The Megyn Kelly Show - 20230103_mccarthys-speaker-fight-and-horrific-nfl-injury-wi

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Jan. 3, 2023 - The Megyn Kelly Show

01:34:53

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Critical NFL Injury After Tackle 00:15:01
	Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
	Hey, everyone, I'm Megan Kelly.
	Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show.
	We begin today with a shocking story that happened last night.
	A 24-year-old NFL player is now in critical condition following a seemingly routine tackle during last night's Monday night football game.
	First, a warning for those watching this on YouTube: the video we're going to show you is tough to watch.
	You see the Buffalo Bills, DeMar Hamlin, make a tackle, get up, and then three seconds later, he collapses, stunning the refs and the players nearby.
	He went down on his back with seemingly no attempt to stop himself.
	Clearly, there had been a significant health event.
	Trainers rush the field, appearing to recognize the severity of the situation almost immediately, and then CPR is administered.
	His devastated teammates, the opposing players, surround him, many with tears streaming down their faces.
	Grown men, some turning away, unable to watch him in distress.
	For 16 minutes, the medical teams worked on him before taking him into an ambulance, rushing him to the nearby University of Cincinnati Medical Center, a level one trauma center, thankfully.
	The game between the Bills and the Bengals was then postponed.
	Overnight, around 1:40 in the morning, the Bills revealing that Hamlin had indeed suffered cardiac arrest.
	How, why, we have very few details on.
	Outside the hospital, look at this.
	Oh, you've got to watch this on YouTube later if you're listening.
	Fans from both teams are spotted standing shoulder to shoulder, praying together, some holding candles, recognizing that this is about so much more than a football game.
	But also, there's football in it, the football community coming together to recognize: you know, we can war on the field, we can fight it out, but in the end, we love each other.
	We're Americans, we love this game.
	And when one of ours goes down, we come together.
	Many others across the country now showing their support by donating to DeMar Hamlin's charity and big time.
	It had, I think, he was shooting for a couple thousand in donations to help kids in need of toys.
	Last check, it was, I think, over $3.5 million that had been donated by well-wishers overnight as we all await an update on his condition.
	Joining me now with the very latest is Clay Travis.
	He's the founder of Outkick and co-host of the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show.
	And Outkick is Outkick the coverage.
	This is your business sports, Clay, your original business.
	Now you do sports and political and all sorts of commentary.
	But I was not watching this game.
	I had friends of mine, you know, women who are big NFL fans, text me immediately to say, Did you see it?
	I assume you were watching it.
	And just put it in perspective for us how significant this was.
	Yeah, so first of all, Happy New Year.
	Thanks for having me on.
	Megan, hi to my wife, who's a big fan of your podcast and will be listening and did not know that I was going to be on today.
	So I hope she enjoys it.
	But look, I was like a lot of football fans out there all over the country.
	Putting this into context, the Cincinnati Bengals and Buffalo Bills, two of the best teams in the NFL this year, and they are fighting for first place in the NFL playoffs.
	This is a Monday night football game.
	Everybody's watching the same game.
	There are 32 NFL teams.
	Everybody on Monday, certainly given the significance of this game, elite quarterback play and Josh Allen and Joe Burrow sitting down and watching this.
	Not to mention, Megan, it's coming out of the Rose Bowl.
	So even if you're just kind of a casual NFL fan, the Rose Bowl is one of the most watched college football games every year, too.
	So we're talking about just a monstrous crowd of football fans watching this game.
	And about 20 minutes into the game or so, this hit happens.
	And the DeMar Hamlin hit, as you mentioned, is there are thousands of more violent hits that have taken place in football games over the past couple of weeks alone.
	It did not strike anyone as a notable hit.
	He stands up, he immediately collapses.
	And from that moment in time, what happened was we went from, I always say, and it's not my phrase, but it's one that has steeped into the consciousness.
	Sports is the toy chest of life, right?
	Meaning that for adults and obviously a lot of kids as well, but this is the not serious part of your enjoyment.
	This is the dessert for your meal, right?
	And most of the time, it's about entertainment.
	And really instantaneously, Megan, this story shifted from, oh, who's going to be the overall number one seed?
	You mentioned Josh Allen, the Bills quarterback, and the fact that he was in tears.
	He missed a throw on the first drive for the Buffalo Bills that he would probably hit eight or nine times out of 10 that would have given the Bills a first down, potentially given them a touchdown.
	And he was disgusted with himself.
	And he went on the sideline and, you know, like he's reacting.
	He's upset at the choice at the play that he put out.
	That's what you're used to seeing.
	And then to see the pivot go from, hey, sports is a serious thing to the guys on the field to a truly life-altering life or death situation is frankly something we haven't seen, Megan.
	And I've never, and I watch a lot of football.
	I have never seen a situation like this where CPR has to be given and a player has collapsed as happened with DeMar Hamlin.
	We've seen serious health instances, usually those are a guy made you worry that he maybe got paralyzed because he led with his head.
	And the way that the hit happened, you know, you watch it and then they come out and they immobilize his head and they put him on a stretcher and they may even take him off on an ambulance.
	That's relatively rare, but we've at least seen it.
	I've never seen in my experience as a sports fan, CPR being performed like that on a player that might well have been dead, but for, I think we got to give a lot of credit to the medical community, the trainers, the doctors on the sidelines who all rushed in and were able to give immediate life-saving potentially treatment to this player where we frankly,
	usually you're having a guy run out because you're worried about whether or not he has a knee injury or has he injured an arm or a leg.
	And here you have a life-saving process.
	I'm sure more details will come out about the treatment that he received in the days and the hours that he had.
	We are learning a little.
	We're learning a little, Clay.
	So we're, I mean, if, as they now say, he was in cardiac arrest and his heart was not beating, you know, he was not alive.
	You know, I mean, they resuscitated him.
	Those medical personnel brought him back.
	And we are learning now that they did use a defibrillator on him, or at least that one was present on the field.
	Thank God.
	Thank God.
	Those things are such lifesavers.
	There would be no excuse not to have it in this situation.
	But I will say this: the NFL apparently has an emergency plan and it worked.
	This is how it is.
	Each week, a league runs through its emergency action plan with all 32 clubs.
	Every stadium rehearses a medical situation just like this one annually.
	The plan is also brought up at the pregame meeting between the coaches.
	Part of that plan involves having a level one trauma center nearby in every home market, and it calls for an ambulance in each stadium as well as a doctor who can handle severe medical problems like cardiac arrest.
	And that would, of course, include a defibrillator.
	And there was a...
	A doctor, a Miami-based cardiologist named Bernard Ashby who was tweeting about this last night, Clay, and he said the video from a cardiologist's perspective resembled comotiocortis, a phenomenon that occurs when a sudden blunt impact to the chest causes cardiac arrest.
	Timely defibrillation is life-saving and prevents anoxic brain injury because, of course, the longer your brain goes without oxygen, which is what happens if your heart is not beating, you have brain damage, even if they can bring you back.
	But it sounds like within four minutes, the ambulance was on the field, four to six minutes, the ambulance is on the field.
	The doctors are on the field even before that.
	I'm sure they brought the defibrillator as soon as they realized his heart was not beating.
	So, I mean, this guy, if there's a bright side, got the very best medical care you could get in the circumstances.
	Yeah.
	And that medical condition you're referring to, Megan, assuming that that ends up being what occurred, it happens incredibly rarely, but it usually has happened occasionally in sports where basically like a ball or it's happened in hockey with a puck.
	It happens to strike the heart region right at the exact moment where this crippling can occur.
	And maybe that's what happened with the hit.
	It got delivered.
	Again, it's incredibly rare, almost never happens.
	But as you mentioned, of all the places that it could happen for an athlete, there probably is not a better place in the United States in terms of having a team of people ready and able to assist you and potentially save his life.
	And we hope being in a hospital.
	This is the best case scenario.
	An NHL player, Chris Pronger, I guess former, said he was tweeting out about this, offering his prayers and saying prayers that he can have the same outcome I was fortunate to have with my incident.
	He had something happen.
	Let's see.
	I'm trying to get the exact, we have the video, but it happened in 1998 during a playoff game between the St. Louis Blues and the Detroit Red Wings.
	And this guy played for the Blues.
	He took a slapshot to the chest, continued to play a couple seconds.
	And here we have video of him going down.
	Same thing.
	It caused cardiac arrhythmia, which interrupts the normal pulsating of the heart.
	He was told he was unconscious for 20 to 30 seconds.
	In that case, it was Mother's Day.
	His parents were in the stands.
	He was taken off the ice into the hospital, spent that night at the hospital.
	He was back in the Blues lineup two nights later.
	So it was obviously less dire.
	But here too, DeMar Hamlin's family was in the stands, watched him go down, was able, we're told, to get into that ambulance.
	Oh, Clay with him on the way to the hospital.
	Just the humanity of it, the effect this must be having on the players, the refs, the coaches, the family, your heart goes out to them.
	No doubt.
	And, you know, there's always that story.
	I've got a kid who plays tackle football and obviously I go and cover a lot of football games.
	And, you know, his mom, I believe, was in the stands.
	And there's a line that I've heard that I think is 100% accurate in my experience.
	The mom watches her son on almost every play, right?
	Like even if he's the lineman, you know, the dad will watch where the ball goes.
	And, you know, but the mom is so just completely invested in the health of her baby, of her son.
	And so this is the worst possible feeling, you know, anybody out there who's got kids that play sports where you could have, I mean, again, the kid, I say kid, I mean, he's 24 years old, right?
	To me, he's still basically a kid.
	And mom is in the stands and sees that happen.
	I mean, it's heartrending, I think, on an emotional parent-based level for anybody out there to be thinking about it.
	And again, this is something that is basically without precedent in the world of the NFL to have this caliber of serious health event, frankly, we've never seen.
	And so that's the thing, Clay.
	You point out we've had injuries where you worry about paralysis.
	I mean, serious injuries, obviously, neck injuries, but I don't remember them ever canceling a game.
	Like after the injury, the players always go back out.
	It's never happened.
	And there's been criticism of the NFL over this because they didn't immediately cancel.
	I think that, look, the internet, Megan, as you well have experienced, certainly I have on some level, is a blame factory.
	Something happens and there is a desire to decide, hey, you're an awful person.
	And so there was this immediate reaction of on social media in particular, oh my goodness, how is the NFL ever thinking that they were going to play this game?
	Well, first of all, it's without precedent.
	Secondly, what usually happens, take it outside of this scenario, you could have a serious injury.
	Let's say a guy, they're worried that he might have been paralyzed.
	And thankfully, that has not happened in recent history in the NFL.
	But usually what would happen is they, even if they load the guy up, take him in an ambulance to the hospital, later they would come back and they would say, hey, good news.
	You know, the player has got movement in his arms and legs.
	Paralysis is not an issue.
	But they continue playing the game.
	And so my bet here is that the NFL was thinking, hey, they're going to be able to handle the medical issue on the field.
	And within a couple of minutes of him coming off the field, we'll get a phone call and they'll say, hey, talk to the doctors, everybody in the ambulance.
	He's going to be fine.
	Let everybody know on the field that he's going to be okay.
	And we'll go back and we'll finish the game.
	That's what usually happens almost without fail.
	That obviously was not able to be the case in this situation.
	I'm hopeful that we'll get information later that he's going to be okay and that maybe it's just like the hockey player and that he's going to be able to go back to his normal life.
	But so far that hasn't happened.
	And I think the NFL.
	The other thing is those players are so upset, right?
	Like it's like, I, as a spectator, understand, but I mean, the football players are bred to be tough, to play hurt, to be like the toughest of the tough out there.
	And they were so distraught, like the inhumanity of forcing them to go back out there where their brother in uniform had essentially just died before their very eyes only to be brought back.
	I mean, that is just too high a request of any athlete.
	I'm so glad that some humanity took place there and the NFL said, no, don't play.
	And the coaches are like, we're not in that.
	And I'm sure the players were like, no, not tonight.
	No.
	Yeah.
	Well, and I think the other thing on this, Megan, is Buffalo.
	I know you've got a lot of experience outside in New York.
	I think you went to Syracuse, right?
	But Buffalo is an incredibly, an incredibly close-knit community, even in the NFL context.
	I mean, these teammates are obviously very close because of what they do for a living.
	But, you know, this is not living in New York or LA or Chicago, you know, big metropolitan areas.
	Buffalo is a lot like Green Bay.
Teammates Support Intubated Player 00:03:46
	And I've been fortunate to know a bunch of Bills players over the years.
	And they're like, you know, we're super close, even for an NFL team.
	And so the guys spend their time together.
	This is not, you know, it's something where you go in, you're there for five or six hours, you leave, and there's not a lot of interaction between teammates.
	These guys live together even more so than most players would.
	So to see one of their close friends at a place at a connection like Buffalo, I think was just next level.
	I'll also say this, Megan.
	I think it's important.
	Remember, this is a road game.
	And we were talking about how, you know, the fun and frivolity of a football game, the entertainment, you want your team to win.
	But in Cincinnati, they pivoted, I thought, so well from, you know, rabid, we wanted to beat the crap out of the Buffalo Bills to.
	My goodness, let's worry about, let's bring together the humanity of sports.
	They lit up the stadium in Cincinnati in Buffalo Bills colors in the evening after stopped this game.
	There were a lot of Cincinnati Bengal.
	I'm sure you shared some of those videos, I think, and Bills fans who went to the hospital and had a candlelit vigil to pray outside of the stadium.
	And regardless of what your religion is, football players are very religious and it doesn't get talked about a lot, but they pray.
	And what you saw in the immediate aftermath and during this process was virtually every player was on their knee praying for whether they're a Bills player, whether they're a Bengals player, a lot of people, I'm sure, in the stadium and certainly millions around the United States as they were watching it play out.
	There was a great amount of prayer that went up into the cosmos for this individual.
	And to me, it represented what sports often can represent at its best, the innate goodness of the American people and our common humanity.
	And that's why to me, they're raising over $3.5 million.
	Megan, over 140,000 people have donated to that charity because to me, that's just something bad happens.
	And I think most Americans don't think, oh, I'm going to go on social media and I'm going to make things worse, right?
	I'm going to blame somebody else and try to make this situation more difficult than it already was.
	Most Americans, innately good, think, what small gesture can I make?
	And I talked about this last night, but it's the same thing as when someone dies and maybe you're a small town or you're in your church and you take food over to their house.
	You're not fundamentally altering the trajectory of the tragedy, but you're just showing a little bit of human decency and kindness and doing some small measure to make things better.
	And that 3.5 million for the kids, for the presents for underprivileged kids, the guy was hoping to raise 2,500.
	To me, that's the best of sports, the outpouring that we've seen as millions of dollars raised in.
	Sports, Americans, humanity, like all of it.
	And it's something for us to hold on to, you know, as we pray for him.
	I do want to say we've gotten this.
	A family representative who described himself as a good friend of the player told ABC's Good Morning America today, his relatives, Hamlin's relatives, are in good spirits, but going through a lot and need their privacy.
	He declined to give details on his condition other than to say he is sedated.
	All I can say is he's fighting.
	He's a fighter.
	So we know that he's sedated.
	We know he's in critical condition.
	We know he had a cardiac arrest on the field, that his heartbeat was restored.
	We're told he's been intubated.
	He's got the breathing tube doing his breathing for him, which would explain this sedation.
Playoff Implications of Medical Crisis 00:03:48
	They don't want you conscious while you're being intubated.
	It's too distressing.
	And the messaging from this friend sounds somewhat optimistic.
	His relatives are in good spirits.
	That gives me some hope.
	I mean, you know, they know more than we know, I think.
	We were told by his Mark Hamlin's marketing representative last night that his vital signs were back to normal.
	But again, pointing out he's intubated.
	The hospital does not have plans for a Tuesday press conference.
	So that's a little concerning.
	We'd like to see them schedule that just so we could get to know more.
	Final question to you, though, Clay.
	There is the matter of the playoffs and the Super Bowl.
	And again, you know me, not a big football follower, but this is what I read, that the game was stopped in the first quarter.
	The Bengals were leading seven to three, that this is the final week of the regular season.
	The playoffs begin January 14th.
	Both of these teams were striving for the number one seed in the AFA playoffs.
	So as you pointed out, they're great teams and they both wanted and needed a win in this game.
	So does this game ever actually get played?
	Does it get rescheduled?
	What happens?
	Great question.
	And, you know, if they were able to come out and say, hey, he's going to be okay, then I think maybe they could try to reschedule it.
	I don't know what the logistics are in terms of how quickly they could get a game played.
	Presumably, if they played it, they would pick up with where they already were in the game, right?
	They played a few minutes.
	I think the NFL has three options in my mind, Megan.
	They can try to replay the game.
	I think that would have to happen either today or tomorrow because after that, the way the schedule works, it isn't able to be done.
	I think they could call it a no contest and just let these two teams only play 16 games.
	I think they could call it a tie.
	The challenge here is, and this is going into the specifics, the Bills are right now the number one seed.
	If you are the number one seed, you get a buy and you advance to the final eight of the NFL playoffs.
	If you're not the number one seed, you have to play a game.
	And if the Bills don't play this game and win, then they are likely to end up the two seed.
	And that would mean that they lose that buy.
	And it would mean for people out there, Kansas City Chiefs would become the number one seed.
	And people say, okay, what's the big difference there?
	Well, one, you have to play an extra game.
	Two, you, in theory, would have to go on the road to play in the AFC championship team game in the opposing team stadium, which is obviously a much more difficult environment than getting to play at home in your own state.
	So there are a lot of competitive choices that have to be made here.
	And I would imagine that right now, as we are speaking, Megan, in the NFL offices in New York City, they are debating all of these different permutations and trying to figure out what the best way to handle this is.
	One small measure of comfort here, I would say, is they got a lot of practice in how to schedule and reschedule games surrounding COVID.
	And remember, they played the entire 2020 season in the NFL.
	So I don't know what sort of scheduling movement they have, but in 2020, they played games on every day of the week.
	Maybe there is a way still to get this game played.
	But again, I think they would have to do it either today or at the absolute latest tomorrow, or else they would have to decide this is a no contest and either say, then we're going to call this a tie and each team gets a tie, or we're just going to only make them play 16 games.
	You feel for the Bengals too, who are the opposing team.
	Their head coach went to the hospital, as did several of those players, we're told.
	Again, there was no team in this.
House Republicans Face Speaker Holdouts 00:14:06
	There was only humanity and Americans doing the right thing.
	I want to tell the audience that the foundation that we were talking about that's gotten all of the donations, DeMar Hamlin's Foundation is called the Chasing M, M, capital M, apostrophe S, Chasing M's Foundation Community Toy Drive.
	It's a GoFundMe.
	Wow.
	They had a $2,500 goal.
	It's now up to $3.9 million, if you want to support.
	That's amazing.
	Say a prayer for DeMar, for his family going through the worst life can offer in these moments, just worrying about your loved one dying under the most bizarre circumstances.
	And honestly, for the other player, it wasn't his fault.
	This guy, DeMar, was tackling the other player and did manage to do the tackle.
	It's just that his shoulder got DeMar in the heart from the look of it.
	We'll know more as we hear directly from the doctors.
	Clay, thanks so much for making time for us today.
	Keep up the good work, Megan.
	And I just say, yeah, if you want to just join me and donate a little bit of money, that is, I think, the best possible thing you can do if you're troubled by this story.
	Try to bring some goodness and a little bit better humanity to the world.
	I'm encouraged by how so many sports fans have already done that.
	Yes, absolutely right.
	You're on.
	Clay, all the best.
	Thank you.
	Thank you, Megan.
	Okay, we're going to keep you updated on this story as we get new details on it.
	But up next, we shift gears.
	The EJs are here: Emily Jashinsky and Eliana Johnson.
	Don't miss them.
	Will Kevin McCarthy be the next speaker of the house?
	We'll see today, maybe.
	It's happening at this moment.
	And our guests are going to join me in one second.
	But first, let me just tell you what's happening.
	He's come in today.
	The vote for House Speaker is happening now.
	And there are about five to nine GOP holdouts.
	These are sort of the more conservatives within the Republican Party who don't like Kevin McCarthy and think that he should be making more concessions to their wing of the party.
	And he's tried.
	He's definitely offered some concessions, some serious concessions, like only five people within my party or within the house would have to vote for an impeachment vote or to kick me out, I should say, as speaker.
	And, you know, that would empower these guys to force a vote on whether he should remain a speaker if he becomes speaker.
	And they said, no, not good enough.
	It has only happened, I think, last time they had more than one vote was 1923, 1923.
	I believe it's only happened once since the Civil War.
	So what they're looking to do here is embarrass him.
	They don't have another candidate.
	You know, they say they're hoping that they could just force a vote after vote after vote of him not getting it and that he would be so weakened then that somebody else would come forward to say, all right, I'll do it.
	And that person, presumably more closely aligned with them, would then get the necessary votes.
	But either way, it's not a great way for the Republicans to be starting their new term.
	And we do need a speaker of the house as much as I, you know, I like gridlock too, but there are certain things we need the house to get done.
	So we'll find out.
	Okay, joining me now to discuss it.
	We're going to have Emily Jashinsky in one second, but Eliana Johnson is here now.
	She's editor-in-chief of the Washington Free Beacon and co-host of the podcast, Ink Stained Wretches with Chris Direwald.
	Great to have you back.
	How you doing?
	Happy New Year, Megan.
	Doing great.
	You too, Eliana.
	So you're actually the perfect person to ask about this because you're neck deep in politics all day long for a living.
	So what's going to happen here?
	Nobody knows.
	And that is really the crux of the problem.
	Suffice it to say, this is not the situation that Kevin McCarthy, the former majority, the current majority leader, wanted to be walking into.
	Because Republicans don't have the majority that they expected to have going into this vote.
	McCarthy can only lose four votes on the floor.
	And so he has got to make sure he's got every single one of these votes locked down.
	And he simply hasn't gotten the commitments from all of the Republicans that he needs going into this vote.
	And you mentioned, Megan, in your introduction, that he's been negotiating and making concessions.
	And I think he thought that in exchange for these concessions, the holdouts would say, okay, you've got my vote, but he's been making the concessions and not getting the votes in exchange.
	And so a failure for McCarthy on this first vote, as you said, would be the first time in a century that this has happened.
	And the result will be if he wins on a first vote or a second vote, he's going to be a weakened speaker.
	And that's going to be a problem for Republicans as they head into the majority and face off in some kind of a unified front against Biden.
	Because at the end of the day, this is the Republicans in Congress against a Democratic Senate and the Biden administration.
	This is basically the same sort of wing of the party that's loyal to Trump saying, burn it down.
	We don't give a damn if he's weakened.
	We don't give a damn if this is our one branch of government that we, the Republicans, control.
	We're not pro-Republican just because, you know, it's not Democrat.
	We object to a lot of the ways Republicans do business too.
	And we want concessions to us and the way we think in order to support this guy.
	And I like Kevin McCarthy, but he has been all over the board.
	He's sort of a notorious flip-flopper when it comes to like currying favor with one group.
	And then it turns out that's out of favor.
	And he's like, forget that.
	I have a new position.
	And these guys sense it.
	And, you know, I guess this is the point, right?
	To weaken him and cause some chaos.
	Yes, it's to enhance their power at the expense of his power and probably at the expense of the power of the party.
	And so going into this, they are extracting concessions from McCarthy, such as that it only takes five Republicans to call a vote for a new speaker on the House floor.
	And if you recall, this is what did in John Boehner.
	Back when it was Boehner, it took only one Republican to do this.
	So they've increased it to five.
	But that is something that means McCarthy's power could go in the scope of 24 hours.
	And that's been a huge problem for Republican speakers.
	And you're right.
	I think they would not say that, you know, we're the Trump caucus and that they want to let chaos rule.
	They would say that they're adhering to principle over party.
	They've demanded some investigations, an investigation into a commission into China's growing power and a couple of other investigations that McCarthy has agreed to give them.
	But the reality is they are creating incredible chaos and weakness in Republican House leadership that is really not going to be prepared to unify against Democratic control in the Senate and in the White House.
	Meanwhile, so there's 222 Republicans now, 213 Democrats, technically 212 now because one died.
	So McCarthy needs, he needs 218 to win.
	So he's got 222 Republicans.
	He needs 218 to win.
	And you got five to nine holdouts.
	So it's not so good, the math.
	He's got to work on getting a few more over to his side or he's about to be embarrassed.
	Again, it's happening now.
	So we've got our eyes on it and we'll bring you the updates.
	None of the Democrats is moving, according to what I read.
	They're all going to vote for their minority leader now that they're in the minority, Hakeem Jeffries, over and over and over.
	And their instructions are show up for every vote.
	Because if they, the fewer Democrats show up, the lower the threshold he needs because it's basically a majority present for the vote.
	So they're under strict orders, get your ass into the chamber and make sure you vote so that he has to keep getting 218 and a number they don't think he could get.
	There's some drama, you know, politics.
	I don't usually like it at this level when you're really up close to the ugly painting.
	You know, like it gets unattractive and just hard to follow.
	But this is kind of an interesting battle.
	And I'm sure McCarthy will say a win's a win.
	If he gets it, ugly or otherwise, great.
	But it's really not 100% clear he's going to get it.
	And it could take days now to find out.
	Absolutely.
	If McCarthy wins this, he's the speaker of the house and he will definitely say a win is a win.
	And you're right.
	This is a majority of the votes of everybody present of all the lawmakers present on the House floor, Republicans and Democrats.
	So Republicans need, they need to unify their party.
	As you said, there are 222 Republicans and McCarthy can only afford to lose four because they are essentially voting against all of the Democrats present on the floor.
	So he needs 218 out of 222 in order to be elected speaker.
	If he loses on the first vote, they go to a second vote.
	And where the drama would really begin is if he gets fewer votes on that second vote, the question becomes, does he step down or bow out?
	Now, McCarthy's people, of course, aren't going in saying, yeah, you know, he'll step aside if we get to a second vote.
	They're saying he's going to stick it out to a second, third, fourth, fifth vote.
	But I think in reality, we don't know what will happen.
	And he does not know exactly how many votes he has.
	You said, you know, between five and nine.
	That's a problem.
	Like every one of these votes matters.
	And he, because he doesn't have firm commitments from a lot of these guys yet, he doesn't know exactly how many votes he has.
	If we get to a second or a third vote, you're going to hear people talking about who's the backup here?
	Who is the backup?
	And one of the problems for these holdouts, Matt Gates and others, is they don't have a preferred candidate.
	I think Steve Scalise would be the next in line, but he's not exactly their preferred candidate either.
	He's been a part of House leadership for years and years.
	And by the way, that would throw all the rest of the Republican House leadership slots open because Scalise holds one and everybody else would start moving around in those slots.
	So we're in for a lot of drama if this goes to a second or a third vote.
	What about this may be crazy?
	What about like Elise Stefanik, you know, somebody who is acceptable to the more Trumpy wing of the party, but seems to be liked by most Republicans.
	I mean, is there anybody like that on deck?
	It's a good question, Megan.
	I think you'd be surprised.
	Elise Stefanik is one of the few House Republicans, and I have a lot of respect for her.
	She's a young woman.
	She's my age, 38, you know, super smart, Harvard graduate, super ambitious.
	But she was one of the few Republicans who after this midterm election came out and endorsed Donald Trump for president.
	Kevin McCarthy hasn't done that.
	None of the other House leaders have done that.
	And I do think that that is something that is going to cause her problems with some of the moderates in the caucus who, you know, were eager for Republican leaders to come out and say, no, Trump was actually part of the problem in these midterms and part of the reason that Republicans are in this situation, that they don't have a bigger majority and that they're in the middle of all of this chaos right now.
	That's the problem.
	So you shore up that right-wing base and you start losing.
	People start peeling off in the moderate middle and you're back to the same problem, only with a different candidate.
	All right, stand by, Eliana.
	Emily Jashinsky is here.
	She's culture editor at the Federalist.
	Highly recommend their podcast as well.
	Emily, thank you for joining the party.
	And so before we move on from Speaker McCarthy, do you have any interesting predictions on how this is going to go?
	Told Kevin McCarthy has gotten to the floor and that the vote will be underway.
	And I don't know.
	I don't know.
	Every smart person I know is like, have no idea.
	Let's watch and see.
	Yeah.
	And most of the people I know that have their sort of their finger on the pulse of what's happening with House Republicans say the same thing right now.
	They have absolutely no idea how this is going to shake out.
	It's always pretty inscrutable because you never know what backroom deals are being struck.
	But I would also say that, you know, conservatives should feel comfortable like taking a W on this because House leadership on the Republican side, it's just never going to be Jim Jordan.
	It's never going to be the sort of conservative fantasy.
	And I think that's an indictment of the Republican Party, but it's also reality.
	And what conservatives have done is pushed Kevin McCarthy really, I mean, gotten some serious concessions out of him.
	It's hard to even, you can't emphasize enough how big his flip-flop on the motion to vacate is.
	That's just a huge concession to the right.
	Puts them back in the situation they were in with John Boehner, which was a hugely successful moment for the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party at the time.
	And so I think, you know, it's a really important thing for conservatives to recognize that this is a new time.
	They were really able to drag Kevin McCarthy over to the right.
	And if I had to place a bet, I would say I think McCarthy will pull this off.
	I think he will ultimately be fine precisely for that reason because he's been so transactional.
	He's been so willing to make concessions to House Republicans because, and I interviewed him about all this back in September.
	He does at least one thing you can say, like him or not, is that he really understands the conservative movement right now.
	He really understands the Trump movement.
	He knows where voters are.
	He's not where voters are, but he does know where they are.
	And that's actually, it sounds like a small thing, but for DC, that's actually a pretty important thing.
	Well, I'm saying he's flip-flop a lot, but he survived.
	You know, it's like you can make the case that was smart flip-flopping because he wound up still in office and a lot of those Republicans didn't.
	One of the things they're going to have to decide today is whether to seat Representative-elect George Santos.
	Haven't had the pleasure of discussing this case yet since we were all on break.
	He's one of the Republicans elected, newly elected in New York, in New York State, one of the ones that made the difference in giving that control to the Republicans.
McCarthy's Fabricated Life Exposed 00:03:20
	Unfortunately, he appears to be an utter fraud of a politician, of a professional, who knows, of a man.
	I don't know, but I'm horrified by what I read in the New York Times.
	And for once, the New York Times actually took a deep dive.
	And the first thing I said to my husband was, I really wish they'd do this on some Democrats.
	This is great information to have about this guy, Santos.
	It'd be wonderful if they would just take a deep dive into George, into Joe Biden's many lies.
	Let's do that next.
	So I don't mean to dissuade the Times because this was an important piece of journalism, but of course it's not applied equally.
	So we'll get to that piece of it in a second.
	But first, let's update the audience on our new Republican-elect congressman from New York's third congressional district.
	Again, this is a district that went for Biden.
	So he was not supposed to win.
	This is one of the upsets, which is why Republicans are like, oh, it's terrible.
	I tell the lies.
	Oh, well, right?
	Like, I understand why they want the seat and they don't want to make this a deal breaker.
	So to me, as a journalist, this is kind of fun and interesting to watch.
	Okay.
	Here's the story.
	This New York Times profile revealed that this guy fabricated much of his resume.
	He claimed to work for Goldman Sachs and Citigroup.
	Not true.
	He worked for some third-party consulting firm that may or may not have done business with them.
	Hello, George.
	That's not the same thing.
	That is not the same thing at all.
	Sorry.
	You could argue that NBC did some business with the Kremlin when I interviewed Putin.
	That doesn't make me say I work for Putin.
	Okay.
	So there's a distinction.
	He said he attended Baruch College.
	That apparently is also false.
	He said he's Catholic, but he also claimed Jewish heritage.
	Recently telling a Jewish news outlet he was a non-observant Jew.
	A genealogist tapped by CNN to examine his family tree found no evidence of Jewish ancestry.
	The New York Post interviewed him.
	He called himself Jew-ish with a dash in between those.
	Is that a thing?
	Okay.
	I have a ton of Jewish friends, Orthodox friends, lived in a conservative building in New York.
	Does that make me Jew-ish?
	I don't think so.
	He claimed his mother died in the September 11th attacks.
	Five months later, he tweeted she died in December of 2016, ladies.
	I'm sorry.
	Don't mess with 9-11.
	He claimed he lost four employees in the deadly 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando.
	That as well appears to have been a lie.
	He also lied about attending Horace Mann prep school here in New York City.
	He falsely claimed that his grandparents survived the Holocaust and he's got 9-11.
	He's got the Holocaust.
	He's got the Pulse Nightclub, all of which appear to be utter lies, as does his academic resume, whether it's undergrad or college, as does his professional resume saying he worked at Goldman and Citigroup.
	He said he grew up with a white Caucasian mother, an immigrant from Belgium.
	His mother was born in Brazil, okay, according to genealogical records.
	He claimed to have headed an animal rescue charity.
	The IRS has absolutely no record of it.
	He's now under federal investigation as a result of all this by the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Eastern District of New York, by Letitia James, the New York State Attorney General, by prosecutors on Long Island, all because if he filed election documents or otherwise based on these frauds, based on these lies, it could be an alleged, it could be a criminal fraud.
	He says he's not a criminal.
	He says he's just an embellisher.
Two-Thirds Vote to Remove Speaker 00:06:24
	He's just an embellisher, ladies.
	He came out and said, I made a mistake.
	Humans are flawed.
	We all make mistakes.
	I'm sorry, but F this guy.
	Just that because there are liars on the Democrat side doesn't mean that this is good enough for America.
	This guy's a serial fabulist who has no business in the U.S. Congress.
	We need fewer liars, not more.
	You don't look at the other side's lies and say, fine, let's elect a bunch of liars of our own.
	So I, whatever.
	Okay, he can be seated.
	I guarantee you the third congressional district had no idea about all this shit when they elected him.
	But you know what can be done is he can be promptly booted out if you have two-thirds of the vote of the party, of both sides, because there's a provision in the Constitution to make that happen as well.
	All right.
	That's the story.
	Let me start with you, Ana, Eliana.
	What should happen here?
	Oh, man, Megan, I can tell you what I think should happen, but I think what will happen is they're going to seat the guy.
	He's going to remain a member.
	Serial fabulous liar.
	That probably applies to a lot of the members of the United States Congress.
	I hate to say, doesn't make it right.
	But this guy, I have to say, takes it to a whole new level.
	You know, we can point to a lot of Democrats who have done this, but like every detail of this guy's resume is embellished.
	And I think what it comes down to is in all likelihood, he will be put back in front of the voters in two years of his district and they can decide whether this is okay with them or not.
	That is what I predict will happen.
	My God, he got in based on a fraud, based on a fraud.
	He didn't disclose all that to those people before the vote.
	Article 1, Section 5 of the Constitution grants the House and the Senate the right to kick out members.
	Expulsion requires a two-thirds vote.
	I know it's not going to happen, Emily.
	It's not going to happen.
	They're not going to get two-thirds to vote to kick this guy out, but it really just is a testament to how we have no standards.
	And apparently we don't have an aggressive enough media, whether you're a Republican or a Democrat, because this should have been done before the vote.
	Well, and yeah, that's one of the best takes I've seen is like, this is a huge, I think, problem with local media that we used to have so much more of a robust local media and national media now is so big and so full of people who are not going to be doing the sort of legwork, the shoe leather journalism that would happen in a district.
	I think this is actually part of the reason we saw all of this flare-ups at school board meetings, because there were no reporters in the room for years.
	And parents suddenly over Zoom found out what was happening in the classrooms because there was nobody in the media and their local media paying attention to it for them.
	So we're going to start seeing some of this stuff happen more and more, stuff that would have been caught by local media.
	Republicans always do vulnerability studies on their own candidates.
	So it's pretty interesting.
	The pattern of money that didn't go to George Santos, what did Republicans know about this period anyway?
	Now, I understand the perspective.
	You know, if Democrats are so curious about this pattern of lies, they will be shocked to learn about Ilhan Omar's past, for instance.
	Wait until they married a brother.
	I don't know.
	So I understand people being like, listen, they're all warm bodies anyway.
	You just want them to vote in a certain way or not.
	But at the same time, this guy clearly has zero respect for his constituents because he lied to them.
	I think, you know, there is a democratic process not to seat him.
	There's a democratic process to recall the election, perhaps, however, the sort of mechanisms locally are for that.
	So maybe we'll see it happen.
	But what they could do is basically what they did with Steve King, they stripped him of his committees so you can seat him and then not put him on committees.
	And that's probably what I'll expect, what I would expect to see.
	Okay, that's something.
	Eliana, I made a mistake.
	Oh, you were mistaken that your mom died in 9-11.
	Oh, okay.
	You were mistaken about your grandparents dying in the Holocaust.
	You were mistaken that your four employees died at the pulse neck.
	That is not shit that we forget or make mistakes about.
	The guy seriously got a fundamental now.
	I get it.
	I get it.
	Because like I, you look at the, because of course, I read all of it, right?
	And I'm looking at Jim Garrity over at National Review, who reminded us of some of the Biden lies.
	He said he was arrested during a civil rights march.
	Not true.
	He spent part of a summer working as a tractor trailer driver.
	No.
	Was arrested while trying to read Nelson Mandela.
	Try again.
	His son Bo was killed in Iraq.
	No, he wasn't.
	He graduated top of his class in college.
	Actually, it was toward the bottom.
	He, of course, he said he hit a home run in one of the 368, I don't even know what that is, home run in one of the congressional baseball games, untrue.
	That his first job offer was from an Idaho timber company.
	Wrong.
	That he, then he later admitted to overstating his academic record in the 1980s.
	He, of course, was bowed out of one of the presidential campaigns earlier because of his plagiarism of other speeches and so on, claiming that they were his own.
	Hillary Clinton claimed she was fired at on the tarmac.
	Remember that lie in Bosnia?
	Cheryl Atkinson called BS on that because she was there.
	Elizabeth Warren said she was Native American.
	She's not because of her mama and her pawpaw and her high cheekbones.
	We could go on, right?
	I get it.
	But this guy hasn't told the truth about anything so far as I can see.
	Yeah, I was going to say, don't forget Richard Blumenthal saying that he served in Vietnam and he didn't.
	But it's true.
	I think the scale and the intricate level of detail of this guy's lies about his heritage, his schooling, and his professional background adds up to a made-up life that is a different level than what we've seen with others.
	Clearly, he's got some kind of mental problem or, you know, he's a sociopath.
	I like, I don't know how to diagnose him.
	He's a serious problem.
	What if he's like a Manchurian candidate?
	We know so little about him, right?
	Like, who the hell knows?
	Dude, he seriously, it's like every tragedy, he somehow has inserted the story of his life into like the grand American narrative in a way that's like, he's cast himself as the forest gump, a gump of the new millennium because he thinks that this is some way to win hearts and minds.
	But to Eliana's point, listen here in DC, we all know this, like they all have mental problems, but this guy seems to be on another level of having a mental problem that clearly he's unfit for office.
	Oh my God.
	You know, by the way, even the sexuality, like we're not sure about here.
	Yes.
	I mean, he may be a fake gay.
	We're not quite sure about.
Kevin McCarthy's Political Relationships Crumble 00:04:02
	Yeah.
	He may be a fake gay.
	He says he's gay.
	Now we don't know whether he's gay at all.
	I was at a dinner party or the Christmas break, and one of the questions they asked was, name something you believed when you were young that you found out later was totally untrue.
	Or you could do the reverse, something you thought was untrue as a kid that you found out later was true.
	And I said, you know, when I was a kid, I actually used to respect like our politicians, you know, members of the House.
	That seemed respectable and exciting and accomplished to me.
	Even members of the Senate.
	Never mind president.
	And then as a grownup, I felt differently.
	Okay, stand by.
	I'll let you ponder that question over the break and pick it up there when we come back.
	So much more to cover as the EJs stay with us for our second hour.
	Don't forget, you can find the Megan Kelly Show live on SiriusXM Triumph Channel 111 every weekday at Noon East.
	The full video show and clips by subscribing to our YouTube channel, youtube.com/slash Megan Kelly.
	Help us get over the 700,000 subscriber bar, right?
	On our YouTube channel.
	That would be great.
	I would love it.
	If you prefer an audio podcast, follow and download wherever get your podcast for free.
	Here is the latest.
	It's not going very well for Kevin.
	He's lost four votes.
	Again, he can lose four, but he can't lose five.
	And he so far has lost Dan Bishop, Lauren Bobert, Andy Biggs.
	Oh, just got the fifth.
	He's lost.
	So he's officially lost the speakership on the first vote, which hasn't happened in 100 years.
	So not great.
	Not great, as the kids would say.
	He's going to have to go.
	He's going to have to go again.
	And we'll see whether they do that right now or later.
	The New York Times reporting there were murmurs and ooze from the crowd as Lauren Bobert voted for Jim Jordan instead of Kevin McCarthy because she had previously declined to say who she was going to support or who she would vote for as an opponent to McCarthy.
	So in any event, it didn't go his way and we've made history.
	Can I just ask, it's not just the New York Times saying this is going to be an embarrassment for the GOP or that he's going to be weakened.
	When I read that first, I'm like, of course, the New York Times.
	But then there are former, there's like a guy in one of the papers who worked for the past two Republican speakers of the House.
	And he's saying, no, this will legitimately be very embarrassing for Kevin McCarthy, for the Republicans.
	And it actually will hobble the next speaker, the GOP speaker, whether it's Kevin or somebody else.
	How?
	Like, how exactly will the, if he lands it, how is this process going to hobble him?
	Anyone want to take that?
	I don't, yeah, I also don't buy that because the fissures in his relationships with some of these Freedom Caucus members already existed.
	So they already know what they're getting with Kevin McCarthy.
	Everybody in the House Republican conference knows what they're getting with Kevin McCarthy.
	These five members are just saying we're not buying it.
	We're not standing for it.
	We don't want it.
	But they're not in disagreement with whether or not Kevin, where Kevin McCarthy sort of stands on the ideological spectrum.
	And obviously, you need to have really good relationships.
	Kevin McCarthy has prided himself on his ability to make relationships with his, he's, for instance, very close with Jim Jordan.
	He saw one of his biggest moves as putting Jim Jordan on the oversight committee, which a lot of the establishment Republicans did not want him to do to ask Jordan to head that committee.
	Famously, a very good maneuver by Kevin McCarthy.
	He actually has a pretty close relationship with Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has been supportive of him throughout this process.
	So I don't know that it's necessarily going to weaken him.
	It'll worsen relationships that are already bad.
	And that's not a huge, if he pulls it off, which I think he will.
	The latest I heard is that the Lauren Boberts and Andy Biggs, who have sort of made this like very clear red line, what they're now negotiating for is committee spots, better committee spots.
	So maybe that's what happens on the second ballot.
	He gives in on some of that stuff.
	But I don't think this really dramatically changes.
	It's obviously not great for Kevin McCarthy, but I don't think it really dramatically changes the dynamic.
	That dynamic was already there.
GOP Needs New Leadership After Announcement 00:16:02
	Okay.
	And the update is now six have voted against McCarthy in total, and the number will continue to go.
	At this point, it kind of doesn't matter.
	It's not going to go, I don't think, much above nine.
	But the point is he needs to get those numbers down.
	He can only lose four.
	So we'll see.
	Okay.
	Although what might happen is though, as some people start voting against him, he then gets like a lot of people, there's a flood.
	They say it's okay because we're all going to vote against him on the first ballot.
	We can tell our constituents we did that.
	Then we move on to the second ballot.
	So it's possible something like that happens too.
	Good point.
	All right.
	Well, we'll give it the final count when we have it.
	Let's talk presidential politics because there is a very little going on.
	And it is kind of interesting.
	You know, I said this on my show before the break.
	Like, what happened to Trump?
	Where'd he go?
	Like, he did the big announcement.
	And okay, we're off to the races.
	And normally, you know, when they do the announcements at the normal time, which is usually like late spring, it'll be late spring of this year.
	Then you see them go on the campaign trail.
	You see them make the TV rounds.
	You see them do start to do some rallies and go to Iowa and go to New Hampshire.
	None of that's happening.
	So Olivia Newsy of New York Magazine must have had the same thought.
	And she's interviewed Trump before and she went down there.
	I love when Trump gives these interviews to people from what is clearly the left-wing press, though I think she's fair, and then expects it to be a fawning piece, right?
	I don't actually know if he expects it.
	He would like it to be.
	And he gives these interviews and they never wind up being a fawning piece.
	And then he attacks the reporters, which is, you know, lather, rinse, repeat.
	That's what happened here.
	She prints the piece on December 23rd in New York Magazine.
	The headline is the final campaign.
	Inside Donald Trump's sad, lonely, thirsty, broken, basically pretend run for reelection, which isn't to say he can't win.
	All right.
	So she does sort of take us into what's happening.
	And I thought that was interesting because I have been wondering what's he doing.
	Not much is the answer, according to her piece.
	She says, since his announcement, he's barely set foot outside the perimeter of Mar-a-Lago.
	For 28 days, in fact, he has not left the state of Florida at all.
	He is sensitive about this.
	He does not like what it suggests.
	So he does not accept the premise.
	Basically, he tries to tell her, I am outside of Mar-a-Lago quite a bit.
	I'm always largely outside of Mar-a-Lago at meetings and various other things and events.
	I'm down in Miami.
	I go to Miami.
	I go to different places in Florida.
	She responds.
	What he means to say when he says Miami is that his SUV rolls down the driveway past the pristine lawn set for croquet and through the Secret Service checkpoint at the gate for the two-hour trip to another piece of Trump real estate, the Trump National in Dural, about eight miles from the airport in Miami-Dade County.
	There, he meets regularly with an impressive, ideological, diverse, ideologically diverse range of policy wonks, diplomats, and political theorists for conversations about the global economy and military conflicts and constitutional law.
	And I'm kidding, he goes there to play golf.
	That's Olivia's clever turn.
	I have to say, it made me laugh out loud.
	One advisor says his world has gotten much smaller.
	He is sensitive, she writes about smallness.
	One advisor said when he was in New York in 2016, the whole world was coming to him.
	Now we've got the villages and it shows.
	Former White House official says it feels like he's going through the motions because he said he would, he would.
	And Olivia says, look, this is about his need for attention, which is tied up with his fear of boredom, boredom.
	He doesn't have anything else to do, said one advisor.
	What else can he do?
	Why do you think he saw Kanye?
	He wants to be relevant.
	He wants the limelight.
	He's thirsty.
	And the second is his fear of arrest.
	But Trump denies that played into his earlier announcement.
	He defends the number of people at his announcement, saying the room was packed, sold out.
	Olivia points out tickets were actually not sold at all.
	Guests were invited.
	The room was full, but it was not at capacity.
	Chairs remained empty, some more glaringly than others.
	And this is the final bit I wanted to read to you.
	Trump's campaign schedule, described to me as busy, involved 11 events over the course of the month.
	One event was the announcement itself.
	Five took place at Mar-a-Lago.
	Four were not events at all, but tape videos that were aired at events where Trump was not physically present.
	His response was to say, New York magazine's on its last legs.
	It's failing.
	The reporter was shaky and an unattractive whack job, known as tough, but dumb as a rock.
	Now, I will say this: one thing you cannot say about Olivia Newsy is that she is unattractive or dumb.
	She is both very beautiful and obviously very smart, but you know, Trump's going to Trump.
	And that is where we are.
	But it brings me to the larger thought of what is he doing?
	Why, why is he sitting down there?
	And she's right.
	There have been no real events.
	So why not?
	This is the invisible campaign for president where we haven't really seen Trump since his announcement, which was itself underwhelming and poorly timed, coming on the heels of a disappointing midterm for Republicans, for which many blame Trump's influence.
	But I think, Megan, you and Olivia put your finger on the problem here is you said, why is he doing this?
	The problem is that there is no why for him.
	If there was a why, he would be out on the campaign trail articulating that why and taking advantage of the fact that he doesn't have competitors.
	It's just him and Biden right now.
	He could be garnering headlines, eating up airtime.
	That is why he sits down and talks to the press because he likes to see himself in the headlines and he likes to square off against the press.
	He does thrive on this stuff, but his articulation of why he's running is to go back to what was.
	He doesn't have really a why for the future.
	And in fact, when he's campaigned for candidates in the midterms, you know, Republicans are uneasy about it.
	They think he's causing them, you know, as much, if not more, problems than he's doing good for the party at this point.
	And so he's in a tough place.
	He's in a tough place.
	Competitor is about to emerge.
	Yes.
	Now, the Federalists, I should point out, you know, Molly Hemingway, all of you guys have always been very fair to Trump.
	So what's the, what do you, in your view, what's the game plan here?
	Or is there none?
	Is this folly for him to just be sitting down there, not doing anything with this?
	I mean, you could argue it's an advantage he has for all these months, just being the only candidate in the GOP field.
	Not really if he's just playing golf.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	And the meetings all being or the campaign events that Olivia listed out all being at Mar-a-Lago, I think is a good indication also of how serious the campaign is at this point.
	But that's what's tough is, you know, there was this cycle with Trump in 2015 and 2016.
	We all remember it.
	You know, this is it.
	He's getting more desperate.
	He's lashing out.
	He's really, you know, done it.
	Voters won't stand for this.
	Even Trump voters won't like this.
	And the sort of pundit class tried over and over again to sort of say that this, the line had now been crossed.
	And it never turned out to be true because all of the other Republicans turned out to be worse than Trump.
	And it's always hard to predict exactly how bad the other Republicans will go and how bad the sort of other options will be.
	And if Trump is sort of savvy enough to manipulate himself, maneuver himself into being a spoil or the exact sort of thing that can be the contrast that voters will latch onto and say, we have zero standards for politicians anymore.
	So you might as well throw this guy back in.
	So I don't know.
	It's really hard to predict that.
	But I will say he took a step clearly the wrong direction.
	Again, on New Year's Day, he posted on Truth Social a really bitter, a really bitter kind of rant against pro-life voters who he said got the big win at the Supreme Court because of him.
	He had a sentence on the Truth Social post that literally just says, it wasn't my fault, like a five-year-old, right?
	Like it wasn't my fault, mom.
	Let me read it for it because I have it here.
	It wasn't my fault that the Republicans did not live up to expectations in the midterms.
	I was 233 to 20 wins versus losses.
	It was the abortion issue poorly handled by many Republicans, especially those that firmly insisted on no exceptions, even in the case of rape, incest, or life of the mother that lost large numbers of voters.
	Also, the people that pushed so hard for decades against abortion got their wish from the U.S. Supreme Court and just plain disappeared, not to be seen again.
	Plus, Mitch stupid numbers, meaning money.
	And then he also went into it.
	Yet another attack on Mitch's wife, Mitch McConnell's wife, Elaine Chow, who served the country admirably, but now refers to her by this.
	I don't even understand.
	They say it's a racist nickname, Coco Chow.
	I don't know what it is.
	I don't know what that is.
	I know it's meant to be derogatory and she considers it offensive.
	He can't get off of her.
	God, he's very angry with her and McConnell.
	But in any event, continue your point.
	It's not my fault.
	And I've seen multiple pro-life groups sort of come out because this is a really big deal for them, right?
	Like most pro-life voters would take the victory in the Dobbs case over winning the midterms any day because they see it as a matter of life and death.
	But multiple pro-life groups have actually proactively put out statements saying this is wrong.
	This interpretation of the results is wrong.
	And I think maybe you can make Trump's case in a place like Michigan where it was on the ballot.
	And maybe that's what puts Alyssa Slotkin over the edge, something like that.
	But overall, it's just not a sharp analysis, but it is a self-interested one because Trump needs a scapegoat.
	And Trump is always the scapegoat for establishment Republicans.
	They can always sort of point to him.
	But there's truth in all of this.
	I mean, there's a lot of blame to go around and he cannot escape it.
	And instead, and he shouldn't escape it.
	He's absolutely part of the problem in many cases.
	And so when you're pointing the finger at other people, but not being willing to sort of reconsider yourself, that's going to be a huge problem for Trump going forward because voters rejected him in the popular vote twice.
	And he's, yeah, so he's, I mean, he's actually never won the popular vote in this country.
	And he obviously has an advantage in the Electoral College, but even that didn't go for him.
	So obviously, obviously he has problems too.
	All right.
	So let's follow this logic through, right?
	Okay.
	So Trump is problematic.
	He shoots his mouth off and he says things that aren't so great.
	So the GOP needs somebody new.
	They need somebody without the baggage.
	They need somebody that the media won't do this to, that the media will be fair to, or at least who is not constantly getting attacked and dominating the news cycle in a negative way.
	Ron DeSantis.
	Enter Ron DeSantis.
	Yay.
	He did so many things that the Republicans love.
	Oh, wait.
	There's Vanity Fair to give us a little preview of how that's going to go.
	It's so amazing that the media is just so predictable when it comes to the GOP.
	Okay.
	It came out, I think, yesterday, Monday.
	A comprehensive guide to why a Ron DeSantis presidency would be as terrifying as a Trump one.
	Terrifying.
	Hold on to your socks.
	I'm going to give you a couple of highlights.
	He thinks it's okay to treat human beings like chattel.
	That's the Martha's Vineyard thing.
	He is dangerously anti-science.
	Examples.
	He said we would, quote, never do any of these lockdowns again.
	Oh, we might want lockdowns.
	We love lockdowns.
	How dare he say that?
	He withheld pay from school board members requiring masks.
	Meanwhile, I was like, he did.
	I missed that one.
	That's awesome.
	He offered unvaccinated cops $5,000 to relocate to Florida.
	Who the hell is offended by that?
	Okay.
	He appointed Joseph Latipo to serve as Surgeon General.
	Of course, he doesn't like, they don't like Latipo because he opposed masking and lockdowns and question the safety of vaccines.
	That's the, you're not allowed to touch the vaccines.
	He wants to make it harder for people to vote, like voter ID laws.
	He's, he passed the quote, don't say gay bill, where they said you can't put sexuality or trans education into the curriculum for K through third graders.
	He's a massive bully.
	He's anti-abortion.
	Guess what?
	Every single Republican president ever has been anti-abortion.
	He supported Donald Trump.
	He saw no need for the Respect for Marriage Act.
	He has no interest in preventing gun violence.
	And wait for it.
	According to people who know him, people who know them now passes as a source in a magazine are people who know, okay, who?
	What people?
	Do they have a bad experience with him?
	Tell me more.
	He is an awful person and has been for many years.
	Case closed.
	Case closed.
	It's quantifiable.
	Like this is where he started being an awful person and he's been an awful person ever, many, many years in there.
	So what do you make of it, Eliana?
	Well, I take issue with one of the things he said, which was the Republicans need a savior.
	The media is going to love him.
	That's where I think we're getting it wrong.
	Okay.
	Excuse my sarcasm.
	The media is going to hate any Republican candidate, but that doesn't mean that Republicans can't do better than Trump.
	You know, if Ron DeSantis becomes the Republican nominee, of course the media will hate him.
	I think the difference between Trump, who is problematic, and an improvement upon Trump will be somebody who does a better job uniting the Republican Party as opposed to dividing it against itself.
	You know, Trump now is pointing the finger at pro-lifers who are an important part of the constituency.
	And I think Republicans have to hope that they find a nominee who as aggressively as Trump takes it to the media and to and to others who are enemies oftentimes of conservatives and of Republicans, but who more often than not do unite Republicans.
	You've seen Trump time and again point the finger at fellow Republicans who don't endorse him, who criticize him.
	The party can't succeed with that.
	And we're seeing some of it play out on the House floor right now where the party's divided against each other.
	Look, suffice it to say, this is not how Nancy Pelosi's vote for House Speaker went down.
	And Republicans are not going to elect a president with the leaders of the party pointing fingers at each other.
	They need a candidate that can unite the party rather than divide it against each other.
	That's a good point.
	I mean, listen, you're exactly right that this, what we're seeing today on the House floor is the consequence of those disastrous midterms where, yes, the GOP won the House, but not nearly in the numbers they expected.
	And he wouldn't be having these problems if they had.
	By the way, Megan, I would add the problem is that a candidate like Trump unites Democrats at the same time.
	Unites Democrats, divides Republicans.
	Republicans need to look to people who unite them at the same time as unite the opposition and eat away at some of that opposition.
	You've seen Ron DeSantis do this in Florida.
	He's peeling away some of the centrist voters.
	Republicans need more of that and less of people who really, really gear up their opposition and pit them against each other.
	But here is where the rubber meets the road, my friends, because if Trump loses to DeSantis in the primary, he's going to spoil the general for the GOP.
	Does anybody think he's not going to spoil the general for the GOP?
	He's going to tell all of his voters, stay home.
	You're not Republicans.
	You're Trumplicans and F this party.
	And we're not going to back this sort of elite country club Republican.
	Meanwhile, consider what Trump's been doing for the past month.
	Mar-a-Lago, back to the golf club.
	But anyway, he's going to say, we're not going to back these establishment Republicans.
	They're swampy.
	Stay home.
Trump Spoils General Election for GOP 00:07:01
	And the reason I raise that is because there was a very interesting piece in American Greatness, which is pro-Trump website.
	I think it's fair to say.
	He shared an article from it titled The Coming Split.
	He shared this article without comment.
	And here's what the article argued.
	The writer, Dan Galertner, said, what should we do when a majority of Republicans want Trump?
	A majority of Republicans want Trump, but the Republican Party says we can't have him.
	He is not a uniparty team player.
	They would rather lose an election to the Democrats, their brothers in crime, this is establishment Republicans, than win with Trump.
	This leads us to the inevitable question.
	What should we do when a majority of Republicans want Trump, but the party says we can't have him?
	Do we knuckle under and vote for DeSantis?
	Because he'd be vastly better than any Democrat, right?
	And then he concludes, no, we don't knuckle under.
	And I like DeSantis, he says, I would vote for him after Trump's second term, but not before.
	Do I think Trump can win as a third party candidate?
	No.
	Would I vote for him as a third party candidate?
	Yes, because I'm not interested in propping up this corrupt gravy train any longer.
	And Trump shared this thing.
	He shared this article.
	So, I mean, that's the closest we've gotten to him saying, dismiss me in the primary at your own peril.
	You should either go down with me or win with me in the general.
	But if you dismiss me for DeSantis in the primary, I'll take the host ship down.
	What do you make of it, Emily?
	Yeah, that article is premised on a really critical error, which is that most Republicans want Donald Trump.
	There's statistically zero evidence for that.
	And there has been zero evidence for that since 2015.
	If there was Donald Trump and another sort of foil candidate in the Republican primary, if Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio had dropped out or whatever, if they had all dropped out, most voters voted against Donald Trump.
	They voted for somebody else.
	And in that primary, that meant, you know, that was voting against Donald Trump largely.
	And right now there's a huge strength of the Republican Party that's not interested.
	It's like a third of the Republican Party does like Donald Trump.
	And there are a lot of people, I wrote about this in the Federalists recently, who have very good reasons for wanting to support Donald Trump and not wanting to vote for any other conventional Republican politician, you know, a career politician, somebody who didn't make their money in the business world, whatever, because a lot of voters said, and it was a rational choice, this system has screwed me for years and years and years.
	So I don't care if this person is a poor character.
	In fact, I love it.
	I think it's funny because Washington is a circus anyway.
	So I'm just casting this.
	Maybe it's a protest vote.
	Maybe you genuinely like Trump.
	But it's not entirely irrational if you have been screwed by the system over and over again.
	And I think some people in the DeSantis camp, not DeSantis himself, they don't totally understand that.
	They don't totally understand why some people continue to like Donald Trump.
	But if you're saying that most of the Republican Party wants Donald Trump, you're just as out of touch as the people who say absolutely nobody wants Donald Trump anymore.
	And that's sort of where the vanity fair, listen, I know Vanity Fair doesn't have a lot of money anymore, but you think they could do better than that.
	What it shows, though, is basically that they're all, they conflate every single Republican with Donald Trump.
	And so you can't be a quote, reasonable Republican unless you're an anti-Trump Republican in their book.
	And that's what when you see the writer bringing in every sort of different Republican conventional point, like being pro-life and saying that is a lynch too far.
	That is an evil that cannot be tolerated.
	Then they're just playing, they're showing their cards, right?
	Like every Republican that's not fully anti-Trump is just as bad as Donald Trump.
	And that's what I'm saying.
	I totally agree with everything you just said.
	The truth is, even Liz Cheney, if Liz Cheney ran and got the Republican nomination, they would do that to her.
	They would.
	And it's John McCain over.
	Yes.
	Totally true.
	Go ahead, Ellie.
	There would be a piece exactly like that about Liz Cheney.
	You know, John McCain was the darling of the media in the primary when he was trailing in the polls.
	And of course, you know, what happened to John McCain when he got the nomination and squared off against Barack Obama?
	The media precipitously chose sides.
	McCain didn't have a chance.
	Was for a lot of reasons, but the question of whose side the media was on, even for a moderate Maverick darling like John McCain, there was absolutely no question.
	And the other, I think the other assertion from this author that I take issue with is there's a lot of references to the Republican machine.
	You know, like there are a group of people in back rooms making deals.
	And he writes, the Republican machine has no intention of letting us choose.
	You know, I learned a lot covering the Republican primary campaign in 2016.
	And one of the things was how weak this machine really is.
	Because if Reince Priebus and the GOP and party leaders had had much influence at all, if they had had any power, Donald Trump would have never been the Republican nominee in 2016.
	It would have been like what happened with Clinton on the Democratic primary.
	We have Martin O'Malley and Bernie Sanders.
	That's exactly right.
	Well, it may not be that the entire Republican Party supports Trump, but it's also true that all you need is about, you know, 30 plus percent of the party to win the nomination if the rest of the field is crowded, you know?
	And so that's, you know, that's why you have Charles C.W. Cook of the National Review writing articles to these other Republican hopefuls saying, don't, don't.
	Just, you may think you can.
	This is your, it's not like seed unless you're, you've got the ground swell behind you.
	And I think, you know, he's looking at DeSantis, obviously, but the GOP is in quite a pickle because if they have another, remember, remember that first Republican debate where we hosted at Fox?
	And we had to limit it to 10 people on the stage because there were so many.
	Can there were like 16 cannons like herding cats, even with the 10.
	So that's probably what we're going to have.
	Again, no one's going to do what's best for the party.
	They do what's best for themselves.
	And that's how Trump got the nomination last time.
	And it could be how he gets it again.
	All right.
	Emily, Eliana, so much more to get to.
	We're going to switch to our culture stories after this quick break.
	And you guys are always awesome on that.
	So stand by.
	The update now is there have been 15 no votes against Kevin McCarthy for speaker.
	They are only up to the letter N in the alphabet in the roll call.
	So presumably we may get some more.
	He, McCarthy, is laughing at the proceedings.
	I'm sure sort of the absurdity of some of these votes from people who actually support him, but are trying to make a point are somewhat amusing.
	He got a standing ovation when he voted for himself.
	So that's the latest there.
	The latest in connection with this Buffalo Bills player, DeMar Hamlin, who was so severely injured last night at the game against the Bengals.
	Just a bit of color for you.
	Niagara Falls will light up blue tonight in support of Hamlin, the Buffalo Bills, and the city of Buffalo.
Harry and Megan Royal Scandal Update 00:12:30
	God, which has been through so much this year, the city of Buffalo, right?
	The shooting, the snowstorm, this, just like hearts go out to those guys.
	They say both the American Falls and the Canadian Falls will be blue tonight from 9 to 9:15.
	Hashtag pray for DeMar.
	And by the way, DeMar's family put out a statement.
	There's no new information on his condition, but they said your generosity and compassion mean the world to us since his charitable foundation to help kids.
	What's a it's a GoFundMe is now just, I mean, they're in the millions now.
	He had shot for 2,500 bucks.
	Your generosity and compassion mean the world to us.
	Please keep DeMar in your prayers.
	We'll release updates as soon as we have them.
	So those are the latest on the two stories we've been following.
	Okay, let's shift gears to somebody who isn't a victim but thinks he is.
	And that is Prince Harry, who is finally going to tell his story.
	Finally, he's going to come out with it in his autobiography after the gazillion interviews he and his wife have given about their poor lives.
	Their castle's too small.
	I don't know if you heard.
	It's too small.
	Treated so poorly.
	He had to duck when he went through the doorways.
	Okay, that's them.
	That's hard for him.
	It's so hard when your castle is too tiny.
	He's given two interviews now, which are being previewed ITV.
	That's the station that asked Megan Markle the question, like, in the middle of Africa, like, how are you?
	Thank you for asking because no one has.
	Right, because we're focused on Africa.
	Okay, that's why no one asked you.
	Anywho, they go back to the same reporter.
	He's promoting his autobiography, which hits in like a week or so.
	And here's just a little sampling of what poor, poor Prince Harry is saying in SOT1.
	It never needed to be this way.
	The leaking and the planting.
	I want a family, not an institution.
	They feel as though it's better to keep us somehow as the villains.
	They've shown absolutely no willingness to reconcile.
	I would like to get my father back.
	I would like to have my brother back.
	They've shown no, no willingness to reconcile.
	Gee, I wonder why.
	Why do you think the family doesn't want to get back together right now?
	Does anyone raise your hand if you got a thought?
	Anyone?
	Emily?
	You know, it could have something to do with the publicity tour that has included so many broadsides at his family and accusations of them leaking to the press as though Harry and Megan have never, they would never stoop so low as to plant stories and leak things to tabloids.
	That is just not their style.
	They prefer to go and make millions over at Netflix, but they would never stoop so low as to plant stories with the tabloids.
	It's just, it's like actually very, very sad because their grandchildren are involved.
	There's this family itself and then the country, of course, that has relied on the sort of stoicism for whatever it's worth.
	Listen, I'm glad we don't have a monarchy here, but if you're going to have a monarchy, I mean, this is just pretty sad for the entire country.
	It's so disrespectful.
	And I'm sad to say it's becoming sort of profoundly American.
	It's sort of fitting that they moved to America and became whiny narcissists along the lines of what.
	Why do we have to get saddled with them?
	They said in their documentary, they were considering South Africa.
	Why didn't they go?
	Why didn't they go there?
	How do we get stuck with them?
	He adds, they know we reward this stuff.
	They know they can go to Netflix and be like, give me money because I'm going to whine.
	It's true.
	It's a terrible reflection on us.
	And let's not forget she's an American too.
	My kids just the other day were like, mom, Abby was here.
	My daughter goes, mom, are you a celebrity?
	And I said, no, absolutely not.
	And she looked up the definition.
	It was like, you know, I don't know, whatever.
	But I'm like, no, some people know who I am, but no.
	And she goes, do you think that you're the most famous Megan in the world?
	And I'm like, definitely not.
	So in any event, sadly, this other woman who, you know, she's definitely the best known Megan and she's bringing down the name and she's bringing down the country.
	Here's some more whining he did to Anderson Cooper over on 60 Minutes.
	And I will just submit to you, I want you to listen to the way Anderson Cooper tees this up because I believe this is such a joke.
	He's strawmanning the arguments against these people to tee up.
	To me, this is a classic example of something that was prearranged where he knew Prince Harry wanted to say something and Anderson asked exactly the right question to get him there because the way Anderson phrases the complaint of the world against Harry is not quite right.
	We'll get to that, but listen for it.
	Here's SOT 2.
	One of the criticisms that you've received is that, well, okay, fine.
	You want to move to California.
	You want to step back from the institutional role.
	Why be so public?
	You say you tried to do this privately.
	And every single time I've tried to do it privately, there have been briefings and leakings and planting of stories against me and my wife.
	You know, the family motto is never complain, never explain.
	But it's just a motto.
	And it doesn't really hold.
	There's a lot of complaining and a lot of explaining.
	And private being done through leaks.
	Through leaks.
	they will feed or have a conversation with the correspondent.
	And that correspondent will literally be spoon-fed information and write the story.
	And then the bottom of it, they will say that they've reached out to Buckingham Palace for comment.
	But the whole story is Buckingham Palace commenting.
	So when we're being told for the last six years, we can't put a statement out to protect you, but you do it for other members of the family.
	There becomes a point when silence is betrayal.
	Just a small nit, but he says there becomes a point instead of there comes a point.
	And he's made so many grammatical errors.
	If you listen to that Netflix documentary, this guy, ironically, is not very well educated.
	I went to public school in upstate New York.
	I take him on any day, intellectually, any day.
	And what he did to Eaton and all the private tutors, bring it, Harry.
	Okay, there comes a point, my friend.
	That's how you say it.
	There comes a point, not there becomes a point.
	Anywho, though, the criticism of these two is not that their complaints about their family went public.
	Yes, some people have said that.
	Okay, it's not like nobody's raised that.
	But the privacy complaint against them is that they ostensibly wanted a more private life.
	They wanted to be left alone.
	And then they never stopped giving interviews ever, right?
	They gave them to everyone.
	So Anderson tees it up like, why?
	Why just, why not just handle this privately?
	And then of course, Harry's like, because I'm surrounded by evil villains who leaked everything I said.
	There was obviously a way for them to leave their royal roles and stay in England and continue servicing the people of England.
	You know, there are plenty of royals who are not working royals.
	They chose to leave in a huff because they wanted the attention, because they're brats, because they wanted to get $100 million from Netflix and telling their story.
	That's actually what happened here.
	It's not about, oh, we tried to resolve it privately and we couldn't.
	So we had no choice but to bring these matters out into the bullshit.
	They wanted the money.
	They were filming that Netflix thing for months, well before Mexic, right?
	So the whole thing is based on a lie.
	And now we all just help him continue with his win-a-thon.
	Let me ask you, Eliana, because even Politico, Politico did a piece on them a week or so ago, listing them as number one in the quote, narcissists that we have become sick of as a society.
	They had them, they had Elizabeth Holmes, they had some bad people in that group.
	And so I do wonder whether people are getting it here in America and they've had it.
	I don't think we're there yet.
	What is so interesting to me about Harry's interview is I think there's a lot of projection going on.
	He talks about the royals' skillful use of the press.
	You know, two could play at that game.
	And I think it's precisely what Harron, Harry, and Megan are doing and about their desire for privacy.
	In reality, Harry and Megan have traded one type of celebrity, the celebrity of the British monarchy, for another type of celebrity, Hollywood celebrity.
	They clearly didn't desire privacy.
	In reality, I think those members of the British monarchy probably have more privacy than Harry and Megan have now.
	They are playing out their messy family dramas in the headlines.
	It's not just Harry.
	It's also Megan who is whose father who's having fights with her father.
	But when you listen to Harry, I think it's just a crash course in the tactics that he and his wife are using to get what they want.
	And he had a sophisticated course in this, giving his upbringing and the use of the press and the tabloids and the best schools.
	And I don't know, Megan, I'm just going to take a guess, given that, you know, you mentioned your grammar and writing skills and elocution are slightly better than his.
	I'm thinking he probably wasn't admitted on the merits.
	Maybe he wasn't subject to the most rigorous grading at these tony British schools.
	You could be right.
	You could be right.
	Whereas I got in on the merits at Syracuse University.
	Yeah, they may have gotten a little soft on him.
	This thing about the press, I love what you just said.
	He's used the same tactics that he accuses the royal family of using.
	This came out in their, you know, they sued the Daily Mail for defamation.
	It came out like Omed Scobie.
	Who's he with, Deb?
	Is he in a Vanity Fair?
	Harper's Bazaar.
	Okay.
	Omit Scoby is their stenographer.
	He is Megan and Harry's stenographer.
	He's purportedly a royal correspondent.
	Bullshit.
	All he does is write down what they according to, use Harry's word.
	Through leaks, they will feed or have a conversation with a correspondent.
	That correspondent will literally be spoon-fed information and write the story.
	And so that's exactly what this guy does for them.
	And then at the bottom of it, it will say Buckingham Palace refused comment.
	He says, but the whole thing is Buckingham Palace commenting.
	That's exactly what Harry and Megan do.
	By the way, it's what virtually everybody in media does.
	If I could tell you the number of negative stories that have been written about me, that I understand 100% who was behind it, an institution that may or may not have employed me.
	And then at the bottom, they say, oh, this organization was not available for comment.
	Meanwhile, the whole thing has been drafted by that organization.
	It's very obvious.
	It's disgusting.
	It's toxic.
	It's nasty, but they're not in some special place.
	They're public figures.
	This is what comes with the role.
	Get over it and grow up.
	And they want to make money off of being public figures.
	And that's what drives me crazy about this media coverage of them.
	Remember, what was it, ABC who let Oprah interview them without really disclosing the extent of their personal relationship?
	She lives like right down the street in Montecito, which is like the most beautiful place in the world.
	And they let Oprah do this like allegedly hard-hitting interview.
	But what that benefit, that benefits Harry and Megan, and they know it because they traffic on their reputation.
	Like that's how they make money.
	That's how they go to Netflix and say, give me money, money me now.
	The Charlie Day quote from It's Always Sunny.
	That's how they do it is because they can say, listen, we're doing really well at these interviews with ABC.
	We can talk to CBS.
	We can talk to Anderson Cooper whenever we want.
	He's going to give us a positive platform.
	We're going to come out looking great.
	And it's the journalists who talk to them.
	They're not entitled to positive media coverage.
	I mean, look at the trajectory of public opinion about Megan Markle.
	It has nothing to do with her politics.
	It has nothing to do with her race.
	People generally liked her until she started publicly acting like a brat and then public opinion of her tanks.
	It's just completely logical, but they don't want to accept that.
	And neither do the journalists who cover them because they want to pretend.
	They want to use these straw men and say this is about politics.
	This is about racism because they think that's good for their ratings.
	That's what they believe ideologically because they live in these bubbles.
	And meanwhile, Harry and Megan are making millions and millions of dollars off of this nonsense.
	Meanwhile, you're exactly right because her friends in response to that political article listing those two as the number one narcissist we're sick of came out and called them racist.
	Politico is now racist because they attacked Harry and Megan.
	Okay, like, of course, right?
	You could almost like count down to the racism allegation.
	All right, shifting gears now to a different media personality.
	I'm almost sorry to bring it up.
	I'm almost sorry, but not really.
	Amy Roebuck and TJ Holmes remain suspended from ABC News.
	They were co-hosts of a third hour of GMA that apparently aired in the middle of the afternoon.
Paparazzi Capture Celebrity Affair Details 00:06:09
	They are suspended because they had an extramarital affair with one another, according to the Daily Mail, which broke it, and then the New York Post, which had follow-up reporting.
	And now they've both in the month of December filed for divorce from their respective spouses.
	They have young children in his family and older children in her family.
	Her older children reportedly babysat for his kids.
	They were going out on double dates all the time with their spouses reportedly while they were having an affair.
	I mean, just like untoward stuff.
	This is why as a news organization, ABC News felt the need to suspend them after trying out the most awkward day ever of having them come right back on the air and pretend nothing had happened.
	And, you know, it was just too much.
	Then it came out that he'd been fishing off the company Pierre for years.
	He's dated at least reportedly two other women in the ABC newsroom, producers who you'd have to look at the circumstances, but you can make a case that he was above them on the totem pole, which makes the relationship problematic.
	Professionally, unlike his relationship with Amy, because they're equals.
	Their thing is more of a PR disaster.
	So here's the interesting thing.
	Okay, they fell in love.
	Whatever.
	They're leaving the spouses.
	It didn't work out.
	You tell me why now they're going like on a love parade.
	Photos from page six, New York Post were published on December 28th of them packing on the PDA in Miami.
	They're out there like all over each other.
	They've been spotted in Miami and Atlanta, kissing, holding hands, more kissing.
	Meanwhile, her cheated on, dumped ex-hutton, soon-to-be ex-husband, Andrew Hsu, they have three kids.
	They have a bunch of kids anyway.
	He and his three boys went to Montana for the holidays.
	And one of the boys posted this photograph of the four of them, Andrew Hsu plus these three boys, Aiden, Wyatt, and Nathaniel, looking totally somber and sad.
	And there's obviously no woman in the picture.
	There's no mother.
	There's no wife.
	And I've got to ask you, because you're both media savvy, whether this is the right move.
	Is this the next move for Amy and TJ who find themselves under fire and did this morally questionable thing?
	But okay, it happens.
	But then the move is to parade it.
	The move is to make sure the paparazzi can see you making out while your kids are still grieving the lot, the blowup of your family.
	Like for me, I feel like, can't there be some discretion in understanding that you made a mistake, something unfortunate happened?
	It does happen.
	But must you parade it?
	Must you flaunt it?
	Must you be completely insensitive to the fact that there are children involved who might not want to see that stuff?
	I just, to me, this is like a step in the wrong direction in getting themselves back on the air.
	What do you guys think?
	Affairs and lying in a healthy culture are shameful things.
	They're not things to be paraded in front of paparazzi.
	Obviously, they know they're being photographed.
	And I think Brad Wilcox has done a really good job at the Institute for Family studies of showing how the sort of corporate media glorifies divorce.
	And especially from this perspective of like, I'm living out my truth.
	My truth is this.
	My truth, my destiny, blah, blah, blah.
	It's always about what's best for me, what's best for me.
	And this gets to the sort of culture of narcissism thing we talked about with Megan Markle and it's straight out of Christopher Lash's culture of narcissism and his other writing.
	And that's what it does.
	It's our culture prioritizes the individual over the family, over the community.
	And so in that sense, I think maybe it is a good move because I can see them.
	And I'm curious what you guys think.
	I can actually see them getting a sit down with Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes, just like Harry and saying, you know, we had to be true to ourselves.
	We had to live out our truths and their profile might jump up and they might become more valuable as brands because of that.
	Even if it's controversial with a section of the public, it will get media attention and it will get positive coverage if they frame it in that light.
	You know, this was just about our truths.
	I really hope we're not there.
	Honestly, like I understand it's very like people make mistakes and definitely people fall out of love and then in love.
	I get that.
	I get all that.
	But this to me, I think it's worse than the paparazzi caught them in a PDA.
	I think they set it up.
	I think they made sure the paparazzi was there.
	And so they're putting this in our face on purpose and they're putting it in the face of their children on purpose.
	And so if I'm running ABC News, I say on purpose, you're never coming back to your role as morning anchors because morning TV is supposed to be fun and, you know, just lighthearted and people shouldn't have to be thinking about the sad children's faces or your extramarital affairs or, you know, like this isn't the move.
	This was not the next move.
	This was a serious misstep.
	What do you think, Eliana?
	I have to say, like.
	My gut says, and I don't know that like we just don't know all of the details about this.
	It struck me as strange that they would be suspended.
	They are equals for having an affair with each other.
	I suspect that there's more to that.
	Part of it, of course, but now we know, well, TJ Roebach, there was more to his story.
	I don't know the story with her.
	And yes, you know, it's untoward and inappropriate and gross that they're like parading their affair out in public at the same time.
	Like, why is the husband posting this sad photo of him and his children online?
	This whole thing with people's entire lives, you know, being on Instagram and on social media, it's not the way that I live or like to do things.
	But I frankly don't know like the intricate details of this situation.
	And I suspect we'll learn more here.
	But it is sad and strange, especially when there are children involved.
	And I totally agree with Emily.
	Like, you know, I think once you have kids, it's not about you anymore and you finding your happiness.
	You know, you should you should be miserable if it makes your kids happy.
	I totally condone the misery of the parents if it means the happiness of the kids.
	It's actually with Eliana now that she's a mom because she can just unload all of this.
	Okay, the suspension came after it came out that he has apparently a list of women in ABC that he slept with and they're trying to figure out whether they have another Matt Lauer on their hands is my bet.
	Okay, last but not least, quickly, Whoopi Goldberg steps in it again.
Whoopi Goldberg Doubles Down on Comments 00:02:16
	She doubles down on the same Jewish comments.
	Jews are not a race.
	The Holocaust wasn't about race that she said a year ago that got her a two-week suspension.
	Back then, she said the Holocaust wasn't about race.
	It's not about race, about man's inhumanity to man.
	Now she gives an interview to the Sunday Times of London and says it wasn't originally about race.
	Remember who they were killing?
	They were not killing racial.
	They were killing physical.
	They were killing people they considered mentally defective.
	The reporter tells Goldberg the Nazis actually measured the hands and noses of Jews to prove that they were a distinct race.
	She replies, they did that to black people too.
	It doesn't change the fact that you could not tell a Jew on the street.
	You could find me.
	You couldn't find them.
	That's the point I was making.
	But you would have thought that I'd taken a big old stinky dump on the table, butt naked.
	Okay.
	This is to me, what this shows is this is like the woke hierarchy.
	No, no, no.
	I, I am more oppressed because you can just see that I'm a certain race just walking down the street.
	Jews, they're a level, they're a different level on the oppression hierarchy because, you know, you'd have to, you'd have to work to figure out what any, in any event, not suspended, forced to come out and issue another apology, but she's not sorry and she hasn't changed her views.
	Has she?
	What do you guys think?
	Obviously, there's been no change in her views.
	And to me, Megan, this just shows the bankruptcy of performative apologies, which the ADL had a huddle with Whoopi Goldberg a year ago and she apologized.
	But this is all a PR stunt.
	There's no cure for ignorance.
	And that is what she is.
	She's crazy.
	She's always been crazy.
	And I don't mind celebrities or pundits being crazy, but I mine the double standard.
	And that's clearly been crossed and violated by her many, many times.
	That's exactly right.
	And she's got a cohort, a co-host there who actually wore black face, which they put on the board and celebrated as Joy Behar's Halloween costume.
	Nobody at ABC said, oh, we shouldn't do that.
	But no problem.
	So, in any event, always interesting to watch how the sides are treated.
	Ladies, it's been an absolute pleasure.
	Emily, Eliana, please come back soon.
	Thanks, Megan.
	Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show.
	No BS, no agenda, and no

Chapters

00:00:20 Critical NFL Injury After Tackle
00:15:22 Teammates Support Intubated Player
00:19:09 Playoff Implications of Medical Crisis
00:22:57 House Republicans Face Speaker Holdouts
00:37:03 McCarthy's Fabricated Life Exposed
00:40:24 Two-Thirds Vote to Remove Speaker
00:46:48 Kevin McCarthy's Political Relationships Crumble
00:50:51 GOP Needs New Leadership After Announcement
01:06:54 Trump Spoils General Election for GOP
01:13:55 Harry and Megan Royal Scandal Update
01:26:26 Paparazzi Capture Celebrity Affair Details
01:32:36 Whoopi Goldberg Doubles Down on Comments