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Dec. 15, 2022 - The Megyn Kelly Show
01:21:51
20221215_harry-and-meghans-complaining-and-putting-faith-an
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Open and Honest Conversations 00:14:37
Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
Hey, everyone, I'm Megan Kelly.
Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show.
Ahead in this program, we are going in depth with former teen star Kirk Cameron.
He was still acting as a grown-up, but we fell in love with him when he was a teen and when I was a teen.
I have a confession to make when he comes on.
He's had a fascinating career, and we will discuss his path toward faith and patriotism and how he's trying to spread that message to this day.
But we begin with the Duchess of Duplicity.
She's at it again.
The final three episodes of Prince Harry and Megan Markle's Netflix quote documentary.
Again, that's a misnomer.
That's not what this is.
Are now out.
In them, Prince Harry claims the royal family was just jealous of Megan.
They don't want me to have it.
They're jealous of me.
Veruca Megan Markle salt because she did the job better than they did it.
She was just bat around it.
She can't help it.
She was the star of the show.
And he claims Prince William once left him terrified after screaming at him in front of the queen during talks over the couple's proposal that they be allowed to be half in, half out of the royal family.
What's not in the six-hour documentary?
The couple taking one moment of responsibility for their role in any of this.
They also don't reveal the name or any additional details of the supposed racist royal who questioned what skin color the couple's future children might have.
Joining me now to discuss what we've seen so far, Maureen Callahan, columnist for the Daily Mail.
Maureen, thank you so much for being back with us.
So now this is the whole thing.
I don't know about you, but I did manage to watch it.
I will say the second three hours I thought were more interesting than the first three hours, which bored me to tears.
Now finally, we got down to some juice, some dirt that they wanted to spew.
But I remain convinced that their number one complaint.
And they don't like the mean media.
The mean is mean, Maureen.
They're mean.
They wanted to say nice things about Megan.
This, I like you, I watched all three episodes today.
I really, you know, earning our paychecks this week, Megan, I think.
What to me, my biggest takeaway is that these two are their greatest offense is that they are boring.
They are, yes, seething with rage, with jealousy, with resentment.
They move about the world with a remarkable lack of self-awareness.
They cannot take a note of criticism.
And you are 100% right about the lack of accountability.
You know, these two such enlightened souls, these global humanitarians who talk so much about the importance of love and treating each other with kindness and giving back.
And, you know, my favorite phrase is standing in your truth and taking up space, all of this gobbledygook.
And there is, you know, for two narcissists, the lack of introspection.
I mean, maybe it's not that surprising.
They are narcissists, right?
So they're never in the wrong.
They're never going to put a foot wrong.
And to your point, I also was sort of my jaw was hanging open when Harry complained that his brother yelled at him during the Sandringham Summit with the queen.
Right.
Like grow up.
Okay.
First of all, whether it's true or not, if it's true, grow a pair.
You're a prince too.
Stand up for yourself.
You're a grown man.
You're not 12 anymore.
The whole thing, he's sort of weirdly effeminate and soft and incapable of actually sounding and acting like a man, but all of his rhetoric is very manly.
I had to protect my family.
I had to protect my wife.
I had to protect my, it's like, but what you're actually doing is crying in your soup over mean media articles, which they make it sound more.
You are in media.
I'm in media.
We live in this toxic world.
We know better than anyone how this works.
And having been the subject of a gazillion nasty articles, I have no sympathy for them.
I got to tell you, it's like, I too have been the target of, I don't care.
Life goes on.
You understand it's part of the deal.
And you don't spend your grown up life whining about it.
I could not agree with you more.
I could not agree with you more.
And, you know, this sort of avalanche of negative press that they keep carping on about, you know, is really quite a fiction.
In the beginning of this second volume of this reality series, we see an abundance of positive press.
They open with the wedding itself.
They open with, you know, Megan marveling that there were 115,000 people lining the streets and cheering.
We learn that not only did Charles enthusiastically walk Megan halfway up the aisle, but that the queen, when presented with this idea of having a gospel choir at the ceremony, which had never been done at a royal wedding before, she not only immediately greenlit the idea, but suggested that what they do was to take the best vocalists from every gospel choir in England and commingle them into one giant supergroup.
So, you know, again, these complaints, it's like they're rooting around for things to be aggrieved by, and it's, it's utterly perplexing.
On the list, this is one of the greatest.
They, they're unhappy with the cottage they lived in while at Kensington Palace.
Their facilities were too small, Maury.
Oh, I know.
And she was horrified.
Even Oprah, the other queen, was horrified by their living conditions.
Oh, I loved how they just casually dropped in.
Remember, Oprah came over for tea.
You know, I loved also when Megan casually dropped in.
Oh, Beyonce just texted me.
She said I was an agent for generational change and killing trauma.
That happened.
Like this.
That happened.
But it's like, what's great about it is the very next message in all these scenes is, poor me, poor us.
We had it so hard.
I want to show people a little bit of what you just said.
We've got that Beyoncé moment on tape.
This is hot eight.
Beyonce just texted.
Just checking.
Just checking him.
Just casual.
I just looked at him.
I still can't believe she knows what's going on.
No, it's okay.
She said, just wants me to feel safe and protected.
She admires and respects my bravery and vulnerability and thinks I was selected to break generational curses that need to be healed.
It's awesome.
This is after the Oprah interview.
Just so happens that she decided to read that and get that text when the cameras were rolling for their documentary.
Right.
Exactly.
And then my other favorite sort of quote unquote private moment they share is after the Oprah interview airs and they're in their kitchen and Harry or H, as Megan infuriatingly calls him, holds up his cell phone, his iPhone and she says, what?
And he says, it's a text from my brother.
And she gets up and she rolls her eyes and she says, I'm not going to say anything about your brother, but you know, it's your brother.
Yeah.
It's just, you know, like.
He's such an a jerk, he's such a it's, it's.
It's that kind of passive, aggressive shadow boxing that she does.
That is just just makes her so profoundly unlikable.
Meanwhile, the brother's gonna wind up king, and these two are gonna wind up a couple of podcasters in Montecedo.
So it's like okay, that's fine, I have a podcast, but you know I wasn't a royal, so it's not a lucky to get a podcast.
At this point I don't think Spotify is renewing Megan's archetypes for season two.
Oh, how could they?
It was unlistenable.
Yes, it was, and she's so.
Here's the other thing that jumped out at me, after they got out of the hideous palace, they're like, you know it's.
They say it's a palace, but if you, if you could just see our facilities you know they're so tiny, even Over was upset.
Um, so then they get out.
Tyler Perry plays a major role in part two, or he, he rescues them from the hell that is being a royal and he flies them out to Montecedo and he puts them up or, wherever they were in California, puts them up at his mansion.
There's a scene of Harry going, oh, it's so beautiful, you know it's so beautiful, and she's like.
You know it's not ours and he's like, but it could be.
Just let me just cut this hundred million dollar deal with Netflix and this could be ours and then Maureen.
The second part is it is they wind up at their Montecito mansion, which is 14 million bucks.
It's got nine bedrooms reportedly, it has stables, it has mountain views, it has the most beautiful grounds and vistas i've ever seen and massive gardens where the baby is picking the tomatoes with mama.
It's spectacular.
And in the midst of all this, there's a soundbite of Harry saying, all I ever wanted was this normal life.
Okay, they're so.
They have no self-awareness.
This is not.
This is not normal.
This is not anybody.
This is why we all hate you.
This is why the world crawling out of you know post lockdown trauma, dealing with runaway inflation hates you.
And I also loved so these two, who never tire of telling us how enthusiastically they are in pursuit of the most authentic life possible.
Right uh, they.
We see Harry and Megan leaving Vancouver, in their words, essentially fleeing with nothing but the clothes on their backs.
They had no plan in place which again, that's squarely on them.
Um, Harry says that they are en route to meet a friend they've never met yet, which I mean square in that circle and that person being Tyler Perry who, having never met them, simply offers up his mansion for, you know, an indefinite period of time that happens to all of us later turns around and asks him to be godfather to their second child,
a new Hollywood friend they barely know shades of.
I'm going to kick my beloved niece to the curb.
She can't come to my wedding, but these celebrities i've never met, such as George Clooney and Oprah Winfrey and the Beckhams, they're invited, You know, she's, so she asks Tyler Perry to be godfather and he has the temerity to say to her, well, if it's over in England with your crew, you know, the royals, I won't be doing that.
Right.
Like the royals are so disgusting who would spend time.
Meanwhile, they have everything, everything in their lives they owe to the royals.
Everything.
The only reason anyone cares what these two have to say, the only reason Netflix is getting a single viewer is because of the association with the royal family.
No one gave two damns about her when she was on suits.
And Harry's been interesting because he's a prince within this royal family.
Once they stop talking about the royals, no one's going.
That's why the Spotify podcast was so insufferable and bad and poorly rated because we don't actually care what she thinks about the world.
It's just their royal affiliation.
So how dare they portray it through Tyler's soundbite as if it's this disgusting thing with which they wouldn't, you know, they wouldn't go near it with a 10-foot pole now.
Right.
And you know why the Netflix series is as boring and difficult to watch as the podcast was to listen to?
It's because neither one of them actually have a discernible personality.
Neither one of them have anything original or interesting to say or to share.
That, you know, Harry doesn't have a personality and you can kind of understand it given, you know, the world into which he was born, the life into which he was born, his wealth and his privilege, his status, like that all sort of meant he never even really had to develop a personality.
You know, he was always going to be surrounded by people.
He was always going to be invited to the party.
Megan, not so much.
You know, she climbed her way up that ladder.
But, you know, the other infuriating thing about her is she continues to pretend she had no idea who Prince Harry was until she met him.
She continues to insist that she had never heard of this entity called the British royal family.
This scene in the, in last week's drop, when she mocks that curtsy to the queen, there's a reason that went viral.
It was so low and it was so emblematic to me of her gaping insecurity, which is her need to sort of bring down all things royal in order to elevate herself.
And it's like, well, you didn't seem to me making such a joke out of it when you were throwing a fit.
You didn't get the tiara you wanted for your wedding.
You thought those symbols were important, but I guess the curtsy to the queen was a bridge too far, which I don't even believe.
I believe she curtsied to the queen just like a normal person would.
And now she's just trying to revise the story so she can sound like, haha, I'm in on it.
I'm an American.
Screw the royal family.
I knew it from the start.
Now, here's the thing I wanted to ask you about.
There's a scene in this part two where she's talking about how she realizes what's happening, how she's been fed to the wolves.
And her friends are calling her up saying, Meg, they're not protecting you.
They're not protecting you.
Now, Maureen, as a person who's been in the press quite a bit in my career, often negative, sometimes positive, I have had people in my life who do this, who are like the, I'm so sorry.
Are you okay?
Are you okay?
And I learned pretty quickly in my career as a public figure, just right back to my friends, don't do that.
I don't need that.
I don't read press about myself for this very reason.
Like the press is going to do what we're going to do.
Bad Press and Racism 00:15:39
I'm part of it.
I have a foot in both camps, so I get it.
But I don't want your condolence texts.
That doesn't help.
She doesn't have the maturity to understand that.
In fact, to this moment, she's repeating it on air with Netflix in an effort to make us feel sorry for her.
And this was supposed to be her aha moment of how like she needed to fight back against this evil palace.
This is how the game works.
Any seasoned journalist is like, you know what?
Maybe the palace did dish dirt on them to deflect off of William and Kate.
I actually, I think a lot of British journalists are going to say that's not true.
I kind of believe it.
And I don't care.
I don't care.
This is how the game works.
Exactly.
It's the cost of doing business.
So what is Megan?
You can't be such a savvy, sophisticated, independent, rule-breaking Maverick figure while also being a total victim who doesn't understand how the game works and needs her friends in Hollywood to tell her that she is being taken advantage of by a media that she depicts as monolithic,
as moving in lockstep, which you and I both know is just completely, it's to even feign that level of naivete is ridiculous and a gross miscalculation.
You know, my other favorite thing about these two and their media tour over the past couple of weeks, and you're so right too about having, you know, a foot in both camps.
These two have a foot in both camps.
You can't castigate the media for being so barbaric to you and then go and cash checks from the biggest media entities on the planet.
Right.
Checks that are meant to pay for your family secrets and your personal torment and everything you're supposed to hold sacred.
But last week, when they were at the RFK gala getting honored for standing up to quote unquote institutional racism, one of the star columnists at the Daily Mail went right up to Gail King and said, do you believe that the royal family is racist?
And she said, no, of course not.
Alec Baldwin on the red carpet was asked, do you believe the royal family is racist?
He said, no, of course not.
So what are we all doing here?
Right.
They're still on it.
Here's, okay, there is an author.
I don't, forgive me, I don't, I'm not familiar, but his name is Kahindi Andrews.
And he's talking about that yet again in the second part, racism, racism, racism.
And she talks about how she was just shocked, shocked, shocked after the Oprah interview.
When she told us all she was suicidal at one point, that was supposed to be the lead, Maureen.
We were supposed to understand that was our lead.
That instead, the biggest takeaway was she accused the royal family of being racist.
Well, hello.
She knew very well that that was going to be the headline.
She's not an idiot.
Can't say I'm sure about Harry, but she's not an idiot.
She knew what racism, that that was going to be the takeaway.
Anyway, here's this author talking about, once again, this is all about race, the backlash against her five.
So the UK is perfect at doing this, right?
Nobody wants to be openly racist.
That wouldn't be civilized and that wouldn't be British.
But it's perfectly fine to kind of dog whistle, give a nug to.
He's a diva.
He's making people cry.
This kind of angry black woman trope.
He just really came to the fore really quite suddenly.
Okay.
I'm sorry.
Can I just say for the record?
I've been called all that stuff too.
All of it.
I'm not black.
It's like, and it's not even because I'm a woman either.
I'm in the public eye.
She's in the public eye times 10,000.
Like, why do they have to make it about color at every stage?
And it's such a terrible condemnation and such an unfair condemnation of Britain itself, of, you know, one of the most diverse countries in Western Europe.
It's an unfair and untrue condemnation of the royal family, which by Megan's own admission did nothing but fast track her in, welcome her in, try to get her to learn the ropes as quickly as possible.
As we saw in the beginning of that series, the media was just lavishing praise on her as a as a breath of fresh air and the power that she and Harry would have had, the kind of soft power, but real world power they could have had had they stayed.
their real issue, their real rage is that they would forever be second best.
They would forever be relegated to number two.
And they can't have that.
They can't, they constitutionally cannot stand it, neither one of them.
But they are running out of steam.
Tough it out.
Like nobody, does anybody even remember that Prince Charles has like yet another brother?
You got Andrew and then you got the youngest one.
I can't remember his name sitting here right now.
The brother of the heir leaves the news cycle eventually.
I'm sure there was a lot of press about him.
Like eventually they forget about you unless you start hanging out with pedophiles like Andrew did.
And then you're back in the news.
And this was going to happen to Harry too.
And according to Valentine Roy, this British author, Harry was dreading it.
He wanted to stay in the spotlight.
Well, guess what?
The bad comes with that good.
Let's spend a minute on the friend.
Okay.
I can't remember what her name is, but she's got the long hair.
She kind of has hair like Megan's hair.
And Abigail is the one who's like crying.
She's like crying.
She's like, yeah.
She was hurting.
And like, I couldn't do anything to protect her.
Abigail's money.
Okay.
And then these two actually try to blame Megan's miscarriage on her emotions, which is bullshit because now they're telling women worldwide, if you're stressed out, you're going to kill your baby, right?
If you're getting bad press, it could kill your baby.
Like there have been doctor statements on this, you know, like miscarriage in the very early part of pregnancy.
I'm not a doctor, but you don't bring that on by being too stressed out.
And so she want that Harry actually blames it on the royal family and the bad press.
Yeah, you know, one of the there, I will say there is one sort of fascinating aspect to watching this whole thing play out.
And it's this really, I think, sick dynamic that these two have with each other.
They really stoke the worst in each other and bring out the worst in each other.
So it feels as though Harry is sort of attempting to replay this trauma he endured in losing his mother in such a sudden, unexpected, tragic way.
And his default is to blame the media, you know, not her drunk driver, not that his mother wasn't wearing a seatbelt, none of that.
And Megan seems to also feed into this need he has to save the most important woman in his life, who now is Megan.
So there's this really weird scene in last week's part where they're in the back seat of this SUV and they're in New York City and they're being chauffeure from, as Megan says, from garage to garage.
And they spy, or so they say, one lone paparazzo on a bike, right?
Like one guy who's like on a scooter.
And Megan leans into Harry and she goes, safety first.
Oh my God.
It's so sick.
It's so sick, but like that's, they're in this weird little bubble they've created where like they're saving each other.
And then when they're through saving each other, they're going to somehow save the world.
And in doing so, they must need to somehow abolish the monarchy.
I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's outer limits.
It's out of limit.
There's self-talk in the midst of all of this is not, it's not empowering.
It's not, I always find it very empowering to say, what can I do better?
How can I fix my life?
What could I, what could I have done differently?
You know, that, that's empowering, actually.
And no, no, no.
This is, this is what they do.
They have a guided meditation, which of course, Maureen, they just happened to have on camera for us all.
She's an actress.
She brings the tears.
Let's not forget this is what she gets paid to do before she got married.
Sot seven brings us to what their messaging is about themselves.
When you try to prove that you're good and that you're not the person they say you are, you're taking the bait.
You're feeding the beast.
It is an illusion.
Your work is not to prove your goodness.
You know who you are, both of you.
And you just are good.
That's basically their message throughout is we are the good ones.
And every piece of bad press about us was a lie.
I know.
And that scene too is like, it's the bunny shot of the trailer originally was Megan wiping those tears off both cheeks as Harry threw his head back in like helpless exasperation.
And, you know, it sort of led you to believe they were having, they were in the middle of some real serious conflict with real stakes.
And no, it's the aftermath of some personalized guided meditation reinforcing all of their worst impulses.
And Megan, to that point about their self-talk being so negative, you're so right about that.
Because one of the other scenes that really stuck out for me in this morning's edition was Harry talking about the aftermath of their wedding and their first royal tour to Australia and then to South Africa and how they were kind of on this victory lap.
And he's, he, he's a little puffed up and you can tell he's like feeling himself a little.
And he says, I'm amazed at what we were able to accomplish in such a short period of time.
And Megan looks at him in utter somber seriousness and says, well, even more so because, you know, I was pregnant.
That was hard.
And you see Harry's face just fall.
It's like nothing can be a win.
Nothing can give them any joy.
They must be suffering at all hours of the day.
Also, like the insanity of her thinking, do you know what every working mother out there in America and the UK and beyond does when they're pregnant?
Shut up.
No one cares that you were pampered day and night and then you had to go out and be loved and adored by a bunch of people while you're shut the F up.
We all go to work every day.
It's very fucking hard.
I don't feel sorry for you.
You know, like I didn't have people bringing me my meals and rubbing my feet at the end of the day, as I guarantee you these two did.
No one cares.
Our sympathies aren't with you.
They are with the women who work two or three jobs just to put food on the table, who have husbands who aren't present, who are already supporting kids, who are with in shitty jobs and they're not going to get a vacation.
I don't care.
You know what I, she can't get over it.
And yet here's Harry.
Here's a little bit of this recalling like one of those tours and why the family, not the media, why the family turned on them because they were just that good.
It's Sat 2.
The issue is when someone who's marrying in who should be a supporting, a supporting act is then stealing the limelight or is doing the job better than the person who was born to do this.
That upsets people.
It shifts the balance.
Because you've been led to believe that the only way that your charities can succeed and the only way that your reputation can be grown or improved is if you're on the front pages of those newspapers.
But the media are the ones who choose who to put on the front page.
My God, they show for the listening audience, they're showing now King Charles, then Prince Charles, Kate Middleton, and the queen.
Those are the three this documentary is saying were overshadowed by Megan because the next scene is all Megan's covers about her.
So she overshadowed the queen, the now king, and Kate Middleton.
And those were the nasty, petty, jealous ones, apparently.
Right.
And Megan, she overshadowed them to such a degree.
Don't forget, she refrained from wearing bright colors for nearly her entire 72-day tenure as a working royal.
She made the supreme sacrifice to wear oatmeal, cream, beige, brown, just to blend in.
Yep.
She doesn't get any credit for that.
Thoughts and prayers, really.
Poor girl.
Poor girl.
There's so much goodness in here.
One of the biggest things, though, is the mismatch, like the juxtaposition of the sob story against the perfect curated life.
Every scene is curated.
Every friend is curated.
The soundtrack, which is borrowed right out of Down Janaby, you know, it's all supposed to be building this magnificent love story.
Like nobody has ever been loved more, Maureen.
These two, they're the number one lovers.
Against like this sad, everyone was mean.
And it ends with her absurd reading of her weird little wedding speech to him.
She read it out loud.
Wasn't it?
You know, that is also the thing I've been thinking about since watching both of these drops, this six hour wine fest is that really when you get down to it, they're both really weird.
They're weird.
They don't fit in the world.
Like they can't really, they can't move in the world the way other people can or do, nor do I think they want to.
I think that that in their sick sort of psyches would mean that they're actually one of us in some ways.
I think they really need to believe they're so much better and that they exist on this higher plane.
So maybe in that way, it's great that they've found each other.
It's a positive note.
Her self-talk and his like self-help talk.
I was turtling.
I was cocooning.
I recognize my unconscious bias.
This is what happens when you speak truth to power.
I'm like, oh my God, this is like spending the day with Ibra Mex Kendi.
Oh my God, I could do like a whole self-talk.
I wish I had picked up on that.
I could do like a whole column on that.
One of the words she used that I found really creepy.
She was talking about, okay, so she was talking about the people magazine cover that, I mean, only in Megan Markle's world, her friends, without her knowledge, engineered as a pick-me-up, right?
For all the bad press she was getting in the UK.
And then she turns around and says, that cover story was a mistake.
Who's responsible for this?
And she uses this really weird word.
She says, I was afraid that something in the papers, it was, she said, I thought it was planted there as a way to form like an imprint.
She used the word imprint as a noun.
She does that.
That's her thing.
And she uses nouns as verbs.
Weird Words and Nouns 00:02:05
It's so, it's so precious and annoying.
And just, again, for someone who's supposed to be so highly educated, it's all it's all this like soft sanded.
It's like what I call like the language of like morning shows, you know, that are hosted by these women who wear like necklaces with their children's initials and diamonds.
And they talk a lot of nonsense about like finding your power and standing in it or standing in your truth or taking up space.
There's a lot of verbs going with like vague nouns.
It's just, and it's, it's nonsense.
It means nothing.
It doesn't mean anything.
And that's where we're at with the discourse that we're being afforded with the Megan and Harry show.
Yeah, no, it is completely vapid.
It is empty.
It's as my husband would say, an air sandwich.
Here's the question now.
Where are we now?
Okay, so they finally, she said her hope a couple of years ago was for truth.
She wanted truth to prevail.
And then truth didn't bring her any peace, you see, Maureen.
So that's what this is about.
This is telling your story, taking control of your story.
That's going to bring her peace.
And you and I both know as a member of the media, this is not going to bring them peace.
They did not stand down the Daily Mail, the New York Post, you, me, the Sun, the tabloids, People magazine, anybody.
They didn't.
The Telegraph.
I could go on.
The media do not get deterred by you suing them, attacking them, playing the victim, and continuing to do ridiculous, absurd, self-aggrandizing, pathetic things.
Right.
You don't get to put yourself in the crosshairs and then complain that there's something pointed in your direction, right?
Yes.
So next, we're going to have the book, Harry's Memoir, which, you know, I'm sure promises more quote-unquote truth bombs in their parlance.
But I do think these two are running on empty.
I don't think they have any more content to give, nor do I think they've got like a smoking gun.
I think we would have heard this by now.
Media Attacks and Suing 00:02:35
Yes, I'll bet you they're saving the angry William text for his book, Spare, which comes out just a few weeks after Christmas.
It's like a belated Christmas present from them to the family.
So, so lovely.
Yeah, that's right.
She's probably next up.
She probably also was horrified by the size of their little cottage.
Maureen, I love reading you.
Everybody's got to read Maureen Callahan.
Every word is delicious to feast on.
So check out all of her columns.
You can check it out at Daily Mail.
Great to see you.
Great to see you, Megan.
All right.
We're going to have much more on all this when Dan Wooden joins us with the full reaction on tomorrow's show.
And we will be right back with Kirk Cameron.
Looking forward to this.
Stand by.
Doesn't that just take you back?
First of all, welcome back to the Megan Kelly Show.
That instantly takes me back.
And today we are super excited to have one of the stars.
I mean, the biggest star, let's be honest, of growing pains with us.
In the years since that huge hit show, he has become well known for his outspoken beliefs and faith.
He is a devoted family man and somehow has managed to make his marriage of 30 years work in Hollywood.
Along with his wife, Chelsea, Kirk Cameron has raised six, count them six children.
He's author of the new children's book, As You Grow, and he's host of the American Campfire Revival with Kirk Cameron podcast, which is really great.
If you are somebody, a person of faith who wants to sort of get back to what is it about our country that's so special, you'll love the American Campfire Revival.
Kirk, welcome to the show.
Thank you, Megan.
It's great to meet you.
Really an honor to be talking with you.
Thank you.
Likewise.
So that theme song really did bring me back.
And I want to take you, I'm sure you've heard this a million times, but you and I are almost exactly the same age.
You were born October of 1970.
I was born one month later, November of 1970.
So we're both 52.
Adoption and Family Choice 00:16:03
I was one of those starry-eyed young women.
I think I was like a tween when you were the big star on growing pains.
And can I tell you something?
You are the only fan letter I've ever written.
It was to you.
I sat, I hand wrote it out.
I was, all I remember was that I was trying to convince you to love me.
I was like listing my credentials, like what I had done in school.
I don't remember if I sent it, but I never got a response.
Megan, you did.
You sent it.
And that's why I'm here on your show right now is to finally reply after 35 years to say thank you, Megan, for your letter.
It was so sweet.
And I am going to send you the last remaining dreamy Mike Seaver pillowcase.
It should be arriving in the mail in about two days.
I can die now.
I'm good.
I forgive everybody.
You know, it's funny is if I had known that Megan Kelly was watching on the other side of that camera lens.
It's crazy to me to think about that now, not seeing you and all that you're doing and think Megan Kelly was watching.
I probably would have been more concerned about how I looked, what I said, all these sorts of things.
I have to confess.
That actually is meaningful to me.
I'm not going to lie.
You wound up marrying a different girl and I approved of your choice because she came on the show and she's your wife is like this preternaturally beautiful woman.
I mean, she's like kind of glowy.
You know, she's just this person.
And you're like, what?
How did this person get to be like this and emanate these kind of vibes in the world?
I wasn't surprised at all that you got married.
Well, you know, my kids are surprised that she married me.
My son says, dad, you really scored.
I mean, how did you, how did you pull that one off?
I mean, mom is amazing.
I know.
I know.
You know, it was a gift.
I fully admit it.
I'm going to find out one day.
She's, you know, she has wings.
She's secretly an angel.
Everyone who knows her thinks so.
But everybody at the time was like, it'll never last because you were 20 years old when you got married.
She's a few years older than you.
And everybody's like, there's no way it's going to last.
These are like Hollywood stars.
This is stupid.
You proved them all wrong.
So how did you do that?
I was.
We were 19.
I was 19 when we met.
And I thought to myself, man, there's no way.
I mean, she's out of my league in every way.
And then when I realized that we shared so many of the same values and the same faith, we were both new to our faith in God.
I thought, wow, this is amazing.
And I asked her out and she went out with me.
And pretty soon, like everything just fell in place.
And she said, yes, we got married.
I think at the end of the day, I understand that I married up and out of my league.
And that when I look around and I see the downward spiral that so many people are in, but families and marriages in generally speaking and culture, I recognize that I've got a great deal here.
And my wife is an amazing, priceless catch.
I tell my kids all the time, guys, don't worry about us ever splitting up.
If mom ever leaves me, I'm going with her because I'm never going to do better than this.
And truly, I mean, it truly, I'm grateful.
I recognize treasure when I see it.
The faith is huge.
That plays a big role.
If you connect over God in the midst of faith and nurture it in each other, in your lives, in your children's lives.
I'm not going to say none of those marriages fall apart, but it does make it tougher for them to fall apart.
I think you're right.
I think it is.
It is the glue that holds us together because we're both committed to something that's much bigger than our marriage or our happiness.
If marriage was simply a contract that says, Hey, you know, let's just keep this party going while I'm still happy with you, then we probably would have been over a long time ago.
But we look back and we say, Wow, I think that there has been a story that has been written over the last 31 years that is pretty great.
And we couldn't have written this ourselves.
We just trusted in the author who was writing the story, and it involved six beautiful kids.
Four of our kids are adopted.
I've learned so much from my wife by honoring her, listening to her, understanding that I need her.
And it's not good for me to be all alone.
And I think that she recognizes similar things, and we're better together.
So, trusting in the author of marriage and life and doing things according to the manual, which for us is the Bible, has really served us well.
And I can honestly say, I can't wait for the next 31 years.
Grandbabies are on the way.
Aw, I know your kids are getting older now.
I have this on my sheet.
I don't know, they're like between 19 and 27.
Is that right?
That's right.
Yeah, that's right.
Yep, our baby's 19.
And I mean, my youngest child has a beard.
It's amazing to me how fast this all goes by.
And they've all moved out of the house.
So it's empty nest syndrome.
Although we're really excited that the house is going to be filled back up with them at Christmas.
So as you can see, we've got the Christmas decorations up here at the fireplace and very excited for everybody to come home.
Now, the thing about adopting children, good friends of mine adopted both of their kids and they wrestled for so long with infertility and they were devastated.
And I don't think that was your situation, but they were devastated that they weren't going to be able to have their own biological children.
And then they wound up adopting two little girls.
And I remember them saying, if only we knew when we went through all the emotional turmoil of not being able to have our own, how you just totally forget it's a nothing once you have this child, it is a nothing that you're not genetically connected to this person.
I've read you say you forget which of your kids was adopted and which, because you wound up having two biological children after you adopted four as well.
So speak to that a little.
Yeah.
Well, adoption is a very special part of our family.
And my wife is an adopted child herself.
So was her brother.
So when we started the conversations about having our own kids, we started with how about adoption?
And we knew that there were thousands and thousands of babies out there who are needing parents.
And Chelsea was, you know, on the receiving end of two loving people who adopted and gave her a great family.
So we thought, why don't we start our family through adoption?
And so we actually chose voluntarily to adopt our first four children.
And we were going down that road and it was great.
I mean, we adopted Jack and Bella and Anna and Luke and they were all infants when we adopted them, all here domestically.
None of them are biologically related.
And it was wonderful.
One year apart.
So when Chelsea told me one day that she was pregnant, I was like, wow, we weren't really expecting that or planning on that.
But we were thrilled.
Chelsea had Olivia and then about a year later, she was pregnant with James.
So we had six children, seven years old and under.
So if you can imagine, you know, getting up and going to school or going to the grocery store with six car seats or five car seats in the 15-passenger van while Chelsea's pregnant and I'm off traveling on the road somewhere.
So again, this is just increasing the angel factor of my wife.
She is a rock star.
And those were great days.
And then when they all become teenagers, those are even crazier days.
So, you know, I mean, think of having a 20-year-old, 19, 18, 17, 16, and 15-year-old.
No, no, I'd rather not.
Now you know, now you know why we pray.
It's the only way forward.
It's the only way forward.
All right, I have to ask you because we just mentioned Ibram Kendi in our first segment, and it made me think of you because some of your children, if I'm not mistaken, are mixed race or of they're not white.
And, you know, there's this growing message by some on the left, including him, that there's something suspicious or problematic about white couples who adopt black babies or mixed race babies.
Now, he claims he didn't mean to impugn Amy Coney Barrett, who did the same when he tweeted out during her confirmation hearing, some white colonizers adopted black children.
They civilized these savage children in the superior ways of white people while using them as props in their lifelong pictures of denial while cutting the biological parents of these children out of the picture of humanity.
And then he goes on to say, whether that's Barret or not is not the point.
It's a belief too many white people have.
If they adopt or have a child of color, then they can't be racist.
I wonder if you've ever had any weird pushback like that on your beautiful decision to adopt a child irrespective of his or her race in your life.
Well, you think that the human race has evolved past that kind of ludicrous thinking.
And surely at this point that we have, I think there are those who still profit off of the old ways of thinking and perpetuating a victim mentality.
I can just tell you that in our family, we've got this beautiful array of colors of skin.
And the idea that some of our kids have more melanin content in their skin than I do just makes it interesting.
And all of the other factors that come through adoption.
I mean, some of our kids are incredibly musically talented.
I'm not.
Some of our kids are very academic.
Some of them are very people or sports oriented.
And all of this comes from all of this genetic hodgepodge that's all come together in this beautifully, this beautiful tapestry called the Cameron family.
And adoption's been wonderful for us.
And it was never an issue growing up.
You literally just, I see my kids.
I don't see the color of their skin.
Some of them have a better tan than I do and other characteristics.
But it's when they get out into the world and people start to say things to you like, oh, you know, which ones are yours?
Or which ones of these are your kids?
And they say that sort of like mindlessly in front of the kids who know exactly what they're saying.
And so you just sort of want to go, hello.
Clueless.
Are you aware of what you're saying?
Yeah, there's a possibility here.
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
So, you know, I love how our families come together.
I love adoption.
I think adoption is at the heart of God.
It's Christmas time and it's not lost on me that even the baby Jesus was the result of an unplanned pregnancy from Mary's human point of view.
And Joseph, full of love for Mary and faith in God, adopted and raised that baby boy as his own son.
And as a result, here we are 2,000 years later, celebrating salvation, redemption, and new beginnings for humanity.
So I'm just all in on adoption.
I love it.
Highly recommend it.
In fact, I just made a movie about it called Life Mark based on a true story that came out this summer.
And it's now available to everybody else everywhere else.
So supervision adoption.
If you adopt first, and then, you know, as you say, the last two babies may have been a surprise, but if you adopt first, your adopted children never have to worry whether you really wanted to adopt, you know, whether they were sort of an astrobot, whether they were like, forgive the term, but like a charity case.
That wasn't it at all.
Right.
When you bring them in first, the messaging is very clear.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
And that wasn't even on our minds, but you're right.
It's like, hey, we actually chose you.
We actually wanted you and we couldn't be more thrilled.
And we were praying for you.
And I remember the time that my wife had this incredible conversation with my son and other three kids in the car.
She was pregnant with Olivia and she was in the 15-passenger van.
And there's a four-year-old in the back seat, a three-year-old, a two-year-old, and a one-year-old.
Chelsea's pregnant.
And our four-year-old was getting excited about the fact that a new baby was coming and growing in mommy's tummy.
And he said to my wife, So, mom, whose tummy was I in?
And that's when she took a deep breath and she looked in the rearview mirror and she said, Well, here it is.
Here's the big conversation.
And she explained to him, Jack, I don't know her name, but I feel like I know her because she's a part of you and I love her.
And I'm so thankful to her because she loved you and she carried you for nine months in her tummy, even though she knew that one day you were meant to come to me and to dad.
And we were praying for a little boy just like you.
And God sent an angel who knew that lady whose tummy you were in and she knew us and she connected us together so that when you were born, you were delivered right into our arms where you were supposed to be.
And we hope to meet her one day, but just know that she's a very special woman.
And Jack just looked up back up at her and he goes, Oh, and he looks back down and starts coloring in his coloring book.
That was it.
There was no weirdness.
There was no like, you know, crisis of identity.
It was done.
And we moved on.
And they take their cues.
It's been wonderful that way.
Of course.
They take their cues from you.
That's right.
Whether this is something that's right.
They pick up on your vibes.
All right.
Stand by because there's much much more to get to.
I want to talk about kind of leaving Hollywood and what that's done for you and your family right after this quick break with Kirk Cameron Stays with us.
So, Kirk, let's talk about leaving Hollywood, at least figuratively.
I think at some point, relatively young, you realized this may not be the town center of a moral and well-led life.
And you must have had to wrestle with that given you're coming to faith.
So talk about that event.
As I look back on those days, it was so exciting because not only was I on this hit TV show called Growing Pains, but I had just met the love of my life.
We talked about Chelsea a little bit earlier.
And to tell you the truth, I couldn't wait.
I couldn't wait to get married.
I couldn't wait to go on a honeymoon.
I couldn't wait to honestly start the new chapter because I had recently come to faith in God, which was an exciting thing for me.
In fact, I thought everybody would be excited about it.
You know, so many, so often you see teenage actors wind up living a life that ends up being a train wreck.
And we feel so bad for these kids who don't have any moral guidance.
They grow up and they wind up with a gun in their hand or you see their mug shot on some tabloid magazine in jail.
And here I'm like, no, I want to love God.
I used to be an atheist.
Now I'm believing that we're actually here on purpose for a purpose and that there's a loving creator and that my job in life is to love other people well.
You'd think, at least I thought, everybody'd be excited about that.
And then there were times where people were like, no, you're going to try to like pull this celebrity muscle combined with some new religious, you know, passion that you're going to try to force on other people and change the show.
And I'm like, no, really, I'm not.
I just have, I, I just want to do my job, go home and be with my girlfriend and, you know, just plan my life.
From Atheist to Believer 00:04:34
But that ruffled so many feathers that it was uncomfortable working on growing pains in the last couple of years.
And so I was really looking forward to moving on.
And when I got married to Chelsea, it wasn't like I wanted to leave Hollywood, but Growing Pains was over.
And so we started another show.
It was a spin-off called Kirk that lasted about a year and a half on a network called the WB Network.
And as I continued to make choices that lined up with the stuff I was passionate about, family-valued things, things that would reflect sort of the priorities of truth, goodness, and beauty in the projects that I chose, I found that new doors were opening, other doors were closing.
And so maybe I didn't take Leonardo DiCaprio's career path or Brad Pitt's career path, both of whom, by the way, were on Growing Pains in early episodes.
But I took a path that now has me married for 32 years, six children, parts of projects that I'm passionate about.
And I feel like I'm pushing back the darkness.
I'm making inroads for light.
And I'm talking to Megan Kelly on her podcast.
So this has not been a bad deal for me.
Right, right.
Not at all.
It's just a question of where you place your priorities and your energy and what you get back.
I mean, I will say, you don't have to say it, but I will say, you know, Leonardo DiCaprio is in the news every week for the fact that he won't date anybody over the age of 24.
He stretched it most recently with, I think, one of the Hadid sisters, who's now 27.
That's as old as he'll go.
He's like our age.
He's slightly younger than we are.
It's weird.
And I would submit it's really not the life that God would want him to lead.
That's my judgment.
I'm in the news business, so I pass judgment.
Look what you've done, you know, with your children and your beautiful wife and all this.
And I heard you say, actually, my producers pulled this soundbite.
I'll play it because I thought this is a great point.
That Hollywood is not, it's not exactly secular.
It's not as secular as you might think.
And here's Kirk's spin on that.
It's soundbite 18.
The truth is, Hollywood is not secular.
It's as religious as anywhere else.
They just worship different gods.
So please do tell.
Like Hollywood, you know, the most common deity is self, right?
That I put myself up on a throne in Hollywood.
That is so true.
It's not that they don't worship.
It's just somebody else is on the throne.
That's it.
Yeah, I think that's still true.
I think it's always true.
I think it's inescapable in the human experience.
We're going to put somebody on the throne.
It's either going to be in a posture of humility and reverence saying thank you for life and breath and friends and family and health and everything else, or it's going to be the state.
It's going to be the government.
And we're going to have a supreme leader like you might have in North Korea or Germany or whatever.
Pick your scary supreme dictator.
Or it might be a group of people or it may be yourself.
And the me monster is often the most dangerous because when you exalt yourself, everything else becomes second and the world sort of exists to serve you and your happiness.
And I've found, and my wife says this to our kids all the time, kids, your focus determines the outcome.
Me, misery, others, joy.
Wow, well said.
It's so true as well.
As long as if you're feeling blue and you're writing your gratitude journal or you write down three things you're grateful for, or you go out and you volunteer and you help somebody else, that's an instant pick-me-up.
And more than a drug, more than a therapy session, more than anything.
Yeah, well, you're right.
And the older that I get, I learned things that I was wrong about things before.
And I learned that that is absolutely true.
You serve other people rather than looking for everyone to serve you.
And start your day out with a great big bowl of gratitude for breakfast.
And you're on the right road.
And regardless of your circumstances, you can have peace of mind.
You can have a joyful heart.
And these are the kinds of things that I want to live by and I want to teach my kids.
So I got to live by example and put the stuff into practice, not just talk the talk, but I've got to walk the walk too.
You got to walk the walk.
Freedom in America 00:07:15
So let me ask you about Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt being on Growing Pains.
Was there any like, was there a hint of greatness there?
Did you see?
You know, were you like, oh, yeah.
Really?
Oh, totally.
Oh, yeah.
You could see it.
We knew.
And, you know, Hollywood is, it's kind of this small world.
There's a, there's a million actors.
I think there's, it's hard to work in Hollywood, just because there's so many.
And I think that, I think the statistic is something like 90% of all SAG actors on any given day are unemployed, looking for work.
And so I don't know all the reasons for that, but certainly the ones who are working, you know, the good ones stand out.
And so Leonardo DiCaprio was a bright, shining star on our set at 14 years old.
He was the cute little kid who we brought in to sort of bring new life to the storylines.
All the little kids on Growing Pains, Mike, Ben, and Carol, were now grown up.
I was, what, I don't know, maybe 19 years old, 20 years old.
And so I couldn't be sneaking out of the house anymore as the rascally teenager.
And so they brought in a new one.
And it was Leonardo DiCaprio, who lived in the janitor's room at Dewey High School.
And he was just awesome.
I mean, he just had a maturity about him.
He had an intrigue about him.
And he had a natural, authentic quality about his acting that was just different and unique.
And we all knew that he was going to go places.
And then he did whose basketball diaries and yeah, Gilbert Grape.
And when he did those and he's working with De Niro and these, these other amazing actors, we thought, wow, Leo is going places.
This is really cool to watch.
So we were cheering him on way back on the set of Growing Pains.
Now, much closer to home, you have a star in your family, your family of origin.
Candace Cameron Burr is your sister.
And she's also a huge star.
My crack producer, Kelly, tells me that she actually starred in like the most successful movie on Hallmark Christmas movie ever, Christmas Under Wraps, under Hallmark's most successful Christmas movie ever.
So that's impressive.
And now she's jumped ship and she's gone over to a new competitive sort of, you know, sort of the non-woke answer to the Hallmark channel.
And I think this is actually an interesting experiment that they're doing over there because it's the guy, Bill Abbott, who used to run Hallmark is now running Great American Family Network, which is run by a friend of mine, Tom Hicks.
Well, in part, he's got an ownership interest.
And their answer, because Hallmark started getting like a kind of, look, you could say woke, you could just say more progressive, but they were not sticking to sort of the more traditional messages.
And Bill Abbott got in trouble over speaking out over it.
He's now running this other network.
And Candace is the chief content officer for the other one.
And she got in trouble recently.
She gave an interview with the Wall Street Journal.
And of course, they asked her if she expects her new channel to feature same-sex couples as leads in holiday movies.
She said, no, quote, I think the Great American Family will keep traditional marriage at the core.
Well, you're not allowed to say that, as she found out.
And there was all this blowback on her with people like One Tree Hill actress Hillary Burton Morgan calling her a bigot.
I mean, it was just, it was ugly.
So what do you make of the blowback that Candace got on that?
Do you think it was fair?
Well, I've known Candace my whole life.
And it was sort of amazing to me because like there's nothing to talk about here.
Candace is a person who's built an entire career on being the kindest, the sweetest, the most compassionate, the most loving toward all people, regardless of their color, their creed, their religion, their beliefs, and all of that.
And people know that.
So the fact that she wants to be working with a group of people that highlights things that she loves and celebrates and believes in, doesn't everybody do that?
I mean, aren't there other people with other worldviews and beliefs that are really into their thing that they want to highlight and make their projects around those values?
Yes, absolutely.
And Candace's values reflect the values of millions and millions of people across the country and around the world.
That's why they love her so much.
I mean, I go places and she's referred to as just as the Hallmark movie queen.
People love her movies just because they make them feel good.
You know, they get on their Hallmark sweater to sit down and watch their Hallmark movie that's starring my sister Candace.
And that people would make some sort of a controversy over her wanting to celebrate and highlight movies and storylines that she really believes in is, yeah, that's crazy to me.
I don't think they're mad at the comment.
They're mad at the belief.
And this is something that always mystifies me.
You know, I have a lot of friends who are in gay and lesbian marriages that I support, but I also understand the objection by people who are deeply Christian, deeply faithful to anything other than traditional marriage.
And honestly, like most of you think about like Dave Rubin, he's a friend of mine.
He's in a gay marriage.
He wouldn't object to, he would understand Candace.
He would understand, I'm going out on a limb and taking a risk for how he feels, but he'd say, that's fine.
You know, my marriage to my husband can be featured on Hallmark or someplace else.
Not every channel needs to celebrate my choice.
And I understand there's room in this country for people who have their own beliefs.
But now, you know, among some sects, it's you're no longer allowed to have your belief because your belief offends me.
Yeah, that's right.
That's one of the things I love about our country, right?
I mean, when we really go back to the very, to the very root of all of this, we have enough room within our country, as you just said, Megan, for different communities to have a different set of beliefs and different states.
I mean, we have so much diversity that exists within this country that we have room for all of this.
And so if you go to a place that is 100% dogmatic in their religious view or in their, you know, a dictatorship or something like that, where you don't have freedom of speech, you don't have freedom of religion, freedom of expression, financial freedom, political freedom, religious freedom, you don't even have these conversations because it's, you know, stuff's just not allowed at all.
But here in America, the fact that you can even have a press that makes comments like this and creates stories that don't make sense coming from someone like my sister Candace just shows that we live in a very special place with lots and lots of freedom.
And people need to, I think, have a lot more respect for that and understand the precious and rare gift we have here to be able to live in different ways and speak our mind.
Right.
It'd be one thing if Great American Family Channel was the only channel on earth.
And so, if it's not represented on that channel, no one's ever going to see what a gay marriage looks like or what, you know, whether you can see a happy union like that.
There's plenty of options out there.
It's all over.
Like, it's not, we are not living in 1950 anymore.
It's 2022 and gay marriage is very well represented and celebrated on most channels now.
Respect for Different Paths 00:15:34
So, in any event, it reminded me of something though with you, because one of the secrets to your marriage is not only do you absolutely love and revere one another, but you are not one of those actors who's running around doing the hot, steamy sex scenes with actresses who aren't named Chelsea.
Like, you got a thing where you will only kiss your wife even on the air.
Like, you're not making out with other actresses if a scene calls for it.
Is that is that true?
Uh, yeah, that is true.
Um, I like that.
Unfortunately, well, you know, I do too.
And I think my wife appreciates it too.
Here's an example.
Um, here's, here's an example.
You know, I um worked on a movie called Fireproof, and Fireproof is a movie all about marriage.
And it's about the story of a firefighter who's doing great at his job.
I mean, the guy's a rock star.
He can put out burning buildings, but his marriage is going up in flames at home and he can't fix it.
And his dad gives him this book called The Love Dare.
And it's a 40-day challenge to see if he's man enough to love his wife unconditionally, regardless of her response for 40 days.
And it gives him a thing to do every day.
And it wrecks him.
He can't do it.
And he finally recognizes that the problem isn't his wife.
It's him.
It's his own selfishness.
And then he gets right with his wife and he reconciles with her in the fire station.
It's a beautiful romantic scene where they run toward each other in slow motion and she says, I want to grow old with you.
Is it too late?
And they have this beautiful kiss.
Well, I said, you know what?
This is something that I've stood at an altar and said that I would only do with my wife.
And call it make-believe or not, I know how this would make me feel if I saw my wife doing this.
And so we redid things, flew my wife out.
She put on a wig that matched the actress's hair in the movie and she wore that dress.
We shot the scene in a silhouette, so you couldn't tell.
But when I'm kissing my wife in the movie, I'm actually kissing my wife Chelsea on screen, not the actress who played my wife.
And some people actually thought that was such an inconvenience to the production and an offense to them personally that sort of I wasn't professional enough to just go with the flow and the status quo.
And they really gave me a hard time.
And I thought, you know, I've got to choose my priorities here.
I'm not nearly as concerned about what the industry thinks or what these individuals think.
I'm much more concerned about what my wife thinks because I want my marriage to last and be solid.
And I've got six kids.
We've got a lot of skin in the game.
And I don't want to do anything that's going to potentially injure my marriage.
In fact, I want to honor it.
So that's just been a conviction of mine.
And nobody else has to copy that, but it's one that is important to me.
I love the whole thing.
And I want to talk about it more.
Let me play the clip.
We actually have it from this movie where they'll see the kiss, the people who watch it on YouTube.
Your producers are amazing.
Oh my gosh, good old Kelly.
I've got Canadian Debbie, Canadian Kelly.
And Kelly's your big fan.
And she queued this up.
It's SOT 19.
And I want what happened to you to happen to me.
It can't.
Is it too late to ask you to grow old with me?
There it is.
There's the kiss right there.
Can't tell you can't tell it's not the actress.
It's well done.
Oh, that's sweet.
My other producer, Canadian Debbie, just said in my ear, I bet Jennifer Anison wishes Brad Pitt had the same rule when they were married.
Yeah, you know, it's right.
I mean, I mean it's it's, it's amazing um, that there are things that we really ought to consider sacred in the world.
I, I think, and and so many things is like we just don't treat them that way and I, I think we regret it later.
Um, and and I don't, you think I can look back on my life and say yeah, that's true, in the same way like i've.
I've interviewed felons.
You know people who serve time for serious crimes, and i've had this conversation a few times where, if you, crossing the first ethical line is actually the biggest deal it's, it's a bigger deal than the bigger ethical lines.
You cross down the line right, because there's sort of a before and after moment like I, I will do this or I won't do this.
And I understand kissing for a movie role is acting, but let's be honest, i'm sure in a lot of those circumstances there is a spark.
You're, you're only human.
I realize there's people on the set, the whole bit, but come on, and i'm referencing the Brad Pitt thing because that he, you know, supposedly fell in love with Angelina while they were making that movie, Mr And Mrs Smith together, which is very hot and heavy.
So I, I too, would not want to see my husband kissing another woman, even if it were for show, and I too would feel like it was crossing a line that i'm sure he would not want me to cross and would probably try, if I were an actress, to avoid roles that required that of me.
Yeah, and it's important to me also to point out that um I, I love what you're saying and I I I um I I, I respect you for feeling that way um, and at the same time, I want people to know that, like you know, listen carefully uh, neither me or Megan are saying that.
Like, this is a moral standard that we're trying to impose on you and everybody else and um no, this is something that I, that I want to do, that's important to me and to my wife and that has served us well and um, I want to keep making decisions like that.
You know what.
It reminds me of um Mike Pence and all the blowback he got when he said he wouldn't have a meeting alone with a woman you know, not his wife yeah, and I understood.
Trust me as a, as a woman of the 21st century, I get what people were like, oh my god, what's he saying?
He can't control himself, or women are gonna be throwing themselves at him.
Like, grow up, this is.
You know, women are everywhere in modern day uh America, in the business world.
But he's not totally wrong.
Having grown up in the legal industry and then the news industry, they can be incestuous businesses and you add alcohol to the mix and, before you know it, you're down a road you wish you weren't down.
It's like, instead of just completely beating the guy up, why didn't more people pause and say, maybe there's like a pearl of wisdom there to be gleaned for people?
Yeah yeah, you know, somebody put it to me this this way, uh, one time that it, you know it's, it's.
It's like one of the places I love to go is Yosemite.
And there's a place called Tuolumne Meadows.
And there's a very windy, dangerous road that leads you there here in the Sierra Nevadas out here on the West Coast.
And there's maybe a 2,000 foot cliff that you go over if you get too close to the edge of that road.
I'm not going 50 miles an hour up against the guardrails creating sparks on that thing just because I think it's fun.
I'm going to hug the other side of the road because the reward at the top is much, much greater than the thrill of riding the guardrails.
And I don't want to take that kind of a risk.
And I feel that way in my marriage.
I feel that way also in my faith and with my children.
There's way too much at stake here.
And the reward is too great when I finish well.
And I don't want to lose that.
I think to one of your other points, Megan, this was cool that you brought this up.
I think my faith in God also plays a great role in the ability to make decisions like that that might cost me a bit in my career.
Like, for instance, one of the concerns was, wow, man, Kirk, if you don't cross some of these moral lines that you've drawn for yourself, these ethical boundaries that, you know, they're not universal.
You're sort of making this up.
You may lose a job.
You may burn a bridge.
And this may affect your career and your income.
At the end of the day, that's true.
I'm sure that there's roles that I've lost because, oh, Kirk has content issues or Kirk's got some moral boundaries and that's ridiculous.
But my faith is not in Hollywood's ability to make me happy and successful because of their approval of me.
Therefore, I got to do what they say.
My faith is in a God who put me here for a reason that is much bigger than Hollywood and that he will take care of my family and my reputation is what's important to me.
I want to, I'm here on the stage of the world for a short period of time.
My job is to play my role well.
And then I trust the one who's watching over me.
I hear you.
It definitely hurt you in your book deal because I saw the story on Fox.
I love the story.
Forgive me.
I love, as a news person, I love it because you have a book out.
It's a children's book and it's called As You Grow.
And it celebrates faith, family, and biblical wisdom.
Well, Fox News has the report out that over 50 public libraries.
This is spectacular.
Have either outright rejected you or not responded to requests on your behalf for you, Kirk Cameron, a big star, to show up and do a story hour on your book about faith, family, and biblical wisdom.
The same libraries that are actively offering drag queen story hours or similar programs for children and young people.
Some of these library programs, according to Fox, promote gender fluidity, inclusion, and diversity.
Others offer name change clinics for older teens and adults who want to alter their paperwork for gender identity reasons.
They went down and called a bunch of these libraries.
Fox News Digital did.
Providence, Rhode Island.
No, we're passing.
We're a very queer friendly library.
We don't want him.
Another one, Roche and Bo Public Library.
They promote a regular offering for young people called Queer Umbrella.
They didn't want you.
City Heights Weingart Branch Library in San Diego.
No, we host LGBTQ, blah, 40 letters events.
We don't want Kirk Cameron.
And on down the list, and then we go deeper into your book.
The books are part of a series.
It teaches on things like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control.
I can see why they didn't want this.
What?
What were you thinking writing books like that?
Crazy.
I mean, it's not like children in public schools today are struggling with mental illness, drug overdoses, cyberbullying, and school shootings and could use a book on kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control.
What was I thinking?
Right, right.
They're not going to want that.
Why wouldn't we want to hear a story hour about that?
We need to see somebody guy, some guy gyrating in front of our four-year-olds.
You know, what's interesting about this is that it's highlighting the moral war that's going on here and how who could be opposed to values like this?
I don't think it is a misalignment of messaging per se, but I think that the messaging is misleading from some of these libraries and groups where tolerance is actually a cloak for totalitarianism.
If we don't like your idea, you're out.
We don't have room for you.
Your messaging is not welcome here.
And coexisting feels to me to be more like a cloak for conquest of ideologies and worldviews.
And all I'm asking for is to be able to use the same space that other people have used in the same way to teach children wisdom through their seasons of their life as they go through difficult times, happy times, sad times, challenging times, and learn to develop patience and kindness and perseverance so that they can flourish as humans.
Truly radical.
That's just a lot of stuff.
But here's the good news.
The good news, Megan, is that parents and grandparents and librarians are rising up, speaking up.
They're calling.
They want the book because they want to host their own story hour in their own public libraries.
And we've taken it to the next step.
Actually, I've written letters to some of these libraries that you mentioned, telling them, but I hope that this is a misunderstanding.
I sent them a free copy of the book to review, to give to their patrons, whatever, and that I'd like to come in and actually read the book and will pay the fees and go through the regulations.
And that if they don't change their mind and want to continue to exclude certain viewpoints, I'm prepared to assert my constitutional rights in court.
And we're looking forward to being able to go to those libraries soon.
Oh, wow.
That'll be a fun showdown for the librarians, too.
We'll be covering that as it unfolds.
Now, you mentioned something a couple of times: totalitarianism, the absence of faith leading to the worship of other false gods.
And this brings me to COVID and what's happened to our country, because I have to tell you, deeply admired this.
I was very hardcore and remain hardcore anti-mask mandate.
I'm also anti-mask for myself and people I love, but I'm really anti-mask mandates.
I really think it's such an intrusive thing.
I'm anti-vaccine mandates too.
So you took a stand early on in the pandemic.
It was, I think, December of 2020 and did something radical.
You hosted a gathering.
Masks.
You are radical.
And we have a clip of the crazy helicopter news coverage of your event.
It's just a good reminder, too, of how insane people were over this issue and really kind of remain, especially in California.
But here's a walk down memory lane for you.
It looks like actor Kirk Cameron may be hosting another large Christmas gathering.
Let's go to Air 7HD and Chris Christie for the details.
Chris?
Yeah, Colleen, that's what we're hearing.
He has announced that he is, well, he's told people to plan on this event.
It's a caroling event outside of the Oaks Mall.
We're looking at about 75 to 100 carolers, not one of them wearing a mask.
By the way, there are children, there are senior citizens, and everything in between here.
We are again outside the mall, but directly next to a COVID testing site.
So clearly, a crusade of a COVID denialist outside the whole thing, by the way, outside.
You know, Megan, this was one of the most joyful things that people had done in months in our community because, you know, here in the communist state of California, under our governor, Gavin Newsom, we were essentially under house arrest for so long.
We were stuck, not just for the initial 14, 15 days, but then the governor says, we're in lockdown.
You can't go to school.
You can't go to your business.
You can't go to the store.
You can't go to church.
And people were just going crazy.
The mental health issues, the anxiety, the depression, the suicide.
And all people wanted to do was to find somebody who said, look, the fear virus is worse than the COVID virus.
How about you join me outside and let's sing Hark the Herald Angel Sing at Christmastime.
And by the way, you don't have to come if you don't want to.
Lockdown Madness and Anxiety 00:03:10
Nobody's forcing you.
It's voluntary.
And we're outside in the fresh air.
Come get some fresh air if you want to.
If you're not afraid, join me and let's sing a little town of Bethlehem and joy to the world.
And you'd have thought that we were burning down the mall.
Yes.
And you would have helicopter coverage.
Actually, remember, that was during the times of some of the season of riots.
And maybe if we had actually thrown chairs through windows and like lit things on fire, they wouldn't have, they wouldn't have covered it so much.
Well, and the medical community told us you couldn't get COVID.
If you were riding, you couldn't get COVID.
So, yeah, if you'd gotten just a little more violent, you would have been fine.
Yeah.
So, gosh, I just, I just think that critical thinking is in short supply these days.
Common sense is not so common.
And with all of the censorship that has gone on, particularly through all of the pandemic and all of that, and now we're seeing all this stuff with the election and Elon Musk and Twitter and all these things, all of us start to go like, you know, people are finally waking up going, really, really?
I didn't think.
I mean, you know, how could this be bad?
If the governor is telling me to do this, it must be good for us.
Well, all we have to do is read history a little bit and we understand that government is, it's got its lane, but once it gets out of its lane, it becomes very dangerous.
And the government is not here to be in charge of your health care or mine or the education of our children and most other things.
And that's why it's important to read the Constitution to understand the difference between sphere sovereignties.
You have family, you have church, you have government.
And there are walls of separation that are very important between them so that you don't have a government like the Pilgrims had in England, where your king becomes the head of your church and he determines everything you do from cradle to the grave.
That's what the uniqueness of America is.
We turned the world upside down and put the power and authority into the hands of the people to govern themselves rather than to be beaten into submission by a dictator, a king, or a czar.
And we lose those liberties all too quickly if we don't stand up and fight for them.
The series for the book, again, is called As You Grow.
You can get it despite the objections of your possible local librarian.
And the podcast is American Campfire Revival.
It's a great name.
Every episodes come out Tuesday and Thursday.
Talks about faith, history, the Bible, answers questions like, what made America so special?
And listening to Kirk Cameron, you can hear not only does he understand what the proper answers are, but he's part of it.
You are part of what has made my America so special, Kirk Cameron.
It's really, it's thrilling to meet you.
Thank you so much for being here.
Hey, Megan, thank you.
Great to be talking with you.
Thanks for all the great work that you do.
And Merry Christmas.
Yeah, Merry Christmas to you and yours as well.
All the best.
Okay, that was fun.
I'm happy that Dr. Jay Bhattachari is going to be back on.
He's going to talk about the news this week about the lunatics at Twitter suppressing him in particular.
Download the show so you don't miss it.
Follow us on YouTube as well.
Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show.
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