The Megyn Kelly Show - 20230525_desantis-false-start-and-missed-opportunity-and-bo
Aired: 2023-05-25
Duration: 01:37:03


=== Missed Opportunity for DeSantis (06:31) ===

[00:00:00]  Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
[00:00:12]  Hey everyone, I'm Megan Kelly.
[00:00:13]  Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, coming to you live from SiriusXM in New York City today.
[00:00:19]  Looking forward to a great in-person discussion today with outspoken fitness guru Jillian Michaels.
[00:00:25]  I've never met her.
[00:00:26]  Looking forward to talking about all things fitness related, including Ozempic when she joins me in a little bit.
[00:00:32]  I'm saying the magic buzzwords everybody wants to hear about that drug.
[00:00:36]  But first, Ron DeSantis launched his presidential campaign last night in what the kids might call an epic fail.
[00:00:44]  It was embarrassing and awkward and had the bewildering, unsteadying feel of a disaster unfolding before your very eyes.
[00:00:53]  You can't look away and yet you're viscerally uncomfortable watching it too.
[00:00:58]  He made the announcement on Twitter Spaces with Elon Musk and our pal David Sachs from the All-In podcast.
[00:01:04]  Kudos to all involved for choosing a different medium and bypassing the mainstream media, which hates DeSantis and which is hated by most Republican voters.
[00:01:13]  I support that mission, but its execution here, to put it kindly, did not work.
[00:01:20]  How on earth were the kinks not worked out beforehand?
[00:01:24]  Some 600,000 people tried logging on to watch, a considerable feat given that most of us had never been on Twitter spaces, including journalists like me, only to be met with messages like, this space is not available, and this space has ended, all before it had even begun.
[00:01:45]  Not a good omen, and certainly not the messaging a campaign wants on launch night.
[00:01:50]  Not available.
[00:01:51]  This is over.
[00:01:53]  It was indeed a failure to launch and it is dominating the news coverage today, the result of an unnecessary, unforced error on DeSantis' part.
[00:02:04]  Almost as bad was when you did enter the space, but got the weird elevator music, only to then be kicked off.
[00:02:10]  Never thought I would be subjected to music when turning in for a presidential announcement from the guy they say is the future of the Republican Party.
[00:02:18]  Finally, they got it going, but not before losing some 300,000 frustrated viewers.
[00:02:24]  The glitches were on Elon and his platform, to be sure, but how on earth did DeSantis' team not make absolutely sure Elon and co were ready and their candidates was protected from this?
[00:02:38]  Let's hope, by the way, they work out these kinks before Tucker starts posting over there because crashing with 600,000 viewers ain't going to work with him.
[00:02:46]  Today, Team DeSantis is trying to turn it all into a win by saying, we broke the internet.
[00:02:51]  What else can we break?
[00:02:53]  In other words, we are so popular, we broke Twitter.
[00:02:56]  Well, kind of.
[00:02:58]  600,000 people may be a record for Twitter spaces, but it is about half of what Fox News gets on any one of its even post-Tucker struggling primetime shows, which don't glitch.
[00:03:10]  And have discovered the magic of video.
[00:03:14]  Video.
[00:03:15]  How do you launch a presidential campaign without video?
[00:03:18]  No clips to be played over and over by all the media the next day or photos for the papers to put above the fold?
[00:03:26]  Why?
[00:03:29]  Even the pre-packaged video DeSantis put out concurrent with the Twitter Spaces event did not have a shot of the candidate with adoring crowds or his beautiful family.
[00:03:40]  It's just him alone walking through a curtain.
[00:03:49]  Our border is a disaster.
[00:03:52]  Crime infests our cities.
[00:03:54]  The federal government makes it harder for families to make ends meet.
[00:03:57]  And the president flounders.
[00:03:59]  But decline is a choice.
[00:04:01]  Success is attainable, and freedom is worth fighting for.
[00:04:06]  Writing the ship requires restoring sanity to our society, normalcy to our communities, and integrity to our institutions.
[00:04:17]  Truth must be our foundation, and common sense can no longer be an uncommon virtue.
[00:04:25]  In Florida, we proved that it can be done.
[00:04:28]  We chose facts over fear, education over indoctrination, law and order over rioting and disorder.
[00:04:36]  We held the line when freedom hung in the balance.
[00:04:41]  Where is the Freddie Mercury moment on the other side of the curtain?
[00:04:46]  With the fans cheering and smiling and excited to be with him.
[00:04:51]  Or how about just shots of DeSantis connecting with real-life voters, glad handing with a smile, holding the hand of a concerned voter somewhere?
[00:05:01]  Talk about a missed opportunity, especially for a guy who's already suspected of lacking the personal touch one needs to succeed in presidential politics.
[00:05:10]  You know what they needed?
[00:05:11]  They needed Debbie Murphy.
[00:05:13]  They needed my producer, who's been with me from the beginning for all of my Fox shows.
[00:05:17]  She actually knows how to put something on television and make it look good.
[00:05:20]  Right?
[00:05:21]  Hello?
[00:05:21]  Well, you can't have her.
[00:05:23]  What we then got, once the glitches were behind us, was a clearly scripted, uninspiring campaign speech of a few minutes, all audio only, delivered in DeSantis' trademark, nasal voice, and then questions to kick it off about whether his policies in Florida are racist and reports of lost jobs in his state.
[00:05:45]  What?
[00:05:46]  You led with questions about your controversies out of your pre-scripted remarks?
[00:05:52]  Yes, they are BS controversies, but why go there?
[00:05:55]  Right off the bat, stay on your message.
[00:05:58]  Stay on offense.
[00:06:00]  They went right on defense and they stayed there for quite some time, getting into negative stories most voters probably had not even heard about.
[00:06:09]  What came next was boring, cringy, and downright uncomfortable.
[00:06:14]  Some diehard DeSantis fans, virtually all of whom I knew and liked, and advisors asking softball questions that felt almost Pravda-esque in their obsequiousness.
[00:06:26]  There was no spice, there was nothing challenging, and there was nothing newsworthy.

=== Staying on Message vs Defense (15:14) ===

[00:06:32]  Nothing to grab headlines the next day.
[00:06:34]  I wrote a sentence to my team I didn't think I would ever write.
[00:06:38]  I miss journalists.
[00:06:41]  That's how I felt watching this.
[00:06:43]  Somebody who would challenge him a little, bring the heat a little.
[00:06:47]  Perhaps the worst offense was that through all of this, I didn't laugh or connect with the candidate even once.
[00:06:54]  And this is a guy whose policies, most of them anyway, I support.
[00:06:58]  He didn't crack a joke at his own expense.
[00:07:01]  He didn't say something that touched me about America or the troubles we're going through.
[00:07:06]  He didn't even tap into the righteous anger so many of us are feeling that has inspired many of his policies in Florida.
[00:07:15]  Maybe he doesn't have that gene.
[00:07:17]  Maybe he's just a pen and paper guy who will pass the right legislation, and that's enough of a blessing.
[00:07:23]  But he is up against a man whose voters love him, who is up over DeSantis right now by anywhere from 30 to 45 points, and who has the advantage of already having been a sitting president.
[00:07:38]  It is true adoration, loyalty, and love between Donald Trump and his base voters, the ones DeSantis has been trying to woo, tearing them away with nice policy and Twitter isn't going to work.
[00:07:56]  A little later in the show, we're going to be joined by Kash Patel, former deputy assistant to President Trump, with his thoughts on the matter.
[00:08:02]  But we begin today with Josh Holmes, co-host of the Ruthless podcast and general political operative.
[00:08:10]  Josh, welcome back to the show.
[00:08:11]  How are you doing?
[00:08:12]  Hey, Megan.
[00:08:12]  I'm doing quite well.
[00:08:13]  How are you?
[00:08:14]  All right.
[00:08:14]  So what'd you make of it?
[00:08:16]  Oh, well, I think your recap was pretty right on.
[00:08:19]  You know, there's a certain level of gravitas that's associated with the presidential announcement, right?
[00:08:25]  I mean, you remember President Trump coming down the golden escalator or President Obama in Springfield, Illinois.
[00:08:32]  There's a certain timelessness that you seek to capture because it's the only day, literally the only day during a campaign when the corporate media can't actually ruin your story provided you tell it.
[00:08:47]  And I think that's what is frustrating so many supporters of Ron DeSantis and a whole bunch of people who thought, you know, this is going to be a one-on-one race till the end were hoping that he would have the kind of bump that he had in Election Day 2022 when he came out in prime time, first Republican to speak with this massive election in Florida, huge win, and people were expecting great things.
[00:09:10]  I think people were hoping that we would reset that.
[00:09:13]  And that certainly did not happen yesterday.
[00:09:16]  I mean, I have to be honest, I am somebody whose vote is available to somebody like Ron DeSantis.
[00:09:23]  He could definitely get me to vote for him.
[00:09:27]  I was asking myself last night, who else is there?
[00:09:30]  Who else?
[00:09:30]  Right?
[00:09:31]  Because you got Trump, who's going to be under four indictments by the time we get to election day.
[00:09:36]  And this guy does not look like a man who can get it across the finish line.
[00:09:39]  He just doesn't.
[00:09:40]  The closer look you get at him, the less steady he seems.
[00:09:44]  And it is unsteadying for people who do not believe in the direction this country's going in right now under Joe Biden.
[00:09:51]  It's scary.
[00:09:52]  Yeah.
[00:09:53]  Well, the whole thing has been exacerbated by the fact that he's had six months basically from his peak popularity to the time of this announcement.
[00:10:00]  And in the interim, you have a whole bunch of other questions.
[00:10:03]  You mentioned what was happening with President Trump, potentially more legal issues.
[00:10:08]  And then you have the announcements of other people like Tim Scott or Nikki Haley, people who are, you know, not pulling anywhere near where Ron DeSantis is, who would consolidate a lot of people in the conservative movement who basically didn't want to do another round of President Trump, but kind of like the policies that were pursued by the Trump administration.
[00:10:28]  And I think, look, I think that does provide a little bit of an opportunity for other candidates to try to make the case that they would be better suited to consolidate it.
[00:10:37]  All that being said, Megan, I don't think this is fatal by any stretch of the imagination.
[00:10:41]  I mean, if he posts a big fundraising number, which it looks like he probably will in the next couple of days, and they go out and they do some real events out around this country, he can get this thing back on track.
[00:10:53]  But it's certainly not the way that you want to start because usually it's your announcement that gives you the bump and springboards you back into where they hope this race will go.
[00:11:02]  That event would have been fine on day two.
[00:11:06]  On day two, right?
[00:11:07]  You sit with Elon, sit with David Sachs, have your supporters and people we know call in and ask you these questions, these fawning questions.
[00:11:14]  But that, not on night one.
[00:11:16]  It was boring.
[00:11:18]  The Q ⁇ A was a bore.
[00:11:20]  I wrote down, I had this epic text chain going with my team.
[00:11:23]  I'm sure you guys at Ruthless had a similar one, which I'd love to see.
[00:11:27]  And here at one of my producers wrote, this makes CNN's Trump Town Hall look like an Emmy Award-winning broadcast in comparison.
[00:11:36]  Elon was sort of back to me.
[00:11:38]  He kept bringing it back to him that he and David were having discussions about tech and Twitter.
[00:11:43]  I wrote to my team, is DeSantis still there?
[00:11:49]  This is not, this is not the way it should have gone.
[00:11:52]  Yeah, no, it's not.
[00:11:54]  And you worry a little bit about that because it's not just the platform.
[00:11:58]  I mean, look, there might be a little bit too much too online, if that makes any sense.
[00:12:05]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:12:06]  What you want to do with the beginning of a presidential campaign is broaden out as wide as you can to get everybody sort of intrigued by it.
[00:12:13]  And then you can narrow in on different audiences and make sure that they understand you get what they're concerned about.
[00:12:19]  But when you're real narrow, like they were with Twitter.
[00:12:23]  You're starting to just convey that.
[00:12:25]  Maybe this is something that some Silicon Valley guys or some sort of libertarian leaning uh conservatives are all about, but then the rest of the Republican party may not quite see eye to eye.
[00:12:37]  Now I don't know if that's true.
[00:12:39]  And honestly Megan, you covered it in your recap at the beginning.
[00:12:42]  The policies that Ron De Santis has been promoting for the last two years tell the story in and of themselves.
[00:12:48]  The problem is that he didn't tell that story.
[00:12:50]  I think he tried a little bit, but when you choose an audio medium, I mean it's not.
[00:12:55]  Look, twitter could be the best broadcast in the history of the world at some point it is not today and what you got was an audio only medium.
[00:13:05]  Then, in all honesty, like you'd have been better off on a radio yeah, it just.
[00:13:09]  It just didn't convey the sense of gravitas, the sense of importance or the audaciousness of a campaign to run against a former president, which is, of course, what he's up to here.
[00:13:21]  Holmes, they were having conversations about bitcoin bitcoin, all right now, I realize some people are interested in that, but on a presidential announcement, all I could think about was my imaginary viewer Madge, who is in Iowa.
[00:13:34]  She's been my imaginary viewer since this, since the beginning of my anchoring career.
[00:13:37]  Madge, first of all, does not know how to use twitter spaces.
[00:13:40]  She doesn't understand that at all.
[00:13:42]  Um, but maybe she tried to get on and she listened and lasted.
[00:13:45]  For all this, Madge did not need to hear the words Central BANK cryptocurrency, which were uttered last.
[00:13:52]  Madge couldn't give two shits about that and they spent long amounts of time on it.
[00:13:59]  I, I know it, I know and look, I love Sax and I think me too.
[00:14:03]  What Elon Musk has done for Twitter is the single most patriotic thing i've seen a billionaire do in my lifetime.
[00:14:10]  All that being said, I don't expect Elon and And Sacks to have a sort of vision for America that i'm, that i'm, you know, parroting amongst the masses.
[00:14:20]  I mean, we've got a hell of an economy that is really having a tough time for a lot of Americans out there.
[00:14:25]  Why don't we start there and then you can move in through all of the?
[00:14:29]  You know the wokeness and the critiques of modern culture that has made Desantis so popular on the right.
[00:14:34]  You don't really need to get into niche stuff on day one, and I don't know if they didn't see that coming or if this just wasn't overly scripted.
[00:14:44]  I look, you know they want to do this again.
[00:14:47]  Yeah, I mean that.
[00:14:48]  That, I think, is the takeaway, that there's just no chance.
[00:14:50]  This is ultimately what they wanted to convey on day one.
[00:14:53]  Let me tell you why I wrote those sentence.
[00:14:55]  I miss journalists.
[00:14:56]  You know the shocking sentence.
[00:14:57]  I miss journalists because I was thinking about my old pal Brett Bear.
[00:15:01]  I was thinking about the way I would have done an interview with this guy right after this.
[00:15:04]  And there's an arc To telling somebody's story.
[00:15:08]  And yes, there should have been some spice in there, something that would make news, which is good for him, right?
[00:15:13]  To have some sort of contentious dust up with a reporter.
[00:15:16]  That's good.
[00:15:17]  That's good for him.
[00:15:18]  Just ask Trump.
[00:15:18]  He understands that implicitly.
[00:15:20]  But also, there should have been some questions that got to, for lack of a better term, the heart of the matter.
[00:15:27]  You know, people are really hurting right now, or the Democrats' messaging has been so divisive.
[00:15:33]  You know, this is what they're actually telling little kids that they're less than because they were born into a certain race, right?
[00:15:39]  Like, what about that upsets you so much?
[00:15:42]  Why have you spent so much of your time in the governor's mansion focused on that stuff, which, you know, the left dismisses as insignificant culture wars?
[00:15:49]  Let them speak from the heart about why that stuff is important to him, as opposed to just like this random cast of characters on like even Chris Ruffo, who I love, but it was like CRT and DEI.
[00:16:03]  Like Madge doesn't know what the hell that is.
[00:16:05]  Like it was just a miss from, I don't know who orchestrated the whole thing.
[00:16:09]  I assume it was Team DeSantis, but they don't understand how to storytell.
[00:16:14]  Yeah, look, if you just back up to what you want conveyed to the entire country, because again, you get one day, your announcement day, when everybody's forced to cover you.
[00:16:26]  And as long as you're scripted on that one day and you have the right images, the media doesn't have any choice but to cover you.
[00:16:33]  Sure, they can put some shitty narration over the top of it or try to, you know, talk about where you're at in the polls.
[00:16:38]  But for the most part, the images that you convey and the sentences that you write to say are going to be the only things that are conveyed to a larger audience.
[00:16:48]  And then by every other standard, you have Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, you go do a tour of the country and you sit down and do those interviews that you were talking about, Megan, and you start putting some meat on the bones.
[00:17:01]  And hell, if you get into a conversation about Bitcoin or cryptocurrency at some point down the road, terrific.
[00:17:07]  But what you lead with is not that.
[00:17:10]  You've got to have a much broader, much more significant announcement that stands the test of time.
[00:17:17]  And, you know, again, this is, this was a miss.
[00:17:19]  I don't think it's fatal.
[00:17:21]  I think they can figure out how to get back on their feet here, but it is not good.
[00:17:25]  The other piece of it is, if you're making a presidential announcement, don't sit next to Beyonce while doing it.
[00:17:35]  You should be the biggest star in the room.
[00:17:38]  You should be the most interesting person in the room.
[00:17:40]  And he wasn't.
[00:17:42]  He wasn't.
[00:17:43]  Yeah, I don't, I don't know.
[00:17:46]  Look, we will maybe never know how all this came about, whose idea it was.
[00:17:52]  You know, obviously there's been a huge revolution on the right as it comes to Twitter and Elon and the interest in Tucker Carlson now after he leaves Fox.
[00:18:00]  And so you understand the niche marketplace.
[00:18:02]  And I get sort of toying around with doing an idea to make that central to an announcement.
[00:18:08]  You just don't make it the announcement.
[00:18:11]  And again, everyone's interested in Elon and you're right.
[00:18:14]  You never want to sit next to Beyoncé.
[00:18:17]  That's such a good way of putting it.
[00:18:19]  You know, when I heard they were doing this event yesterday, I thought, this is great.
[00:18:22]  You know, they're bypassing traditional media.
[00:18:25]  It's kind of an F you to Fox News too, which isn't the monopoly it used to be and is kind of in trouble with its viewers right now in the wake of Tucker.
[00:18:33]  So it seemed savvy to me.
[00:18:34]  I did not realize that Elon was going to be kind of co-hosting it.
[00:18:37]  I thought it was going to be like, hey, welcome to Twitter.
[00:18:39]  Here's David Sachs, you know, tossing to Ron DeSantis.
[00:18:42]  And maybe they have a few questions and DeSantis is off to the races.
[00:18:46]  Did not realize that the star, the true star, was going to be staying there.
[00:18:51]  He was staying in the room.
[00:18:53]  Well, and again, just go back.
[00:18:55]  There are plenty of spots in conservative media that you can go get what you're looking for.
[00:19:01]  If you decided you wanted to bypass all of it, it's a statement.
[00:19:04]  On the Variety program.
[00:19:05]  Come on, the Variety Program.
[00:19:06]  Go on, Megan Kelly.
[00:19:07]  Go on Ben Shapiro.
[00:19:08]  Go.
[00:19:09]  There's a lot of places that have millions of people in their audience that you can go talk to that they can actually see your face at the same time.
[00:19:18]  I just, you know, it's disappointing.
[00:19:20]  And it's disappointing for a lot of us, I think, that had put a ton of stock into what he has been selling over the last couple of years and think that now may be the perfect time for Ron DeSantis.
[00:19:31]  It still may be, Megan.
[00:19:32]  It really still may be.
[00:19:34]  But I do think he's given the opportunity for other candidates, not named Trump, to make a case, which was not the case four or five months ago.
[00:19:42]  Now we've got this Ron DeSantis video that's been put out featuring Beyonce.
[00:19:49]  I mean, Elon.
[00:19:50]  Here it is.
[00:19:51]  I don't know what this is about, but it's SAT7.
[00:19:54]  Well, I am running for president of the United States to lead our great American comeback.
[00:20:00]  Look, we know our country's going in the wrong direction.
[00:20:03]  We see it with our eyes and we feel it in our bones.
[00:20:06]  Our southern borders collapse.
[00:20:08]  Drugs are pouring into the country.
[00:20:10]  Our cities are being hollowed out by spiking crime.
[00:20:13]  The federal government's making it harder for the average family to make ends meet and to attain and maintain a middle-class lifestyle.
[00:20:20]  And our president, well, he lacks vigor, flounders in the face of our nation's challenges, and he takes his cues from the woke mob.
[00:20:28]  Okay, this is put out by Team DeSantis today.
[00:20:30]  For the listening audience, it is literally 50-50 DeSantis and Elon.
[00:20:34]  Video clips of Elon at Tesla, at the rocket launch.
[00:20:37]  What is Elon running for vice president?
[00:20:39]  Is he running for president?
[00:20:40]  Is DeSantis in the what is this?
[00:20:43]  I wonder if Elon knew he was going to be so prominently featured in the rollout video.
[00:20:48]  I mean, as far as I know, I don't think he's made an endorsement here.
[00:20:51]  He's certainly happy to host the platform.
[00:20:53]  But, but I mean, also, just the audio overlay there, Megan, doesn't exactly make you want to do the Kool-Aid man through the brick wall, does it?
[00:21:03]  It doesn't.
[00:21:04]  They need desperately Debbie Murphy, but again, they cannot have her.
[00:21:07]  They cannot have her.
[00:21:08]  But they need somebody talented to show them how to paper a campaign, to produce it and present it in a way that resonates, especially when you got a guy for whom none of that comes naturally.
[00:21:22]  He is stiff as a board, Holmes.
[00:21:25]  He is.
[00:21:25]  He's not warm and fuzzy.
[00:21:28]  You know, there is a charm problem.
[00:21:30]  And I, as a voter, could get right past that, right past that.
[00:21:35]  But it has to be addressed and managed in some way.
[00:21:38]  You do this kind of thing for a living, right?
[00:21:41]  What would you do?
[00:21:42]  What would you say?
[00:21:43]  Well, to be honest with you, Megan, they did it in 2022.

=== Charm Problem in Politics (14:42) ===

[00:21:46]  I mean, if you look at the campaign that he ran for re-election of governor, when he set up a record for the margin that he put up in his victory, that's what he did.
[00:21:55]  It was very well stage crafted.
[00:21:57]  He had messages where he just controlled every single week, put against a backdrop of exactly where he wanted to be and hit the cadences along the way that needed to be done throughout the campaign.
[00:22:09]  Somewhere along the way, post-election, and by the way, election night 2022, I don't think I've ever seen better visuals and audio conveyed from a re-election of a governor than Ron DeSantis had on election night 2022.
[00:22:25]  He looked like a winner.
[00:22:27]  He looked like a winner.
[00:22:28]  He looked great.
[00:22:28]  His wife looked great.
[00:22:29]  Everything was just, you know, through the moon.
[00:22:32]  But then now, somewhere along the way in the last six months, as this thing has gotten organized, they've had to rely on a whole bunch of stuff from a super PAC, which, as you know, has to be sort of disconnected from the campaign itself.
[00:22:44]  I don't know if that caused some confusion here or if somewhere wires got crossed because what they were doing was working.
[00:22:54]  This is not.
[00:22:55]  Now he's going on a media tour.
[00:22:57]  And I like all these people, so I say this respectfully, but he's going back on the Dana Lash program.
[00:23:03]  He's going on with Eric Erickson, who's a regional radio host in Georgia.
[00:23:09]  I don't get it, Holmes.
[00:23:11]  Once again, bypassing the Megan Kelly show, which is insane.
[00:23:15]  I mean, honestly, we have 10 times the viewers and audience.
[00:23:18]  But so, okay.
[00:23:20]  He's afraid of tough questions.
[00:23:21]  That's what that tells me.
[00:23:22]  Honestly, it's not about my offense.
[00:23:25]  He doesn't.
[00:23:26]  Trump hasn't come on either, though.
[00:23:27]  I haven't yet asked Trump.
[00:23:28]  We've had a long history of interviewing, as it turns out.
[00:23:31]  And we'll go back to it.
[00:23:32]  We'll go back to it.
[00:23:32]  But my point is, there's a reason he's doing what he's doing.
[00:23:35]  And I don't get it.
[00:23:37]  Like being subjected to adversarial questions is a good thing, especially for Ron DeSantis.
[00:23:42]  Whenever he's taken on media reporters, his numbers went through the roof.
[00:23:45]  He could take a lesson from Carrie Lake.
[00:23:47]  How did she become a household name?
[00:23:49]  It wasn't because she was pushing the right policies for Arizona.
[00:23:52]  It was because of those viral dust-ups she had with reporters, and she'd get right back up in their grills.
[00:23:58]  And Republican audiences freaking love that stuff.
[00:24:01]  Yeah.
[00:24:01]  Yeah.
[00:24:02]  It just, again, it feels very online.
[00:24:04]  It feels very niche.
[00:24:06]  The most active of the activist online crowd seems like this message is being tailored to right now.
[00:24:15]  And I agree.
[00:24:16]  First of all, Ron DeSantis is perfectly well equipped as a candidate to handle just about anything you throw in front of him.
[00:24:24]  I mean, remember him bulldozing those reporters down there trying to blame him for hurricane preparedness and everything else.
[00:24:30]  I mean, he just absolutely crushed it.
[00:24:31]  His COVID interactions with those press conferences on a week, week by week basis were perfect.
[00:24:37]  Like he's perfectly capable of doing all of that.
[00:24:40]  Maybe there is a method to the madness.
[00:24:42]  It is not evident to me right now.
[00:24:45]  They've got to broaden the aperture here.
[00:24:48]  And if it's not, you know, Megan Kelly's show and it's not Ben Shapiro's show and it's not like these larger audiences, not to mention, you know, you're going to go do the cable news stuff too.
[00:24:59]  Then I don't know who you're talking to ultimately because this is about, if he's got to win, by the way, if he's going to win, he can't have the same primary turnout that we had in 2020 and 2016.
[00:25:12]  He needs to broaden the aperture.
[00:25:14]  You need to get people who were active primary voters in 2014 and 2016 that have since left or become frustrated with Trump or what have you to begin to push back on that already locked in 35% of the current primary electorate that the former president already has in the bank, right?
[00:25:33]  So with that in mind, knowing that you've got to go get out, get those voters anyway, when do you start talking to them?
[00:25:39]  Right.
[00:25:40]  Right.
[00:25:40]  You can't, you've got to reach out beyond just your favorite, you know, people who are asking you the questions that make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
[00:25:50]  You just have to.
[00:25:51]  There's only one road to the presidency.
[00:25:53]  And that's something Donald Trump was very good at.
[00:25:55]  I mean, he would take questions from anybody and still will.
[00:25:58]  Haters, non-haters.
[00:26:00]  There's only one road there.
[00:26:01]  So now Trump responding in a number of ways.
[00:26:04]  Well, we'll get into some of this in a minute with cash, but I want to show you this new Trump ad just dropped by his team.
[00:26:11]  Watch this.
[00:26:14]  The Washington-established politicians like to talk about how they can be just like Donald Trump.
[00:26:21]  The truth: there's only one Donald Trump.
[00:26:27]  Only one who gave us the largest tax cuts in history, who gave vets the health care they deserve, and stood up to China and protected your job.
[00:26:38]  Only one who kept us out of endless wars while destroying our terrorist enemies.
[00:26:44]  Only one who fundamentally changed the Supreme Court, was called the most pro-life president in history, and relentlessly protected our Second Amendment rights and our borders.
[00:26:57]  Why would we ever settle for Trump impostors?
[00:27:01]  Make America great again when there's only one starting day one who can make America great again.
[00:27:11]  I'm Donald J. Trump and I approve this message.
[00:27:17]  It's good.
[00:27:18]  It's good.
[00:27:19]  It's really good.
[00:27:21]  I mean, look, Donald Trump is running a very good campaign.
[00:27:26]  But part of why he can run a very good campaign is because as of right now, he has no challengers who have challenged him on any of the issues, his record, his moral responsibilities, anything.
[00:27:42]  Basically, everybody's been trying to play for Trump light.
[00:27:45]  And I'm just not sure how that works.
[00:27:48]  That video for the listening audience ended with you heard somebody say, make America great again.
[00:27:53]  And that man was Ron DeSantis holding up those words in front of children back, obviously, when he was running for governor and Trump was supporting him.
[00:28:02]  But pretty powerful and savvy.
[00:28:05]  I want to just give you a flavor for the way this is being covered now, the DeSantis launch by the media.
[00:28:12]  Of course, it's terrible, but for once, it's justified in my view.
[00:28:16]  You've got New York Times calls it a fiasco.
[00:28:19]  NBC News calls it a meltdown.
[00:28:21]  Washington Post, awkward.
[00:28:23]  Politico calls it horrendous.
[00:28:26]  Everyone is calling it a disaster, D-E-S-A-S-T-E-R, which is the last moniker they want to have stick, right?
[00:28:36]  Ron's disaster, courtesy here of the Daily Mail.
[00:28:40]  Debacle, Breitbart called it, Ron's debacle.
[00:28:45]  On and on it could go.
[00:28:47]  So he's hurt.
[00:28:49]  He did not advance the ball last night.
[00:28:51]  He hurt himself.
[00:28:52]  But does it last?
[00:28:53]  Does it matter?
[00:28:54]  You know, again, I don't know if it does.
[00:28:57]  Look, you can't take it back and everybody will remember this and his detractors will use it as a reason to never consider him and this, that, and the other thing.
[00:29:05]  And of course, the left will help amplify all of that and try to make it as difficult on him as possible.
[00:29:10]  Because I do think a lot within the progressive movement, the Democratic Party see Ron DeSantis as a much more formidable general election candidate than President Trump.
[00:29:18]  So they'll hang that around his neck.
[00:29:19]  But that being said, if he raises the money, if he gets out there and campaigns hard, if he starts showing us a little bit of a different side of Ron DeSantis, some of the stuff that we saw in 22 and before, he can get this back.
[00:29:31]  I think the most important part is you got to have some audacity here.
[00:29:35]  You got to shoot from the hip.
[00:29:37]  You got to have some just genuine belief in yourself and not be afraid to make mistakes, even though this one was a big one.
[00:29:46]  He's going to have to just go out and try to get it.
[00:29:48]  And there is a point in every campaign, Megan, whether you're running for Senate, you're running for president, there is a point in every campaign where the candidate needs to deliver.
[00:30:00]  This, unfortunately, for the DeSantis campaign is coming much earlier than they want.
[00:30:04]  Typically, that's in a debate setting or in a big rally setting down the road close to an Iowa caucus.
[00:30:10]  It's happening day two of the DeSantis campaign, but it's unmistakable and it needs to happen.
[00:30:16]  I've told a story before, but it's all I can think about today.
[00:30:20]  There was an event years ago that I co-anchored, co-hosted with Bob Costas in front of all these media types.
[00:30:27]  And I was trying to be funny, Holmes.
[00:30:32]  It wasn't going well.
[00:30:34]  I needed my friends for ruthless.
[00:30:36]  It wasn't going well.
[00:30:37]  Literally, nobody clapped or even bothered to do the fake polite laugh.
[00:30:42]  But I kept trying because I'm a glutton for self-punishment.
[00:30:45]  And at the end, I saw my then agent.
[00:30:48]  She came over and I was like, it didn't seem to go very well.
[00:30:52]  And she looked at me.
[00:30:53]  She looked at me and she said, onward.
[00:30:57]  Onward.
[00:30:59]  Onward.
[00:31:00]  I mean, that's a perfect bit of advice, Megan.
[00:31:03]  First of all, I find it impossible to believe that you weren't charming and funny.
[00:31:06]  It must have been a terrible audience.
[00:31:08]  But, but secondly, that's a perfect way of looking at it.
[00:31:11]  I mean, you're never going to have every good day.
[00:31:14]  You'd like your first day to be better than most because generally it's the best day that you have in a campaign, but it's not.
[00:31:21]  And it wasn't.
[00:31:21]  And the only way to get through that is to put it behind you and start trying to make progress through everything else.
[00:31:27]  He's got all the tools in the toolbox in order to do it.
[00:31:29]  They just can't get hung up on this.
[00:31:32]  Josh Holmes, what a pleasure.
[00:31:33]  Thank you for coming on, my friend.
[00:31:35]  Thank you, Megan.
[00:31:36]  Onward.
[00:31:37]  Coming up, Kash Patel joins us.
[00:31:39]  And then later, Jillian Michaels is here.
[00:31:41]  And we're going to talk all things fitness.
[00:31:42]  How'd she get that beautiful body?
[00:31:43]  And how can the rest of us have it too?
[00:31:48]  Now it's quiet.
[00:31:49]  We want to welcome you to this historic Twitter spaces event.
[00:31:51]  And tonight I'm pleased to introduce two individuals who've done more to loosen the group.
[00:31:58]  Sorry about that.
[00:31:58]  We've got so many people here.
[00:32:01]  I think we've got just a massive number of people online.
[00:32:05]  So it's service-restraining somewhat.
[00:32:08]  All right.
[00:32:08]  Well, it's certainly an incredible honor to have Governor DeSantis make this stark announcement.
[00:32:17]  God.
[00:32:22]  Yeah, you get the hint.
[00:32:23]  You get the picture.
[00:32:25]  You get the picture of how it went last night as they tried to launch this event on Twitter Spaces.
[00:32:29]  Welcome back to the Megan Kelly Show.
[00:32:31]  That was some highlights of the tech meltdowns last night during Governor DeSantis' announcement for president.
[00:32:36]  Now, for some reaction from someone close to former President Trump, Kash Patel.
[00:32:41]  Cash served as Trump's deputy assistant and as chief of staff to the Secretary of Defense.
[00:32:46]  He was also a member of Truth Social's board of directors.
[00:32:49]  Cash, welcome back.
[00:32:50]  Great to have you.
[00:32:52]  Hey, Megan, great to be back with you on the show.
[00:32:54]  Thanks.
[00:32:54]  All right.
[00:32:54]  So, what was your reaction watching all of this?
[00:32:58]  Well, it seems fitting that Ron DeSantis goes on Twitter to announce that he's going to decapitate the FBI and anyone that colluded with big tech when FBI and Twitter were the two biggest collaborators in conspiring to rig a presidential election and censor free speech.
[00:33:14]  So, I found it ironic that he chose that platform.
[00:33:18]  And that was pre-Elon, but I found it ironic that he chose that platform.
[00:33:22]  And I found it ironic that it didn't really work out the way he'd want it to on the launch thing.
[00:33:27]  But I'm glad he's in the fight because for me, as a Trump advisor, it shows me all the former quote-unquote Trump advisors that are over there that have shifted sides, and that's their right to do so.
[00:33:39]  But now the lines are drawn, and we don't have to guess about it anymore.
[00:33:44]  Trump responded with a few different videos.
[00:33:48]  One, which kind of captured the moment.
[00:33:50]  It's only four seconds long.
[00:33:52]  For the listening audience, it shows a rocket failing to launch and exploding.
[00:33:58]  We'll show it for the YouTube audience.
[00:34:00]  Watch says Ron, and down goes the rocket.
[00:34:06]  It's just video and then explodes.
[00:34:09]  You know, pretty apt.
[00:34:10]  It was not a great launch.
[00:34:12]  What was the reaction, as far as you know, inside Trump World?
[00:34:16]  Well, I think you saw it with President Trump's multiple truths and videos that he put out there.
[00:34:21]  He summarized it as best as he could in that four-second span.
[00:34:24]  It was a failure to launch.
[00:34:26]  And when you go out there and analyze what Ron DeSantis said, I didn't find anything of substantive value that he would do differently than Donald Trump did when he was president and what he's outlined in his Agenda 47.
[00:34:40]  I'm sure there's some minor issues I didn't pick up on, but to me, as a senior advisor to President Trump, I'm looking to see what is the monumental difference.
[00:34:49]  Why would people want to go with Ron DeSantis if President Trump has ran and done it successfully as president before?
[00:34:56]  I just didn't see anything big in terms of policy.
[00:34:59]  He made the point that he is going to build the wall that Trump did not wind up building.
[00:35:03]  I mean, that's one thing.
[00:35:04]  He seems to be getting to the right of Trump on this gender nonsense that we're seeing out there saying, you know, a man cannot become a woman, period.
[00:35:12]  I haven't heard Trump go that far, though I haven't heard him asked about this issue lately, and things have changed since when he ran.
[00:35:18]  Do you see differences on those two points between the two men?
[00:35:22]  Well, I think, you know, President Trump did start to build the wall.
[00:35:25]  You're right, we didn't get to, he didn't get to finish it.
[00:35:27]  So I'm not sure that Ron saying he's going to, Governor Santa saying he's going to actually build or complete it is a monumental difference in policy.
[00:35:35]  President Trump has said since he launched his campaign, he's going to complete, finish building that wall in year one.
[00:35:41]  And on the gender sort of comments, you know, he's had individuals like Riley Gaines and I've been there at events where President Trump has spoken and she's highlighted, you know, the position that basically he's taken that men do not belong in women's sports, period.
[00:35:57]  And I think if someone in the media were to ask him with more fidelity, you would get an answer that provides a little sharper contrast to what Governor DeSantis is saying.
[00:36:07]  But I don't think there's any great distinction there.
[00:36:10]  What do you make, Ash, of the argument that he's Trump without the baggage?
[00:36:13]  That will get Trump, Trump policies without the tweets and controversy.
[00:36:18]  I think that's political rhetoric they want out there.
[00:36:22]  People have, you know, I got to remind people sometimes that President Trump was president and Ron DeSantis has not been president.

=== Trump Without the Baggage (10:57) ===

[00:36:28]  And it's a unique period in history for America because I think the last time that happened was Grover, Cleveland in like the 1800s.
[00:36:35]  And so President Trump can run and say, I did this and you see that I did this in national security, in economy, the border, healthcare, what have you.
[00:36:43]  And Governor DeSantis can say that about what he's done successfully in the state of Florida.
[00:36:49]  And the numbers just don't lie at the end of the day.
[00:36:52]  President Trump received 5 million votes in the state of Florida in 2020.
[00:36:56]  And Governor DeSantis received 4 million votes in the state of Florida when he ran for early election in 2022.
[00:37:03]  The message from DeSantis wasn't directly anti-Trump.
[00:37:06]  He's smart enough, you know, I think, to be careful around that issue, though, you know, there's an argument that he should just punch him in the face because it's on, right?
[00:37:13]  It's like Trump's going to punch him in the face and has been.
[00:37:15]  So, you know, whatever, politicos will decide that.
[00:37:19]  But he made a couple of comments like entertainment is not governing or, you know, governing is not about entertainment, something to that effect.
[00:37:27]  And that we have to get past what the Republican Party's been suffering from these past few cycles, which is a culture of losing, a culture of losing, which, you know, clearly is a reference to Trump.
[00:37:39]  So what do you make of those two points?
[00:37:42]  Well, I think on the culture of losing, yeah, it's tough to not succeed in a presidential election.
[00:37:48]  But I think also there have been valid arguments made, especially with the highlighting of the Durham Report and what Governor DeSantis said about himself about censorship and big tech and the FBI and other government agencies.
[00:37:59]  So when it comes down to whether it's a failure of the RNCs, and I'm a big critic of them at often points, the Republican National Committee and the party, I don't know that you can just put that all squarely on President Trump, given the history of what's just come out recently in the Durham Report.
[00:38:15]  But it's the disseparation that I guess Governor DeSantis is looking for to see that while you can't go out there and be Hollywood and entertaining, the unfortunate reality, Megan, is we live in a 24-7 news cycle where if news isn't breaking every hour on the hour, then something's going wrong in the media.
[00:38:30]  And that is, you know, the definition of having entertainment enter into the political stream.
[00:38:34]  So I just don't see how you do it elsewhere.
[00:38:37]  And I don't see anyone who's better in the media than President Trump.
[00:38:40]  I pointed out before some of the headlines, Daily Mail, disaster.
[00:38:44]  Fox News called it a disaster.
[00:38:45]  Breitbart News calls it a debacle.
[00:38:48]  And you could go on.
[00:38:49]  I mean, once you get to the left-wing media, it gets even uglier than that.
[00:38:53]  Do you think, what do you think it says, if anything, about DeSantis and his candidacy?
[00:38:59]  I mean, is it more than just a false start?
[00:39:03]  Well, I think that's a great point.
[00:39:05]  He could have chosen to do this in a live setting at a big audience or at multiple different styles, go on a bus tour, what have you.
[00:39:14]  But this is the launch that he engineered with Elon Musk to do it in a specific way of Twitter, because to me, I take it as that's the style campaign he wants to run.
[00:39:23]  He wants to be on social media, which is ironic when he talks about he wants to be less entertaining.
[00:39:29]  And to me, President Trump's style has always been, I'm going to be more in person.
[00:39:34]  And that's a striking difference.
[00:39:35]  And the tone has now been set.
[00:39:37]  And we'll see how they recuperate or recover from this sort of failure to launch or however you want to style it.
[00:39:42]  But I think it's a great point that you're making that the stylistic differences right off the bat are I'm going to launch on Twitter and go 100 miles an hour.
[00:39:51]  And President Trump is going to continue to do in-person events and show up in places like East Palestine and do rallies.
[00:39:57]  And you're going to see him crisscross the country.
[00:39:59]  I'm sure Ron DeSantis is going to start doing that, but he didn't do it from the inception.
[00:40:04]  Trump sent out a video, a montage, trying to show the differences between his launch and DeSantis' launch.
[00:40:10]  Want to take a look at that for a minute.
[00:40:11]  It's Sat 11.
[00:40:14]  And I'm proud to be an American.
[00:40:20]  The listening audience, it reads preparing to launch.
[00:40:22]  And I'm back to Mar-a-Lago.
[00:40:24]  The man with your diets.
[00:40:26]  We are kind of melting the servers.
[00:40:29]  And I'm proud to be an American.
[00:40:32]  We're at least free.
[00:40:38]  His mouth is.
[00:40:39]  I've set the narrative on us by our government.
[00:40:46]  So juxtaposing two very different looking events.
[00:40:51]  But look, first of all, my first impression looking at that cash is the cell phone ruins everything, right?
[00:40:56]  Everybody, I see it at my kids' recitals or whatever.
[00:40:59]  It's like people don't clap anymore.
[00:41:01]  They don't actually look with their eyes anymore.
[00:41:03]  They only look through their iPhone.
[00:41:05]  In a normal Trump rally, people would be clapping.
[00:41:08]  They'd be cheering for him.
[00:41:09]  Instead, what are they doing?
[00:41:10]  They're just holding up their phone to capture the moment.
[00:41:13]  But Trump had actual humans in the room, which I mean, who knew that simple move would give him a considerable advantage over DeSantis?
[00:41:24]  Yeah, I think, well, I was there, you know, front and center.
[00:41:27]  And I agree with you that the meeting, you know, the telephone has sort of hurt how we do some of these things, but everybody wants to capture the moment and post about it.
[00:41:34]  But that's another conversation.
[00:41:36]  But the room was packed.
[00:41:37]  And maybe Governor DeSantis didn't think he could pack a stadium like that.
[00:41:42]  I'm sure the idea crossed the campaign's minds.
[00:41:45]  I know some of the people over there, they're not stupid.
[00:41:48]  Governor DeSantis certainly isn't an idiot.
[00:41:50]  And so that was an intentional decision to set a separating space in not just venue, but style on how he's going to run his campaign, at least out of the jump, out of the gate.
[00:42:00]  And so I think it speaks volumes to their decision not to do it in the stadium.
[00:42:06]  If Governor DeSantis is as popular as everyone is making him out to be in some of the mainstream media, then he can go fill out Allegiance Stadium here in Las Vegas in my hometown.
[00:42:15]  No problem.
[00:42:16]  But he chose not to do that.
[00:42:17]  That is very interesting.
[00:42:18]  I'm trying to find the tweet, but there was somebody who tweeted out something right along these lines talking about why, why wasn't he in a stadium?
[00:42:26]  Why didn't he go in Florida?
[00:42:29]  I can't find it, but in any event, she was saying, why, if you're the governor of Florida, who is so popular in Florida, and I think we can agree, he's very popular in Florida, why wouldn't you go into one of the many football stadiums that are in Florida, fill it up with your fans and have the cheering crowds?
[00:42:45]  Yes, as opposed to we're melting down, we're glitching.
[00:42:49]  Like he couldn't have foreseen the glitches necessarily, though he should have kicked those tires before agreeing to this.
[00:42:55]  But he could have foreseen the lack of cheering crowds and the unavailability of the opportunity to show off his beautiful family and create this sort of loving Camelot 2.0 imagery.
[00:43:07]  All of that was not used.
[00:43:10]  Yeah, it sounds like you need to be advising him on how to do this better.
[00:43:13]  I mean, you're right.
[00:43:14]  They should listen to me.
[00:43:17]  The pageantry of it all was missing, but you hit on some critical points.
[00:43:21]  In Florida, from where Governor DeSantis' hometown is in the Panhandle, you have Florida State University.
[00:43:26]  That's a 70,000 person stadium.
[00:43:28]  That's a no-brainer for the governor of Florida to go there or go to Orlando or go to Miami.
[00:43:33]  They all have huge football stadiums and arenas that they could have done, but they didn't do that.
[00:43:39]  You're right.
[00:43:39]  I think if he's styling a campaign after talking about being big on family and being less on entertainment, he went to the entertainment capital of the world right now, which is Twitter, because that's where most people get their news, their media, their videos, their sports and everywhere else, but it's not in person.
[00:43:57]  And I just think you see that Donald Trump has made a distinction from way back that he's going to do this in person along with social media, of course, but he's out there on the streets of East Palestine.
[00:44:08]  He's not just doing rallies.
[00:44:09]  He's doing town halls.
[00:44:10]  He went over on CNN and did that town hall for the first time in, I think, like six years.
[00:44:15]  So it's a very different approach.
[00:44:16]  I know Governor DeSantis just started, but the start was not the one he was looking for.
[00:44:22]  And he's got a lot of smart people who should be asking themselves, why do we get this so wrong?
[00:44:27]  Right.
[00:44:27]  Why are the headlines so uniformly bad for us today when it should just be Ron DeSantis is in and then a discussion of the policy differences or the chances or what have you?
[00:44:35]  This is all about his disastrous launch.
[00:44:37]  I'll say this.
[00:44:38]  Dana Lash, who I mentioned before, she's radio host.
[00:44:41]  She's going to have him on her show today.
[00:44:42]  She wrote, tweeted out, DeSantis broke the internet.
[00:44:45]  I think it's cool that someone tried something new and circumvented legacy press.
[00:44:49]  It's the maiden voyage for this for this many years.
[00:44:54]  And it won't be the last time for a candidate conversation.
[00:44:56]  Not going to have a meltdown over it.
[00:44:58]  I mean, what about that?
[00:44:58]  It's cool that someone tried something new and circumvented the legacy press.
[00:45:03]  Republicans hate the press.
[00:45:04]  So does she have a point?
[00:45:06]  In part, yeah, if that was their intention to get around the legacy press, but here's the reality of it.
[00:45:12]  All of the press covered it anyway.
[00:45:14]  And if he had done it in a stadium or arena, even more of the press would have been there in person to give it even more coverage.
[00:45:20]  I mean, I'm not the political genius.
[00:45:22]  I'm not the campaign guy.
[00:45:23]  I'm the national security defense intel advisor, you know, and law enforcement stuff.
[00:45:28]  And even I can see the glaring failures of that.
[00:45:31]  If she's writing that, I think she's just fishing and trying to throw him a lifeline to say, okay, thanks for trying something new.
[00:45:38]  Nobody patted Donald Trump on the back every time he tried something new.
[00:45:40]  And he basically tries something new every other week.
[00:45:43]  If it's new, it's got to succeed.
[00:45:45]  And I think that's the message that Donald Trump's going to put forth.
[00:45:47]  No problem trying something new, but you can't crash and fail, especially on your one yard line when you just got the football.
[00:45:54]  And that's what you saw happening.
[00:45:55]  Ben Shabiro tweeted out tonight was a perfect encapsulation of the campaign.
[00:45:59]  If you're obsessed with the optics of the Twitter space glitch, then you're probably not going to vote DeSantis.
[00:46:04]  If you're interested in political substance, DeSantis is likely your candidate.
[00:46:09]  That does not describe me because I could vote for DeSantis.
[00:46:14]  I could vote for Trump.
[00:46:15]  I could, you know, I, but I can also see these were absolutely terrible glitches that really undermined the man's message in a way that really does lead you to question, is he as on top of everything as he wants us to believe?
[00:46:29]  And are they doing this to cover up a weakness of his when it comes to connecting with people that we're already wondering whether he has?
[00:46:38]  What do you make of that?
[00:46:39]  Because, you know, Trump doesn't really have the support of the sort of Daily Wire guys or, you know, a lot of people within the Republican Party who think it's time for a change.
[00:46:47]  Yeah, look, it speaks to whether or not Governor DeSantis has the social stamina to go out there and do that in the public forum and take the heat and the questions.
[00:46:54]  It also asks the question, and this is the most important one to me: is this the guy that can handle protecting our border, safeguarding us from the CCP and Chinese fentanyl, taking on Russia and China and getting us out of World War III, or that we're on the verge thereof and taking on the swamp.
[00:47:10]  These are the questions that are now up there.
[00:47:12]  If all of his advisors should have warned him about it before and it said a new game, he failed to do so.
[00:47:18]  Well, as we said in the last segment, onward for Team DeSantis and Team Trump, probably can't wait.
[00:47:23]  Kash Patel, thanks for coming on and weighing in on it.

=== Social Stamina and Empowerment (16:46) ===

[00:47:26]  We appreciate it.
[00:47:27]  Thanks so much, Megan.
[00:47:29]  Coming up, Jillian Michaels is here.
[00:47:31]  We're looking forward to meeting her.
[00:47:33]  I have so many questions.
[00:47:34]  I recently resumed working out and then I was preparing for this interview.
[00:47:39]  And it turns out I think I'm doing it all wrong.
[00:47:41]  Are you looking to get in shape for the summer?
[00:47:42]  Well, Jillian's got thoughts on that and the latest craze about pushing obesity as gorgeous.
[00:47:47]  Does she think so?
[00:47:49]  We'll see.
[00:47:50]  We'll talk about it all as well as Ozempic and whether you should be taking it.
[00:47:54]  Remember, you can find the Megan Kelly Show live on SiriusXM Triumph Channel 111 every weekday at Noon East.
[00:48:01]  And you can find us on youtube.com/slash MeganKelly as well.
[00:48:09]  Joining me now in person here at the Sirius XM Studios in Manhattan is health and wellness expert Jillian Michaels.
[00:48:16]  Yay.
[00:48:17]  She has inspired millions to make health a priority since gracing our television screens, starring in 2004, starting in 2004 with the NBC series, The Biggest Loser, and has always spoken her mind, even in the face of criticism and backlash.
[00:48:31]  I love that about her.
[00:48:32]  She's here today to share her own fitness journey and tell us how we can increase ours and improve ours.
[00:48:39]  Her app is The Fitness App.
[00:48:41]  It's like the number one fitness app that's available.
[00:48:44]  So go ahead and download it.
[00:48:45]  And her podcast is Keeping It Real.
[00:48:48]  Welcome to the show.
[00:48:49]  Great to have you.
[00:48:49]  Thank you so much for having me.
[00:48:51]  Yeah, thanks for coming on.
[00:48:52]  So I was just asking during the break, did you go on the Twitter spaces last night?
[00:48:56]  Did you?
[00:48:57]  I'm so embarrassed to say I have no idea what you're talking about.
[00:49:01]  Have you ever heard of Twitter Spaces?
[00:49:03]  I have not.
[00:49:05]  Am I dating myself?
[00:49:07]  Is this a new thing?
[00:49:08]  No, literally, nobody was on that call other than journalists.
[00:49:10]  I'm convinced of it.
[00:49:12]  I mean, I like the idea of Twitter just in general.
[00:49:14]  A lot of us are on Twitter.
[00:49:15]  Right.
[00:49:15]  But Twitter spaces normally there, like I get some notification at the top of my phone, like so-and-so is speaking.
[00:49:19]  I'm like, where?
[00:49:21]  How?
[00:49:21]  I don't get it.
[00:49:22]  I don't.
[00:49:23]  Oh, I get it.
[00:49:23]  It's kind of like that app that came out, Club Something.
[00:49:27]  Yes, where you can just pop into and listen to somebody intelligent speak on something interesting.
[00:49:33]  Maybe.
[00:49:35]  Or you can just get screamed at.
[00:49:36]  So if I want that, I'll just take a walk on the upper west side.
[00:49:38]  I don't need to log on to any spaces for that.
[00:49:41]  All right.
[00:49:41]  So in reading up on you before this interview, we have a lot in common, including something I don't talk about just because it hasn't come up, but I, like you, was a little hefty gal when I was 13.
[00:49:54]  Were you really?
[00:49:55]  Yes.
[00:49:56]  And I know you've written about that.
[00:49:57]  Like we were both heavy girls.
[00:50:00]  And I remember being specifically called out and how chunky I was.
[00:50:02]  And it was news to me.
[00:50:04]  I remember being like, oh, I am?
[00:50:06]  Because my family hadn't really told me that or prioritized fitness in any way, which was lovely, but I found out the hard way from the fellow kids at school.
[00:50:15]  Kids will always make you aware.
[00:50:17]  And you had the same.
[00:50:18]  Like you were bullied and it got pretty bad.
[00:50:20]  I was bullied.
[00:50:21]  I was bullied, I think, for a host of reasons.
[00:50:26]  I was gay and didn't know I was gay.
[00:50:28]  That's got to be a tough period.
[00:50:30]  It was, it was not like, oh, it was not the time where queer was cool.
[00:50:35]  No, not at all.
[00:50:38]  And I think other kids picked it up and they're like, that kid's, she's off.
[00:50:44]  It was the 80s, 90s.
[00:50:46]  Boys don't tend to respond well to repeated rejection.
[00:50:50]  I don't even know that I was getting hit on by boys, though, because I was heavier and I had a huge nose and terrible skin and braces.
[00:50:57]  And it was without a question, not a glamorous period in my life.
[00:51:03]  And so kids, you know, they pick up on that and they pick you apart.
[00:51:05]  Kids are mean.
[00:51:06]  And contrary to popular belief, they're still mean.
[00:51:09]  And I hear about it every day from my 13-year-old, my 11-year-old.
[00:51:13]  Oh, mom, they did this to this kid.
[00:51:14]  I'm like, can you dare keep that to that kid?
[00:51:16]  Yeah.
[00:51:17]  Stay out of that conversation.
[00:51:18]  They are.
[00:51:18]  They're nasty.
[00:51:19]  They can be.
[00:51:20]  Yeah.
[00:51:20]  Kids get what I'm mean.
[00:51:21]  To me, I think it's interesting that your route out of that was eventually fitness.
[00:51:25]  Like you found fitness as a way of slimming down and empowering yourself.
[00:51:30]  This too, I could relate to to some extent because while I was kind of chubby when I was 12, 13, by the time I was 15, I had become an aerobics instructor, which I did religiously.
[00:51:42]  And I did that all the way through law school and into the early practice of law.
[00:51:46]  Fitness can be used as a tool to improve your life in many ways.
[00:51:49]  Oh, absolutely.
[00:51:50]  It's transcendent because when somebody feels stronger physically, they feel stronger in every facet of their lives.
[00:51:58]  But most importantly, and this is how I would always use it in extreme situations, if a person is struggling with food as an addiction, a coping mechanism, a defense structure, they have a host of other beliefs about themselves and their capabilities that are untrue.
[00:52:15]  It's like, oh, I'm the funny fat guy.
[00:52:16]  Oh, I was picked last in P.
[00:52:19]  Oh, you know, what they believe their limitations to be.
[00:52:22]  And if you bring somebody into the gym, right, that was never fit and never thought of themselves as being athletic and they run that first mile or they do that first push-up on their hands and feet or they do the first pull-up they never thought they could do, essentially you're opening up an infinity of other possibilities because you're shattering this notion of this is my story and these are my limitations.
[00:52:45]  So it can be used in many ways, as you said, but empowerment is top of the list.
[00:52:50]  Why do so many people have such food issues?
[00:52:54]  I was talking to my team about this recently because if you read the Daily Mail, which I love, every other day they will have somebody who used to be a bikini model whose name we know from the 80s or 90s or what have you, who is now morbidly obese.
[00:53:08]  And of course, they get this poor soul walking down the street just trying to get their groceries at age 70.
[00:53:13]  But there's always a huge juxtaposition between like this bone thin, like too thin, to be honest, bikini model, and then this morbidly obese older version of them.
[00:53:23]  And I always believe, Jillian, those two people are struggling with the same issue.
[00:53:29]  Flip sides of the same coin.
[00:53:30]  You're absolutely right.
[00:53:32]  Actually, look, you have the person that has the dad bought, right?
[00:53:36]  The guy that had two kids and then the desk job.
[00:53:38]  And all of a sudden, you can't drink beers with your buddies on Saturday without it packing on slowly over the years.
[00:53:44]  You have a midlife crisis.
[00:53:45]  You take off 25 pounds.
[00:53:47]  It's a great thing.
[00:53:48]  Then you have the individual, or you know, the mom that had two kids and has a job and she's like, oh, you know what?
[00:53:54]  I somehow have managed to put on 15 pounds over the past decade.
[00:53:58]  Let me take that off.
[00:53:59]  Fine.
[00:54:00]  With that said, you now have the individual that is, let's say, 50 pounds overweight, 75, 100 plus.
[00:54:09]  This is a very different beast.
[00:54:10]  This is not a person that likes pizza.
[00:54:12]  This is not a person that's lazy.
[00:54:14]  This is not a person that's lifestyle has caught up to them.
[00:54:17]  This is an individual that is using food because it is providing with something, them with something so significant that at one time in their lives or another, I'm willing to bet you it meant their psychological survival.
[00:54:32]  We use it in so many ways, whether it's control, like you don't control me, I control my body, or a defense structure of an individual who may have been incested or molested.
[00:54:42]  And it's like, if I desexualize myself, am I protecting myself?
[00:54:46]  I'm just giving you handful of a lot of people who wind up with eating disorders say that they were molested with sexually all the time.
[00:54:53]  Or, you know, there was a young boy I worked with whose mother was also morbidly obese, young, 18, young.
[00:54:59]  And we took 100 pounds off of him.
[00:55:02]  He goes back home to his environment.
[00:55:04]  And within the first week, puts seven pounds on because his mom sees him and immediately feels like he's going to outgrow her, emotionally withdraws from him.
[00:55:13]  So what does the weight provide?
[00:55:14]  An emotional connection with his mother.
[00:55:16]  And I could go on and on and on.
[00:55:18]  But the reality is that this is a very complex issue.
[00:55:22]  It's not black and white.
[00:55:23]  It's not healthy at any size.
[00:55:26]  It's not about fat shaming.
[00:55:28]  It's none of the above, but it is rooted firmly in mental health that plays out in your physical health.
[00:55:35]  You mentioned control.
[00:55:36]  So I have a couple of friends.
[00:55:38]  Two of my dear, dear friends had, I mean, their daughters are still around, but they've aged up now, but had daughters at the age of like 14, 15 develop an eating disorder.
[00:55:49]  And in both cases, it started with extreme veganism.
[00:55:54]  And that, so I think there are signs on these things, right?
[00:55:56]  When it comes to control, it's like, it's not about being a vegan.
[00:56:00]  It's not about saving animals.
[00:56:02]  It's about that extreme control, which is like red flag all over it.
[00:56:07]  It's a very difficult position to be in as a parent.
[00:56:11]  And the tremendous irony of this is that my daughter struggles with a food addiction, meaning not bulimia, not anorexia, but food obsessed, could eat, neat, meat to the point that, you know, as her mother, I think to myself, okay, she, she is adopted.
[00:56:30]  So there's that component of feeding this pit inside from the first two years of her life, which she can share when she's older, but were without question, extraordinarily traumatic.
[00:56:41]  And then you've got me as her mom.
[00:56:42]  So you have to wonder if there's an element of rebellion in the teenage years.
[00:56:46]  What I would tell any friend going through this, right?
[00:56:49]  I'd be like, listen, role model wellness, you know, be supportive in every way you can.
[00:56:56]  Don't make an issue of their weight of their health ever at all.
[00:56:59]  Or they will interpret it as you don't love them.
[00:57:02]  And you keep the child active and be active with them.
[00:57:05]  I did all of that with my daughter and none of it worked.
[00:57:08]  And we finally got to the point where I was like, baby, you know, she would go into town, get bags of candy.
[00:57:14]  She's fit.
[00:57:15]  She pulls it off.
[00:57:16]  That's not what I'm worried about.
[00:57:17]  I'm worried about the fact that this is so, so bad for her developing body and get bags of Halloween candy.
[00:57:23]  And I was like, honey, listen to me.
[00:57:24]  As your mother, I'm dying inside and I feel like I'm failing you and I need to do something.
[00:57:28]  But on the same hand, I don't want you to think like, you don't love me.
[00:57:31]  You're trying to control me.
[00:57:32]  You want to change me.
[00:57:33]  And I finally was like, what do you need from me?
[00:57:35]  You're just going to have to tell me what you need me to do right now.
[00:57:37]  Do you need me to leave you alone?
[00:57:39]  Like, would you need me to help?
[00:57:40]  And she actually finally was like, I want you to help me.
[00:57:43]  Oh.
[00:57:44]  And I was like, okay, but if I do, I swear to God, don't come back and tell me I didn't love you the way you were.
[00:57:49]  Don't tell your therapist yet.
[00:57:50]  She started laughing.
[00:57:52]  So we've been going to the gym together.
[00:57:54]  We're running sprints together.
[00:57:55]  But as a parent, it's very muddy.
[00:57:58]  From the outside, you know, looking in, you can give tremendous advice.
[00:58:01]  But from the inside, you can't see the forest through the trees and you're not quite sure where to intervene or how to intervene or if you're going to mess them up by intervening.
[00:58:09]  We've been just like honest with our kids.
[00:58:11]  I mean, I'm slim.
[00:58:13]  My husband's thin.
[00:58:14]  I mean, he's muscular, but he's a trim guy.
[00:58:17]  And our approach has just been to be honest.
[00:58:19]  You know, you don't want to be too heavy.
[00:58:21]  That's not healthy.
[00:58:22]  And you don't want to be too thin.
[00:58:23]  That's not healthy.
[00:58:23]  Right.
[00:58:24]  And we'll tell you if you're getting one way or the other.
[00:58:26]  Yeah.
[00:58:27]  And sometimes they'll ask.
[00:58:28]  We'll be like, absolutely not.
[00:58:29]  You're good.
[00:58:29]  Our kids are thin.
[00:58:30]  You know, they eat like we eat.
[00:58:32]  So they're not really going to lose fast metabolism.
[00:58:35]  So they don't have to worry about their snacks yet.
[00:58:37]  Lucky.
[00:58:38]  But sometimes that's been okay.
[00:58:39]  You know, like they, it's the daughters that you really have to worry about it.
[00:58:43]  Men do get eating disorders, but usually it's the daughters.
[00:58:46]  And I do already see, she's only 12, and I do already see this athletic, beautiful girl being like, why are my legs fat?
[00:58:52]  I'm like, that's where we carry our fat, honey.
[00:58:54]  Like, that's where we, like, look, mom's got it too.
[00:58:56]  Like, it's just society starts planting this stuff.
[00:58:59]  Wow, that she's interpreting her legs as being fat.
[00:59:03]  That's where we are.
[00:59:03]  And she's, of course, a thin girl, but like, that's America.
[00:59:06]  Like, fat on one's body is like assessed.
[00:59:10]  Is that a negative?
[00:59:11]  Are we, can we have fat on our bodies?
[00:59:13]  This is why we shouldn't be looking at it from a literal perspective of, okay, you appear this way.
[00:59:21]  This is something that belongs literally in a doctor's office.
[00:59:25]  They will tell you, hey, your cholesterol is high, your blood pressure's high, your XYZ PDQ, the biomarkers are off.
[00:59:33]  There's cause for concern.
[00:59:36]  And this is when you have concern.
[00:59:37]  And a pediatrician will tell you, they said to me, they're like, her blood pressure is high.
[00:59:40]  She's 12.
[00:59:41]  And I was like, okay.
[00:59:43]  Okay.
[00:59:44]  This is, you know, time to intervene.
[00:59:47]  And that's when I was like, honey, because it has nothing to do with the way she looks.
[00:59:50]  You'd see her and be like, wow.
[00:59:51]  And I'd be like, I know she gets away with murder.
[00:59:53]  You have no idea.
[00:59:54]  And plus, you're setting them up.
[00:59:55]  Like, that's the real concern is like, of course, they're not like you're setting them up for a lifetime.
[01:00:00]  Once they're no idea.
[01:00:01]  Right.
[01:00:02]  Like, I cannot even tell you.
[01:00:05]  All I do all day long is talk to some of the world's best doctors.
[01:00:09]  And they will tell you, if a child is not consuming vegetables between the ages of 13 and 17, their chances of breast cancer, a girl, obviously, child in this case, is 50% higher in their 50s.
[01:00:24]  It has to do with microbiome and the role it plays with immunity.
[01:00:27]  But then I'm like, oh my God.
[01:00:30]  Honey, please.
[01:00:31]  Right?
[01:00:31]  One time.
[01:00:33]  You're going to blink your eyes.
[01:00:34]  Love of God.
[01:00:35]  Yeah.
[01:00:35]  It's crazy.
[01:00:36]  When you know too much, it starts to get even scarier.
[01:00:39]  Well, that's the same in my business, but it's like sharks and lightning strikes and all sorts of stuff.
[01:00:45]  And my kids are like, what?
[01:00:46]  I mean, my kid, my 13-year-old went on a school camping trip recently.
[01:00:51]  It was like his entire grade and they went to this lovely sort of camp in the woods where they had cabins and all that.
[01:00:56]  And all the other mothers are like, have a great time, sweetheart.
[01:00:59]  Love you.
[01:00:59]  And I was like, watch out for the molesters.
[01:01:06]  48 was like, wow, mom.
[01:01:11]  The world is full of sickos.
[01:01:12]  You have no idea.
[01:01:13]  You are not safe.
[01:01:14]  Bye-bye.
[01:01:15]  I love you.
[01:01:18]  Oh, my God.
[01:01:20]  Okay.
[01:01:21]  We all have that.
[01:01:23]  That makes perfect sense.
[01:01:23]  All right.
[01:01:24]  I feel a little better now.
[01:01:25]  That makes me feel a little better.
[01:01:27]  All right.
[01:01:27]  So let's go to the opposite end of that with that.
[01:01:29]  There's the children on the one hand, and then there is the absolute celebration of obesity amongst adults that our society is going through.
[01:01:37]  I've heard you speak out about it and you got backlash.
[01:01:39]  I mean, you would get even more backlash just because of your position in the fitness and well-being.
[01:01:43]  It's absurd because this is what I do.
[01:01:45]  It's my job to talk about it.
[01:01:48]  People like me can say it without much blowback, but I agree with everything you say.
[01:01:52]  Obesity should not be glorified.
[01:01:54]  Being body positive should not include celebration of obesity.
[01:02:00]  Here's what's happening culturally is that for years we have marginalized individuals who were, quote, obese, overweight.
[01:02:12]  Now what happens is society is like, this is wrong.
[01:02:15]  We have to stop doing this.
[01:02:17]  Excellent.
[01:02:17]  So step out of the equation if you're not an expert.
[01:02:20]  Don't shame somebody.
[01:02:21]  That makes you an asshole.
[01:02:23]  Don't do that.
[01:02:24]  Just step out.
[01:02:25]  You're not an expert.
[01:02:26]  Be a good guy.
[01:02:28]  See this person as a person and that's all you need to do.
[01:02:32]  But then there's the overcompensation.
[01:02:34]  And arguably we shift into the virtue signaling of like, no, no, girl, you're good, says the person who's doing Ozempic, you know, on the side.
[01:02:45]  And the reality is that the individual who is obese or overweight has felt so hurt and so wounded that it then becomes about rejecting that entire concept of, you can't hurt me with this.
[01:02:58]  I love this.
[01:03:00]  This is great.
[01:03:01]  And I liken it to, you know, in the gay community, we throw around gay slurs all the time.
[01:03:09]  All my gay guy friends say fag.
[01:03:11]  You know, I've been guilty of saying dyke.
[01:03:14]  And I'm like, I carry a card.
[01:03:15]  Like I'm allowed.
[01:03:17]  But my daughter the other day was like, mom, I hate when you do that.
[01:03:20]  And I was like, why?
[01:03:21]  I'm allowed.
[01:03:21]  And she goes, but it's just gross.
[01:03:24]  And I was like, but it's my, she's like, it's, and I was like, why am I doing this?
[01:03:29]  And you do do it because you're like, I own this word.
[01:03:32]  Yeah, right.
[01:03:32]  And it doesn't bother me and you can't hurt me with it because it was hurtful growing up.
[01:03:37]  And I believe it's the same thing where it's like, I own this and I love this and you can't hurt me with this.
[01:03:42]  But you can't die from calling yourself a dyke.
[01:03:45]  Maybe not.
[01:03:46]  I hope not because God knows it's happened a few times.
[01:03:50]  But no, you can't be leaning into obesity.
[01:03:53]  Well, leaning into obesity is deadly, obviously.
[01:03:56]  The point is why I'm trying to explain why they're doing it because it's been so hurtful.
[01:04:00]  The reality, though, is we're likely going to die of three things.
[01:04:05]  We can stretch it to four, but it would be heart disease, cancer, and cognitive decline.

=== Obesity as Top Health Threat (10:22) ===

[01:04:12]  Metabolic disease contributes to all three of those things.
[01:04:16]  So to call it four is strange because it contributes to all three, but sure, why not?
[01:04:21]  So what is going to be the top contributing factor to those three things is obesity.
[01:04:28]  And what people don't understand is that, yes, you can be unhealthy at any size without question.
[01:04:34]  Heart disease, cancer, all the things.
[01:04:35]  And be skinny fat for sure.
[01:04:36]  100% and eat garbage and get sick from it.
[01:04:39]  However, when a person is carrying excess body fat, it is an indicator of specific habits that we know are unhealthy.
[01:04:48]  And then we get into the biochemistry of it.
[01:04:50]  And it's everything from vitamin D gets is in your fat stores and you don't have enough circulating vitamin D and it impacts your immunity.
[01:04:56]  It disrupts your microbiome and makes you less resilient to disease.
[01:05:00]  We see people that have more methylated DNA that are obese.
[01:05:04]  I could go on and on and on and on.
[01:05:06]  The bottom line is, this is not a question.
[01:05:08]  The earth is not flat.
[01:05:09]  Obesity kills people.
[01:05:11]  Period.
[01:05:13]  I went for my annual physical.
[01:05:15]  My doctor is a fettest.
[01:05:17]  He is hardcore anti-obesity.
[01:05:20]  I mean, he like you gain weight.
[01:05:21]  He's like, no.
[01:05:23]  But I like it because whenever I have my annual physical, I'm like, oh, shit, I got to lose some weight.
[01:05:27]  I couldn't go see him.
[01:05:28]  And he'll be like, Doc, I'm up two pounds year over year.
[01:05:31]  He's like, you know what two pounds is over 10 years?
[01:05:33]  That's 20 pounds.
[01:05:34]  You'll never get it off.
[01:05:35]  I'm like, okay, I'm on it.
[01:05:36]  Oh my gosh.
[01:05:37]  Like it's, it's helpful to me.
[01:05:38]  They our styles align.
[01:05:40]  Of course.
[01:05:41]  But when you go into his office and you sit there and you're sitting on the little table and he's going to take your heart rate and listen to your heart and all that, there's a chart right there.
[01:05:49]  And it shows that the hockey stick of all the diseases and what's making them go like that.
[01:05:56]  And it's obesity.
[01:05:56]  He's like, he doesn't care how you look.
[01:05:59]  He cares that you're going to take on this entire practice if you overeat because obesity causes all the things you just said.
[01:06:07]  It does without question.
[01:06:10]  And we understand all the mechanisms of how it impacts all of those different obesity-related diseases, 170 comorbidities, COVID alone was a once in a generation opportunity to really grab this bull by the horns and help people get healthier and inspire them to find a reason.
[01:06:32]  And I kind of think we blew it.
[01:06:34]  You know, the CDC even came out, and I can't remember this statistic exactly because this was, oh my gosh, came out, I want to say two years ago, but something like 80% of the individuals that were that died from COVID or had a very severe case of COVID or were hospitalized with COVID were overweight or obese.
[01:06:54]  And they know why.
[01:06:55]  They understand the mechanisms of that.
[01:06:57]  Speak to any endocrinologist and they'll walk you through why.
[01:07:03]  It's simple science.
[01:07:04]  It actually really is simple science.
[01:07:06]  Okay, so now all of this leads me to why don't you like Ozempic?
[01:07:11]  Because Ozempic helps with weight loss.
[01:07:16]  And then I just read something in the paper this week saying it's they're finding a new side effect of it is reducing addictions.
[01:07:23]  Like it's reducing cravings for alcohol, for drugs, for things that are bad for you.
[01:07:31]  Is that anecdotal?
[01:07:32]  There's no clinical trial.
[01:07:33]  Yeah, I think it's anecdotal.
[01:07:34]  Right.
[01:07:35]  So, you know, so you can no longer be obese and you could curb your cravings and your, you know, emotional food dependence from childhood is no longer ruling your life thanks to the miracle of Ozempic or LeeGovie or the other one.
[01:07:50]  We govie, yeah.
[01:07:51]  Ribelsis, yeah, all the things.
[01:07:53]  There's another one that starts with an, I can't even remember the name.
[01:07:56]  Monjaro.
[01:07:56]  Monjaro.
[01:07:57]  That's right.
[01:07:58]  Yes, it's a bird of the exact same feather.
[01:08:02]  Okay.
[01:08:03]  So first, let's address the following.
[01:08:06]  People often think that Ozempic is being prescribed off-label for obesity.
[01:08:12]  Ozempic is semagglutide.
[01:08:14]  Wegovi is semagglutide.
[01:08:15]  We govie is, oh my gosh, forgive me.
[01:08:20]  The FDA has approved Wegovi as an anti-obesity drug.
[01:08:24]  It's not off-label.
[01:08:25]  It's simply a higher dose of semaglutide.
[01:08:28]  Now, though, it's more, it's a higher dose than Ozempic.
[01:08:31]  Yep.
[01:08:31]  Okay.
[01:08:32]  Yeah.
[01:08:33]  So with that said, okay, I don't actually like this for people with type 2 diabetes.
[01:08:39]  There are other options that have less side effects, like Jardian, smetformin.
[01:08:44]  There must be because these drugs are new and people have had diabetes for many, many years.
[01:08:48]  So there's got to be some other diabetic drugs.
[01:08:50]  Let's go a step further, though.
[01:08:51]  This isn't type 1 diabetes.
[01:08:54]  It's type 2 diabetes, which means we bring it on by eating too much garbage food and we develop a resistance to insulin.
[01:09:05]  You can resensitize the body to insulin because the most effective drug for doing that is exercise.
[01:09:12]  It's not obviously a drug.
[01:09:14]  Point being that you can reverse type 2 diabetes with no side effects that are negative, only upside by changing what you eat and exercising.
[01:09:25]  And now let's say you turned around and you were like, but Jill, the emotional side is beating me down.
[01:09:33]  It's hard and it's getting the best of me every time.
[01:09:35]  And I'd be the first to say, I've seen it.
[01:09:36]  I know it.
[01:09:37]  I understand it.
[01:09:38]  And there's a reason that 95% of the people who lose weight put it back on.
[01:09:42]  And this is the reason because whatever the food is providing them, they're unconsciously not ready to let go of.
[01:09:50]  Okay.
[01:09:50]  So we think this is our workaround.
[01:09:53]  But the reality is that you can only be on it for, what was it, 60 weeks, a year and a half, roughly on one of these drugs.
[01:10:00]  Yep.
[01:10:01]  Okay.
[01:10:01]  And then the clinical trials have shown that within the first year, people put two-thirds of their weight back on.
[01:10:07]  It's not a permanent fix.
[01:10:09]  Even while they're still on it.
[01:10:10]  No, once they get off of it.
[01:10:11]  So after a year and a half.
[01:10:13]  Why can they only stay on it for the 60 weeks?
[01:10:15]  This is how long they've studied it for.
[01:10:17]  That is the full duration of the treatment with that drug.
[01:10:21]  And I would imagine because of the extensive side effects.
[01:10:25]  And if you go to the website, you will see everything from kidney failure to thyroid cancer to nausea and vomiting.
[01:10:33]  It's right in the article this week about crapping the bed.
[01:10:36]  Oh, lovely.
[01:10:37]  Yeah, that's not how it makes you constipate.
[01:10:40]  Oh, what a good time.
[01:10:41]  People are taking, you know, laxatives and over-correcting, shall we say?
[01:10:45]  Yeah.
[01:10:45]  So that's a, yeah, that's an that could impact your sex life as well.
[01:10:49]  Tremendously.
[01:10:50]  Yes, that's a very good point.
[01:10:51]  I haven't brought that one up yet, but I'm going to use that from now on.
[01:10:54]  I will crack it, but I crap the bed.
[01:10:57]  Perfect.
[01:10:59]  Oh my gosh.
[01:11:00]  Yeah.
[01:11:01]  So that's what it's anecdotally also causes facial aging, ozempic face, sarcopenia.
[01:11:09]  I don't buy that.
[01:11:10]  I'm not buying that one.
[01:11:12]  I've taken a lot of weight off of a lot of people.
[01:11:14]  They look better, not worse.
[01:11:16]  I'm small.
[01:11:17]  You're small.
[01:11:18]  You look great.
[01:11:19]  I don't see any facial aging pounds two months ago and then lost to this weight.
[01:11:26]  I'd probably be saggy.
[01:11:27]  I'm going to say no.
[01:11:28]  No, I've done it a million times and they look fantastic.
[01:11:32]  So I think there's something else going on with how it's affecting us on a cellular level that's creating this accelerated aging.
[01:11:39]  Personally, this is, I have no data to back it up.
[01:11:42]  If I had to guess at what's going on, that would be my guess.
[01:11:47]  It's not a permanent fix.
[01:11:49]  The side effects are extreme.
[01:11:51]  I would say get a therapist.
[01:11:52]  Honestly, get a therapist.
[01:11:54]  Get into counseling and pursue this with safer drugs if you need help in that area while you're in this transition process of dealing with the emotional drugs.
[01:12:05]  Metformin is safer.
[01:12:06]  There is no question.
[01:12:07]  What is that?
[01:12:08]  What's metformin?
[01:12:09]  Metformin is another medication developed for diabetes.
[01:12:14]  But you see doctors who specialize in longevity, like Dr. David Sinclair, he's a Harvard geneticist, one of the most impressive individuals in the space of longevity globally.
[01:12:27]  And he takes metformin.
[01:12:29]  And it has to do with insulin resistance and glucose and all this.
[01:12:34]  Long story short, without, you know, I'll let you interview him about that because he can explain it better than me.
[01:12:39]  But the side effects are significantly less.
[01:12:42]  And in many cases, a lot of people who work in that field are taking it for longevity.
[01:12:49]  It's always thrown me off a bit.
[01:12:52]  Does it have an appetite suppressant side effect?
[01:12:55]  It doesn't.
[01:12:56]  They're not obese.
[01:12:58]  It's utilized to resensitize people.
[01:13:01]  Well, here's how, first, hold on.
[01:13:03]  Let me back up.
[01:13:03]  My apologies.
[01:13:04]  Let me explain how Ozempic works for weight loss.
[01:13:07]  The mechanism of Ozempic with regard to why/slash how you lose weight, two things.
[01:13:13]  Number one is that it delays gastric emptying.
[01:13:16]  So it makes you feel fuller for longer.
[01:13:19]  So you eat less.
[01:13:21]  It makes you actually full for longer.
[01:13:23]  It makes you keeping the food in your stomach.
[01:13:25]  Hormone, it impacts your endocrine system and the appetite center in your brain to help manage cravings, to make you less hungry, and to literally delay gastric emptying and allow you to feel fuller for longer.
[01:13:41]  What does this do?
[01:13:41]  It makes you eat less.
[01:13:43]  So we're still back to calories and calories out.
[01:13:45]  It just helps facilitate.
[01:13:47]  That's your big thing.
[01:13:48]  One must do some calorie restriction if one would like.
[01:13:52]  Here's the bad news.
[01:13:54]  One must lower one's calorie consumption.
[01:13:58]  That is it.
[01:13:58]  You know, unfortunately, we can talk about health.
[01:14:01]  Health is a different animal in some cases.
[01:14:04]  There we go.
[01:14:05]  But this is what Peter Etio was saying, too, that like, you know, you can't be so focused on getting thin that you forget about your health.
[01:14:13]  What is healthy?
[01:14:14]  Yeah.
[01:14:15]  Like, what are you eating in the day?
[01:14:17]  How many grams of protein?
[01:14:18]  How, like, do you want to get down to where you're eating absolutely nothing?
[01:14:21]  Right.
[01:14:21]  Like, that makes sense to me.
[01:14:23]  That's not safe.
[01:14:24]  It's not healthy.
[01:14:24]  No, not at all.
[01:14:26]  But there's a diet called the Twinkie Diet and it was done, I'd say a decade ago by I was on that when I was 15 and chewing.

=== Testosterone and Calorie Restriction (09:06) ===

[01:14:35]  Me too.
[01:14:35]  Yeah, courtesy of my nana.
[01:14:38]  She loved me.
[01:14:40]  This was restricted Twinkies.
[01:14:44]  And a professor of nutrition, I believe his name is Mark Haub, to illustrate the point that it is calories and calories out to facilitate weight loss.
[01:14:54]  ate garbage, but less of it and lost 27 pounds.
[01:14:58]  I can't remember the timeframe.
[01:14:59]  It was like two or three months.
[01:15:01]  And he did lower his triglycerides, lower his LDL, lower his blood pressure.
[01:15:08]  Obviously, we would want those calories to be great.
[01:15:11]  We're getting blueberries and, you know, wild-caught salmon.
[01:15:15]  But if people have a hard time giving those things up, I try to just, I'm like, listen, just let's start with eating less of them.
[01:15:23]  Let's get you out walking.
[01:15:25]  It's just the basics.
[01:15:27]  I keep it as simple as possible for people who struggle where Ozempic becomes an option.
[01:15:33]  And I'm not expecting that person to go to the gym and do HIIT training four to five times a week.
[01:15:37]  I know I'm glad you mentioned that.
[01:15:38]  Yeah.
[01:15:39]  Because I do believe talking to Peter Atia and others, he's impressive.
[01:15:43]  Very impressive.
[01:15:43]  I got to exercise.
[01:15:44]  So he actually got me off my couch.
[01:15:46]  I did it.
[01:15:47]  I did teach aerobics for a long time and I was into fitness and I have had personal trainers over the years.
[01:15:52]  But a couple years ago, I've told the viewers about this, I hurt my shoulder.
[01:15:56]  I had to have a surgery and I just got me out of it.
[01:15:59]  It was a brutal recovery.
[01:16:00]  It was, it was painful.
[01:16:01]  And you really couldn't be the number one thing you can't do is down dog.
[01:16:04]  And I'd been doing some yoga and I've been doing this thing called the class, which I actually really like.
[01:16:10]  I do it now via video.
[01:16:11]  I have, I'd like download the app and you can mirror it on your screen.
[01:16:14]  Awesome.
[01:16:14]  But it's HIIT training.
[01:16:16]  And I just got back into it.
[01:16:18]  And I love it.
[01:16:19]  I have to tell you, it is transforming my body.
[01:16:23]  Like your body kind of remembers, it knows what to do.
[01:16:26]  You start off, you're seeing yourself in the full length mirror and you're like, oh my God, it's depressing.
[01:16:30]  It's depressing.
[01:16:31]  And then just like a few weeks into it, you're like, I'm starting to look good.
[01:16:35]  I'm starting to see some muscle definition.
[01:16:37]  So I was starting to feel good about that.
[01:16:38]  I'm like, I could do this forever.
[01:16:39]  I could just keep doing this class.
[01:16:40]  I love it.
[01:16:41]  Then I get to the prep for Jillian and I read.
[01:16:44]  You have to switch it up.
[01:16:45]  Otherwise, it's going to stop working.
[01:16:47]  I'm like, oh, shit.
[01:16:48]  You do.
[01:16:49]  You do have to switch it up, but you don't necessarily, you don't give up HIIT training.
[01:16:53]  You incorporate other modalities of fitness.
[01:16:57]  So I would have you doing endurance training and strength training and HIIT training.
[01:17:02]  And they all facilitate different benefits.
[01:17:06]  So endurance training is great for mitochondrial biogenesis, which is the fancy way of saying the battery packs on your cells keeps them healthy and vital and helps create new ones.
[01:17:17]  You get into HIIT training and it's not only great for your hormone balance and your metabolism because of something called epoch, which is also a fancy way of saying your body utilizes more energy.
[01:17:29]  It burns more calories to return itself to the state it was in before the workout.
[01:17:34]  Oh, so interesting.
[01:17:35]  Excess post-exercise oxygen consumption, which I've been doing this 30 years and I still can never remember what this stands for.
[01:17:42]  It's afterburn.
[01:17:43]  You burn more calories while you're doing it and after the workout's over.
[01:17:47]  And it's also highly stressful.
[01:17:50]  So when we stress the body, the body adapts to the stress more quickly and becomes fitter faster.
[01:17:56]  So it has a ton of benefits.
[01:17:58]  All of these different things.
[01:17:59]  Strength training is going to help maintain muscle, bone density, help to keep your HGH levels high and your testosterone levels solid, which as a woman, we actually have more testosterone than estrogen.
[01:18:11]  We just don't realize it because men have more testosterone than us, but we need healthy levels of testosterone too.
[01:18:18]  So it's great for you.
[01:18:20]  Do want to mix it up and not get caught doing one thing for all of us.
[01:18:24]  A couple things to say.
[01:18:24]  So, first of all, people are wanting to know the name of that thing.
[01:18:27]  Again, it's called The Class.
[01:18:28]  I have no financial stake in this company whatsoever, but it's very good.
[01:18:32]  I really like it.
[01:18:32]  And I really love JC.
[01:18:33]  If you want to go online, you have to register and you can do it by instructor.
[01:18:37]  She's amazing.
[01:18:38]  Testosterone.
[01:18:39]  Now, I'm getting to be an old lady.
[01:18:40]  I'm 52 now, so I got to think about these things: hormone replacement therapy and all that stuff.
[01:18:44]  Okay, premenopausal.
[01:18:46]  Or I have no idea whether I'm menopausal or not, to be perfectly honest with you, because I've been on the pill for so long.
[01:18:50]  You know, but I did find out.
[01:18:52]  I'm not doing blood though.
[01:18:52]  Yes, I'm doing the pushback.
[01:18:53]  I'll say Peter can speak to you in depth about that.
[01:18:56]  I'm going to do a big show on the whole thing because I feel like women don't talk about this enough.
[01:19:00]  But I wanted to say this: I did learn something interesting, which is if you're like me and you've been on the pill for a long time, and then if you just go off the pill, your testosterone goes up.
[01:19:10]  So, like, a lot of women are like turning to testosterone now.
[01:19:13]  It's like the new sexy thing to do in your 50s.
[01:19:16]  And if you just go off the birth control pill, you have a natural resurgence of your normal testosterone.
[01:19:22]  I hate to tell you, I can't speak to this because I've never been on the pill.
[01:19:25]  Yeah.
[01:19:25]  Oh.
[01:19:26]  Never risked being pregnant.
[01:19:27]  Well, this is the benefit of being a lesbian.
[01:19:30]  You have a way lower risk of STDs and you don't have to worry about getting pregnant.
[01:19:35]  That's amazing.
[01:19:36]  Yeah, no, I just worry about it when my daughter gets a little older.
[01:19:38]  It's like, can we get into the 20s?
[01:19:40]  Please, just let me get there.
[01:19:43]  But yeah, I don't, I haven't done my homework on this per se, but I do know a few great doctors.
[01:19:49]  Yeah, no, I'm excellent show up.
[01:19:51]  Peter is one.
[01:19:52]  Sarah Gottfried is great.
[01:19:53]  She's another great one.
[01:19:55]  But I have a question for you on the types of exercise you were just listing.
[01:19:58]  Yeah.
[01:19:59]  So I don't know how to do those and I don't know how to find out about those.
[01:20:03]  So like, how do I start doing endurance training?
[01:20:05]  How do I start doing stuff other than hit and find a different class?
[01:20:09]  Like, I don't have time to go to the gym.
[01:20:12]  I could buy some equipment, I guess, for my house.
[01:20:14]  Like, I don't even know what to do.
[01:20:15]  I don't know where to begin.
[01:20:16]  Right.
[01:20:16]  Okay.
[01:20:17]  The first thing is I would say pick a few different workouts that you like.
[01:20:21]  So for example, if you like spinning, that's going to be different than yoga.
[01:20:24]  Yoga is going to be different than HIIT training.
[01:20:26]  And that's good.
[01:20:27]  And strength training is going to be if I wanted to dial this in and go crazy, which I do, which I love to do.
[01:20:37]  And that is the benefit of having a program to a certain extent is a trainer knows how to create muscle splits and program active recovery and get just the right amount of stress and hit all different modalities.
[01:20:47]  You can go down that path with some.
[01:20:50]  That's what I do in the fitness app.
[01:20:51]  That's my job.
[01:20:52]  All the programs I create are created with all that in mind.
[01:20:55]  You don't think about it.
[01:20:56]  You can do it on the app.
[01:20:57]  But the person who does not sign up for the app, and again, like no problem, pick, if you like yoga, it's great for mobility, calisthenic body weight conditioning.
[01:21:07]  Do a HIIT workout a couple times a week.
[01:21:10]  Get into an endurance-based form of training like cycling or swimming or jogging or incline walking.
[01:21:18]  Pick different things, just a handful, and mix it up.
[01:21:22]  And every couple of weeks, change the stimulus.
[01:21:26]  So for example, if you're going into the gym and you're doing a chest press, instead do push-ups in two weeks.
[01:21:34]  If you've been doing the chest press with 20 pounds, 10 reps, do 10 pounds, 20 reps.
[01:21:40]  This is so disheartening because after having done this now for weeks, I'm getting really good and it's getting so much easier and I'm loving this phase.
[01:21:47]  Now my whole bubble has been burst.
[01:21:49]  This is bad that it's getting easier.
[01:21:51]  Excellent.
[01:21:53]  You don't even necessarily need to make it harder.
[01:21:55]  You make it different.
[01:21:56]  Yeah.
[01:21:56]  You make it a little bit different because, okay, you haven't worked out in a while.
[01:22:01]  You go to the gym, you do 10 push-ups.
[01:22:03]  You're so sore.
[01:22:04]  Do 10 push-ups for 10 days.
[01:22:05]  By the 10th day, you're like, what is the benefit of exercise?
[01:22:09]  Why actually is the question?
[01:22:12]  Is exercise beneficial?
[01:22:13]  And the answer is because exercise is stress.
[01:22:16]  And we love to talk about cold exposure and heat exposure and micro-dosing mushroom.
[01:22:21]  Everybody's doing all this crazy shit.
[01:22:23]  People are freaking doing it.
[01:22:25]  Listen, I've been guilty of all of it.
[01:22:27]  I'm always exploring all of it, but the number one thing is right in front of us and it's exercise.
[01:22:34]  So when you are training your body, you're stressing the body.
[01:22:37]  Stressing the body in different ways creates different stress adaptation responses.
[01:22:43]  So some condition your cardiovascular system and some help to maintain muscle and bone density.
[01:22:49]  Plus, you're not going to adapt.
[01:22:51]  You adapt, but then you change it up again so you get more benefit because once you have adapted, now you've adapted and there's no more stress.
[01:22:59]  So I can relate to this from an emotional standpoint because I do welcome danger and risk taking.
[01:23:06]  100%.
[01:23:06]  And even this sounds weird, but like attacks on me.
[01:23:11]  I do, not physical, but like I don't mind when somebody pummels me in the press because I do feel like it's just a little bit more fuel to make me stronger.
[01:23:18]  I always get stronger when people attack me.
[01:23:21]  So that's, I think most people go the opposite way.
[01:23:23]  They use their physical building, you know, like their muscle building to call on that when things get tough emotionally.
[01:23:29]  I think I need to go in the opposite direction and call on my emotional experience to inspire me to try harder physically to mix it up, take in new stressors.
[01:23:39]  You have healthy ego strength, though.
[01:23:40]  Yeah, that's true.

=== Attacks Fueling Stronger Ego (02:43) ===

[01:23:41]  You do.
[01:23:42]  And not everyone has that for different reasons.
[01:23:46]  And it can absolutely be developed just like physical strength.
[01:23:50]  I would not say you're the norm.
[01:23:52]  It's impressive.
[01:23:53]  That's why you're so inspirational.
[01:23:55]  This is, this is interesting.
[01:23:56]  I'm into this because I know somebody who I want desperately to make different decisions, desperately.
[01:24:04]  And I confess to you, I've been saying, like, why?
[01:24:06]  Why can't I get this person to make different decisions?
[01:24:08]  And my other friend is saying, you can't, like, this is, this person's different than you are.
[01:24:13]  Horse to water.
[01:24:14]  Right?
[01:24:15]  They got to want to drink.
[01:24:16]  And you, I am guilty, I think, too often of coming from it just from my background and my judgments, my character, and saying, do it this way.
[01:24:23]  Yeah.
[01:24:24]  And not everybody, as you point out, has the same background.
[01:24:27]  No, my therapist helps me with that all the time, especially with my kids.
[01:24:32]  He's like, they're not you.
[01:24:34]  I'm like, but when I look at why I feel the need, it's usually coming from my own fear of something, whether it's fear of them being around for you or fear that you might be failing them in some way or something you're projecting about when maybe you didn't feel strong enough to do it.
[01:24:52]  But the reality is we can impact loved ones three ways.
[01:24:56]  One is asking them aspirational questions.
[01:25:01]  What do you want for yourself?
[01:25:02]  Where do you see yourself?
[01:25:03]  Helping them identify the why, right?
[01:25:06]  Nietzsche, if you have the why to live for, you can tolerate the how.
[01:25:09]  I like to quote Nietzsche.
[01:25:10]  I feel like it makes me look very erudite.
[01:25:11]  It does.
[01:25:12]  I like that.
[01:25:12]  Thank you.
[01:25:14]  Comes from my mom who taught me.
[01:25:18]  Yeah, but I take credit for knowing the quote all on my own and pretending to read Nietzsche.
[01:25:22]  Anyway, circling back.
[01:25:24]  If they have the why to live for, hopefully they can tolerate the how, the how being the work associated with the goal.
[01:25:29]  Often that isn't enough on its own because of whatever the habits are providing them.
[01:25:37]  Those habits are more valuable than the why.
[01:25:39]  They just don't realize it because they're not conscious necessarily about why they're engaging in destructive behaviors.
[01:25:45]  So you can then try, you can try to scare them.
[01:25:50]  You can try to facilitate a rock bottom moment.
[01:25:52]  And this is something that I would do on Biggest Loser, where it's like, okay, I want you to feel the pain of where you've been living because it's, if it's more painful to continue doing what you're doing, hopefully, you know, then the work.
[01:26:07]  If it's more painful to continue doing what you're doing, then the pain and the work associated with making the change, you'll move.
[01:26:13]  Right.
[01:26:13]  So it's like your kids are in bed at night, afraid you're going to have a heart attack.
[01:26:17]  Your wife is afraid you're going to widow her.
[01:26:19]  Like, can you scare them into, and usually it's the person that has the quadruple bypass that suddenly makes the change.

=== Scaring People to Rock Bottom (09:36) ===

[01:26:25]  Yes.
[01:26:25]  It is the rock, rock bottom.
[01:26:27]  J.K. Rowling, rock bottom is a great place to begin rebuilding your life.
[01:26:32]  I didn't quote that exactly.
[01:26:33]  And then the third thing that you do is you lead by example.
[01:26:36]  And that's the one thing you really have.
[01:26:39]  And sometimes they never get there.
[01:26:41]  Sometimes they do.
[01:26:42]  But the deeper question is: why are you so compelled?
[01:26:46]  Because often, you know, you're the only thing you can control in that change.
[01:26:53]  Well, I hope that my own exercise journey will make me more empathetic toward people and their emotional struggles as opposed to just bootstrap it up.
[01:27:01]  Come on, let's go.
[01:27:03]  We want to talk about eating too.
[01:27:05]  I want to find out.
[01:27:05]  Don't you want to know what she eats in a day?
[01:27:07]  I have some answers and we'll get into them right after this.
[01:27:10]  Don't go away.
[01:27:14]  Fitness expert Jillian Michaels is with me in studio today.
[01:27:17]  All right, so let's have it, lady.
[01:27:18]  In a day, what's your normal diet?
[01:27:21]  I have grown more stringent with the years.
[01:27:26]  So this is seemingly unrelatable.
[01:27:29]  I used to be able to show up and be far more relatable.
[01:27:32]  I'm no longer relatable.
[01:27:33]  I'm no longer relatable.
[01:27:34]  Are you like Gwyneth Paltrow, like bone broth, and that's it?
[01:27:37]  No, not at all, but I am really meticulous with my food.
[01:27:42]  I think the more I've learned.
[01:27:43]  Tell us.
[01:27:44]  We must look like you, so we'll do it.
[01:27:45]  So I do do the 16-hour fast and I know how to do it.
[01:27:49]  And people make a lot of mistakes with it.
[01:27:51]  They do it for the wrong reasons.
[01:27:53]  I do it for two weeks at a time.
[01:27:56]  And I'm after something called autophagy, which means I want my body to cull dead and senescent tissue.
[01:28:02]  So I don't eat until noon.
[01:28:04]  I give myself that 16 hours.
[01:28:06]  I walk after dinner in a really accelerated break.
[01:28:08]  Doing a math, you stop at six.
[01:28:10]  I stop at eight by eight o'clock and eat at 16.
[01:28:13]  I just do it.
[01:28:14]  Okay, thank you.
[01:28:14]  It was echoes.
[01:28:15]  Yes.
[01:28:16]  I do that too.
[01:28:17]  I just didn't realize I was doing 16 hours.
[01:28:18]  Okay, keep going.
[01:28:19]  So stop by eight and start again at noon.
[01:28:21]  And then sometimes I feel like breakfast, sometimes I feel like lunch.
[01:28:24]  So it just depends.
[01:28:25]  And it could be overnight oats with all kinds of superfoods and seeds and nuts and fruits and things and vitamins and all the crazy stuff that you see in the Ariana Berry.
[01:28:39]  Like I get a little out there with it.
[01:28:41]  It could be a yogurt parfait.
[01:28:43]  It could be eggs.
[01:28:44]  Eggs are amazing for you.
[01:28:44]  They have choline, acetal, all this great stuff.
[01:28:47]  It could be eggs with whole grain toast.
[01:28:49]  It could be Wildcott, salmon locks on whole grain toast.
[01:28:54]  Whole grain organic.
[01:28:55]  Oh, no, no, no.
[01:28:56]  Carbs are amazing for you.
[01:28:57]  I did hear that you liked a turkey sandwich.
[01:28:59]  I was like, I've got to talk.
[01:29:00]  No woman eats a turkey sandwich who's skinny.
[01:29:03]  Why?
[01:29:03]  I don't know because bread is the devil.
[01:29:05]  Bread is not the devil.
[01:29:07]  It's not organic, whole grain bread is not at all the devil.
[01:29:11]  And in fact, Ezekiel or what do you think?
[01:29:13]  Yeah, Ezekiel or Dave's killer bread.
[01:29:15]  Dave, right?
[01:29:16]  I know Dave's good.
[01:29:17]  I see Dave in the aisle all the time.
[01:29:19]  Dave's is a little less, a little, a little more flavorful, if you will.
[01:29:23]  I think Dave's is a good entry point for organic whole grain bread.
[01:29:27]  Ezekiel's more of like seasoned.
[01:29:29]  Yeah, the hit trainer is with that said.
[01:29:33]  Lunch is usually, if I go with lunch instead, for example, I just had a green salad that I added chicken to with avocado and almonds and dressing on the side, but it's olive oil.
[01:29:46]  A little, you know, then I'll have something carbs, protein, and fat.
[01:29:51]  It could be back to the yogurt with the fruit or back to some rotisserie chicken with an apple or is this a snack or a dinner?
[01:30:01]  This could be snack.
[01:30:02]  So it's usually 12.
[01:30:04]  Then three to four hours later, usually around 3:30.
[01:30:09]  Snack and a coffee, my second coffee.
[01:30:11]  And then dinner from seven to eight.
[01:30:14]  And it just depends.
[01:30:16]  My wife cooks.
[01:30:17]  She's an amazing cook.
[01:30:18]  So she can make anything that I want literally in a healthy way.
[01:30:23]  One day I'm like, God, I miss Kung Pao Chicken.
[01:30:26]  She figured out how to make Kung Pao Chicken.
[01:30:29]  I want to marry her.
[01:30:30]  She's amazing.
[01:30:31]  She really is.
[01:30:31]  She's incredible.
[01:30:32]  She can cook.
[01:30:33]  It's unbelievable.
[01:30:34]  She'll make you a grass-fed filet that's better than mastros, hands down with like the green beans and the garlic.
[01:30:40]  And she's fantastic.
[01:30:42]  So I can eat really well at home and get all the stuff that I like.
[01:30:46]  But we do go out and when we do.
[01:30:48]  Do you ever have dessert?
[01:30:49]  Never.
[01:30:50]  Never hardly.
[01:30:51]  Nothing.
[01:30:51]  No sugar.
[01:30:52]  Fur.
[01:30:52]  But here's why.
[01:30:55]  Remember that, you know, we talked about being overweight as kids.
[01:30:58]  This is an addiction for me.
[01:31:00]  Yeah.
[01:31:00]  And I don't really have an, I don't have this middle of just one.
[01:31:05]  Yeah.
[01:31:06]  It's the alcoholic, right?
[01:31:07]  I just don't.
[01:31:08]  You just don't go there.
[01:31:09]  I just don't.
[01:31:10]  And if I don't, then I just don't.
[01:31:12]  But if I think, well, just one, then the next day it's just one.
[01:31:16]  And then the next day it's one at lunch and one at dinner.
[01:31:18]  Right.
[01:31:18]  And, you know, you know yourself.
[01:31:20]  It is very much, that's why I understand this stuff.
[01:31:23]  How about supplements?
[01:31:23]  I know you like supplements.
[01:31:25]  I feel like I feel overwhelmed by them.
[01:31:26]  I feel understand.
[01:31:27]  Let me give you the five that you should take.
[01:31:29]  Yeah.
[01:31:30]  Arguably.
[01:31:31]  And of course, talk to your doctor.
[01:31:32]  And that really does matter.
[01:31:34]  It really is important that you talk to your doctor because you don't want to supplement something without knowing what your levels are.
[01:31:42]  I know people that take 10,000 milligrams of vitamin D3.
[01:31:46]  Like, wait, hold on.
[01:31:47]  Whoa.
[01:31:48]  I don't know whether that's good or bad.
[01:31:50]  That's a lot.
[01:31:50]  It depends.
[01:31:51]  It absolutely can be a lot.
[01:31:53]  Yeah.
[01:31:53]  So it depends on: are they deficient in vitamin D?
[01:31:56]  Like, what are you doing?
[01:31:59]  So I would say talk to your doctor before you get into things.
[01:32:03]  What's some of the most obvious that you could do is an organic greens powder that's whole food-based.
[01:32:09]  Right.
[01:32:09]  And hopefully you're getting antioxidants, the green veggies, the adaptogens, a probiotic, a prebiotic.
[01:32:16]  Great.
[01:32:16]  You can't adapt.
[01:32:18]  That is a whole separate show.
[01:32:20]  You can take a look at.
[01:32:22]  You're saying it should be in your powder that you're putting on.
[01:32:24]  So adaptogens would be things like ricey, functional mushrooms, coruscines.
[01:32:28]  I understand none of the words you're speaking.
[01:32:29]  Okay.
[01:32:31]  Ashwagandha.
[01:32:32]  Have you heard of like ashwagandha?
[01:32:34]  I know we advertise blood water and they've got a lot of this stuff.
[01:32:36]  Okay.
[01:32:37]  So these are foods that theoretically, there are other health benefits because I've had a hard time buying into this concept, no matter how many experts I've spoken to on the subject matter.
[01:32:48]  Theoretically adapt to your body's unique needs and help stabilize or bring balance to your hormones.
[01:32:58]  Would you go into GNC and say, I want an adaptogenic chicken?
[01:33:02]  You could buy adaptogenic herbs.
[01:33:04]  You could.
[01:33:05]  All right.
[01:33:05]  So what have we given permission to do?
[01:33:06]  I would do an organic greens powder, superfood.
[01:33:10]  Yeah.
[01:33:11]  I'm all transparency.
[01:33:12]  I invested in a company called Eli Naturals.
[01:33:15]  They have one and it's half the price of the leading brand and all organic and arguably better.
[01:33:21]  But there's a bunch out there.
[01:33:22]  Do your homework on it.
[01:33:23]  Food-based.
[01:33:24]  I would, without question, do fish oil.
[01:33:28]  Yes.
[01:33:30]  Yeah.
[01:33:30]  Fish oil is super important.
[01:33:32]  And just make sure that it's third-party lab tested so you're not getting heavy metals and all the above.
[01:33:37]  Did we do that?
[01:33:39]  Abby.
[01:33:41]  I don't think we did any testing.
[01:33:42]  No, you don't have to.
[01:33:43]  You don't have to.
[01:33:45]  Yeah, it needs to stay third-party lab tested.
[01:33:47]  If the company does not do that, do not, don't, don't, don't buy from them.
[01:33:51]  You don't know what is in there.
[01:33:52]  Literally, I did, because they're not regulated.
[01:33:54]  Okay, good to know.
[01:33:55]  So this is how they can prove to you that what they claim is in there is in there.
[01:33:58]  And none of the stuff that you don't want is not in there.
[01:34:02]  Okay.
[01:34:03]  So fish oil, absolutely.
[01:34:05]  I would do D3 and K2.
[01:34:06]  Absolutely.
[01:34:07]  K2.
[01:34:08]  K2 is really important.
[01:34:11]  It's a vitamin.
[01:34:13]  One of the things it does is it helps you get the calcium where it needs to go into your bones instead of your arteries.
[01:34:21]  So you want D3 with K2.
[01:34:23]  It optimizes the way your body utilizes D3.
[01:34:28]  I take collagen, but if you do as a pill or you put it in your I take a powder and I put it in my either my coffee or I make this afternoon drink that's kind of crazy.
[01:34:38]  This is where it's completely unrelatable.
[01:34:40]  It's like organic matcha, cocoa flavanols.
[01:34:46]  God, do you have somebody who works for you together?
[01:34:49]  I'm thinking she literally makes fun of me.
[01:34:51]  She's like, all you do is live at the kitchen counter making this shit all day long.
[01:34:55]  How do you and your wife feel about a thrupple?
[01:35:00]  The thing is, I'm jealous, but if you say that as she's, she's got such a crush on you, I think we're done.
[01:35:07]  I'm out.
[01:35:08]  It's a deal.
[01:35:08]  I'm getting a divorce.
[01:35:09]  Poor Doug.
[01:35:12]  All right, did we hit all five?
[01:35:13]  I think we're missing one.
[01:35:14]  The collagen, the D3, the omegas, the greens.
[01:35:17]  And I am an advocate for a probiotic product.
[01:35:21]  I am.
[01:35:22]  I like that.
[01:35:22]  But they are not all created equal.
[01:35:24]  So I am going to plug a lia one more time, but I will tell you to do your own homework.
[01:35:28]  Aligned naturals is human resident strain probiotics, which I believe, in my vast experience, are the best form to supplement because soil-based are better when chewed.
[01:35:40]  They should come from well water or organic vegetables and fermented foods.
[01:35:46]  If we just, if we go to your fitness app, the fitness app, is the stuff on there.
[01:35:50]  That is not, but the meal plans are.
[01:35:52]  The supplement regimen is not.
[01:35:53]  We want the meal plans.
[01:35:54]  We want help diversifying our workouts, which for some of us have only just begun, but I like it all.

=== Absolute Pleasure and Show Tomorrow (01:02) ===

[01:36:01]  I love everything about this woman.
[01:36:02]  She not only does she stand up for wellness and fight back against this crazy overreach on body positivity, but she had a fight once with Al Roker.
[01:36:11]  So there's no reason not to like her.
[01:36:13]  He didn't like me.
[01:36:14]  I didn't know he didn't like me either, Jillian.
[01:36:16]  Found out the hard way.
[01:36:19]  It's wonderful.
[01:36:20]  Wonderful.
[01:36:20]  Wonderful to see you.
[01:36:21]  Thank you.
[01:36:22]  All right, it's called The Fitness App.
[01:36:23]  Her podcast is called Keeping It Real.
[01:36:26]  And I hope we get to see each other again.
[01:36:27]  Thank you so much.
[01:36:28]  It's been an absolute pleasure.
[01:36:30]  Likewise, all the best to you.
[01:36:31]  All right, now don't forget to tune into the show tomorrow because we've got Dave Rubin.
[01:36:35]  He's been globetrotting, but he's back.
[01:36:37]  He might be Ron DeSantis' number one fan.
[01:36:40]  So we will hear sort of the other side of the story.
[01:36:42]  I think he really liked what happened last night and we'll ask him why.
[01:36:45]  He knows Ron DeSantis very well.
[01:36:46]  I think they're sitting down together very soon, but I'll find out and we'll get his take on what happened and what's likely to happen in this race.
[01:36:55]  Don't miss that.
[01:36:59]  Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show.
[01:37:01]  No BS, no agenda, and no