The Megyn Kelly Show - 20230602_bidens-alarming-fall-desantis-fires-at-trump-and-n
Aired: 2023-06-02
Duration: 01:36:30


=== Brave Detransitioners Speak Out (09:41) ===

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[00:01:32]  Welcome to the Megyn Kelly Show.
[00:01:34]  Your home for open, honest and provocative conversations.
[00:01:43]  Hey, everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly.
[00:01:45]  Welcome to the Megyn Kelly Show.
[00:01:47]  It is June 2nd, and that means it is officially Pride Month, where we will be subjected to nonstop celebrations of a group Gays and lesbians, that has had equal rights and political power in the United States for quite some time now.
[00:02:01]  Okay?
[00:02:02]  As author and gay rights activist Bruce Bauer writes in Thursday's New York Post: We've won equality.
[00:02:08]  Why should gays continue to be singled out, even for the purpose of being celebrated?
[00:02:13]  Being gay is an attribute, not an accomplishment.
[00:02:17]  Nonetheless, American corporations must show the citizenry how progressive they are, and so taste the rainbow.
[00:02:24]  We also have a month of this kind of imagery coming our way, boldly celebrating the TQ portion of the LGBTQ crowd.
[00:02:33]  Look at this.
[00:02:34]  Look at this.
[00:02:36]  A pregnant woman who purports to call herself a man, complete with facial hair, on the cover of Glamour UK.
[00:02:46]  She says giving birth made her very dysphoric.
[00:02:50]  That will happen when you're calling yourself a man by giving birth to a baby to the point where she demanded a C-section.
[00:02:58]  I, for one, will not be celebrating this dishonesty.
[00:03:02]  In fact, I'm in a very different place when it comes to this entire issue.
[00:03:06]  And that is the subject of today's opening: Why I'm Done with Preferred Pronouns.
[00:03:13]  I was an early proponent of using preferred pronouns as far back as the early 2000s, of saying she, when I knew the truth was he.
[00:03:21]  It seemed harmless, and I had no wish to cause offense.
[00:03:24]  Trans people were tortured enough, it seemed to me, by nature of their dysphoria and society's disdain for them in general.
[00:03:31]  So I complied.
[00:03:32]  I went along with it.
[00:03:34]  I didn't see the harm.
[00:03:36]  By 2016, we were debating bills to stop trans access to certain bathrooms, which I covered from the news desk, siding with the trans community.
[00:03:45]  How does it affect our lives as women if here or there a trans person uses a stall in our bathroom?
[00:03:50]  These people aren't bothering anyone.
[00:03:52]  Why wouldn't we accommodate them?
[00:03:54]  I didn't see the harm.
[00:03:56]  In 2018, while at NBC, I hosted shows on trans people, one of which had a segment on trans kids.
[00:04:04]  I led the audience in cheering for them, encouraging them to own who they are.
[00:04:08]  I used approved terms like gender-affirming care for medicinal gender manipulations, cis to refer to natural-born women and men, assigned male at birth instead of born male.
[00:04:21]  I smiled and listened politely as a guest told me gender is just a social construct.
[00:04:26]  I wanted to be supportive of those who were suffering.
[00:04:29]  I would use this more evolved language.
[00:04:32]  I didn't see the harm.
[00:04:34]  By the time we began the Megan Kelly Show podcast in September 2020, the warning signs were everywhere.
[00:04:41]  Abigail Schreier had written her beautiful and immensely important book, Irreversible Damage, documenting the social contagion sweeping teenage and adolescent girls, a group that traditionally had very few members claiming gender dysphoria, but was quickly on its way to having more than any other.
[00:05:00]  Teenage girls in Connecticut were losing on the track to males.
[00:05:05]  Runners who had raced as boys the year before then simply declared themselves female and dominated their new competitors.
[00:05:12]  I had the female runners on the show, along with a trans medical physicist who was also a former athlete to explain the advantages to trans athletes, especially post-puberty.
[00:05:23]  When I slipped and said the trans girls were biological males, this person told me that was offensive.
[00:05:31]  I explained that it was an attempt at clarity, but began to rethink the language policing.
[00:05:37]  Why did I have to deny reality in order to be polite?
[00:05:41]  What I said was true and not offered to offend, but I wanted to be respectful.
[00:05:48]  Was there any harm?
[00:05:50]  The Connecticut girls sued and went on to lose their case.
[00:05:53]  It's now on appeal.
[00:05:55]  And girl after girl across this country soon faced the same problem.
[00:05:59]  Competing against boys who claimed they were trans was dejecting and often near impossible.
[00:06:05]  They were too strong, too big, too fast, too agile.
[00:06:10]  From wingspan to femur length to lung capacity, heart size, and musculature, they had serious advantages, even with testosterone adjustment, which few competitions required in the first place.
[00:06:22]  American schools, including our own in New York City, began pushing the idea on children that gender is as malleable as a dinner menu order.
[00:06:32]  Our son and his third grade classmates were regularly asked if they were sure they were still boys.
[00:06:39]  Later, this and other schools moved away from the terms boys and girls altogether.
[00:06:44]  Now parents pick up their students at day's end, not their sons or daughters.
[00:06:50]  Kids telling teachers they were uncomfortable in their bodies were immediately affirmed as trans, despite the fact that upwards of 90% of kids will grow out of these feelings if only they are allowed to do so.
[00:07:04]  Schools work to facilitate children's transition in the classroom, complete with name and wardrobe changes while implementing policies to keep it secret from the parents.
[00:07:15]  The children had to be protected from those who loved them most.
[00:07:21]  We pulled our children out, fleeing the woke ideology on gender and race that seemed closer to abuse than academics.
[00:07:29]  We moved to Connecticut in 2021, and that was the year the floodgates really opened.
[00:07:34]  Hardly a day went by over the next two years without another story in the news of trans madness sweeping the nation.
[00:07:42]  Female inmates being raped by male sex offenders who had conveniently declared themselves trans right before heading to prison.
[00:07:50]  Female cyclists losing titles to grown men who declared themselves trans and absconded with the prize money.
[00:07:58]  Professional psychiatric associations adopting gender-confirming care as the only acceptable option for children suffering any hint of gender confusion.
[00:08:09]  A boy in a dress sexually assaulting a girl in a Virginia school bathroom while administrators covered it up.
[00:08:17]  A teenage volleyball player. severely injured by a trans player who spiked the ball so hard, the girl suffered permanent damage.
[00:08:27]  Hospitals bragging about how much cash they were making on cross-gender procedures, including on teenagers.
[00:08:34]  Pictures online of young women's gutted forearms, where flesh was harvested to build a grotesque, phony phallus that no one would ever mistake for an actual male sex organ.
[00:08:45]  High schoolers celebrating top surgery in which their breasts were amputated before their 16th birthday, forever eliminating their ability to breastfeed.
[00:08:56]  Kids pumped full of puberty blockers and then cross-sex hormones rendered sterile and incapable of ever reaching sexual climax, all while their parents and doctors maintained this was all by informed consent.
[00:09:12]  One by one, we met the detransitioners, those brave enough to admit their gender changes had been a mistake.
[00:09:19]  Kids who were just unhappy, anxious, or perhaps on the autism spectrum, had been rushed to transition by a system that seemed more about a political agenda than about addressing the patient's mental health.
[00:09:33]  These voices were promptly ignored or shamed by the very same community that had love-bombed them to begin with, earlier touting surgery hormones in the trans lifestyle as a kind of panacea.

=== Riley Gaines Challenges The Pool (02:38) ===

[00:09:45]  And then came Leah Thomas, an obvious male towering over his female competitors, crushing them in the pool by several body lengths.
[00:09:56]  The spectacle of this swimmer ranked in the mid-500s as a male, annihilating women in race after race, heading to the NCAA finals, where he emerged a champion, was for many of us the last straw.
[00:10:10]  The University of Pennsylvania female teammates who quietly objected were told they should seek therapy.
[00:10:17]  Forced to share a locker room with an intact male whose social media posts, according to the Daily Wire, suggest he becomes sexually aroused by dressing like a woman, a common fetish among male to female trans people, the female swimmers were told, deal with it.
[00:10:34]  Every instinctual alarm that went off about the dangers of sharing this vulnerable space with a man was stifled and rejected as bigoted by administrators who would never have to face these circumstances themselves.
[00:10:46]  A few of the co-eds spoke anonymously in the press, revealing their distress over these events, but saying they feared losing future employment if they failed to keep their mouths shut.
[00:11:00]  Riley Gaines stayed silent too, at first.
[00:11:04]  Gaines, who like all female swimmers, had a lifetime of training as a girl.
[00:11:11]  The swims when your breasts are developing and changing the way your arms and torso move.
[00:11:16]  Your hips are expanding and affecting your balance and speed.
[00:11:20]  Your first period is coming, but you don't know when and you worry about an embarrassing moment in the pool.
[00:11:25]  The moments when you're so bloated you look and feel 10 pounds heavier in your lower abdomen and dealing with menstrual cramps that no medication can assuage.
[00:11:34]  But you dive in anyway and give it a go.
[00:11:37]  Gaines undoubtedly had all of those moments.
[00:11:41]  while the six-foot-one, Leah Thomas, who one year earlier was swimming as Will, had none, having lived his 20 years as a man.
[00:11:52]  Now that man was a woman's team champion, regularly in the press, bragging about how much it meant to him to crush his female competitors.
[00:12:01]  When Gaines tied Thomas for fifth place at the NCAA championships, she said nothing publicly.
[00:12:08]  When officials wanted Thomas, not Gaines, to hold the trophy for the picture, Gaines smiled for the cameras.
[00:12:16]  But something was shifting under the pool that afternoon because Riley Gaines would not stay silent for long.

=== Women Lose In Shared Spaces (06:58) ===

[00:12:23]  A few weeks later, she found her voice, speaking out respectfully about the unfairness of it all.
[00:12:30]  And when she did, she was attacked, physically assaulted by a trans activist on a college campus, threatened and shouted down, mocked for her tears, and forced by an angry mob into a back room after speaking to students, security too intimidated by the vicious mob to stand up to them.
[00:12:49]  And she was not the only one.
[00:12:52]  Kelly J. Keen, a 5'1 English mother of four and devoted advocate for women's rights, who came on this show recently and spoke truth so plainly, it moved me profoundly, has been repeatedly targeted.
[00:13:07]  In March, she was doused in tomato juice as a mob moved in yelling, F you, you C word, prepared to cause her physical harm rather than let her speak in New Zealand.
[00:13:20]  Had she not been rushed out by police, she clearly would have been brutalized.
[00:13:25]  And there I was, along with millions of others, watching and learning and finally seeing it.
[00:13:33]  There is the harm.
[00:13:35]  There's the harm.
[00:13:39]  There is the harm.
[00:13:42]  It is beyond time to stand up to the trans lobby that means to deprive women of their spaces and rights.
[00:13:50]  To the men who pose as trans women to gain access to places like sorority houses, only to exploit the women who'd been strong-armed into welcoming them.
[00:13:59]  To the men who grow their hair long, throw on a dress, pop on their TikTok filter, and then threaten to kill us if we object to them coming into our private spaces.
[00:14:10]  To the mutilation of our children by money-driven doctors and the rape of our imprisoned sisters and the theft of our medals and opportunities to win.
[00:14:19]  How can we stand up to any of this if we are complicit?
[00:14:23]  How can we fight for facts if we participate in this fiction that a man can become a woman, that transitioning is possible?
[00:14:34]  And then we try to say, no, she cannot come into our locker rooms or bathrooms or swimming lanes or sororities.
[00:14:42]  We try to say, no, Target, she can buy her bathing suit with the extra fabric to hide her penis in some other store.
[00:14:53]  It doesn't make sense because it isn't true.
[00:14:56]  And we know it's not true.
[00:14:58]  And to pretend that it is true is to foster a lie that is hurting too many people, almost all of them girls, women and girls.
[00:15:09]  They say pronouns are a gateway drug.
[00:15:12]  They open the door to these lies that lead to real harm to real females.
[00:15:17]  They are a clever rhetorical trick that forces you to seed the argument about women's spaces before you've ever even spoken one word of substance.
[00:15:27]  People with genuine gender dysphoria can lobby to create their own spaces.
[00:15:32]  I will support them.
[00:15:34]  To create open categories in sport, I will support them.
[00:15:39]  The answer in the interim is not women lose.
[00:15:43]  Girls get hurt.
[00:15:45]  Females learn to turn off their innate sense of danger, of fairness, of the joy of spending time with only women.
[00:15:52]  Kids too can grow to adulthood and do what they want with their bodies.
[00:15:56]  I will have empathy for them.
[00:15:58]  I would never bully them.
[00:16:00]  But children should not be subjected to these dangerous interventions in school or at the hands of so-called medical professionals.
[00:16:08]  The facilities that allow it must be stopped or shut down.
[00:16:12]  For these reasons, I have resolved to base my conversations around gender on the same tenets that already govern my life, truth and reality.
[00:16:21]  I will not use preferred pronouns, a decision motivated by a growing alarm over women's rights and the safety of children.
[00:16:30]  I will speak to a trans person kindly and with empathy.
[00:16:34]  In their presence, I will likely try to avoid pronouns altogether, as I have no wish to intentionally provoke or upset anyone.
[00:16:42]  But I will not take this gateway drug anymore because I have a daughter, because I am a woman, an adult human female.
[00:16:53]  Because for far too long, I failed to see the harm and therefore helped cause it.
[00:17:00]  To the women and men who helped open my eyes, thank you.
[00:17:04]  And I will single out one in particular, Ireland's brand dove, who at 14 years old wrote the poem, I am not a dress, which perfectly captures what so many of us are feeling.
[00:17:20]  I am not a dress to be worn on a whim.
[00:17:23]  A man in a dress is nonetheless a hymn.
[00:17:27]  Women are not simply what we wear.
[00:17:29]  If this offends you, I do not care.
[00:17:32]  I am not an idea in any man's mind.
[00:17:35]  And my purpose in life is not to be kind.
[00:17:39]  So while my rights are trampled every day of the week, I will not stand by being docile and meek.
[00:17:46]  We are women.
[00:17:47]  We are warriors of steel.
[00:17:50]  Woman is something no man will ever feel.
[00:17:53]  Woman is not a skill that any man can hone.
[00:17:57]  Woman is our word, and it is ours alone.
[00:18:04]  After the break, I'll be joined by my pals from National Review, Rich Lowry and Jim Garrity.
[00:18:14]  It is National Review Day today here at our show.
[00:18:17]  And joining me now, editor-in-chief, Rich Lowry, and senior political correspondent Jim Garrity.
[00:18:22]  You can find their work on National Review or through an NR Plus membership, which I highly recommend.
[00:18:29]  Rich, Jim, thanks for being here.
[00:18:32]  Thanks for having us, especially on an episode where we're just inevitably going to be anticlimactic compared to that opening monologue.
[00:18:38]  Holy wow.
[00:18:40]  Powerful.
[00:18:41]  Thank you, Rich.
[00:18:42]  Thank you.
[00:18:42]  You know, that one's from the heart.
[00:18:43]  I've been thinking about it for a long time, a long time, because I, like most people, have been in the category of just, it's just good manners.
[00:18:51]  You know, like there's no reason to provoke or offend people.
[00:18:54]  Like just, you know, it's a small.
[00:18:56]  And just the more I thought about it, the more I realized it actually is a big deal.
[00:19:01]  You really are seeding the argument right up front with this language.
[00:19:05]  And it's just led to so much, not that specific thing, but it's part of what's led to just so much damage, so much damage all around us.
[00:19:14]  And I don't know that any one thing is going to stop it.
[00:19:17]  I feel like it's an all-hands-on-deck situation and we got to do everything we can to stop it.

=== Language Defines Our Reality (15:24) ===

[00:19:22]  Not the existence of trans people, but the encroachment, you know, incursion into our spaces and so on and the dangers that I was just outlining.
[00:19:31]  Yeah, I saw this experience the other day.
[00:19:33]  I was writing about the Bud Light boycott and I wrote of Dylan Mulvaney.
[00:19:37]  Said he's a gay man who's decided he's a woman and prances around like a teenager.
[00:19:41]  And the person editing this column went to, I guess, what's AP style and just changed it all to trans woman.
[00:19:47]  I was like, no, that's that's not what I said.
[00:19:49]  And that's not just a mere style change.
[00:19:51]  There's there's substantive content to that.
[00:19:53]  He's a kind of a woman, if you're saying that, which I don't, he's a gay man.
[00:19:56]  That's what he is.
[00:19:57]  He's a gay man.
[00:19:58]  Yeah, that's right.
[00:19:59]  Even that word trans woman is somewhat problematic.
[00:20:02]  Like there is no, there's no other version of woman.
[00:20:04]  There's woman, period.
[00:20:06]  You cannot trans your way into it.
[00:20:09]  You can't fake your way into it.
[00:20:10]  You know, I, and I'm still wrestling with exactly how to phrase it, but I think it's biological man who poses as a woman or says he identifies more as a woman.
[00:20:20]  I'll have to work on that one.
[00:20:21]  I haven't figured it out.
[00:20:22]  But the language does matter.
[00:20:24]  We've had this debate internally because well-meaningly, people will say to try to be specific and get to the point you're getting at, biological is a biological man, but what's a biological man, right?
[00:20:35]  Or what's a biological, it's just a man or a woman.
[00:20:37]  So even that is kind of conceding something.
[00:20:40]  It's true.
[00:20:41]  No, it's true.
[00:20:42]  And it's like, I don't like to be referred to as a biological woman.
[00:20:45]  Like, I'm a woman.
[00:20:47]  Hello.
[00:20:48]  It's obvious.
[00:20:49]  So I don't like that either.
[00:20:50]  I usually use that term biological when we get into this trans situation where clarity is required.
[00:20:55]  Like, what the hell are we looking at?
[00:20:56]  What are we?
[00:20:57]  What, you know, which brings me to the UK glamour cover.
[00:21:01]  Let's look at it.
[00:21:02]  What the hell are we looking at?
[00:21:04]  What is this?
[00:21:05]  It is, this is a woman.
[00:21:09]  This is a woman.
[00:21:10]  For the listening audience, the person's dressed in a man's business suit with an enormous pregnant belly.
[00:21:16]  The person's head looks like the head of a man, a man's haircut, some facial hair.
[00:21:21]  It looks looks like a man, but it is very clearly a woman because there's an enormous pregnant belly.
[00:21:28]  It says trans pregnant proud.
[00:21:31]  And here's more pictures.
[00:21:32]  I got to tell you, I'm deeply offended by this whole thing.
[00:21:36]  I am disgusted by what I'm seeing.
[00:21:38]  And I'm sorry, sorry to use that term, but that is how I'm feeling.
[00:21:42]  This is horrifying to me that this baby is going to be born to this mother who is posing as a man who's married, guys, to, according to the piece, somebody who is a non-binary drag performer.
[00:22:00]  And the person giving birth is writing books like My Daddy's Belly, talking about how this book is going to be totally accessible to children of all ages and easy to understand, giving basic facts about how transgender dads give birth and celebrate the miracle of life.
[00:22:22]  No, no, hard pass.
[00:22:24]  Only women give birth.
[00:22:25]  Only women are pregnant.
[00:22:26]  The only reason that person's on the cover of glamour is because that's a woman.
[00:22:30]  That's a woman who looks very different than most women, but that's a woman.
[00:22:35]  You know, if you said to me, we'd be spending Friday afternoon talking about the cover of Glamour magazine, I would have been very surprised because I would have figured, you know, I'm guessing this is not a regular topic, perhaps never discussed on the Megan Kelly program.
[00:22:49]  This is one of the ways that you guarantee that people will talk about it and the transgender community will say, oh, look at this.
[00:22:56]  Isn't this wonderful?
[00:22:58]  We finally proved to conservatives that men can get pregnant.
[00:23:01]  And of course, there are plenty of people on the right who will be outraged over this.
[00:23:04]  And of course, in the process, will denounce it on social media or writing about it.
[00:23:08]  And this, of course, makes more attention.
[00:23:10]  And of course, everyone who hears about this is like, well, wait, let me see.
[00:23:12]  I got to see.
[00:23:13]  Let me click on that link to get through to glamour.
[00:23:16]  My suspicion is that this will probably be the most read, most discussed, most trafficked, most debated cover of glamour.
[00:23:25]  If they put some, you know, ordinary supermodel on the cover, nobody would have noticed.
[00:23:31]  So it's one of those things where I don't begrudge any conservative coming out and saying, this is ridiculous.
[00:23:35]  This is absurd.
[00:23:36]  This is a, but, you know, this, you're insisting two plus two equals five.
[00:23:40]  This is not true.
[00:23:41]  But in the process of denouncing it, we're kind of doing them a favor.
[00:23:45]  And I don't know about you guys.
[00:23:46]  I have yet to figure out how to how to square that circle, how to, how to not re how to say, no, I think this is not true.
[00:23:55]  You are wrong in this and not do it in a way that does them the favor of giving them the tension that they deeply seek in the first place.
[00:24:02]  I just like, I don't, people say this about Dylan Mulvaney too, and I'm just not there.
[00:24:06]  I don't care if they get more attention as a result of our discussing it.
[00:24:09]  I want to fight this.
[00:24:10]  You know, that I just think it's more important to call it out, correct their language.
[00:24:14]  They want to correct our language.
[00:24:15]  I want to correct their language.
[00:24:17]  That is, there's no such thing as a dad who gives birth.
[00:24:21]  That is not a thing.
[00:24:23]  And so I don't really care if Glamour sells a few more articles as a result of it.
[00:24:27]  I care about the actual fight and the language that keeps appearing elsewhere.
[00:24:31]  This person, Rich, here's the person's name is Logan Brown.
[00:24:34]  Again, this is a woman.
[00:24:37]  And this is, they gave an interview in, I guess, is it on the Gossip Gaze podcast, this interview, Lauren?
[00:24:43]  Is that where we're pulling this from?
[00:24:44]  Yeah, some podcast called The Gossip Gaze talking about, well, you listen here.
[00:24:52]  It almost feels like it's, for me, like the most feminine thing that I could possibly do, to be honest.
[00:24:56]  So like when I found out, it kind of like in that split moment, it kind of felt like all my manlihood that I've been like working towards for ages was just taken away from me straight away.
[00:25:06]  Like it was really, really weird.
[00:25:07]  I don't feel feminine.
[00:25:08]  I actually feel like a pregnant man.
[00:25:12]  My God.
[00:25:13]  They went on to say, Rich, this Logan, that you'll be shocked to hear Logan had really bad mental health growing up.
[00:25:22]  Logan was, quote, constantly in therapy.
[00:25:24]  Logan took a pregnancy test and it was positive.
[00:25:27]  Logan had been off testosterone for a while, which Logan needs because Logan's a woman trying to pose as a man for a while due to some health issues.
[00:25:36]  And then it was like my whole world just stopped, that everything, all my manlihood that I've worked hard for for so long just completely felt like it was erased.
[00:25:47]  Okay, right.
[00:25:49]  Because there is no manlihood because again, that's a woman, Rich.
[00:25:54]  Right.
[00:25:55]  You know, our friend Ben Shapiro, who is prescient and has been so stalwart on this issue, he was pointing out a Washington Post article a little while ago about Megan Fox.
[00:26:04]  And she was, I think she's in the swimsuit issue.
[00:26:07]  Of course, I wouldn't know because I haven't left it.
[00:26:11]  But, you know, she talked about her body dysphoria, right?
[00:26:14]  So you look at Megan Fox and you're like, why would she feel badly about her body?
[00:26:17]  Dysphoria is not a rational thing, right?
[00:26:20]  But she's created for this not by saying, oh, Megan, you're right.
[00:26:24]  You're a fat slob or you're a stick figure that has no sex appeal.
[00:26:27]  It's like, why do you feel this way?
[00:26:29]  Let's get to the bottom of your feelings and try to get you more attuned with what the reality is about your body.
[00:26:35]  That's a rational approach, right?
[00:26:37]  Instead, we have every instrument in our culture and even the medical establishment now saying if a kid has or someone else has these irrational ideas that can be quite destructive about themselves, you affirm the destructive ideas.
[00:26:51]  You affirm the lies and the irrationality.
[00:26:55]  And that just makes no sense.
[00:26:57]  But we've carved out this one element of dysphoria that we're going to affirm.
[00:27:01]  And this is where, with all due respect with Jim, you know, that cover is about getting attention partly, but it's also about pushing an agenda, right?
[00:27:10]  It's not just mere clickbait and mere attention seeking.
[00:27:13]  And that's why I think it's right to discuss it.
[00:27:17]  You have to discuss it in order to push back against it.
[00:27:21]  The other thing is, Jim, the absolute nerve of this person, because if you read the article, Ms. Logan goes on to say how difficult it was on Logan to go into the maternity ward to give birth because of Logan's unique circumstances.
[00:27:35]  I've been misgendered by staff.
[00:27:39]  Oh, really?
[00:27:40]  The nurses and the doctors were confused and called you she as you were giving birth to a baby.
[00:27:46]  And now you want to call them out as insensitive?
[00:27:50]  I've been misgendered.
[00:27:51]  And no one's actually turned around to me and said, are you okay?
[00:27:55]  No one's asked what it feels like to be a trans pregnant man.
[00:28:02]  I can't.
[00:28:02]  I can't.
[00:28:03]  You know, I've been present for two births.
[00:28:06]  Like, I have to hold a leg.
[00:28:08]  And look, I'm a man.
[00:28:09]  I'm never, I'm not going to pretend I know what it feels like to go through childbirth.
[00:28:14]  But from what I could tell from that upfront seat, it looked pretty darn painful to me.
[00:28:19]  So painful that you'd actually, while you're feeling the contractions and you are feeling the human life come out of your body, a head is appearing where you really never expect to see a face.
[00:28:31]  And while that's happening, oh, I was misgendered.
[00:28:34]  That really hurt my feelings.
[00:28:36]  I really have a hard time believing.
[00:28:38]  You know, I have a hard time.
[00:28:40]  The other little bit in that snippet that you commented, there's the emphasis, the certainty that this person felt like a pregnant man, not a woman.
[00:28:51]  Has this person felt both?
[00:28:54]  How do you distinguish between those two?
[00:28:56]  How do you like there?
[00:28:57]  It's kind of fascinating.
[00:28:57]  Well, I just felt a certain way, and I'm certain it was one way and not another.
[00:29:01]  This is like remarkably nebulous language that basically is just an affirmation of what the person wanted to believe.
[00:29:09]  Yeah.
[00:29:09]  You got to keep aligning.
[00:29:10]  I feel myself this way.
[00:29:11]  I feel this way.
[00:29:13]  Therefore, I am this way as to pose to whatever you actually are.
[00:29:18]  Then, okay, just a little bit more color for you, Rich.
[00:29:21]  Logan goes on to say.
[00:29:23]  It would just be nice.
[00:29:25]  Yeah, no, no, back to you, sir.
[00:29:27]  Goes on to say, it's just too, it's just too amazing.
[00:29:29]  But it would just be nice for us as LGBTQIA plus people to be more involved and for me not to be referred to as a woman.
[00:29:38]  I remember being in the C-section because I'll get to that part because one of the, and one of the doctors referred to me as she, and someone else corrected them and said, he, I did get called she a few times, though.
[00:29:52]  Then goes on to say, when I was in labor and there was so much attention being paid to what was going on down there, Logan means attention to her vag where the baby was emerging.
[00:30:03]  It did get to the point where I burst out crying, not from the pain, gentlemen, but crying.
[00:30:09]  And I said, I need a C-section, as it was too overwhelming and dysphoric.
[00:30:17]  It was really triggering Logan's recognition that she's a woman when she had a human emerge from her vagina.
[00:30:26]  Because as it turns out, on the list of things the men can do, that's not on there.
[00:30:32]  So did she have a C-section or she has one in one?
[00:30:35]  Yeah, then she claims, then she claims she won.
[00:30:39]  She wound up needing one anyway.
[00:30:41]  And she was super glad.
[00:30:43]  She was super glad about that.
[00:30:45]  Glamour, for its part, says we are celebrating the allyship that exists between women, cisgender or not, and transgender people.
[00:30:54]  No, no, no, no.
[00:30:55]  Not in this way.
[00:30:56]  Sorry, Glamour.
[00:30:57]  We will not.
[00:30:58]  Yeah, this is, I think, one of the underlying causes to the backlash we've seen against various Pride Month excesses, so-called Pride Month excesses, is the L and the G and the B, they basically won, right?
[00:31:12]  They won their cultural war.
[00:31:13]  So now there's been an emphasis on the T in recent years.
[00:31:16]  And the T just goes too far for people.
[00:31:20]  It's insane, as this article and many other examples demonstrate.
[00:31:25]  And there's been an effort, as you said in your monologue, to push it on kids.
[00:31:29]  So you get the T plus our kids.
[00:31:31]  That does not work for a lot of people.
[00:31:33]  It's no longer just a flag that might be a little annoying because everyone's doing it and it's rainbow washing, whatever they call it.
[00:31:41]  This is something different.
[00:31:42]  It's more threatening.
[00:31:43]  It's more disruptive.
[00:31:45]  And people, I don't know whether it will succeed, but it's right to say stop.
[00:31:51]  The introduction to the doctors.
[00:31:54]  Yeah, go ahead.
[00:31:55]  During both of the births of both of my children, the moment you go into the hospital, everyone's calling me dad, which, by the way, when you have not actually yet become a dad, all of a sudden somebody calling you that is this, you know, particular power to it.
[00:32:06]  But anyway, like they're calling you dad because nobody knows it's Mr. Garrity or Jim or anything like that.
[00:32:11]  Nobody cares.
[00:32:11]  They're there for a job.
[00:32:13]  There is a small person waiting to get into this world.
[00:32:17]  Thankfully, everything ran smoothly, but things can go wrong.
[00:32:20]  This is the sort of thing that we are doing this in a hospital for a reason.
[00:32:23]  We have all this medical technology, all this stuff here.
[00:32:26]  If, God forbid, it ends up being necessary.
[00:32:29]  So if a doctor misgendered the patient, but so the reason they're calling the dad is because the guy who's there very often is dad.
[00:32:36]  And the person who's giving birth almost every, you know, 99.999999% of cases prefers to be called mom, right?
[00:32:43]  Because they're either a mother or they're about to become a mother.
[00:32:46]  So I think we can cut this doctor a little bit of slack because he has literally and physically had his hands full performing a cesarean section.
[00:32:56]  That seems like a big deal.
[00:32:57]  That does, that's not chopping carrots on your, on your, uh, on your kitchen counter at that point.
[00:33:02]  It's major.
[00:33:02]  It's kind of busy at that moment.
[00:33:04]  So just be a little easygoing, a little more forgiving, because they are delivering your child, which is kind of an important job.
[00:33:11]  You know, that I mentioned Kelly J. Keene.
[00:33:13]  She recommended to me an article that got banned over and over.
[00:33:17]  It's not, it's not that controversial.
[00:33:18]  You should Google it and read it.
[00:33:19]  It's called Pronouns Are Rohypnol.
[00:33:22]  And it talks about how when you use these preferred pronouns, it has a way of dulling your senses.
[00:33:26]  It has a way of like sort of putting you into this confused state because you look at that and you say she, she gave birth, she's having a baby.
[00:33:34]  She is a new mom.
[00:33:35]  And this person's saying, no, stop that.
[00:33:37]  It's he, it's dad.
[00:33:39]  Dad gave birth.
[00:33:40]  Dad's having a new, no.
[00:33:42]  And this demonstrates the premise of that article so perfectly, which is if you have to stop and stutter on the language over and over, you're tricking your brain.
[00:33:52]  You're training your brain to get past what is basic reality.
[00:33:57]  And there are real dangers to doing that.
[00:34:00]  It might even go beyond this issue, but it certainly comes back to haunt us in the locker rooms and the bathrooms and the sports and the other spaces where we've already tricked our brains to seed the argument, Rich.
[00:34:13]  Yeah, absolutely.
[00:34:14]  Words are really important.
[00:34:17]  They define reality.
[00:34:19]  What things are called is really important.
[00:34:22]  You know, it's one reason there are many, many biblical injunctions about watching your tongue.
[00:34:27]  It's one thing to think something really harsh about someone.
[00:34:30]  There's another thing to say it and and things you say that are harsh can be remembered forever and change relationships forever.
[00:34:36]  That's the power of words and that's why there's an enormous battle over words, as we're talking about.
[00:34:42]  We use trans woman or do we use man who?
[00:34:44]  Who says or pretends he's a woman?

=== Four Locker Rooms Proposed (04:01) ===

[00:34:46]  That is a huge difference.
[00:34:48]  Which prevails, defines who wins the debate, and they've been very focused on this, very focused on this, and a big part of it again, as you pointed out in your monologue, is pushing back and not accepting their terms.
[00:35:02]  You got um, you got people like here in Connecticut, where I live now not my town, but in Connecticut, um, in Darienne, there was an equinox that just hit the news gym because a bunch of women were in the locker room at the equinox, including a 17 year old girl, and a man walked in who said he was a trans person, so he had a right to be there, and they went.
[00:35:23]  The women felt unsafe and they said, of course, like we've seen in so many of these situations, he started behaving strangely.
[00:35:30]  They felt like they were being stared at, gawked at, that he was enjoying his time in the locker room a little too much in the same way, you guys don't?
[00:35:38]  It's not appropriate to look at the other guy when he's peeing next to you at the urinal.
[00:35:42]  You don't freaking look at the women's naked bodies in the locker room at all.
[00:35:46]  You know it's like that's not a thing where we're leering at one another as we take off our clothes.
[00:35:51]  Most women are like, towel down, bra on, panties on, get out of here.
[00:35:54]  You know like you're, you feel uncomfortable.
[00:35:56]  Um, so yeah, it's a red, it's a red alarm to see somebody in there leering.
[00:36:01]  They went to the front desk and the Equinox person was like, no, of course that's our policy, that's Equinox, welcome.
[00:36:06]  You know that's, that's what we stand for.
[00:36:08]  And at this point the horses left the barn both in company policy and in state law.
[00:36:14]  In so many places it feels overwhelming like how are we ever going to reverse this?
[00:36:19]  How are we going to get this changed?
[00:36:21]  As I say, different parts of the country will have different experiences, but I live in northern Virginia.
[00:36:26]  Uh, travel generally, you know, generally operate in the Dc area and I would say, if not the overwhelming majority of establishments, then a large majority of establishments now have gender neutral bathrooms.
[00:36:38]  Um, and it's.
[00:36:38]  It didn't quite happen overnight, but it happened surprisingly quickly.
[00:36:42]  That was their way of negotiating this controversy, of saying, you know what?
[00:36:47]  We don't have men's rooms.
[00:36:48]  We don't have ladies' rooms.
[00:36:49]  Everybody can use any bathroom.
[00:36:50]  They're single stall.
[00:36:51]  There's only one person who can use them at a time.
[00:36:54]  I do wonder if the day is going to come when you start to see three locker rooms.
[00:36:58]  In fact, the gym i'm in a whole bunch of gyms that I know uh have a men's locker room, a ladies locker room and then a family locker room.
[00:37:06]  Uh, in the cases where you have a you know parent with a child of the different gender uh, generally people are okay with a you know baby being a baby boy being in the?
[00:37:15]  Uh women's locker room, but at a certain age they want the person to use the appropriate one.
[00:37:20]  So the family restroom was the uh one, and they also by the way, the gym i'm at is pretty good about saying, look, you should only be using it if you're a parent with a small child.
[00:37:28]  They don't want just any old person coming in and using the family restroom.
[00:37:32]  Maybe we should invest in gym construction companies, because they will probably the day will come when they may see the most easiest option is to have four locker rooms uh, you know men's, women's family and those who identify As transgender or something in the middle, avoid these kinds of controversies, because at some point people will start saying, I don't want to go into that gym because I don't like the number of locker rooms they have.
[00:37:53]  I feel like that's the only solution is to have a third locker room.
[00:37:57]  Maybe it is four, but another space.
[00:38:00]  Because right now, the default is, as I said in my opening, women lose.
[00:38:04]  Women lose.
[00:38:05]  Girls lose.
[00:38:05]  Suck it up.
[00:38:06]  Too bad.
[00:38:06]  They're going in years.
[00:38:07]  And it's never the other way around.
[00:38:09]  I haven't heard one story about men saying a woman who says she's male popped up in their locker room and was behaving inappropriately.
[00:38:20]  It doesn't happen the other way around.
[00:38:23]  Look what the prisons are filled with: male sexual offenders, not female sexual offenders.
[00:38:28]  It's all coming our way.
[00:38:29]  And all we hear is: be quiet, you bigot.
[00:38:32]  And now the law supports be quiet, you bigot, where you've got to use those pronouns and you've got to let them into your spaces.
[00:38:41]  And they don't adjust the law based on the number of sexual assaults and the number of these really difficult incidents, Rich.

=== Bud Light Faces Cultural Backlash (09:30) ===

[00:38:48]  Yeah.
[00:38:48]  And this is a really disturbing thing.
[00:38:50]  So Equinox is a high-end gym, right?
[00:38:52]  Caters to a high-end clientele.
[00:38:55]  So, you know, might have some fancy pretensions.
[00:38:59]  But the disturbing thing is Equinox is not, do they really care about trans issues?
[00:39:04]  Why do they care about trans issues?
[00:39:06]  And you get, this is what the power the other side has, the cultural power.
[00:39:09]  There is some professor of women's studies somewhere 40 years ago who was writing about how gender is a fiction or whatever, or maybe it was Michael Foucault.
[00:39:18]  I don't know.
[00:39:19]  But that grain of a crazy radical idea can just take over the culture and ends up being pushed by everyone.
[00:39:27]  So someone, the manager at Equinox is probably not a conservative or big progressive or whatever, it's just going to go with that tie.
[00:39:35]  So that's the challenge.
[00:39:36]  And that's what's so disturbing to conservatives right now and why they're so invested in these cultural fights is how to stop that is huge, huge question.
[00:39:49]  And Garrity, I read this on the show yesterday because I thought it was so good, your piece on NR, everybody join NR Plus.
[00:39:55]  And you were saying, this is so good because now you had an update on Bud Light.
[00:40:01]  And by the way, the latest today, this is as of June 2nd, New York Post, Bud Light parent company, Transheiser-Busch, Michael Knowles, love it.
[00:40:09]  Get it.
[00:40:09]  Clever.
[00:40:11]  Their stock has lost over $27 billion since the one can was sent to Dylan Mulvaney, since the one can was sent to Dylan Mulvaney.
[00:40:24]  27 billion, not to mention the drop in actual sales, which range any place from 20 to 29% down.
[00:40:34]  But you had this piece the other day that reads: imagine a beer company that just wanted to make good beer and sell it to you.
[00:40:40]  Imagine if that company wanted to sell beer to everyone, but didn't feel that its job was to make you more accepting of transgender individuals any more than it felt its job was to warn you about the national debt and went on from there.
[00:40:53]  Exactly.
[00:40:53]  We used to have that kind of beer company for a while.
[00:40:57]  You did see, in the era of, you know, when BEN AND Jerry's was hot, this idea which companies would kind of associate themselves with some sort of noble cause Newman's OWN was always helping homelessness and kids.
[00:41:08]  And you know, eventually you realized you reached the point where you're like I never drink any coffee that is less than fully committed to eliminating the federal debt.
[00:41:15]  You know that kind of idea that for some reason every consumer product had to adopt some sort of political cause and associate it with self.
[00:41:22]  By golly that's, you know, In the case of this one, it's kind of, it is fascinating because, first of all, I wonder if the Mulvaney can would have had the same effect if it had not had the BUD Light chief marketing executive making those comments in the interview, dismissing the brand's old image as kind of fratty and out of touch and outdated.
[00:41:43]  That spread, you know, because I wrote about it.
[00:41:45]  I think almost every conservative columnist who wrote about the Bud Light issue found those comments, spotlighted it.
[00:41:51]  And it wasn't just a, it makes it harder to believe this was an innocent misjudgment of the tastes of the existing Bud Light consumer market.
[00:42:00]  That comment suggested a certain amount of contempt for the existing Bud Light consumer market.
[00:42:05]  The first thing I wrote about this was this question of you can be a marketing executive and have whatever political views you want, whatever cultural views you want.
[00:42:14]  But if you're going to market to people who are very different than you, the first thing is you have to like, ideally, you'd like them.
[00:42:19]  Ideally, you would like feel warm and fuzzy towards these people.
[00:42:22]  And even if you don't like them, you have to want to understand them.
[00:42:26]  And I kind of wonder if that was the case in this case of this particular executive.
[00:42:30]  And you also kind of wonder when we see almost every company engaging in marketing that is woke or progressive left or, you know, just something that is almost like combatively, culturally controversial for brands that used to be known as to appealing to the broadest possible market and the lowest common denominator.
[00:42:48]  All of a sudden, it's like they're coming from, you know, Benetton used to be one of the, you know, the ones that was associated with diversity and things like that.
[00:42:56]  Like that all of a sudden, everybody's, every brand sounds like Ben and Jerry.
[00:42:59]  Suddenly every brand is eager to associate how much their corporate values perfectly align with the most recent platform of the Democratic Party.
[00:43:07]  Right.
[00:43:08]  And you put that out there.
[00:43:09]  And what is interesting is I don't know how many marketers really care about marketing to red states anymore, even if they are half the country and or in some cases, probably more than half of their customer base.
[00:43:23]  In other words, did the Bud Light marketers decide we're bored with being the beer of middle America?
[00:43:29]  We travel, we associate, we have peers who are progressive leftists and we want to be the beer of progressive leftists.
[00:43:35]  Now, I got to tell you, Bud Light is basically what you drink at the barbecue when everything else is gone, right?
[00:43:41]  This was never going to be the world's favorite beer and the biggest premium.
[00:43:45]  So the idea that you were going to get sophisticated urbanites who are, you know, check every box in the woke philosophy, the odds of getting them to purchase, you know, make Bud Light their beer of choice were always going to be challenging because your product is pretty crappy and there are a million other light beers out there.
[00:44:04]  And I think what makes this boycott probably a little bit different from a bunch of others, although we're seeing maybe some others gaining some speed against Target and some other companies like that.
[00:44:13]  But the idea is that, you know, Bud Light, Coors Light, Miller Light, like most light beers are pretty interchangeable.
[00:44:20]  Maybe there's some people out there, but I think Bud Light believed that it had a whole bunch of people who fell in love with the brand in the days of Spuds McKenzie or the Waza guys or something like that, and that they'd always stay with them.
[00:44:32]  And what happened?
[00:44:33]  The answer is the big chunk of the market said, no, we don't like what you're doing here.
[00:44:37]  And we're going to go out and we're going to try Coors Light.
[00:44:39]  Well, as you point out in your piece, it's worse than that because you point out in your piece that this is worse than a boycott because they actually changed their brand.
[00:44:47]  Their brand means something entirely different to the consumer today than it did five weeks ago.
[00:44:54]  Like you're, it's embarrassing now for a lot of people to hold a Bud Light.
[00:44:59]  And in the first couple of weeks, you saw a lot of observers who said, ah, you know, this is a social media.
[00:45:04]  This is, you know, right-wingers on Twitter causing this.
[00:45:07]  This isn't going to happen.
[00:45:08]  Well, now it's been five weeks and six weeks and the numbers are, you know, 25%.
[00:45:13]  Some chain stores have said they've seen, you know, 50%.
[00:45:16]  They're returning unsold Bud Light because it's spoiled.
[00:45:22]  They've run into really major problems like this.
[00:45:24]  They're planning a whole new campaign.
[00:45:25]  They've had to give it away in some cases, giving people rebates.
[00:45:28]  Like this is a self-inflicted, catastrophic damage to this brand.
[00:45:33]  I don't know if they'll ever recover.
[00:45:34]  I think at some point, maybe Bud Light will change Bud Light and create, you know, Diet Bud or something.
[00:45:40]  They will completely rename it to get away from this, all because of one decision to send this can.
[00:45:46]  And then, you know, on top of it, to kind of sneer that the old image of the brand was fratty and out of touch.
[00:45:51]  Yes.
[00:45:52]  Catastrophic, Rich.
[00:45:54]  That's the word.
[00:45:55]  Yeah, it's more than a boycott, though.
[00:45:57]  It became a national joke.
[00:45:58]  And I do some little, you know, silly Instagram videos and I've needed Bud Light cans to do some commentary on Bud Light.
[00:46:06]  So I went and bought a six pack of Bud Light at the local liquor store and I was embarrassed holding it, you know, taking it out of the store for a little bit to an establishment that at the height of the pandemic that would have a mask requirement.
[00:46:20]  So you had to wear a mask and then your hands would be full coming out and you'd be wearing a mask on the sidewalk.
[00:46:25]  You're like, really?
[00:46:26]  Am I one of those people?
[00:46:27]  Someone going to see me randomly and think I'm one of those people.
[00:46:29]  So I think that's the way people feel about Bud Light.
[00:46:32]  And Jim is absolutely right.
[00:46:33]  This is a brand that was uniquely vulnerable because the old brand was straight down the middle, middle America.
[00:46:40]  Now they changed their brand into kind of ineptitude.
[00:46:43]  And there's something in the freezer right next to it that is just as good or probably better.
[00:46:49]  So Target, you know, I think that the Target drop, we'll see what the sales look like, but the stock drop is just based on the fact that in a low margin business, any consumer turbulence is bad news.
[00:47:00]  But I'd be kind of surprised if Target is experiencing this kind of consumer drop off.
[00:47:06]  But you would think the lesson from Bud Light to every other company, big company in America, just play it down the middle.
[00:47:11]  Don't do the culture war one way or the other.
[00:47:14]  Now it's hard because you have the other side pushing you and rating you based on how much you're into the culture war.
[00:47:19]  And no one really seems to have learned this lesson.
[00:47:21]  I mean, the LA Dodgers, like a major league baseball team, welcoming after having the good sense not to want them to come be part of that pride celebration, this anti-Catholic gay activist group, Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, you know, a month after the Bud Light thing.
[00:47:36]  So this is going to be this is going to be a long struggle.
[00:47:39]  But the future Bud Light is more about more than Bud Light.
[00:47:43]  It's about whether you can send the message to other companies not to do this in the future.
[00:47:48]  The human rights campaign needs to get an alternative.
[00:47:51]  There needs to be another brand out there saying, we'll give you a rating.
[00:47:54]  We'll give you actually a fair, like, let's go with like log cabin Republicans, somebody who like a gay rights group that actually is about gay rights, that's fair and actually would keep companies in line if they cross outside the lines of, you know, genuine discrimination.
[00:48:08]  But human rights campaign has just become a trans activist group that doesn't give a damn about the LGB.
[00:48:13]  And you can read that piece I referenced in the New York Post from yesterday if you doubt me on it.
[00:48:17]  All right.

=== DeSantis Irritated By Reporters (15:31) ===

[00:48:18]  Stand by.
[00:48:18]  Very happy these guys are with us for the entire show today.
[00:48:21]  A lot to get to.
[00:48:22]  We'll do politics next.
[00:48:23]  Trump and a growing 2024 GOP field, plus an incredible profile about CNN just hit.
[00:48:31]  We've got the highlights.
[00:48:32]  You will not believe what's happening inside the building there.
[00:48:35]  Remember, folks, you can find the Megan Kelly Show live on SiriusXM Triumph Channel 111 every weekday at Noon East.
[00:48:40]  The full video show eclipsed by subscribing to our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash MeganKelly.
[00:48:44]  And go now to megankelly.com to sign up for my Friday newsletter to you.
[00:48:49]  It's always great.
[00:48:50]  It's got the news in 60 seconds or less.
[00:48:56]  Let's talk about presidential politics because it's getting interesting.
[00:48:59]  It's getting interesting.
[00:49:00]  For a long time there, DeSantis would not hit Trump.
[00:49:03]  You know, it was the, I don't know if it was the Ronald Reagan, thou shalt not criticize a fellow Republican, or if it was just smart strategy before he had declared to stay away from the 800-pound gorilla.
[00:49:15]  But the gloves are off, guys, right?
[00:49:18]  He's officially taking shots back at Trump now.
[00:49:22]  There is one example I'll give you here where, all right, just to set it up, Trump is hitting DeSantis on not knowing how to pronounce his name.
[00:49:32]  Trump says DeSantis doesn't know how to pronounce his, Trump calls him Rob, Rob DeSantis instead of Ron.
[00:49:39]  And also says even DeSantis doesn't know how to pronounce his name.
[00:49:42]  And there is a discrepancy in how Ron DeSantis has pronounced his name over the years and even recently.
[00:49:50]  It goes in between DeSantis and DeSantis.
[00:49:54]  Now, I have sympathy for Ron DeSantis on this because I don't know how to pronounce my name either.
[00:49:59]  Sometimes I say Megan.
[00:50:01]  Sometimes I say Megan, which is kind of close.
[00:50:04]  It was more in between Megan and it's not Megan.
[00:50:07]  It's like, I don't know.
[00:50:08]  Sometimes I hedge it.
[00:50:09]  I don't know.
[00:50:10]  I too am around his age and can't pronounce my own name.
[00:50:13]  So it's becoming a thing.
[00:50:15]  And before I get to the battle, I'll just give you an example because here's a bit of Ron DeSantis and his wife, Casey DeSantis, diverging in how they pronounce their now shared last name.
[00:50:26]  I'm Ron DeSantis.
[00:50:28]  I'm Ron DeSantis.
[00:50:29]  Everyone knows my husband, Ron DeSantis.
[00:50:31]  I'm Ron DeSantis.
[00:50:33]  I'm Ron DeSantis.
[00:50:34]  At Ron DeSantis.com.
[00:50:36]  Ron DeSantis.com.
[00:50:37]  Hi, Ron DeSantis.
[00:50:39]  Hi, Ron DeSantis.
[00:50:42]  I don't know.
[00:50:43]  It's unclear.
[00:50:44]  So by the way, they actually went, one of these companies was at Politico and got commentary.
[00:50:52]  No, it was Axios.
[00:50:54]  Got commentary from an Italian history professor on how you're supposed to pronounce it.
[00:51:00]  He points out that the proper Italian pronunciation would be DeSantis, DeSantis, Ron DeSantis.
[00:51:07]  But a lot of Italians make it a little bit more Americanized and might just go with DeSantis.
[00:51:11]  No one really knows how he's got to DeSantis.
[00:51:14]  Whatever.
[00:51:16]  Trump mocked it.
[00:51:18]  And DeSantis was asked about it on Thursday by our radio host Jack Heath on WTSN.
[00:51:24]  Here's what he said.
[00:51:25]  Former President Trump yesterday was criticizing your name, whether it's DeSantis, DeSantis, DeSantis.
[00:51:32]  He keeps coming at you.
[00:51:34]  I think it's so petty.
[00:51:35]  I think it's so juvenile.
[00:51:36]  I don't think that's what voters want.
[00:51:38]  And honestly, I think that his conduct, which he's been doing for years now, I think that's one of the reasons he's not in the White House now.
[00:51:47]  Oh, shots fired.
[00:51:49]  What do you make of it, Rich?
[00:51:51]  Yeah, so we've heard Republicans say what Trump's doing is juvenile.
[00:51:56]  What I was surprised by and what has real import is the second part of that, where he's saying what, you know, Jim and I and others in National Review have said all along that Trump's conduct had a lot to do with his loss.
[00:52:07]  But it's forbidden.
[00:52:09]  People would say that in private, but a Republican who wants a future in the party, saying that out loud, that's kind of amazing.
[00:52:16]  And I've been surprised at how aggressive DeSantis has been.
[00:52:20]  It's not just that he's counter punched, which is absolutely necessary.
[00:52:22]  He's taken affirmative shots on some things, and it just shows he's not afraid.
[00:52:27]  And that's just key because one of the metrics in Republican politics now is strength.
[00:52:33]  And Trump, that's something brought to the table in 16.
[00:52:36]  No one can match him.
[00:52:38]  Not clear anyone, including DeSantis, is going to match him this time around.
[00:52:41]  But as someone associated with DeSantis, I was talking to you yesterday about these very strategic considerations, just said, you can't be a pussy.
[00:52:48]  You can't be a pussy.
[00:52:49]  And you've got to.
[00:52:50]  You've got to P-word right there.
[00:52:51]  Just put it out there, Rich Lowry.
[00:52:53]  Yep.
[00:52:54]  There you go.
[00:52:55]  This is not the editors.
[00:52:57]  Look at him.
[00:52:57]  This is the new Rich Lowry.
[00:52:59]  Pats very rarely get elected.
[00:53:01]  You know, there's a very long.
[00:53:03]  Oh, that.
[00:53:03]  Okay.
[00:53:05]  Megan or Megan, whichever you prefer.
[00:53:08]  That's not on the list.
[00:53:10]  Megan is not on the list.
[00:53:11]  Megan's not.
[00:53:13]  It's between Megan, which is what my family calls me, and like a mix of Megan and Megan, like Megan, Megan.
[00:53:21]  Megan.
[00:53:21]  I don't know.
[00:53:24]  You mentioned the Axios article about the controversy between DeSantis and DeSantis.
[00:53:30]  I happen to notice that that section in their morning newsletter ran ahead of the coverage of the debt ceiling deal.
[00:53:36]  Smart brevity for those who have no attention span.
[00:53:41]  Of all the things that Ron DeSantis has done, is doing, or ever will do, the idea that he doesn't pronounce his name consistently is just about the dumbest line of criticism that anybody could possibly throw up against this guy.
[00:53:56]  It has nothing to do with public policy.
[00:53:57]  It has nothing to do with anything he's done as governor.
[00:53:59]  It has nothing to do with anything he's going to do in the White House.
[00:54:03]  This is a stupid argument.
[00:54:05]  And Ron DeSantis came right up to the line of saying, Mr. President, that is a stupid argument because you are a stupid man.
[00:54:12]  And if you were not a stupid man, you'd still be president of the United States right now because you tend to step on your own, you know what every five minutes.
[00:54:19]  Your mouth gets you in trouble.
[00:54:21]  And the country has really serious problems we need to address right now.
[00:54:25]  But you, for some reason, keep thinking about how the D or the Die, how to pronounce it, DeSantis.
[00:54:30]  So I'm a little fired up about this.
[00:54:32]  I'm a little.
[00:54:33]  You have a good point.
[00:54:34]  Although I will say the debt ceiling, I also find it a little boring.
[00:54:36]  I don't know.
[00:54:37]  We move ahead in like these little inches and then everybody declares it a victory.
[00:54:41]  Whatever.
[00:54:41]  They struck a deal and it's better than the GOP would have gotten had they not won the House.
[00:54:46]  That's for sure.
[00:54:48]  So Debbie Murphy, who I listen to on all Soundbites, Canadian Debbie, says that we've got to listen to how DeSantis landed the messaging on this whole thing a bit later in the day yesterday in an interview on Fox.
[00:55:00]  Clearly, he worked on it.
[00:55:01]  Listen.
[00:55:03]  Confusion over your last name and the pronunciation.
[00:55:05]  And I'm just wondering to correct the record.
[00:55:07]  What is it?
[00:55:07]  Oh, it's ridiculous.
[00:55:08]  These stupid things.
[00:55:09]  Listen, the way to pronounce my last name, winner.
[00:55:16]  Oh, man.
[00:55:18]  The only flaw in that argument is that there's an NSA spy who also had that surname and things didn't turn out so well for her.
[00:55:24]  But yes, I think that.
[00:55:27]  Well, the other thing is they say, you remember how Malcolm Gladwell informed us that if you name your child winner, they're going to grow up to be a loser and vice versa.
[00:55:33]  So really, I don't know, like, be careful because, you know, that doesn't always end that well.
[00:55:38]  DeSantis is getting a little bit more fiery.
[00:55:40]  He's clearly not afraid of attacking Trump.
[00:55:42]  And of course, Trump's been lobbying attacks on him non-stop.
[00:55:45]  I mean, non-stop.
[00:55:47]  He got a little ornery with the press corps yesterday.
[00:55:49]  He was at an event.
[00:55:50]  He was glad-handing.
[00:55:51]  He did speak one-on-one informally with a lot of fans who had shown up, but he didn't take like official questions from the audience, you know, like a town hall style.
[00:56:02]  And somebody from the AP got in his grill about it.
[00:56:04]  Here's what happened.
[00:56:07]  Governor, how come you're not taking questions for voters?
[00:56:09]  No, I'm not coming up to me, talking to me.
[00:56:11]  What are you talking about?
[00:56:11]  I'm not here working with people.
[00:56:13]  Are you?
[00:56:13]  Are you blind?
[00:56:15]  Are you blind?
[00:56:15]  I'm not blind.
[00:56:16]  Okay, so people are coming up to me, talking to me whatever they want to talk to me about.
[00:56:21]  Are you blind?
[00:56:22]  He's clearly a little annoyed, Rich.
[00:56:24]  I'm going to get like, he's annoyed.
[00:56:26]  And so is that, is that a problem?
[00:56:28]  It's fine being annoyed with a reporter.
[00:56:30]  You can be more than annoyed with the reporter.
[00:56:33]  The thing is, he lacks a light touch, obviously.
[00:56:37]  The advantage to DeSantis, he's knowledgeable.
[00:56:41]  He's cogent.
[00:56:41]  He's determined.
[00:56:42]  He's hardworking.
[00:56:43]  He's got a great message, great record in Florida.
[00:56:47]  The disadvantage is he's not very inspiring.
[00:56:49]  He has no sense of humor that anyone's aware of or that he's ever shown in public.
[00:56:55]  And he doesn't have natural people skills.
[00:56:57]  Now, politicians can get over having natural, not having natural people skills.
[00:57:01]  You know, Barack Obama is an example.
[00:57:02]  Barack Obama was an introvert, but he also had a thousand watt smile and this, you know, off-the-charts charisma, which DeSantis doesn't have.
[00:57:09]  So he's never going to pass the have it have a beer with them test.
[00:57:15]  The potential downside, though, is if he shows that kind of irritation they showed with that reporter to a voter or the wrong kind of voter.
[00:57:23]  And this is what the process does: it wears you down, it exposes you, it gets you in the dead of night, you know, of January in Iowa when at your fourth event, when you're tired, you may be running a little bit of fever, you're feeling like crap in your real feelings show about having to suffer all these fools gladly.
[00:57:42]  And you talk to that like to a nice old lady or something who's annoyed you.
[00:57:46]  That's that's what he has to avoid at all costs.
[00:57:49]  Yeah.
[00:57:49]  And I mean, you could also, you know, this is the way it works.
[00:57:52]  You could take the questions like this, face to face, two inches apart, or you could do it 20 feet apart.
[00:57:57]  You know, I sort of chose option A because it's more intimate.
[00:57:59]  Thank you for playing, Mr. AP reporter.
[00:58:02]  It doesn't, you know, like you can put them in their place without snapping, but it's, I'm sure it is annoying to deal with those questions all the time.
[00:58:09]  And some of them are inane.
[00:58:12]  Let's switch gears because before we get to Biden, though, to talk presidential debates, the hatred of the media, and you say it's okay to criticize them, it's gone to the next level now to where there's reportedly a debate about whether there will be any debates.
[00:58:26]  Trump has been saying he's not sure he'll appear on Fox News, even for this first scheduled debate, which is in August, because he doesn't think Fox News is going to treat him fairly because they've been very pro-DeSantis, let's face it.
[00:58:37]  Fox has turned on Trump.
[00:58:39]  And so he's not sure what he's going to get.
[00:58:41]  Then you got DeSantis, who all along has said, I'm not going to deal with these mainstream media people who hate me and hate Republicans.
[00:58:49]  And how does it help our side if we keep lining the pockets of NBC and CNN and those are the two who are begging him to participate in a GOP debate hosted by them?
[00:59:02]  And so now Axios is reporting, you know, there may be sort of a standoff now, and there's an uncertainty about whether we will have any, whether there will be any GOP primary debates.
[00:59:12]  Also, there's the factor that Trump thinks, what do I need to debate for?
[00:59:16]  I'm ahead by like 40 points.
[00:59:17]  It's only going to help the other guys.
[00:59:19]  So, Garrity, what do you make of it?
[00:59:21]  I'm glad I'm not in the shoes of the Republican National Committee right now, because ideally, the RNC would be on good terms with all the presidential campaigns, not dependent upon or subservient to any of them, and try to get decisions that are best for the party and for the electorate as a whole without favoring one candidate or another.
[00:59:42]  It looks like Trump is probably the only one who really has an objection to Fox News.
[00:59:45]  So I'd be shocked if by the end of this process, you know, Fox News did not have one, at least one, and probably maybe two or three debates during, but we're all said and done.
[00:59:55]  And whether as for Trump, we'll skip, we'll skip one of them.
[00:59:58]  People forget he did skip one back in the 2016.
[01:00:01]  Yeah.
[01:00:02]  So like, you know, he did the weird little veterans fundraising telethon.
[01:00:06]  I don't think any of the money ever actually got out there.
[01:00:08]  Huckabee and Santorum showed up because they ducked.
[01:00:11]  Anyway, it was a little weird, but he's done it before.
[01:00:13]  It wasn't that consequential in the grand story of the 2016 election.
[01:00:17]  So I wouldn't put it past him.
[01:00:19]  I do think after a while, Trump would just, you know, to quote Eminem, it would feel so empty without me.
[01:00:26]  He would feel like, you know, how could they have a debate and not invite me and not have me up on that stage?
[01:00:31]  It's boring without me.
[01:00:32]  But I was talking about this on my other podcast today.
[01:00:36]  So I don't know if you watch Monday Night Football, but ESPN has what they call the Manning cast, where in addition, you've got Peyton Manning and Eli Manning and usually a couple of celebrity guests, and you basically watch them watch the game and they joke around.
[01:00:49]  Sometimes they talk about the game, sometimes they don't.
[01:00:51]  Could you imagine some network saying, we're going to do the Trump cast of the debate that he's not participating in?
[01:00:57]  We will show you live televised Trump reacting to the debate that he's not in.
[01:01:02]  And I'm sure a lot of people would find that absolutely fascinating television.
[01:01:05]  I'll do it.
[01:01:05]  I'll co-host it with Tucker.
[01:01:07]  Yeah.
[01:01:07]  You know, throw that idea out there.
[01:01:09]  I could see somebody, I could see a huge audience for that.
[01:01:13]  As for CNN and NBC and the other big, you know, regular television networks, look, there are very few things on television, particularly in this era of streaming that are must-see.
[01:01:23]  But that first debate that's going to feature Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis is going to be must-see television.
[01:01:29]  It may be the moment that decides the course of the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
[01:01:36]  It could be the end of the Trump era, or it could be Trump coming out there and clobbering him and demonstrating this is still his party.
[01:01:44]  So everybody's going to watch it.
[01:01:46]  That's going to be huge ratings.
[01:01:47]  Every network, no matter how mean they've been to Republicans, no matter how unfairly they trash Republicans, would love to have that on their network because the ad rates would be huge.
[01:01:57]  And that I suspect is what it's at work here.
[01:02:00]  The other question is if you're the RNC, okay, you don't like CNN, you don't like, you certainly don't like MSNBC, maybe you're a little less upset with NBC news.
[01:02:09]  You know, is it worth it to not reach those audiences?
[01:02:12]  Or is there a value in reaching out to the people who'd be viewing on those networks?
[01:02:17]  Again, the RNC wants it.
[01:02:19]  Yeah, the RNC wants it.
[01:02:20]  But you can't make Trump do what he doesn't want to do.
[01:02:23]  And I don't think you can make DeSantis do what he doesn't want to do either.
[01:02:27]  But what a lost opportunity.
[01:02:29]  We're talking about how would it affect Trump if he didn't show up to the Fox News debate and all the other guys where they are.
[01:02:33]  Rich, what if NBC gets a debate and Trump and the others show up and DeSantis doesn't?
[01:02:41]  I mean, that would just be foolhardy by DeSantis.
[01:02:45]  Yeah, it's hard to see him doing that.
[01:02:50]  He needs the opportunity.
[01:02:51]  You know, he's not as well known as Trump.
[01:02:54]  He needs the opportunity to get the word out in any way possible.
[01:02:58]  And this would be a huge, if you were to do that, a huge missed opportunity.
[01:03:01]  It wouldn't surprise me if Trump skips the first debate or two, but I don't think you can skip them all.
[01:03:06]  You know, when you get right down to it, there's always a debate like a week or two before Iowa.
[01:03:11]  You know, it's a local public PBS station or whatever.
[01:03:18]  And if you don't show up, people.
[01:03:20]  That was the one he skipped.
[01:03:22]  That was the one he skipped last time with Fox.
[01:03:25]  Didn't hurt him at all.
[01:03:27]  Yeah, but it's people, I think it did hurt him a little bit.
[01:03:31]  I think that was what.
[01:03:31]  Well, he didn't win Iowa, right?
[01:03:33]  Didn't Ted Cruz win Iowa after all of a sudden done?
[01:03:35]  But I'm just saying, yeah, he did go on to become president.
[01:03:37]  Yeah, no, that's true.
[01:03:39]  But they'll be there.
[01:03:41]  There'll be debates.
[01:03:42]  I don't know why to get around kind of the mainstream media question, the RNC has access to massive donors.
[01:03:47]  You know, these are expensive events to put on, as you know.

=== Biden Stumbles On Briefings (15:28) ===

[01:03:50]  That's why you just can't go to some alternative conservative site and say, do it, because it's cost millions of dollars.
[01:03:57]  But why can't the RNC just raise money from donors and host its own debates and say any network that wants to carry them can carry them?
[01:04:05]  And we'll have fair moderators that are coming at these guys from a conservative perspective, which is oftentimes missing in the NBC debate or whatever.
[01:04:15]  That would seem to make a lot of sense to me.
[01:04:17]  But debates are a public service.
[01:04:19]  It would be a shame if there are no debates.
[01:04:22]  And if we revert to the world in which Trump just keeps sitting with Hannity and DeSantis just keeps sitting with his fans, it's going to be a bore and we're not going to learn very much.
[01:04:34]  And then we'll get to the point where we're in a general election and presumably these guys are going to be forced to debate the Dem.
[01:04:40]  I mean, like he can't stay underground forever.
[01:04:44]  And then, you know, we learn at that point that they can't debate or they can't articulate their positions.
[01:04:48]  It's not good.
[01:04:49]  That's not good for anybody.
[01:04:50]  All right, while we're on the subject of media, well, no, before I get to that, before, because I want to talk about CNN, but we've got to talk about Joe Biden because we're on the subject of politics.
[01:04:58]  So we'll stay there for a second.
[01:05:01]  Did you see the fall?
[01:05:03]  Oh, Abby doesn't like it.
[01:05:04]  I know.
[01:05:05]  I don't like it either.
[01:05:05]  It is sad.
[01:05:06]  It's sad.
[01:05:07]  I had the same thing.
[01:05:08]  I watched it with Doug.
[01:05:09]  We both felt bad for him.
[01:05:11]  You know, in the same way you feel like my mom, she came to visit me this past weekend.
[01:05:14]  She's going to be 82 in July.
[01:05:16]  She fell.
[01:05:17]  I'm like, oh, my God, I screened mom.
[01:05:19]  She was fine.
[01:05:19]  But, you know, it's scary when you have an elderly person.
[01:05:23]  Ah, God, it went down kind of hard.
[01:05:27]  I know he says he tripped on a sandbag.
[01:05:29]  Very possible.
[01:05:29]  They use him sometimes to tamp down cords and lights and things like that on stages.
[01:05:35]  I don't, guys, to me, this is about one thing, two words, Kamala Harris.
[01:05:41]  That's really my biggest takeaway from watching the whole thing.
[01:05:44]  What do you think, Rich?
[01:05:46]  Yeah, we talked about this.
[01:05:48]  You were ahead of the curve, kind of being willing to talk about Biden's age.
[01:05:52]  And I tweeted, you know, we've all seen this.
[01:05:54]  If you've had an elderly parent in decline, you're used to this way of walking, you're used to holding your breath.
[01:06:01]  And once the falls start, they don't stop.
[01:06:05]  And I just fear that that's the state that Biden is in.
[01:06:07]  Even prior to this trip in fall, he was being led around at that event.
[01:06:12]  Like, you know, everyone's shoving him when the music starts to go this way and pointing and pointing out obstacles.
[01:06:20]  It literally could be unsafe for him to be out and about any year or so.
[01:06:24]  It's not crazy to think that.
[01:06:25]  And when I tweeted this yesterday, John Harwood of, I guess, CNN now and some others like, well, anyone could trip.
[01:06:31]  You know, Jerry Ford tripped when he was 62.
[01:06:33]  That's true.
[01:06:34]  We all could trip, but this is something different.
[01:06:37]  You're fooling yourself if you don't think there's something different going on here and this isn't a symptom of decline.
[01:06:44]  And this has to be factored into his electability.
[01:06:47]  Democrats figure, you know, he's better than Kamala Harris, right?
[01:06:49]  It would be a disaster.
[01:06:50]  So he's the most electable against Trump.
[01:06:52]  But if you factor in that some horrible health event, some terrible fall could happen at any time, including, you know, October 2024 that would throw the election to a Republican, including Trump, that makes him not seem so electable.
[01:07:06]  And so I have doubts whether he's going to make it to the starting line, but let alone the finish line.
[01:07:12]  That is the thing is it's like you, you're right.
[01:07:17]  It happens once.
[01:07:18]  It's going to happen more than once.
[01:07:19]  We've already seen him fall.
[01:07:20]  You know, he fell up the stairs.
[01:07:22]  You know, he stumbled a few times.
[01:07:23]  They do lead him around like he's a blind man, you know, like he can't see independently.
[01:07:28]  And no one wants anything bad to happen to Joe Biden, you know, even if you don't disagree with the guy's politics.
[01:07:33]  He served the country honorably for many, many years in public service.
[01:07:37]  Not to say we agree with all of his behaviors or his ethical choices.
[01:07:40]  I'm just saying you don't want anything bad to happen to him, but you really don't want anything bad to happen to him when you see who's in the number two position, Jim.
[01:07:48]  You look at the opinion polls on her.
[01:07:51]  This is just from between 421 and 531.
[01:07:54]  Favorable, 39%.
[01:07:56]  Unfavorable, 53.
[01:07:59]  Now, if you were start to break it down by party, it collapses amongst independents can't stand her.
[01:08:04]  Republicans multiply that by a thousand.
[01:08:07]  But she has zero support.
[01:08:09]  And if the Democrats were stuck with her, they'd lose.
[01:08:12]  They'd lose against anybody, Trump, DeSantis, Chris Christie, you name it.
[01:08:17]  Am I wrong?
[01:08:18]  Megan, we know that the overwhelming majority of Democrats do not have faith that Kamala Harris could win the 2024 presidential election against either Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis, or, you know, let's say some scenario where Nikki Haley or Tim Scott or somebody else is the nominee.
[01:08:35]  We know this is the case because if they believed she would win, we would be seeing the columns saying it's time for Biden to hold to a one-term pledge and pass the reins to Kamala Harris.
[01:08:45]  He's 80.
[01:08:46]  He just fell off a stage, right?
[01:08:48]  He's not getting any younger.
[01:08:49]  He's going to be 81 when he's running for reelection.
[01:08:52]  He turns 82 right after election day 2024.
[01:08:55]  Nothing's getting better from here on out.
[01:08:57]  Those bones are not getting any more flexible or they're brittle, right?
[01:09:00]  This is why we're frightened.
[01:09:01]  Yes, any one of us could fall.
[01:09:03]  If I fall down, I'm going to get up and I'm going to moan and I'm going to groan and I'm going to keep on walking with Biden.
[01:09:07]  And also my responsibilities compared to the presidency are pretty mild.
[01:09:11]  What we see here with this, look, there was that comment ironically also in Axios.
[01:09:16]  I cite them a lot for making fun of them.
[01:09:18]  Axios noted that it's very hard to schedule an event with the president before 10 a.m. in the morning or after 4 p.m. in the evening.
[01:09:25]  And it's only five days a week because the president goes back to either Delaware or Camp David every weekend.
[01:09:30]  All right.
[01:09:31]  Now, here's the thing.
[01:09:31]  We know that if the president could get out there more, he would get out there more.
[01:09:36]  No president strategically chooses to minimize their appearances to one a day between 10 and 4, five days a week.
[01:09:43]  The reason President Biden isn't doing these sorts of events is because he can't, which means early in the mornings and late in the afternoon and the evenings, he's in rough shape and he's in no shape to make a public appearance.
[01:09:54]  We already have a part-time president.
[01:09:57]  What do you think it's going to be a year from now?
[01:09:59]  What do you think it's going to be in fall of 2024?
[01:10:01]  None of this is any good.
[01:10:02]  And what's kind of baffling is that we can all kind of see this, and yet we're constantly being gaslit.
[01:10:07]  We're being told how great he is.
[01:10:08]  He's fine.
[01:10:09]  Karine Jean-Pierre claimed that President Biden has so much energy, she can't keep up with him.
[01:10:15]  Sure.
[01:10:16]  I just go.
[01:10:17]  Yeah, the other thing is, he's a natural retail politician.
[01:10:20]  He likes being out there, right?
[01:10:23]  So it's not as though he's an introvert and doesn't want to do it.
[01:10:27]  It's just that he can't anymore.
[01:10:30]  And you hear stories, Republican senators say they never hear from him.
[01:10:33]  And he's a garless guy.
[01:10:35]  He used to talk to everyone.
[01:10:36]  And apparently, you know, I don't have Democratic sources, but they say their Democratic colleagues say they never hear from him.
[01:10:43]  You know, then he got up.
[01:10:44]  This was even sadder.
[01:10:47]  It was even sadder.
[01:10:48]  He got up.
[01:10:48]  He got caught on cameras back.
[01:10:50]  I think this is back at the White House after the fall.
[01:10:54]  The fall was on Thursday at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado.
[01:10:57]  And then later he was on cam and tried to do the, you know, like, look at me.
[01:11:02]  I'm, I'm like Dick Van Dyke, you know, clicking my heels together.
[01:11:07]  Watch.
[01:11:10]  I got sandbags.
[01:11:18]  That also is sad.
[01:11:19]  That also, right?
[01:11:21]  It's like, oh, God, he needs to overcompensate now and like do a little heel kick to show us he's still limber and he isn't, you know, he's not fooling anybody.
[01:11:31]  You just kind of want to give him a hug and escort him over to his mat lock and just let that be the end.
[01:11:37]  You know, sail out into the sunset in some sort of dignified way.
[01:11:42]  This is not the way.
[01:11:43]  The sandbag thing is kind of funny.
[01:11:45]  I thought that was that was kind of funny and light, a little self-deprecating.
[01:11:48]  But the thing is, an elderly person in this condition, there's always a reason they fall.
[01:11:54]  It's never, you know, they just collapse, you know, out of nowhere on the floor.
[01:11:57]  It's always something they trip over and they blame that thing.
[01:11:59]  You're like, mom, you got to be more careful next time.
[01:12:01]  I'm really worried about you.
[01:12:02]  No, no, Richie is that the rug corner was curled up.
[01:12:06]  But whatever it is, there's always some reason.
[01:12:09]  But the right thing to do for Biden, step aside now, right thing to do for the party.
[01:12:13]  Have them step aside now.
[01:12:15]  You're worried about Kamala Harris.
[01:12:17]  Ever have to win a nomination in primaries and caucuses.
[01:12:20]  It's probably not going to happen.
[01:12:22]  And then you've solved your problem and you get someone who's not going to fall down in October 24, who's probably not Kamala Harris.
[01:12:29]  But this, I understand, this is a path of least resistance.
[01:12:32]  Biden himself has wanted this his entire adult life.
[01:12:34]  He's not going to just walk off stiffly into the sunset.
[01:12:40]  Dumb.
[01:12:40]  This is the for them and for the country.
[01:12:43]  Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter, actually tweeted out the following: open the Democrat primaries and debates.
[01:12:50]  This isn't fair to anyone.
[01:12:52]  Wow.
[01:12:53]  I find that fascinating.
[01:12:54]  He's getting more political.
[01:12:57]  I didn't know, I didn't think he was like a far left guy.
[01:12:59]  I wasn't sure what his politics were, to be honest with you.
[01:13:01]  But that's interesting.
[01:13:03]  He wants the primaries open.
[01:13:04]  That's a pretty big voice.
[01:13:06]  I don't know if this is going to lead to more calls.
[01:13:08]  Will it, Jim?
[01:13:09]  Do you think we're going to start to like, if there's one more fall, are we going to hear more Democrats say, that's it, we got to.
[01:13:16]  So last fall, or really throughout most of 2022, you saw folks like Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker just coincidentally doing events for the Iowa Democrats and New Hampshire Democrats.
[01:13:28]  Gavin Newsom was starting to was taking on Ron DeSantis all the time.
[01:13:33]  Something a little unusual for the governor of California to spend all of his time critiquing the record of the governor of Florida.
[01:13:38]  Phil Murphy up in New Jersey.
[01:13:40]  He had all of these Democratic governors who pretty clearly have presidential ambitions for someday, who insisted they were not running for the presidency.
[01:13:48]  But you could tell they were hanging around.
[01:13:50]  If God forbid something happened to Joe Biden and the party didn't want to have Kamala Harris, they were just going to be in position.
[01:13:56]  They were going to have that name ID.
[01:13:58]  They were going to have that fundraising network.
[01:14:00]  They were that quarterback, that backup quarterback warming up on the sideline, just kind of saying, hey, I'm just loose and I'm ready, just in case.
[01:14:06]  You never know.
[01:14:07]  And I have the sneaking suspicion that all of these governors are looking at Biden when he takes these falls, and they've got a red button that says, go 2024 or something like that.
[01:14:18]  And they're ready to go because there's a poll that has Biden at 60% against Robert Kennedy Jr. and Mary Ann Williamson, right?
[01:14:26]  That is not the, you know, for to continue my football metaphors, that's not the 85 Bears defense, right?
[01:14:31]  These are not, you know, giant monstrous candidates.
[01:14:36]  They're a bunch of tomato.
[01:14:37]  RFK Jr. is this vaccine conspiracy theorist, and Mary Ann Williamson is holding seances on stage and getting out of Goiji board, right?
[01:14:46]  And Biden's.
[01:14:47]  I'll defend RFK, Jay.
[01:14:49]  I will defend him.
[01:14:50]  He's very, he's much more interesting and thoughtful than you make him sound.
[01:14:53]  But I see your point.
[01:14:54]  I mean, he's not exactly the frontrunner in an open contest, but he's coming for Joe Biden.
[01:14:59]  We aren't even touching on the other piece.
[01:15:01]  Like, okay, falling, that's one thing, but mental competency is what we should really be concerned with.
[01:15:07]  And there isn't a speech where he doesn't flub something, forget something, think somebody who's dead is alive, thinks somebody who's alive is dead.
[01:15:14]  There was a bit of that yesterday at the Air Force speech as well, just a small one, but here it is in SAT 16.
[01:15:20]  I think, was it 16?
[01:15:22]  You know what it is, Debbie?
[01:15:23]  13.
[01:15:25]  By the way, I met with who are those guys that fly over shortly?
[01:15:30]  You heard them.
[01:15:31]  How many?
[01:15:32]  Three of them are women.
[01:15:40]  So don't screw around, guys.
[01:15:45]  They had, then Megan, they had him started doing a cute kind of press availability with kids about two weeks ago.
[01:15:51]  I mean, they caught this.
[01:15:52]  The kids were asking him questions, and he'd just gotten back from being, I don't know, in Ireland for a week.
[01:15:56]  And one of the kids was like, what country, foreign country, you visited most recently?
[01:16:00]  And Biden's like, ah, that's a great question.
[01:16:02]  I'm not sure.
[01:16:03]  And one of the kids yells out, Ireland.
[01:16:05]  He's like, oh, yeah, yeah, Ireland.
[01:16:06]  Another kid asks, what movie, good movie have you seen recently?
[01:16:09]  He's like, the one with the fast planes, the fast planes.
[01:16:13]  You know, another kid's like, Top Gun.
[01:16:15]  He's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, so again, none of this is going to get better.
[01:16:20]  It's all a progressive condition, even if it's just aging.
[01:16:23]  It's a progressive condition.
[01:16:24]  I know I talked about it with my mom.
[01:16:25]  My mom's open about it.
[01:16:26]  She's like, my mom jokes that she does her word search and she's like, I can't think of the word.
[01:16:31]  You tell me the word.
[01:16:32]  What's the word?
[01:16:32]  It's the thing that does this.
[01:16:33]  And she finds the other words.
[01:16:34]  It's like somebody who's speaking a second language.
[01:16:36]  You know, like where you, I remember when I was learning Italian, I studied over abroad when I was in college and I couldn't think of the word for onion.
[01:16:43]  And so I was able to say in Italian, the food that makes you cry.
[01:16:46]  And they got it.
[01:16:47]  That's the way my mom communicates now.
[01:16:49]  God love her.
[01:16:50]  But she's not president.
[01:16:53]  So I see exactly what's happening and it's not leading in a good place.
[01:16:57]  And you say, what's it going to be like in 2024?
[01:16:59]  What's it going to be like four years from 2024 if he wins?
[01:17:03]  That's the real question six years from now.
[01:17:06]  January 2029, right?
[01:17:09]  That would be the end of his second term.
[01:17:11]  Oh my God.
[01:17:12]  I mean, that's, and that, and that leads me back to my Kamala Harris, one thought, two words, Kamala Harris.
[01:17:17]  That's what you really need to be thinking about going forward.
[01:17:19]  I'll say this as well.
[01:17:20]  Remember when Trump walked slowly down the ramp when he was president and people are like, what's wrong with him?
[01:17:25]  Why is he walking like that?
[01:17:25]  And he said it was icy.
[01:17:27]  Biden's comments at the time, this is June of 2020.
[01:17:30]  Look how he steps.
[01:17:31]  Look how, and look how I step.
[01:17:32]  Watch how I run up ramps and he stumbles down ramps.
[01:17:36]  Okay, come on.
[01:17:37]  That was Biden's reaction to the slow walk by Trump.
[01:17:41]  Not good.
[01:17:42]  You know, those are the kind of comments that are going to come back to haunt him, Jim.
[01:17:45]  In the grand scheme of things, it's not going to matter that much if Joe Biden can't remember the name of the Blue Angels during a speech at the Air Force Academy or something like that.
[01:17:54]  However, I think one of the most frightening and most, you know, eye-opening examples of this kind of memory lapse or something like that to me, in his infamous interview with George Stephanopoulos during the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, this is the one where Biden said, that was four or five days ago, man.
[01:18:10]  At one point, Stephanopoulos asked him, Did anybody tell you, did anybody recommend to you to keep Bagram Air Base open to have a second place to evacuate Americans?
[01:18:19]  And Biden said, no, absolutely.
[01:18:21]  I don't remember anyone saying that to me.
[01:18:23]  Now, later, Millie and several other Pentagon officials testified under oath before Congress that they had specifically recommended keeping Bagram Airbase.
[01:18:31]  Now, when Joe Biden says something like that, there are two explanations.
[01:18:35]  One is that he's lying.
[01:18:36]  And I suppose that's, you know, there's plenty of good evidence to believe that, yes, Joe Biden is just denying that anybody had made that recommendation to him.
[01:18:43]  But I think the more frightening one possibility is that he's telling the truth, that Joe Biden does not remember what he was briefed.
[01:18:49]  And you sit there and think about how every single day the president gets the presidential daily briefing from the intelligence community.
[01:18:55]  And it's got all of our secrets.
[01:18:56]  It's the hottest, you know, the hottest information we know about what's going on all around the world, every threat facing the country.
[01:19:02]  How much does Joe Biden remember from day to day?
[01:19:05]  How much of that does it absorb?
[01:19:06]  How much of that stays in his brain?
[01:19:08]  I think it's very fair to ask how much he remembers.
[01:19:11]  And so when he says, oh, I don't remember being briefed that, I believe him.
[01:19:14]  And now we have an interesting question in which the president cannot be updated.

=== Does Biden Remember His Briefs (02:18) ===

[01:19:18]  He cannot get new information because his mind cannot process and retain new information.
[01:19:23]  And God knows how that affects presidential decision making.
[01:19:26]  You know, I remember in the lead up to the last election listening to you guys on the editors.
[01:19:31]  And one of Charlie's, just one of the many things he doesn't like about Trump, who was then still president, was how he's just not able to inspire by speaking knowledgeably about much, especially American history.
[01:19:45]  You know, he just doesn't have the depth of knowledge, the reading, or the rhetorical abilities that somebody like Charlie, and frankly, I would like in a president who's got this in-depth knowledge of U.S. history and can bring it up in context and use it to inspire.
[01:20:00]  I don't know that Joe Biden's got that either, but I think we can all agree that old KH in the number two position, swinging the bat, you know, in the warm-up position, as you say, Garity, although you did football, I'm doing baseball.
[01:20:14]  She doesn't have it at all.
[01:20:16]  We've been talking about how she keeps talking about this unburdened, unburdened, unburdened.
[01:20:20]  You'll be unburdened by your past, by your present circumstances.
[01:20:22]  I don't know how she puts it.
[01:20:23]  She says it every day.
[01:20:25]  It's in every speech.
[01:20:26]  She can't think of anything else.
[01:20:28]  She really thinks this is moving.
[01:20:29]  It isn't.
[01:20:30]  Here's yet another example when she spoke to the West Point grads.
[01:20:33]  First time a woman, I guess, ever addressed the West Point grads.
[01:20:37]  She blew it.
[01:20:37]  Here she is.
[01:20:39]  Your generation grew up online.
[01:20:43]  Technology that might be intimidating or unfamiliar to other generations to you is exciting and intuitive.
[01:20:54]  You see what can be unburdened by what has been.
[01:21:00]  She loves that line.
[01:21:02]  I can't.
[01:21:03]  She talks to them like they're too rich.
[01:21:06]  Yeah, that's just the way the way she talks.
[01:21:09]  I never thought I'd grow to hate the word unburdened of all the words I thought I would hate.
[01:21:13]  That wasn't high on the list, but now I do.
[01:21:16]  And she just has this quality.
[01:21:18]  This is the advantage to Biden politically: you don't look at him and think radical, right?
[01:21:24]  Even though he's, with some exceptions, pushed as far left as he plausibly could and placated his left as much as he possibly can, because he's been around forever and he's this doddering old man.

=== Trump Conviction Unlikely In Court (07:02) ===

[01:21:37]  Whereas it's going to stick to Kamala Harris, it would stick to Gavin Newsom, stick to Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.
[01:21:44]  So there just hasn't been, you know, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Republicans hated them for various reasons.
[01:21:53]  Biden doesn't inspire that emotion.
[01:21:56]  It's pity, which is something different and isn't as motivating as hatred.
[01:22:01]  So that's one thing he has going for him: everyone feels sorry for him.
[01:22:07]  These are important questions because over on the GOP side, the guy who's leading the race by high double digits could be under maybe four indictments, four criminal cases by the time this election actually happens.
[01:22:20]  He did Trump, that is, a town hall with Sean Hannity last night.
[01:22:24]  He's the guy he does like on Fox.
[01:22:26]  He doesn't want to do Fox as an entity, but he likes Sean.
[01:22:30]  And he commented on at least one of those criminal cases and some news that broke in it yesterday.
[01:22:36]  We're going to pick it up there and then get into the debacle that is CNN, according to this huge Atlantic piece.
[01:22:42]  My God, look at this.
[01:22:43]  My team printed it out for me.
[01:22:44]  This is the printed article.
[01:22:45]  Look at this thing.
[01:22:46]  It goes on and on and on and on.
[01:22:49]  We've read it.
[01:22:50]  We'll talk about CNN, Chris Licht, the president's thoughts on Don Lemon and what's happening internally there and how Jeff Zucker may be sabotaging him right after this.
[01:23:04]  News broke yesterday that there might be a tape recording that, quote, where you acknowledge that you understood that these were classified documents.
[01:23:12]  Do you know anything?
[01:23:13]  No, I don't know anything about it.
[01:23:14]  All I know is this: everything I did was right.
[01:23:17]  We have the Presidential Records Act, which I abided by 100%.
[01:23:22]  So there it is.
[01:23:23]  Trump weighing in on that news yesterday that CNN and so many others breathlessly reported that there is allegedly a tape that the reporters haven't heard, but they say someone tells them.
[01:23:33]  He's on tape in connection with a book that they were discussing from former chief of staff Mark Meadows saying something to the effect of, I've got this document.
[01:23:41]  It relates to Millie and I think war plans against Iran.
[01:23:45]  And I can't show it to you because it's classified and I'm limited in what I can declassify post-presidency.
[01:23:52]  So CNN smoking gun.
[01:23:54]  This is it.
[01:23:55]  I don't know.
[01:23:55]  We haven't heard it.
[01:23:56]  We don't know.
[01:23:57]  But there he is on camera with a classic Trump.
[01:23:59]  Like, it was a perfect phone call.
[01:24:02]  It's perfect.
[01:24:03]  Perfect.
[01:24:04]  Do we think this is going to come back to haunt him?
[01:24:06]  Not necessarily this piece, but the four criminal investigations.
[01:24:10]  Rich?
[01:24:11]  I think they're all going to be in the bucket for the overwhelming majority of Republican voters as politicized attempts to get Trump.
[01:24:19]  And that wouldn't be happening if his last name wasn't Trump.
[01:24:23]  And this one is probably the most serious legally.
[01:24:26]  I mean, every indication is he's kind of dead rights on this one.
[01:24:30]  But the case is going to be the counterargument will be: well, Hillary, she was dead rights at the emails.
[01:24:35]  Was she prosecuted?
[01:24:35]  You know, Joe Biden did a version of the same thing.
[01:24:38]  Is he going to be prosecuted?
[01:24:39]  No, of course not.
[01:24:40]  But I think the only way these can hurt him is just sort of cumulatively at the end.
[01:24:47]  If voters are kind of making an electability type judgment, you know, the night they're caucusing or voting in New Hampshire, they say, you know, there's just, there is too much baggage.
[01:24:56]  There's just too much material for the other side to work with.
[01:25:00]  We love Trump.
[01:25:01]  We like what he did, but it's too big a risk.
[01:25:03]  That's possible.
[01:25:05]  I wouldn't necessarily bet on it.
[01:25:08]  I said yesterday on the show when we talked about this, we don't know where this document came from.
[01:25:13]  We don't know whether it was in the boxes that are at issue in that whole Mar-a-Lago FBI read.
[01:25:19]  We don't know anything right now.
[01:25:20]  We don't know whether Trump actually had and believed he had the ability to show them the document, but just didn't want to.
[01:25:26]  So lied, you know, like, hey, this one's class.
[01:25:28]  We have no idea.
[01:25:29]  But just seeing this breaking right now from CNN, they say CNN exclusive Trump attorneys have not found classified document former president referred to on tape following subpoena.
[01:25:40]  Attorneys for Donald Trump turned over material in mid-March in response to a federal subpoena related to classified U.S. military document described by the former president on tape in 2021, but were unable to find the document itself.
[01:25:52]  Two sources tell CNN.
[01:25:53]  Why?
[01:25:54]  Because Trump had it and he was keeping it in his back pocket and he was pulling it out at meetings about Mark Meadows' book.
[01:25:59]  I have no idea, but it just underscores the challenge these prosecutors are facing.
[01:26:04]  Garity, here's what I really want to know.
[01:26:07]  What is the thinking?
[01:26:08]  Like, what is the thinking that, like, I got the impeachment.
[01:26:12]  If he gets impeached and convicted, he can't run again.
[01:26:14]  So I totally understood why they wanted to do that.
[01:26:18]  You know, Trump's numbers went up exponentially when he got the Alvin Bragg indictment.
[01:26:23]  As I said at the National Review Forum with you guys, it would happen and that Trump should beg for it.
[01:26:27]  And sure enough, he's crushing DeSantis now in a way he wasn't prior to that indictment because of what Rich just said.
[01:26:33]  So what's the thinking?
[01:26:34]  That they're good.
[01:26:35]  It's just no man is above the law?
[01:26:37]  Is that really the Jack Smith thing and the Fannie Willis thing in Georgia and the Alvin Bragg thing in New York?
[01:26:42]  Like, forgive me, but I'm having trouble believing that.
[01:26:47]  Yeah, first of all, like in Alvin Bragg, it really does look like they stretched and exaggerated the statute beyond all recognition to justify a felony indictment.
[01:26:57]  I'm not, I have a hard time believing that, you know, in the end, the highs and lows of Donald Trump were all brought down by boxes of documents as he was leaving.
[01:27:07]  I don't believe that's how the Trump story ends.
[01:27:09]  I don't think that most Americans are that bad.
[01:27:12]  And, you know, he'll be able to point to Joe Biden's garage.
[01:27:15]  In fact, I believe it was just yesterday, the Department of Justice said that there will be no criminal charges against Vice President Mike Pence for any, I think, there were three documents that were classified or sensitive that were in his, got mixed in with his personal papers.
[01:27:29]  Sounds like everybody did it.
[01:27:30]  And it does not sound like it was always resulting in criminal charges.
[01:27:33]  Maybe Trump was more egregious or shameless about it, but it's going to be very tough, I suspect, to sustain a conviction on that, or at least in the court of law, maybe they'll sustain a conviction.
[01:27:43]  I think in the court of public opinion, it'll be very tough.
[01:27:45]  The two you mentioned, Jack Smith, you know, stuff related to January 6th.
[01:27:50]  I think that is the most consequential and most probably pretty clearly the worst thing Trump has done in his time as presidency.
[01:27:57]  The clearest case in which his actions had terrible, dire consequences.
[01:28:01]  And if you're going to put Trump on trial for anything, that would seem to be the one.
[01:28:04]  And that's the one we still don't know.
[01:28:07]  And then the second thing down in Georgia, the phone call down to that, I think, you know, the question is, can you say that this was a deliberate effort to suborn?
[01:28:16]  Well, I know all that.
[01:28:17]  We've analyzed the cases, but my question is politically, what is the Democrats thinking?
[01:28:22]  Because some believe this is going to help him.
[01:28:25]  And the Democrats know it.
[01:28:27]  And they want his poll numbers to be driven up because they want him to be the nominee.
[01:28:31]  Others think no.
[01:28:33]  They just hate him and they fear him and they want him to be actually locked up and ineligible to actually take office because he's sitting in a prison.

=== CNN Profile Becomes Time Bomb (06:14) ===

[01:28:40]  I don't know what the truth is.
[01:28:41]  I think if you ask the prosecutors, they'd say it's, oh, it's no man in the Bovala.
[01:28:45]  I think in the general Democratic Party circles, it's probably a mix of both.
[01:28:49]  And or the more time we're talking about Trump and these cases against him, we're not talking about the border.
[01:28:54]  We're not talking about massive spending and the state of the economy.
[01:28:58]  We're not talking about Joe Biden rambling and being 80 years old.
[01:29:03]  We're not talking about like there's all kinds of issues that are not good for this.
[01:29:06]  Earned media for Trump, good or bad.
[01:29:08]  I mean, all the time we spent on the access Hollywood tape and all that, it all wound up helping him.
[01:29:12]  So, you know, they need to be careful.
[01:29:14]  All right.
[01:29:14]  I've got to shift gears because if I don't get to this today, I'm going to cry in my bed tonight.
[01:29:18]  The Atlantic, Tim Alberta, in-depth piece on Chris Licht, the new head of CNN, following Jeff Zucker.
[01:29:24]  It's unbelievable.
[01:29:25]  I mean, Twitter's on fire right now with people not understanding how he gave this reporter this much access when he's still in the job.
[01:29:31]  He's still in the ongoing role.
[01:29:33]  I'm just going to give you a couple highlights.
[01:29:34]  Don Lemon.
[01:29:35]  They talk about his thoughts on it.
[01:29:37]  He clearly did not like Don Lemon and was watching the rehearsals for that dreadful morning show that he got fired from.
[01:29:43]  Just realizing it was a time bomb.
[01:29:45]  He knew this was not going to work.
[01:29:47]  Some quotes.
[01:29:48]  I'm going to tell Don the biggest mistake is commenting after every single story for the sake of commenting after every single story.
[01:29:55]  He says, let's see.
[01:29:58]  Don't tell me, oh, that's horrible.
[01:30:00]  We know it's horrible.
[01:30:01]  If you've got a specific insight into something, if you can add something, tell us.
[01:30:04]  But don't comment on every single fucking story.
[01:30:08]  He thought partnering with Lemon or Lemon, with the opinionated gay black southerner with a pair of hard-hitting female news reporters could be the fun viewers needed.
[01:30:18]  But Licht, I sensed, writes Alberta, was not having fun.
[01:30:22]  He saw a rehearsal for the first show.
[01:30:24]  Apparently, they looked up and Don Lemon had changed during the rehearsal into a white jacket, the collar made of fur with a turtleneck underneath.
[01:30:32]  What the fuck is he wearing?
[01:30:34]  Chris Licht blurted out.
[01:30:36]  Nervous chuckles echoed around us.
[01:30:38]  A little while later, the younger producer spoke into Lemon's earpiece.
[01:30:40]  Don, we're not too crazy about the jacket in here.
[01:30:45]  Lemon looked miffed.
[01:30:46]  Licht fought back a smirk.
[01:30:48]  Why are you guys so mean to Don? He asked.
[01:30:50]  The joke wasn't lost on anyone.
[01:30:52]  Clearly, Licht had dwindling patience for Lemon, his outfits, his ad-libbing, his opinions.
[01:30:56]  None of this should have come as a surprise.
[01:30:58]  As the show emerged for another break, Lemon San's jacket took his place in front of the display.
[01:31:03]  He was going to do some bit on how Kanye West got canceled over anti-Semitic comments, but no one cared about comments that were offensive to the black community.
[01:31:11]  Don saw it in, and Licht looked skeptical.
[01:31:16]  Where exactly would you envision this running?
[01:31:19]  In our morning show, he asked Don, or the EP of the show.
[01:31:24]  Probably in the back half.
[01:31:25]  Do you think if I'm on my way to work at 7.40 in the morning, I have time to absorb this?
[01:31:29]  Just then the segment began and Lemon straightaway butchered the opening line.
[01:31:33]  Paul, the EP then, let out an exasperated grunt.
[01:31:36]  How does that happen?
[01:31:37]  Licht grimaced.
[01:31:38]  Read the fucking prompter, he said.
[01:31:41]  It goes on and on with Lick saying the whole thing was way too long.
[01:31:44]  It's fucking morning time.
[01:31:46]  Motioning towards the screen, which had a display with a graphic image of a tortured slave next to Lemon during his monologue.
[01:31:53]  This is morning television.
[01:31:58]  Got off on the wrong foot, stayed there ever after.
[01:32:02]  I'm not sure exactly what this says about what Chris Licht is doing, but it certainly shows CNN is having a massive identity crisis, Rich.
[01:32:10]  Yeah.
[01:32:11]  So why do you give a reporter this kind of access?
[01:32:13]  It's pure arrogance and ego, right?
[01:32:15]  You think you're the greatest thing since sliced bread and the profile is going to show it.
[01:32:21]  And the more access you provide, the more it's going to show it.
[01:32:24]  So CNN has a couple of problems, big ones.
[01:32:27]  One is they think their brand is news, but their brand had changed over time, certainly during the Trump years, into they were an opinion network.
[01:32:37]  And now they're trying to be not an opinion network or less of an opinion network, and they're shedding audience because they were an opinion network.
[01:32:45]  And then a real big fundamental problem, lack of talent.
[01:32:49]  You know, who are the big prime time stars on CNN?
[01:32:53]  Who are the stars on the horizon?
[01:32:55]  You know, Caitlin Collins, I think, is a good journalist, maybe a promising young woman, but is she really, she's going to hold down?
[01:33:03]  Where do they put her?
[01:33:03]  8, 9 p.m.
[01:33:05]  That big prime time slot?
[01:33:07]  I'm really doubtful.
[01:33:09]  So this profile could be the beginning of the end of Chris Licht.
[01:33:17]  Some of the color on him, the reporter followed him around for his morning workout.
[01:33:20]  He lost a bunch of weight.
[01:33:21]  He quotes Licht.
[01:33:23]  He's, no, no more breakfast, no more drinking during the week, no more carbs or sweets.
[01:33:26]  I'm a fucking machine.
[01:33:28]  Lick told me one day when I asked why he was skipping a meal.
[01:33:31]  Oh boy, cringy, cringy.
[01:33:33]  Then he says he squatted down to grab a metal pole lying flat on the ground as he was working out.
[01:33:38]  Zucker couldn't do this shit, Lick said.
[01:33:42]  I know, guys.
[01:33:43]  Through his clenched teeth, hoisting up the pole with a grunt.
[01:33:47]  Then Lick told friends he was convinced Zucker, whose legacy he was undermining daily with rhetorical recriminations about past damage to CNN's brand, was retaliating by pushing hit pieces on him.
[01:33:56]  I mean, the palace guards, everybody's pointing fingers at everybody, Garrity.
[01:34:01]  But the best is what happened after the Nikki Haley prime comments by Don Lemon.
[01:34:07]  Apparently, according to Tim Alberta, for months, Lemon had been making the control room cringe with half-baked opinions, irritating his co-host by forcing his way into every segment and angering Licht by adding the very sort of superfluous commentary the boss had explicitly warned against.
[01:34:21]  Then he made his prime remark and Lick was already confronting the reality his morning show might be a bust.
[01:34:26]  Top executives urged Lick to fire him.
[01:34:28]  Lemon pitched an attempt at damage control, a primetime special on misogyny.
[01:34:33]  Lemon wanted to host a network's preeminent experts on misogyny.
[01:34:39]  I felt best qualified to host this discussion.
[01:34:43]  And then Lemon began telling allies Al Sharpton, Ben Crump, and other black leaders would rally to his defense if he were fired, making his dismissal a referendum on CNN's whiteness.

=== Lemon Hosts Misogyny Special (01:35) ===

[01:34:55]  It's wonderful.
[01:34:56]  It's got everything.
[01:34:56]  It checks every box that we already knew about Don Lemon and CNN, Joe.
[01:35:01]  I think last time I was on your program was when we were discussing the insanity of that.
[01:35:05]  No, I came away from that article feeling real sympathy for Chris Licht.
[01:35:09]  Maybe he has an appropriate surname considering the challenge ahead of him.
[01:35:13]  But it's like he's trying to make an organ transplant to CNN.
[01:35:17]  And during the Trump years, it became hashtag resistance.
[01:35:19]  And now it's rejecting the transplant, that there's too different a network and he can't go back to the original identity that Lick's trying to bring back.
[01:35:27]  That is so well said.
[01:35:29]  Yeah, they don't know what to do.
[01:35:30]  And his, I agree with his mission.
[01:35:32]  He is trying to make it, you know, he's trying to sort of, after, what, 10 years as Colbert's executive producer, turn himself into Roger Ailes.
[01:35:41]  The problem is there's only one Roger Ailes.
[01:35:43]  And either that's who you are and it comes to you naturally or not.
[01:35:47]  And even Roger Ailes couldn't have turned CNN into Fox News.
[01:35:51]  So you can see what's happening there.
[01:35:52]  The whole piece is well worth a read.
[01:35:54]  Take a glass of wine or a big cup of coffee this weekend and dig in.
[01:35:58]  The Atlantic's got a lot to say.
[01:36:00]  Guys, thank you so much for coming on.
[01:36:01]  Appreciate your thoughtful, funny commentary, as always.
[01:36:05]  Awesome.
[01:36:05]  Great weekend.
[01:36:06]  Play pleasure.
[01:36:07]  All right, and don't forget to check out National Review and NR Plus.
[01:36:10]  On Monday, we have a different kind of show for you.
[01:36:11]  We're looking forward to this.
[01:36:12]  We're going to have one of our Megan Kelly Show debates where we have both sides represented about the HPV vaccine.
[01:36:19]  The HPV vaccine.
[01:36:21]  Should you or shouldn't you?
[01:36:22]  We'll go there.
[01:36:25]  Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly Show.
[01:36:28]  No BS, no agenda, and no