The Megyn Kelly Show - 20230516_cnns-post-trump-town-hall-meltdown-and-no-media-ac

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May 16, 2023 - The Megyn Kelly Show

01:36:06

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CNN Meltdown in New York 00:04:05
	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.
	Incredible new details on the absolute meltdown inside CNN after the Trump Town Hall.
	We're going on one week now, and they are still in a shambles over there.
	One CNN staffer likening the fallout to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
	This is the greatest story ever.
	I'm sorry.
	It's the greatest.
	Meanwhile, on Friday night, CNN's primetime drew a smaller audience than Newsmax.
	Okay, no, we never even look at Newsmax.
	No, no disrespect to my friends at Newsmax.
	They understand this too.
	They're not in as many homes as Fox News.
	So, I mean, they were just like a blip that nobody would ever even look at.
	And now they're beating CNN.
	Oh my God, in the prime time, at least on Friday.
	Always love when our friends from the Fifth Column podcast join the show and they are here today for the entire program.
	Camille Foster and Matt Welsh are here.
	Moynihan, interestingly, is stuck in the subway and will be here shortly.
	You know what?
	This is very sketchy.
	What's he doing?
	Like a little like man on the street research for the biggest story in New York right now.
	Is that what's happening, guys?
	From wethefifth.sudstack.com.
	Some debate about whether or not he is doing his own Michael Jackson impersonations or he's actually trying to wrestle someone to the ground right now.
	I suspect we'll find out very soon, though.
	And I hope he'll be the good guy.
	There he is.
	I see him.
	He made it.
	Moynihan, can you hear us?
	Yeah, I was just doing a very spirited rendition of the song Dirty Diana on the subway.
	And when I got up on my toes, I was attacked ruthlessly.
	So now I'm here.
	I apologize.
	Glad to see you.
	There is something I just want to say one thing before we start.
	It is amazing to me that people who live in New York aren't all libertarians because nothing in this city works.
	Literally, you pay absurdly high taxes and nothing works.
	Something that a private company could do well.
	The New York city government cannot achieve the most basic things.
	And I'm doing Trump hands because I'm so frustrated by it.
	So sorry for being here.
	It's true.
	No, my biggest image of New York City right now, these days, and I lived there for 17 years on the Upper West Side with my family is the trees because now I live in Connecticut where there are actual trees with leaves on them.
	Unlike the Upper West Side and the Upper East Side and the Lower East Side and Hell's Kitchen, where the trees don't so much have leaves as they do plastic bags.
	Yes.
	Plastic bags, like little, sad little wannabe Christmas ornaments adorning the trees because the Department of Public Sanitation is all but non-existent.
	Yes.
	So the trees are covered in violence in New York.
	They're covered in leaves.
	I live outside the city most of the time too.
	And it is a real market contrast.
	And you need that once in a while to come back and say, oh my God, this is the fifth world.
	It's not even the third world.
	So they are.
	I'm excited to share with you all that they are thinking about.
	And of course, it'll cost an incredible amount of money.
	They're thinking about finally putting the garbage sacks that are piled up on the streets in bins.
	They're making this consideration in New York City in the Lord's year 20 and 20.
	That would be nice to have some bins.
	And then if they could actually aim correctly for the bins, because the problem is once the garbage trucks go by, they dump out the garbage, you know, the trash that's on the street corners or that you have wrapped up in a bag.
	And then there's an overflow, right?
	There's overflow from the, because they don't pick up enough.
	And then they just leave it.
	So you're walking down the street, you're stepping over so much disgusting trash.
	Now you're stepping over human excrement.
	Yes, it's true.
	That's another joy of the subway these days.
	This mayor was not the big fix that many of us hoped he'd be after the disastrous last mayor.
	All right, enough about New York City.
Stepping Over Human Excrement 00:04:25
	Let's talk about CNN.
	I sent this to Debbie and Steve, my producers last night.
	I'm like, this is the greatest story I've ever read in my life.
	It's by Lachlan Cartwright, who's a reporter over at the Daily Beast and Justin Barragona.
	And it's under this brand called Confider.
	Now, it's following up on a puck news report that initially reported things continue in a downward spiral at CNN.
	They are so angry that Trump was hosted in a town hall internally.
	I mean, it's a full revolt.
	It's dividing the staff from the management.
	The staff's attacking the management.
	The management is attacking the staff.
	In places like Fox News Digital, it's a civil war inside of CNN right now.
	And this is just an example of the Trump derangement syndrome that has dominated the media for the past six years and continues to to this day.
	All right.
	So I'm going to get into all of it, but let me just set it up with this, with the lamentation of their best-known news anchor.
	I think it's fair to say, Anderson Cooper, the day after the Trump town hall last week, which I haven't yet played for the audience.
	Maybe they've seen it elsewhere.
	But you got to get a feel for how sad and disturbed the CNN talent and many, many others inside the building are that Trump was given this forum.
	Listen.
	As good a job as Kalen Collins did trying to fact check him, it is impossible to fact check fully because he lies so shamelessly.
	That man you were so upset to hear from last night, he may be president of the United States in less than two years.
	And that audience that upset you, that's a sampling of about half the country.
	They are your family members, your neighbors, and they are voting.
	You have every right to be outraged today and angry and never watch this network again.
	But do you think staying in your silo and only listening to people you agree with is going to make that person go away?
	I mean, he at least kept the tears from rolling down his cheeks because that would have been a little bit too strong.
	Well, he's kind of right about that last bit, though, isn't he?
	He is.
	You know, you got to deal with this.
	You can't be like me.
	It is really amazing what he says.
	Those people in the audience, those are real humans.
	I am Gloria Vanderbilt's son.
	And now that's a special thing.
	That was really amazing.
	But I do appreciate all of this.
	And we talked about it on the fifth column.
	This incredible thing coming from inside a news organization with a man who is going to cinch the nomination for the Republican Party for the next election should not be quote unquote platformed.
	Are you joking with me?
	Right.
	It's uncomfortable.
	Here's how I'm going to revise his talking points for him.
	Dear CNN audience, grow up.
	Grow up.
	It's called news.
	Sorry.
	Okay, bye.
	That's it.
	I mean, the struggle session on the air live, Camille.
	Like, oh, you have every right to be angry and to never watch the channel again.
	Like, who are they kidding?
	Either do news or don't, but don't apologize for doing the news.
	I mean, the presumption is very clear that the people who watch his show couldn't possibly vote for Donald Trump.
	Like they're just, they're aware of that.
	So any pretense that what they are doing is decidedly objective, not that one can be completely objective, but that it is decidedly objective and it's just the facts.
	And that is what they're doing should obviously be pushed aside in favor of this rather indirect, but very clear admission that what we've been doing for a very long time is producing a newscast that the only sort of people who would actually watch it are the kind of people who would be outraged by the very visage of Donald Trump on the screen and the sound of his voice.
	If you are outraged by Donald Trump, even if you're someone who dislikes him by just him appearing and being cross-examined by someone who didn't do the best possible job, the magic wall, I know there's some disagreement about that point of hand.
	That is really distressing.
	You're an adult human outraged by the fact that the man is on television ever.
	I think that's preposterous.
	And Anderson did eventually arrive at what sounded like the right idea that people shouldn't be siloing themselves.
	But it's also the case that anyone who's been watching your program apparently has been siloing themselves.
	So it's nice that you're no longer doing that, but that's what you did before.
	He had to acknowledge their pain first.
	You understand?
	Like they're all feeling it.
	This is obviously hugely distressing to hear him again and have him back again.
	We get it.
Chris Lick Summons Oliver Darcy 00:04:52
	We feel you.
	I mean, so much for the new more fair and balanced CNN.
	All right.
	Because that's the way forward is not, we fucking hate him as much as you do, but we've got to put him on because he's running.
	Like that's, that is not the way to win back the missing GOPers that they drove away during the GOP of the Trump years.
	So, all right.
	So that what he said shows to some extent what's happening inside the building at CNN and it's ongoing.
	Puck news, Dylan Byers, who used to, I think he was inside CNN and then he went inside NBC and now he works for Puck News has an article up saying that he summoned their new Brian Stelter, a guy named Oliver Darcy, up to his office.
	Chris Licht is the new boss over at CNN.
	He's the new Jeff Tucker.
	And he was very unhappy with the way his internal reporter, media reporter, Oliver Darcy, shown here on the left, covered the fallout within the building after this town hall, reports Dylan Byers.
	Oliver Darcy's newsletter caught Chris Lick's attention.
	Chris Lick summoned him and told him, you are too emotional in covering this.
	What did Oliver Darcy write?
	Quote, it's hard to see how America was served by the spectacle of lies that aired on CNN Wednesday evening.
	He reported that his boss, Chris Licht, was now facing a fury of criticism, both internally and externally, and went on to write how Licht and other CNN executives that addressed the criticism in the coming days and weeks will be crucial.
	So he gets summoned up to the boss's office and the meeting, quote, put the fear of God into Oliver Darcy, who was left visibly shaken per Puck News.
	According to Semaphore, a different news organization, in the aftermath of the meeting coverage, Darcy has wondered to colleagues whether he should resign or if he will be fired.
	All right, so that was interesting enough.
	But then let me get you to the real good stuff.
	Okay.
	This is from, as I point out, Daily Beast, Lachlan Cartwright, and Justin Barragona.
	CNN's boss, Chris Lick's extreme sensitivity to any negative press, coverage of his reign, and his resulting attempt to intimidate the network's top media reporter in the wake of the disastrous Trump Town Hall has greatly alarmed staffers.
	So here's what happened according to this report.
	Chris Lick didn't like the Oliver Darcy reporting.
	Chris Licht apparently got somebody to go speak with Fox News Digital and say that, hold on, I'll get it.
	Standby.
	CNN staffers were appalled by Oliver Darcy's report.
	And then the CNN staffers revolted, saying, F you, Chris Licht.
	Oliver Darcy's not the problem.
	You, platformer, you are the problem for turning CNN into a forum in which Donald Trump took over and got his message out uninterrupted, basically, well, interrupted, but unimpeded to the American people.
	So they talked about the puck reporting.
	They go on to say that after that, A CNN executive tells Confider that the people inside the building were very bothered by what they did with Fox News Digital, this attempt to smear Oliver Darcy.
	One said, quote, I heard zero complaints about Darcy's newsletter.
	In fact, the opposite.
	People were glad someone was calling this out.
	A CNN on-air personality added, it's a terrible look that he's being muzzled or intimidated simply for saying what everyone is thinking.
	He's not in PR.
	He's a journalist.
	Okay, they went on to say he's not going to resign, but he did contemplate it, this media reporter.
	And it says as follows.
	CNN insiders say Licht has been spending an inordinately large amount of time around the Atlantic reporter, Tim Alberta, who was profiling the executive after his first year in the office.
	Alberta was in the audience for the Trump Town Hall, which was described to Confider as, quote, our Chernobyl by one CNN staffer as network spin doctors work overtime hoping to generate a glowing profile of the boss.
	All of this happens as the network falls to fourth place in cable news primetime ratings on Friday night, just two days after the Trump Town Hall, falling behind Newsmax.
	Then Oliver Darcy late last night puts out his own reliable sources newsletter.
	That's the thing Stelter used to do, and points out that CNN averaged 335,000 in the overall on Friday night.
	My God, I would have been embarrassed to get that in the demo most nights on the Kelly file, which is the smaller, the younger audience.
	The overall, it should be above a million.
	It was 335,000.
	They point out, Oliver Darcy says, smaller audience from 8 to 11 than Newsmax.
Jeff Zucker's Credibility Crisis 00:14:59
	And he says, quote, it's unclear if the viewership decline was connected to the town hall.
	Chernobyl, guys, exactly the same.
	It's the same.
	I'm just glad that we've graduated from words are violence to words are catastrophic nuclear radioactive poison, which I think is inaccurate.
	Unless they're said by someone on the subway who's acting erratically and saying he wants to die and then that should be treated differently.
	No, that's hurtfully for help.
	This shows what Chris Licht.
	He's in.
	Licht is in a pickle, Megan, because he's trying to change a news organization that has already changed beyond recognition.
	I mean, just think in terms of Anderson Cooper.
	Anderson Cooper, I mean, he was on my short list of people, as were you, Megan.
	And I'm not saying this to butter you up.
	I'd said this in other fora and even got criticized for it on the Bill Maher program.
	He was a really good presidential debate moderator, at least on one or two occasions, like a good newsman on his best days.
	And then if you just happen to stumble into Anderson Cooper while channel surfing anytime over the last six years, you're like, what the hell is this?
	Like soggy emotionalism.
	I mean, that thing, I'm glad that he did express the sentiment like, hey, we're supposed to not stay in our silos, but he was breaking up.
	He was crying talking about it.
	And it felt like a hostage note.
	Like, this is the conditions under which he has to still work.
	CNN, I used to, when I first started doing cable news as a guest back around 2007 and 8, I first noticed this at Fox and would try to sort of struggle against it.
	There was a sense of the first person plural, of the we, the assumed kind of political sense of things, not in every place and certainly not on Red Eye where I went on the most, but in many places.
	And like, it was just sort of strange for me with my news background.
	I began noticing that at MSNBC pretty shortly thereafter.
	And it was a stronger sense of we than the we that I had experienced over at Fox.
	And, but CNN was always considered to be, all right, that's more of a news thing.
	CNN has gotten into such the we business.
	And the we is we're defending democracy by making sure that we don't platform not just Trump, but by any January 6th denier, as Jake Tapper is, he won't, they won't put on actual elected representatives who are in the Republican Party who don't agree with what they say about January 6th.
	I might not agree with those people too, but they are elected Republicans.
	They are, this is your country.
	If you have any pretensions of being in the news business, you have to deal with them.
	Tucker Carlson, if I'm not mistaken, had more of an audience among Democrats than Anderson Cooper or anyone else has among humans.
	And Tucker Carlson, I might add, who's a different character than almost anybody else on television.
	When he would get to the, you know, these are my politics, it was always him.
	It wasn't like there wasn't a we.
	He knew that he had an audience of people who were more politically cross-dressing than people in that are watching CNN right now.
	So if Chris Licht is coming in there and saying, okay, we're going to fire Brian Stelter.
	We're going to get some of the emotionalism off.
	We're going to start doing it down the middle.
	He's going to find that his entire organization has are still pretending like it's the summer of 2020 when you can do a staff-wide revolt and issue your petitions.
	We don't live in that world anymore, but it's really, really hard to change an existing legacy news media operation whose culture has changed so profoundly.
	Yeah, so right.
	It'd be one thing, guys, if DeSantis got the nomination or Tim Scott or Nikki Haley.
	CNN might have a chance of playing it down the middle under the new edict.
	But there is zero chance of them landing that plane with Donald Trump as the nominee, which is what the smart bet is, as at least as of today.
	They can't do it.
	The town hall and the fallout after the town hall prove it.
	No, the fallout was internal and the fallout was not amongst American people.
	I mean, normal people aren't talking about this stuff.
	I mean, as Matt says, this is a kind of dying empire.
	It reminds me, I went to a very waspy country club that Irish people like me are not typically allowed into in Massachusetts.
	And I looked around and I said, man, these people are living in a different era.
	The era of the wasp is over.
	That's what I look at when I see cable news.
	They don't notice it and they're all high on their own supply.
	They're like, we are, I'm Anderson Cooper.
	You get 300,000 people watching your show.
	I'm sorry.
	Why are people not paying attention to what the fifth column says?
	Because we get more listeners than you get viewers.
	I'm sorry to say no one's paying attention to us in the way that they're paying attention to them because this is a completely dying world, a dying business.
	And you have somebody like Tucker Carlson who's going to run out in a rail and he says, look, I'm going to do it on Twitter.
	I don't need cable news anymore.
	I'm going to bring my audience with me.
	My audience is portable and mobile.
	And, you know, you have guys like Oliver Darcy saying, like, they think this is a public works job.
	They think they work for the MTA or something.
	Like, why can't I criticize my employer?
	Like, how dare you attack me for attacking my employer?
	I, sorry, grew up in an era where if you don't attack your employer, you don't piss inside the tent.
	That's considered insane to do.
	And to say, well, no, I'm just reporting.
	No, no, no, you're giving an opinion about how it was terrible that the decision that your new CEO made.
	And you're expecting and you're coming to the business.
	It depends on what his role is.
	Like, what is, I don't know what Oliver Darcy's role is.
	You know, if he's supposed to be like the ombudsman, you know, like the Washington Post used to have, where there's a person sort of sitting outside the company, but really is employed by the company and is supposed to be free to say, oh, the company screwed up.
	This is BS journalism.
	That's one thing.
	That's certainly not what Brian Stelter was doing when he was there.
	He was Jeff Zucker's mouthpiece.
	He said whatever Jeff Zucker wanted him to say.
	Now Jeff Zucker's fired and so is Stelter.
	So I don't know what Oliver Darcy thinks he's doing over there.
	I do believe, however, the real problem is here, he was giving voice to the actual attitude inside of CNN, whether Chris Licht likes it or not.
	And to me, that's the news story that they're so fragile inside of CNN.
	There's in such a meltdown over the platforming of the guy who is dominating the GOP race by what was the latest, like 30, 40 points.
	It's not like he's up by two over DeSantis.
	Like, who else would they be platforming if they want to take a look at the GOP race right now?
	Oh, go ahead, Monet.
	Just one quick point.
	People used to complain that we would, people like Madam Camille and I would focus on the madness that had enveloped campus politics.
	But I would always point out this is the bleeding edge.
	This stuff is going to overtake the sort of general population soon.
	And that's what you see at CNN.
	I mean, we used to have these conversations about words being violence and no platforming, and we have to get rid of Alex Jones or something from YouTube rather than debate her or expose him as a loon.
	And now this is actually within mainstream news organizations.
	And their remit is to tell you what the person who is up 30 points in the Republican primary is saying and is likely to be the nominee.
	And the fact that these weird things from the campus that people used to say, look, that's just extremist nonsense.
	And I was, we always say that this is like, you know, edging closer and closer to the mainstream, but I never thought it would hit journalism because we were kind of siloed in that way that, you know, we're talking about what is real in society, what people are talking about, and we can't sanitize it because it might make you uncomfortable.
	It's incredible that that's actually coming from inside the machine at CNN.
	It just means that they're no longer a news organization.
	Here's the other thing on the fact checking.
	It's like, I'll give you the floor in one second.
	I just want to make one quick point on it.
	You don't have to fact check every single thing he says.
	Trump does lie a lot.
	A lot of politicians do.
	Trump might be in a special class, but he does lie a lot.
	He says a lot of things that are not true.
	You don't have to fact check every single one.
	You know, pick your top five is basically what I would have told Caitlin Collins and zero in on those so that the audience knows this one actually really matters.
	Pay attention right here.
	If you're just nitpicking the guy, it's annoying.
	You look rude.
	People start to, you know, tune out.
	It's like, oh, she hates him.
	So whatever I get, you don't.
	And like these people inside CNN seem to think that, you know, she should have been like, you ever watch pop-up video on VH1?
	You know, it's like, there should have been like a little pop-up.
	It's a lie too.
	And that's a lie.
	Here's why.
	Don't take my ideas, Megan.
	The bubble would take over the screen.
	Like there are smart people who are smart enough at home to figure out, okay, I've heard that enough times.
	You know, it's got a red flag on it.
	Anyway, keep going.
	Go ahead, Camille.
	Well, no, they certainly don't believe that people are smart enough at home.
	Their entire theory of the world appears to be that they can, by suppressing the bad people, make the world a better place and that they can affect electoral outcomes and that they will never ever have their credibility impaired as a result of this like obvious game sort of meddling with the game and the mechanics of the game.
	But it clearly has impacted their credibility.
	And there are so many good reasons why it has.
	And I know we're going to talk about some of those other things later, but that is the fundamental issue here.
	Like you imagine that you can simply not talk to these people, that you can simply only give voice to people who already agree and that you can parrot points of view back at them that they explicitly agree with.
	And you never ever talk about the folks on the other side.
	I mean, I think that that is except to demonize them.
	And I think that that is an obvious mistake if you're actually interested in persuasion.
	The fact that you're not, as you just said, Megan, going after every single point and trying to go down the line and interrupt at every moment, you're conserving your fire.
	You're hopefully making a more persuasive point.
	You're getting them at their most vulnerable spot.
	And you should be doing it, quite frankly, across the board to every politico and policymaker that shows up on your platform and talk to them in precisely the same way.
	That is what viewers, I think viewers would reward that.
	That is what they want.
	I think Chris Licht is really flailing right now.
	He's really struggling.
	He doesn't, he is faced with this really tough problem of the fact that Jeff Zucker turned CNN into a left-wing hack job.
	I mean, it really, it had credibility.
	I've said before, it was kind of boring, but it was pretty much down the middle.
	It had some left-wing bias, but not terrible.
	They did a good job of trying to hide it.
	And then he turned it into just a left-wing rag, basically on television.
	And people knew and they drove their Republicans who are watching it away.
	I, too, I'm an independent, but I watch CNN all the time.
	They drove me away.
	I'm like, I can't watch this.
	This is insufferable.
	So how do they get me back when they've already told me that they hate people who think like me, they hate my ideals, they look down on me.
	Like, I'm not going to watch that.
	Plus, I don't think they're fact-based.
	That's their other problem.
	They used to be and they're no longer.
	So this brings me to the programming decisions that Chris Licht is now making.
	Now, we heard that he's bringing on Gail King and Charles Barkley to host a show.
	God only knows.
	Problem solved, Megan.
	Okay.
	We'll see that.
	And before that, he brought on Chris Wallace.
	Now, Jeff Zucker brought him over, I think, right?
	It was Jeff Zucker, not Chris Wallace.
	I can't keep track of the firings.
	But he's there.
	And they put him on Sundays.
	Chris Wallace had the fourth rated Sunday show on Fox News Sunday.
	It was not doing well, but it was a fair show.
	He was by far the fairest of the Sunday anchors.
	And he was, I think, the toughest questioner.
	It's just, Wallace is a little prickly and has never been a huge hit with the audience.
	That's just the honest truth, with all due respect to him as a journalist.
	Then he had the presidential debate, which was very biased, in my opinion, against Trump.
	And that was the end of it for him and the Fox audience.
	And so now he goes to CNN and he's going to sort of do non-politics.
	He's going to do more of like, I don't know.
	It's like Larry King in the softer interviews, not with Politicos.
	And they put it on Sunday morning.
	It totally bombs.
	They got nobody.
	Then they just moved it to Friday nights.
	Oh my God.
	I mean, Moynihan's dating life in high school had more action than what's happening.
	You mean he's doing incredibly well?
	I didn't know his dating for that high, Megan.
	Thank you for being there.
	I mean, it's dreadful.
	He actually lost to Newsmax.
	Again, Newsmax isn't even in, like, they've got millions more homes with CNN than they do that have Newsmax.
	And yet, Greg Kelly beat him at 10 p.m. this Friday night.
	I would submit to the jury, it is because what happened on Friday night were exchanges like the following.
	Shown here.
	Watch.
	We got to do that together.
	The tracks of, come on.
	The tracks of my tears.
	All right.
	Hey, man, what are you doing this weekend?
	I'm going to concert this weekend.
	No, you actually want to get people there, not drive them away.
	Yeah, this is good advice for Chris Licht, too.
	Smokey Robinson.
	He's done all, he's got a lot of big names.
	I mean, we.
	Sure.
	Oh, God.
	Who's the guy who played Wolverine?
	Hugh.
	Hugh Jackman.
	Thank you.
	Hugh Jackman.
	I just saw him on Broadway.
	Anyway, he's got a lot of big names, but nobody's watching.
	Absolutely no one's watching.
	Like, they don't get it.
	Okay.
	Now, this leads me to Fox, okay?
	Because the thing that CNN needs and doesn't have is they need a programming genius.
	They need somebody who actually understands what will make, who's our core audience and what will make them tune in.
	Fox News is going through something similar.
	They really are.
	And that leads me to Beth Ailes in an extraordinary tweet.
	Extraordinary.
	The widow of Roger Ailes last night tweeted out the following.
	Happy heavenly birthday, Roger Ailes.
	It took you 20 years to build Fox News into the powerhouse that it was, and only six years for the Murdochs to wreak havoc.
	Rupert thought he could do your job.
	What a joke.
	He has the checkbook, but could never come close to your genius.
	Rest in peace.
	Whoa.
	Whoa.
	I haven't heard her say anything at all since Roger was ousted from Fox.
	And then she weighs in with that.
	And I got to hand it again to Confider over Daily Beast and Lachlan Cartwright, who did what journalists are supposed to do.
	He saw the tweet, picked up his phone, and he cold called her and got her talking.
	I mean, literally, I haven't seen this person do an interview in the entire time since Roger was ousted.
	Never mind, died.
	And this is what he reports.
	Confider saw that tweet, immediately cold, called Elizabeth, and then spent, who then spent half an hour absolutely railing against the Murdoch family and their handling of a post-Ailes Fox News.
Roger Ailes' Managerial Legacy 00:14:18
	Quote, Roger never had his hand off the wheel when it came to Fox.
	I agree.
	Megan Kelly speaking there, contrasting it with the Murdochs, who she said, quote, weren't born here and don't have the same pedigree.
	Roger was born, he was raised in Ohio, in Youngstown, Ohio, where he dug ditches for a living.
	He understood America, middle America.
	He understood the coastal elites.
	He knew exactly who the audience was and what the need was for Fox News to be born in the first place.
	And he did have his hands on the steering wheel 10 and two the entire time, mostly because this thing pulls to the left, as he used to say about news, but also because it can pull too far to the right.
	And Roger knew when to course correct when that happened too.
	She goes on to say about Lachlan Murdoch.
	I was told he's a spear fisherman.
	I don't know if he spends time in the office.
	This is one of the criticisms of him that when he came in and took over, what he really wanted to do was run the movie studios, not be stuck at 1211 6th Avenue running the cable operation, which isn't as sexy as the Hollywood stars.
	Recalled that Roger used to refer to brothers James and Lachlan as Tweedledum and Tweedledum, respectively.
	I can also confirm that, having heard it many times from Roger Ailes.
	But she saved most of her ire for the patriarch, Rupert, whom she described as a jealous man who fired her husband because Roger eclipsed Rupert on the world stage.
	Now I've got some thoughts on that too.
	She likened Tucker Carlson's firing to her late husband's ouster, claiming the Murdoch figured out how to chop off his head when he became too big.
	This is fascinating.
	She knew Roger better than anyone.
	And I have to say, she's got some very valid points in there, guys, about what she's essentially saying is it took six years for Fox News to collapse in its core mission from the time Roger was ousted, that no one other than Roger has been able to do it, and that the Murdochs don't have the vision or the desire or the capability to make it happen.
	What do you think?
	It's been amazing.
	However, I think that's a managerial, it's accurate or plausible from a managerial standpoint.
	We've heard that about the Murdoch kids forever.
	There's always been a succession battle.
	And Roger Ailes, for those, and I never met him, I worked for him as a Camille, you know, in theory, but he was the genius.
	The people from the outside who are always like, oh, God, Murdoch over at Fox News, as long as Roger Ailes was alive, that wasn't the issue that you really had.
	The issue is Roger Ailes.
	He ran the place.
	It was his vision.
	It was his idea.
	Fox has kept most of its audience until very recently.
	That's the area in which her complaints or her analysis I think needs to be complicated.
	That and also she said that Eric Bowling was part of the people who got fired because he was too big.
	I don't think that was the problem with Eric Bowling.
	No, with respect to Eric.
	Was it too big?
	Is that what Eric complained?
	No, don't.
	I told you.
	Come on.
	Come on.
	Let me do it.
	Go ahead.
	Deep cut.
	Oh, I love Eric.
	But managerially, I think that there's absolutely something to that.
	You can tell from outside the building, and I have no intel on the inside, but that it lacks the same kind of cohesive managerial structure.
	You knew Roger Ailes was in charge.
	You worked at his behest and you worked.
	And his vision was out there every single day in one way or the other.
	I'm not sure what that vision is now.
	And I think that people do become kind of too big or too not controllable by the Murdochs because they don't have their hands on the system the same way.
	Suzanne Scott doesn't command the same kind of respect within the building.
	I don't think I would guess that Roger Ailes did.
	I'm being nice.
	So I think it's fascinating that she's talking and that she's dishing.
	And it points to, I think, the most plausible theory still to me so far of Tucker Carlson's firing was that he built a center of independence from the managerial team within.
	And they couldn't have that.
	That plus all the lawsuits were probably starting to get a little bit difficult around the edges.
	But I think it seems like that attitude from the Murdochs is one that they're going to continue to revisit as soon as someone becomes sort of problematic.
	They've come bigger than Fox in their point of view, then they can get rid of them.
	And at some point, and that point might be now with Carlson's audience in that hour, they will start to finally lose audience because up till now, they've still managed to kind of win their basic business.
	Look, there's something you can't, there's no answer to this, obviously, of what would Roger Ailes have done.
	But, you know, Roger Ailes, for all of his many faults, was a political genius at television, a political television genius, a very specific thing.
	If you go back and read Joe McGinnis's book from 1968, The Selling of the President, I mean, who is the key player in that who is trying to kind of make Nixon a kind of TV guy in watching Roger Ailes as a young man in that book?
	You're like, man, this guy is really something.
	He's kind of a magician.
	And he did that at Fox for a very long time.
	He saw a market opportunity.
	There was a big glaring hole in the market and he filled it.
	And the one thing, the what if, though, is, you know, Roger Ailes dies in 2017.
	How do you handle the Trump phenomenon as a, you know, a news organization that leans right?
	Because this is the complete blowing up of the traditional Republican Party coalition.
	And, you know, Roger, as you said, Megan, was somebody who kept a check on, you know, going too far to the right.
	And it fires Glenn Beck when he's the highest rated guy on the network because he's scribbling on chalkboards and looking a bit crazy, to be honest.
	And I think Roger acknowledged that and said, you know, no more of this.
	So I really wonder, I just to say that the current, I don't, you're not a huge fan of Suzanne Scott.
	And I think last time on the show, you told me, which I didn't know, that she used to run hair and makeup, which I think is pretty interesting.
	But I don't think that she's doing a great job over there.
	But at the same time, just to be nice to everyone in this, is that it is a very, very tough time to take over when you look at Republican politics and how much they've changed in the kind of populist, like re, let's say, revivification of the Republican Party as this populist thing.
	How to do that on television is pretty tough.
	It was a lot easier when it was kind of Bush Republicans versus sort of ordinary Democrats.
	Now you have this AOC populist end, you have the Trump populist end, and it confuses things.
	So, I mean, he would have known how to do it.
	She is right about instinct.
	I suspect that she's right that Rupert doesn't have the instinct for what to do right now with his audience.
	And Roger absolutely would have.
	He would have understood.
	I've worked with him.
	Let me tell you something right now.
	Suzanne Scott and Bill Schein used to run over to me because I met with Roger all the time.
	And they'd say, What did he say?
	What do you say about this?
	What do you say about that?
	He didn't share anything with them.
	She has absolutely no tutelage to call back on because he didn't mentor her.
	He didn't mentor any of his executives.
	He wanted to keep them unsteady.
	He had zero desire to share his leadership vision with any of them.
	I guarantee you, I know more about it than she does.
	I guarantee you.
	He would have understood that he would have to fold in Trump's views to the core programming in a way that was defensive of them while trying to hold on to their national review flank.
	He had already come to understand that, even though he was against Trump's populism, he understood the channel's too one-dimensional in its coverage of Republican politics.
	And we're going to lose our Ohio ditch-digging flank in favor of the national reviewers if we don't do something about what's on our air right now.
	And that's when he started to bring in more contributors who were pro-Trump and saying what Trump was saying.
	And, you know, a lot of people internally were like, what are you doing?
	Why are we doing that?
	He's like, out of respect for the audience.
	He understood it before anybody else did.
	And he would have navigated the Trump presidency perfectly.
	I really have no doubt of that.
	Roger's problems were never that he didn't get the audience, that he didn't have a genius ability to program both when it came to content and selecting talent.
	What ultimately brought him down was a combination of what she said and a real problem with women.
	And I've thought about this a lot.
	And I've talked to Janistine about it a lot.
	And she was one of the women who came forward and worked with me to make sure women understood that we were talking and that it was safe to talk.
	I think we both believe that while there were some two dozen women who came forward with complaints about AILS, some that were deeply disturbing.
	All right.
	Let me just reassure the audience of that.
	This wasn't like a passing remark like he may have made to Gretchen Carlson.
	Some people were really harassed in a way that was dark, okay, and abused.
	So that was a real problem.
	But I do think she's right that it was used.
	It was used to get rid of him by a family.
	I mean, in particular, the sons who wanted him gone.
	I don't think Rupert wanted Roger gone, though.
	I don't think it was Rupert.
	I think it was the Sons who were ready for him to move on.
	And Gretchen filed that lawsuit.
	And then the rest of us came forward and they saw an opportunity.
	And that was the end of Roger.
	And, you know, there's some sort of, I don't know, it makes me feel sad that I and maybe others were used in that way.
	But I also can't say I regret it because there's no way he could have stayed in that office.
	There's no way a man doing that many bad things to that many young women who just are trying to make it in journalism should have remained in power.
	No way.
	That part is omitted from her tweet.
	Yeah.
	To step away from the person of Roger for a moment and to speak to this kind of broader question of how things might have played out differently were someone like him in the media ecosystem and able to help shepherd a network through the Trump era and the transformation of the Republican Party in particular.
	It is interesting to imagine what the dust-ops might have looked like with a network boss and Donald Trump once he got this, once he was unhappy with what he was seeing on the network and sort of started to throw darts.
	I think that, if nothing else, can kind of push your buttons in a very particular way and create a climate of concern inside of the network.
	You could see people making all sorts of kind of panic decisions about the sort of programming and people who ought to be there and perhaps having that kind of genuine fear about whether or not the audience might actually defect from them, which is the sort of stuff that you actually saw talked about openly in those text messages that came out during the recent legal proceedings.
	Dominion.
	Yeah, that's exactly.
	I think that was another opportunity for somebody to steer the boat, you know, and steadily.
	And they didn't have it.
	You know, she points out the Dominion lawsuit.
	That was one thing that was mishandled, the aftermath after the election and the, you know, false election claims.
	And I'll tell you, I've said this before, but one thing Roger would have done was protect the news division, which hasn't happened here.
	They have not been protected.
	And that was the one and main and most important source of Fox's credibility.
	And they've sacrificed it.
	There's no one's protecting them.
	They fired Chris Direwald and Bill Salmon, two of the best respected journalists behind the scenes in Fox News as a pander.
	But then they got rid of their most beloved host, who was out there giving voice to a whole line of contrary thinking, contrarian thinking, that wasn't espoused anyplace.
	They don't know what they're doing.
	They don't understand the mission as Roger believed it to be when he launched the channel back in 1996.
	It's also worth pointing out that when you fire Chris Direwald, who's a brilliant guy and an interesting guy, and Bill Salmon, who's been somebody around the kind of conservative firmament for a long time at the Washington Times, The Examiner, et cetera, it's a SOP to who.
	Nobody who's angry about this notices that.
	Yes, anybody who's even marginally involved in politics, they don't know who these people are.
	So why bother doing it?
	I mean, what Roger Ailes had the other thing was the luck in some sense of not having a lot of places where people could defect to.
	I'm not sure if Chris Ruddy had started Newsmax at that point.
	The magazine had been around for a long time, the website too.
	But once there was actually another place for people to go, two other places, you know, OAN, which is the real kind of extreme end of this, and Newsmax, which is sort of, you know, more towards the Fox end, but more with the populist tinge, that is something that the new bosses have to contend with.
	And you see that in Tucker Carlson's text when they say, you know, we're going to lose our audience here.
	You didn't have to have that conversation before.
	Like, where are they going to go?
	CNN, MSNBC?
	And I think, Megan, it's pure speculation that it's right that I think that Roger Ailes seeing what he had done.
	I mean, I didn't know the guy as you did.
	And by the way, it's also pretty interesting and admirable from a journalistic perspective that you separate the art from the artist in a way.
	And, you know, like it's all the stuff that you went through with him and actually talking about him as a kind of media guy and as kind of a media genius in the way that he was and throughout his whole career.
	But I, you know, it is, it seems to me that that balance is something that is a difficult thing to do that, as you put it in the sort of national review wing, the kind of more traditional free market conservative wing and the populist one, that balance is possible.
	It's not one or the other.
	And Tucker was a huge part of that balance.
	If you like him or you don't like him, that was where those people are being satiated at Fox.
	And you get rid of him.
	I just don't know what the hell you're doing.
	It just doesn't make a hell of a lot to me.
	Yes, you're so right.
	I would never take away and never did take away Roger's genius.
	And, you know, one thing I'll say about that movie Bombshell, I've been critical of Charlize Theron this week for other reasons, but one thing I'll say about that movie was I thought they did a good job in capturing that I really cared for Roger.
	I cared for him deeply.
	He was a mentor to me.
	He really helped me throughout the course of my journalism career.
	And I learned a ton from him.
	And, you know, I would not, I would not have the career I have right now had it not been for his help.
	And I don't even just mean the opportunities he gave me.
	I mean also just the advice he gave me and he showed me how to cover news in a fair and balanced way.
	But, you know, but I also wasn't going to lie on his behalf.
	I wasn't going to lie.
Media Splintering Realities 00:04:16
	I had a feeling I might not be the only one.
	And when the issue was put to me directly, is he capable of this?
	There was just no way I was going to lie, not given my own history, not given my time as a lawyer, not given my affinity for the women I worked with, and not knowing what I knew, which was that at least Janice Dean had a story like mine too.
	So it was just an impossible situation.
	And I really feel like the reverberations from all that we went through at Fox back in 16 when this happened, we're still watching play out.
	It's still there, percolating.
	And Beth Ailes's tweet raised it again in a way that I thought was, you know, rang true on, let's say, 90% of what she wrote.
	All right, stand by, you guys.
	Quick break and then more with the fifth column.
	They stay with us for the show.
	Guys, as if on cue, as we are deconstructing the media situation right now, Barack Obama weighs in on what the real problem is right now, the thing that scares him the most in an interview that aired today on CBS this morning.
	Listen to this.
	Post-presidency, what about this country keeps you up at night?
	The thing that I'm most worried about is the degree to which we now have a divided conversation, in part because we have a divided media.
	But when I was coming up, you had three TV stations.
	Yeah.
	And people were getting a similar sense of what is true and what isn't, what was real and what was not.
	Today, what I'm most concerned about is the fact that because of the splintering of the media, we almost occupy different realities.
	Remember the good old days when he controlled everyone?
	Thankfully, he never could.
	Yeah.
	No, all those good old, every single bit of alternative journalism.
	We've forgotten about this now because alt journalism for a while under Roger Ailes, he created an alternative form of journalism.
	Before that, there was the alternative form of journalism of AM Talk Radio, which was overwhelmingly conservative.
	Some of the early internet under Andrew Breitbart and other people, Drudge Report, was right of center.
	So people in their minds and the media think of alternative journalism now as being kind of right of center.
	But in fact, the early alternative journalism, a lot of it was left wing.
	It was the village voice.
	It was all the underground papers of the 60s.
	It was Rolling Stone Magazine.
	It was left of the center.
	It was a critique of how much the best and the brightest generation had screwed up.
	They had taken this perceived legitimacy and greatness, and they had absolutely screwed the pooch all over the country again and again and again.
	And so to harken back to that time is to harken back to being self-bamboozled.
	And it's disreputable.
	We should like as much chaos and innovation and growth in media.
	And if you don't like the way that people lie and have alternative realities, when you were in political power, stop lying.
	I wish you would have done that.
	He didn't.
	What about it, guys?
	We'd still be in masks and having no negative reporting about side effects from the vaccine.
	And we would still be believing that Trump colluded with Russia.
	We'll get to the Durham Report in our next blog.
	If it weren't for alternative sources of media, if it were the way it was in the good old days that he's referring to.
	Everything that he said was true up until then.
	I mean, we do have a divided conversation.
	We do have a divided media.
	I don't think that's a bad thing.
	He does seem to think that's a bad thing.
	And I'm not somebody that harkens back and it's nostalgic for this sort of corporate control of three major networks plus PBS.
	I don't think that was a good thing.
	And I think the freedom that the internet has given people scares the establishment.
	That's why they want to de-platform people and push people off of, you know, put YouTube and put them on, you know, that's why Rumble comes up.
	If this was not true, if it was not true that there was one direction that the media drifted in in the past, when these opportunities came up, they would not have been filled, as Matt pointed out by the Drudge Report, by Fox News, by blogs, by podcasts.
	And that's why it happened, because we knew which direction it was going and people wanted a different, different perspective.
	And they got it.
	And that's great.
	Yep.
	Exactly right.
Durham Report Criminal Indictments 00:12:22
	All right.
	We're going to pick it up there.
	And when we come back, we will deconstruct.
	I love that leftist term.
	The Durham report and tell you what's happening with that.
	It's actually just so embarrassing for the FBI, for Andrew McCabe, and for Jim Comey in particular.
	And now we know the source of the Trump P-tape rumors.
	We know who got it started.
	We know who leaked it and who seemed to work hard to get it into this deal dossier.
	And wait until you hear who he's connected with.
	Fifth column guys, stay with us.
	And don't forget, folks, you can find the Megan Kelly Show live on SiriusXM Triumph Channel 111 every weekday at noon East.
	The full video and show and clips by subscribing to our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash MeganKelly.
	And if you want to hear from me on Fridays, I send you a fun email.
	Just go to megankelly.com and you can sign up for it there.
	It's getting lots of great traffic and I read all of your emails.
	Okay, guys, so the Durham report is out.
	This is actually, I think it's interesting.
	You know, it's not like earth-shattering, but it's disgusting.
	I mean, what he concluded is disgusting.
	And he's suggesting he probably would have brought criminal charges, more criminal charges, if he could try anybody outside of Washington, D.C., where, you know, it was 95% for Hillary, 95% for Biden.
	There's zero chance of convictions there.
	He tried it a couple of times.
	So I don't think the fact that there are no criminal cases coming out of this tells us much.
	And I'm actually fine with it too, because we don't really want to become a banana republic where as soon as the one guy's out of the office, we start arresting everybody who worked for him.
	So, okay, that's fine.
	But that is not to dismiss the substance of what this guy found.
	Now, his investigation was launched in 2019 under Attorney General Bill Barr, and he was looking into the origins of the FBI's investigation of Trump, the so-called Crossfire Hurricane FBI investigation to see whether Trump colluded with Russia in the context of getting elected.
	We now know he didn't.
	We now know that the FBI knew he didn't, but tried to cobble together an investigation anyway because they so hated Trump.
	And Durham finally comes out.
	Durham, keep in mind, Durham was praised by both sides as a no-nonsense straight shooter when he got selected, right?
	The left had no problem with John Durham being selected to do this.
	Now they're like, oh, John Durham sucks.
	But this is what he reported in a 300-page report released yesterday.
	The DOJ and the FBI failed to uphold their mission of strict fidelity to the law in looking into these allegations and figuring out whether there was a case to be had against Trump and in the conduct of that investigation.
	The FBI used raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence.
	Senior, I'm quoting, senior FBI personnel displayed a serious lack of analytical rigor towards information that they received, especially information received from politically affiliated persons and entities.
	And he means Hillary.
	That's what he means, the Hillary Clinton campaign.
	The department did not adequately examine or question these materials and the motivations of those providing them.
	They did not and could not corroborate any of the substantive allegations contained in the controversial steel dossier.
	That's the thing that alleged Trump went over to Russia, hired some Russian prostitutes and had them pee on a bed in the presidential suite that Barack Obama had allegedly stayed in years earlier, among other things in that steel dossier, which has been totally discredited.
	He writes, we conclude that the Justice Department and FBI failed to uphold their important mission of strict fidelity to the law in connection with certain events and activities described in this report.
	However, it does not recommend any wholesale changes in the guidelines and policies at DOJ or FBI that they now have in place to ensure proper conduct and accountability in how counterintelligence activities are carried out.
	Andrew McCabe was the guy in charge of counterintelligence.
	He's now absolutely a darling of the left, and there will be no accountability for him publicly for what he did, sicking the FBI on the Trump campaign, sicking the FBI and people like Carter Page, Papadopoulos, who this makes clear, they knew there was nothing there there.
	This was based on the flimsiest evidence ever to go after those guys and get warrants from the FISA court.
	And they absolutely understood they didn't have it, but they wanted to get him anyway.
	There are quotes of Peter Strzok at the time inside saying essentially exactly that.
	And just to tell you what I teased before the break, they also report that the person behind the infamous P rumor that Trump did that in the Russian hotel was none other, according to Durham, he believes it was, PR exec and Clinton ally, Charles Dolan.
	That Charles Dolan is the one who provided this information to this Igor Denchenko who got it into this deal dossier.
	And Charles Dolan, working in close with Hillary, went over to Russia.
	He went into the hotel.
	He got a tour of the presidential suite.
	And that's where it was born, that rumor, which was totally unsubstantiated.
	Durham actually went over there and spoke with all the witnesses in the hotel.
	He actually did his homework.
	It wasn't true.
	It never happened.
	And indeed, Trump, the one time he stayed in that hotel, did not stay in the presidential suite.
	He stayed in an entirely different room.
	The whole thing was made up.
	And then it was saddled on Trump in such a way that still has his supporters believing, not without foundation, that his first term was stolen from him, having to deal with this nonsense, which was a fabrication by Hillary and a compliant, complicit FBI.
	What do you guys make of it?
	There's a phrase that people use in the media oftentimes, the ones who are crying at CNN platforming Donald Trump, where that they perceive Trump and certain people in the conservative movement of, they accuse them of working the refs,
	of taking the existing standards that are supposed to be kind of objective or supposed to be fair, and knowing that people have to kind of report to or respond to factual stimulus or controversies in such a way that you can launder things that are not true.
	I'm struck by that because I've been hearing that for most of my career.
	And this is that in action in the absolute opposite way of the people who normally talk about that.
	This is people working the levers of the FBI and of the national security apparatus who know those levers, who know how it's done.
	And they successfully planted a piece of hot steaming garbage in the middle of a campaign.
	Recall that Hillary Clinton was in that presidential debate, like calling Donald Trump a puppet of Vladimir Putin.
	Of course, he's like, no, you're the puppet.
	And so it became that was what people pointed to.
	No puppet.
	Hillary Clinton called him a puppet of Vladimir Putin in a presidential debate.
	This is how she approached it.
	And she's someone who would, you know, you would think that she wouldn't know, having been in government for so long and in those positions.
	It's appalling, as is the media's response to this, even today.
	Oliver Darcy, who we talked about last hour, in his newsletter this morning, which the little tagline at the top is, I'm still here.
	So he's being brave inside of CNN.
	He dismisses this as, you know, a conservatives said that this was going to bring arrests.
	It didn't.
	And so, you know, yet another report that just doesn't deliver on promises.
	Well, that's one way a media reporter might look at this.
	I might suggest there's another way a media reporter might look at this is, I don't know, look at one of the many, many, many super clips out there on Twitter.
	John Elliott is someone who does these every day, it seems like, of people on MSNBC, people like Adam Schiff, people like Rachel Maddow, and all of these deep state liars.
	And I'm now just saying former, you know, people, heads of the CIA and the former directors of national intelligence, people who have been given contributor contracts on cable news networks, just lying about this and saying and intimating not just that the steel dossier is true, but the P-tape stuff, which is absurd on its face.
	If you knew anything about Donald Trump, and I tried not to, but I knew that he was a germaphobe.
	Germaphobes don't like getting beat on, from what I understand.
	You would think that this would be an occasion for people who ever said anything that wasn't true about this, whoever said, well, look, you know, these people probably know what they're talking about.
	And so you would think that would be the time that they would look at that and say, gosh, I was a little bit wrong there.
	No, they're saying that Republicans are pouncing, that it didn't deliver on the promises.
	This is shameful.
	This is what extends people's long growing distrust in media and the way this was done.
	This is a pretty bad episode in American intelligence and law enforcement and media.
	And it's not getting better, judging by the early reaction to it.
	Shame on you, Matt Welch.
	Why are you protecting him?
	Why are you protecting him?
	Why won't you tell the truth about the Venturian president?
	It really is extraordinary to watch Rachel Maddow talk about this and talk about all of the Republican excitement and how they were waiting for all of the indictments.
	They were waiting for the revelations of the huge scandal when there is another scandal that is worth talking about here.
	And I do think that while it is egregious that politics was permitted to creep into a criminal investigation, and I think that the recommendations in particular in the Durham report are seemingly quite sensible and sane, incredibly reasonable.
	And the highlighting of concern around the FBI impugning its own reputation in this way as a result of this kind of botched investigation, totally sensible.
	I didn't hear any of those things get responded to.
	Instead, it was only the kind of hysterical overstatement on the part of Donald Trump.
	And this is in a way, him giving them a cudgel with which to beat him.
	He promised that this would be, you know, the gravest crime of the century and that heads would roll, et cetera, et cetera.
	It didn't turn out to be that.
	And that is one reason perhaps why it's prudent to allow these investigations to take shape than to deal with the revelations when they come out.
	I understand I'm perhaps a bit naive because that's not how politics is played, but it might have been better.
	At least then you'd be in a better position to appropriately and on the merits, impugn people like Rachel Maddow, who were way out over their skis, promising that the other shoe was about to drop with respect to this story.
	I mean, these are the people who should be the most embarrassed by these revelations and quite frankly, outraged by the fact that people in the intelligence community have at different times, like doubled down on these narratives about the president being in bed with Vladimir Putin and being controlled by Vladimir Putin.
	It's the sort of thing that we would hear over and over and over again.
	And it's taken a while for this report to materialize.
	But having waited so long, I'm not going to be the one who's comparing the number of indictments between this and the Mueller report, which people also waited for with bated breath, because that isn't the measure of whether or not this is credible and worthwhile.
	I mean, the fact that this never quite panned out, that they never had any sort of cooperation of the stuff in the Steel dossier, which they used to secure warrants for spying on American citizens, like that is egregious.
	People should be materially outraged about this on the left and the right.
	It should be the sort of thing that we don't want to see repeated again.
	But instead, there are particular kinds of people who are happy to ignore this or to downplay it because it is consistent with their politics to do so.
	They can.
	The press cannot be outraged because they were willing participants in it.
	They allowed themselves unquestioningly to be used.
	So the FBI gets the steel dossier full of lies based on the sourcing we just discussed and leaks it to the press.
	Then the press writes articles about the steel dossier, which have no skepticism in them whatsoever.
	Then the FBI uses those press articles to go into the FISA court to say, look at the press reports about what's in the Steele dossier and what's out there and gets warrants to spy on private American citizens based on that rubber dope in which the press willingly participated.
FISA Courts Push Lies 00:05:50
	Meanwhile, we now know that, you know, flash forward a few years when Trump's, he's running for reelection and Biden's running for election and were days before the election and the Hunter Biden laptop drops.
	And we now know that the CIA was running around trying to get former intelligence and counterintelligence officials to sign on to that dopey letter, which was full of lies.
	That's the CIA, the FBI, and the DOJ.
	Now, you would be called a conspiracy theorist if without this evidence, without the Durham report, without this reporting that has outed these guys, you said, oh, that's deep state.
	They're in on it.
	You know, they're trying to bring down Donald Trump.
	It's true.
	You know what?
	Can we just run the Barack Obama soundbite one more time?
	Let's just run.
	This is why he's so wrong.
	This is why we desperately need alternative media sources as opposed to his three chosen ABC, CBS, and NBC, none of whom was questioning these reports as they were being delivered.
	They were reveling in them.
	Listen to him again.
	Post-presidency, what about this country keeps you up at night?
	The thing that I'm most worried about is the degree to which we now have a divided conversation, in part because we have a divided media.
	But when I was coming up, you had three TV stations.
	Yeah.
	And people were getting a similar sense of what is true and what isn't, what was real and what was not.
	Today, what I'm most concerned about is the fact that because of the splintering of the media, we almost occupy different realities.
	Wow.
	Talk about not accurately assessing the problem when it comes to American communication right now.
	That maybe back when Walter Cronkite was on, I don't know, I was too young.
	I knew everybody loved him.
	But the media we had prior to the birth of alternative media, it was not a trustworthy media.
	And we should not be harkening back to those days.
	Well, if you look at the media that we're seeing now, and Matt has pointed out that there are people who are making these sort of collections of clips, and I apologize for my image being frozen because the FBI is onto me and the deep state is trying to get my internet connection.
	It's very, very frustrating.
	But it's an amazing thing because you have somebody from the FBI like Peter Strzzok, and I saw this today.
	These are people who are referring to Donald Trump as an asset, an asset.
	They know what this phrase means.
	They're people in the FBI.
	And when you look at the kind of scope of this, these are the same people that are talking endlessly, breathlessly about misinformation and disinformation.
	What does one call this at the end of the day?
	If you're saying that the President of the United States is in the control or the pay of the Kremlin, this is lunacy.
	And so the response to this today has been, well, you know, there's a lot of nothing going on here.
	Well, I'll tell you what, an indictment is not what I'm interested in.
	I'm interested in the kind of etymology of this case.
	And look, I like, I'll even acknowledge very, honestly, and you know, this Eli Lake wrote a very good piece about this for Commentary Magazine a couple years ago.
	It was called Guilty But Framed, which is about right.
	There's some stuff that's really smells.
	I mean, Paul Manafort stuff, I don't think is above board, and I don't think it's okay.
	But when you have that sort of desire to go deep into it and say, we're going to, you know, let's let's also point out something that is really, really important here.
	And it's the tribal affiliations overtaking consistency.
	Because during the Bush years, who was talking about rubber stamp FISA courts?
	Who was talking about not trusting the intelligence after Iraq, not allowing intelligence agencies to run rampant and just trust?
	That was people on the left.
	And now, when you see the most interesting part of the Durham report, and I'm a complete loser, so I spent this morning reading it in bed.
	I maybe should have done something different.
	I should have got an exercise.
	But I'm reading this, the Papadopoulos wiretaps in stuff that, like, as Durham points out, is kept out of the re-up of the FISA warrant, in which he's saying over and over to this, to this source, this FBI source, that, yeah, there's nothing here.
	I don't know what they're talking about.
	And it's in no uncertain terms.
	It's saying, like, this is kind of crazy that they think, you know, Trump is in bed with the Kremlin and kind of they're pulling his puppet strings.
	This is nuts.
	If that was allowed, and again, you know, the problem with the FISA courts is that they approved 99% of the warrants in front of them, maybe that would have had some sort of effect.
	But even knowing that, they didn't include it.
	And that's a problem because the problem is they have investigators shouldn't have a conclusion when they're starting their investigation.
	And that seemed to be the major takeaway from this document.
	They knew, they knew that the White House was advised, the FBI knew that Hillary Clinton was planning on pushing this lie that Trump had colluded with the Russians in the context of his campaign.
	They knew they didn't care.
	And the report also reveals that the Russians knew, the Russians knew that she was planning on saying this years before and took advantage of it.
	They don't care.
	They don't care what truth is.
	They just want to sell chaos over here in the United States.
	That's been their plan for years now.
	So they all knew that she was going to push this lie.
	Then she did push this lie.
	Then the FBI ran with this lie.
	Then they get the steel dossier through this guy, Dunchenko, and so on, who they were paying already as a confidential informant.
	And then when everything falls apart, they know it's lies.
	They pay him according to Durham, I think it's another $300,000 so he can remain a confidential human source.
	Now, why would they do that after they've discredited him, after they know that he's been feeding them lies, so that he can't be subpoenaed by Congress, so that he can't go out there and out what they've been doing, all the nonsense he's been pushing that they've been willingly accepting the spoon feed of.
Jill Stein and Foreign Agents 00:07:55
	It would make them look bad.
	I mean, I had a big debate with Dan Abrams, my pal, both here on SiriusXM and he's on News Nation about he doesn't like it when people rip on the FBI because he thinks there's a lot of honorable guys in there who would prosecute leftists and conservatives and so on.
	That speaks to the rank and file.
	The leadership of the FBI has been corrupt and there's been almost no accountability.
	Why?
	Why is Andrew McCabe a darling of the left?
	What about Peter Strzok?
	Why?
	They don't care.
	These same leftists who want to lecture us on everything, like you put out disinformation and so on, are employing and celebrating and giving tenured university positions to these people to this day.
	I'm always struck by how people who otherwise can cite by heart a line from a movie about Joseph McCarthy will then in the next breath accuse someone without any good evidence at all of being a puppet of the government.
	It's like, do you see any dissonance going on here?
	And this is, I mean, keep in mind, Hillary Clinton did this not just with Donald Trump, which is the most consequential one, to be sure, but to Tulsi Gabbard.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	To not just Tulsi Gabbard either, also to Jill Stein.
	She said that Jill Stein running for the Green Party in 2016 was likely a Russian asset.
	It's her language for this.
	John McCain, the late John McCain, said something very similar about Rand Paul.
	These are disreputable, dishonorable ways of going through life.
	When someone is frustrating you because they're your political impediment, they're not doing the thing that you want them to do, or you just hate them.
	It's fine.
	People hate each other.
	It happens.
	You don't call them an asset of a foreign adversary.
	This should be basic.
	It should be kind of a consistent thing that we have an instinctual revulsion at, not just as citizens, but as journalists, or not just as journalists, but as citizens.
	And yet people went whole hog for it.
	And there's only a few people I can think of in the media who, when faced with new information as it has come out over the years, have said, oh, gosh, that's a problem.
	Michael Zikoff, I think Moynihan has pointed out in previous iterations, was one of them who did that and deserves some credit for that.
	That's the social searching that we should be seeing right now.
	And we're not because people are just not consistent about this.
	Just to add one thing to that, you know, it is the seriousness of the charge is what we should focus on because I don't like Tulsi Gabbard's ideas about Russia and about Russian foreign policy.
	I do not like Rand Paul's either.
	And I do not like Jill Stein's and, you know, who's at RT gallows.
	To say they are assets, to say they are working for a foreign government is to accuse somebody of what?
	Of treason.
	Treason.
	What is the crime?
	What is the highest punishment for treason?
	There were two people, married couple in the 1950s, who were accused of being treasonous towards the Soviets, with the Soviets in collusion, and they were executed, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.
	And, you know, they were guilty too.
	But to go around saying that these are people that I think they have crappy foreign policy, but you know what?
	I'm not going to take shortcuts.
	I'm not going to say, well, you know what?
	I think they really are because that's cable news stuff.
	I mean, if you go back and look at Rachel Maddow's record, no one seems to be doing this because the woman is making $30 million a year or something to that tune.
	And we're doing one show a week.
	And she had major ratings to the entire Trump administration by spinning these yarns about a treasonous government.
	Good Lord.
	If the government in power is in service of the evil scumbags in the Kremlin, you would have the right to, you know, overthrow it for Christ's sake.
	I mean, it's unbelievable that Rachel Maddow probably lives in, you know, the penthouse that she's probably got, the car she probably drives, the country estate she probably has.
	She bought that thanks to these lies that she told, dividing the country night after night after night with impunity.
	I mean, I hope she looks around and she sees her beautiful couch and she thinks lies paid for that.
	That's what, that's what happened.
	And she, unlike these other journalists you point out, Issakoff's been good, hasn't had any accountability for it whatsoever.
	She got raises for it.
	She got praised for it.
	I mean, not for nothing, but my husband Doug, you know, he's got this other podcast where he interviews authors.
	He's an author.
	And it's called Dedicated with Doug Brunt.
	It's really good.
	And he had on Douglas Murray, actually released today, Douglas Murray, who's such a great pundit.
	And he was talking to Douglas Murray about people like Rachel Maddow and how they just spew lies and they don't debate anybody, right?
	Like, wouldn't it be great to see somebody get on there and grill her and say, how dare you, madam?
	Have you no shame?
	Speaking of quoting McCarthy, right?
	It doesn't happen.
	By the way, we have the clip, just, you know, shameless plug for Doug's podcast.
	It's kind of cute.
	Here, watch this.
	Is there anyone out there that you would like to debate that you think could maybe do it in a constructive way?
	Unfortunately, not at the moment.
	There are ones who I'd like to debate who wouldn't be able to do it.
	I'd love to debate Nicole Hanna-Jones of the 1619 Project or Robin DiAngelo, the race huckster, author of White Fragility and other unreadable terms.
	I'd love to debate Ibrahim X. Kendi.
	But all three people I've just mentioned are a new form of public figure in America, which is the public figure who throws out and send you ideas and will not defend them in public.
	In fact, says, I will not debate these ideas because all opponents are de facto racist.
	What about like, I don't know, I mean, you and Rachel Maddow probably have a different worldview.
	So she's smart.
	Well, it doesn't necessarily mean you're plenty of dim people from these places, but I think she's an act.
	I don't think she's a real ideas person.
	I mean, she is just an act.
	I mean, she has a shtick where she sits in front of the monitor and reads, reads out and cries sometimes when it's good for ratings.
	And I don't think it's a real ideas person by any means.
	Sounds so much better with the British Agent Club.
	Yeah, it's like ASMR, isn't it?
	I'm like, so soothing when Douglas is angry.
	My daughter does that all the time.
	Yeah, he's like opening the package.
	But no, I mean, he's right about all of these things.
	And, you know, if people, it's funny when you say like, we cannot have people like, you know, Alex Jones and whatever, because people are silly and stupid and we don't trust them and they'll believe these things.
	So let's just have somebody uninterrupted on cable for five, six years talking about Trump being a Russian asset on a cable channel that's getting very good ratings for cable and unopposed and have them sort of, it's the idea that people are going to soak this stuff up.
	And they do.
	And he's absolutely right with the people he mentioned before who explicitly say we have invited Nicole Hannah Jones many times onto the podcast.
	It was a long time ago before she said she won't talk to anyone.
	If you can find a critical debate, she'll sneer at people on Twitter, but you will not find on YouTube her being challenged by an actual historian.
	She's not a historian, but she has made very large claims for herself and for the history of the United States that is, you know, revisionism is a perfectly fine thing.
	We can revise history.
	It's very important to do so.
	But it's also very important to be able to publicly defend those ideas.
	And as Douglas says to your husband, a very smart way of saying it is that is that this is something that used to be standard, but those were amongst historians.
	This is we have media people now redrawing the past of America and saying, no, It's not good for me to go out there and defend these things.
	It's just good to get the echo chamber and people want to get that validation.
	They don't want challenge.
Russia Narrative Shoulder to Shoulder 00:03:42
	I have a quick question I have to ask you guys.
	Okay.
	That's a good question.
	Forgive me for this question.
	Does this officially put an end to any possibility of Hillary Clinton becoming the nominee?
	I'm just saying, nobody wants Biden.
	Nobody wants Kamala.
	I've heard the name mentioned over.
	It's dead.
	The horse is dead.
	Okay.
	I want to agree, but I don't make predictions like that anymore.
	Ever since I was very, very wrong about Donald Trump securing the nomination for the Republican Party.
	So I was wrong about the Russia stuff.
	I was like, oh, well, the FBI's got to have something.
	Well, that's it.
	I said that many times in the podcast and I walked that back.
	That's the problem.
	I mean, I think most Americans were very trusting of an institution like the DOJ, like the FBI, you know, and even I had real faith in Jim Comey.
	I thought he was a man of honor.
	I see him so differently now.
	Thank God for alternative sources of media for those journalists who did question, who didn't accept.
	I was on the sidelines for a lot of this reporting because it was in between my stints and television.
	But I thank God for people who pushed back, people like Glenn Greenwald, people like Tucker, you know, who just didn't accept these narratives, who kept pressing and not and didn't allow Rachel Maddow to have the floor, you know, alone, right?
	There was another narrative out there and it made people hate them.
	Just for fun, just for kicks, here's just a throwback just real quick to Rachel Maddow during the Trump era and what she sounded like then, Miss $30 million a year lady.
	Russia.
	Russia, Vladimir Putin, Russia, Russia.
	Russia hates Russia.
	Russia, Russia, Putin, Russia's Russian, Russian, Russian, Russian, Russia, Russia.
	Moscow.
	Moscow.
	Russia.
	Russian pro-Russian.
	Russian, the Russians.
	Russian, Russian, Russian.
	Russians, Russians, Russian, Russians, Russian, Russian, Russian, Russian, Russia.
	Russian, Moscow, Russian, Russian, Russia, Putin, Russian, rush against us.
	Russians.
	The Russians rush against the U.S.
	The Russians, the Russian government scheme.
	The Russians.
	Vladimir Putin, Russia.
	Vladimir Putin.
	Russian Putin.
	Putin and Russia.
	Russia.
	Moscow.
	Russia.
	Russian.
	Russia.
	Russia.
	The Russians.
	We think that's from Matt Taibbi, an old one.
	This reminds me of a feeling that I've had and I've thankfully have suppressed it for a while.
	But I think I can speak for Moynihan about this too.
	I've hated Russia my whole life.
	Yeah, it's been pretty good.
	My dad worked in aerospace.
	Like, we're going after the Ruskies since I was old enough to crawl.
	And I mean, when Camille and I had the best show, along with Kennedy on the history of cable news, sorry, Megan, The Independence, didn't quite do as big as Rod Real's one failure, Matt, was he didn't see that genius.
	It's true.
	He was clear to say as much as it did in the newspaper.
	They didn't say anything back to you.
	They were very kind of me.
	We had our own.
	He did not.
	It's so clean in articulation.
	But we had our countdown, like the biggest enemies of freedom or something like that.
	In 2014, we did this.
	And who's the number one global enemy of freedom on our list?
	Vladimir Putin was.
	So you go and I've, you know, just hating Russia, opposing all of his imperialist wars and all of this stuff.
	And to go from there and then suddenly see people who have not been shoulder to shoulder on that issue over the years do that clip for the better part of four years was a was an out-of-body experience.
	And it's always a reminder to even yourself to remember to tether your stuff to reality.
Sincere Hatred Towards Mexicans 00:02:28
	And, you know, you can, it's totally not just possible, but preferable to keep your hatred of hateful actions and figures without impugning your fellow citizens.
	Just don't.
	These are Americans we're talking about.
	We should have facts on our side before we make these grave accusations.
	Don't we that we see that in the climate we're in now?
	I'm very surprised that we allow hatred against a nation and people.
	Now do the exact same thing.
	And we can use AI to replace that with Mexico and Mexicans and see how long that Rachel Maddow's show would stay on the ears like Mexicans, Mexicans, Mexicans.
	Like these Mexicans are everywhere.
	The Mexicans are in the government.
	It's like, yeah, I don't think you can get away with that.
	No, she's fine.
	It's all right because it's your birthday.
	You know, it's fine.
	You might win a GOP nomination, but it'd be hard for you.
	Go ahead.
	Can I bridge one disagreement with Doug Murray?
	I think Douglas, excuse me.
	I'm sorry.
	I'm sorry, Doug.
	He gets mad.
	I know.
	I am sorry, but I'm not.
	I don't think she's acting.
	I think she's sincere.
	I think that a lot of people are stampeding towards certainty with respect to conclusions that conveniently fit particular perspectives that they have.
	And you just see too much of it.
	I think there's kind of a sincere earnestness to it.
	And even it might even be the case that people are allowing themselves to be convinced that when it seems like they're wrong, there's probably some sort of conspiracy there.
	I think people earnestly cannot see it.
	I think much of the media establishment can't see the various ways in which they've kind of been deluded and they've engaged in just these kind of miscarriages, these abortions, journalistic abortions over and over again, which quite frankly is far, a far worse and far more pessimistic perspective on things than to believe that everyone is engaged in some sort of like open dishonesty.
	I think that Nicole Hannah Jones, for example, earnestly believes her point of view and doesn't debate people because she believes that anyone who disagrees is some sort of monster.
	And unless I have some evidence to the contrary, I'm probably going to maintain that belief.
	And it's unfortunate that that's where we are right now.
	And I don't know how to pull out of that except to continue to try to have earnest conversations and to continue to try to model what it looks like to not get out over your skis and to not engage in that kind of self-delusion.
Nicole Hannah Jones Cooking Fail 00:07:34
	He might have meant Douglas Murray because the longer clip has my Doug saying, you know, she's smart.
	I think she, she's a road scholar.
	She went to Oxford.
	And Douglas Murray is now too generous.
	He says, well, that's my, that's my Doug being a nice guy.
	And Douglas Murray says something like, I knew a lot of dim people from those universities.
	She's another dim dude.
	Like she might have meant she's acting smart.
	She's actually not really a smart person.
	I had to listen to the whole podcast dedicated with Doug Brun if you want to hear Douglas.
	Dr. Douglas would be very rich.
	And you'll find out what his favorite drink is too.
	Oh, and you know what?
	I teased this.
	So let me give you one more clip.
	I'm going to give you one more clip of Douglas on Doug on Doug's show.
	And this is the question.
	What irritates Douglas Murray when he goes into a restaurant?
	Here it is.
	Worst distinctly American thing.
	Oh.
	The phrase, are you still working on that?
	I hate that so much.
	I'm the restaurant exposed to a book or something.
	No, no.
	It's a restaurant.
	And I want to say how much more workmanlike and unpleasant do you want to make this seem?
	I guess I'll just have to get back to that salmon again and see if I can make another assault on it.
	I hate it.
	The one and only Douglas Murray's amazing.
	So funny.
	He's absolutely right.
	By the way, he's a cheese.
	Why should my salmon be work?
	All right, standby, fifth column.
	More coming up.
	Can I just tell you about a little cooking fail that happened to me last night?
	I'm thinking about Douglas Murray and salmon.
	I can't stand seafood.
	I've never been able to eat it.
	I think I had a fish trauma as a child at my grandparents' boatyard on the Hudson.
	Okay, it was the 70s.
	GE was dumping chemicals in there.
	Like it could have been one of a number of things.
	So I don't eat seafood, but my doctor, I go to my heart doctor every year because my dad died young of a heart attack.
	And he's like, you need to eat more fish and you need to eat less red meat and don't, you can't have like a big bowl of carbs because believe it or not, that can drive up cholesterol, even though there's no cholesterol in the bowl of spaghetti.
	My cholesterol is fine, but you know, we're staying proactive.
	I'm like, oh man, I eat a fair amount of red meat and chicken for that matter.
	So I'm like, okay, I want to, I want to do more, you know, vegetarian options and I want my kids to eat like that.
	But my boys say they don't like cheese.
	They eat tons of pizza, but they claim they don't like cheese.
	I'm stuck with this.
	So going meatless is very challenging because every recipe has cheese in it, which now I can't make because we're all pretending that my boys don't like cheese.
	So I'm like, I'm going to Google meatless Monday.
	That's a thing.
	I remember that from my NBC days where they were making me do cooking segments.
	I'm going to do meatless Monday.
	I find a recipe.
	Everything has cheese.
	Okay.
	No, get it.
	Finally, a teriyaki vegetable dish with tempe, T-E-M-P-E-H.
	I've never had it before.
	They said it's like tofu, only supposedly better.
	I'm like, oh, okay, because tofu sucks.
	So maybe I'll try tempe.
	So I drive to the Whole Foods because I'm like, where else am I going to get Tempe?
	I'm not going to yakme for that.
	So I go to the Whole Foods.
	I get the Tempe.
	The recipe calls for three heads of broccoli.
	I'm like, I'm not doing all that nonsense.
	That's a lot of work.
	So I get the frozen florets instead.
	This, as it would turn out, is a mistake.
	One of many.
	I get the peppers.
	I had to get three different peppers in different colors.
	I thought I was getting snap peas, but I think I got something else.
	They were thicker and fatter and you had to cut off the ends.
	I don't know what I got.
	And I bring it all back home.
	Then they wanted me to make teriyaki.
	I'm like, I'm not doing that.
	I just bought one, a teriyaki off the shelf.
	I'm in Whole Foods.
	How bad could it be?
	So I get it all home.
	It was $168.
	Now, I bought other things.
	It wasn't just the, but it was an expensive trip.
	Get back home.
	I start cutting up the veggies.
	I go wash all the veggies.
	Everything takes so long.
	I'm not happy.
	I'm not a happy chef.
	I don't like the way I feel when I'm in the kitchen, inadequate.
	I can't eyeball anything.
	I try to follow the directions to a tea.
	First, you have to cook the tempe.
	So I got the tempe in there and some oil in like a wok.
	I mean, within, they say it's six to eight minutes.
	Within three, it burned.
	Everything burned.
	The olive oil, whatever the oil was in here burned.
	Hey, do I put it on what they said, but it still burned.
	So now I'm pushing around.
	The doctor also said burn is bad.
	Don't eat burn.
	Burn causes bad things.
	I'm like, quack crackpot doctor you have.
	I'm causing death by the minute as I cook the tempe, my healthy meal in the burn.
	Like dump it out of the get it into a plate.
	No, I didn't throw it away, but then I scrub with the brillo.
	Scrub, scrub, scrub, get the burn off the wok because it's my only pan.
	Brillo.
	Then I go back.
	I start putting all the vegetables in there and it's not looking right.
	I'm not going to lie.
	It just looked like wrong.
	I put the broccoli florets in.
	All that water comes off.
	They are the soggiest, most disgusting broccoli florets ever.
	I know that's not how it's supposed to be.
	It meandered over to the other vegetables.
	Everything's now soggy.
	By the way, peeling ginger is a massive pain in the ass.
	It's an exercise in how to keep your fingers attached to your hand, but trying to get the skin off.
	Then trying to slice the tiny, tiny ginger.
	The scallions, my hands still smell.
	I don't enjoy doing this shit.
	So I tried, everything was waterlogged.
	I could tell my kids come in.
	They're like, what's for dinner?
	You know, with the bright faces.
	I'm like, something healthy.
	Try the Tempe.
	And everybody's, their noses are turned up.
	Well, one fell on the floor.
	Even Thunder wouldn't eat the Tempe.
	My good dog, Strudwick, was outside.
	He would have eaten anything.
	I thought that was good.
	Even Thunder.
	Thunder.
	Thunder.
	Thunder Kelly.
	Thunder rejected the Tempe.
	That's a great name.
	The kids didn't want it at all.
	I tried it.
	It was the most disgusting thing I've ever put in my, it was, I couldn't.
	So I threw it away.
	All we had was a big wok full of soggy, waterlogged vegetables.
	The teriyaki was a disaster because it didn't say how much to put on.
	I had to eyeball, which as I've already explained to you, I don't know how to do.
	So I waterlogged it even more.
	It was a salty, disgusting mess.
	Doug said, do you want a glass of wine?
	I said, no, I'm trying to.
	We'll lay off the wine.
	The doctor also said not to have too much wine.
	Flash forward.
	I looked at Dr. Dr. Phil.
	Please order some pizzas.
	Yes.
	We got a cheese pizza and a sausage pizza.
	And where's my wine?
	Indeed, I drank it.
	Were you on the phone with the doctor throughout this entire trauma?
	Is he telling you that like, no, no, no, you can't be on the floor.
	You can't burn it.
	And I would rather die young.
	You can't do that.
	I mean, I'd rather die young than live like this.
	I can't do it.
	You're a 21-year-old dude.
	Yes.
	I don't have any idea what you're doing in the kitchen because instead of eyeballing it, just get the measuring.
	Do you have a measuring cup, Megan?
	No, well, it didn't say it said, like, make the teriyaki in this amount, and then pour it.
	I'm like, I didn't do that.
	I don't.
	It's like, just figure it out.
	I honestly, like, these are the days that I look at Abby and I'm like, should I just try to hire somebody?
	Like, I can afford somebody to come help me.
	Why don't I just get something?
	I was thinking.
	I don't know.
	I think it feels. like too big an indulgence.
	You know what I mean?
	It feels like you're creating jobs.
	You're creating jobs.
	It's good for America.
	It's good for your family.
	And it will save you a great deal of stress.
	For God's sake, let Doug cook.
	He doesn't cook either.
	I know he needs to break at least a little bit.
	Douglas Murray cook.
	Let anyone cook.
Miller Light Beer Ad Empowerment 00:08:39
	It's funny.
	There's a running joke in my family because one thing I know how to make is lasagna.
	Of course, I have to make it cheeseless.
	One for the boys that's cheeseless because they don't like cheese, even though they ate cheese pizza like it was going out of style.
	And then one that has cheese.
	So I make it, but it's a massive hassle.
	Lasagna is a big hassle too.
	The bechamel sauce, that's another 20 minutes you didn't have.
	Cooking the meat on the stove takes all day.
	It's got three different kinds of meat in it.
	The lasagna noodles, first time I made it, I didn't realize you got to cook those unless you buy a special kind.
	And then you get to do everything and look at the lasagna is not done.
	You got to put the noodles in there.
	They're raw.
	Anyway, by the time I serve the lasagna, now it's gotten to the point where the whole family's like, we're having lasagna with like the blinking eyes of a dog that knows it's getting hit with the newspaper because they know I'm going to be in a terrible mood by the time it's supper.
	Are all the kids like massively underweight and like look like skin is a bit jaundiced?
	And they're like, mommy, can I please have something with that cheese that's delicious?
	I'm not going to lie.
	They are a little skinny.
	It's awesome.
	Maybe this is why Stradwick is eating everything off my counters because he's too skinny.
	Okay.
	All right.
	Sorry, back to the news.
	I have to say that I've got a stove like it's a tribesman.
	I do get triggered.
	You would think at 52, I would have better skills than this, but I do not.
	Okay, let's talk about more important things like Miller Light.
	People are joking that Miller Light saw the controversy with Bud Light and said, hold my beer.
	They've decided that their marketing campaign, much like the Bud Light one, was outdated and offensive.
	You know, Bud Light thought it was too fratty, according to that one woman.
	And Miller Light, too, thinks that they've been too bro-tastic in their effort to get men to want to use or drink their beer.
	So they, I'll just give you a look back at a classic Miller Light ad and the way they used to try to market the brand.
	This is from 2003.
	Oh, yeah, that was great.
	Bikini clad mud like that.
	By the way, that is a family.
	At the end, the men are looked at like you guys are gross, but I am also very, very thirsty right now.
	So just need a beer and it's one o'clock.
	There you go.
	So now Miller Light's sad and it's sorry that it was a bunch of sexist pigs, according to it.
	And they put out this librarian lady to lecture us on how they're going to change it all.
	Look at this clip.
	Centuries later, how did the industry pay homage to the founding mothers of beer?
	They put us in bikinis.
	Wow.
	Don't take it away.
	Look at this.
	Wild, it's time beer made it up to women.
	So, today, Miller Light is on a mission to clean up not just their the whole beer industry's Miller Light has been scouring the internet for all this and buying it back so that they can turn it into good for women brewers.
	Literally, good, but there's definitely more out there in your attic, in the garage, in your parents' basement.
	Send any you got into Miller Light, and they'll turn that into good too.
	So, here's to women because without us, there would be no beer.
	Oh my god, that's like Nicole Hannah Jones' history without women.
	I'm stuck on the practicalities of it because if you keep playing the ad, they're like, No, seriously, send us your shit or bad shit.
	We'll turn it into good shit.
	So, you scoured the internet for shit and you somehow turned it into fertilizer.
	So, you scoured a beer ad on the internet and it became fertilizer.
	Yeah, or even, you know, if I'm reaching over to my grandpa's Playboy collection, which is thankfully within arm's reach over here, um, they want me to pull out the not the Carlton ads, which are actually really gruesome, but the beer ads and like mail them to them.
	And then they're going to put it through a shredder, yes, and then that shredder is going to produce fertilizer for, I guess, barley and hops, which they're going to send to female brewers.
	So, I want to do the follow-up for you and see how many like barrels full of shredded, you know, destructed images.
	You know, we're sort of book shredding over here now, um, are going to be.
	I didn't even know they were serious about that.
	Are they actually serious about that?
	At the end of the ad, they pretend to be serious about this, that it's never going to happen, of course, but um, they pretend to be serious.
	I can tell you guys were offended by the original ad that was obvious and that you're happy for this moment of female empowerment, right?
	This is going to make you want to buy Miller Light, no?
	Yeah, I mean, I look at that and I'm like, I just think I really want to support women by drinking the shittiest beer I can find and being yelled at for ads that I like because I thought the women were mildly attractive.
	I mean, this is a great way of selling things.
	We used to like the fact that women were in the ads in the first place, it was like, yeah, you can title it, maybe they'll be interested.
	And now they believe that to interest us, they have to yell at us and lecture us about how bad America has been and send us this in this Stalinist spasm.
	Send us this stuff from the past and we will destroy the past.
	This is like the Khmer Rouge of beer, get just destroy the past for this glorious future.
	It's like you're a beer company, you want to apologize?
	Fine, but you don't have to go in the other direction, you don't have to go all scoldy and be just don't do those ads anymore.
	Correct.
	And all the women brewers like they found, like the hardy women who are brewing.
	This is the, these are the new women.
	We're getting rid of the old women.
	F the women who wear bikinis.
	We're about these women now.
	It says at the beginning that only we don't have, we only have beer because women decided to brew this in the past and they figured it out.
	Without without women, we wouldn't have beer.
	No one would have figured it out, by the way.
	It's just in the past.
	It's never would have happened.
	We have AI, but we probably wouldn't have beer.
	It's a really bizarre thing that is also, you have to like create a fake historical narrative to get people to pay attention.
	Like, oh, interesting.
	I do.
	But it's once again, it's like, who was offended?
	Who actually was offended by the Miller Light?
	You know, like, like the woman at Bud Light saying we were too fratty says who?
	Who's your audience?
	Do they really have a bunch of like hardy women?
	Like, I wish they'd get rid of those bikini clad ladies and then I'd finally drink the Miller Light.
	I don't think so.
	They work in the adjective.
	The insinuation is also, the insinuation is also that women don't enjoy those ads.
	And I mean, who, who are the Terry Cruz old spice ads for?
	Like, are they for me when he's shirtless and looking absolutely great?
	And there's this.
	You tell us, Gamal Star.
	They are.
	He's thinking.
	It's only a male product.
	They're selling it to me.
	So, we should do something about that too.
	Terry Cruz, keep your damn shirt on.
	Well, Camille, I said this to you the other day on the fifth column.
	This is the thing: is that now we want to have like big, shapely women on the cover of magazines.
	Let's have that men shirtless and shapely on the cover of men's show.
	I want to see it.
	Why is that not happening?
	Exactly.
	It should be.
	I'll show back.
	Proud of their bodies.
	Right next to Matt Walsh, the two of us.
	We did not get to the Sports Illustrated cover models with the trans person and the 81-year-old Martha Stewart.
	And guess what, though?
	The audience can take heart because that leads me, that leaves me some good fodder for my guest tomorrow, guys.
	Sorry, but Roseanne will have first crack at that on the MK show.
	The warm-up act, right?
	How good is that going to be?
	I can't wait.
	You were also excellent, though.
	Don't feel bad.
	It went very well today.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	I'm glad it went well.
	Thank you, as always.
	Sending you Casey Miller Light in the mail.
	Check your mail.
	Thanks, everyone.
	On the fifth column, don't forget to check them out at wethefifth.substack.com.
	And don't forget, Roseanne is here tomorrow for the full show.
	And then later this week, we're going to be joined by Dan Bongino for the first time.
	This will be very interesting.
	This is the first time I will have had the opportunity to talk to him in the first interview he has given since Fox booted him.
	We'll get to the bottom of what's going on over there.
	Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly Show.
	No BS, no agenda, and no

Chapters

00:00:35 CNN Meltdown in New York
00:04:41 Stepping Over Human Excrement
00:09:06 Chris Lick Summons Oliver Darcy
00:13:58 Jeff Zucker's Credibility Crisis
00:28:58 Roger Ailes' Managerial Legacy
00:43:16 Media Splintering Realities
00:47:33 Durham Report Criminal Indictments
00:59:56 FISA Courts Push Lies
01:05:46 Jill Stein and Foreign Agents
01:13:41 Russia Narrative Shoulder to Shoulder
01:17:24 Sincere Hatred Towards Mexicans
01:19:52 Nicole Hannah Jones Cooking Fail
01:27:26 Miller Light Beer Ad Empowerment