The Megyn Kelly Show - 20231207_fiery-and-fun-gop-debate-and-vivek-vs-haley-with-j

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Dec. 7, 2023 - The Megyn Kelly Show

01:38:45

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Exclusive Debate Content 00:04:32
	Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, live on SiriusXM Channel 111 every weekday at Noon East.com,
	and there we will be posting some exclusive content from the debate.
	So, go to MeganKelly.com, sign up.
	I don't sell your emails or bombard you.
	We send you one a week on Fridays just with news updates.
	That's it.
	So, it doesn't cost you anything, and it's a good way to stay abreast of headlines and some behind-the-scenes things here at the show.
	And we will have plenty of them for you this week.
	I had so much fun.
	I was so happy that I got to bring my family.
	Doug came with the kids yesterday, and that was super fun.
	They had a lot of thoughts about the debate themselves.
	And I was actually really impressed with how thoughtful they were on it.
	And you know, I would rather listen to my little 10-year-old Thatcher than politico.
	I'm telling you, his analysis was spot on.
	Look, I thought it was a success last night because we got to have a real, actual debate.
	It's the first time, right?
	It's like the first debate was a little too big that Fox News had.
	The second debate was just a hot mess from beginning to end.
	The third debate was Kristen and Lester doing an interview.
	I'm really interested in their own thoughts on what matters, not at all on what the candidates had to say or getting them to argue with each other.
	And I thought this was the first debate where they really got to go at it.
	We tried to shrink ourselves, and you got to see the candidates be the stars, which I loved, focused on real issues.
	And by the way, the two other things I thought made it different were we asked questions that Republicans want answers to, some issues that came up that were not raised at any other debate that are important to Republican voters.
	So, I thought that was good.
	And I thought the questions were all very, very charged in a good way, in a challenging way.
	You know, you can ask very charged questions like that, I think, if the audience knows you don't hate these people.
	You know what I mean?
	Like, when I'm up there, those four standing in front of me, they knew I don't hate them.
	I'm skeptical of politicians in general, as you know, but I've said before: look, I'm gonna vote for one of these guys or Trump if they get the nomination.
	I cannot vote for a man who wants children to have their body parts cut off when they're 10.
	So, in any event, it doesn't have to be a softball just because you're kind of on their side.
	And you can get away with very charged questions and pointed questions, really, no matter what, but especially if they know you don't hate them.
	It's not coming from a very, very negative place.
	All right, we're gonna get reactions from all sides.
	I'm more interested in what my guests have to say and what you have to say.
	Glenn Greenwald will be here just a bit later.
	Rich Lowry, Jim Garrity too, of National Review.
	But joining us first is Josh Holmes.
	You know him as the co-host of the Ruthless Program.
	It's a hip podcast.
	We love it.
	And he's the founding partner and president of Cavalry.
	He does politics for a living.
	Okay, so fantastic me loses that board.
	You have two play bosses and two extra streaming tennis.
	HBO Max, Prime Video, Sky Showtime, you name it.
	Or hello, OES or Tengiranet or Sotinikiron, Nulbinning, Porter, or Streaming.
	Josh, great to have you.
	What'd you think?
	Megan, first off, congratulations.
Vivek Ramaswamy's Irony 00:15:30
	I mean, that was so well done.
	I expected it.
	I've watched your style.
	I know how you interact, and I know how you give nobody any sort of free quarter.
	So I expected you to have a good debate, but you really, I mean, this was exceptional.
	Really, really well done.
	You know, I thought both Elizabeth and Eliana did it well.
	People got to see what they needed to see.
	And hats off to you for that.
	Thank you.
	I enjoyed just letting them go.
	That was my favorite part.
	Just let them go.
	Let it rip.
	You know, it like for once they got to pile on each other, and some defended each other.
	And you kind of really took in the dynamic, I thought, in a new way.
	You hadn't seen all four going at it and like the old Republican Party, the new Republican Party.
	He's defending her.
	He's on this guy's side.
	Like, oh, wow, a new dynamic emerged right in front of our eyes.
	Yeah, they get to actually talk about stuff and challenge each other.
	You know, I mean, look, off the top, clearly where Nikki Haley is in the polls was sort of validated by the fact that everybody was piling on.
	I mean, clearly, DeSantis saw her as target A1A.
	Not surprisingly, Ramaswamy continued to put her in the middle of it.
	And that was interesting, right?
	I mean, you can tell a lot about where the candidates see the race based upon their strategy in a debate like this, where they have the opportunity to press their case.
	I also thought Ron DeSantis did a very, very nice job for the following reasons.
	You were highlighting a whole bunch of things and tapping into the anxieties that conservative voters have across this country and a range of different issues.
	And each and every time he was able to not only identify with that, but then show you the solution that he got done in Florida.
	He's done a little bit of this in every single one of these debates, but what I found sort of separating here was people were challenging their opponents' credentials in all these areas, including his.
	And each and every time he could lay out what he actually did.
	And I think that resonates, right?
	I mean, I think that's a separating factor.
	It's not enough to just sort of talk about how you feel about something.
	When a candidate does something, boy, that's hard to ignore.
	So I thought he was.
	I'll just add to that.
	I'll just add to that on DeSantis because, you know, we, as you know, on this show, we've hit them all.
	They've all taken bumps and bruises from us, but we've praised them too.
	You and I were on the air together the day after DeSantis' disastrous launch and we're unsparing.
	But he's done many good things for which we praised him.
	And last night, I thought it was very interesting because I asked that question about vaccine injuries.
	And we'll get to, there's some controversy about the feed going down on Rumble when I ask that.
	And we'll play you the question and let you guys hear it.
	But I asked that question.
	And when I wrote that question, I thought it was a very important issue to raise because nobody else, that will never be raised by the mainstream ever at a GOP debate.
	I intentionally did not put it to Ron DeSantis because it's a softball to him, right?
	It's like, it's a softball because that question landed with, was warp speed a good thing?
	So I gave it to Vivek, who's been very defensive of Trump.
	And it becomes more, a little bit more interesting now.
	Is he going to, because, you know, he knows the Republican Party has some questions about these vaccines, but he doesn't want to split from Trump.
	So now things get a little sexier.
	You know, it's like, oh, wait, what's he going to do?
	What's going to happen?
	Well, this is interesting.
	And DeSantis did jump in, which is fine.
	We let him weigh in.
	But you know what he didn't do, Josh?
	He did not raise the fact that he has created a whole program to help the vaccine injured.
	And I thought, because he had other things he wanted to say, but I really thought that was almost to his credit because that's the thing about Ron DeSantis.
	He has done something about every single issue bothering Republican voters in Florida.
	He's actually done something, including this whole thing, but it wasn't unique or special to him.
	You know, it wasn't like, oh, wait, I've got something I can say about myself.
	No, he had other, many other things he wanted to get to.
	We could have gone on probably for an hour with him on that one thing, but I thought that is to his credit.
	Listen, I totally agree with you.
	I mean, it was issue after issue.
	And again, everyone else is trying to parse around if they're saying what they actually believe or whether they're just trying to reflect back what they imagine a voter would want to hear.
	And he just has to, he just sets that aside.
	Like he just doesn't have to deal with that question at all because he's got the record on it.
	And I just thought he did a nicer job last night of laying all that out.
	And I thought the way you directed those questions, Megan, you're absolutely right.
	That is a much more interesting question for Vivek than it is for Ron DeSantis.
	And it allowed other people to weigh in.
	The other thing that I thought was interesting is Chris Christie, for the first time, I think in all of the debates, did what he does best.
	Now, you can make a strong argument that Republican primary voters don't want to hear that.
	And I think that's borne out in the numbers and the poll numbers and how people feel about Chris Christie.
	But he also is on that stage for one reason and one reason alone is because he's willing to draw contrast with Donald Trump regularly and challenge everybody else on the stage to do the same thing.
	He got that last night.
	He was very strong last night on all of those things.
	Again, I don't know how that ultimately resonates with conservative voters.
	Numbers kind of say that it doesn't, but that's why he's on that stage.
	And you've heard a lot of people talk about Chris Christie, like, why is he here?
	That's why.
	And I thought he did everything he wanted to do and more in that debate in that context.
	Nikki had to play a lot of defense last night.
	And the one thing that I think to her great credit is that she never lost composure.
	And in fact, at the end, sort of stopped responding to Vivek altogether when he's holding up signs and all kinds of things.
	I mean, that takes a fair amount of restraint, the kind of restraint that I think a lot of voters would like to see in a president of the United States when they're dealing with complicated issues overseas or what have you.
	But she also didn't get to play the same kind of offense that she has in the previous debates.
	She wasn't, you know, carte blanche to just go anywhere she wanted.
	She was pinned down an awful lot.
	She handled her well, but it's, you know, your scoring ceiling comes down a little bit when you have to play an awful lot of defense.
	Let's show that moment that you just referenced in SOT 23.
	And Nikki Haley's campaign launch video sounded like a woke Dylan Mulvaney Bud Light ad talking about how she would kick in heels.
	At the first debate, she said that only a woman can get this job done.
	That's what she said.
	After the third debate, when I criticized Ronna McDaniel after five failed years of leadership of this party and criticized Nikki for her corrupt foreign dealings as a military contractor, she said that I have a woman problem.
	Nikki, I don't have a woman problem.
	You have a corruption problem.
	And I think that that's what people need to know.
	Nikki is corrupt.
	This is a woman who will send your kids to die so she can buy a bigger house.
	This is the problem.
	Using identity politics more effectively than Kamala Harris is a form of intellectual fraud.
	And actually, Stan, there's her donor puppet masters wielding their puppet right up here tonight.
	This is how this game is played.
	The puppet masters put up their puppet, and I reject the use of identity politics in this party.
	It has been a cancer coming from the left, and I'm sick and tired of the double standards the people of this country are too.
	Having two X chromosomes does not immunize you.
	Thank you.
	Thank you, sir.
	Thank you.
	Governor Haley, would you like to respond?
	No, it's not worth my time to respond to him.
	By the way, that was a reference in there to the Ruthless Gang.
	It was your podcast on which she said, I think he's got a girl problem.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Now, listen, that has been the marquee attraction in all of these debates is what Ramaswamy is trying to do with Nick.
	Nikki laid him out in the first couple of debates.
	Obviously, Vivek wanted to turn the tide on that, and he was very aggressive.
	You know, there's just an element of a P.T. Barnum routine with him where I think it was summarized in one of his last answers when he starts talking about 9-11 and he's talking about all kinds of sort of conspiracy theories.
	J6 job and all of that.
	And it's very hard.
	He makes some points there that are very worth listening to if you're a conservative voter, but it's always overshadowed by this P.T. Barnum routine that verges on complete insanity.
	And he takes away his authentic pitch.
	I don't know what the demographic is that's looking for like J6 as an inside job and 9-11 was a conspiracy and all these niches.
	Fair to say niche.
	Very niche.
	Very.
	Certainly does not reflect the primary electorate writ large and definitely not in Iowa.
	So I don't know really what he was grasping for there.
	So here, I mean, that line about she will send your kids to die so she can have a bigger house.
	I mean, that, wow, that is below the belt.
	I mean, that is like, look, we raise the issue and it's fair to ask about, as I did at the top, whether she's too beholden to the banks and the billionaires and is going to push an agenda to please them.
	But what he said there is absolutely impugning her moral character, her integrity, you know, her life as a Christian.
	No, no Christian, no good person, no like would ever do such a thing.
	That's really like it's taking it, ratcheting it up to the nth degree.
	Although I do think on the other thing, he had a fair point about the Republican Party is not about identity politics.
	Yeah, that's when she said on your when she said on the program, Josh, I think he's got a girl problem.
	She said it because he attacked Ronna McDaniels.
	He attacked Christian Welker and he attacked her, Nikki Haley, at the beginning of the last debate.
	And she said, I think he's got a girl problem.
	She said it kind of with a fun vibe.
	You know, you could make the argument she was just being playful, but, you know, I'll be the first to say, we are not immune from criticism just because we do have the double X chromosome.
	The lady parts do not get you some sort of immunity from attacks in a presidential race.
	So I agreed with his point there.
	But then of course, it just goes too far.
	It doesn't mean she's going to kill children so she can have a bigger house.
	You're entirely right.
	And a very good point, one worth examining and getting a response to.
	Again, totally overshadowed by complete insanity.
	I mean, this was Donald Trump's UN representative.
	I mean, that's a hell of a thing to, by extension, accuse the Trump administration of, which is essentially what it was that he was doing there.
	You can disagree with Nikki Haley's foreign policy all you want, but it happens to be pretty well reasoned based on somebody who spent an awful lot of time thinking about these sort of things.
	To reduce that to killing your kids because she wants a bigger house is nonsense.
	It's the kind of thing that you hope doesn't show up on a stage in Iowa, New Hampshire for the next two debates.
	If that means that Vivek's not there, so be it.
	But that's not serious discussion at all.
	You know, part of what Vivek was doing reminded me a little of Trump.
	I mean, I've said he's kind of like a Trump wannabe, but there's only one Trump.
	There can only be one.
	There is only one Trump.
	You're exactly right.
	There is only one Trump.
	And you know what Trump is?
	He's funny.
	He's funny.
	He raises this sort of thing and it's outrageous.
	It's ridiculous, but he kind of does it with a wink.
	And it doesn't feel as mean.
	Right.
	Right.
	It's like he's part of the crowd making commentary on everything else.
	He breaks that fourth wall when he does it.
	With Vivek, it's like he's just shot out of a cannon.
	And it's the kind of guy that you, you know, if you're cornered at a party with, you're just kind of trying to slink away as fast as you possibly can.
	You know what?
	That's the irony of that, but that's the true irony of Vivek is that I've known him for a long time.
	He's totally charming.
	One-on-one, you'd love to have drinks with him at a cocktail party.
	And I, the Vivek I know, doesn't say these things.
	I think this is an appeal to a sliver of the Republican base with whom he's getting more and more popular.
	And he's kind of leaning into it.
	You know, he's, I, I, he, it's like, you know, you see the positive clicks or the positive likes on your tweet, and then you get kind of radicalized toward whatever it is they're liking.
	It seems like that's what's happening.
	It's a, it's a reflection back of the way to online right.
	You're entirely right.
	The subsect of the population that believes the things that he's talking about is so small.
	It's very intense and it's very loud if you spend all of your day on X, right?
	And I understand if you spend all your day on X, you probably get the impression that there's a much bigger constituency to talk about these kind of things than ultimately exists.
	But, you know, at some point, you'd think you would get, if he's actually trying to play to win this thing, he would take a broader view and be like, well, you know, I peaked somewhere in August at double digits.
	I'm now at like 4% or 5%.
	Real danger of not making a debate stage from here.
	I mean, that could have been his last performance right there.
	I would think you'd want to broaden this out and showcase some of the things that you just talked about.
	I've known Vivek too.
	This is a charming guy.
	He's a very smart guy.
	He's a thoughtful guy.
	And I think what we've been critical on in the Ruthless Variety program is that that guy hasn't shown up yet at all.
	Yeah.
	It's really there have been hints of it.
	Even at the beginning of last night's debate, I was like, oh, you know, because my question to him on electability was all about how he's like, I joked, like the sybil of debate candidates.
	Like, I don't know what I'm getting.
	Who is it?
	It's the calm, nice one, or it's the really mean, personal, insulting one.
	And last night, he kind of started off kind of nice.
	I was like, oh, we've got second debate, Vivek.
	I don't believe in personal insults.
	And these people are good people.
	And then it was like, psycho killer.
	You're fat, Chris Christie, which is, by the way, what he was kind of saying in stop 14.
	Take a listen.
	I think we just learned something from Chris Christie.
	We learned three things.
	We learned three things right there.
	First of all, Chris Christie also doesn't know what provinces in eastern Ukraine he actually want us to fight for.
	Chris, your version of foreign policy experience was closing a bridge from New Jersey to New York.
	So do everybody a favor, just walk yourself off that stage, enjoy a nice meal and get the hell out of this race.
	Whoopsie.
	I mean, to your point, like, listen, I know this isn't nice.
	I'm not trying to argue this was nice by Trump, but Trump gets up there.
	He's got a whole bit he does on Chris Christie's weight.
	And as I said in that debate last night, Chris Christie has given as good as he's gotten from Donald Trump.
	You heard the list of, I could have kept that list going for, you know, three more minutes.
	Yeah.
	So Donald Trump doesn't like him.
	Christie doesn't like Trump either.
	Donald does this thing on the campaign trail where he's like, it's not nice to call him fat.
	That's not nice, sir.
	See, I didn't say it.
	I didn't say he said it.
	Stop.
	Don't call him a fat pig.
	That's not nice.
	We're not.
	Okay.
	I am not advocating this language in any way, shape, or form, but he tries to do it with some humor.
	It does it land differently than if you do it with, and get the hell off this stage.
	You know, it just feels a little meaner and a little bit more alienating for the audience.
Chris Christie Resume 00:14:43
	Yeah, also just totally disconnected.
	I mean, whatever you think of Chris Christie, he has a resume to be on that stage.
	The only person who doesn't is Ramaswamy, to be honest with you.
	And he's making an argument that nobody else is making.
	Ramaswamy really isn't.
	I mean, the only arguments that he's making that nobody else is is like real conspiracy niche stuff.
	And so he obviously should be on that stage.
	But I think throughout all of this, you begin to separate the wheat from the chaff and you start to see that if anyone is going to have the capability of challenging Donald Trump seriously, and it might be after South Carolina in the context of like a Super Tuesday at the beginning of March, it's going to require consolidation down to one person.
	And it's quite obviously going to be Ron DeSantis or Nikki Haley.
	The results in Iowa are going to have a huge impact on that.
	New Hampshire, clearly.
	And then Nikki Haley will have her LMO in South Carolina unless, you know, she really underperforms in the first two states.
	At that point, if they're going to make this a race, it's going to have to be a mono-amano deal.
	And we still didn't see, although you gave him every opportunity last night, still didn't see anybody naturally rise out of that crowd to a point where you're like, well, that's the one.
	That's the one.
	And that's a tough deal when a guy's got a 30-point head start on you.
	Yeah, it needed to be not just like, oh, it's a good debate.
	You know, like you look at Ron DeSantis, I think by far it was his best debate so far.
	Although I think the debates are done.
	I'm going to go on the record right now and say there will be no more debates.
	I really do.
	I don't think the RNC is going to do it.
	I don't have any inside knowledge on this.
	I just think it's too close to Iowa.
	They cost a lot of money.
	It's the undercard debate.
	You know, Trump's not participating and they're not going to do it.
	Mark my words.
	Last night was the last debate and it might be the last debate of the entire cycle.
	They're going to try to schedule it, Megan.
	And I think they've talked to CNN about it.
	There was some news about this today.
	But look, for all intents of purposes, I think you're probably right in that this was the last best chance.
	Now, they may have one right before Iowa.
	They may have one right before.
	That was the original plan.
	Yeah.
	And I still think that they hope to execute that.
	But what you saw last night was hard to improve upon in terms of giving voters a good look at what it is that they're voting on or who.
	So, you know, we'll see.
	Up to this point, as long as Donald Trump is not showing up, it's that elephant in the room that you can talk and you can debate and you can defend yourself adequately and you can score points, but you're not closing a 30-point gap by getting into a discussion with Vivek Ramaswamy about anything.
	So Did Ron DeSantis do enough to at least retain or regain, depending on the poll you're looking at, his frontrunner status?
	Because, you know, last night you have to figure out who the frontrunner is because you're arranging the podiums.
	Now, thankfully, we had four, but we didn't know we had Christy until the day or two before.
	So when we thought we might have three, we had to figure out, is Haley the frontrunner?
	Does she get to go in the middle?
	Or is it Ron?
	And it is still Ron DeSantis, if you look at all the polls and the averages and so on.
	But as I said, she's leading him in South Carolina.
	She's leading him in New Hampshire.
	And she's now within three points of him in Iowa.
	Now, if you expand it, he's still leading.
	But my point is, he's got to do something.
	He does have to like give her the boot in the forehead to get her back down because he needs to be number one in the undercard.
	If Trump implodes, he wants to be number one.
	There's no number two, right?
	At that level.
	So did he do enough?
	I know, I agree with you, not enough to overcome number one, the true number one, Trump, but enough to overcome her and give her the boot?
	Yeah.
	Well, look, I think he stopped the bleeding a long time ago.
	I think he's had a pretty good four or five weeks here.
	Now, that's all the staff nonsense that I don't think voters actually pay attention to, but it becomes captured in the pundit world where his super PAC has got problems and people are resigning and this, that, and the other.
	But outside of that, in terms of candidate performance, DeSantis has stopped the bleeding a long time ago.
	He's basically stuck at his number, maybe a little bit of an improvement.
	And last night, I think he did himself a lot of favors.
	The reason that that race has changed a little bit is not so much about Ron DeSantis over the last month as it is about Nikki Haley and actually solidifying herself as not only a serious presidential candidate, but somebody who can garner support, raise a lot of money and become central to this debate in and of itself.
	And she's gone from, you know, six, 7% now up to 17 in many polls.
	Ultimately, Megan, there's no debate that can litigate this.
	What's going to litigate it is the performance in the Iowa caucus.
	It just is what it is.
	It's a separation event that if you're looking for a winner, it quite obviously looks like it's going to be Donald Trump.
	But one of these two candidates, either DeSantis or Haley, needs to be up in those 20%, high 20%, and they need a margin between them and the third place finisher.
	If they're both in the high teens, for example, this thing's cooked.
	This thing's, I don't understand how you could possibly rearrange the math when you've given both an incentive to keep going and yet there's no separation at all.
	So I think it is a huge, huge deal, maybe much larger than it has been in several open primary Republican years.
	So no sooner do I utter them than I eat my words because apparently CNN has just announced that it's getting not just one, but two, two more Republican debates, one before Iowa and one before New Hampshire before the voting starts.
	Can I just say this?
	I think that's bullshit.
	I don't think they should reward CNN.
	I don't.
	What has CNN done for the Republican Party?
	Honestly, it's a joke.
	Who are they going to have moderate it?
	I just like, I don't know why the RNC keeps doing this.
	I realize not every debate can go to Fox, nor should it.
	But what has CNN, look, what has it done for the Republican Party over the last six years other than lie incessantly about it, Josh?
	Well, and in and of itself, I think, you know, I tend to agree with you, except for this.
	I think the RNC has done a really good job in an impossible situation of trying to pair up partnerships here where you're not getting the same kind of thing that we saw in 2016, where you have agenda, you know, many agenda-driven moderators that aren't asking questions at all.
	I mean, Hugh Hewitt, for example, in that NBC debate.
	I mean, if there's anybody that you could say is worse than CNN, it's NBC, except for the fact that they bring Hugh in to ask very serious policy-oriented questions.
	It'll be interesting.
	MSNBC is worse than CNN.
	I mean, yeah, I think I kind of lose the whole thing.
	You could go worse and loot the whole meds in.
	But I guess what I'm saying, I want to see who else they bring in on that.
	I find it very hard to believe that it's just going to be a CNN anchor directly to camera as we've seen.
	No, let's hope it's not.
	I mean, I'm sure, you know, CNN is going to want to front its talent and then they'll bring somebody else in as sort of the third party.
	But look, I've done this a lot.
	That's not going to change the tenor of the debate.
	That's just not going to.
	You know, it's probably going to be like the one weird thing down at table left saying weird things that the other two are like, what?
	It's like, I realize that Rana and the others are in a difficult spot because the mainstream media is run by all leftists.
	I mean, the liberals run CNN.
	They run NBC.
	They run CBS.
	They run ABC.
	Never mind MSNBC.
	And so if you want coverage, if you want the debate blasted everywhere, which is their goal, there's only so many partners you can work with.
	So I get it.
	Putting the conservative on the panel is like their next best option.
	But I think it's so irritating that they get rewarded after all the shit they pull and all the nonsense they've dumped on Republicans and Trump for the past six years since they went hard partisan.
	I just felt like it's outrageous to me.
	Whatever.
	Okay.
	I've had my say.
	Okay.
	I think there's an awful lot of primary voters that agree with you on all of that, Megan.
	But they are in a tough spot.
	And you do need a broadcast partner at some level.
	Because remember, it's not just about your Republican primary voter.
	It is chiefly about that.
	But in order to win a presidential election, you're going to have to reach voters beyond a Fox News.
	I mean, look, you guys did a nice job on News Nation.
	I've never watched News Nation before.
	No, no.
	Right.
	And I had to, you know, I have not.
	It's like, it's just started.
	Yeah.
	I mean, I had to scramble to try to figure out what channel it was on.
	I found it.
	Thank goodness.
	But they did a nice job.
	They did a nice job.
	The production quality was great.
	I mean, you guys obviously are pretty hard to screw up because you're pros and you do it as well as anybody in the business if you're sitting in front of a camcorder.
	But it wasn't that.
	It was a nice production.
	It was good to do.
	I'd like to see some more of that.
	Yeah, me too.
	I'll say this: just on first glance at the requirements for the next debate, they're saying the candidates will have to have at least 10% in three separate national and/or Iowa polls in advance of Iowa.
	And I assume it's the same for New Hampshire.
	That's a lot.
	And that will eliminate everyone, everyone, but DeSantis and Haley, and maybe, maybe both of them.
	Yeah.
	Well, maybe if it's down to a point where we're 85.5, okay.
	You know, it's a wrap.
	Guess it's off.
	We tried.
	Unintentionally, that may be the most hilarious part about this.
	But look, if they're going to do another one, it's got to be a one-on-one.
	We all know who the two candidates are here.
	I mean, Christie barely made the dance at 6%, and Vivek is barely making the dance at these numbers.
	There's zero chance of them making 10.
	Go ahead.
	Yeah.
	No, I mean, that's right.
	And what we saw during the course of last night's debate is you have two people who are taking this extremely seriously by their tone, by the way they conduct themselves.
	I think Chris Christie is too, but I think reality is that there is no real path to the nomination here for Chris.
	And I like Chris, but I think that's true.
	So we're really dealing with these two candidates.
	We might as well showcase that.
	I'm guessing that's why it's at 10%.
	Yeah, the same.
	Okay.
	Josh Holmes, a pleasure.
	As always, my friend, say hello to the gang for me.
	Looking forward to the next time.
	Check out the Ruthless program, everybody.
	Up next, Rich Lowry and Jim Garrity.
	We'll get their thoughts on what changed, if anything.
	They do puberty blockers.
	These are irreversible.
	That is what Nikki Haley opposed.
	She said the law shouldn't get involved in that.
	If you're somebody that's going to be the president of the United States and you can't stand up against child abuse, Nikki, you were bankrupt when you left the UN.
	After you left the UN, you became a military contractor.
	You actually started joining service on the board of Boeing, whose back you scratched for a very long time.
	That math does not add up.
	It adds up to the fact that you are corrupt.
	Because when she was governor of South Carolina, she was the number one ranked governor of bringing the CCP into her state.
	She wrote a love letter to the Chinese ambassador saying how great a friend China is.
	The only person more fascist than the Biden regime now is Nikki Haley, who thinks the government should identify every one of those individuals with an ID.
	That is not freedom.
	That is fascism.
	One thing that Joe Biden and Nikki Haley have in common is that neither of them could even state for you three provinces in eastern Ukraine that they want to send out troops to actually fight for.
	Look at that.
	This is what I want people to understand.
	These people have, I mean, she has no idea.
	You saw the pile on Nikki Haley last night.
	It is a sign she's in the lead or about to be, but it was probably also unpleasant for her.
	She did not seem to be enjoying it.
	Joining us now, Rich Lowry, editor-in-chief of National Review, and Jim Garrity, senior political correspondent of National Review and contributing columnist for the Washington Post.
	Guys, welcome back to the show.
	So that was sort of the lead story of the evening, the pile on Nikki, Rich.
	I guess we shouldn't have been surprised.
	How do you think she did?
	Well, first of all, you did a great job.
	I thought you guys did a great job.
	Most enjoyable debate as far as I'm concerned.
	And it helped us to have four candidates up there.
	Could have had, you know, stood to have one or two less, actually.
	But yeah, this was predictable.
	I'm not sure like the Boeing stuff and you're going to cave to lobbyists.
	I'm not sure how telling that was.
	I thought the, and the site you just played, it was the first one, which came about halfway through, where DeSantis really hit her on the trans stuff.
	I was queued up by your question and exchange with Chris Christie on this.
	And that's where I was like, you know what?
	DeSantis is having a better debate.
	That one really landed.
	And I think goes to the point, DeSantis is better positioned for whatever it's worth, and it might be worth nothing given what the dynamics you and Josh are talking about, is better positioned in Iowa.
	He just has a more social conservative record, is more current with where Republican voters are.
	But I thought he's had fine debates all along and obviously hasn't moved anything.
	Whereas Haley has had quite good debates and she's moved, you know, within limits within this distant second place context.
	But I don't think she made quite as much an impression last night.
	She's clearly just done with the vague, didn't answer, let kind of Christie take it on and disappeared for a long part in the middle.
	So I don't think she hurt herself.
	I don't think her momentum is going to be blunted, but I don't think she helped herself as much as in the first three debates last night.
	You know, she wasn't really doing battle in the way we had seen Jim.
	She was kind of shrinking to me.
	She was like almost physically shrinking back.
	And then Christie stepped in.
	Again, I said this on the post-show show last night with Steyerwald.
	He had predicted it.
	Steirwald had said, I predict Chris Christie steps in to be the white knight for Nikki Haley.
	And man, he called it exactly, here's the moment in SOT2.
	This is the fourth debate, the fourth debate that you would be voted in the first 20 minutes as the most obnoxious blowhard in America.
	So shut up for your lives.
	We're now 25 minutes into this debate.
Insulting Nikki Haley 00:13:04
	And he has insulted Nikki Haley's basic intelligence, not her positions, her basic intelligence.
	She doesn't know regions.
	She wouldn't be able to find something on a map that his three-year-old could find.
	I've known her for 12 years, which is longer than he's even started to vote in a Republican primary.
	This is a smart, accomplished woman.
	You should stop insulting her.
	So it was interesting how the camera got her at the end for the listening audience, just kind of looking down almost demurely and then back up.
	And I know it's nice, like it's nice for him to defend her.
	I have to say she wants to be commander in chief.
	I really wanted her to say, Chris, thank you.
	I got this.
	And to interrupt him and to defend herself.
	She didn't.
	Megan, I see what you're saying.
	And by the way, let me echo what Rich said.
	You must have felt like the lion tamer or the ringmaster in a circus last night, except all the animals were cocaine bear.
	It was just, you know, damn the torpedoes.
	I'm holding nothing back.
	I saw what you're saying about CNN says they're going to do two debates, but you know, this could be the last time we see Chris Christie and Vivek Ramaswamy on stage as presidential candidates.
	So I'm sure their attitude is, we're holding nothing back.
	You could see Bruce Banner turning into the Hulk on stage in front of us.
	And so I think that's like in that kind of environment.
	Look, we all know Nikki Haley can be really tough.
	When she was at the United Nations, she was blessing all those hearts up there.
	I don't, I think she's proven her toughness.
	I think, you know, often women candidates, there's this question of, oh, you know, is she tough enough to be the commander in chief?
	I think Nikki Haley cleared that threshold a long time ago.
	I think everybody can find, you know, whether you think the appropriate comparison is Margaret Thatcher or whatever past woman leader strike you as the ideal, I don't think anybody looks at Nikki Haley and says, oh, she's a squish, which is why DeSantis's, oh, she always backs down attack just struck me as like, that doesn't fit.
	I wasn't sure where that came from.
	Yeah, I'm sure he wants to say, like, look, everybody wants to say, I'm the fighter.
	Going back to Howard Dean, the easiest, you know, brand to sell yourself as is everybody else in this party is a weak, squishy sellout.
	And I'm the fighter.
	I'm the one who's representing the Democrat side of the, and it's like, it's a pose, by the way, right?
	You know, but almost all of them have some version of it.
	And it's particularly egregious when it comes from Ramaswamy.
	In one of the earlier debates, there was like, you know, the Republican Party's been losing.
	What do they need to do?
	Vivek Ramaswamy, you've never been elected to anything.
	What do Republicans need to do to win more?
	Which I think was a less than ideal person to ask that kind of question.
	So I just kind of, she's beat up on Ramaswamy in like several debates now.
	I think we've all seen that.
	I think this was Chris Christie, you know, like he wanted to pull open the shirt and show Superman and kind of to show up.
	And he kind of playing to type.
	We all remember the one Christie debate moment everybody remembers is when he used Marco Rubio as a tackling dummy back in 2016.
	And I think he's been waiting to do that.
	And his whole presidential campaign was predicated on this idea that at some point he'd be on a stage with Trump and he'd get a chance to really let into Trump.
	And we've never seen Trump really get, you know, a blistering attack, you know, from a one-time ally.
	This is the thing about Christie is he is, say what you will about the guy, and I realize most of the Republicans are not fans.
	He is the best there is at forensically diagnosing a candidate's obfuscation or frailties on that debate stage.
	That's what he did to Marco Rubio.
	He listens.
	He's smart.
	And as a lawyer, he hears it.
	He hears it when they're dodging, when they're evading.
	He called it out last night when he was talking about how Ron DeSantis did not ask the question about Hamas and the hostages.
	Here's a bit of it, stop four.
	This is the problem with the first three debates.
	Ron gets asked a question and he doesn't answer it.
	Your question was very specific.
	You said, would you send American troops as commander in chief?
	And he went on to this minute 30 second Hosanna about his knowledge of the military and what we need to do and didn't answer your question.
	Look, when you're president of the United States, you're not going to have a choice whether to answer that question or not.
	Your generals, your Secretary of Defense, your Secretary of State, your National Security Advisor are going to present plans to you.
	They're going to look at you and say, do we go or don't we, Mr. President?
	And you can't give a 90-second speech about your military service.
	Oh, my gosh.
	That was good, Rich.
	You got to give it to Christie on that one.
	Yeah, I'm totally with you.
	It shows tremendous forensic skill.
	And this might sound like a stupid thing to say, but it's hard to think and talk at the same time.
	And it's hard to listen to other people when you're on a stage like that because you're thinking, well, what question might come to me next?
	What would I have said to this question that just was asked to another candidate might come to me?
	It's hard to just focus in detail on what other people are saying.
	And Christie has the ability to do that.
	That was a good hit on DeSantis.
	And DeSantis had no rejoinder.
	And Christie came back on a couple other answers and pointed out the same thing.
	And one of them on whether Trump is fit as a matter of age.
	I thought most people listening to DeSantis would have thought he answered that, right?
	He's saying he's not unsuited, but he's too old and now needs someone younger.
	But no one else is better on his feet than Christie.
	The problem he has is he had a couple of assumptions going into this race.
	One is that Trump would be on the stage, right?
	And he's not.
	Another would be rewarded by being a truth teller and being willing to say things about Trump that no one else will say.
	And a lot of people don't want to hear because it would translate his toughness, translate his forthrightness.
	And it's just made him radioactive.
	He wasn't in a strong position going into the race, but I was struck at some of the same numbers you cited to him and one of the questions.
	New Hampshire is his state.
	And that's where he's at 14%, which in the context of this second place battle is respectable.
	60% of people have an unfavorable view of him in New Hampshire.
	You know, two-thirds of people would be angry or dissatisfied, as you noted, if he got the nomination.
	That's in his state.
	And that's just why there's no path for him.
	He might overperform in New Hampshire because independents and Democrats can vote, but that's not true everywhere else.
	That can get you to 20 in New Hampshire, which might be enough to be a distant second or to trip up Nikki Haley if she has a chance against Trump, but it's not getting him the nomination, which is why he shouldn't, even though he's good at it and he has a zeal for it.
	He should not be on that stage.
	So I'll give you guys some news.
	All over the internet last night was a video that went viral of somebody in the balcony filming Chris Christie coming over to yours truly during a break at the end of the first hour and kind of getting up in my grill.
	And there was all sorts of speculation about what was happening there.
	I will tell you what was happening there.
	It was not off the record.
	He was pissed off.
	He was mad that he wasn't getting enough questions.
	And he said, you know, I made it up on this stage and I haven't been able to speak in a while.
	And, you know, I should have been brought in on that last debate.
	And, you know, I had a couple minds of it.
	I said, we're coming to you.
	You're going to be happy in the second hour, which I lived up to.
	But number one, he was right that in the last run, he had been excluded.
	And the reason that happened is because we let them fight in the first 40 minutes of the debate.
	And therefore, that comes at the expense of something.
	And where you insert yourself, Chris Christie, on this earlier fight, or that's, it's all at the expense of something else that's coming, which is fine.
	We were, we were not wedded to our rundown.
	We had like 40 questions going out there.
	Our goal was to ask 10 of them, you know, in a perfect world.
	But the producers in the truck have to rejigger the rundown and move like our whole Trump block was supposed to be playing much earlier in the show.
	We had to move it.
	And anyway, the long and the short of it is the sort of even distribution of questions got mucked up by all the arguing.
	Having said all that, I knew very well that Christie was going to get asked a Trump question having to do with immigration at the top of the next hour.
	So it was totally fair to him.
	And he's polling at 2%.
	Okay.
	In no debate ever, and I've now done six of them, have we given as many questions to the guy who's at 3% as to the person who's in the lead, at least amongst the candidates on the stage.
	I'm sorry, Governor Christie.
	That's the way it is.
	And all said and done, CNN says this is the timing on the stage.
	Vivek got 22 minutes.
	DeSantis, 21.
	Haley, 17.
	Christie, 16 and 52 seconds.
	So he was a half a minute behind Haley, who's tied up there for number one.
	So I don't want to hear it.
	Frankly, we did right by him.
	He got a ton of airtime.
	That's what he was mad about.
	I like the guy, but just to break some news on what people are speculating on, Jim, they never like it when they don't get to speak.
	Yeah.
	I was going to say, one, by the end of it, it didn't feel like any of the candidates had been significantly shortchanged.
	And I think those numbers bear that out.
	If you need further support, I checked the RealClear Politics national average this morning.
	Christie is actually at 2.5%.
	That's looking better.
	But to point out, Tim Scott is still at 2% and he left the race a month ago.
	So he's still.
	So, you know, Chris Christie is half a point ahead of the guy who dropped out a month ago.
	So that's the momentum there.
	Yeah.
	Whenever you have four candidates, one of those candidates is going to be the last one to speak.
	I think he got to speak like 14 minutes in.
	And I can understand that kind of, you know, rankling on him.
	But if you like, you know, not that many people came to see Christie.
	Yeah.
	He didn't jump in.
	Others were jumping in and I was allowing it.
	You know, it's like, you can lead the horse to water, but he didn't.
	And I said, you're like, hey, I see you over there.
	We're coming to you, but good stuff's happening here.
	And nobody had said, hey, can I get in?
	I was like, they were just going for it.
	It was great stuff.
	Anyway, he got in.
	He had his say.
	All was said and good.
	I said and done and it was good.
	And he and I, I think, are fine.
	He left the debate hall seemingly unhappy.
	He gave an interview to Dana Bash on CNN and he seemed rather angry.
	In fact, we have some of that.
	It's SAT 16.
	He was most unhappy with Vivek Ramaswamy.
	Here it is.
	I think Vivek does have a woman problem.
	I do think he insults women's basic intelligence.
	He's done it over and over and over again.
	And I guess tonight I just had had enough.
	I had enough of listening to his garbage.
	And as I said, his smart ass Harvard mouth, because that's what it is.
	When he's dictating to me and Nikki Haley, who have committed ourselves to public service while he's been off stealing from seniors to make his fortune.
	Yeah, I'm not going to put up with him anymore.
	I'm going to tell the truth.
	If someone's insulting Nikki Haley in a way that was personal, it was nothing about issues.
	He was saying she's not smart enough to know where things are on the map, that somehow his three-year-old son is smarter than a woman who served as a two-term governor and a UN ambassador.
	He's a jackass.
	So did he, did he take Vivek out in the way he took out Marco Rubio?
	No, I mean, there's just, there's not taking Vivek out.
	I mean, Vivek has kind of been slowly taking himself out.
	I mean, every one of these debate performances has been a little sip of arsenic for him in terms of his electoral ambition.
	And the reason why, as you pointed out at the beginning, you know, he's shifted a little bit is that he does apparently care about being liked by voters and his poll standing.
	And he's been slipping since the first debate when he came out so obnoxious.
	But the ultimate goal here is not really to win.
	You know, it's to cater favor, as you're pointing out earlier, to a certain segment of the very online right that is very popular, that has a great market share in terms of the conservative media, and where he will at least have a home as a constant guest.
	And I would think hopes to have a perch as some sort of host or moderator at some point.
	And in those terms, this has been a great success, but it's been a disservice to the process.
	He's cheapened everything.
	He's touched.
	He has occasionally important and original things to say.
	He says it in a swarmy way, maybe can't help that.
	But the rest of it is just totally unworthy, dishonorable, childish.
	I mean, the logical end point of his performance in these debates so far, we'll see if there are any more, was when he held up that piece of paper.
	I mean, just give me a break, but there are people like Charlie Kirk on X immediately saying, what a fantastic moment.
	You know, Vivek's blown up the debate again.
	Look, he drew wrote on his pad that Nikki Haley is corrupt.
	It's just, it's just absurd.
	And it's a shame.
	Democrats don't tend to have these kind of candidates and their process.
MAGA Skepticism 00:15:44
	And for whatever reason, Republicans do.
	I liked the prop.
	I have to say, as a TV person, I was like, yes, visuals.
	Thank you.
	We had no graphics.
	We had nothing.
	Thank you.
	What other graphics can you guys sketch out in the two seconds we have left?
	I appreciated the prop.
	Yeah, I don't, Vivek's not going anywhere, but he's not going anywhere in this race and he's probably not going anywhere in the national conversation for some time.
	But I don't know.
	I don't, the problem with Vivek in terms of like becoming a host or becoming a very successful podcast host is he really likes to hear himself talk.
	And, you know, I think you do better as a host.
	If you really like to hear your guests talk, you can get in the mix.
	You know, he tried that.
	He went to the Daily Wire and actually helped.
	He was over there kind of sniffing around about possibly launching a podcast.
	It didn't go very well from what I hear.
	And now he's launching his own podcast.
	And, you know, we'll see whether that's what this is all about.
	There's, he's not going to be president, not this time around.
	Probably not in the, I don't know, we'll see.
	Anything could happen, but not this time around.
	So in any event, he's giving voice to an important part of the Republican Party right now.
	So that piece of him, I appreciate because it keeps things saucy.
	Standby, quick break, more with Rich and Jim.
	You do not favor a ban on trans medical treatments for minors, saying it's a parental rights issue.
	The surgeries done on minors involve cutting off body parts at a time when these kids cannot even legally smoke a cigarette.
	Kids who go from puberty blockers to cross-sex hormones are at a much greater likelihood of winding up sterile.
	How is it that you think a parent should be able to okay these surgeries, never mind the sterilization of a child?
	Republicans believe in less government, not more.
	In less involvement with government, not more in government involvement in people's lives.
	And you know what, Megan?
	I trust parents.
	And we're out there saying that we should empower parents in education.
	We should empower parents to make more decisions about where their kids go to school.
	I agree.
	We should empower parents to be teaching the values that they believe in in their homes without the government telling them what those values should be.
	And yet we want to take other parental rights away.
	And we're going to put my children's health and my decisions in their hands for them to make those decisions, for Joe Biden to make those decisions.
	For me and for my wife, let me just say this.
	This is not something I favor.
	I think it's a very, very dangerous thing to do.
	Welcome back to the Megan Kelly Show.
	Back with us now, Rich Lowry and Jim Garrity of National Review.
	So his defense was parental rights.
	And then I followed up with, you didn't seem like such a big fan of parental rights when you were governor.
	You passed a law requiring this guidance be issued to the schools in New Jersey that, among other things, said the teachers don't have to tell the parents if a kid is quote transitioning or going by an opposite identity from their actual.
	And he denied it.
	And it was a false denial, as I said on the stage that night.
	He did.
	Go look it up.
	He passed the law.
	He required that this trans guidance be provided, including, he specifically said to protect the confidentiality of the trans kids, to protect their transition, to make sure that they could be in the sports and use the facilities of their quote identity.
	He just, I don't know if he didn't remember it or if he just felt uncomfortable and he wanted to lie about it.
	But I'm sorry, the last half of that question was, aren't you way too out of line on this for the Republican voters?
	And I ask that because that's what I think.
	That's what I think, Jim.
	And am I wrong?
	No, you're not wrong.
	And I think that basically Christie can argue that the first half of that answer, the I trust parents, that's probably the best defense he could make of the stance that he has.
	And no doubt there are probably some Republicans who feel that way.
	There's probably a more libertarian-minded section of the voters.
	You're probably going to find more of them in New Hampshire than you are in Iowa.
	Maybe I'm broadly stereotyping the kinds of people who show up for the caucuses and primaries out there.
	But I think the Ron DeSantis position, and I think kind of the context of your question of, wait a second, wait a second, this is completely ridiculous that you're going to say that kids can do this without parental consent for this, but they can't get parental consent for tattoos or some places they can't get ear piercings without parental consent.
	So like, isn't this a wild disparity in what we consider appropriate for kids to make their own decisions about?
	Yeah, you know, I think that's going to be a losing issue for Christy.
	He may, you know, he could either flip-flop and say, oh, I was totally wrong when I was governor.
	This should be banned.
	Or he could be the best thing you can put on it.
	That's what he should have said.
	I was wrong.
	Things have changed.
	I've changed.
	A lot of people have changed in this issue.
	That was really wrong.
	Now I see the harm.
	He should have said, I know the case now, Chloe Cole.
	It's outrageous.
	But you know what?
	His stuff on the trans medical procedures has been said over and over recently.
	So he couldn't wiggle out of that.
	The only thing he was trying to wiggle out of was this notification to parents in schools.
	He favors these medical procedures on minors.
	He does.
	He thinks a parent can consent to the sterilization of her child.
	It's amazing.
	Like we're not paying attention to what these, just the drugs, never mind the surgeries are doing.
	Ron DeSantis, in my view, best moment of the night, brought the crowd almost to its feet with this response in 21.
	Watch SOT 21.
	You do not have the right to abuse your kids.
	This is cutting off their dental.
	This is mutilating these minors.
	These are irreversible procedures.
	And this is something that other countries in Europe, like Sweden, once they started doing it, they saw it did incalculable damage.
	They've shut it down.
	I signed legislation in Florida banning the mutilation of minors because it is wrong.
	We cannot allow this to happen in this country.
	And I know Chris disagrees with me, and I think he has an honest position.
	Nikki disagrees with me.
	She opposes the bill that we did to ban that.
	She said the law shouldn't get involved with it.
	You said the law shouldn't get involved with it.
	She also, though, I think, and this flows from what she did as governor of South Carolina, you know, they had a bill to try to say that men shouldn't go into girls' bathrooms.
	And she killed that bill and she bragged that she killed that bill.
	Even to this day, she bragged that, I don't think men should be going into little girls' bathrooms.
	I think it's wrong.
	And I think we have every right to protect them from that.
	Rich, I'm not sure how he could have done better on that answer.
	Home run, absolutely his best moment of any of the debates.
	And what we saw last night, and this is born partly of desperation, right?
	Is that he was much more willing to mix it up.
	The first three debates, almost every time, here's my set speech, right?
	Even when he got hit, you just ignore it and go, here's my set speech.
	And that's just not, it doesn't create moments.
	It's not very interesting.
	They believe very much in it, you know, as a three yards ahead and a ball of dust kind of approach.
	You use the form to get your message out.
	But he mixed it up much more last night.
	And this, he's just on the strongest substantive and political ground.
	And it goes to Christie.
	You know, it's not like he was governor 20 years ago, but what his position was back then, which he's now stuck to, unfortunately, was kind of the conventional wisdom.
	Say with Nikki Haley back then.
	That's what you did if you're a respectable politician.
	And DeSantis represents a much more current position, has actually walked the walk down in Florida.
	So that's, if there's a moment that really helped him last night, it was that.
	And I, you know, we'll see whether it changes any hearts and minds, because I will say, Ron DeSantis appears to me to be more, what's the word, anchored in principle on this than Donald Trump.
	That's what I think.
	Donald Trump is now, he's now saying the right things, but I'm not sure his heart is in it the way DeSantis is, Rich.
	Am I, what do you think?
	No, I think that's absolutely right.
	This is something where clearly, I think most things, you know, there's some exceptions.
	Ukraine, I don't think DeSantis is particularly sincere, Ukraine funding.
	But on this, he feels it passionately.
	He understands the case and can state it strongly.
	You know, the thing with DeSantis, and I think the reasons why he's had such trouble, one is Donald Trump, right?
	This is the greatest showman on earth.
	People are still attached to him and he's got indicted four times and people hate it.
	That's the fundamental thing that's gone wrong.
	But with DeSantis, there's also, you know, last night, even though I thought he was good, he has that sort of Nixon-esque five o'clock shadow thing going on.
	He never feels relaxed, you know?
	He always feels as though he's trying a little too hard.
	We all saw that viral moment with the conservative leader in Canada eating the apple, you know, while he's getting hostile reports.
	Who says that?
	But that's total relaxed.
	You know, most people can't pull that off.
	But DeSantis feels, even last night, is just a little bit too much of an attempt to hammer every single point home.
	It's not modulated very much.
	There's no subtlety.
	There's no humor.
	So I think that plays more than it might because he's not running against the end of the day conventional politicians.
	He's running against this incredibly talented communicator and entertainer that people feel an emotional bond to.
	And it's just hard to match that.
	Let's switch over to another candidate.
	I want to go back to Vivek Ramaswamy because he, I tell you, when this moment happened on stage, I was like, some of the moments when Vivek was speaking, I was like, he's good.
	This is good stuff.
	Like, this is very well said and well argued.
	And then we heard stuff like this where I was like, what?
	Wait, what?
	Watch.
	Here's my issue with all three of my other colleagues on this debate stage is all three of them have been licking Donald Trump's boots for years for money and endorsements.
	Ron DeSantis, you've been a great governor, but you would have never been one without actually begging Donald Trump for that endorsement.
	And you had sacked him in your game a year ago.
	Same thing with Chris Christie as a lobbyist, begging them for COVID money for his special interests in New Jersey, prepping him for the debates last time around.
	These people are now Monday morning quarterbacking some decision he made.
	I think the real enemy is not Donald Trump.
	It's not even Joe Biden.
	It is the deep state that at least Donald Trump attempted to take on.
	And if you want somebody who's going to speak truth to power, then vote for somebody who's going to speak the truth to you.
	Why am I the only person on the stage at least who can say that January 6th now does look like it was an inside job?
	That the government lied to us for 20 years about Saudi Arabia's involvement in 9-11.
	That the great replacement theory is not some grand right-wing conspiracy theory, but a basic statement of the Democratic Party's platform that the 2020 election was indeed stolen by big tech.
	That the 2016 election, the one that Trump won for sure, was also one that was stolen from him by the National Security Establishment.
	Okay.
	That actually cleared the Trump-Russia collusion hopes that they knew was false.
	A lot.
	A lot in there.
	Jim, would you like to take a shot at that one?
	Megan, Rich, we don't talk directly about religion on this program very much, but I think of myself as a believer.
	But I'm not going to lie, there are times my faith is challenged.
	And when Ramaswamy can be up on that stage and accuse the other three of being bootlickers to Donald Trump, the fact that Ramaswamy was not struck by lightning makes me question the existence of God, because there was never a moment for God to say, nope, that's a lie.
	Thunderbolt.
	Here you go.
	You can't say that kind of thing.
	That would be it.
	That would be, you know, to paraphrase some comedian, Ramaswamy calling you a Trump bootlicker is like Michael Jackson calling you weird.
	It's just the guy who defines the term.
	So like, look, I could rip into Ramaswamy all afternoon, but one of the things that jumps out at me last night, he began by saying that Nikki Haley, like Joe Biden, wanted to send troops into Ukraine.
	She's never said that.
	I went and I checked.
	If Nikki Haley had said we should send U.S. troops into Ukraine to fight Russia, that would be a big deal.
	You would have heard about it by now.
	This isn't that you missed it somewhere in the news cycle and only Ramaswamy picked this out or something like this.
	Now, we can have a legitimate argument about Ukraine.
	We can have a legitimate argument about how much aid should we send, what kind of weapons can we spare, what kind of weapons can we not spare?
	Is there a longer term?
	This is a legitimate debate to have.
	But when you begin it with, my opponent has a position, you make up your opponent's position.
	One, you muddy the waters.
	And then he goes back to the same well later and he says, she's doing that.
	She wants your children to die so she can get a bigger house.
	Does he know that Nikki Haley's husband is in the South Carolina Army National Guard and is currently deployed in Djibouti, Africa for a year?
	Like, do you know a lot of military moms who are like, yeah, let's have war.
	I want to have as many casualties as possible.
	What the hell is wrong with this man?
	So, yeah, I could rant all day, but that gives you the gist of my question.
	Can we just spend a minute on it, though?
	Because I am interested in what's happening to this piece of the Republican Party, because I know a lot of MAGA voters, people who love Trump, who do not think January 6th was an inside job, have questions about 9-11, or maintain that both elections, 2016 and 2020, were stolen.
	Like there is a slice of within MAGA, maybe it's growing, that seems to be really latching on to these things.
	It's like, yeah, we see the inside truth.
	Deep state is everywhere doing everything.
	What do you think about it, Rich?
	You guys follow this for a living.
	Yeah, so it's clearly not everyone is not a majority of the party.
	It's not a majority of MAGA, but it's a really engaged part of MAGA.
	And again, an element of MAGA that's very loud online and that has big social media followings and is making Vivek a folk hero.
	So I think what's happened is he's slowly slid this way over the course of the campaign.
	And I think it's based on the affirmation of those kind of social media influencers that, you know, they are important.
	They have important bases, important voices and important audiences.
	So, you know, you can run through those things.
	No, January 6th is not an inside job.
	The government did hide the Saudis' role.
	Now he's presenting it in a way that plays into this broader conspiratorial thinking.
	What the National Security Establishment did after 2016 was terrible.
	And he's wrong about the 2020 election, but it's all to go to this radical doubt that's afoot in the Republican Party about everything that the establishment or conventional opinion believes.
	Now, some of that skepticism is called for.
	Megan, you obviously, you represent it and have been a very important voice on the vaccines and the mask mandates and all that and how insane it was, even when they're trying to shut down debate.
	But this tendency kind of runs out of control, especially if you don't care what you're saying.
	You don't care about being responsible the way the vaic is.
	So it's working for him if you have a very stove pipe goal at the end of the day, which I believe he does, but it's not, it doesn't contribute to the discourse and it's not contributing to his efforts to win the Republican nomination to the extent that matters to him at all.
	He's like, he's got a nugget of truth in there and he expands it, like, again, well beyond where the facts would support.
	For example, we've seen the videotapes on January 6th of, yes, cops letting people in.
RNC Release Decision 00:05:11
	We'd like to know more how many federal agents were there.
	Okay, we haven't, we don't have full answers to that question.
	That does not mean that it was a quote, an inside job, that everybody there was a Fed, that there were more feds than there were rioters, that the people spraying bear spray in the face of cops.
	I mean, it's just, he goes too far.
	And the thing about Saudi Arabia 9-11 is a cover because he originally said it's totally fair to inquire how many federal agents were on the planes that hit the towers in the Pentagon on 9-11.
	And then many of us in the press hit him for that nonsense.
	And looking for an out, he found, oh, there was a question about how much Saudi Arabia cooperated and helped the 9-11 terrorists.
	That's what I'm going to exploit to say the government has been lying to us about its role and what it knew, the facts, the truth about 9-11.
	That whole thing was born as a cover of something absurd he said.
	And now he's like, I'm owning it.
	I'm the only one who will tell you the truth.
	So the average voter has to work very, very hard to find the truth in what he's actually saying and it's the nuggets of its origins.
	All right, let me end with this.
	I don't think anybody thinks anything really changed as a result of last night.
	So once again, Trump won because if nothing changed, he's the winner.
	He's 50 points ahead.
	So now what, guys?
	Andy McCarthy had an editorial on National Review saying he really thinks Judge Shucken might not let Trump go free on bond when he is likely convicted in that federal case in DC.
	There will be riots.
	The country will burn if she sends him to jail prior to November 2024.
	And Andy's the smartest guy we all know is saying, don't rule it out.
	So where do we go from this day to that?
	Well, earlier this week, I had pitched the idea of, you know, look, you look at the dynamics of this primary.
	DeSantis and Haley should form a unity ticket, either Haley DeSantis, DeSantis-Haley.
	I don't know if particularly strong preference, one or the other.
	But, you know, that's the one way you could get most supporters to jump on board with DeSantis and vice versa.
	The reaction online is uniformly negative.
	It is all they just say, oh my God, why would we want to associate with a neocod warmonger like Nikki Haley and the Nikki Haley?
	Why would we associate with this theocratic maniac from Florida?
	But here's the thing.
	I'm kind of in this Dr. Philman thing.
	Like, how's that working out for you so far?
	What these guys have done is fought for a very distant second place.
	Neither one of them is like, they need like 20 points in the next six weeks in Iowa, in New Hampshire, in South Carolina, and they need like 30 to 40 points nationally.
	And we're seeing this kind of insane little infighting over this small slice of a much bigger pie that they need to win if they have any hope of being the nominee.
	If Trump's the nominee, we're in totally uncharted waters.
	And I would say, based on history, don't doubt Andy McCarthy, even if he's very skeptical about the Jets.
	Truer words are never spoken.
	Guys, thank you.
	Thank you both so much.
	All right.
	And coming up next, thank you.
	Our pal Glenn Greenwald joins us and we'll get into what happened when Rumble went down just as I asked my question about COVID vaccine injuries.
	We've got some reporting for you.
	I'm Megan Kelly, host of the Megan Kelly Show on SiriusXM.
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	Joining me now, Glenn Greenwald.
	He's host of Rumble's System Update.
	Glenn, welcome back.
	Great to have you.
	Great to be with you, Megan.
	And I don't like to start any appearance by praising the host, but I nonetheless want to say how great it was to see you back in that chair where people knew that the rules were going to be in force and there was not very much funny business.
	And I think that was largely due to your presence.
	So it was great to see you doing what you do best.
	Thank you.
	Thank you, Glenn.
	It was great to be back out there.
	I have to say.
	Also, I have an update for the audience now.
	With this, just in on the debates that we reported on earlier, see, I knew it.
	Like, I really did not think that the RNC would offer another debate.
Political Persecution Fears 00:06:31
	I just don't think that the RNC, I think, is kind of aligned with Trump.
	I mean, they recognize he's the party leader.
	And I know they're trying to be fair to everybody, but are they really going to have more debates?
	That's why I'm surprised to hear that there's two more debates, one in Iowa and one in New Hampshire.
	And now this just in from Brian Steinberg of Variety, CNN plans to host two Republican primary debates next month, one in Iowa, one in New Hampshire.
	Events appear to be organized without the sanction of the RNC, without the sanction.
	So I think what's happened here is the RNC has basically said, you're released.
	Go do your own thing.
	We're no longer participating in the debates.
	And if you guys want to do it, do it on your own.
	So that's kind of interesting.
	I don't know how much point the debates are going to serve at that point in the contest.
	I don't know how much point they're serving right now.
	It's kind of like Glenn, we give them the chance to land some knockout blows and change the trajectory.
	Given the fact that Trump's 50 points ahead, I'm not sure that's even come close to happening.
	What was your take on last night?
	Yeah, I mean, there's an obvious gigantic elephant hanging over these debates, which is that the person who, by all indications, the voters of this party actually prefer to be their nominee is not participating in these debates.
	And the more he doesn't participate, he doesn't suffer any harm.
	And on some level, maybe he even gets stronger.
	But I also don't think the candidates are doing themselves a lot of favors because I heard the end of your last segment.
	I didn't hear all of it, but you would think that they are seeing these same poll numbers as we are.
	And if they're really serious about winning, they would be doing things to try and undermine that fact by uniting, by having a joint strategy to at least attack Trump.
	And they just won't do it.
	And so when they sit there and bicker among themselves, I saw some focus group with that I think News Nation had convened and the overwhelming sentiment in that focus group of Republican voters was that the winner was Trump by a pretty good distance.
	And that's been the dynamic that they haven't been able to break.
	This is what led to Chris Christie raising the following on stage last night.
	Listen to Sat 3.
	Respectfully, Governor, you have not stopped, Mr. Trump.
	And voters may wonder how you could possibly become the nominee of a party that does not appear to like you very much.
	Yeah.
	Well, look, Megan, it's often very difficult to be the only person on the stage who's telling the truth and the only person who is taking on what needs to be taken on.
	I look at my watch now.
	We're 17 minutes into this debate.
	And except for your little speech in the beginning, we've had these three acting as if the race is between the four of us.
	The fifth guy who doesn't have the guts to show up and stand here, he's the one who, as you just put it, is way ahead in the polls.
	And yet I've got these three guys who are all seemingly to compete with, you know, Voldemort.
	He or shall not be named.
	They don't want to talk about it.
	A totally fair point, right?
	It's like we gave them a whole Trump section.
	Here's your chance.
	Try to take a shot at the frontrunner.
	They were too afraid.
	But here's the reality.
	And I mean, actually, Chris Christie alluded to this, which is you can think it's wrong.
	You can complain about it.
	A lot of people do.
	The Republican voters love Trump.
	That is just the reality.
	And I don't think they love him just because he's Trump and all of his charisma and personal characteristics that they seem to really like.
	He represents an ideology that has really stimulated their interest and passion about politics, mostly based in the idea that the establishment wing of both parties, the kind of status quo power centers that run the United States, are fundamentally corrupted and not interested in what their interests are.
	And so when you have politicians up on that stage like Nikki Haley and Chris Christie, who very much represent that kind of establishment Republican ideology, even if they were to do what one might think they should do, I don't think it would resonate very much with these voters because I don't think these voters like them.
	That's what you pointed out to him.
	And I think one of the things Ron DeSantis and Devec are interested in and thinking about is their future in this party.
	And I think Chris Christie even said that.
	Like they may be thinking about four years from now, you don't want to alienate those Trump voters because they're a gigantic part of this party.
	Yeah, it does make some sense.
	I mean, because they've all been pretty diligent about not doing it.
	Like they're careful.
	They have to hit him on some things, but they never go too far.
	And look, I still believe there's a point in having, and it's actually important, having these debates to some extent, because we do need an alternative.
	There has to be first alternate, given all the legal jeopardy that Trump's in.
	There must be a first alternate just in case.
	I mean, truly, Glenn, if Trump's in jail as of what, I don't know, the trial is supposed to start in March, this March.
	That's, what, four months away?
	I don't know how quickly it's going to go.
	There is a scenario.
	It's slim.
	It's not likely, but it's that Trump's in jail this summer when they're having the Republican National Convention.
	What are they going to do?
	Like, call, like, you have a collect phone call from the DC correctional facility.
	Yes, I accept the nomination.
	Not a place.
	We don't know how any of this is going to work.
	I mean, for one thing, he has a gigantic secret service detail that has to guard him for the rest of his life.
	He's entitled to that by law.
	And there's nothing in the Constitution that bars you from running if you're in prison.
	We had a candidate, Eugene Debs, who was imprisoned under Woodrow Wilson for opposing the U.S. entry into World War I, got charged under the Espionage Act of 1917 for that, was convicted.
	And he ran for president as a socialist leader and got a fair number of votes.
	So there's precedent for people running from prison.
	And it's the huge unknown.
	Like, is this obvious distrust that people have for our institutions of authority so fundamental and so entrenched?
	Obviously, they're not willing to hold it against Trump that he was charged or indicted.
	Is it that entrenched that even if he's convicted, that still won't be in prison support and imprisoned?
	Will that be looked at as a form of political persecution where they'll want to kind of double down in their support on Trump?
	I mean, Tucker Carlson just said, I've never supported a candidate as a journalist.
	And the only time I decided I would was I became a Trump supporter when they raided Mar-a-Lago.
Racism and Immigrants 00:07:09
	I think there's probably a lot of people who see it that way.
	And we don't, I just don't know.
	I can't pretend I know.
	Yeah, I know.
	None of us.
	We're in really unchartered territory here.
	And only time will tell.
	All right, let's talk about Vivek because we've beaten up on him a little bit here tonight.
	And it's not all he there's, he did some good stuff last night and he's very interesting.
	And I was saying to the guys before you, there were moments last night where I thought you kind of become mesmerized by him.
	He's such a good speaker.
	He makes his points so well.
	He's got, he's like, there's a bit of theater to him that's compelling.
	You know, he knows how to sort of like capture your attention and deliver a line.
	Like the rise and fall in his voice, it can kind of suck you in.
	Van Jones felt differently over on CNN.
	He was not sucked in.
	Here is his reaction on CNN after the debate, Sat 18.
	And the smug, condescending way that he just spews this poison out is very, very dangerous because he won't stop Trump, but he's going to outlive Trump by about 50 years.
	And you're watching the rise of an American demagogue that is a very, very despicable person.
	And literally, I was shaking listening to him talk because a lot of people don't know that is one step away from Nazi propaganda coming out of his mouth.
	Oh, we got the N-word, Nazi.
	And he's shaking.
	Vivek made Van Jones shake.
	Yeah, I mean, look, when, you know, the New York Times has this little thing they do after every debate where they all, their columnists rank the participants and see who they think wins and see who they think loses.
	And they've ranked Nikki Haley as the winner of all three debates.
	I don't know what they did last night.
	And I think Vivek always comes in last or second to last.
	These people, I don't think this is breaking news, are not even a little bit in touch with the sentiments and perspectives of Republican Party voters because Van Jones has cried on the air about Donald Trump and how sick and fearful he gets when he hears Donald Trump.
	And these are the people these Republican voters hate.
	So I know that, you know, I don't know who was packed there last night.
	I went to the first one.
	I know that the RNC usually gets to pick and choose who's there.
	So the reaction of the crowd too is often disparate from what American voters in the Republican Party are reacting to.
	But they don't respect these people.
	They don't like these people.
	And I know, I think Vivek is purposely kind of seeing what Trump did and more or less following in that path.
	You know, I talked to Vivek two and a half years or three years ago about an unrelated thing and I hung up the phone and I knew I said to my friends, that is going to be a politician very shortly.
	It was clear that he had this kind of ambition to be a public figure in that way before he was.
	And he is skillful and talented.
	And of course, he's not going to, his audience is not, his target audience is not Van Jones and New York Times columnist.
	But if you want to be successful in the Republican Party, that shouldn't be.
	They love Chris Christie and Nikki Haley.
	So when he's dropping the N-word on Vivek in that moment, the other N-word, it was in response to Vivek, this, you know, I listed the things that Vivek said, like January 6th was an inside job.
	And the one thing he said in there that I will give him is the great replacement theory is a Democrat thing.
	It's not a Republican thing.
	He's 100% right about that, but the Democrats will never admit that.
	They want to say Tucker's a racist and I'm sure Vivek's a racist.
	Vivek's a Nazi.
	And Dana Bash asked Vivek about that after the debate.
	Take a listen.
	It's not 16.
	But we labeled conspiracy theorists.
	It's crystal clear.
	I'm the kid of immigrants.
	But when the Democratic Party and Biden, the leader of the Democratic Party now, as recently as 10 years ago, with Maorca sitting at his side, expressly talking about non-white populations exceeding white populations, that being a good thing, and immigration policies they've advanced to achieve that result remain in Mexico, which they're not enforcing.
	Let's have that debate rather than saying this is a dog whistle.
	This is going to cause violence.
	A lot of it grounded in truth.
	To be able to have that debate without labeling something.
	Let's ask me one question as xenophobe or a racist.
	I'm going to let you go.
	Let's just say.
	Let's just say, and I'm not going to use the term anymore because it is a dog whistle for people out there who are looking for reasons to go after people of color and Jews.
	But let's just assume that that was something that was happening.
	Is that so wrong?
	So what's wrong with you?
	First of all, let me just pause right there.
	Let me just pause right there.
	This is a legitimate discussion for us to have.
	In my view, I don't care about skin color.
	I could care less for skin color.
	Do you share the ideals of this country?
	Wow.
	Wow.
	What did you make of that?
	It's such a microcosm.
	I mean, it's a perfect clip to pick because, first of all, it really drives me insane, Megan.
	And it has for quite a long time now.
	This idea that the great replacement theory is something that white supremacists like Tucker Carlson say to provoke mass murders, like they tried to blame him for in Buffalo.
	Even though the guy left a gigantic manifesto about all the people who influenced him and not only didn't he ever mention Tucker or anyone on Fox, there's no indication he even knew Fox News or had ever watched it, but they don't care about that.
	The great replacement theory is 1000% a Democratic Party idea.
	There are Democratic Party operatives, mainstream ones who wrote books saying that the key to an enduring permanent Democratic Party majority is ensuring that we have so much immigration that it changes the demographic composition of our country.
	And these newly arrived immigrants will forever be Democrats and there'll be no way for us to lose elections because of these demographic shifts.
	So the Democrats can say that that's their plan, but then you can't point it out that that's their plan.
	That is insane.
	But I also think that there are legitimate debates about things like immigration and what the effects are that people like Dana Bash and CNN and the whole liberal commentariat have tried to say is off limits and they just scream racist and they yell at you that you're provoking violence.
	And that was a perfect microcosm right there of the fact that huge numbers of people, as we know, Democratic governors and Democratic Party mayors, the minute large numbers of immigrants started showing up on their door, illegal ones, they started screaming bloody murder and calling for the Biden Justice Department to do more to secure the border.
	But there's this idea that if you're in a neighborhood like where Dana Bash lives or people like her live and you're all ensconced and you don't have the kind of immigrants in your neighborhood that many other people do, then you can call everyone racist for caring about it because it doesn't affect you.
	And that is the breach between, I think, elite culture and ordinary Americans that has become so destabilizing.
	Yeah, couldn't agree more.
	By the way, speaking of Tucker, I should tell our audience, Tucker will be joining us on Monday.
	Very excited to bring him to the show.
	This is the first time we've spoken many times privately, but this is the first time he's been on the show since he left Fox.
Donor Influence in Politics 00:05:59
	And guess what?
	He has a big announcement when he comes on.
	So you will hear that only here.
	Don't miss that.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	So Vivek, it's kind of fun to watch him be provocative towards the left.
	And he really stirs up a lot of feelings.
	And then he stirs up a lot of feelings in the right too, but on different issues.
	I don't think he told me after the show he's not going anywhere.
	He does not plan on dropping out.
	I think he's in this now for other reasons because Vivek is not going to be the president this time around.
	And he's accomplishing something.
	So let's talk about, because I know you're not a Nikki Haley fan.
	And he was her chief antagonist.
	DeSantis got in on the act more than ever, but Vivek was the chief antagonist last night.
	And I'm told by the team that this particular exchange captured one of your complaints about her.
	It's SOT 12.
	I want to go back, though, to Nikki Haley's comment from earlier that she is somehow not responding to the will of these donors.
	Nikki, you were bankrupt when you left the UN.
	After you left the UN, you became a military contractor.
	You actually started joining service on the board of Boeing, whose back you scratched for a very long time, and then gave foreign multinational speeches like Hillary Clinton is.
	And now you're a multi-millionaire.
	That math does not add up.
	It adds up to the fact that you are corrupt.
	What was it about that exchange you liked?
	Well, the facts are true, first of all, that when she left government, she spent her whole life in government and she did struggle with a lot of personal debt, which I personally don't consider a moral failing.
	Most Americans at some point in their lives struggle with that.
	It's a very American thing.
	In fact, I think it's actually a good thing if you're running for president to have had that experience.
	But it is true that she immediately converted her political celebrity and political influence into enormous amounts of personal wealth using that Hillary Clinton, Tony Blair, now very common way that when people leave Washington, they get very rich by meeting in private with activist groups, giving speeches to them, serving on the board of Boeing.
	And when you look at Nikki Haley's policies, the one on which she's running, those policies completely align with the interest of all of those big donors and those corporations that made her personally very wealthy and that are now funding her campaign.
	Now, the question always is, the eternal question is, are they funding her campaign because she agrees with them or does she agree with them because they're funding her campaign?
	Usually you can't really draw that line.
	It ultimately doesn't make a difference.
	The influence of money is so great in our politics that you might kind of morph into the kind of person that you know will attract big donors and think you're doing it because you really believe in it.
	But the point is, there's a reason why Wall Street and why corporate donors are running to Nikki Haley because they see her as a vessel, as a tool to advance their agenda.
	And their agenda is not the agenda of the American people.
	Republican Party voters have made very clear they reject that agenda of international globalism and corporatism and militarism.
	That's not what they said they want in every poll and the way they're voting.
	And so I think it's an extremely legitimate question to ask, how is Nikki Haley's campaign being funded by whom?
	And how did she get so wealthy in such a short amount of time?
	And I think those answers have now been revealed through investigative journalism, including some of the work we did about where her money came from.
	I really wrestled when I was coming up with her electability question on between two things.
	Well, three things.
	The candidates, because the way you do it is you come up with all sorts of research on the person.
	Obviously, hopefully you have a working knowledge of what matters to Republican voters and what the party looks like and what it's saying.
	And you look for her vulnerabilities.
	And for her, there were a couple of lanes.
	There was one accusing her essentially of being a political opportunist because she's flipped and flopped back and forth on Trump many, many, many times.
	One was how hawkish she is in a party that is increasingly rejecting that and that has learned some hard lessons from 20 years of war.
	And then the third was this lane, which is where I ultimately went with the money and, you know, being beholden to the banks and the billionaires.
	You know, is it, are we being too hard on her versus someone like Trump, right?
	It's like eventually he did, once he won, get all the billionaires.
	They're all, they all wind up bending the knee once you become the president and they will do it again.
	So like once you get into office, you know, they're all there wanting to control you for money and so on.
	And they're all going to try to woo him again if and when he becomes the nominee.
	So are we being too hard on her in that way?
	Well, one thing she said that is true is that all these people had been backing DeSantis in the beginning.
	They thought he was the best alternative to stop Trump.
	And only once they saw his polling numbers and concluded that he wasn't talented enough on the campaign trail and dealing with people, he wasn't resonating, they switched to Nikki Healy.
	So now he gets to say, oh, she's getting all this money from bankers of Wall Street.
	He was getting it at first and lost it to her.
	But, you know, once you're president, of course, everybody in power is going to go and try and, you know, have a friendly relationship with you because of how much power you wield as a politician.
	It is true, though, when Trump ran in 2016, all of this big donor money was looking for every alternative but Trump.
	They started with Jeb Bush.
	That was where all those donors win.
	No, they didn't want Trump.
	Then they went to Marco Rubio.
	Then they even, even though they hate him, went to Ted Cruz, anything but Trump.
	And they went one after the next and ultimately didn't win.
	And this is what they're doing here, too.
	So you are, of course, right, that once somebody gets very powerful, everybody bends the knee.
	But you can look at who power centers want to become president and who they don't want to become president.
	And I'm not saying you should automatically reject the candidate they support because maybe they support them because they'll foster economic growth or whatever.
	But the reality is, as you said, Nikki Haley supports an ideology, a foreign policy ideology and an economic ideology that the largely working class base of the Republican Party has come to detest.
	That's just the irreconcilable reality.
Establishment Reckoning 00:09:15
	Well, that's why, you know, we thought it would be interesting in that quick last block that we had, which was tight, to just ask a question about which president you admire.
	And, you know, Christy said Reagan.
	I think an honest Haley probably would have said Reagan too.
	And Reagan, even though he's been a god in the Republican Party for many, many decades, in today's Republican Party, it's kind of controversial to choose Reagan because he had that same foreign policy and some of the domestic policies.
	And so Christy did it.
	He said Reagan.
	And she said George Washington and Abe Lincoln, Glenn.
	It was like, oh, it's like a third grade fuck report.
	You know, like if you ask any American kid in like junior high who their favorite presidents are, they're going to say Abraham Lincoln and George Washington.
	I mean, it really sounded a little bit pitiful.
	That was not a good thing.
	I appreciated the Calvin Coolidge reference, though.
	That one was actually kind of thought out.
	That is Ron DeSantis.
	He's well thought out on everything.
	I said this after my interview with him.
	He can go 10 deep on any subject and then some.
	So I wasn't surprised at all that he had one that nobody else chose and he had good reasons for it.
	And then Vivek with the Thomas Jefferson and the swivel chair.
	I mean, everybody loves the swivel swole chair.
	We've been spending too much time focusing on that Declaration of Independence.
	The swivel chair is the pop.
	Thanks, TJ.
	All right, I have to move on to Rumble.
	We've gotten to the bottom of this.
	You're on Rumble.
	So one of my questions last night was about the vaccine injured.
	And apparently, unbeknownst to me, the feed blacked out on Rumble in the middle of the question.
	And I totally understand why on that question, it would lead people to go into, whoa, who did that mode?
	Here's the question, first of all, unedited.
	Through Operation Warp Speed.
	The Trump administration and private industry developed a COVID vaccine in record time.
	The program protected the drug companies from virtually all lawsuits over vaccine injuries.
	The government has a program to compensate for such harm, but critics say it is a black hole of bureaucracy.
	12,000 claims filed, 10% decided, only eight payouts so far in a forum with no right to counsel, no hearings, no appeals.
	Mr. Trump says he's very proud of Warp Speed.
	Should he be?
	Okay.
	And he went on from there.
	That was the full question.
	Now we know why the feed went out on Rumble.
	Rumble says it was not fed like there was a problem in the feed it was receiving from News Nation.
	It was nothing Rumble did.
	And NewsNation had a problem feeding to the spin room as well on that question and maybe another one I heard.
	Yeah.
	But oh, this is what happened.
	It froze black on Rumble.
	That's what the audience says.
	So I get it.
	Anyway, we just want to clear it up.
	There's no conspiracy.
	News Nation had trouble live on NewsNation.
	Right.
	And Rumble also posted the proof of this.
	Christina Poucha, the spokesperson for Governor DeSantis, said, you know, they absolutely believe that.
	And if there's any platform that wants an open COVID debate and has done more to foster an open COVID debate, it's Rumble.
	They allow every last conceivable view on there.
	So as Christina said, if there were any other platform, I'd be suspicious, but not with Rumble.
	Yeah, exactly.
	They're committed to all this stuff.
	But what did you make of this is the first vaccine in which COVID or, God forbid, the vaccine injured was raised.
	And I, like, it's been very annoying to me that nobody else has raised any of this.
	I realize we're well past COVID and people don't, they don't want to be reminded.
	But the vaccine injured are still out there.
	And it's not just people with small injuries.
	There have been some people catastrophically injured who are completely ignored.
	And you look at those, the payouts.
	I didn't get to this because the question is going to only be so long.
	The payouts these eight people have gotten are like a grand, maybe two.
	There's been no big payout and there never will be.
	And these vaccines were mandated in company after company and government after government department.
	Well, this is the thing, Megan.
	I mean, this is, I think, the heart of everything we've been talking about and that actually the Republican Party is dealing with, which is the reason that all happened is because there's complete government capture, capture of the regulatory agencies, capture of the entire executive branch by these industries through campaign donations and PACs and all sorts of other things.
	They have the revolving door where the executives of these industries go to run the regulatory agencies and they run it in favor of these industries.
	And when they leave, they get rewarded by getting hired even better jobs, stock options.
	It's legalized corruption.
	And so when everything is done from a public health perspective, it's all done to protect the pharmaceutical companies.
	So they had this mandate to develop a vaccine.
	And of course, they want to say, look, if you want us to develop a quick vaccine, we'll do it, but then you need to give us some protections.
	It's not totally unreasonable.
	The problem is that it was rendered taboo to talk about the deaths and the harms from these COVID vaccines because it was deemed COVID nihilism.
	There was widespread censorship on it.
	The minute anyone talked about it, they were accused of wanting to encourage people not to get the vaccine or to kill people.
	And so there was every attempt made to repress it.
	And that's exactly the problem is the establishment has so many ways of preventing debate that it took until the fourth debate, even in the Republican Party field, which is more open to talking about this, for this issue even to be raised.
	And I think a lot of people would find it controversial.
	And I understand why they would think maybe there was tampering going on to prevent the discussion because so much of that has happened.
	I know it was kind of a confluence of events all at one time, but News Nation aired the full thing on News Nation.
	They had no desire to censor anything.
	News Nation loved the question.
	I can speak to that firsthand.
	It's just sometimes you have these technical snafus and it's available in all forums now online.
	So you can see it for yourself.
	By the way, not for nothing.
	Here's, I mentioned this at the top of the hour.
	I intentionally did not bring the COVID question to DeSantis because it would have been too easy, but he saw the opportunity and jumped in and did have a powerful message on it.
	Here he is in SOT6.
	We need a reckoning for what this government did during COVID-19.
	That includes the MNRA shots.
	They put it out.
	It was experimental.
	People wanted it.
	Then the government started trying to mandate it to say, you don't have a right to put food on your table if you don't take an MNRA shot that was under emergency use.
	They tried to take nurses away.
	Now, in Florida, we blocked that.
	We provided protections for everybody so that they wouldn't lose their job.
	You also have the FDA approving an MNRA shot for six months old babies.
	There was no data to support that.
	They're doing it because big pharma will make money.
	So I'm going to go in there, CDC, NIH, FDA.
	We're going to clean house.
	There's going to be a reckoning because right now nobody's been held accountable for any of the damage and they're going to try to do it again.
	When I'm president, this will never happen to our country ever again.
	Glenn, the thing is, I believe him.
	Like, I believe him.
	He actually has gotten things done and he lived it firsthand.
	And unlike so many others, he wasn't lured into the excessive authoritarian rule that we were getting handed down.
	Well, here's the thing, Megan.
	This is what I don't understand because you asked me earlier why they're not attacking Trump more directly, more harshly.
	And we talked about that.
	But in this, these kinds of things, I think is where they could, without even alienating Trump voters.
	I mean, if you're going to be Chris Christie and just constantly talking about how much Trump is a terrible human being, of course, Trump voters are going to hate you.
	But what Ron DeSantis is able to do, and I don't think he does nearly enough, is say Trump's words were correct.
	The problem is he didn't follow through with any of it.
	He said he was going to build a wall.
	Where's the wall?
	I'll actually get it done.
	I mean, he did say that.
	But even with the COVID thing, the reason we had Felchie is because Trump didn't fire him.
	The reason we have Christopher Wray is because Trump didn't fire him.
	The deep state continued because Trump did nothing about it.
	Trump had so many appointees, including Nikki Haley, who were in foreign policy positions, even though their foreign policy was the exact opposite ideology of the one he said he believed in.
	So there was this constant mismatch between what Trump was promising people that he was going to do, that he got them to vote, that got them to vote for him, and the failure of the follow through or the actions.
	And I think that's where DeSantis could do way more work in saying, this is why Trump failed you.
	Not because he was wrong.
	He was right, but he didn't do it and I'll do it.
	I think that could be a lot more direct.
	And obviously, COVID is the perfect example where even a lot of liberals will now look back and say, even though we attacked and smeared and maligned DeSantis while it was being done, he turned out to be largely right.
	He was willing to read the data and not go along with the herd mentality.
	And that is an impressive attribute in a political leader.
	It seems to me that Ron DeSantis is finally finding his groove in this race.
	After the debate with Newsom, at this debate, he's finally finding his groove.
	And the question is whether it's too late, whether it's too late, you know, because if he had found that groove earlier, maybe this race would look a lot different.
	I don't know.
	His future in politics is going to be very long, no matter what happens in this race.
	Glenn Greenwald, your future in punditry and journalism is going to be very long as well.
	It's always a pleasure, my friend.
DeSantis Finding His Groove 00:00:27
	Great to see you.
	Great to see you, Megan.
	Thanks a lot.
	All right, see you soon.
	All right, tomorrow, we're going to be back, and Maureen Callahan will be here.
	I'm looking forward to talking to her.
	She's always fun.
	There's so much to catch up on.
	And again, Tucker Carlson will be here for the full show on Monday, and then we'll leave a little time at the end for calls.
	So set your calendar for that one.
	We'll see you tomorrow.
	Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show.
	No BS, no agenda, and no

Chapters

00:00:35 Exclusive Debate Content
00:05:08 Vivek Ramaswamy's Irony
00:20:39 Chris Christie Resume
00:35:22 Insulting Nikki Haley
00:48:26 MAGA Skepticism
01:04:10 RNC Release Decision
01:09:21 Political Persecution Fears
01:15:53 Racism and Immigrants
01:23:02 Donor Influence in Politics
01:29:02 Establishment Reckoning
01:38:17 DeSantis Finding His Groove