The Megyn Kelly Show - 20231214_cnns-vivek-meltdown-status-of-the-bud-light-boycot
Aired: 2023-12-14
Duration: 01:38:26


=== Ruthless Serial Plagiarizer Duo (02:43) ===

[00:00:35]  Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at Noon East.
[00:00:51]  There is so much to get to today.
[00:00:54]  New polling showing former President Donald Trump now leading President Biden in all seven swing states, at least two of those outside the margin of error.
[00:01:02]  The New York Times, meantime, is heaping praise on Harvard President Dr. Claudine Gay, saying she was quote destined to reach the pinnacle of higher education.
[00:01:15]  Running a little cover for their gal pal over there as she's being accused of being a serial plagiarizer, not to mention somebody who doesn't seem to particularly care much about Jews, though now she's out there celebrating Hanukkah.
[00:01:30]  This is like when people used to go, they get in trouble for like being alleged racist and they would go make a donation to Al Sharpton.
[00:01:36]  She's out there celebrating Hanukkah, lighting like literally lighting menorahs with a tiki torch.
[00:01:42]  It's a confused message.
[00:01:43]  It's really in any bed.
[00:01:46]  Meantime, some of the biggest raced baiters, race baiters in America calling any criticism of Dr. Claudine Gay, this Harvard president, racism.
[00:01:56]  And an example of white supremacy.
[00:01:57]  You see, if you don't want a serial plagiarizer as the head of Harvard, one who doesn't seem to much care if Jews are being chanted, hearing chants of genocide to the Jews outside of their classroom windows, that makes you a white supremacist.
[00:02:10]  I don't know if you knew that, but we're here for you.
[00:02:12]  And so are the NAACP and Nicole Hanna-Jones, which we'll get to.
[00:02:17]  Joining me now to discuss it all: Michael Duncan, Josh Ashbrook, and the man known to his minions as Comfortably Smug.
[00:02:25]  Together, they make up ruthless.
[00:02:28]  The very popular variety program.
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=== Rocking The Bald Mullet Look (04:01) ===

[00:03:19]  Or hello, OOS.
[00:03:49]  We're expecting Josh Holmes to join us in a bit, but he likes to keep us on the edge.
[00:03:52]  He, you know, is like likes to make an entrance.
[00:03:55]  So we'll see you guys.
[00:03:56]  Welcome back.
[00:03:57]  Thanks for having us.
[00:03:58]  Yeah, great to be here, Megan.
[00:04:00]  Great to see you all.
[00:04:01]  Duncan, the facial hair is coming back.
[00:04:03]  I like it.
[00:04:04]  Yeah, it's sort of my winter tradition, especially when I'm going to be traveling.
[00:04:10]  What I like to do is I get it as bushy as possible, get like a push broom mustache going.
[00:04:16]  Then I shave it right before I travel, put on a windbreaker, and then everybody in the airport thinks maybe you're like an undercover air marshal.
[00:04:26]  They treat you really well.
[00:04:28]  Yeah.
[00:04:29]  There is power in the stash.
[00:04:31]  I see what you're talking about.
[00:04:32]  Like you do look at a guy who wears the stash confidently a little differently.
[00:04:38]  I'll take it.
[00:04:39]  You know, Doug and I were just having this conversation.
[00:04:42]  Doug still has all of his own hair, but we were talking about guys who get like the fill in, you know, up front.
[00:04:47]  And trust me, in news, I know a lot of them.
[00:04:50]  And I'm for it.
[00:04:51]  Forward or against it.
[00:04:52]  I just like it's there's nothing wrong with going bald, but I just think for especially men who are in the public eye, you're not like, I don't, some guys can go good bald, but I would say it's the exception, not the rule.
[00:05:06]  And I like a little fill-in that some guys get.
[00:05:08]  You know, you can either get fake fill in or you can get it from the back of your head.
[00:05:13]  And I'm not going to say who, but I used to work with somebody who had that done.
[00:05:17]  So like you can tell because the back of their head looks like a baby's bottom.
[00:05:20]  It doesn't have hair coming out of it like a normal because all those things have been put up in the front.
[00:05:26]  So what do you think?
[00:05:27]  Forward or against it?
[00:05:29]  I mean, I think by any means necessary, honestly, like it's a tough thing for a guy.
[00:05:33]  I mean, you know, by God's grace, I have yet to lose the hair, but I would do.
[00:05:39]  You've got the most like full head of hair I've ever seen in real life.
[00:05:43]  I'd make a deal with the devil to keep this fight of hair going.
[00:05:47]  I don't know.
[00:05:48]  I feel like you're right.
[00:05:50]  Like you got to be able to rock it.
[00:05:52]  And there's only certain people that can rock it, you know, like Walter White, great bald, you know, Michael Shipless, L.L. Cool J, you know, like Michael Jordan.
[00:06:02]  You have to have some swag, like to rock bald.
[00:06:06]  Then there's bad ball, like Anthony Edwards.
[00:06:08]  Forgive me, but that's not good bald, you know, from ER.
[00:06:11]  You remember him?
[00:06:12]  Yeah.
[00:06:13]  Sad.
[00:06:14]  I would like to see, I would like to see pictures of what the back of their head looks like because I don't think I've ever seen that.
[00:06:21]  It's a reverse mullet.
[00:06:23]  I'll tell you what they do.
[00:06:24]  I figured it out.
[00:06:25]  Here's what they do.
[00:06:26]  You get all the follicles from back here and you have them transplanted up here where you need the hair because you don't really need it way back there.
[00:06:33]  And then you just grow your hair out, your hair that is like kind of high up on the back of your head.
[00:06:39]  You let it grow.
[00:06:40]  So it is a little mullet-esque.
[00:06:41]  It's true.
[00:06:42]  Like if the wind blew, then you'd see just bare, bare head underneath that hair.
[00:06:47]  You do have to grow it because it starts up too high.
[00:06:49]  You can't just let it end where it would end.
[00:06:53]  But who's going to really be staring at your hair that closely from the back other than me?
[00:06:59]  It's like a strategic comb over, you know, because everyone can tell if it's a lie up top, but if you're hiding in the back, you can get away with it.
[00:07:05]  It's like a good deal.
[00:07:08]  And they have so few tools to help them through like the loss of their looks over the years.
[00:07:12]  Like women, my God, we can, we have so many tools in our arsenal.
[00:07:16]  I always say to Doug, this is like what's amazing about him is he's just like, he wakes up looking like that.

=== Jury Delay Complicates 2024 Race (14:16) ===

[00:07:20]  Like he does, he has to do nothing.
[00:07:22]  Whereas my routine takes forever.
[00:07:24]  If you could see what I look like in the morning, you'd wonder why the man married me.
[00:07:27]  In any event, God bless men.
[00:07:29]  If you do it, I support it.
[00:07:30]  That's not actually what the focus of today's show is.
[00:07:36]  But in any event, all right.
[00:07:38]  So I want to get to Claudia and Gay and all of it, but I've got to start with the polls because I've heard you guys talking a lot about them.
[00:07:43]  And there's yet more out today just showing absolutely terrible results for Joe Biden versus Donald Trump.
[00:07:49]  But I've heard you guys, and I saw you tweeting about it, Duncan, with like some important caveats here that I do think we need to address.
[00:07:57]  So Trump now leading Biden in seven of these seven swing states, all seven.
[00:08:02]  Recently it was six, now it's gone up to seven in, this is morning consult, Arizona up by four, Georgia up by six, Michigan by four.
[00:08:11]  He was up by 10 in the last poll.
[00:08:13]  Nevada up by three.
[00:08:14]  North Carolina up by nine.
[00:08:16]  Pennsylvania up by two.
[00:08:17]  Wisconsin up by four.
[00:08:21]  What is that caveat, Duncan, that you think people need to remember?
[00:08:26]  It's pretty simple.
[00:08:28]  You know, Ipsos ran a poll yesterday where they asked, I think, an important question for Republicans and everybody to consider.
[00:08:36]  And that is, you know, if he is convicted of a felony by a jury, would you still support Donald Trump for president?
[00:08:44]  Yes, 25, no, 59.
[00:08:49]  And considering he's facing 91 indictments and a handful of cases over the next nine months, he's going to have to really draw an inside royal flush, I think, to avoid being convicted of at least one of those charges, unless he's able to somehow get all of them delayed past election day.
[00:09:08]  I guess that is possible.
[00:09:10]  You know, Jack Smith, the special prosecutor, has asked the Supreme Court to sort of pre-vet an immunity claim in that DC case.
[00:09:23]  You know, we ultimately, we don't know today, you know, how quickly SCOTUS might hear that.
[00:09:28]  And that could delay that one case.
[00:09:30]  But then you'd also have to get a delay in the Mar-a-Lago Docs case, the Georgia state case, and a handful of other things that are sort of out there as well, which I don't think, I mean, you'd know better than I do.
[00:09:45]  I'm not a lawyer, but I have to think one of these is going to happen before election day.
[00:09:50]  Well, all right, here's a couple of things on that.
[00:09:52]  And I want to talk about it.
[00:09:54]  That Ipsos poll is bad.
[00:09:55]  Reuters Ipsos, as you point out, it was a big poll sample of 4,400 adults.
[00:10:00]  That's a lot.
[00:10:00]  That's a big one.
[00:10:02]  Dems, GOP, and independents all in there.
[00:10:06]  And you're right.
[00:10:07]  They said that Trump was leading.
[00:10:10]  He's leading 61% over DeSantis at 11.
[00:10:13]  Haley tied for number two at 11.
[00:10:16]  And on the Trump charges, they said, okay, if he's convicted, 64% said he should not run for president.
[00:10:23]  And then would you vote for Trump if he's convicted of a felony?
[00:10:27]  59% say no.
[00:10:29]  And that includes 66% of independents.
[00:10:33]  Only 31% of Republicans say if he's convicted, it's going to stop me from voting for him.
[00:10:38]  That's the Never Trump crowd and maybe a few others.
[00:10:41]  No big surprise in the Republicans.
[00:10:44]  But two-thirds of independents say conviction is a deal breaker for me.
[00:10:49]  I'm not doing it.
[00:10:51]  That is a problem.
[00:10:52]  Like that does have to be factored into these Trump leads that Republicans are getting so excited about in poll after poll.
[00:11:03]  He hasn't yet been convicted and there is a very good chance he will be.
[00:11:08]  However, we're sleepwalking towards that.
[00:11:11]  I don't feel like the presidential candidates who are opposing Donald Trump are really litigating this for the Republican electorate either.
[00:11:18]  They never mention it.
[00:11:19]  Yeah.
[00:11:20]  They never mention it.
[00:11:22]  It's, I got thoughts on that too, but wait, so let me just finish the legal stuff.
[00:11:26]  By the way, Holmes, welcome to the party.
[00:11:29]  Greetings.
[00:11:30]  So on the legal front, Trump's chances got a lot better yesterday, a lot better yesterday, because the Supreme Court agreed to take up this January 6th case not involving Trump, involving regular J6 defendants, and one of the claims involving whether you can be charged with a felony for obstructing a congressional proceeding.
[00:11:53]  That happens to also be a claim against Trump.
[00:11:56]  And for sure, Trump's legal team is going to try to use the Supreme Court mulling the constitutionality of one of the charges against him as a reason to delay the trial against him.
[00:12:07]  And that's a pretty good argument.
[00:12:09]  And in addition, this argument about whether Trump can be prosecuted for crimes at all for things he did as president, which is not yet clear under any federal precedent, that also is now going up to the Supreme Court, we believe on an expedited basis, but not entirely clear whether they're going to take it.
[00:12:30]  Right now, they've asked for expedited briefing on whether they should take it at all, much less in an expedited fashion.
[00:12:37]  So the Supreme Court, I think, will take it, but we have to see how quickly.
[00:12:42]  All of this works for Trump because the number one thing he wants, especially in that DC federal case, is delay.
[00:12:50]  The Georgia case, I don't see getting tried before November 24.
[00:12:54]  It's got too much shit in it.
[00:12:55]  She screwed up.
[00:12:56]  Rico against 19 defendants.
[00:12:58]  You screwed up, lady.
[00:13:00]  It should have been much more simple and streamlined.
[00:13:02]  You had your chance, muffed it.
[00:13:05]  Down Mar-a-Lago documents, the best legal case against him, but probably with the best jury for Trump and certainly the best judge for Trump.
[00:13:12]  It's a Trump appointed federal judge.
[00:13:14]  It's a jury in an area of Florida that's more red.
[00:13:18]  But the legal case itself is very strong against Trump, frankly.
[00:13:22]  That's why he's been doing jury nullification on that, just going out there saying, Biden did it.
[00:13:26]  Everyone did it.
[00:13:27]  I did nothing wrong.
[00:13:28]  You know, nothing but whatever.
[00:13:30]  That case, again, I don't see that coming before November 2024 because it's in-depth.
[00:13:36]  Who's got access to the classified documents?
[00:13:38]  Can the defense lawyers see them?
[00:13:40]  Can the jurors see them?
[00:13:41]  Which ones can they see?
[00:13:42]  Which ones can't they see?
[00:13:43]  Are people going to get security clearances?
[00:13:44]  Andy McCarthy's been talking about this a lot on National Review.
[00:13:47]  That's going to take a while for the court to figure out.
[00:13:49]  And P.S., the Trump-appointed judge, has no reason to put the pedal to the metal and speed it along.
[00:13:54]  She is not a Judge Chutkin, the federal judge in D.C. who can't stand him.
[00:13:58]  So I like my chances of delay in Florida if I'm Trump.
[00:14:02]  And I like my chances of not getting tried in Georgia too, because Fannie Willis overcharged.
[00:14:07]  Then you go up to New York.
[00:14:08]  No one gives a shit about the New York case.
[00:14:09]  He's not facing jail time.
[00:14:11]  It's about the Stormy Daniels hush payment, whatever.
[00:14:14]  That's not going to affect anything.
[00:14:17]  I don't think that's the one people are going to say.
[00:14:19]  I'm not voting even independence because he didn't document his hush money to Stormy.
[00:14:24]  So that leaves us with D.C., which is the best place for him to be convicted.
[00:14:28]  It really is.
[00:14:29]  Chutkin hates him.
[00:14:30]  The D.C. jury is going to hate him.
[00:14:32]  The J6 charges are trumped up for sure, but a D.C. jury is probably going to do it.
[00:14:37]  So all they really needed is get the conviction.
[00:14:39]  Even if it gets reversed on appeal, the conviction helps the Dems.
[00:14:42]  And the fact that Jack Smith is like, I have to have a resolution immediately just shows what a partisan hack he is.
[00:14:49]  I said this on the air yesterday.
[00:14:50]  Then I found out even the Washington Post had an opinion piece saying that.
[00:14:54]  Even the Democrats are starting to see this is so political.
[00:14:58]  There's no reason for Jack Smith to be like, fast, fast, we have to resolve the immunity issue and skip the Court of Appeals ruling, which is what he wanted to do.
[00:15:05]  The lower court ruled no immunity, Chutkin.
[00:15:08]  Normally you go up to the Court of Appeals, the D.C. Circuit, and say, did Chutkin get it right?
[00:15:12]  Jack Smith, the prosecutor, said, fuck you, Fifth Circuit.
[00:15:15]  I'm going right to SCOTUS.
[00:15:16]  I need an immediate ruling.
[00:15:17]  Does he have immunity or doesn't he?
[00:15:19]  I got to get this case tried.
[00:15:20]  ASAP is supposed to go March 4th, the day before Super Tuesday.
[00:15:23]  Do me a solid, SCOTUS.
[00:15:24]  So in any event, if Trump can delay that case as much as humanly possible, then he's not a convicted felon before November 2024.
[00:15:33]  And then on November 2024, if he wins, he can pull the feds off of those cases in D.C. and in Florida.
[00:15:42]  And then he's just stuck with Fannie Willis down in there in Georgia, who's going to have quite a pickle trying to put the sitting president of the United States, even in the defendant's chair where you're supposed to be in a criminal trial, never mind in jail.
[00:15:55]  And as I said, F the New York case.
[00:15:57]  I'm like, we're kind of done with it.
[00:15:58]  It was shocking to have it indicted, but it's a nothing burger net net.
[00:16:02]  So that's my legal analysis of why yesterday's two Supreme Court pieces of news are very good for Trump doesn't mean it's not going to happen, guys.
[00:16:12]  And these polls are still an issue because if it does happen, God, the Republicans are taking a huge gamble.
[00:16:19]  The whole thing's a game.
[00:16:20]  I mean, just listen to the analysis, which was exquisite as it usually is with you, Megan.
[00:16:25]  But I mean, what everybody's pinning their hopes to is a Supreme Court that's going to find a different group of defendants can't actually obstruct an official proceeding.
[00:16:35]  So somehow that that will work out in his favor, which I think is an open question.
[00:16:39]  We always knew, by the way, that this Jan 6 case was going to end up at the Supreme Court.
[00:16:44]  There is nothing but new precedent here from beginning to end.
[00:16:48]  Doesn't mean it's not going to stick, but this has just has to be litigated at the Supreme Court one way or another.
[00:16:54]  Getting a front run on that, it does sound like based on your analysis that it is probably a good thing for Trump.
[00:17:00]  The documents case, look, I'm a little bit more skeptical than you are, Megan, about whether or not that actually comes to trial.
[00:17:06]  There is a whole bunch of stuff there, maybe not everything, but there's a whole bunch of stuff there that's pretty cut and dry.
[00:17:11]  There's just not a lot of opinion to have about whether or not people ask you for documents and then you attempt to try to destroy them or obfuscate or, you know, otherwise mislead the federal government about the possession of those.
[00:17:26]  So I just clarify what you mean, Holmes.
[00:17:28]  You're saying you, even though the jury will be Trump friendly, you actually wouldn't bet on them siding with him just because it seems pretty clear that he defied the subpoena.
[00:17:38]  On at least a couple of the charts.
[00:17:40]  I'm not saying the whole thing is going to stick.
[00:17:42]  It's certainly a much more friendly jury than DC or New York, no question about it.
[00:17:47]  But it ultimately it is a court of law and laws either are broken or they're not.
[00:17:52]  I don't think I'm cynical enough at this point to say our entire justice system just is a partisan lens, although it does appear as though the left is trying every single day to make it so.
[00:18:02]  But I think those are real issues.
[00:18:03]  And I'm sure you guys were talking about before I jumped on.
[00:18:06]  I mean, look, that's the liability that Republican voters have somehow not processed.
[00:18:12]  Like nobody's talked about this in any significant way.
[00:18:14]  I mean, it is hard to imagine, even in that best case scenario for Trump that you laid out, it is very difficult for me to imagine that you're not sometime in the mid or late summer months, maybe even into the fall, still grappling deeply with these issues in the context of a general election in which the American people are dead split on.
[00:18:32]  Right.
[00:18:33]  So that's a hell of a liability to just load on your back and pretend like it doesn't matter.
[00:18:37]  I mean, we discussed this the other day, but in 2022, we were skeptical that the whole argument that Democrats were making of, you know, democracy's on the line, Trump is an existential threat to democracy, and these people that he endorsed are thus, you know, threats to democracy.
[00:18:54]  We were skeptical that that would be a powerful argument to make in the face of such a terrible economy that can be on, you know, put on Biden.
[00:19:01]  But it worked.
[00:19:02]  It seemed that independent voters, you know, women in the suburbs, they were completely on board with that argument.
[00:19:07]  And that's an argument that can be made whether any case is delayed or not throughout the fall.
[00:19:12]  And the polls to begin with, specifically these ones that show Trump is such a commanding lead, two things about them.
[00:19:19]  Number one, they're with registered voters, not likely voters.
[00:19:23]  So you don't know how many of those folks are going to actually show up to vote and have a say in it.
[00:19:28]  And then secondly, for a number of these states, I noticed it falls within the margin of error.
[00:19:33]  So it is not just like it's a settled argument of, okay, well, Trump's got the win.
[00:19:38]  And then you add in the whole gamble of, are all these court cases going to be able to be delayed?
[00:19:43]  It's just a lot of things.
[00:19:45]  You know what I mean?
[00:19:45]  Like what we try to do in our lives as operatives is mitigate the unknown.
[00:19:50]  Yep.
[00:19:51]  Right.
[00:19:51]  You want as few of these variables as possible.
[00:19:54]  This is just like layer after layer of variable.
[00:19:57]  Right.
[00:19:57]  You guys, if you were running Trump's world now, you'd be taking medication.
[00:20:02]  Deeply intoxicated.
[00:20:05]  The entire thing is like a Rube Goldberg experiment, like of how they get to election day and navigate all this stuff.
[00:20:11]  Like it's, it's bonkers.
[00:20:12]  But like Ashbrook makes a good point that he made on Ruthless, the episode that's out today is like, we also have a lot of other variables that we might not have had in a typical election.
[00:20:22]  Yeah, it's true.
[00:20:23]  So we talked to Kellyanne Conway this week, you know, the former campaign manager for President Trump, and she made a point about this field in 2024.
[00:20:31]  It could be different from any field we've seen since the 1992 election when Bill Clinton made it across the finish line with just a little over 40% of the vote.
[00:20:41]  So if you have a situation where in multiple states, you've got RFK Jr. or Cornell West or somebody else like Joe Manchin on the ballot at the same time, you could be running a race for 40 plus one instead of running a race for 50 plus one.
[00:20:56]  And that's also a scenario where President Trump, he's got a certain base that's sticking with him.
[00:21:01]  It's not going away no matter what.
[00:21:04]  And that, you know, that's another scenario where I think that they put some confidence in their ability to win.
[00:21:10]  Wait, explain that.
[00:21:11]  I don't understand your point.
[00:21:12]  So the, so if they're four plus one.
[00:21:15]  Yeah, if they're, if there are four people on the ballot splitting the vote, it somebody, you don't need, you don't need 50 plus one.
[00:21:21]  You just need the most votes in that state to be able to win the state.
[00:21:25]  And if Trump gets more votes.
[00:21:26]  Wait, are you saying, Ashbrook, that like these head-to-head polls of Biden versus Trump may not have that much relevance because like those independents we were just talking about could be diluted across four candidates?

=== Polls Show Suburban Voter Shift (16:00) ===

[00:21:37]  That's right.
[00:21:38]  And I mean, certainly some of the Trump vote is going to fall off to RFK, but some of the Biden vote might fall off to RFK.
[00:21:44]  Some of the Biden vote might fall off to Cornell West or Joe Manchin.
[00:21:48]  And so exactly.
[00:21:51]  So a head-to-head poll is not a perfect measure of a field that includes four people.
[00:21:57]  And it's not especially far-fetched.
[00:21:58]  I mean, you saw it happen to sitting president George H.W. Bush where Ross Perot siphoned off just enough to get Bill Clinton over the finish line.
[00:22:05]  Yeah, well, Democrats blame the Wisconsin loss.
[00:22:08]  I mean, the ultimate loss of Wisconsin for Hillary Clinton on Jill Stein picking up 3 or 4% there.
[00:22:13]  So, yeah, no, look, I think those are all things that could factor in, but it is, again, as an operative, you go into a situation where you have commanding 10, 15, 20-point leads on every issue that matters to the American people.
[00:22:26]  You got a president that can't complete a sentence and you're like, all right, hold on.
[00:22:29]  We got to roadmap this thing because maybe we can get to 42.
[00:22:34]  It doesn't have to be that hard, Megan.
[00:22:35]  I guess that's the point.
[00:22:36]  So here doesn't have to be that.
[00:22:37]  Here's my thinking is that like, if you can get every single one of these cases delayed and you can get voters convinced that the democracy argument doesn't work and you can get Chairman Powell to cut rates maybe four times and you also get Joe Manchin and RFK on the ballot in multiple states, I think we're in a good place.
[00:22:58]  Oh, God.
[00:22:59]  Well, you know, if you I follow a lot of Trump supporters and I follow a lot of DeSantis supporters and Nikki Haley and Vivek.
[00:23:08]  You know, I try to keep it all whatever.
[00:23:09]  I don't, I don't know if I have that many Christie supporters out there.
[00:23:13]  But the DeSantis supporters feel strongly that this is all going to Democrat plan according to plan.
[00:23:24]  That, you know, they still very much want Trump to be the nominee, that there's a reason these left-leaning, for the most part, outlets continue to do these polls.
[00:23:33]  They want the news to continue coming in that Trump is leading Biden.
[00:23:37]  They like that news.
[00:23:38]  They want this headline.
[00:23:39]  They want this discussion.
[00:23:41]  And they're depending on people like us not looking at the next line about will the independents stay with Trump if he's convicted because they want Trump.
[00:23:53]  They think he's more beatable than DeSantis or Haley or anybody else.
[00:23:58]  And so like the master plan, according to a lot of these DeSantis supporters and probably Haley supporters too, is push Trump, push Trump, push Trump with GOP or lead the GOPers to believe he can do it.
[00:24:11]  In fact, he might be the only one who can do it.
[00:24:13]  And then as soon as he has the nomination, the rest of the time will be spent dinging him up even more than he has been and then convicting him, which will eliminate the remaining independents that he needs to win.
[00:24:28]  The other reason that Democrats want Trump is because they have a severe base motivation problem with their candidate, Joe Biden.
[00:24:35]  Nobody's turning out to vote for him the way they did for Barack Obama.
[00:24:38]  So they need their people to be motivated by something.
[00:24:41]  And what they're motivated by is their hatred of Donald Trump.
[00:24:44]  And so they're hoping that they can run against him because he will get their people to the polls.
[00:24:49]  I mean, Biden himself said, you know, if Trump wasn't running, I probably wouldn't be doing this to myself.
[00:24:55]  Or to us.
[00:24:56]  The thing is, it's not really a conspiracy theory because it's true.
[00:25:00]  I mean, everything you laid out is 100% true.
[00:25:02]  But, you know, where I depart a little bit from where the DeSantis camp and Haley and others discuss all this, I agree with the premise.
[00:25:10]  The problem is, what are you going to do about it?
[00:25:12]  And in six, seven months, from announcement day up until, you know, 30 days or six weeks ago, nobody was making this case.
[00:25:21]  And the result of that is a whole bunch of Republican voters that don't think any of these charges mean anything.
[00:25:27]  They think it's too hard.
[00:25:28]  It's like, I sometimes if my kids complain too much without doing anything about their problem, I tell them that they've waived their right to complain.
[00:25:38]  There you go.
[00:25:41]  You know, you, you raised it.
[00:25:43]  I gave you three suggestions.
[00:25:45]  You had the time to think of your own solutions.
[00:25:47]  You did none of them.
[00:25:49]  And now you just want to complain again.
[00:25:50]  It's a no.
[00:25:51]  No.
[00:25:52]  This is now your problem.
[00:25:53]  Quality parent.
[00:25:54]  This is quality parenting.
[00:25:56]  Very good mothering.
[00:25:57]  And look at these Republican candidates.
[00:26:00]  We have had four debates, not to mention all the time that they have spent out on the campaign trail in front of voters and in front of cameras at CNN on Fox and elsewhere.
[00:26:11]  We, in the last debate, had a whole Trump section.
[00:26:14]  We had a whole electability section, which for some of them involved you're crapping the bed when it comes to polling.
[00:26:23]  Trump's crushing you.
[00:26:24]  Did anyone at any point in any of those debates or appearances or what say what we just said about you cannot listen to the polls for this reason?
[00:26:37]  The independent vote is going to collapse on Trump.
[00:26:41]  I know Republicans hate the criminal charges.
[00:26:44]  I, DeSantis, Haley, whomever, hate the criminal charges and think they're political.
[00:26:50]  But let's talk turkey.
[00:26:52]  If he gets convicted, which is a very high chance, those independents are going to run and we are going to lose.
[00:27:01]  It's too uncertain a bet and it's one we don't have to make.
[00:27:06]  I don't remember hearing that from any of them.
[00:27:09]  That wasn't that hard.
[00:27:10]  Maybe we should see if we can get Megan Kelly on it too.
[00:27:16]  I think ultimately the problem is like, for the most part, politicians don't like telling people things they don't want to hear.
[00:27:23]  That's it.
[00:27:23]  And the Republican primary electorate doesn't want to hear that stuff.
[00:27:27]  Just look at the reaction Chris Christie got, you know, at the debate.
[00:27:30]  But you're absolutely right.
[00:27:32]  It's like, if you aren't willing to have that discussion, what the heck are you doing?
[00:27:37]  What's the point of raising all the money?
[00:27:39]  What is the point of traveling to Iowa, New Hampshire, and all these places for a year?
[00:27:43]  What is the point?
[00:27:44]  Duncan, what is the point?
[00:27:45]  I don't know.
[00:27:46]  Do they want to be in Trump's cabinet?
[00:27:47]  Like, what's happening?
[00:27:48]  Why?
[00:27:49]  I know they don't want to alienate the Trump base.
[00:27:52]  Okay, that could be the one.
[00:27:53]  Or really, they just want to be in his cabinet.
[00:27:55]  They know he's won and they're more interested in being the next Secretary of State than they are in really seeing this thing through as a kid.
[00:28:01]  Or they're shooting for 2028 at this point.
[00:28:04]  It could be that.
[00:28:04]  It could be the 2020.
[00:28:05]  I don't think the cabinet thing other than maybe Vivek is a real thing with the rest of them.
[00:28:10]  But this is the criticism that we had right at the beginning when everybody announced is that it takes a certain audacity to run for president to begin with, which means you got to take some risks.
[00:28:20]  You got to do some things that aren't just sort of repeating where it is that you think the Republican electorate is at the time.
[00:28:25]  There has never been a successful nominee in my memory to the Republican Party that has surfed somebody else's wave to a nomination.
[00:28:33]  They have their own stuff, right?
[00:28:35]  Even if you look back on George H.W. Bush coming out of the Reagan administration, he did a thousand points alike.
[00:28:40]  Very, very different than anything you heard from Ronald Reagan.
[00:28:43]  He had his own brand, his own thing.
[00:28:45]  And what we saw for the first six months of this campaign was nobody doing their own thing.
[00:28:49]  I mean, maybe elements of Nikki Haley over the summer that were punctuated by the Milwaukee debate showed a very different pathway than the one that Donald Trump had treaded through the Republican primary electorate over the last five years.
[00:29:01]  But for the most part, and Ron DeSantis is included in this, it was basically telling everybody how all the anxiety things that they had been concerned about are things that I've done, but never really drawing that steep contrast into the existential danger of nominating somebody who, A, cannot win and what four more years of Joe Biden presidency would mean for them as a result of that.
[00:29:22]  And that's frustrating, right?
[00:29:24]  He's doing it now.
[00:29:25]  The question is, like, is it too late?
[00:29:28]  Yeah.
[00:29:28]  No, it's an awful lot of trouble for somebody to go through just to spend four years behind a desk at the Commerce Department.
[00:29:34]  I mean, I really don't know what motivates somebody to pursue that.
[00:29:39]  I mean, maybe it's just a hard argument to make when you look at these polls.
[00:29:42]  And we've all seen them.
[00:29:43]  And Donald Trump is currently, currently beating Joe Biden.
[00:29:48]  You know, I mean, there is part of it is, you know, the, the, one of the people that, that I blame for this is Joe Biden being as bad as he is.
[00:29:57]  Like he is so historically unpopular that like Republicans don't feel like they have to make a hard decision here, right?
[00:30:04]  Because like everybody could find a way to beat Joe Biden.
[00:30:07]  He's Joe Biden after all.
[00:30:09]  But the thing I keep reminding people is John Fenderman's a senator.
[00:30:12]  Yeah.
[00:30:12]  Right.
[00:30:13]  There is an actual risk that Joe Biden wins reelection.
[00:30:16]  You know, I mean, he won last time.
[00:30:18]  Yeah.
[00:30:18]  I mean, you could get beat with a cadaver.
[00:30:20]  Anybody can, right?
[00:30:21]  I mean, if Republicans in Alabama, you can lose damn near anything.
[00:30:24]  Yeah.
[00:30:25]  Right now, the media, I think that they're really hoping that Biden steps aside and someone like Newsom gets in, that the left-wing media understands that Biden is vulnerable.
[00:30:36]  He's too old.
[00:30:37]  He's too infirm.
[00:30:38]  And they see these polls.
[00:30:39]  So the press coverage of him has not been all that defensive lately.
[00:30:44]  You know, you can see them kind of nudge, trying to nudge him.
[00:30:47]  Like, maybe it's time for somebody else.
[00:30:48]  Maybe you could go.
[00:30:49]  We've talked before about like the Issakoff piece and other prominent Democrat figures, Axel Rod, who seem to be like, it's really up to him at this point, but hey, maybe for the good of the country.
[00:31:00]  Well, as soon as they realize he's doing it, he didn't listen.
[00:31:05]  It's Biden.
[00:31:06]  They're going to rally around him just like they always do.
[00:31:10]  And the media coverage is going to go right back to he's the leader we need.
[00:31:16]  Bidenomics is working.
[00:31:17]  Here's another Black Lives Ladder matter case that we're going to put on loop to upset everybody.
[00:31:23]  Everyone's radical.
[00:31:24]  Pick your case.
[00:31:24]  Like the abortion case, which is in the news today, we can talk about all that stuff's going to be on loop.
[00:31:29]  The media is going to do what it does because there's zero chance their questions about Joe Biden will continue past the point when they know he's their nominee.
[00:31:38]  Yeah, I just don't think this is very hard to figure out.
[00:31:41]  I mean, you don't have to be a conspiracy theory.
[00:31:43]  This is just the way it's worked, right?
[00:31:45]  I mean, Mitt Romney's full of woman misogynist who stole your job and was the worst human being of all time.
[00:31:52]  I mean, that's the way that they colored Mitt Romney.
[00:31:55]  Imagine what's coming here.
[00:31:57]  And the reconsolidation of a Democratic base is inevitable.
[00:32:00]  It's not, I mean, anybody out there is saying that a Republican nominee for president, whether it's Donald Trump or anybody else, is going to get 35, 40% of the black vote, which is what they're counting on right now in a lot of these polls that show him leading.
[00:32:11]  They're nuts.
[00:32:12]  I mean, I'm just telling you, that's not going to happen.
[00:32:14]  It's just not going to happen.
[00:32:16]  And they've got huge demographic gaps where young voters who certainly aren't going to vote for a Republican like Donald Trump are now either in the independent category or they're not checking a box or they just haven't consolidated yet around Joe Biden.
[00:32:30]  Like, what do we think is going to happen when Donald Trump, to your point, Ashbrook?
[00:32:34]  Nobody motivates that voting base like Donald Trump does.
[00:32:37]  I mean, the only demographic that he turns out better than primary Republicans is primary voting Democrats, young ones.
[00:32:45]  And so you don't need to do a lot to see how this becomes problematic in a hurry.
[00:32:50]  And specifically, that's like why the White House has given so much resources to TikTok, of all things.
[00:32:55]  They have like a TikTok division in the White House that they're going to activate and just are young voters.
[00:33:02]  Yeah.
[00:33:03]  They're so much smarter than the Republicans are.
[00:33:04]  Ashbrook, like why Vivek is right.
[00:33:07]  Like you can take, you can criticize TikTok, but these guys should all be on TikTok trying to reach young voters.
[00:33:15]  We can hate the platform, but while it's alive and well and being used by this entire group of Americans, why would Republicans completely ignore it?
[00:33:23]  Well, they should have banned it is what they should have.
[00:33:26]  But it's not banned.
[00:33:28]  I mean, that's the thing is like, at the end of the day, that platform is, and we have seen, especially in light of the attack on Israel, of it's a Chinese, you know, Communist Party government propaganda tool.
[00:33:39]  Like they are essentially using it to divide Americans in plain light.
[00:33:42]  Like it's been, you've had computer scientists who have shown specifically that it is designed to divide America.
[00:33:50]  And in the wake of Israel's being attacked by Hamas, you saw anti-Semitism.
[00:33:55]  They said, I saw studies where the percentage of people who start harboring anti-Semitic beliefs increases by the amount of time they're exposed to on TikTok.
[00:34:05]  Yeah.
[00:34:05]  And it's really just an add-on for them because their control over the mainstream media is absolute.
[00:34:11]  And you touched on this a second ago, saying exactly what's going to happen if Joe Biden's the nominee.
[00:34:16]  They're going to lay down the palm leaves for him to come into Washington, D.C. again.
[00:34:21]  And if Donald Trump is not our nominee, let's say it's like Nikki Haley, all of a sudden they're going to say, oh, well, you know what?
[00:34:27]  She's actually the worst fascist we've ever seen.
[00:34:30]  I found this option.
[00:34:31]  They're going to frame absolutely any Republican in the worst possible light.
[00:34:36]  And that's a great advantage for them in a lot of ways, except new media, the internet, thanks to Elon Musk.
[00:34:44]  People are allowed to speak their mind on X now.
[00:34:46]  Thanks to people like you, Megan.
[00:34:48]  There's information getting out so people can feel like they have the they can have the facts that they can use to make their own decisions.
[00:34:56]  So I I still, I mean, but still, we're in a stronger spot.
[00:34:59]  We're in a stronger spot from a media perspective than we have been in my memory anyway.
[00:35:04]  But it is true four years ago.
[00:35:06]  Yeah, the question ultimately, though, is not like what they're going to do.
[00:35:10]  It's the baseline and the ceiling of the candidate that they're going to try to do it to.
[00:35:15]  And, you know, Donald Trump's ceiling, like the lowest possible or the highest possible amount of support is by far and away the lowest of any Republican in this field, by far and away.
[00:35:25]  Now, his basement is the highest of anybody in terms of Republican support.
[00:35:30]  So therein lies the problem, the catch-22 within the Republican universe right now is that you've got almost by virtue of just showing up the highest amount of votes and the most likely to come out of a primary, but also the absolute lowest in terms of potential votes.
[00:35:45]  So that even the top end of that is very malleable with an independent electorate that is proven not just in polls in 2022 and 2020 and in 2018, the last three elections to be very Trump skeptical.
[00:35:59]  And I just don't, you don't need to recreate the wheel to just look at the data and say, well, that looks like it could be problematic.
[00:36:06]  And I think that the economic argument alone won't get the job done because 2018, we had a roaring economy and still got demolished.
[00:36:15]  Yeah, but then we had COVID.
[00:36:17]  Then we had COVID.
[00:36:17]  I mean, and that was, that hurt people instantaneously.
[00:36:21]  Of course, they were forced to stay home and they couldn't go to school and all that stuff.
[00:36:24]  But on that Wall Street Journal poll yesterday, we talked about it on the show, but it showed, I'm trying to pull up the numbers, a dramatic, dramatic difference on how people felt about the economic policies.
[00:36:38]  Here it is.
[00:36:39]  Hold on a second.
[00:36:39]  Let's see.
[00:36:41]  23% of voters said Biden's policies have helped them.
[00:36:45]  23%.
[00:36:48]  49%.
[00:36:49]  Bidenomics.
[00:36:51]  49% said Trump's policies had helped them.
[00:36:54]  So almost half the electorate said Trump's policies have helped them.
[00:36:58]  About one-fifth, one-fourth almost said Biden's has helped them.
[00:37:03]  53% said Biden's policies had hurt them, a majority.
[00:37:07]  Only 37% said that for Trump.
[00:37:11]  That is the piece of the Wall Street Journal poll, which I said yesterday.
[00:37:14]  That is everything right there.
[00:37:16]  That's everything that David Axelrod is worried about too.
[00:37:20]  He spoke out about the Wall Street Journal poll saying it is very, very dark.
[00:37:26]  That's the double very from Axelrod.
[00:37:29]  Very, very dark for the Biden campaign.
[00:37:33]  He said, you know, job approval down, ratings generally down.

=== Deep Agents And Censorship Claims (10:42) ===

[00:37:37]  Most of the comparatives with Trump, not good.
[00:37:42]  This is, he went on a podcast called Hacks on Tap with Robert Gibbs, former Trump guy, and another guy.
[00:37:49]  And so, you know, we're talking about 37% approval rating right now for Joe Biden.
[00:37:54]  61% had an unfavorable view of Joe Biden.
[00:37:57]  So, Holmes, I think this leads the Republican voters to think, yes, we realize Trump's got unique problems and traditionally would be considered to have this ceiling, right?
[00:38:08]  Because you look at 2020.
[00:38:10]  But, but, but look at the Wall Street Journal poll.
[00:38:15]  One fourth of voters, you know, versus all the voters who think Trump, a majority say Trump helped them.
[00:38:22]  This record low approval rating for the sitting president.
[00:38:25]  Does that not, if it doesn't raise Trump's ceiling, does it not lower Biden's to at Trump's level or below?
[00:38:32]  Oh, I mean, look, it's a battle of the midgets in terms of where your political standing is no question about it.
[00:38:38]  But, but look, this term now is little people.
[00:38:42]  Okay.
[00:38:44]  You know how I always come to you for my political corrections, Megan.
[00:38:47]  I appreciate you.
[00:38:50]  No, but look, those numbers are not entirely dissimilar from the exit polls that we saw in 2022.
[00:38:55]  I mean, the reality is, is that Republicans won every single measure, except the issue of abortion, won every single issue in front of the American people in 22 by double digits.
[00:39:06]  The economic argument, the crime argument, the border argument, all the things that come with the border argument, fentanyl, human trafficking, all of that.
[00:39:14]  And they prosecuted the case about as dang well as you could because they just destroyed it in terms of people being with them.
[00:39:20]  Then ultimately, all those people that agreed with them voted Democrat.
[00:39:22]  Why did they do that?
[00:39:23]  They voted Democrat because they still have a huge hesitancy about supporting Donald Trump.
[00:39:28]  And what Smug was talking about earlier, which we were very dismissive of in 22, was that all of the post-election shenanigans, all of the January 6th stuff, all the chaos that involved there, we thought like, you know, people are going to focus on their own pocketbook here.
[00:39:42]  They're not going to be caught up in whatever CNN's breaking news of the day is.
[00:39:47]  We were wrong.
[00:39:48]  We were wrong because there was a very significant part of the electorate that resides in suburban America that is a high income, high education voter that Republicans have traditionally used for the last 20 years to get to 50 plus one that have been since 2018 in the Democratic column.
[00:40:04]  And they are not going anywhere.
[00:40:05]  They still have that same hesitancy, despite the fact that they agree.
[00:40:08]  They're going to show up in those polls saying, yes, Biden sucks.
[00:40:11]  We hate him.
[00:40:12]  He's terrible.
[00:40:13]  It's also the same people, by the way, that show up in that 70% Venn diagram of American people that don't want either of these guys.
[00:40:20]  It's very, very unprecedented from that standpoint.
[00:40:23]  But you shouldn't look at how somebody feels about issue sets right now to extrapolate about whether or not your own candidate is in a stronger position because we've seen this.
[00:40:34]  It's happened in the last, like traditionally speaking, that is right.
[00:40:38]  It's the old Carville.
[00:40:39]  It's the economy stupid.
[00:40:41]  That has traditionally been right.
[00:40:43]  It hasn't been right in the last three cycles.
[00:40:46]  Something that I've been doing is spending time looking at the ads, the messaging that Obama was doing for his reelect, right?
[00:40:54]  And he was highlighting specifically economic numbers of like, oh, the average American is paying X and X less for filling a prescription or paying X and X, you know, less for their, you know, day-to-day needs, showing that, okay, we're getting out of recession.
[00:41:09]  There's no talk of that from Biden.
[00:41:12]  I think the Democrats have completely rejiggered their message completely to social issues of like, like every issue, like you just described, the Harvard president.
[00:41:21]  Oh, it's white supremacy to try to correct this.
[00:41:23]  You know, like everything is an existential threat to them in the sense that this is white supremacy.
[00:41:28]  This is bigotry to make people terrified, feeling that like, okay, Donald Trump and Republicans want to kill me.
[00:41:35]  They'll say like, you know, trans lives are at risk if we let Ben Shapiro speak on campus.
[00:41:39]  Everything has to be amped up to them to be a life or death situation.
[00:41:43]  So they avoid thinking about, wait a minute, I'm paying 11,000 more for food this year than I did in 2021.
[00:41:49]  And they can't.
[00:41:49]  The Democrats can't talk about economics because it's such a losing message for them from that Wall Street Journal poll, Megan.
[00:41:56]  Bidenomics polls, fave on fave, 2952.
[00:42:01]  Oh, my Lord.
[00:42:03]  How's that going, Joe?
[00:42:04]  The lean in philosophy on Bidenomics.
[00:42:07]  Well, and that's the thing.
[00:42:07]  The Wall Street Journal poll over the weekend showed in a general election matchup of the existing Republicans running for office right now.
[00:42:14]  Nikki Haley crushes way more than anybody else.
[00:42:17]  She was 17 points up over Biden.
[00:42:20]  Everyone else, Trump had, he was up over Biden by some single digit number.
[00:42:24]  Ron DeSantis was tied.
[00:42:27]  And yet that's not how this works because that's just like a hypothetical.
[00:42:32]  This is how it could be.
[00:42:33]  You'd actually have to get like the Trump base, the people who are supporting Vivek Ramaswamy hate her, hate Nikki Haley for whatever reason.
[00:42:44]  And I've asked some of them, like, explain to me what it is that really drives you crazy.
[00:42:48]  And I think it goes to largely what I was asking him about, her about in my electability question.
[00:42:52]  She's too tied in with the establishment, with the banks, with the billionaire.
[00:42:55]  She's going to sell out.
[00:42:57]  She won't represent the little guy, which is what they think they are.
[00:43:01]  And so 17 points up over Biden sounds good on paper.
[00:43:05]  But does the Trump base stay home if it's somebody like that?
[00:43:10]  Like, I think they'd go out for a Vivek.
[00:43:12]  We all know it's not going to be Vivek, but I think they would go out for a Vivek.
[00:43:16]  I think they might actually go out for Ron DeSantis too.
[00:43:18]  They're kind of pissed at him right now because he's running against Trump.
[00:43:21]  But in the end, if Trump died and DeSantis got it, I think they'd support him.
[00:43:26]  If Trump died and Nikki Haley got it, I don't think they'd support her.
[00:43:30]  So it's like to your point, these things are on paper.
[00:43:34]  They're one thing, but what is the real meaning and what's actually happening on the ground?
[00:43:38]  Tell us.
[00:43:39]  Go ahead, Josh.
[00:43:40]  Well, it's a different coalition.
[00:43:41]  And that's where I think an awful lot of people within the Republican Party, within the operative class, do not have a firm grasp on how they were going to prosecute this election in the primary at all, because everybody's working off of a primary electorate that was built since 2016 entirely by Donald Trump.
[00:43:58]  Yep.
[00:43:59]  That is not the same segment of voters that showed up in droves in 2014 to support Republicans.
[00:44:04]  In fact, in many places, it is entirely different.
[00:44:07]  You saw congressional districts that were held by Democrats in rural areas in 2014, and then Republicans smoked suburban areas in 2014.
[00:44:16]  And you fast forward, it's the exact opposite.
[00:44:19]  It doesn't mean that all of those suburban voters have just somehow taken leave of their senses and they're now like left-wing lunatics.
[00:44:24]  No, they've got a problem with the Trump electorate as is.
[00:44:27]  And the question is whether or not they're going to participate in any meaningful way in a Republican primary electorate.
[00:44:33]  There's no question that they are participating in a general electorate.
[00:44:37]  I mean, part of the problem Republicans have in midterms is that that suburban electorate shows up at 78%.
[00:44:43]  And in midterms, they swapped them out for a rural electorate that shows up at 57.
[00:44:48]  That's why my entire lifetime, midterms have been pretty good for Republicans until the last two midterms because the coalition changed.
[00:44:54]  But you don't have to accept that.
[00:44:56]  What you have to do is make a case to voters.
[00:44:59]  People don't just sit at home in silos and wait for their silo to be called to go up and vote.
[00:45:05]  They're dynamic.
[00:45:05]  They think differently.
[00:45:06]  You have to have a message that mobilizes that maybe this is something that's different that I identify more with than the current iteration of the Republican Party.
[00:45:15]  And thus far, there's been precious little talk about that.
[00:45:17]  I think that's an excellent point.
[00:45:19]  Huge point is I think too many folks have been fixated on politics and how we've had coalitions since 2016.
[00:45:27]  I think a lot of the operatives don't know a time before 2016.
[00:45:31]  They don't know about 2014 being a monster wave where we took the Senate and just crushed Democrats coast to coast.
[00:45:37]  So their idea of like what the voter base looks like is incredibly static.
[00:45:42]  They don't see how it changes over time.
[00:45:44]  And they don't see like, you know, let's say Nikki is on the general election ballot.
[00:45:48]  Well, she's picking up a ton more of these independent voters and has a lot less and Dems.
[00:45:55]  And Dems.
[00:45:56]  I mean, the point is the coalition changed.
[00:45:57]  Well, do you remember ahead of 2016?
[00:46:00]  Maybe I think it was Chuck Schumer.
[00:46:02]  It was somebody, a prominent Democrat, you know, made the argument because people were starting to notice like there is this rural vote that is, you know, switching to Donald Trump.
[00:46:11]  And, you know, famously he said, you know, for every one rural voter, we pick up two in the Philly suburbs.
[00:46:17]  And he was wrong then.
[00:46:19]  But as we've seen over time, that is what has happened to the coalitions.
[00:46:23]  They have changed.
[00:46:23]  Nikki Haley widens the aperture and gives us an opportunity, I think, to play back into some of those suburban areas, which look, I don't like making a trade for voters ever.
[00:46:34]  You know, I want the Republican coalition to be as large as possible, but you cannot deny these suburban areas are extremely vote rich in raw vote totals.
[00:46:41]  You're talking tens of thousands of votes.
[00:46:44]  When you're talking statewide about winning a state or the electoral college, it matters a ton.
[00:46:50]  All I can think of, this is not right.
[00:46:52]  Exactly the right analogy, but all I can think of is like the husband who's at home, the would-be husband, and he's choosing between the two women.
[00:47:00]  And like, there's the one woman who's very unattractive and kind of difficult to listen to and is constantly nagging at you and yelling at you and causing trouble in your life.
[00:47:09]  But if you, if you marry that woman, um, you're gonna have like great kids, they're gonna, your life's gonna be better, they're gonna be easy to raise.
[00:47:19]  You're you know, the children next level could be really good.
[00:47:23]  Then you've got the really hot one.
[00:47:25]  She loves crazy, she loves to have a turn in the stack every time.
[00:47:31]  Why are you doing that?
[00:47:32]  You have tons of fun with her, you enjoy spending time with her.
[00:47:36]  But if you marry that one, there's something in the family gene pool that's going to wind up really weird at the next level, and you're going to have to live with a lot of issues.
[00:47:43]  It's just somebody's got to make poor decisions.
[00:47:46]  Who does the man cheating us into a belt sander?
[00:47:51]  No, I can marry guys.
[00:47:53]  No, you want to make a smooth decision?
[00:47:54]  That's a crazy touch.
[00:47:55]  Trump voters are like, I get that like net net.
[00:48:00]  I'd probably be better off if I married the one I do not find attractive, Nikki Hayes.
[00:48:05]  I can fix her.
[00:48:06]  I want the hot one.
[00:48:07]  I want the hot Trump.
[00:48:08]  That's what they're thinking.
[00:48:09]  We can make this work.
[00:48:11]  I think it all comes down to which in-laws are richer.
[00:48:14]  You know, that can really tip the balance.
[00:48:16]  I think you're looking, I think you're right.
[00:48:18]  That's a great analogy.

=== Texas Mother Health Crisis Debate (10:05) ===

[00:48:20]  I think you're right.
[00:48:21]  I think there's something else that is more practical in trying to understand the motivation of the Trump voters who want to stick with Donald Trump.
[00:48:28]  It's like, look, they lived through the Russia collusion hoax and everything that happened when he was president.
[00:48:34]  They feel like he was slighted and that is part of his presidency.
[00:48:37]  He was stolen by the media and the Democratic establishment that tried to frame him for something he obviously didn't do.
[00:48:46]  And so they're not ready to throw him away.
[00:48:48]  I think also for them, and if they see these cases as a weaponization of the DOJ and all of those things, their thought process is: if we don't fight that system with this guy, then it's then that system will win forever.
[00:49:03]  They'll do it again.
[00:49:05]  And I sympathize with both of those things.
[00:49:10]  Here's what I would say in response: you know, if Donald Trump had tipped his cap after 2020 and said, we'll get him next time, he'd be leading by 25 points.
[00:49:20]  No question.
[00:49:21]  And if he didn't wave that document at Mar-a-Lago in front of people being recorded saying, I shouldn't have this, I could have declassified this as president, and I didn't.
[00:49:31]  Now we have a problem.
[00:49:32]  The aid, like, like the deep, can we turn off the recorders and rewind a little?
[00:49:40]  Like the deep state, like the deep state didn't set him up for that.
[00:49:44]  He did it to himself.
[00:49:45]  No, he did it to himself.
[00:49:47]  You know, so like it's he is the hot chick, but there are some issues there that are outside of your control.
[00:49:56]  I think it was best said on the Lebowski.
[00:49:59]  How are you going to keep Bunny down on the farm when she's seen Carl Hung as well?
[00:50:02]  Do you hear about that?
[00:50:06]  All right.
[00:50:06]  On that note, we'll take a quick break.
[00:50:09]  We'll come back as the guys from Ruthless stay with us for the full show.
[00:50:13]  So happy to have the fellas with us today.
[00:50:19]  So, guys, CNN has been doing a series of town halls with the candidates.
[00:50:23]  They did DeSantis on Tuesday.
[00:50:26]  He did decide to go after Trump.
[00:50:28]  He's been getting a little bit more aggressive towards Trump lately.
[00:50:31]  Not that aggressive.
[00:50:32]  It kind of reminds me of Ted Cruz.
[00:50:34]  Remember how Ted Cruz is like, I'm going to finally tell you exactly what I think about Donald Trump.
[00:50:39]  He's absolutely disgusting.
[00:50:40]  He's blah, blah, blah.
[00:50:41]  And I was like, okay, it's too late for that.
[00:50:44]  Like, it's too late.
[00:50:46]  Anyway, last night they had on Vivek Ramaswamy.
[00:50:51]  And I realize that Vivek is having a really fun time spinning a bunch of yarns about everyone's favorite conspiracies.
[00:50:59]  I mean, he really liked it from 9-11.
[00:51:01]  January 6th was an inside job.
[00:51:03]  I mean, there's just, that's okay.
[00:51:06]  I'm sure there were some federal agents there.
[00:51:08]  They haven't been honest with us about how many.
[00:51:10]  The FBI director was very cagey when asked and wouldn't give the numbers.
[00:51:16]  Okay, so was it FBI agents bear spraying cops in the face, pummeling them with flagpole?
[00:51:22]  Like, all right, you can say they had a role and it's bullshit and we're entitled to know exactly what the role was without going full Alex Jones.
[00:51:30]  But in any event, that's for his voters and everybody else to pass judgment on.
[00:51:35]  But here's what is so annoying that Abby Phillip is annoying.
[00:51:39]  She is such an interrupter.
[00:51:41]  Like, shut the F up.
[00:51:42]  Let him make his point.
[00:51:44]  If you want to fact check him later, then do shut up though.
[00:51:47]  CNN has got an aversion to letting the words come out of the candidates' mouths.
[00:51:53]  And it's really a disservice.
[00:51:55]  Even if you don't agree with what he's saying, yet you invited him.
[00:51:59]  Let him say it.
[00:52:00]  Then do your fact check.
[00:52:01]  Here's just a little bit of what happened.
[00:52:04]  The reality is we know that there were federal law enforcement agents in that field.
[00:52:08]  We don't know how many.
[00:52:09]  I think it's a shame for you.
[00:52:11]  If I may finish this answer, I'm going to go ahead and interrupt you here because saying that the establishment doesn't approve of this message.
[00:52:18]  We should be able to talk about this.
[00:52:19]  You're saying that there were federal agents.
[00:52:20]  This is important.
[00:52:22]  You are saying there were federal agents in the pad on January 6th.
[00:52:26]  There is no evidence that there were federal agents in the crowd on January 6th.
[00:52:30]  So why before Congress, when pressed on what the number was, they didn't say there were none.
[00:52:34]  They just couldn't say.
[00:52:35]  You're saying that there's no, that you have not seen any evidence of the people.
[00:52:38]  So we've seen multiple and so you're not.
[00:52:40]  We've seen multiple informants suggesting that there were.
[00:52:43]  We know people were FBI informants who were asking.
[00:52:44]  Is there any evidence?
[00:52:45]  May I just put it in the middle of the moment?
[00:52:47]  Let me come back to question.
[00:52:48]  But let me clarify.
[00:52:48]  I know it's very uncomfortable for you.
[00:52:49]  I'm going to clarify.
[00:52:52]  This is.
[00:52:54]  For listening audience, Holmes has got his hand over his face.
[00:52:57]  That's how I feel too.
[00:52:57]  Go ahead, Ashbrook.
[00:52:59]  Here's the thing.
[00:53:00]  We give this guy a really hard time on the program, Michael Duncan, Chief Among Us.
[00:53:05]  But he is paying for that microphone.
[00:53:07]  He's like the one guy in the race who is literally paying out of his own pocket to be in the race.
[00:53:12]  So he has the right to be able to say what it is that he wants to say.
[00:53:17]  And I think he came off looking better at that exchange.
[00:53:21]  Like given the circumstances of like how terrible a job she was doing, he made the best of it.
[00:53:27]  I mean, like, it's insane that he had the situation of where someone from CNN makes him look better by like saying, well, the facts may not agree with you, but is so terrible about it and gives him the opportunity multiple times to dunk on her and being like, okay, since you're not going to allow me to finish, it's clear that you don't want me discussing it.
[00:53:45]  It just adds more weight to his argument if it seems like he's being censored.
[00:53:50]  That's exactly what he's saying.
[00:53:51]  That's exactly the thing.
[00:53:52]  It's that Streisand theory where like you try to suppress images of her house and so that everybody Googles where her house is and so everybody learns something they didn't even care in the first place.
[00:54:03]  You know, it's the same thing with Vivek because like he's making a point.
[00:54:08]  And I mean, we could get into all the things that are wrong and the point he's trying to make.
[00:54:12]  But when he's, you interrupt him, you're giving him exactly what he wants.
[00:54:14]  Yeah.
[00:54:14]  Which he's now, it's like, oh, well, I must be on.
[00:54:16]  I must be on to something because they don't want me saying it.
[00:54:19]  What are we hiding?
[00:54:20]  Yeah.
[00:54:20]  What's out there?
[00:54:21]  Right.
[00:54:22]  I, too, am like, I'm leaning in.
[00:54:24]  The more she's trying to censor what he's saying, I'm like, what's, you know, what's he saying?
[00:54:28]  Why is she so averse to it?
[00:54:30]  Like his words, his words are so vile, they cannot be uttered.
[00:54:34]  They can be uttered.
[00:54:35]  Abby, let him finish.
[00:54:37]  You invited him there.
[00:54:38]  Let him make his damn point.
[00:54:40]  And if you watch the whole clip, it's not like he was going on forever.
[00:54:43]  Like it was a reasonable amount of time he took to set up his point.
[00:54:46]  Just fucking let him make it.
[00:54:48]  Okay, here's the second thing that's bothering me right now.
[00:54:50]  Here's the second thing that's bothering me.
[00:54:53]  There's no quicker way for me to support someone than CNN being an ass to them.
[00:54:57]  That sounds like someone who I would agree with.
[00:55:00]  100%.
[00:55:01]  I'm ready to vote for him now just because of that.
[00:55:03]  Yeah.
[00:55:04]  Oliver Darcy of CNN doesn't feel as we do.
[00:55:09]  Here's what remember the CNNers had a complete meltdown when they did a town hall with Trump.
[00:55:15]  Similar reaction by him.
[00:55:17]  This is what he wrote.
[00:55:19]  Handing Ramaswamy a microphone and putting him on a stage affixed wait for it with CNN's iconic branding to answer audience questions helps validate him and provides oxygen to the menacing wildfire of delusions he has pushed into the public discourse.
[00:55:41]  The notion that the infotainer who CNN has reported struggles for relevance as he polls in the low single digits and remains exceedingly unlikely to be the Republican Party's nominee deserves an hour-long national platform to sell his personal brand and insidious talking points to the masses taxes the imagination.
[00:56:00]  Oliver Darcy has pronounced Vivek should no longer be platformed.
[00:56:06]  Even though he is polling 5% in the latest poll, he's look, we all know he's not going to win unless something catastrophic happens to everybody who's polling way, way above him.
[00:56:15]  But he has pronounced it over and said Vivek should no longer be platformed because of CNN's iconic brand.
[00:56:25]  This is where I wish we had the board going because the statement that you read from Oliver Darcy would be a perfect overlay to a West Wing thing.
[00:56:32]  Yeah, wouldn't it?
[00:56:33]  This just like weird fictional place that libs live that, you know, you can just sort of platform who you want and talk about the virtues of these things and other people should not be able to.
[00:56:45]  But I think honestly, in both of these cases, Megan, there's still a cadre of journalists and this falls into like the old corporate journalism place.
[00:56:54]  And this would be familiar to you having dealt with it in your life and career, that their constituency is entirely made up of each other.
[00:57:04]  And what they want to do is impress their fellow journals.
[00:57:09]  It's not really about informing the actual electorate.
[00:57:12]  It's not about news.
[00:57:13]  We know that for damn sure on CNN.
[00:57:16]  It's about impressing their like-minded journal colleagues who, you know, either would blash, just blunch at any sort of suggestion that a Rip Vivek Ramaswamy makes in public.
[00:57:27]  And so they can say, well, I pushed him hard.
[00:57:29]  And I've, and everybody can say, yes, you did.
[00:57:31]  You're a very good job on that.
[00:57:33]  And Oliver Darcy kind of falls into the same category.
[00:57:36]  It's disgusting that that's still where there is a segment of media.
[00:57:39]  But I mean, look, it shows up more often than it doesn't on these major stations.
[00:57:43]  It was pretty precious.
[00:57:45]  I mean, the iconic brand, what is that the one that Don Lemon built that Jeff Zucker built?
[00:57:50]  Is that like, walk us through it.
[00:57:52]  That the Malaysian flight went missing into a black hole.
[00:57:55]  Is that your iconic brand?
[00:57:56]  Yeah.
[00:57:57]  Rush a gate.
[00:57:58]  Your COVID, your fake Chris Cuomo coming out of the basement, pretending he had not been out.
[00:58:03]  Like, and you put it on TV like it was real and not an acting job.
[00:58:06]  That's your iconic.
[00:58:07]  Okay.
[00:58:08]  Don't forget about the deathless coverage of the poop boat.
[00:58:11]  They did like a year-long coverage of that ship that was stuck in the book.
[00:58:14]  Yeah, it's a cruise ship.
[00:58:16]  Not to mention Chris Cuomo, like reporting on his brother, having his brother on, giving him a total pass on all the COVID main.
[00:58:24]  Okay, iconic.

=== Yale President Plagiarism Scandal (14:49) ===

[00:58:25]  I mean, maybe, but not for the reasons you think.
[00:58:28]  All right.
[00:58:28]  They continue to go on there trying to turn things around.
[00:58:31]  I look forward to seeing whether it happens.
[00:58:32]  I got to get to this Kate Cox story.
[00:58:35]  So she's not in household name yet, but she's starting to become one.
[00:58:38]  I mentioned before the Democrats absolutely are going to find it's not going to be necessarily a George Floyd, but it trust me, it could be something just like George Floyd.
[00:58:48]  Police work is ugly and doesn't always make good headlines and it certainly doesn't make good video.
[00:58:55]  And if you want to make demons out of the cops on any given day, you could probably find a videotape to do it.
[00:59:01]  And they do it.
[00:59:01]  They do it every election year.
[00:59:02]  It's going to happen this year.
[00:59:04]  Mark my words.
[00:59:04]  We got 10 months to go.
[00:59:05]  There'll be something.
[00:59:06]  They have to wait until we're a little closer to the vote, but it's going to happen.
[00:59:09]  And another possibility for those offerings is the abortion lane.
[00:59:14]  You guys pointed it out before.
[00:59:15]  That is the one issue on which the Dems continue to beat the GOP in the exit polling, in the real polling, in public opinion in general.
[00:59:23]  And enter the case of Kate Cox.
[00:59:26]  Now, Kate Cox is down in Texas, and she's a mom who's got two children already.
[00:59:32]  And she is pregnant with her third child and found out that the child has a health issue and that the baby has no chance of living outside of the womb.
[00:59:46]  That it's in more, they say in more than 95% of the cases, babies with trisomy 18 die.
[00:59:55]  Either they die stillbirth or they die moments after they're delivered.
[00:59:59]  And, you know, the heartbreak for the mother is enormous when you know at 20 weeks you're carrying a baby that's going to die either while she's in you or while you're delivering her.
[01:00:10]  My God.
[01:00:11]  I mean, I totally understand why a mother in that situation would consider ending the pregnancy.
[01:00:16]  And I realize that there are hardcore pro-lifers who are like, nope, you got to do it.
[01:00:20]  You got to give birth to the baby.
[01:00:22]  And if she dies moments thereafter, life is life.
[01:00:26]  I definitely do not feel this way.
[01:00:28]  I cannot imagine the psychological torture for a mother understanding you're carrying this baby, you're nurturing this baby, you're falling in love with this baby day after day.
[01:00:37]  And in over 95% of cases, she will die the moment she's coming out of you or she will be stillborn.
[01:00:45]  My God, that's a form of torture for what?
[01:00:49]  For a baby that's going to die.
[01:00:50]  The only question is at what moment?
[01:00:54]  With respect to the people who disagree with me, that's where I've come down on it.
[01:00:57]  And in any event, Kate Cox wants to do this.
[01:01:01]  She wants to have the abortion in Texas, but the law does not allow it.
[01:01:05]  And you can only have an abortion like this under certain medical exceptions.
[01:01:12]  And it would have to be, she would have to show that, for example, she wasn't going to be able to have children in the future, like a pretty significant medical risk to the mother.
[01:01:23]  And the court found she didn't show that, that she did not show that.
[01:01:28]  First, the lower court said she did, but then that lower court judge got overruled by the Texas higher court that said, look, you're saying you have hypertension.
[01:01:40]  You're saying you've already had two C-sections and being forced to have a third C-section, which could happen in an emergency delivery like this, could cause you not to have future children.
[01:01:49]  That's not good enough.
[01:01:50]  There are lots of mothers who actually did have to have or chose to have three C-section.
[01:01:53]  Like they're not buying it.
[01:01:55]  And it's turned into a big deal.
[01:01:57]  She went on the New York Times, The Daily podcast today.
[01:01:59]  Here's a bit of the exchange.
[01:02:02]  One of those last ultrasounds I had done, my mother-in-law asked, even if somehow the results came back and this was not full price of me 18, is the situation severe?
[01:02:14]  And the doctor said, yes, it's severe.
[01:02:16]  We asked the best case scenario.
[01:02:18]  How much time might we have?
[01:02:21]  And she said, could be an hour, could be a week.
[01:02:24]  I knew for my health and for the best chance at another baby and for this pain every day of carrying a baby and wondering, you know, kill her kick, wondering if her heart has stopped.
[01:02:36]  You know, it's always in the back of your mind.
[01:02:38]  I love and I want this baby so badly.
[01:02:42]  There's nobody that loves and wants this baby girl more than I do.
[01:02:45]  But there's no outcomes at the end of this where I take home a healthy baby girl.
[01:02:53]  When the Texas Supreme Court ruled against her, she left the state and we believe she's gotten an abortion in another state.
[01:03:00]  But this is a big story and it's going to get bigger.
[01:03:04]  The social media lefties went nuts with it.
[01:03:07]  Yes, Jacob Ann Coulter tweeted something out to the effect of we've gone from being empathetic toward the life of the child to being totally apathetic to the life of the mother and child.
[01:03:18]  Something like that was more eloquent than what I just said.
[01:03:23]  Republicans have a massive problem on their hands if this is what the next 10 months look like, you guys.
[01:03:29]  Yeah.
[01:03:30]  Yeah.
[01:03:30]  I don't know.
[01:03:31]  What do you make of it?
[01:03:32]  It's just absolutely heartbreaking.
[01:03:34]  And, you know, as a parent, you put yourself in that situation.
[01:03:36]  You can't even barely draw breath.
[01:03:38]  I mean, it's, it's, I can't even imagine what that family's going through.
[01:03:42]  But I think this is in terms of a political problem, it's one for precisely these reasons.
[01:03:48]  It's going to stick around for a little while because, you know, we went for 40 years having one sort of Roe v. Wade standpoint of how you judge whether abortions are available in this country.
[01:04:01]  And there are an awful lot of us who thought that was wrongly decided and it was rightly remanded back to states like Texas to make their own laws.
[01:04:07]  What's happened as a result of that is you've entered a new category of legislation in all these states that is like any issue that is being litigated for the first time in a long time is imperfect at best.
[01:04:22]  And there are scenarios that like this one right here that really need to be thought through and need to be understood and understood that there is compassion on all sides.
[01:04:32]  This is not just like coming down on high from saying, nope, these are the only situations that we can ever foresee this being done.
[01:04:43]  Well, obviously, I don't think there's an awful lot of people that would disagree with what this woman is saying.
[01:04:48]  I just don't.
[01:04:49]  I don't think there's an awful lot of women.
[01:04:50]  Now, there are some, for sure.
[01:04:52]  But the question is, how do you litigate this thing over time?
[01:04:55]  Do we get to a point where you have consensus in every state or best you can?
[01:05:00]  And right now you don't.
[01:05:01]  You have some states.
[01:05:02]  I mean, look, Virginia is one of them, right?
[01:05:03]  Where you can basically have right up until birth that you can have an abortion.
[01:05:09]  That is equally disgusting.
[01:05:12]  And they have to figure out, Republicans have to figure out how you litigate this issue and legislate upon it to a point where you have found consensus and you can actually put this issue into a place where it's not constantly thrown open, exposing the worst fears of young women, young couples, you know, parents like this that we're talking about, because that's where we're at right now.
[01:05:37]  And a lot of these states are just grappling with it and it's imperfect.
[01:05:42]  Yeah, Democrats have.
[01:05:43]  I'll just say, I'll give you the fluoreshi, but I will say this, like DeSantis in Florida signed that six-week abortion ban, but it's got exceptions.
[01:05:49]  Of course, there's always a life exception, but it's also got exceptions for severe fetal abnormalities.
[01:05:55]  I mean, he's not saying you can abort your child if like it's missing a finger in a severe fetal abnormalities would include trisomy 18.
[01:06:03]  This, the Texas law is different.
[01:06:06]  And so that you've got the human element that really will pull on the heartstrings of most thinking human beings who understand abortion is like, it can be very fraught, but who also already see Republicans on abortion legislation as potentially getting too authoritarian, like overreaching.
[01:06:26]  You go ahead.
[01:06:28]  All I was going to add was the Democrats have a responsibility here too, because if you listen to them, there is no common ground that they're interested in finding at all.
[01:06:37]  I mean, this is a human issue on so many different sides.
[01:06:40]  It's an emotional issue on so many different levels.
[01:06:43]  And you have Republicans who are saying, let's find some common ground.
[01:06:47]  And Democrats are like, no, we won't even talk about it.
[01:06:50]  If like the Virginia case that Josh mentioned, where I don't know if you remember this video with the Democrat governor at the time talking about post-birth abortion.
[01:07:01]  So if Democrats are just going to, you know, defend that indefensible position over and over and over again, we're never going to reach common ground to it to some sort of a standard that everybody agrees with.
[01:07:14]  But how is that an answer to this?
[01:07:16]  Because you're down in Texas where they've got a Republican government.
[01:07:19]  They could have passed what they wanted.
[01:07:20]  They did.
[01:07:21]  They passed this.
[01:07:22]  Obviously, the law is inadequate.
[01:07:24]  The law is inadequate.
[01:07:26]  I think, you know, Democrats realize that they want to highlight instances like this because they know they lose on arguments like abortion up to day of delivery.
[01:07:39]  And they know they lose when the public sees demonstrations, which, you know, you have these activists screaming, like, shout your abortion to celebrate it.
[01:07:46]  This is a case where, like she said, she loves that child.
[01:07:49]  She wishes this wasn't happening.
[01:07:51]  And so they want to highlight situations where the law fails to understand the human element like this, because like Holmes says, this has not been, you know, this policy is very fresh.
[01:08:02]  And we're still in a situation where Democrats want the political issue.
[01:08:06]  Yes.
[01:08:06]  Right.
[01:08:06]  I mean, I have a hard response.
[01:08:07]  The correct response, though, you tell me, the correct response, if you're a Republican in Texas to say, is to say, you are right.
[01:08:15]  The law failed.
[01:08:16]  We need an amendment.
[01:08:18]  We need to be like Florida and provide for severe feet.
[01:08:22]  And I get it.
[01:08:22]  The hardcore pro-life crowd is like, no, there's a reason that's not in there.
[01:08:27]  My own view is as a moral matter and certainly as a political one, if you don't start providing exceptions for situations like that, you've completely lost your way.
[01:08:37]  The whole abortion argument is meant to balance the rights of the mother with the rights of the fetus.
[01:08:45]  And in a perfect world, they totally align.
[01:08:47]  But sometimes they don't.
[01:08:49]  Sometimes the mother will die if forced to carry the baby to term.
[01:08:53]  It's extremely rare.
[01:08:54]  This isn't that case, but sometimes the mother will.
[01:08:57]  And in those cases, the law will recognize, yes, the mother's, the existing life that's already present and with us on her own two feet and viable would take precedence if we have to choose over that of the baby.
[01:09:08]  And sometimes it's something very different.
[01:09:10]  Sometimes, you know, when you've got a baby that's about to be born and there's no health abnormality and there's no risk to the mother, the mother should have to give birth to that baby.
[01:09:18]  You carried it.
[01:09:19]  You made it.
[01:09:19]  What you can't say your mental health allows you to kill this child.
[01:09:24]  So the law already recognizes there are two interests here that we are weighing.
[01:09:28]  And what they're saying in this case is that the torture of the mother for the next 20 weeks, just to give birth to a child that has zero chance of living beyond a few minutes, doesn't matter.
[01:09:42]  That to me is too barbaric for the Republicans to ever win elections.
[01:09:47]  Again, in Texas is going more and more blue by the day.
[01:09:51]  You guys could take it.
[01:09:52]  And I think a Texas, you know, a representative there should immediately introduce a bill specifically for trisomy 18 because the more that you allow these stories, these heartbreaking stories to be highlighted, the worse it's going to be for Republicans.
[01:10:05]  Well, let me this, if it's possible to get more depressing, let me give it a shot.
[01:10:11]  Let me tell you how I think this would go.
[01:10:14]  I think this story highlights something that there are an awful lot of really reasonable people who would like to introduce legislation to amend their current statute that deals with that.
[01:10:23]  I think a not inconsiderable number of Democrats who are pro-choice are entirely pro-choice to the point where there's no nothing.
[01:10:33]  It just is open, unfettered access to abortion, no matter what.
[01:10:37]  And their willingness to improve pro-life legislation is almost non-existent.
[01:10:42]  We've seen this at the federal level, where anytime you try to get to a point where you're actually making improvements to deal with situations like this or deal with various very problematic pieces.
[01:10:56]  The political issue is so strong.
[01:10:58]  Emily's list is so strong within the Democratic coalition that they don't want to improve anything.
[01:11:03]  They want the issue and they want to turn around and point at Republicans.
[01:11:07]  And then you've got a Republican, probably a majority of representatives, but not all representatives who would be willing to take action on this with zero Democratic votes and it ultimately doesn't pass.
[01:11:17]  That is how broken the current standard of politics is.
[01:11:22]  And it's happening in every state legislature across this country.
[01:11:25]  If you want to demand change for things like this, it's not a Republican-only problem.
[01:11:30]  It is a Republican and Democratic problem to have a willingness to set your special interest bullshit aside and try to listen to people like this and make adequate changes for the betterment of your citizenry.
[01:11:42]  We just haven't seen a lot of that lately.
[01:11:43]  And I mean, look, that's really depressing.
[01:11:46]  Well, the other problem, just to add to that, is Democrats always want a mental health exception for the mother, a health exception, which could include mental health.
[01:11:55]  And that's an exception that eats the rule.
[01:11:58]  I mean, it's like, this is the problem.
[01:12:00]  This is what was happening with Gosnell in Pennsylvania.
[01:12:04]  All you'd have to do is go in there and say, like, I realize I'm eight months pregnant, but it's really distressful to me to have this baby.
[01:12:10]  I can't afford it.
[01:12:10]  And he would abort it.
[01:12:12]  You know, he's now in prison, but only because that wound up becoming a national issue.
[01:12:17]  And they were allowing this in Pennsylvania for a long, long time under Tom Ridge.
[01:12:21]  In any event, you can't have this wide mental health exception because it swallows the rule.
[01:12:27]  And what I'm kind of talking about here, the distress to the mother in carrying the fetal, that is, they're allowing that because of the mental distress to the mother.
[01:12:35]  I mean, Ron DeSantis' exception for fetal abnormalities is basically allowing the mental distress of the mother to lead to an abortion.
[01:12:43]  Now, I feel like most reasonable people can see the logic behind that.
[01:12:47]  That is not the same as saying, gee, I don't want this kid.
[01:12:50]  I just don't want it.
[01:12:52]  I was irresponsible and now I want to kill it.
[01:12:54]  That's not the same.
[01:12:55]  And so like the Nikki Haley approach of like, we've got to be reasonable looks very appealing, I think, to a lot of women.
[01:13:01]  You just can't get to the point where you're allowing Governor Blackface/slash KKK Hood, Northam, in Virginia, to be letting babies be born and then killed on the operating table.
[01:13:11]  So anyway, there's no revision.
[01:13:13]  This is the kind of conversation.

=== Free SiriusXM Subscription Offer (11:26) ===

[01:13:15]  Megan, this is the kind of conversation you ought to be having about an issue of this magnitude.
[01:13:19]  And it's one that we haven't had at a national level because of the interests predominantly on the Democratic side of making it a potent political issue that has worked very well for them over the last two years.
[01:13:30]  And they're not eager to let it go.
[01:13:32]  It's going to keep going.
[01:13:33]  That's the point really of me raising it because you guys are the political gurus, not the abortion experts.
[01:13:38]  But this is going to be a George Floyd.
[01:13:41]  You know, like this is going to be this case and others like it on loop, everywhere.
[01:13:47]  All Republicans want to do this to you, including President Trump, who's responsible for the reversal of Roe v. Wade through those Supreme Court.
[01:13:55]  Like, this is where we're going.
[01:13:57]  And Republicans, it's fine to just sit back and be like, it's bullshit.
[01:14:01]  That's unfair.
[01:14:02]  You better learn how to fight.
[01:14:04]  You better get a better message or you're going to get your asses kicked over and over and over because cases like this are going to scare women.
[01:14:11]  They're going to scare married women and unmarried women.
[01:14:15]  Okay.
[01:14:15]  Speaking of scary women, Claudine Gay, She is scary because she's running a massive university and she appears to be intellectually and academically dishonest.
[01:14:27]  And no matter how much of her dishonesty surfaces, she gets defended.
[01:14:31]  It's no problem for Harvard.
[01:14:33]  It's no problem for the New York Times.
[01:14:35]  I'm sure if one of you four guys got caught in like a dozen plagiarism scandals and you were running even a department at Harvard, they'd cut you the same kind of slack, don't you think?
[01:14:48]  Oh, no question.
[01:14:50]  No question.
[01:14:51]  Claudine Gay is getting full cover run for her.
[01:14:54]  Forget the stuff she said about Jews and she wasn't sure if calling for their genocide was a problem at Harvard.
[01:15:01]  The plagiarism allegations have gone like every day.
[01:15:03]  There's a new one.
[01:15:04]  It seems like almost every paper she wrote, she stole in part from somebody.
[01:15:08]  You've got all these scholars coming out being like, yep, she stole from me.
[01:15:11]  Yep, that's my work too.
[01:15:12]  Uncited, unattributed.
[01:15:14]  And now you've got the New York Times doing this long piece, running cover for her, actually praising her with things like, hold on, this is CNN, actually, but the New York Times did it too.
[01:15:21]  First, I start with CNN.
[01:15:23]  How Harvard President Claudine Gay made history.
[01:15:27]  She's the first person of color, the first black woman to serve as president of America's oldest institution of higher learning, making her ascent nothing short of groundbreaking.
[01:15:38]  Bachelor's degree from Stanford, doctorate from Harvard, first cousins with Roxanne Gay.
[01:15:44]  Her sterling resume resume includes a laundry list of positions and fellowships at Harvard and Stanford.
[01:15:50]  This is like porn to the liberal left media.
[01:15:53]  I mean, this is like porn talk, is it not?
[01:15:55]  Oh, Stanford, Harvard, Roxanne Gay is her cousin.
[01:16:00]  And then New York Times chimes in with, Harvard clears its president of research misconduct after plagiarism charges.
[01:16:09]  The Harvard Corporation said that while the review found she had not violated the university's standards for research misconduct, it did discover a few instances of inadequate citation.
[01:16:23]  Like it wasn't in there.
[01:16:25]  That is inadequate.
[01:16:26]  They keep going to talk about how the Harvard Guide for Students defines plagiarism broadly, but not all instances of potential plagiarism are equal, guys.
[01:16:37]  You see, like if you're comfortably smug, you're guilty.
[01:16:41]  And if you're Claudine Gay, you're not, particularly when they do not reflect any intention to deceive, some scholars said.
[01:16:51]  Notably absent from the New York Times piece is the name of those scholars who specifically said the intention to deceive must be proven before you've got plagiarism.
[01:17:02]  The whole thing is a farce.
[01:17:06]  Yeah, I mean, well, they're going to have to hurry up and change the definition in the dictionary of what plagiarism is because that was inadequate citation up until this day, you know, throughout history.
[01:17:16]  And I think what this is, is it shows that they have to defend her to sustain the DEI industrial complex.
[01:17:24]  Because as soon as they would let this person be accountable for their actions, that whole system crumbles and falls apart.
[01:17:31]  Because we've been told that if you are the first fill in the demographic here, then you must be special.
[01:17:39]  And clearly the system has been keeping you back from having that position to begin with.
[01:17:45]  If she was actually held to the standards of someone who would have that position, she would be gone.
[01:17:51]  It's no question.
[01:17:52]  Like the Harvard Crimson themselves published and said, well, this is cut and dry plagiarism, right?
[01:17:57]  But they have to maintain this system.
[01:17:59]  And that's the thing is when the Supreme Court had that ruling on affirmative action, central to that was Clarence Thomas spoke very eloquently about how he felt under a system of affirmative action, people would look at him and say, oh, well, you know why he's here?
[01:18:16]  He didn't earn his keep.
[01:18:17]  He was a stellar scholar and academic.
[01:18:19]  And you've seen through his tenure in the Supreme Court, he's unmatched.
[01:18:24]  But having to live with that of people be able to question you, why are you here?
[01:18:28]  And I think this is a prime example of it because it lays that system bare of everyone now knows why she has that position.
[01:18:35]  It's not because she's the best person to execute that role.
[01:18:38]  It's because they need those supprollers that at Harvard, the Harvard Corporation is proud to present to you the first woman of color under the age of 65 who also is left-handed.
[01:18:48]  You know, like this is what's become of the system, not what's best for education.
[01:18:52]  Also, who's most deserving?
[01:18:54]  What the hell is the Harvard Corporation?
[01:18:55]  Can we tax that?
[01:18:57]  That would be fantastic.
[01:18:59]  They need to dip into that endowment and maybe hire better PR people.
[01:19:03]  But, you know, I mean, to Smug's point, the system is more important to them than any of the rules they pretend to care about.
[01:19:10]  Bingo.
[01:19:11]  And you see this not just in academia, but in media.
[01:19:15]  I mean, you know, look with the Chris Cuomo with the fake coming back up the staircase when we all saw him out when he supposedly had COVID and was quarantining.
[01:19:22]  They will lie to your face and tell you you didn't see that.
[01:19:27]  Right.
[01:19:27]  I mean, they have to maintain the system.
[01:19:30]  The system will crumble.
[01:19:31]  So the rules get thrown out the window the second they're inconvenient.
[01:19:34]  It also just ironically does a huge disservice for any sort of people you're claiming to help.
[01:19:39]  Yeah.
[01:19:40]  Right.
[01:19:40]  I mean, in and of itself, does this, does, does Claudine Gay and her plagiarism, outright plagiarism, not to mention what she said about genocide, which I can't get over that piece of it either.
[01:19:52]  And obviously the people at UPenn couldn't in terms of their president.
[01:19:56]  But if all of those things don't matter simply because what she looks like, what's the message you're sending here to everyone else?
[01:20:05]  Like it's to Clarence Thomas's point.
[01:20:07]  Like you're not actually helping anyone.
[01:20:09]  You're making it harder.
[01:20:10]  You're telling people that there are certain demographics in this country that have to be given the benefit of the doubt because they can't compete, which is nonsense.
[01:20:19]  It's absolute bullshit.
[01:20:21]  And that's the most racist thing I can think of, 100%.
[01:20:23]  Yeah, it's what was the old saying in the Bush administration, the soft bigotry of low expectations.
[01:20:28]  Exactly.
[01:20:28]  That's what it is.
[01:20:29]  But I think it's also important to remember why she became a household name to begin with.
[01:20:34]  It's because she wouldn't condemn anti-Semitic chants for Jewish genocide on campus.
[01:20:39]  And that's not a position.
[01:20:41]  I mean, it's a position that a handful of these presidents at these upper echelon universities have held, but it's not universally held.
[01:20:49]  I mean, there are university presidents like Peter Slovani in Yale, Robert Robbins at Yale, did you?
[01:20:59]  I'm not defending Yale.
[01:21:02]  Peter Slovani, whatever his name is.
[01:21:05]  Well, but I mean, but he's condemned the anti-Semitism.
[01:21:09]  Robert Robbins in Arizona has condemned the anti-Semitism.
[01:21:12]  And you got Ben Sass in Florida and others.
[01:21:14]  It's been very clear.
[01:21:15]  What I understand is like, what I don't understand is like why she is not condemning anti-Semitism and yet she's protected in that position.
[01:21:23]  Oh, well, now she is.
[01:21:24]  Now I said at the top of the show, now she's out there lighting this enormous menorah with her tiki torch.
[01:21:30]  I mean, not the right choice, Claudine.
[01:21:32]  For somebody who's been accused of being anti-Jew, just put the tiki torch.
[01:21:36]  Look at this.
[01:21:37]  That's not the mood.
[01:21:38]  Tiki torch involved.
[01:21:40]  My God.
[01:21:42]  Didn't anybody say, don't we have like a long lighter or like a long dip into that endowment?
[01:21:48]  They need to hire better PR people.
[01:21:50]  Oh, well, see, what we're doing here, the five of us, is just showing our racism, according to Nicole Hannah-Jones, author of the fake news 1619 project, that America's racist and you're all racist and I'm racist and our audience is racist because we have questions about Claudine.
[01:22:07]  Take a listen to her the other day.
[01:22:12]  What do you make of the fact that, you know, there were all these university presidents who were criticized.
[01:22:16]  wasn't the only one.
[01:22:18]  But the other presidents weren't criticized because they were women.
[01:22:22]  They were criticized because of things that they said or did.
[01:22:25]  She is being singled out as someone who is only surviving because of her race.
[01:22:31]  What did you make of that?
[01:22:34]  Well, it's racist.
[01:22:36]  I mean, we have no one has produced a shred of evidence that shows that the sole qualification that President Gay had was that she is a black woman.
[01:22:49]  That's insulting.
[01:22:50]  It defies logic.
[01:22:52]  And the fact that of those presidents who all came under intense scrutiny, that only one has been called out as a so-called diversity or affirmative action hire just speaks to what black women in this country have gone through historically and continue to go through every day.
[01:23:11]  What a great gig.
[01:23:17]  Yeah.
[01:23:18]  When you're a hammer, when you're a hammer, everything's a nail.
[01:23:22]  Yeah.
[01:23:23]  Bill Ackman, the guy who's been tweeting, has been doing a great job tweeting out on the anti-Semitic behavior at these universities.
[01:23:28]  He tweeted this out on December 7th.
[01:23:30]  He has spoken with somebody with firsthand knowledge of the Harvard President's search that the committee refused to consider any candidate who did not meet the DEI criteria.
[01:23:41]  So she was a diversity hire, Nicole.
[01:23:45]  Sorry, it's the truth.
[01:23:47]  And probably those two other women were too.
[01:23:50]  Women are considered part of the diverse crowd as well.
[01:23:53]  There was like a rash of elevating women to these top positions at universities.
[01:23:58]  And if they could be a woman of color, so much the better.
[01:24:01]  So let's not pretend that her race and her gender had zero to do with her elevation and have zero to do with the cover the New York Times and CNN are running for her.
[01:24:11]  Because as I said, if her name were John Ashbrook, a white guy who didn't get into Yale, it would be a very different message.
[01:24:20]  Very different.
[01:24:24]  No question about it.
[01:24:25]  John Ashbrook would have a very difficult time.
[01:24:27]  I know that.
[01:24:28]  Did we go too quickly with the he didn't get into Yale narrative?
[01:24:30]  I mean, that's unconfirmed.
[01:24:32]  Well, I just, you know, I can confirm.
[01:24:40]  Good.

=== Bud Light Conservative Backlash (02:02) ===

[01:24:41]  Like I said, you're too good for them.
[01:24:42]  All right.
[01:24:43]  So she lives to fight another day.
[01:24:44]  We shall see whether that keeps going.
[01:24:46]  By the way, the NAACP got in on it too.
[01:24:48]  And that the president of the NAACP, enough is enough.
[01:24:51]  Claudine Gay is a distinguished scholar and professor with decades of service in higher education.
[01:24:56]  We know throughout them she's been writing with other people's words.
[01:24:59]  The recent attacks on her leadership are nothing more than political theatrics advancing a white supremacist agenda.
[01:25:06]  White supremacist agenda.
[01:25:07]  I tweeted back to him.
[01:25:09]  No one is listening to you, Derek Johnson.
[01:25:12]  This BS doesn't work anymore.
[01:25:14]  Take care.
[01:25:15]  Stand by, guys.
[01:25:16]  Quick break.
[01:25:17]  Back with more.
[01:25:18]  There's actually a bunch we need to get to, in particular, the Bud Light situation and how we're now being told to back off and drink it again by Kid Rock and Dana White.
[01:25:29]  It's a no.
[01:25:30]  I'm Megan Kelly, host of the Megan Kelly Show on SiriusXM.
[01:25:34]  It's your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations with the most interesting and important political, legal, and cultural figures today.
[01:25:42]  You can catch the Megan Kelly show on Triumph, a SiriusXM channel featuring lots of hosts you may know and probably love.
[01:25:49]  Great people like Dr. Laura, Fleming Beck, Nancy Grace, Dave Ramsey, and yours truly, Megan Kelly.
[01:25:56]  You can stream the Megan Kelly show on Sirius XM at home or anywhere you are.
[01:26:01]  No car required.
[01:26:03]  I do it all the time.
[01:26:04]  I love the SiriusXM app.
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[01:26:12]  Subscribe now, get your first three months for free.
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[01:26:21]  That's seriousxm.com slash mk show and get three months free.
[01:26:26]  Offer details apply.
[01:26:33]  Okay, one of my closest friends really wants me to ask you how you came up with program.
[01:26:38]  What, where did program come from?
[01:26:40]  That's a great question.
[01:26:42]  Holmes has to take this.
[01:26:43]  Yeah, this is for home.

=== Bud Light's Conservative Backlash (11:41) ===

[01:26:44]  I mean, look, like a lot of things in our world, there's not like a clear through line.
[01:26:51]  We appreciate bad affectations.
[01:26:54]  We make fun of them an awful lot.
[01:26:57]  Program was just kind of one thing that we just began to throw in there at the very beginning.
[01:27:02]  I mean, do we have a real I think it comes from, so we worked in the Senate for a number of years and there were no shortage of members who would walk around and talk very, very high.
[01:27:14]  Like I'm thinking of John Warner when he giving his giving a speech on the floor and everything is just such like high language.
[01:27:21]  And I just think that we started talking to each other that way and just started saying, oh, the program, you know, it's like a way of talking together.
[01:27:29]  Yeah.
[01:27:31]  It's a variety piece of it too.
[01:27:32]  It works for me.
[01:27:33]  I like it.
[01:27:34]  It's like, I don't know.
[01:27:35]  It reminds me of kind of like Archie Bunker, you know, like the way he would talk.
[01:27:39]  I'm trying to get the Archie Bunker as one of my buttons on my series.
[01:27:47]  In any man, he would like the program.
[01:27:50]  So I've got to get to what's happening with Bud Light.
[01:27:54]  I mean, Matt Walsh has been saying, and I agree, like this is like the only successful boycott that Republicans have ever engaged in.
[01:28:01]  It's the only time they've stuck together and actually been heard.
[01:28:07]  And because Kid Rock and Dana White want to give it up, we're supposed to all surrender our principles now.
[01:28:15]  And I like Kid Rock.
[01:28:17]  I actually do.
[01:28:17]  I like the guy, but he's wrong.
[01:28:20]  He can do what he wants.
[01:28:21]  If he wants to drink a Bud Light, he can.
[01:28:24]  He does not speak for the rest of us.
[01:28:26]  Many of us are still deeply offended by that brand's partnership with the person who makes his living mocking women, Dylan Mulvaney, not to mention what they said about their core audience and customer base, which is that they've gotten to Fratty and they want to get away from them.
[01:28:44]  Like, just be who, who at Bud Light thinks that we do what Kid Rock tells us to?
[01:28:51]  Like, it's, it wasn't Kid Rock shooting the Bud Light cases that led to the backlash.
[01:28:58]  That was just one person who was angry.
[01:29:00]  Never mind Dana White, who runs UFC.
[01:29:03]  Like, who, who that is part of this is like, oh, well, Dana gave it up.
[01:29:07]  So me too.
[01:29:08]  That's not how this works.
[01:29:09]  Dana White got $100 million for giving it up, for bending the knee to them.
[01:29:16]  And now we're like, to me, it's just absurd that Bud Light won't fucking apologize, but will pay $100 million to the fighter guy so that the rest of us will bend the knee.
[01:29:29]  You bend the knee, sir.
[01:29:30]  You bend the knee.
[01:29:31]  He hasn't apologized.
[01:29:33]  He hasn't asked for forgiveness.
[01:29:34]  And the reason he hasn't asked for forgiveness is because he's too beholden to the radical, nasty trans activists who are men trying to shame women out of using their voices.
[01:29:46]  He's too afraid of them and not enough afraid of the rest of America that's had it up to here with this bullshit.
[01:29:52]  What do you guys think?
[01:29:54]  Well, that's it.
[01:29:55]  That's it right there.
[01:29:56]  I mean, I think until Bud Light is willing to pay every conservative in this country the same amount that they're paying Dana White, we stick to our gun.
[01:30:06]  But the second you get the check, once the wire clears, say what they want.
[01:30:10]  You know, I still won't be part of the deal.
[01:30:12]  I still won't drink it.
[01:30:14]  Yeah, that is.
[01:30:14]  I didn't drink it before the ban.
[01:30:16]  It's just not very good.
[01:30:17]  You'd think they'd improve the product in the same time.
[01:30:19]  Is that just pay us and then we can get back to drinking bourbon in peace?
[01:30:21]  We definitely have to cancel our gift to Megan of 12-pack of Bud Light.
[01:30:26]  That is not going to go over well.
[01:30:29]  Look, you can't.
[01:30:32]  This is what big corporations do.
[01:30:33]  They've got the money to try to rehab themselves.
[01:30:35]  And so you go hire people you think have some constituency in a place that you've lost.
[01:30:40]  Obviously, they're going to try.
[01:30:41]  But I think for conservatives, it's not enough to just say, no, we're not going to drink this.
[01:30:46]  We're not going to do that.
[01:30:47]  Because over time, memories fade things.
[01:30:51]  What you have to get into a habit of is finding alternatives.
[01:30:54]  And like, you know, I mean, there's this one company that we began working with a little bit, Public Square, that's like a marketplace of conservative small businesses that offer beers.
[01:31:04]  They offer ice cream.
[01:31:06]  They've got dentists that are signed up on diapers, like all this stuff.
[01:31:11]  But it's, you've got to have, as a conservative, if you're going to make consumerism part of your value structure, it's not enough for you to be like, I'm never going to drink that ever again.
[01:31:21]  That's true.
[01:31:21]  And you can do that.
[01:31:22]  That's fine.
[01:31:23]  But you also have to empower people and companies that are making a dramatic effort to try to include you as a conservative.
[01:31:30]  Because without that second piece, the motivation for the Bud Lights of the world to go hire people just to try to convince a whole bunch of people who have sort of forgotten the outrage is always going to be there until you find that conservative marketplace that's ultimately going to provide that alternative.
[01:31:45]  Yeah, I think you brought up a really good point, Megan.
[01:31:47]  Of their people who are running that company, like I can't remember the name of that lady who was like, we don't want these Fratty type of people drinking our beer.
[01:31:55]  So you do not have to side with a brand and buy a product of someone who's willing to stand you.
[01:32:02]  You can find someone who actually wants you as a customer.
[01:32:05]  And we took great personal frattiness, by the way.
[01:32:08]  That was a direct shot.
[01:32:09]  We felt very seen by what were you saying that good?
[01:32:12]  Well, not just public square, but look at what Daily Wire is doing, you know, producing movies now and all that streaming content.
[01:32:19]  I mean, you know, if you're going to build an alternative economy, you got to start with things like that, you know, and consumer products.
[01:32:29]  And empower them.
[01:32:30]  Entertainment.
[01:32:31]  I mean, make sure that, and I think we have some responsibility too on the conservative side of the listening audience to make sure that we're not selling out.
[01:32:38]  Yep.
[01:32:39]  You know, that we're actually trying to find a way to enhance awareness of conservative alternatives to these products that we've been shoved down our throat here for, you know, generations.
[01:32:50]  He said Kid Rock told Tucker he thinks that Bud Light or that, well, I'll actually just let him put in his own words because we cut this out.
[01:32:59]  Take a listen to Kid Rock.
[01:33:01]  You released the video of you executing the Bud Light with the carbine Bud Light and fuck Anheuser-Busch.
[01:33:13]  Months later, Bud Light effectively apologizes, but then comes back and hands the UFC $100 million basically to say, We're sorry, we will get better.
[01:33:23]  That seems like a win to me.
[01:33:24]  I think it could be.
[01:33:25]  I think they got some work still to get, you know, some of that base that they lost.
[01:33:29]  Well, at the end of the day, when you step back and look at it, like, yeah, they deserved a black guy and they got one.
[01:33:33]  They made a mistake.
[01:33:35]  Yes, it was a mistake.
[01:33:36]  So, do I want to hold their head underwater and drown them because they made a mistake?
[01:33:40]  No, I think they got the message.
[01:33:41]  Like, hopefully, other companies get it too.
[01:33:43]  But, you know, at the end of the day, I don't think the punishment that they've been getting at this point fits the crime.
[01:33:49]  How do we know they got the message?
[01:33:51]  Where was the apology?
[01:33:52]  Why didn't the CEO come on this show or any other and say, I hear you?
[01:33:57]  I'm sorry.
[01:33:58]  I get it.
[01:33:59]  I realize I promoted somebody who's extremely offensive to most Americans, never mind most women.
[01:34:05]  And that my head of marketing, who I quietly dismissed without even owning that it was because of this, I didn't have the balls to do that.
[01:34:12]  That she left after she called our audience Fratty and said she wanted to exchange them for someone more acceptable to her.
[01:34:18]  That was deeply wrong.
[01:34:20]  We made a public example of her.
[01:34:21]  I now admit that's why she was fired.
[01:34:24]  It was deeply wrong.
[01:34:25]  We love our audience base.
[01:34:26]  She screwed up.
[01:34:27]  She's what we want to distance from, not you.
[01:34:29]  It's not that hard, sir.
[01:34:31]  He doesn't do it because he's afraid because the trans activists, you follow this story closely.
[01:34:36]  They got all up in Anheuser-Busch's grill and Bud Lights saying, you better not.
[01:34:41]  You better not do that.
[01:34:42]  How dare you not stand by Dylan Mulvaney and amped up the pressure like they always do.
[01:34:48]  So he bent the knee and wouldn't say to his customer base and those of us around it, I'm sorry.
[01:34:55]  I do not stand with them.
[01:34:57]  Those are not my values.
[01:34:59]  I have to pick a lane and I am against their lane where you're cutting off children's body parts and sterilizing 12-year-olds.
[01:35:07]  That's not my lane, where you steal the term women, where you get rid of breastfeeding for chest feeding, where you try to wear tuck-it bathing suits like Dylan does.
[01:35:16]  That's not us.
[01:35:17]  I get it.
[01:35:18]  I've heard you.
[01:35:19]  And until I hear that, they can pound sand.
[01:35:22]  And I love Bobby Gidrock.
[01:35:24]  He's a great guy, but no, he doesn't understand.
[01:35:28]  And he's talking about how working class people have gone out of work because two plants went down.
[01:35:32]  Whose fault is that?
[01:35:34]  It's the CEO of Anheuser.
[01:35:36]  It's the CEO of Bud Light.
[01:35:37]  Those are the ones who are, not us.
[01:35:39]  I'm worried more about the children.
[01:35:41]  How about the children of working class people who get sucked into this ideology, wind up sterile, and have no money to reverse the procedures?
[01:35:48]  That's the ideology that Bud Light is promoting.
[01:35:51]  So I worry about them too, but in a different way.
[01:35:54]  Those working class guys who worked at Bud Light will get another job, but their children won't get their fertility back.
[01:35:59]  They won't get their body parts back.
[01:36:01]  The women who lost the sporting races because these trans activists took over thanks to Dylan and the Bud Light promotion of people like that aren't going to get their medals back.
[01:36:10]  There's a lot more to worry about than two plants shutting down.
[01:36:13]  I don't like these myopic views, right?
[01:36:15]  It's like, oh, well, he made nice with Dana White, who, by the way, is getting 100 million a year for six years.
[01:36:22]  Nobody else is getting that to your point, smug.
[01:36:24]  So it just like, to me, it's so infuriating.
[01:36:26]  Conservatives win nothing.
[01:36:28]  They win nothing.
[01:36:29]  They bitch about the culture wars.
[01:36:31]  They finally have a win.
[01:36:32]  Now these two guys want to give it back for what?
[01:36:34]  For $600 million.
[01:36:36]  Are we sure we can't run Megan?
[01:36:38]  Yeah.
[01:36:40]  That's the speech right there.
[01:36:41]  He's accepting the nomination.
[01:36:43]  We need to look into ballot acts.
[01:36:44]  I can get her.
[01:36:45]  Think about this.
[01:36:45]  If there's any way.
[01:36:47]  Good lord.
[01:36:47]  I mean, that's it right there.
[01:36:48]  Is they did not apologize.
[01:36:50]  They still stand with that same ideology.
[01:36:52]  And until things change, like you said, the fact that they have, look at the legislation in California where that state is going to allow minors to overrule their parents and their parents can't have any say in it whatsoever.
[01:37:04]  This is insanity.
[01:37:05]  And so that's the system that's being propped up when you allow things like this.
[01:37:09]  I also think that, look, the integrity of people who consider themselves conservative and the trust that you build within an audience.
[01:37:16]  I mean, it's the reason why your audience doesn't go anywhere, Megan.
[01:37:19]  It's why it grows every day because your view of this issue is the same from day one as it is today.
[01:37:25]  Doesn't matter who's showing up with a check.
[01:37:27]  And honestly, that's the challenge the conservatives are going to be in for in perpetuity because there's not a corporation in America that hasn't screwed this thing up and doesn't want to also buy your integrity to try to fix it.
[01:37:39]  That's it.
[01:37:40]  Well, it shouldn't be for sale.
[01:37:41]  And, you know, I hope these guys understand there's a lot on the line with this boycott.
[01:37:46]  Bud Light needs to suffer.
[01:37:49]  I honestly, I hope the brand closes.
[01:37:51]  I'd be thrilled to see it close.
[01:37:52]  I really would.
[01:37:53]  And you can continue letting Dylan Mulvaney and all those Democrats who posed with pictures holding it.
[01:37:59]  They can be your new customer base.
[01:38:01]  See how that works out.
[01:38:02]  If we give up now, we're giving up on the culture fight, which is too important on the right.
[01:38:06]  Love you guys.
[01:38:07]  Thanks for coming.
[01:38:08]  Oh, you're the best.
[01:38:09]  Thank you.
[01:38:09]  Thank you.
[01:38:10]  And Merry Christmas, because we won't see you until January.
[01:38:13]  All right.
[01:38:15]  Merry Christmas, fellas.
[01:38:16]  Lots of love.
[01:38:21]  Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show, No BS, No Agenda, and