The Megyn Kelly Show - 20221102_undecideds-breaking-red-and-bidens-sad-gaffe-with-

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Nov. 2, 2022 - The Megyn Kelly Show

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Partisan Affiliation and Runoffs 00:15:08
	Okay, so fantastic me losing the health and greedily wandering.
	HBO Max, Prime Video, Sky Showtime, you name it.
	The foreigner holding funk.
	Hello, OOS.
	Tramon Sotenikon, Nulbinning, Porter, and Streaming.
	Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
	Hey, everyone, I'm Megan Kelly.
	Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show.
	Oh, my goodness, things are happening.
	I want to tell you, first of all, later today, we're going to bring you part two of our interview with Sean Parnell, where the former Pennsylvania Senate candidate who wanted to be in the slot that Dr. Oz is in right now will address the personal matters that caused him to drop out of that race, something he has never spoken about publicly before.
	And is there a future in politics for Sean Parnell?
	Meantime, the midterm elections are now less than a week away, and at seven o'clock tonight in Washington, D.C., President Biden has apparently decided he has found the answer.
	He will, according to early reports just breaking, quote, address the threat of election deniers and those who seek to undermine faith in voting and democracy.
	So basically, we're going to get Dark Brand in part two.
	Why is he doing this?
	It could be the polls.
	We've seen the red wave apparently growing in poll after poll in states like Arizona and Georgia, but even in states like New York, New Hampshire, and deep blue Oregon.
	Here to help break all of this down for us this morning is our friend from the Ruthless podcast, Flying Solo today.
	He's the founding partner and president of Cavalry, Josh Holmes.
	Josh, welcome back.
	Hey, Megan, great to be here.
	Are they jealous?
	It's one-on-one.
	Yeah, I mean, look, I don't have my pals here, but I feel like I get more airtime, so it's kind of nice for me.
	All right, well, we'll do them one by one at some point as well because everybody is awesome on the Ruthless podcast.
	So we'll get to Dark Brand in part two in one second.
	But Real Clear Politics, I had Tom Bevin on last week or the week before, and he was saying at that point they'd been predicting the GOP would take the Senate.
	He thought that there would be wins in Georgia, and I think he said Nevada.
	Now, Real Clear Politics is saying it's going to be GOP up 54 in the Senate.
	He's still projecting that they'll win in Georgia and Nevada, and he's added Arizona and New Hampshire to the mix.
	Do you agree with that?
	Do you like that projection?
	I think all of those races are certainly possible, right?
	But they're all in degrees of possibility.
	I think what he initially started with with Georgia and Nevada.
	Nevada is the one state in the union that's Democratic held at this point where the Republican Adam Laxall has had a consistent lead here for a period of about six weeks.
	It's been a small lead, it's two to three points, but it's very, very durable up to this point.
	Hard to see at the end how they can sort of shake that.
	So I think that is definitely going to be a Republican pickup.
	Georgia has been trending towards Herschel Walker here for the last couple of weeks.
	He's had a good month.
	He had a good debate performance.
	Also aided significantly by the fact that Governor Kemp is also on that ballot and is blowing the doors off of Stacey Abrams.
	So, I mean, there's going to be a big margin that governor's race.
	I think it probably helps Herschel.
	He's going to win a plurality here.
	The question is whether he can get to that 50% threshold, right?
	Because Georgia, like a lot of southern states, has a 50% threshold.
	And if you don't meet it, you go to a runoff.
	I mean, we all remember 2020 and the fun that we had in that process, which was ultimately a disaster.
	But a lot of reason to believe that that could end differently in a runoff.
	So I feel pretty good about Georgia.
	The one that, you know, I think he didn't count initially that I feel excellent about right now is Pennsylvania.
	I think Oz unlike Joe Biden, right?
	Or Chuck Schumer, who was saying to Joe Biden, we're good in Pennsylvania.
	We survived that debate.
	We're okay there.
	Yeah.
	I mean, look, in the seven days preceding that debate, that race had closed by five points, right?
	In my experience, if you're dealing with a double-digit closing in the last 60 days of an election, it's almost impossible for the party in power to reverse that trend, right?
	At some point, those lines will cross.
	Those lines crossed during the debate, right?
	For obvious reasons that the world could see.
	But I think when you're talking about late-breaking independent voters who tend to be less partisan, they make a lot of judgments about whether or not somebody's fit for the job.
	And in this circumstance, you got a pretty clear divide on that.
	So I like Oz's chances in Pennsylvania a lot.
	New Hampshire and Arizona, look, they've been trailing, albeit very small, very small number, like two, three points over the last couple of weeks.
	I think if you're, let me back off a minute.
	I think all of these midterm elections, when you have a party in power that has a president that's 40 or below, you have a really bad economic approval rating, and you have a right track, wrong track.
	In other words, do you think the country's going in the right direction?
	If that's also inverted, any one of those three things means that your final couple percent go against the party in power.
	Now, they have all three of them, right?
	And in my experience, you kind of have three different sets of turnout in midterms.
	It either breaks two to three points, three to five points, or five plus.
	2014 was the only election I've been a part of in 20 years where it's been a five plus break.
	Now, what do you mean?
	Can you just explain what you mean by that?
	What do you mean a two to three point break or a five plus break?
	Yeah, so the ultimate turnout on election day reflects a huge shift in undecided voters who ultimately turn out to vote that aren't captured in the screens in the polling, right?
	You'll see polling always kind of in the mid-40s sort of tide.
	And what generally happens is those remaining voters break towards the party out of power here.
	In this case, Republicans.
	Now, typically speaking, it's kind of a two to three point deal, but there have been instances, as I said, in 2014, where we dealt with a five-plus-point break, meaning a whole bunch of people came out to vote and they almost monolithically voted against the party in power.
	If that is the case, New Hampshire, Arizona, Colorado all of a sudden begins to be interesting.
	And then the one sleeper that you really ought to put on your radar right now is Washington State with Tiffany Smiley.
	I think she's got a real shot.
	She's coming on a Monday, actually.
	You pointed her out to us.
	Somebody just yesterday pointed her out to us.
	Like she's getting a lot more buzz as a possible comer in this whole thing.
	Let me jump back and go through a couple of those states with you because I do think the numbers are interesting.
	Now, Nevada, the Republican Laxalt now has a five-point lead over Cortez Masto.
	She was the first Latina elected to the U.S. Senate Democrat per an Emerson College poll.
	Basically, he has 50.
	She has 45 among likely voters.
	Five points is pretty significant.
	You know, this has taken over the past couple of days.
	One week out.
	I feel like Nevada, I mean, I don't know if you can say safely GOP, but you got to have, that's a leaner.
	That's our GOP leaner, no?
	Yeah, well, look, nothing's safe in Nevada because during the COVID pandemic, Democrats in the legislature changed all the voting rules there.
	And what they did is they had an automatic mail out of their ballot, which they've cleaned up a little bit, at least that they have now current voter roles.
	In 2020, they were mailing out people who had left the state a year or two before.
	They've cleaned up that process, but they also have ballot harvesting there, which is the practice of an operative being able to go through a community and just collect ballots on behalf of the Democratic Party.
	Sketchy.
	I mean, it's the worst practice of all time, right?
	But not surprisingly, Democrats love to do that.
	It enables them to get these sort of big ballot drops.
	So, in other words, their ground game is going to be pretty extensive in Nevada.
	But like you said, this has been a durable lead that is sort of outside of the margin of error in some circumstances.
	I expect this to be a very close race, but at this point, everything points to an Adam Laxalt victory.
	All right.
	In Pennsylvania, we've had a hefty early vote.
	Last I checked last week, it was some 700,000.
	I'm sure it's higher than that now.
	And 500,000 were reportedly Democrats.
	So they're banking a lot of early votes.
	That was pre-debate.
	Is that overcomable?
	Yeah, I definitely think it is overcomable.
	I mean, if you look at the in many states similarly situated to Pennsylvania, this mail-in process, the early vote process has been greatly expanded since COVID, right?
	And so in practice, it has been basically a Democratic way of voting.
	There's a huge advantage for Republicans on Election Day in places like Pennsylvania.
	Places that have been doing mail-in ballots forever, by the way, like Colorado or Arizona or Washington State, that's going to be a fairly neutral partisan territory in terms of what the early votes look like.
	Not in Pennsylvania.
	That's going to be heavily Democratic.
	So I'm not nervous about people voting ahead of time that didn't get a chance to see the debate.
	Those are pretty partisan Democrats that are going to happen come hill or high water, right?
	Yeah, they were not going to be going Oz's way after the debate.
	Yeah, that's right.
	I mean, they're banked Democratic votes.
	What is important is that Oz maximizes his turnout with a Republican base.
	But then also, as I was talking about, that final two, three, four percent, that is disproportionately going to break Oz's way, which is why I feel really good about that Pennsylvania Senate race.
	Okay.
	So you're feeling good about that.
	Now, Georgia, there was just a poll out, Atlanta Journal Constitution showing a tie in the race between Walker and Warnock.
	It said Walker's up 46 to 45, but it's basically a tie and showing Kemp up 51 to 44 over Abrams, which is perhaps a little tighter than he's been.
	He's had a 10-point lead lately.
	The New York Times, I think, described it as marginal, his lead over Abrams, really, you think?
	Okay.
	But Georgia, yeah.
	And I mean, every day we get another woman coming out about her negative experience with Herschel Walker.
	His poll numbers seem immune to it, or if anything, in my late person estimation, they seem to go up in response to it.
	Though they say that 39% in the same poll view Herschel Walker as trustworthy, the rest do not, only 39%.
	Now, that doesn't bode well.
	I'm not sure what the numbers are for Warnock, but they don't seem to think it's a deal breaker because as I say, he's tied with Warnock right now in Georgia.
	So what do you make of it?
	All the mud that's been slung and he's tied or 1.0.
	Well, I mean, look, if ever there is a voter who's been conditioned to be lied to over the years, it's Georgia voters, right?
	I mean, these are voters who are very well educated now at this point.
	They've been the center of the political universe for two years, right?
	They also have had the added benefit of being the deciding state in who ultimately controlled the government with the two Senate seats and the runoff in 2020.
	Clearly, there's got to be some buyer's remorse on that, which is why you've seen Raphael Warnock, despite all of the media attacks against Herschel Walker, all of the mud being slung in that, he can never break out of that 46, 47%.
	It literally has not moved an inch, whereas you've seen Herschel begin to inch up week over week.
	And he, again, has had a pretty good month, far exceeded everybody's expectations in that debate.
	He's closed this gap.
	And again, I think in that governor's race, this is not a six-point race.
	Kemp's going to win this thing by a margin.
	And nobody's been able to show me a Venn diagram of a Republican vote, 10% of which votes for Kemp and Raphael Warnock.
	Like that, that is a very, very difficult thing to do in partisan times like this.
	And so I think he gets there.
	The question is whether he hits that 50% threshold.
	They're talking about the black vote in Georgia.
	Now, in that Senate race, you have two black candidates, but the black vote tends to be more Democratic.
	So it's not all about skin color.
	It's about partisan affiliation.
	And they were saying that what they really need is a strong black vote and ideally a strong black early vote in Georgia.
	Early voting in Georgia, I'm told, started on 1017.
	It ends this Friday.
	And that there were some initial promising signs for the Democrats saying that the black vote was around 39% in that early voting, but it dropped quickly to 30%.
	That they like that.
	I mean, I think the voting population of blacks in Georgia is 30%, but they wanted it to be higher.
	Basically, the consensus was they were hoping for it to be higher in the early vote for the reasons I think you were just discussing, which is they presume Election Day voting will favor the Republican.
	Yep, no question about it.
	Georgia is another state where they went through and underwent a bunch of reforms here.
	And you've got a bunch of institutional resistance on the Republican side to voting by mail, right?
	I mean, this is a state that I think you're going to have to be a big Republican turnout on Election Day.
	And so they do need to build that wall.
	And Democrats, the first couple of days of early voting in Georgia, you're right, were extremely enthusiastic about what they thought was a huge African-American turnout in Atlanta.
	That has come down.
	And if you look at basically the performance of the early vote, the advantages the Democrats really wanted to have have sort of evaporated.
	Again, I think if this thing stays on trajectory, Herschel Walker Kemp's in a good spot.
	Herschel Walker, I think, is on track to get a plurality there.
Georgia Poll Aggregation Issues 00:15:30
	The question is whether he can get a majority.
	Over in Arizona, Blake Masters got some good news.
	The Republican as the Libertarian candidate dropped out and then endorsed Blake Masters.
	However, and this is the one with Mark Kelly, you know, the twins, Mark and Scott, the astronauts.
	Mark's married to Gabby Giffords, popular in Arizona, Democrat against his Republican challenger, Masters.
	So good for Blake Masters for getting this endorsement from the Libertarian, but it's like you can count in the number of hours how soon it happened in advance of election day.
	The guy's still going to be on the ballot.
	You know, it's like, hey, TikTok, Mr. Libertarian, make a decision because now he's still going to be on the ballot.
	Yeah, no, I mean, you're totally right about that, Megan.
	That's like information that would have been helpful yesterday, right?
	I mean, it's the kind of thing that if you're not going to run and you want to endorse Blake Masters, please don't put your name on the ballot.
	Yeah.
	Get off the pot, as they say.
	Right, right.
	Which is what they did.
	But it is helpful, right?
	And I do think there's been some earned media, enough earned media within Arizona where it may make a tangible difference.
	Look, this race is going to be decided by an eyelash.
	Arizona has been incredibly close the last two cycles.
	It is incredibly close this cycle.
	I think Mark Kelly pains me to try to provide a compliment to a Democrat, but he's run a pretty effective campaign into an impossible environment, right?
	And you know what?
	Can I just jump in on that too?
	Unlike some of these other candidates, he's likable.
	Mark Kelly is a likable guy.
	He's not some, he doesn't come across like some far-left extremist.
	He seems reasonable.
	He seems nice.
	He seems like the kind of guy you'd have a beer with.
	I mean, I think this is part of Dr. Oz's problem in Pennsylvania.
	I said this to you guys last week.
	He seems a little slick, whereas Mark Kelly just kind of seems like a good guy.
	Yeah, you know, he's really good at avoiding the questions, right?
	I mean, he's super super bad.
	I mean, this guy's really talented at not taking any sort of ownership over his job performance at all, right?
	Which is to your point.
	I mean, it comes off as sort of likable.
	That being said, Masters has really picked up steam here.
	There's been a bunch of investment on his behalf towards the end of the campaign.
	You've seen Carrie Lake in that governor's race begin to sort of put points behind her.
	I do think that's going to be a close race, too, by the way.
	But if what we were talking about at the top of the show comes to fruition and that two to three point lead or two to three point swing at the end moves to three to five, yeah, you're going to welcome Senator Blake Masters to the United States Senate.
	I mean, it's really that simple.
	Wow.
	Because I mean, he just got pummeled in so many, I just, there was so much negativity around him by pundits, by media, not because of him necessarily.
	So that would be remarkable.
	Carrie Lake, you mentioned.
	So she had an 11-point lead on Katie Hobbs, 53 to 42, ahead with Hispanic voters, with female voters.
	Then the Fox News poll that just dropped this week showed her up only one percentage point.
	That was through October 30th.
	So that's a big difference: 11 points up versus one point up.
	What are we supposed to believe?
	Well, so look, this is a good thing for your audience to actually think about.
	The problem with media polls is that polls were basically created to give people like me, operatives, a good sense of trends over time on issues, you know, your ballot question, how you can position certain messages and know your standing within the electorate, knowing institutionally what's likely to happen here as things break.
	What's happened over the years is polls have become news hooks, right?
	And so you get this wide ranging variety depending on what kind of screen that they have.
	And by screen, I mean their assumptions about what the turnout looks like, right?
	Because that's the base of the poll: they're polling people that they think are representative of the people who are going to show up and vote.
	That varies radically, and it's not done typically by a lot of political professionals.
	It's done by these analysts and these and these media polls.
	So, look, it's not one.
	It's not 11.
	I think it's probably in the two to three point range.
	So it's closer to the one than the 11.
	That's not going to be a blowout race by any stretch of the imagination.
	It's Arizona.
	It's going to be really close.
	But I do think that Carrie Lake has an advantage right now.
	Wow.
	I mean, that one's a nail biter.
	Now, but meanwhile, overall, I mean, all or virtually all these polls are trending red.
	I mean, we've seen that over the past couple of weeks in remarkable numbers.
	You know, we talked about Kathy Hochle versus Lee Zeldon, the Republican in New York State.
	She had a 19 percentage point advantage over him in August.
	And now he's up one in the latest poll.
	He, he's, it's been a 20-point swing in Lee Zeldin's favor.
	Rising tide lifts all boats.
	The local Republicans taking on Democrats in district after district throughout the state of New York are now doing better.
	I mean, we could literally see a red, maybe not literally, but we could see a red wave in New York State next Tuesday, which is crazy.
	But, you know, like I'm, I've lived here my whole life.
	It's great.
	Like, you never see this.
	I didn't think it was possible anymore.
	That, okay, so enter respected political pundit Joy Reed, who you'd speak of the media maybe staying in their lane and not trying to do your job.
	Yeah, that was advice she could have used when she tried to warn people off of the polling that's been so good for the Republicans because remember the Democrats, they don't do conspiracies, conspiracies.
	It's only the crazy QAnon Republicans.
	Well, tell that to Joy.
	Listen here.
	If you believe the recent headlines, you would think that MAGA fascism is ascendant.
	If you get past those headlines and dig a little deeper, you uncover an insidious and seemingly intentional campaign by Republican-backed polling firms to flood the zone and tip the balance of polling averages in favor of their candidates to create a narrative that Republicans are surging and that a red wave is imminent and inevitable.
	According to Nate Cohen of the New York Times, most of the polling over the last few weeks is coming from partisan outfits, usually Republican or autodial firms.
	These polls are cheap enough to flood the zone.
	And it shouldn't come as a total surprise given that one of those polling aggregators, Real Clear Politics, has become more openly pro-Trump.
	Insidious and intentional.
	I urge all of the Democrats, if you're thinking about a campaign or you just want to kind of put together some kind of a political organization, just take Joy Reed's advice.
	She seems to have her finger on the profession.
	I can't imagine what she's not understanding about the American electorate.
	Can you make it?
	I mean, she seems like she's.
	You know what's great?
	Let's hold on to that soundbite.
	Okay.
	Let's see how she does.
	Let's talk next Wednesday and see how she did, you know, and her prediction that these were all intentionally misleading and way off the mark.
	I think that's right.
	I think it's, you know, a little bit of accountability goes a long way.
	You know, Joy Reed could be right.
	She could be the next Carl Rove of our time.
	Something tells me that's probably not right, that she probably has her own set of opinions that may color her view of certain polls.
	I mean, look, what's happening nationwide is unmistakable.
	And if you can talk to Democrats, they'll tell you about it.
	There is a dramatic shift as those remaining undecided voters who are not ideological, they're not partisan, they're famously swing voters, begin to apply the circumstances of their life to their ballot, right?
	And if you believe that like 10, 8, 10, in the case of Nevada, 16% inflation is good for your family, then by all means, keep the incumbents in there, right?
	If you think gas prices at six bucks a gallon and leveraged against the rest of the world is good for your family, then yeah, no, the incumbents are going to be in good shape.
	It's obviously going to not happen that way, right?
	So it's just a matter of in what margin all of this happens.
	And I'm beginning to think there's going to be a little bit more margin than perhaps we initially thought.
	Well, and here's the other thing.
	Okay, by the way, Trafalgar, which I think is one of the polls she's referring to, because Robert Cahaly is more right-leaning, but what he wants, and he said this to me personally repeatedly, what he wants more than anything is to be right.
	He doesn't want to be loyal to Republicans.
	He wants to be right.
	He was given an A minus rating, I think, by 538 when it comes to pollsters.
	He called the 2018 elections better than anybody.
	He called 2020 either better or almost as well as anybody in the game.
	So it's like, all right, I don't know who you're referring to, but if it's him, if it's real clear politics, they have a history that we can judge them against, and their histories are really, really strong.
	They started poll aggregation.
	They started the thing that Democrats all love in aggregating all of these polls.
	I mean, like literally their business model in 538 and the New York Times and they just took what real clear politics had been doing and applied it to their own models.
	And Democrats seem to love that, right?
	Yeah.
	But what's real clear politics doing other than like averaging?
	Tom Bevin's not putting a thumb on the scale.
	He's saying, here are all the polls and here's what the net result is.
	I mean, it's absurd.
	But wait, but here's, you're a political operative.
	So you know the answer to this question.
	Okay.
	I'm like, I actually want accurate information.
	I don't want to predict results that I want.
	I want, I want accurate information.
	What's likely to happen?
	So maybe I'm deluding myself about a red wave in New York, which personally I would like to see.
	I'm sick of one party rule in New York State.
	So maybe Joy Reid is right.
	Maybe there's some Republican pollster or somebody trying to mislead us in New York to try to get Lee Zeldin over the top.
	Well, where are the Democrat heavyweights going?
	Doesn't that tell us a lot?
	Like in my history as a reporter, you want to know where they're worried about.
	You see where the big names are going to try to shore up support.
	New York governor's race.
	Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton joining Kathy Hochl and Tish James for a Manhattan Rally tomorrow.
	I don't think they send in HRC to the areas they don't care about at all or they think are a total lock.
	And Obama and Biden are going to all of the states that we just discussed, states that, you know, we previously thought were solidly blue.
	They're dispatching their top emissary.
	So you tell me what that's supposed to mean.
	If not, it's incredibly tight and they're in danger.
	Yeah, I mean, look, you can't send Kamala and Joe to a state that has any sort of significant red population, you know, just a real Republican base, but you can send them to places like New York where you have institutional advantages, huge party registration advantages.
	You know, the thought process there is if Democrats vote Democrat, we don't have to worry about this thing.
	So it's all about motivation and trying to get people out.
	The problem that they've got, particularly in this, in this Zeldon Hochul race, is that they are the problem, right?
	I mean, you've got a bunch of people who may have traditionally voted Democrat over the years who are sick and tired of crime.
	They're sick and tired of the people.
	Democrats outweighed Republicans in that poll showing Lee Zeldon up one by one point.
	Two to one.
	Democrats outweighed Republicans two to one in that sample.
	And that's the right sample, right?
	So the question is, how are those Democrats behaving?
	Are they behaving like true blue Democrats?
	And in this case, no, they're not.
	They're not at all, right?
	So I don't want to be overly bullish on New York to say like Republican red wave is happening.
	The fact that we're talking about it at all, I think is testimony of the red wave is actually happening, right?
	Because you should, there's no business, no business in a Republican winning that governor's race in a partisan moment like this.
	And also, there's a ton of congressional districts here that are super competitive.
	I mean, we talked maybe the other day about the Driple C, the campaign committee for House Democrats.
	Sean Patrick Maloney himself, the chairman of the operation, is now down in polls in his own district.
	That's real.
	That is happening.
	And so, you know, like, can these people overcome all the institutional barriers and turnout mechanisms that Democrats have traditionally had in New York to win?
	I guess that part remains to be seen.
	But the point is, is Democrats have had to exercise every muscle possible to try to get to the point where they even have any confidence that their people can win.
	You know, and again, if it's a mirage, as again, prognosticator Jory Reed tells us, it's a mirage, an intentional misstatement of the facts.
	Why is Dark Brandon coming out again?
	Why are we getting Dark Brandon part two at the Capitol?
	He's going to begin with membo when I won here.
	Remember me, I won.
	And these people try to say I didn't.
	Back to me and my thwarters of democracy.
	Come on, we've got to stop them.
	And Paul Pelosi, too, by the way.
	Oh, I mean, I don't understand for the life of me why they think this works, Megan.
	I mean, first of all, let's just take the backdrop.
	He's doing this in front of Union Station, right?
	Yeah, they moved it from the Capitol to Union Station, the train station.
	Okay, fine.
	Yeah, so like Union State.
	Well, I mean, the bad, the capital is right there.
	It's all, it's all right there.
	But I guess the point.
	The point is, Union Station has lost about 30% of its storefronts over the last two years.
	You walk through there.
	It is like a ghost town.
	Starbucks had to close because of safety issues.
	I mean, if ever you want a monument to the failures of the Biden administration, he's standing in front of it.
	And then he's going to go and he's going to tell us what democracy means, right?
	Right before we're all voting and exercising democracy, the president's going to helpfully explain to us how it can be saved by voting Democrat.
	What an amazing construct, right?
	And like no poll in the country is buying their whole Jan 6 and abortion is the only thing that matters construct, which is why you have this red wave developing, in addition to the fact that their economic policies have basically made every American vulnerable to their next paycheck.
	This is like when I interviewed Chris Christie not long after Bridgegate.
	And we went to him.
	We went to the governor's office and his team chose the location.
	We're like, fine, great, wherever you guys want.
	It was outside.
	And I liked the governor and still like the governor and his team, but they literally set it up with an enormous bridge in the background to the point where we actually said, are you sure this is how you want to do it?
	They were like, yeah, yeah, we're good.
	I'm like, okay.
	Okay.
	Let's do this thing.
	Okay.
	Sometimes these folks are not well served by their team.
	Not everybody has a Josh Holmes on their team.
	Oh, well, it's nice of you to say, but I mean, look, I think what is an undeniable fact is that control of the House and the Senate is going to be determined in large part on the president himself, his policies, his image, whether the American people want to continue on in the Biden agenda or not.
	All right.
Vice President Political Liability 00:08:48
	That has proven to be a real liability for Democrats.
	And so, I mean, like, I think you ask like a Mark Kelly or a Catherine Cortez-Masto or Patty Murray or some of these people who are in danger of losing their seats.
	Is it helpful to have the president standing in a monument of your failures a week before the election?
	I mean, I just can't imagine.
	Maybe they'll move it next to a grocery store or in front of a gas pump.
	Seriously, it's on this president's keystone pipeline in the middle of it and see if we can't figure that out.
	Maybe Afghanistan, Bagram Airbase.
	Right?
	I mean, let's just go through the litany of all of the list of terribles that this administration has been through and talk about them all six days before an election.
	Oh, okay.
	Now, listen, I mentioned an overseas war and I wanted to ask you about this before I let you go.
	Biden with yet another nonsensical, non-factual campaign trail stumble.
	I mean, hopefully, Dark Brandon stays on the prompter tonight because when he goes off the prompter, we've seen makes a lot of mistakes.
	Just last week, he said we have 54 states.
	And last I chat, I have to just count the flags.
	I mean, the stars on the flag, and you're good.
	You got it.
	50.
	Let's not get started on the Republican congressman he thought was alive when she was dead.
	He had acknowledged that shortly prior.
	So here he is speaking yesterday about inflation.
	Okay.
	And listen to how he says Iraq instead of Ukraine and then how he tries to fix it with more disinformation.
	Listen, inflation is a worldwide problem right now because of a war in Iraq and the impact on oil and what Russia is doing.
	I mean, excuse me, the war in Ukraine.
	And think of Iraq because that's where my son died.
	Because he died.
	No, he did not die in Iraq.
	He's made this mistake or misstatement repeatedly, Josh.
	Bo Biden may have gotten sick.
	He may have gotten cancer thanks to those pits, those burn pits in Iraq, but he did not die in Iraq.
	And he said this repeatedly now.
	I just, you know, at some point it becomes elder abuse, doesn't it?
	I mean, it's like, look, I understand he's the president of the United States and I understand that, you know, people elected him.
	And I understand that they want to get him out and talk about things.
	But like every single time he goes off of a teleprompter, it is a debilitating error, the likes of which, if a Republican ever said one of those things that he says on a daily basis, they'd never see elected office again.
	And yet we're sort of forced to pretend like he's driving the bus in the right direction.
	And look, I think that's playing into this midterm too, right?
	I mean, it's not just that what you've done is wrong.
	It's that they have absolutely no confidence in his ability to get things right.
	And how could they?
	He can't get through his sentence.
	And I mean, look, like, I don't want to harangue away on the fact that clearly he's lost his step.
	Clearly, he doesn't know what he's talking about.
	Like, it brings me no joy to do that, but he's the president of the United States, right?
	And it comes with enormous power, enormous responsibility to try to take care of the American people.
	And by any objective standard, he cannot effectuate that.
	He cannot do anything about that.
	And God, I mean, you take him off the mic, you put the vice president on, it gets worse.
	So, I mean, this is, look, if I were them, I'd shut it down.
	I'd shut it down.
	That's my question.
	If you, you, because you've handled candidates before.
	What would you do if you were in the position of handling him?
	What would you do?
	Well, I think his campaign guys got it right.
	I mean, they turned it over to the White House staff and they have created all of this problem.
	The campaign for Joe Biden, if you recall, was largely conducted from his basement.
	We didn't hear anything from him other than stumbling out and shaking a couple of hands and going back in the basement.
	And that worked for him.
	I mean, basically, Rand is not Trump, right?
	It wasn't anything.
	It was like, here, this old guy is not going to go screw up the country because he doesn't know any better anyway, but that's fine.
	He's not Trump.
	Now you get him out there and he wants to be, you know, 30 years ago Joe Biden.
	He's not 30 years ago Joe Biden.
	He is an 80-year-old man who has clearly lost his ability to navigate incredibly treacherous water.
	And the scariest part is on the international stage, right?
	I mean, it's one thing to screw up talking about tax cuts.
	It's quite another to change foreign policy vis-a-vis Taiwan, for example, off the cuff, right?
	Not to mention this clearly signal to Russia, you can invade and the consequences will probably be rather minor as long as it's a minor incursion.
	I mean, just, you know, you could go down the list, but yeah, he's not this Joe Biden of 30 years ago.
	He's not the Joe Biden of 30 months ago.
	You could even say 30 days ago.
	I mean, it just seems like it's on a downward decline.
	That's why there's so little enthusiasm, in particular amongst young Democrats, for him staying on the ticket.
	And in our next segment, we'll talk about Kamala as well.
	Josh, always a pleasure.
	Yeah.
	Oh, gosh.
	It's so fun.
	Megan, I feel like we're just sort of sitting on the living room couch just chatting politics.
	This is great.
	I just love it.
	I love your political analysis because you're always spot on and you're an honest broker.
	We appreciate it.
	Thanks, Megan.
	All right, coming up, part two of my interview with Sean Parnell, who, you know, I don't want to say he should have been in that seat that Dr. Oz is in right now running against Fetterman, but he almost was in that seat until a personal story, Travail, took him out of the race.
	He's never spoken about it.
	Today he will, and we'll talk all things politics, including a scathing column by George Will calling for the Democrats to boot Kamala Harris once and for all, not to mention Joe Biden.
	I did want to bring you something that I mentioned earlier, and that is this opinion piece by George Will.
	Okay.
	He makes the case in no uncertain terms today that Kamala Harris cannot be the standard bearer once Joe Biden goes away, which he argues he needs to do.
	So here's what George Will writes.
	For the good of the country, Biden and Harris should bow out of the 2024 election.
	I'm going to read this to you.
	I said this to Steve Krakow before we launched the show today, that I wanted you to hear this in full.
	Vice President Kamala Harris applauds President Biden.
	No, sorry, that's the okay.
	Here he writes, during this autumn's avalanche of political news, an enormous boulder bounced by, barely noticed.
	It demonstrated why Joe Biden should not seek another term.
	Democrats should promptly face that fact and this one.
	An Everest of evidence shows that Vice President Harris is starkly unqualified to be considered as his successor.
	Now, here's the boulder.
	The boulder, colon, meeting recently with some progressive activists, Biden said his $426 billion student loan forgiveness was accomplished by a law that he had, quote, just signed, quote, I got it passed by a vote or two, end quote.
	No, he did not.
	Biden was not merely, again, embellishing his achievements.
	This is not just another of his verbal fender benders.
	There is no less than dismaying explanation.
	There's no less than dismaying explanation for his complete confusion.
	What vote?
	Who voted?
	Good questions, George.
	No one, as George well knows.
	After repeated unilateral extensions of the moratorium on loan repayments until election season, Biden unilaterally implemented the windfall for millions of voters.
	Congress was not involved in this cataract of money from the treasury in violation of the Constitution's appropriations clause.
	Of course, as an aside, this is me talking again.
	We've talked about this on the show.
	There was no vote.
	There was no, I got it passed by a vote or two.
	He did not.
	He did it by executive fiat.
	And yet he's out there completely revising history in a way that most disturbingly seemed real to him.
	He seemed to actually believe it.
	All right, back to George Will.
	It is frightening that Biden doesn't know or remember what he recently did regarding an immensely important policy.
	He must be presumed susceptible to future episodes of similar bewilderment.
	He should leave the public stage on January 20th, 2025, which would be the end of his first term.
	Okay, so should his vice president.
	Thomas R. Marshall, Woodrow Wilson's vice president, joked, once there were two brothers.
	One ran away to sea.
	The other was elected vice president of the United States, and nothing was heard of either of them again.
Electric School Bus Debate 00:02:44
	Kamala Harris has been heard from sufficiently.
	And then George goes on to say, transcripts of her verbal meanderings cannot convey their eerie strangeness.
	Videos of them should be watched.
	He's 100% right, and we've played so many of them on the show.
	He goes on to quote many of them and says, she sounds, as a critic has said, like someone giving a book report on a book she has not read.
	I'll take you down just a little memory lane.
	Let's play Soundbite 9 as one example.
	We will work together and continue to work together to address these issues, to tackle these challenges, and to work together as we continue to work, operating from the new norms, rules, and agreements that we will convene to work together on.
	He goes on, her style betrays a self-satisfied exaggeration of her aptitudes.
	Lacking natural talent, she needs to prepare, but evidently does not.
	Complacency and arrogance make a ruinous compound.
	Here's another soundbite cited by George and played previously by us, Kamala Harris, on the beauty of the yellow school bus, SOT 8.
	I have a particular fondness, I must tell you, for electric school buses.
	I love electric school buses.
	I really do.
	And we're manufacturing them in our country.
	I've been to the manufacturing plants.
	I've been on these electric school buses.
	And think about it.
	Aside from the pandemic, on a daily basis, 25 million children in our country every day go to school on those diesel-fueled school buses.
	And hundreds, thousands of school bus drivers are driving those buses, which are then these people, these children, these adults are inhaling what is toxic air.
	George Will goes on, regarding Biden and Harris, the National Democratic Party faces two tests of stewardship.
	It's impremature cannot again be bestowed on either of them.
	Biden is not just past his prime, even adequacy is in his past.
	My God, that may be the perfect sentence.
	Biden is not just past his prime, even adequacy is in his past.
	And this is Harris's prime, George Will points out.
	He concludes, in 2024, the Republican Party might present the nation with a presidential nominee whose unfitness has been demonstrated.
	Will, as you may know, is no Trump fan.
Shared Custody Factors Explained 00:15:30
	After next Tuesday's sobering election results, Democrats should resolve not to insult and imperil the nation by doing likewise.
	It's an unbelievable piece.
	It's a strong piece, and it's a completely fair piece.
	And it perfectly encapsulates the pickle in which Democrats find themselves because who's next?
	Who's next?
	Gavin Newsom?
	Good luck.
	Once voters get a look at his record.
	They're not trying to go farther left to get a more squad-like nominee.
	That person's not going to be acceptable to these Dems who are getting ready to vote for Lee Zeldon in New York.
	No, right?
	So who else here?
	Pete Buttigieg, who's he's like 14.
	He's been a mayor and the transportation secretary during a supply chain crisis that he did absolutely nothing about.
	That's not going to work.
	It's not going to happen.
	They don't have a strong standard bearer.
	That's why they're in such trouble.
	That's why we're getting Dark Brandon tonight and Joy Reed in a panic saying the polls are wrong.
	By the way, we're talking about, I was looking at him, the Cook political report, the Cook political reports, nonpartisan.
	Both sides acknowledge that.
	They just shifted 10 more House seats won by President Joe Biden toward the GOP.
	Nate Silver's 538 just flipped its projection for control of the U.S. Senate to favor Republicans for the first time.
	They are part of her weird right-wing cabal?
	They're in trouble and they know it at the presidential level, at the congressional level.
	And soon we're going to have hardcore results by which to judge her kind of nonsense.
	Stay tuned.
	We'll be right back.
	We're trying now to do this via like a new technology as sort of a different computer and a different system.
	So hopefully this will work.
	Stand by.
	And if not, you know, we'll give it a third try.
	We're not giving up on John Carnell.
	I feel like it's Fetterman.
	You're off the Pennsylvania state forever.
	He's clipping wires in the back of your Connecticut home and you don't even know it.
	I know.
	It's insane.
	It's so weird.
	I can hear Josh Holmes perfectly and I could hear everything else.
	But then every time you pop up, it's like some dark force is trying to prevent us from talking.
	I know it's the strangest thing in the world, but it's not unlike the luck that I've had this last year.
	So we'll just roll with the punches, you know?
	Oh, well, you know what?
	And then, but not unlike the last year, you did not give up on yourself and we did not give up on you.
	And we will forge forward and have a meaningful exchange, which is what I hope your future holds to.
	Thank you for trusting me with this.
	And I'm sorry that we got off to the rocky start on such a personal issue in particular.
	But so let's just go back.
	Okay, let's go back to August of 2021.
	And you were running for this Republican nomination in the Senate seat in Pennsylvania, the one that ultimately Oz would get.
	And he only swooped in when you bowed out and he saw an opportunity.
	You actually are from Pennsylvania and you decided to try your throwing your hat in the ring.
	Then things exploded in your personal life in a way that caused you to drop out.
	And the allegations were, I was shocked because I remember you had just been on my show and you clearly have a ton of charisma.
	You just remember saying, like, you don't look like the average Senate candidate.
	You don't act like the average candidate, like the tats going, and you're the combat vet and the bronze stars.
	But then the next thing I heard like a month later was you had to drop out.
	And I forgive me, but like the headlines in the media were abuser, you know, a wife abuser, a child abuser.
	It was like, what?
	And I remember saying to my team, I don't believe it.
	I don't believe it.
	Like, I want to know more.
	And as it turns out, that was a good instinct because the story is far different than that.
	And few in the media or even your detractors would really take the time to go look it up.
	So let's get into it.
	Okay.
	From your perspective, what happened?
	Why did the newspapers say that?
	And why do people still believe that?
	Well, I think that with regards to the media, their mission was clear.
	And it was to derail my Senate campaign.
	We were up by 20 points in the primary.
	We were outraising everybody in the field combined.
	We had just received President Trump's endorsement.
	Our internal polling, more than 10 months out from the general election, had us running neck and neck with John Fetterman.
	And that was prior to the world knowing about his stroke.
	We were, we had a special thing going, Megan.
	And I mean, my message to the people of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania was like, generally speaking, I don't like the Republican Party or the Democrat Party, you know, but I'm running because I love this country and that's what matters to me.
	And if you're a Democrat that's been voting Democrat your entire life, but and maybe we disagree on certain issues, but you love this country, then you are more than welcome to stand with me and march with me and fight for this country.
	And I did everything that I could to bring people together, you know, because ultimately I think that's what leadership is all about.
	And then the custody trial happened and it came out of left field.
	And I think that the focus was at that specific time was to derail my Senate campaign because we were running away with this thing.
	But leading up to, so I'll tell you this, just give you a little bit of a timeline, if that's okay.
	I ran for Congress.
	Prior to your running, you had been in a contentious divorce with your now ex-wife.
	That's exactly right.
	And that's a long time.
	Yeah.
	Now, that's something that was not talked about at all, but I think a critical piece of information was the media led people to believe that this was all brand new and that the woman I was with now, I'm getting a divorce from that.
	My ex and I were together now.
	It really wasn't the case.
	I've been involved in my children's lives their entire life.
	I was the first person to hold them when they were brought onto this earth.
	And in 2019, my ex consented to 50-50 custody.
	And for years thereafter, she and I shared custody with some conflict along the way because, you know, if you're going through a divorce, you know, everybody has conflict.
	But everything was fine.
	I ran for Congress in a highly contested swing district here in Western Pennsylvania, spoke at the Republican National Convention in prime time, spoke at three Trump rallies in front of tens of thousands of people.
	And when the media inquired into my divorce and my custody issues, my ex issued a joint statement with me.
	She stood with me and basically told the media to scram saying that, you know, while Sean and I have our differences, we love our kids very much.
	And a year later, that all changed.
	And I found myself in a three-day custody trial with every media outlet in the country, either in the trial itself or cameras outside.
	And, you know, Megan, divorce and custody issues are really, really tough.
	And they're extraordinarily tough on children.
	And then you add to that the media being involved and exploiting every single thing in an attempt to paint me as something that I'm not.
	I have to say, outside of deploying to Afghanistan, I mean, this was 10 times worse than anything that I'd ever experienced in the military or prior or prior to that.
	You know, it was just hard to talk about even now.
	It's hard to talk about even now.
	What changed?
	Okay, your ex-wife came forward during this run.
	Her name's Lori and Lori Snell.
	And she came forward to say all these negative things about you, allegations, as you point out at this particular time in your Senate run.
	So what changed?
	I understand how the media got super interested in it.
	You know, they hadn't been before, but had something changed between you and Lori at that particular time?
	Well, no, not that I know of.
	In fact, the custody modification that was filed, Megan, was filed back during my run for Congress, and it largely focused on extracurricular activities or homework during COVID.
	And if you remember, schoolwork during COVID was really challenging when everything shut down and schools didn't really have a rhythm for how they were going to do virtual schooling.
	You know, I had one laptop that I'm on right now and I was getting three different notifications for my kids.
	You know, they've got a Zoom class at 1130 and then there's another class on class dojo.
	It was just super chaotic.
	So it was a chaotic time in general for, for I think, not just our family, but every family.
	So I don't really know what changed other than I was running for a higher office.
	She, we'll get right to it.
	She filed a case against you to challenge the custody situation.
	It was heard by senior judge James G. Arner, and the hearing was on, it was early November 2021.
	Okay, so it was after you had come on our show and in the midst of your run.
	That judge said in his decision that the children love and feel safe with you and their mother, both of you, and that both parents provide proper care for them.
	That judge said, under the circumstances, it would seem that the parents should have equal time and equal say in the decisions regarding the children.
	However, that arrangement has been tried and is not working, primarily because both parents refuse to communicate and compromise.
	Both parents are now seeking primary physical custody.
	And the court says it must decide between, quote, two good parents.
	By applying factors and facts of the case and the needs of the children, the end goal is the best interest of the children.
	Now, that so far to me is very contrary to the media narrative, which, as I said at the beginning, was so cruel to you.
	I mean, very unfavorable to you.
	This judge is saying, I have two good parents here, and both children, all the children, you have three of them, love and feel safe with both parents and say that they are properly cared for by both parents.
	So the judge is basically saying, I want you both to have shared custody just the way it's been, but you two can't get along.
	And that's not working.
	So now I'm being forced to modify that.
	So, okay, I'm going to.
	He considers all the evidence, the arguments, including testimony of the children who did not testify in open court, but privately and that he heard.
	And he awarded primary physical custody to your wife, your ex-wife, and sole legal custody to Lori.
	So she got so that this is the thing that so upset you.
	So it was shared custody, 50-50.
	Now it's primary physical custody and sole legal custody.
	So she gets to make all the decisions on schools, on medicine, on religion, all that stuff.
	And you get partial physical custody, which is like every other weekend, something like that.
	I get the first, second, and fourth weekend of every month, which basically boils down to three days a month that is uninterrupted with a custody exchange.
	So it didn't just, the order didn't just overturn a three-year status quo of shared custody.
	It overturned a lifetime of me being in the lives of my kids for every moment, large and small.
	And it was tough.
	You know, as someone who loves this country, I believe in the system, I trust in the system, and I'm never going to stop fighting for my kids.
	But this ruling was extraordinarily tough for a lot of reasons on our family.
	But when you look at how the state of Pennsylvania evaluates custody, they look at 16 factors, Megan, and it covers a wide range of things.
	In the ruling, three factors favored my ex and two factors favored me.
	The one that was the most significantly weighted was availability and the fact that in the trial court's own words, I was the leading candidate for Senate.
	I didn't testify to the fact that I was the leading candidate for Senate, but those were the words in his opinion.
	I did testify to the fact that, hey, I thought we were going to win.
	I felt it in my bones.
	So my thought to remedy that was, okay, if three factors favor my ex and two factors favor me, if I withdraw from the Senate race and make sure that the court knows and that more importantly, my children know that they are my only priority in life and I always put them number one, then maybe I can file a motion for reconsideration.
	And then, look, we've got two factors that favor her, two factors that favor me.
	And maybe I can get at least salvage time with my children and get them back into my life.
	Yeah.
	Get back to the 50-50.
	Yeah.
	Ideally, more of a fair arrangement on legal custody, like the decision-making authority.
	So you drop out of the race.
	But before we get to what happened next, I think it's very interesting because you're right.
	I looked at the decision myself and the judge did not say.
	Sean is an abuser of Lori or the children, and therefore the children are going with the wife, which is how I think this was kind of spun.
	The judge, as I said, said, you're both good parents and the children feel like they've gotten good love and proper care.
	And the judge had no reason to dispute any of that.
	But your ex-wife, Lori, did make abuse allegations during the hearing.
	And this is where things got ugly.
	And I want to ask you about them.
	So suddenly, she testified at this particular hearing, which wound up going her way about specific incidents she claims constituted abuse.
	Again, this is 2021, the fall of 2021.
	She says in, she says, 13 years earlier in 2008, while you were dating, that you threw chairs across the room toward her, that you dropped her off on an interstate when she was six months pregnant and told her to get an abortion.
	That in 2009, 12 years earlier, after your oldest child was born, you pinned her down by her thighs and screamed profanities at her.
	That in 2015, six years before her testimony, you tried to choke and strangle her on the couch and that she bit you.
	That in 2018, three years before her testimony, you started hitting the kids and would call them names.
	That you would call her crazy in front of the children.
	You would go into rages over little things the children did.
	And then she had two big allegations beginning in 2018, which I'll get to involving the children.
	But so far, that's what she alleged and testified to.
	How do you respond to those claims?
	They're flat out untrue.
	They're false in every single way.
	And what I just told you is the same thing that I told the trial court.
	And every single one of those allegations, the alleged allegations and alleged incidences were heard in an actual hearing in 2018 in front of a judge where there was a full hearing.
Unfounded Allegations Dismissed 00:14:43
	In fact, my attorneys at the time, because there was a PFA filed, and I don't know if your audience knows what that is, but it was a protection from abuse order.
	Oftentimes when those are filed, they're almost always granted on an interim or temporary basis.
	They're ex parte.
	So you can't make a case.
	They're just, they're filed against you and you have to comply for 10 days until you get a hearing.
	My lawyers at the time were saying you should try to settle this.
	And oftentimes when you're in the midst of divorce and custody, you know, PFAs are used as leverage for exclusive possession of the Merrill home.
	Like in other words, I'll drop the PFA if you give me if you give me the house and pay the mortgage.
	I was so committed against defending myself against these false allegations, I wouldn't settle.
	I went to trial.
	And in that hearing, we won.
	And then, in fact, there was a child protective services investigation at the time.
	They found the allegations to be completely unfounded.
	The judge at the time found the allegations to be unfounded and untrue.
	Everything was dismissed and then expunged.
	There was no contest on the expungement.
	And then shortly thereafter, she consented to 50-50 custody.
	And I thought that this was all behind us.
	I thought that, you know, hey, I defeated these allegations once.
	You know, this is America.
	You know, you can't have the same allegations brought to you, brought against you multiple times.
	But in the family court, I guess that's not true.
	Everything that you just talked about, I had already defeated once in 2018.
	So we weren't even sure that she'd be able to bring that stuff to trial and testify to that stuff, but she was.
	It's completely, completely untrue, Megan.
	And what was really difficult about all of this was that I remember being bullied as a kid a lot.
	I was bullied pretty horrifically, actually.
	And one of the things that affected me the most as a kid were my friends who I was really close with who would see me getting bullied and then maybe not do anything or stand up for me.
	And for whatever reason, I just thought to myself, I'm never going to be that kind of person that sees someone that needs help or needs to be defended or is maybe weaker than me and never let them stand idly by and take it.
	I would always stand up to defend them.
	And I think that was a lot of what drove me to join the military after September 11th.
	And it's been wired into the very fabric of who I am, defending people who can't defend themselves.
	And since I've been out of the military, I've dedicated my life to serving other people.
	I think the pathway to a meaningful life is service to your fellow man and woman.
	And these allegations just flew in the face of all of that.
	And let me ask you, let's talk turkey, okay?
	Because Muron, when we did our lengthy interview in August of 21, we talked about your traumatic brain injury and some of the trauma that you suffered in serving overseas.
	And that doesn't make anybody inclined to abuse a loved one at all, to be clear.
	But it can result in anger issues, having PTSD or, you know, something like that.
	Traumatic brain injury can change the way somebody acts or behaves.
	And so is it not true?
	Like none of this is true that you were rageful toward her, you threw chairs toward her, dropped her off in the interstate.
	She says interstate 79 when she was six months pregnant.
	That's very clear.
	Like that's a that's a super detailed one.
	None of that ever happened.
	No, no, none of it.
	She just made up to get you.
	Yes.
	Yes.
	In fact, you know, I would say that in some cases, the family court or being in the system almost incentivizes that because you have one parent or another feels like they have to make up allegations to get a leg up in custody.
	And then you add to that, that whoever gets primary custody, there's a financial incentive there because child support obligations and sometimes alimony is increased.
	And then add to that the fact that there's no punishment for false allegations.
	It almost the entire system that pits one parent against the other, I mean, it creates an environment for it.
	And look, Lori and I, we had a rough relationship, right?
	Maybe rough is obviously the wrong word.
	It wasn't a great, healthy relationship.
	That's why she and I went our separate ways and ended up getting divorced.
	There was never any abuse.
	I mean, we fought.
	We had arguments.
	We called each other names.
	We had an on-again, off-again relationship for a long time, but there was never any abuse in that relationship.
	Certainly nothing of what she said in that trial was true.
	But unfortunately, the judge was swayed by those allegations, even though he didn't find any child abuse.
	So as you point out, back at that 2018 hearing in which she raised these allegations, she got the temporary protection order, which I mean, with respect to her, that's very easy to get.
	You just go in one-sided before a court and say, I need it.
	And they take your assertions as they basically give you the benefit of the doubt.
	And if your assertions taken as true would justify you to the protection, they generally give it.
	But then you have a trial.
	Then you have a hearing where the judge hears evidence from the defendant and gets to make a more measured conclusion.
	And indeed, even this judge acknowledged that after a full hearing on that 2018 trial, the judge denied her petition for protection.
	And that after that, you agreed, the both of you, to a 50-50 custody order.
	You filed a motion to expunge that case, basically erase it, which she did not oppose.
	And the court did expunge it.
	So, you know, so far going into your senate race and all that, you and Lori had had an ugly divorce, an ugly custody dispute, but you got it to a decent place and you're going forward.
	Now it gets reopened because she's saying it's not working.
	We hate each other too much to communicate well.
	And the judge is revisiting.
	And now there's a couple of other allegations.
	These are, you know, arguably the most disturbing about you and your children that I do want to ask you about because they're in the public record now.
	And she said that in January or February of 2018, and you'll tell me whether this was also in the earlier proceeding, but that in January or February 2013, she claimed she heard your older son scream and cry, that you said, oh, it's a joke, and that she saw your full handprint on the child's back, that the child was hurt.
	And she took a picture that was admitted into evidence.
	She claimed she was going to call the police, but she did not because she knew that you were concerned about your livelihood and public image as an author and a public speaker, and because she did not see you hit the child, and that you would allegedly say to her, call the cops and you will be dead before they get here.
	And then claimed you were only joking.
	Before I go on to the next incident, do you want to respond to that one?
	It's completely not true.
	And that picture that was entered into evidence during the custody trial, that exact same picture was entered into evidence during the 2018 hearing.
	And my testimony during the custody trial in 2021 was the same as it was during 2018.
	And that's...
	She did raise that one earlier.
	That was also raised before the judge did not find in her favor and 50-50 custody.
	It was the same piece of evidence and the same alleged incident.
	My testimony was unchanged.
	And that's not a picture of my son.
	That incident.
	Not a picture of my son.
	And it just flat out did not happen.
	And did she falsify evidence?
	Is that your allegation?
	I don't know what she did.
	You'd have to ask her that question.
	But that picture was not a picture of my son.
	That incident did not happen.
	And my son, my children never testified to that.
	Wow.
	All right.
	Let me give you an incident number two.
	And this is the court writing this up.
	This is the court again that I, senior judge James G. Arner, says the next incident appears to have been the final straw.
	A few months later, Lori claims Sean and the younger son, five years old at the time, were playing with a robe, a robe or a robe tie in the parents' bedroom.
	And that Parnell, meaning you, punched a close, a closet door and it hit the child in the face.
	He said to the child, quote, it was your fault and get out of here, end quote.
	Photos of the child's face showing marks were introduced.
	Lori told Sean to get his stuff and leave.
	He left that day.
	Several days later, he came back to the house screaming.
	She said she was going to file for protection and so on.
	So that preceded, that's, according to this court, is what led her to go in and get that initial protection order, which wound up ultimately in 50-50 custody.
	This incident was also discussed at the 2018 hearing.
	And anytime there's a PFA, it also triggers a CYS child and use services investigation.
	And so they also investigated this.
	Evan and I were playing tug of war.
	My youngest son and I were playing tug of war with a robe, like one of those things that wrap around.
	He was just super little at the time, but I was pulling on one end.
	He was pulling on the other.
	And he let go of his end and went back and he bumped his head on the corner of a door.
	And that's exactly what happened.
	And back then, I think four years ago, that's exactly what he told the investigator.
	And that allegation as well was unfounded.
	But again, it was dismissed back in 2018, but then brought to bear again in the 2021 custody trial.
	Everything was dismissed.
	And I thought this was all behind us and that we were moving on together and doing everything that we could to raise our kids.
	Look, anytime there's a divorce or a divorcing couple or a couple that's separated, there's going to be some conflict.
	And there is some conflict, but the children, by and large, like are not necessarily exposed to it.
	You know, of course they know that their parents are divorced and of course they know that there's some conflict, but they weren't exposed to it.
	They weren't exposed to it in a way in which it was presented at the custody trial.
	And after these allegations were dismissed, I thought that this was just going to be put behind us and that, you know, Lori and I were going to move on in a productive co-parenting relationship and do everything that we could to raise good, strong kids together, but apart.
	Yeah, but she raised it again.
	And the court took another look at it.
	And ultimately, this court, taking another look at it, said as follows.
	He found Lori to be more credible.
	He found you to be less credible, pointing out that you were dressed very casually for your appearance in court.
	I got to tell you, as a lawyer, that's an odd thing for him to base your credibility on, which he did not feel showed respect for the seriousness of the occasion.
	I mean, again, that's to me that that's a little odd.
	But and said he did find that you did commit some acts of abuse in the past.
	However, noting that the incidents involving Lori occurred so many years ago and did not involve the children, they're not relevant to the custody determination.
	Also went on to say incidents involving the boys did happen in his view, as Lori describes, but he did not place weight on that because it had been years since then with no further incidents and that you had properly cared for the children since.
	Judge goes on to say Lori agreed that Sean can have substantial periods of unsupervised custody.
	And that indicates even she does not view him as a threat to the children and that the children have not expressed any concerns for their safety.
	And then he goes on to say there's no evidence of child abuse and that both parents have adequately performed parental duties.
	So the judge is a little bit all over the board.
	You know, he's like, I kind of believe her.
	I feel like he didn't dress nicely and maybe didn't treat this thing with the respect it deserved, but I don't really think there's evidence of abuse.
	And so having to choose between one and the other, since he's going to be in the Senate, he's not around as much as she is.
	I'm going to give her sole legal custody.
	Does that about sum it up?
	Yeah.
	And unfortunately, I think that he was swayed a little bit by her testimony.
	And I'll say, you know, the decision on my attire, I actually discussed that with counsel at the time.
	And we were afraid that I'd walk in there in a business suit and look like a politician.
	And, you know, to be fair, I also wasn't dressed like a hobo.
	I was wearing, you know, an untuck-it shirt.
	And I thought nice clothes, but maybe I need to reexamine that.
	Maybe, maybe I need to reexamine that.
	Um, uh, moving forward, and I certainly will.
	Um, I guess it just hurts as someone who like anyone who knows me knows the kind of relationship that I have with my children.
	Um, the people of Western Pennsylvania who were super close to our campaign for Congress, I mean, my family campaigned with me everywhere we went.
	They saw the kind of relationship that I had with my children.
	I know, but you never know, like in front of the camera versus behind closed doors.
	That's that's what's that, but Megan, that is exactly what's so sinister about all of this is that you have people say, Well, my gosh, Sean seems like such a nice guy, and it seems like his kids really like him, but behind closed doors, you just never know.
	And that's been really tough for our family to deal with, you know.
	Her agreeing to 50-50 unsupervised custody after all this allegedly take place took place is your best fact.
	That's your best fact.
	And as the judge found, I will say she gave us a statement emailed to us at our request that reads as follows: Mr. Parnell is a public figure defaming me using his platform, playing out a personal vendetta to impact his own situation with no regard for our children.
	Facts and evidence prove the abuse and determined custody.
Sealed Records Protect Children 00:07:09
	Four judges, because you appealed later to a three-judge panel, all made the same decision based on those facts.
	He tried to file a gag order to prevent me from speaking out.
	And now that I have, Mr. Parnell is using every platform available to lie and publicly shame me, which is far from healthy or helpful for our children.
	So she says you're playing out a personal vendetta to impact your situation, and that the abuse has been proven.
	Well, that's, I dispute that.
	The abuse hasn't been proven and it didn't happen.
	And I would not lie about the mother of my children.
	You know, we, for all of our differences, you know, we created three amazing children together.
	And my focus is and always has been on them and will continue to be on them.
	And it's just unfortunate that she feels that way because that's just simply not true.
	Do you?
	So you appealed it.
	And unfortunately, you did no better at the appellate court, where a three-judge panel said, I mean, I read that, the opinion.
	And to me, what they were saying was he raises some good points, but we're the appellate court and we don't get to revisit what the finder of fact says.
	And that is the case.
	You know, like when it comes to errors of law, you can get a reversal.
	When it comes to findings of fact, you're screwed.
	You're stuck with what the lower court did, unless it was absolutely egregious.
	And they didn't see that here.
	And so they kind of said, well, we might have decided this differently.
	That's not really our role.
	We got to stick with the findings of fact that the lower court did.
	And so you're living with this arrangement now where she has full legal custody and you have partial legal custody.
	So how is that for you?
	It's been tough.
	It's been tough on me.
	I think it's, again, more importantly, it's been tough on the kids because, you know, again, this order didn't just overturn a three-year 50-50 status quo.
	It overturned a lifetime of me in the lives of my children in every moment, large and small.
	And it's been tough, you know, but I filed another custody modification.
	I'm going to keep fighting for my kids because they're the most important thing in my life, which is why I, which is why I withdrew from the Senate race to make sure that they knew that, that there was never a question in their minds that they were always and will always come first for me.
	And I'm going to keep fighting for them.
	And, you know, something that I haven't been able to escape, though, that's been on my mind ever since that trial is that I've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars fighting to defend myself against these false allegations and fighting to keep my children in their lives.
	And had I just, had I just said, when all this started, threw my hands up and said, you know what, I'm just going to walk away from this and be content to be every other weekend dad, pay child support, maybe be, maybe not be there for them all the time, be there for them on the weekends, that would still be a better deal than what I have right now.
	So what incentive?
	It's so hard because it's like I think people are primed to believe a woman alleging abuse, abuse of a child in particular.
	We're primed to believe that.
	But you're not wrong to point out the context in which it was raised.
	You know, that it was raised in the midst of a contentious divorce, in the midst of a contentious custody dispute, and that ultimately that first court that listened to it thought you were entitled to 50-50 custody and she was fine with that too.
	Like all this has to be, and I do think, you know, to be honest, in the wake of like Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, people are looking at these cases, just checking their own bias in favor of the female, you know, alleged victim, like just checking you.
	And everyone deserves a fair shake is the point.
	Not just the woman making the allegation, but the defendant, the dad, the guy being accused of something as horrific as intentionally abusing his own children and his wife.
	Like it's saying that about a man is so bad.
	There's jokes about it.
	You know, like, oh, how long have you been beating your wife?
	Like that, that's a joke in the law because if you say that, you've defamed the person in the question right out of the gate.
	That's how damaging those allegations are.
	And they do, they get thrown around these custody disputes in a way that's not always fair or accurate.
	And I'm not passing a judgment on this case.
	I'm just, you know, we've all seen that dynamic play out.
	Yeah, it's been tough.
	And I'll say, I did ask for this, the custody proceedings to be sealed.
	And I mean, my ex opposed me on that.
	But I didn't do it because, and of course, the media ran with this narrative that I wanted the case to be sealed to stop my ex from talking about abuse.
	That's that's not why I pushed.
	I wanted this to be sealed.
	I wanted it to be sealed to protect my children from public scrutiny.
	You know, I'm running for office.
	People can attack me, but I didn't want my children to have to go to school and have all of their friends and maybe their friends' parents know about their personal issues.
	And I got to imagine you didn't really want her out there repeating these allegations either.
	Well, of course not.
	Of course not.
	And, you know, it's not been.
	No, of course not.
	I mean, of course not.
	These false allegations destroy people's lives.
	And it's not been easy on our family.
	It's not been easy for me professionally picking up the pieces after all of this.
	When you operate, Megan, at, you know, you're doing operate at our level, when you're running for Senate or you're doing, you know, an hour prime time on Fox News or something like that, or you're doing all these media segments, you have a thousand people lining up to do those jobs.
	And the moment someone like me has these allegations against them, people say both the companies that I work with or maybe other media outlets that I work with say, well, we're just going to go to the next person in line because who wants to deal with Sean with all these crazy, horrible allegations against him?
	You know, it does, you know, of course I care about my name and my reputation because my name and my reputation is how we make a living and how I provide for her and our children.
	So, of course, I don't want that stuff being talked about out there because it's simply not true, but it happened.
	And so now, you know, once I make it through this process and navigate through this process, I'm going to do everything that I can to try to reform this system for people that come through it after me.
Advocating for Equal Parenting 00:02:49
	Because this has when something like this happens with your family, you know, and your children, it tends to color everything that you do.
	And I just think that, you know, Democrat, Republican, people that agree or disagree with me on policy, if you've been through a divorce and you've been through a custody fight, you know how tough this is.
	And if there are ways that we can make the system better for families and diminish conflict for children, then we should do everything we can to make sure that that happens.
	And I am, since this case, since this has happened, I've sort of found myself becoming an advocate for equal shared parenting across the board because parents are always going to have their stuff, especially if you're going through a divorce.
	But the children, their relationship with each parent is sacrosanct and they deserve, they didn't ask for a divorce.
	They didn't ask for a custody fight, but their relationship with each parent is sacrosanct, should be protected and preserved.
	Because even if there's some conflict, and in divorcing couples, there's always conflict.
	The children should always come first.
	They should always have equal access to mom and dad.
	You need to love your spouse more than you, or sorry, you need to love your kids more than you hate your spouse.
	I think that about sums it up.
	You know, I can't imagine, honestly, I cannot imagine getting a divorce.
	And I can't imagine my poor kids and my kids and your kids are exactly the same ages, a boy, girl, boy, and the same age.
	And can't imagine saying to them, you're not going to see your dad except for a couple of weekends a month.
	Like, I can't imagine doing that.
	I can't imagine ever getting so angry with him that that would be what even I wanted.
	But of course, I've seen custody disputes get as contentious as yours.
	And this is how it goes.
	Let me stand you by because I want to squeeze in a break, but I really would love to talk about your next chapter.
	Okay.
	You know, you're not done.
	That to me, that seems pretty obvious.
	And I'd love to know what it looks like.
	And in particular, I'd love to ask you about, you know, there have been some pretty brutal allegations that came out about Raphael Warnock and his divorce from his ex-wife.
	Why is it, why is that such a deal breaker?
	Like for you, allegations that were deemed, you know, unproven initially and then ultimately accepted.
	And in his case, it hasn't been a deal breaker.
	You know, do you think there's a double standard?
	So that's where I'll leave it.
	I'm going to take a quick break and come right back to Sean Barnett.
	So, Sean, let's flip the page and talk about some of the good things that have happened to you.
	You bailed out of the Senate race.
Blending Families Successfully 00:03:02
	Sure, it gave you time to focus on family.
	And thankfully, as so often happens after a bad divorce, like a phoenix, the sun comes out and love to be born again.
	And that is what happened in your case.
	Tell us now about Melanie.
	Well, she's the most amazing person that I think I've ever met.
	She's brilliant.
	She's beautiful.
	She's politically savvy.
	She's a fighter.
	And she's got amazing daughters that have, you know, changed my life just as much as my own children.
	And as I mentioned, like when I taught you before, like they're not my daughters, my biological daughters, but boy, I really love them like they are.
	And we've been focused on blending our families.
	And they've got an amazing, her daughters have an amazing relationship with my kids.
	And it's a pretty amazing thing to behold watching them grow together.
	And, you know, blending a family is challenging.
	It really is.
	But it's also incredibly rewarding.
	And so, you know, we're focused on picking up the pieces and turning the pages and making sure that we spend, you know, a lot of time together and focus on building a life with one another.
	And, you know, Melanie, without her, and I mean this, without her, I don't know how I would have made it through this.
	Without her daughters, I don't know how I would have made it through this because they're strong and they're resilient.
	And my own kids, one of the things that I've learned, you know, there's anytime you go through something traumatic like this, there's opportunity in the darkness.
	And I think maybe in some ways, you know, maybe we took each other for granted in some ways.
	And sometimes with the people that you love, you take those relationships for granted.
	Now my family, my children and I, Melanie and her girls, we don't.
	And we know that every single second on this earth is precious and time is fleeting.
	And it's the one constant that we're all working against.
	And I think that, you know, when we're together, we focus on spending just quality time together.
	And it's awesome.
	So I gotta got engaged.
	All right, now stand by.
	Okay, okay, sorry.
	Where we've got that.
	By the way, I would like to say for the record, every woman would like her man to talk about her the way you just talked about Melanie.
	That was very sweet.
	All right.
	So you proposed to Melanie and you had the kids there when you did it.
	And we actually have a little bit of that on tape.
	I just wanted to ask you if you would marry me.
	Oh my God.
	Of course.
	All the kids are jumping up and down.
	Oh, they're screaming and they're jumping up and down.
	You can't hear it because it's probably too much noise.
	But everybody's clapping and she's hugging you.
	You're down on one knee.
	So you are romantic.
	So, all right.
Marriage Proposal Night Tape 00:03:55
	What's next professionally?
	You got the personal life now in order.
	Will there be another run at political office for you?
	I knew you were going to ask that.
	And I asked Melanie.
	I'm like, I asked Melanie.
	I'm like, what am I supposed to say if she asks this?
	Because, you know, the reality is I'm just trying to focus on being a dad.
	And, you know, that proposal, by the way, I actually didn't get down on one knee.
	I had an injury and I had to sit my butt on the steps and I had to have the kids help me and I had to pretend like I fell because that was the only way Melanie was going to rush and answer me right away.
	So, but she did.
	She did.
	And I surprised her and it was awesome.
	But the answer is I'm absolutely going to run again.
	Like I'm not going to play political games.
	I have to show my children that quitting is not an option, that freedom is worth fighting for.
	It must be fought for.
	And ultimately, I'm fighting to make sure that they inherit a country that's rich with opportunity and a country that is free.
	And I'm doing all of this for them.
	And so, and when we get back into the fight, into the political fight, and honestly, Megan, I don't know when that's going to be.
	We're going to do it as a family and we're going to come back and we're going to be stronger than we ever were before.
	Wow.
	You, I think that would be to the delight of a lot of Pennsylvania voters.
	I do want to ask you, pretty hard with Dr. Oz before when he first came in.
	A lot of Republicans were like, but now, and I only have a short time left.
	Do you support him?
	Do you want to see him win on Tuesday?
	Everybody in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania needs to get out and vote for Dr. Oz like this country depends on it because it just might.
	Unambiguous endorsement.
	Any predictions for how that race is going to go?
	That's one of the ones with a big question mark on it.
	Oh, it's going to be super close, but I think, you know, there's been a lot of debate around whether or not John Fetterman should release his medical records.
	I don't think we're having that debate anymore.
	Every single time he does an interview or talks publicly, it makes people move to the Oz camp even more.
	It's going to be a close race, but Oz is going to win.
	Sean Parnell, thank you.
	Thank you for being here and telling your story and all the best to you and your family.
	Thank you, Megan, for having me.
	All the best.
	Oh, wow.
	Thank you all for joining us today.
	Tomorrow, we're going to have both sides on the lab leak versus natural origins debate.
	I'm really looking forward to this.
	Don't miss that tomorrow.
	Before we go, I want to tell you something exciting that is happening next week.
	Election night this year is going to be a huge event.
	So we are bringing you a special event with a few firsts for us and our show.
	On Tuesday night from 9 to 11 p.m. Eastern, we're going to be live with an extra episode on SiriusXM Triumph Channel 111.
	We're going to do election night live for you, but we will also be live on YouTube for the very first time as well.
	First time live on YouTube.
	We're going to bring you the results as they come in, an instant reaction and analysis from some of the friends of this show who will be spending the night with us.
	We're going to have Dennis Prager, Barry Weiss, David Sachs, Camille Foster, Emily Jashinsky, Ryan Grimm, Larry Elder, Tom Bevin, Jim Garrity.
	I could go on.
	It's going to be a great night with an A-list cast and you're going to love hearing from our guests.
	We're going to have a lot of fun too.
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	No BS, no agenda, and no

Chapters

00:00:03 Partisan Affiliation and Runoffs
00:15:12 Georgia Poll Aggregation Issues
00:30:42 Vice President Political Liability
00:39:30 Electric School Bus Debate
00:42:15 Shared Custody Factors Explained
00:57:46 Unfounded Allegations Dismissed
01:12:29 Sealed Records Protect Children
01:19:38 Advocating for Equal Parenting
01:22:28 Blending Families Successfully
01:25:30 Marriage Proposal Night Tape