The Megyn Kelly Show - 20230718_another-trump-arrest-coming-plus-rich-and-woke-pol
Aired: 2023-07-18
Duration: 01:36:42


=== Fake Electors and Obstruction Charges (14:34) ===

[00:00:00]  FICE presented super inkin trance program for all the rheumatoid.
[00:00:34]  So, welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
[00:00:57]  Hey, everyone, I'm Megan Kelly.
[00:00:58]  Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show.
[00:01:00]  Breaking news today as former President Donald Trump announces he has received a target letter from special counsel Jack Smith, and he expects to be arrested and indicted again in the coming days.
[00:01:16]  We do not yet know what the specific charges might be or when exactly they will be handed down, but Mr. Trump says they are in connection with the criminal investigation into the events leading up to the storming of the Capitol on January 6th.
[00:01:31]  This will be Trump's third indictment in just over three months.
[00:01:35]  It's never before happened in U.S. history, and now it's happening three times in just over three months.
[00:01:42]  Where the former president of the United States is being indicted, the leading candidate for the Republican nomination is being indicted, and there may yet be a fourth.
[00:01:50]  There is a Georgia grand jury that may be indicting him sometime, excuse me, before September.
[00:01:57]  Joining me now to discuss it: two attorneys who are steeped in the cases against Donald Trump.
[00:02:02]  Mike Davis is the founder and president of the Article III project, which defends constitutionalist judges and the rule of law.
[00:02:08]  Also, with us, Dave Ehrenberg, he's the state attorney for Palm Beach County, Florida, where Mar-a-Lago is based, and is somebody very used to bringing indictments.
[00:02:19]  Guys, thank you both so much for being here.
[00:02:22]  So, President Trump released a statement that reads in part: Wow, on Sunday night, while I was with my family, having just arrived from the turning point event in Florida, where I won the straw poll against everyone else by 85.7%, blah, blah, blah.
[00:02:35]  Um, I received uh horrifying news for our country by my attorneys.
[00:02:41]  Duranged Jack Smith, the prosecutor with Joe Biden's DOJ, sent a letter again.
[00:02:46]  It was Sunday night stating that I am a target of the Jan 6th grand jury investigation, giving a very short four days to report to the grand jury, which almost always means an arrest and an indictment.
[00:02:57]  So, let me start with you on that, Dave.
[00:02:58]  As a prosecutor, he's correct, is he not?
[00:03:01]  That getting this kind of a letter from the DOJ means he's about to get arrested and indicted.
[00:03:07]  Yes, Megan, good to be back with you.
[00:03:09]  He is correct.
[00:03:10]  He is going to be indicted.
[00:03:11]  It's just a question of when, and it's going to happen sooner than later.
[00:03:15]  He's being invited to testify before the grand jury, but no one believes he's actually going to do that.
[00:03:20]  In fact, prosecutors don't expect him to do that.
[00:03:22]  It's just a courtesy you give to a defendant who's a target who's going to be indicted.
[00:03:28]  And you hope that he comes and testifies because that's usually goes poorly for the future defendant.
[00:03:35]  But he's not going to show up there because he's not going to get immunity.
[00:03:39]  And they are just going to move ahead with this case, which I think is not as strong of a case as the document matter, but I think is more understandable to the public.
[00:03:50]  The public saw what happened on January 6th, so I think this will be something that's easier to sell to the public than the document case.
[00:03:58]  Mike, indicted on what?
[00:04:01]  We don't know.
[00:04:02]  You know, but like the Alvin Bragg case, we had an idea where that one was going.
[00:04:07]  The documents case, we had an idea, like a pretty good idea.
[00:04:10]  This one, I don't know what they're going to indict him on in connection with January 6th.
[00:04:15]  What do you think?
[00:04:16]  Well, it's very interesting, Megan.
[00:04:17]  We've been talking about this since August.
[00:04:19]  This is part of the Democrat lawfare campaign against President Trump.
[00:04:23]  They fear they can't beat him in November of 2024.
[00:04:26]  So they're simply going to indict him and try to get him to die in prison instead of facing Joe Biden or Gavin Newsom.
[00:04:33]  And so the theory I think that I've been seeing leaked improperly to the press is that they're going to charge Trump maybe with some sort of conspiracy to overturn the election, maybe file false electors or false paperwork to the election regarding the 2020 election certification.
[00:04:54]  The problem with this theory is you are allowed to object to presidential elections in America.
[00:05:02]  It's specifically permitted by the Electoral Count Act of 1887.
[00:05:07]  You're also allowed to twist arms politically in America.
[00:05:10]  That is allowed under the First Amendment.
[00:05:13]  If it were, it's only a crime to object to presidential elections in third world Marxist hellholes.
[00:05:20]  And if it's a crime to object to a presidential election, Democrats would be in prison for objecting to Republican wins in 1968, 2000, 2004, and 2016.
[00:05:31]  What Garland and Smith seem to be doing is trying to lump everyone together on January 6th, a protest, a lawful protest from the National Park Service that got out of control and turned into a riot and somehow put all that together into this legal soup and come up with this bogus legal theory that Jack Smith is, he's good at this.
[00:05:52]  He's good at coming up with bogus legal theories against Republican presidential contenders that later get overturned unanimously by the Supreme Court.
[00:06:01]  That's a specialty.
[00:06:02]  What a specialty.
[00:06:03]  Dave, I get, I understand as a lawyer, a possible charge of inciting a riot, which is one of the things that they've discussed.
[00:06:14]  I don't think that's going anywhere because Trump's speech that day specifically said, you know, be peaceful.
[00:06:20]  And it wasn't, it just, I think they're going to have a very difficult time getting past his First Amendment rights in trying to turn that speech into a crime.
[00:06:29]  So I don't think that's what's going to come.
[00:06:31]  If you read more left-leaning websites by lawyers who wanted to see this happen, this is what I've come up with in trying to understand what we might expect here.
[00:06:42]  That Trump wanted to use false electoral slates to obstruct the Congress's certification of the election.
[00:06:50]  So basically obstruction of Congress.
[00:06:53]  That is what Andy McCarthy has also predicted this will likely be about.
[00:06:57]  This is some months ago, not today, but that's what he was predicting, obstruction of Congress.
[00:07:03]  18 USC Section 1512 prohibits the obstruction of an official proceeding.
[00:07:08]  Could be that.
[00:07:10]  Also linked to it, that he wanted Mike Pence to block certification or to delay the count of the Electoral College.
[00:07:18]  And then that he wanted fraudulent electoral certificates and submitted the same to Congress.
[00:07:26]  He basically certifications.
[00:07:27]  He didn't want the actual vote that was coming in from the states to be certified because he said that it was fraudulent.
[00:07:33]  And his last resort was triggering an insurrection.
[00:07:36]  Of course, we've heard that from the Dems to delay the transfer of power.
[00:07:38]  What do you think of those possibilities?
[00:07:41]  Megan, I don't think he's going to be charged with insurrection.
[00:07:45]  And I don't think he's going to be charged with inciting a riot or inciting an insurrection.
[00:07:50]  I agree with you that the First Amendment is broad and it protects his speech.
[00:07:55]  I do think he's going to be charged with obstruction of an official proceeding and or obstruction of Congress.
[00:08:01]  And I think he'll be charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States.
[00:08:04]  These are crimes that many other rioters from January 6th have been charged with.
[00:08:09]  And you don't have to be there at the Capitol to be charged with those crimes.
[00:08:13]  There's also the possibility of wire fraud if he was involved with the fake elector scheme.
[00:08:18]  And there's the possibility of fraud when it comes to the fundraising that occurred.
[00:08:23]  He raised $250 million, supposedly for his legal defense fund, and it was sent other places.
[00:08:28]  So I think those are the potential charges.
[00:08:30]  Get back something that I want to differ with my friend Mike about the fake elector scheme.
[00:08:36]  You know, in a couple of the states where they had the fake electors, they actually had disclaimer language on the bottom that says, Forgive me, Dave, forgive me.
[00:08:43]  Let me just jump in.
[00:08:44]  Can you just explain for people who aren't following this that closely, what were the fake electors, the so-called fake electors?
[00:08:50]  Sure.
[00:08:50]  The states provide electors to the Congress to be counted.
[00:08:54]  That's what Mike Pence has to open and count.
[00:08:55]  And there are several states where individuals sent a false state of electors saying, We are the real electors and here are Arizona's electors.
[00:09:06]  And that was false.
[00:09:08]  That could be considered wire fraud.
[00:09:10]  That could be considered altering an official document as far as a state law.
[00:09:14]  So that's the crime.
[00:09:15]  Now, in a couple of the states, the people who signed on to these as electors said that we are alternate electors in case there's a dispute over the electors.
[00:09:28]  So in that case, that's not a crime.
[00:09:30]  In fact, Jack Smith will not prosecute in those states because that disclaimer language protects you.
[00:09:36]  But in the majority of the states that provided this language, they didn't.
[00:09:39]  They didn't say we're alternate electors.
[00:09:41]  They said, we are the real electors.
[00:09:43]  And that's a fraud.
[00:09:45]  And that's something you can't do.
[00:09:46]  And I think that's going to be prosecuted.
[00:09:49]  What do you make of that one, Mike?
[00:09:50]  The false electors claim, I confess, confuses me because, you know, I know this is related to the now infamous John Eastman memo, this lawyer who is advising Trump, and he's come under much scrutiny for this plan.
[00:10:03]  But the thought that instead of taking the real electors that were coming out of certain states, Trump worked with his legal team and others to create a false slate of electors.
[00:10:15]  I mean, it was all out in the open.
[00:10:17]  It wasn't secret because he said those states' votes were fraudulent and he wanted the vote to come down a different way.
[00:10:25]  Again, all out in the open, not in any way a secret, hoping that Mike Pence, then, as the guy whose real sole job was just to he was supposed to just count what was coming in, that he would reject the actual slate in favor of the quote fake slate.
[00:10:39]  So that, how, how is that?
[00:10:42]  How do you see all of that?
[00:10:43]  And then I'll go back to Dave on the rest of what he was going to discuss.
[00:10:46]  Go ahead.
[00:10:47]  I see this as a bogus legal theory to try to criminalize the political process.
[00:10:53]  And that's what Jack Smith has a track record of doing.
[00:10:57]  He did this with Virginia Governor Bob McDonald when Bob McDonnell was a likely Republican presidential contender in 2016.
[00:11:06]  Jack Smith came up with a bogus legal theory of corruption, got this guy, got Bob McDonald convicted.
[00:11:13]  It was overturned unanimously, eight to nothing by the Supreme Court.
[00:11:16]  It would have been nine to nothing, but justice Scalia died.
[00:11:19]  But Jack Smith did what he wanted to do, which is take out a Republican presidential candidate.
[00:11:25]  This guy is a partisan.
[00:11:26]  He's doing the same thing to Trump.
[00:11:28]  This is a bogus legal theory.
[00:11:30]  They are criminalizing conduct that is protected by the Electoral Account Act of 1887.
[00:11:36]  It's also protected by the First Amendment.
[00:11:39]  How is it?
[00:11:40]  How is the electors, the so-called fake electors, a fraud, Dave, when we knew that there was a slate of electors coming from these states?
[00:11:48]  And then we knew that in a couple of states, Donald Trump had an alternate slate, whether they specifically said that or not.
[00:11:54]  Nobody was fooled.
[00:11:55]  The elections were certified with the regular slates.
[00:11:58]  So, how is that even arguably a fraud?
[00:12:00]  Well, if you say that we're an alternate slate of electors, in case that the actual electors are not counted, that's not a fraud.
[00:12:08]  But if you say we're the real electors, that's a fraud.
[00:12:12]  And when Mike Pence is there to count, the whole plan was that Mike Pence would have these fake electors and say, you know what, we're going to send this back to the state or we're going to count the fake electors.
[00:12:22]  But this was part of the whole plan with John Eastman and Jeffrey Clark and all the folks on the inside to try to delay or obstruct the counting of the votes to send it back to the states when they didn't have any legitimate reason to do so.
[00:12:40]  There was no articulable fraud in the election to warrant the rejection of the actual electors.
[00:12:47]  Now, here's the thing: I think the reason why they can get Trump on obstruction of an official proceeding is because if he went along with the plan to send up fake electors or to send rioters to shut down the count, any of that stuff can get you obstruction of an official proceeding.
[00:13:07]  Just the plan, the planning of it gets you.
[00:13:10]  You don't have to be at the Capitol that day.
[00:13:11]  It's a broad statute that's been used successfully already, hundreds of times against the rioters.
[00:13:17]  So I think that's where they're going to get him.
[00:13:19]  It's not on seditious conspiracy, Megan.
[00:13:20]  That's another thing I want to differentiate.
[00:13:22]  Seditious conspiracy means you have to have an agreement between two or more people to use violence to shut down the count.
[00:13:30]  I don't think you can connect Trump directly to the violence.
[00:13:32]  So I don't think that's going to be charged, but you don't need violence to charge someone with obstruction of an official proceeding or a conspiracy to defraud the United States.
[00:13:41]  But how, how, okay, so putting the fake electors thing to the side, which I don't know, this seems like a stretch to me.
[00:13:48]  It was all open and notorious.
[00:13:49]  Nobody was trying to pull the wool over anybody's eyes.
[00:13:52]  And I mean, I guess now, Jack Smith, this is my understanding.
[00:13:54]  I confess I haven't done deep research on the fake electors and how that went down.
[00:13:58]  All I know is Mike Pence certified the election.
[00:14:00]  Joe Biden won, and we were off to the races.
[00:14:02]  And Trump had, you know, this legal theory that he was pushing that was that didn't go anywhere.
[00:14:07]  But, but on the interference, you know, like Trump encouraging rioters that day.
[00:14:14]  I just like every time we go back to what Trump did on the day of January 6th, Mike, I don't think they have him.
[00:14:20]  Like he's got to have something beyond that day, does he not?
[00:14:22]  Because Trump's speech at the Capitol, it was, if you look at like over and over, he was saying be peaceful.
[00:14:29]  He wasn't encouraging a riot.
[00:14:31]  He did sit in the White House and not say anything for a couple of hours.

=== Prosecution Risks Under the 14th Amendment (15:28) ===

[00:14:35]  That's not criminal.
[00:14:36]  That's a political matter that the voters will or will not care about come the next election.
[00:14:42]  Yeah, I mean, that this is political speech.
[00:14:44]  He had a permit from the National Park Service to show up to the Capitol on January 6th.
[00:14:50]  They gave a speech, which is routine.
[00:14:52]  It got out of control and turned into a riot.
[00:14:55]  There's no evidence that Trump encouraged that right.
[00:14:58]  And again, I think what Jack Smith is trying to do is lump everything together between what happened with that riot versus the planning for what happened on January 6th to have the protest, which is legal, and the legal effort to object under the Electoral Count Act of 1887 and the First Amendment.
[00:15:17]  And they're trying to combine all this together into this legal soup and come up with a novel and bogus legal theory to try to eliminate President Trump.
[00:15:25]  Again, if it's illegal to object to presidential elections, Democrats would be in jail for 68, 2000, 2004, and 2016.
[00:15:35]  Right.
[00:15:36]  Stacey Abrams would be behind bars right now with Hillary Clinton.
[00:15:41]  This seems to me like the Democrats' holy grail, Mike.
[00:15:46]  I mean, this is the one they really wanted.
[00:15:49]  They'll settle for the documents case.
[00:15:51]  They'll settle for Stormy Daniels and the payments not being properly recorded in Alvin Bragg's New York prosecution.
[00:15:58]  But this is the one they really want.
[00:16:02]  And it does make me wonder because Jack Smith, though he certainly seems like a political animal, and he's got to understand how absurd this seems to most of us who aren't political like hacks.
[00:16:15]  It's just how many indictments can you slap the former president of the United States with, especially you, Jack Smith, working for the man essentially who's his chief political rival, Joe Biden.
[00:16:26]  Yeah, I mean, I said Alvin Bragg's bogus indictment won the Republican nomination for Trump.
[00:16:33]  Jack Smith's presidential records indictment won Trump the general election.
[00:16:38]  This indictment is going to win Trump a blowout in the November 2024 election.
[00:16:42]  This is going to backfire spectacularly.
[00:16:45]  What I think the Democrats are trying to do is, I don't think they expected these indictments to help Trump in the polls.
[00:16:51]  And now what I think they're trying to do with this indictment by Jack Smith for January 6th is to try to tag him with like insurrection or seditious conspiracy so they can try to move under the 14th Amendment to have him where he can't run for the president, have a federal judge say that he can't be a presidential contender because of the he's disqualified under the 14th Amendment.
[00:17:13]  That will not fly at all with the American people.
[00:17:17]  But I fear that's the path the Democrats are heading down.
[00:17:21]  Wait, how does that work?
[00:17:23]  Because I mean, maybe impeachment, if he had been convicted, which he wasn't, then he would not have been permitted to run again.
[00:17:29]  But how can they use the 14th Amendment here on this particular prosecution to get to get him out of this race?
[00:17:35]  So under the 14th Amendment, after the Civil War, the 14th Amendment disqualifies candidates who are involved in an insurrection.
[00:17:44]  And I think that's the path.
[00:17:45]  If you read those, you know, like the Andrew Weissman types, if you read their memos, if you read their online chatter, it's the 14th Amendment theory.
[00:17:54]  They think they can disqualify Trump under the 14th Amendment, under the insurrection clause, so he can't even run in 2024.
[00:18:02]  Dave, you were shaking your head no when Mike was speaking.
[00:18:05]  Why?
[00:18:07]  With due respect to Mike, from a political standpoint, let me talk to you as a Democrat.
[00:18:11]  And I love coming on your show as a Democrat, Megan.
[00:18:14]  I can tell you, the candidate the Democrats want to run against is Donald Trump.
[00:18:19]  He is the most beatable.
[00:18:20]  The polls show it.
[00:18:21]  Joe Biden does better against Donald Trump than against anyone else in the Republican field.
[00:18:26]  And so I strongly disagree with the thought that's not true.
[00:18:31]  I mean, he's in the latest polls, Trump's beating Biden by two, and DeSantis is either tied or like a point or two behind Biden.
[00:18:38]  We may be looking at different polls then, but I'm looking on the real clear politics average, but go ahead.
[00:18:43]  All right.
[00:18:43]  Well, it depends on what they include in the average.
[00:18:47]  But look, the thinking is, I can tell you within the Democrats, is that although no Democrat wants Donald Trump to be president, they do think that he is the easiest to beat in a general election.
[00:18:59]  I think that these indictments are going to hurt Donald Trump when it comes to suburban moms in Atlanta.
[00:19:04]  I mean, the swing states.
[00:19:05]  Yes, it will help him in the Republican primary.
[00:19:08]  I think he's a lot to win the Republican primary.
[00:19:11]  But in a general election, I don't see how January 6th helps him when January 6th was there for everyone to see.
[00:19:18]  People were appalled by the conduct on that day.
[00:19:20]  And when Jack Smith comes out with his evidence, I anticipate it'll be a stronger than what we're discussing now because we don't know what he has access to.
[00:19:28]  And also, a federal judge has already come out and said that it's more likely than not that Donald Trump committed the crimes of obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the United States.
[00:19:38]  And one last point on that is that, you know, even if you can't show his direct intent that he knew the election was legit and he did this anyways, I don't think as a prosecutor, you need to show that, even though I think they may have that evidence.
[00:19:52]  They've interviewed a lot of people around him.
[00:19:53]  The fact is that if you think the election was stolen, there's a way to challenge it.
[00:19:58]  You go to the courts.
[00:20:00]  You can make objections in Congress.
[00:20:02]  That's the way to do it.
[00:20:03]  But that's not what happened here.
[00:20:05]  You can't do fake electors.
[00:20:06]  You can't rally the proud boys.
[00:20:08]  You know, you can't conspire with the people.
[00:20:10]  He did not rally the proud boys.
[00:20:12]  He did not rally the proud boys.
[00:20:13]  Stand back and stand by is not a rally.
[00:20:15]  Mike, what about that though?
[00:20:18]  Because Trump, if we're Mike is raising a good point.
[00:20:21]  Sorry, Dave is raising a good point, Mike, on fraud.
[00:20:24]  Because generally, you have to show that the person knew one thing and was saying a different thing.
[00:20:28]  And in this case, I do think that's a very high bar for Trump.
[00:20:30]  I mean, I think others from the outside may be looking at this saying, how could you possibly have believed you won?
[00:20:38]  Trump, I think, is, I think he was a true believer that he won and that he was screwed over.
[00:20:43]  Forget the stuff that we can all agree on, like the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop and all that.
[00:20:47]  I think Trump genuinely believed there were shenanigans at the voting boxes.
[00:20:51]  There were shenanigans possibly at the Dominion voting, you know, all of that.
[00:20:55]  But is he right that Trump's actual mental state would be irrelevant for these claims?
[00:21:02]  For, I mean, conspiracy to defraud requires fraud, which would require you to have, there has to be a disconnect between what you believe and what you're saying and doing.
[00:21:12]  Yeah, there has to be specific intent.
[00:21:14]  You have to know what you're saying is false and you're saying it anyway.
[00:21:18]  And then people detrimentally rely on that.
[00:21:20]  That's fraud.
[00:21:21]  And that's not what happened here.
[00:21:22]  Trump legitimately believes he won the election.
[00:21:25]  He legitimately believes it was stolen from him.
[00:21:28]  He still believes that.
[00:21:29]  He talks about it constantly, both privately and publicly.
[00:21:33]  And so it's going to be a very, very high bar.
[00:21:36]  And look, I ran Senate, I ran the nominations for the Senate Judiciary Committee, including for the Kavanaugh confirmation, where Democrats obstructed the proceedings throughout the entire time.
[00:21:49]  They weren't charged with obstruction of a congressional investigation.
[00:21:53]  They weren't charged with seditious conspiracy.
[00:21:55]  We just said that these were boneheads who got out of control.
[00:21:58]  And this is part of the political process.
[00:22:00]  We didn't try to put these people in prison for the rest of their lives.
[00:22:03]  And this is a novel legal theory.
[00:22:07]  This is obviously political and it is overreach by Jack Smith, the king of overreach, the king of getting overturned unanimously by the Supreme Court when he goes after Republican presidential candidates.
[00:22:20]  Just to, my team just sent this to me, Dave.
[00:22:23]  So the Real Clear Politics Average shows Biden up over Trump by 0.4, up over DeSantis by 1.4.
[00:22:34]  So that's the real clear politics of all polls.
[00:22:36]  It's all clustered right in there.
[00:22:38]  But I take your point that many Democrats do want to run against Trump and believe him to be the most beatable.
[00:22:46]  He's the best known.
[00:22:47]  He's the most controversial.
[00:22:49]  He's the most beloved within the Republican Party.
[00:22:51]  But when you take it out to a general electorate, could be a different story.
[00:22:55]  What's interesting to me is some of the political reaction we're getting right now, which is from his GOP rivals.
[00:23:02]  And for the first time, we're starting to see a little, you know, in the last two indictments, the GOP got indignant.
[00:23:08]  They knew that their voters were indignant.
[00:23:11]  And now you're starting to hear a little bit different of a message.
[00:23:16]  Here's Nikki Haley responding on the spot this morning after Trump's announcement of all this.
[00:23:21]  Three.
[00:23:23]  It's going to keep on going.
[00:23:25]  I mean, the rest of this primary election is going to be in reference to Trump.
[00:23:29]  It's going to be about lawsuits.
[00:23:31]  It's going to be about legal fees.
[00:23:32]  It's going to be about judges.
[00:23:34]  And it's just going to continue to be a further and further distraction.
[00:23:38]  And that's why I am running is because we need a new generational leader.
[00:23:43]  We can't keep dealing with this drama.
[00:23:45]  We can't keep dealing with the negativity.
[00:23:49]  So is there a risk there, Dave, that the GOP accepts that message?
[00:23:55]  Somebody else ascends to the top of the polls right now, despite Trump's 30-point lead in the GOP field.
[00:24:01]  And the Democrats, you know, should get disappointed because Trump effectively is too mired in legal morasses to actually run.
[00:24:12]  Yeah, the Democrats would fear running against Nikki Haley, much more so than running against Donald Trump.
[00:24:19]  And I think that Donald Trump is still a lock because if this were a one-on-one race with Nikki Haley or with Ron DeSantis, he could be in trouble.
[00:24:27]  But this is not.
[00:24:28]  It's like 12-on-one.
[00:24:29]  This is 2016 all over again.
[00:24:31]  And I don't see a path to victory when the anti-Trump vote is going to be split a number of ways.
[00:24:36]  I'm going to be interested to see how Mike Pence reacts to this.
[00:24:39]  Will he start putting more daylight between him and Donald Trump?
[00:24:43]  Will Ron DeSantis do that?
[00:24:45]  So far, DeSantis has been reluctant to attack the frontrunner.
[00:24:48]  And if you can't attack the frontrunner on stuff like this, then you're not going to overtake the frontrunner.
[00:24:54]  And not even just stuff like this, but in general.
[00:24:56]  I mean, it's true that DeSantis, you know, not attacking Trump has not been working for him.
[00:25:01]  His approach thus far has not been working for him.
[00:25:03]  So he's starting to try new things.
[00:25:05]  And that includes, Mike, a little bit of a different messaging on today's news.
[00:25:10]  He, like all of us, just learned about it this morning.
[00:25:12]  So it was a little bit, you know, okay, just reacting to the breaking news.
[00:25:17]  But listen to his message, which the first part of it is being used against him by the diehard Trump fans, but listen to the whole message.
[00:25:24]  Here it is.
[00:25:36]  That's a different issue entirely.
[00:25:38]  And I think that we want to be in a situation where you don't have one side just constantly trying to put the other side in jail.
[00:25:47]  Again, I have, I just, someone had whispered this to me, so I'm sure I'll have a chance to look at this in the future, depending on the developments.
[00:25:56]  So, Mike, there's just even that first bit, you know, you're just starting to see a little bit of percolation from these GOP rivals.
[00:26:03]  Like, you know what?
[00:26:05]  He should have done more.
[00:26:06]  And Nikki Haley, you know, it's too much drama.
[00:26:10]  He's full of draw, like just bit by bit.
[00:26:12]  I say, okay, that's fine.
[00:26:13]  They should fight.
[00:26:14]  They want the job he wants.
[00:26:15]  But he's 30 points ahead.
[00:26:18]  I mean, consistently in poll after poll after poll.
[00:26:22]  And if you go down to the state level, it's almost as bad.
[00:26:26]  Yeah, I mean, I would say about Ron DeSantis, I think he's been America's best governor.
[00:26:30]  He's been one of the most underwhelming Republican presidential candidates I've ever seen.
[00:26:35]  And so maybe he should just stick to being the governor until 2028 and get out of this race so he doesn't embarrass himself any more than he's already done.
[00:26:44]  I think what the Democrats and a lot of DC Republicans have done with this law fare against Trump is they are, they've done the impossible.
[00:26:52]  They have made Donald Trump sympathetic.
[00:26:54]  And if you talk to real Americans in real America, like my friends and family back in Iowa, they resent this.
[00:27:01]  They resent the fact that the elite think that they get to decide the presidential election instead of the American people.
[00:27:07]  And that's why this is backfiring.
[00:27:09]  This is why President Trump's poll numbers are skyrocketing and will continue to skyrocket.
[00:27:15]  The other thing I want to ask you about before we wrap it up is there's news in a couple of the other cases.
[00:27:23]  So in particular, in the documents case that's pending in South Florida, where you are, Dave.
[00:27:28]  They are now both sides now are going in for a procedural hearing today at two, and they want to push the trial date past the summer, which of course, that's definitely going to happen.
[00:27:39]  Trump wants to put it into a point past the 2024 election.
[00:27:44]  The prosecution wants it to be mid-December.
[00:27:49]  Now, the closer we get to the actual election of November 2024, the less likely any judge, never mind the Trump appointed judge who's right now overseeing things like discovery and dates, is going to want to actually schedule this thing.
[00:28:02]  You know, they're going to be very reluctant to put this.
[00:28:05]  Oh, let's put it in October of 2024, right?
[00:28:07]  So Trump's team's trying to get it after November 2024, and the prosecution wants it well before November 2024, like this December.
[00:28:16]  What do you think the judge down there is likely to do?
[00:28:18]  Because this is actually a very important, this is very important.
[00:28:21]  I mean, if Trump can postpone this Mar-a-Lago documents thing till after the election, he could win and pardon himself potentially.
[00:28:29]  He could just have a, any Republican could win and pardon him.
[00:28:34]  Now, if he loses or if Joe Biden gets re-elected, all bets are off.
[00:28:38]  That's not great for him, but at least he's got another lifeline available to him if he could postpone this thing.
[00:28:43]  So what do you think is likely to happen?
[00:28:45]  Right.
[00:28:45]  Although, Megan, it's unclear whether a president can pardon himself.
[00:28:49]  He can clearly order his Department of Justice to drop it all.
[00:28:51]  And that's what would happen if this doesn't get tried.
[00:28:54]  I think today, Judge Cannon is going to deny Trump's request to have an indefinite postponement.
[00:28:59]  That's a bridge too far.
[00:29:01]  The Speedy Trial Act doesn't allow you just to say indefinite postponement.
[00:29:05]  You got to come up with a specific date.
[00:29:06]  It's got to be in consultation with not just the defense, but prosecutors.
[00:29:10]  But I think that a December trial is also a bit expedited.
[00:29:15]  I think that'll be too fast.
[00:29:16]  So I think this will get set perhaps in December, but eventually it will get pushed back little by little by little.
[00:29:22]  And I've used this analogy.
[00:29:24]  You know, for Judge Cannon to make a ruling that is best for Donald Trump, she doesn't have to hammer the Department of Justice with an indefinite postponement.
[00:29:35]  She just has to keep postponing it little by little and it'll be a death by a thousand paper cuts because it is in Trump's interest to postpone this as long as possible because I do think this is the strongest case.
[00:29:45]  I think this is a stronger case based on the evidence than the January 6th case that is yet to come.
[00:29:51]  I think you're right about that.
[00:29:53]  I agree with everything you just said.
[00:29:54]  And let's face it, anybody who's ever tried a case knows that that's how it normally goes.
[00:29:58]  You get a delay, you get another delay, you get another delay.
[00:30:01]  You don't just get like the one big sweeping delay of two years.

=== Delaying Justice Until After Election (03:01) ===

[00:30:03]  It's like just like you say, death by a thousand paper cuts, which would be good for Trump.
[00:30:07]  Also news that there's a possibility that the political reporting as follows, all signs point to Trump's trial being held at the federal courthouse in Fort Pierce, a city of fewer than 50,000 residents on the east coast of Florida.
[00:30:20]  Judge Cannon does not appear to have explicitly declared that yet, but holding the trial there could minimize disruption at the other main federal courthouse in South Florida.
[00:30:28]  It also would likely mean a jury drawn from five relatively pro-Trump counties.
[00:30:33]  That's all good for Trump.
[00:30:35]  The case, I agree with you, Dave, that the case in Florida is strong on the papers, you know, forget the politics of it against Donald Trump, but the jury pool is much better for him down there.
[00:30:46]  But Mike, in New York, that Alvin Bragg case is supposed to go to trial in March.
[00:30:50]  I think that one too will get delayed.
[00:30:52]  I think it could potentially, it probably will get delayed past the election.
[00:30:55]  Maybe I'm wrong.
[00:30:57]  But that's a very bad jury pool for Trump.
[00:30:59]  And Mike, if he gets indicted on Jan 6th, that's a DC jury, which is a nightmare for any Republican, never mind Donald Trump.
[00:31:09]  Yeah, I mean, this is lawfare.
[00:31:11]  They know that they're going to try to hang him with a criminal conviction somewhere.
[00:31:16]  They're trying to hedge their bets by having it in New York and D.C.
[00:31:21]  And they have to have it in Florida because that's where they found the documents.
[00:31:24]  So again, this is lawfare.
[00:31:26]  This is lawfare by the Democrats.
[00:31:28]  This is Lawfare by Merrick Garland, Jack Smith, Matthew Colangelo, who joined Alvin Bragg's office up in New York from the Biden Justice Department.
[00:31:38]  He was the acting number three and then the number two to the number three.
[00:31:42]  This is, you know, why can't the Democrats just let the American people decide the next presidential election?
[00:31:49]  Why are they trying to eliminate a leading presidential candidate with novel, I would say, bogus legal theories that have never been tried before, particularly against a former president of the United States who happens to be the leading presidential contender against their boss?
[00:32:06]  We already had a whole impeachment hearing on Trump's behavior around January 6th.
[00:32:11]  We had, he wasn't convicted.
[00:32:13]  We had a whole January 6th series of hearings on prime time television.
[00:32:19]  They've done their level best to make sure every American knows exactly what happened that day, what Trump did and what he didn't do.
[00:32:26]  Now it's in the hands of the American people.
[00:32:28]  But apparently that's not good enough.
[00:32:29]  And they want to put it in the hands of a jury.
[00:32:31]  If this goes into a DC jury's hands, Trump's screwed.
[00:32:35]  I mean, honestly, there's no, I just, what DC jury on anything would acquit Donald Trump?
[00:32:42]  This is getting uncomfortable.
[00:32:44]  It's getting, it's making me feel uncomfortable as a citizen, the way that Jack Smith is behaving, the way this DOJ is behaving.
[00:32:50]  But Dave, I also love having you on the show as a Democrat, honest attorney with your honest analysis.
[00:32:56]  Mike, you're on the other side of it and always appreciate your whip smart analysis.
[00:33:00]  You guys are awesome.
[00:33:01]  Thanks for coming on.
[00:33:02]  Thank you.
[00:33:03]  Thank you.

=== Lawfare Against Donald Trump (02:50) ===

[00:33:04]  When we come back, Chris Rufo is here to talk about what is happening in the DEI world.
[00:33:11]  There have reported reports that it's all but collapsing.
[00:33:14]  This is the guy who helped expose it in the first place.
[00:33:17]  We'll ask him whether that's true.
[00:33:22]  Joining me now, Chris Ruffo.
[00:33:23]  Chris has been one of the leaders pushing back against the left's desire to shame children for their race and push radical trans ideology in schools.
[00:33:32]  He is now a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and contributing editor for the great City Journal.
[00:33:39]  Love City Journal.
[00:33:40]  If you're not reading City Journal, you are missing out.
[00:33:43]  Trust me.
[00:33:44]  And now he is the author of the new book just out today, America's Cultural Revolution: How the Left, How the Radical Left Conquered Everything.
[00:33:53]  It's currently the number one bestseller on Amazon.
[00:33:55]  Chris, welcome back to the show.
[00:33:57]  Great to have you.
[00:33:59]  So, where are we?
[00:34:00]  You've been on the show many times over the past two plus years we've been on, going on three years now.
[00:34:05]  And where are we in terms of the DEI fight?
[00:34:09]  Because a couple months ago, we saw a forum in which Robin D'Angelo and others like her were lamenting that the appetite for their books and their programs has fallen off a cliff, that their message and their message just wasn't resonating the way it used to.
[00:34:26]  Today, our friends over at Morning Wire, which is the Daily Wire's morning news podcast, it's the answer to NPR.
[00:34:33]  I love it.
[00:34:34]  We're talking about how places like BlackRock and Larry Fink won't say anymore ESG, which is kind of like the corporate DEI.
[00:34:44]  They won't talk about investing in those terms.
[00:34:46]  It's been very alienating.
[00:34:48]  Doesn't mean they're not doing it anymore, but they've at least been shamed out of owning it and touting it in the way they were right after George Floyd.
[00:34:55]  So give us an overview as to how your/slash our fight is going.
[00:35:03]  Well, it's an important fight.
[00:35:04]  And actually, the roots are much deeper than anyone really knows.
[00:35:08]  And what I've tried to detail in the book is the genealogy of the DEI business.
[00:35:12]  It started in the 1970s as neo-Marxist intellectuals around The country had failed to achieve their political objectives in the riots of the 1960s, the student protests in the early 1970s.
[00:35:27]  And they wanted to find another way of burrowing into the institutions, including corporations, and then bringing their ideology into those institutions under the guise of racial sensitivity training, which then morphed into diversity and inclusion training and finally reached its full form in the summer of 2020 as DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion.
[00:35:46]  When these programs were ubiquitous, it was every company, school, church, government agency teaching the catechism of critical race theory.

=== Systemic Racism in Institutions (02:51) ===

[00:35:55]  America is systemically racist.
[00:35:57]  White people are inherently privileged and oppressive, and minorities need to be treated unequally as a group, awarded special advantages by the government in order to equalize group outcomes.
[00:36:08]  But as you've described, the energy has shifted dramatically.
[00:36:13]  As the ascendant movement of the DEI, CRT ideologies seemed to be overtaking the whole country.
[00:36:22]  Now, people, now that it's been exposed through my reporting, through guests on your show, through a whole host of other investigations, people are saying, hey, wait a minute.
[00:36:33]  I don't want DEI if what DEI means in practice is racial scapegoating, abolishing the First Amendment protections of free speech, and then subverting all of the basic American principles such as freedom and equality and equal treatment as individuals.
[00:36:51]  And so we have this moment right now where if conservatives and moderates and classical liberals can come together and really make a push for true colorblind equality, I think we have a huge opportunity.
[00:37:04]  Robin DiAngelo, Ibram Kendi, Black Lives Matter have been totally discredited.
[00:37:09]  And now we have to actually make these policy changes.
[00:37:12]  And so what I've done with Governor DeSantis in Florida, with legislators in Texas is actually help pass legislation to abolish the DEI departments in all of those states' public university systems.
[00:37:22]  We need to take that model and take it everywhere.
[00:37:26]  You know, the Supreme Court ruling two weeks ago on free speech, I think was an important victory in this whole battle, where we had the web designer who didn't want to do gay wedding websites.
[00:37:39]  She would do services for gay people, but just not the wedding websites that the Supreme Court held.
[00:37:44]  Her free speech rights and her right not to be compelled into speech she doesn't support outweigh the laws that are supposedly about equality for various groups.
[00:37:59]  They were basically saying you cannot force somebody to support a cause like gay marriage if their legitimately held belief doesn't allow that.
[00:38:07]  If they don't want to support it, you can't make them say that they support it.
[00:38:09]  You can't make them design websites supporting it and so on.
[00:38:12]  I really think it's got a direct parallel in the work that you're doing.
[00:38:16]  I mean, how many cases have you seen where kids are forced in the classroom to participate in these racialized discussions that they don't want to participate in?
[00:38:26]  And if they try to sit back and just keep their heads down and And like stay out of it, the teacher says, You must speak up.
[00:38:35]  We need to hear from you.
[00:38:37]  And what she means is, we need to hear you affirm our messaging about the differences in races and how one is oppressed and one's the oppressor and so on.

=== Balancing Education Laws and Free Speech (14:39) ===

[00:38:47]  Yeah, and this is really the key to understanding how all of these things work.
[00:38:51]  I think a lot of people the past few years have looked around and said, What happened?
[00:38:55]  How did all of our institutions suddenly become gripped by this ideology and really deranged away from their original mission to provide education, to provide essential services, to provide a product for sale in the marketplace, and then toward the total kind of ideological conditioning of society according to these basic tenets, whether it's a race theory, gender theory, et cetera?
[00:39:20]  And you have to understand that this is part of a long, decades-long process where the left came up with a strategy, as I explained in the book, in the early 1970s to go on a long march to the institutions and then take their ideology anti-democratically in an extra-parliamentary manner and force it on people through HR programs,
[00:39:42]  through K through 12 curricula, through university faculty hiring, and et cetera, because they know that when voters are asked, do you believe in the principles of CRT, DEI, trans ideology?
[00:39:56]  They wholeheartedly and in a strong majority reject them.
[00:39:59]  So, what they've done is they've hijacked all of the transmission belts within the systems of power within the institutions where they can force it on you because they know that their ideology can never win consent of the public, the consent of the government.
[00:40:13]  So, what they've done is a very sneaky, very subversive, and really, frankly, very anti-democratic method for forcing you to repeat the words, for forcing you to use the pronouns, for forcing your kids to line up according to their racial privilege.
[00:40:27]  I mean, so the fight against this from conservatives, you know, the left says conservatives are anti-democratic, they're fascist, they're authoritarians.
[00:40:36]  The opposite is true.
[00:40:38]  We need to revitalize the democratic structures to restrain our institutions, our public institutions, in the best interests of the citizens themselves, consonant with the values of the people who pay for these institutions, who are the fundamental stakeholders in these institutions.
[00:40:57]  And so, the solution to this anti-democratic measure is not to try to fight them on their own terms, but actually to go over their heads and to say, we need to restore democratic governance of our institutions.
[00:41:11]  And if the ideology is opposed by 70 or 80% of the people, it shouldn't be in the K through 12 classroom.
[00:41:18]  That's not how public institutions work.
[00:41:20]  That's not how our republic works.
[00:41:22]  So, how do we do that?
[00:41:24]  And I know you were the one who convinced Donald Trump to write an executive order getting rid of CRT in our federal agencies, which, of course, then Biden changed.
[00:41:34]  But you've been working with Ron DeSantis in Florida to try to de-wokeify Florida and its institutions.
[00:41:40]  That's been very successful.
[00:41:42]  But how do we do that?
[00:41:43]  Because I think of things like the teachers' union, and I feel overwhelmed.
[00:41:48]  They've completely captured the Democrat Party.
[00:41:51]  They do whatever the teachers' union wants.
[00:41:53]  And what they both want is to indoctrinate our children in both of the lanes that you just referred to.
[00:42:01]  Yeah, well, there's actually really good news.
[00:42:04]  And the final chapter, the conclusion in my book, talks about how conservatives can combat America's cultural revolution with their own counterrevolution.
[00:42:13]  And it requires some big thinking, it requires big confidence and courage, and it requires moving pieces of legislation through state legislatures and hopefully one day, if power shifts, through the Congress and to the president's desk for signature.
[00:42:28]  In Florida, for example, we've been making tremendous progress that can serve as a prototype or a model for other states.
[00:42:36]  You know, legislators banned critical race theory in K through 12.
[00:42:40]  Legislators banned gender surgeries for minors and banned gender ideology in the K through 12 school system.
[00:42:46]  Legislators recently banned the DEI system, have reformed faculty hiring in public universities.
[00:42:53]  The governor appointed me to actually be part of this new board majority to take over one of Florida's public universities, transform it into an institute of classical liberal education.
[00:43:03]  And then finally, and I think really in some ways, most importantly, the legislators have instituted a universal school choice program so that any family in the state of Florida that is anxious or nervous or in opposition to what's being taught in the public school system can take those taxpayer dollars and take them to any institution of their choice, private school, religious school, homeschool, anywhere that they want to go.
[00:43:28]  But can I ask you some of those things have been struck down by the courts, Chris.
[00:43:32]  Some of those things have been struck down by the courts.
[00:43:34]  And the problem is, you know, and I'm all for eliminating these agendas from public and private schools for that matter, but you got to do it within the balance of the law because we can't have an authoritarian government on the right that tries to tell everybody what they can and cannot say any more than we want it on the left telling us what we can and cannot say.
[00:43:55]  So, I mean, there's some nuance there, though.
[00:43:58]  So, I mean, look, speak to the legal losses.
[00:44:01]  Speak to the legal losses because I understand what you're pushing.
[00:44:04]  There's been one minor legal setback.
[00:44:07]  There's been really no losing in courts.
[00:44:09]  There's one specific aspect of one of the bills where the district courts have ruled against the state of Florida.
[00:44:16]  But I think I'm confident, and I talk with the legal team, that will prevail.
[00:44:20]  But that's very specific.
[00:44:22]  Chris, there's been multiple losses, and I'm on your side.
[00:44:25]  Okay.
[00:44:25]  I like the agenda, but I want this to come forward in a way that can be sustained legally.
[00:44:30]  That the Stop Woke Act was ruled against, and that was upheld, I believe, by the 11th Circuit, the preliminary injunction against the act.
[00:44:37]  So was the act banning the medicalization of for minors in schools or for minors in the medical community.
[00:44:45]  There's been a multiple sort of attack by Ron DeSantis, which I like, but it's losing in the courts.
[00:44:52]  For sure.
[00:44:53]  But you have a, what I think is going to be a minor setback applied to a very specific part of the Stop Woke Act, specifically in higher education.
[00:45:01]  That's where the case is probably weakest for the state of Florida.
[00:45:05]  But the attorneys feel confident that they can win it on appeal.
[00:45:08]  They'll eventually prevail.
[00:45:09]  And I think that it's important to make this distinction.
[00:45:12]  In K through 12, you know, public school teachers are agents of the government.
[00:45:19]  They have compulsory power over kids.
[00:45:21]  And as you know, from the Supreme Court precedent on Sabios versus Garcetti, their speech is not protected by the First Amendment when they're in the classroom.
[00:45:30]  So we have an absolute authority as citizens to say to public school teachers with compulsory power over our kids, you can't promote this, you can't promote that, you have to promote this, you have to promote that.
[00:45:44]  We set the curriculum, we set the standards, and we set reasonable restrictions.
[00:45:48]  Those are none of that will be overturned in the courts.
[00:45:52]  There is a slightly different way.
[00:45:53]  And I think that's why, let me jump in, please.
[00:45:55]  I think that's why the other lien that DeSantis has been legislating at, like the stopping this discussion of inappropriate sexual matters, of gender ideology.
[00:46:07]  First you said K through third grade.
[00:46:09]  Now it's been expanded to high school, but not beyond.
[00:46:13]  That's fine.
[00:46:14]  That hasn't been struck down because of exactly what you're saying, right?
[00:46:18]  It's like free speech rights have always been recognized as somewhat limited in the grade schools and the lower schools, especially if it can be, unless it can be deemed obstructive or somehow obstructive of instruction.
[00:46:34]  So in any event, I think that one's working and I understand why it's working.
[00:46:37]  I just, I'm looking for something that we can be, that we can repeat, you know, in state after state that's going to withstand constitutional scrutiny.
[00:46:46]  And I think that the strongest argument, and look, I'll be straightforward about it.
[00:46:50]  What I've actually proposed, the model legislation that I worked on with Manhattan Institute was for higher education.
[00:46:56]  There's a slightly perhaps, although the jurisprudence on this is still up in the air, there's perhaps more latitude for public university professors in their classroom speech.
[00:47:06]  I personally think that that's probably better in legislation in other states to carve out an exemption, to say, hey, look, if you're a university professor, you should have more latitude in the classroom.
[00:47:17]  These are adults.
[00:47:19]  This is an environment that should have more openness of inquiry than, for example, in a kindergarten class.
[00:47:25]  So I would actually recommend, and I think that protecting against lawsuits, it would be very successful, providing an exemption, but really hammering down on the speech of university administrators, not faculty, but actual administrative employees, DEI bureaucrats and others, because there is no question that those fall very much under the Sabayo versus Garcetti precedent.
[00:47:48]  Those are not academics.
[00:47:50]  Those are not professors.
[00:47:51]  They're not engaged in the inquiry process.
[00:47:53]  They're engaged in administering the university.
[00:47:56]  They're bureaucrats and they're subject to really complete oversight to the public that pays their salaries, that charters their institutions.
[00:48:05]  And so if they wanted to be more careful and cautious, I understand why the DeSantis team and the legislators in Florida said, hey, we're going to push the precedent.
[00:48:12]  We're going to see how far we can get.
[00:48:14]  If we don't get there, we'll go back and we'll amend the legislation.
[00:48:17]  I think that is, you know, in some ways, actually quite useful to test the boundaries.
[00:48:22]  But if conservative legislators wanted to be very certain, what they would do is they'd say, hey, look, we can do K through 12, no problem, regulating the curriculum in K through 12, that's untouchable.
[00:48:34]  And in public university bureaucracy, we have, again, we can regulate it, we can reform it, we can restrict it in the best interest of the people with the very low risk of legal challenge.
[00:48:45]  So in the minimalist case, let me say goodbye.
[00:48:49]  In the maximalist case, we'll find out.
[00:48:52]  Okay, got it, got it.
[00:48:54]  Chris Cruze, he stays with us for another block and we'll be right back.
[00:49:02]  This is relevant on so many levels, Chris.
[00:49:04]  Virtually every story we do somehow touches on this problem.
[00:49:08]  And today, the story I want to ask you about involves our former president.
[00:49:12]  So Barack Obama felt the need to weigh in on the alleged book bans that the left is talking about.
[00:49:19]  And this happened in my own child's class.
[00:49:22]  He goes to a non-woke school by design.
[00:49:24]  We selected it for that reason.
[00:49:26]  But there was this one woke teacher who sneaked in and was there for a while.
[00:49:32]  And he said to my son's class, oh, the right is banning books in schools across America, LGBTQ books.
[00:49:38]  And it's terrifying.
[00:49:40]  And of course, we set our son straight, but this is in a non-woke school.
[00:49:43]  I mean, imagine what the messaging is to kids.
[00:49:46]  And my son was in seventh grade last year in the regular schools.
[00:49:50]  And now Barack Obama weighs in.
[00:49:52]  He writes a public letter to America's librarians, the hardworking librarians of America, and says it's about book bans, quote unquote.
[00:50:03]  They're not banned.
[00:50:04]  They're kicked out of elementary school young education centers, but you can get them, sadly, at the public library.
[00:50:11]  You can get them on Amazon.
[00:50:12]  If you want to show your kid another, a little boy giving a blowjob to a man, sure, you can find that.
[00:50:19]  Go ahead and find that.
[00:50:21]  You could find it in Gender Queer if you want to go to any library.
[00:50:24]  And that's the book that apparently Barack Obama really wants in our young children's classrooms.
[00:50:30]  Here's what he writes: Today, some of the books that shaped my life.
[00:50:33]  Really?
[00:50:34]  Were you a big fan of gender queer when you were growing up?
[00:50:37]  And the lives of so many others are being challenged by people who disagree with certain ideas or perspectives.
[00:50:42]  It's no coincidence that these banned books are often written by or feature people of color, Indigenous people, and members of the LGBTQ community.
[00:50:52]  What a lie.
[00:50:53]  Look at, he's got to, right?
[00:50:54]  We're all racists and transphobes if we don't want books about little boy blowjobs in our children's elementary schools.
[00:51:03]  This is so dishonest.
[00:51:06]  He goes on to link to something involving an organization, Unite Against Book Bans, and that's an organization spearheaded by the American Library Association.
[00:51:18]  Now, Barack Obama in his letter speaks to these sweet, dear old librarians.
[00:51:23]  I'm sure they have absolutely no political agenda.
[00:51:26]  Here's what he says to them: Librarians, you're on the front lines fighting every day to make the wildest public, the widest public, sorry, my eyes, you're on the front lines fighting every day to make the widest possible range of viewpoints, opinions, and ideas available to everyone.
[00:51:42]  Your dedication and professional expertise allow us to freely read and consider information and ideas and decide for ourselves which ones we agree with.
[00:51:53]  Hold on one second here, Chris, because a week ago was, I think it was last Friday or two Fridays ago, I had on Kirk Cameron.
[00:52:00]  Kirk Cameron has a book about core values and faith that he would like America school children to read.
[00:52:08]  It's fine.
[00:52:08]  That's well within the possible realm of books you could see in a school library.
[00:52:13]  And he's having real trouble promoting it, including at public libraries.
[00:52:19]  So he and his publisher organized a, it's a like National Read Day, read aloud day at libraries.
[00:52:24]  I think it's August 5th.
[00:52:25]  You don't have to read his book.
[00:52:26]  They're just encouraging you to go there and have any sort of a reading circle with a book about core American values and family values and possibly religious values.
[00:52:36]  And he, a whistleblower, somebody released to him, or he said it was actually out in the open.
[00:52:42]  They just didn't realize, I guess it was being taped, the director of the American Library Association talking about how to sabotage that book event so he couldn't, he and his publisher and those supporting them could not even get into the public libraries to have this alternative offering.
[00:52:59]  Listen to the soundbite.
[00:53:02]  We're seeing groups that seek it seek to censor LGBTQA materials or disparage or silence LGBTQA library users exploit the open nature of a public library to advance their agendas.
[00:53:18]  For example, right now, Brave Books and Kirk Cameron are conducting a campaign to take over libraries on August 5th.

=== Bud Light Endorses Controversial Figures (07:14) ===

[00:53:26]  The First Amendment does not require the library to even offer meeting room spaces.
[00:53:31]  So this in regard to the Kirk Cameron thing, you are not obligated to offer public meeting room spaces or invite the public in to use the library.
[00:53:40]  You can have a make a priority for library sponsored programs.
[00:53:43]  And what if your library decided to offer a whole host of programs in its meeting room on August 5th, making it unavailable for the public?
[00:53:51]  That's another option for you.
[00:53:57]  Great.
[00:53:58]  This is what we're up against.
[00:54:01]  Yeah, that's absolutely right.
[00:54:02]  And the American Library Association, but like so many other professional organizations and societies, have been absolutely hijacked by left-wing activists and ideologues.
[00:54:11]  And you can say right there, she's saying that we're so open, we're so tolerant, but then scheming to subvert the intention of the First Amendment, which requires libraries to offer a viewpoint-neutral meeting spaces and other facilities.
[00:54:25]  Doesn't have to have the library's endorsement, but it has to provide it in equal access.
[00:54:29]  And so, this is how they do it.
[00:54:32]  It's all underhanded, it's all done with an intention to manipulate and conceal.
[00:54:37]  And it's really ridiculous on its face to say that it is somehow illegitimate for parents and public school administrators and public school boards who are elected in a democratic process are not allowed to restrict pornography in a kindergarten classroom flies in the face not just of common sense,
[00:55:00]  also makes you wonder why they are so intent on putting pornography to the kindergarten classrooms full of other people's kids, but also flies in the real true meaning of the First Amendment, which was designed to protect substantive speech and debate about public issues, not to protect the publicly funded activists from jamming pseudoscience and race scapegoating into your child's curriculum.
[00:55:27]  And so it's so false, it's so phony.
[00:55:30]  And what I found to be the best method of fighting back against this narrative is to be very specific, to show the books, to show the pages, to show the illustrations, and make them not defend this rosy abstraction, but make them defend the specific content that is being pushed on kids.
[00:55:48]  All of a sudden, you get people, even like former president Barack Obama, would be very uncomfortable if you showed him the pornographic material, the material of racial scapegoating, and pin him and say, Do you want your kids learning this?
[00:56:03]  Do you want other kids to learn this?
[00:56:05]  Why are you forcing this on families that disagree?
[00:56:08]  That's always a really fun strategy, and I find it quite delightful to watch them squirm.
[00:56:13]  It's absolutely disgusting.
[00:56:15]  I mean, I'm just looking at GenderQueer right here, which is the book that, quote, gets banned.
[00:56:20]  It's not a ban.
[00:56:21]  It's a removal from an inappropriate spot for young children.
[00:56:24]  And it's absolutely filthy.
[00:56:27]  It's filthy.
[00:56:28]  It's got erotic scenes of men having sex, illustrations of minors performing oral sex, a drawing of a man masturbating a young boy's penis, a man masturbating a young boy's penis, shots of blood all over thighs from a period, and like graphic descriptions of all.
[00:56:50]  This is disgusting.
[00:56:51]  And it's why Gays Against Groomers, we just had them on the other day, they put out a statement in response to Barack Obama's saying, These books are not LGBTQ.
[00:57:01]  They are pornographic filth being pushed on children using our community as a shield and a scapegoat to do so.
[00:57:09]  Shameful that you have come out in support of them, but we're not surprised.
[00:57:13]  It's just absolutely alarming that somebody like the president of the United States former would feel the need to defend this.
[00:57:20]  And I don't know that he didn't do his homework or what.
[00:57:22]  Either way, it's inexcusable.
[00:57:24]  Then you've got the disappointment of Charles Barkley.
[00:57:28]  Charles Barkley is like the one person in America who doesn't seem like a hard lefty who is defending Bud Light.
[00:57:36]  I don't know what came over him.
[00:57:38]  Maybe he hasn't done his research on why everyone is so mad at Bud Light.
[00:57:43]  He thinks you'll see in this clip it has to do with we don't support trans people.
[00:57:48]  That's not it, Charles.
[00:57:50]  That's not it.
[00:57:51]  Dylan Mulvaney, in particular, is extremely controversial and has been very offensive to women, the stereotypes that he perpetuates about us as bimbos acting and dressing as a little girl, showing his underwear, showing up in women's spaces, running around with tampons that he makes a mockery of, that actually do prevent a lot of us from having embarrassing moments, something Dylan wouldn't know anything about, to what Dylan and the partnership represented,
[00:58:21]  which was Bud Light endorsing a very controversial trans person at the very moment they are transing children with absolutely harmful medical procedures, shoving this ideology on our children in schools, something you've documented at length.
[00:58:35]  He doesn't get it, but here's what he said: I'm going to buy some drinks for y'all.
[00:58:43]  And I'm going to buy Bud Light.
[00:58:47]  Hey, and let me tell you something.
[00:58:50]  All you rednecks or assholes who don't want to break Bud Light, fuck y'all.
[00:58:56]  I ain't worried about getting canceled.
[00:58:58]  Because let me tell you something: if y'all fire me and give me all that money, I'm going to be playing golf every fucking day.
[00:59:04]  If you're gay, God bless you.
[00:59:07]  If you're trans, God bless you.
[00:59:10]  And if you have a problem with them, fuck you.
[00:59:14]  Do your homework, Charles.
[00:59:16]  Put a little effort into educating yourself before you make dumbass statements like that.
[00:59:21]  Go ahead, Chris.
[00:59:22]  Yeah, I mean, it's just absurd.
[00:59:25]  It's a ridiculous statement.
[00:59:27]  It's a ridiculous position to hold.
[00:59:29]  And, you know, Charles Barkley should also clean up his language, quite foul language on his part.
[00:59:35]  I can't criticize it.
[00:59:36]  Look, I mean, here's the idea.
[00:59:38]  I mean, they're trying to enforce an orthodoxy that you have to celebrate everyone who is suffering from gender dysphoria and then identifies in this heroic posture as a member of the opposite sex.
[00:59:52]  And I think that the opposition to this is not just that it's a mockery of women or against notions of real womanhood, but it's actually a mockery of basic reality that we all share.
[01:00:04]  And so the position that is strongest against this is to say, I'm sorry, Dylan Mulvaney is a man.
[01:00:12]  He will always be a man.
[01:00:13]  He always was a man.
[01:00:15]  This is a farce.
[01:00:16]  This is something that is not a well-ordered part of the soul that is going to extreme lengths in order to present as something that he is not.
[01:00:27]  You should respect his dignity as an individual human being, as we do everyone, but we should not indulge his fantasies, delusions, and as you mentioned, dressing up as a little girl, his obvious perversions.

=== Disney Dwarfs as Oppressed Category (06:41) ===

[01:00:41]  Let's call it what it is.
[01:00:43]  And this is not the civil rights issue of our time.
[01:00:46]  Dylan Mulvaney is not the new Rosa Parks.
[01:00:48]  Let's get over ourselves.
[01:00:49]  Let's live in reality of sex, of creation, of man and woman.
[01:00:55]  Let's also live in the reality of our time.
[01:00:57]  We have equal protection under the law.
[01:00:58]  We've had it for generations in this country, now dating back more than 50, 60 years.
[01:01:05]  And let's all move forward as individuals, not indulge these fantasies or be bullied into somehow celebrating them by people as ignorant on this issue as Charles Barkley.
[01:01:16]  That's exactly right.
[01:01:17]  So Disney is one of the biggest problems in the wokeification of America.
[01:01:21]  It's a complete betrayal by a company that a lot of parents for decades trusted implicitly.
[01:01:28]  They've decided to go another way.
[01:01:30]  And the latest example is the DEI forces have descended on the seven dwarfs around Snow White in Disney's latest offering.
[01:01:43]  Now there's only one dwarf and like a bunch of DEI boxes checked behind the one dwarf because they don't want to offend little people.
[01:01:53]  So they had to eliminate their jobs.
[01:01:56]  And Snow White herself is not white.
[01:01:59]  So everybody's been racialized to check every box they can, except for all the dwarf boxes because they're offensive.
[01:02:07]  I guess you can only have the one dwarf.
[01:02:09]  That's not offensive, but the six more would have been.
[01:02:13]  What do you make of it?
[01:02:14]  Because when this picture first emerged, Disney tried to tell the Daily Mail it was fake.
[01:02:19]  And now they've been forced to admit it's 100% real.
[01:02:23]  It's just not an official photo.
[01:02:25]  So they lied.
[01:02:26]  They lied and said it was fake.
[01:02:27]  Like we weren't going to find out when we saw the movie that they got rid of six out of the seven dwarfs.
[01:02:33]  Yeah.
[01:02:34]  And, you know, I kind of stared at that image and I actually thought it was fake at first because I said, no, they didn't.
[01:02:39]  This isn't real.
[01:02:40]  And then I really studied it and I started to untangle it.
[01:02:43]  And I think it's a perfect symbol of how intersectionality, the idea that you can categorize and slice and dice people according to all of their characteristics of race, height, sex, body shape, sexuality, and others, and then create a new hierarchy and apportion these things.
[01:03:00]  It's like the logic of it is so internally incoherent.
[01:03:04]  It's almost impossible to explain the logic of the image.
[01:03:08]  It's like, wait, no, but dwarfs are an oppressed category.
[01:03:12]  So you're removing the dwarfs and redistributing them towards taller people who are higher on the hierarchy.
[01:03:18]  But then you have some kind of gender hair, you know, kind of gender people.
[01:03:22]  You have, you know, a composition of racial minority.
[01:03:27]  It's like, what is the formula?
[01:03:29]  You know, the formula keeps changing.
[01:03:30]  It's impossible to make sense of.
[01:03:32]  And then what it does, it's like it's distracting from the story.
[01:03:36]  And if you look at a lot of these stories, they're actually rooted in many cases in specific folklore of specific traditions of ethnicities, of ethnic heritage.
[01:03:47]  And so it's like, tell the story as it is to be told as to not be distracting.
[01:03:51]  Some stories, it doesn't really matter.
[01:03:53]  You can have people interchangeable based on races and perhaps sexuality.
[01:03:58]  But for some stories, I think it really foregrounds the politics in a way that detracts from the narrative and the aesthetic sense of those stories.
[01:04:06]  And so this one is just like a farce.
[01:04:09]  It's like a spoof almost.
[01:04:10]  And I find it, you know, to the point where it's like, come on, guys, really?
[01:04:15]  This is where we're going, you know, with these movies.
[01:04:18]  They're spending tons of money on this, but it's Disney, so they can't resist.
[01:04:21]  They have to kowtow to the loudest activists.
[01:04:24]  And look, I feel bad for all the, you know, all the small statured actors out there who are hoping for their shot at seven dwarfs.
[01:04:32]  They got six of them removed.
[01:04:34]  You know.
[01:04:35]  Well, that's the thing.
[01:04:36]  So Peter Dinklage, probably the most famous little person in the world, had come out and called this a backwards, a effing backwards story last year.
[01:04:47]  And that's when Disney announced that they were going to replace the dwarfs.
[01:04:52]  So great job, Peter.
[01:04:54]  You made all your money.
[01:04:55]  You became the most famous dwarf in America.
[01:04:58]  And then you ruined the acting roles that were available for six other dwarfs who just want to work as paid actors like you did.
[01:05:05]  And now Disney announced that these are magical creatures.
[01:05:10]  They're magical creatures.
[01:05:11]  You see, that's more sensitive than dwarf.
[01:05:14]  They'll be a mix of genders, ethnicities, and of course, heights because they felt that, quote, the story needed refreshing, including getting rid of, I guess, the offensive white skin of Snow White, who is traditionally a fair German princess with, quote, skin as white as snow.
[01:05:35]  But you see, even that is offensive.
[01:05:38]  It's fine to say that the white skin is offensive.
[01:05:41]  No one can take offense at that statement.
[01:05:45]  Replacing a white woman in one of this classic roles that's supposed to be a white person with a person of color, no problem.
[01:05:52]  But if you even have a white person voice the part of an ethnic cartoon, you will be canceled.
[01:06:02]  I mean, you know, I'll tell you what, I'm Disney, I'm at the point where I say acceleration.
[01:06:07]  Let's let them go all the way.
[01:06:09]  Let's let them reach new heights of absurdity so people can really see what's driving the company ideologically and then they can make better decisions.
[01:06:18]  And if their stock price, if some of their recent mass layoffs, if some of the recent comments from the CEO admitting that he shouldn't have waded into this fight with Governor DeSantis, if those are any evidence, they're taking a hit from all these decisions.
[01:06:33]  And so if they want to have, you know, magical gender people replace the beloved dwarfs, you know, at this point, let them do it.
[01:06:42]  You know, I know my family canceled Disney Plus many months ago and my kids haven't missed it one bit.
[01:06:48]  There's plenty of good content out there.
[01:06:51]  You know, they should go all the way.
[01:06:53]  They should go all the way.
[01:06:54]  You know, the reason Disney strikes such a chord is, of course, because it's children and they like coming for the children is one thing.
[01:07:01]  You know, I hear the disgusting stories about what they do to grown adults who want to change their gender, right?
[01:07:08]  Quote unquote.
[01:07:09]  And I'm horrified.
[01:07:11]  I am horrified.
[01:07:12]  Like they're messing with your stomach, with, you know, everything down south is in jeopardy.
[01:07:18]  It's going to get poked, prod, prodded, you know, stabbed.

=== Graphic Procedures for Adults (09:03) ===

[01:07:22]  I mean, it's just a lifetime of horrors that comes after these procedures.
[01:07:26]  You want to do that to yourself as an adult?
[01:07:28]  Okay.
[01:07:29]  All right.
[01:07:30]  But they're doing it to the kids.
[01:07:32]  And this is one of the reasons why you're such an important figure in America is because people talk to you from the beginning.
[01:07:38]  That's how you sort of made your name.
[01:07:40]  We talked about that the first time you came on the show.
[01:07:42]  People started releasing documents to you.
[01:07:44]  You were in Oregon and it was like your stories coming out of leftist Central America, right?
[01:07:51]  The central part of America that's leftist were stunning, but parents had had it.
[01:07:55]  They were hurting.
[01:07:57]  And now you've turned your sights in part to this, to what's being done toward our children and the radical ideology.
[01:08:04]  I believe you are the one who called our attention to Blair Peters, right?
[01:08:08]  This surgeon?
[01:08:09]  Was that you?
[01:08:11]  Yeah, I mean, he'd been circulating around.
[01:08:13]  I don't think I had the full scoop on that, but I certainly went a bit deeper in a recent short documentary I produced and directed, digging into what he's doing.
[01:08:21]  And I discovered that he actually, this is a doctor at the publicly funded Oregon Health and Science University who actually has deployed a robot to castrate male patients and then turn their penile tissue into an artificial vagina.
[01:08:38]  And I found documentation and evidence that is incontrovertible.
[01:08:43]  I mean, it's actually from his own mouth.
[01:08:44]  It's a recording of him saying that he has deployed this castration robot on children, on minors, castrating them and creating this open wound that he calls a neo-vagina.
[01:08:59]  And I mean, it's so shocking.
[01:09:03]  It's so disturbing.
[01:09:04]  It's so disgusting.
[01:09:08]  It's hard to imagine that it's real.
[01:09:11]  And then when you find out that it's real, you reach a new sense of horror because you have a little bit of it from you.
[01:09:19]  Let me play it.
[01:09:20]  Let me play a little bit of that soundbite with courtesy of you.
[01:09:24]  And then you can pick it up on the back end.
[01:09:25]  Here's this self-described queer surgeon, Blair Peters.
[01:09:30]  One thing that is very new is genital surgery in someone that has underwent pubertal suppression, a much bigger issue for an individual that's undergoing a penile inversion vaginoplasty because we use all of that tissue to basically create vivulva as well as line the internal vaginal canal.
[01:09:49]  And as a specialty, those of us that do a fairly high volume of genital gender affirming surgery, you know, we've maybe done a couple, a handful of pubertally suppressed adolescents as a field and no one's published on it yet.
[01:10:02]  You don't have enough tissue to line the vaginal canal.
[01:10:05]  So you either have to take a skin graft or take skin from elsewhere or use some artificial products.
[01:10:12]  The way that we're dealing with it is by using a robot and we're basically performing intra-abdominal components of the surgery.
[01:10:19]  So we're using peritoneum, which is the inner lining of the abdomen to line most of the vaginal canal.
[01:10:26]  This is so sad.
[01:10:28]  I mean, it's horrifying.
[01:10:29]  He admits right there that he's done it to adolescents.
[01:10:33]  And I don't, I'm going to give a trigger warning for the first time ever.
[01:10:37]  I know I don't believe in trigger warnings, but this is so graphic.
[01:10:40]  I'm about to say something very graphic about the procedure.
[01:10:44]  They cut off the head of the boy's penis and they splice the penis right down the middle to try to create a vagina.
[01:10:51]  You want to do that to yourself as a grown man.
[01:10:53]  God help you.
[01:10:54]  I mean, I will pray for you.
[01:10:56]  You do that to a minor.
[01:10:58]  It should be a crime.
[01:11:01]  It should be a crime.
[01:11:03]  And honestly, Chris, this is why I look at DeSantis and what you're doing down there and I say, okay, so he's losing some of these battles in court.
[01:11:09]  He's fighting.
[01:11:10]  He's trying.
[01:11:12]  Then you've got people like Asa Hutchinson who are sitting back saying, well, I didn't sign that bill because, you know, not everybody, I just thought some of this stuff was concerned.
[01:11:18]  No, do you understand what's happening?
[01:11:22]  They're using robots to cut the penises off of healthy children.
[01:11:27]  I mean, I don't know how else to say it.
[01:11:29]  That is what's happening.
[01:11:30]  And if you're a conservative politician and you can't draw a line there, how can we trust you on anything?
[01:11:37]  It's such a moral abomination.
[01:11:40]  I mean, and a surgeon like Blair Peters, you can just see him.
[01:11:44]  He takes a great pleasure in doing this.
[01:11:46]  I mean, it's extremely disturbing.
[01:11:49]  It should be totally illegal.
[01:11:51]  And I would actually step up the ante even more.
[01:11:54]  There's no medical necessity or reason to be doing this on a child or an adult.
[01:12:01]  I think that the first duty of doctors, and I've interviewed a lot of doctors that are starting to dissent from these kinds of procedures, is to do no harm and to assess a patient's mental, psychological, even spiritual well-being.
[01:12:15]  And I just don't see any use case in which a voluntary castration of an adult should be performed by a doctor.
[01:12:26]  I think it's in all cases correlated with someone that is deeply unwell.
[01:12:31]  And you see that in the research, you see that in the medical literature.
[01:12:34]  You see that in the notes.
[01:12:35]  You see that when you talk to surgeons whose colleagues are starting to do these procedures.
[01:12:41]  Doctors as a class, as a profession, they've been intimidated from speaking out, but that's starting to change.
[01:12:48]  And I think when that changes, you're going to start to see some of the lawsuits and the legal challenges to these bills go a different way.
[01:12:56]  But we really need them to stand up.
[01:12:58]  So if you're a doctor, if you have knowledge of this stuff, if you have a medical opinion about this, these types of procedures, you have to start speaking out now because they're not just doing it to, you know, 50-year-old, you know, adult male perverts that take a pleasure in castration, self-castration.
[01:13:21]  They're actually now deploying this on the most vulnerable kids in our society.
[01:13:24]  And it's got to stop.
[01:13:25]  That is, it's a five-alarm fire.
[01:13:28]  This is why, you know, DeSantis got a lot of crap from people for that ad.
[01:13:32]  He didn't put it out, but his campaign room retweeted it.
[01:13:37]  This is why I see it in a different light, I have to say.
[01:13:40]  Like he's trying to say in this ad, his supporters, and then he by retweeting it, that's what I stand against.
[01:13:47]  I don't think DeSantis says anything against gays.
[01:13:49]  I really don't.
[01:13:50]  I think it's about the T portion of the LGBTQ.
[01:13:53]  That's the fight he's been fighting.
[01:13:56]  And that, like, he, they just had this moment.
[01:14:02]  The headline I read online was something like, DeSantis kicks out person with gay flag, with pride flag, as if like he can't even be around a gay person.
[01:14:13]  That's not what happened.
[01:14:14]  Here's a bit of an interaction he had with an activist in South Carolina.
[01:14:19]  Watch this.
[01:14:21]  He's sitting here talking about all of our children.
[01:14:26]  I have something to say to him.
[01:14:28]  Why don't you focus on spending more time with your granddaughter in Arkansas or at least acknowledge she exists before you worry about our children?
[01:14:41]  And they shouldn't be worrying about our children either.
[01:14:45]  We don't want you indoctrinating our children.
[01:14:48]  Leave our kids alone.
[01:14:50]  You're going to have to tell him.
[01:14:52]  That was, that was a great, that was a great, right?
[01:14:54]  I mean, like, that's exactly what he's trying to say.
[01:14:57]  And that's why people are, you know, they're not flocking to DeSantis in the way they are Trump, but that's why he's a solid second in this race.
[01:15:03]  Yeah, that's right.
[01:15:04]  And I think the ad was, you know, ill-conceived in the sense that I don't think it struck the right tone.
[01:15:10]  But I think if you look at the substance of his record on these issues, it's positive.
[01:15:16]  It honors parents' wishes and values.
[01:15:19]  It, I think, strikes the right balance between all of these issues.
[01:15:24]  And the bottom line is this, the state has enormous power over people's kids.
[01:15:29]  And if we're not shaping the curriculum, if we're not shaping the classroom experience, if we're not shaping the bureaucracies, some people with bad intentions can get in and really do some damage to these kids, leading, of course, to the ultimate consequence, like these gruesome procedures that we just highlighted in Oregon.
[01:15:49]  And so I love what the governor is doing.
[01:15:51]  I support him 100%.
[01:15:53]  I hope he gets the message out there and can connect with voters because what he's done in Florida is truly remarkable.
[01:15:59]  I'm honored to have been a part of it.
[01:16:00]  And, you know, what I try to do with the book is really to tell the story of how we got here, explain to people what is happening with the institutions, and then provide a blueprint for recapturing them, reorienting them, and bringing them back to sanity.
[01:16:16]  That's why I think it's resonating at number one on the charts.
[01:16:18]  And that's why I think people of all political persuasions, left, right, and center, can find something valuable with it.
[01:16:25]  Yes.

=== Bipartisan Insider Trading Phenomenon (14:31) ===

[01:16:26]  One thing you can say about Chris Rufo, he does his homework, unlike Charles Barkley.
[01:16:30]  The book is called America's Cultural Revolution.
[01:16:34]  It's available right now.
[01:16:35]  Please support Chris.
[01:16:36]  Go out there and get it.
[01:16:37]  You won't be sorry you did.
[01:16:38]  All the best of you, Chris Ruffo.
[01:16:39]  Thanks for coming on.
[01:16:40]  Thank you.
[01:16:42]  Up next, you know how all these politicians get in office and get rich like Nancy Pelosi?
[01:16:49]  Wait until you hear just how rich she got while she was representing the people.
[01:16:54]  We've got the guy with that story next.
[01:16:59]  Do you ever notice how people get elected to Congress and then despite their relatively modest salaries, end up getting incredibly rich while in office?
[01:17:09]  They turn into multi-multi-millionaires while humbly serving you, the public.
[01:17:15]  Joining me now is Matt Lewis.
[01:17:17]  He took a hard look at this and what he found was so shocking.
[01:17:19]  He wrote a whole book about it.
[01:17:21]  He's a senior columnist at the Daily Beast and the author of the brand new book, Filthy Rich Politicians, the Swamp Creatures, Latte Liberals, and Ruling Class Elites Cashing In on America, which is out today.
[01:17:35]  Well, Matt, welcome to the show.
[01:17:36]  This is distressing, but eye-opening.
[01:17:39]  And it is something I confess I've never really looked into.
[01:17:43]  I know they do it and that it's shockingly legal for them to do all these trades with inside information that you or I would be prosecuted for having and acting on, but they can do it somehow.
[01:17:55]  It's wow how so many of them got rich.
[01:17:57]  But just outline the problem from the top.
[01:18:01]  Like your chapter one talks about the Facebook post you saw that first garnered your interest in this.
[01:18:08]  Yeah.
[01:18:08]  So there was a Facebook post that said, how is it possible that the average member of Congress is a millionaire, but only like 1% of Americans are millionaires.
[01:18:20]  And the truth is they got it a little bit wrong.
[01:18:23]  It is true that more than half of members of Congress are millionaires.
[01:18:27]  It's actually something like 7% of normal Americans are millionaires, but still you can see there's a huge disparity.
[01:18:34]  So the average member of Congress is something like 12 times richer than the average American household.
[01:18:41]  And this is something that is actually, the chasm has widened greatly in recent decades.
[01:18:49]  And one of the things I started looking into is, does this matter?
[01:18:54]  And I started finding things like a Pew Research Center survey from 2015 that showed that three quarters of Americans felt like our members of Congress, our elected officials, are more interested in their own well-being than we the people.
[01:19:12]  And in fact, 72% describe members of Congress as quote unquote selfish.
[01:19:18]  So probably no surprise that one year later, Donald Trump runs for president and he talks about draining the swamp and he talks about the game being rigged.
[01:19:29]  And even though he's a billionaire, I think that message really resonated because I actually think that this sense that not only are our politicians richer than everybody else, but that the game is rigged, that they're cashing in on their jobs.
[01:19:44]  I really think it's eroding trust in our public officials and in democracy itself.
[01:19:49]  You write in the book about how this was never the vision for those who represent the public.
[01:19:56]  So talk about how the founders wanted it to be and then how it was all the way up to you write in the book around 1970, 75.
[01:20:03]  It was still like it lasted a long time the way the founders envisioned.
[01:20:08]  It did.
[01:20:08]  I mean, and obviously our founders were very rich elites, many of them.
[01:20:12]  George Washington was an incredibly rich man.
[01:20:15]  The difference is that he also pledged his life and his honor for this country.
[01:20:23]  And if the revolution had failed, he would have probably been hanged as a traitor.
[01:20:28]  And I just don't think that our current elected officials probably have that same loyalty and dedication to the country.
[01:20:35]  So I think that's part of the problem.
[01:20:36]  It's not just that they're rich.
[01:20:38]  It's a sense that they're in it for themselves and that they're more interested in advancing their own financial interests than they are in serving our country.
[01:20:46]  But our founders were very worried about this type of problem.
[01:20:51]  They looked to Greece.
[01:20:52]  They looked to Rome.
[01:20:54]  And they realized that when these nations fall apart, these empires collapse, oftentimes it is because elites are cashing in.
[01:21:06]  And so they took corruption very seriously.
[01:21:09]  There's things like the emoluments clause, things like that that are built in to tamp down on corruption.
[01:21:15]  And, you know, Madison specifically felt like the House of Representatives, the lower chamber, should be very much simpatico with the American people.
[01:21:25]  It should be a house of the people that has sympathy with the American people.
[01:21:30]  I think it's very hard to believe that that's the case when the average member of the House is 12 times richer than the average American household today.
[01:21:39]  Yeah, you're right that it used to be like barbers, pipe fitters, you know, working class people.
[01:21:48]  And now it's not that at all, which explains a lot of the legislation that we see and a lot of the way that they spend their time and a lot of the public messaging that they do.
[01:21:57]  And so the question is, what's happening?
[01:22:00]  Is it both rich people are running for Congress or that working and middle class people run for Congress, get in and then get rich on while supposedly working for the taxpayers?
[01:22:11]  Yeah.
[01:22:12]  So first, you're right.
[01:22:13]  This has happened in the last three or four decades that things have really dramatically changed.
[01:22:20]  In those years, the net worth of a member of Congress has doubled, while for the rest of us, we've basically been either treading water or actually going backwards.
[01:22:30]  I'm talking about in terms of our inflation adjusted purchasing power.
[01:22:35]  So this is something that is relatively new.
[01:22:42]  But, you know, the question is, does it matter?
[01:22:45]  And I think, look, a lot of politicians are obviously rich.
[01:22:50]  Business insider, and I put this in the back of my book, Filthy Rich Politicians, right in the back, there's an appendix where they rank the richest 25 members of Congress.
[01:23:01]  More than half, I went through and did a diagnosis of each one.
[01:23:05]  More than half of them, 13 out of 25, got their money either through inheritance or through marriage.
[01:23:14]  So yes, rich people are more likely not just to run, much more likely to run and more likely to win than the rest of us.
[01:23:22]  And I think that is somewhat troubling, but much more troubling is the sense that once people get elected, they always get richer.
[01:23:31]  That I think is much, much more corrosive to trust in the process.
[01:23:37]  So how are they doing it?
[01:23:38]  I mean, is it what I said, that they can make what would be an illegal trade for you or for me, but they, because of their rules for themselves, don't have to worry about that kind of insider trade?
[01:23:50]  Like, how are they getting rich?
[01:23:52]  Yeah, well, let me just give you a couple examples here.
[01:23:56]  One example is Nancy Pelosi.
[01:23:59]  Nancy Pelosi, she makes something like less than $200,000 a year as a salary.
[01:24:07]  She would have to work 500 years based on her salary to get her current net worth, which is over $100 million.
[01:24:16]  Where does it come from?
[01:24:17]  Well, it turns out her husband, Paul, is incredibly gifted when it comes to things like stock trading.
[01:24:25]  And let me just give you one example.
[01:24:27]  So in 2021, Paul Pelosi exercised call options for $10 million on Microsoft stock.
[01:24:37]  Within two weeks, the U.S. Army announced that they had a deal with Microsoft to produce these augmented reality headsets.
[01:24:47]  This deal could be worth tens of billions of dollars over the next decade or so.
[01:24:52]  And that's just one of many examples.
[01:24:55]  Disgusting.
[01:24:55]  Yes.
[01:24:56]  That's just disgusting.
[01:24:58]  How?
[01:24:58]  How are they able to do that?
[01:25:00]  You know, because all the people who worked at Microsoft, who knew that was going to happen, if they went home and told their spouses and then they bought stock, they'd get arrested.
[01:25:10]  Well, it is up until 2012, it wasn't even illegal.
[01:25:14]  Members of CO, it's only been illegal for members of Congress to engage in insider trading since 2012 when they passed the Stock Act.
[01:25:23]  But right now, it's really difficult to police.
[01:25:27]  And I could tell you chapter in verse on other Nancy Pelosi stories.
[01:25:31]  It's, by the way, a bipartisan phenomenon.
[01:25:34]  There's a story about Richard Burr, who was chair of the Intel Committee, who really profited during the COVID-19 pandemic.
[01:25:43]  And again, I mean, I have no evidence except everything about it looks swampy.
[01:25:48]  Everything about it looks entirely sketchy.
[01:25:50]  And if you or I did it, we would probably be in orange jumpsuits right now.
[01:25:56]  But I think the answer, regardless of why they get away with it, is to just simply ban stock trading in Congress of individual stocks.
[01:26:06]  Look, I think they should be allowed to own mutual funds.
[01:26:08]  That's fine.
[01:26:09]  But if you don't have to be in Congress, nobody's forcing you to serve in Congress.
[01:26:13]  But if you want to serve in Congress, I don't think it's asking too much to, while you're here, while you're there, give up betting on the stock market.
[01:26:24]  I think that's an amazing idea.
[01:26:25]  And you're right about the mutual funds where you don't control the individual investment decisions.
[01:26:30]  So it takes the sort of insider trading aspect of it out of it entirely.
[01:26:35]  You know, Nancy Pelosi has gotten away with this.
[01:26:37]  I don't know why, because, you know, she rose to a very prominent position, obviously, in the House.
[01:26:43]  And it made news.
[01:26:45]  I think maybe people don't, they don't realize how rich these politicians are getting.
[01:26:49]  But remember, it made news the ice cream freezer that she did or hit in front of.
[01:26:55]  I think it was during COVID.
[01:26:56]  It was 20, yeah, it was April 2020.
[01:26:58]  I'll run this down by just to refresh people's memory of Nancy in front of her ice cream empire in her freezer.
[01:27:06]  Chocolate candy.
[01:27:09]  Oh, wow.
[01:27:10]  And this is something you can get through the mail.
[01:27:17]  Okay.
[01:27:18]  Run out.
[01:27:20]  Oh, my.
[01:27:22]  Wow.
[01:27:22]  Other people in our family go for some other flavors, but chocolate.
[01:27:26]  And then we have some other chocolate here.
[01:27:29]  We just got, we stopped the ice cream right for Easter Sunday because we were, shall we say, enjoying.
[01:27:36]  I don't know what I would have done if ice cream were not invented.
[01:27:41]  It's just in the middle of the day.
[01:27:43]  Yeah, so this is Nick.
[01:27:44]  People were struggling financially.
[01:27:46]  And there she is, so out of touch.
[01:27:47]  Go ahead, Matt.
[01:27:48]  I was saying exactly that, right?
[01:27:50]  It's COVID-19.
[01:27:51]  A lot of people are out of work, struggling because of the shutdown.
[01:27:55]  She's got these like two stainless steel freezers.
[01:27:58]  It's gourmet ice cream.
[01:28:00]  And it is so out of touch.
[01:28:02]  And I think that's part of the story.
[01:28:03]  It's not just that they're wealthier than the rest of us.
[01:28:07]  It's not just that they're cashing in on their position, but they are also now flaunting it as well.
[01:28:14]  And I think that really is contributing to this sense that the game is rigged and that they're out for themselves.
[01:28:21]  So now it's not just the sort of insider trading that now is not okay.
[01:28:26]  It's taking advantage of the crises that hit the country.
[01:28:31]  So who got rich off of COVID-19 and how did they manage that?
[01:28:36]  Let me give you one story.
[01:28:38]  I alluded to it earlier, but Senator Richard Burr, who was then chairman of the Intelligence Committee.
[01:28:46]  So obviously, if you're a chairman of the Intelligence Committee, you are privy to lots of classified information, classified briefings and documents that normal people don't see.
[01:28:58]  So think back to 20 early 2020, when the COVID pandemic is just starting, but most Americans don't realize how bad it actually is.
[01:29:08]  Remember, it's going to one minute, it'll just be gone.
[01:29:11]  going to disappear or two weeks to stop the spread or whatever like most people don't fully appreciate how bad this is going to be richard burr again chair of the intel committee dumps hundreds of thousands of dollars of stock and things like wyndham hotels right the kinds of investments that probably aren't going to fare great during a shutdown and a global pandemic but what makes it even worse is Then he picks up the phone,
[01:29:41]  and you can read all about this in Filthy Rich Politicians.
[01:29:44]  Burr picks up the phone and calls his brother-in-law.
[01:29:47]  Within one minute of hanging up the phone with Burr, his brother-in-law calls his broker and dumps all of his stock.
[01:29:56]  And so the thing about insider trading, I think a lot of people think insider trading is about making money.
[01:30:02]  And of course, it's possible, right?
[01:30:04]  I think the Pelosis have clearly made money from things that certainly look like insider trading.
[01:30:09]  But the key to insider trading is actually not the money you make.
[01:30:14]  It's the money you don't lose.
[01:30:16]  And I think what's really corrosive and toxic about this is that it is during times of change and crisis, and especially the COVID-19 pandemic, when members of Congress have information we don't have, instead of telling us, instead of sounding the alarm, their first call is to their broker to dump stuff.
[01:30:39]  So he didn't, he called his brother and his broker, but didn't go on the news to say, I want to tell all of you.
[01:30:46]  If you have hotel stocks, you might want to sell them or just FYI.
[01:30:49]  You can do what you want, but this is what we're seriously considering doing that could affect you in a number of ways.
[01:30:54]  It's so upsetting.
[01:30:56]  It's such a betrayal.

=== Wealthy Squad Members Are Landlords (04:37) ===

[01:30:57]  And the book also gets into what you call latte liberals, rich and privileged with influence, talking about how there are other ways of being wealthy, of being rich.
[01:31:09]  And that brings us to the squad.
[01:31:11]  Now, how is the squad rich and what are they doing?
[01:31:16]  Well, first, I think they're on their way to being rich, just like their heroes, Bernie Sanders, a socialist who, by the way, is a millionaire.
[01:31:26]  And Maxine Waters, who lives in a mansion outside of her district and pays her family tens of thousands of dollars.
[01:31:35]  I think the squad, they're on their way to that status.
[01:31:40]  But right now, I think it's more about not the economy, but the attention economy, right?
[01:31:45]  They're very rich in terms of the attention economy.
[01:31:48]  But certainly there are things that I write about in the book that members of the squad are guilty of.
[01:31:55]  I mean, I think clearly they're guilty of hypocrisy.
[01:31:58]  Think of AOC's fancy techs, the rich dress, going to this very high-end dinner at the Met, the Metropolitan Opera House dinner.
[01:32:09]  And then there's the spreading the wealth around to their family, right?
[01:32:13]  That's one of the things I talk about in Filthy Rich Politicians.
[01:32:16]  It's not just that the politicians are getting rich, it's that they're spreading it to their friends and family.
[01:32:22]  Ilhan Omar, for example, directed millions of dollars of her campaign dollars to her husband's consultant firm, which obviously is very questionable.
[01:32:36]  So I think that keep your eyes on them.
[01:32:39]  They're not at the Nancy Pelosi level of wealth yet, but I think they're punching above their weight.
[01:32:44]  Well, you talked about housing hypocrisy, right?
[01:32:47]  Some of these squad members who are talking about how we need more housing construction and we need more, we need a relief on rent and so on.
[01:32:57]  They're actually acting as landlords.
[01:33:00]  They're reaping tons of income from rental properties, not really part of their stump speech, Matt.
[01:33:06]  Yes, it is interesting, right?
[01:33:08]  And there are things that they've done.
[01:33:10]  For example, back during the COVID-19 lockdown time era, which it was so tragic and horrific, a lot of us have tried to block it out.
[01:33:21]  But during that time, you may recall there was a call to quote unquote cancel rent.
[01:33:27]  They wanted a moratorium on evictions.
[01:33:30]  And so people on the left, like the squad, wanted to cancel rent.
[01:33:35]  But what's interesting about it, and I think a little bit out of character, was that they also wanted to reimburse landlords for the money that they were going to lose by virtue of this left-wing policy.
[01:33:48]  Now, I actually think if you're going to, if you're not going to let landlords evict people, it's a good idea to reimburse them.
[01:33:57]  But that seems a little out of character for the squad.
[01:33:59]  And then as you noted, Megan, I think it may have something to do with the fact that two of the four squad members are landlords and earn quite a bit of money by renting out property.
[01:34:11]  Oh, it's such a good book.
[01:34:14]  It's so, I think the last poll I looked at was that congressional approval ratings are lower than that of a cockroach.
[01:34:22]  People would rather.
[01:34:27]  So, I mean, this is part of the reason why.
[01:34:30]  Is there any getting back to the citizen representative, to the farmer, to the, you know, just the regular Joe who goes and serves one term and then goes home and doesn't get rich off of us?
[01:34:43]  Well, is that right in the book?
[01:34:44]  When you look at the age of members of Congress these days and our politicians, they'd rather, you know, buy the farm than go back to the farm.
[01:34:53]  So I don't know that the founder's vision of people going back to the farm is going to happen, but I do think some of the reforms that I call for in Filthy Rich Politicians, you know, banning stock trading, a moratorium on lobbying, where you can't just walk out of Congress and become a lobbyist the next day.
[01:35:10]  You have to wait like 10 years, term limits, book deals, curbing the ability to get rich on book deals the way Bernie Sanders actually became a millionaire.
[01:35:21]  They've got a whole bunch of these ideas.
[01:35:22]  And I don't think we're going to solve this problem overnight.
[01:35:26]  We didn't get into this mess overnight.
[01:35:28]  But I think we can begin to reform the system and certainly mitigate some of the real bad problems.

=== Helen Joyce's Important Cultural Voice (01:07) ===

[01:35:35]  Such a great offering.
[01:35:36]  We needed this book.
[01:35:38]  Matt Lewis, thank you.
[01:35:39]  The book, again, is Filthy Rich Politicians.
[01:35:42]  Filthy Rich Politicians.
[01:35:43]  It's a great name and it's easy to remember.
[01:35:45]  And it's out today if you want to educate yourself.
[01:35:47]  Thank you.
[01:35:48]  See you soon.
[01:35:49]  I want to tell you that tomorrow, we have Helen Joyce on the show for the first time.
[01:35:53]  She's such an important voice in our culture on the gender issue.
[01:35:57]  I mean, she is like the godmother.
[01:35:59]  If you haven't read her book, Trans, or listened to Helen Joyce, you need to tomorrow.
[01:36:04]  And if you have listened or read Helen Joyce, then this is still a gift to you.
[01:36:09]  She is always worth spending time with.
[01:36:11]  I absolutely love what she says.
[01:36:13]  She's really insightful.
[01:36:14]  So don't miss tomorrow.
[01:36:16]  We'll talk to you then.
[01:36:20]  Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly Show.
[01:36:22]  No BS, no agenda, and no fear.
[01:36:39]  And there are two things.