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Josh's Business Dealings and Gun Charges
00:14:30
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| Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. | |
| Hey, everyone, I'm Megan Kelly. | |
| Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, and happy Monday, I guess, right? | |
| I don't know. | |
| Happy Monday sounds like a contradiction in terms, but we're going to make it happy because we've got a pack show for you today. | |
| Later, I will be joined by NBA star Jonathan Isaac, who is launching a non-woke sports apparel apparel company. | |
| Haven't you won one of these? | |
| When you go, it's like Nike, as far as the eye can see in all these sports stores, or you're signing your kid up for team sports and they've already cut a deal with Nike where you have to buy the Nike stuff. | |
| Wouldn't it be nice to have a non-woke sports apparel alternative to these giants who are backing people like Colin Kaepernick and Megan Rapino? | |
| Well, Jonathan Isaac, the one who refused to take a knee during the national anthem, the one who stood tall for our country during the midst of everything, post-George Floyd, has just launched one. | |
| So we're excited to talk to him. | |
| Plus, one of the board members who filed those lawsuits that led to the monumental affirmative action case that was just before the U.S. Supreme Court is going to be here to talk about it. | |
| We'll talk to him about all the claims that really Asians are just white adjacent and should stop complaining about any discrimination against them. | |
| Okay. | |
| But we begin today with President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. | |
| Hunter's former best friend and co-bury board member Devin Archer is testifying right now behind closed doors. | |
| It's happening. | |
| There was speculation about whether he'd do it. | |
| He'd canceled a few times. | |
| He's there. | |
| It's underway, two hours into it, as I understand. | |
| Behind closed doors, as I said, it's not on cam, but it's going to be transcribed as the Bidens in other news finally acknowledge that they do have a seventh grandchild. | |
| When? | |
| In a Friday night news dump. | |
| We'll get into all of it. | |
| Joining me now to discuss Josh Holmes, co-host of the Ruthless podcast and founding partner and president of Cavalry. | |
| Josh, great to have you. | |
| So much to discuss. | |
| It's exciting. | |
| Good to see you, Megan. | |
| This guy showed up, right? | |
| Because it was like a big question mark about whether Devin Archer was going to have the stones to actually show up before Congress and talk about the number of times. | |
| This is what Miranda Devine is reporting. | |
| He's expected to talk about the number of times Joe Biden personally got on the phone with the Hunter business contacts. | |
| And we think he's going to say something effective to seal the deal in all these foreign business dealings that Joe Biden denies he ever even discussed with Hunter, never mind participated in himself. | |
| So what do you make of it? | |
| Yeah, I mean, this is where the knot gets tied, right? | |
| I mean, you recall where we started with all of this during the campaign. | |
| Joe Biden was asked on a number of occasions what his interaction was with Hunter and his business dealings, knowing that you had the Burisma-Ukraine situation. | |
| At that point, it was alleged that there was a Chinese money component to all this. | |
| We've since come to find out that that was also true. | |
| And he said, no, I've never even discussed any of this with my son. | |
| Well, that lasted, I guess, about a year and a half. | |
| And the White House now is in a situation where they're saying, well, he wasn't in business with him. | |
| Right. | |
| So they've now are not repeating the line that he never discussed anything with him. | |
| Can I just say, Josh, just as just to interrupt, it's so annoying because Kareen Jean-Pierre, before she tells us that lie, says, I haven't changed my story. | |
| This is what I've said all along. | |
| And then she completely changes her story. | |
| It is, I mean, it just insults your intelligence. | |
| But, but now the wasn't in business piece of it is going to get a little bit trickier if you have Devin Archer in there today saying that not only was the then vice president, now president in part of these business discussions, but he may have been a central part to some of them, at least in terms of getting the deal done. | |
| If that is the case, I don't think that anybody can ignore this. | |
| I mean, the mainstream media has done a terrific job of ignoring a burning hot scandal for a long period of time here, but you're beginning to see people start to pay attention to this. | |
| If this guy does what it's purported him to do today, you can't ignore it. | |
| I mean, this is this is literally, that's why you have impeachment on the books, right? | |
| If you've got a guy who's acting as a central component to his, his son's business dealings, which may not have the American interest at heart at the same time, he's serving as vice president of the United States. | |
| You know, I mean, look, Megan, what was it, two months ago, he had Hunter at a state dinner with the president of India? | |
| I mean, it hasn't stopped, right? | |
| I mean, this is, he's still kind of a central part of all of this. | |
| And if it's all a lie, boy, this gets ugly. | |
| Right, because this, we're talking about, you know, the partnership these guys had while Joe Biden, in part, was the sitting vice president of the United States. | |
| And the allegation we believe will be that Joe Biden was sealing the deal for Hunter Biden to get on the take from Romania, from Ukraine, from the Chinese, whenever it was needed, basically to prove to these rich foreign countries, I know all about the relationship. | |
| I'm blessing it, and I'm here. | |
| Like that, because no one's paying Hunter Biden for anything other than access to Joe. | |
| Yeah, I mean, that's the central part of why this is all kind of gets the ball rolling. | |
| There is nobody on the face of the planet who would consider Hunter Biden an expert at anything other than maybe cracking hookers. | |
| This is not a guy you'd hire to have your energy policy or your relationship. | |
| That could make an interesting ruthless podcast interview. | |
| The program. | |
| I don't know. | |
| I could see it happening. | |
| Yeah, I mean, look, we like to profess expertise in some of these areas, but this is, look, this is really bad news because we also recall, like, people forget why the whole Trump impeachment, the first one came up in the first place, is because he and his team were absolutely convinced that this that we're now talking about was happening. | |
| And you had Joe Biden on tape in front of a crowd of people talking about how he personally withheld American aid to Ukraine in order to ensure that they fired a prosecutor who he said was corrupt. | |
| Well, we've come to find out that the prosecutor, whether he was corrupt or not, number one on his hit list was Burisma. | |
| So now if you have a vice president who's saying, admitting as much, that he got a prosecutor fired that was intending to prosecute a client of his son, which maybe, as we learned today, he could have actually got that client for his son. | |
| I mean, what more do you need? | |
| I mean, that is, that is horrible. | |
| Meanwhile, as this guy, Devin Archer, who is, you know, he's got issues of his own. | |
| This guy's been convicted a year plus ago for trying to defraud Native American tribes in some way. | |
| That's, that doesn't involve Hunter. | |
| That's a different crime. | |
| It's hard to keep track of them all. | |
| So he gets convicted. | |
| And there's correspondence on the laptop between Devin and Hondra. | |
| Like, Devin's like, hey, no one from your family is going to help me? | |
| What the hell? | |
| And Hondra's like, oh, the system is full of checks and balances and separation of powers for a reason. | |
| It was such gobbly cook written by somebody who was afraid his email was going to get discovered, obviously. | |
| But an interesting thing happened over the weekend, which had, you know, it unleashed a dispute about what it means. | |
| So in connection with that case, Devin Archer was convicted of this business with the Native Americans. | |
| And he filed an appeal to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. | |
| Well, he lost his appeal. | |
| They said, no, we're not going to overturn it. | |
| He says he's got another grounds for appeal and also that the feds have misapplied the sentencing guidelines to him. | |
| He should not be going to jail for a year. | |
| And so he doesn't want to report to prison yet because he's got two other viable avenues of challenge, according to him. | |
| Well, the prosecution, the DOJ, decided that on Saturday, 48 hours before his testimony before Congress, that would be a good time to write to the judge in the case and say, we really need to find a date, ASAP, to imprison Hunter. | |
| I mean, not Hunter, Devin, Devin Archer. | |
| ASAP, he's got to go. | |
| I mean, we can work it out. | |
| We'll brief it. | |
| But just reminding you, this guy needs to go to prison. | |
| And apparently they're not persuaded at all about his arguments on how it's not time. | |
| I've got these other viable legal avenues. | |
| So this unleashes a whole thing online about, you know, many of us are like, the timing for this seems coincidental. | |
| They're dangling the prison threat in front of this guy right before he goes to Congress. | |
| And so much so that the DOJ then had to write into the judge the second day to say, he could go to jail after his Monday testimony. | |
| We're not suggesting he has to go to prevent him. | |
| But it just the whole thing, Josh, stinks. | |
| The DOJ stinks and they've deserved zero benefit of the doubt. | |
| Yeah. | |
| I mean, do you get the impression? | |
| I mean, I don't know. | |
| Maybe this is just me, but do you get the impression that DOJ is like sitting around being like, you know, let's remove all plausible deniability that we're not putting hands on the scales of justice here? | |
| I mean, because if it's not, this is just like truly outrageous. | |
| I mean, you know what the testimony is going to be on Monday because they've leaked it. | |
| They know what's going to happen. | |
| Why on earth would you use that as an opportunity to further try to intimidate a witness before a congressional hearing that implicates? | |
| But there's no other way to take it. | |
| I mean, that's the fundamental problem that they have is they just don't care. | |
| They just don't give a shit. | |
| I mean, the brazen nature by which they negotiate out plea deals for Hunter Biden, where they're anybody else that has that level of tax fraud at a minimum is paying back and doing a little time. | |
| This guy's a couple of misdemeanors. | |
| Oh, by the way, there's a federal gun charge. | |
| Forget about that. | |
| And then they've got a problem convincing the judge in the case of that ultimately. | |
| I mean, everything that the DOJ is doing as he pertains to Hunter Biden and by extension, Joe Biden, looks like they are completely putting a thumb on the scale. | |
| And sometimes when it looks like it, it's because they are. | |
| Yeah, there's the duck right there. | |
| No, what happened last week was absolutely absurd. | |
| I'm going to get to the Hunter thing too in one second, but look at this. | |
| So this just into the newsroom, meaning my team. | |
| Catherine Herridge of CBS got to ask Devin Archer a couple of questions as he walked in. | |
| He doesn't really answer them, but it's interesting to see the guy on his way in. | |
| Watch. | |
| What will you tell congressional investigators about Hunter Biden's business deals? | |
| Are White House denials about President Biden's involvement incredible? | |
| Smiling. | |
| No comment. | |
| Good he showed up. | |
| I'm happy to actually see him with my own two eyes because this guy does know where a lot of the bodies are buried. | |
| He does. | |
| And, you know, back to your original point, which sort of introduced all of his other legal issues that he has. | |
| I mean, I don't think anybody's real surprised to find out that Hunter Biden was not dealing with people of the highest integrity, right? | |
| I mean, we've seen some of the photos. | |
| We've seen some of the videos. | |
| We know that this guy's up to on a day-to-day basis, and it ain't great. | |
| But it doesn't mean that the guy doesn't know, as you said, where the bodies are buried, which is the only reason that he is where he is. | |
| It's not like you need Mother Teresa to come in and tell the story. | |
| You just need somebody who was there and it was on the phone. | |
| And, you know, nobody took Tony Bobolinski's word for it when we found out through his business dealings and he was alleging at the end of the 2020 election that all of the things that we're hearing about now are true. | |
| Well, it seems like he was pretty darn credible, too. | |
| So look, I'm glad he's there, as you said. | |
| I'm glad he's there. | |
| Hopefully by tonight, we'll have a better sense of what it is that he's come up with and where this investigation goes, because I think it's really serious. | |
| I think it has a massive capacity to debilitate the Biden administration that's in the midst of running reelection on this sort of integrity message. | |
| It's so interesting. | |
| Like if I'm the prosecution against Devin Archer in that other case, as soon as the defendant's appeal, his application for a writ to the Second Circuit gets denied, I say that day, you're going to jail. | |
| It's over for you, buddy. | |
| You're going to jail. | |
| Sorry. | |
| Maybe somebody says, hey, but he's got this congressional testimony on Monday. | |
| And I say, okay, then we wait until Tuesday and we send it to him. | |
| Or maybe in our letter to him, we say, you're going to be able to testify. | |
| No problem. | |
| We get it, but you're going to jail now. | |
| The fact that they just sent it without anything like that, two days before the testimony is what got everybody talking. | |
| All right. | |
| So let's talk about Hunter Biden because he goes before the court last week. | |
| Now we talked about it on Friday, but he and the DOJ were very clearly in on it together, trying to pull the wool over this judge's eyes, that this plea deal was on the up and up and was legit and, you know, covered the appropriate things. | |
| And only by paging through the many pages did the judge realize they were trying to give him immunity on everything. | |
| His foreign dealings, the Ukrainian stuff, the Chinese stuff, the role mate, all of it, to the point where she had to say to the prosecution, are you giving him immunity on this other stuff? | |
| And they had no choice but to say, no, no, judge. | |
| Because as a political matter, this is Andy McCarthy lays this out beautifully in his podcast last week. | |
| They had no choice but to lie and say, no, notwithstanding that the four corners of the document show they were giving him immunity on that. | |
| And then Hunter Biden's lawyer stands up there and says, well, this bullshit, forget it. | |
| We're out. | |
| We're not, why are, what are we pleading to? | |
| You know, we're not taking a plea if not everything is off the table. | |
| Well, listen to the spin. | |
| Okay. | |
| Listen to the spin on this. | |
| Dan Goldman, he used to come on my show when I was at NBC. | |
| He wasn't a complete partisan hack back then. | |
| He was a lawyer. | |
| He hadn't yet run for Congress. | |
| After all that, he ran for Congress in New York and now he's Adam Schiff's little like minion. | |
| He just does what Adam Schiff tells him to, which is lie. | |
| So here he is speaking to Jonathan Carl on ABC News this week. | |
| This was an unusual agreement, in part because it's a 24-month agreement. | |
| And there's the possibility that Donald Trump will be president. | |
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Dan Goldman's Navy Investigation and Spin
00:15:00
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| And we know from his presidency how much he weaponized the Department of Justice to go after his enemies and to favor his associates. | |
| And so Hunter Biden's lawyers are concerned that Donald Trump, if he were to get the presidency, would weaponize the Department of Justice. | |
| And so there is an added calculation to this. | |
| But the fact of the matter is that this is a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney, a Trump-appointed judge. | |
| This is a very independent and thorough investigation. | |
| And I think that whatever happens in the Hunter Biden case, we can rest assured that it was done based solely on the facts and the evidence and that there was nothing else to it. | |
| Okay. | |
| So they're worried that Donald Trump will be president. | |
| And because he's weaponized the DOJ to go after his enemies when he was president, they had to do this rigmarole to try to fool the judge into signing off on this because Trump is the one, Holmes, who weaponized the DOJ. | |
| The DOJ that, as I recall, went after Paul Manafort, Trump's campaign manager, Roger Stone, Mike Flynn. | |
| We could go down the list. | |
| That was Trump. | |
| He weaponized it against his own people. | |
| What the hell is this guy talking about? | |
| If Trump was weaponizing the DOJ, it was weaponizing against himself. | |
| I mean, all of the Justice Department put him through years upon years of investigation. | |
| I mean, do we figure, did we forget about Mueller? | |
| I mean, not to mention Manafort and Stone and all of that. | |
| I mean, they prosecuted the Trump campaign, Trump, you know, if not himself by extension, for four years, weaponizing. | |
| We haven't seen that until this guy showed up, until Biden showed up. | |
| And to be honest with you, I know a lot of line lawyers that have been at the Department of Justice, and there are a lot of really good people over there. | |
| It was hard for me to believe initially when the Biden administration looked like they were putting a heavy finger on the scale in many of these cases. | |
| But now I don't think you can come to any other conclusion. | |
| It's if it is being weaponized, it is currently being weaponized and it's being weaponized against the adversaries of President Biden and on behalf of his allies. | |
| Now raised by Jonathan Carl in his interview with Dan Goldman. | |
| What kind of responsible reporter doesn't slap him back in the face to say, hello, McFly, hello? | |
| Right? | |
| But no, he didn't do that. | |
| And he let him go on about how this has been a very independent and thorough investigation. | |
| Really? | |
| What about the whistleblowers from the IRS who were running point on the investigation, who literally just 10 days ago came out to say we were shut down by this DOJ at every turn from investigating the big guy, Joe Biden in any way. | |
| Most of the Hunter foreign business deals, they weren't provided with that form 1023 from the FBI, alleging a direct bribe to Hunter and to Joe. | |
| None of it, but not raised. | |
| And here's point two, Dan Goldman makes in the interview, Holmes. | |
| Listen, listen to this. | |
| That's what they've been investigating for five years. | |
| And they ultimately determined they could not charge him. | |
| And for whatever reason, we don't know. | |
| The House Republicans have no idea what the actual evidence is that David Weiss has. | |
| And this was an exhaustive five-year investigation. | |
| And so what Hunter Biden's lawyer wanted was some confirmation that they will not charge him for any crimes related to the investigation that they underwent. | |
| That's fairly typical. | |
| And oftentimes prosecutors and defense lawyers go back and forth about what degree of immunity a defendant will get. | |
| But let's remember, this is not as if it's a new investigation. | |
| This is five years. | |
| And we had testimony of foreign bank accounts, domestic bank accounts, search warrants, hundreds of thousands of documents that they poured over. | |
| And ultimately, they decided they could not charge Hunter Biden with it. | |
| And that's how the process should work. | |
| Here we go. | |
| An exhaustive five-year investigation, you see. | |
| And they've been doing it for five years and ultimately determined that they could not charge him with all those things about the Foreign Agent Registration Act and so on, because that's why they were comfortable giving him blanket immunity. | |
| That was the question going in there. | |
| They just, they did this thorough investigation, Holmes, and they ultimately determined that he could, they could not charge him. | |
| Missed by both the questioner and Dan Goldman is the fact that there's an open investigation. | |
| They were trying to give him immunity. | |
| Well, they have an open investigation on him. | |
| They were waiving all the charges that they're now investigating. | |
| But Dan Goldman, it's fine. | |
| What he means is totally, what did he say up front? | |
| Oh, it's the typical process. | |
| No, no, it's anything but. | |
| I feel like I'm just like in an asylum or something. | |
| And like, maybe I'm the crazy one because all of this doesn't feel that difficult to figure out. | |
| Did you love, by the way, did you love that he started with the idea that, well, House Republicans have absolutely no idea what's in this investigation. | |
| But Dan Goldman, who's a junior congressman in his first term, is an absolute expert on this issue. | |
| He knows everything that there is to know. | |
| And Weiss, I mean, boy, it's like he was at the table working through the plea deal with the guy. | |
| He's going to provide absolute expertise on what it is that he's being charged and the fairness of that. | |
| But he knows that nobody else really has insight into that other than Weiss and Dan Goldman. | |
| Unbelievable. | |
| Meanwhile, you know who actually does know at least more than most of us? | |
| Those IRS agents. | |
| And they're saying this stinks to high heaven. | |
| The guy committed multiple felonies and that absolutely there was obstruction of justice by the DOJ here. | |
| That's what they're saying. | |
| Dan Goldman doesn't care and neither does the news media that's going to provide cover for him at every turn. | |
| Did you see the headline in USA Today over the weekend talking about the foibles? | |
| Oh my God, I've got to find out. | |
| I know you saw it. | |
| I think I amongst us. | |
| Who amongst us, Megan? | |
| We're foibling around everywhere and look what happened. | |
| Here it is, USA Today's tweet. | |
| Hunter Biden's foibles provide ammunition for Republicans who want to inflict harm on Joe Biden ahead of 2024. | |
| Just, you know, look, it's a foible. | |
| It's a foible. | |
| I know, Megan, when you're out on the weekend and you're foibling around with crack and tax evasion. | |
| Hookers. | |
| It's just, you know, you foibble around and things happen. | |
| And what's unfortunate here, it's not so much the foibles or the foibler as it is those Republicans who are using these foibles against their father, his father, because, you know, I mean, you can't excuse it, foibler, but I mean, they're just trying to defeat him electorally. | |
| That's what we should be focused on. | |
| They're so mean the way they just jump on this stuff. | |
| All right. | |
| So another, I've got to get this in. | |
| Unbelievably, I mean, we've been talking about how the Biden White House, Joe Biden, Jill Biden will not acknowledge the seventh grandchild, Hunter Biden's love child, however you want to have heard of this girl, Navy, but it's this child out of wedlock with a woman who was a former stripper down in Arkansas. | |
| And not only will they not acknowledge her, but they continue to underscore the fact that they have six grandchildren, six, They have seven. | |
| There's this young four-year-old named Navy who they refuse to let her call herself Biden, even though Hunter Biden's her dad. | |
| Anyway, Friday night in the middle of the summer, 5 p.m., in a paper statement, last paragraph of their release on what's going on in the Biden White House, they bury an acknowledgement that there is a Navy and that she is the president's seventh grandchild. | |
| Now, I'm sure Navy's going to wrap that around her like a hand-knitted shawl at Christmas, a lovely gift from Grandpa, Grandpa Joe, one paragraph in a paper statement on Friday at five. | |
| But this is such an obvious CYA, Holmes. | |
| And I guess they felt they had no choice but to do it. | |
| It's obviously politics. | |
| Now, I mean, I've long felt like this is as big a liability as President Biden has because he, amongst all his nonsense and his terrible governing or whatever, amongst the American people, was seen as a family man, seen as a good, a good person. | |
| Of course, people remember his tragedy, of course, as a young man, also with the death of his son, Bo. | |
| And so, people give him the benefit of the doubt on all of this. | |
| But then you get to a point where he's not acknowledging a granddaughter. | |
| And that takes something. | |
| It takes an act, a proactive act by somebody to just completely throw out who he sees apparently as garbage or somebody he doesn't want to acknowledge as a human being and a part of his family. | |
| And it had done so for a period of years. | |
| I thought that that cut deeper into the center left or center right of the electorate than almost anything that Joe Biden can do because it's about him. | |
| It's about his integrity. | |
| It's about who he is as a person. | |
| Clearly, they got to the bottom of that and felt like, well, you can't do that. | |
| I mean, people are going to have a real problem with that. | |
| So on Friday night, let's just say, yeah, Navy, that's her name. | |
| We want what's best for her. | |
| No, you don't. | |
| No, you don't. | |
| I mean, they went through Hunter a period of years trying to basically distance as far as he could distance, couldn't use the name, had to pay off. | |
| You know, it's just, it's ugly. | |
| And what's so bad about this is it exposes the cynicism of the Biden family in the politics of this issue, not the family, are what drove this discussion. | |
| It's disgusting. | |
| He wants to say, Joe Biden wants to say this is personal. | |
| In the statement, he says, our son Hunter and Navy's mother, London, are working together to foster a relationship that is in the best interest of their daughter, preserving her privacy as much as possible going forward. | |
| In other words, stop fucking talking about this kid. | |
| That's what we translate for the audience. | |
| Then he writes, This is not a political issue. | |
| It's a family matter. | |
| Same, same refrain as paragraph number one. | |
| Jill and I only want what is best for all of our grandchildren, including Navy. | |
| And here is CNN with their messaging on it, not that far afield from the president's message. | |
| This is CNN over the weekend. | |
| Why now for the Bidens? | |
| And honestly, why did it take them so long? | |
| Well, two things. | |
| First of all, I respect you as a journalist for having to ask the question, but it is a very gross and uncomfortable subject to talk about as it is. | |
| Well, let's not call a little girl gross. | |
| No, I'm talking about the intersanctum of a family and the privacy of what goes on in a family. | |
| That little girl, she should not be weaponized by the Republicans who are down there in Arkansas with conservative lawyers and conservative PR people and posting on their Instagram. | |
| They shouldn't be weaponizing her. | |
| It's not Republicans with all due respect who made Hunter Biden into a complete scumbag on this and other issues. | |
| The ignoring his own daughter for four years and the president of the United States hanging up a stocking for the dog. | |
| I mean, not for his seventh grandchild. | |
| Hey, look, we can also have some sympathy for people who are struggling with addiction. | |
| Let's keep this conversation. | |
| Oof. | |
| Help me. | |
| I mean, people wonder why the mainstream media is dying. | |
| Let's have a bless Scott. | |
| God bless Scott Jennings, a good friend of mine who goes in there and has to face all this nonsense all the time. | |
| And, you know, the point he's making is a good one, which is like Republicans didn't create this problem. | |
| Hunter Biden did in the dead of night, probably on a crackfield binge. | |
| But look, pull it back out of all of that. | |
| What's not disgusting is asking questions. | |
| What is disgusting is when you hang six stockings for each grandchild at the White House, omitting the seventh, and then hanging one for the dog that bites the shit out of the Secret Service at all, basically hours of the night. | |
| Like the dog, the dog gets a stocking. | |
| Not Navy. | |
| Now Navy does. | |
| And it's like, but you can't talk about that. | |
| Why would you talk about it? | |
| Personal family. | |
| That's a personal issue. | |
| And everything, by the way, a president of the United States, the most public figure in the English-speaking, probably all of the world, just got to have privacy. | |
| There's got to be privacy amongst these kind of decisions. | |
| Like he keeps raising it. | |
| He keeps saying, I've got six grandchildren. | |
| I speak to them every day. | |
| This is what I tell them. | |
| The importance of being a dad, the importance of family. | |
| He is running on his Grandpa Joe image, which is particularly annoying to those of us who love Wonka. | |
| There's an actual Grandpa Joe who's a good man. | |
| He got up out of that bed. | |
| He went with Charlie to the factory. | |
| His legs hadn't worked in 20 years. | |
| Willie Wonka. | |
| I didn't see that coming. | |
| That's good. | |
| I'm obsessed. | |
| Anywho, he's the one who's using it as a campaign issue. | |
| But then when he comes back to haunt him, we're not allowed to discuss it because it's a family matter. | |
| It sort of just shocks the sense. | |
| Again, I keep coming back to like, am I in an asylum? | |
| Am I the crazy person? | |
| Are we seriously just looking at a person who omits the existence of a grandchild and then tries to run on the family values platform? | |
| And then when he changes his mind on that, well, we should all just be like, okay. | |
| All right. | |
| That sounds good, Joe. | |
| I get it. | |
| Like, you know, and by the way, Hunter is the smartest person that he's ever met. | |
| Remember that one? | |
| Remember that one? | |
| Hunter's the smartest man that he's ever met. | |
| Well, he sure has put you in a lot of bad situations, hasn't he, Mr. President? | |
| It is just unconscionable. | |
| I hate the fact that we have to deal with it, but it is, it's real, it's material, and it goes to who this family is and what decisions they may or may not have made. | |
| Because ultimately, in a political context, the American people are going to be judging Joe Biden on that because there's a lot of smoke that would indicate that he has all kinds of potential corruption issues surrounding him. | |
| Whether you believe that or not is entirely reliant on whether or not you think he's capable of it. | |
| When you're capable of erasing a human being because they're politically uncomfortable, you're capable of anything. | |
|
Atlanta Voters and the January Election
00:08:38
|
|
| Over on the Republican side of the aisle, Trump is more dominant than ever. | |
| The New York Times just did his first poll of the election cycle on what's happening in the Republican side and finds this is their headline. | |
| I just like circled a couple of their top words, crushing DeSantis, dominating his rivals, landslide 37 percentage points nationally, and it goes on from there. | |
| But yes, it shows Trump at 54. | |
| The number two is DeSantis at 17. | |
| Everybody else is down at three or two at best, three or two. | |
| Talking about how he has decisive advantages across almost every single demographic group and region and in every ideological win of the party, the survey found, led by wide margins among men and women, young and old, moderates and conservatives, college educated and those who are not, in cities, in suburbs, in rural areas. | |
| On and on it goes, even in a hypothetical one-on-one race, which is what the DeSantis supporters have said all along. | |
| If you could get rid of these also rans and just make it head to head that DeSantis would win, this shows Trump would still dominate DeSantis 62 to 31. | |
| They write about the intensity in the support for the president versus any of the Republicans running against him. | |
| They say the bottom line is the theme is the Republican voters like Ron DeSantis. | |
| They love Donald Trump. | |
| Now, this might make Republicans feel good because there's enthusiasm for the guy who's dominating and the most likely one to become their nominee. | |
| But there's like a lot of indictments and maybe we're going to double them by the time we get to 2024. | |
| And the more I look at this one that may be coming out of Atlanta, Holmes, the more I worry because this woman is out to get him and Atlanta's not going to slow roll it. | |
| And that case actually could be tried in front of an Atlanta, i.e. Trump hating jury prior to 2024. | |
| And there actually is a decent chance they could throw President Trump in jail before the November election. | |
| He was actually asked this question. | |
| Can you, can you run from jail? | |
| Can you can you run from jail or can you can you work from jail? | |
| One or the other. | |
| Here's, yeah, can you run? | |
| SOT 12. | |
| Listen. | |
| You get these indictments. | |
| There ends up, you got to join D.C., you get convicted and sentenced. | |
| Does that stop your campaign for president if you're sentenced? | |
| Not at all. | |
| There's nothing in the Constitution to say that it could, and not at all. | |
| And even the radical left crazies are saying, no, that wouldn't stop. | |
| And it wouldn't stop me either. | |
| That's a hell of a background. | |
| Have you ever had to work on this kind of a campaign issue before in all your campaign work? | |
| No. | |
| No, you hate to think what the sat link looks like from San Quentin. | |
| That's a tough podium. | |
| That's a tough podium. | |
| Look, you hope that doesn't happen. | |
| Back to the polls just for a second. | |
| I'd quibble a little bit with the argument that people like Ron DeSantis, but they love Donald Trump. | |
| There's 30% of the electorate that loves Donald Trump, and they're not open for business at all. | |
| We've seen that since January 6th, basically. | |
| I mean, there's 30% that's not going anywhere. | |
| But you saw last winter coming off of the high of a big win in Florida and in DeSantis with a big prime time speech, family looking lovely and potential presidential ambitions. | |
| You had poll after poll that showed DeSantis either leading Donald Trump or very closely behind him. | |
| What that was indicative of is a whole bunch of people consolidating around something new and something different. | |
| They still had 30, the 30% with Donald Trump. | |
| So when he lost all of that, it's scattered to the wind, and then Trump picks some out. | |
| What we're looking at is a Republican electorate that has yet to find an alternative that they're comfortable with. | |
| But almost every one of these state polls, Megan, if you look at Iowa, you look at New Hampshire, South Carolina, Nevada, all these early states, they show Trump in the 40s. | |
| And there's, so there's anywhere between 50 and 65% of voters. | |
| It's not like they don't know who Donald Trump is. | |
| There's 50 to 65% of voters that want something different other than Donald Trump, but they don't know what yet. | |
| And I think Ron DeSantis had the capability of consolidating all of that as he did in January and February, but it didn't work. | |
| The rollout didn't work. | |
| A bunch of early campaign stumbles and he wasn't able to lock that one-on-one Mano Amano deal. | |
| And so now it's thrown back open. | |
| That does not mean that this just is what it is. | |
| There is plenty of opportunity and roads starting with this debate in August that the RNC is putting together in Milwaukee, where you're going to have a platform, a national platform to somebody, including Ron DeSantis, to make the case. | |
| And look, we can get into the nuts and bolts of why I think it's not actually working at this point, but there's a lot of runway here. | |
| I don't think that this is over. | |
| Donald Trump is the prohibitive frontrunner, but there's a lot of runway left and there's many, many things that can happen. | |
| The one thing that I'm virtually certain is there's no indictment here that is going to recede his political waterline. | |
| We've seen it only go up. | |
| No, but a conviction is the scary thing. | |
| I mean, it's the scary. | |
| Like there is a very good chance, legally speaking, that Donald Trump will spend the rest of his life in prison. | |
| It's outrageous, but there is a very good chance of it given these prosecutors who have just made this whole thing political and are doing to him what nobody would do to Hillary Clinton. | |
| We're supposed to forget all about her and what nobody will do to Hunter or Joe Biden. | |
| So it's very scary for him from a personal perspective, but it also really could wind up if this Atlanta charge comes that or even if the January 6th federal charges come in DC that we could get a trial before November 2024. | |
| And I'm just thinking about the country. | |
| This is not a comment about whether we should or shouldn't make Trump the Republican nominee. | |
| It's just look what these Democrats are doing to the country. | |
| They won't let it be a fair fight. | |
| Look what they're hanging around the guy they know is most likely to be the GOP nominee by the day. | |
| It's serious. | |
| It's dark. | |
| And it's the reason why they celebrate things like this New York Times poll because they think they've got an ace in the hole on Trump. | |
| They do. | |
| They do. | |
| And look, to be fair, he's given them a lot of opportunity to do this kind of thing to him, right? | |
| I mean, these things are not sort of to be glazed over and pretended they're not serious. | |
| Now, there is a very significant double standard that he's encountered that Hillary Clinton and others have not, no question about it. | |
| But ultimately, sometime this fall, and as we get closer to the Iowa caucuses, Republican voters will grapple with a question that they haven't grappled with thus far. | |
| And it will not be a process question. | |
| It will be whether or not you think that Donald Trump can serve and can be elected. | |
| And there was a lot of discussion about whether he could be elected in January, February last year. | |
| Ever since Bragg brought the charges in New York this spring, that question has gone away and people are circling the wagons around Donald Trump. | |
| But ultimately, whether or not you think that Joe Biden deserves another four years is decided somewhat on whether you think Donald Trump is capable of doing that or whether he's going to be convicted of one of these crimes or whether the center of the electorate that has been a little shy about Trump thinks that somehow this bolsters their case to support him. | |
| I would think that there's plenty of evidence to suggest that it does not. | |
| And so that electability question will come up. | |
| Oh my gosh, it's getting so uncomfortable. | |
| It's getting so bizarre. | |
| It's getting so like, it just doesn't feel like America to me. | |
| It doesn't feel like our country, what these guys are doing. | |
| And then they have the nerve to go on ABC News and say, oh, the process is just and you can trust it. | |
| And the Department of Justice is, you know, Joe Biden's restored its integrity. | |
| He actually went on to say that, unlike Trump who weaponized the DOJ. | |
| Oh my God, Holmes, like this is without any pushback on ABC. | |
| It's horrifying. | |
|
The Debate That Upset the Left
00:03:18
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|
| Mr. Holmes, I will be talking to you before the big debate, but I know the program's going to be there and is going to be doing all sorts of interviews with the candidates before and after. | |
| So I'm looking forward to watching that, my friend. | |
| We see it before the debate or we see it right after. | |
| Yeah, so we're doing the pre-show for the debate, the two hours leading up to it on a Rumble platform in the RNC. | |
| I thank Chairwoman McDonald so much for having the trust and faith. | |
| I mean, you've seen our show, right? | |
| It takes some trust to make trust. | |
| Has she? | |
| Yeah, well, Rona, Ronna has definitely. | |
| And she's been on a few times. | |
| I think she's listened. | |
| I know her kid has listened, but Ronna McDaniel came on very clearly, said, you're invited. | |
| And so we took her. | |
| We took her up on it. | |
| She's smart because you guys, you'll ask smart questions, but you also have a very nice ability of humanizing these politicians, you know, with humor and just the way you guys approach the news. | |
| So that is something I absolutely will watch and I'm looking forward to that. | |
| Oh, it's very kind of you. | |
| Thanks as always, Megan. | |
| You are the absolute best. | |
| Likewise, right back at you. | |
| All right, see you soon. | |
| And we will be right back with Jonathan Isaac, that huge basketball star who stood up against the nonsense and now is trying to help us all with some non-woke sports apparel. | |
| Of course, he's upset the left. | |
| Yes, yet again. | |
| We'll look forward to that discussion. | |
| Join me now is Orlando Magic Power Forward Jonathan Isaac. | |
| Jonathan made headlines. | |
| You may remember this back in 2020 when he was the only player on his team to stand during the national anthem and not wear a BLM shirt. | |
| We had him on last year to discuss his amazing book, Why I Stand, which is a must-read. | |
| Now he's back again as he puts his words into action again, launching a new sports brand called Unite Us as a values-based alternative to woke sports companies. | |
| Jonathan, welcome back. | |
|
LeBron, Video Collapses, and Heart Health
00:11:06
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|
| They say necessity is the mother of all invention. | |
| And this seems to be exactly what led to Unite Us. | |
| I am sick, sick, sick of the Nike and Adidas sports brands shoveling their woke ideology down our throat and then going to the sports store and seeing almost no alternatives to them. | |
| Absolutely, Megan. | |
| Thank you so much for having me. | |
| I appreciate it. | |
| Like you said, I was here a little while ago, and I'd agree with you. | |
| I think that the time has come. | |
| And even that quote, I haven't heard that, but I love that quote about necessity. | |
| And that's what Unitas was for me. | |
| At the end of the day, very simply, values matter. | |
| What people believe matters, and it tells you a little bit about them. | |
| And so when we give our money to companies and we find out what these companies stand for and believe, we co-sign them by giving them our money. | |
| And so what I wanted to do was take the values that I hold dear and I stand for, which are faith, family, and freedom and a plethora of other ones, but pretty much put that into apparel, sportswear, leisure wear, and give people the freedom and alternative to buy with their values. | |
| It's such a good idea. | |
| So how do you make sure that it's, you know, it covers everything? | |
| Like, we need sneakers and we need athletic wear and we need, you know, stretchy pants for us ladies. | |
| Like you got to cover it all. | |
| So how are you making sure that it's all quality and you've got it all covered? | |
| Well, it takes time. | |
| It takes a lot of time. | |
| I am doing this by myself for now, but we're going to start with just leisure wear. | |
| So we are live right now. | |
| You can head to weareunitis.com and we have our first capsule of leisure wear merch, which is a sweater, a hoodie, t-shirt, sweatpants, things like that. | |
| And we have big plans to diversify and go from young to old, all of that. | |
| We have youth merch as well on the website right now. | |
| But again, plans to do big things and pretty much be a one-stop shop for everything that you would need from a sportswear and leisure wear perspective. | |
| I'm going to be wearing my own sneaker called the Unitis Judah One this upcoming season. | |
| And those are going to be live in a few months for purchase. | |
| And we want to get into, again, every sphere of sportswear and leisure wear that you can think of. | |
| And we want to do it in the best of ways, high quality, and things that people can believe in. | |
| Give us the website again so people who want to support you can do it. | |
| The website is called weareunitis.com. | |
| U-N-I-T-U-S is Unitis. | |
| And you can head to Instagram, Twitter, We Are Unitas as well. | |
| Yes, I will. | |
| I'm going to do that. | |
| And I'm going to help you promote the brand because I so believe in this. | |
| I wonder what the reaction has been amongst your fellow players and the fans. | |
| I don't really understand the politics of sports fans because I'm not really a sports person. | |
| So is it a woke crowd? | |
| Do you think they'll welcome this? | |
| Or are they more woke and they're going to be like, ah, his boo? | |
| No. | |
| Well, everybody's different. | |
| I've definitely had my fair share of negativity towards the brand and towards the idea. | |
| But at the same time, I've had an overwhelming swell of support. | |
| And for me, it's about focusing on the positive. | |
| And, you know, people who disagree, it's not that they disagree with me. | |
| It's that they disagree with the values that I hold dear. | |
| And I'm not worried about them. | |
| I'm worried about uniting the people who do stand up for the values that I believe in and that millions of people across the country believe in. | |
| No matter what you look like, no matter where you come from, if you understand the necessity and value of faith in Christ, our building and platforming the family unit. | |
| And then again, focusing on our freedoms, constitutional freedoms, biblical freedoms that are inherently given to us, then Unitis is for you. | |
| And if you don't agree with them, then more power to you. | |
| The movement isn't about hating anybody. | |
| It's not about going against anybody. | |
| It is about putting our words into action. | |
| And I understand that we could one day get to a place where if you don't believe this or believe that, you can't shop here. | |
| You can't go here. | |
| You can't do this. | |
| And if there aren't people who are, you know, putting kind of the feet to the ground and giving people alternatives, when that time comes, the only answer for those people is going to be to conform. | |
| And so I want to put my foot in the fire and say, you know what? | |
| I've kind of been used to standing up for what I believe in and doing it alone in some sense. | |
| But I want to unite people and give them courage and confidence that our values are valid. | |
| And if they're not going to celebrate them, then we can celebrate them ourselves. | |
| Yeah, you're not alone. | |
| So when you say you're doing this on your own, do you need financial backing? | |
| Because, you know, there are a lot of very well-off people who share your values entirely and I'm sure would love to get behind this financially. | |
| Well, absolutely. | |
| At this point in time, we're okay. | |
| But when we get to the point where, again, talking about those big dreams of scaling and being able to sponsor entire college teams and universities and high schools and everything like that, we'll have that conversation. | |
| But that time is coming. | |
| But we're very excited. | |
| We're doing very well with the launch. | |
| And I just want to continue to grow and, again, hit those different spheres of influence from all the different sports realms to different influencers and just get this thing out there in front of people's eyes. | |
| Now, there's so much I want to talk to you about. | |
| Charles Barkley was in the news ripping on people who are critical of Bud Light. | |
| The U.S. women's soccer team refuses to sing or put their hands over their heart in unison for the national anthem. | |
| Before we get to all that, I do want to ask you how you're doing because I know you had some gnarly hamstring injury, and I am such a whiner. | |
| I had like a bone spur in my shoulder. | |
| I've been whining about it for three years. | |
| What happened to your hamstring? | |
| Because it sounds like you managed to overcome it and you're going back out there now. | |
| Yeah, yeah, I had a little tweak, but I'm good. | |
| I'm 100%. | |
| This is my first summer of really being able to put in work, and I'm excited for the Orlando Magic and what we're going to be able to do this upcoming season. | |
| Did you have to have a surgery on it? | |
| I did. | |
| I did. | |
| I had to have a minor surgery. | |
| But again, I'm up there, Megan. | |
| I appreciate you. | |
| You know, you talk about their hamstring. | |
| It's like the Achilles tendon. | |
| You just don't want anybody messing with it. | |
| You don't want anything to go wrong with it. | |
| But I know you're a professional athlete. | |
| So it's like these injuries are going to come and you guys heal up so fast because you're just in such good shape going into these things. | |
| So good on you. | |
| We're excited to see you back out on the court. | |
| I mean, not me personally, since I don't watch basketball, but my sons and my husband, all the people. | |
| We're going to do so well. | |
| We're going to get you to watch. | |
| We're going to get you, maybe get you out to a game. | |
| Who knows? | |
| You never know. | |
| Well, that'd be fun. | |
| Okay. | |
| If it's to watch you, I will do that. | |
| All right. | |
| When we come back, we're going to discuss those subjects that I just mentioned. | |
| What does Jonathan Isaac think of Charles Barkley calling everybody losers and other choice words if they don't support the boycott against Bud Light? | |
| We'll ask him. | |
| And then an update on our disgraceful women's team. | |
| And don't forget, folks, if you would like more of the Megan Kelly show, you can listen to it live on SiriusXM Triumph Channel 111 every weekday at Noon East. | |
| The full video show and clips by subscribing to youtube.com/slash MeganKelly. | |
| If you prefer an audio podcast, and I know a lot of you do, follow, download on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, wherever you get your podcasts for free. | |
| And there you can find our full archives with more than 595 shows. | |
| If you go and listen to Friday's episode, which is on fire, you will hear my full interview with Governor Ron DeSantis, getting so much great feedback from all of you on it. | |
| So many of you wrote in with suggested questions, some of which worked their way into my outline, if not the exact wording, then the thought. | |
| And now getting all sorts of feedback from you guys. | |
| So I read it all and I love hearing from you. | |
| So, Jonathan, let me ask you about one of the one, a very famous basketball player who's been in the news for his health this week, Bronnie James, the son of LeBron James and a star in his own right, collapsed a week ago today while I think practicing. | |
| He was at the sports center and we now have the 911 call, just absolutely chilling. | |
| Amazing. | |
| I'm going to start with this. | |
| He appears to be okay. | |
| He's out of the hospital. | |
| I'll show you the new video of him. | |
| Thank God. | |
| But here's the 911 call of what happened after he collapsed. | |
| Immediately. | |
| Okay, sir. | |
| Listen, listen to me. | |
| Okay, Amless here now. | |
| Okay, all right. | |
| How old is he? | |
| All right. | |
| Get next to him with the phone, okay? | |
| Get next to him. | |
| Get next to him, please, with the phone. | |
| So, I mean, this is a very young man. | |
| And by the grace of God, he was he collapsed of cardiac arrest last Monday. | |
| And by this weekend, LeBron released the following video of him. | |
| He's out of the hospital. | |
| And look at him. | |
| I can do it. | |
| Oh, my God. | |
| I mean, to me, that looks like a miracle. | |
| He's 18 years old. | |
| He plays college at USC, college ball. | |
| This is scary because any young athlete worries about this kind of thing. | |
| I know people have speculated: is it the vaccine? | |
| We're not going to do that. | |
| But any young athlete has to worry about just the extraordinarily taxing, you know, number of practices and just how much you press your bodies. | |
| And in particular, when it comes to young men in heart health, we have seen a rash of incidents. | |
| And it's alarming to me as a mother of two boys, never mind it, I'm sure, to somebody like you who's actually in basketball full-time. | |
| What do you make of this whole thing? | |
| Well, I think for starters, just saying, like you said, praise God that he's okay. | |
| I know I have and many of people across America have been praying for not just Brownie, but LeBron and his family. | |
| So I'm grateful to see him back doing what he does and able to play the piano and all that. | |
| That's great. | |
| It is terribly scary. | |
| I had when I was at, when I was at Florida State, I had a teammate. | |
| His name was Ojo. | |
| And he actually passed away because of a cardiac arrest moment after I had already left. | |
| I had been with him with the Magic, I think a year or two. | |
| And it was right around the time of the COVID outbreak and everything. | |
| And he had a heart issue and ended up dying. | |
| And so it's near and dear to me. | |
| And it's just, you know, who knows? | |
| I just, I'm glad that he's okay. | |
| And I have heard and seen, you know, stories of, you know, uptick in athletes, you know, struggling with this and, you know, where it comes from. | |
| Everybody's speculating and things like that. | |
| But I'm just grateful that Bronny's okay. | |
| It's to me, it's, it's like we featured about a year ago our family friends, the Barkledges, and the loss of their son, Blake, at age 17, who died. | |
| Similarly, he had like, he just dropped, dropped. | |
| And it turned out he had myocarditis. | |
| And the family said very openly they had no idea whether it was caused by COVID, by the COVID vaccine, by something unrelated. | |
|
WNBA Players and Compassionate Concerns
00:15:58
|
|
| They really couldn't tell any of that. | |
| But they are big proponents now of getting screened. | |
| And they work with this group called Simon's Heart, which I recommend to everyone listening, Simon's Heart, which will come into your sports organization or your school or your NBA team and do heart screenings. | |
| And they do find abnormalities sometimes. | |
| It's like a lot of times you're out there. | |
| You don't know if you've got something or maybe heart damage from something, whether it's myocarditis or something. | |
| Like to me, it's just a reminder that you cannot be too careful, even if you're a young man. | |
| Because as you point out, we see it too frequently. | |
| And I, like you, I'm not a big LeBron James fan because I don't like his woke messaging, but God bless him and his son. | |
| This goes well beyond any of those nonsense debates, you know? | |
| Absolutely. | |
| Okay, but the women's soccer team is a different story. | |
| They're about to take a hit. | |
| They are embarrassing us. | |
| That's what I think, Jonathan. | |
| They're embarrassing us time after time after time. | |
| First, they go up against the Vietnamese. | |
| The Vietnamese sing their anthem loud and proud. | |
| There are women who could barely find a mumble. | |
| Maybe two or three tried to find a mumble of a few of our lyrics, and at least half didn't even have their hands on their heart. | |
| Now they go out again against, it was the Dutch, right? | |
| And the Dutch are singing it loud and singing it proud, their anthem. | |
| Once again, there's our ladies phoning it in. | |
| They could barely spare a word. | |
| They don't care to represent the United States with any sort of pride. | |
| And so I've been asking, what are they doing there then? | |
| Why go out there? | |
| Only a couple put their hands on the heart and only and fewer actually managed to sing a lyric or two as the one guy who actually refused to take a knee when our national anthem played. | |
| What do you make of this? | |
| Well, I do think it sucks. | |
| I think it is telling about where we are as a country. | |
| And kind of the first thing that comes to my mind is, you know, the people who are playing for these other countries, you know, their countries that they live in aren't perfect and no country is. | |
| And if you would compare some of the things that go on in our country and some of the things that go on in these other countries, you would think that it would be the other way around because of how great the U.S. is overall. | |
| Obviously, the U.S. has had downfalls and a history that isn't spectacular. | |
| But one of the things that my pastor always says about us as individuals is that we haven't done everything right, but we haven't done everything wrong either. | |
| And that is the lens that I try my best to see America through. | |
| Yes, America has had, again, its downfalls and its pitfalls, but it hasn't done everything wrong. | |
| We wouldn't be where we are today if America did everything wrong. | |
| And I just think that it's not a bad thing to have pride in your country and where you were born or where you come from or anything like that. | |
| I think it's normal. | |
| I think it's natural. | |
| And I think it is something that we should do. | |
| We should understand that being Americans binds us together. | |
| And we are the experiment that can take people from all over the world and give them a message and a meaning of what it means to be American and have them pursue their dreams. | |
| And I think that's something beautiful. | |
| I think something that we should take pride in. | |
| And so, you know, for me, standing in the bubble wasn't completely about the flag or about America. | |
| It was more so about using that platform to share the gospel for what I thought was the real antidote for the problems that we see. | |
| But at the same time, I wanted to show a pride that, you know, I don't think it's the right thing to kneel for the national anthem in that moment. | |
| And so, you know, I would say it would only benefit us for them to do the right thing and to share, you know, their pride. | |
| But at the same time, the America that they live in affords them the freedom to go and not sing the national anthem or put their hands over their heart. | |
| And again, I think that speaks to how great America is. | |
| I just think of, you know, all the guys, every Memorial Day, we do an in-depth piece with a veteran who, you know, who's been out there serving our country, just to remind people, what are we remembering on Memorial Day? | |
| What are we actually supposed to be thinking about? | |
| And I think about somebody like Marcus Luttrell, who thank God is alive and survived his lone survivor ordeal, which was so traumatic and harrowing that they've made books and movies about it. | |
| But I think about him. | |
| Get up. | |
| You put your hand over your heart and you sing because the United States of America produced a man like that, along with his twin brother. | |
| And they're out there serving us still in different ways. | |
| That's why you put your hand over your heart and you sing the national anthem. | |
| It's not about you and your petty grievances. | |
| And these women, Jonathan, I looked it up. | |
| Megan Rapino is on the bench because she can't quite make the starting lineup this year, but she made $7 million last year. | |
| She's chief, she's kneeler in chief. | |
| She said she'll never sing the national anthem again for the country that paid her $7 million just last year alone. | |
| Never mind what she makes every other year. | |
| Trinity Rodman's out there. | |
| She's on the U.S. women's soccer team. | |
| She's Dennis Rodman's daughter, though apparently they don't have much of a relationship. | |
| Last year alone, $2.3 million. | |
| She's not grateful. | |
| She doesn't appreciate the country that created the environment, the capitalist world in which she was able to earn that both on the field and off, thanks to all the endorsements she's gotten at age 21. | |
| You know what sliver of 21-year-olds in America have made 2 million, 2.3 in the past year? | |
| Almost none. | |
| But she's not grateful, Jonathan. | |
| She's angry. | |
| She's angry at the country. | |
| So is Crystal Dunn, 2 million last year. | |
| Same thing. | |
| Couldn't muster the ability to honor our country. | |
| Neither could Sophia Smith. | |
| Same thing. | |
| $2 million just last year. | |
| These girls are 22, 21. | |
| I find it disgusting. | |
| And I feel like it's part of what we're doing to young people today, Jonathan. | |
| We have too few Jonathan Isaacs and too many sports stars who want to shame the country and lead these up-and-comers to believe it's the cool thing to do. | |
| Yeah, it's unfortunate, Megan. | |
| I agree. | |
| It is very unfortunate. | |
| And I think about what we could be As a unified America, where again, everyone understands that America hasn't done everything right, but everyone takes pride in the fact that they have done some things right and are continuing to move in a better direction for everybody. | |
| And so, what would it look like if we were able to truly band together, everyone, white, black, and different from different ethnicities and backgrounds and share that American dream, that American pride, that American vision? | |
| You know, what a force we would be for the world. | |
| I think about that. | |
| But I think more so, again, it comes down to America going through a spiritual battle that is overtaking our youth, that is overtaking our country. | |
| And I think, you know, initiatives like, you know, that I'm trying to start and other people are trying to start as well are trying our best to push back against that and hopefully instill that American pride, instead those values, those constitutional values that has made America great. | |
| Yes, that's right. | |
| And to remind people, like protest is fine, but remember who you're representing. | |
| Remember in this role, to me, it's you want to go out there and protest, you know, America. | |
| You want to march with BLM? | |
| Okay. | |
| You want to march with the women's march? | |
| Okay. | |
| Even though that's not what they stand, they're not for women. | |
| They're for an entirely different agenda. | |
| But when you're out there representing the United States of America, stand up, put your hand on your heart and sing. | |
| Sing. | |
| Don't embarrass us. | |
| Don't embarrass our country and don't dishonor the people who have served this country and given literally everything so that those stars and stripes could be waving over their heads. | |
| Charles Barkley, I mentioned it, and I'm so surprised to see him do this. | |
| He was like more of a voice of reason on a lot of these debates, but he went off the rails on this whole Bud Light controversy that genuinely has people upset for very good reason. | |
| And just as a reminder, here's what he said recently when he was at some comedy show saying he was going to buy Bud Light for everyone. | |
| I'm going to buy some drinks for y'all. | |
| And I'm going to buy Bud Light. | |
| Hey, let me tell you something. | |
| All you rednecks or assholes who don't want to break Bud Light, fuck y'all. | |
| I ain't worried about getting canceled. | |
| 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. | |
| If you're gay, God bless you. | |
| If you're trans, God bless you. | |
| And if you have a problem with them, fuck you. | |
| What do you make of the way he framed that issue? | |
| Well, my gripe isn't even necessarily with Charles Barkley when it comes to that conversation. | |
| Do I think he was wrong in what he said? | |
| I do. | |
| But my gripe is more so with the narrative that's being played out in not just this conversation, but all the conversations that are kind of our forefront, polarizing media conversations, which is if you have any pushback, any concern, any hesitation for not jumping on board with any of the ideologies or movements that are going on today, that you are rooted in hatred. | |
| And I think that couldn't be farther from the truth. | |
| Do I think some people do hate other people? | |
| Yes. | |
| But I don't think that's the majority of people in our country or Americans for that matter. | |
| And I think that these narratives are framed that way because they're easy to attack, right? | |
| It's easy to say if you don't like this, you don't like that, then F you, you hate people. | |
| But I do think that there is valid room for concern for parents, for adults, for anybody who is concerned about their children, who is concerned about the children who are going through such a deep identity crisis that we are seeing, especially in that movement in our country. | |
| I think people are concerned about truth and where truth stands when it comes to this conversation. | |
| People are concerned about women and women sports, girls, sports, and more, you know, particular. | |
| And I think those are valid concerns. | |
| So I just, I disagree with the narrative that if you have, if everybody who boycotted Bud Light, it's because they hate people. | |
| And I don't think that's the truth. | |
| I think that's the easy narrative to attack. | |
| But when you actually talk to people and you hear about their concerns for where our country is headed, they are valid concerns. | |
| And that's what I would say. | |
| What do you make of the rash of men declaring themselves trans entering women's sports? | |
| I mean, how do you think you'd do if you did a game in the WNBA? | |
| Well, me, I dominate. | |
| I think, again, it speaks to a spiritual lack, a spiritual yearning and a spiritual battle that's going on within our country where people are looking for identity and meaning and things outside of God, outside of who they were made to be. | |
| And I think that also the narrative that only one side has compassion, I think that is where I draw the line as well. | |
| I think that, you know, it's said, you know, one side hates you and the other side is this compassionate, affirming person. | |
| But I don't think always affirming everything is always the compassionate thing. | |
| I think compassionate people are truthful and honest and can walk people through what they're going through in truth and love. | |
| I think that's compassionate. | |
| And so that would be my stance on that issue. | |
| I think it is unfortunate. | |
| I think it is telling of a deeper issue that's going on in our country spiritually first. | |
| And if we don't continue to stand for truth and continue to offer a different voice and a different alternative to what's going on, then it'll continue to take us over. | |
| I mean, what do you like? | |
| We had the head of the human rights campaign in congressional testimony try to laugh at the notion, the notion that men have any sort of athletic, inherent athletic advantage over women. | |
| And I feel like basketball is a great sport to put the lie to that. | |
| I mean, I just, as you know, I'm not a sports person, but I looked it up. | |
| The number one of the top 25 players on the female side, WNBA, in 2023, is Brianna Stewart. | |
| Now, how do you think Breanna Stewart would do if she spent a season with the magic? | |
| It'd be difficult. | |
| It would be. | |
| You know, I'm not necessarily here to hate on Brianna, but she wouldn't be able to play with us. | |
| I think she's a great player for women. | |
| I think the reason why we have women's sports in the first place is to create that divide between men and women because it is an unfair playing field when it comes to how we were made and how we are genetically and physically. | |
| I just think that's, I think that's reasonable and truthful and honest. | |
| And I think that we should be trying our best. | |
| And again, what we have done to protect women in their sports and allow them the ability to perform against each other on an even playing field. | |
| And that's what has produced things like the NBA, which is, you know, which is a great sport and people love to watch it. | |
| I think that is a good thing. | |
| And so to then try to act like it's not a thing or we didn't start Title IX and things like that for the protection of women and girls' sports is crazy. | |
| I wonder if you think it would even be safe if you took the top female basketball player, whether it's Brianna or somebody else, and put her on your team. | |
| And then, you know, off you went to play in the whatever tournament. | |
| Would that even be safe? | |
| Well, even outside of Brianna, again, if you're talking about the best of the best, right? | |
| You're talking about the best female, you know, WNBA players. | |
| You know, I'm sure that they play pickup with guys all the time. | |
| Again, I don't think that it would work out with the NBA, but that's just the cream of the crop when it comes to women's sports. | |
| What about all the other ones? | |
| I think that's where the true conversation is with the divide is if you go straight to the extreme with the best female players against the best basketball players, yes, there's going to be a big difference. | |
| But how does that work out as you trickle it down to girls' sports and girls who are 12 and 15 and 16 years old? | |
| There really isn't a chance. | |
| And so I think that again speaks to the extreme of the difference. | |
| I think, you know, obviously the WNBA, they are great players. | |
| I don't think that they'd be able to perform on the level that we do. | |
| But at the end of the day, it's more so about the girls who are who just want to play for fun, who just want to go out there and enjoy a sport that is on an even playing field with girls their age and everything and their size and their ability just like them. | |
| I think they're the ones that are in real jeopardy. | |
| It's funny to me because these are all, you know, sweeping rules. | |
| And of course, there can always be an exception to the rule. | |
| You can have an especially slight man and an especially muscly woman. | |
| But we have to go by the rules when we create barriers and safety rules and so on and fairness regulations. | |
| But I also think that, you know, if you took 10 men and 10 women and put them in a room and there was somebody crying, in virtually every instance, the woman could get to the bottom of why fastest. | |
| Like we all have different gifts. | |
| Right? | |
| Just like, let's just be honest about them and then create a fair playing system to handle it all. | |
| I love to hear you speak so frankly about it. | |
| Do you feel like, you know, we've seen in the basket in the baseball arena, some guys get basically canceled for agreeing with the Bud Light boycott or for saying some of the things you just said. | |
| That guy in the Toronto Blue Jays comes to mind. | |
| Is it scary to speak about this issue? | |
| Is this the kind of thing that could get you canceled? | |
| Even somebody like you? | |
| Well, I guess, you know, because it's happened to other guys. | |
| I try my best to speak in a way that is truthful and compassionate. | |
| I'm not about bashing people or hating people, but I am about standing up for my position and trying my best to vocalize it in the best way that I can. | |
| And I just think that, again, there's no more nuance. | |
| There's no room to sit down and have a conversation with somebody where you humanize them for what they're going through, what they feel, their background, how they got to that position. | |
| It's just about if we can label you something, then it's easy to attack you because this label carries so much weight. | |
|
Victimhood Culture and Discrimination Lawsuits
00:16:14
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|
| And so even in the instance where guys are strong in their faith and they believe in the word of God and the Bible and Jesus Christ as the Lord of Savior. | |
| So because of that, they don't want to participate in certain things. | |
| They're automatically deemed as right-wing extremists and Christians or whatever you want to call them as some hateful group, but not understanding who they are, where they come from, and that they have true belief in this system. | |
| I think that's where we've gone awry. | |
| And that honestly, my view is that true belief is the answer to most of our problems. | |
| If you could just fill that void inside with something truly good and uplifting and that reminds you there's a power higher than yourself, you won't need to seek solace in what we call wokeism or identity politics or something that obsesses over, you know, skin color or gender or what have you. | |
| This is one of the many reasons why you're such an important voice, Jonathan. | |
| Thank you so much for this. | |
| Now, listen, when you get ready to expand Unitas, come on back because I know a lot of people who would actually really like to help you. | |
| I have absolutely no doubt. | |
| And we need to take this to the next level. | |
| Wow, we can start on that now. | |
| If you want to DM me on Instagram or there's a spot on. | |
| We know how to reach you. | |
| Yes, weareunitis.com and we can talk. | |
| We are Unitas, U-N-I-T-U-S.com. | |
| All the best to you. | |
| Thank you so much for being here. | |
| Thank you, Megan. | |
| I appreciate you. | |
| And don't forget, folks, make sure you go back and listen to episode 324, 324 for our very first interview with Jonathan. | |
| Don't you love him, right? | |
| There's a reason for that. | |
| Don't you want to help him? | |
| Do it. | |
| Next up, we're going to take a look at the affirmative action Supreme Court ruling and what's now happening with one of the main guys behind the whole thing. | |
| How are the colleges about to implement their new plan? | |
| Are they just going to find ways around it? | |
| We'll talk about it next. | |
| Today, we're taking a look at the fallout from the Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action. | |
| UNC's Board of Trustees has just formally, in the wake of that ruling, banned preferential treatment based on race from its admissions and hiring decisions. | |
| Meanwhile, Harvard is facing a new battle over legacy admissions. | |
| My next guest is at the center of this fight. | |
| He is the author of the brand new book, School of Woke, How Critical Race Theory Infiltrated American Schools and Why We Must Reclaim Them, which is out tomorrow. | |
| Kenny Hsu is also president of Color Us United and a member of the board that brought the case against Harvard and UNC to the Supreme Court. | |
| He is what you might call the victor in that big, big decision that will help us all, I believe. | |
| Kenny, welcome to the show. | |
| Thank you for having me. | |
| It's great for you. | |
| You must have had what a moment. | |
| Can I just ask you, like, what a moment. | |
| Not did you win. | |
| Not just only did you win your case, you won a seminal case before the U.S. Supreme Court that is supposed to change university admissions and potentially down the line other ways we factor race into situations forever. | |
| So what was that like? | |
| Yeah, and it's a victory for Asian American dignity. | |
| You know, it's a victory for equal opportunity for everybody. | |
| We knew how Harvard was discriminating against Asian Americans. | |
| They ranked them lowest on personality. | |
| Asians had the highest grades and the highest test scores out of any race, but they decided to rank them lowest on personality. | |
| That was inexcusable. | |
| It showed the level of discrimination. | |
| I'll tell you, we won. | |
| And Students for Fair Admissions and my organization, Color Us United, we won fair and square. | |
| And there are people at UNC right now that are really regretting even filing this lawsuit. | |
| Vice chair of the Board of Trustees, John Pryor, for example, said that they spent $35 million on this lawsuit to lose. | |
| Why? | |
| You know, I think it's going to leave a lot of liberals and progressives wondering about the efficacy of their case. | |
| Hmm. | |
| Well, you're saying, because you're saying he's mad that they fought, that they fought you? | |
| Yeah, he's mad that they fought us. | |
| They fought a losing case. | |
| Most Americans do not support race being used in the college admissions process, where we support helping minority children is at the K-12 public education level, not at the college level. | |
| Elite colleges should be about merit and admitting most qualified. | |
| But they haven't been. | |
| And you were so right in all of your allegations. | |
| And just, let's just spend one second on this. | |
| I mean, the absolute insult of basically rejecting Asians because they factored in their lame personalities. | |
| That was the sweeping judgment that they were making at places like Harvard. | |
| Like, well, you could get in. | |
| You have perfect SATs. | |
| You have a 4.4, but your personality is so lame, you had to go. | |
| All these other people who just happen to be people of a certain racial group have much better personalities than you do. | |
| So they're coming in despite the fact that they're two standard deviations below you on the SAT. | |
| That's what was happening. | |
| Yeah, and the truth is the progressives that claim to be anti-racist are actually more racist and more racially conscious than we could ever think of. | |
| At this heart of this entire lawsuit was Harvard's mistaken belief that they don't want too many Asians at Harvard. | |
| Because if they eliminated race preferences and admissions, the percentage of whites would go up slightly, but the percentage of Asians would go from 20% to 43%. | |
| And Harvard did not want the percentage of Asians at their campus to get on 43%. | |
| Now we know why Asians would get into Harvard at 43%. | |
| It's because they study twice as hard as the average American, twice as many hours as the average American. | |
| That's why. | |
| It's cultural. | |
| I mean, and this, but this is something you're not allowed to say, right? | |
| Because what it implies is that it's not cultural for certain other racial groups to apply themselves that much to their academics. | |
| But the truth is, it's not. | |
| It's not cultural as a rule for any other racial group, for the most part, to spend that many hours studying a day. | |
| That's just a truism. | |
| And until we actually get our arms around that, those numbers aren't going to change in terms of what the admissions would be if we just went on merit. | |
| Right, exactly. | |
| Harvard cared more about the racial, what their composition of their student body looked like than they cared about the actual merit of their institution. | |
| Now, the problem with that argument is, well, what do we as Americans, what do we believe should compromise, can should constituent, could be a constituent of an elite institution? | |
| The answer is it should be the most qualified students because those are the people that we trust to deliver the resources, the intellectual resources that are going to propel our country forward. | |
| So if Harvard continues to claim to be an elite institution, they need to admit the most intellectually elite people. | |
| They are compromising that by factors of, like you said, two standard deviations or more on the SAT, 273 points higher Asians had to get on the SAT to have the same chance of admission as a black person. | |
| That's inexcusable from the perspective of merit. | |
| What's crazy is Asians, of course, are a minority in this country as well. | |
| And so you would think they'd say, oh, we're 43% minority if it wound up that Asians made up 43% of the Harvard incoming class. | |
| But you're the wrong kind of minority. | |
| That's what it boils down to. | |
| You're the wrong kind. | |
| Your past history in the United States of discrimination against you, the current attacks we see against Asians on the street from COVID forward that have made news over and over. | |
| None of that matters. | |
| It doesn't rate. | |
| It doesn't count because you're the wrong kind of minority. | |
| The same could be said about our Jewish friends, that the trauma against them, eh, well, it's different. | |
| And so it's just so infuriating because it's the same group that wants us to look at them as this inclusive, progressive, loving group. | |
| And all of us on the other side are just the haters. | |
| Right. | |
| And by the way, before somebody says, well, Asians make up 43% of the university, that's too much. | |
| Why is the NBA 75% black? | |
| Why is the construction industry 50% Hispanic? | |
| Why are restaurant management in New York City? | |
| Why are they disproportionately Hispanic and Asian? | |
| Is it because of racism? | |
| Is it because of racism for these certain preferred groups? | |
| No, it's because every cultural group or every group, whatever you want to call it, prioritizes different things in life. | |
| That's what America is about. | |
| That's what true diversity is about. | |
| True diversity is when Americans are allowed to pursue whatever talents that they, their family, their group decides prioritizes and be rewarded on the basis of what they produce. | |
| Asians produce great intellectual output because they study really hard. | |
| But Asians, for example, are not very politically represented. | |
| That's because Asians have not prioritized political representation. | |
| That is, of course, hurting them right now as Biden produces an agenda that is explicitly anti-Asian. | |
| Their equity has built back better equity rationale completely ignores the plight of Asians. | |
| They only care about quote unquote underrepresented minorities, which does not include Asian Americans. | |
| I'm reminding our audience, it's called School of Woke. | |
| It's out tomorrow. | |
| You've got to help support Kenny by buying School of Woke and you can figure out how this happened to us. | |
| The complete capture of the university system. | |
| So the big question, of course, in the wake of your victory is, what are they going to do? | |
| There's no way these universities are actually going to comply. | |
| Like they'll have to do it to the letter. | |
| But they already said, and I know the chief justice says, Well, I'm not looking to make this an end around our ruling, but we already believe that you can write an essay about how you overcame discrimination because of your race. | |
| That's if it went, if it went to like your character, you can write about it and they can consider it, but you can't just let somebody in because he checked the box that he's of a certain race. | |
| I don't know. | |
| That leads me to believe every single person of color is going to be writing all about their, you know, their racist past that they were subjected to and do an end around the ruling, notwithstanding what the chief wrote. | |
| Well, K-12 schools get their memo from universities. | |
| So, if universities say we prioritize victimhood ideology, then K-12 schools are going to incentivize their minority, particularly their black students, to cater to victimhood ideology. | |
| But as I argue in School of Woke, this is the wrong way to teach American history, and this is the wrong way to teach Black kids how to succeed. | |
| Instead, why don't we talk about the cultural values that make all groups in America successful? | |
| One, two-parent family households, right? | |
| 75% of Black children are born out of wedlock. | |
| That is a big issue in these communities. | |
| Two, high crime. | |
| You cannot learn when you have high crime in places like Baltimore and New York, and when teachers are worried more about becoming custodians than they are worried about actually helping people to learn. | |
| And then three, ending victimhood ideology in the curricula. | |
| Florida's curricula right now in African-American history is under attack because it said that slaves had benefited from certain skills. | |
| Nowhere does it say that slavery was a good institution. | |
| In fact, it repeatedly denigrates that institution. | |
| But it is true. | |
| Slaves learn skills. | |
| Why can't we talk about things from an objective basis instead of an emotional basis? | |
| And that is unfortunately the things that are being fed to minority children that lead them to pursue victimhood rather than achievement that eventually lead to this racial disparity and achievement that we have, as I argue in School of Woke. | |
| I have a friend, she and her family are very successful, and they have some kids, and their daughter is now in high school. | |
| And so they brought in one of those education consultants who will tell you how to get your kid into Harvard or, you know, one of those schools. | |
| And the mother was very dejected after this person left because all this person did was try to flesh out the trauma that had been in this daughter's life. | |
| Like, maybe this happened to you. | |
| You know, was there, what was there? | |
| Could we cite a sexual assault? | |
| What could there have been? | |
| Because she's well off and she's white and the parents have advantages. | |
| And she was like, you're never getting in unless we can find some way to make you into a victim. | |
| Meanwhile, this girl's like, I'm very lucky to have not had any of that in my past. | |
| I'm actually just a really well-adjusted, happy kid who's gotten great grades through hard work. | |
| Will that get me in anywhere? | |
| And the answer was basically no, Kenny. | |
| I mean, like, that's what kind of future leaders are we creating if the person who happened to be so lucky as just to have really happy, healthy, well childhood is booted because of that. | |
| Right, because it's not sexy to talk about hard work. | |
| It's not sexy to talk about merit. | |
| The left now wants to eliminate standardized test scores and admissions because they claim that, well, it underprivileges black children. | |
| So what are they going to replace it with? | |
| How are you going to judge people based on their quote-unquote story? | |
| But of course, what we know is that the left only wants a certain kind of story. | |
| They want the victimhood story. | |
| What about the story of hard work? | |
| You know, I took a job when I was 16 years old, Megan. | |
| And my first job was working at a Jersey Mike's. | |
| And that was eventually what I wrote my essay on. | |
| It wasn't sexy. | |
| It wasn't super exciting, but it was something I took great pride in because I actually was part of a team and I learned core skills and I didn't have to brag about my victimhood. | |
| And I actually made some money. | |
| For me, that was a big deal growing up in a middle-class family. | |
| So those are the stories that the left does not care about. | |
| They would prefer if you talked about how oppressed you are by society. | |
| So all of the incentives that we have in our country right now are towards victimhood, especially among children, not towards working hard and being meritorious. | |
| Why does the Asian work ethic make them so uncomfortable? | |
| Because I feel like one of the pieces of it is that it spans the socioeconomic landscape. | |
| You know, like they get uncomfortable. | |
| If they could just dismiss all Asians as just like a bunch of rich, spoiled kids, because everybody hates the rich, that'd be one thing. | |
| But the truth is, it's across socioeconomic divide. | |
| And I feel like that's what makes them have to just deny that it's happening. | |
| They can't talk about the cultural commitment to excellence. | |
| I can debunk that with one statistic. | |
| New York City's low-income Asians have higher SHSAT scores than the high-income blacks and the high-income whites. | |
| Okay. | |
| It's not just about money and privilege. | |
| It is about culture, hard work, study. | |
| And this is the inconvenient minority to the left because the left prefers to believe that if you're a minority, you're a victim of oppression. | |
| But what do they do with Asian Americans? | |
| Asian Americans are a victim of America's historic discrimination, and they certainly don't come here with social status or parent-family connections, but they are able within one generation to have higher bachelor's degree attainment and higher incomes household-wise than even white people. | |
| That is a big, that's what, you know what that shows? | |
| That shows meritocracy. | |
| That shows that America fundamentally rewards people regardless of their color, but fundamentally rewards them on their hard work and character. | |
| That is anathema to the left. | |
| So to me, I just feel like there's no hope for these universities. | |
| You know, you just have to choose one like Hillsdale or Liberty or someone was singing the praises of Clemson on the show recently. | |
| Something in the South, you know, where people are just like, I'm not doing this. | |
| But you obviously think something can be done because you were behind this lawsuit and you've already changed the law. | |
| But how do we actually make them comply with the Supreme Court ruling? | |
| And how do we just, how do we regain what has been captured by these ideologues who wish to foist their identity politics on all of us? | |
| I would prefer not to use the word comply. | |
| I would prefer to use the word inspire. | |
| What we can do if you're an ordinary parent is have a dinner time conversation, which I argue in my book, School of Woke, have a dinner time conversation with your little Johnny, with your kid. | |
| Tell them, I value my black friend as a friend, not because he's black. | |
| It doesn't matter what color of skin you are. | |
| You know, you should value somebody as a human. | |
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Whiteness Studies and School Board Battles
00:02:38
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| I think that's the start. | |
| Now, one thing I talk about in my new book is how school boards have been captured. | |
| School boards have been captured because we never ran effective challengers. | |
| So what happened was most school boards in this country, they don't even have elections because the woke school board will appoint their woke friend to become the next school board member. | |
| And so you need to run effective challengers and you need to run on what's going on here. | |
| But what I show in my book is that when you do, you have huge victories, not just Glenn Young's landslide victory, but victories in places like San Francisco, California, where Chinese Americans basically rallied and booted out three of the woke school board members in San Francisco. | |
| You know, this shows education is a winning issue. | |
| People care. | |
| People blame the Democrats because the Democrats are to blame because the racial achievement gap hasn't closed over the past 40 years and they're willing to consider new solutions. | |
| And I think that that's what we have to run on. | |
| It's, of course, going in another direction in too many instances. | |
| Just today in the news, there's a report that universities around the country, this is from our friends of the Daily Wire, this summer are hosting critical whiteness studies courses, critical whiteness studies, where students will learn about whiteness as an ideology of supremacy and domination in school after school after school. | |
| Here's just one example. | |
| University of San Francisco School of Education courses whiteness, power, and privilege, where they will explore racialization and racism through the lens of critical whiteness studies. | |
| It will also offer an examination of whiteness as the driving force behind oppression. | |
| Now, if you were to ever offer a course like this that looked negatively as a sweeping characteristic of blackness, it would be the lead story in every newscast for months. | |
| But it's fine in today's day and age, and it's as we discussed, not just whites, it's Asians too, that to do this to the different racial groups, depending on whether they're considered powerful or not. | |
| Yeah, when whiteness is associated with quote unquote objectivity and timeliness, maybe people should be more white or more whiteness. | |
| Now, of course, that's not what I argue, but if you buy the critical race theorists, maybe that's what should happen according to the critical race theory framework. | |
| I'll tell you something that happened in California. | |
| They basically said the Gewert School of Education in University of California, Santa Barbara, argued to their own students that teaching English was a form of white supremacy. | |
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Confidence in Higher Education Crumbles
00:03:36
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| So you know what these education school graduates do? | |
| They go to their school systems, they go become superintendents, and then they tell the Hispanic kids, stop learning English. | |
| And if you check off, if you're an illegal immigrant mother, you say born in Mexico to your kid, your kid is automatically put in an ESL system in which he will never learn English in this country and therefore never fully assimilate to American culture and never achieve the status that you wanted your kid to achieve. | |
| This is progressivism at its nadir. | |
| This is progressivism hurting minority kids in the name of anti-racism. | |
| And if you care at all about minority education, which I'm sure most of us do, you would stand against this with your foot in your mouth. | |
| Wow. | |
| My gosh, these are just some of the stories that you'll learn about if you read School of Woke by Kenny Hsu, spelled X-U. | |
| The latest polls show the cynicism that's taken over America when it comes to this kind of college and university education. | |
| Their confidence in it is down sharply. | |
| According to Gallup, this came out just earlier this month, the article citing a poll they had done over three weeks in June. | |
| For the first time, Americans' confidence in higher education has fallen to a new low, 36% sharply lower than in two prior readings. | |
| Okay, 36% is the new low of the American public's confidence in higher education. | |
| It was 57% believed in it as recently as 2015. | |
| In 2018, the confidence in it had fallen to 48, but now it's down to 36%, almost entirely driven by Republicans and Independents who do not believe in higher education nearly at all now. | |
| Republicans, only 19%, say they have confidence in higher education. | |
| Independents, only 32%. | |
| Who does have confidence in it? | |
| Democrats, 59%. | |
| They have confidence in higher education because they own it. | |
| But what does this mean for our future? | |
| Well, I believe the Americans. | |
| So what I mean by that is Americans are less confident about higher education because higher education has given us less to be confident about. | |
| You know, what is the cost of higher education now? | |
| You know, tens of thousands of dollars a year that you're shelling out for what benefit? | |
| Are your kids learning real skills? | |
| Are they coming out confident about pursuing the American dream in this country and making money and providing for their family? | |
| No, they're not. | |
| They're coming out more depressed than ever. | |
| And the parents, the grandparents are seeing this. | |
| So that's what's happening in this country. | |
| That's why higher education, faith in higher education is down so much. | |
| Now, I will say, if you asked Americans, there was a poll last year that asked Americans whether they agreed with the agenda of limiting sexual education to kids before fifth grade, not teaching that one class of race is more privileged or oppressed than another. | |
| Basically, you know, the Ron DeSantis colorblind history curriculum agenda. | |
| And I'll tell you, one-third of Democrats supported that. | |
| They supported that statement. | |
| One-third of them, that's a lot of Democrats supporting that statement. | |
| So this is a unifying agenda. | |
| If you run behind ending the sexualization of kids and ending the racial division going on in the schools, you can win. | |
| What do you make of now there's a new push to, in the wake of the ruling on Harvard and UNC that you're a part of, to ban legacy admissions at places like Harvard? | |
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Merit Systems and Ending Racial Division
00:04:18
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| Because I, I mean, I actually like this because I do think it's, it's kind of bullshit, right? | |
| How like, if your parents went to Harvard, you've got a much better chance of going to Harvard because they want your parents' money, really. | |
| And that, I mean, like, if there's anything people should be complaining about to me, that one makes sense. | |
| I'm very supportive of ending legacy admissions. | |
| I've always been supportive of legacy admissions. | |
| In fact, the reason why we know that Harvard is full of crap and why they're so disingenuous is because they never even considered ending legacy admissions as part of their whole DEI complex. | |
| Instead, they would prefer to discriminate against well-qualified Asian non-legacies who got in because of merit rather than end legacy admissions. | |
| So this shows that Harvard is full of crap. | |
| I would highly suggest right now in the wake of the affirmative action decision, if I were Harvard's comm officer right now, if I were Harvard's dean of admissions, Dean Fitzsimmons, I would say to him, end legacies or you're fired. | |
| You know what the truth is too? | |
| I mean, people don't talk about this, but I know because I know a lot of people who are trying to game the system. | |
| People pay. | |
| They pay. | |
| They make they suddenly, even if they didn't go to Harvard, they make a $3 million donation in the year Junior is applying. | |
| And they have so much money, they'll game the system by Harvard gets a $3 million, Yale gets a $4 million, Stanford gets a $2 million. | |
| All this money just to hedge their bets to help Junior get in. | |
| So it's like the kid, you know, like the Asian kid who's just working hard, who, you know, lives in whatever Chinatown in New York City, does not come from a wealthy background, has no idea how many obstacles he's up against, right? | |
| His race is going to be held against him. | |
| His socioeconomic status is not going to help him. | |
| And nor can he game the system in any of these other ways. | |
| He's not a legacy and he doesn't have millions to get in. | |
| So all he can do is hard work. | |
| And that will still get you a boot on the head. | |
| Oh, but it's because of your personality. | |
| Right, right, exactly. | |
| So that's what I'm helping Americans to realize through my advocacy, through the Students for Fair Admissions case, is that we should be treating hard work like a positive personality trait. | |
| Okay. | |
| Think about it. | |
| You know, what does it take to study 13 hours a week? | |
| Okay. | |
| What does it take to study 20 hours a week? | |
| Delayed gratification. | |
| That's what it takes. | |
| It takes sacrificing your social status, sacrificing your popularity, sacrificing your dating life, probably, you know, being looked upon as a loser in high school for some extent of time. | |
| But you know what you want. | |
| Like, couldn't we reward that kind of determination in America? | |
| Isn't that what America is about? | |
| Everybody makes choices. | |
| Everybody makes sacrifices. | |
| When you get married, you make a sacrifice because you believe in the goal. | |
| And if the goal is higher education, if the goal is opportunity for your family, those are the sacrifices that Asian Americans are disproportionately willing to make and they should be rewarded for it. | |
| You point out in the book, you actually go through some studies on like the study habits of different groups, and you point out in American high schools, Asian students in Chinatown, for example, study an average of 110 minutes a day. | |
| White children study an average of 55 minutes a day. | |
| Black children study an average of 35 minutes a day. | |
| Now, I suppose these progressives are going to tell us the reason black kids study 35 minutes is white supremacy. | |
| I don't like, I don't, I don't know. | |
| You tell me, Kenny, like what if they put you in charge of addressing this, what would you do? | |
| Well, this is the part where I disagree with a lot of reactionary conservatives who just want a laissez-faire system in which the status quo is allowed to stand. | |
| I don't support, you know, white children just getting ahead because, you know, their daddy has money, their family has money. | |
| I support a system fundamentally built on merit. | |
| That is what I advocate for. | |
| If you believe in this, go buy School of Woke. | |
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Buy School of Woke on Book Tour
00:01:29
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| And by the way, I'm on a book tour as well. | |
| Schoolofwoke.com is where you can find me and hire me to speak to your group, schoolofwoke.com. | |
| It's all about our finance critical theory. | |
| Obviously, if we want to help black kids who are struggling in school, one of the number one things is school choice. | |
| I mean, it's just one of the number one ways of doing it. | |
| And who's standing in the way of that? | |
| The unions, the progressives, the Democrats. | |
| I mean, that's just a fact. | |
| And we've had economist after economist and education expert after education expert come on the show and explain it. | |
| Kenny, this is a great insight into how this whole system has been working, or in other words, not working. | |
| Thank you for writing School of Woke. | |
| Thank you. | |
| All the best. | |
| Available right now for pre-order. | |
| And thanks to all of you for joining me today. | |
| Tomorrow, guess who's coming on the show? | |
| An old pal of mine, Dennis Quaid. | |
| He is a great guy. | |
| You know, he's starring in the new movie Reagan that's coming out in the not too distant future, but he's on to talk about a different special project and he always goes there. | |
| Unlike most of these people in Hollywood, he's not afraid to talk about, you know, to go to the place that hurts. | |
| So we'll do that together tomorrow and we will have a full rundown for you on what happened today with Devin Archer. | |
| I want to tell you that if you have feedback on my interview with Governor Ron DeSantis, email me, megan at M-E-G-Y-N-K-E-L-L-Y.com. | |
| Love to hear from you. | |
| I'll talk to you tomorrow. | |
| Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly Show. | |
| No BS, no agenda, and no | |