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Dec. 7, 2023 - The Megyn Kelly Show
01:07:53
20231207_post-debate-spin-room-special-with-vivek-ramaswamy
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Post-Debate Spin Room Thoughts 00:14:38
Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, live on SiriusXM Channel 111 every weekday at Noon East.
Hey everyone, I'm Megan Kelly.
Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show and our post-debate spin room special.
I am just off the debate stage where I was co-moderating tonight's debate and I have a lot of thoughts.
I'm going to share them with you in a minute.
Plus, we'll get reaction from some of our Megan Kelly show favorites: Emily Jashinsky, Michael Moynihan, Tom Bevan.
But we begin with one of the stars up there tonight, and that is entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.
Welcome to the show, Vivek.
Great to have you.
Good to be on, Megan.
How are you doing?
Thank you.
I appreciate it.
So, I know on the stage, I have to call you Mr. Ramaswamy, but I think I can call you Vivek here.
Yes, I can't.
I took my tie off, so that's where we're going.
Yeah, we're all relaxed now.
How did you think it went?
The overall debate?
I think it was good.
I mean, I was pleased with it.
I was fluid.
I didn't really have much restraint.
And I think that, I mean, I think it's the first time we actually had real conversation between the candidates, but still actually being able to hear one another.
So, if we're going to set the bar that low, I think it was actually pretty much a success.
I think there's some issues that we do need to discuss that we didn't get to in this debate that I think are deep ideological fault lines in the GOP primary.
I think free speech is one of those issues.
That was what I was saying before we had to do it.
Free speech and foreign policy.
Those are the two big ones.
Free speech is on our list, but you know, everything dies as a result of something else that went.
We were a little too free with our speech, I think.
But we wanted to let you guys debate.
So, it's like that's why it was like you have to strike the balance, right?
Because otherwise, if we just stay rigid to our questions and get through every single topic, you guys don't get to debate each other.
That's right.
That's right.
And so, I think that's a good debate.
And I think we do have some ideological divides in the GOP.
I think the big ideological divide is: what do you think is America's approach to being the leader of the world?
All of us agree that America should be that shining city on a hill.
I'm of the view that it should be by being foremost strong at home.
I think we have weakened ourselves by fighting these foreign wars in other parts of the world.
That as we revealed on that stage tonight, many of them who are clamoring for going after defending some part of Ukraine don't know the first thing about the part of Ukraine they're actually arguing for.
You're right, that people are starting to move more and more towards the position that you took early on.
Yeah, and I think I think it's a form of intellectual fraud on the American people, but I think that that's one divide number one.
And then, divide number two is: what do you have the right to say in this country?
Do you actually have the right to engage in heinous speech or not?
And I think we have candidates on both sides of that issue, but I'm a free speech absolutist, and I think those are the two main divides.
Well, you know, I wanted to talk to you about that because you and I had our little exchange on Twitter.
I went to the other side.
I suspect we have some different opinions, but we can continue that elsewhere as well.
That's exactly right.
All right, so let's talk about some of the big moments because my impression from the debate moderator was Christie came loaded for bear for you.
Yeah, he did.
Right?
Were you expecting that?
I didn't really go in one way or another.
I kind of got a kick out of it.
And my view is that Chris Christie's foreign policy experience is about as thin as it's going to get.
And blockading that bridge from New Jersey to New York was, as I said on stage, the best example of it I could think of.
And I think that Chris Christie would do this country a favor if he got out of the race.
And so I think I didn't hold back in saying so.
Here's a little flavor of what we're talking about.
SAT1.
Let me just say something here.
You know, his reasonable peace deal in Ukraine, he made it clear: give them all the land they've already stolen, promise Putin you'll never put Ukraine in Russia, and then trust Putin not to have a relationship with China.
Let me tell you something.
That's no reason.
That's not my deal.
That's not my death.
Yes, it's exactly what you said.
I do this at every debate.
I'll just say what I'm saying.
Don't interrupt me.
I didn't interrupt you, okay?
You say that.
You two are every debate.
You go out on the stump and you say something.
All of us see it on video.
We confront you on the debate stage.
You say you didn't say it, and then you back away.
And I want to say exactly what I said, because I'm not done yet.
Now look, this is nonsense.
It's not a spirit.
It's made a speed of nonsense.
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 no one.
So he was gunning for you.
What was that about?
Why?
Why you?
Why you tonight?
Well, look, I think that he is very frustrated that he's not able to go after Donald Trump.
There's two key America first candidates in this race.
And as I said, there is a deep ideological divide in the GOP.
So I think he's venting his frustration at Trump on me, and I can take it.
I can handle the heat.
And I responded to him accordingly.
How about the Nikki Haley moment, Nikki Corrupt?
That was big when you held that up.
Well, I think it is the heart of who she is and what she represents.
I don't care about Republican versus Democrat.
We need to end the corruption in D.C.
I don't think you should be able to join the board of a company that you underwrote nine-figure deals while being governor of a state that did deals with that company.
I don't think you should use your connections to start a military contracting firm after you leave the UN and then not disclose those clients.
She's asked Donald Trump to release his tax returns back in 2016, joining Democrats to do it, yet now hasn't released her tax returns.
I've released 20 years of mine.
So I do think that Haley is fundamentally an example of the corrupt establishment.
Biden has sold off our foreign policy to make their family rich in the form of that bribe to Hunter Biden.
I think Nikki Haley's defense contractor is quite likely, if some recent reporting is to be believed, making money off of sales in the Russia-Ukraine war as well.
The American people deserve to know that.
And I think there's an intellectual fraud here where she professes this foreign policy experience that began in all of a cup of coffee stint at the UN, offering platitudes that were served up by political consultants since the 1980s, yet doesn't know the first thing about the region she actually even wants us to fight for.
And so I think it's an intellectual fraud.
I think it's a financial fraud.
And I do think that regardless of who leads this country, if you want somebody who's actually going to take on that corruption in D.C., you can't be part of it in the first place.
So I didn't want to speak to that directly to that.
Let's shift and talk about free speech for one minute because one of the things that we wanted to talk about was what's happening in these campuses.
Eliana got to it a bit and some of the testimony on Capitol Hill.
But you and I had a dust up on Twitter the other week, the other month, because you, I understand the opposition to Ron DeSantis trying to disband students in justice in Palestine.
I get that.
And that's where I'm strongest.
I guess, I get that.
That's where I'm most strong.
I get it.
And I agree.
I mean, I've said on my show.
I didn't know where you were.
Yeah, I don't agree with that move.
Because the Constitution.
Yeah, of course.
Yes, there's this thing called the First Amendment.
It's kind of risky.
It's an artist.
And then there's this separate cultural debate that we ought to have that doesn't have to do with the law.
Well, that's where you and I diverged because the students in for justice in Palestine, days after the 10-7 attack, sent this letter saying it's entirely Israel's fault.
It's all Israel's fault.
I mean, it's nonsense.
No, and I know you don't support that.
But then you had these lots of folks like Bill Ackerman and others who said, I want the name.
I want every student who's in that group.
And I said, right on, me too.
As an employer, I would never hire somebody who signed that letter.
And you were like, you said, we shouldn't be shaming students.
We shouldn't be naming students like that.
They're dumb kids.
Yeah.
And what is they're about to go into America's biggest media companies and law firms that, right?
So I'd say a couple things.
One is very pragmatic in the reality of how college campuses function, and then the other is a cultural point.
The way you're a member of a college student group is you actually just put your name on some student group list.
Many of these people did not even know they were affiliating themselves with the state.
I can see, but they're not.
So to put that to one side, and I know you would probably agree with that.
You'd be like, take me out of that group.
I think the reality of, I mean, this is a really not terribly important point, Megan, but if we're going to talk about it, let's just understand.
I know many of those kids have talked to many of those kids on those college campuses.
They actually have no idea whether they would count as members of the group or not, or whether the leadership of the group is saying something they have no say in actually determining.
There's a very easy way of making that clear.
Then you have to disavow.
Well, take me off your email list.
Yes.
And then it gets to a culture of what we want in our country.
Do we want student groups, students signing up with groups even they disagree with?
I did that when I was in college.
And so it gets to the cultural question of not legally what would our founding fathers say, but actually you guys asked me on that debate stage, you know, which president would you take inspiration from.
And so let's just go through this.
And the table chair.
The original team and this little chair we're sitting on.
He invented it.
I don't think Thomas Jefferson would be on the side of saying that we want our universities and institutions of higher ed creating blacklists based on what a 19-year-old kid has or hasn't said.
But it's absolutely, here's the name.
No, no, but that's absolutely.
The UN will hire off the public.
For this one issue.
Because then if we do it for this issue, we're going to be doing it for somebody who denied climate change, somebody who questioned the wisdom of using fossil fuels.
Somebody who claimed that J6 was actually an inside job or not.
I think that people should be able to speak their mind freely on these topics.
And I think once we go down this road, imagine if this was during the COVID pandemic.
I get it.
You're saying slippery slope.
But I think the slippery slope is really part of what these free speech incursions, cultural free speech incursions are all about.
If during the COVID pandemic, and I think you and I would probably be on the same side of this, if somebody questioned the safety and efficacy of vaccines, I think you have a lot of people on the other side to say, as an employer, I want to know that.
If I'm in the healthcare industry, tell me which student did that because I don't want to hire them.
That's fine.
I actually think this could lead to the better alignments for students and their employees.
I think it leads to students being less likely to discover who they are and what they think.
And I think that we've got to lead them rather than the censorship.
Talk to me about your plan because your poll numbers have gone down in recent history and one of the top guys in your campaign left and went to work for Trump and there's a lot of people.
He was actually one of the top guys as a side note, but we brought in someone above him and he moved.
But I respect him.
I don't want to be throwing people under the bus.
But respectfully, you're not on the street.
The polls are not on track to where they need to be for me to win this election yet.
Right.
That much is fair.
Or even win the undercard part of the election.
So how long do you stay in this thing?
What's the goal of this poll?
Oh, I think I'm not going anywhere.
And I think, to the contrary, I have a responsibility to be in this race as somebody who is taking the America First movement to the next level.
I do think we're going to deliver a surprise in Iowa.
I think the media has done us a great favor of downplaying our expectations going into Iowa and New Hampshire.
We're seeing a lot of people coming to our events, like a lot, like not small numbers of people.
Like the crowds we're seeing at our events do not match up to the narrative of where the public polling is at.
That's what happened to Trump.
And absolutely, and when you see many of those people at those events, though, many of them are coming with Ron Paul shirts.
Many of them are first-time caucus goers.
We're actually going to college campuses.
I go to frat houses and they have like massive events where people, I mean, I haven't been a celebrity for much of my life, but if you go to many of those young people, we're seeing something that I think Iowa has not seen for a long time.
So if those people come to the caucus, I think we're going to shatter expectations on this, and I think that's going to propel us forward.
Exactly.
I love that you've fit some frat houses in on your busy campaign schedule.
Good move.
Hundreds of them, too.
And these kids, and that's what I see in these kids is they're lost, but the conservative movement needs to lead them, and I think we can do that.
It's great to see you.
It's good to see Megan.
Yeah, all the best to you.
Thank you.
Thanks for having me.
Appreciate it.
All right, that was fun.
It's great to see him in person.
We've known each other a long time, but we haven't done this in a while.
Joining me now, Emily Jashinsky.
She's culture editor at the Federalist and host of the Federalist Radio Hour, and Michael Moynihan, co-host of the fifth column.
Guys, great to see you.
I haven't gotten to talk to you, but I know you've been busy working here.
What'd you think?
Great job, Megan.
I mean, that was, I thought that was easily the best of all the debates.
I thought the pacing, by the way, was excellent because you've got a broader scope of issues.
And it was interesting, actually, with the lake just now that you guys didn't get to some of the topics you wanted to get to, because that was the broadest range of issues that I've heard covered in any debate.
And actually, like, it was very, very impressive how much was brought in.
I thought, personally, this looks like a two-way race between Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley for the second place.
So it's really obviously a three-way race, as you often point out, Megan, but the second place is clearly DeSantis and Haley at this point.
I also preferred having it down into the four candidates.
I thought that really let them distinguish themselves in a way we haven't seen yet either.
Thank you for the kind words.
Moynihan, what'd you think?
So do I have to offer the kind words too now?
I mean, I have kind words.
It was great.
They were great questions.
You don't need kind words.
Good to know.
Here, I don't need to butter you up, but they were great questions.
I will say this.
I will say about Vivek, who is just on, so I'll respond to him.
And I'll be generous to start.
It's always nice to be generous at the beginning.
I, like you, Megan, think he is very, very good on free speech.
He excels in that.
And I think Ron DeSantis is absolutely off base when it comes to the excorable people in the Students for Justice in Palestine movement, the horrible things that they said.
I thank God that they say them and they say them loud so I know who they are.
And like Bill Ackman, I would never hire them.
So that's the first thing.
The second thing is with Vivek is that, you know, I understand why his unfavorables are so high after watching that debate.
The one thing that really, really irked me, if he, he referenced Ron Paul at the end there, if he wants to be the Ron Paul of the new GOP, a little more aggressive, Trump, you know, he's like, I don't really, he doesn't really care about foreign policy.
He says, I keep you out of foreign wars.
Whereas Vivek is much more ideological about it in the sort of Ron Paul way.
But he makes an unbelievable mistake here when he attacks Chris Christie and Nikki Haley with something that is not true.
He keeps on saying that we are going to, they want to send your kids who die.
I have looked for this.
There is no such statement from either of them.
They want to support the Ukrainians and the Israelis.
You can disagree with that.
That's absolutely fine.
I have a lot of friends.
I have people on my own podcast who disagree with some of those policies.
But I don't.
But it's not true in any way that, you know, it's a rather different thing to say that Americans are going to be involved in a ground war in Donetsk and Luhansk, if those are the words that he was looking for tonight.
Or crime.
I had them.
I was ready to go.
But you know what?
I don't like the cheap gotcha stuff.
But the point, it reminded me of George Bush in 2000 when every time he sat down was like, you know, name the president of Uzbekistan.
And he was like, I have no idea.
Which no one really should know that.
But no, I think that that's a cheap point because it's just not true.
It's frankly beneath him to say things like that.
And you know what?
If he's going to be conspiratorial in a very Ron Paul way, he said in his book that January 6th was deplorable.
And now he says it's an inside job and that we don't know what really happened on 9-11.
So, I mean, I don't know what happened to Vivek, but those are sort of not sensible positions to be taking.
There was a lot in there.
Did you think somebody won and lost?
I mean, look, I think that Ron DeSantis had a very good debate.
I mean, and I say this independent of the things that I agree and disagree on.
I think Nikki Haley was okay.
DeSantis Wins on Trans Argument 00:03:40
I don't think she hurt herself too much, but she really, really flailed on the trans answer, and you pushed her hard on that.
You know, I will say this, at least Chris Christie was completely forthright about it.
This is what I believe.
She kind of played it in a couple of different ways, and DeSantis went in really hard on her and did very well.
So I think that, you know, I guess on points, like a boxing match, I would say DeSantis came out, came out ahead of everybody else.
I was surprised, Emily, this is sort of a new version of DeSantis.
I don't think we've seen this version at the prior three debates.
I have the exact same takeaway.
I thought DeSantis won on one with another foil.
So when he was debating Andrew Gillum, when he's debating another candidate, one other candidate, he's at his strongest.
There's something about it for him that's where he's at his best.
And this four-person debate really, really allowed it, allowed the Haley-DeSantis matchup to take center stage in a way that he rolled off of his Gavin Newsom debate from last week feeling good.
He took her on on the donor question.
She had a tough line back at him about how he's just jealous that the Wall Street donors aren't on his side anymore.
But I actually thought he ended up with a better of that argument.
He ended up with a better in the trans argument.
He sounded very strong on foreign policy, which is really Nikki's bread and butter.
That's where she's supposed to be at her best.
So again, yeah, I think Nikki Haley has this idea that she's going to have momentum going into North New Hampshire and then down to South Carolina where Tim Scott is now out of the race.
She's down to Donald Trump in both of those states, neck and neck with DeSantis in New Hampshire.
I don't think this helps her in New Hampshire to the extent that even matters when everyone is down double digits to Trump anyway.
And to say that it is a very, very bad comeback in the GOP of 2023 that you're just jealous that I have all the Wall Street donors.
That doesn't really resonate.
All right.
Well, she's sitting right here, so I'm going to ask her about that now.
Stand by, guys.
Thank you.
Joining me now, 2024, presidential candidate and former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., Nikki Haley.
Great to have you, Ambassador Thanksgiving.
Thanks so much.
I appreciate it.
How did you feel it went?
It was fine.
I mean, look, we knew that they were all going to start to kind of hit.
They are after you.
But I appreciate that.
That means we're winning.
And so our goal was just to make sure we tried to show that, look, they're fighting to go up, but we're continuing our momentum.
We're going to continue to do well.
We're second in Iowa, second in New Hampshire, second in South Carolina.
We got one more guy to catch up to, and that's what we're working on.
What did you think of, I mean, Vivek and DeSantis kept hitting you on the ties to the billionaires, the ties to the banks, corporate corruption.
And, you know, our guest was just saying, in this Republican Party, is it really a defense to say, oh, well, you know, they're just jealous that I have all these donors and they don't.
It's true.
These were all donors of Ron's, and they've left him because he's losing, and they've come to me, and now he's upset about it.
It's just like the Americans for Prosperity.
That's the most conservative grassroots network in the country.
And he was hitting it saying that they weren't great a couple of days ago.
Well, he fought just as hard to get that.
He took that endorsement from them when he was running for governor.
So it's sour grapes for him.
But look, I mean, at the end of the day, when you go and look at what matters, I've been a chief executive.
I've been a governor.
I know what it takes to take a state that has 11% unemployment and make it an economic powerhouse.
I've dealt with Russia, China, Iran, North Korea every day that I was at the United States.
Let me ask you about the DEI thing because they raised the, you know, it has a different name when it's in corporate America, but they were sort of saying companies like BlackRock, they invest in left-wing causes and they're backing you and they're going to somehow want you to do their dirty work to push left-wing causes to sort of abandon the conservative movement.
Erasing Women and Biological Boys 00:04:02
They know I am completely against all the woke ideology, all the woke culture.
I've been on record saying that.
I will continue to say that.
Companies need to focus on making money and they need to stay out of politics, period.
That's what I think we need to do.
All right, I want to talk about the trans thing because we spent some time on that tonight, which we hadn't done before.
And I'm still unclear because I too have looked at your history on this and I still don't know whether you are in favor of a ban on these medical procedures for minors or you're not in favor of it.
Very clear.
I am in favor of a ban.
I do not think any medical procedure should be done to a child before the age of 18.
That's why I said I have been on record saying if you can't get a tattoo till 18, you certainly don't have any sort of gender transformation during that time.
Even if your parents give you permission, I don't think it's okay because kids, we know kids going through puberty can be confused.
They get a lot of different thoughts through their heads.
That is not the time to be making a decision like that.
I'm adamantly opposed to any sort of body changing anything until the age of 18.
How about the puberty blockers into cross-sex hormones?
None of that should happen until the age of 18.
I'm on record saying that.
I've always said that.
I mean, you know, Ron kept saying that I hadn't done it, but Ron has been lying this entire time.
I mean, he's got spending millions of dollars on commercials on TV, and everybody from CNN to Newsmax has said that his ads are false.
On this subject, I confess I myself and my researchers looked very hard because I wanted to make sure I knew everybody's position.
By the way, I was right about what I said to Governor Christie, too.
And what I found you saying was, you probably saw yesterday there was a viral clip of you, which we had seen.
But they clipped the business.
I've seen the whole interview.
It was six months ago.
I was given a CBS this morning and you were asked if a 12-year-old girl wants to become a boy, what medical procedures, what medical care should be available, or do you believe the law should get involved?
You said, I don't believe the law should get involved.
There's that.
But then I saw your spokesperson gave a statement to the Daily Caller saying she's against the medicalization of the minors.
So I too saw a bit of a split.
Why did you say that to CBS?
So I don't want government involved in anything related to what happens between parents and children, but I don't want any procedures for kids.
Does that make sense?
Yes, it does make perfect sense.
That's a law saying you can't change a child until the age of 18.
But parents and kids can decide how best to deal with that.
That video that was going viral that talked about, I was talking about suicides.
And so they took the suicides and they tried to make it something else.
But I'm very clear on this.
I want parents to have as many rights.
When Chris was talking about parents having rights, they do have rights.
I want them to have rights.
But that's not government saying parents can't have rights.
That's us just saying, for a law, you can do whatever you want when you're 18.
But we're not going to have you do that before then, because I don't think that's in the best interest of the children.
Let me ask you another question that wound up on the editing room floor just because time.
What do you think we should do about the fact?
And I know you're good on the girls' sports and all.
I've heard you many times on that, so I don't want to retread it, but what about the fact that the term woman is being eroded?
I mean, it's being erased in American society.
This is infuriating to me because the idea that, what was that, I forgot which school it was, but they gave the definition of a woman and it was a non-man.
And I was sick to my stomach.
That's why I always say strong girls become strong women, strong women become strong leaders.
That doesn't happen if biological boys are playing in their sports.
That doesn't happen if you go and make a woman feel any more inferior or not, you know, who she is.
And the idea that they're trying to erase us, that's my biggest thing, is I think they're trying to erase women by now saying, oh, but biological boys should do that.
I mean, it's absurd, and we can't have that happen.
The crack team telling me it was Johns Hopkins.
Johns Hopkins, thank you.
Yeah.
All right.
Focus on Recruitment Not Draft 00:05:49
So the other thing is immigration.
I thought it was an interesting question because you did not say I'm going to deport all of the people who are here illegally tonight.
You said the ones who came recently under Joe Biden, that's one thing, seven or eight million.
But you know that there's a hardcore wing of the Republican Party who are like, what about the rest of them?
All of them need to go.
Right, and we have to find them first.
So the first thing we need to do is we've got to figure out where everybody is, look at what their status is.
And that's why I say it would be easy to say, oh, send them all back.
We don't know where they are.
That's the reality.
We know.
Are you saying if we find them, they're all going, like even the ones who are working and paying taxes?
Because you seem to be saying the opposite.
If they've been here 20 years and they've been paying taxes and they've had a job and they've been since, I think we need to create categories of how we're going to do this.
There is no simple answer.
And so if somebody's been here 20 years and they've done everything right, I think we put them in one category.
If they have come over and they're sitting there feeding off the system or they're part of these eight, nine million that came under Biden, they got to go back.
The point of all of that is don't incentivize more to come.
The only way you don't incentivize more to come is to deport, is to make sure they don't jump the line and they know that there's going to be a price to pay.
Another question on foreign policy, I asked this question of DeSantis, but I'd love to hear your answer too.
If China does invade Taiwan, and I know deterrence, I get it, but if they do, are we going to send American troops?
This is the thing, if we say that we're going to do it, we have to follow through with it.
And so the best way to deal with China, and this is what I saw at the United Nations, is let them know there will be hell to pay.
That's how you say it.
Trying to stay strategically ambiguous.
It's more about, but it's leveraging us, right?
So when you say there's going to be hell to pay, it shouldn't just be words.
Taiwan should be getting equipment, ammunition, everything they can so that China sees it.
This is action that we're actually arming them right now.
We're actually giving them everything that they need.
That's going to let China know we're serious.
The other thing that's going to let China know we're serious is if we stick with Ukraine, if we stick with Israel.
Because if they see us just getting tired and leaving.
We are tired, though.
Don't you think?
You look at those polls of Republican voters on Ukraine, they're not with you.
Listen, and this war would have been over if Biden would have given them what they needed in the first place.
This war never should have happened if Biden would have dealt with it when Russia surrounded Ukraine for that long.
I think most voters believe that.
I think most Republicans would give you that, but they're fed up.
I totally agree, and we need to end it.
And there's a way that you can end Ukraine.
The way you end Ukraine is if you went and said to Ukraine, we will invite you into NATO.
It's a process.
It doesn't happen quickly.
We will invite you into NATO.
Doesn't require anything more of the U.S. under those laws.
What would happen is Putin would know, Russia's never invaded a NATO country.
They've invaded Georgia, Moldova, and now Ukraine.
They've never invaded a NATO country.
If we do the invitation, Putin would know he needs to come up with an exit strategy.
Zelensky would know he can go back and say we got the invitation.
If Putin does continue fighting with Ukraine and they come in NATO, then we have to fight.
We have to get involved.
I mean, the Ukrainians and Israelis, they don't want American troops.
They want to win this on their own.
They want to win their countries on their own.
I don't think we should ever give cash to any country, any country.
Because you can't.
And not troops.
Not troops.
I don't think we need to do that.
I think, look, my husband's a combat veteran.
I don't want him fighting any more wars than he has to.
All right, last question on that front, because I worked with a bunch of 17 and 8-year-old, 18-year-old boys in advance of the debate.
And I asked them, what would you like to ask the candidates?
And for you, they're the young guys.
I actually went back and traffic.
I did not realize once we let women into combat roles, we kept the draft still limited to just men.
And I have to say, I'm kind of relieved.
I don't know.
It just makes me scared to think of my 12-year-old daughter when she gets to that age.
Maybe it's sexist, but in any event, they want to know under what circumstances you would implement a draft.
I don't think we need to go back to a draft.
I think what we do need to do is focus on recruitment.
Recruitment is down 25%.
Why is it down?
Interestingly enough, we get 80% of our recruits from military families.
For the first time, military families are telling their kids don't do it.
It's unheard of.
But if you look at how we treat our veterans, you wouldn't be surprised.
If you look at the fact that they're teaching gender pronoun, that they're making our military men and women take gender pronoun classes, that's not the same.
But we did look at the Army survey that said only 5% say it's wokeness, the reason they're not joining.
They say, kind of amazingly, because I know you're a military family, the number one reason they're not joining is fear of death.
And the second one is a fear of post-traumatic stress disorder, like stress.
They're afraid of stress.
And the third is they don't want to miss their friends and family.
Which, I mean, I just think like as a military, like, where are the old grizzled military people?
Patriots, right?
My husband joined after 9-11.
It was that love of country.
It's that sacrifice.
Your friends and family.
First of all, they don't think government's going to have their backs.
That's a real thing.
The second thing is one in three veterans suffers from PTSD or thoughts of suicide.
We lose 22 heroes a day.
There's something to that.
We're not doing anything.
And we're not doing near enough to help in the transition or to make sure they have telehealth with mental health care.
We're not giving them good health care all the way.
You know, so why does anybody see the need?
But I want to bring back love of country.
I want us to go back to our national purpose.
People should be proud of America so much so like the Israelis are, where they want to fight for their freedoms, where the Ukrainians are, they want to fight for their freedoms.
We want people to love our country.
But our country's in chaos.
And we've got to get out of this chaos.
Yeah, it's true.
The more patriotism you feel, the more likely you are to sign up for the military to want to do that.
Exactly right.
It's like this downward spiral.
So nice to have you, Larry.
Haley Knocked Off Her Heels 00:15:33
Thank you so much.
Appreciate it.
Good luck to you.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Well, that was fun.
I hope you're enjoying the show.
I am.
It's great to see these candidates here in person after being with them on the debate stage.
Back with me now, Emily Jashinsky and Michael Moynihan.
All right, Moynihan, so do you feel satisfied now?
Do you feel better?
I do.
Here's the thing: is that when I said before, and I'm going to be clear about this, that I thought Haley was knocked a little bit onto her heels by DeSantis and the trans exchange, and that was particularly about bathrooms and about Florida's own policy when it comes to the trans issue.
What she should have done, and I'm going to offer some free advice here, and she didn't even do it here, was that clip that was going around, I heard that 19 seconds too.
It was 19 seconds.
The DeSantis people published it.
It's a dishonest edit.
And the thing about that is, and I don't think she expressed this in the right way, because 30 seconds into that, she says, you know, I think parents should be able to interface with their kids about this stuff without government.
And then she says, but when they're 18 and they're interested in, the quote from her was a more permanent change.
And the more permanent change is obviously what people were hanging around her neck, that she wants 12-year-olds to have surgery if their parents say it's okay.
She didn't say that.
And I don't think she was clear enough in making the point that when she said permanent change at 18, she was talking about surgery.
Okay.
So I think, I'll tell you this.
I think this was the most lively debate.
And I think the candidates came ready to battle, which was great.
I think two things made it great.
We wanted them to debate, and they wanted to debate.
You know, we allowed them, right?
They came feisty and we allowed that to sort of manifest.
And that's what I think made the difference in tonight's performance.
And I will say, I do believe, if I may say, I think the questions were harder and they were more provocative and they were more interesting.
And so people, you know, they were a little bit more on their heels and they had it.
It was like a little bit torqued up as opposed to, what would you do about that?
So I think those are the things that kind of made the difference, Emily.
Well, yeah, but they also were framed really well because this isn't the typical corporate media framing, which takes basically like a dorm room college freshman leftist's idea about trans ideology or about the border.
I thought the border, Elizabeth Vargas' question about fentanyl to the Vaikramaswamy, just a fantastic, sharp question.
We haven't heard anyone bring that up basically this entire cycle.
And that's because these Republican candidates are answering questions for people who despise their worldviews.
And I think that basic point of respect, that basic point of respect, like meeting people where they are and saying, I'm going to ask you about this in a way that is going to actually be clarifying for Republican voters, that was the difference with this debate.
And that's not easy to do.
So I really thought that made a huge difference.
It's also helpful that there are four candidates.
So I imagine being patient with everyone is a little bit more easier when there's four candidates.
But then again, they're all jockeying for time over the next person.
So that's probably never easy.
Yeah, although they were compliant.
Nine times out of 10, if you gave them the signal, like, be quiet, I'm coming, they were compliant, which I think helped too.
All right, stand by.
I'm going to get to Tom Bevan.
He's here.
He's co-founder and president of Real Clear Politics, which we love.
Great to see you, Tom.
How are you doing?
Great to be here.
Thanks for having me.
What'd you think of the big night?
I thought it was great.
I agree.
I thought the questioning, I mean, out of the gate, Ron DeSantis, why are you 40 points behind Trump?
Correction Chris Christie was a great one too.
So look, I think, in my opinion, I think DeSantis, this is probably his best debate, I think.
Yeah, I agree.
He was more comfortable.
He obviously had command.
He managed to stay out of the fray.
There was a lot of bad blood, a lot of bickering, name-calling going on, and he managed to kind of stay out of it a little bit.
I thought Nikki Haley, she should have been prepared for the attacks.
I think she was, but I think she was still a bit taken aback and a little overwhelmed by the magnitude of them, the multitude of them on every single issue with DeSantis and Ramaswamy sort of joining forces almost.
It was definitely a pylon.
Yeah, total pylon.
And, you know, Chris Christie came to her defense a little bit, but at the end, I mean, she just, she didn't respond.
She couldn't really respond as forcefully.
I mean, they were just coming too fast.
Yeah, I thought that was an interesting dynamic because Steyerwald had said on our show today, I think it was today, that if he were Christie, I can't remember whether he said this on the air or to me in our debate prep, Christie would be looking for a white night moment of Nikki Haley.
And man, he called it.
That's exactly what we saw.
Yeah.
And I looked at her to see how she was responding when he was white-knighting her, and she looked a little like uncomfortable.
I'm not sure if she knew what to do.
Like, I'm running for president, do I let him white night me?
Or do I say, I got this, Chris?
Yeah.
But there was just sort of a dynamic of, let's get her, like wolves.
Yeah.
No, and even despite your prompting, trying to make Donald Trump an issue, other than Chris Christie, he really didn't, the candidates didn't really engage on Trump.
DeSantis had that one list of promises that Trump didn't fulfill that he was going to fulfill.
Nikki Haley took a couple swipes, but that was basically it.
You know who didn't come in for a lot of criticism tonight?
Joe Biden.
I mean, they mentioned him on the economy a little bit, but other than that, he really did not take the beating that you would have expected from these candidates.
They were more focused on each other.
Yes, and our questions were focused on these individuals on the stage, not on Joe Biden, because that's just such an easy out for them.
We were never going to give them that glorious pass.
Go rip on the Democrat.
Of course, they all want to do that.
But if I were a candidate, I would have made it happen anyway.
You know, turn it.
Give an answer that's responsive and then turn it.
Right, because it is low-hanging fruit, and it's something that unites the Republican base.
Has anything changed tonight?
I don't know that the fundamental, I mean, look, we've had three debates.
Nothing's really changed the fundamental dynamic of this race.
I'm not sure that anything that happened up there is going to fundamentally change what happens in Iowa.
But I do think Ron DeSantis, as I said, he needed to have a strong debate.
I think he did.
And then the question is, you know, is the organizational poll that he's got an eye with that he says he has in Iowa is going to show up?
Because what it's going to take is one of those candidates, Haley or DeSantis, to really overperform.
He's at 17 in Iowa, she's at 14.
Trump's at 45.
And so you're going to need one of them to sort of overperform big Lee.
And you're going to need Donald Trump to underperform his polls.
And if they can get within 10 points of him, then they can say, listen, we're surging.
Donald Trump is vulnerable.
He didn't, you know, the thesis out there that he is vulnerable, that his support is soft, that is true, and off we go to New Hampshire.
So, I mean, Haley's in a better position to make that argument since she's in second in New Hampshire and DeSantis is in fifth.
But nevertheless, that's what either one of these candidates wants to see 45 days from now.
Okay, stand by.
Joining me now, I just mentioned him, News Nation's Chris Steyerwalt.
He's also co-host of the Ink Stained Wretches podcast with my debate co-moderator, Eliana Johnson.
So you called it the white knight.
What did you think?
We've put so much time into this debate, Styrowalt.
How'd you think it went?
It's so hard for me to separate the personal from the analytical, right?
So I have to put on two different hats here.
So the one is, wow, right?
Like, it was great.
We had the best debate by far.
And I know that I'm partial in this, but we had the best debate so far.
That was the most interesting.
We talked about things nobody else had talked about.
You guys did a stellar job.
It was one half of a debate that was, I believe someone once described it as a spicy margarita, I believe.
I think we delivered this spicy margaritas.
So the first hour was spicy margaritas, a pitcher of spicy margaritas.
And then the second hour was a steak dinner.
It was substantive.
You talked about things that had not been discussed before.
It was deep.
It was substantive.
It was interesting.
So I really think we did what we did.
So I just have to give you a little, we'll pound.
We'll pound.
Right on.
And everybody should know that you are very, very involved in all the questions, making them better.
I just can't do that much not being delivered on time.
That's all I did.
But I can tell you this, as an analyst, this was, and Tom Bevin is exactly right.
This was Ron DeSantis' best debate.
He was obviously mad.
He was obviously PO'd.
And he brought that sort of intensity.
And it's something that you had alluded to in questions and that we had been talking about, which is, where's the COVID Ron DeSantis, right?
Where's the never back down Ron DeSantis?
Where's the fighter guy?
He showed up.
He was present.
He was there.
I thought it was also important that his attacks on Nikki Haley were not characterological attacks.
He wasn't saying you're a bad person, you're not corrupt.
He was fighting her on substantive policy, things that he said she had done, and they went back and forth on that.
I thought Nikki Haley had a very good hour during the margarita pitcher, right?
Yeah.
Because she rose above, she elevated, she was placid.
A very smart moment where you guys gave her the opportunity.
Okay, you want to roll around in the mud with Ramaswamy again?
And she said, nope.
Nope.
Nope.
No, thank you.
Second hour, she was a little too placid, right?
She's not far enough up in the polls to be running like a frontrunner, right?
Because what got her where she is is scrapping, and it's not time for her to stop scrapping yet.
We actually have that soundbite.
Let's watch it, SAT3.
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, 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 us a lot of people.
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.
Okay, so that was it.
And yes, so I thought that was fine, but I just thought she was sort of the incredible shrinking woman for most of the evening.
Exactly.
So the first hour, she's going for high-minded regret, rising above.
I'm not going to, I'm not going to, I'm not going to be as lowly as you people, you squalid people.
But then in the second hour where she should have stepped up more and fought more and been more assertive about her policy views and pushing in on that, she didn't.
And I think, and I, as a dude, I don't know if I'm allowed to say this.
It didn't strengthen her to have Chris Christie riding in.
It did not, it did not.
I was just saying to Tom, like, I think had it been me up there getting, and he'd been white-knighting me, I think I would have said, I got it, Chris.
Yeah, I'll fight my own bad.
Thank you.
Thanks very much, but I'll fight my own bad.
I'm good.
Appreciate it, but I'm good.
That's right.
I didn't think she knew what to do because it was like, but there was a moment where I looked at her face and she almost looked like there was almost a scared look on it.
I don't think it was scared.
But the facial expression conveyed like a, like a, I don't know, I can't imitate it, but she just looked like she was getting smaller by the second.
And I was like, she needs to change that look immediately because she's asking to be leader of the free world.
So Emily and Moynihan are still with us too.
I mean, let's talk about Vivek because, you know, my opening question to him on electability was, you know, with respect, it was basically, you're Sybil.
You know, you show up.
It's a dated reference.
You know, I was like, who the hell are you, right?
Like, you show up in the one debate.
You're really sweet.
Then you're really mean.
Then you're making fun of, I don't know, I can't keep track.
And tonight, I thought he kind of started off trying to be nice, Vivek, and then boom, like the chest opened up with the, you know, it's me, mean Vivek still here, corrupt.
What did you think?
Vivid.
Yeah, I mean, he started off nice for about 14 seconds.
And then we got to Vivek calling Nikki Haley more.
Wait, I think I've just lost the audio.
Did I lose the audio?
No, no, no, we can hear you.
No, we're back.
I lost you for a second there.
Vivek calling Nikki Haley more fascist than the fascist Joe Biden.
And then I was like, oh, that guy's back.
And then.
Hold on, let me play it.
Let me play it.
Hold that thought.
Hold that thought.
It's a quick stop.
Stop for.
We're marching towards fascism under Biden.
Jack Smith has subpoenaed every last retweet that someone has issued from Donald Trump in the year 2020.
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.
Keep going, Michael.
I mean, that's about as ludicrous as it comes.
I mean, this is something that we've expected from the left for a very long time.
If you've watched MSNBC over the past four years and you've counted the times that the word fascism has been used and Donald Trump has become compared to a Nazi, I don't love it as he says, I don't like identity politics on the right when they do it on the left.
I don't like fascism accusations on the right when it's so common on the left.
He also kind of referred to her as a Stalinist, too, because he then invoked Orwell's 1984, which is obviously a book about Stalinism.
So yeah, that Vivek that showed up early and seemed to be like he was going to be the first debate Vivek became even crazier than I had seen previously.
Yeah, no, second debate Vivek was the nice Vivek.
Second debate Vivek was.
I don't believe in personal insults.
That's what he said.
I don't believe in personal insults.
What happened to that guy, Emily?
He was not there.
But you know what?
He was handing out little golden nuggets to Core MAGA.
That's what he's doing tonight.
And I bet they ate up every single one of them.
I haven't even looked at Twitter, but I'm guessing they ate up everyone.
Well, you know, yeah, I was going to say, actually, in a weird way, there's a benefit to having Vivek on stage because he really does represent Core MAGA in a way that even Ron DeSantis, who flirted with representing Core MAGA, but then never really pulled it off, doesn't.
And so kind of pushing candidates on foreign policy in the way that Vivek does.
Listen, I don't think it comes across as appealing, especially on a stage with four candidates.
It was different when it was the pure chaos of 10 people on the stage screaming at each other incoherently.
But when you have four people, you're constantly jumping in and being the loudest person in the room.
I just think it's a lot harder to pull that same act off.
I thought this debate felt like it had more gravity and seriousness to it, and he wasn't reading the room super well.
And I should also say, I'm going to need a spicy margarita to fall asleep tonight after the vivid rendering of the fake as Sybil that you just put in everyone's mind.
Megan, thank you.
Foreign Policy Vanity Project 00:15:00
I was referring to that as the Sybil question.
I don't know what I'm getting, whatever.
You know, it's funny you guys talk about the core MAGA, but I don't know whether he said this when he was talking to you, but Ramaswamy is behind us right now, and he's appealing to Ron Paul voters.
Yeah, he did mention Ron Paul.
So I think, and Michael, we're veering over into a libertarian space, so you can check me up as we go.
But so when we met Ron Paul as a 2008 and 2012 presidential candidate, we thought it was about libertarianism, right?
We thought, oh yeah, and the Fed and all this stuff and foreign policy stuff.
But there was also the undercurrent of not libertarian, but just kooky, right?
Just like the weird beard, unusual stuff that you're like, aliens?
What are we talking about?
That's who I heard Vivek, Ramaswamy.
When he started talking about Bitcoin.
Well, yes, and it's just like the long litany of things when he was hitting J6, there was like a long litany of buzzwords.
He was like touching like bam, bam.
I was like, the YouTube sensors are like, ah!
I sounded like Michael Moynihan.
Yes.
So why is he doing that?
What's happening inside?
What's happening?
So if you want to, there is already a core constituency for MAGA, but the libertarian and libertarian adjacent space in the Republican Party is not served, right?
They don't have a candidate.
They don't, because that's not Donald Trump and that's not MAGA.
Nationalism and libertarianism are not the same thing.
But there is a group of these people, especially younger people and especially very online people, that are interested in that.
And if you can cultivate that, and look, I don't ever like to impugn people's motives.
I try to take people at their word.
They say they're running for president.
I believe they're running for president.
But if someone was trying to become a media sensation, if someone wanted to have a media life after this, this is a good core group of people to cultivate, right?
They're loyal, they're interested, high engagement users.
And he said, when you asked him, what's the end game here?
When we get out, he's not getting out.
He's not.
He's going to stay in.
Can you believe that?
You know, they always say that.
Yeah, I think this is...
He seems sincere.
I think this has become a bit of a vanity project for him.
He's gotten a lot of notoriety.
I think he's, in his mind, he's pushing forward the America First Agenda when Donald Trump's absent from the stage.
But I think he is going to stick into it.
I mean, if it was a spicy margarita, Vivek's like his own wine cooler and three shots of fireball.
I mean, he's just, he does, he does, I'm hungry just you talking about that.
But this is what he does.
And I mean, obviously, I think this is going to be the last debate and the last time that he'll get to do it in this way.
And he certainly went out with a bang.
Although I don't think the audience appreciated some of the antics.
Yeah, well, it was hard to read the audience at times.
They booed him a lot, and they cheered him at other times.
They cheered for DeSantis way more than I thought for an Alabama crowd, given DeSantis and this lawsuit over the Florida team.
I don't know.
These guys tried to explain it to me.
But it's supposed to be a war right now between Alabama and Florida.
And the crowd seemed to be a Florida crowd.
Here's my question for you guys though, over there on the Zoom satellite.
Did Vivek hurt Nikki?
Because all night long he punched and he punched and he punched.
And DeSantis punched too.
But I wondered if at the end of it, did they actually hurt her?
Did Vivek in particular hurt her?
No, no.
Can Michael go first?
Because I disagree.
Yeah, no, I think that him being lustily booed is, you know, lines up with his unfavorables.
I mean, people don't like that stuff very much.
And I think that, you know, when they cheer him, I mean, look, I can't stand Vivek for a lot of reasons, but I think that there's certain things he said tonight, because I can be a kooky libertarian too, that are fairly sensible.
And he, when he calms down, when he stops doing that wrestling villain routine that he does, he can be fairly sensible and fairly convincing.
But to Chris's point, by the way, about the libertarian thing, I think there's two things here, and both of them are right.
I mean, that he does appear to try to appeal to the MAGA bays.
I mean, I was at a Trump rally in Detroit two months ago, and it was the first time that I had heard Donald Trump repeatedly use the word fascist, referring to Joe Biden as a fascist.
And I said, oh, that's where Vivek is getting that from.
But the thing about the Ron Paul in like 2008, 2012 was who was Ron Paul appealing to?
What did Vivek say when he was talking to you after the debate?
He said, I go to college campuses and I go to frat houses.
That's who Ron Paul was appealing to.
He was an octogenarian kind of Buchananite, paleo-conservative, bit of libertarian.
And there is a market for that.
And that's where Tucker has gone.
That's where a lot of people have gone.
And that is he's trying to gather people from both of those sides of the right.
I think Vivek is not just, I was going to say, I think he's not just hurting Nikki Haley's candidacy.
I totally disagree with Michael on this.
I think he's actually hurting Nikki Haley's future political career.
I don't think it's helpful for her to face accusations of joining the board of Boeing.
That's not even an accusation.
It's absolutely true.
This is not the temperature of the Republican base to hear that over and over again about a candidate and then have your face juxtaposed with a notebook that says Nikki equals corrupt.
Just over and over having that repeated, I don't think it's helpful for her.
I think he slammed her on the internet anonymity question.
All of these things add up in a way that he's painting a picture of her that appeals to the median Republican voter probably more than her message does.
I do think her message absolutely resonates in the suburbs with educated women.
I think some people would be wrong to dismiss that level of appeal.
But with that core Republican voter right now, I think he's really undercutting not just her candidacy, but her political career in the future.
Stand by, here's Nikki responding on stop five on Boeing.
We weren't bankrupt when I left the UN.
We're people of service.
My husband is in the military, and I served our country as UN ambassador and governor.
It may be bankrupt to him, but it certainly wasn't bankrupt to us.
Secondly, I did serve on the board of Boeing.
I did a lot of work with Boeing when I was governor.
They were a great partner to me.
I served for 10 months.
And then when they decided after COVID that they wanted to go for a corporate bailout, I've never supported corporate bailout.
So I respectfully stepped back and got off the board.
I love Boeing.
They build good commercial airplanes.
They build airplanes for our Air Force.
I am proud of them.
They employ a lot of people in South Carolina.
But that's why I left the Boeing board.
There's nothing to what he's saying.
And in terms of these donors that are supporting me, they're just jealous.
They wish that they were supporting them.
They're jealous of me.
They don't want me to have it.
Keep going.
So what did you think?
You didn't like that, Emily.
You didn't think that was effective?
Well, no, I don't think it's effective.
I mean, again, she really has to make that case in the context of an election that is, Donald Trump is running away with this race.
And it's not a Pete and Amy situation where the RNC is collaborating behind the scenes to push absolutely everybody out and consolidate voters that are anti-Trump behind Nikki Haley.
Anyone, it would probably be Ron DeSantis stepping into that position, and she's just that those past points in her career are very hard to defend in this moment and and that is not helpful for her going forward.
To have Vivek Ramaswamy constantly reminding people sometimes in hyperbolic terms, but constantly like bludgeoning her over the head metaphorically with that, I just don't think it's helpful, did you?
I'm gonna get to you Tom, Pete and Amy is that the Peter Trump, what is that judge?
And Amy Klovich star.
They, they were worried about Bernie.
In the same way they're worried about Trump, and they got everyone behind them.
I'm not on a first name basis with them, so I like that you are, thank you.
What were you gonna say Tom, I think?
I think the attacks hurt her a little bit tonight, and for a couple of reasons.
One, they were more substantive, at least on the issue of of the donors.
But the other thing is this wasn't just, you know, Vivek going at Nikki Haley and, and you know, sort of in a personal way, DeSantis joined in.
Yeah, I mean, it felt different because they were together singing from the same sheet of music.
She's beholden to donors, she's craving, I thought when DeSantis hit her on on China and you know how she was soft on China, according to him, when she was governor of South Carolina.
Those attacks seem to resonate to me a little differently.
They hit a little differently tonight, maybe a little harder, maybe cut a little deeper than some of the attacks in the past that were just, you know, Vivek sort of flying off the handle, especially because he it's more effective when you don't do it a lot.
So when you do pipe up to fight and launch a serious attack, it can hurt more, right?
Because like oh wow, he's, DeSantis is fighting tonight.
He's got actually somebody to say, and he's very measured, like he doesn't, he's not hysterical, DeSantis is very measured.
Definitely a good night for DeSantis.
But we have to remember it in this context, what does it cost you to get the ticket that you need to go ahead?
The ticket that Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley need to get go ahead from here is has nothing to do with Trump voters.
They need them later they'll.
They'll need some Trump voters later if they want to actually win the nomination and certainly if somehow they manage to get the nomination to win the presidency.
But that's a problem that they're going to have to face in March.
The first problem that they have is, can you consolidate the part of the party that hates Vivek Ramaswamy?
Because there's a whole big chunk of the party that hates Vivek Ramaswamy, with the white hot passion of 10,000 sons, and it's only 25 percent or a third of the Republican party that likes Nikki Haley and likes Boeing and likes that stuff and is okay with that.
These are the traditional Republicans.
These are, as Emily referred to, college educated, more affluent voters.
They like Nikki Haley.
They're fine with that.
Ron DeSantis' problem in the premise of his candidacy was at the beginning.
He started from the wrong end of the elephant.
Right, he was gonna go blow up Donald Trump's coalition.
I'm gonna go blow up MAGA.
I'm gonna do culture war stuff all the time.
I'm gonna suck up to them very online.
MAGA voters, I'm gonna do all that stuff.
He failed to consolidate this part over here, right?
So now he's sprinting back across to fight with Nikki Haley before it's over so he can say well, let me consolidate this group.
He may succeed in doing that, but the first task for them and it may be terminal.
Right, Emily might be quite right that it may kill any chance of actually winning the nomination in the end, but there's no way to even find out unless you can consolidate that other side of the party right.
They really are in a death match right now.
So let's let me shift gears and talk about the Trans issue, which really has been given no, or at a minimum short shrift in all these other debates, and it's it's a huge issue for, I think, a lot of voters, not just Republicans.
I have a lot of Democrats who contact me because I'm very outspoken on it to say keep going, keep going.
So, Chris Christie, I confess to you, I was dying for him to make the debate.
I wanted him up there very badly because I knew what an outlier he was on this issue.
So I prayed Tom Bevan, I prayed to Real Clear Politics every day to tell me that he was going to be over 6% in the national and the New Hampshire poll.
And at the last minute, it happened.
And I was just dying to ask him my questions, and I did.
I was not wrong, as he suggested, but it was the first question that I really needed to ask him.
Here it is, Sat 9.
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.
Okay, so I will tell you, if he really had any chance at getting the Republican nomination, I think it died right there.
I don't think the Republican Party will nominate somebody with that position.
I really don't.
And I think that's one of the reasons why Nikki Haley came out very forcefully tonight, and it was for the first time to say, hell no, not only no, but hell no.
And look, I give him credit for being honest about his position and defending it.
I really do.
But I just think this Republican Party, that's going to be a hard no.
He's being backed mostly by Democrats, as I raised, you know, he doesn't have the support of the Republican Party.
The numbers behind him in New Hampshire are mostly Democrats.
So I wonder, though, Emily, whether this issue is going to explode for the Christie campaign.
Is this going to keep coming up more and more now?
Or is the mainstream press still going to be too scared to ask him and others about it?
You know, that's the thing.
They'll happily ask people about it, but not with the proper framing, as you did right there, the sharpest question on this that they faced so far.
And Chris Christie's answer was really good in the sense that that's the best he can do with that position.
I do think that's sincerely his position.
And that was the best possible way you can handle having this horrible position morally and politically on the issue.
I thought he handled it as best as he could have.
But I don't know going forward because most of the corporate press agrees with the answer that he just gave.
In fact, I saw people from the corporate press, Alyssa Farah over at The View, reacting very positively to what Chris Christie had just said about trans kids.
So I think it could explode for him in the sense that the media devotes even more airtime.
He's already getting disproportionate airtime in corporate press.
They devote even more airtime to Chris Christie fawning over him and saying, this is the brave man who is standing up against those MAGA rubes in the conservative wing of the Republican Party.
So maybe it could almost hurt him in that way or backfire in that way.
It's not just MAGA Rubes.
What were you going to say?
I know you know that.
Corporate Press Backfires on Christie 00:03:44
This struck me as an Obama answer.
Sounds great, and then you kind of think about it for a second, you scratch the surface, and you're like, wait a minute, like, really?
Is it okay, Chris Christie, if parents let their kids drink?
Five-year-old, give them a shot of whiskey, give them a cigarette, give them drugs.
Like, of course not, right?
His premise is sort of absurd.
Like, we're not going to let the government come in and tell us what we can do as parents, our values, whatever our values are.
The government does it all the time.
We set limits on all sorts of things for kids, right?
So in that sense, it's kind of, again, sounds good.
As he gives it, you're like, oh God, we're all prepared.
And then you think about it for a second and you're like, well, that doesn't make any sense.
If the kid really wanted to cut off his arm, he's desperate to cut off his arm.
And should the law allow the parental rights?
The parents should be able to make that decision when a hand.
That's basically what he's saying.
I would modify what you said at the beginning slightly and said this doesn't play with Republicans.
It doesn't play with a lot of Democrats too.
I mean, if you look at opinion polling on this stuff, this is a culture war issue.
If handled in the right way, you can get bipartisan support.
Not huge bipartisan support, but bipartisan support.
Disney, you go after Disney and people say, well, you know, I like some of their movies.
I like some of that Disney stuff.
When you talk about, you know, you see these people up in the pyramid, number one, number two, number three in a bike race, and two of them are biological males, that resonates with almost everybody.
It's a very simple thing.
The thing about Christie's answer is what he does is he takes something that I very much agree with, which is keeping the government out of our business, but it's not school choice.
I mean, he's saying that, you know, look, the government shouldn't tell you where your kid goes to school.
I'm a school choice person.
I agree.
This is not the same thing.
And I think that that's pretty obvious to most Republican voters.
And I think that's obviously kind of obvious when you look at opinion pollings to a lot of sort of centrist swing voters and people that are kind of traditional Democrats.
I have a question for you on a different subject.
So the opening round of this debate was on electability.
And we did a lot of internal debate about, do we like that?
Is that good?
And we did like that because nobody's done it so far.
It's the right thing to do.
Yeah, and it was, what we did not anticipate to the extent that it happened was that it was going to fire everybody up.
And that worked out great.
I was thrilled.
I didn't know whether the others would want in.
We kind of hoped.
Yeah, we were in the truck, like ripping up, tearing apart the rundown.
Like we remaking, remaking, redo, redo, redo.
Right.
You know how they say that when Alfred Hitchcock talked about suspense, that suspense is when the audience knows the bomb is on the train, but the people on the train don't, right?
That that's suspense.
Well, for us in the truck, when you said to Chris Christie, okay, here's your question, your first question that you just played there, and he answered it.
I know.
It was like, because we knew what the follow-up was.
And he's like, parents' rights and this, and I believe in parents' rights.
And I was like, he's doomed.
There's going to be a murder in the building.
He's just sprinting into this question.
It's like, and the bomb then blew up on him, and it was like that.
I think the first, their desire to fight, right?
And by the way, this is why I'm a proponent of more debates, not fewer debates.
There's just, there are ill humors that have to be purged, right?
You just have to get it out.
You just have to get it out.
And what you guys did so well tonight, like, okay, get your spleens out.
Retail Politics Explodes in Building 00:04:52
Go for the, yeah, blah, blah, blah.
And by the way, get all your dumb canned one-liners, your corny stunts, get them all out.
Say all your dumb stuff.
Okay, are we done now?
Have you finished saying all of the things that somebody in the car over here was like, oh yeah, and you should say that he, and you should call him fat, and you should do that.
Blah, Okay, we're done.
Great.
Now, let's talk about Obamacare.
Now, let's talk about trans.
Now, let's talk about and move through all that stuff and did it in a substantive way.
And again, I know I'm insanely biased, but this was a debate that included both the wildest wild, right?
This was Mr. Toad's wild ride for the first part, and then the most substantive.
Yeah, I mean, I thought it was very substantive, too, and we lucked out because they came to play.
The electability stuff for me was exciting because you really do get to zero in on what, I mean, I asked myself for months, what is it that's going to stand in the way of this person making it other than Trump?
Trump obviously is the big, the big thing.
And I will tell you, for Ron DeSantis, I struggled a lot because I really wanted to go to his failure to connect with voters, his failure to connect with retail politics.
But in the end, we just weren't sure, like, you can't craft a question like that without being very opinionated.
You know, it's like me being like, you're not a retail politics person.
People don't like you and the money that you need.
Yeah, you're lame.
Like, that doesn't, no, that's, you can't.
You got to stick to facts, and his numbers are just so dreadful.
Anyway, we have a little clip of some of the opening questions to them.
Let's watch.
We begin with the question of electability.
Governor DeSantis, your campaign and its super PAC have spent the most money, had the most high net worth donors, and had a wave of momentum coming into this race after your big re-election win in Florida.
You were seen by many as the candidate most likely to consolidate the non-Trump field.
But here we are, a month out from the first real votes, and you haven't managed to do it.
The voters actually make these decisions, not pundits or pollsters.
I'm sick of hearing about these polls because I remember those polls in November of 2022.
They said there was going to be a big red wave.
It was going to be monumental, and that crashed and burned.
The one place it didn't crash and burn was in the state of Florida.
You left government service in 2018 with just $100,000 in the bank.
Five years later, you're reportedly worth $8 million, thanks to lucrative corporate speeches and board memberships like you had with Boeing.
Weeks ago, you met with Wall Street heavyweights, including leaders from JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, and BlackRock.
Aren't you too tight with the banks and the billionaires to win over the GOP's working class base, which mostly wants to break the system, not elect someone beholden to it?
In reference to donors coming on board, look, we will take support from anybody we can take support from.
But I have been a conservative fighter all my life.
I was Mr. Ramaswamy.
For months, you campaigned as a unifier.
The second debate, you changed your tune, saying, these are good people on this stage, admitting you can come across as a bit of a know-it-all, and rejecting the practice of personal insults.
Megan, I think there's a time and place for everything.
We need somebody in the White House who absolutely is going to be a fighter when it counts.
And I did say that there were some good people on that stage in that third debate.
Doug Bergh was on that stage at that time.
And I'll say that jokingly, Ron DeSantis is a good person, too.
It's fun to re-watch it and relive it.
Tom Bevan, what do you think of the Ron DeSantis?
He went after your neck of the woods.
Polls, the polls crashed and burned in 2022.
That's a pretty good answer.
You know, his theory of the case, the thing that he's making is, listen, he's done the full Grass Lee.
He's got Vander Platz's machine.
He's got Kim Reynolds' machine.
And that's not being picked up by the polls, and it's going to show up big for him on January 15th.
It's possible.
I mean, we've seen, that can happen.
And we've seen surprises in Iowa before.
So I think he was right to push back on the polls because they're not, I mean, listen.
If the polls were in his favor, he'd be topping them all over the place.
Yeah, they're not.
He's making the best argument that he can.
That's what you have to do as a politician.
It's pretty clear.
Yeah.
Well, you guys, thank you all.
Thank you so much.
Thank you, Chris.
Thank you, Tom, Emily.
You're the best.
Michael, love you.
Thanks to all of you, and thanks to all of you for joining me live on SiriusXM and YouTube.
And we're going to be back tomorrow with our normal program at our normal time.
We are live on SiriusXM at noon, Monday through Friday, and then we drop the show as a podcast just a short time after that.
And on YouTube, you can get it in any number of ways with much, much more debate analysis and more.
Thanks to all of you.
All the best.
Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show.
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