The Megyn Kelly Show - 20230627_new-explosive-hunter-biden-revelations-and-whether

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June 27, 2023 - The Megyn Kelly Show

01:24:21

20230627_new-explosive-hunter-biden-revelations-and-whether

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Hunter Biden Tape Leaks 00:02:03
	Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
	Remember, they've been talking about this.
	CNN has been conspicuously breaking the news each time around this tape.
	Obviously, somebody's leaking to them.
	And now we've actually got the tape.
	CNN played it last night.
	We'll play it for you in a moment.
	Donald Trump's critics and others suggesting this is it.
	This really is the smoking gun.
	They've got Trump dead to rights on possessing a document he did not have the right to possess.
	We'll talk about it in just a minute.
	Plus, new ridiculous attempts to defend Hunter Biden and President Joe Biden from people like Ana Navarro on The View, literally almost in tears over what's being done to this poor family by those mean, mean people who want to know whether they're corrupt and accepted bribes.
	So much to get to today.
	I'm super glad to be joined, as always, by John Ashbrook, Michael Duncan, Josh Holmes, and the man known to his minions as Comfortably Smug.
	Together, they are ruthless.
	Now on YouTube, too, and look at our friends.
	Look at our friends who you can find on youtube.com/slash ruthless podcast.
	It looks like Meet the Press.
	This is such an impressive set, you guys.
	We're all grown up.
	Yeah, well done.
	I like this.
	So you got Holmes over there at third base.
	Then you got Smug right next to you.
	You got, is that Duncan there and Ashbrook on over on?
	I'm trying to see actually because it's like a teeny tiny in my feedback.
	And then Duncan.
	Anyway, great, great to see you guys all grown up and looking very professional, very prof, except for your sweatshirts and your baseball caps and your sunglasses.
Special Counsel Tax Crimes 00:15:25
	Other than those things.
	Nailing it.
	Okay, let's kick it off with Hunter Biden because today I think the New York Post has a very interesting piece.
	It's by the Post editorial board, and the headline is: Freeze the Hunter Biden plea deal until we know who lied.
	This is a very good point.
	You know, Hunter Biden copped a plea to his many tax infringements and breaking of the tax laws, as well as the gun situation where he applied for a gun and lied about not having a drug problem, misdemeanor, slap on the wrist, probation deal.
	Anybody else, I believe, based on the lawyers I've looked at, I've heard it both ways, but the ones I trust have said actually, most of us would be in prison if they had charged what he actually did.
	And that's what the whistleblowers are saying about him, too, from the IRS, who have come forward saying any civilian would have been charged with multiple felonies for what this guy did.
	Well, now this is an interesting twist on the whole thing.
	Now, one of the things the whistleblowers are saying is They were told by the U.S. attorney, David Weiss, who was investigating Hunter Biden, that these whistleblowers were told and at least five others were told that Weiss said he did not have authority to charge Hunter Biden anywhere outside of Delaware and that he was denied special counsel status.
	Now, that's very interesting because all the stuff we're most interested in, the stuff outside of the tax laws, the stuff outside of the gun violations, the corruption charges, those would have occurred down in Washington, D.C.
	So in order to pursue charges, you would need the ability to charge outside of Delaware.
	And this guy, allegedly from the whistleblowers, told a whole staff full of people, I haven't been given that authority.
	I'm not allowed to charge outside of Delaware.
	So the reason this is so interesting is because the Attorney General of the United States, Merrick Garland, as recently as Friday, said the following, quoting here, David Weiss was allowed to, quote, continue his investigation and make a decision to prosecute any way in which he wanted and in any district in which he wanted.
	So Garland's saying he was a true special counsel.
	He could have charged any crime anywhere he wanted to.
	And according to the whistleblower, in a meeting with some six people, David Weiss said, that's not true.
	I was specifically told I could not charge outside of Delaware.
	And the suggestion is that's why we're not seeing anything against Hunter Biden on the real substance of the corruption allegations against him, which dovetails nicely with what the whistleblower said previously, which is that he was getting shut down at every turn by the attorney general's office on any attempt to even look into those allegations or Joe Biden's connection to them.
	This is the New York Post now adding to it saying there is not a chance in hell this judge, because the judge has to approve the plea deal that David Weiss struck with Hunter Biden.
	There's not a chance in hell this judge should do that until we can figure out who the hell is lying about this investigation.
	What do you guys think of it?
	No, I mean, look, that's a massive discrepancy, a huge inconsistency there between the attorney general and what was conveyed by a U.S. attorney.
	And remember, I mean, the background of this is actually pretty important is that the U.S. attorney in charge of Delaware was the one holdover from the Trump administration.
	They have all Biden U.S. attorneys across the country except for Delaware.
	And the thought process on that was at the very beginning, they would try to get out beyond any reasonable sort of hometown favor or anything that could potentially be alleged as an indiscretion against anybody prosecuting or not prosecuting Hunter Biden.
	But if they told this guy that he can't actually do anything outside of what was happening in Delaware, and then on the other hand, the attorney general is saying, no, no, no, they had full discretion.
	That seems to me to be something that Jamie Comer and his committee are going to probably get to the bottom of because remember, beyond what the plea deal was that we heard about last week, we wouldn't know any of this stuff if it wasn't for the House Oversight Committee.
	And that WhatsApp message, for example, all of that stuff that the payments Smug always talks about from the various Chinese entities to nine members of the Biden family, all of that stuff has come through congressional oversight.
	None of that stuff has been disclosed by DOJ.
	Now, you don't expect them in the course of an investigation to be disclosing everything that they come across.
	But when they say- Well, they did during the Donald Trump investigation.
	Exactly.
	Exactly.
	Well, I think that's also a really good point.
	And I think, you know, Josh is right.
	That's a very critical point to make is what they had hoped to happen is they could set up a sweetheart deal for the president's son and no one would notice.
	The one wrinkle in their plan was Republicans took the house.
	That wasn't supposed to happen.
	They had three years of basically being left unchecked where Hunter, we were told that it was Russian disinformation that he committed any kind of a crime when we have video on it and people are getting banned from social media for posting anything, which was, you know, who do you trust?
	Your lying eyes, the media?
	Who do you trust in that situation?
	And I think this has become very clear that when you have a situation that there are two sides to this coin: one is Hunter and his lawyer, and the other is, you know, the attorney general who works for his father.
	How is that a fair situation?
	We're seeing exactly the result of that.
	Here's two things I wanted to tell you.
	Ted Cruz on his podcast verdict, the verdict, which is good.
	I enjoy it.
	He was saying yesterday, don't be fooled into this whole, oh, you know, David Weiss was a Trump administration appointee.
	He points out that, yes, out of Delaware.
	And in order to get that appointment, even under a Republican president, you'd have to have the blessing of both state senators, which are, who are Democrats in Delaware.
	So he's saying, yes, the guy might have been palatable to the Trump administration, but there's only so reasonable he could be in the eyes of at least people who have a more conservative jurisprudence because he had to get a blessing from people who are on, you know, of the left.
	So that was an interesting point, which I had forgotten about.
	Secondly, yes, the DOJ, the same DOJ, which, you know, has been so tight-lipped about any Hunter Biden leaks, leaked on Trump right from the beginning.
	You know, how did the New York Times know the raid was happening?
	How did everybody know that, right?
	Like they've been leaking over and over.
	And except one thing that they haven't leaked, which is very interesting, is, you know, if you read the indictment, it talks about the terrible nuclear secrets that Trump has been hoarding down at Mar-a-Lago.
	Well, why haven't they leaked?
	Why?
	I mean, yes, you're not going to tell exactly all of our nuclear, but they would have gotten more specific in the leaks if they had something that really made him look bad.
	They would.
	They've proven that.
	And the fact that they just want to scare us with the rhetoric that's being used tells me they're trying to sort of amp it up.
	If they really had a dead to rights document, they would have leaked it.
	It would have been leaked to CNN.
	It would have been leaked to Maggie Haberman.
	We would know more specifically without actually compromising our secrets what exactly they had.
	So this DOJ is up in it up to their necks.
	Here's the last point, and then I'll give it back to you guys.
	Via the code of federal regulations, express special prosecutor jurisdiction, the jurisdiction of a special counsel shall be established by the attorney general.
	And then it goes on.
	If in the course of his investigation, the special counsel concludes that additional jurisdiction beyond the specified jurisdiction in the original jurisdiction provided to him is necessary, he shall consult with the attorney general who will determine whether to include the additional matters within the special counsel's jurisdiction or assign them elsewhere.
	So, you know, Merrick Garland is saying, I told this guy he could take this in any direction he wanted and he could prosecute in any district in which he wanted to, thus having the same effect as a special counsel.
	And now it appears that isn't true.
	So the question is, what should happen?
	Kevin McCarthy is suggesting yesterday, maybe we're going to impeach Merrick Garland.
	If he's the one lying, he might get impeached.
	And if he wasn't lying, then it just proves this guy, David Weiss, lied to a group full of people and half-assed the investigation.
	Yeah, like no question about it.
	I mean, this is, this is the core of the issue, because ultimately, it's one thing about Hunter Biden.
	You got him on tax and a federal gun charge.
	The problem is where this ultimately leads, right?
	Don't I mean, this is what we've talked about.
	But if you look at that decision, this plea deal with Hunter Biden, we've talked about on the show that they also discuss in there that there is an ongoing investigation.
	And a cynic might look at that and say, well, if there's an ongoing investigation that's related to all these other potential crimes, that's going to seal those records so that people can't actually see everything that is there and evidence.
	But I guess it's also possible that those things are yet to come, right?
	But again, back to the whole point of taking the house, it's like none of this would really come to light in the first place if it wasn't for Kevin McCarthy and Comer putting out things like the WhatsApp, you know, I mean, like we would have no idea where this was going.
	And if you read that WhatsApp message where Hunter Biden clearly says to this Chinese businessman, like he does it the way I talk to my toddler when I count to five for him to eat his dinner.
	He's like, I am here with my father.
	Like I need an answer now from you.
	He's like, he's like typing out, in case anybody wants to know, I'm extorting and committing a crime right now and I'm sitting next to the former vice president of the United States.
	Like, how did that not come out before?
	And we have, you know, obviously Jamie Comer to thank for that.
	Well, I'm sure that the media was working really hard to uncover this thing.
	Like they were busting their tails, don't they?
	Yeah.
	It's unbelievable.
	Well, the thing, I mean, this is like, this stinks to high heaven because there's been a lot of pressure on the attorney general to appoint a special counsel in the first place to investigate Hunter Biden to make sure, and Joe Biden and this whole thing to make sure that they didn't really have, you know, that there was a level of independence to actually look into this.
	And then Garland's trying to reassure people saying he was basically a special counsel.
	Like he wasn't exactly, but I gave him full authority to charge this guy and investigate this case in any jurisdiction in the United States, including Washington, D.C., which is where he allegedly did all the bad, the really bad stuff that we're talking about here, the corruption stuff.
	And yet it doesn't appear to be true.
	And in fact, the whistleblower goes on to say that the Biden appointed DC U.S. attorney, the guy for D.C., Matthew Graves, specifically said Weiss may not charge in my district.
	He was like, no.
	He said he would not allow Weiss to a charge in his district.
	And there was testimony that Weiss was turned down in other districts as well, according to the whistleblower.
	So Weiss was having real trouble getting any other prosecutor to help him out because if he didn't have the authority to charge in another district, he needed the help of the sitting federal prosecutors in those districts.
	And it looks like at every turn, they were giving him the middle finger, despite Merrick Garland's testimony under oath that he allowed it.
	So which is it?
	I mean, that's exactly the point.
	And it also explains why Weiss would tell investigators that ultimately he can't go down that road.
	I mean, if he's actually requested to make, you know, some kind of charges within anybody else's district and was denied.
	Yeah, I mean, his hands are sort of tied.
	I think the biggest issue here, you're right that Garland, whether or not any of this was true is like the core of the issue.
	But ultimately, it's about where it leads.
	And you have to believe that the Jamie Comer evidence that he has uncovered was known to D.O.J. I mean, if they did even just a cursory search through WhatsApp and text messages or whatever, they would have stumbled upon the same thing the oversight committee did.
	And ultimately, what that says, and now we've learned from the Washington Examiner that Joe Biden was actually in the same house as Hunter Biden when that WhatsApp message suggesting that they were together happened.
	It means that the president of the United States is a much, much, much bigger thing to answer here for than whatever Hunter Biden's tax crimes might be.
	Because you remember, it's not just misleading the American people, lying to the American people about your involvement in foreign business dealings, saying you were never involved in Hunter Biden's business.
	All that stuff is just sort of rhetorical.
	This is about also financial disclosures that you make as a president of the United States.
	There's a whole bunch of like big ticket issues that if you are lying on, there are actual legal ramifications for in addition to the tax issues, whatever they may be.
	Right.
	So I think that this thing ballooned pretty quickly beyond anything that they could have imagined the tax implications of Hunter Biden quickly.
	And they try to put a top on it.
	There's no other explanation for me as to how it just sort of stopped with Hunter.
	And I think that's especially important because for so long, you've had folks on the left and the media carrying the message of, oh, well, I didn't vote for Hunter Biden.
	Hunter Biden is not, you know, the president of the United States.
	This is no longer a Hunter Biden issue.
	This is a Joe Biden issue.
	We now have, we've had evidence that he had the keys to the office that Hunter Biden is operating this influence peddling scheme out of.
	We now have evidence that he's in the room while his son is demanding that a Chinese national wire the money immediately.
	And he promises if you don't send me the money, me and my father will remember and we will come down on you for it.
	This is like, you know, if you're tapping Tony Soprano, his lawyer was like, hey, no, he was not crack.
	Yeah.
	I mean, he was not crack.
	I can't listen to anything.
	He was cracked up.
	And we also being on crack, of course, doesn't excuse anything, but I will say in Joe Biden's defense, it is possible that Joe Biden was upstairs in the shower and Hunter Biden was downstairs on the couch, like, yo, my dad's right next to me.
	You know, like, he's right here.
	Like, I don't put too much stock in Hunter Biden.
	You know, he, he might have just said it to threaten him because he knew his word was absolutely fucking useless.
	And so it was like, my daddy's here.
	Him, you need to care about.
	That is, that is a possibility.
	But it's, we should know.
	Let's probe it.
	Let's figure out.
	We don't, nobody's even asked.
	And so far, we just get Joe Biden kind of smirking and laughing at us like this is all made up.
	Go ahead, Michael Angel.
	But there's a precedent for this sort of behavior because I agree with Megan.
	We talked about this on the show in the last episode.
	Like, look, he could have just been pretending that Joe Biden was sitting there next to him so he could try to, you know, get this thing done.
	But go back to when he was sitting on the board of that Ukrainian natural gas company, Burisma, and Joe Biden is on tape talking about withholding aid to Ukraine because of this prosecutor who happened to be investigating the company that his son sits on the board of, right?
Joe Hunter Collusion Exposed 00:09:12
	And so you have a demonstration of previous behavior in which Joe Biden and Hunter Biden colluded to try to impact a political decision.
	Also, by the way, they impeached Donald Trump for doing pretty much the same thing.
	So it's wild.
	And also, you have separate points of data that you can look at to put this whole case together, which is becoming increasingly clear that what's happening here is an independent, independently, the United States Treasury puts a suspicious activity report saying that nine members of the Biden family are having money wired to them from China.
	Is that just a random coincidence that, okay, well, this guy is sending messages to Chinese nationals trying to extort them?
	And then millions of dollars start getting wired from China.
	It's like, what, did you just win the lottery except in China?
	That's just a random coincidence.
	And then Hunter Biden got that $5 million within 10 days of that WhatsApp message.
	That's pretty incriminating.
	That's a pretty good fact.
	If you want to go after him and say that message did happen and they were up to no good.
	Now, I wanted to say, correct one thing I said.
	The Garland statements were not under oath.
	They were from a DOJ presser.
	Take a list of how Merrick Garland characterized all this on Friday when he was responding to some of these whistleblower allegations.
	Okay, this is Biden.
	As I said at the outlet, Mr. David Weiss, who was appointed by President Trump as the U.S. Attorney in Delaware and assigned to this matter during a previous administration, would be permitted to continue his investigation and make a decision to prosecute any way in which he wanted and in any district in which he wanted to.
	Then he goes on to say this.
	I don't know how it would be possible for anybody to block him from bringing a prosecution given that he had, that he has this authority.
	He was given complete authority to make all decisions on his own.
	So he's saying he could not have been blocked from bringing a prosecution.
	This is Garland saying this.
	And the whistleblower saying exactly the opposite, that they were told, he, the whistleblower, and several others, Baltimore FBI special agent in charge, assistant special agent in charge, another woman, an IRS special agent in charge, Sean Wheat.
	He goes on, he names them, that they were all told by this guy Weiss, he lacked authority to charge Hunter Biden outside of Delaware and was denied.
	Okay, so there is a direct diversion there.
	I just wanted to make sure people understand there's no question that there's a split between what the whistleblower is saying actually happened and what Merrick Garland is saying actually happened.
	Hence the calls now for this federal judge to not approve this plea deal until we figure it out.
	That conversation and the WhatsApp thing, I think would have happened in Delaware.
	But the stuff in D.C., which is outside of David Weiss's jurisdiction, according to the whistleblower, includes Hunter was apparently living in D.C. when the issues with the foreign income from Barisma took place and the scheme to evade his income taxes also took place.
	So D.C. is relevant among potentially other jurisdictions.
	It just gets more and more complicated.
	And honestly, you're right.
	If the Republicans hadn't eked out that victory, guys, we would know none of this because the press, which usually are the ones to sniff this kind of stuff out, has zero interest in this story still, even today.
	And you ask yourself, why?
	Well, you know, because they're all Democrats.
	And you know that if Hunter Biden were a Republican, if Joe Biden were a Republican, that the press would have been all over this in the lead up to the investigation.
	And if these, if the investigation wasn't going in the direction strong enough, you know, the press would be holding the Department of Justice accountable.
	I mean, we've talked about this endlessly on the show.
	It's one of the most demoralizing aspects to the press right now is that their bias, what has been biased for years is just getting worse and worse and worse.
	We had to talk for two years about a meeting in Trump Tower that Don Jr. happened to be in.
	Yeah, right.
	You know what I mean?
	Well, the other thing is, though, sourcing, right?
	I mean, the part of the problem we found with Russia Gate and everything else after five years of ruining our country over it is that the FBI, people in the FBI, people in the intel services were actively providing the press information that turned out not to be the truth.
	Right.
	And I think what we're seeing here is that there is no interest, right?
	I mean, the same time we're getting all kinds of audio leaks of Donald Trump, we're not seeing any leaks of anything pertaining to Hunter Biden and Joe Biden.
	And you, again, why?
	Yeah, you look at how they frame these Hunter Biden stories.
	It's Republicans pounce on latest Hunter Biden activity.
	It's not that Hunter Biden did something wrong.
	And then when they talk about his guilty plea, it's like.
	It's all over here.
	Yeah, right.
	This, this, this hurts the Republican claim that there are two systems of justice.
	And like all of this has come out since the guilty plea.
	These whistleblowers have come out since the guilty plea.
	The WhatsApp message, all of this is happening because these whistleblowers are pissed off at what was done.
	They're telling us the truth about what led up to these guilty pleas and how inept they are, how insufficient they are, given the evidence the IRS had against him in the lane charged and in others.
	And you're exactly right because we talked about this a little bit yesterday, the press, Claire McCaskill on MSNBC, Nick Kristoff of the New York Times, all trying to push this into Hunter's drug problem.
	This is all about that doesn't, that's not an excuse.
	That doesn't excuse criminality in any lane.
	But here we go.
	We got more of it from Anna Navarro on the view.
	Listen to this person.
	The Hunter Biden story.
	The scandal, the this, the that, it's also the story of a father's love.
	And Joe Biden has never and will never give up on his son son Hunter and will never treat him lesser than.
	And so he is a father first.
	Take it or leave it.
	Yes.
	Yes.
	Serving on Ukrainian natural gas boards, smoking crack with prostitutes and throwing guns into school zones.
	There, but for the grace of God, go by.
	Are you kidding me?
	But then he's that he shows up at a state dinner, right?
	That's the thing.
	You can't simultaneously say that this son of mine is deeply troubled and has all kinds of things in his life that's regrettable.
	And, you know, unfortunately, that's his problem.
	And then have him show up in Beijing with you during the course of your vice presidency, show up on Ukrainian boards during the course of your vice presidency.
	And then when you become president, he's the bell of the ball at every state dinner.
	It's what Smug often talks about on the show, that this isn't about hypocrisy.
	We obviously know it's hypocrisy, but it's hierarchy.
	They're laughing in our faces.
	This is a guy who's being accused of influence peddling in foreign countries and taking money from China, taking money from this corrupt Ukrainian gas company and all this sort of stuff.
	And he's showing up at official events with foreign dignitaries in front of us.
	They're laughing at us.
	That's what she was actually commenting on.
	Anna Navarro was responding to the blowback against Biden for including Hunter Biden in the state dinner.
	Like they don't care.
	That just shows his love for his son.
	You can love your child and still recognize it would be inappropriate, given the circumstances, to bring him to something that is not your private party.
	It's not your private party, Joe Biden.
	It's our party.
	It's the United States.
	It's America.
	And Hunter Biden should not have been there.
	Yeah, she never talked about President Trump's relationship with Don Jr.
	I mean, if he had written a text to the Chinese, whoever, I mean, they would have been all over it.
	That would have been over.
	It's like Bill Clinton bringing Monica Lewinsky to family dinner.
	It's like, it's just badly absurd.
	And I have to get a new dress for that occasion, though.
	And the attempts to brush us off is like, oh, this is a story about addiction.
	Oh, this is a tragic story about addiction.
	I don't think everyone who gets addicted to smoking crack starts selling influence to the Chinese.
	That's not like part and parcel of like your third day smoking crack, you're getting wired $5 million.
	It's a very big crack story.
	And as you guys pointed out, it's also the question of not just Hunter, but Joe.
	You know, this is such a convenient way of deflecting from the questions about what Joe Biden's role was, whether he got that alleged $5 million payment outlined in that FBI informant document, the 1023, and what else he may or may not have gotten.
	Because it's one of two things, very clearly.
	It's one of two things.
	Either one, Hunter was unscrupulously parading his father's good name in front of foreign nationals to try to extort them out of money that God knows he couldn't earn unless they were trying to tap his expertise on Thai hookers or crack rock or Joe Biden knew he was parading his name around these people and was perhaps doing something about it.
	It's one of those two things.
	Well, it's a love story, Meg.
	It's a father's love.
	We all know that.
	Everyone should be so lucky as to have a father who happens to be vice president or president and opens the doors, greases the skids for millions of dollars to come from our enemies.
Trump Secret Iran Files 00:15:20
	All right, let's pause there.
	When we come back, let's talk about the Trump tape.
	We'll play it in full and discuss what it means.
	The guys from Ruthless stay with us for the show.
	Reklame, via play, film og serier, og to ekstra streamingtjenester som du velger helt selv.
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	På mobilen i teltet, nettbrett i bilen, eller med Chromecast på hotell-tven etter en stranddag på Granka.
	Or hello, OS.
	Oh, three months, null binning by streaming.
	Yesterday, when I came back from my two-week vacation, I gave the audience my take on this whole prosecution.
	In any prosecution, there is something called prosecutorial discretion.
	And even if you know you have the guy, you got to decide whether to actually bring the charges.
	Charging a former president of the United States would require a very serious exercise of that discretion on whether it's worth putting the country through the kind of tumult that would result in this kind of charge.
	I don't think this was the case for all sorts of reasons, not just the country's sake, but the president of Hillary, who also withheld documents, who also destroyed documents that were under federal subpoena, knowing that they were responsive, who, unlike Trump, actually does seem to have exposed our state secrets to our enemies via her homebrew server, which they believe at least the Chinese accessed, which is not the case with Trump.
	What we believe is that he kept them not entirely secure down in Mar-a-Lago.
	And people just worried after the fact on whether it would have been easy for somebody to access them, but there's absolutely no proof or actual reason to believe someone did.
	Okay, so I don't believe this is an appropriate prosecution.
	And I believe you have to consider it in the light of the five-plus-year campaign to ruin Trump and charge him criminally and put him behind bars in the first place.
	I mean, you go back and you look at, I just did this for kicks.
	You look at when Russia Gate was breaking, and people were talking about how he was a Russian agent, you know, and how he had a handler over in Russia when he was the sitting U.S. president being controlled by his Russian handlers and the number of calls for his prosecution.
	You know, and then even after the Mueller report came out, and Bill Barr was like, they didn't get him.
	People freaked out.
	No, he did get him.
	There needs to be a criminal prosecution.
	I mean, they've been wanting to put Trump in handcuffs from the start.
	And so now, finally, they went after him in a way they never did with other presidents.
	They never did with other people like Hillary who had classified information or national security information because it just fulfills their long-held desire.
	Okay, so that's my disclaimer, but that doesn't stop me from wanting to hear the validity of the actual legal case against him.
	And this recording that CNN got a copy of is terrible for Donald Trump's legal chances.
	That's my take.
	It's terrible.
	Trump went on Brett Baer last week and I believe mischaracterized it.
	But we're going to play it for the audience and get you guys to weigh in and let the audience decide for themselves.
	He should not have gone on Brett Baer and talked about the document.
	Before we saw the document, we only had a partial transcript of the tape.
	I said, we don't know whether Trump actually had the document.
	It could have been full of bluster.
	He could have been waving around the morning sports scores saying, look at this.
	I've got something that contradicts Mark Milley calling me a warmonger.
	I've got a document that proves he was the warmonger.
	He was submitting plans to me to attack Iran, not the other way around.
	Could have been absolutely nothing in his hand.
	Well, he kind of tried to go with that defense on Brett Baer, but the full audio tape, I think, puts the lie to what he said.
	Let's first play for the audience exactly what he tried to say to Brett in diminishing what it was he waved around some meeting involving Mark Meadows' book that Trump attended, a couple of members of the press attended, and some Trump aides attended that has now become such an issue for him.
	Ready?
	You were recording.
	This isn't a document.
	Okay.
	I had lots of paper.
	I had copies of newspaper articles.
	I had copies of magazines.
	When I said that I couldn't declassify it now, that's because I wasn't president.
	I never made any bones about that.
	When I'm not president, I can't declassify it.
	Brett, there was no document.
	That was a massive amount of papers and everything else talking about Iran and other things.
	And it may have been held up or may not, but that was not a document.
	I didn't have a document per se.
	There was nothing to declassify.
	These were newspaper stories, magazine stories, and articles.
	I just don't think I've ever seen a document from Millie.
	Very clear defense.
	It was not.
	I was basically saying I was bullshitting people.
	I didn't actually have it.
	You know, I had just newspapers.
	That's all I was waving around.
	Well, maybe this was bullshit.
	Like maybe what you're about to hear was him bullshitting.
	Let's let the audience decide.
	Here is the full two-minute tape of Trump with that alleged document.
	Bad, sick people.
	That was your coup, you know, against you.
	Well, it started right at the time.
	Like when Millie's talking about, oh, you were going to try to do a couple.
	They were trying to do that before you even were sworn in.
	That's right.
	Trying to overthrow your election.
	Well, with Millie, let me see that.
	I'll show you an example.
	He said that I wanted to attack Iran.
	Isn't it amazing?
	I have a big pile of papers.
	This thing just came up.
	Look.
	This was him.
	They presented me this.
	This is off the record, but they presented me this.
	This was him.
	This was the Defense Department and him.
	We looked at some.
	This was him.
	This wasn't done by me.
	This was him.
	All sorts of stuff.
	It's pages long.
	Wait a minute.
	Let's see.
	I just found, isn't that amazing?
	This totally wins my case, you know.
	Except it is like highly confidential.
	This is secret information.
	Look at this.
	You attack.
	Hillary would print that out all the time, you know.
	She sent it to Anthony Weiner.
	The pervert.
	By the way, isn't that incredible?
	I was just saying, because we were talking about it.
	And, you know, he said he wanted to attack Iran.
	And what?
	He said it.
	This was done by the military, given to me.
	Oh, God.
	I think we can probably get it.
	I don't know.
	We'll have to see.
	Yeah, I'll try to figure out a president.
	I could have deedless.
	No, I can't.
	But this is it.
	Isn't that interesting?
	Yeah, it's so cool.
	And you probably almost didn't believe me, but now you believe me.
	Yeah, I believe it's incredible, right?
	Yeah, bring some bring some coaxing, please.
	I mean, I was waving around a newspaper article is not going to cut it.
	He says this was done by the military and given to me.
	These are the papers.
	It's highly confidential.
	This is secret information in the newspaper.
	It's not going to work.
	They got him.
	They got him on this particular issue.
	He should not have given that interview to Brett Baer in that way.
	What do you guys think?
	Yeah.
	I mean, where do you start?
	The Coax was a nice touch, I guess.
	He was trying to provide refreshment for the assembled.
	No, look, I'm not a lawyer, but it strikes me that when you have audio of your client talking about the inadvisability of sharing the documents that he is sharing on audio, that's not a great start.
	The Brett Baer thing is a total mystery to me.
	And Brett did a great interview as he always does, but I can't imagine anybody being put in a situation where they have a federal indictment against them and they're just sort of like winging it on air.
	I mean, he's just don't talk about it.
	He's risking his freedom.
	Why is he doing that?
	It was absolutely foolhardy to speak.
	Even Trump should be able to say, obviously, I can't speak about that because these guys are trying to put me in jail.
	That would have been a totally acceptable answer that did not show any weakness.
	It would have shown a rational assessment of what the risks are to him in this prosecution.
	That was an insane thing to do, especially given that there does appear to be a specific document.
	Now, they haven't found the document.
	They haven't found the document.
	It wasn't found in those Mar-a-Lago boxes, but they never searched Bedminster.
	And if you read the indictment, it says Trump wound up taking a bunch of these documents to Bedminster, his golf club up in New Jersey.
	And they decided for whatever reason, maybe because of PR and so on, not to raid Bedminster.
	So honestly, that document could be sitting there right now.
	I have no idea, but it certainly sounds like Trump had it in his hand that day and understood, as he said, it was secret.
	It was highly confidential.
	It had not been declassified.
	That's not even the issue at this point.
	The classification, it's just whether it relates to national defense.
	And more importantly, specifically says in here that the military gave it to him.
	The military did it and give it to him and recognized that it would have been inappropriate to share unless it was declassified, which it wasn't.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	I mean, look, going back to the preface of your thoughts on this charge and the advisability of whether or not they should have prosecuted this at all.
	I have a little bit of different take than you, Megan.
	I think it's possible to be deeply concerned about two systems of justice here.
	I think it's possible to be deeply concerned about where these leaks are coming in the course of a prosecution of one political party versus another political party without defending what is a pretty serious underlying charge.
	And I think where do we disagree?
	Well, because I think whether or not you bring a charge against Trump, I think you have to, if you believe this to be true, and this audio suggests that it very well could be, I think the government has no choice to bring a charge.
	I think they should have brought a charge against Hillary Clinton as well.
	I think anybody who has got to be played in.
	But Holmes, they didn't bring the charge against Hillary Clinton.
	And I realize it's not Comey still at the FBI.
	It's a different attorney general, but that it doesn't matter.
	Like it's the offices priors that matter, not yours specifically as Merrick Garland.
	Yeah, no, but I think there are two separate tracks of what you've got to do here.
	I think almost every Republican presidential candidate has suggested that amongst the first things they do is rework the whole FBI, rework the entire Department of Justice to make sure that we actually have a justice system again and not one that benefits the political party.
	of one political party in particular.
	And then there's a separate issue of how you deal with crimes.
	I don't think that you can excuse criminal behavior for anyone because the other party got away with it.
	I think that the only answer is this.
	I'm not going to say that in the vacuum, that vacuum.
	And I look as a general principle floating around out there, I agree with you.
	But you can't disassociate that statement from what happened with Hillary, what's happening right now with Hunter that we spent the first half hour talking about.
	You just can't, you, you can ignore criminal behavior.
	They're doing it right now.
	Yep.
	Exactly.
	But if you do that, you perpetuate the end of this country itself.
	This is a country that is a democracy that relies exclusively on the trust of the American people.
	If half of this country believes that they are never going to get a fair shot simply because of their political affiliation, one of two things happens.
	Either they all become Democrats or the country erupts into civil war.
	You don't have a choice when you're operating in a place like America, but to try to figure out how to get back to what our founders intended as a government for the people and by the people.
	How do you start with?
	I get what you're saying.
	Totally get what you're saying.
	And look, I wrestle with this because I read that indictment and was shocked and horrified, if it's true, at the way Trump behaved in response to this subpoena in particular.
	But how do you start writing that ship with Donald Trump, the former president, the likely GOP nominee?
	That's not the one to start with.
	Maybe there was a way where they could have come out and done to him what they did to Hillary Clinton.
	The big look at all the terrible shit he did, but we're not going to charge because this office has a prior history with Hillary Clinton.
	It would divide the nation, but you have the right to know what we found, what he did.
	All right.
	Maybe that would excuse the Mar-a-Lago raid, but we stop short of criminally charging the former president of the United States.
	Go ahead, Duncan.
	I think the problem for Donald Trump, and I think it's sort of his Achilles heel when he steps on all these rakes all the time, is he makes himself intimately involved in all of these decisions, right?
	And he always has to take the bait here.
	This is a memoir for Mark Meadows, and he has to correct the record on Millie in this thing.
	Like he has to do it.
	He has to pull up the documents and correct the, he can never take a pitch and just be like, well, I can't do this.
	I can't try to correct the record.
	He fights for every inch.
	And that's what always gets him in trouble is it's him personally on tape saying the thing he shouldn't do and doing it.
	And that, unfortunately, is his problem and his legal liabilities, his ability to not just shut up.
	He can't.
	So I think I take it in the opposite tack of I think that's actually a strength for Trump in this instance.
	Clearly not.
	Here's why is because we know he's doing it because like you just said, it's all about him.
	It's a very, it's an egotistical move to be like, oh, shit, look, I've got classified documents on my desk.
	Why would the Biden family get involved in this is because of money.
	They're selling out this country.
Trump Lawyer Dirty Work 00:05:06
	Why did Hillary get involved in this?
	Same thing.
	She's power hungry trying to make money.
	The same reason that, you know, the Clinton Foundation essentially raided Haiti, according to many people.
	So I think that is something that needs to be considered, especially when there is a very evident two tiers of justice in this country.
	You cannot unilaterally disarm, especially not when they're trying to take down the opposing party's leading candidate.
	Like now is not the time to be like pontifating of, well, you know, I don't think the founding fathers would have liked this to happen.
	Sure, they wouldn't have, you know, but when they got pushed, what did they do?
	They fought back.
	So we can't allow only one party to control the justice systems, throw our hands up and say, well, we can't do that.
	That'd be too mean.
	They have no qualms about it.
	They have no qualms about exercising their power whatsoever to maintain this grip that they have on the country.
	All I'm saying is if Joe Biden was on tape saying, here are the documents showing that I did work with my son, Hunter Biden, and to set up these accounts and get this money from China.
	And that was on the way.
	He was indicted.
	What's different about this, Duncan?
	What's different about this, the reason why this, in my view, one of the many, should not have been charged, it's the exact same crime as Hillary's.
	It's the exact same.
	If Joe Biden, if they went after Joe Biden, if they actually investigated this stuff we talked about in Half Hour One and found that he did work with Hunter to cut a deal with the Chinese and influence peddled in a way that was inappropriate or traded favors to get that Ukrainian prosecutor fired so that his son could stay on the brewerism board while he was the sitting vice president.
	That's a huge, huge deal.
	That is a crime.
	It was something that would have gotten him impeached as the sitting vice president and so on.
	That's not this.
	This is a much lower situation.
	We're talking about document management.
	You know, Hillary had the homebrew server.
	She had the phone.
	She had all the stuff that she shouldn't have had.
	And then compounding her mistakes, to be charitable to use that word, she then blew off a federal subpoena, ignored it, and destroyed her phones and documents and responsive material.
	That's what Trump did.
	Now, take apart the issue that he could have declassified because the way this thing was charged, it really doesn't come down to classified information.
	They don't have to prove that.
	They're saying you held national security information that you had no right to.
	Trump keeps trying to deny that these were classified.
	He's fighting the old fight.
	He's fighting the fight he thought he had before he actually saw the indictment.
	He needs to update his defense.
	The charge against him has to do with him holding national security information that he wasn't entitled to hold that belongs to the United States, not to him.
	He doesn't get possession.
	He doesn't get ownership of the documents just because he was president.
	He continues to try to say that he did.
	He didn't.
	There's no question about that under the law.
	He didn't own the documents just because he was the president.
	Okay.
	So that's an important thing to remember.
	But it's the same thing.
	What he did and what she did.
	It's the same on each front.
	And they didn't charge her.
	Except for one component there, Megan, I think is right or wrong.
	And obviously, we think what Hillary Clinton did was wrong in creating this homebrew server and everything.
	She worked with her lawyers who worked with the Justice Department on the emails.
	Of course, when they deleted the 30,000 emails that said was about yoga appointments, I don't agree with that, but she worked through her lawyers.
	Donald Trump, if you read the, if it is to believe, the obstruction component of this indictment, which is a very specific talking indictment, which goes through the minute by minute and hour by hour in which Donald Trump told his lawyers one thing and then had this NADA guy doing another thing and then signed a piece of money.
	Duncan, what you're saying is I have reviewed all the documents.
	No, but what you're really saying is that he undermined his own argument.
	She had corrupt lawyers and he didn't.
	No, she had corrupt lawyers and he didn't.
	That doesn't make Trump more guilty.
	That doesn't mean that he's a good man, but he's innocent.
	What I'm saying is, is legal jeopardy aside, the fundamental mistake that he made is he got himself intimately involved in all of this stuff with the lawyer rather than just let the lawyers do lawyer things.
	Well, he tried.
	To the point you just made, he did try to get his lawyer to do the dirty work.
	And the lawyer's like, holy shit, he's trying to get me to break the law and made tape.
	He went back to his office and said, hello, dictaphone, keep a record.
	He's going to get me.
	And in the end, the lawyer saved his own skin, which most lawyers would.
	And that's why they were able to pierce the attorney-client privilege because the judge said that was Trump trying to commit a crime, and you can't cloak that in attorney-client privilege.
	But yeah, I mean, all this brings me back to: I believe, I believe, that this shows Trump did break the law, that he had a document he wasn't entitled to have, and that he should have turned it over in response to the subpoena.
	I'm not surprised by that.
	That's how this indictment sounded.
	Now, indictments usually fall apart to some extent before you go to court, but the federal indictments don't usually fall apart that much.
	But it still doesn't, it's almost a jury nullification issue.
	And it's like you can call it prosecutorial discretion.
	You can call it jury nullification, which I believe will be essentially Trump's defense at trial to try to nullify the jury with just ubiquitous press coverage saying like Hillary Hillary, and I didn't, and I had the right to do it all.
	But it doesn't make the charging decision anymore just or right.
DeSantis Trump Contrast 00:15:28
	If I had been Jack Smith and stumbled upon this tape, I would have let the public know.
	I would have wrapped this thing up saying I'm not going to charge it.
	I'm using my discretion not to charge it, but I'm going to tell you what I found.
	This is an electoral issue.
	Is Trump fit to hold the office?
	Is this a man you want to reentrust with the federal secrets?
	Same way we got to decide with Hillary, right?
	And the electorate is answering right now: we don't give a shit.
	That's what the Republicans are saying.
	And that's fine.
	They can say that, right?
	They can say that.
	But the Democrats and the DOJ are trying to take it out of the hands of the electorate and put this guy in jail where he will be unless he can find a jury that he can nullify, which is possible down in Florida, or he can get himself or another Republican elected who will pardon him.
	All right, let me pause it there.
	There's more to discuss.
	Love talking to you guys.
	But we're going to squeeze in a quick, quick break.
	Don't forget, while you're over at YouTube, checking out the Ruthless Guys, check out the Megan Kelly Show live.
	If you want to watch us live, you can listen to us on Sirius XM Triumph's channel.
	If you want to watch us, you go to youtube.com slash Megan Kelly, and you can check out the audio podcast as well wherever you get your podcasts for free.
	What does it say about the Republican Party that the next guy down is Ron DeSantis who is running the most openly fascist campaign I think I've ever seen.
	And I'm saying that having covered Donald Trump, their second choice is a guy who is worse than Trump.
	So it's a threat to what it means really to be an American.
	And I think we have to realize that and address it accordingly.
	Okay.
	I used to have Stuart Stevens on my show all the time when I was hosting the Kelly file.
	He was like a normal Republican.
	He was a former Bush guy.
	Now he fits in perfectly at MSNBC.
	You are back with the host of Ruthless, my guest today here on the Megan Kelly show.
	They are Josh Holmes, Comfortably Smug, Michael Duncan, and John Ashbrook.
	Find them now on youtube.com/slash ruthless podcast.
	And later today, I'll be excited to talk to you.
	It's been a while, so we're going to take calls.
	I'd love to hear from you guys.
	The number is 833-44M-E-G-Y-N-83-446-3496.
	All right, guys.
	So he's worse than Trump.
	They covered Trump, and they know DeSantis is worse than Trump.
	This is about being an American.
	And I guess if you vote for Ron DeSantis, you aren't one.
	Yeah.
	Well, if you vote Republican, you're not one.
	Yeah.
	Which is actually, you know, for Sue Stevens, something that he's been able to ensure as a Republican consultant for quite some time.
	Every Republican that he has advised or supported in the course of his tenure basically comes up on the short end of the stick.
	So remarkable consistency in that regard, I might add.
	He's been very dedicated for helping Republicans lose for a long time.
	It's a flawless record.
	And you know what is just fascinating to me is that if once they meet Tim Scott, as soon as he becomes the number three, the number two, the number one, he's even more fascist than Ron DeSantis.
	Yep.
	That's right.
	And a white supremacist.
	They'll label him that very soon.
	That's what they did to Larry Elder in California.
	It's not a joke.
	They'll do it.
	It's a terrible publication.
	Yeah.
	All right.
	So let's talk about the numbers, though.
	I'm just saying it because all along, you know, people, it's like Bill Maher said that people think DeSantis is Trump without the baggage.
	Sure.
	That's not how he will be if he becomes the nominee.
	They will make him worse than Trump, worse than Trump.
	You heard it right there.
	Don't kid yourselves, folks.
	They'll never let DeSantis get away with Trump without the baggage.
	The media will make him worse than Trump.
	He is worse than Trump when it comes to the polls.
	The polls, you know, you guys tell me because my impression is, I don't remember whether we've specifically discussed this or not, but my impression is you guys like DeSantis and would be happy if he were to become the GOP nominee.
	And yet the guy cannot get any traction.
	I mean, he just cannot get past the gorilla.
	He can't do it.
	No matter what poll it is, no matter where in the race it is.
	You know, there was a time several months ago before any indictments where it was like getting a little better for him.
	And then the indictment changed everything in the favor of Donald Trump, like the first indictment in New York.
	Never mind the latest one.
	I'll just give you some of the numbers and you tell me what you think.
	Real Real Clear Politics Average shows Trump ahead of DeSantis by an average of 31 points.
	Oh my God.
	31.
	Latest poll in the Real Clear Politics Average is from Emerson.
	Shows Trump above DeSantis by 38 points.
	In Iowa, where DeSantis has been putting all of his efforts, you know, I think he realistically thinks if he could win Iowa, he could get some momentum going.
	He could get some chatter about himself as opposed to Trump and the media.
	Trump spent absolutely nothing in Iowa.
	DeSantis has got the whole state covered in people and resources.
	Trump remains up 21 points over DeSantis in New Hampshire.
	Trump remains up 22 points over DeSantis.
	And then there was a recent poll that just was released, I think today.
	No, it was from Monday released from NBC showing Trump is up 29 points over DeSantis.
	That's nearly double Trump's lead in the same poll from just April.
	He's the more he gets indicted, the more his numbers go up.
	So how do you handle that if you're Ron DeSantis?
	I mean, look, DeSantis is still very much solidified in the number two spot.
	I mean, he's got a big gap between him and the rest of the field.
	I mean, typically what happens in the summer going into primary season is it's a pretty stagnant time other than sort of one or two moments or events.
	You have a campaign kickoff, an announcement.
	Typically, candidates get some kind of a bump out of that.
	And you saw like Chris Christie and Tim Scott and others go from zero to seven to eight.
	Nikki Haley kind of had the same thing following her announcement.
	DeSantis didn't, right?
	And we've covered the reasons why he didn't have a bump out of that.
	But I'm not surprised that he hasn't moved the numbers when all of the news is Donald Trump.
	And Trump has basically consolidated the protest vote at this point.
	He's got his base, which is probably 30, 33%.
	It's not going anywhere ever.
	And then you've got the rest of this sort of angst-ridden conservative electorate that sees him as a protest against the Biden administration, against two systems of justice, against all of the things that are concerning them about the way that America is running in the direction that we're going.
	What I would look at more specifically as we get into the fall, though, is the A, the debates, which I think is a big sort of moment of truth for everybody on stage to say, does this person have the capacity to be on this big stage and lead our country?
	And you put them both on the same playing field for the same time.
	That goes for all the candidates.
	And then second, when you get into the retail politics of Iowa itself and New Hampshire and South Carolina after that, you're making a more direct case of why not that guy and go with me.
	At this point, the contrasts have been sort of light.
	Other than Chris Christie, there's not a whole bunch of people that are taking the knives out at this point.
	It's more like an introductory tour.
	You try to raise your name ID, introduce yourself to people.
	That really is not conducive to big movement in the polls.
	What ultimately moves this stuff is when you can change people's mind about where they're at.
	Because let's be very clear.
	DeSantis needs to take 20% out of Trump's hide.
	And that's, it's not going to be consolidating the rest of the electorate.
	I thought maybe that was a path for him at one point in January or February of this year where he could consolidate a anti-Trump electorate, but that's not the path he's chosen.
	He's chosen to do the Trump light or Trump without the baggage, as you said, Megan.
	And that requires taking those votes right out of his column.
	And he's got his work cut out for him in Iowa.
	We had a top advisor for the Trump campaign on the show recently, and he was walking through everything that they're doing in Iowa.
	They've hired so many people and they're professionalized at a level that Trump wasn't in 2016.
	So they've built up a defense precisely against this DeSantis effort to try to pull it out at Trump's height in that state.
	And a couple of things.
	First off, I want to say I think I speak for all of us in that we like all the Republican candidates.
	Joe Biden's been an absolute disaster for this country.
	So we are not like picking and choosing who we want.
	All of them are fantastic when you compare them to Joe Biden.
	Secondly, I think there is right now such a long time until a single vote is cast in any primary.
	The Iowa Coxes are in March of 2024, right?
	Going back eight years, it's been that long.
	It was mid-June of 2015 when Donald Trump first announced, right?
	This time he announced way earlier.
	Essentially, we have a far stretched out primary season, right?
	And like Holmes said that you have very stagnant movement during the summer before any of the primaries happen.
	Like this is a long time out.
	At this point, Jeb Bush was ahead of Donald Trump.
	You never know what could happen, especially given the climate where Democrats are hell-bent on prosecuting Republicans running for office.
	So anything could essentially still happen.
	I would say that a great point that's been made is I'd advise DeSantis to make the contrast a little bit clearer of you can't offer people, I'm going to be kind of like Donald Trump because I mean, you know, why would you go for, you know, Dietko, we can get the real thing.
	Well, he has to make the argument on electability, right?
	Because you look at that NBC poll that you cited earlier, Megan, where he's up, you know, by a huge margin in the Republican primary.
	In the general, Donald Trump is losing to Biden by four points.
	And DeSantis is tied with Biden in that same poll.
	And so, you know, to the extent that we've been critical of Donald Trump on our show, I think it's you look at the crosstabs on polls like that and you look at his is fave unfave with the general electorate and he's negative 21, right?
	And so, like, what is Donald Trump going to do different in 2024 if he's the nominee that he didn't?
	He's going to get indicted two more times.
	Right.
	So, so, what are you going to do differently to change to change the outcome?
	And so, if you're a Ron DeSantis, you got to be sharpened than the knives on electability because you have to think that there's enough people in the Republican primary electorate who are angst-ridden, like you said, Holmes, who want to win, right?
	Because essentially, every primary voter has two levers in their hands: I want to fight her and I want to win her.
	How much do they want to fight her?
	And how much do they want somebody who's going to win?
	And how those things are calibrated impacts how you're ultimately going to vote in Iowa, which, like you said, Smug, is still months and months and months away.
	So, it's all hypothetical now.
	But when you get to why you said in March, you want to win.
	Can you explain March?
	I mean, back in my day, Iowa used to be January.
	And I just asked my team, is it like, when is it?
	And they were like, it's someplace between January and March.
	Why how do they not?
	So, the estimate is that's going to be in March this time.
	And in the previous cycle, it was in February.
	So, they keep pushing the date a little bit.
	And by announcing in November of last year, Trump extended the primary season just that much more.
	Yeah.
	That's so confusing.
	Okay.
	But that's good.
	I mean, more time, I think, is good for Ron DeSantis, right?
	He needs a runway to close that gap.
	And all the candidates.
	I mean, and all of them, right?
	I mean, the one thing that I mean, realistically, is there another candidate after Ron DeSantis?
	I mean, with respect, I like all those guys too.
	I mean, I could potentially vote for any one of those guys, like you guys, but realistically, I mean, there's no Christy Christie is not going in.
	No, not happy.
	I mean, again, I remember on that Bill Marsh show when they asked Ann Coulter who she thinks is going to win.
	And she said Donald Trump and everyone laughed at her.
	Yeah.
	I think it is like it is the wildest sport there ever is.
	You can never know who's going to win until voters hit those booths.
	I mean, I think, again, his victory over Halo is another perfect example of that.
	Strange things happen in those first few contests.
	I mean, just recall, Ted Cruz won the Iowa caucus, right?
	I mean, that's almost impossible to remember, but that did happen.
	But was there, I mean, I'm trying to remember whether there was an election because I remember the Jeb Bush lead, and then you know what happened.
	He sat down with me at Liberty University and he said some controversial things about Iraq and his poll numbers went off the cliff.
	Why do you have to do him like that, Megan?
	This is like a foreseeable question I was asking about Iraq, given that it was anyway.
	I like Jeb Bush, but that didn't go well for him and the things changed dramatically.
	Was there another election in which the frontrunner was up 38 points and then fell off the cliff?
	He was crushing Joe Biden.
	He won Iowa and New Hampshire, and then they cut some secret deal in South Carolina, but he was just Bernie Sanders.
	Well, Bernie was, but Pete, I guess Pete also stole it, but he won in Iowa and New Hampshire.
	Yeah, Joe had he was down 40 points.
	He wasn't up 40 points.
	No, but that contest was a lot more concentrated and squished in terms of the numbers.
	The Democratic primary last time around, you're talking about than this.
	I mean, I'm not making an argument for Trump.
	I'm just, I'm genuinely curious as an electoral watcher whether somebody's ever in the number two spot or worse, overcome that kind of deficit.
	I mean, this is a big one.
	And the consolidation for Trump, I think, is, you know, as a result of being a former president, more, much more significant than you typically get in an out-of-party, out-of-power party in a primary.
	So I mean, look, there's a bunch of things that he's got going for him for sure, but it is not out of the realm of possibilities that things happen on the way to a victory here.
	I mean, you look at somebody like Howard Dean in 2004 that had a pretty commanding lead.
	John Kerry wasn't even really registering at that point and got the Democratic nomination.
	There have been episodes over the years where you've had somebody that you didn't.
	I mean, look, Bill Clinton in 1992 was a, it was another one of those situations where it didn't look to me like he was putting much together and then all of a sudden went on to steamroll.
	I'm not saying that that's not fully going to happen in here, but I, it's definitely not over.
	Let's just put it that way.
	Well, I, it's, I mean, like the whole thing is seeming to me like it's playing out exactly the way the Democrats want.
	Am I wrong?
	They want I know that they'd love to see Trump in jail.
	They'd love that.
	But I mean, it's funny.
	They equally want him control to be the nominee because they think they can beat him.
Democrats Plan Trump Jail 00:07:48
	Yeah.
	Like those that's helpful for them.
	What did you say, Smog?
	I said it's helpful.
	They can guide the way things go when you control the Justice Department in the media.
	Yeah, that's pretty helpful.
	True.
	In higher education, higher education corporations.
	You guys are in this line of work for a living.
	Do you think this is playing out the way they want it and planned?
	I think it is.
	I mean, if you talk to them consultants, and I talked to a few of them here and there, just to stay honest on what's actually happening out there and whether I'm, you know, lying to myself about Republicans' chances, every single one of them say that they have a very hard time turning out their base with some sort of key motivating factor.
	And a couple cycles ago, it was Obama.
	Last cycle, it was Trump.
	And they think that there is no chance that they can turn out their electorate for old man Joe Biden unless they have something like Donald Trump on the other side.
	And honestly, that's why you hear these Democrat talking points from Stuart Stevens and MSNBC and all the rest saying that, oh, Ron DeSantis is worse than Donald Trump because that's their only hope is that they can sell to their base that this guy is something worse if somehow Ron DeSantis is able to overcome Trump in the primary.
	That's a good point.
	I'll add there's a new CNN poll that was just conducted in June saying only 33% of the American electorate in the poll has a favorable opinion of Donald Trump.
	Only 32% have a favorable opinion of Joe Biden.
	CNN noting that usually most Americans like at least one of the candidates running for president.
	They don't.
	They don't like these two, the frontrunner on the GOP side or the actual sitting president at all.
	So to your point, what would motivate Joe Biden's the Democrat electorate, never mind writ large, all of us, they can't stand him.
	So how do you get them to go vote for him?
	No, they can't.
	They know they can't.
	And they know that that's their Achilles here is that they have a candidate who's got one foot in the grave and they're already thinking about what sort of flower arrangements they want to spend.
	Yes.
	Oh, and by the way, the only person who makes Joe Biden and Donald Trump look popular is Kamala Harris.
	Her numbers are absolutely dreadful.
	I don't have them in front of me, but my God, she's the stat was she's the least liked vice president in American history.
	And may I remind you, we used to have Dick Cheney, who was not exactly beloved when he was in office.
	Her numbers are worse.
	Yeah, Megan, she's 17 points underwater.
	And that's an NBC poll.
	So that's not exactly a Republican pollster who's saying that she's the most she's the most unpopular ever.
	She is awful.
	And Democrats know that that makes their case even worse.
	Well, I mean, it also closes their options, right?
	I mean, they're looking, they know the same thing that we're looking at.
	You saw that MSNBC or the NBC poll where they had 68% of the electorate, including 43% of Democrats that say that Joe Biden's unfit.
	Not that they don't like him or he's not doing a good job, that he's like literally physically unfit for office.
	And you might ask yourself, like, how, how is that possible to overcome?
	Well, I mean, as you've mentioned on our show today, John Fetterman is a pretty good example of how Democrats consolidate around that.
	Right, right.
	I mean, they can vote as long as they don't have a baseline pulse, you can get to 51%.
	But it's also closed out their options in that they have to go with Joe Biden.
	And so to Ashbrook's point, I mean, there was a great piece in Axios the other day that said, what's the plan for 2024 for Joe Biden?
	Well, same as 2020.
	And they go on to outline how they're going to talk about all the base stuff that they did in the first year of this presidency, which only, only appeals to a base Democratic electorate.
	It is deeply unpopular with everybody else.
	So it's trying to keep them on board.
	And then you just hide them in the basement.
	You come out with no new proposals.
	They were contrasting that to like all these Republicans who are talking about different things that they would do to try to improve the country.
	And the Biden camp says, nope, we're not going to do any of that because we're not going to create news.
	We are banking on the other side nominating Donald Trump.
	And we can do the same thing in 24 that we did in 20, which is just say, I'm not him.
	I'm going to sit in my basement and I'm going to be hooked to a cardiograph for the next six months.
	And again, I think the Fetterman point is great because that was yet another instance of the only animating factor that Democrats could have is Donald Trump.
	They said, this is Donald Trump's guy.
	We're running against.
	Don't vote for Donald Trump's guy.
	So he is a huge motivator for Dems to get out.
	They used him in the midterms.
	Anyone who could be associated with Donald Trump ended up losing the general.
	Yeah, that's fact.
	Well, they clearly don't want fit on the Democratic side, which somebody should tell RFK Jr.
	Because he's all over Twitter in the last 24 hours.
	I'm sure you guys saw this because he put out a videotape of him shirtless.
	And he's 70 years old.
	Is he 69 or 70?
	He's 69 years old doing push-ups.
	Here he is.
	He wants you to know that this is the last 10 of the many, many sets of 10 that he was doing, which is why he ran out of gas in the last nine or 10.
	I'm not seeing a full extension there either.
	I feel like that's a short push-up.
	You got to, I mean, the man is built like a truck.
	Let's see it all the way up, huh?
	Well, we don't know how many sets of 10 he had done, but he put this out and he, the caption was getting in shape for my debates with President Biden.
	Of course, those are the debates that are never going to happen because the Dems won't allow it, even though 80% of the Democrats say it should happen, but the party leaders are in charge.
	He says, as president, I will restore America as the global example of health and well-being, not through pills or syringes, but through character and self-discipline.
	And I will continue to walk the walk and lead by example.
	The thread went on about physical fitness and how to turn it around for yourself.
	And then you got all these people on the internet.
	So funny.
	People have time on their hands that the guys from Ruthless do not have.
	Okay.
	They put together threads of shirtless RFK Jr. photos over the years to make the argument that today's RFK Jr. is clearly on steroids in their view, because you don't look better.
	Look, there he is with JFK Jr. and RFK Jr. together, that you don't look better with more muscles at 69 than you did when you were 39 or 49.
	What say you, my jurors?
	I don't know.
	I think Jack Lelaine would beg to differ.
	And apparently he's running for president right now.
	It's the perfect contrast to old man Joe Biden.
	And I mean, they must know it because they're putting him out left and right.
	I honestly can't wait to see what exercise is.
	This dude's going to march around the Iowa State Fair in a banana hammock before this thing's over.
	I mean, this is some of the most, this is like erotica.
	It's bordering on complete pornography.
	I'd say the dude's just a little bit of a dude.
	Dude is shredded.
	He was on incline putting up, I think it was 110, but he said it was like the last hit of the day.
	He said he was putting up 200, 200 plus earlier.
	He's got the 70 year old.
	He's got the bulk.
	Now he needs reps for toning.
	I mean, that's what he's doing.
	You know, I say I do not believe he would be so bold as to say, I'm going to be an example of health without syringes and pills.
	And then I don't, I know he, I don't, he doesn't strike me as that flagrantly dishonest a man.
	I know people have the wrong impression of him, but I don't think he would have said that if he were on steroids.
	Not that there's anything wrong.
	A lot of guys, when they get older, take testosterone, which I realize is like not exactly the same thing, but or is it, I don't know.
	I don't totally understand.
	Maybe they should, you know, if Democrats are trying to be transparent, maybe they should allow Joe Biden's doctors to do a full workup on RFK and allow RFK's doctors to do a full workup on Joe Biden.
RFK Jr Fitness Secrets 00:04:34
	100% great idea.
	Or just straight up meet him at Venice Beach, go to Gold's Gym and see who can run the Democrat Party.
	I'm Russell.
	All right, wait.
	So while we're talking about the fashion and the banana hammock, I got, I got, I got, go ahead.
	Did you want to say something, Holmes?
	No, I was just going to say, like, I'm sorry that we couldn't provide more insights on male supplements for you.
	It's unfortunately not part of our gig.
	We'll look into it for the next show.
	But, but I think you're going to like this next segment because you do have, I know you have thoughts on sexy man dress.
	Silence.
	They don't know what's the guy who's stealing luggage.
	No.
	I don't.
	Is this a Biden guy who's Sam Brinton?
	No, different kind of sexy man dress.
	Sexy man dressing.
	I'm afraid of what you are going to do here.
	I'm deep.
	Jared, you just watch and learn, sir.
	The Wall Street Journal wants you to know that if you think dressing sexily is only for women, you're wrong.
	No one talks about it, they write, but men sometimes want to look hot too.
	Here's how to turn heads without looking sleazy on date night.
	Could you be dressing sexier? asks the article.
	A guide for men.
	Okay.
	You may or may not understand.
	I mean, like, look at you.
	You clearly do understand.
	That's obvious to anyone.
	Okay.
	Oh, thank you.
	That's very, very kind of a good idea.
	Would you like to stand up and show us your well-fitting pants?
	Well-fitting pants are key to your outfit.
	Do you have well-fitting pants on?
	Yes.
	He's got no fitting pants on.
	It's what he's got.
	Do you have outfits with alluring textures?
	Think cashmere, suede, or even eyelid cotton.
	Do you have that on?
	Oh, that strikes me as a potential problem for many reasons.
	I don't know what kind of cotton that is, but it seems like maybe the thinner variety.
	I'm not sure that doesn't break several taste barriers.
	Well, I'll tell you what.
	Literally, you know, a nice cashmere shawl collar makes the girls go crazy on date night.
	I'm looking at three men in sweatshirts, hoodies, and there's Mug in his signature vest.
	It's like fleas vests.
	So, okay.
	But listen, I can help you.
	Okay.
	I can help you.
	The Wall Street Journal has done our work for us.
	Here's a couple of don'ts.
	All right.
	Polos so shrunken they suffocate your biceps.
	Not sexy.
	Got it?
	Saran wrap type jeans with a phone and a wallet bulging from the pockets.
	They say that's the most powerful contraception, contraceptive known to man.
	I don't know.
	Bulging wallet, that can be attractive.
	This whole thing with the word bulge is just not the direction I thought this was going to head.
	Okay, look, if you want it, maybe you want to go beginner sexy.
	All right.
	You guys might want to just try beginner sexy.
	Beginner sexy is buttonless polo.
	I had to look that up.
	There's like a little polo shirt you can get that looks like any polo shirt, but instead of having the buttons on the little collar, it has nothing.
	It's just like a little V with a tiny collar.
	So that's, you can wear these yellow pants.
	I look at those pants and that shirt and I think you're ready for the bingo haul.
	Okay.
	All right.
	So beginner sexy is out for Duncan.
	Intermediate sexy.
	Awesome.
	You had a walker and that looks like a Joe Biden outfit.
	How about intermediate sexy?
	Look at this, guys.
	Intermediate sexy is a tee with character.
	If you can find a fun item that resonates with you, you are on your way to intermediate sexy.
	Single button laser with sloped shoulders and dark jeans.
	Let's put it back on the board.
	What do we think?
	Dark jeans?
	That's nice.
	Could you do this?
	No, you only wear denim if you're gardening.
	What you're either a funny in certain circumstances.
	What I can tell you is if you're looking for a shirt with character, you can go to store.ruthless.com and you can figure out how to find one there.
	What's going on in this belt?
	What there's like a is there a bell on that belt?
	Is it a is it like a I don't know.
	It looks like a spike.
	I know that that might be a little aggressive right around the male region.
	Oh, that's I thought that was a keychain.
	No, that looks like the kind of thing.
	Remember in the 90s when they'd wear like the spike belts with the chain off and a wallet?
	Yeah, yeah, but you wouldn't rock those jeans.
	You'd have Jenkos, right?
	And those would be baggy.
	Yeah, but look at them, dude.
	They are.
	They look super baggy.
Mouse Shirt Outfit Review 00:05:47
	I mean, what I don't appreciate, and this is just a personal pet peeve.
	When it comes to the graphic tees, like have it mean something to you.
	What the hell is Motorcycle Club Inc?
	Who the hell are you?
	Yeah.
	I mean, you need a ruthless tee or a mega or a Megan tea.
	Or maybe like we're going to get some merch one of these days.
	Now, I'm not going to show you.
	If you put that one on, she might think, oh, he must drive a motorcycle.
	Now, I'm not going to show you the ultimate sexy yet.
	Okay.
	Just stand by because I have to tell you a story first.
	This time last year, I was here.
	I'm at the Jersey Shore.
	I do this show from the Jersey Shore over the summer.
	And I talked with the guys from Fifth Column about my husband's fashion.
	Air France had lost all five of our bags.
	I was lamenting the loss of so many clothing, complete items of clothing that we loved.
	But I said the only person who was happy was Doug because he literally only wears one t-shirt and he had it.
	And it was his Mickey Mouse shirt.
	Doug loves his Mickey Mouse shirt.
	I think we have the sound bike.
	Do we have the sound bike?
	Yes.
	I actually, while talking about this, pulled Doug into the studio and watch what happened.
	Oh my God, can you look at this?
	Look at him.
	Mickey Mouse t-shirt.
	Wow.
	Oh my God.
	It's very good.
	It's real.
	It's real.
	USA.
	I'm taking you shirt.
	He wears it all the time.
	I mean, if it has legs, it would get up and walk off of him.
	So we went to France.
	This year we took our vacation in France.
	And I posted a picture of Doug.
	There he is in the Mickey Mouse t-shirt again, which made its way.
	It's gone all over the world.
	But not Disney.
	And does he have multiple versions of this one shirt or is it literally just one shirt?
	No.
	He literally wears that one.
	He's got an RC Cola shirt that he wears as well.
	That's it.
	That likes what he likes.
	This is a dude, Megan.
	You got a great one here.
	This guy, he picked it out.
	He's sticking with it.
	Yeah.
	It's working.
	I mean, Hallie's married to Megan Kelly.
	It's got to be working somewhere.
	As long as he doesn't show up at Disney in the Disney shirt without your kids, because in that case, charges.
	So I've made fun of Doug's fashion for many, many years.
	All right.
	Like when I first met Doug back in 2006, it was a setup, right?
	It was a blind date.
	I show up.
	You're having your first date.
	Now, I wasn't well known at the time, but I was on Fox News.
	I was like a cub reporter.
	So, like, he kind of knew who I was.
	And I was just like, maybe you try a little, right?
	Like, you try a little.
	It's a sexy girl from Fox News.
	That's how I wanted to present myself anyway.
	He came to our blind date with high-waisted khaki pants with the flat front, high-waisted, and a yellow golf shirt, people.
	Yellow.
	I'm like, what?
	Like, what the fuck is this?
	You're like, man, if he's got the audacity to do that, he must be up to something.
	This guy sounds like confidence plus.
	And if he was working a pleat, then you really know it's over the top.
	Like, if you have a nice pleat.
	All I could think was that his prior girlfriend had sabotaged him so that he wouldn't be available or interesting to any other women.
	And I was just getting the remnants of that.
	And then, you know, Diamond in the Rough, Diamond, we could work together on it.
	So I've made fun of Doug and his fashion for years.
	And that is what takes me, folks, to Black Diamond Sexy.
	This is the top level, according to the journal.
	Oh, my goodness people.
	There it is.
	High-waisted pants and a yellow golf shirt.
	The man's ahead of his time.
	Ahead of his time.
	And he's with a beater in there, too.
	I mean, that, yeah, I didn't see that coming, but it's nice to know.
	Is that an Apple watch?
	What is that?
	I mean, I don't know about the mandals, but other than that, it seems like a good setup.
	But what's that?
	What was it?
	Was that a jewelry or something?
	Who knows?
	I don't know.
	Was it a ring, Kelly Maguire?
	So Doug.
	Oh, it's if it's a pink.
	Then we're really on to something.
	I mean, that outfit looks like you're ready to be an extra on the Sopranos.
	Pinky ring with mandals.
	He didn't wear that.
	This is the Jersey consultants.
	I can definitely see where this was happening.
	You're just missing a couple of gold chains there.
	And I think you've got the full deal.
	I called him over this morning, guys, when I was reading my packet and Kelly McGuire showed me these pictures.
	And I said, Doug, you've got to look at it.
	He goes, all along, he's like, you've been mocking me and I've been black diamond sexy.
	You just didn't understand.
	He's like, you're the saboteur.
	You're the saboteur, not the ex-girlfriend.
	I love this story.
	That's fantastic.
	I thought you'd appreciate that.
	So there you go.
	If you decide to, you know, take your ladies out for a nice special dinner, you should consider the mandals, the pinky ring, and the Doug Bruns high-waisted pants in yellow.
	You're welcome.
	Thank you for that advice.
	That's good.
	Thank you, gentlemen.
	Good.
	That could be your first or your next YouTube outfit.
	You could consider that now that you've gone visual.
	You've got something here.
	You've got something here.
	Fellas, I think we can do that.
	All the best, guys.
	Great to see you.
	Thank you, Megan.
	Thanks so much.
	Got a lot of great feedback on our hot crime summer, which was what we did the first week I was gone.
	A bunch of shows we'd been working on for you guys.
	Meg writes in saying, I am grateful for crime week.
Jennifer Turbulence Memo 00:02:58
	As crazy as it is in terms of murders, it's a reprieve from the vitriol of politics.
	I feel the same, Meg.
	I love crime podcasts and I listen to them all.
	So it's my pleasure to bring them to you MK style.
	Stephanie writes in, totally enjoyed your crime week.
	I'm not into crime stories on TV, but listening to them on radio captured my attention.
	Thank you.
	Jennifer writes in about turbulence in response to our discussion about the missing plane, MH370, and our pilot turned journalist who really made me and a lot of our audience feel better about turbulence.
	He said he'd gone up like into the eye of storms and hurricanes for a living for a long time.
	He said, if you could see firsthand, like he has, what planes can handle, the amount of turbulence and tumult, you would feel so much better about these minor bumps and whatever that we feel when we're up there.
	You'd never complain about turbulence.
	He's like, it's ridiculous to reroute planes because of turbulence.
	That's just like a comfort check and people need to get tougher.
	I felt so much better.
	And so did Jennifer.
	She writes in, I'm pretty terrified to fly and sit in my seat white-knuckled, asking, why isn't the captain saying anything about turbulence?
	Williams' answers about turbulence and why the pilot may not give reassurance was helpful.
	I have been told turbulence is like a pothole on the road, so I recite that over and over while praying at the same time.
	Some feedback on the HPV debate we had, whether or not to give that to your kids.
	Jennifer says, thanks so much for having that show.
	I have two daughters who to date have not been vaccinated for HPV, despite their pediatrician's advice.
	It's really tricky.
	And like you, I do not trust the CDC anymore.
	Last one here, preferred pronouns.
	You remember my talking points memo about a week before, that was about a month ago now.
	Renee writes in, this is why I'm no longer going to use preferred pronouns.
	She writes in, your opening monologue from June 2nd has stayed with me.
	And I just want to thank you for what you're doing to arm your listeners with strong and concise arguments so we can deploy and leverage them when needed in this insane time.
	That is a lovely compliment, Renee.
	I appreciate that.
	Ron also wrote in saying, I just watched your show on pronouns.
	You nailed it.
	This BS toward women must stop.
	It will only happen if everyone stands up and says no more.
	I'm so glad my daughter's a little older.
	I did not have to go through this crap.
	Unfortunately, we're all going through it, Ron, but I take your point.
	The younger, the worse.
	So yeah, go ahead and take a look.
	It's on our YouTube timeline, that memo, and it just sort of walks you through why I'm no longer going to do it and my own evolution on this issue as a journalist and a human.
	Tomorrow, we have another great show for you.
	Rick Grinnell will be here.
	Plus, we'll do Kelly's Court with some of our stars, Mark Garragos and Marcia Clark.
	Such a great panel, cover all the latest legal news, and there's quite a bit.
	So we'll see and talk to you then.
	Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show.
	No BS, no agenda, and no

Chapters

00:00:35 Hunter Biden Tape Leaks
00:02:39 Special Counsel Tax Crimes
00:18:05 Joe Hunter Collusion Exposed
00:27:17 Trump Secret Iran Files
00:42:38 Trump Lawyer Dirty Work
00:47:44 DeSantis Trump Contrast
01:03:12 Democrats Plan Trump Jail
01:11:01 RFK Jr Fitness Secrets
01:15:35 Mouse Shirt Outfit Review
01:21:23 Jennifer Turbulence Memo