowing exactly what to say.
She had institutional knowledge of me and used it in just the right ways, whether it was in grieving our dad or anything else, for all the days of my life so far.
She went back to college after my dad's death and invited me to visit.
She took me and my best friend out and let us sneak a drink and feel like grown-ups.
She was so pretty.
Her feathered blonde hair and beautiful smile could catch the attention of anyone in any room, and her acerbic wit could level you with its clever edge.
More than anything, she loved to make fun of herself and of others, a skill she came by honestly, thanks to our mom.
As much as Suzanne loved her own feet, she hated mine.
She used to say, your toes look like fingers, and my fingers were even worse.
We used to sleep in the same bed when we slept at my Nana's house.
Stay away from me with those spidery fingers, she used to say.
Those summers we would spend at my Nana's house, Nan and Pop had a boat yard, were magical.
Suzanne and I would play waitress with our grandparents' spare order pads and make ice cream floats for our brother and his friends.
She always included me in her fun plans.
We would watch Elvis Presley movies together or eat TV dinners in front of the Brady Bunch.
We watched The Waltons and Little House on the Prairie religiously.
We went to the annual carnival together.
We laughed, and she taught me the ropes of life.
When I was in law school, my sister was a young teacher, newly married and with no money.
I had even less and was leaving her house one time with no gas and no spare change to get even a gallon.
She reached into her purse and pulled out a 20.
It might as well have been $1,000.
I was so grateful.
I knew she didn't have to spare, but it got me home and kept my tank filled for days, and I never forgot it.
I moved to Chicago after becoming a lawyer, and she and my mom came for what would be a visit we'd never forget.
Not because anything extraordinary happened, but just because we had so much fun together.
I will always remember sitting in my car, the three of us, blasting billy idols, dancing with myself, singing and laughing so hard our stomachs hurt.
This would become one of my favorite memories in life.
Suzanne was always quick to laugh.
Life was not easy for my sister.
Her marriage ultimately fell apart under very trying circumstances.
She raised her three kids by herself.
She had given up teaching to be a homemaker and had next to no money.
Life threw many challenges at her.
She got swept up in the opioid crisis thanks to a doctor who told her a minor painkiller was not addictive.
Later, she got clean and sober and rebuilt her life.
I once asked her if I could talk about this publicly, and she said it was okay.
We actually had plans for her to come on and talk about it all right here one day.
She told me shortly after I launched the show that she wanted to tell her story, that she thought it might help people.
I always imagined us having that conversation and it being a triumphant moment for her.
At times she could tell the world that like so many, she had faced real struggle but had survived and even thrived.
We never got around to it.
The tabloids attacked her as I became a public figure.
I got wind that one publication was preparing a hit piece on her from when she was still suffering with addiction.
I called in every favor to stop it and thought I had.
Later, I found out they ran it anyway.
My sister never told me.
She protected me even then.
Her children were her greatest source of happiness, bar none.
Throughout her ups and downs, she loved them deeply.
She would light up talking about her kids.
She was so proud of each one of them.
Emily, the Spitfire, whose moxie is matched by her deeply caring nature.
Brian, the whip-smart middle child, accomplished, reflective, soulful.
And Chris, the eldest, like his mom, funny, direct, no nonsense, and now a strong and loving parent himself.
In our adult years, as challenges kept coming her way and my career took off, we had a bit of a role reversal.
I became more of the caretaker, which she did not love, but seemed resigned to accept.
It was an adjustment for both of us.
She never stopped with her kindnesses.
She took in my vicious dog, Bailey, who bit all of us, but who I did not have the heart to put down and who she loved too.
She'd send my kids gifts she made, little dough ornaments for the Christmas tree, or a family portrait she had drawn.
She would come to visit with games in tow.
On one recent Thanksgiving, she had us play this game where we filled tissue boxes with ping pong balls, strapped them to our waists, and then danced vigorously to music.
The first one to get all the ping pong balls out of the tissue box won.
Again, crying, we laughed so hard.
Luckily, someone got some of those laughs on tape.
So much fun to watch now.
Shortly after that, my sister's health took a turn.
Liver enzymes didn't look right.
Legs started swelling.
She saw specialist after specialist.
Was it cancer?
Heart ailment?
No.
No, they told us.
Test after test and no diagnosis.
She was real thin and eating was tough.
Over the past year, she was in and out of the hospital as we tried to figure out what was going on.
She was released after a short stay just last month.
The main direction was for her to eat.
We needed to get some nutrients in her.
And then came last Friday when my mom found her unresponsive.
My poor mom, who lived with Suzanne.
They became like freaking frack up there in Albany watching reruns of gun smoke and arguing over the volume on the TV.
We had always imagined my sister taking care of our mom in my mom's later years.
We joked that Sue would do it and my brother Pete and I would pay for it.
We'd never foreseen that my 81-year-old mother would be the caretaker for Suzanne.
But that's how it goes, right?
Moms never stop caretaking.
When Suzanne started feeling ill, my mom swooped right in.
I don't know how many doctor's visits my mom went to with my sister.
And Lord help the doctor who took too long to tell my mother upon meeting her that she does not look 81.
We thought Suzanne was on the mend.
She looked ill, but she'd been released and was looking forward to the holidays.
I hadn't seen her in a few months.
She had suggested a visit in August, but we were too busy.
And I told her I couldn't do it.
How I wish I could have that one back.
Suzanne collapsed on Friday, October 21st.
The ambulance came and took her to the hospital where she had a heart attack.
I was with her at the end, holding her hand.
She wouldn't have liked my spidery fingers on her.
I did it anyway.
I told her it was okay for her to rest, to be with our dad and our Nana, who she loved so much.
And then she was gone.
She won't be at Humley's wedding.
She won't meet her future grandchildren.
Her kids don't know what they're going to do without her advice.
And I feel the same.
Who's going to make fun of me now in a loving, don't take yourself too seriously kind of way?
Who's going to tell me to put on our favorite movie, Willy Wonka, when the rough patches come in my own life?
We were supposed to take care of our mom together, to commiserate on life's challenges, to watch our kids grow up and become parents themselves.
And she left too early.
The love of a sibling is more complicated than that of a parent.
The relationship has different layers to it.
How I wish I had nurtured our connection more recently.
You get busy with your own stuff.
Focus on your job, your kids, your marriage.
Your siblings aren't at the top of the list on a daily basis.
That's the natural life cycle.
You're not expecting it to suddenly end.
Not in your 50s.
I know my sister would have wanted me to have a happy life, to thrive, to laugh at myself.
She would have wanted you to know by the time I tried to host Thanksgiving dinner and didn't take the turkey out of the freezer until 10 a.m. the day of we had to have rotisserie chicken.
She would have wanted you to laugh if I or anyone else for that matter trips in front of you.
She might have pressed your bruise and says, Does it hurt when I do this?
She definitely would not have wanted me sitting around feeling sad.
I told my husband Doug at her funeral as the sad music played, I don't want this at my funeral.
I want tone loc or MC Hammer.
The Fetterman Media Cover-Up 00:16:14
Seriously, he said.
Seriously, yes.
When I remember my sister, I will play billy idol.
I will play silly games.
I will make doughy Christmas ornaments.
I will love on, but also rip on, my mother and her purple hair.
I will help my sister's children, and I will adore my own.
And I will keep reminding people, including myself, that life is too short.
This whole thing is fleeting.
Don't wait until tomorrow to reach out to your loved ones.
Make time for the visits.
You never know if it could be the last.
Suzanne never got to take that victory lap with all of you, to tell you her story of great struggle and triumph, of a life not adorned with material riches, but filled with emotional treasure.
Of a sisterhood in which roles evolved over time, but one in which one thing remained constant: love was always present.
She didn't get to tell you any of that.
I hope you feel it anyway.
We'll be right back.
Oh my God, I don't know about you, but I'm really glad we had a commercial break there.
Really glad we had a commercial break.
Now I want to get to the news.
Okay, the cleanup effort is now well underway.
As President Biden, Vice President Harris, and former President Obama all plan on making campaign stops in Pennsylvania, trying to undo the damage from John Fetterman's debate performance the other night.
We have yet to see updated reputable polling in that key Senate race, and it's a big one.
But even before the debate, the polls were tightening, showing Fetterman up by just 1.3% in the real clear average of all polls, real clear politics average, over Dr. Oz.
Well, my guest today very well could have been running against John Fetterman.
He was the frontrunner for the Republicans until personal issues forced him to withdraw from the race.
Today, he is here to publicly discuss all of that for the very first time.
Sean Parnell is a former Republican Senate candidate in Pennsylvania, a decorated combat veteran and best-selling author.
Sean, welcome back to the show.
Hey, Megan, thank you so much for having me.
It is great to be back.
It's great to see you.
You look great.
And I've been following your story and sending you much support along the way.
I know it's been a rough, rough year.
I think you were last out in August of 2021.
And it was an exciting time.
You know, you had just announced and you were looking really good for that race.
And it's just like you wonder what life would be like right now if it were Parnell versus Fetterman instead of Oz versus Fetterman, you know?
Yeah, yeah, I do.
I mean, I am not going to lie to you, watching from the sidelines is tough, but I don't regret the decision at all.
You know, I knew that my kids needed me more than at any other time in their life in that moment, and I needed to be there for them.
And, you know, we're Melanie and I, like my future wife, were working hard to blend our families.
And that is no small challenge, but she's got amazing little girls of her own.
They're not my biological kids, but I love them like they're my daughters.
And, you know, they had just lost their dad in the middle of that custody trial as well.
He passed away from COVID.
And I knew that they were going to need me as well.
And, you know, the Senate race could wait.
And so I've been focused on my family for the last year.
And again, although it's hard to watch from the sidelines, I don't regret it at all.
There were some very unfortunate allegations made between your ex-wife and you and this whole thing.
And we'll get to all that because that was, you know, a quote scandal.
And, you know, just things turn very ugly.
So we'll talk about that in a minute.
But let's just start with the news because Pennsylvania is crazy.
It's the most interesting state in the nation right now.
What's happening with these guys?
I assume you watched the debate the other night.
What did you think?
Oh, I couldn't believe it.
Hello, everybody.
Good night.
From that moment on, I mean, if it were a boxing match, they would have thrown in the towel after the first round.
I couldn't believe it.
And a couple of things on this.
John Fetterman's health was a lot worse than I thought.
And I live in the state and I'm wired into the political apparatus here.
And boy, what an indictment on the media trying to cover for him since the primary.
Absolutely unbelievable.
It's also, I think, on an indictment on the Pennsylvania Democrat Party and maybe even on John Fetterman himself and his family.
I don't understand how they could put him through that in good conscience.
Although at the end of the day, it's his choice.
And so it was probably one of the worst debate performances that I've ever seen.
And when you watch the post-debate spin, that was also extremely interesting to me.
You have all these blue checks on Twitter talking about the debate as if nothing were wrong.
Like if you read the ABC coverage of the debate, like you would think that there were no issues with John Fetterman's cognitive state.
If you read Reuters, you'd think there's no issues with John Fetterman's cognitive state.
They are still totally covering for him even now.
And you look at, you watch how his staff reacted.
It's like their entire response to the debate was a chumbawamba song.
You know, John Fetterman gets knocked down, but he gets up again, but nobody's going to keep John Fetterman down.
And then the media regurgitated that over and over and over again.
It was an absolute disaster in every way.
And you are right.
Pennsylvania is a very, very difficult state to read.
It's a state that closes late and closes fast.
Democrats have a 520 plus thousand person voter registration advantage.
There are 1.2 million independents.
Republicans simply cannot win in this state without some crossover support.
But the independents who are still on the fence, and I think a lot of those Democrats who have been voting Republicans since President Trump brought them into the fold, I think their minds are made up after that debate.
I think Oz runs away.
It's going to be close.
Obviously, it's Pennsylvania, but I think Oz is going to win this thing.
Wow.
What do you make of the early voting, though?
Because there was a reason that they didn't agree to do this debate until October 25th.
Early voting has been underway in Pennsylvania for weeks now.
And I heard a report saying that some 700,000 ballots had been cast already, 500,000 of which have come in from registered Dems, who they believe would be Democratic votes, that there's a massive advantage for Fetterman in the early vote.
And that's by design.
To me, this feels, it feels like cheating because they knew something about him that they kept secret.
And they, and, and last two nights ago was the big reveal.
And the big reveal is he can't put two words together.
He cannot put two sentences together without fudging his words, misunderstanding, merging his thoughts.
Like you said, he began the debate with a good night, everyone.
I mean, something's gone wrong cognitively, and they hit it so they can bank those votes.
Yeah, absolutely.
And there's no question about it that John Fetterman and the entire Pennsylvania Democrat Party wanted a debate with Oz as late as humanly possible so that they could bank as many early votes as possible.
In Pennsylvania, I think people have been voting here for the better part of a month now.
And you're right.
I think John Fetterman has got 75 plus percent of those early votes.
700,000 people have already voted already.
And to me, this sort of is emblematic of the problem with early voting.
I wonder how many of the 400,000 plus people who early voted for Fetterman maybe want a mulligan on that vote, you know?
And that's why I'm in favor of voting on election day so that people have all the information that all the current information that they need to cast their ballot.
And, you know, part of me feels bad for John Fetterman, you know, but part of me doesn't.
You know, he chose this.
He chose to run with it.
The media covered for him.
And now the people of this state are the ones that could potentially be left with a senator who can't string together two words, but whose votes will be cast on behalf of not only the people of this Commonwealth, but millions and millions of people all across this country.
And John Fetterman has been open about his positions on being the 51st vote to do away with the filibuster, packing the Supreme Court.
He's basically Bernie Sanders through and through, although somehow more extreme.
And so I think, and frankly, Megan, I think the people of Pennsylvania are finally starting to see that.
And again, after that debate performance, I really do think that this race is going to break Oz's way.
I just do.
All right.
So let's just take a look back because you talk about the media and how they've been covering for him.
I mean, they'll thrill to have all those votes banked and to have it gone this way.
They're totally, I'm sorry, in on it.
I know that sounds like a weird concern.
No, but you can have you have them working together without it being an open agreement.
And that's what's been happening between the Fetterman campaign and the press.
I take you back to the interview that was done by the NBC reporter Dasha Burns.
She did the interview and it was clear that he had to use the same closed captioning system.
And then she added, as any good reporter would do.
I mean, let me tell you, when I got back from interviewing Putin a couple of different times, it wasn't all about the exchange with Vladimir Putin.
I would also explain to the audience, this is what it was like.
This is what he was like.
That's absolutely part of reporting.
So Dasha Burns, with the story with John Fetterman, is not that he's in the Kremlin.
It's that he just had a massive stroke and we're all wondering how he's doing.
And so, and he's given no face-to-face interviews, no on-camera interviews.
So she gets one, responsibly comes out to try to tell us what she saw.
I think we have the soundbite.
Let's listen to it.
The screen that he was looking at was transcribing my questions so he could read them in real time.
Because of that auditory processing issue, he has a hard time understanding what people are saying.
Once he can read it, though, he can understand.
But I'll say, even those small moments, as you know, Peter, behind the scenes, you know, when you're having some of that small talk before an interview, during some of those conversations before the closed captioning was rolling, it wasn't clear that he could understand what we were saying.
Well, she got pilloried for this, pilloried.
I mean, she was accused of ableism.
This is not ableism.
This is not mocking someone for their inborn disability.
This is trying to figure out whether someone is competent to hold a U.S. Senate seat.
That is an entirely different matter.
And I'll just give you a couple of examples.
Okay.
Rebecca Tracer of New York Magazine in the cut, she tweeted she had recently interviewed Fetterman and found his comprehension is, quote, not at all impaired.
He understands everything.
It's just that he reads it, which requires extra acuity, I would argue, and responds in real time.
Podcaster Kara Swisher, sorry to say, but I talked to John Fetterman for over an hour without stop or any aids.
And this is just nonsense.
Maybe this reporter is just bad at small talk.
Molly John Fast, another journalist and podcast host, said she too recently interviewed Fetterman.
He understood everything I was saying and he was funny.
And then when there was any pushback saying, you know, maybe this is an important comment and Pennsylvanians might care, you get things like this from Robert Sheram, director of University of Southern California Center for the Political Future.
I thought or hoped we had passed this kind of prejudice to just even ask.
All right.
And Stephen O'Reilly, reporter for Politico, suggesting this feels a hell of a lot like ableism.
On and on it goes.
Okay.
Then we see him come out the other night.
Okay.
He was fine, Sheriff Swisher.
He was fine.
There's something wrong with your small talk, you moron.
Here's what we saw.
Okay, watch.
Here is what we saw.
This is Soundbite One.
Hi.
Good night, everybody.
You know, he has never met an air, an oil company that he doesn't swipe right about.
It's about supporting and helping, you know, young earners, excuse me, young, young, young students to give them a break.
I believe that supporting, I do support fracking and I support fracking and I stand and I do support fracking.
It's just the same the way the university for degrees as well too, but going to those kind of vocational schools, able to create a career to way to excuse me, to Wayne, raise a lot of high salary.
And then again, supporting, reduce those costs are critical too.
I want to look into the face of every woman in Pennsylvania.
I believe if my doctor believes that I'm fit to serve and that's what I believe is appropriate, they all believe that I'm ready to be served.
We can't be held, you know, ransom to somebody like Russia.
I made the opportunity to defend my community as the chief law enforcement officer there.
Everybody in Braddock, an overwhelmingly majority community of black community.
And I've always believed that the choice belongs women and their doctors.
And again, it's the odds rule.
He's on TV and he's lying.
I never supported any of that thing.
His family's company levied the largest fine for immigration hiring of immigrant illegals.
Not at all impaired.
These reporters look like liars.
They look like partisan ideologues who have a horse in this race, who were part of the effort to obscure the truth until it was staring us right in the face two nights ago.
No question about it.
They're all partisan hacks.
And just to be direct, I mean, and not to mention that John Fetterman is the sitting lieutenant governor.
He has a constitutional obligation to let the people of the Commonwealth know the condition of his health.
When he had the stroke just primary, just prior to the primary, they covered it up.
They said it was just a minor blip on the, like a minor hiccup in his health.
The media then helped him cover that up.
And when you look at just like, look at the juxtaposition between the way that John Fetterman was tweeted, was treated back then and the way that I was treated.
I had multi-million dollar media companies suing to sit in on my custody trial, suing me to sit on my custody trial as a private citizen.
Yet they can't even ask basic questions about a sitting lieutenant governor's health that in the most important Senate race in the country.
Honesty in Political Reporting 00:03:58
And I think there's no question that all of these reporters who then went after Dasha, right, that's her name, like they owe her an apology, no question about it.
And with regards to the Senate race and the questions that I think people of Pennsylvania need to ask right now after having watched that debate was if John Fetterman were in the NFL's concussion protocol, would you let him play on Sunday?
I think the answer is no.
Would you let John Fetterman drive your children to school?
I think the answer to that question is no.
Would you let John Fetterman administer his own medication?
I think the answer to that question is no.
So why then would we vote to send him to the Senate, which by the way, I don't know if you've talked to senators, but they have a fairly arduous schedule down there.
It's a six-year term.
There are constant debates.
How is he expected to serve in the United States Senate for six years?
And I think do people forget that I too had a brain injury.
I fractured my skull in Afghanistan.
I know how difficult. the rehab for something like that can be.
The left showed me no quarter when I ran for Congress and I ran for Senate.
There were no comments about me, about ableism back then.
So these reporters, they covered for him.
And I think they were, they were, I mean, I think by and large, Republicans and a lot of independents don't trust the legacy media as it is.
But this cover-up of John Fetterman's health certainly didn't help the situation.
Yes.
That's what it's been.
It's been a cover-up.
They have kept him under reps.
The press, with just a few exceptions, I tip my hat to the Washington Post, did not demand that this man make himself available publicly so that we could see what we were evaluating in terms of this race.
And he only agreed to do this one debate late in the process under enormous pressure.
And I'm sure they're now wishing that they had not done it.
But now that they've done it, it's almost like the issue has shifted from his health or his positions to his lies, his cover-up that he just tried to pull.
The fast one, he, his wife, and his campaign team just tried to pull on the people of Pennsylvania, not to mention the American people.
It's a question of honesty at this point.
Yeah, there's no question about it.
The media have been along with the Fetterman campaign for the ride the whole way.
And now here we are a week from election day, 700,000 plus early votes cast.
The race is going to be close in Pennsylvania.
It's always, it was always going to be close.
But like I said, I think Oz is going to win.
But the fact that it's even close should tell you something.
I mean, this is why the people of this country, oh, well, let me just say this.
This is why President Trump for a very long time called the media the enemy of the people.
This is a very good example of exactly what he means.
Now, are there good journalists out there?
Like you mentioned the Washington Post with regards to this Fetterman story.
Yes, I agree with you.
There are good journalists out there.
There are good media companies out there that do the right thing all the time.
But when President Trump says that the media is the enemy of the people, this is exactly what he means.
Because if they were doing their job and doing it the right way, they would have been asking relentlessly about John Fetterman's health.
And now there was a question during the debate about whether or not he would release his health records.
And I don't think we need him to do that now.
I think people have all the information that they need to pull that lever in a week.
And I think a lot of people, I think his performance in that debate would be is going to be outcome determinative.
And I think it's, that's why I think this race is going to break Oz.
I'm going to bring you the latest edition of our mailbag.
Changing Your Victim Mentality 00:03:37
And you can email me now at megan at megankelly.com.
I got so many nice messages from you all this week.
Thank you all so much.
And every week I'll continue reading a few and I'll read them on air.
I mean a few on air and be part of our MK mailbag segment.
All right.
So let's dive right in.
Here is one that actually jumped out at me.
This is from Sam.
It says, requesting guidance in not feeling like a victim.
Hello, Megan.
I hope all's well with you.
I'm writing to you to get some pointers on how you deal with stressors.
I am currently a full-time worker and in graduate school.
Every time something happens, I go into this spiral of feeling like a victim.
For example, if I had parents, this wouldn't happen.
Or if I had millions of dollars of money, I could be a full-time student, et cetera.
I have recently become your number one fan.
I admire how you handle stressors of life.
Can you please share how you handle difficult situations?
What advice would you give me to not feel like a victim?
Thank you.
Okay, I appreciate this, Sam, because that is a terrible feeling and you would be looking to change it if that were your go-to.
And I would say, first of all, you have to change your mentality.
Don't stop using words like unfair or bad luck and stop using terms like victim.
Just completely get rid of those words.
Sometimes I'll catch myself saying it's just really unfair.
And then I immediately say like, no, fine.
I mean, it may be, but don't get mired in that.
You should always be thinking about massive challenges being thrown your way as a gift.
You know, even the worst of possible challenges, not to say they're not sad, they're not hard or that they're fair, but they are in a way a gift because you will never become strong ever unless you have hard things thrown at you and then you deal with them.
That's the only way to getting courageous, to getting strong, to getting just confident in your own skin that you can handle life's challenges.
So you've got to accept them and you've got to say, great, here's an opportunity for me to grow, for me to do better, for me to see if I can get from A to B on my own.
And once you do, you should give yourself a moment of patting yourself on the back.
If you have disadvantages like no parents, my heart goes out to you, but that's as much time as we're going to spend on it.
No good comes from staying stuck in poor me.
But it's almost an advantage in a way to have a lot of stuff like that in your life.
You will wind up, if you just keep rowing, you will wind up stronger than everyone who didn't have to go through those challenges.
So instead of saying poor me, say thank you.
Another chance to figure out how to deal with adversity and move off of victimizing words and thoughts immediately.
If you can't do it easily, use cognitive behavioral therapy to think about something else, whatever your go-to is.
You know, as I've said before, it was my old sweet dog, Bosh's face.
That's so cute.
And it really helps me rejigger my brain when I get stuck on something bad.
But you find your own and then be religious about it because staying stuck in victim mentality keeps your life stuck in victim mentality.
And victimology begets victimology.
So you do have to move on.
All right, let's see.
Okay, this is a line from Eric Rostad.
He says, good evening, Megan.
I enjoy your no-nonsense approach to news and that you don't let people get away with shenanigans on your show.
I am taking your advice to selection and starting out myself as an independent.
I've always leaned right because of my military service and appreciation.
Ironically, Tulsi was the first Democrat I actually liked.
I'm sure you noticed how we haven't, how we can't even agree on words and what they mean anymore, like the word woman.
Defining Democracy Independently 00:02:31
But I can't even define Republican or Democrat.
I've tried.
The dictionary doesn't help.
It says they're both governments of the people elected by the people.
Maybe you can help us out by defining democracy, Democrat, Republican, and so on.
Thanks for the great work.
Eric, I wish I could.
I wish I could.
But do we really know at this point?
What does it mean to be a Republican?
Does it mean to be pro free trade?
Does it mean to be pro-military and strong intervention?
Does it mean to be pro-national security state?
I don't think so.
Those things have all changed.
And what does it mean to be a Democrat or to be even liberal, right?
Does it mean to be pro-woman?
Does it mean to be anti-people's skin color being used against them?
I don't think so, right?
So forget the labels.
It's one of the reasons why I am a registered independent.
Forget that nonsense.
Just vote however your heart is aligned.
Don't vote for douchebags and don't vote for people who you don't think you can trust, right?
And don't get hung up on party labels unless you really want to vote in the primary and you have to be registered in that party's party in order to cast that vote.
And then that's the moment of truth.
But what you call yourself is up to you.
How you identify more generally is up to you.
I'm not a big fan of wearing people's team jerseys.
You know, you wear the one that makes the most sense and then you do what feels right to you and your God.
Thank you for writing in and keep them coming.
Well, unfortunately, our connection with Sean Parnell went down and it went down hard.
And we were never able to reestablish that connection.
And we're still not able to reestablish that connection.
So hence, we've labeled this podcast part one because we will deliver part two.
There's so much to go over.
And we're actually really flattered that Sean trusted us with this interview in which we're going to go into the reasons why he withdrew from that race and everything that happened with his family and so on.
But we're going to pause it here as we try to solve those technical difficulties and then bring you part two.
It may not be tomorrow, but it'll be soon.
And I promise we will bring it to you.
And hopefully tomorrow we will have solved all of our technical issues and everything will be just as smooth as it always is.
Thank you for listening.
Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show.
No BS, no agenda, and no
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