The Megyn Kelly Show - 20221130_media-panics-over-elon-musk-and-free-speech-and-wi
Aired: 2022-11-30
Duration: 01:24:57


=== CNN Coverage of Trump (14:39) ===

[00:00:36]  Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
[00:01:01]  They're really not supposed to be messing with people's free speech, just in case you haven't read the First Amendment.
[00:01:06]  Musk's purchase of Twitter is coming under attack.
[00:01:09]  It's just one of the many topics that we're going to discuss today with our pals from Ruthless, the ruthless podcast, Josh.
[00:01:15]  John Ashbrook, Josh Holmes, and Michael Duncan.
[00:01:19]  Smug is out today.
[00:01:20]  He's not feeling well, but we'll get him the next time.
[00:01:23]  John, Josh, Michael, welcome back to the show.
[00:01:26]  Thank you.
[00:01:26]  Thank you for having us.
[00:01:27]  It's always such a pleasure.
[00:01:28]  Smug's a little delicate, Megan.
[00:01:30]  I don't know if you picked that up in our relationship over the years, but you know, he got a little bit sick.
[00:01:36]  Like five, six days later, he's still not heard of.
[00:01:38]  Yeah, people were in oxygen tents for shorter periods of time.
[00:01:43]  Just impressively.
[00:01:44]  Well, it'll be fun when we get to election predictions.
[00:01:47]  We actually look back, and you three guys did pretty well on your election predictions when it came to the Senate.
[00:01:52]  Smug, not so much.
[00:01:54]  So that'll be fun.
[00:01:56]  We'll teach him to miss an episode.
[00:01:58]  But before we get to that, before we get all to all that funness, did you see what just broke about CNN?
[00:02:05]  Reading from MediaITE, Justin, CNN starts laying off hundreds of employees, targeting on-air contributors first.
[00:02:13]  The new chief, Chris Licht, announced the network will start making layoffs as part of its budget cut strategy, expected to target hundreds of CNN employees.
[00:02:21]  We haven't gotten the names yet, but this is on the heels of a report by what's his name?
[00:02:27]  Dylan Byers, who used to work there and now does his own independent thing, saying this was coming and that it's going to be deep and it's going to be wide and it's going to hurt.
[00:02:36]  And that there's the morale is at an all-time low at CNN, as are ratings.
[00:02:42]  And I just tweeted out before we came to air: this is the fault of Jeff Zucker.
[00:02:46]  This is the fault of Jeff Zucker.
[00:02:49]  Chris Licht is the new guy hired to try to fix it.
[00:02:52]  Jeff Zucker is the one who broke it and ruined CNN from what was once a well-respected, solid brand to a partisan hack organization that lost every center-right and right viewer they ever had.
[00:03:05]  What do you guys think?
[00:03:06]  Yeah, no, look, I think that's right.
[00:03:08]  To the extent that morale is low, it's low because these people have been living in an echo chamber of their own making for the last few years, right?
[00:03:15]  I mean, it had become one of the most partisan networks ever even dreamed of, right?
[00:03:22]  I mean, MSNBC had nothing on CNN at the height of their Trump administration.
[00:03:28]  And obviously, new ownership brought in Chris Lick to make some serious changes.
[00:03:32]  He's already made a lot of changes, right?
[00:03:34]  I mean, they required a whole lot of people.
[00:03:39]  I'm not surprised to see the contributors.
[00:03:40]  Like, look, I'm not cheering anybody losing their job, but I got to tell you, if your job is to try to provide honest analysis and you're a news network, that they weren't doing that.
[00:03:51]  Right.
[00:03:51]  If you were Republican on air, basically, you had one criteria.
[00:03:55]  You had to be either a former Republican or somebody who hated Trump or somebody who would otherwise denigrate the Republican Party.
[00:04:02]  And that was the only criteria that they then could put up Republican contributor behind it and put these people on air.
[00:04:08]  So I look, they do have a lot of work to do.
[00:04:11]  Well, and the problem is when you spend five years cultivating that sort of on-air talent, that's also the audience you cultivate, right?
[00:04:20]  And so now that we have a Democrat in the White House and you ostensibly want to report facts and news about that administration and its failures, you're going to have a hard time keeping that audience that you created that was entirely based on hating Donald Trump, right?
[00:04:36]  It's become nearly unwatchable.
[00:04:38]  I mean, there was a day when Wolf Blitzer would stand up against the backdrop of the Iraq war and provide people with information that they consumed over and over and over again.
[00:04:46]  It was one of the most valuable sources in news.
[00:04:48]  But now it's become an absolute liberal play pen.
[00:04:51]  And there was a woman on there the other day.
[00:04:53]  Her name slips my mind.
[00:04:54]  She was on their brand new morning show with Don Lemon that I don't think anybody really watches except to clip things and make fun of them.
[00:05:01]  The woman literally said that more free speech doesn't help free speech.
[00:05:07]  Something to that effect.
[00:05:08]  So they're attacking freedom of speech on CNN.
[00:05:14]  They need big change over there.
[00:05:15]  Yeah.
[00:05:15]  And adding in a couple of new contributors who are subject matter experts is not going to do it.
[00:05:20]  It's too late.
[00:05:21]  That's the problem.
[00:05:23]  This all needed to happen years ago, years ago.
[00:05:26]  Jeff Zucker crushed that organization and then stomped on it for years after it was crushed and just a little bloody pulp of a grape left.
[00:05:35]  And now the wine's gone bad.
[00:05:37]  It's like a shitty grappa.
[00:05:39]  I don't know what it is, but it's bad and nobody wants to drink it.
[00:05:42]  And now you've got Don Lemon engaging in just revisionist history and revisionist present.
[00:05:49]  Like, didn't happen.
[00:05:50]  What do you mean?
[00:05:51]  We've always been fair.
[00:05:52]  We're went on with.
[00:05:55]  Oh, he was on, I think it was Colbert.
[00:05:57]  Colbert is horrified that CNN is trying to leave its liberal bias behind and asked Lemon about it when he appeared on his show the other night.
[00:06:05]  And listen to the gall of Don Lemon.
[00:06:10]  The word on the street is that you guys aren't allowed to be liberal anymore.
[00:06:13]  Is that is that the case?
[00:06:14]  I don't think we ever were liberal.
[00:06:15]  What?
[00:06:16]  Yes.
[00:06:16]  I don't think we ever were.
[00:06:17]  Not me saying that.
[00:06:18]  That's the people out there saying that he's not letting you be liberal anymore.
[00:06:21]  Well, listen, I think that I think what Chris is saying is that he wants Republicans, sensible Republicans.
[00:06:29]  He wants us to hold people to account, but he wants people to come on and feel comfortable with coming on and talking on CNN.
[00:06:37]  Sensible.
[00:06:38]  Well, there are sensible, only sensible Republicans, meaning anti-MAGA, anti-Trump.
[00:06:44]  And secondly, they've never been liberal.
[00:06:46]  You see, they've always just been above board, trying to hold people to account, right?
[00:06:50]  Wasn't that your experience in watching CNN over the past six years?
[00:06:53]  Listen, I can tell from a personal experience.
[00:06:56]  First off, Don Lemon should say that to the new ownership, because clearly they believe that they were extremely liberal and they ruined the audience, right?
[00:07:03]  Which is why all these changes are afoot.
[00:07:05]  But I used to do, when I first started doing TV, I did equal parts CNN and Fox.
[00:07:12]  And it got to a point during 2016, during the primary elections, where they were all Trump all the time.
[00:07:19]  But as soon as he became president, the whole dynamic shifted.
[00:07:24]  And you couldn't really get a word in edgewise on any one of their panels unless you were like just taking a knife to the administration.
[00:07:31]  And it was so uncomfortable for me personally to sit in green rooms and listen to one view of the world for so long and then go out and get absolutely castigated on air.
[00:07:42]  I just refused to do it.
[00:07:43]  I just stopped doing it.
[00:07:44]  I haven't done CNN in six, seven years.
[00:07:47]  And at one point, I had a really good relationship with them.
[00:07:50]  It has been so like Don Lemon.
[00:07:52]  I mean, my God, what is he looking at?
[00:07:55]  Because it was one of the most liberal networks that's ever existed.
[00:07:58]  Well, yeah.
[00:07:59]  Well, and if you went into it, Josh, if he goes on, just to add to it, guys, and I'll give it back to you, Duncan.
[00:08:05]  He goes on in this exchange with Colbert to say, look, we're just going to hold people to account.
[00:08:12]  That doesn't mean we're going liberal or conservative.
[00:08:14]  It just means we're doing what we do.
[00:08:16]  That's good journalism.
[00:08:18]  He says, you can have confrontational conversations without being vitriolic.
[00:08:23]  You can disagree without being disagreeable.
[00:08:27]  That's what our mission is.
[00:08:29]  This is the same guy.
[00:08:30]  You know how on Twitter you say something and then they've got your record and they'll retweet what you said before with a, that you, Don?
[00:08:37]  Okay, I got one of those for you.
[00:08:39]  This you, Don?
[00:08:40]  Listen to Don Lemon prior to his newfound, you know, just good journalism and disagree without being disagreeable and no vitriol, all right?
[00:08:49]  Listen.
[00:08:50]  There's one party right now that's not operating in fact that has been misleading the American people, and that is the Republican Party.
[00:08:57]  Republicans are doing something that is very dangerous to our society.
[00:09:02]  We must acknowledge that as journalists, because if we don't, we're not doing our jobs.
[00:09:07]  You voted for the person who the Klan supported.
[00:09:11]  You voted for the person who Nazis support.
[00:09:15]  You voted for the person who the alt-right supports.
[00:09:18]  And there is no reason to believe that the Republicans are going to start playing fairly and are going to start operating as a party of sanity.
[00:09:27]  What is it about President Obama that really gets under your skin?
[00:09:34]  Is it because he's smarter than you?
[00:09:36]  I've lived in several red states.
[00:09:38]  There are a lot of friends who I had to really get rid of.
[00:09:40]  You have to stop demonizing people and realize the biggest terror threat in this country is white men.
[00:09:48]  We have to stop coddling people when it comes to this and the vaccine saying, oh, you can't shame them.
[00:09:55]  You can't call them stupid.
[00:09:56]  You can't call them silly guy.
[00:09:57]  Yes, they are.
[00:09:58]  The only party now that is operating in reality is the Democratic Party.
[00:10:04]  The Republican Party is obsolete.
[00:10:07]  Listen, again, I'm not a political person.
[00:10:09]  I'm a person who lives in reality.
[00:10:10]  I'm a journalist.
[00:10:13]  Look, there is bringing receipts and then there is bringing a CVS length receipt.
[00:10:20]  And that is what Megan Kelly brought for us today.
[00:10:24]  I don't know if you guys have seen these CVS receipts that are literally like a mile long.
[00:10:29]  I mean, that's exactly what that was.
[00:10:31]  He seems like the Edward R. Murrow of our time.
[00:10:35]  Talking about it.
[00:10:36]  Liberal bias.
[00:10:38]  What are you saying?
[00:10:39]  We love sensible Republicans.
[00:10:41]  And by that, we mean those guys who were at the Lincoln Project.
[00:10:43]  What's your problem?
[00:10:46]  This is a joke.
[00:10:47]  And this is directly why that long clip is exactly why hundreds of employees are being laid off at CNN today.
[00:10:53]  They abandoned their fealty to journalism.
[00:10:58]  Yeah, no, it's like that you reap what you sow.
[00:11:03]  It's like they did a lot of sowing there, you know, and now they're finding out suddenly, oh, no, there's some reaping.
[00:11:09]  Yeah, there's some reaping involved.
[00:11:12]  But that's exactly right.
[00:11:13]  Back on Holmes's point earlier about when he used to do CNN is like, who's going to opt in?
[00:11:18]  If you're a Republican, who's going to opt into walking into the WWE arena where it's four-on-one and two of the co-hosts have chairs that they're hitting you with for 30 seconds at a time.
[00:11:31]  It's so true.
[00:11:32]  I mean, the last one, I think the last hit I did on CNN, I was on a panel where I was being berated because I didn't believe that both the Pledge of Allegiance and our national anthem were inherently racist.
[00:11:46]  And I was like, man, this can't be good for business.
[00:11:49]  How am I going to be in the middle of this discussion and help me at all?
[00:11:52]  This is awful.
[00:11:54]  Right.
[00:11:54]  Right.
[00:11:54]  All they wanted was a Republican foil.
[00:11:56]  It's like the view.
[00:11:57]  Whoever sits in that seat over there on third base, or I don't know, maybe it's first base is just there to get beaten up on.
[00:12:03]  The weaker, the better, right?
[00:12:05]  And the only reason Megan McCain got it, because she was feisty, was because she hated Trump.
[00:12:09]  So that was acceptable to them.
[00:12:10]  And then they got this Alyssa Farah, who's just weak and a pushover and not a real Republican.
[00:12:14]  And she worked for the Trump administration.
[00:12:16]  So they can say, oh, yeah, she's real, but she now hates Trump because she wanted to see her name in lights.
[00:12:20]  So she conveniently started hating Trump.
[00:12:22]  And post-January 6th, stormed out of the administration like she'd never seen him do anything controversial prior to that.
[00:12:28]  Okay.
[00:12:28]  This is so Begging.
[00:12:29]  Can I stop you on that just real quick?
[00:12:31]  Because I think this is an important part beyond just CNN.
[00:12:34]  Because part of the reason why the liberal left and the media in particular is in a reality all by themselves is because they only associate with Republicans like the ones that you were talking about there.
[00:12:45]  If you look at the contributors to the New York Times or the Washington Post, CNN, or the Republicans that go on MSNBC, and these are, by the way, these are the only Republicans that these journalists know or talk to.
[00:12:58]  None of them are actual Republicans, right?
[00:13:01]  None of them have actually spent any time in the field at any point in recent history.
[00:13:05]  There may be Bush administration holdovers or something, but they've changed their mind long ago about conservative policies and they only echo back what Democrats have to say on air and sort of reinforce that the Republican Party is broken.
[00:13:18]  It is like that with all of media and it's been like that forever.
[00:13:23]  Yeah.
[00:13:24]  Well, here's to back up you, I agree with everything you said.
[00:13:27]  And I'll back up another point you said about CNN in the election and how, you know, 2015 or so, they were putting Republicans on.
[00:13:34]  They were more normal.
[00:13:35]  This is back when I would watch CNN when getting ready for my show on Fox.
[00:13:40]  Donald Trump actually just truthed out on his social media network.
[00:13:44]  This election cycle reminds me so much of 2016, much more than 2020.
[00:13:49]  Blah, blah, blah.
[00:13:50]  The Wall Street Journal and Fox News were terrible to me, much like today, until I won the election.
[00:13:56]  CNN, when they actually had great ratings, was terrific.
[00:14:00]  They covered me no matter where I went 24-7.
[00:14:04]  And then he goes on from there.
[00:14:05]  He's not wrong.
[00:14:06]  He's not wrong about any of that.
[00:14:09]  No, he's not.
[00:14:10]  And, you know, of course, from a CNN perspective and Zucker's perspective, it was all about the circus, right?
[00:14:16]  And I mean, for the same reason why everybody covered car chases for as long as they did, right?
[00:14:21]  You wanted to see how it ended in a fiery wreck.
[00:14:25]  And that's basically what I think was happening there with CNN and how they covered Trump.
[00:14:30]  And then as soon as he won, they were like, holy smokes, what have we done?
[00:14:33]  But it's still good for ratings.
[00:14:34]  So let's throw that on there.
[00:14:36]  But now we got to just sort of like castigate the entire crew, make all Republicans a Trump Republican in the most, you know, disaffected way.
[00:14:45]  And they became a joke of an organization.
[00:14:48]  And take your news anchors who were purporting to be objective news anchors and turn them into partisan hacks.
[00:14:56]  That was his greatest sin as he ruined his own talent.
[00:14:59]  Well, now, according to this report by Dylan Byers, the talent is distrustful of the new management.
[00:15:04]  He's set up his office, Chris Licht, on a different floor.
[00:15:08]  A la The Watcher.
[00:15:09]  I don't know if you guys have seen The Watcher, a series that's out right now.
[00:15:12]  It's actually very good.
[00:15:13]  Disappointing ending, but riveting until you get there.

=== Harassment on Private Platforms (10:08) ===

[00:15:16]  But anyway, what do they say?
[00:15:18]  So he's on with management and they're mad he's not in the middle of the fishbowl.
[00:15:21]  Maybe that's part of the problem is that he was a little too chummy with his top stars and his bias rubbed off on all of them.
[00:15:27]  Maybe Chris Licht is smart to sit in a different office, make decisions and let the troops comply or quit.
[00:15:34]  And if they don't comply or quit, they may get fired.
[00:15:38]  It's not totally dissimilar to what we're seeing over at Twitter, which will lead us back to CNN in one second.
[00:15:45]  But Elon and Twitter are in the midst of a huge epic battle with virtually everyone on the left.
[00:15:53]  And it's because of several things that he's done, but it's really because of his ideology and his commitment to expanding free speech on Twitter and bringing back controversial figures.
[00:16:02]  I begin now with the White House.
[00:16:05]  Now, this is a private company.
[00:16:07]  Right now, these social media companies are private companies and they're treated accordingly.
[00:16:11]  You can make a good case for why they shouldn't be.
[00:16:14]  I've had lawyers on who have argued things like this.
[00:16:16]  Rebecca Ramaswamy came on and so on.
[00:16:20]  But right now, they're private companies and they are not allowed to have their company targeted because of free speech.
[00:16:26]  I attacked Ron DeSantis for trying to do this in Florida and I will attack this White House for trying to do it to Twitter.
[00:16:31]  You can't do it.
[00:16:31]  There's a First Amendment.
[00:16:32]  Stay the hell out of their business.
[00:16:35]  Well, listen to what happened at the White House when these leftist reporters, the question by the reporter is as outrageous as the answer.
[00:16:42]  This is a Reuters reporter, Andrea Shalal, wanting to know what the White House is going to do about the fact that Elon is letting previously suspended accounts back onto Twitter.
[00:16:55]  What the hell?
[00:16:56]  Listen.
[00:16:58]  There's a researcher at Stanford who says that this is a critical moment, really, in terms of ensuring that Twitter does not become a vector for misinformation.
[00:17:09]  Who is it at the White House that is really keeping track of this?
[00:17:13]  So look, this is something that we're certainly keeping an eye on.
[00:17:17]  And look, we have always been very clear that when it comes to social media platforms, it is their responsibility to make sure that when it comes to misinformation, when it comes to the hate that we're seeing, that they take action.
[00:17:38]  Of course, Corinne Jean-Pierre reading again because she's incapable of answering anything off the top of her head, anything.
[00:17:46]  But how about that reporter from that Reuters reporter?
[00:17:49]  Who is it at the White House that is really keeping track of this?
[00:17:52]  No one.
[00:17:52]  No one.
[00:17:53]  They're a private company and this isn't China, you dumbass.
[00:17:56]  That's what KJP should have said to her.
[00:17:59]  But Megan, did you hear there's a Stanford professor?
[00:18:02]  It's very concerned.
[00:18:04]  The Stanford professor.
[00:18:06]  They've got our, they have our best interests at heart there.
[00:18:09]  No question about it.
[00:18:10]  The university crew definitely has the right, the finger on the pulse.
[00:18:13]  Go ahead.
[00:18:14]  It is very wild to see now so many figures in the media arguing against free speech itself.
[00:18:21]  Jarring.
[00:18:22]  Like, I know it's been happening for a while, but like we shouldn't get used to this because it is so incredibly abnormal to see like a reporter asking the government to do more to stifle free speech.
[00:18:33]  And by the way, all of these people a few years ago were saying, oh, if you don't like it, build your own Twitter.
[00:18:40]  This is America.
[00:18:41]  We believe in the free enterprise system.
[00:18:43]  These are private companies.
[00:18:44]  And then suddenly Elon Musk buys it and they're like, oh my God, daddy government, save us, save us all.
[00:18:50]  We're going to have to go to Mastodon.
[00:18:52]  They say go to Mass Market.
[00:18:53]  We're going to have to go to Mastodon.
[00:18:54]  We can't go to Mastodon.
[00:18:56]  And they say conservatives are the fascists.
[00:18:58]  Yeah.
[00:18:58]  Right.
[00:18:59]  Well, that's the thing.
[00:19:00]  The thing is, I think what Elon did in purchasing Twitter might have been the most patriotic thing that I have seen in generations from a billionaire or anybody else because it unmasked a fundamental reality that we've been dealing with in this country that nobody really wants to talk about, which is that you have establishment government entities, Hollywood entities.
[00:19:26]  You've got the entire news media.
[00:19:29]  You've got basically every corporate America, every pillar in this country is now entirely dedicated to not offending the far left.
[00:19:39]  And in doing so, ensuring that the conservative movement doesn't have a voice and either intimidating people into not speaking at all or banning them from platforms altogether.
[00:19:49]  And you don't really come to that conclusion.
[00:19:51]  I mean, it sounds like a crazy conspiracy, but you don't actually come to that conclusion until Elon buys Twitter and you see their reaction.
[00:19:58]  I mean, for weeks, he took literally zero changes, zero changes.
[00:20:03]  And you saw companies, CBS News, say that they were suspending their activity on Twitter for what?
[00:20:09]  For what?
[00:20:09]  What was it about the initial couple of weeks of Elon Musk's ownership that so offended them and made them feel insecure?
[00:20:17]  Well, it was the basic prospect that there was a freedom of speech there that wasn't entirely controlled by the mainstream corporate media.
[00:20:24]  That's their problem.
[00:20:26]  Yeah, it's all theater.
[00:20:27]  It's all theater.
[00:20:28]  Just like all those companies who said, oh, we're going to pause all of our advertising on Twitter because of a brand safety issue.
[00:20:34]  It's about brand safety.
[00:20:36]  And it's like, there are like porn stars selling themselves on Twitter every day.
[00:20:41]  And none of these major Fortune 50 brands gave a shit about any of that.
[00:20:45]  But Elon Musk buys it.
[00:20:47]  Now suddenly it's beneath us to advertise here.
[00:20:49]  It's unsafe.
[00:20:50]  It's just absolute theater.
[00:20:51]  It's all fucking fake.
[00:20:53]  Exactly right.
[00:20:54]  So now, so now the media is in a tizzy.
[00:20:57]  They're upset about the fact that Elon is in control and he's expanding access to the platform the way it was originally envisioned.
[00:21:04]  By the way, if I can just take you back, because you may recall that there was a certain candidate for president who had a lot of tweets about yours truly.
[00:21:13]  Some several hundred tweets.
[00:21:15]  Somebody once counted them up and did an article.
[00:21:18]  I must have missed that, Megan.
[00:21:20]  It definitely unleashed a shitstorm in that reporter's life.
[00:21:24]  Okay.
[00:21:25]  I met a senior executive at Twitter right around this time that that was happening in my own life and the online campaign against it.
[00:21:32]  It was crazy what was happening.
[00:21:34]  And they were like, you know, we're really sorry about everything that happened on Twitter.
[00:21:37]  I'm like, you are?
[00:21:40]  Okay, fine, but, you know, a little late, but okay, fine.
[00:21:44]  I don't expect you to do anything about it.
[00:21:46]  They're like, well, we're really considering.
[00:21:47]  We're really considering doing something about it.
[00:21:49]  Okay.
[00:21:49]  So fine.
[00:21:50]  I didn't expect Twitter to solve my problem.
[00:21:52]  That was a problem I had directly with the person who was generating the tweets and the people who were following his orders, right?
[00:21:57]  Or following sort of the hateful rhetoric we've followed.
[00:22:00]  But my point is that as recently as 2015, 2016, there was no anti-harassment policy in place at Twitter.
[00:22:07]  It was the Wild West.
[00:22:08]  It was a free-for-all.
[00:22:10]  I'd been on there for eight years at the time that that happened in my life.
[00:22:14]  And people did all, they did all right.
[00:22:15]  I'm not saying it was great.
[00:22:17]  I'm just saying Twitter's a mean place.
[00:22:19]  It's been a mean place for a long time.
[00:22:21]  And people in a world like ours where we prize the First Amendment and free speech find ways to work around the negativity that can come from a site like that.
[00:22:30]  That's not to say there shouldn't be any boundaries, but Elon's not saying there shouldn't be any boundaries.
[00:22:35]  He's just expanding it, not even to where it was in 2015, but just a little closer to where it was in 2015.
[00:22:43]  Yeah.
[00:22:43]  Look, I think that's really well said.
[00:22:46]  But to be honest, it wasn't as though they were taking action against anyone who was creating a problem for a conservative, right?
[00:22:56]  The problem was, and now it's been unmasked and Elon has confirmed as much on Twitter himself, that all of the restrictions that were in place were basically to silence conservatives.
[00:23:07]  So the problem wasn't that people were being harassed.
[00:23:09]  I mean, hell, I'm harassed all day, every day, right?
[00:23:12]  But I kind of expect it.
[00:23:13]  And I feel like that's part of it.
[00:23:14]  That's why Smug's not here, isn't it?
[00:23:15]  Tells the truth.
[00:23:16]  That's why he's not here.
[00:23:19]  He's a good harasser, by the way.
[00:23:20]  He's absolutely terrific.
[00:23:23]  If there is a harassing Hall of Fame, that guy's a first ballot deal.
[00:23:28]  The favorites, the harassers.
[00:23:31]  But I guess my point is the harassment doesn't matter if you're coming after a conservative.
[00:23:37]  Like, it just was never part of the issue.
[00:23:39]  The harassment is exclusively restricted by Twitter over the years on people who had a conservative point of view.
[00:23:46]  So much so that you enable fact checkers that are entirely funded by leftist 501c4 organizations to serve as basically the proxy to allow you to keep those people or those media organizations off the platform altogether.
[00:24:00]  It got so bad that the platforms that continue to allow political advertising would disallow political advertising if those fact checkers said something that was untrue.
[00:24:13]  was that was actually true.
[00:24:14]  So, I mean, look, this whole thing has gotten so perverted.
[00:24:18]  And I think what Elon is doing is helping lift the veil and show us all what's been happening over the years.
[00:24:24]  Well, and that's why the left is screaming so loud because their con, the jig is up.
[00:24:27]  Yeah.
[00:24:28]  The con that they've been running that you just described that is a very, it is an eight, nine figure a year con that they're funding with resources from foreign individuals, I might add, that it's just, has just ruined our system of conversation over the past few years.
[00:24:48]  What you're saying about Elon is exactly right.
[00:24:49]  He's he's improving the platform.
[00:24:51]  He just he just said, this is really exciting.
[00:24:55]  He just said that he's going to release what he calls the Twitter files, capital T, capital F, about free speech suppression by Twitter prior to him taking it over, saying the public deserves to know what really happened.
[00:25:11]  That's amazing.
[00:25:13]  That'll be a huge reveal because we all know that the ones who have been suppressed and had their follower accounts suppressed and been censored, as you point out, Holmes, are on the right.

=== Taylor Lorenz on Twitter Files (14:45) ===

[00:25:24]  Maybe not entirely, but the overwhelming majority are going to be.
[00:25:27]  We've seen that.
[00:25:28]  Just look at the ones who got back on thanks to Elon's amnesty.
[00:25:32]  Jordan Peterson, the Babylon B, Project Veritas, President Trump.
[00:25:37]  You know, there isn't some massive lefty.
[00:25:40]  Kathy Griffin got booted by Elon personally because he didn't like her impersonating him, but she got back on.
[00:25:46]  That's not what we're talking about.
[00:25:48]  But meanwhile, if I can refer you to more of the media coverage, because it really does give up the game and how disgusting these people are.
[00:25:56]  The AP tweets out, new Twitter owner Elon Musk says he's granting amnesty for suspended accounts.
[00:26:02]  They're so upset about this, which online safety experts predict will spur a rise in harassment, hate speech, and misinformation.
[00:26:10]  Welcome to America.
[00:26:12]  Okay.
[00:26:12]  That shit happens.
[00:26:14]  And unless it crosses a legal line, we allow it.
[00:26:16]  Washington Post, quote, opening the gates of hell, end quote.
[00:26:21]  Musk says he will revive banned accounts.
[00:26:24]  Guess who wrote that one?
[00:26:25]  I'm going to give you one guess.
[00:26:27]  Your favorite columnist at the Washington Post.
[00:26:30]  Rubin.
[00:26:31]  Taylor Lorenz.
[00:26:33]  Taylor Lorenz.
[00:26:36]  How can you miss that?
[00:26:39]  Listen.
[00:26:41]  It's a real coin flip.
[00:26:42]  Taylor Lorenz has got to be.
[00:26:43]  I mean, she's been in the dark for a while.
[00:26:46]  Like, they're both, they're kind of nuts in different ways, aren't they?
[00:26:49]  Jennifer Rubin and Taylor Lorenz.
[00:26:52]  Here's what Taylor Lorenz says.
[00:26:53]  My favorite thing on Taylor Lorenz, real quick, Megan, is now if you've seen on her Twitter account, she has gotten rid of her name.
[00:27:00]  Like it still has her same at, you know, Taylor Lorenz, but her name now says in all caps, subscribe to my sub stack.
[00:27:07]  You know, like she's sitting on the bow of the Titanic and she's like, she's, she's wearing the life vest and she's going to have to leave Twitter forever and everybody better migrate to her sub stack.
[00:27:16]  It's insanity.
[00:27:17]  I wonder how many subscribers she's getting.
[00:27:20]  She'll be back.
[00:27:21]  They'll all be back to Twitter.
[00:27:22]  They'll all be back.
[00:27:24]  Okay.
[00:27:25]  So she's talking about that he's going to reinstate these previously banned accounts to the alarm of activists and online trust and safety experts.
[00:27:36]  Glenn Greenwald had a great post about who the hell are those people?
[00:27:39]  That is a made-up term.
[00:27:40]  Like you three and I, we are now online safety experts because I have pronounced it so.
[00:27:46]  Online safety experts are concerned and alarmed.
[00:27:50]  And then she says, Apple and Google, she's quoting somebody here.
[00:27:54]  Apple and Google need to seriously start exploring booting Twitter off of the app store.
[00:28:00]  Recall, viewers and listeners, that's what happened to Parlor after Jan 6th, and it decimated this growing conservative alternative to Twitter by design.
[00:28:11]  The person she quotes, Taylor Lorenz quotes for this position, is Alejandra Caraballo, clinical instructor at Harvard Law's Cyber Law Clinic.
[00:28:21]  What Musk is doing is existentially dangerous for various marginalized communities.
[00:28:27]  They're going to die, basically, is what she's saying.
[00:28:29]  It's like opening the gates of hell in terms of havoc it will cause.
[00:28:35]  I can't even begin to state how dangerous this will be.
[00:28:40]  It is literally life or death for people.
[00:28:44]  Okay.
[00:28:45]  So who is Alejandra Caraballo or Bio, who Taylor Lorenz uses as her expert?
[00:28:52]  Who is this woman who's so alarmed?
[00:28:53]  She's like the, she's the Rachel Walensky of Twitter scene.
[00:29:00]  Is that the truth ministry lady?
[00:29:02]  No, it's not.
[00:29:04]  No, there's a million more just like that, Jenkowitz, and this lady's one of them.
[00:29:08]  So the little internet sleuthing on Alejandro, it was Seth Dylan, actually, who looked into her background, Alejandra.
[00:29:17]  And this is how he tweeted about it.
[00:29:20]  Here we have a call to violent action.
[00:29:23]  This is from one of her earlier tweets for the purpose of intimidation from at ESQueer.
[00:29:29]  That's how she goes on Twitter.
[00:29:31]  A far-left transgender activist who accuses conservatives of incitement for thinking it's wrong to sexualize, exploit, and mutilate children.
[00:29:37]  Then she wound up deleting it.
[00:29:38]  Okay, I'm trying to read my, it's so small, the writing.
[00:29:41]  Here's one that she tweeted out after the Supreme Court Dobbs decision.
[00:29:46]  The justices who overturned Roe should never know peace again.
[00:29:52]  It is our civic duty to accost them every time they are in public.
[00:29:58]  They are pariahs.
[00:30:00]  Since women don't have their rights, these justices should never have a peaceful moment in public again.
[00:30:06]  And then she tweets out all six of their photos for reference, just to make sure people know exactly who she is.
[00:30:13]  This is Taylor Lorenz's independent expert on cyberbullying and internet safety.
[00:30:21]  Yeah.
[00:30:22]  This moron.
[00:30:23]  A month later, Justice Kavanaugh with an assassin outside of his house.
[00:30:27]  I mean, if ever there was an internet safety, that's it right there.
[00:30:31]  This lady's now the source for internet safety.
[00:30:33]  My kids.
[00:30:34]  Can you believe?
[00:30:34]  It's absolutely disgusting.
[00:30:36]  This is how the media works.
[00:30:37]  This is why people hate them.
[00:30:39]  This woman, Taylor Lorenz, is trying to say like, this is going to unleash hell in people's lives.
[00:30:44]  And look at my expert.
[00:30:45]  She says lives are on the line.
[00:30:47]  And this is the woman who put them there.
[00:30:50]  Right.
[00:30:51]  It's incredible.
[00:30:52]  You know, if you take this whole thing a step back, just like at a 50,000 foot look, what these people want to do is basically limit the interaction of conservatives with anybody else altogether, right?
[00:31:01]  And what the end result of all of this is the further polarization of our society, where you get people that don't have any understanding of different perspectives and different cultures, because the only culture that can be accepted is a progressive left, right?
[00:31:17]  And they'll censor out anything else.
[00:31:19]  It is when you talk about societal breakdowns and the concern that you have just in a political discussion in this country, that I think is the most meaningful change.
[00:31:30]  It's not been the proliferation of the internet.
[00:31:32]  It's not been that you've got everybody's ideas out there.
[00:31:35]  That's not the problem.
[00:31:36]  Problem is, is that you have a committed progressive left that is backed by every major institution in this country at this point that is saying that if you have a conservative point of view, it is not worth listening to.
[00:31:47]  And if you have any doubts about that, come listen to our action.
[00:31:50]  And to put a finer point on it, to see how this actually works in practice, Megan.
[00:31:54]  And so I wish Smug was here for this because he's described it to us many times.
[00:31:58]  But, you know, while they're talking about user safety and how, you know, this is going to put lives on the line if people are allowed to have free speech on Twitter.
[00:32:05]  In practicality, what it means is that it threatens this whole ecosystem the left has created through academia and these 501c4s and the establishment, you know, figures within the Democrat orbit who are in contact with these fact checkers or with Twitter writ large, which I think we're going to see in these Twitter files that Elon's going to release.
[00:32:24]  But, you know, if Smug got a video that had damning evidence against, let's say, a Democratic Senate candidate, kissing Cal Cunningham, for example, and he posted it on Twitter.
[00:32:35]  You know what happened next, Megan?
[00:32:37]  He would suddenly start getting all these DMCA report violations on his account.
[00:32:42]  And what you would, what we have, somebody in the bowels of the DNC is reporting his old tweets, like some meme that used some audio that he's not allowed to use, you know, because it's copyrighted or whatever.
[00:32:56]  And they would use that as the way to preempt his account and get it taken down for a while so that he would delete that video.
[00:33:02]  It's a pressure and intimidation campaign against information.
[00:33:05]  It has nothing to do with safety.
[00:33:07]  Look, speaking of pressure and intimidation against information, there is one platform that Taylor Lorenz likes.
[00:33:13]  She's basically like the press secretary for, and that's TikTok.
[00:33:16]  And TikTok is wholly owned and operated by the Chinese government.
[00:33:20]  And have you seen what they're doing?
[00:33:22]  The suppression that TikTok is carrying on against these protesters in China who are speaking out against being welded into their buildings and these over like these overbearing COVID restrictions.
[00:33:36]  It's horrible.
[00:33:37]  Yeah, TikTok is stopping these videos from getting out.
[00:33:40]  Taylor Lorenz thinks that they hung them up.
[00:33:43]  And then you got reporters in the White House who are asking our government to do more to stifle speech while that is going on.
[00:33:50]  Think how sick that is.
[00:33:51]  Disgusting.
[00:33:52]  Yeah.
[00:33:52]  Well, so here's here.
[00:33:54]  Her article goes on to sort of explain some of the people who are being allowed back on, you know, to their horror.
[00:33:59]  Of course, they talk about Trump.
[00:34:02]  Listen to how they describe the sins, okay, of the people who are being allowed back on in the context of people will die.
[00:34:09]  They'll die.
[00:34:09]  Okay.
[00:34:10]  They talk about Trump.
[00:34:11]  Jordan Peterson, a professor who was banned from Twitter for misgendering a trans person.
[00:34:17]  Yes, people will die as a result of that.
[00:34:19]  Okay.
[00:34:19]  By the way, Allison Camerada just did that on CNN the other day when we found out the shooter in the Colorado shooting at the LGBTQ nightclub calls himself non-binary.
[00:34:28]  She refused to say they them, even though he made very clear that's what he wants to be called.
[00:34:33]  So should she be banned?
[00:34:34]  Maybe she should be kicked off of CNN.
[00:34:36]  Babylon B, a conservative media company.
[00:34:39]  That's it.
[00:34:41]  Their sin too was to call a trans person by their biological pronouns.
[00:34:46]  But this, but for purposes of this piece, it was enough for the Washington Post.
[00:34:48]  Yeah, I got it.
[00:34:49]  Conservative media company.
[00:34:50]  Of course, they did bad shit.
[00:34:51]  He also restored the project.
[00:34:54]  He also restored Project Veritas, a site, get this, that was frequently accused of misrepresenting events it commented on.
[00:35:05]  Oh, well, it was accused.
[00:35:06]  Well, hey, this is America.
[00:35:09]  I mean, might as well just jump right to the conviction without a fair trial.
[00:35:13]  And so this is why Glenn Greenwald was going on a tweet storm about these so-called experts in here labeling these people problematic and Elon's decision as dangerous.
[00:35:24]  And I've got to read you a little Glenn's tweets because, you know, there's only one Glenn.
[00:35:29]  So he says, pardon my French, because I would never swear.
[00:35:32]  It's just that my friend Glenn does.
[00:35:34]  You're just an accurate reporter.
[00:35:35]  No question.
[00:35:36]  That's right.
[00:35:36]  He writes, What the fuck is an online safety expert?
[00:35:42]  Do you see how media outlets baptize totally fake expertise industries and titles like Disinformation Reporter to launder their highly politicized censorship agenda as scientific, data-based, and neutral?
[00:35:58]  Such a good point.
[00:35:59]  Then he writes, Taylor Lorenz miraculously found three or four people more neurotic, clearly unstable and censorship happy than she, bestowed them with fake expertise titles.
[00:36:13]  And now the Washington Post is blasting out her alarmist asylum-worthy babbling to millions.
[00:36:20]  Hashtag journalism.
[00:36:24]  So right.
[00:36:26]  So well.
[00:36:26]  So right.
[00:36:27]  And it was the same thing we saw with Russia Gate.
[00:36:29]  Remember?
[00:36:29]  It's like, you know, you couldn't walk 10 feet in DC without tripping over a Russia expert all of a sudden.
[00:36:36]  You know, and they were on CNN every single night.
[00:36:38]  But really, what it was was to launder the opinion of the Democratic Party that Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin were colluding.
[00:36:44]  That's how, you know, he won the 2016 election.
[00:36:46]  And we had to hear that for years.
[00:36:47]  Now, suddenly all those people have gone away.
[00:36:49]  They're not on CNN every night.
[00:36:51]  But now we've got everyone under the sun as a misinformation expert.
[00:36:53]  It's just, it's just theater, absolute theater.
[00:36:56]  It is laundering.
[00:36:59]  I don't want to purport to be an expert in laundering because I definitely am not, but that's laundering.
[00:37:05]  That is opinion laundering.
[00:37:06]  That's exactly right.
[00:37:07]  He's right and you're right.
[00:37:08]  Okay, more opinions fresh right out of the laundry.
[00:37:12]  Maybe dirty, dirty opinions.
[00:37:14]  We don't need a laundry from the ruthless guys when they stay with us right after this break.
[00:37:19]  Don't go away.
[00:37:38]  I'm not done with Twitter.
[00:37:39]  There's so much news going on.
[00:37:41]  Alyssa Milano.
[00:37:42]  Alyssa Milano.
[00:37:44]  I mean, this is one of those self-owns, as the kids would say.
[00:37:48]  She decides to give back her Tesla because Elon Musk, of course, owns Tesla in addition to now Twitter.
[00:37:55]  And she tweeted, I gave back my Tesla.
[00:37:59]  I bought the VW electric vehicle.
[00:38:02]  I love it.
[00:38:03]  I'm not sure how advertisers can buy space on Twitter.
[00:38:06]  Publicly traded companies' products being pushed in alignment with hate and white supremacy does not seem to be a winning business model.
[00:38:13]  Even though I'm going to stay here and talk to my many, many followers because it makes me feel special.
[00:38:18]  I added that last part.
[00:38:19]  Then you got the Hodge twins.
[00:38:21]  They're great.
[00:38:22]  They came on the show who tweeted out, Volkswagen was literally founded by the Nazis and Hitler.
[00:38:32]  But hey, you do you.
[00:38:34]  This is how the Hollywood leftists are.
[00:38:36]  And it's amazing.
[00:38:37]  They know nothing about anything.
[00:38:39]  Just total lack of substance, right?
[00:38:41]  Everything is a cause, though, right?
[00:38:44]  They've got to get involved.
[00:38:45]  I can't figure out from Alyssa Milano's standpoint or anybody else's standpoint what the primary objection here is, other than the fact that all other lefties seem to be pissed off about it.
[00:38:56]  I guess it's the reinstatement of these accounts.
[00:38:58]  I mean, I don't know, but in and of himself, Elon Musk is only controversial now.
[00:39:06]  I mean, for years, Democrats bent over backwards to try to showcase Tesla as the next energy revolution in this country.
[00:39:13]  And they would create tax credits after tax credits and all of these different tax bills to try to incentivize Elon Musk's company of Tesla and having electric vehicles overtake gas-powered vehicles in this country.
[00:39:26]  It was only when he started coming out, you know, and a little bit of challenging their point of view.
[00:39:32]  By the way, he's not a conservative.
[00:39:33]  Elon Musk is not a conservative.
[00:39:35]  If anything, he's a libertarian in many ways, but he's certainly not like a Republican.
[00:39:41]  And the fact that he himself has now become this controversial figure who they say is promoting white supremacy, it just gives you a good insight into the delusions of these people.
[00:39:55]  The media reaction is awful, and so is that of the left, but I repeat myself.
[00:40:01]  Another example is from the New Yorker, Jelani Cobb, who's also, wait for it, dean of Columbia Journalism School.

=== Musk's Midlife Crisis (07:40) ===

[00:40:10]  Oh, there we go.
[00:40:10]  I remember Roger Ayles used to say that's disqualifying if I see that on a resume.
[00:40:15]  Columbia Journalism School.
[00:40:18]  For obvious reasons, my God.
[00:40:19]  First of all, journalism is a trade.
[00:40:20]  It's not a profession.
[00:40:21]  You learn it by doing it.
[00:40:22]  You don't sit in a classroom and listen to somebody like Jelani Cobb.
[00:40:25]  What the hell?
[00:40:26]  What has Jelani done at the New Yorker?
[00:40:28]  I guess I'll have to look it up.
[00:40:30]  Why I quit Elon Musk's Twitter.
[00:40:33]  And like a lot of these leftists, it's not enough to leave.
[00:40:35]  He's got to go out in a ban of martyrhood, right?
[00:40:38]  Like a martyrdom.
[00:40:39]  I'm amazing and listen to how amazing I am as I quit Twitter.
[00:40:44]  It has been an interminable month since Elon Musk assumed control of Twitter.
[00:40:51]  Who are these idiots like he's on the Russian front?
[00:40:55]  Yeah, yes.
[00:40:56]  I leave for the New York.
[00:40:58]  This magazine, by the way, is just a never-ending source of comedy.
[00:41:01]  Yeah.
[00:41:02]  I mean, I highly encourage any conservative just open it up and laugh for a few minutes.
[00:41:06]  You are 100% right.
[00:41:07]  He talks about it.
[00:41:08]  He's like, in Ukraine, the tanks are moving in.
[00:41:12]  The platform has lost at least a million users.
[00:41:15]  Last week, after 14 years on the platform, I became one of them.
[00:41:23]  Goes on to explain.
[00:41:25]  Why?
[00:41:25]  Okay.
[00:41:26]  And he has to let us know that he has 400,000 followers.
[00:41:29]  Okay.
[00:41:29]  So he's like special.
[00:41:32]  So, okay.
[00:41:33]  This is why it's Twitter is so valuable.
[00:41:35]  Go back to after George Floyd and his murder went viral on the platform, blah, blah, blah.
[00:41:40]  Were it not for social media, George Floyd, along with Ahmad Arbery and Breonna Taylor, would likely have joined the long gallery of invisible dead black people, citizens whose bureaucratized deaths were hidden and ignored, really?
[00:41:56]  Because as I recall, the George Floyd death was on loop on cable news for weeks.
[00:42:02]  Believe it or not, there are separate media entities not controlled by Twitter, sir.
[00:42:07]  This is what was at stake quietly and loudly when Musk acquired Twitter.
[00:42:13]  His reinstatement of Donald Trump's account made remaining completely untenable.
[00:42:18]  Meanwhile, Trump hasn't even tweeted one thing.
[00:42:20]  He's like, I don't see the point.
[00:42:22]  I have my own social.
[00:42:23]  But this guy's like, I'm out of here.
[00:42:25]  That's the last straw.
[00:42:26]  Goes on to say, talks about Trump was booted after January 6th and says then Musk reinstated him.
[00:42:35]  The implication was clear.
[00:42:36]  If promoting the January 6th insurrection, which left at least seven people dead, that's a lie.
[00:42:45]  It did not.
[00:42:46]  And more than 100 police officers injured doesn't warrant suspension to Musk, then nothing else on the platform likely could.
[00:42:52]  Okay, there was a suspension.
[00:42:53]  There's been a suspension of over a year, right?
[00:42:56]  Elon Musk's point is you can now come back.
[00:42:59]  I don't believe in this permanent ban of you.
[00:43:02]  So that's that guy.
[00:43:03]  Okay.
[00:43:03]  I just had to bring you like the, it's got every item that the Columbia journalism thing, the New Yorker, the martyrdom.
[00:43:10]  It has to mention the number of followers.
[00:43:12]  So you think that this person is important, misstating facts while touting his own journalistic credos, and then making up facts about George Floyd and other people who have had encounters with the police.
[00:43:24]  Now, that brings me to Chris Hayes.
[00:43:26]  Okay, Chris Hayes of MSNBC.
[00:43:28]  Oh, my favorite.
[00:43:29]  Oh my God, this is amazing.
[00:43:31]  I'm sorry to be dominating with all these readings, but I knew you guys would love this stuff.
[00:43:35]  Chris Hayes writes an opinion printed in the New York Times.
[00:43:39]  Why I want Twitter to live.
[00:43:42]  He wants a reprieve from the governor.
[00:43:45]  My Twitter archive, who even knows how big their Twitter archive is?
[00:43:50]  Like, what?
[00:43:51]  I didn't even know there was a Twitter archive.
[00:43:53]  What?
[00:43:53]  My Twitter archive is over 6.4 gigabytes.
[00:43:57]  More than 161,000 tweets over 15 years.
[00:44:02]  It's enough writing to fill about 10 books.
[00:44:04]  By the way, Chris Hayes, this is pathetic.
[00:44:06]  And these are, this is in the category of facts you should not reveal publicly about yourself.
[00:44:11]  What was going on when I tweeted?
[00:44:13]  Wait, which one?
[00:44:14]  In October 2008?
[00:44:16]  I'll never know.
[00:44:17]  Okay.
[00:44:18]  So first of all, he's done 161,000 tweets, which have gotten him 2.4 million in followers.
[00:44:24]  I just want him to know that I've tweeted about, well, he's tweeted 10 times as many times as I have 17,000 tweets.
[00:44:32]  I had Abby go back and check.
[00:44:33]  Prior today and reading his stupid column, I had no idea how many tweets I'd ever done in about as many years.
[00:44:38]  17,000 by me, 161,000 by him.
[00:44:42]  And I do have more Twitter followers, just FOIA.
[00:44:45]  So this is him.
[00:44:46]  Yeah.
[00:44:46]  Try trying to make himself super important.
[00:44:48]  Then he talks about how he did download his archive in the wake of Elon's purchase.
[00:44:55]  I did not do that because I thought Twitter was going to die, but I did not want the sole record of my microblogging.
[00:45:02]  That's his Twitter experience.
[00:45:04]  My microblogging to be owned by a red-pilled billionaire going through a midlife crisis.
[00:45:11]  He goes on to say, if Twitter survives, and I fervently hope it does, its near-death experience has revealed something fundamental about our online lives.
[00:45:19]  Wait for it.
[00:45:20]  The digital spaces of civic life, the public town square, as Mr. Musk deemed Twitter, have been privatized to our collective detriment.
[00:45:31]  Oh, is it hard when your worldview is not the only one that can be aired?
[00:45:38]  When because of private ownership, you feel a little less in control.
[00:45:43]  Boo, fucking who?
[00:45:45]  Welcome to the life of everyone in the center and the center right since the beginning of, well, the past modern era at least.
[00:45:53]  Twitter, this is the last part, is where I spend a good deal of my life.
[00:45:58]  Again, don't admit this shit publicly, sir.
[00:46:03]  That's partly because I'm an inveterate poster and have been most of my life.
[00:46:11]  And also because it allows me to synthesize vast amounts of information, blah, And he goes on from there.
[00:46:18]  Again, just like the New Yorker guy, it hits every note, doesn't it?
[00:46:23]  Look, here's one other thing.
[00:46:25]  Just one quick observation.
[00:46:26]  If Bill Bennett were to write a book about left-wing virtues in America, I think narcissism would be the first chapter.
[00:46:35]  I mean, to be honest with you, that is a perfect definition of narcissistic personality disorder.
[00:46:40]  Imagine, like we were talking about shitty, shitty grappa earlier.
[00:46:44]  Imagine how shitty a book Chris Hayes' tweets would make.
[00:46:49]  His microblogging.
[00:46:52]  Stop it.
[00:46:53]  Don't diminish his work on there.
[00:46:55]  His whole life is work.
[00:46:57]  They think of Twitter.
[00:46:58]  They think of Twitter as their own personal diary that they clutch on their chest every day.
[00:47:03]  Like get outside and touch grass.
[00:47:05]  Like get a light.
[00:47:10]  It goes back to your earlier point, though, about their little echo echo chamber in which they live where they don't leave it.
[00:47:15]  All they do is sit around and tweet all day.
[00:47:18]  And suddenly they're like, oh my God, now that Elon's bought it, I realize it's private.
[00:47:23]  And that's really dangerous.
[00:47:25]  That could lead to things I don't like.
[00:47:29]  Oh my gosh, do you mean that your data security is not totally put together when you put everything online?
[00:47:36]  Does that live forever?
[00:47:37]  Oh my gosh, that's incredible.
[00:47:38]  I can't believe it.
[00:47:40]  Let's make another TikTok and see how that works out.
[00:47:42]  I might now be subjected to viewpoints I don't like, with which I don't agree.
[00:47:49]  This is so bizarre.

=== Dedicated with Doug Brunt (03:37) ===

[00:47:50]  Okay, there's so much more to get to.
[00:47:52]  Today's news cycle is fantastic.
[00:47:53]  You guys are the perfect guests, and we'll pick it up right after a quick break in two minutes.
[00:47:57]  Don't go away.
[00:47:58]  The guys from Ruthless remain with us, and you don't want to miss one moment of them.
[00:48:03]  Remember, folks, you can find the Megan Kelly show live.
[00:48:06]  You can listen to it live as you might be doing right now on SiriusXM Triumph Channel 111 every weekday at Noon East.
[00:48:12]  The full video show and clips over at youtube.com/slash Megan Kelly.
[00:48:17]  Audio podcast is free.
[00:48:18]  You can get it any place that you get your audio podcast.
[00:48:21]  And while you're over there, subscribing and downloading, which I hope you're doing, you can go subscribe to the Doug Brunt podcast.
[00:48:28]  My husband's got his own podcast now on books where he interviews very well-known authors.
[00:48:33]  It's called Dedicated with Doug Brunt.
[00:48:36]  And he's got a really interesting one out today with Dan Abrams, who used to run MSNBC and pinpoints the exact moment it went from what was once a centrist network to a leftist network.
[00:48:46]  He was there.
[00:48:46]  He remembers and he knows exactly how it happened and walks you through it.
[00:48:50]  Well, worth your time.
[00:48:50]  And there's a great one with Paulina Portskova, which we highlighted last week.
[00:48:54]  Anyway, check it out.
[00:48:58]  So I mentioned Corine Jean-Pierre a little earlier, and this doesn't have anything to do with anything other than I really wanted to show it to you.
[00:49:05]  You know, if you're really, really smart, if you're really, really smart, someday you might grow up and offer some massive contribution to mankind, which winds up winning you a Nobel Prize, a Nobel Prize, named after the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, who created this, I think, early 1900s was when this first started.
[00:49:25]  And everybody knows about the Nobel Prize because it's something that they talk about in school and we celebrate the winners every year.
[00:49:29]  And President Biden, to his credit, invited some of them to the White House to celebrate them winning their respective Nobel Prizes.
[00:49:36]  They come in like five different categories, like physics and chemistry and all stuff that I was bad at.
[00:49:40]  And although I think literature is one of them, in any event, it is.
[00:49:44]  They go to the White House and the subject came up with Corine Jean-Pierre.
[00:49:48]  And I'm just going to play you the soundbite.
[00:49:51]  Today, President Biden met with three U.S. winners of the 2022 Nobel Prize: Dr. Caroline Bertozzi, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
[00:50:03]  Dr. John Clauser, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics, and Dr. Douglas Diamond, who won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences.
[00:50:15]  Oh my God.
[00:50:18]  And they get on us if we say Iran instead of Iran.
[00:50:24]  We're not allowed to listen to that.
[00:50:27]  The odd talents.
[00:50:29]  She did it five times in total.
[00:50:32]  I have secondhand embarrassment.
[00:50:34]  Noble, the Nobel Prize.
[00:50:35]  There's no such thing as the Nobel Prize.
[00:50:38]  Does it surprise you at all that she has no idea what that is?
[00:50:41]  No, it doesn't.
[00:50:42]  That's what's sad.
[00:50:43]  It should surprise me.
[00:50:44]  I mean, honestly, this is.
[00:50:46]  It has been amazing.
[00:50:48]  You know, you always thought of a White House spokesperson.
[00:50:51]  At least, you know, when I was growing up, you see these people and you're like, wow, that is incredibly impressive to have a mastery of subject matter, wide-ranging and all things global and domestic and policy understandings and ability to sort of articulate it well and all this stuff.
[00:51:06]  And then like the last few years, you're like, my God, what have we become?
[00:51:13]  What has happened?
[00:51:14]  Those two words are spelled differently, by the way.
[00:51:16]  That should have been the first clue.
[00:51:18]  Nobel and Noble, not spelled the same.
[00:51:22]  All the reading she does directly from this binder in front of her.
[00:51:25]  You think, yeah, she could figure out the pronunciation by the way that it's spelled.

=== Sam Being Railroaded (06:22) ===

[00:51:28]  It's clearly not.
[00:51:30]  That would be the bare minimum of prep you would do is to pronounce the words that you've taken the time to write down and go read in front of potentially millions of Americans.
[00:51:38]  It's humiliating.
[00:51:39]  Okay.
[00:51:39]  Speaking of the Biden administration, they've had a bit of an embarrassment this week in their attempts to hire people from all walks of life, including people who are non-binary.
[00:51:50]  They found out the hard way.
[00:51:52]  Deep background checks and making sure these are people of character and not just checking a diversity box might be important.
[00:51:59]  I give you a senior energy department official by the name of Sam Brinton.
[00:52:05]  Now, Sam Brinton, again, goes by non-binary, says Sam is non-binary.
[00:52:12]  And Sam was hailed as one of the government's first ever non-binary officials.
[00:52:18]  Okay, this is Sam.
[00:52:19]  Don't know what's going on here with Sam, but that's Sam.
[00:52:22]  Sam decided in between doing stuff for the Department of Energy and this very important job called the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition.
[00:52:31]  Sam is now on leave from the Department of Energy.
[00:52:35]  Why?
[00:52:36]  Because you're not going to believe this.
[00:52:38]  This is like unbelievable stuff.
[00:52:41]  Sam, you know, and you know, I'm like, I can't really talk about airport baggage yet without being triggered because of my own experience.
[00:52:47]  I remember that.
[00:52:48]  But this is a story about baggage at the airport.
[00:52:51]  Sam, according to the criminal complaint that's been filed against Sam on October 26th in Minnesota state court, showed up at the airport and allegedly took a Vera Bradley suitcase worth $2,325 from the luggage carousel.
[00:53:09]  Now, you might think maybe Sam has been wrongly accused.
[00:53:13]  Who hasn't mistaken a bag here or there or for a moment thought that this one was theirs and it turns out it wasn't?
[00:53:18]  Maybe Sam is being railroaded.
[00:53:20]  Well, let's read on.
[00:53:22]  After the suitcase's owner alerted police, officers, doing their due diligence, reviewed video surveillance of the carousel and identified Brinton taking the luggage.
[00:53:33]  All right, well, once again, bags look alike.
[00:53:35]  What is it like?
[00:53:36]  You got the one black bag looks just like the other black bag.
[00:53:38]  It's wheelie.
[00:53:39]  Who knows?
[00:53:40]  So so far, I'm open-minded to Sam's innocence.
[00:53:42]  Then it comes.
[00:53:44]  They identified Brinton taking the luggage before Sam removed its tag.
[00:53:53]  That identified the owner.
[00:53:56]  Then, okay, well, maybe Sam thought the tag is falling off.
[00:54:01]  It's annoying me.
[00:54:02]  I'm going to get rid of it here.
[00:54:03]  I'm going to give Sam the benefit of the doubt.
[00:54:04]  Law enforcement observed Brinton using the luggage during at least two other trips to Washington, D.C., because you see, Sam did not then take the bag home and innocently realize this is not my shit.
[00:54:19]  Sam was luggage shopping.
[00:54:21]  Yeah.
[00:54:21]  Totally.
[00:54:23]  And then they finally called Sam on October 9th, cops did.
[00:54:28]  And Sam denied stealing anything and said, if I had taken the wrong bag, I am happy to return it, but I don't have any clothes for another individual.
[00:54:36]  That was my clothes when I opened the bag.
[00:54:41]  That was my clothes.
[00:54:44]  And I was listening to the demand of the English language.
[00:54:47]  News about the Nobel Prize.
[00:54:49]  And I remember opening up the bag and seeing my own.
[00:54:51]  Two hours after that phone call, Sam called the officer back and apologized for not being completely honest.
[00:54:59]  But then Sam said it was a mistake.
[00:55:02]  And I was just tired when I took the wrong bag at the carousel.
[00:55:07]  Then it turns out that the defendant stated defendant left the clothes from the bag inside the drawers of the hotel room.
[00:55:15]  Blah, blah, blah.
[00:55:16]  It's been charged with felony theft.
[00:55:18]  Can you believe?
[00:55:22]  What kind of Let's start with the fact that this person is a senior government official.
[00:55:28]  Yeah, the government is way too big.
[00:55:30]  This is perfect evidence that the government is just way, way too big.
[00:55:34]  When Yule Brenner and Lipstick can come on and steal somebody's luggage from then, all of a sudden, he's in charge of like nuclear.
[00:55:45]  Did you just do the Yule Brenner?
[00:55:49]  That's what it looked like to me.
[00:55:51]  Holmes is pulling his hat down.
[00:55:54]  Well, that notwithstanding.
[00:55:58]  Look, I think at some level, this is part of the problem that we see occurring time and time again with the progressive left when identity is more important than things like integrity or things like actual subject matter expertise and or even subject-verb agreement or verb agreement, yeah, which is also a challenge at times.
[00:56:21]  But I think like this particular situation is just so bizarre that it's hard to like totally wrap my actually to be trying to get over Yule Brenner and lipstick.
[00:56:33]  It's not a walk.
[00:56:34]  Listen to this.
[00:56:35]  Listen to this.
[00:56:36]  Jamie Lee Henry was the Army's celebrated as the Army's first transgender officer.
[00:56:44]  And Jamie Lee Henry was just indicted by a federal grand jury.
[00:56:48]  Wait for it.
[00:56:49]  What did Jamie Lee, this army doctor, celebrated for being the first transgender officer, allegedly do, according to the grand jury?
[00:56:54]  Oh, it's just like they sold secrets to the Russians.
[00:57:00]  Maybe we should spend some more time worrying about qualifications, performance on the job, ethics, basic fundamentals before we just run to let's celebrate the diversity of hiring this groundbreaking candidate.
[00:57:14]  I think you hit the nail on the head.
[00:57:15]  I mean, qualifications matter.
[00:57:18]  And when the government is so big that people don't seem to care about qualifications, expertise, technical proficiency, and they care more about image, then something is wrong.
[00:57:28]  But also, look, if you're if your goal in this Biden administration ostensibly is trans rights or non-binary rights or whatever, what good does it do to put somebody of low character in a position of trust within the government and then something like this happens?
[00:57:44]  Right.
[00:57:44]  I mean, anything that you were trying to accomplish is immediately completely thrown out the window.

=== Shop Teacher in the News (03:00) ===

[00:57:50]  Well, there's other trans news today that relates back, I think, to another discussion we had, and that involves that trans shop teacher in Canada.
[00:57:58]  Remember the guy?
[00:57:59]  Remember the guy with the enormous breasts?
[00:58:02]  The bazongas, let's say it, bazongas, right?
[00:58:04]  The bazongas, the big fake prosthetic nipples teaching the children in shop with the big blonde wig.
[00:58:11]  Right.
[00:58:12]  You're not going to.
[00:58:13]  That's right.
[00:58:13]  That's right.
[00:58:14]  You said it was an OSHA violation.
[00:58:17]  That killed me.
[00:58:18]  I forgot about that.
[00:58:19]  Okay.
[00:58:21]  This trans shop teacher is in the news.
[00:58:25]  Why?
[00:58:26]  Because the trans-Canadian shop teacher decided to go skydiving.
[00:58:33]  Try to hold on with the skydiving adventure.
[00:58:37]  There are these.
[00:58:39]  Oh, God.
[00:58:41]  Well, how do we know about it?
[00:58:44]  The bazongas are there.
[00:58:45]  They went into the air.
[00:58:48]  This has to be a bit.
[00:58:50]  You are faking.
[00:58:51]  Megan, you walked us into this bus song.
[00:58:54]  This is not belief.
[00:58:55]  And Michael, what I Michael is a scientist in the group.
[00:58:57]  I want to know if this affects the terminal velocity of an individual.
[00:59:01]  I think it's certainly going to increase drag.
[00:59:04]  There's a lot going to be a lot of resistance.
[00:59:07]  Well, you've seen the Hindenburg.
[00:59:08]  You saw what happened to them.
[00:59:12]  The wig fell off.
[00:59:13]  The wig fell off in this one.
[00:59:17]  I'm expecting that there's a rip cord attached on both sides and there's some sort of airbag situation and they hit the ground.
[00:59:24]  There could be an opportunity.
[00:59:26]  Here's the craziness.
[00:59:28]  The reason we know this happened is because, you know, you do the tandem.
[00:59:32]  I've never been skydiving, but I understand enough to know you do the tandem with a real instructor who knows what he's doing.
[00:59:37]  And this is what the shop teacher did.
[00:59:40]  Well, it turned out that this shop teacher's tandem partner was the male porn star voodoo.
[00:59:46]  Voodoo, whose real name is Alexander Boisvert.
[00:59:50]  And he took the shop teacher skydiving.
[00:59:54]  And my producer included the helpful note in my packet.
[00:59:58]  Do not Google this person's account.
[00:59:59]  My eyes, my eyes.
[01:00:03]  So voodoo tweets out about it, presumably with the consent of the shop teacher, saying, the jump was completed safety, but the wig was never found.
[01:00:14]  He said, by the way, all it took was one bump from the cameraman and the wig went away.
[01:00:19]  Then went on to say, I took him skydiving and his hair came off.
[01:00:22]  No problems with the huge fake breasts.
[01:00:24]  Those stayed in place.
[01:00:25]  He described himself as the conservative porn star skydiver.
[01:00:29]  If you look at his Twitter feed, it's all about like he's anti-COVID, COVID lockdown.
[01:00:33]  He's like a, he's like a Twitter porn guy with a heart.
[01:00:37]  A thoughtful porn star.
[01:00:38]  You don't see that every day.
[01:00:40]  He is.
[01:00:41]  And said, I am not a fan of trans activism or the teacher's behavior at school, but I am a professional and I don't discriminate it.
[01:00:48]  And I don't discriminate.
[01:00:50]  I'll throw anyone out of a plane.

=== Apology for Hurt People (07:43) ===

[01:00:51]  So that happened.
[01:00:56]  What a treasure.
[01:00:57]  Unbelievable.
[01:00:58]  I can't.
[01:00:59]  The pictures.
[01:01:00]  I get the pictures.
[01:01:01]  Oh my God.
[01:01:02]  For anybody who's listening, I'm serious.
[01:01:05]  You've got to get back on the YouTube and check this out.
[01:01:08]  It's unbelievable.
[01:01:09]  It is worth the journey.
[01:01:12]  Okay, let's talk Will Smith.
[01:01:13]  He's back in the news again today.
[01:01:15]  He's got a new movie out, so he's got to get out there and promote it.
[01:01:18]  And of course, people are asking him about the slap seen and heard around the world.
[01:01:22]  Well, this is an opportunity.
[01:01:24]  I was on with my pal, my pal Paul Murray of Sky News Australia talking about this last night.
[01:01:31]  This is, in my view, was an opportunity for him to say very simply and straight, I screwed up.
[01:01:37]  I'm very sorry.
[01:01:38]  I've apologized to Chris.
[01:01:39]  I've apologized to my fellow actors.
[01:01:41]  I apologize to the general public.
[01:01:43]  And all I can tell you is that I'm embarrassed and I'll try to earn your forgiveness.
[01:01:47]  That's it.
[01:01:48]  That's all you got to say.
[01:01:49]  Move on.
[01:01:50]  They'll forgive you or they won't.
[01:01:51]  That's period.
[01:01:52]  Move right along.
[01:01:53]  Instead, because I believe he did this, because he was trying to make himself look like the big, bad, protective husband in this moment.
[01:02:01]  That's why he did it in the first place.
[01:02:03]  He tried to make the moment about him when Chris Rock said something about Jada Smith and her hair, her head.
[01:02:10]  He tried to make it about himself in the first place.
[01:02:11]  And true to that instinct, he does it again on his apology tour.
[01:02:17]  Would you listen to this?
[01:02:20]  I guess what I would say: you just never know what somebody's going through.
[01:02:26]  It's like I understood the idea where they say hurt people, hurt people.
[01:02:30]  It was a lot of things.
[01:02:31]  It was the little boy that watched his father beat up his mother.
[01:02:37]  All of that just bubbled up in that moment.
[01:02:47]  That's not who I want to be.
[01:02:49]  That was one of the big things for me over this last couple of months, that I had to forgive myself for being human.
[01:03:00]  And it's like, trust me, there's nobody that hates the fact that I'm human more than me.
[01:03:07]  Yeah, that's not it.
[01:03:09]  No, that is not it.
[01:03:11]  You guys are in the business of devising professional political candidates who screw up all the time.
[01:03:18]  Is this, is this how it sounds?
[01:03:20]  Hurt people, hurt people.
[01:03:21]  You didn't know what I was going through.
[01:03:23]  I had childhood trauma.
[01:03:25]  And really, my biggest challenge over the past months has been figuring out how to forgive myself.
[01:03:29]  I'm working on forgiving.
[01:03:31]  Oh my God, the narcissism.
[01:03:33]  Back to the narcissism.
[01:03:34]  Right.
[01:03:35]  Yeah.
[01:03:35]  I, I, I, me, me, me.
[01:03:37]  That's all he said.
[01:03:38]  The only thing I heard was him referring to himself.
[01:03:40]  I mean, the entire thing was just about him.
[01:03:43]  The narcissism in our society is just to the 11th level.
[01:03:49]  And, you know, I would, I would start with some sympathy towards the angle he started down, which is, you know, I don't know if it has any authenticity or not, but trying to describe events that led to that moment where you clearly lost your mind is probably not the worst thing in the world, but it doesn't stop when you're a kid, right?
[01:04:08]  I mean, look, I think Will Smith, unlike almost anybody walking the planet, has been famous since he was a child, right?
[01:04:15]  And I think all of that has surrounded his brain in a way, like you said, with narcissism and everything else, where he thinks that you can just kind of walk away with these things and not really explain it whatsoever.
[01:04:27]  You can't, right?
[01:04:29]  I mean, that's a show that families watch, which, you know, the message to people that you can walk up and slap somebody for saying something is obviously wrong.
[01:04:40]  I think an apology to people who are watching, apology, the message it sent, all that stuff would have been appropriate there.
[01:04:46]  Unfortunately, he was basically trying to build insulation for himself.
[01:04:50]  Yeah, it was all about his process and his journey to forgive himself.
[01:04:54]  Just absolutely incredible.
[01:04:56]  You know, and to talk about, you know, his background and seeing, you know, violence and the like, what about the kids who are watching you do it?
[01:05:06]  Like, what about your own kids seeing you do that?
[01:05:08]  And they think that's appropriate now because you won't apologize for it.
[01:05:12]  Like he's not.
[01:05:13]  His son tweeted out kudos to him after it happened.
[01:05:15]  Remember his son tweeted out like, that's the way it goes.
[01:05:18]  And I don't care what the tweet was, but he celebrated it.
[01:05:21]  So I'm sick of these Hollywood people thinking we give a damn about their childhood traumas when they behave badly.
[01:05:27]  Just say you're sorry and people either will forgive or they won't.
[01:05:31]  But I don't, you know, go tell it to your therapist.
[01:05:34]  Go sit on the damn sofa for the guy who charges $700 an hour and work it out with him.
[01:05:40]  I don't give a shit.
[01:05:41]  You assaulted a guy and humiliated him who is just standing there doing his job for what?
[01:05:47]  For nothing?
[01:05:47]  To boost your own ego.
[01:05:49]  So I don't really care about your self-analysis or how hard it's been for you to forgive yourself.
[01:05:55]  I just want you to be humble.
[01:05:58]  And on top of that, let's not forget he's back on television promoting a movie in which he's going to be paid millions of more dollars.
[01:06:04]  Right?
[01:06:05]  Like, how is this apology to where actually we're supposed to feel bad for you?
[01:06:08]  Right?
[01:06:09]  He reserved it for a moment and he could capitalize on it.
[01:06:13]  Right.
[01:06:13]  And also, is there no mention?
[01:06:14]  I didn't see the interview.
[01:06:16]  All I know is what has been reported, but is there no like apology to Chris Rock there?
[01:06:20]  Please don't feel like maybe it should be addressed.
[01:06:23]  I don't know.
[01:06:24]  In the past, he has apologized to Chris Rock and he's been banned from attending the Oscars, Will Smith, for the next 10 years.
[01:06:31]  But I mean, who cares?
[01:06:32]  Like, fine.
[01:06:32]  I don't care.
[01:06:33]  If people want to go see Will Smith in a movie, more power to you.
[01:06:35]  I like, whatever.
[01:06:36]  That's, that's up to the audience and whatever.
[01:06:38]  But what I object to is this Hollywood elitist multi-millionaire.
[01:06:43]  Like, you can see the light bulb over his head.
[01:06:46]  Like, oh, I'm human.
[01:06:48]  Oh, I mean, I'm not this mega god that everybody's been telling me I am for all these years because I can memorize sentences and string them together in front of a camera.
[01:06:58]  No, you're not.
[01:06:59]  You're no better than anybody else.
[01:07:01]  In fact, you appear to be quite worse than a lot of the people who are out there digging ditches every day and driving buses every day.
[01:07:08]  And despite the fact that they've had a shit ton of childhood trauma, don't go around abusing other people.
[01:07:14]  That's right.
[01:07:14]  That's right.
[01:07:15]  No, I think that's the main point.
[01:07:16]  And look, I'm a little different than most in that I like my rock stars and my movie stars.
[01:07:21]  I like everybody a little screwed up, right?
[01:07:23]  I mean, I like my lead singer in my band.
[01:07:26]  I want him to have like issues, right?
[01:07:29]  I think that's part of the creative process.
[01:07:31]  I love that.
[01:07:32]  But I don't then want to take their point of view on like politics or world events or how to raise kids, all the things that Will Smith and his sort of promotion have done over the years, which is just sort of lionize this guy's character and make him something that, you know, we ought to try to emulate.
[01:07:50]  Well, that's obviously not the case here.
[01:07:52]  But when that's been done over the course of 20 years, now you do have a apology that is necessary to everyone.
[01:08:01]  That's why I like it.
[01:08:02]  Like at the Academy Awards, when you get somebody like Joe Pesci, when he won the Academy Award, he got up there and said something like, it's my honor, and then sat back down.
[01:08:10]  You know, they're not self-aggrandizing all the time.
[01:08:13]  They don't think that they're, as you were saying, at the Russian front.
[01:08:16]  You know, they understand what they're doing is an art form.
[01:08:19]  It's artistic, but it's really, come on.
[01:08:22]  The accolades, the money, the way we lionize them and almost make them into royal figures is ridiculous.
[01:08:30]  And the smart ones get that and don't have to wrestle with the realization that they're actually humans.

=== Iranian Reporter Exchange (04:56) ===

[01:08:35]  So anyway, the whole thing is just such a turnoff to me.
[01:08:38]  I don't think Will Smith is a bad man.
[01:08:41]  I love his wife.
[01:08:42]  I know they've taken a lot of shit and people have issues with their marriage, but I think his wife is great.
[01:08:46]  But I just, I can't stand the narcissism on display yet again.
[01:08:52]  Okay, let's look at the opposite of narcissism.
[01:08:55]  When Team USA captain takes to the microphone in connection with the World Cup, okay, so our team USA, yay, we won.
[01:09:05]  We beat Iran.
[01:09:07]  He takes to the microphones and he gets questioned by an Iranian reporter.
[01:09:12]  Now, the Iranians, they're mad at us for all sorts of reasons.
[01:09:15]  The Iranian team refused to sing their anthem and because they're trying to stand in solidarity with the protests that are happening in Iran right now in the wake of this young girl being allegedly beaten to death for not wearing her full face covering properly.
[01:09:31]  And the Iranians say, oh, no, she had a heart attack.
[01:09:34]  Sure.
[01:09:34]  It's a young girl.
[01:09:35]  In any event, so all these young Iranians have taken to the streets.
[01:09:38]  They've been protesting in the Iranian soccer team.
[01:09:40]  World Cup only comes along every four years.
[01:09:42]  They, in solidarity with these protests, refused to sing the actual words to their national anthem.
[01:09:47]  Well, then, according to reports, they were taken into a back room where the Iranian National Guard Revolutionary Guard was there.
[01:09:54]  And they were told, you will sing the damn anthem or your family and friends will be hurt, possibly killed.
[01:10:02]  Well, guess what?
[01:10:03]  They sang the anthem the next time they went out there.
[01:10:05]  Those poor guys, I felt so bad for them.
[01:10:07]  I mean, I was glad USA won, but how do you win a soccer game with that in the backdrop?
[01:10:11]  What a nightmare, right?
[01:10:12]  What a nightmare.
[01:10:14]  So Team USA, they had tweeted out something that had the Iranian flag in it, but they took off the emblem.
[01:10:23]  They took off the emblem in an effort to show solidarity with the team.
[01:10:27]  And that caused all sorts of the Iranians claimed we should be kicked out of the games and so on.
[01:10:32]  So this is the background leading up to this moment where our team USA captain, and I think the coach was also there, take questions from the reporters, including an Iranian reporter, and listen to how this exchange went.
[01:10:46]  You say you support the Iranian people, but you're pronouncing our country's name wrong.
[01:10:51]  Our country is named Iran, not Iran.
[01:10:55]  Please, once and for all, let's get this clear.
[01:10:57]  Second of all, are you okay to be representing a country that has so much discrimination against black people in its own borders?
[01:11:07]  And we saw the Black Lives Matter movement over the past few years.
[01:11:11]  My apologies on the mispronunciation of your country.
[01:11:16]  Yeah, that being said, you know, there's discrimination everywhere you go.
[01:11:21]  You know, one thing that I've learned, especially from living abroad in the past years and having to fit in in different cultures and kind of assimilate into different cultures is that in the U.S., we're continuing to make progress every single day.
[01:11:35]  You know, growing up for me, I grew up in a white family with obviously an African-American heritage and background as well.
[01:11:42]  So I had a little bit of different cultures and I was very, very easily able to assimilate in different cultures.
[01:11:49]  So, you know, not everyone has that ease and the ability to do that.
[01:11:53]  And obviously it takes longest to understand.
[01:11:55]  And through education, I think it's super important.
[01:11:58]  Like you just educated me now on the pronunciation of your country.
[01:12:01]  So yeah, it's a process.
[01:12:03]  I think as long as you see progress, that's the most important thing.
[01:12:08]  How about that from Tyler Adams?
[01:12:10]  Just a clinic.
[01:12:11]  Guy put on a clinic on how to answer a question.
[01:12:14]  Well, and hats off for him taking the question as is, right?
[01:12:18]  I mean, I think I would have been tempted in his shoes to be like, seriously, how remarkable restraint, right?
[01:12:23]  Remarkable.
[01:12:24]  Where are you from again?
[01:12:26]  You're stoning women in the streets and you're coming at me.
[01:12:29]  I mean, listen, we had a lot to say on Twitter yesterday.
[01:12:34]  Don't get in particular about that matchup, but Tyler Adams can't say enough nice things about him.
[01:12:39]  No, you know, one thing I would also point out for the liberal journalists very concerned about Elon Musk's Twitter, I would remind them that the supreme leader of Iran still has an active Twitter account.
[01:12:52]  That's right.
[01:12:53]  So when we're worried about the user safety, because Donald Trump's back on the platform, just a reminder that that guy who likes to stone women in the streets is still allowed access to his Twitter account.
[01:13:05]  And was there the entire time you were there without you objecting to it at all?
[01:13:09]  And the reason he's never misgendered anybody is because you get killed over there if you're gay.
[01:13:14]  Okay.
[01:13:14]  So, or never mind, trans.
[01:13:17]  Here's the other thing.
[01:13:18]  That reporter also asked the coach, get this, why he has not asked the U.S. government to remove a naval warship stationed in the Gulf.
[01:13:26]  The coach said, I'm a soccer coach.

=== Republican Brand Problem (09:16) ===

[01:13:32]  Good point.
[01:13:33]  Let's move on.
[01:13:35]  Right.
[01:13:35]  Yes.
[01:13:37]  Man, this is a Burger King.
[01:13:38]  What is it?
[01:13:38]  How does it go?
[01:13:44]  This is the Wendy's.
[01:13:45]  Yeah.
[01:13:45]  You're right.
[01:13:46]  This is a Wendy's.
[01:13:49]  Yes, I know.
[01:13:49]  It's exciting.
[01:13:50]  I'm looking forward to watching it.
[01:13:52]  I'm a little sad the next match is against the Dutch because I just went there and I was happy to root for the orange, but I'm team USA all the way.
[01:13:58]  So go, America.
[01:14:00]  Okay, before we go, let's talk the midterms.
[01:14:05]  I had you guys on not long before the midterms.
[01:14:08]  The predictions, all three of you predicted 51 GOP in the Senate.
[01:14:13]  Not terrible.
[01:14:14]  I mean, I don't think many people were predicting 49 GOP in the Senate, if, you know, depending on how things go.
[01:14:20]  But in any event, it went a different way.
[01:14:22]  Smug said 52, so he was most wrong.
[01:14:24]  Sorry, Smug.
[01:14:26]  But I did want to ask you, because you did seem much more bullish prior to the election than the results turned out.
[01:14:33]  I was the same.
[01:14:35]  You guys are smart, though, when it comes to politics and know what you're talking about.
[01:14:39]  So what happened?
[01:14:41]  Well, I think a couple of things happened.
[01:14:43]  I mean, historically over the last 200 years in midterm elections, they're a reflection on the party in power.
[01:14:49]  And only twice in history has a majority picked up seats with a president in power during a midterm.
[01:14:58]  And so what generally happens is your late breaking, late deciding voters, you know, the classic swing voter independents tend to take a look at the environment and tend to make decisions on things like the economy.
[01:15:12]  And we know going into that election that the economy was in a very, very bad place with the electorate.
[01:15:18]  In fact, I think it was like 65% in the exit poll said the inflation is basically what drove them to the polls in the first place, right?
[01:15:26]  And so you look at the backdrop of all that, you would think, all right, at a minimum, you're going to get three points on that.
[01:15:33]  And that's how I did my math.
[01:15:34]  That's how I got to 51 is that you get, you know, at a maximum 5% of your final late deciding voters that break traditionally all one way.
[01:15:45]  And they generally break with the political environment and against the party in power.
[01:15:48]  And that didn't happen here.
[01:15:50]  And there's a number of reasons for it.
[01:15:53]  I think my personal analysis is that Republicans have a brand problem that we're going to have to work on over time.
[01:16:00]  Now, fortunately, there's a presidential election, a presidential primary that allows Republicans to start that process right away.
[01:16:07]  And you will see going into 2024, regardless of who the nominee is, a different brand than the one that we ran on in 2022, where the mission sold, the statements sold.
[01:16:19]  People bought that crime was a big problem.
[01:16:22]  They bought that open borders were not something we wanted.
[01:16:25]  And they certainly bought that the Biden administration was heading down the wrong track with the economy.
[01:16:28]  And they still couldn't support a Republican candidate in many of these states.
[01:16:34]  I would contrast that with like Florida and Texas, where you have a very different Republican brand that is cultivated over many years in the case of Florida by a governor that has a really well-established identity of his own.
[01:16:49]  In those states, you saw the message not only sell, but there were winning counties that Democrats had won since Reconstruction, right?
[01:16:58]  So this is a brand issue that we just kind of have to work through here.
[01:17:03]  When you say brand issue, do you mean Trump or more than that?
[01:17:06]  Yeah, I think it's a big contributor to it, to be completely honest with you.
[01:17:09]  Yeah.
[01:17:10]  I think he would even recognize that.
[01:17:12]  He would never say it publicly, but tacitly he does because when he did his announcement, Megan, after the election, you'd notice one of the topics that didn't come up really at all was how 2020 was unfair to him and rigged against him.
[01:17:27]  Now, he endorsed a ton and ton of candidates and made them walk the plank on the issue.
[01:17:32]  And I think that impacted our ability to win some of these late breaking swing voters and independent voters.
[01:17:36]  Because at the end of the day, they were like, all right, I just want somebody competent.
[01:17:39]  You know, like we've spent the last two and a half years coming out of COVID and like the economy is in shambles.
[01:17:44]  I just want like a steady hand on the wheel.
[01:17:46]  And instead, I think he like walked a lot of these candidates through Box Canyon.
[01:17:51]  It was still scary.
[01:17:53]  On issues that the electoral was like, I don't know, that seems kind of crazy.
[01:17:56]  Like, why are we still talking about, you know, the previous election?
[01:18:00]  And I think that undercut us with those voters.
[01:18:02]  And I think that's what Holmes is talking about when he's talking about a brand problem.
[01:18:05]  Well, to your point about his own self-awareness, I mean, he also has not announced a big rally in Georgia where Republicans and Democrats are facing off in this runoff election.
[01:18:15]  And in some of the races before November 8th, Trump held big rallies.
[01:18:20]  Well, he's not doing it in Georgia right now.
[01:18:23]  And I think one of the reasons is because he doesn't want to get stoned.
[01:18:27]  Yeah.
[01:18:27]  And look, it's not all Trump, right?
[01:18:29]  I mean, there are candidates' campaigns that didn't do a great job.
[01:18:33]  There's the issue of Dobbs, as you just mentioned, with abortion, which I think had a profound effect on predominantly younger voters.
[01:18:41]  And then there are some states where their actual election infrastructure, which is in no way alleging any impropriety whatsoever.
[01:18:48]  But, you know, Nevada, the state that we were involved in, in 2020, they changed all the election rules on a partisan basis, which enabled things like ballot harvesting, right?
[01:18:58]  And if you look at Adam Laxalt in that race, he won early votes, mail and election day voters by three and a half points.
[01:19:05]  He was up 28,000 votes when they started counting the election day drop boxes.
[01:19:11]  And those were, as admitted to by the Culinary Union out in Las Vegas, that was their goal is to try to fill Election Day drop boxes with as many mail ballots as they possibly could.
[01:19:24]  It turns out they did.
[01:19:25]  They won 67% of those drop boxes that came in.
[01:19:30]  It was done because of that election infrastructure that was put in place that heavily advantaged Democrats.
[01:19:36]  Well, because a Democrat will let a ballot harvester take their ballot and put it in a Dropbox for them.
[01:19:41]  And back to the Trump issue, you know, he just destroyed our ability to do that with Republican voters.
[01:19:51]  You know, like hardcore, I vote in every election.
[01:19:54]  Republicans will tell you, I'm going to vote on Election Day in person.
[01:19:58]  And I mean, that's fine, but it puts you at a structural disadvantage when they're banking votes for, you know, three months and Republicans are relying on like not having snow and rain on Election Day.
[01:20:11]  I mean, one other aspect to the disappointment, I think, is that expectations were set a little higher than they should have been.
[01:20:17]  If you looked at the districts, specifically talking about the House, if you look at the districts where Republicans had to do very well in order to take the kind of majorities that you heard people talk about in the run up to the election, these are districts that Joe Biden won by plus seven, plus eight, plus 10 points.
[01:20:32]  So that's a very different kind of campaign, a very different kind of candidate that you have to run in a district to be able to seize that sort of portion of the middle or even people who were voting for Joe Biden in the previous elections.
[01:20:46]  I just, I think these voters just want competence, right?
[01:20:49]  And you even in some of those Biden plus nine, plus 10, plus 11 districts, you saw Republicans win, particularly look at places like California, right?
[01:20:56]  Or like look at the Oregon 5 seat that we flipped.
[01:21:01]  We just have to be, I think, more, more careful in candidate selection of what these people's message is going to be.
[01:21:09]  It's important to have somebody who fits the district or who fits the shit out of people.
[01:21:14]  I mean, I look at that race.
[01:21:16]  What was it in Washington State?
[01:21:17]  The Joe Kent R plus 13 district.
[01:21:22]  And people were frankly afraid of the guy.
[01:21:24]  They didn't know what he was going to do.
[01:21:26]  And we lost that.
[01:21:27]  I mean, that's the difference between we actually competed pretty well in Biden plus three plus five districts.
[01:21:33]  But if you start losing Republican-held districts, your day is not going to be that great.
[01:21:37]  And it was a real mixed bag out there.
[01:21:40]  And we didn't get the historical shift of late breaking undecided voters towards the Republican side.
[01:21:46]  And I want to see more analysis on the abortion issue because, I mean, if you looked at the polls, like we looked at polls all the time, it's like the voters who put that up in their issue matrix saying like, this is the reason I'm going to vote.
[01:21:58]  Very low propensity to actually vote for Republicans in the first place.
[01:22:00]  So that was sort of baked into the polling.
[01:22:02]  And it showed us, you know, winning a lot of these races, in particular, a lot of the closed Senate races.
[01:22:07]  And I wonder if there's sort of a non-response bias in polling there where people may care about an issue like abortion because it is a personal issue, but not necessarily say that to a pollster.
[01:22:18]  And how is that going to impact the way that we view the issue moving forward?
[01:22:21]  Issue.
[01:22:22]  Interesting.
[01:22:22]  Great, great analysis, you guys.
[01:22:24]  So good to talk to you.
[01:22:26]  I'm sure you're feeling good about the fact that the Republicans won the House, which is not nothing.
[01:22:30]  And we're seeing that start to unfold right now.
[01:22:33]  I'm sure the Biden administration is super conscious of it as well.
[01:22:36]  There's a lot of opportunity out there next year.
[01:22:39]  Well, yes, not just in politics, but in your future careers as online safety experts.
[01:22:43]  So thank you for offering us that expertise and for being with us, guys.
[01:22:47]  All the best to you and to Smug.

=== Thanks for Listening (02:08) ===

[01:22:48]  Thanks, Megan.
[01:22:49]  Thank you.
[01:22:52]  I want to get in something from our mailbag.
[01:22:55]  If you want to email me, you can email me at megan at megankelly.com.
[01:22:59]  And at megankelly.com, you can sign up for our weekly American News Minute too.
[01:23:04]  Sarah writes in, did you decide to cut out Seed Oils, the Hateful Eight?
[01:23:08]  Because I said on June 12th I was going to.
[01:23:10]  Remember, I did a year without french fries.
[01:23:12]  And by the way, that's still rolling.
[01:23:13]  And I said this year I was going to do Hateful Eight.
[01:23:15]  Sarah writes, I was on board for about two minutes until I realized what it meant.
[01:23:19]  Then I decided I just didn't care that much.
[01:23:22]  Okay.
[01:23:23]  Sarah, word.
[01:23:25]  You're 100% right.
[01:23:26]  It was too hard.
[01:23:27]  I failed.
[01:23:28]  I'm not going to lie.
[01:23:29]  I wasn't able to do it.
[01:23:30]  And I've spent the past six months like, what else could I cut out?
[01:23:32]  Because I like this thing, this game of like cutting something out.
[01:23:35]  It's just a personal challenge.
[01:23:36]  And I'm leaning toward granola.
[01:23:38]  Like, I need to go to my weaknesses.
[01:23:40]  That's the ones that are like problems for me.
[01:23:43]  And granola is a weakness for me.
[01:23:44]  I don't do well when it's around.
[01:23:46]  I kind of can't stop myself.
[01:23:47]  There's a brand called Kelly's, No Relation.
[01:23:50]  I'm, I, like, it's my kryptonite.
[01:23:53]  Like, I, I, it weakens me.
[01:23:54]  I, I, I have no resolve.
[01:23:56]  In any event, um, yeah, it didn't happen.
[01:23:58]  Then she asks, also, do we ever get to see Abby?
[01:24:01]  Abby?
[01:24:01]  Oh, Dano.
[01:24:02]  Can we show Abby?
[01:24:03]  Can you come over here?
[01:24:04]  She doesn't want to be on camera.
[01:24:05]  Come over here.
[01:24:06]  Come on, quickly.
[01:24:07]  She's going to do it.
[01:24:08]  Here, she's coming.
[01:24:10]  Here she is.
[01:24:10]  This is for you, Sarah.
[01:24:11]  Hi.
[01:24:12]  Hi.
[01:24:12]  She's so cute.
[01:24:13]  She's makeup's not as good.
[01:24:16]  Oh, anyway, that's Abby, little sister-ish and assistant and CEO of my life.
[01:24:23]  Thanks for writing.
[01:24:23]  Thanks for calling.
[01:24:24]  And thanks to all of you for listening.
[01:24:26]  I want to tell you that tomorrow we're going to dive into the Casey Anthony story.
[01:24:29]  They're airing that piece with her tonight.
[01:24:32]  And we'll have a full reaction tomorrow, including with her lawyer, Jose Baez.
[01:24:35]  That'll be a good one.
[01:24:36]  Download the show on Apple Pandora Spotify and Stitcher for free.
[01:24:39]  Follow us at youtube.com/slash MeganKelly.
[01:24:41]  Yesterday I showed you how to avoid strangulation.
[01:24:44]  And today we had that unbelievable skydiving event, which you've got to look at.
[01:24:48]  Thank you for being with us.
[01:24:53]  Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly Show.
[01:24:55]  No BS, no agenda, and no