The Megyn Kelly Show - 20230928_who-won-the-chaos-hot-mess-debate-with-glenn-green

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Sept. 28, 2023 - The Megyn Kelly Show

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Terrible GOP Primary Debate 00:05:25
	Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, live on SiriusXM Channel 111, every weekday at least.
	Hey, everyone, I'm Megan Kelly.
	Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show.
	Last night marked the second Republican primary debate, and it was terrible.
	It was terrible.
	Between the line of questioning, the lackluster performance from some of the candidates and the cringe attempts at laugh lines, it seems yet again, the only real winner was Trump, who chose not to play.
	Today, we have an all-star panel to break it all down for you and for more on the 2024 presidential race.
	In just a bit, I'm going to be joined by journalist Glenn Greenwald, looking forward to his take on it all, and GOP presidential candidate Larry Elder.
	Larry's actually still running, did not make the debate stage, but as always has some spicy commentary on what he thought about all of this.
	But we begin the day with Michael Duncan, co-host of the Ruthless podcast, along with Eliana Johnson, editor-in-chief of the Washington Free Beacon and co-host of the podcast, Ink Stained Wretches.
	Guys, welcome to the show.
	My God, what a hot mess.
	I have to say, I didn't enjoy it.
	I said yesterday, this is a good thing because it's Republicans getting their ideas out there.
	That's probably better for the GOP, you know, like reinforce the positions that they hold when it comes to the border, when it comes to the economy, that could work to their benefit as we go into the general.
	No, I take it all back.
	They were sniping.
	They were small ball.
	They were petty.
	The moderators were a disaster.
	I don't think it was a good night for the Republican Party.
	It could have been.
	It just wasn't.
	And I think overall, it was a fail.
	So I will give the whole event.
	I won't give it an F, but I'm going to give it a D. I'm going to give it a D because there were a couple of moments that were okay.
	So I guess let's kick it off there.
	What's your letter grade?
	And then we'll get into why.
	I'll start with you, Duncan.
	I think I'd give it a C.
	I agree with you in large part on everything you're saying there.
	Look, I think it was a food fight.
	And I think it reflects the anxiety amongst all of these candidates to know that the field is too large right now.
	If one of them is going to knock off Donald Trump, who has a huge, huge polling lead.
	And I think you see that in their rhetoric and style in this second debate.
	People are looking for a moment.
	Maybe some are looking a little too hard.
	I'm sure we'll get into some of the lowlights of the night.
	But I think the food fight reflects that anxiety for people trying to have a breakout moment and win of the field.
	What about you, Eliana?
	What's your grade for what we saw last night?
	I'm going to go D plus.
	I thought there were a couple of highlights and several lowlights.
	Clearly, I think all of the candidates were conscious that this is the last debate where many of these guys are going to be on stage.
	I anticipate the RNC is going to ratchet up the qualification threshold for the third debate, and we're going to see far fewer candidates on that stage.
	And so everybody was sparring for attention and the moderators did a poor job of corralling the candidates.
	So there was tons of crosstalk.
	It was oftentimes difficult to hear.
	The moderators had a hard time controlling them.
	And when the candidates were talking, the questions appeared to me more appropriate for a general election debate, if that, than for a Republican primary debate.
	They just weren't asking about, for the most part, things of interest to Republican primary voters.
	The ones that stood out to me as particularly inappropriate for Republican primary voters was one of the questions was, what are we going to do for the DREAMers?
	Another one was about gun safety.
	There was a third about LGBTQ plus Americans.
	And while all of those might be okay for a general election debate, these things just aren't top of mind for conservative voters.
	And no, that's it all the show is for.
	That's who this show is for.
	And so keep the audience in mind.
	And the New York Times today ran a glowing profile of that Univision anchor, noting that Univision retained editorial control over all of her questions.
	Well, it was obvious and it was a fail.
	What on earth was Fox thinking partnering with Univision?
	That woman, Ilya Calderon, is a leftist who's been partnering with Jorge Ramos, who more than anyone is responsible for the abandon objectivity approach to Donald Trump and to journalism.
	I mean, they have almost singularly undermined the profession of journalism more than any other that I can think of off the top of my head.
	And it was intentional.
	She's his co-anchor.
	This is a leftist news organization that's basically propaganda.
	They've been in partnership with the Clintons.
	It was like having Hillary Clinton out there, this woman's questions.
	And while, I mean, I've anchored five presidential debates in the GOP primary field, and you can go out there and it's perfectly fine to say, hey, here's an issue that's going to be a problem for you if you're the nominee when you get to the general.
	You can do that.
	Like you're too extreme for moderates on abortion.
Income Inequality and Gun Violence 00:02:02
	What say you?
	Is that true or not?
	That's okay.
	We've been doing that from time immemorial.
	But the issue selection and the way in and out of the questions showed her bias time and time and time again.
	And at times, she wasn't the only one on the stage committing that sin for our GOP primary.
	Here's just an example of what we saw last night.
	Americans want to believe a leader who says, you can follow me.
	I've got you.
	Don't worry.
	President Biden is trying to do that with Bidenomics.
	Champeau found that mass shootings and gun safety are one of the most important issue for Latino voters.
	Mental health concerns are not unique to the United States, but gun violence is.
	The Department of Homeland Security warns that violence against LGBTQ plus people is on the rise and intensifying.
	How would you protect this community from violent attacks and discrimination?
	That's just part of a wider income inequality trend in the country.
	The richest 1% now controls one-fifth of all income.
	New Black History Curriculum says, quote, slaves develop skills which in some instances could be applied for their personal benefit.
	You have said slaves develop skills in spite of slavery, not because of it.
	In three days, the billions of dollars in pandemic era funding is going to end and 70,000 daycares could close.
	According to Customs and Border Protection, about 90% of fentanyl is seized at official border crossings and 57% of the smugglers are U.S. citizens.
	How would you stop fentanyl brought into the country, mostly by U.S. citizens?
	I mean, like that, especially that last one, really.
	Yes, the problem with fentanyl into the United States is all about the people with no connection to cartels.
Fentanyl Cartels and Border Issues 00:15:34
	That's what she's leaving out.
	Yes, it is true that normally the fentanyl coming across there on the border tends to be brought in at the ports of entry by smugglers, not the illegal migrants who are choosing other places to sneak into the country.
	That's besides the point.
	The cartels are the ones providing the fentanyl.
	They are trying to kill Americans and desperate people will help the cartels get it across at ports of entry and elsewhere.
	And by the way, the migrant crisis pulls border agents away from the ports of entry so that they can't do thorough screening to begin with.
	But the cartels in the eyes of the Univision lady are not the issue.
	You see, it's the Americans desperate enough to help them to get the fed.
	What the F?
	I'm sorry, Duncan, but that woman had no business being out there at a Republican presidential debate.
	It was bizarre.
	It was almost like if you had a conference call with Joe Biden's comms department and tried to figure out a way to put all these candidates into knots on some general election issue and sort of weaved in there with all of the questions is the framing that the Biden administration would want in a general election debate, right?
	Like you're forcing all of our folks to play defense on these issues rather than speaking to the conservative values that animate the people who are actually watching this thing.
	It was an absolute disgrace, Eliana, as I heard her questioning.
	First of all, I'm going to be honest, she was difficult to understand.
	Sorry, she's bilingual and I'm not, but I didn't understand her English.
	And I actually thought quite a few times the candidates on the stage were a little confused by what she said, like they were struggling a little.
	She's only been in the United States, I think, for 20 years.
	She hosts a show that's in Spanish.
	All of her social media is in Spanish.
	She decided to open the debate with a little Spanish language.
	I mean, it's still an English-speaking country.
	It's like, are the Spanish speakers at the point now where we actually have to make a debate moderator speak in Spanish?
	So, okay, fine.
	That's what Fox and Univision decided to do.
	But what was more incomprehensible was her editorial for the situation.
	And the whole thing felt to me like it could have been put on by MSNBC, not Fox News.
	The miss here, I think, was that there are disagreements on the right among conservatives about foreign policy on economics and on immigration.
	You know, I'm old enough to remember in 2014, 2015, a huge debate on the right.
	Marco Rubio fell into this trap on immigration reform.
	But the two biggest issues in the country right now are the economy and the border.
	And there are divisions among these candidates on those issues.
	And I thought the biggest miss in this debate was not allowing the candidates to face off against each other and to showcase the divisions among the candidates on the issues of most interest to Republican voters.
	Instead, it was putting the left-wing talking points to them and putting them on defense against them.
	We want to see the candidates spar against each other.
	And when we got that, by the way, for example, on China, on TikTok, when Nikki Haley and Vive Kramaswamy faced off, on foreign policy over Ukraine, when they faced off, those were the best moments of the debate.
	But in the clips that you showed, and by the way, you didn't get the final question on who would you vote off the island, which was just bizarre.
	It was like Fox didn't learn from the final question of its last debate when they asked about UFOs.
	Those were just huge misses and ultimately did a disservice to the 75% of Republican primary voters who say they're still trying to make up their minds as to who they want to cast a ballot for in the primary.
	The debate question about survivor and who would, there's a placard, there's a note card on each of your lecterns.
	And would you please write who you want to vote off the island was an absolute embarrassment.
	I was embarrassed for Fox News and for Dana Perino.
	I don't know why she wrote that question, read that question, and thought that was an appropriate question at a presidential debate.
	It was beneath the dignity.
	And I thought it was Ron DeSantis' best moment of the night when he was like, absolutely not.
	Here's what happened.
	Which one of you on stage tonight should be voted off the island?
	Please use your marker to write your choice on the notepad in front of you.
	15 seconds starting out of the people on the stage.
	Are you serious who should be absolutely serious?
	With all due respect, I mean, we're here.
	Like, you know, we're happy to debate.
	I think that that's disrespectful to my fellow competitors.
	I think I've been the only one on the stage who's been clear about this.
	I vote Donald Trump off the islands right now.
	Every person on this stage has shown the respect for Republican voters to come here to express their views honestly, candidly, and directly, and to take your questions, honestly.
	This guy has not only divided our party, he's divided families all over this country.
	He's divided friends all over this country.
	Of course, Chris Christie took the bait because he never misses a chance to try to hit Trump, but it was beneath the dignity of the event, the office that these men and this woman are seeking.
	And I was shocked that it got through like Fox, that the editorial board didn't say, I mean, the editorial board that was there when I was there, they're all gone.
	But back when I was there, somebody would have stopped and said, not appropriate.
	That's a fun little moment maybe in an interview.
	The standards at a presidential debate are higher.
	The decorum is higher.
	The expectations are higher.
	And it's an embarrassment that that question made the dance, especially as you point out on the heels of the UFO question, Eliana, at the last one.
	Right.
	And I did think DeSantis came across as presidential there.
	And in a debate where you did see these guys hitting each other, it was nice to see him say we all showed respect for each other by showing up.
	It really was his best moment of the night.
	And I think DeSantis, overall, I thought he came across as tight and overly prepared.
	And that was obviously a question meant to catch these guys off guard.
	And I did think it showed that DeSantis can actually be good when he comes off his prepared remarks.
	He did it in the last debate when he said, I'm not going to raise our hands.
	Come on, please.
	And I do think that it demonstrates to him and his campaign that, like, let the guy go a little bit.
	He's actually better when he's off his talking point so much and not so tightly scripted.
	That was by far his most memorable moment of the evening.
	And he's better when he's just a little bit more loosened up and unbuttoned.
	As loose as he can get, right?
	There's like a limit.
	Here's a little example of DeSantis kind of taking control.
	He did it a couple of times during the debate, Sat 10.
	You voted for me.
	He has made sure that you're going to be able to do that.
	12 years.
	Where have you been?
	I voted no.
	I voted no.
	12 years.
	We've waited.
	Nothing has happened.
	Here's what you've done.
	Here's the thing that I always find interesting.
	Ron.
	Let me finish up first.
	Here's the fact.
	And I appreciate a lot of the things they're saying.
	Nikki.
	I'm the only one up here who's gotten in the big fights and has delivered big victories for the people of Florida.
	And that's what it's all about.
	You can always talk, but when it gets hot in there, when they're shooting arrows at you, are you going to be stand up for parents' rights, keep the state free?
	Are you going to be able to do all those things?
	And in the state of Florida, because of our success, the Democratic Party lies in ruins.
	That was a strong moment, Duncan.
	You did well there.
	It was great.
	It was great because you had Nikki and Tim talking about the cost of drapes and the gas tax and just going back and forth that food fight we were talking about.
	It seemed like such small ball.
	And then, you know, DeSantis has the opening to come in and be like, okay, well, all of you guys are just talking.
	Let me tell you what I did.
	And you get back to those conservative accomplishments he's accomplished in Florida, which, of course, is one of the main selling points of his candidacy.
	And I also agree with Ileana, like when he gets an opportunity to interject with that stuff, it comes off more authentic than as part of like this scripted 30-second stump.
	And I just think he shows more authentic, natural emotion in those moments.
	And he had another really great one, I thought, on the issue of life, where he was able to weave in Donald Trump not being here, not defending the pro-life movement, supporting the pro-life movement with what he's done in Florida with the heartbeat bill and talking about the city.
	We actually have that, Michael.
	Let's play it.
	It's not 11.
	Governor DeSantis, how are you going to win over independent pro-choice voters in Arizona?
	Same way we did in Florida.
	We won the greatest Republican victory in a governor's race in the history of the state.
	And I reject this idea that pro-lifers are to blame for midterm defeats.
	I think there's other reasons for that.
	The former president, you know, he's missing an action tonight.
	He's had a lot to say about that.
	He should be here explaining his comments to try to say that pro-life protections are somehow a terrible thing.
	Keep going.
	Yeah, so I mean, he managed to take what was supposed to be a difficult question about a vulnerability that he has in a general election, and he flipped it around and not only talked about his electability in Florida, he also then attacked Donald Trump on the issue and turned it into a positive.
	So he managed to do a little pirouette out of that question and put Donald Trump and I think in a difficult spot on the issue when it comes to evangelical voters in Iowa, right?
	Who gives two shits about the drapes at the UN ambassador's apartment, which is what Tim Scott was coming at Nikki Haley on, that you paid the $50,000 for the automated shades in your UN place, which we know from when the New York Times did this hit piece on her was actually not on Nikki Haley for whatever it's worth.
	They had to retract it.
	That was something that the Obama administration ordered and paid for to upgrade the UN ambassador's place that she stays.
	And then Trump won and she took office.
	It wasn't even on her, but this is how they chose to spend their time last night.
	Watch this is more of that drapes exchange that Ron DeSantis interrupted to sort of say, can we talk about my record here?
	Watch.
	Talk about someone who has never seen a federal dollar she doesn't like.
	10 cents on the gallon in South Carolina as the UN ambassador.
	You literally put $50,000 on curtains at a $15 million subsidized location.
	Next.
	You got bad information.
	First of all, I fought the gas tax in South Carolina multiple times against the U.S. Secondly, on the curtains, do your homework, Tim, because Obama bought those curtains.
	Did you send them back?
	It's in the State Department.
	Did you send them back?
	You're the one that works in Congress.
	Oh my gosh.
	You get it.
	You hung them on your curtains.
	They were there before I even showed up at the residence.
	You are scrapping.
	You are scrapping.
	Oh, my God.
	Did you send back?
	What sane person who's moving into the UN residence would say, take the automated curtain shades down and send it.
	They're not returnable.
	Anybody's ever had those put in their house notes?
	You're stuck with it.
	That was an absurd.
	I'm sure there's plenty you can go after Nikki Haley on.
	You know, even if you're Tim Scott, you share a lot of the policy positions that she does.
	But the curtains, the curtains, Eliana?
	Look, frankly, I'm surprised that question didn't come from the Univision moderator.
	That hit was beneath Tim Scott.
	And I thought that that exchange between Nikki Haley and Tim Scott was the low moment of the debate for both of them.
	Nikki Haley appointed Tim Scott to the Senate.
	And so I was surprised not to hear Tim Scott say every time Nikki Haley hit him, you appointed me.
	And I was surprised not to hear Nikki Haley hit back harder on him for being in hoc with the New York Times's incorrect false reporting.
	I thought she could have gone further on that and said he's picking up their fake news that they retracted.
	They removed her picture from that article.
	They issued an editor's note.
	They changed the text of that piece and had to run away with their tail between their legs after publishing that piece.
	I thought she could have gone a bit further on that.
	And back to DeSantis, DeSantis' response on life in the midterms.
	I thought it was masterful.
	And when he said Donald Trump owes an explanation to people, he said, you know, pro-lifers aren't to blame for the midterm losses.
	I thought he could have gone a little bit further on that too and said, by the way, it was candidates Donald Trump endorsed in the midterms.
	It was Dr. Oz in Pennsylvania who lost.
	It was Blake Masters in Arizona who lost in 2022.
	It was two senators in Georgia who lost in 2020 when he was crying over spilled milk.
	If you want to talk about Republican electoral losses, look no further than Donald Trump.
	If you want to talk about victories, look to Florida.
	And I think we need to hear a little bit more of that from DeSantis.
	He could have carried the point a little bit further.
	You know, Michael, there was a moment where the Univision anchor called her own, again, came at the candidates from the left.
	And this one was for DeSantis on the dumbass debunked slavery nonsense that they're teaching slavery was a good thing down in Florida, which is a lie.
	He's teaching the exact same thing that they put in the African-American AP history class that the Democrats push.
	And nobody down in Florida said anything about it.
	They had no problem with it.
	Only when it wound up at a lower level, K through 12, where they said, you know, some of the slaves were very resilient and developed some skills that suddenly the left freaked out.
	And all the agenda was put together by African-American historians along with others.
	In any event, so he at this point, you saw Tim Scott come at Nikki Haley from the left with a leftist lie from the Times.
	And she tried to debunk it, but I agree with Eliana.
	She could have been much more effective with, what are you doing?
	You're repeating a New York Times lie that was retracted.
	Ron DeSantis had it happen to him from the Univision anchor and handled it very effectively.
	Here's what happened.
	Florida's new Black history curriculum says, quote, slaves develop skills, which in some instances could be applied for their personal benefit.
	You have said slaves develop skills in spite of slavery, not because of it.
	But many are still hurt.
	For the sentence of slaves, this is personal.
	What is your message to them?
	So first of all, that's a hoax that was perpetrated by Kamala Harris.
	We are not going to be doing that.
	Second of all, that was written by descendants of slaves.
	These are great Black history scholars.
	So we need to stop playing these games.
Black History Curriculum Hoax 00:15:14
	Here's the deal.
	Our country's education system is in decline because it's focused on indoctrination, denying parents' rights.
	Florida represents the revival of American education.
	We didn't just talk about universal school choice.
	We enacted universal school choice.
	We didn't just talk about parents' bill of rights.
	We enacted the parents' bill of rights.
	We eliminated critical race theory.
	Florida is showing how it's done.
	We're standing with parents and our kids are benefiting.
	And then Tim Scott got all over him.
	You can hear him on the side going, take the line out, take the line out.
	It's literally one line about how some of the slaves, you heard her repeat it.
	Again, a small ball, right?
	This is always with Tim Scott.
	It's about the drapes.
	It's about the one line.
	But he's been embracing this sort of like left-wing mainstream media attack on his opponents, both with Nikki Haley and DeSantis.
	I don't get the strategy, really, because it seems like small ball to me.
	How does this move any voters whatsoever?
	But I will say this: Ron DeSantis is getting better.
	He's definitely getting better.
	Market improvement from debate one to debate two.
	And this is one of the reasons why, you know, it might serve well, serve Trump well.
	We can debate it all day long to show up at these things because you do get better once you practice.
	You know, you get a little bit more agile.
	You see what works.
	He gets better in this situation, I think, particularly, Megan, where he's facing these adversarial questions sort of from the left, from the Universion reporter, because you got to remember this guy sort of, he came on the national scene answering questions from left-wing reporters and mainstream reporters at press conferences in Florida, right?
	So like he is used, I think, more than most of those people on stage, used to the framing that they use to try to box men into a corner.
	And he always was able to fight his way out.
	It's his most authentic stuff.
	I really don't get it.
	Fox News could have said, we're not going to partner with Univision.
	We have plenty of money.
	We're owned by Rupert Murdoch.
	We're good.
	We're going to put it on ourselves and we're not partnering with Univision.
	That's a leftist news organization.
	That's essentially the Clintons.
	It's like having Hillary Clinton out there as a moderator.
	It's a no.
	I don't understand why they agreed to have this woman out there at all.
	The other thing, before we move off the moderators, because we're sort of weaving it all in there, is I understand it's very hard to control these guys when they're out there and they're talking over each other.
	It's very annoying.
	The candidates should remember how annoying it is to the people at home when they're talking over each other.
	But as a moderator, you at least have the obligation to try.
	That's the thing.
	You have to try.
	If you don't succeed, you don't have superhuman powers out there, but you have to show the audience, I'm trying.
	And this Univision woman had absolutely no control.
	I mean, frankly, none of them had control throughout the whole night.
	But watch this debate descend into absolute chaos.
	She was the one who asked the question and she allowed it.
	And finally, she says something, but watch.
	What is what is it?
	SAT 12W?
	You know the one I'm talking about.
	Stand by.
	12.
	I can't imagine how you could say that knowing that you were just in business with the Chinese Communist Party and the same people that funded Hunter Biden millions of dollars was a partner of yours as well.
	That's not nonsense.
	So look, I want to respond.
	These are good people who are tainted by a broken system.
	And it's not the fault of anybody who's involved.
	Some of us here are tainted by the business.
	Excuse me.
	Thank you for speaking while I'm interrupting.
	You can't be on both sides.
	Gentlemen, you'll have your turn.
	One of the challenges.
	We have a focus on the issues that matter between business in China.
	Everybody knows that.
	I'm focused on holding Joe Biden accountable.
	That's how we need to be.
	I actually agree with Ron DeSantis.
	Okay.
	Let me tell you what should have happened.
	The person asking the question, or there should have been somebody in charge at, you know, sort of at the helm, should have said, Senator Scott, Governor Bergham, stop.
	Stop.
	Mr. Ramaswamy has the floor.
	I'll give you a chance.
	And it's fine to let him mix it up.
	Like it's exciting that they want to weigh in.
	I get it.
	We're having a moment.
	It's your job to run herd on the debate.
	It's not their debate stage.
	It's not the candidates' debate stage.
	That debate stage was Fox News's.
	They paid for it.
	The old Ronald Reagan, they're at the Reagan Library.
	I paid for this microphone, sir.
	Fox News paid for the microphone.
	And it's Fox News's debate stage and production.
	There's a reason they call it broadcast television, broadcast journalism.
	You take control and you maintain control and you say you are going to be quiet and so are you.
	Mr. Ramaswamy has the floor and you make sure they shut up and you make sure you establish control nice and early so they know who's in charge.
	And if they try to speak up again, you say, you don't talk to them.
	You say control room, cut their mic.
	You don't threaten it.
	You just say, do it.
	Doug Bergham, you're done.
	Tim Scott, you're done.
	Shut the mic.
	And then you let Vivek Ramaswamy finish his answer.
	And then you look at Doug Bergum and you look at Senator Scott, whichever order you want.
	You say, go ahead, sir.
	Go ahead.
	That's it.
	It's she was, she receded.
	She was gone.
	Nobody else said anything.
	It happened multiple times over the night.
	It's one of the reasons why we left.
	And, you know, it's the viewer at home only knows, I don't feel good.
	I don't like it.
	I don't know why I don't like it, but I don't feel good.
	And Eliana, I'm telling them right now, this is why you didn't feel good.
	Megan, how do we get you up there with a mallet in your robe?
	We need Megan center stage running court.
	It's not that hard.
	I'll wear my little Judge Judy doily.
	We need it.
	We need it.
	Yeah.
	Look, I don't, I'm not under the illusion that this is easy and I have no experience myself, but it was it was hard to watch in those moments.
	And I'm actually curious to see the ratings over the two hours, because my suspicion is the more interesting parts of the debate actually came in the second hour, but I'm guessing that fewer people were watching by the time they got there because of the craziness that transpired on stage in the first hour.
	And I also think it was unfortunate for Ron DeSantis, who it was bizarre that he is still leading in the polls among the candidates on the stage, but he didn't have much of a presence in that first hour.
	No.
	And in fact, they didn't even go to him until 10 minutes into the debate, which was weird because he's among that crew, the frontrunner, though obviously we all know who the real frontrunner is.
	So Duncan, what was your, what was your, like, what were your standout moments, best, worst?
	What comes to mind?
	Best, I think DeSantis on some of those exchanges where Nikki and Tim were fighting was fantastic.
	I think what he did on the pro-life answer was pitch perfect.
	I think low light, Chris Christie and Donald Duck.
	What are you thinking?
	I mean, look, I think everybody.
	Wait, wait.
	I'm sorry to interrupt you again.
	Let's play it.
	And then you react to it.
	It's not six.
	It's part of the montage.
	Oh, can we play it standalone or no?
	I don't want to watch the whole thing.
	Well, we'll go.
	All right, go ahead.
	Watch it.
	Where's Joe Biden?
	He's completely missing in action from leadership.
	And you know who else is missing in action?
	Donald Trump is missing in action.
	He should be on this stage tonight.
	He owes it to you to defend his record.
	Look at that camera right now.
	I'll tell you, Donald, I know you're watching.
	You can't help yourself.
	I know you're watching.
	Okay.
	And you're not here tonight, not because of polls and not because of your indictments.
	You're not here tonight because you're afraid of being on the stage and defending your record.
	You're ducking these things.
	And let me tell you what's going to happen.
	You keep doing that.
	No one up here is going to call you Donald Trump anymore.
	We're going to call you Donald Duck.
	Is it over?
	Keep going.
	Look, I think everyone is aware that Chris Christie has had great moments at debates.
	Everybody remembers the Marco Rubio exchange in 2016.
	I think a New Jersey guy is capable of a little harder language than Donald Duck.
	I don't think it's his best stuff.
	And I've heard his best stuff.
	It was uncomfortable.
	It was obviously a line he had rehearsed and he had sort of the weird smile after he landed it.
	Um, and it didn't work and it was just too light.
	It was just, I don't know, it, I mean, I felt uncomfortable, which is not a good sign.
	What he does well is break is break that fourth wall and talk directly into the camera and talk to the audience at home and address Donald Trump.
	And he's he does that better than any other candidate.
	And you can tell he's just really comfortable doing that.
	And I think the voters really appreciate that because I think it perks their ears up.
	They're like, okay, this is something that's important.
	But then he just didn't stick to the landing.
	It was like he got in the air and he was doing three flips and he twisted around back and then he came down to land and it didn't work.
	It was painful to watch.
	Here's another one that didn't land Eliana.
	Mike Pence.
	Mike Pence should not try humor.
	Okay.
	There's like certain things people can do.
	Chris Christie actually can do humor.
	That one didn't work, but he can do humor.
	Mike Pence cannot do humor.
	It's not his thing.
	It's fine.
	But he tried.
	Didn't go well.
	Here it is.
	My wife isn't a member of the teachers union, but I got to admit, I've been sleeping with a teacher for 38 years.
	And full disclosure.
	It doesn't work on a number of levels.
	First of all, nobody wants to picture that.
	Like literally, yeah, Abigail Finan doesn't want to picture that.
	And, you know, he's Mike Pence.
	That's not his lane is like to be the distinguished gentleman, the former vice president, the dignified.
	No, no, no.
	Don't talk about sleeping with your wife or any and don't use humor.
	What do you think, Eliana?
	I didn't mind it.
	I like that from Pence, I gotta say.
	But reading Twitter and talking to people, I think my debate impressions were a little bit of an outlier from everybody else's.
	My best and worst moments were: I thought Nikki telling Vivek that she gets dumber every time she hears him talk.
	And that was-we have it.
	Stand by.
	We have it.
	Let's watch it and then you can pick it up.
	So yeah, 13.
	This is infuriating because TikTok is one of the most dangerous social media apps that we could have.
	And what you've got, I honestly, every time I hear you, I feel a little bit dumber for what you say because I can't believe they hear that we've got a TikTok situation.
	What they're doing is these 150 million people are on TikTok.
	That means they can get your contacts.
	They can get your financial information.
	They can get your emails.
	They can get text messages.
	They can get all of you.
	This is important.
	This is very important for our exactly what they're doing.
	This is very important.
	What we've seen is you've gone and you've helped China make medicines in China, not America.
	You're now wanting kids to go and get on the social media that's dangerous for all of us.
	You went and you were in business with the Chinese that gave Hunter Biden $5 million.
	We can't trust you.
	By the way, there again, all the moderator had to do is quickly say, Mr. Ramaswamy, you're next.
	You're next.
	Stop.
	Let her finish.
	Anyway, it's so annoying to me.
	Like on the, it's annoying to me to watch because it's like so clear.
	I feel like any mother who's had a toddler knows how to moderate the debate.
	That's what you need.
	You need mothers of toddlers to moderate the debate.
	We all know how to do it.
	It's instinctual.
	After you, okay, sorry, keep going.
	That you like that moment.
	Why?
	I liked it because I thought it showed that Nikki's ability to manhandle some of these other candidates was not a one-off from the first debate.
	She hit him again on a foreign policy issue, and I thought it was effective.
	And I thought she was right.
	Second best moment I thought was Ron DeSantis refusing to answer that last question.
	And my worst moments, I'm with Duncan.
	I thought it was Chris Christie and Donald Dunk, Donald Duck.
	And second place was the moderators.
	I went back and forth.
	To say, I preferred Nikki Haley's first debate performance.
	There were moments last night where I was like, she's kind of crossing over into rude.
	Even though, you know, I've been a critic of Vivek's.
	I've been a supporter.
	I've been a critic, whatever.
	I was like, it depends on the day and what he's doing.
	But I don't know.
	That one seemed kind of mean to me.
	Maybe I'm being too charitable.
	I don't, it seemed, and there was just a couple of moments where I was like, she's crossing over into unlikable, which I would guess.
	I would be mean.
	Once I saw Vivek, once I saw Vivek doing his dramatic, I'm giving you the floor, like he's a matador in a bullfight.
	I would have been pretty mean too, because it seemed sort of condescending and smarmy, if you're asking me.
	Well, how about how about the new Vivek who is who really just wants everyone to be kind to each other on the debate stage?
	After the guys he called super PAC puppets, yeah.
	Yeah, oh, I think we have this.
	Do we have this, Deb?
	We have last time versus this time, Vivek and his 180.
	Watch it.
	I'm the only person on the stage who isn't bought and paid for, so I can say this.
	I think we would be better served as a Republican party if we're not sitting here hurling personal insults and actually have a legitimate debate about policy.
	So what happened there, Duncan?
	As a guy who works in politics, what happened there?
	I mean, he either doesn't have a single thing he really believes or stands for, or he has the memory of a goldfish.
	You know, I mean, I feel like he got bad, he got bad feedback.
	He got feedback that was negative about attacking every Republican up there as some corporate shill.
	Well, I also noticed that he had a super PAC fundraiser in California recently for himself.
	And so maybe it'd be a little dissonant to get back up there on stage for the second debate and call everyone a puppet.
	So look, I don't think it works.
	I didn't think it worked in the first debate.
	I didn't think it worked in the second debate, but he is talking a lot and mixing it up.
	And so if you're watching this debate and this is a guy you haven't, you know, heard from before, he's going to benefit from that.
	And I think some of the polling indicates that he had a boom and it sort of receded, but he's doing well in New Hampshire.
	So he's doing something right.
	Yeah, exactly.
	And he's, I thought my own taste was I preferred this Vivek much more than I preferred the Vivek from debate one.
	I thought he was like respectful.
	He stuck up for himself.
	Maybe he had a moment or two with the stage, but like I didn't like what I saw at the first debate and him just tearing down everybody's character as opposed to just getting after him on policy.
	I'm the only one with the courage to tell you the truth.
	It's like, who is this guy?
Enforcing Rules on Stage 00:10:16
	What do you stop it?
	Anyway, overall, that's my take on how the debate went.
	That's my sophisticated analysis, but we're going to keep it going as Glenn Greenwald is up next.
	Eliana Duncan, great to see you both.
	Thanks for being here.
	Thanks, Megan.
	Thank you.
	All right, Glenn's up next.
	And then Larry Elder comes on.
	Joining me now, Glenn Greenwald, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and host of Rumble's system update.
	All right, Glenn.
	So what's your grade on last night's debate and your overall thoughts on how it went?
	Honestly, Megan, I really struggled to watch that debate, even though I have a program tonight where my viewers are going to expect me to discuss it.
	I knew I was coming on your show this afternoon to talk about it.
	I kind of have to watch it for the work that I do.
	I generally like debates, which is part of why I'm interested in politics.
	And even with all those incentives that I don't think most people share, I had a hard time just not turning it off.
	I just wanted to so badly.
	I didn't find it interesting or compelling.
	It was actually actively annoying.
	I think a lot of the fault was the moderators and the questions that were asked, their failure to control the debate, the behavior of the candidates just trying so desperately to draw attention to themselves, but in ways that weren't effective.
	Obviously, I think Trump's strategy of lowering how the debate seems in terms of its importance, even though I don't like that strategy.
	I think he ought to be there, is an effective one.
	Already, the threshold for wanting to watch is a little bit lower because the person who's dominating the polls isn't there.
	And by design, it's intended to feel less important.
	And when you add all that together, combined with just the fact that they were just rude mostly, just talking on top of each other, interrupting each other.
	It was very hard to listen to.
	It just wasn't anything of real value.
	It was, I don't know if there's a lower grade than F, so I don't appear cliche.
	I would like to give it.
	But that was my overall impression.
	Well, the other possible grade would be incomplete because when it ended, you know, Dana asked that question about survivor and voting people off the island.
	And then it was over.
	Like there was no closing moment.
	I'm very against the opening speeches.
	I think they're boring and you never get anything.
	You need a good first question.
	And they did better in this one than they did in the first Fox debate.
	But it is nice to have a closing message from each of the candidates.
	And this one, it was just kind of like, it's done.
	They're gone.
	What happened?
	So you didn't have like the, I don't know, the send off.
	And, you know, with the old primacy and recency rule, that's what people remember, what they heard first and what they heard last.
	It left us with survivor.
	Like, I don't know.
	That's, that's what I left thinking about and not a closing message.
	Yeah.
	You know, I haven't seen any of the ratings.
	I don't think anybody has.
	I question how many people who began watching it and joined early on ended up staying for the entire thing.
	As I said, I really struggled to do so.
	And in fact, I admit I didn't.
	I had to go back and watch the like last 40 minutes that I just couldn't endure early this morning.
	So I made sure that I actually know what I'm talking about when I'm talking about a debate that I've actually watched it.
	So, you know, as eager as I was to get out of that debate, I really wonder how many people have stayed until the end.
	And I think you're right.
	You know, the thing is by eliminating a couple of the candidates who were there the first time, like Asa Hutchinson, you actually have a number of candidates that are manageable.
	It's not like you have 13 up there.
	You have, I think, there were six.
	And it is a small enough group that you could have a more structured debate.
	You could have the kind of ending that you're talking about where you give them that last moment.
	If they want to read a dumb cam speech, that'll be a lost opportunity.
	I think most of them are capable enough politicians to give an ending that picks out the strongest points of their debate.
	I just think it was a failure on the part of everybody.
	And when you have moderators who just don't seem able to control the debate or even really trying to control the debate, it just seems like if they're not interested enough to keep control of the debate so that it's watchable, you feel like you don't have anyone you can trust to make sure that you're being presented with something you actually want to listen to.
	And I don't know, I just felt like it was a missed opportunity all the way around, even though there were some fine moments.
	I felt there were some good debates about the border in Ukraine that showed some of the compelling differences within not just the party, but within these candidates.
	But the debate itself just lacked any kind of attribute that wanted you to watch, just this television.
	And that's, of course, extremely important.
	There were all kinds of counter programming with Tucker Carlson interviewing Bill O'Reilly and Trump giving his speech and the zillions.
	I think actually the real survivor was on last night, like the premiere.
	So when you have people with all these other alternatives, including like if they're interested in survivor, they can go watch the real survivor instead of getting the same question that is embarrassing.
	I don't know.
	It just, it's amazing how much money Fox spends on this, how much they depend on it, and what a kind of failure it was just from a television perspective.
	I really think the moderators need to remember you're not there to be liked by the candidates and you're not there to just let them have fun on the stage.
	You're there for the audience.
	You are the audience's representative and you are their protector.
	Your job is to make sure the audience can hear.
	The debate is, it has lines that we can color in between.
	The candidates can fight and whether they go petty or go big, that's up to them.
	But you have to control order so that people can understand and hear and don't feel frustrated at home.
	You're not a magician.
	You can't necessarily control it perfectly, but you need to try.
	And what we've seen is just weak sauce out there, like just sitting back, like letting, oh, okay.
	Like at least try, at least try to protect your audience as opposed to just seating the whole thing.
	That's what leads somebody like Aron DeSantis to say, this is out of control.
	He's basically saying, who's in charge?
	Yeah.
	And I think you're exactly right.
	You know, I think it's a common thing that candidates are going to want to try and grab their moment and that can oftentimes lead to disorder.
	You know, it's very common.
	You see them talking over each other.
	But I think as a viewer, exactly what you just said, and obviously you have insight into this because you've done it.
	If you know that you have somebody there who's kind of going to be, as you said, your protector, somebody who's going to put their foot down in a very aggressive way early on so that there's no benefit or incentive to talking when you're not allowed to talk because you're going to be embarrassed or chided or have, you know, some kind of threat issued or not even a threat issue, but actually have your microphone cut off.
	That creates the motivation on the part of these candidates.
	You know, you don't want to over control it so that everybody's just very rigid and like robots.
	As you said, you do want to have some mixture, some interaction, but it needs to have some structure and some rules and therefore somebody to enforce it.
	I think it was like an hour into the debate when they finally threatened to cut off Doug Bergham's microphone because he just wouldn't stop talking and they didn't even do it.
	He continued to talk and they didn't cut off the microphone.
	And then of course sends the signal to all the candidates.
	Well, you, no one's going to be controlled and therefore you can't seed the field to let everybody else talk because there's no one here to enforce the rules.
	And I don't blame Governor DeSantis funny thing.
	What are we doing up here?
	It's just, it felt so undignified.
	I would let a candidate get away with a quick one-line zinger.
	I would let somebody interrupt somebody doing their bit, you know, like Vivek at the first debate when he was like, you hugged Obama, you know, and Chris Christie was saying like, that was good.
	Like, yeah, the one-line zingers where you're not really that disruptive of the person's answer.
	That, that works.
	But like Tim Scott, he just kept saying the same thing like over and over, just kept interrupting over and over.
	And like, he was just, he wasn't, he was trying to wrest control of the moment away.
	That you can't allow.
	That you have to say, I hear you.
	You want to get in.
	And then you decide whether this is interesting or not.
	And I really think what these moderators need to remember is you're trying to provide an interesting two hours.
	You're not going to get, it's not going to be the Council on Foreign Relations.
	We are not going to do a two hour in-depth tutorial on Ukraine.
	You know, you're, but so if you stumble on gold and there's some issue that they really want to fight about, let them let us stay on it.
	So what if questions in the back half about daycare wind up getting sacrificed?
	Yeah, exactly.
	It was like the worst mix where on the one hand, they weren't interested in the rules they had set.
	It was kind of a free-for-all.
	They weren't really there to enforce the rules.
	And so it was this, this kind of endless kind of bickering and people talking over.
	And nobody likes that.
	Like in any setting, when people are talking over one another, you just want to run away.
	Like it's not interesting if it's that the whole time.
	But then on the other, they were kind of so overdependent on their rules.
	Like they wanted to get to every last policy question that they would just arbitrarily cut off the few moments where things started happening in this like organic way.
	It's a balance, right?
	Where you do want the exchanges as long as you can hear what they're saying, as long as it's vibrant, it's not constant.
	And so they were ignoring the rules that mattered, like desperately dependent upon the rules that didn't.
	And I don't know, it was just, and again, when you don't have Trump there, you're already kind of fighting an uphill battle to make it interesting, to make people want to watch a group of people who voters continuously say are not their candidates.
	So already having that uphill battle, every time there's anything you can do to intervene to make sure that it's being interesting television, you have to do, and they were doing it in the moments where it didn't matter and not doing it in the moments where it did.
	It was just, I don't know, I just thought it was a terrible performance.
	I just know as a viewer, again, there's one far more motivated to watch than most people.
	All I kept thinking about is, God, when can I safely turn this off?
Balancing Entertainment and Policy 00:11:37
	You know, like, that was my favorite.
	Have the confidence to throw away your outline.
	Have the confidence to throw away your pre-written questions.
	When you realize you've stumbled upon gold, let the audience have it and sacrifice the later questions.
	It's fine.
	The audience will never know what you sacrificed and won't care.
	We'll be right back with more with Glenn.
	What do you see?
	You see a young man who's in a bit of a hurry, maybe a little ambitious, bit of a know-it-all, it seems at times.
	I'm here to tell you, no, I don't know-it-all.
	I will listen.
	I will have the best people, the best and brightest in this country, whatever age they are, advising me.
	Welcome back to the Megan Kelly Show.
	Here with me now is Glenn Greenwald, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and host of Rumble's system update.
	So he was asked about that answer, Vivek, by CNN's Dan Abash later and admitted that it was based on feedback he'd received from, I don't know, like focus groups or consultants after the first debate.
	He's learning.
	I think it was good feedback.
	He was too much of a know-it-all in the first debate.
	Nobody knows who he is.
	It's like he comes out there.
	Not only is he like, I'm the only one.
	I've criticized him about this repeatedly.
	I'm the only one with the courage to tell you this.
	I'm the only one who's brave enough to say the truth.
	And everybody else up here is bought and paid for.
	It's like, okay.
	So I liked the new Vivek better.
	I thought it was a good tweak.
	It could have the unfortunate effect of making him seem inauthentic, however.
	Yeah.
	I mean, I think that's the problem that a lot of them had actually in trying to compensate for their failures of the first night by coming out and essentially unveiling a totally different personality for the second night.
	You know, it's like, who is this person?
	And if somebody's willing to change to that extreme, that extent, you start to wonder, do they even have like an actual soul, like an actual fixed personality?
	Or is it just whatever they're being instructed to do?
	I think we talked about this last time I was on your show because I was in Milwaukee for that last debate and I interviewed Vivek the morning after the debate.
	And I had interviewed him before, but it was the first time I did so in person.
	And, you know, he does have kind of like a natural charisma.
	I absolutely can see easily why he succeeded in business so early.
	He's obviously very smart.
	The thing about it is, though, he obviously has a huge amount of faith and confidence in the fact that he's smart.
	He believes a lot in how smart he is.
	And that too is palpable.
	Not just the fact that he is smart, but the fact that he thinks he's very smart.
	And that can be very off-putting.
	It's just that I think there was kind of a consensus in polling at least.
	And you saw like in the polling since that he did himself a favor with that first debate.
	Even though he came off in kind of like an arrogant way, he stood out.
	He clearly dominated that first debate in a way people didn't expect.
	And I don't mind that kind of a self-effacing humor, you know, like, oh, I know you think I'm a know-it-all.
	Maybe I am, but no, actually, I'm not.
	That's fine to do to kind of poke fun at yourself.
	But to just offer a completely new revamped relaunch of your personality where like you went from running like a bull through a China shop, insulting everybody's character and intellect and everything about them to suddenly being mismanners, you know, oh my gosh, I'm so offended that one might interrupt me and speak of our character.
	Let us have dignified political debate.
	I think that's going to leave a lot of people, particularly for someone new on the scene, wondering, like, does he just wake up and change his personality the way the rest of us change our wardrobe every day?
	It's so true.
	Yes, you hit it right on the head.
	Well said.
	I will say, I'll give Chris Christie this moment.
	It was kind of funny and it showed himself in control.
	And my kids liked it.
	He kind of put Vivek in his place at a certain point here.
	We'll watch it.
	Because it's on it.
	Put your hand down for a second.
	I still got time, dude.
	So chill out.
	I liked that.
	I have to say, you know, it is, it's back to what you were saying about like the kid in class who's always like with the hand up while you're speaking and like every time he knows all the answers and he's always got something to say is annoying.
	And so I think Chris Christie was feeling it and it organically was like, just stop it.
	Put your hand down.
	I still have the mic, dude.
	Well, what it reminded me a lot of was you probably remember there was a lot of very similar hostility toward Pete Buttigieg, and especially in the early parts of those 2020 debates when, you know, this young guy who never really went through the paces,
	the most he did was get elected with 7,000 votes to be the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, started speaking with that sort of, you know, same kind of self-certainty of having gone to Harvard and worked at McKinsey and believing that you're just like on the smartest kid in the room always the smart.
	And it just offended a lot of them there who have been working in politics for decades to be treated as though they were just dumb, ignorant by this person who never really has done anything.
	And particularly, Amy Klobertar barely could disguise her very visceral contempt for Pete Buttigieg in a way that actually became entertaining.
	And it's starting to remind me of the dynamic now between Nikki Haley and Vivek.
	The problem is I think a lot of people watch these debates, not necessarily the way we do, kind of looking to be entertained, but a lot of people look to politics as a way to help important things in their lives they feel are missing with their kids, with their family, with their financial situation.
	And when it starts to become these kinds of bickering personality disputes, even though they can produce some entertaining moments, I love the hatred that Amy Klobertar harbored for Pete Buttigieg.
	So obviously, and I kind of find it funny the way they have similar contempt for Vivek.
	I think for the viewer at home, again, remembering that Donald Trump's not there, the person that they've already seen be president, I think it can also have the effect of making people think, well, these people aren't really saying much that, you know, is going to inspire me to want to go and vote for them in a belief that they're going to change my life in a meaningful way.
	I mean, I think Ron DeSantis did well on that.
	And I've criticized him a lot in the past too, but I do, I have to say, I thought if there was a winner last night, it was Ron DeSantis.
	But to what end?
	To what end?
	I mean, he's, he really is 30 to 40 points behind Donald Trump.
	He may be in number two right now, according to the latest polls out of Iowa, New Hampshire.
	You know, it's just, it's a long way to go.
	And Trump, it is kind of unfair that he doesn't go to the debates because how would he do?
	What would happen if it was a, if it were a face-off?
	You know, if DeSantis got in his grill and said, how dare you say that stuff about the pro-life policies in Iowa and in Florida?
	And what about the $7 trillion you added to the debate to the debt?
	And, you know, like it would be very interesting to see him tested like that.
	These other candidates are being tested and their positions are being held up to scrutiny.
	And that's not happening with Trump.
	You know, he's putting himself out there a little.
	He sat with me, sat with Kristen Welker, but not much.
	And it's protecting him.
	Yeah, you know, there is something similar going on, by the way, with Joe Biden.
	And maybe it's not exactly the same, but Joe Biden does not only have two declared primary challengers within the Democratic Party, Maryam Williamson and RFK Jr., but polls are showing insistently that each of them is polling between 10 and 15 percent for RFK and 5 and 10 percent for Maryam Williamson.
	So you have 25 to 30 percent of the Democratic electorate, one out of every three voters, saying they intend they want to vote for one of the two primary challengers and not Joe Biden.
	And the position of the Democratic Party is we have no primary, there will be no debates.
	And I think there's kind of this sense like no one's really calling on Joe Biden to debate because of the view that, well, when you're the, you know, the incumbent, when you already have this gigantic lead, it's savvy and smart not to debate.
	And maybe the same is true for Trump.
	That's why there's not a lot of media controversy that he's not participating.
	But I think our job as journalists is not to be savvy political consultants, but to press people who seek political power on what their responsibilities are.
	And I think one of the basic responsibilities is not to be so arrogant if you're seeking political power and go face voters and face your competitors and answer questions and criticisms that are being voiced against you.
	And our job, even if we understand the political rationale, should be to say this isn't the right thing to do.
	Yeah, we want to see them.
	Meanwhile, Trump was in Michigan yesterday speaking with auto workers, not the ones who are striking, but auto workers in general, trying to counter program.
	I don't know that it counterprogrammed anything.
	You know, I mean, people weren't tuning in for that.
	I don't know that they were watching the Fox News or the Fox business debate either.
	But, you know, the way I see this whole debate process on the Republican side, because Trump right now today is calling for it to stop.
	He put out a statement saying there should be no more primary debates.
	We should focus all our resources on fighting Joe Biden.
	I don't think that's going to happen, but I do think they're important for this reason.
	We don't know what's going to happen with Donald Trump.
	He's facing four criminal indictments.
	Some of these trials could take place on the soon side, and he actually could be in jail by the time we get to November 2024.
	It is not an unrealistic proposition.
	So why wouldn't the Republicans be settling on their number one alternate?
	They really do need to have a contest on at least their number one alternate.
	I know, but the thing is, Megan, and I think this is the most interesting part of the whole presidential race so far.
	10 years ago, even, if you were a major candidate for any high political office, Senate, House, nevermind president, and anyone even considered indicting you, let alone that you got indicted on felony charges, it would instantly end your candidacy.
	No one would even conceive of the possibility that you could run for high office credibly while you're being accused by the government of having committed serious felonies.
	Trump has now been indicted in four separate jurisdictions, two state, two federal, on a huge variety, a wide range of allegations from what he did after the 2020 election to fake electorates to stuff he did in terms of the mishandling classified documents at Mar-a-Lago to how he accounted for payments to Stormy Daniels.
	They've thrown the entire book at him.
	And the reality is that not just within the Republican Party, but in general with independents and non-affiliated voters or whatever, his polling is certainly not declining.
	And if anything, solidifying.
	And that to me reveals a very alarming and pervasive lack of trust and faith, even contempt for our institutions of authority that had traditionally been considered legitimate, which is why if you were indicted by the Justice Department, you would be considered politically dead.
	And now you're not.
	If anything, it's strengthening him.
	And so even if he ends up in jail, you know, because some Manhattan jury convicts him based on a prosecutor's charges that, you know, is perceived as a Soros prosecutor.
	How many people are going to consider that legitimate?
	And even if he is in jail, there's nothing that says you can't run for prison or for president from prison.
	I really question whether that would be politically even damaging, let alone debilitating, where he would have to drop out of the race.
	I mean, it's amazing, but I think it's true.
	It's crazy.
	I know, but I can see that more readily than Trump dropping out.
Trump's Jailhouse Campaign Strategy 00:03:06
	Yeah.
	I don't, I have to say, like, one of the reasons Trump continues to do well is, yes, people are outraged about what's happening to him with the criminal justice system and so on.
	But when you hear Trump talk, like he goes and he talks to the auto workers last night.
	He's talking about how you're going to, you're all going to get fired in a couple of years because this Biden administration is totally obsessed with electronic vehicles.
	And you're all going to be out of business.
	And I'm going to make sure that doesn't happen.
	I'm going to make sure we use gas-powered cars.
	I'm going to save your industry.
	There was nobody up there last night who was thinking about the working class.
	They really weren't.
	You know, like every single question that came from that Universion anchor, what about the DREAMers?
	You know, what are you going to do for them?
	What about the LGBTQ community and attacks on them?
	And you could, you could pick anybody.
	You know, you got, well, what about the attacks on Asians?
	Should we talk about that?
	Like, whatever.
	Okay.
	But there was nothing about the working class.
	And the vote that's going to put a Republican in office or not is going to be the white vote and the working class white vote.
	And you would think that a Republican debate would focus to some extent, especially if it's coming from a business channel, on them.
	You know, I think this is the key point.
	And I think you're putting your finger on the thing that is Trump's gold that we often forget about.
	I remember the first time in 2016, I was like everybody else reading the polls, you know, believing that Hillary was way ahead of Trump, that he had virtually no chance.
	And I remember the first time I actually thought Trump had a chance.
	I remember he went to West Virginia a couple of weeks after Hillary went there.
	And when Hillary went there, she said, coal is dead.
	Clean energy is coming.
	You may not like that, but that's the reality.
	Your coal jobs are dead.
	And Trump went there and said, I'm going to save the coal industry.
	I'm going to save your job.
	And they interviewed this coal worker at a Trump rally and asked him, do you really believe Trump's going to do that?
	And he said, no, I don't think he's going to be able to save our coal industry.
	But at least he's coming and talking about our fears, like the fact that our lives are being run roughshod over while Hillary's coming and saying, it's just the reality.
	You're going to have to accept it.
	It's a new world now.
	And Trump's ability to go and speak to the things, he just like, he connects to these people instinctively.
	I think a lot of it is because he grew up in Queens, has this like sort of outer borough resentment toward elites.
	And he always has that was his success in terms of being a TV star is he appeals to ordinary people.
	He knows how to speak to them.
	He feels like he just has an intuitive sense to know what to talk about that makes them think he's talking to them in a way nobody else is.
	And I think he still has that.
	And I think you're very right that the contrast between what Trump chose to do last night and the way he chose to speak and the way that debate was conducted was a very stark one.
	And I think that is a big part.
	I think you're right, not just the anger over the indictments, but the fact that Trump is still a very, you know, kind of talented politician when it comes to talking to these voters.
	If I were one of these politicians, I would try to turn almost any answer into that and not curtains.
Toxic Political Discourse 00:13:44
	No, that's it's a no.
	No one cares.
	I think Tim Scott is one of those candidates is who's in the vive field of just completely reinvented on debate number two because he had been like a potted plant in debate number one.
	And then he came out and he's like, I'm fiery.
	I'm fiery.
	I've got things to say.
	But he wasn't executing it well.
	And then he was kind of annoying.
	It's like, stop being so interruptive.
	I want to turn the page because I'm dying to get to this story.
	It's huge over in the UK and it involves GB News where I appear once a week on the show of this guy, Dan Wooden.
	And Dan's been on our show many times as a royal commentator.
	He wrote for years for the sun, then for the Daily Mail, and now he has the most popular show on GB News.
	And I really wanted to get to this because it's absolutely exploding in the UK and it involves a friend of mine.
	Here's what happened.
	This actor, very successful actor and now political commentator, Lawrence Fox, and he's sort of been political in the UK for a while now, goes on Dan's show.
	And he is asked to comment on comments made by a woman, a political journalist over there named Ava Evans.
	So I'm going to set it up.
	Ava Evans had made remarks I would submit quite callously on the epidemic of male suicide.
	And then Dan and Lawrence Fox wound up talking about it.
	So here's Ava Evans' comments that are going to lead to this firestorm that could get both of these guys fired.
	All right, watch.
	I think that it feeds into the culture a little bit, this minister for men argument.
	Like in my mind, I think there should be a minister for mental health, which would be all-encompassing.
	I mean, you've got something like 7 million children waiting for prescriptions for mental health at the moment.
	It's a crisis that's endemic throughout the country, not specific to men.
	And I think, you know, a lot of ministers kind of bandy this about to sort of, I'm sorry, but make an enemy out of women.
	So she's suggesting that to have a minister of men who would be overseeing for one thing, the male suicide crisis would be some sort of making an enemy way of making an enemy out of women, as opposed to taking a moment to actually get into, wait, why is that necessary?
	What's happening with men?
	And there is a male suicide crisis.
	And we can get into the details of it.
	We've covered it on our show.
	There really is.
	I'll just give you a couple numbers.
	In the United States, men make up 49% of the population, 80% of the successful suicides, the completed, I guess is a better word, suicides.
	They're far more likely to complete a suicide and far less likely to either be diagnosed with depression and anxiety, never mind, actually seek help for it.
	And by the way, September happens to be National Suicide Prevention Month.
	Okay, so that's in that context.
	She's in the UK, she's not in America, but they have similar numbers over there, exactly the same numbers, actually.
	She doesn't take a moment to actually acknowledge what's happening.
	I mean, who among us doesn't know?
	I doesn't know a man who has committed suicide.
	Like I, I do.
	Someone in my family years ago.
	Anyway, it's just a very touchy issue.
	You're supposed to say die by suicide now.
	And she did not treat it gingerly or even respectfully.
	So understandably, some people were mad.
	And one of those people was Lawrence Fox.
	And he addressed it, I think, with humor, but it was, you know, you'll see crass.
	Here's what happened when he went on Dan's show.
	Show me a single self-respecting man that would like to climb into bed with that woman ever, ever, who wasn't an incel, who wasn't a cucked little incel.
	That little woman has been fed spoon-fed oppression day after day after day after day, starting with the lie of the gender wage gap.
	And she sat there and I'm going like, if I met you in a bar and that was like sentence three, chances of me just walking away are just huge.
	We need powerful, strong, amazing women who make great points for themselves.
	We don't need these sort of feminist 4.0.
	They're pathetic and embarrassing.
	Who'd want to shout out?
	Total meltdown ensued.
	It's all over the UK papers.
	This group, Ofcom, it's a government organization that oversees the UK media, is raining a shitstorm down on GB News.
	GB has now suspended both Lawrence Fox and Dan Wooten, who really just stood there.
	He just sat there, but he's gotten punished now, too.
	And this is a woman who Glenn has actually written.
	She sent out a tweet, I think it was last January, calling men, quote, the most powerful virus of them all.
	So no problem for her to say that.
	No problem for her to be insensitive toward the male suicide crisis.
	Lawrence Fox deals with it with a crass, humorous attempt at humor, you know, attempt.
	And he's about to lose his job 100%.
	And they just announced today that Dan Wooten was fired from the Daily Mail, which isn't even where the conversation happened.
	So what do you make of the whole offense?
	I feel like it's both complicated and important.
	First of all, I do think this issue of this crisis among young men in particular in the West, it's not just suicide.
	It's, you know, depression and anxiety and addiction and alcoholism and just like a general sense of being lost, you know, like having no place in society, no purpose, no sense of fulfillment.
	I think it's a very serious one.
	There's like a lot of people doing really great work.
	There's this young woman who does, who came from the left called Shoe On Head.
	I don't know if you had her on her show.
	She covers this crisis a lot and especially the kind of left-wing contempt for men that it often provokes, including aimed at her.
	Like, who cares?
	They get what they deserve.
	They're just angry because they don't get to have women as their sex toys anymore and just like makes a mockery of it in a way that this political commentator in the West did.
	There's a great documentary by Alex Lee Moyer, who just did the documentary on Alex Jones, who before that did one on this kind of incel culture and the way we shouldn't mock these people as being misogynists and a lot of like socioeconomic pressures that are being placed on young men in the West as to why they're so lost and have these kind of pathologies.
	So I think to make light of it and to talk about it in this very callous way, the way this political commentator in the UK did, I understand completely why that generates a lot of anger.
	I share that anger when I hear her saying that.
	I do, though, think that we can, on the one hand, push back against the excesses of forcing people to speak in a certain way while still having some standards.
	Like, I just think a line that you just should observe is that if a woman enters public life and speaks on a particular policy issue, no matter how angry that you are, you can attack her, you can criticize her the way you would anyone else, including a man.
	But to talk about her as somebody who's not worth your having sex with, how you would never get into bed with her, how she's just so repulsive that no man would ever sleep with her.
	I don't know.
	I find it gross and degrading.
	I just don't think that's like a way that we need to be thinking about women.
	It reminds me a little bit of the commentary you had on Russell Brand that I really like.
	I was one of the people saying he deserves due process.
	He shouldn't be assumed to be guilty.
	But you don't have to go to the other extreme and start talking about these women in the most degrading way possible, assuming they're liars.
	You know, that they're just every woman now who makes an accusation like this deserves to be hated and assumed to be conniving.
	There is this kind of misogynistic element that runs through that discourse that both of them seem to share.
	Even the host did kind of laugh about it and claimed he didn't, but then had sent a note right after saying, oh, I loved what you said.
	But then you get to the backlash to it, which is let's get this government agency involved.
	Let's ensure that their lives are room, that their careers are over, that they should be fired.
	Where I also start feeling very uncomfortable.
	You know, there can be this middle ground between saying these kind of comments, I personally find disgusting.
	I don't appreciate this sort of discourse, but it doesn't mean that the government should have gotten involved.
	It doesn't mean that they should lose their jobs.
	So, I think unfortunately, there was this very important issue that we should be spending a lot more time talking about that a lot of people are talking about in a very good way that does often produce this really craft, callous reaction.
	And it all got kind of sidetracked because Lawrence Fox decided to make it about whether any man would want to sleep with this woman.
	And I don't know, I kind of understand the visceral reaction to that discourse, but now I find myself siding with them because I think the reaction is so extreme.
	It's so funny because so I think I, you and I sort of came in on the Russell Brands thing in a very similar way, um, but maybe diverged on whether he should be defended or resurrected.
	Um, but I think we diverge again here because I have to tell you, I was not offended by what Lawrence Fox said.
	I wasn't.
	It's not like I would have said it myself, but I've had so much worse said about me.
	I mean, my God, go back and take a look at what happened speaking of presidential debates after that first one with Trump.
	Uh, it's not pleasant, you know.
	Yes, there can be sort of a sexism tinge in some of the comments, but this, what I think he was trying to say, he was angry.
	He was angry about her blowing off the fact that, I mean, here in the United States, it's 35,000 men a year who die by suicide, and no one gives a shit about that.
	It's like not even okay to be a man anymore.
	And so, he was angry, and he was trying to say, This woman couldn't be more unattractive to me.
	She is ugly, she's ugly in her soul.
	That's what I think he was feeling: that she has a dark heart, and I reject her on a visceral level.
	That's if he had been more articulate in the moment, that's probably what he would have said.
	You know, he's an entertainer, so he went a different way.
	Um, and I like we're pretending that she's this delicate flower who can't hear it, you know, who's like, oh my God, someone said something offensive about me.
	And I just feel like it's not great, but it's this is not a fireable offense.
	And for everyone, like the government to be raining a shitstorm down at him, whereas I see the Russell Brand stuff as much more problematic.
	He was allegedly sleeping with a 16-year-old when he was 31.
	Totally different.
	That's not like saying one offensive thing that had a tinge of jest in it.
	And by the way, the same woman over here is now like claiming to be so offense, offended, she's got a long history of saying this exact kind of stuff.
	He tweeted out some of her tweets about, I'm not going to shag you, pal, when somebody comes from her.
	Oh, this person's not going to shag you, mate.
	I'm not going to shag you, mate.
	He's not going to shag you.
	She's constantly saying that.
	So he says, I'm not going to shag you because I don't like your personality and what you just said.
	And now he's going to lose his career.
	She's not.
	She's the victim.
	He's the bad guy.
	And I think it's wrong.
	I think once again, here too, the public should be able to decide whether they like Lawrence Fox or not.
	They can tune in to his show and segments on GB News or not.
	But I don't think he should be fired.
	I certainly don't think Dan Wooden, who just sat in the chair and was mildly bemused, should be fired.
	And I think people need to sort of understand like what got it, what got them mad to begin with?
	Do we care at all about that?
	No, the answer is no, because they're dudes.
	I'll give you the last word on it, Glenn.
	Yeah, no.
	So here's, I do kind of, I do agree with that.
	I think the one place we diverge is, I don't know, I just had a visceral reaction to that kind of discourse.
	It's not discourse in which I would engage.
	The thing, though, is I do, there is this thing that I think is very important that we, that I do want to mention, which is, and it's happened to me so many times.
	So there are a lot of influential women in media and politics.
	They wield a lot of power.
	And there's this culture now that says, and I can't tell you how many times this happened to me, where if you criticize an influential journalist or an elected member of parliament or whoever who happens to be a woman, you get accused of riling up hatred for them, of speaking misogynistically about them, of generating hate against them because women suffer so much worse than anybody else on the internet.
	And I do think this tactic of trying to say, oh, these women are so fragile and so weak.
	That they can't be subjected even to aggressive vitriol is this kind of you know, actual sexism.
	This idea that women are weak, women are fragile, women can't handle the same thing masquerading is chivalry.
	That, I think is, you know very uh, damaging to women, to our discourse in general.
	You cannot, on the one hand, say women are entitled to the same access to power as everybody else and, on the other hand, you have to like, pull your punches rhetorically when you talk about them.
	And I also do think this woman, the comments she made, are horrific.
	They're deserving of contempt and scorn.
	I do think he went a little too far but, like I said, to have now the focus point beyond, we have to fire him as opposed to just say I don't like his comments.
	That used to be fine.
	We used to be able to do that and not have everybody fired or every, or the government intervening.
	I think ultimately, as I look at the story and all the kind of component parts, that does end up being the one that disturbs me the most is the, the backlash and the way this kind of thing gets exploited like no criticism of any woman.
	They're off limits.
	They're too fragile to handle the same sort of criticism of men as men do and I think it's offensive actually uh, to women to create that shoe.
	She's helping drive it.
	She had an opportunity here to be like that was offensive.
	Lawrence is a jerk, i'm moving on with my life, but instead she's really leaning into it like i'm getting death threats.
	Really she's getting death.
	Is she getting death threats because of what he said or because of what she said?
	And i'll guarantee you he's getting threats too.
Breaking News and Hiring Threats 00:02:48
	The government has no place in this.
	If i'd been running GB NEWS, I would have said, GB NEWS has spoken with Lawrence about trying to keep an elevated level of conversation on our airwaves, which is our promise to our audience.
	That's it, that's fine.
	And I bet Lawrence would have been like, okay cool, got it.
	That's more like a barroom conversation, not so much on the air, on camera, on you know, this news channel, I.
	I think it's going another way.
	I hope i'm wrong um, but anyway it's bugging me because I know, and like both guys, it's not like I want anything bad to happen to her, but I really hope she takes a moment and does some self-reflection on her callousness here too, and thinks about the young men who have no one.
	No one advocating for them.
	Instead, women like this one have so much access to the microphones and are just utterly dismissive of them, as she publicly refers to them as the worst virus.
	You're wrong, madam.
	You're wrong factually and you're wrong morally.
	Uh Glenn, always a pleasure, thanks for coming on.
	Great seeing you, Megan.
	All right up next, Larry Elder, and he's got thoughts stand by.
	I want to tell you that there appears to be, or could be, some breaking news happening right now.
	The Drudge Report, you know, very connected in Republican circles, Matt Drudge, has got a headline up right now that reads, mystery, 11th hour candidate in the GOP primary race about to shake up.
	Is that what it says?
	Republican race about to shake with late entry question mark with a big old picture of Glenn Young.
	the governor of Virginia.
	We've been talking about it on this show.
	If you click on the link, it brings you to CBS News with a report from Robert Costa in which he, we're just clicking on it now, but he appears to be saying that there's GOP donors are pushing for Glenn Youngkin to enter.
	We knew that.
	So it's got to be more than they're just pushing for it.
	We knew that.
	So perhaps there's movement.
	That would be huge.
	Whether it would be tenable, that's a very different question.
	In the meantime, there's another candidate in this race who did not make it on stage last night who's probably got thoughts on all of this.
	And that's Larry Elder.
	He is also author of the upcoming book set to be released in November.
	It's called As Goes California.
	And you know the rest, My Mission to Rescue the Golden State and Save the Nation.
	Larry, great to see you again.
	Can I ask you to comment on this Drudge headline and the possibility of Glenn Youngkin possibly getting in this race?
	Well, I don't think it'll matter all that much.
	I think that, you know, there's still a long way to go between now and November 2024.
	And of course, anything can happen.
Larry Elder Challenges the Race 00:03:13
	But look at Ron DeSantis, Megan.
	What's not to like?
	Guy is young.
	He's governed successfully.
	He won re-election by 20 points.
	He carried Miami-Dade County.
	He's a military decorated vet, beautiful wife, young family, and he's gone nowhere.
	Why?
	Because the 10,000 pound elephant in the room is a guy named Donald Trump.
	I recall years ago, Michael DeKakis was saying something flattering about this new guy named Bill Clinton.
	And he said, Bill Clinton, quote, is the best stand-up politician I've ever seen, close quote.
	Well, Trump is even better.
	He's likable by the base anyway.
	He's funny.
	He governed successfully.
	His policies were great.
	Great economy, great border.
	So what's the case that Glenn Young is going to make that Ron DeSantis has not made?
	So I don't think it's going to make any real difference.
	I've been on the campaign trail.
	I've seen how people respond to Donald Trump.
	I've seen how they respond to the other candidates.
	And as far as I'm concerned, I don't see anybody dislodging Donald Trump at this moment.
	To your point about Donald Trump being funny, he is funny.
	When he was in Michigan last night speaking to the auto workers, he did a bit on his indictments, which for any normal human would make you very stressed out.
	Just one would make most of us very stressed out.
	Here he is on that.
	Listen to this, Top 23.
	I never heard of the word indictment.
	Now I get indicted like every three days.
	He spoke badly about the election.
	He must be indicted.
	He said something bad about Joe Biden.
	Joe Biden is the most corrupt president and most incompetent president we've ever had.
	Oh, no.
	No, I shouldn't have said that.
	I'm going to get indicted again for saying that.
	To your point, this is, and you see him out there and you're kind of reminded, oh, oh, this is why he's 40 points ahead of all those other guys we saw last night.
	And Megan, in the debate, two-hour debate, nobody brought up the indictments.
	I mean, Donald Trump's arguable biggest vulnerability, at least with swing voters, is the indictments.
	Nobody even brought them up because the base feels that they're BS.
	I feel that they're BS.
	And to his point, be more serious about it.
	What he did on January 6th, Megan, you're a lawyer.
	I'm a lawyer.
	made the same legal argument about the powers that the vice president had that the Democrats made after 2000 when they lost and they tried to decertify Florida.
	About a dozen House members argued that the vice president had the power to not certify Florida, which would have given the election to Al Gore.
	2004, they made the same argument when W got re-elected.
	30 House members joined Senator Barbara Boxer to try to decertify Ohio, claiming where we heard this before, the D-Ball voting machine had been tampered with.
	Fast forward 2016, more House Democrats on the first week of January 2017 challenged more states nine than did Donald Trump following 2020 when he challenged six.
	So they made exactly the same argument.
	Nobody accused them of being election deniers.
	Nobody prosecuted their lawyers and let alone the lawyers face disbarment as it's going on right now.
	It's a two-tier judicial system and even Chris Christie ought to see that.
Systemic Racism and Homicide Stats 00:02:15
	Let's shift to what we saw on stage last night at the Reagan National Library.
	The questions, and we've talked before on this hour about how far left they were, but I mean, especially on social issues, Larry, it was bizarre.
	The LGBTQ community, what are you going to do to decrease attacks on them?
	Dreamers, what are you going to do to make sure they can stay in the country?
	Minority students, what are you going to do to improve their education?
	Right?
	Like everything, every way in was about some allegedly oppressed minority group and how as president, you're going to make their lives better.
	What did you think of it?
	Yeah, and don't forget the one about slavery and what Florida says.
	Slavery.
	Yeah, I mean, honestly, well, you know, the whole agenda on the part of the left is that America remains systemically racist.
	The country is divided 50-50.
	The way Democrats win elections at the top is to convince 13% of the electorate, black people, that America remains systemically racist.
	And we Democrats wear the white hat in that battle.
	And these dastardly Republicans wear the black hat.
	And that's what this is all about.
	That's one of the reasons that I ran, because I feel that our party is wimpy when it comes to dealing with this lie that America remains systemically racist.
	Quick example.
	Joe Biden goes to Howard University a few weeks ago, commencement exercise speech, and he says, the number one threat to the homeland is white supremacy.
	Are you smoking something?
	The Anti-Defamation League keeps track of the number of people killed every year by extremists, and there were 25 people last year killed by extremists, as opposed to over 20,000 homicide victims.
	Do you want to play that game?
	Most homicide is same-race homicide.
	Most whites who were murdered or murdered by other whites.
	Most blacks who were murdered or murdered by other blacks.
	But every year out of the total homicides, about 3% are interracial black, white homicide.
	500 white people killed by blacks, even though blacks are 13% of the population.
	250 blacks killed by whites, even though whites are 60% of the population.
	Now, if Donald Trump at a commencement speech said the number one threat to the homeland is black supremacy, you and I would deride him as a race hustling demagogue.
Crime Rates and Governor Newsom 00:10:34
	But Biden says this, nobody says a word.
	And also in Jacksonville, Florida, a few weeks ago, as you know, a racist white man murdered three black people and did it because they were black.
	And Biden, of course, commented on that because it advances his narrative.
	However, two months earlier in Tulsa, Oklahoma, black guy gets a gun, walks up to a white guy he doesn't even know, pulls out the gun, shoots him, kills him in the back of the head.
	Another part of Tulsa, same black guy goes, sees another white guy he doesn't know, pulls out the gun, shoots him in the back of the head, kills him.
	Biden did not say a word.
	And when he talked about Jacksonville, he said, silence and that kind of hatred makes you complicit.
	Well, he didn't say a darn thing about Tulsa because it does not advance his agenda.
	It's offensive to me.
	And the RNC didn't say a thing about it.
	Right.
	They're afraid.
	So I have got to ask you, you ran for governor of California, which would have been such a blessing to the state had you won, didn't happen.
	Gavin Newsom is the governor, as we all know.
	And now Fox News and Sean Hannity are arranging a debate between Gavin Newsom and Ron DeSantis.
	And it looks like it's going to happen.
	They negotiated terms.
	There was some snarky back and forth.
	Now it looks like it's going to happen.
	And then Gavin Newsom, now that it's set, it's supposed to happen.
	Gavin Newsom goes on some local television show in, I think it was Fox LA, and was so ungenerous and classless about this thing happening.
	Listen to just a bit of what he said.
	The fact that he took this debate, the fact that he took the bait in relation to this debate, shows that he's completely unqualified to be president of the United States.
	That's my humble first.
	Why is that?
	You're baiting him with the debate on course.
	I mean, why is he debating a guy who's not even running for president when he's running for president?
	He's showing up at the Reagan Library, Hollow Ground, and he puts on an ad today, not for his presidential campaign, to promote a debate against the governor of California.
	I mean, this guy's distracted.
	So I don't know that he has it in his heart.
	What did you make of it, Larry?
	Where do you start with this?
	So DeSantis is distracted from his job, but Newsom is not distracted from his job by participating in the debate.
	More importantly, where was Sean Hannity?
	Where was Fox News?
	Where was Fox 11?
	Where was Alex Michelson, the person to whom Gavin Newsom made the comment?
	When I ran for governor, when he refused to debate me, when it mattered during a recall election, I didn't participate in the GOP debates because I said over and over and over again, I want to debate one person and one person only, and his name is Gavin Newsom.
	And nobody but nobody in the media put pressure on him to debate me when it mattered.
	People are leaving California.
	We have a huge homeless problem in California.
	This man shut down the state in a more severe way than did any other governor.
	A third of all small restaurants in California are now gone forever.
	Most of them run by the mom and poppers, black and brown people that people on the left purport to care about.
	We've got a real crime problem because of the soft on crime DAs and the soft on crime policies that he has backed.
	Our budget has gone from $100 billion surplus to a $30 billion deficit.
	We have a $1.5 trillion underfunded pension liability.
	I could go on and on on the man signed legislation requiring publicly held corporations in California, Megan, to have one member of the LGBTQIA member on its board of directors.
	Clearly a violation of the 14th Amendment.
	He signed it anyway.
	Banning gasoline-powered cars by 2035.
	I mean, this man is a left-wing loon.
	And if you look at the reason that Joe Biden is underwater with the economy, with borders, this man, Gavin Newsom, has not said a single negative thing about any policy that Joe Biden has imposed.
	California is a sanctuary state, so Newsom has nothing about the borders.
	California is a state that believes that rich people are under tax.
	We should be spending more.
	He's expanded the number of illegal aliens who get health care at taxpayers' expense.
	So what policy has Joe Biden enacted that Gavin Newsom has criticized?
	He's one of the few politicians who publicly at the time praised Joe Biden's pullout in Afghanistan.
	So there's nothing that Joe Biden has done that Gavin Newsom has criticized.
	So what's the case for Gavin Newsom taking over for Joe Biden?
	I really hope you connect with Ron DeSantis before he goes on this Hannity debate.
	Here's another thing.
	We know that Gavin Newsom is radical when it comes to the gender issue.
	He is radical.
	He didn't sign that most recent bill, but he's just as radical as they come.
	And here he was.
	I was glad to hear, this is one nice thing about the moderators last night.
	Glad to hear them bring up the issue of what's happening in schools, not notifying parents when their child expresses gender confusion or says, you know, I'm suddenly transitioning.
	And here was Gavin Newsom, who's in the spin room last night.
	Here was his reaction to that.
	Why should parents not know if their kids are transitioning in school?
	It's a hell of a thing.
	You're talking about about 1% of the population.
	Climate change that's impacted 100% of the population wasn't even brought up.
	And we're talking about trans issues.
	Here in California, this is an issue.
	This is a front and center issue.
	It's the issue for parents.
	This is a front and center issue.
	It's a big issue for issues.
	It's the great, it's the great.
	This is one of the greatest distractions.
	And it's classic.
	1% of the population in the United States.
	These kids just want to live.
	These kids just want to transfer.
	And we're having a debate about trans issues at the Reagan Library.
	What did you think?
	Again, where do you start with this guy?
	He did not sign legislation that would have allowed a judge to take away a child if you did not affirm that child's gender.
	And the Democrat lawmakers who assumed he was going to sign it were living.
	He's doing that because he's positioning himself to run for president at some point.
	May I also say something too?
	The biggest knock against Donald Trump is Donald Trump's character.
	This is a man, Gavin Newsome, who when he was mayor of San Francisco, was having an affair with the wife of his campaign manager.
	His campaign manager was his best friend.
	Nobody ever brings that up.
	Happened in 2007.
	He admitted it, apologized for it, yada, blah, et cetera.
	Nobody ever brings it up here in California.
	I mean, talk about somebody's character.
	I could go on and on and on.
	And by the way, there's this assumption that somehow, some way, the Democrats are plotting to get rid of Kamala Harris and or Joe Biden and swap him out with Gavin Newsom.
	Not going to happen.
	The most loyal part of the Democratic base, Megan, are Black females, and they love, love, love them some Kamala Harris.
	The first primary for Democrats in South Carolina.
	They're the ones 60%.
	60% of the primary voters in South Carolina are black.
	Majority of those are black female.
	There was a poll in the LA Times showing that among blacks, Kamala Harris had a 70% approval rating, and they didn't divide it by gender.
	I assure you, she had been more popular among black females.
	If she is perceived as being dropkicked in favor of some white dude like Gavin Newsome, Black females will be so angry.
	They won't vote Republican.
	They just won't vote, thereby guaranteeing whoever it is we nominate, he or she will win.
	They cannot afford that.
	You play by the gender and race sword.
	You die by the gender and race sword.
	They are stuck with Kamala Harris.
	Trust me.
	So how do they proceed?
	Because you look at Joe Biden and there are obvious reasons to doubt whether he can get this across the finish line, whether he can make it across the so maybe he's the one to get subbed out.
	Gavin Newsom gets subbed in at the top and she stays the number two.
	You have to get the agreement of Kamala Harris to be number two.
	This is a woman who ran for and got elected DA of San Francisco, ran for and got elected Attorney General of California, ran for and got elected U.S. Senator.
	She dropped out early on in the 2020 race, but she was on the ticket and she won.
	So every time she's been on the ballot, she has won her race.
	What makes you think she's going to say, you know what, Gavin, I'm so incompetent.
	I'm so airheady.
	I didn't get to the root causes of illegal immigration.
	I speak in tongues.
	So please come and take my job.
	She's not going to do that.
	She wants to be president.
	The only way you get rid of Kamala Harris is that she says, you know what, I'm incompetent.
	And then you've got to swap around for an equally popular, well-known black female, and the only two fit the bill.
	And that's Oprah Winfrey and Michelle Obama, neither of whom wants the job.
	So they are stuck with Kamala Harris.
	Do you think Joe Biden will be the nominee and that he will be the one to stand against Trump or whoever lands it on the GOP side?
	If Joe Biden can fog up a mirror, he will be the nominee.
	And if he cannot fog up a mirror, the nominee will be, well, it will be Cobler Harris.
	All right, listen.
	This is just being filled out from the news we began with.
	I got to be honest, it seems like bullshit.
	It seems like they're making something out of stuff we already knew on that Drudge report.
	They're saying GOP donors making a push for Youngkin to enter.
	They're just discussing the possibility of him getting in late and what he would have to do should he decide to.
	He has said he won't make a decision until the election, the election in Virginia, which is in November for the state house, for the legislature.
	So this is really nothing we haven't heard before.
	Costa reports that he's that people who want Junkin to run, he's listening to them.
	Youngkin is listening to them and he hasn't told them to stop saying it.
	That's the big scoop.
	The election is November 7th.
	We may know more then.
	It's not impossible.
	It's just this is not news.
	Larry, I missed talking to you.
	Will you come back and stay for a longer time?
	There's so many subjects I wanted to get to.
	Absolutely.
	Go to larryyola.com.
	Throw something to get a tip jar because I've incurred unexpected legal expense by going after the RNC for, in my opinion, shafting me for that first debate for which I was eligible.
	I met their criteria.
	So go to larryyoda.com.
	Throw something in the tip jar.
	Thank you so much for being here.
	Great to see you.
	We'd love to see more of you.
	It'd be great if you could make it the debate stage.
	It'd be super fun to have him up there.
	He raises some good points.
	And he'll come back when his book is out, I hope.
	Tomorrow on the show, we have Scott Adams on for the first time.
	So that'll be exciting to interview him.
	Want to tell all of you, what did you think of the debate?
	Would love to get your thoughts.
	Email me, megan at megankelly.com, M-E-G-Y-N.
	Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly Show.
	No BS, no agenda, and no

Chapters

00:00:00 Terrible GOP Primary Debate
00:05:25 Income Inequality and Gun Violence
00:07:28 Fentanyl Cartels and Border Issues
00:23:02 Black History Curriculum Hoax
00:38:17 Enforcing Rules on Stage
00:48:33 Balancing Entertainment and Policy
01:00:11 Trump's Jailhouse Campaign Strategy
01:03:17 Toxic Political Discourse
01:17:01 Breaking News and Hiring Threats
01:19:49 Larry Elder Challenges the Race
01:23:03 Systemic Racism and Homicide Stats
01:25:18 Crime Rates and Governor Newsom