The Megyn Kelly Show - 20230908_inside-the-jimmy-fallon-toxic-workplace-allegation
Aired: 2023-09-08
Duration: 01:37:03


=== Strudwick Joins the Studio (04:12) ===

[00:01:37]  Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
[00:01:56]  Strudwick is here with me.
[00:01:58]  Yes, Strudwick has come to the new studio.
[00:02:00]  I'll tell you how it started.
[00:02:02]  I was actually in another room doing my work.
[00:02:04]  He's here with me.
[00:02:05]  And I got a panicked text from Canadian Debbie saying, Are you aware that Strudwick is in the studio?
[00:02:10]  Strudwick is in the studio.
[00:02:12]  It's not good.
[00:02:13]  So here he is.
[00:02:13]  You'll get a licking the fake gas fireplace right now.
[00:02:17]  He said so bad.
[00:02:21]  We don't know what to do.
[00:02:22]  In any event, we have actual news today, including Mayor Eric Adams going from promising to lift migrants up, quote, as high as Lady Liberty lifts her torch, to now saying they're destroying New York City for the love of God, get them out.
[00:02:35]  Corrine Jean-Pierre gets a glitzy feature in Vogue.
[00:02:40]  What?
[00:02:40]  Have they done this for another White House press secretary?
[00:02:42]  I don't remember Kaylee McEnany.
[00:02:44]  Not even Melania Trump was featured in Vogue, but Corine Jean-Pierre gets it.
[00:02:48]  And wait until you hear how they characterize her.
[00:02:51]  And some thoughts for you coming up on the Jimmy Fallon controversy.
[00:02:54]  Have you heard about this?
[00:02:55]  They're saying he's responsible for a toxic work environment over at NBC.
[00:03:01]  Hello, Pot, calling the kettle black.
[00:03:05]  Having worked in the building, how would you know?
[00:03:08]  How would you know that it becomes especially toxic inside the Jimmy Fallon studio?
[00:03:13]  It's Friday and we're going to have tons of fun.
[00:03:15]  I've got the perfect guest with me today.
[00:03:17]  He is host of the Jesse Kelly Show, and I'm right.
[00:03:21]  Jesse, welcome back.
[00:03:23]  Megan, I buzzed all my hair off.
[00:03:26]  Well, actually, Aubrey buzzed all my hair off this weekend.
[00:03:30]  She likes it too.
[00:03:31]  I'm not sure, but she swears she likes it.
[00:03:34]  I feel like she's lying, though, Megan, just to make me feel better.
[00:03:37]  No, I gotta get down low so I can see the top.
[00:03:40]  No, no, what do you mean?
[00:03:40]  What do you not like about it?
[00:03:42]  I don't know.
[00:03:44]  I don't know.
[00:03:45]  All right.
[00:03:45]  I'm forging ahead.
[00:03:46]  I'm forging ahead.
[00:03:48]  Look at us with my red background and your red background and my red dog here.
[00:03:52]  It's like we plunged in the gates of hell for this special Friday.
[00:03:55]  It's true.
[00:03:56]  And you're wearing red.
[00:03:57]  If I'd known, I would have found something red too.
[00:03:59]  Let's just go totally dark.
[00:04:01]  Yeah, I'm leaning in.
[00:04:02]  Although I'm wearing my red t-shirt, Kelly J. Keene sent this to me.
[00:04:05]  She's like a pro-woman's activist who's pushing back on the craziness and the trans stuff.
[00:04:10]  And you can't see it in this light, but it says woman.
[00:04:12]  It says woman in sparkles here, Jesse Kelly.
[00:04:14]  Look, I'm, can you see it now?
[00:04:16]  I'm kind of leaning in.
[00:04:17]  I can't see it.
[00:04:18]  I can't see it.
[00:04:19]  I can't see it, Megan.
[00:04:20]  I don't know what it is with you women in the sparkles.
[00:04:22]  No, I can never, I can never read them.
[00:04:23]  I can't see them.
[00:04:25]  Well, trust me, I don't know why I'm wearing a shirt that reads woman.
[00:04:30]  It's very clear that I am.
[00:04:31]  But every once in a while, you want to remind people: it's a word.
[00:04:34]  It exists.
[00:04:35]  It's an actual thing, notwithstanding what these crazy lunatics tell us.
[00:04:39]  Okay, where to begin?
[00:04:41]  I guess maybe the Corrine Jean-Pierre controversy is as good as any.
[00:04:46]  So she gets this spread in vogue, Jesse.
[00:04:49]  I mean, honestly, you would think that she were like the first lady or some prime minister, the way they give her sort of the royal treatment.
[00:04:58]  And they have covered her like she is, you know, our true next leader who's going to take us rhetorically into the next season.
[00:05:05]  Trying to find my, okay, here they are.
[00:05:07]  They talk all about her, her fashion sense, how her style at the White House electorate is to disarm with a smile and then lay out facts.
[00:05:19]  Okay, that's what they say she's known for.
[00:05:22]  The headline is, she has made history and waves.
[00:05:28]  And they go on to say, okay, she gets some criticism from the White House Press Corps that she sounds rehearsed, rights Vogue.
[00:05:40]  That is because she does rehearse.
[00:05:43]  In prep, she chooses adjectives and verbs with fastidious care.

=== Fastidious Word Choices (04:34) ===

[00:05:49]  Did you have any idea that this, I mean, obviously, she's got to be the worst White House Secretary ever.
[00:05:56]  And I include Sean Spicer in here, that she is up there rehearsing those banal answers, allegedly choosing her adjectives and verbs with fastidious care.
[00:06:08]  Megan, she can't even talk.
[00:06:10]  She can't even talk.
[00:06:11]  And you and I have had this discussion before.
[00:06:14]  This is the press secretary.
[00:06:15]  Her job is to talk.
[00:06:16]  She should be better at talking really than most people because that's her job is to be the voice.
[00:06:21]  And when she gets up there, you've talked about it before, how she has to read everything.
[00:06:25]  She's up there and she's, when someone asks her a question, she's looking down and she's referencing her notes on just basic questions of the day.
[00:06:33]  She is easily the worst I've ever seen in my life.
[00:06:37]  I don't know how you could find a worse one than Corin Diversity Higher.
[00:06:42]  Although there's no evidence of any of this fastidious preparation, choosing her adjectives and verbs, if you actually take two minutes to listen to her, our team put together just a short little montage of examples.
[00:06:55]  Watch.
[00:06:57]  When the PRC government surveillance balloons transited the continental U.S. briefly, at least three times, as you just mentioned, during the president's prior administration, and once that we know of the beginning of this administration's, but never for this duration of time.
[00:07:13]  The NORAD is part of like a part of a, it's a, it's a, what you call a coalition pact.
[00:07:21]  Exactly.
[00:07:21]  We did it in clearly in step with Canadian.
[00:07:26]  Three U.S. winners of the 2022 Nobel Prize.
[00:07:30]  Who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry?
[00:07:33]  Who won the Nobel Prize in Physics?
[00:07:35]  Who won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences?
[00:07:39]  I don't have anything.
[00:07:42]  I don't have anything.
[00:07:43]  I just don't have anything.
[00:07:44]  I don't have anything.
[00:07:44]  I don't have anything.
[00:07:45]  We just don't have anything.
[00:07:46]  He tripped over a sandbag on the stage and briefly he tripped and got up and he got right back up.
[00:07:54]  And so I'll just leave it there.
[00:08:00]  She's such a wordsmith.
[00:08:01]  So good with the verbs like transit, transit to the.
[00:08:06]  You want a scary thought, Megan?
[00:08:07]  It hit me when I was watching that little montage.
[00:08:10]  Okay, so obviously we all know Karen Diversity Hire was not hired because she can speak well.
[00:08:15]  She just cannot.
[00:08:15]  So she was hired for diversity reasons.
[00:08:17]  Okay, so that, okay, that's embarrassing and it makes for funny montages.
[00:08:21]  How many critically important positions in this government have been filled in the exact same way?
[00:08:29]  Just take it.
[00:08:30]  Take a minute and think about how many vice president.
[00:08:33]  Yep.
[00:08:34]  Really?
[00:08:35]  With a senior official at HHS who's trying to trans all our children.
[00:08:39]  Yes.
[00:08:41]  Pete Bag and see now.
[00:08:44]  Same exact reasons.
[00:08:45]  And these people matter.
[00:08:47]  They matter a lot.
[00:08:48]  The last guy who was stealing women's luggage and wearing thongs around the airport, that dude had the nuclear coats.
[00:08:57]  You have to laugh.
[00:08:57]  It's laugh or cry.
[00:08:58]  That's why we're in the circle of hell.
[00:09:00]  We're in the seventh circle of hell today.
[00:09:02]  Sam Brinton, who still, how many, like they're coming out of the woodwork to this day, new people alleging him of having stolen their luggage and worn their clothes.
[00:09:12]  You're such a gutter.
[00:09:13]  That's terrifying.
[00:09:16]  Here's a little bit more from the vogue treatment of Corine Jean-Pierre.
[00:09:22]  They got a statement from Dr. Jill Biden as a pioneering White House press secretary.
[00:09:28]  So I appreciate the honesty.
[00:09:29]  That's yes, pioneering.
[00:09:30]  That's the reason she's there.
[00:09:32]  Very first black and lesbian White House press secretary because we really needed those boxes to be checked.
[00:09:38]  As a pioneering White House press secretary, she brings grace, integrity, and insight to the podium.
[00:09:46]  With her calm, quiet confidence, Corine inspires us all.
[00:09:50]  Does she, Mitchell?
[00:09:52]  We've been watching a lot of Modern Family in my family.
[00:09:54]  Does she, Mitchell?
[00:09:56]  Integrity and insight to the podium.
[00:09:58]  I mean, it's just a basic lie.
[00:10:00]  I realize it's like a white lie.
[00:10:01]  She's trying to be kind, but it's literally the exact opposite of what she does.
[00:10:06]  She lies.
[00:10:07]  They all do.
[00:10:08]  But she lies every other day about Hunter Biden.
[00:10:11]  She never answers a question.
[00:10:12]  There is no integrity there.
[00:10:13]  And there's certainly zero insight she's provided since she took over the job.
[00:10:19]  And all these journalists, Megan, are okay with everything you just said.
[00:10:22]  That's the thing.

=== A Different Story Emerges (15:10) ===

[00:10:23]  It's not like Joe who's hiding so they can't really get to him.
[00:10:27]  They stand in front of this woman and sit in front of this woman every single day.
[00:10:31]  And there's a shockingly low amount of hostility coming her way.
[00:10:36]  Wouldn't you say, Megan?
[00:10:37]  I mean, she's essentially spitting in their faces.
[00:10:39]  That's who she's insulting, but they're not really insulted.
[00:10:42]  I wonder why that is.
[00:10:44]  Yeah.
[00:10:44]  Well, it's amazing because they actually managed to find a couple of reporters to push back on this.
[00:10:48]  The White House Press Corps saying, what is happening here?
[00:10:52]  Like, since when do we do this with a White House press secretary?
[00:10:55]  And she's been very anti-press.
[00:10:56]  She's given no, like her job is actually to funnel real information to the press corps, who represents as much as we hate them, us.
[00:11:02]  They're out there trying to get answers for the American people.
[00:11:04]  So her middle finger every day to them of, I just don't have anything for you on that.
[00:11:08]  I just don't have anything for you.
[00:11:09]  I have nothing for you.
[00:11:10]  Consult Hunter Biden.
[00:11:12]  Consult, you know, it is a middle finger and the press should be angry at her.
[00:11:16]  All right, let's shift gears because here in New York City, it's the second day of public school.
[00:11:20]  And the New York City school system, like so many school systems in blue America today, is a hot mess.
[00:11:29]  The liberal woke policies are taking over from the mass influx of illegal migrants to the mass influx of wokeness.
[00:11:39]  I'll tell you something.
[00:11:40]  A friend of mine was just talking to her very dear friend.
[00:11:43]  They're both in the New York City public schools.
[00:11:46]  And that friend's child went into class yesterday and he was asked on day one, public school in New York, what are your pronouns?
[00:11:52]  And he didn't say that.
[00:11:54]  He didn't say them.
[00:11:55]  He wanted name and pronoun and he just said his name.
[00:11:57]  And the teacher said, What's your pronoun?
[00:11:59]  What are your pronouns?
[00:11:59]  And he said, His name again.
[00:12:02]  And she said, What are your pronouns?
[00:12:03]  And he said, I'm not comfortable with that.
[00:12:05]  And she said, You have to say them to be respectful.
[00:12:08]  And he refused.
[00:12:10]  The mother was very proud of him.
[00:12:11]  I am very proud of him.
[00:12:13]  My kids ask me this all the time.
[00:12:15]  Like, what are they?
[00:12:15]  They know that this is a dangerous game.
[00:12:17]  These adults are asking them to play.
[00:12:20]  And we're going to have somebody on in the second hour where we talk about this.
[00:12:22]  But I say to them, you can say, I'm not comfortable with that discussion.
[00:12:27]  I am not comfortable with that discussion.
[00:12:29]  Like, who the F is looking at minor children and asking them to start the school day by thinking about gender identity?
[00:12:36]  Well, that's the problem, Megan, with the teaching profession right now.
[00:12:40]  And well, it's many professions.
[00:12:41]  Journalism is probably the foremost, but with the teaching profession, especially, we automatically assign a certain level of respect to somebody when they tell us they're a teacher.
[00:12:50]  Understandably so, right?
[00:12:51]  Okay, so your job is to look after the next generation, educate people.
[00:12:55]  So we're just teacher automatically, you give them something.
[00:12:58]  But we have to adjust our thinking and we have to understand that a lot of these people go into teaching just to be predators.
[00:13:05]  And I don't even just mean in like a really gross, you know, sexual kind of a way.
[00:13:09]  They go into the teaching profession because they want to break children away from their parents.
[00:13:15]  They want to take children who have been given values by their parents and break those.
[00:13:19]  That's why they're there.
[00:13:20]  They're there to break you from your kids.
[00:13:23]  And we have to accept that and start interrogating these teachers and challenging them a lot.
[00:13:28]  And I'm glad the kids are getting some guts out there because they're going to need them in this new country we have.
[00:13:33]  What would you do if you found out that a teacher had asked your kid pronouns, tried to force your kid to say the pronouns, and then, God forbid, in the worst case scenario, you know, your kid expresses some sort of gender confusion to the teacher and the teacher starts agreeing to socially transition your child without telling you because this battle is starting to unfold in district after district, including in places like California.
[00:13:55]  Like, what would you do?
[00:13:57]  Megan, I don't know if I'm allowed to say a lot of what I would do if somebody actually tried to harm either of my sons, but I will tell you this.
[00:14:06]  And this is what sucks.
[00:14:08]  You ask me, I would just yank my kids out of school.
[00:14:11]  Whatever that meant for us, if that meant, you know, we have to move jobs, quit jobs, move areas, whatever.
[00:14:16]  But my kids are not going to go to school where they can be prey for people.
[00:14:21]  And that's the hardest adjustment parents have to make in places like New York and California and various places where they're really going crazy.
[00:14:28]  Are you going to have to make some sacrifices and some changes in your life to keep your kid from getting sent off to a place where they are prey for seven, eight hours a day?
[00:14:37]  That's how a lot of these places are.
[00:14:38]  And it's going to mean people have to make adjustments, really hard adjustments.
[00:14:42]  That's right.
[00:14:43]  Prey is exactly the right word, especially when you consider the number of quote-so-called trans women who are there, are doing this because it's a sexual fetish and they're actually getting off on dressing like women.
[00:14:54]  So we're letting our children participate in their sexual fantasy, like that Kayla Lemieu up in Canada.
[00:15:00]  So my kid has to be there.
[00:15:01]  What?
[00:15:01]  When you're getting off, like you're going to get off that my kid is looking at you.
[00:15:05]  No, it's a no.
[00:15:07]  Yeah, that's that.
[00:15:08]  Yeah.
[00:15:08]  And look, it's, it's okay to judge a book by its cover sometimes, too.
[00:15:12]  I realize a lot of people, especially people on the right, they tend to either, either they're nice or they pretend to be, right?
[00:15:19]  They want to be.
[00:15:20]  They at least want to appear to be nice.
[00:15:22]  People want to be nice.
[00:15:23]  But look, if you take your kid into kindergarten, first grade, and it's some woman in there with the crew cut and half her head shaved and she's got 15 rings in her face and tattoos all over her neck.
[00:15:33]  Okay, you're going to have to make a judgment call there that that human being is probably not the person you should be leaving your child with for seven, eight hours a day.
[00:15:40]  It's time to start judging books by their cover.
[00:15:42]  It's not like a lot of these freaks are very subtle about it.
[00:15:44]  Half of them are pretending to be a different gender with weird makeup on.
[00:15:49]  But like you just pointed out, the one guy, we all saw the guy in Canada with the gigantic fake.
[00:15:54]  Well, we won't go into all that, but you can tell if your kid's teacher is a freak.
[00:15:58]  Go talk to your kid's teacher.
[00:16:00]  Yeah.
[00:16:01]  It's not just gender, of course.
[00:16:03]  The immigration problem now in New York and elsewhere is exploding.
[00:16:06]  And this plan by Governor Greg Abbott of Texas and others along the southern border to ship migrants north is working.
[00:16:12]  New York City is at its breaking point.
[00:16:14]  We've had over 100,000 migrants come in over the past year, illegal migrants from all over the place.
[00:16:19]  And I've been talking about how all these kids, now 20,000 of them, are going to the New York City public schools as of yesterday.
[00:16:26]  And half of these kids at least don't speak English.
[00:16:30]  So they're trying to find desperately Spanish-speaking teachers, but it's not just Spanish.
[00:16:34]  These kids are coming from all over, from African countries.
[00:16:38]  And there's a new mandate from the Department of Education that each school just kind of deal with it on their own.
[00:16:44]  But they have to have at least one person at the school who can speak whatever language is now represented at their school.
[00:16:51]  So you got to run.
[00:16:52]  I mean, it's like basically you got to move in over at Rosetta Stone and try to find the little AI person who can speak Swahili for every new migrant who comes in who happens to speak it.
[00:17:03]  Even though these kids are unvaccinated, and I don't just mean COVID, they can go to the schools without the MMR vaccine, the chickenpox vaccine, any of them.
[00:17:11]  Meanwhile, my kids and your kids, 100% have to have all of those just to step across the schoolhouse door.
[00:17:18]  Megan, this is the thing about in our country, we have gotten so far away from actual border policy that most Americans on left, right, middle, doesn't matter, they couldn't stomach what actual border policy should be.
[00:17:31]  Most nations in the history of the world understood you stop people at the border and don't allow them in.
[00:17:37]  And that's not just, oh, well, what about the felons?
[00:17:39]  No, no, no, all of them.
[00:17:40]  None of them are allowed in.
[00:17:42]  That's not drugged.
[00:17:45]  Of course, it's not mean or evil.
[00:17:48]  Look, it doesn't look wonderful.
[00:17:50]  It's not something you celebrate, but that's the way to preserve a country.
[00:17:54]  And honestly, I'm thrilled at what's happening to New York City, not because I wish ill on New York City, which I love, as you well know, Megan, because it finally takes an issue that southern states, the border states have been suffering from forever.
[00:18:08]  And it finally puts it in front of the media so they're forced to cover it.
[00:18:12]  What New York City is going through right now, that's Texas.
[00:18:15]  That's Arizona.
[00:18:16]  That's Southern California.
[00:18:17]  That's New Mexico.
[00:18:18]  That's what it is.
[00:18:19]  There are places, shoot, Megan, I'm 15 minutes away as I sit here right now from a place that has an entire wing in their K through 12 school, an entire wing just for Spanish speakers, because they have so many freaking illegals in the school.
[00:18:31]  They decided to bring, they had to build a whole new wing for them in the school.
[00:18:35]  Sane countries do not do that.
[00:18:37]  You don't bring in everybody who shows up and house them and feed them and medical care and education.
[00:18:43]  They're giving them freaking X boxes.
[00:18:44]  One dude I read from Venezuela, he gets specialized Venezuelan cuisine every day.
[00:18:49]  Not only do we not send him back, we say, come on in.
[00:18:52]  We'll make you your papusas or whatever you want fresh for you every day here in this country.
[00:18:56]  That's not a country that is going to continue existing, Megan.
[00:18:59]  Our border policies, it's insane to me.
[00:19:01]  It dies me out.
[00:19:02]  There's a story today.
[00:19:03]  I used to live on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
[00:19:05]  There's a story about how there's a hotel up there on 70th on the west side where they've been housing all these migrants, including mostly single men.
[00:19:12]  Great.
[00:19:13]  That's exactly what young families who live on the upper west side, a bunch of single male migrants moving in from God knows where.
[00:19:19]  So now all these families have migrated in illegally, allegedly seeking asylum.
[00:19:24]  And under Trump, at least they had to prove that they had tried to seek asylum someplace else before they came to, like you crossed through how many countries before you tried to seek asylum here?
[00:19:32]  Why didn't you seek asylum someplace else?
[00:19:34]  If you were really fleeing conditions that were so bad, right?
[00:19:37]  You would have gone to the first country you could.
[00:19:38]  No, they all want to be here.
[00:19:39]  It's here.
[00:19:40]  So if it's just about here, it's a preference.
[00:19:42]  It's not a true asylum claim.
[00:19:44]  In any event, they had to kick these guys out because the families were taking over and they wanted to move them into the hotel.
[00:19:49]  And the men got moved to Randall's Island, which is where our kids had to play sports for a long, long time because there are no athletic fields in Manhattan.
[00:19:55]  You get there.
[00:19:56]  This is my favorite Doug Brunt story on Randall's Island.
[00:19:59]  He walks in with his buddy, who's they were coaching our kids when they were young.
[00:20:02]  And our friend Jonathan goes, my God, it's so beautiful here.
[00:20:05]  Look at these amazing fields.
[00:20:08]  Why don't more people?
[00:20:10]  What's that?
[00:20:11]  What's that?
[00:20:12]  It's right by a sewage treatment center that just, oh, it reeks to high hell of sewage.
[00:20:18]  This is how your kids grow up in New York.
[00:20:20]  Anyway, my point is the migrants are pissed.
[00:20:23]  They're mad that they're moving from the Upper West Side to Randall's Island to continue their free housing and free meals there because they preferred the beautiful hotel on the Upper West Side, Jesse.
[00:20:36]  Megan, that's honestly, it's embarrassing for me, just as a patriot, what our border policy is, what our immigration policy is.
[00:20:45]  It is.
[00:20:45]  It is embarrassing because we are so disrespected by other nations, as you just pointed out, by the illegals themselves.
[00:20:52]  And we deserve that disrespect.
[00:20:54]  That's the worst part of it.
[00:20:54]  It's not just, it's not that guy.
[00:20:56]  It's that that guy has every right to go complain about that the fields aren't okay and my meal wasn't hot enough and this.
[00:21:02]  And he has every right because in this country our politicians Democrat and Republican are so pathetic and spineless and weak.
[00:21:09]  They don't want to do anything to actually stop these people, even Republicans, don't?
[00:21:13]  They always pretend they do and they don't.
[00:21:15]  The best you can get out of some loser Republican, some low t GOP here today, the best you can get out of him as well.
[00:21:21]  We should definitely deport the criminals.
[00:21:22]  They're all criminals the men, women and the kids.
[00:21:25]  They're all criminals.
[00:21:26]  They all broke our immigration law and every single one of them should go home.
[00:21:30]  But you can't say that in this namby pamby society.
[00:21:32]  Low t GOP that's amazing.
[00:21:35]  That should be on a bumper sticker.
[00:21:37]  Low t GOP all right, wait.
[00:21:39]  So Eric Adams, who was just absolutely open the doors.
[00:21:46]  People come on, let him in, don't be so heartless who were Americans.
[00:21:49]  They always reference back to the Statue Of Liberty.
[00:21:52]  My, my grandpa, came over.
[00:21:54]  Both grandpas came over, passed the Statue Of Liberty.
[00:21:56]  They did it legally and they didn't do it illegally.
[00:21:59]  Uh, this is a different story.
[00:22:01]  Boy, oh boy.
[00:22:02]  Mayor Adams has changed his tune.
[00:22:05]  He was totally in favor of New York City being sanctuary city.
[00:22:08]  Welcome, give us your tired, you're poor, you're hungry, all of it now.
[00:22:11]  This made news yesterday.
[00:22:13]  He said it on wednesday.
[00:22:14]  Take a listen to the New York City mayor.
[00:22:17]  Started with a madman down in Texas decided he wanted to bust people up to New York City, 110 000 migrants who have to feed clothe house, educate the children, wash their laundry sheets, give them everything they need health care.
[00:22:40]  Month after month.
[00:22:41]  I stood up and I said, this is going to come to a neighborhood near you.
[00:22:46]  Well, we're here.
[00:22:48]  We're here.
[00:22:49]  We're getting no support on this national crisis.
[00:22:55]  Never in my life have I had a problem that I did not see an ending to.
[00:23:02]  I don't see an ending to this.
[00:23:04]  I don't see an ending to this.
[00:23:07]  This issue will destroy New York City.
[00:23:11]  One time we were just in Venezuela.
[00:23:14]  Now we're getting Ecuador.
[00:23:16]  Now we're getting Russian Speaking coming through Mexico.
[00:23:19]  Now we're getting Western Africa.
[00:23:21]  Now we're getting.
[00:23:22]  People from all over the globe have made their minds up that they're going to come through the southern part of the border and come into New York City.
[00:23:30]  Every community in this city is going to be impacted.
[00:23:34]  The city we knew we're about to lose That literally could have been Donald Trump.
[00:23:41]  That could have been Donald Trump saying all of that.
[00:23:44]  What a different message now that he's had to live the consequences, Jesse.
[00:23:48]  And let me just add this to that news.
[00:23:51]  Bill Melugin of Fox News now reporting, he's citing from the LA Times, reporting actually, with a scoop, reporting that the Biden administration is now considering forcing some migrant families who cross the border illegally to remain in Texas, limiting their ability to travel within the U.S. as bipartisan criticism grows.
[00:24:12]  This is his solution.
[00:24:14]  Just, I will appease the blue state mayors and governors by making this remain a Texas problem, F Texas.
[00:24:23]  Well, of course.
[00:24:24]  And these people are so evil, Megan, the people who run this country, that they look at everything now as simply power.
[00:24:31]  Everything's about allies or enemies.
[00:24:33]  So if you're the Biden administration, I'll use the administration because Joe's not actually making any decisions, as everyone else.
[00:24:39]  If you're the Biden administration, what are you?
[00:24:41]  You're a bunch of comie dirtballs, Lisa Monaco, Susan Rice, Valerie Jarrett.
[00:24:46]  Everybody knows the names of the real, real, real committed commies behind the scenes.
[00:24:50]  So what do you want?
[00:24:51]  You want to flood the country with illegal immigrants because it's going to help you break America, which you hate anyway.
[00:24:56]  So you start flooding America.
[00:24:57]  The red state governors actually do something smart, which is something they rarely do.
[00:25:01]  And that's they send them to the sanctuary places.
[00:25:03]  Now the sanctuary places freak.
[00:25:05]  Well, that's not going to, that's not going to sway the communists from his goal.
[00:25:08]  Remember, he has a goal.
[00:25:09]  His goal is to burn down the country.
[00:25:11]  So he's not going to stop.
[00:25:12]  He's just going to stop making you have to deal with it.
[00:25:15]  Let's just send all of them to my enemies so we can bankrupt the red states.
[00:25:18]  That's how evil these people are.
[00:25:20]  And people think I'm over the top when I say that stuff, but I'm telling you, that's how they look at the country.
[00:25:24]  They look at this region and that region.
[00:25:26]  That's why Joe Biden hops on a plane right away and goes and sees Maui.
[00:25:29]  Still hasn't been to East Palestine.
[00:25:31]  It was all about how they vote.

=== Blue States Face Upheaval (02:05) ===

[00:25:34]  The New York Post had a report this morning about how the first day of school went at some of these high schools.
[00:25:41]  I mean, imagine what these poor kids are going through, right?
[00:25:43]  You and I can sit here pissed off, but these kids actually have to deal with it.
[00:25:48]  So they show up to school, for example, in one Queens high school, Newcomers High School on Long Island City, to overflow.
[00:25:55]  Look at this.
[00:25:56]  These are lines of the teenagers trying to get into their school.
[00:26:03]  These schools were historically under attended because of chronic absenteeism, because of community problems and so on.
[00:26:10]  But now you can't even get in as they expect at least 21,000 migrant students to enroll.
[00:26:18]  The report says it's unclear how many of the kids were asylum seekers because the Department of Education doesn't keep those records.
[00:26:24]  It does not track the immigration student or status of the students.
[00:26:28]  It doesn't want to know.
[00:26:29]  And so they are moving a lot of the legitimate students, you know, the Americans whose parents pay taxes, which is why they're allowed to attend there, to other off-campus buildings where they're crammed in like sardines so that the migrants, non-paying and unvaccinated, can mix into the normal classrooms with the air conditioning and get their 45 different translators so that they can receive the lessons pro I mean,
[00:26:56]  these poor parents who are now having to deal with this and the kids as well.
[00:27:00]  This is why the blue states are going to empty, Megan, of everybody who can.
[00:27:04]  And it's going to be such a sad, it's going to be such a sad state of affairs going forward in this country in the blue areas like New York, where New York's only going to be for the mega rich or the dirt poor, and everybody middle class is going to pack up and leave because what parent, I mean, you don't have to be a political person to want that to stop.
[00:27:22]  Imagine sending your kid to that every day.
[00:27:24]  If you can afford it, if you have to move down to a shanty, you're getting your kid out of that environment.
[00:27:30]  And these blue areas, as they continue to descend into whatever crap they're going to finally turn into, it's going to really, really suck as people have to pack up and uproot their lives and leave.

=== Grand Jury Names Revealed (13:09) ===

[00:27:40]  But people are not going to live under that.
[00:27:41]  I wouldn't live under that.
[00:27:42]  Forget that.
[00:27:43]  I never would.
[00:27:45]  No.
[00:27:45]  And then, as we pointed out, once your kid finally makes it into the classroom, he sits down ready to do some learning and is asked what his pronouns are.
[00:27:54]  That's the state of not just our New York City schools, but I mean, I hear from parents across the country more and more in the blue states.
[00:28:02]  It's starting to happen and it's really driving uprest, even in blue states like California and New York.
[00:28:08]  Let me put a pause in it there.
[00:28:09]  We'll take a quick break and we'll come back much, much more to discuss with Jesse Kelly, including the revelation of who the grand jury, the special grand jury down in Georgia wanted to indict.
[00:28:20]  Remember that lunatic grand jury four person who was everywhere?
[00:28:23]  Now we know some of the people she was all excited about.
[00:28:26]  But alas, the DA did draw the line at a couple of sitting U.S. senators.
[00:28:32]  All right, stand by.
[00:28:52]  So they just released information on who that Georgia grand jury, it was a special grand jury that was more of an investigative tool for this Fannie Willis, who's now going after Trump and 45 other defendants, or 19 others.
[00:29:03]  She wanted to make it even more than the 19.
[00:29:05]  She wanted to include, I mean, the grand jury was asked to consider and gave her a thumbs up on including for criminal indictment people like Lindsey Graham, Kelly Lauffler, David Perdue.
[00:29:17]  These are Georgia, I mean, senators.
[00:29:20]  And of course, Lindsey Graham, sitting South Carolina U.S. Senator.
[00:29:24]  They, in the end, Fannie Willis decided not to do it.
[00:29:28]  But, you know, the whole thing makes you remember how absurd the process was to begin with, how sweeping it was.
[00:29:35]  I mean, everyone committed a crime.
[00:29:36]  Is that really?
[00:29:37]  That's really what was presented to the grand jury.
[00:29:39]  The grand jury didn't come up with Lindsey Graham on its own, the special grand jury.
[00:29:42]  They were presented that as, hey, here's another criminal.
[00:29:45]  And here's Kelly Loeffler.
[00:29:47]  Anybody who questioned the election process was presented to this special grand jury as a potential criminal.
[00:29:55]  And you had morons like this woman on the special grand jury who were like, sure, another ham sandwich?
[00:30:02]  Sure, another ham sandwich.
[00:30:03]  Remember her?
[00:30:04]  Watch.
[00:30:06]  Did the grand jury recommend indictments of multiple people?
[00:30:18]  Yes.
[00:30:18]  I will tell you, it's not a short list.
[00:30:21]  I mean, we saw 75 people and there are six pages of the report cut out.
[00:30:27]  So we're talking about more than a dozen people.
[00:30:31]  I would say that.
[00:30:32]  Yes.
[00:30:33]  Are these recognizable names, names that people would know?
[00:30:37]  There are certainly names that you would recognize.
[00:30:40]  Yes.
[00:30:41]  There definitely are some names that you expect.
[00:30:44]  And she was talking about how excited she would have been to swear in President Trump.
[00:30:48]  She's literally, for the listening audience, raising her eyebrows like playfully in response and rocking back and forth and looking coyly at the interviewer.
[00:30:58]  The whole process is becoming very clear, Jesse, on how this all went down.
[00:31:03]  Yeah, and how it's going to look going forward, Megan.
[00:31:06]  That's what worries me so much because the more we learn about how it all went down, well, it's the same jury poll going forward.
[00:31:14]  These freaks, like that, that poor thing right there.
[00:31:17]  My goodness, I don't know what's wrong with her, but these people, these are the people who are going to be sitting there in Trump's trial deciding whether or not he's guilty or not guilty.
[00:31:26]  And what's crazy is they've all already made up their minds.
[00:31:29]  They haven't even picked the juror yet.
[00:31:30]  And all 12 of Trump's jurors in Washington, D.C., in New York, in Atlanta, Fulton County, he might get a little bit of a break there because of Northern Atlanta.
[00:31:38]  But all these jurors have already made up their mind that Trump's the antichrist, Adolf Hitler, white supremacist threat to democracy, and that he needs to go into a cage.
[00:31:47]  This whole thing has already been decided and written, like the Moscow show trials.
[00:31:52]  I wonder whether there's anything to be gleaned, though, because they voted, I think, 13 to 7 to indict Senator Lindsey Graham.
[00:31:58]  So they could have done it.
[00:31:59]  Fanny Willis could have done it.
[00:32:00]  She decided not to.
[00:32:01]  Smart move.
[00:32:03]  But there was like one juror actually, according to the footnote in the report, wrote a dissent or dissented, dissented openly saying these people were just pandering to their base.
[00:32:15]  They weren't actually interfering with an election.
[00:32:18]  They didn't commit a crime.
[00:32:19]  And so you might get, you know, you still could get that person on the Trump jury too saying, what are we doing?
[00:32:26]  What is this about?
[00:32:28]  Not to excuse, you know, like all the craziness around January 6th, but it wasn't criminal.
[00:32:34]  So Vivek Ramaswamy, I want to talk to you about because he's somebody who got very, he was openly critical of Donald Trump on June 6th, very openly critical.
[00:32:42]  But now he seems to be running as Trump's chief complimenter, the bootlicker in chief to Donald Trump.
[00:32:51]  And yet reporters on the left and the right are going back and looking at his prior statements, trying to figure out who's the real Vivek.
[00:32:57]  Like, does he love Trump?
[00:32:58]  Does he credit it?
[00:32:59]  Does he, does he think Jan 6th was deeply problematic?
[00:33:02]  Like, what's the truth?
[00:33:03]  And this guy, Mehdi Hassan, who I can't stand over on MSNBC, had a very contentious exchange with Vivek.
[00:33:09]  I would submit it doesn't reflect well on our friend Vivek, but I want to know what you think.
[00:33:13]  Here's what happened.
[00:33:15]  You say he behaved in downright abhorrent behavior that makes him a danger to democracy.
[00:33:20]  What was it that was downright abhorrent?
[00:33:21]  Let's tell me what he did that was downright abhorrent.
[00:33:23]  Let's actually be let's actually be really fair to your audience.
[00:33:26]  So on January 10th, 2021, thereabouts, days after that incident, I wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal arguing that censorship was the real cause of what happened on January 6th.
[00:33:37]  When asked in response, somebody asked me the question, are you that that's that's well, that's what I wrote.
[00:33:41]  I'm giving you the facts of what I said.
[00:33:43]  That's a hard fact.
[00:33:44]  That was published in the Wall Street Journal.
[00:33:45]  When pressed on, was that condoning what Trump did?
[00:33:48]  My answer was no.
[00:33:50]  There's a difference between a bad judgment and a judgment.
[00:33:53]  And you're looking to be able to tell the difference between Donald Trump do in your view that was downright abhorrent.
[00:33:59]  Second time.
[00:34:00]  I think that the thing that I would have done differently if I were in his shoes is I would have declared re-election on January 20th.
[00:34:08]  I'll ask you to say that.
[00:34:08]  That's exactly the thing.
[00:34:09]  What did Trump do that was egregious, quote, downright abhorrent and a danger to democracy?
[00:34:15]  Can you just explain to our viewers your words?
[00:34:18]  So you're mixing two different quotes, but what did I think was reprehensible about what happened that day?
[00:34:23]  Look, I think that the way a true leader should have handled that situation should have been to actually say, this is me running for re-election, not actually litigating what is already passed in behind us.
[00:34:34]  And I would have done things differently.
[00:34:36]  That is not a crime, though.
[00:34:37]  I understand.
[00:34:38]  And the reason I have been so vehement.
[00:34:39]  You keep saying what you would have done.
[00:34:41]  And this is what I hear from your mouth.
[00:34:42]  No, no, I wouldn't.
[00:34:43]  Unless you're scared of him, why wouldn't you say what he did that was?
[00:34:46]  I'm not going to let you stitch stitching together three things with three revelations.
[00:34:51]  Let's start the tweet.
[00:34:51]  Let's put a caricature.
[00:34:52]  Do you want to have an actual conversation?
[00:34:56]  Yes, I want you to answer my question, Vivek.
[00:34:58]  Three times I've asked it.
[00:34:59]  What did Trump do?
[00:35:00]  That was downright abhorrent.
[00:35:02]  It's a simple question.
[00:35:03]  It's your words.
[00:35:04]  It's on screen.
[00:35:05]  What did he do that was downright abhorrent?
[00:35:09]  I believe that failing to unite this country falls short of what a true leader ought to do.
[00:35:14]  That is why I'm in this race is to do things differently than any prior president has done them.
[00:35:19]  That's the hard truth.
[00:35:21]  Okay.
[00:35:21]  And that's what makes the media.
[00:35:25]  Well, the reality is none of that is a crime.
[00:35:27]  The reason I have been so vocal.
[00:35:29]  Okay.
[00:35:30]  The reason I have been so vocal is because when somebody actually prosecutes somebody for a bad judgment, and I've been clear, I understand the distinction we have to draw.
[00:35:42]  Understood.
[00:35:45]  What's your reaction to that, Jesse?
[00:35:48]  Megan, the right has a condition right now that they're going to have to be very careful of.
[00:35:53]  If you don't mind, I'll take a minute if you don't mind with this one.
[00:35:57]  Our condition on the right right now is desperation.
[00:36:00]  We look around if you're somebody, just a relatively normal person and your country just lost its mind like 15 minutes ago.
[00:36:07]  You don't have any cultural institutions.
[00:36:10]  You can't watch a football game or put your kid in the Boy Scouts without having to talk about transsexuals.
[00:36:15]  This is not the country you grew up in and now you're desperate.
[00:36:18]  And desperate people will oftentimes grab a hold of something that they should not grab a hold of because it just sounds like any port.
[00:36:25]  They don't any port in a storm, as the old saying goes.
[00:36:28]  That's Vivek.
[00:36:29]  That's what Vivek is for the right.
[00:36:30]  I have a theory.
[00:36:31]  It's only a theory.
[00:36:33]  I have nothing to back this up.
[00:36:34]  I have a theory that the Trump campaign brilliantly, if they actually did this, it's a brilliant move, which I totally support.
[00:36:40]  That they got him.
[00:36:41]  I know he knows Jared Kushner.
[00:36:43]  Vivek and Jared are friends.
[00:36:44]  I think they talked him into the race.
[00:36:46]  So he'll get into the race and take a bunch of the far right-wing votes away from DeSantis.
[00:36:51]  That's why Vivek will attack every candidate and does in the race all the time, but he can't stop giving Donald Trump foot rubs every single day.
[00:36:59]  Anybody paying attention can see Vivek is there on behalf of Donald Trump, whether that was designed and planned or whether he just did it because he wants to be VP or something like that.
[00:37:09]  That's why he's in the race.
[00:37:10]  And that's why he changed positions on things within the course of six months.
[00:37:14]  He just looks around and sees whatever the right wants to hear because we're desperate to hear something right now.
[00:37:19]  And that's what he decides to say.
[00:37:21]  And it's obviously not what he believes, but look, desperate people, they reach out and they grab a hold of anything that looks nice.
[00:37:29]  I'll say, I mentioned this to my audience.
[00:37:31]  You know, I have conflicting feelings on Vivek because I love his anti-woke stuff, but this, like, his behavior as a candidate has been less than stellar to be charitable.
[00:37:38]  And one of the things that's jumping out at me is it's annoying.
[00:37:41]  Like he is sort of the smartest one in the class who's always correcting everybody else.
[00:37:45]  I know better than you do.
[00:37:46]  I know I'm the only one who can do it.
[00:37:48]  I'm the only courageous one out here.
[00:37:49]  All the rest of you suck.
[00:37:51]  And there, it's maybe you think that.
[00:37:53]  Maybe you think every other Republican candidate sucks and you think Vivek is the shining light.
[00:37:58]  In my experience, the seven-foot center doesn't tell you how tall he is.
[00:38:02]  And yet that is exactly what you hear from Vivek on his own courage and bravery.
[00:38:08]  We've cut a soundbite.
[00:38:09]  Listen.
[00:38:10]  I'm the only person on the stage who isn't bought and paid for.
[00:38:13]  So I can say this.
[00:38:14]  The climate change agenda is a hook.
[00:38:16]  I am the only person bringing clear strategic vision to our foreign policy.
[00:38:20]  Pardon Donald Trump.
[00:38:21]  I'm the only candidate on the stage who had the courage to actually say, from the conversation I'm having with you guys, being far more honest than any politician that I know in the last 10 years in this country, we have to offer an affirmative vision of our own.
[00:38:34]  That was the only candidate in this race that's been doing that so far.
[00:38:37]  How do you navigate DeSantis first Trump?
[00:38:39]  So I navigated by saying that what we really need is a courageous lead.
[00:38:42]  I don't think the two of them are.
[00:38:44]  I don't think so.
[00:38:46]  There are additional, I could have listed 25 tweets where he, I'm the only one with the courage.
[00:38:50]  I'm the only one with the courage to tell you what's real.
[00:38:53]  And then it will be insert some new position that he changed over the past week because he got hit by the media or by the right or by his competitor on having an untenable position.
[00:39:04]  Yeah, look, Megan, he's a used car salesman.
[00:39:07]  It is what he is.
[00:39:08]  I liked him at all from the very beginning.
[00:39:10]  It's he just, it smells slimy to me.
[00:39:12]  It always has smelled slimy to me.
[00:39:15]  So I'm not a Vivek guy, but at the same time, I understand why people are, right?
[00:39:20]  I really do.
[00:39:21]  Because he takes a lot of the correct positions on issues now, at least, takes a lot of correct positions on issues.
[00:39:27]  And people are dying for somebody that'll step up and say, you know, hey, we don't have to pussyfoot around this.
[00:39:33]  Yeah, we should eliminate the FBI.
[00:39:34]  This is an organization that has become a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States of America and they should be eliminated completely.
[00:39:42]  That's an appropriate position to have.
[00:39:43]  And when he's the only one who's willing to say it in a race, then it does make him appealing.
[00:39:48]  So I get the appeal.
[00:39:49]  I just thought he's the first of many, Megan, who are going to come.
[00:39:55]  I think 2024 is very likely going to go real, real ugly for us.
[00:39:59]  And so we're going to be real desperate after that.
[00:40:02]  And there'll be many, many Viveks in the future who are going to come in and sound just so perfect and say all the right things.
[00:40:09]  And they're probably not going to be.
[00:40:11]  Yeah, be careful.
[00:40:12]  Be careful of the man who tells you everything you always wanted to hear.
[00:40:16]  The age issue in politics has been everywhere, right?
[00:40:21]  Nancy Pelosi comes out today to add to the issue.
[00:40:24]  Number one, claiming she's going to run again.
[00:40:27]  Okay.
[00:40:27]  She's 83.
[00:40:28]  She says she's going to run again.
[00:40:29]  And number two, claiming that the criticism of Diane Feinstein as needing to step down is sexist.
[00:40:38]  It's you're a sexist jerk if you think Die Fi, who literally has forgotten how to vote in the U.S. Senate, should step down.

=== Nancy Pelosi Age Issue (02:34) ===

[00:40:49]  Megan, I actually am a huge admirer of Nancy Pelosi.
[00:40:53]  I mean, I hate her just like everyone else does, but I just love the gumption, I think you'd say, on the woman.
[00:40:59]  She's always been this way.
[00:41:01]  Just like blatant, right out there about Diane Feinstein.
[00:41:04]  Well, yeah, that's sexist.
[00:41:06]  She's just like this Terminator Democrat robot.
[00:41:09]  And she always has.
[00:41:09]  And I guess I kind of want, I wish for somebody like that on our side.
[00:41:13]  One thing I don't get, though, Megan, is why you would run again and stay in Congress.
[00:41:18]  Now, I understand it's not exactly a brutal life for her, but they're worth millions and millions and millions of dollars.
[00:41:24]  The Pelosi family is, why would you want to be in Washington, D.C.?
[00:41:28]  Why do these people want to die in office, Megan?
[00:41:31]  I don't understand it at all.
[00:41:32]  Go die on a beach in Italy or something somewhere.
[00:41:36]  Why do they all do this?
[00:41:37]  I don't get it at all.
[00:41:39]  They can't step away from power, right?
[00:41:41]  It's very, oh my God, Streibuch is right now opening the door to the studio and letting himself in.
[00:41:45]  Okay, what could possibly go wrong?
[00:41:48]  So let's talk about Jimmy Fallon because having worked at NBC, I understand people saying it's a toxic place to work.
[00:41:54]  I do, trust me.
[00:41:56]  However, it's rare to see somebody like Jimmy Fallon, who's supposed to be everybody's favorite late night guy, though not according to the ratings, come under this kind of scrutiny.
[00:42:04]  And the controversy is getting bad.
[00:42:06]  Now, I will tell you, he's not the worst.
[00:42:09]  The Daily Show has the worst ratings.
[00:42:10]  They only have 366,000 people watching that show.
[00:42:13]  During the Jon Stewart years, it was over 2 million.
[00:42:16]  Now it's down to 300,000.
[00:42:17]  Seth Meyers, absolutely dreadful.
[00:42:19]  He's got, he doesn't even have a million, 778,000.
[00:42:23]  I mean, for network television, this is, you know, you don't have to pay for it.
[00:42:27]  It's there when you turn on your TV, you plug it in.
[00:42:29]  That's a dreadful number.
[00:42:31]  Greg Gutfeld on cable, which you do have to pay for, has more than double the numbers of Seth Meyers.
[00:42:37]  Jimmy Kimmel, 1.5 million, averaging, also equally horrible.
[00:42:41]  And then there's the tonight show with Jimmy Fallon, who back when I was there, 2017, 18, he was averaging 2.3 million a night.
[00:42:48]  Now he's down to 1.3 million, Jesse.
[00:42:51]  And he cannot afford the you are toxic controversy because he's also pulling in reportedly over $15 million a year.
[00:42:58]  I think it's probably more than that.
[00:42:59]  It's probably more than closer to $20, $25 million a year.
[00:43:03]  So you got all that money for $1.5 million in audience, which is a nothing.
[00:43:07]  I mean, the middle of the day on Fox News gets that, or at least used to before the Tucker controversy.
[00:43:12]  And the reporting out of Rolling Stone is people.
[00:43:18]  I'm conflicted.
[00:43:19]  I'm going to be honest.
[00:43:20]  Because kids today, they're so dramatic, Jesse.

=== Conflicted Reporting on TV (04:26) ===

[00:43:23]  They left due to their mental health.
[00:43:25]  They were fired.
[00:43:26]  Rolling Stone reached out to 80 current and former staffers.
[00:43:30]  Not a single one had positive things to say about working on the tonight show or for Jimmy.
[00:43:36]  NBC and defending the story did not defend Fallon.
[00:43:39]  They just said, we're incredibly proud of the tonight show and that providing a respectful working environment is a top priority.
[00:43:45]  But then you get to this paragraph.
[00:43:48]  Reporting things like.
[00:43:50]  Having nightmares related to work, in a constant state of fear, being put on anti-anxiety medication, hair thinning, weakened nail beds, going to therapy.
[00:44:01]  Some claim they had suicidal ideation as a result of the working environment.
[00:44:06]  They reported, I'm like, what the hell did Jimmy Fallon do?
[00:44:08]  What did he do?
[00:44:09]  I read the next paragraph.
[00:44:10]  It says, they reported Jimmy snapping at people.
[00:44:13]  He snapped at people?
[00:44:15]  What do you mean?
[00:44:15]  That caused suicidal ideations?
[00:44:17]  Then I said, what seriously?
[00:44:19]  Like, specifically, they have some examples.
[00:44:22]  One employee said Fallon would write personal insults to staffers as opposed to constructive criticisms, such as, are you okay?
[00:44:29]  Seriously, do you need help?
[00:44:33]  He's laughing.
[00:44:34]  And Ugh, lame, what's going on with you?
[00:44:37]  You've outdone yourself.
[00:44:40]  Horror, Jesse.
[00:44:42]  Megan, see, this is what I struggle with too.
[00:44:46]  And are we dealing with somebody who's an actual jerk or are we dealing with this new generation?
[00:44:51]  So I have this friend of mine.
[00:44:53]  He manages this big auto dealership and he's looking for sales guys.
[00:44:57]  This happened last weekend, weekend before.
[00:44:59]  And he has this applicant come in.
[00:45:00]  He sits down with this guy, Megan.
[00:45:02]  And the guy says, the interview's going well.
[00:45:05]  And they ask him, hey, why are you leaving your other job?
[00:45:07]  You got another job.
[00:45:08]  And the guy said, well, I'm looking for a better work-life balance.
[00:45:11]  And they said, oh, wow.
[00:45:12]  Okay.
[00:45:12]  Well, by what kind of, what kind of hours are you working?
[00:45:15]  And the guy said, man, they have me working Monday through Friday from eight to five every single day.
[00:45:21]  And that for this guy, that didn't strike the correct work-life balance in his mind for what thing?
[00:45:28]  Eight to five, Monday through Friday, you know, a normal job, 40 hours a week.
[00:45:32]  So whenever I hear these complaints about I left because he was mean or I left because he was mean, I do keep in mind that this generation was not raised by my father.
[00:45:41]  I could never go home and tell my dad that somebody snapped at me at work.
[00:45:45]  That would not have gone over well in the Kelly household.
[00:45:48]  So yeah, I don't, I don't know.
[00:45:50]  I don't ever know what to make of them, Megan.
[00:45:52]  Same.
[00:45:52]  I feel the same.
[00:45:53]  I've got serious questions about whether any of this is true.
[00:45:56]  I mean, I, in every job I've ever worked, I've, I've had people who would jump through brick walls for me.
[00:46:01]  And I can be a tough boss.
[00:46:03]  I'm not an asshole, but I'll say like that was a shitty packet.
[00:46:05]  Like we need to do better.
[00:46:07]  That was not okay.
[00:46:08]  And the team, my team loves me and I love my team because we are all about putting out great work product.
[00:46:13]  And I'm quick to compliment too.
[00:46:16]  Like, what did he say?
[00:46:17]  He basically said, are you okay?
[00:46:19]  Seriously, do you need help?
[00:46:20]  That's causing people to lose their hair.
[00:46:24]  People need to toughen up.
[00:46:25]  Your workplace is not your nana's lap.
[00:46:28]  Like it's, they're not there to make you feel good.
[00:46:31]  They're there to make the consumer feel good.
[00:46:34]  Yeah, I don't understand.
[00:46:36]  This has got to be a parent thing from today, right, Megan?
[00:46:39]  Because I just, every time I hear stories like this, I, again, I think about my folks and how they would react if I ever said something like that.
[00:46:47]  If I ever said, well, my boss asked me what was wrong with me and I'm very upset.
[00:46:52]  I think they would try to, I think they'd be looking at me like I was some kind of an alien.
[00:46:55]  They'd probably say, what is wrong with you?
[00:46:57]  What's your problem?
[00:47:00]  I think this is a parent thing.
[00:47:01]  I think this is a helicopter parenting thing, Megan, where you're never allowed to yell at little Billy and Aiden, Jaden, and Brayden have to be taken care of at all times.
[00:47:10]  And I think that's really what we're dealing with now in this weird age.
[00:47:14]  It's really true.
[00:47:15]  It's like, I've joked before about how you need to criticize your own children somewhat.
[00:47:20]  Like you got to kid your kids.
[00:47:21]  You got to make sure they know how to take a joke and some constructive feedback and, you know, occasionally some insults.
[00:47:28]  We actually have practiced insulting our kids with our kids.
[00:47:31]  Like, how would you deal with it?
[00:47:33]  Like if a bully came up to you and said, you're stupid and you suck and nobody likes you, you have no friends.
[00:47:38]  How would you handle it?
[00:47:39]  And we went down the line and our eldest Yates had like a clever retort.
[00:47:43]  Our daughter, Yardly, had, I'll never forget what she said.
[00:47:46]  Her response was, it doesn't matter what you say because I know who I am.

=== Constructive Feedback for Kids (15:48) ===

[00:47:50]  You know, she went like ethereal and like profound.
[00:47:52]  And then our little guy, Thatcher, after we did it to him, like, you're stupid, you suck, and nobody likes you.
[00:47:57]  He looks at us and he goes, bye.
[00:48:00]  Like, that's the best.
[00:48:01]  That was the best one.
[00:48:03]  That's the way to handle it.
[00:48:05]  But we need to toughen up these kids because like they're manifesting in the work.
[00:48:08]  Maybe he's a complete brick and he's bullying everybody.
[00:48:10]  I leave open that possibility.
[00:48:12]  But I mean, the way this sounds, Jesse, we have another bunch of snowflakes who are running to Rolling Stone to try, I guess, to get Jimmy Fallon out of there.
[00:48:21]  Yeah, well, they'll probably succeed.
[00:48:23]  And in the end, no matter what, it won't even be the ratings that brought him down.
[00:48:26]  It'll be because some 25-year-old fresh out of college got her feel feels hurt.
[00:48:30]  That's what it'll be, Megan.
[00:48:32]  Her poor anxiety medication.
[00:48:34]  Yes.
[00:48:34]  Honestly, like all I can tell you is yes.
[00:48:38]  Jesse Kelly, it's always so fun talking to you.
[00:48:41]  I like the hair.
[00:48:42]  I don't, I think you should embrace it, lean in.
[00:48:45]  You look good.
[00:48:46]  And I loved being in the seventh circle of hell with you.
[00:48:48]  Thank you, ma'am.
[00:48:49]  We'll talk soon.
[00:48:51]  See you soon.
[00:48:52]  Okay.
[00:48:52]  And thanks to all of you.
[00:48:53]  Remember, you can find the Megan Kelly Show live.
[00:48:55]  There's much more coming in our next hour on the SiriusXM Triumph Channel 111.
[00:49:00]  We're on every weekday at noon East.
[00:49:02]  You can listen to us live there.
[00:49:04]  And then if you missed it, you can check out the full video show later.
[00:49:06]  You can watch us.
[00:49:07]  You can see what I'm talking about with the red background at youtube.com/slash MeganKelly.
[00:49:12]  If you prefer an audio podcast, simply follow and download on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts for free.
[00:49:21]  And there you will find our full archives with more than count them 600 plus shows.
[00:49:31]  Our next guest is a licensed professional counselor who has worked with hundreds of trans-identifying adolescents.
[00:49:37]  But she says she does not affirm her patients' gender identities and tells parents they should not either, that if that is what they are looking for, they should look elsewhere and they should look someplace other than her new book, which is an essential blueprint for parents on how to navigate all of this.
[00:49:55]  This is really important that these books are coming out.
[00:49:56]  Let me tell you, because when Abigail Schreier wrote her book, Irreversible Damage in 2020, there were precious few resources out there for parents struggling with this issue.
[00:50:05]  All you got was affirm, affirm, or your kid will commit suicide.
[00:50:08]  And so these desperate parents started doing it.
[00:50:10]  And that's in part how we got to the place we are now.
[00:50:14]  This book today that we're going to talk about is called When Kids Say They're Trans, a Guide for Thoughtful Parents.
[00:50:22]  And it's out right now in the UK.
[00:50:24]  It's coming out on October 17th in the US.
[00:50:26]  So you can get your pre-order going right now if you're here in America.
[00:50:31]  Sasha Ayad joins me now.
[00:50:32]  Sasha is one of the co-authors of the book and she joins me live.
[00:50:36]  Sasha, great to see you.
[00:50:37]  Welcome to the show.
[00:50:38]  Thank you so much, Megan.
[00:50:39]  I'm really happy to be here with you.
[00:50:42]  So you are a licensed, what, family therapist?
[00:50:46]  I'm a licensed professional counselor.
[00:50:48]  Okay.
[00:50:49]  And you, why did you feel the need to write this book?
[00:50:53]  Well, my co-authors and I, we started to notice in the mid-2010s something very unusual happening.
[00:51:00]  And by the way, at the time, we didn't know each other.
[00:51:02]  We had never met.
[00:51:03]  We were kind of working in our separate fields.
[00:51:06]  But we all started to track this cultural phenomenon, which as probably your viewers know now, we saw a huge spike in the number of young people identifying as trans, often for the first time with no history of gender issues.
[00:51:19]  And what we know, Megan, is that exploring your identity in adolescence is a very normal thing.
[00:51:24]  You know, kids get into all kinds of different identity explorations.
[00:51:28]  They're exploring style and creativity.
[00:51:31]  And in this day and age, you know, kids are also experimenting with gender and sexuality labels.
[00:51:36]  So there's nothing really unusual about that.
[00:51:39]  But what Lisa and Stella and I started to find in these online parent reports was something very unusual, which is, as you mentioned, parents were, you know, noticing that their kids were, you know, also very distressed about other things.
[00:51:53]  Maybe they had histories of, you know, eating disorders or cutting or some other kind of mental health distress.
[00:52:00]  And when they were announcing that they were transgender, rather than taking an exploratory way of looking at it, when they took their kids to therapists or doctors, the therapists and doctors were saying, we need to affirm this child, meaning we need to kind of take this distress literally and almost rubber stamp the new identity that has that has evolved.
[00:52:22]  So we thought that this was very unusual.
[00:52:24]  And when you think about the kind of complicated and heavy medical burden involved with a pathway towards hormones and surgeries, we thought, wait a minute, there's something really wrong here.
[00:52:37]  And it is not appropriate for therapists and doctors to be taking these trans declarations literally.
[00:52:44]  So we connected with each other because we were writing and talking about our concerns.
[00:52:49]  And honestly, Megan, this was in the mid-2010s.
[00:52:52]  There was not a lot of infrastructure for people to speak out.
[00:52:56]  So when I started my practice in 2016, and just to make sure I kind of correct the statement, I've worked with dozens of trans-identified kids, but I have worked with hundreds of families.
[00:53:06]  So in 2016, when I started to speak about this and write about this, I connected with Lisa, who also wrote about social contagion and psychic epidemics.
[00:53:16]  And then Stella O'Malley made an incredible BBC film in 2018 called Trans Kids, It's Time to Talk.
[00:53:23]  So we kind of found each other doing this similar work and connected.
[00:53:27]  And since then, since speaking about our concerns, we ended up each getting completely flooded by thousands and thousands of messages and emails and voicemails from parents who were describing this very thing.
[00:53:40]  Like, my kid was really distressed.
[00:53:43]  They have nowhere to turn.
[00:53:44]  We talked about this with Dr. Miriam Grossman about how there are so few and far between honest therapists who will use talk therapy and explore what's going on with the child as opposed to affirm you're right.
[00:53:56]  You're in the wrong body.
[00:53:57]  Right, right.
[00:53:58]  And I think there's a kind of black and white narrative here too, right?
[00:54:02]  So we have people saying that either you affirm, which means you literally agree with your child, or you kind of allow them to experiment with gender in this way, or you say, no, this is impossible.
[00:54:13]  This is not going on for you.
[00:54:15]  You're just a girl.
[00:54:16]  There's nothing we can do about that.
[00:54:17]  And actually, most families that we meet are kind of somewhere in the middle, which is coming from a place of, I see that you're distressed.
[00:54:25]  Tell me more.
[00:54:26]  I love you.
[00:54:26]  We will always be your parents.
[00:54:28]  We will get through this together.
[00:54:30]  So there's a very compassionate way to take this suffering seriously without literally agreeing that the conclusion is, I'm trans.
[00:54:39]  I was born in the wrong body.
[00:54:41]  It's so important to handle it just right because the child can easily become untethered from you and immerse themselves further in this world of gender ideology.
[00:54:54]  So you do, even if you're as anti all of this with children as I am, you have to be smart and you have to thread the needle just right.
[00:55:03]  If you have a kid coming to you saying they are feeling this, it's almost like, okay, by this point, you've already missed something with your child.
[00:55:10]  Like I think there's been a bit of a fail because, you know, you, you should kind of should have been on top of it and on top of your child's wellbeing and their time online and all that, but we all fail.
[00:55:19]  I mean, none of us is a perfect parent.
[00:55:21]  And in today's day and age, these kids get sucked into this stuff, even with a great parent.
[00:55:26]  So in any event, at that point, now that the only decision you have to make is how do I handle this in the most savvy fashion to help this child exit out the other side.
[00:55:36]  Yeah.
[00:55:37]  And I want to talk about something else.
[00:55:39]  You know, we tend to focus a lot on the kind of rapid onset gender dysphoria stories because I think they're the most stark and they're the most shocking.
[00:55:47]  So if you have a child who's historically been, let's say a girl who's historically been incredibly feminine, right?
[00:55:53]  And then she starts struggling with body image or eating disorders.
[00:55:56]  And then during COVID, she's on her computer for, you know, 12, 15 hours a day and she's binge watching transition timelines and, you know, trans YouTube and TikTok.
[00:56:06]  And she announces trans.
[00:56:07]  I think most people, reasonable people will say there's something really unhealthy about that and we should help her reconcile with her body.
[00:56:15]  But I also want to point out that any child these days who is naturally gender non-conforming and maybe gay or lesbian or bisexual and has always had a pattern of kind of being a little bit outside of the box when it comes to gender and gender expression, they are also incredibly vulnerable.
[00:56:33]  I mean, this is even happening for adult women I know who part of the lesbian community, for example, were noticing all their female friends were transitioning.
[00:56:43]  So I want to be really clear.
[00:56:44]  This is not just about kids with no history of gender nonconformity.
[00:56:49]  This is for anybody who may be vulnerable to the belief that if I'm different, it means my body is wrong.
[00:56:56]  If I'm feeling ambivalent about my sexuality or my gender nonconformity, it means I need to change my body.
[00:57:03]  And we have a problem with that belief because we want to celebrate people's expression and their creativity.
[00:57:09]  We don't feel like we need to message that it means your body is wrong or that there's anything wrong with your biological sex.
[00:57:16]  It's, and we've talked about this before, but I just had Glenn Greenwald on the show a few days ago and we were talking about how he is a gay man really objects to this, what's happening to the children, because he really feels like in today's day and age, the little Glenn would have been forced over into, you're a girl.
[00:57:33]  You're not gay.
[00:57:34]  You're a girl.
[00:57:35]  And I was saying I feel the same because I was a tomboy.
[00:57:38]  You write about tomboys in the book and he had a good point.
[00:57:41]  This is me when I was a kid.
[00:57:42]  I look like a boy.
[00:57:43]  If you didn't know this was Megan Kelly, you would say this is little boy in a tire swing in my dirty jeans and my ripped sweatshirt and my boy haircut.
[00:57:50]  And I was all girl.
[00:57:51]  I was just a gender non-conforming girl.
[00:57:53]  I didn't like dresses.
[00:57:55]  Like it's absurd that this version of me would be told you're not actually a girl is going to grow into a woman and be a fully feminine.
[00:58:03]  And even if I didn't turn out totally feminine, who cares?
[00:58:06]  Our tent's very big.
[00:58:09]  Yeah.
[00:58:09]  And I mean, that's such a great point.
[00:58:11]  And I think one of the things we've really tried to do is understand the arguments coming from the other side, right?
[00:58:17]  So let's say to play devil's advocate, someone might say to you, but Megan, you weren't distressed about being a tomboy.
[00:58:23]  But if you were, that would be maybe a reason to kind of consider a different gender identity.
[00:58:28]  But, you know, the cultural context is really different.
[00:58:31]  So any kid who is gender non-conforming is surrounded by kind of cultural prompts to question their biological sex, right?
[00:58:39]  So asking a kid's pronouns all the time or being taught certain kind of health ed curricula in school, which says, you know, we all have a gender identity and you may actually be a boy trapped in a girl's body.
[00:58:53]  And, you know, this language is odd because I think it could be metaphorically valuable to understand like a transgender adult's experience, right?
[00:59:01]  But when we start kind of suggesting these narratives to kids, you know, going through adolescence is hard for everyone.
[00:59:08]  So if you have a history of that gender nonconformity, you might be really convinced that this explains why you're different or why things are difficult for you.
[00:59:17]  And it's interesting to see your photo from childhood because one of the co-authors of the book, Stella O'Malley, she lives in Ireland.
[00:59:24]  She's a psychotherapist there.
[00:59:26]  And she had a very intense experience of gender distress as a kid.
[00:59:31]  And I would say today, 100% she'd qualify for a gender dysphoria diagnosis.
[00:59:36]  And she was not just a tomboy.
[00:59:38]  She adamantly insisted that she was a boy and thought she was a boy.
[00:59:43]  And she describes, you know, we have a podcast called Gender a Wider Lens, and she often talks about this on the show.
[00:59:49]  Going through puberty was an excruciating experience for her because she didn't want to become a woman.
[00:59:56]  So she had this kind of classic gender dysphoria.
[00:59:59]  And she often says, when I came into my own sexual awareness of like my attractions and developing relationships and having crushes, that actually pulled me out of my gender dysphoria because I realized biology is bigger than me.
[01:00:15]  So even for kids that have a long history of these kind of gender identity issues, we really think it's very dangerous to gamble with what their future looks like by imposing a medical identity on them before they have a chance to reconcile with their bodies.
[01:00:31]  You know, and Stella, for example, she's married and she has two children and being a woman and being a mother is such an important aspect of who she is.
[01:00:39]  Of course, it's not all of who she is, but had that decision been made on her behalf by doctors, therapists, parents, all of that opportunity would have been stolen from her.
[01:00:51]  There's so much in there that I want to get to.
[01:00:53]  I want to start with something from the book that's on point to what we're discussing.
[01:00:57]  You write about how gender non-conformity is a gift.
[01:01:03]  We should be celebrating it.
[01:01:06]  This can actually be an ace in the hole for your child and not a reason to try to, quote, transition him or her to the opposite sex.
[01:01:16]  You have sort of an advantage potentially if you're gender non-conforming in a kid.
[01:01:22]  Yeah.
[01:01:22]  I mean, we know there's not a lot of research out there, but we do know that there's some overlap with gender nonconformity and intelligence and creativity.
[01:01:30]  And I mean, I think people from my generation or other generations can remember some of the most creative artists and, you know, actors and writers have always kind of thought outside of the box when it comes to the way they express themselves.
[01:01:44]  So we absolutely think that this should be celebrated.
[01:01:47]  And we certainly don't believe that people should try to force their kids into a certain rigid idea of what does it mean to be female or what does it mean to be male.
[01:01:58]  But we just have an issue with conflating kind of gender expression and gender creativity with medical transition and why those things overlap is really not clear to me.
[01:02:09]  And as you mentioned earlier, a lot of gay adults who themselves kind of look back at their experiences and their childhoods and their adolescents recognize that there's actually something quite homophobic in the belief that feeling some sort of distress around your gender means you should transition.
[01:02:29]  Right.
[01:02:29]  So one of the things that resonated with me in the book on the gender nonconformity being a gift was you wrote about how, for example, a little girl who's more of a tomboy might be very comfortable hanging out with boys and come to understand in a very familiar way the way boys interact, the way young men interact, because she's totally comfortable being immersed in that.
[01:02:51]  And that's 100% the case for me.
[01:02:53]  I had lots of girlfriends too, but I had lots of guy friends and growing up just immersed with, you know, just boys and sports and boys sports, boys things.
[01:03:03]  So now I always was very comfortable around men and I remain very comfortable around men.
[01:03:08]  And that has been a professional advantage to me.
[01:03:11]  So like people don't ever think about it in that way now.
[01:03:16]  Now it's like, oh, you feel comfortable with the boys.
[01:03:18]  That's because you are one.
[01:03:20]  And even on the guy front, and I know the book does a good job pointing this out too.
[01:03:23]  We stigmatize the boys who are gender nonconforming.
[01:03:26]  It's okay to be a tomboy, but it's not okay to be.
[01:03:28]  And you say there's not even a term for, you know, tom girl or Jane girl, whatever doesn't exist because we kind of stigmatize it.
[01:03:36]  But they too might have advantages.
[01:03:37]  Look at Prince.

=== Stigmatizing Gender Nonconformity (15:52) ===

[01:03:38]  You know, like some gender nonconformity may lead to some creative expression or some sort of special line into some field you can't anticipate.
[01:03:47]  I see that all the time about Prince specifically with his like frilly shirts and his very eccentric look, you know?
[01:03:54]  And I think what's important to realize too, especially with the kind of sudden onset gender dysphoria cases, there isn't always the history of gender nonconformity, right?
[01:04:03]  So so far we've been talking about tomboys or, you know, guys who are more effeminate or creative or sensitive.
[01:04:09]  And so where do they fit in?
[01:04:10]  But a lot of the stories we hear from parents of boys, for example, they are describing boys who have a history of being pretty gender typical.
[01:04:19]  Now, these are not the alpha male super athletic types.
[01:04:23]  They're usually the kind of maybe quirky, geeky, gamer, really intelligent.
[01:04:29]  They might be kind of creative kids.
[01:04:33]  And so they're not showing a history of being really into like, let's say, you know, fashion or very kind of feminine things as we would imagine them.
[01:04:42]  And these are boys who tend to be sensitive and a little bit socially awkward and maybe a little bit naive.
[01:04:49]  And what we often hear from these parents and from the kids themselves is that they really struggle to fit in.
[01:04:55]  They had a really hard time coming to terms with, you know, liking a girl and how to interact with girls.
[01:05:01]  And they're vulnerable in a very different way than a gender non-conforming boy because there's no place for him in society.
[01:05:07]  They're vulnerable in a way of trying to understand why is this so difficult for me?
[01:05:12]  Why am I having a hard time in these peer groups?
[01:05:15]  And frankly, there's a lot of kind of difficulty around developing attractions and what it means to like somebody and have a crush on somebody and have an interaction with a girl that might be kind of challenging and contentious.
[01:05:28]  So there are a lot of different stories represented here beyond just the history of gender nonconformity getting wrapped up in the trans issue.
[01:05:37]  There's a lot of different stories.
[01:05:39]  But the takeaway on this piece of the discussion is if you have a little boy who wants to play dress up with a dress or who wants to play with dolls or a Barbie, go for it.
[01:05:49]  You don't need to say, no, boys play with trucks because you're worried he's like getting sucked into the trans ideology.
[01:05:55]  It's kind of exactly the opposite.
[01:05:58]  Let him not think the boy Lane is only this very limited group of things.
[01:06:05]  Let him play with whatever the hell he wants to.
[01:06:07]  Just because he wants to put on a dress for a day doesn't mean he's a girl or that he's going to say he's trans.
[01:06:12]  And same for the girls.
[01:06:14]  And the more you allow them to have this full expression of themselves, you know, playing with whatever they, the less likely you are potentially to develop this problem.
[01:06:25]  Yeah, I think we've really intertwined sex and gender expression in a way that doesn't make sense.
[01:06:30]  So with your example, I think it's perfect to say, if you like to play with Barbies and you like to play with dolls, that's great.
[01:06:38]  And don't lie to him about his body and his biology, right?
[01:06:42]  He's a boy and boys can express themselves in lots of different ways.
[01:06:47]  And puberty is coming.
[01:06:48]  And when puberty comes, here are some of the changes that will happen to you.
[01:06:52]  And you don't have to change anything about your preferences or your personality or what you find interesting.
[01:06:57]  So I really like that example because parents, as we talk about in the book, we encourage them to basically let their kids be themselves without imposing all of these kind of adult labels.
[01:07:10]  And, you know, while we're on this topic, I think there are a couple of ways people misuse the term transgender, right?
[01:07:17]  I wonder if we're going to talk a little bit about this.
[01:07:19]  I tweeted recently about a clip from a Chris Cuomo special from about seven months ago.
[01:07:24]  Wait, I have it?
[01:07:24]  Okay.
[01:07:25]  Okay.
[01:07:26]  I'll play it and then you can offer your commentary on it.
[01:07:28]  Here it is.
[01:07:29]  Okay.
[01:07:32]  In terms of the concern that, yeah, but when they're young, they don't know.
[01:07:36]  And you should wait.
[01:07:38]  We wait with kids on everything else.
[01:07:39]  We don't like to make decisions about where they're going to go to college, let alone what their identity is.
[01:07:45]  Response.
[01:07:46]  My response is that kids know their genders unequivocally.
[01:07:52]  Cisgender kids know their genders and transgender kids know their genders.
[01:07:55]  And there shouldn't be really a difference between them.
[01:08:00]  Think about how sure you felt of your gender from some of your earliest childhood memories.
[01:08:06]  It's no different.
[01:08:09]  This is Dr. Meredith McNamara claiming your kid knows, your kid may know better than you do.
[01:08:15]  And we should just be trusting these children and offering this so-called affirming care.
[01:08:19]  Go ahead.
[01:08:20]  Yeah.
[01:08:21]  Well, a couple of things really stood out to me.
[01:08:23]  I watched the entire program to refresh my memory.
[01:08:26]  And, you know, what I, when I tweeted about this, I said, well, the cultural context has changed, right?
[01:08:32]  We touched on this earlier, Megan.
[01:08:33]  You know, Chris Cuomo as a little boy was probably not being shown the gender unicorn at school and being told that if you feel distressed about your sex, it might be because you're born in the wrong body.
[01:08:44]  And he probably wasn't asked his pronouns every single day at school or, you know, in peer groups.
[01:08:51]  And as we know, a lot of these kids are going online and really imbibing a lot of beliefs about biology, identity, biological sex, and gender dysphoria, which kind of equates distress with being trans.
[01:09:06]  So I'm sure that that was not the context Chris Cuomo grew up in.
[01:09:09]  So maybe that's why he didn't feel confused about his gender, right?
[01:09:13]  But I think, you know, in the piece in general, Chris Cuomo talked a lot about transgender kids.
[01:09:18]  He kept using the phrase transgender kids.
[01:09:20]  And he said something like, you know, transgender people have been around as long as our culture.
[01:09:26]  And I think that's really interesting.
[01:09:28]  And I think when people use the term trans kids, they might be referring to one of two things.
[01:09:33]  And I'd like to just take a minute to parse these out.
[01:09:36]  They might be referring to the phenomenon that a young person is experiencing gender dysphoria.
[01:09:42]  And as they get older, it doesn't get alleviated.
[01:09:46]  And they end up medically and socially transitioning.
[01:09:49]  And so it's almost like we're retroactively applying this adult label to the child.
[01:09:54]  Like it's a predictive label, right?
[01:09:57]  And then the second thing is what we've been talking about so far, which is a kid who's so gender non-conforming that they are kind of different, right?
[01:10:05]  And people viscerally see them and they just sense like this is not a typical girl.
[01:10:09]  This is not a typical boy.
[01:10:12]  But the problem is that we really don't know which kids with severe gender dysphoria will outgrow it and transition and which ones will or sorry, which ones will outgrow it and not transition versus which ones will actually transition.
[01:10:29]  So we're playing a bit of a gamble when a kid's experiencing gender dysphoria and we call them a transgender child because that's a narrative.
[01:10:38]  It's a framing that adults are using to help this kid explain their distress rather than something maybe more neutral, which is, you know, you're experiencing some distress around your gender.
[01:10:50]  There could be lots of reasons for that.
[01:10:52]  And there are also lots of ways to help you feel better.
[01:10:56]  But when we call kids transgender kids, we're kind of locking them into this identity.
[01:11:01]  And frankly, when a kid is very young, they believe what adults tell them.
[01:11:06]  So, you know, if you tell a child that's female, you are really a boy.
[01:11:11]  And don't worry, when puberty comes, we'll take care of it with puberty blockers and you won't have to deal with that.
[01:11:16]  And when you get old enough, you can have this or that medical intervention and surgery.
[01:11:21]  I mean, kids will believe what we tell them.
[01:11:24]  So it's not that the stress isn't real, but the way adults help kids frame their distress matters a lot because as we know.
[01:11:33]  So the bottom line is just because your child may have some gender dysphoria, some confusion around the gender issue, does not mean he or she is trans.
[01:11:42]  It doesn't mean that don't slap the label on them.
[01:11:45]  It means your child may need some help.
[01:11:48]  And what issues causing that confusion is really the big question.
[01:11:53]  I mean, it seems in the vast, vast majority of cases, it's not a true trans kid.
[01:12:00]  It's not somebody who's really got the disorder that people have when they're two and they will never be happy unless they transition into the opposite sex or at least give it their best shot.
[01:12:11]  It's not that.
[01:12:12]  It's a kid who, the book does a great job of pointing this out.
[01:12:15]  In like half of the cases, maybe on the autism spectrum or maybe gifted, gifted kids have an unusually high percentage of flirting with this kind of, well, problem or issue.
[01:12:29]  Right.
[01:12:29]  So like you're, you're just saying like, don't label them because you, you're, the high likelihood you're going to get it wrong.
[01:12:35]  They're not trans.
[01:12:36]  They have an issue.
[01:12:37]  They have a gender issue.
[01:12:39]  Yeah.
[01:12:39]  I mean, there's so much there too that you said, Megan.
[01:12:43]  These kids are quite intelligent.
[01:12:44]  Many of the kids I work with are brilliant.
[01:12:46]  And I think they're kind of speaking to something they metaphorically feel.
[01:12:50]  You know, have you ever been in a situation that is so difficult and so overwhelming that you think, this isn't supposed to be happening to me?
[01:12:58]  You know, and when you're going through puberty and your breasts are developing, you're feeling awkward, and maybe you've had some sort of like a sexual assault or maybe you're dealing with serious body image issues.
[01:13:07]  Metaphorically, you can feel like you were born in the wrong body.
[01:13:11]  It's a metaphor, right?
[01:13:12]  So we should not be taking metaphors literally.
[01:13:15]  And, you know, another thing that you said is we may be getting it wrong if we label the kids as trans kids.
[01:13:21]  And I think our framing is a little bit different here.
[01:13:24]  We've met a lot of transgender adults through this work who feel like transition benefited them.
[01:13:30]  But I have a hard time saying, well, they were the true trans people because I've also met adults who, let's say, transitioned and lived as transgender for 10, 15, 20 years.
[01:13:40]  And then for whatever reason, that stopped serving them.
[01:13:44]  And so they started living a different way.
[01:13:46]  So instead, in the book, we talk about transition, both social and medical transition is a kind of strategy, right?
[01:13:53]  It's a set of steps.
[01:13:54]  It's a set of actions.
[01:13:56]  And I have no moral or ethical qualms with those actions that some people take to feel better and to live their lives.
[01:14:05]  Now, we do emphasize that there's a serious medical burden and really complicated consequences for the body.
[01:14:12]  So these are not a neutral set of steps, but we don't think it's really appropriate to say this person's truly trans and this person got it wrong, right?
[01:14:21]  Or this person wasn't actually trans, because there's a huge variety of narratives and stories that people have about how they interacted with gender medicine and their own sense of identity and what happened after five years and what about after 20 years.
[01:14:35]  So we just think it's way more complicated than either correctly identifying trans kids or not.
[01:14:42]  But the knee jerk in today's day and age is to say, you're trans.
[01:14:46]  You're having the confusion.
[01:14:47]  You're trans.
[01:14:48]  That's it.
[01:14:48]  Like Cuomo was loosely doing in this segment.
[01:14:51]  You point out in the book, like for lack of a better term, this is mine, the overreaction, the over-treatment when a child expresses this.
[01:15:01]  You point out if your kid comes in and says, I've had chronic headaches, you don't bring him to the brain surgeon, right?
[01:15:09]  Like in the sort of watchful waiting approach that a lot of parents take.
[01:15:13]  You don't bring him to the brain surgeon.
[01:15:15]  You watch him.
[01:15:16]  And if he continues coming back and then he starts throwing up regularly and he's like, he gets debilitated at school, then maybe you go to a neurologist and you say, I've got a real problem on my hands.
[01:15:25]  But with the trans community in kids who are expressing any sort of confusion, it's the equivalent of going to the brain surgeon immediately and performing brain surgery on the child.
[01:15:36]  Yeah.
[01:15:37]  Yeah.
[01:15:38]  I mean, I think on one hand, parents don't realize that going to a therapist is maybe the equivalent of going to a brain surgeon.
[01:15:45]  Like they don't realize that oftentimes the therapist's big, you know, recommendations will put a kid on a medical pathway.
[01:15:53]  I think parents rightly think, oh, well, a gender clinic will help my kids sort out their gender issues.
[01:15:59]  And as we know, it's a conveyor belt, unfortunately, in the vast majority of cases.
[01:16:03]  So I think on one hand, they don't realize that they're doing that.
[01:16:06]  And then I think secondly, you know, a lot of the parents we work with, they are very, very responsive to their kids' needs.
[01:16:13]  Every time their kid is distressed or struggling with something, they just want to figure out how to help them feel better.
[01:16:18]  And we think that comes from a really good place.
[01:16:21]  But as you were just talking about with your previous guest, you know, we also have to help kids kind of tolerate that sometimes life is hard.
[01:16:28]  Sometimes you are going to have discomfort with your body.
[01:16:32]  Sometimes you'll feel alienated from a sense of who you are.
[01:16:35]  And it's not to dismiss them and say, ah, you'll get over it.
[01:16:38]  But there's a way to lean in with care and compassion that is not the same thing as like, oh, no, we need professional help right now, right?
[01:16:46]  So, I mean, that's why we wrote the book in the first place, Megan.
[01:16:49]  We want to give parents some of the confidence and tools to essentially do what is, you know, pretty basic parenting stuff.
[01:16:58]  And you're so right that when gender comes into the picture, it kind of scrambles everyone's brain and they don't know how to think about this issue anymore.
[01:17:06]  And that's why we use these examples of other kind of very common parenting scenarios to help parents realize, okay, let's get this in perspective.
[01:17:14]  You know, a phrase that I used to hear a lot growing up is that teenagers act out, right?
[01:17:19]  Like I remember, you know, if some kid was doing something that seemed really out there or seemed self-destructive, society had a term for that.
[01:17:27]  It was acting out.
[01:17:28]  And it meant that it was a cry for help, right?
[01:17:31]  That it wasn't really about the surface story.
[01:17:34]  And that's the last chapter in our book.
[01:17:36]  It's not really about gender.
[01:17:38]  So we see that this is often an expression of other things going on.
[01:17:42]  So if we run with the gender piece, we miss all the stuff that's going on beneath the surface that might be the real issue.
[01:17:51]  And you do sound the alarm like so many other thoughtful therapists have about do not trust the therapy industry on this and do not trust a therapist whose knee jerk is affirm, affirm, affirm when your parental instincts are telling you, no, that's not what's happening here.
[01:18:08]  We're being told at every turn to ignore our instincts, whether it's the parents who know that's not what this is or the girls in their female spaces who know this is not safe to have this man in our spaces.
[01:18:26]  I don't feel safe.
[01:18:27]  Like we are being taught to ignore those gifts.
[01:18:32]  This is huge.
[01:18:33]  I mean, the parents who rightly recognize that something isn't quite right with their kid and they have an instinct, a strong instinct that says, affirming is not going to help my child feel better.
[01:18:46]  What's so sad is that they are being treated like they're coming from a hateful place or a bigoted place, when actually it's their love and their knowledge of their child creates that hesitancy and that concern in the first place.
[01:19:00]  And there's so much about the kind of reality denial that is part of these gender beliefs that we find so destructive.
[01:19:09]  And frankly, it's just like we talked about earlier, destructive to lie to kids about what their eyes are telling them, what they see around them, what their bodies mean, what is the reality of their body.
[01:19:21]  So there's a lot of instinct squashing elements here, which is not healthy.
[01:19:27]  And, you know, we often say, you know, feelings aren't facts.

=== Family Systems in Crisis (16:17) ===

[01:19:30]  So sometimes we might have an emotional reaction that we need to think about and deliberate on, but that's very different from kind of blatantly gaslighting parents that actually everything is fine with their kid.
[01:19:41]  And if you go along with it, everything will be better.
[01:19:44]  I mean, that is a real gaslighting and it is a squashing of intuition.
[01:19:48]  And that's why we want parents to, you know, read this book, get the information they need, right?
[01:19:53]  We talk about the latest research, the information they need to know to make informed decisions.
[01:20:00]  And then we talk about some of the delicate and practical situations that a lot of families find themselves in so that they can kind of lean in with a more confident stance and help their kid move through the situation.
[01:20:12]  Now, it's not very good tips in here.
[01:20:15]  Like they're one of them.
[01:20:17]  One of them, I mean, there's some of this like in Abigail's book, but there's not a ton of helpful tools out there for parents looking to divert instead of affirm or, you know, like actually help instead of affirm.
[01:20:29]  And this book actually offers some real solutions, which we'll get into.
[01:20:32]  I'll take a quick break and we'll get into it.
[01:20:33]  But one of them, just as a tease, was, you remember when your toddler like kept going over to play with like the outlet, trying to stick his finger in there?
[01:20:42]  And you wouldn't just hit the finger and say no.
[01:20:44]  You'd be like, look at this fun little Tonka truck.
[01:20:47]  Look over here.
[01:20:48]  You kind of distract him.
[01:20:49]  You offer him something else to catch his interest.
[01:20:53]  And I do it to this moment with Strudwick, who's lying like a sweet little puppy right next to Abigail.
[01:20:58]  You never know he's the hassle he is.
[01:21:00]  In any event, Sasha's got strategies, a little bit more sophisticated than that, on how you can use that same technique on a child going through this.
[01:21:09]  It's all in her book, When Kids Say They're Trans, a Guide for Thoughtful Parents.
[01:21:15]  Stand by more with her after this quick break.
[01:21:21]  Here in the United States, Sasha, more and more we're seeing even left-wing school districts getting serious pushback from parents on the attempt to keep this a secret from the parents.
[01:21:35]  I've had arguments online with so-called social workers who maintain it's completely appropriate for a social worker at a school or a guidance counselor at a school to whom a child says, I'm secretly trans and I want to transition here at school and I don't want you to tell my parents to keep it a secret.
[01:21:54]  And in the New York City publics and privates now, it's policy, it's policy, and not just in New York, it's happening more and more and more.
[01:22:03]  Out in Los Angeles, near Los Angeles, I think this is Orange County.
[01:22:07]  Just last night, they were in the news because the school board was forced to take a vote on whether they should be required, as the parents were demanding, to notify the parents if this happens.
[01:22:20]  It passed, I think, four to three.
[01:22:23]  It was, it just got through.
[01:22:24]  The three who were against it, as I'm, if I'm remembering correctly, got up and walked out.
[01:22:30]  They were so angry that they were about to lose.
[01:22:32]  One of them was very vocal about how wrong this vote was to keep parents in the loop.
[01:22:38]  We have a little bit of her.
[01:22:39]  She was on the losing side, thankfully.
[01:22:42]  As a teacher, I oppose this policy.
[01:22:44]  Any student comes out to me, I will not out them.
[01:22:47]  I will not do it.
[01:22:48]  It's not in their best interest.
[01:22:51]  So she wasn't on the board.
[01:22:52]  She was a teacher.
[01:22:54]  If you don't tell my child, you want to have a secret with my child, I'll get you fired.
[01:22:58]  I will make it my, I will sue you.
[01:23:00]  I'll sue you personally.
[01:23:00]  I'll school your school district.
[01:23:02]  I will make your life a living hell.
[01:23:04]  I will.
[01:23:04]  Trust me.
[01:23:05]  I mean, and I will do it for other parents too, because guess what?
[01:23:08]  I have plenty of money to do it and I have a vicious pit bull lawyer.
[01:23:12]  I will get you.
[01:23:13]  That is, I want to create a nonprofit so I can help all parents in this position, even those who don't have deep pockets.
[01:23:19]  It's deeply, deeply, deeply wrong.
[01:23:21]  And I know you agree that it's wrong, but can you explain why?
[01:23:26]  Yeah, I mean, I think there are some serious misunderstandings about what it means not to tell a parent if their child is questioning their gender.
[01:23:33]  I think people take it similarly to like if a kid says to you, you know, I think I might be gay.
[01:23:38]  You know, I don't think in every case that the teacher needs to kind of warn the parent that their child is gay, but this is so different because it's not the same for many reasons.
[01:23:48]  I mean, first of all, a kind of basic fundamental principle is that parents love and know their children best and they're the ones entrusted with making every single decision about this child's care.
[01:23:58]  So when a child is saying that they're questioning their gender, it actually requires a great deal of participation from everyone around them.
[01:24:05]  So that means putting them in different changing rooms and lockers, changing the way you address them at school, changing their name and pronouns.
[01:24:12]  So it's a very different situation.
[01:24:14]  And if a kid is going through that, absolutely their parents need to be aware and they need to be working with the family to actually take guidance and cues from the family about what they want the school to do.
[01:24:26]  So it's private you of their opportunity.
[01:24:30]  They're depriving parents of their opportunity to intervene and help in and potentially, if appropriate, and it is appropriate, steer the child away from this towards something that looks more like actual mental health care to resolve their issues.
[01:24:45]  This is where your book comes in.
[01:24:47]  I offered the tease before about sort of the redirect.
[01:24:51]  And the book talks about how, okay, if we're going to be obsessed with identity issues, here's how about this one.
[01:24:56]  Let's talk about our cultural heritage.
[01:24:58]  Let's talk about where you're from.
[01:24:59]  Let's talk about what it means to be, you know, Syrian American or Irish American, whatever.
[01:25:04]  You know, like that's actually worked for some of the parents.
[01:25:07]  And other parents that I know you interviewed talked about how we're going to immerse our kid, like our kid's going hardcore chess club.
[01:25:13]  Like we're going to, we're going to wean him off of the Reddit and the YouTube and he's going to become a math lead or something like this.
[01:25:21]  Can you talk about it?
[01:25:23]  Yeah, sure.
[01:25:23]  I mean, over the last maybe seven or eight years, I used to tell people early on, parents who contacted me, I'd say, we're learning together because we don't have any precedent for what to do in these situations.
[01:25:36]  Rapid onset gender dysphoria is a brand new phenomenon.
[01:25:39]  And luckily, Lisa Stella and I, you know, we were advising parents and talking with them early on and a lot of our clinical instincts turned out to be right because we've kept in touch with families over the last seven or eight years and parents report back to us what was helpful, what was not helpful.
[01:25:54]  And ultimately, what we want is to help these kids thrive and be happy and be more themselves and have a broad perspective on what it means to be a person, what it means to be a human, right?
[01:26:05]  So we encourage parents to keep things broad.
[01:26:09]  If your child is going down the tunnel vision path of getting obsessed with gender as this kind of magic solution to their problems, make sure their life is actually full of interesting, enriching, valuable activities that they like, right?
[01:26:24]  Support their gender nonconformity.
[01:26:25]  It's okay to express yourself in different ways.
[01:26:28]  But if your child is pretending to be someone they're not and it's making them more self-conscious and hate their body more, that doesn't seem to be a healthy road.
[01:26:37]  So we want to make sure that parents really lean in with a lot of quality time and bonding and keeping their kids busy with fun and interesting things and really broaden their world, right?
[01:26:47]  Getting tunnel vision is never a good idea.
[01:26:51]  And you point out too, I talked about this recently, but work on yourself too.
[01:26:56]  And Dr. Laura says this.
[01:26:58]  She follows me on SiriusXM.
[01:26:59]  I love Dr. Laura.
[01:27:00]  I love her.
[01:27:00]  But she always says, there's in all her years of doing family therapy, she's never met a kid with a problem.
[01:27:06]  She's met tons of kids with parents who have problems, right?
[01:27:10]  Like, look at yourself.
[01:27:12]  How are you living?
[01:27:12]  How is your marriage?
[01:27:13]  How is your mental health?
[01:27:15]  How is your household before you just sort of rain down on your kid?
[01:27:19]  Yeah.
[01:27:20]  And I mean, frankly, most of the parents we talk to aren't trying to rain down on their kid per se, but it's just that the kid is such an obvious, glaring distress that it's so easy to focus on.
[01:27:30]  And to be fair, I mean, it's, it's really hard when you are a parent who sees something going on and all of society around you says you're bad for thinking that way.
[01:27:40]  So I think even when there were challenges in the family, it can get exacerbated when a parent feels so isolated and alone and ostracized.
[01:27:49]  But you're absolutely right.
[01:27:50]  There's a whole chapter about mental well-being for the parent, because this can become a rabbit hole that kind of the kid falls down the rabbit hole and then the parent falls down the rabbit hole too.
[01:28:01]  So the same kind of philosophy about making sure you are a well-rounded whole person.
[01:28:06]  Don't get too obsessed with this idea.
[01:28:09]  And, you know, Helena is a brilliant detransitioning young woman, detransitioned young woman who talks about this on our podcasts and lots of other media appearances.
[01:28:18]  But for her, the gender distress was a kind of signal that something else was going on in the family structure.
[01:28:25]  You know, she was feeling a bit abandoned because her mom was really busy with this or that thing.
[01:28:29]  And so, you know, that's not the exact story that we see.
[01:28:32]  But parents who do really well in this situation, they often say stuff like, this gender thing was a wake-up call for our family.
[01:28:40]  And we really started to think about what was going on.
[01:28:43]  You know, maybe the sibling had really complicated medical issues.
[01:28:48]  And so everybody was focused on her brother for three years and she kind of got neglected.
[01:28:52]  So it was a wake-up call to see that there is something else going on that might be the root cause of this.
[01:28:58]  So I think you're right.
[01:28:59]  It's a family system that needs to be looked at and thought about.
[01:29:04]  And some like minor changes here and there can make a big difference.
[01:29:09]  And beware, like if you have a kid who's gifted, which is amazing and awesome, just keep an eye on them because there's an unusually high percentage of kids who are gifted who fall prey to this.
[01:29:20]  And as I mentioned too, kids on the autism spectrum, same.
[01:29:23]  And the book goes into in depth why that is.
[01:29:26]  You can read it to find out why, but just be aware.
[01:29:29]  That's a thing.
[01:29:31]  The other huge thing is the online presence.
[01:29:33]  I mean, all these kids who get sucked into this.
[01:29:36]  And by the way, Rapper on set, gender dysphoria was a term coined by Dr. Lisa Lippmann of Brown.
[01:29:42]  She's brilliant.
[01:29:44]  It was her work on which Abigail Schreier based irreversible damage in large part.
[01:29:47]  If you want to go back and hear those episodes, Schreier was one of our first episodes.
[01:29:50]  We didn't even have video back then.
[01:29:52]  It was episode 12.
[01:29:53]  Lippmann came on episode 188.
[01:29:56]  Both so, so worth your time.
[01:29:59]  But in any event, so the kids, like it happens and it happens quickly.
[01:30:04]  And you've got to like know what you're talking about as the parent.
[01:30:08]  What else can parents do, right?
[01:30:10]  So you've got sort of, for lack of a better term, distraction.
[01:30:13]  You've got, you know, identity leaning in.
[01:30:17]  And then the online thing, how exactly?
[01:30:20]  How do you get your kid offline?
[01:30:21]  Because a lot of parents say, oh, great.
[01:30:23]  That's going to be really easy.
[01:30:25]  So give me your phone.
[01:30:26]  Give me your iPad.
[01:30:26]  No more YouTube.
[01:30:28]  It's very hard.
[01:30:29]  I mean, this is one of the things we refer to as mitigating unhelpful influences.
[01:30:34]  And that can come from online.
[01:30:35]  It can come from therapy.
[01:30:36]  It can come from a lot of different places.
[01:30:38]  But, you know, we recommend thinking about this as a digital wellness issue, right?
[01:30:43]  And if you make it punitive and you say like, you're not allowed to look at so-and-so types of YouTube videos, you're going to have a really hard time managing that interaction with your child.
[01:30:52]  But if instead you frame it as, you know, We've been doing some research and thinking and all of us are on our screens too much.
[01:31:00]  So we might implement a couple of kind of household ideas to get us all off screens a little bit.
[01:31:06]  So that way you are not really focusing just on the child and their maladaptive internet use.
[01:31:12]  You're treating it like a wellness issue, just in the same way that you're feeding your kids vegetables, but you're not scarfing down like three pizzas every night, right?
[01:31:20]  Like all of us want to be healthy.
[01:31:22]  So again, you know, we're trying to take the focus off of the gender piece because it's really distracting and think about the well-being of this family, of this child overall.
[01:31:33]  The problem is when they go online, when they spend all these hours online, especially in these trans community sites, you get a lot of mental illness.
[01:31:42]  I mean, it's very clear.
[01:31:43]  There was a clip that went viral over the past weekend from this woman who is incredibly distressed.
[01:31:49]  She looks like a woman.
[01:31:50]  I think she is a biological woman.
[01:31:51]  I don't know what she wants us to think she is, but she was very, very upset that she wasn't referred to the way she wanted to be referred to.
[01:31:58]  I'll play just a little bit of it.
[01:32:01]  Basically, I was just getting a drink at the bar and they called both and I ladies after they were done making the drink.
[01:32:11]  I was like, some people don't refer to themselves as ladies, but it's okay that you didn't know.
[01:32:16]  And then a gay bar, so you should be safe.
[01:32:19]  Too bad, turned it around.
[01:32:21]  These are so mad at me and they took the drink away from my wife and I.
[01:32:29]  And then they kicked us out.
[01:32:31]  This isn't the first time that I'd like to home somebody I felt brave enough to tell somebody my identity.
[01:32:37]  Are you so mad at me for being myself and for my wife being themselves?
[01:32:45]  Just her.
[01:32:48]  Can you imagine subjecting your child to that person's influence?
[01:32:55]  When they see this woman's posts online, I'm sure they have no idea she's this disturbed.
[01:33:01]  They think they're getting kind, loving advice from somebody on this issue.
[01:33:05]  And it's anything but.
[01:33:09]  Yeah, I mean, that is a remarkable clip precisely because it seems so disconnected from reality, right?
[01:33:16]  And I think there are different kids who find themselves in online spaces and their level of vulnerability is really different, right?
[01:33:24]  So, you know, there are lots of kids who are questioning their gender who would look at that clip and say, that's patently ridiculous.
[01:33:30]  You know, that doesn't represent me.
[01:33:32]  But some kids are really vulnerable.
[01:33:35]  They might be naive.
[01:33:36]  If they're on the autism spectrum, they may have a hard time distinguishing between like social situations and dynamics that are more subtle.
[01:33:44]  So, you know, especially in a text-based online space, these ideas and beliefs about your identity and what others see in you or not seeing you are really hard to reality test, you know, and that's what makes it so hard when a parent is dealing with a child who has very warped ideas about what these things mean.
[01:34:03]  What does it mean to have an identity that's completely separate from your body?
[01:34:06]  And you also think that the way people see you can be modified just because you said you're not a woman.
[01:34:11]  I mean, that is a very bizarre and almost like high level concept that if it's not reality tested regularly, like it's going to be hard to communicate with your child about it.
[01:34:22]  The book goes into this medicalization we've been doing of the children and how deeply problematic it is.
[01:34:30]  And I mean, I think, you know, we have to end on the fear-mongering about suicide because the reason so many parents have been pulled into affirming when they don't want to is the lie that your kid's going to kill themselves unless you do it.
[01:34:43]  Yeah.
[01:34:44]  Yeah, we have to talk about that.
[01:34:46]  We run these in-person parenting events and there's another one coming up actually later this month with a couple spots open, but it was shocking when we got together with parents in person.
[01:34:56]  Story after story after story, parents were saying they were given that kind of live son or dead daughter framework.
[01:35:04]  And not only does the evidence have no reason to support that, it's just simply not true.
[01:35:10]  It's a bullying tactic, right?
[01:35:12]  And it's so irresponsible for therapists and doctors to use a line like that because you're creating, you know, incredible duress and you're making it impossible for parents to make informed decisions about their kid.
[01:35:25]  And so we do see a lot of families who kind of get pressured and bullied and terrified into affirming when their gut says, no, this is not right.
[01:35:34]  And so it's a real manipulation of parents' emotions, especially if their child has been struggling with mental distress, right?
[01:35:42]  So they're already on edge about it.
[01:35:44]  We just find this to be so egregious.

=== Email Updates and News (01:15) ===

[01:35:47]  All of these truths are laid out articulately and kindly and beautifully in When Kids Say They're Trans, Sasha's book, When Kids Say They're Trans, a Guide for Thoughtful Parents.
[01:36:01]  It's a book liberals and conservatives can love, which is hard to do in today's day and age, Sasha.
[01:36:07]  Thank you so much for writing it to you and your co-authors.
[01:36:10]  Thank you, Megan, for having us.
[01:36:12]  It's been great to talk with you.
[01:36:13]  And we hope that this helps a lot of parents because we know it's a hard road out there.
[01:36:17]  Absolutely right.
[01:36:18]  All right.
[01:36:18]  So you can go on Amazon now and buy it or pre-ordering it, order it, depending on where you are and other book sellers too.
[01:36:24]  Okay.
[01:36:25]  When kids say they're trans.
[01:36:27]  Okay, next week, don't forget, or it's Friday, so we're going on the weekend.
[01:36:31]  Donald Trump will be here.
[01:36:34]  That ought to be fun.
[01:36:35]  And I would love to know what you would like me to ask him.
[01:36:39]  We did this with DeSantis and you guys wrote in such great things.
[01:36:43]  So email me, megan, M-E-G-Y-N, at megankelly.com.
[01:36:47]  And if you go to megankelly.com, you can sign up for my email from you with an update on my Strudwick, among other news.
[01:36:53]  Do that now.
[01:36:54]  Have a great weekend.
[01:36:55]  And I'll talk to you Monday.
[01:36:58]  Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show.
[01:37:00]  No BS, no agenda, and no