The Megyn Kelly Show - 20240206_rfks-2024-impact-woke-kindergarten-and-inspiring-f

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Feb. 6, 2024 - The Megyn Kelly Show

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Supreme Court Rules Against Trump 00:14:12
	Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111, every weekday at least.
	Hey, everyone, I'm Megan Kelly.
	Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, a federal appeals court today.
	The DC Circuit Court of Appeals dealing a blow to former President Donald Trump, saying he does not have immunity when it comes to criminal charges against him stemming from the January 6th riot and the events around it.
	This is just the latest step in that case as it continues on its likely path to the U.S. Supreme Court later this year, or maybe not.
	The court may not take it.
	We'll get into exactly what's likely to happen here.
	All this comes as we learn which TV show Trump's likely general election opponent, President Joe Biden, is obsessed with.
	Obsessed, I say.
	This one will not surprise you.
	Later, our pal Sage Steele returns to the show.
	Looking forward to seeing her.
	And now I am joined by Matt Welsh, editor-at-large of Reason Magazine and co-host of The Fifth Column, along with Liz Wolf, associate editor at Reason and co-host of Just Asking Questions.
	Matt, Liz, welcome back to the show.
	Hi, Megan.
	Thanks for having us.
	Great to see you both.
	Okay, so the biggest news of the day is this DC Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, which is not good for Trump.
	It was a unanimous decision by all three judges.
	Two had been appointed by Biden, one had been appointed by H.W. Bush.
	And they found unanimously that a sitting president does not have immunity to charges, criminal charges, based on what he does while he's in office, once he's left the office.
	So somebody like Trump, who's post-his term, can indeed be charged if he broke the law while the sitting president.
	And now he's probably going to ask the full circuit, full D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider that three judge panels ruling.
	That's par for the chorus when you lose.
	In nine cases out of 10, they will reject you.
	And I have a feeling they're going to reject this here.
	Like the judges don't want any part of this.
	The fewer that have to weigh in on it, the better, I'm sure.
	And then he's going to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, and they may not take it either.
	We've had ongoing debates on the show about just how likely they will be to take it.
	We don't know.
	So overall, net net, the odds are very bad for Trump winning this case, Matt, but delay, delay works in his favor because this thing was supposed to get started at the trial court on March 6th.
	That's officially off.
	Yeah, I mean, in every one of these cases, it always comes down to, or it usually comes down to, there's a bad moment of lawyering for Trump, and then there's a pretty bad moment of clienting.
	And both of those things happened under cross-examination when they were sort of given hypothetical scenarios about the horrible things a president might do.
	They basically said, yeah, that's what we should do.
	And then Trump goes out in Truth Social and starts talking about absolute immunity at all caps.
	So this is not a surprise at all.
	I'm very curious to see whether the Supreme Court takes it because they're going to have some Trump on their hands in the year 2024.
	And I imagine that they want to have the least amount of Trump possible or at least keep their powder dry politically.
	And we all know that John Roberts is a very politically attuned Chief Justice.
	It's going to be hard to imagine any judge looking at this one particular case about immunity and saying, you know, I think the Trump and his legal team has a point here.
	But then as you say and rightly point out, I don't know how many of these trials are going to get going before the election.
	And if it's just the one in New York, that's not going to make Trump's candidacy any worse.
	It'll probably make it better.
	But this could go pretty quickly at this point, Liz.
	I mean, Trump's going to appeal the full D.C. circuit on bank for an unbanc hearing, as they call it, with all the judges.
	He's probably going to get a quick denial.
	He'll file at the U.S. Supreme Court.
	He's probably going to get a quick denial there.
	I don't know that they're going to take it.
	I don't think it's actually that it's a novel legal issue.
	It hasn't been decided before, but it's actually a pretty simple one.
	His argument was very much kind of a stretch, if you look at how he argued it.
	I think they're probably going to dispatch of this pretty quickly and this thing could get rescheduled faster than I had anticipated, I think, just based on the way this came down in the DC trial court, the federal D.C. trial court.
	What do you think?
	Yeah, I think that's absolutely right.
	The other thing that I think will be interesting is if the Supreme Court does decide to take this case, you know, say they do, and say they decide to rule against Trump.
	Okay, we might be in a situation where somehow, you know, the Supreme Court has basically, you know, made an enemy of Trump, which, you know, is totally fine by me.
	But the thing I'm always curious about is, okay, well, all of the liberals who have been billyaking this entire time about how, oh, you know, the Supreme Court is totally, you know, in bed with Trump, completely doing his bidding.
	They're so Republican.
	Will any of them actually alter their political beliefs, their belief that the Supreme Court's integrity is so compromised?
	Will any of them actually, you know, sort of look at this and see it for what it is, which is, you know, the Supreme Court's attempt to legitimately, you know, be safeguards of our justice system?
	I don't think they will.
	And so I really see our politics getting even more toxic as a result of this, because that would be the honorable thing to do, right?
	That would be the sort of fair and balanced thing to do.
	And I don't really think that that's what they're going to do.
	And keep in mind also that the Supreme Court is likely to be taking up at some point one of these, I think, kind of legally obscure challenges to Trump's ballot access on primary elections based on a unique reading of the 14th Amendment.
	And I would presume that if that gets to the Supreme Court level, that they're going to rule in Trump's favor.
	So it's going to be a lot of people being inconsistent, let's say, about their treatment politically of the Supreme Court.
	And it's worth pointing out, I mean, the 14th Amendment argument is like a, you know, in my opinion, a very legally weak one.
	I think it is important for Trump to have ballot access here, despite not being any sort of fan of his.
	But it is really astonishing how even if the Supreme Court does decide to rule in that manner, I don't know what type of difference this will actually make in our politics overall.
	No one's going to, everyone will just use it to confirm their priors.
	But yeah, he'll win the should he be banned from state ballots because he caused an insurrection and therefore is barred under the 14th Amendment.
	He's going to win that with SCOTUS.
	And I don't think they're going to take this case, but if they do, I think he's going to lose.
	Delay does work in his favor.
	He wants this case to be pushed to after the November election, thinking that he will win.
	And then being in the driver's seat, he will pull the bridle back and the horses will stop because he'll then be in charge of the Department of Justice and he's going to promptly fire Jack Smith and make sure this case goes away.
	That's the game plan.
	If the case gets started and God forbid for Trump gets resolved before November, he's in a whole ton of trouble because no one involved will be rooting for him.
	The judge, the jury, you know, maybe I guess his own lawyers.
	But in any event, the immunity argument was a bit of a stretch, as was made clear at the argument when they asked his lawyer.
	Are you saying the sitting president could go use SEAL Team 6 to assassinate an opponent?
	And it would actually, we have that pulled.
	I'll play it for you.
	This was Trump's lawyer's argument in front of the appellate court in SOT1.
	I asked you a yes or no question.
	Could a president who ordered SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival who was not impeached, he be subject to criminal prosecution?
	If he were impeached and convicted first, answer.
	My answer is qualified yes.
	There's a political process that would have to occur under our structure of our constitution, which require impeachment and conviction by the Senate.
	Okay.
	That was never going anywhere.
	That was never going anywhere, Matt.
	It's not just that it's never going anywhere, but I really, I can't besiege enough.
	Libertarians are annoying people and especially Liz.
	But one thing that libertarians can always see in any situation is what happens when the evil power that you're looking for, or at least the power to cover your ass that you're looking for, is used by the people that you hate.
	Because that's what's, they're going to be the next ones in power.
	We always see this because we kind of hate everybody in power and they're never our team.
	It's amazing that someone who, and I know I know honest meaning conservatives who really think that Joe Biden is potentially dictatorial or Kamala Harris or whoever is running the country at the current moment.
	And if you really truly believe that, and this is true of Democrats too, if you really think that Trump is a dictator in waiting, why haven't you been spending all of your time defrocking the executive branch of power?
	And in this case, it was one of the worst examples of that.
	Just a couple of procedural points.
	The appeals court that just ruled against him has given Trump until February 12th, today's the 6th, to file an emergency stay request with the Supreme Court, asking the Supreme Court to just keep the entire proceeding in abeyance until he can get an appeal filed with SCOTUS and delay the case that way.
	We'll see what he does.
	I do think he'll go first to the D.C. Circuit.
	He'll probably get the boot on the forehead and then file with the Supreme Court.
	The oral arguments on that separate case about whether Colorado was right to keep him off of the ballot go up to the Supreme Court this Thursday.
	So SCOTUS is taking up that ballot access thing.
	He's going to win that.
	And then there's another case before SCOTUS right now involving other January 6th defendants and whether this claim of obstruction of a congressional proceeding can be brought against them for the riot that took place, whether this claim is an apt claim for that kind of behavior.
	And that case SCOTUS is taking.
	And while Trump's not a party to that case, it's also a claim that's been brought against him in this very trial.
	And we'll see whether, you know, that would obviously help him a lot if the Supreme Court ruled, you can't bring this claim against this type of behavior.
	So he could be the big beneficiary of that.
	I mean, in a normal case, I think the lower court would say, let's see what happens at SCOTUS with this, one of the main claims against you before we proceed.
	There has been no ruling by Judge Chutkin to that effect.
	So Trump's winning some and losing some.
	I want to read you one other thing.
	The court wrote as follows in denying that Trump has immunity.
	For the purposes of this criminal case, former President Trump has become citizen Trump with all of the defenses of any other criminal defendant.
	But any executive immunity that may have protected him while he served as president no longer protects him against this prosecution.
	The interest in criminal accountability held by both the public and the executive branch outweighs the potential risks of chilling presidential action and permitting vexatious litigation.
	I mean, I will say it's a little scary to read that.
	I don't disagree with it, but I'm still scary because it does feel like could be the before and after moment into banana republic shit, you know, where like we're going to get vexatious litigation and we're going to get more,
	you know, we're going to get chilling presidential action because it is very possible in the wake of this ruling now, you're going to get presidents who are afraid to do what they must do with the military, with drones, what you take your pick, Liz, because they don't want to get charged as criminals when they leave office.
	I mean, you know, I'm a libertarian, so I'm all in favor of trying to rein in executive power and hold presidents accountable for when they, you know, act like we start authorized foreign wars without going through the, you know, system and making sure that Congress authorizes that too, right?
	So like, on one hand, I do sort of understand the possible value out there, but I think it's important that we zoom out and look big picture and look at the fact that like, not only are we dealing with all of this total legal, as you said, banana republic type shit from Trump, but we're also dealing with astonishingly low approval ratings for Joe Biden, the incumbent.
	And somehow the Democratic Party has not managed to, I mean, of course, the incumbent is the person running on their ticket, but somehow they haven't really managed to come up with any better contenders.
	And so we have these two 80-year-olds who are running against each other, one of whom might very well take our country in a terrible direction.
	And to some degree, it's a little bit of like, well, are we reaping what we've sown, right?
	I mean, many of us have been warning for a long time about the importance of legitimately having these safeguards in place so that presidents don't abuse their power.
	And, you know, one way that this could have been somewhat avoided was if, you know, Trump had been both impeached and then removed from office, if there hadn't been such, you know, a rallying of the troops in Congress in the wake of January 6th and some of his malfeasas.
	And yet there was.
	And so I think Congress has demonstrated time and time again, especially members of his own party, that they're not really interested in holding Trump accountable.
	Now we have this very upsetting and disappointing situation playing out in the courts.
	I mean, we even have these states like Colorado taking him off the ballot and trying to do this 14th Amendment argument.
	And I don't know, call me old-fashioned, but I kind of think that, you know, we can defeat Trump at the ballot box if we so choose.
	But the seedy way to play this game is by doing what they're doing, what Colorado is doing and other states of removing him from the ballot to ensure that nobody can vote for him at all.
	I mean, that's vexatious litigation.
Lawfare And Election Interference 00:05:32
	Yes.
	It's lawfare.
	And this has been a temptation that we've seen since Trump, since inauguration, but even before that, that the people who are most exercised as being anti-Trump are going to reach for any stick that they can find.
	And it's going to be increasingly like lawfare sticks, you know, and they're doing it in the name of democracy.
	This is what I can't understand.
	We have to protect our democratic institutions by coming up with the most legal weirdo theories possible in order to try to deprive voters of a choice.
	That seems crazy to me.
	It's been amazing to watch the left, the legal left, freak out over the delay in this ruling coming down.
	I don't know if you guys caught any of this, but they were over on MSNBC.
	They had all their legal experts daily like, where's the decision?
	Where's the decision?
	Because the clock was ticking, you know, and delay works for Trump for the reasons I just pointed out.
	And like the next day or two, we get the decision.
	And now they can heave a huge sigh of relief because they're not embarrassed about the fact that for them, this is totally political.
	They need it to get decided before November.
	Why?
	Legally, there's no reason why.
	It's just because they want him to have a conviction, which this case almost certainly will lead to, given the jury pool, before the election.
	It's pretty on the nose that it's election interference.
	They don't really give a damn if we know.
	They just want to get the, get the big C because the voters are still saying the independents, they care about that.
	They don't really want to elect a convicted felon as president, as it turns out.
	Well, they care about it when a result, when it's having to do with January 6th, they care about it much less in the case in Manhattan and New York.
	I think people would have a tendency to shrug that off.
	I would also, you know, let's give a shout out to the people, the poor people who work for MSNBC.
	They have 500,000 former prosecutors on the payroll now.
	They got to have something to talk about.
	So yeah, they want the new ruling to be made so that they can fulfill their salary.
	It must also be really hard because they no longer have all the Russia collusion stuff to talk about.
	So I don't know.
	They might be a little bored over there.
	I can understand.
	Yeah.
	I mean, who knows what they'll resurrect.
	I mean, certainly if Trump becomes president, you can see a replay of all of this, right?
	They're going to find some new Russia gate to ruin his second term.
	And he's probably going to turn around and find a way to charge Joe Biden.
	Let's be honest.
	He's going to try to turn around and find a way.
	And maybe not Joe Biden.
	Maybe Barack Obama.
	Maybe he'll find some way if the statute hasn't run to charge him for, I don't know, something like a murder on the drone strikes.
	He's already mentioned that.
	Andrew Sullivan had a pretty good piece about 10 days ago.
	Andrew Sullivan was, you know, borderline hysterically anti-Trump in 2016, I think by his own admission.
	And he went back and he looked at his column warning about Trump back then and put it through a lens of what would Trump presidency look like this.
	How did my predictions turn out?
	And one of the things that he concluded, and I think it's correct, is that, remember, Trump was saying lock her up.
	That was the big chant besides, you know, build the wall on the campaign in 2016.
	He didn't lock her up at all.
	A lot of the things that he said and threatened to do, he did not.
	Some things he did do.
	The Muslim ban almost immediately after becoming president, then it got challenged in the courts.
	So some of the stuff he did, but directing the justice.
	And upheld.
	The Muslim ban was upheld ultimately.
	Right.
	It was rewritten, but it was upheld and it strengthened the president's hand in immigration matters, which he then used later on.
	But he didn't go after individuals who irked him.
	He talked about it a lot.
	He was always going to suspend the broadcast license of NBC because he was mad at Saturday Night Live.
	He would say these things.
	He's saying those things now.
	I hate those things.
	I think those things are wrong for a president.
	He had even the rhetorical instinct.
	So far, he has not done them.
	One of the interesting things to figure out in considering a second Trump term is what of those things would he do.
	I'm not convinced that he would charge Joe Biden.
	I'm not convinced that he would direct the Department of Justice, but we don't know because he says a lot of stuff.
	I don't know.
	I feel like that, if I had to put money on it, you know, if I had like 10 grand to bet on if Trump gets reelected, will he charge Biden or Obama if he can?
	I'd put it on yes, he will.
	Can you imagine how pissed off he's going to be?
	Yes, he will have won reelection in this scenario, but he is going to be so angry at what these people put him through.
	Look, I know you're right.
	Like he wasn't particularly vindictive in his first presidency.
	I just think this is next level.
	What they've done, they are the ones who crossed the Rubicon.
	And I do think they will rue the day.
	I think the country will rue the day, but we're a long way off from that.
	And on that front, Joe Biden's in a lot of trouble.
	There was just, my team was just sending me the real clear politics approval numbers for Joe Biden.
	He's at 40.2% approval, 55.8% disapprove of the job he's doing.
	Just talked about the NBC news poll yesterday showing Trump ahead of him on the economy on immigration on crime by double digits, above 20, 35% on immigration.
	I think 22% in the economy, 22% on crime, something like that.
	And then we get, I mean, almost daily, we get another Biden, huh?
Biden Approval Numbers Drop 00:14:51
	Moment, right?
	Like, what?
	Huh?
	What?
	And this was Biden yesterday, where I just want to set it up for the audience, because I was actually confused when I heard it.
	He was speaking on Sunday, but it hit yesterday in Las Vegas.
	And he, well, let's play it and see if you can hear the mistake that he makes.
	Now, he corrects it, but he's got, there's a couple things wrong with the sound bite you're about to hear.
	Take a listen.
	Right, right, right after I was elected, I went to what they call a G7 meeting, all the NATO leaders.
	I was in the south of England.
	And I sat down and I said, America's back.
	And Nitaran from Germany, I mean, from France looked at me and said, said, you know, how long are you back for?
	Okay.
	So for those of you playing at home, he says that happened recently, that he met with Mitterrand from Germany.
	Mitterand is not what he meant to say.
	He meant to say Macron.
	Mitterrand was not of Germany, first of all.
	He was the president of France.
	And he was the president of France a long time ago, back when I was in college.
	And Liz was in her stroller.
	And so, yeah, so he's not of Germany.
	He's a France.
	And he definitely did not meet with him recently at the G7 because he's been dead since 1996.
	So there's a double error in there.
	It's embarrassing.
	The White House transcript attempted to fix it, right?
	Poor White House transcript guy.
	They changed it from, you know, they've got to write exactly what he said.
	So they changed it from America's back and Mitterra from Germany, they changed it to Mitterra with the strike-through to Macron in brackets from Germany.
	Then they left his correction France.
	On and on it goes.
	Guys, this, I would submit to you, is the reason why he has refused to sit with CBS News for the Super Bowl halftime interview that is tradition among the presidents, though it's been broken before.
	Last year, he didn't do it because it was Fox and Trump has said no as well.
	So what do you make of it all?
	That's absolutely why they're trying to keep him in the basement again.
	But we don't have COVID and we have seen him deteriorate in front of our eyes.
	And anyone who has a parent of those age or grandparent of those age recognizes that stuff.
	And I feel for anyone who's in that frame of mind, he just happens to be the president.
	So like my sympathy has going to have some limits because he probably shouldn't be president.
	These are with us.
	They're with us, Matt.
	I feel sorry for us.
	It is totally the president of the United States talking about Mitterrand.
	I mean, who's even thought of Francois Mitterrand besides one of his mistresses in the last 18 years?
	It's really hard to say who showed up at the funeral, by the way.
	That was one of my greatest moments of statesmanship in the modern era.
	He is absolutely ducking Donald Trump.
	And Trump is taunting him now and saying, I'll do the Super Bowl interview.
	He'll get great ratings.
	Saying that he's ready to debate him, which, you know, we've talked about on this program before that maybe Trump wouldn't debate him.
	Now it's like, yeah, bring it on.
	And Biden is going to have to duck him.
	And here's what's going to happen.
	I guarantee it.
	When Biden refuses to debate Trump, there's going to be a chorus within journalism, professional journalism, sad to say, that says that's right, because we don't want to platform him.
	Because God knows that we shouldn't actually talk to someone who 46% of the country twice has voted for president and probably around that number would vote for him again, depending on what happens to RFK Jr.
	It's amazing.
	They think they can duck their way out of it and they can just sort of democracy lecture their way into.
	Biden again getting the same kind of vote when he's basically been a pretty unpopular politician his entire career.
	People voted for him last time because they wanted to defeat Trump, but now they've seen what Biden is like.
	And one of the things that he's like is a guy who talks to Francois Mitterrand's German ghost, which is bizarre.
	Well, also the other thing to consider here is like, say, Biden gets re-elected this time around.
	Okay, how is this going to look four years from now?
	What will Biden's mental capacity be four years from now?
	This is terrifying.
	We're not just electing Biden.
	I'm not electing Biden at all, but we're not just electing Biden to serve for the next six months or nine months or 12 months.
	We're electing him to serve for the next four years.
	How is that going to go?
	I mean, no wonder the White House interns feel so capable of becoming foreign policy experts and setting foreign policy direction for the entire United States.
	If the person who's actually in charge, I mean, I am left wondering consistently, is this a weekend at Bernie's situation?
	Who is actually running the show?
	Is Joe Biden locked in a basement somewhere?
	Does he need to be locked in a basement somewhere?
	I wonder how much of actual policymaking is being left to all of these aides who are actually 30 and 40 years old and mentally competent, in the absence of an executive who's mentally competent.
	I mean, this is kind of alternative point.
	Think about this.
	Think if they actually do debate.
	I mean, it was just a couple of weeks ago that Trump referred to Nancy Pelosi as Nikki Haley repeatedly.
	Like he was obviously confused.
	He's called Joe Biden Barack Obama repeatedly.
	Now you look over at Joe Biden, who's talking to dead people like Mitterrand, who's, you know, been dead since he was still young, Joe Biden, and not understanding that he wasn't at the G7 and that he didn't run Germany.
	Not to mention when he thought the woman, the Congresswoman, was still alive, but she was dead.
	Jackie, where's Jackie?
	She's dead.
	You're there.
	You just played a memorial, an in-memorium for her.
	Why are you saying, where's Jackie?
	You just played it.
	You were standing.
	This is what people would be so confused at this debate.
	We're going to be holding on by our fingertip, like, oh my God, what are they saying?
	Who are these references to?
	It's like Washington Marriage.
	But there's no denying Trump's old too.
	Trump's old too, although he's old and funny still and has a comic sense of timing.
	Could be cruel.
	Maybe you don't like it, but he's a gifted comic and he's just sharper.
	I mean, occasionally Biden will have a sharp day or sharpish day, but they become more and more occasional.
	And he's given like the fewest press conferences.
	He's done very few sit-down interviews.
	They're just hiding him and they don't have a backup plan.
	I mean, Nikki Haley is...
	Well, Matt, Matt, let me ask you, because this is like last year, he could get away with it because it was Fox, right?
	Evil Fox, who would sit with them?
	That would be terrible.
	And but this year, it's a different story because it's CBS.
	What does he have against CBS?
	Why won't he go on CBS?
	There's not even a reason.
	He's just not going to do it because he won't sit with the press because he can't answer hard questions.
	And I don't mean he doesn't know the answers.
	I mean, he physically cannot get the words out.
	I mean, if they imagine if they played, anyone played a, let's say, 20 consecutive minutes of unedited Q ⁇ A with Joe Biden.
	How do you think that's going to go?
	Seriously, how do you think it's going to go?
	I think it's going to go really bad.
	I think what would happen is there'd be sort of a 60 minutes treatment or Tucker Carlson did with Kanye West.
	It's like, okay, I'm going to edit this.
	So we're going to try to get most of the crazy stuff that doesn't make a lot of whole, a whole lot of sense out of it.
	And that's not great, a place to be for a country.
	Super Bowl is the biggest, the only big television moment anymore in American television.
	And to, while you're down nationwide and you're down in all these swing states and there's people questioning your fitness to say, no, I just, I'm going to give Americans a break from politics.
	That's why we're doing it.
	That's a terrible tell of where Biden is.
	I think Nikki Haley had a good line.
	I don't know if it's true, but it's a good line at least of like, you know, there's going to be a next female president.
	It's either me or Kamala Harris.
	I don't know whether that's true, Nikki Haley is only, I can't imagine the circumstances under which right now she's going to be the president.
	But if you do elect Joe Biden, you're going to get Kamala Harris as president almost soon.
	I mean, that's the truth.
	But here's how the media on the left runs cover for him.
	Because there's actually been, I mean, the Democrats know that Biden doesn't, that he's lost it.
	There was a poll, NBC at 81 years just came out.
	Joe Biden not having the necessary mental physical health to be president for a second term.
	Do you have major or moderate concerns?
	76% say, yes, I do.
	76% of the electorate has major or at least moderate concerns about Biden having the necessary mental and physical health.
	Far fewer have that concern about Trump.
	48% have that about Trump, which is down from a month before the election in 2020.
	Like back then, 51% had that concern about Trump.
	So if anything, Trump is doing better today on that concern than he was, but they're very worried about Joe Biden.
	Nonetheless, the left will run cover for him as soon as it's guaranteed he's going to be the nominee.
	You know, if Michelle Obama pops her head up, if Gavin Newsom, like maybe they'll turn, they'll turn on him quickly because they'll want, but so far he's their nominee.
	So the Dem is going to run cover for him.
	And I give you as an example, Joe Scarborough, who's in the news actually right now, because that's the show that Joe Biden's obsessed with.
	You're shocked to learn.
	I know.
	Morning Joe apparently watches it all the time.
	And if you want to get the ear of Joe Biden, you go on Morning Joe and you say what you want him to hear.
	Same as it was with Trump when he was president with respect to Hannity in particular and Fox and Friends.
	So listen, though, to Joe Scarborough.
	He's praising Biden because it was in the news this week that Biden called Trump a sick F. I'm being ladylike for once.
	And he manages to squeeze into this reaction a defense, he thinks, of Joe Biden's many verbal gaffes.
	Take a listen.
	There's been concerns that he's not getting out.
	He's not doing enough stuff.
	He's not answering enough questions.
	All right.
	So if he makes a mistake, he makes a mistake.
	Andy Card told Barnacle one time that the thing that people didn't get about Bush was when he bumbled around and wasn't perfect, wasn't Ronald Reagan.
	I'm talking about 43.
	And he cards said it made him more relatable.
	And some of the polls that made him more, he wasn't speaking in flowery language.
	Like people felt like, okay, yeah, he's one of us.
	Well, that's Biden.
	So let Fox News make fun of him because he has the same stutter he had since he was 14 years old.
	But go out and show flashes of anger.
	All right.
	Now, I haven't studied this, but I don't think having a stuttering problem makes you think dead people are alive and alive people are dead.
	I don't know if maybe you got, could you Google it like quickly and get back to me?
	It's absurd.
	I mean, everybody, the thing that's so wild is this isn't the only way that the media is, you know, covering Biden and sort of running interference here.
	It's as if they think American voters are stupid and will actually buy the thing they're selling.
	I don't think they will.
	I was watching an MSNBC segment this morning, which was otherwise good and sort of just, you know, hard news about polling data.
	But at one point, one of the commentators said, you know, employment is up and inflation is down.
	Inflation is recovering.
	And I just want to linger on that for a second because it's like, okay, well, inflation is down compared to what?
	Like, sure, technically that may be true, but compared to, you know, a few years ago, is it actually down?
	Do you think the economy has fully recovered?
	We still have a big issue with interest rates being super high.
	I think lots of people feel a little bit like they're in a holding pattern where, you know, depending on what type of job seeker you are, depending on the industry, your industry might be doing very well or maybe not so much.
	You know, a lot of people are in a holding pattern related to buying and selling houses, transacting real estate.
	I think for many people, maybe on paper and according to MSNBC analysts, the economy is doing just fine, but I don't think many people agree with that.
	And there's this question of like, well, what does their purchasing power look like right now?
	The thing that that just kept like highlighting in my mind was, okay, you can be an MSNBC analyst telling me that the economy is doing fine all day long.
	But ultimately, if I don't feel that way and if a whole bunch of other voters don't feel that way, what good is that really?
	I mean, it just feels like saying, Cindy Crawford, who gained 200 pounds and went up to size 30, is down to size 18.
	She's down to a size 18.
	Yay, Cindy.
	We all know Cindy Crawford used to be perfect and hot and slim, which by the way, she still is.
	But my point is, that was the economy under Trump versus what's happened under Biden.
	And they want us to celebrate that, okay, she's down to 200.
	Well, I don't like, I liked her before when she had to cut off shorts in the Pepsi can.
	I'm not going to lie.
	I'm glad she's down a little, but like this new version.
	Anyway, it's absurd to be celebrating that.
	Now, here's the other thing about Morning Joe.
	This is how up the ass, I'm sorry, but they are of the Biden administration.
	They went.
	Yeah, I know.
	I lost it.
	Shit.
	And I lose it so quickly, man.
	So apparently Kamala and second gentleman Doug Emhoff also love Morning Joe.
	And they hosted a dinner last month at the vice presidential residence for Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski.
	I just threw up a little in my mouth.
	It's so gross how incestuous this is.
	And yes, I say the same thing about the other side.
	Trust me, I would never go have a private dinner with the sitting vice president and her husband because you need to stay like this with them.
	I mean, only if you can prove that you can not be a bootlicker on the back end of that meeting are you allowed to do stuff like that.
	And these two cannot do that.
	I mean, I'll just give you, we pulled just a sample of Scarborough's coverage of Joe Biden.
	You tell me whether you think he's managing to maintain the arm's length distance that any professional media personality ought to be able to do.
RFKJ As A VP Candidate 00:12:55
	Watch it.
	I think Biden's doing, I mean, you know, I think he's doing really well.
	I mean, he's, he's engaged.
	He's fired up and he's ready to go.
	I had the opportunity to speak to the president once or twice lately.
	And let me tell you something.
	That guy is in it to win it.
	He's fired up.
	And if anybody even suggests that he not run, it just, there's no other word for it.
	It pisses him off.
	And he gets more focused.
	Joe Biden is saying, pass the law, I'll shut down the border.
	Donald Trump is saying, keep the border open, wreck the economy, destroy America so I can get reelected again.
	But they've actually turned Joe Biden's biggest political weakness into his biggest political strength.
	That was literally like a day.
	I mean, if we went, if we threw a cast a wider net, you guys, you know, we'd get a... way more fish back into that.
	It's just, and by the way, he's calling Scarborough all the time, according to these reports.
	This is from Axios.
	The two are BFFs.
	I mean, there's some BFFage happening from Avenue of the Americas in the previous presidency as well.
	I think people love access to power.
	It's fun.
	It's flattering.
	It makes you feel important.
	I'm with you, Megan.
	I find it to be just sort of tawdry and strange.
	I wouldn't understand what that even felt or smelt like.
	But one thing about Scarborough, and you can always tell it's really convincing what you've heard in your private ear when you speak in utter clichés about it.
	It's like, I've talked to him and I can tell you, he's fired up and ready to go.
	I can tell you, here's a stupid slogan chant that looks totally insincere and I'm going to mouth it.
	It's not convincing at all.
	What's convincing is the only thing you need to get it there is that you get to talk to the president and it's kind of neat for a guy on cable.
	Congratulations.
	Pinky height.
	That's exactly right.
	I just am too distracted by the fact that Matt looks a little bit like Joe Scarborough today.
	That's not Megan.
	I mean, he has a tie on.
	As we said, I think I look like Joe Scarborough today.
	And I was like, ooh, we're going to fix that later on.
	We'll do a makeover.
	We'll do it before and after.
	Never.
	Never.
	Look, I called out, and I call this out at the time, like Hannity going on stage with Trump.
	And, you know, he's described Trump as his best friend.
	They were way too incestuous for my liking.
	And I said so at the time.
	And Hannity and I had had battles when Trump was running for president that spilled over onto camera and into the public sphere because I felt this way about him too.
	I'm not partisan about this.
	I really think if you're going to be in the media business, you have to have a professionally arm's length relationship with someone who's in a position of power.
	You are there to represent the people, not to push the agenda of the people who are in power.
	You're supposed to be holding them to account.
	And we've just gotten to a very weird place in the media space where that's forgotten.
	Okay, let me squeeze a quick break in here, you guys.
	I'll come right back.
	And there's so much more to discuss.
	How did we get to the 37 mark already?
	It's going by too quickly.
	Don't leave.
	All right, stand by.
	RFKJ in the news getting a little buzz and some news coverage these days.
	We don't talk about him enough because he's going to play a major role in this election one way or another.
	And that seems very clear, not to mention these other third party candidates who are really changing the way the ballot's going to look and the way the vote's going to go.
	The news of a few days ago was, according to RFKJ, it wasn't like us.
	According to him, the Trump team asked him whether he'd be interested in being VP.
	And he said, no, you never get that.
	You know, you always, it's like some third party.
	You can always maintain deniability.
	He's like, yeah, he told News Nation, they reached out to me about possibly serving as his vice president, but he said he would not do it.
	Here's an interview he gave to Variety where he explains a little bit of why.
	Saudi.
	Latest speculation is that maybe, maybe you would be the VP for Trump.
	Would you ever do that?
	I don't think that my marriage would survive.
	I think he's right.
	Just president.
	That's all you want.
	Yeah.
	That's his wife, actress Gerald Heinz, saying he's right.
	The marriage won't survive.
	So he's not going to be the VP, guys, but he actually is going to play a significant role, potentially, and it looks like to me, in getting Trump elected.
	I think he hurts, I've said this before, I think he hurts Biden more than he hurts Trump.
	And there's a new Reuters Ipsos poll, relatively new, showing, yeah, that's right, that Trump's up two versus Biden without RFKJ.
	If RFKJ's in the race, Trump's up four.
	And yet I'll finish this all out by saying Team Trump denies that they offered him the VP slot at all.
	They're attacking him right now.
	And Don Jr. was on Newsmax the other day, ripping him a new one.
	So, Matt, what do you make of it?
	He's not purely going to get votes from the left, even though he comes, he emanates from the left originally.
	I think he's been tacking more in unpredictable ways since he's been an announced candidate.
	But if you look at the polls, and I spent all of yesterday down the rabbit holes of three-way polls, but also five-way polls, including Jill Stein from the Green Party and Cornell West, who's going to be on at least a couple of ballots.
	I don't think he's going to get that many, but he's been polled a lot.
	And it's been very interesting.
	It is absolutely consistent that where those guys are on polls too, they're getting 2% each.
	And that might not seem like a lot.
	It's just 2%, but 4% to basically definitely left of center candidates.
	And those two are also the only ones who are really going to go to Biden's left when it comes to intervention, particularly in Israel.
	RFK is an Israel hawk, but he's a Ukraine dub.
	The other two are dubs in a very serious way.
	And there is a bubbling kind of anti-Biden administration policy towards Israel happening on the left now, particularly among young people and very much in swing states like Michigan that has a larger American population.
	They're definitely going to affect it.
	When you take polls that ask both questions, it asks the Biden and Trump question, but then it asks what happens when you put the third party candidates there.
	Trump does better with more candidates, usually by two or three or four percentage points.
	That's right now.
	Those polls might be skewed a little bit because I think, and there's polling to support this too, that a whole lot of, especially Democrats and independents, are still in denial that Trump's going to be the Republican nominee.
	They're like, something's got to happen.
	So I think once everyone understands that it's going to be Trump versus Biden, unless one of those guys dies, which I think is where we're at right now, then some of that might ship.
	But RFK Jr. right now is polling higher than anybody has polled since Ross Perot in 1992.
	He has a decent shot at getting 50 state ballot access, which is very, very difficult to do.
	But you can throw money at that problem.
	And he's sitting on, or he and the super PAC affiliated with him, is sitting on $20 million right now.
	$20 million buys a lot of petition gatherers.
	And you're right, it's undercover.
	He is absolutely going to affect this election unless something happens to him or he steps back.
	But I don't get the impression that he's going to do that.
	Now, speaking of Ross Perot, I remember that election.
	I was 21 at the time.
	And he was like this little, really interesting guy who had all these innovative ideas and he was just totally unlike the others.
	He made the presidential debate stage and so did his vice presidential running mate, the Admiral, who was great.
	He was such a gem.
	And we just pulled a little bit of Ross Perot just to take you back.
	This could be RFKJ this time around if there ever are debates.
	Watch.
	We've got to collect the taxes to do it.
	If there's a fair way, I'm all ears.
	He's gone through the floor.
	Now, whose fault is that?
	Not the Democrats, not Republicans.
	Somewhere out there, there's an extraterrestrial that's doing this to us, I guess.
	I don't have any spend doctors.
	I don't have any speech writers.
	Publish shows.
	I make those charts you see on television.
	Foreign markets to fair competition from American business and to stop unfair competition here at home from foreign countries so that we can bring jobs back to the United States.
	I decided I was dumb and didn't understand it.
	So I called a who's who are the folks who've been around it.
	And I said, why won't everybody go south?
	They say, we'll be disruptive.
	I said, for how long?
	I finally got them up for 12, 15 years.
	And I said, well, how does it stop being disruptive?
	And that is when their jobs come up from a dollar an hour to $6 an hour and ours go down to $6 an hour.
	Then it's leveled again.
	But in the meantime, you've wrecked the country with these kinds of deals.
	This makes me want it, right?
	I know the odds of a general election debate are not great, but it would be wonderful if we could get somebody like that.
	And RFKJ is innovative in the way he thinks and the way he approaches issues.
	He will be like a Ross Perot coming at all of it from a totally different angle, Liz.
	I don't know.
	I'd like to see it.
	The area that I most want to see RFK Jr. actually, you know, take other people to task, specifically Biden and Trump, is COVID policy.
	I mean, RFK Jr., when it comes to the vaccine question, you know, I'm totally with him in opposing, you know, vaccine mandates always and everywhere, especially, my God, applied to children.
	On the issue of vaccines, though, I think RFK Jr. does spout some medical quackery that I'm not a huge fan of.
	Of course, I think it should be absolutely legal for him to continue to run his mouth.
	I mean, sure, give people the information, let people make their own decisions.
	That's what the federal government doesn't seem to grasp people ought to be able to do.
	But I do think when it comes to COVID policy and lockdowns, I mean, thankfully, I think many of us have either moved on from that or entirely blocked it out of our minds, trying to like force some amnesia.
	Like, I'm still drinking to forget.
	But, you know, like to some degree, we actually do need a little bit more of a reckoning.
	And I think RFK Jr. and his supporters provide that perspective.
	Whether you're Trump or Biden, whether you're Newsom or, you know, DeSantis did a pretty good job, but it was odd how we didn't promote his successes, his victories in Florida to the degree that I expected on the campaign trail.
	Regardless, though, what just happened?
	The months and months and months of lockdowns of children being kept out of school of massive learning loss.
	They've gotten away with it.
	The two men who did it to us who were in the office when it was done, they're back.
	They've gotten away with it.
	So who's going to be up there?
	You know, we'll see whether I don't think any leftist journalist who it would have to be doing the general election debate is going to raise that because it's not an issue for the left was pro-lockdown.
	I got to ask you this.
	If I agree, I don't think that RFKJ hurts Trump as much as he hurts Biden.
	But if that's true, and these polls seem to suggest that's true, why is Don Jr. out there saying things like this?
	Listen to him on Newsmax with our pal, Eric Bowling.
	The reality is RFK is a radical liberal who happens to be anti-vax.
	That may be the one policy where he leans a little bit right, but he was for open borders for his entire life.
	He's against farmers.
	He was a radical environmentalist.
	He was super anti-gun.
	You know, he says he's changed his, he's changed his mind.
	He's changed his mind on everything that he did for decades, everything magically six months ago.
	I don't believe that.
	So, you know, he's a phenomenal alternative to Joe Biden as a Democrat, but he is a radical Democrat.
	Yeah, that's a message not for RFK, but that's a message for the Trump voters who are voting for RFK, for the DeSantis voters who now have a place, the ones who backed DeSantis particularly because of his COVID policies.
	They are RFK curious.
	And also there's people who like RFK because they want to throw stuff against the wall and see if it breaks a little bit, right?
	There's that sort of nihilistic party energy that Trump attracted a lot, especially the first time around, of like, hey, I'm sick of the way that the whole system works.
	I need an outside disruptor.
	And so Don Jr., correctly, in my view, identifies that if RK is polling at 19%, he's pulling some of that, let's say eight points from Donald Trump.
	That's competition.
	He's got to tell those voters, like, no, He's got these ragbag of policies that you hate, even though he's talking now tough about the border and doing things that he wasn't doing six to nine months ago.
	So it makes sense to me.
Pressure To Get Kids Into Harvard 00:13:03
	And you'll see, you'll see more of that the further we go.
	I'm sad he's not considering running as VP because I would buy a ticket to that.
	We don't know who the vice presidential pick will be of the likely Republican nominee, Donald Trump.
	The names that he mentioned, Trump mentioned this week in passing, just as like a tease, were Christy Noam and Tim Scott.
	Kellyanne Conway with a piece out this week saying she thinks he should choose somebody, a person of color, because the Republican Party is becoming much more diverse, not for identity politics purposes, she says, but because to reflect what's happening in the Republican Party.
	And she named Tim Scott, maybe Byron Donalds or Vivek.
	We'll see.
	Stand by, Matt and Liz, stay with us.
	We'll be right back.
	All right, guys.
	So college and its craziness back in the news as I have heard about this.
	Our kids are very young and nowhere near college age.
	Thank God.
	But I have heard about this in these sort of privileged zip codes that I've bounced between for the past 20 years.
	These education consultants that are making buku bucks from the top 1%ers who want Junior to wind up at Harvard or Yale or Stanford or UPenn, come hell or high water.
	I did not realize just how expensive it is.
	There's an in-depth piece in New York Mag.
	It's a cover story and it's amazing.
	And they're talking about these services, one in particular, which charges $120,000 a year to help them get their kid into one of the IVs.
	And they start paying this company when Junior, they say on average, is in ninth grade.
	So you're talking a half million dollars to pave the way to get your kid into one of these schools just so he can wind up probably hating you, hating the country.
	And if he happens to be a white boy, hating himself.
	For the low-low price of half a million dollars, you can do this.
	Here's just a few more details for you.
	It's called an independent education consultant.
	The one that they profiled was Command Education, offers a personalized white glove service, does everything from curating students' extracurriculars to helping them land summer internships, craft essays, and manage their course loads.
	This guy who charges $120,000 a year has 190 clients.
	He's rolling in dough, mostly private school kids, mainly in New York, 41 full-time staffers working for him.
	They say the real problem as these 1%ers see it is that legacy admissions, which have always favored the rich, quoting here, are under increased scrutiny.
	Some universities have done away with them altogether.
	The horror.
	The threshold for a donation now that might move the needle to get Junior in if you don't use this guy and his $120,000 a year has reportedly reached $10 million.
	So if you want to buy your kids' way in the way Jared Kushner's dad reportedly did, it's going to cost you $10 million.
	And that may or may not get Junior in.
	This is the absurdity.
	We've lost our ever-loving minds.
	You tell me, Matt, how regular kids, I understand if you're a kid of color who's doing relatively decent at any school, you might still get in, notwithstanding this.
	But if you happen to be like a white kid in Appalachia who happens to just have straight A's and does pretty decent on the SAT, F it.
	You're not getting, you're not getting past these kids.
	And you're happy too.
	I would imagine.
	I mean, all this is like a sorting exercise.
	Like, where are all the douchebags going to be?
	Oh, they're there.
	They all went to Horace Mann.
	One third, I think, something like the people that were discussed went to Horace Man.
	And that's a name that might not mean a lot to people, but it's not, I guess, far from where I live.
	It's a private prep school in New York where all the fancy people pay $60,000 a year before you go to college to prep you already.
	The idea of going to Horace Man is to spend all this money so that for sure you're going to get into the Ivy.
	So imagine that your kid is such a layabout that that's still not enough.
	We've got to get the white glove.
	I just call it the rubber glove treatment here, the rubber room treatment.
	Imagine how like completely without initiative a kid would have to be to sort of sort of sit there and take it.
	Yes, mom and dad, spend a million dollars on me before you get to college so that people can make sure that I'm doing my homework.
	Well, these kids don't know.
	I have an eighth grader.
	If I sat him down and said, Yeats, you're going to have to meet with the education consultant.
	And he's, this is important to mom and dad.
	And he's going to help us get you into a proper college.
	I don't know that Yeats would know to say, mom, that's crazy.
	I just, you know, like, they're young.
	14 is young.
	That's like the parents still have such control over them and they kind of want to do what you tell them to do.
	It's the parents' fault.
	This is crazy stuff here where you're, somebody on the outside is curating your son or daughter's extracurriculars.
	Like, you have to play squash.
	Squash is the only sport that's going to go.
	You have to play lacrosse.
	I don't care if you love basketball.
	You're not doing it.
	That's happening, Liz.
	It's stunning to me.
	I mean, most of these kids, truth be told, are either going to be getting into these nice schools and they're going to be doing cocaine in a boathouse and doing all kinds of nasty things or they're going to become social justice warriors.
	Frankly, both baits sound terrible to me.
	If my, you know, my son is one right now, but if he did either of those things, I would be terribly disappointed in him.
	Beyond that, I'm pretty much cool with him doing whatever he wants to do and going down whatever path, you know, he sees appropriate.
	But I do think, I do think the problem is really with the parents.
	I mean, can you imagine being so, it's a creativity problem more than anything.
	Imagine being so narrow-minded and pathetic and losery and just having no real personality of your own to the point where you think the only way to live the good life is to go to your fancy prep school and then go to Harvard and then go and proceed with your investment bank route or what have you.
	I mean, can you imagine believing that that is the only path to the good life?
	I mean, I definitely, I'm young, far, far younger than Sweet Matt over here and I have a young child.
	So I don't really know as much about parenting as you guys do.
	But already I can tell that to some degree, your job as a parent is not just to have this very strict, narrow sense of what your child could possibly become.
	And in fact, it is to have a sense that your child is innately, inherently valuable, not just for their productive capacity or the degree to which they boost your own ego later on.
	That's not what it's about.
	It's such a pathetic way to live.
	There's still this belief that you got to get junior or Harvard degree or Yale degree or whatever in order for junior to succeed in life.
	It's just a lie, but we're still buying into it.
	Look what they're doing to the students at Harvard right now and the students at UPenn.
	Like, look what's actually happening to them on campus.
	Now, you know, God willing, they'll solve this problem and these schools will go back to what they used to do, which is just educate students.
	I don't have a lot of high hopes, Matt, but I understand.
	I have to say, I'm going to be honest, I understand the pressure that parents feel because when, you know, you're in the midst of it and you're thinking, oh, God, is everybody doing this thing?
	It could be whatever, education consultant or anything.
	And we're not doing it.
	And are we disadvantaging, advantaging our kid, you know, by like just kind of letting him choose.
	His own sports and his own extra.
	You have to like pull yourself out of that madness regularly or it will sweep you away like Dorothy In The wind.
	George Packer is a talented writer.
	Uh lives, or lived uh in my neighborhood in Brooklyn uh, and he wrote a piece for THE Atlantic about six, seven years ago, basically articulating exactly what you just said, that sense of pressure, but also the peer pressure of the people around you who are also from the professional class, and and they all uh imagine that they really want to do what's best for the kid.
	Except the point of the article wasn't about the kids being, you know 15, like my daughter is, or even nine, like the youngest one is.
	They were three reader, they were three years old.
	These, these parents, were agonizing over the pressure about what to make sure they go to the right pre-c, because if you don't get into the right pre-K, you might not get the proper this, which then you don't get to go to Horace Mann, and then you don't get to go to Harvard.
	And I read this stuff and it's like science fiction.
	I know I live among these people.
	And I'm very grateful that this feeling never crosses my brain.
	My only thing that I've ever said to my 15-year-old is like, you are not going to Harvard.
	Thank God she's not getting the grade.
	It's not even a possibility.
	And don't you want to have fun in college?
	Didn't you have a good time?
	I had a great time in college.
	Syracuse was so fun.
	I learned a ton.
	I had a great four years.
	I thoroughly enjoyed my time on campus.
	We went to basketball games, lacrosse games.
	I did not, I was not surrounded by social justice warriors trying to turn me into a socialist.
	I just, I would love to have my kids enjoy their four years.
	I went to the school whose abbreviation can be retold as you can study buzzed.
	And it was a proud thing that we were in the top five or top two or just the top one ranked party school for about 10 years running.
	I think it was Playboy that happened.
	So I lasted a year, but I started working for the college newspaper and it turned out well, right?
	Look at you now.
	That's the thing.
	Kids need to be reminded.
	I always tell the kids, like, don't worry.
	I didn't go to Harvard.
	Harvard never would have taken a look at me.
	I didn't even get accepted at the journalism school at Syracuse.
	I went poli-sci, which is a well-respected program, but I'm just saying, it's fine if you work hard.
	You can make something of yourself.
	You will outshine your competitors with ease.
	Because a lot of these kids, Liz, as you probably know, if you do this to them, if you make them get a perfect 4.3, it's not even enough to have a 4.0 now, and a perfect score in the SAT and do 10 extracurriculars and be captain of all the sports, they're going to burn out in year one at Yale.
	And then what, right?
	Like you got to keep some gas in the tank for when they have a real job and get out there and need to outhustle their competitors in order to advance where it matters, the workforce.
	Well, and worse still, you're robbing them of their childhoods.
	You're robbing them of the ability to figure out what their values and interests actually are.
	You're really shunting them toward this very narrow path and you're kind of disregarding who they actually are as people, which does not seem like a recipe for long-term success to me.
	I mean, I wrote this piece for, you know, to what you're talking about, Matt, I wrote this piece for the free press for Barry Weiss's wonderful publication about like the benefits of being a young mom.
	I had, you know, I got pregnant with my son when I was 25, which isn't really young, right?
	That's pretty normal in America, but I was living at the time in Brooklyn, surrounded by a lot of these ultra-wealthy 40-year-old moms who are, which there's nothing wrong with being 40 when you have your first kid.
	Who cares?
	But the issue was I was trying to diagnose this very specific type of neuroses.
	And it, you know, I think really stems from almost like being too affluent and too anxious and too into overthinking for your own good.
	And I can sort of understand why people feel that way.
	You know, if you're having kids a little later, maybe you struggle to conceive, maybe you're one and done, and you're not going to have a big family.
	I could totally understand why then you would have so much pressure that you feel to ensure that your child has an absolutely perfect childhood and that you set them up for, you know, the utmost success.
	The only problem is people end up sabotaging their kids' happiness and their own happiness in the process of doing this.
	I feel blessed beyond measure to not really have the ability, the wiggle room, the budget to be able to do all of those things for my son.
	And I think you said, we have a lot more fun.
	We're able to be scrappy.
	I'm able to, you know, instead of thinking there was this thing with this mom's group I was in where they were getting their kids into the fanciest possible swim lessons.
	So I, I don't know, I signed my kid up for the YMCA swim lessons.
	And guys, guess what?
	I think he's not going to drive.
	Like, I think he's going to be okay.
	We're going to survive this one.
	He's not going to get Ebola from the frickin' high class swimming.
	Like high class versus like, oh, that's the low class, the working class swim.
	Look at the way the breadstroke goes.
	It's weird.
	No, it, I look, I understand investing in your kids' education and wanting what's best for your child and making sure that they're being challenged, you know, to let their beautiful minds develop to where they ought to be.
	You know, like that's all great.
	And I get that.
Subscribe For Three Months Free 00:02:24
	And also athletics.
	Like if you, if you push them a little, I wish my mom had pushed me a little bit more, to be honest.
	Like my mom saw absolutely zero potential and pushed me not at all.
	She's made that clear.
	But so I would have liked to have been pushed a little bit harder, but this is crazy talk.
	$120,000 a year so that Junior can get into some college that is not going to teach him, odds are truly any better or maybe even as good as some of these third-tier schools that just care about teaching you how to think and making sure that you remember you're only 19 one time and you can make friends and go to sports and have a grand old time on campus as you're really truly coming of age.
	Anyway, guys, thank you very much for your expertise.
	You turned out beautifully and I love having you on the show.
	Thanks for being here.
	Thank you, Megan.
	Thanks, Megan.
	Okay, when we come back, Sage Steele is here.
	So much to go over with her.
	Don't miss that.
	I'm Megan Kelly, host of the Megan Kelly Show on SiriusXM.
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	Joining me now is Sage Steele.
	Sage was on with us for the full show back in episode 610 this past August, August of 2023.
	It was an amazing conversation.
	It is still one of our most downloaded episodes.
	You should definitely go back in your free time, just if you have a car ride or something, pop it in there and listen to it.
	You will love every minute.
	We went through her life story, her battle with ESPN over free speech, and we are thrilled she's back with us today.
	Sage, my friend, great to see you.
Woke Kindergarten Programs Explained 00:10:15
	Hello.
	Thank you for having me back, Megan.
	Great to see you.
	Oh, love the thousand watt smile, Sage.
	It's unbelievable.
	It's just a light room.
	So thank you for being here.
	There's a lot to go over.
	I'm going to pick it up where I left off in the last segment, which is education.
	We were talking about the craziness of like the college admissions and paying $120,000 a year to a consultant to get your kid into just the right school.
	Okay, whatever.
	So going back 12 years from where the kid has to get into college to kindergarten, in the news right now is this woke kindergarten program.
	I don't know if you've heard about this, but it's this program.
	I'm trying to find it in my papers here.
	It's this program that has a consultant come into your school and radicalize your children, the kindergarten children, teaching about how bad America is, how skin color is everything, pronouns and so on.
	And I think it's a federally supplemented program where we're trying to wokeify our young people.
	And they've got some radical leftist who's running it in a school district that is struggling when it comes to math, struggling when it comes to English.
	I could go on.
	I'm going to find my paper so I give you the actual specifics.
	But what do you make of the radicalization happening with the littles before they're?
	They're even in first grade.
	The babies.
	That's what hurts me.
	Like, I feel like I can talk to my youngest is a senior in high school.
	So we're almost through.
	They spend some of the, what are the, the, the cat, like the furries that that has happened in my daughter's school.
	And I'm like, really?
	Hold me back.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Oh, and I'm like, just, just, just get her out.
	We're almost there.
	Point is at that age, you can have conversations with your kids and, you know, go back and forth with kindergartners.
	You're lucky if you find out about it.
	Sounds like from what I read that most of the parents knew and were informed, which is, I mean, breaking news.
	It seems like people are doing so much behind the scenes now.
	It's actually called woke kindergarten.
	Like they intentionally named it that.
	Yeah, that's the name of the program.
	And I mean, it sounds like somebody with the bad test scores.
	They don't care.
	Right.
	It's something we would say.
	I feel like I think I saw something also where even some of the teachers weren't buying into this.
	I mean, they're told what to do and saying to, you know, avoid whiteness and to stay away from whiteness, like distract from that and not talk about that.
	And really poisoning.
	Yes.
	These children.
	100%.
	I'm going to go.
	Let me give you the, I'll give you the TikTok on it.
	So it's, okay.
	It is, this is per the San Francisco Chronicle.
	It's a Bay Area school.
	Shocking.
	They spent $250,000 on this woke kindergarten program.
	It's called the Glassbrook Elementary School.
	They've got almost 500 students, predominantly low-income, because yeah, this is what low-income kids are worried about, whether they're using the proper terminology.
	Two-thirds of the students are English learners, more than 80% Hispanic.
	The struggling to boost low test scores school, not to mention dismal students attendance, spending $250,000 in federal money for this organization called Woke Kindergarten.
	They're training teachers, ready, Sage, to confront white supremacy, disrupt racism and oppression, and to remove those barriers to learning.
	They share with schools, this program does, wonderings, which pose questions for students, including if the U.S. U.S. defunded the Israeli military, how could this money be used to rebuild Palestine?
	Oh my goodness.
	Sure.
	They have thoughts.
	Right.
	I can't.
	I'm disgusted.
	Again, I can't get over the fact that they like openly call it woke kindergarten and federally funded for-profit.
	So they're taking the federal funds and then still making the money.
	I think I saw that the leader of it, she's quite a character.
	None of this surprises me when you read your doctor.
	Don't be such a bigot.
	She goes by they.
	Yeah, I'm going to call her she.
	Yeah, no.
	And I love because you inspired me back in the day too.
	I think you're like, no, I'm not going to fall for that.
	I'm not going to fall for the, I'll call you by your first name, but I'm not doing the announcing the Z, Zer, like I can't.
	It's ridiculous.
	Don't even go there.
	As a parent, I'm out.
	I'm taking my kids out of that school.
	Now, on the realistic side for money, especially if it's a low-income neighborhood, I mean, they don't have a lot of options, right?
	And so what do you do?
	It's easy for us to say, I would remove my child and put them in a private school or do something else.
	And so you try to put yourself in their shoes.
	And what do you do?
	Do you go to those school board meetings and have, you know, voice your opinion, your concerns?
	That hasn't seemed to help for many other instances around the country, whether it's about wokeism or even the transgender sports issue, right?
	So I don't know the answer.
	I think what I keep asking myself, Megan, with all these issues is why?
	Like, why is this happening?
	And to me, number one is the financial aspect of it, because people are making money from this.
	People are getting rich from this.
	And look at the media and how the media has taken all of this as well and made everything a race issue.
	I mean, it's intentional because there's too much money that would be left on the table if they don't keep all of this going.
	And so why not indoctrinate our children at this young age?
	It's even bigger than that, though.
	There is evil.
	There's evil people.
	And there's something so dark.
	I wish I could fully put my finger on it, but so dark going through our country in specific right now, specifically right now.
	And like I said, I'm grateful that my kids are older.
	I have two in college who have very strong opinions.
	And they're at a university, by the way, that does not put up with this stuff.
	They're at High Point University.
	The motto is God, family, country.
	But they're not shoving it down your throats, but they're giving kids options.
	There's never a vaccine mandate.
	So whatever we can do to salvage our kids when they're young like this, again, kindergartners, God bless them.
	And then have the conversations with our kids and then choose not to let them go to these institutions of quote higher learning, like what you were talking about with your last guest and paying six figures a year for them to be poisoned, because that's what this is.
	That's just woke college.
	It's the bookend of this kind of program.
	I mean, I, it wasn't so long ago I had a kindergartner.
	My youngest right now is in fourth grade.
	And I'm, it wasn't, you know, too long for me to remember his main concern was making fart noises that sounded realistic.
	He certainly did not care about the Israel-Palestine situation.
	And nor should that happen.
	Right.
	That's to me, that's, that's the most heartbreaking thing as well, is that kids aren't innocent for long, especially in today's world.
	And with social media and the technology that frankly is a part of their lives, not just because, you know, okay, there's TVs and devices around our home, but also I found during during, well, even before COVID and with my kids being in junior high and high school at that time, there were no more textbooks, right?
	It's all you're forced to have a laptop or an iPad for your kids.
	And that's where they do all the reading and get their homework assignments.
	So with those devices, you can control all that you want.
	And I think when they're little, it's easy.
	They get a little bit older.
	It's harder to control what's on those.
	It's heartbreaking to me because this is the there's only a few years where they're innocent, where they're allowed to be babies and worry about, you know, okay, what we should be teaching.
	Yes, reading.
	By the way, the reading scores at that school have fallen drastically.
	If I went down from one of those articles, not even two years.
	They're not going to be a three-year contract with Woke Kindergarten, a for-profit company, as you point out.
	Student achievement has fallen.
	English and math scores hit new lows last spring.
	Less than 4% of students are proficient in math.
	Just under 12% are at grade level in English.
	Under 12% in the school are at grade level in English.
	That's a decline of about four percentage points in each category.
	When the San Francisco Chronicle called to ask questions about this of district officials, they said, Well, Woke Kindergarten did what it was hired to do.
	We had improvements in attendance and suspension rates, and the school's no longer on the state watch list, only to be told by the Chronicle that the school was not only still on the watch list, but had dropped to a lower level.
	They have no idea what they're doing, but they're still taking those funds.
	I think the only silver lining here is that it sounds like there are many teachers there who are upset about this.
	Teachers who actually want to do their job and teach and teach reading and math and all of those basics to set them up for elementary school, primary school, junior high school.
	And so, okay, all of us are out there.
	And thanks to people like you getting these stories out there and probably some parents, it sounds like as well.
	We haven't heard as much from teachers with any of these controversies.
	And I think it is time for teachers to take a stand as well.
	I know it's easier said than done, but what we've seen with so many different kinds of controversies, silence really is compliance.
	And it is scary.
	We know that.
	But if we're going to truly try to save these kids, we have no choice.
	And so teachers help because teachers get a bad rap for this.
	You know, these are things they're being told to do, especially if you've got money coming in from the feds.
	Like sometimes they don't have a say.
	So what do they do?
	I empathize with many of them because I think most teachers probably feel like us and just they didn't get into this to teach wokeism.
	That wasn't even a word a few years ago.
	What is that?
	They did it out of the luck.
	They're not doing it to get rich, you know?
	You know how it is too.
	And the parents who normally would be the ones who object to this, they're working.
Teachers Forced To Teach Controversial Topics 00:03:54
	They have lives.
	I remember when we were at our New York City school, they brought in this race program called Pollyanna.
	And I was like, oh, that's got a nice name.
	I don't know what that is.
	Even I wasn't looking into it.
	And then you spend two minutes Googling this and the people behind it.
	And you're like, whoa.
	But most parents aren't doing that.
	You know, you're kind of trusting your educators not to veer off course of just teaching them the things they need to know.
	These days, people are paying a little bit more attention.
	But I'll put it to you this way.
	Imagine you mentioned the woman who created the program.
	Her name is Akia Gross.
	And she calls herself an abolitionist early educator.
	So imagine taking your five-year-old, which is how old you are in kindergarten, and saying, I want you to spend all five days this week and every week of your kindergarten year listening to this person.
	Here's a little sound from Akea.
	Yes, everyone, the rumors are true.
	I am anti-Israel.
	I am pro-Palestine.
	And I am 100% 10 toes down anti-Israel.
	I believe Israel has no right to exist.
	I believe the United States has no right to exist.
	I believe every settler colony who has committed genocide against Native peoples, against indigenous people has no right to exist.
	I believe in a free Palestine.
	From the river to the sea.
	I have an unwavering respect for children, an unwavering love and care and compassion for children, a commitment to children and to their freedom, to their learning, to their lives, to sustaining their lives.
	Y'all are the demons.
	Y'all are the villains.
	We've been trying to end y'all.
	Get free of y'all.
	Think those parents would say, here, have Adam.
	I had not heard that and I am disgusted.
	Shame on her.
	Sometimes I think when those people do that and they hold their camera and they do the selfie videos, like I really hope that she's just doing it for attention, that deep down she doesn't mean it.
	Even if she doesn't, she's doing it.
	Why?
	Because she's making money doing so.
	And the fact that that school district chose her, her, not they or whatever the hell she wants to be called, chose her to come in there and to teach that crap to those kids, to kindergarteners.
	By the way, I had an argument with one of my daughter's teachers when she was in kindergarten, actually.
	It was one of the first times I had to really go in and stand up for one of my kids.
	It was a crazy moment.
	And I remember coming out saying, this is why we're here as parents.
	We must advocate for our children because we can't always control who is allowed in the classrooms.
	We really can't.
	At the end of the day, what I said to that teacher, story for another day with you and me overwhelmed, it's a long one.
	It's a good one, juicy one.
	I said to her, your job is not to say, okay, if Sally says the sky is blue and Johnny says, no, this sky looks more pink to me today.
	You don't tell Johnny or Sally they're wrong.
	You say, well, why do you think that?
	Well, let's talk about it.
	I don't want to know the teacher's opinion.
	Your job is to encourage conversation from that young age.
	So then what happens?
	They don't end up like all the idiots on social media who can't actually have a conversation, which means nothing in this world in this country is going to change.
	So there's extra shame on that school district, that the Bay Area.
	I mean, hell, the state of California, right?
	Shame on them.
	Although when you told me where it was and the San Francisco Chronicle is involved, sounds like they tried to do some journalism for once there, as far as saying, oh, no, no, look at your, look at your state scores, look at the scores and all the numbers, but it is there.
	And shame on that state for continuing to do this to our children.
Grammys Performance Driven Show 00:09:07
	I can handle it.
	Throw it at the adults, right?
	But it's sick to indoctrinate these children.
	You won't be surprised, the perfect epilogue to this story.
	This woman Gross has a master's in child development psychology and special education from Columbia University.
	This is what you're paying $120,000 a year to an educational consultant to get your child into a school so you can wind up with a degree that this same woman has that, as I said at the top, will teach you to hate America, probably hate the family that you come from, especially if you happen to be white or a male, you know, tick the boxes.
	This is what you're paying all this money for, not to mention the Columbia tuition.
	I mean, it's we've, we've just lost our minds.
	We've lost control and we need to find them.
	We need to speak up.
	All right, let me move on.
	A nice moment happened at the Grammys.
	I didn't watch the Grammys, but I saw clips.
	I have to say, it sounds like they did a great job at the Grammys the other night.
	Entertainers entertained.
	There was very little politics, a little bit from Annie Linux on the Israel thing, but whatever.
	Sure.
	For the most part, it sounds like it was a great performance-driven show.
	And the best moment, I'm sure you feel as I do.
	Maybe you don't.
	I love Tracy Chapman.
	I've been singing songs my whole life.
	I was hoping you'd say that.
	Yes, the fast car.
	I mean, like when I was a freshman in college, I think that came out.
	And it was, we sing it all the time.
	It was so catchy, such a beautiful tune.
	It was a great message.
	And when her song got covered by Luke Combs and rose up to the top of the country charts, the lunatics on the left wrote about it like it was some white privilege situation.
	He co-opted her music as if that's even legal.
	You know, you'd have to get her permission.
	You'd have to pay the country.
	Of course.
	Anyway.
	And she came out at the time and said she loved it and she was really honored because with her, I guess it only ever hit top six back in the day, you know, 88, whatever, whenever it hit.
	And with him, it wound up hitting number one.
	And this was somehow used by these crazy lunatics on the left to say it's like a white privilege thing.
	It could never be done by a black woman.
	I was like, what are you saying?
	It was one of the most popular songs in the country when she was the one singing it.
	And I really loved this moment for many reasons, including that this one was kind of a middle finger to those people, but really just to see Tracy Chapman, who does not come out in public a lot and sing a lot publicly at these award shows.
	She took to the stage, sang it with him.
	Here's a clip, Best of the Night, SOT 13.
	You got a fast car.
	Fast enough so you can fly away.
	We got to make a decision.
	Leave tonight or live and die to sway.
	So you're singing it.
	Such a good moment.
	Oh, it gives me chills.
	I've probably watched it eight times.
	I like you.
	I did not watch it live and I just go back and watch all the important clips.
	And first of all, when I heard Luke's, when he did the song last year, last summer, I was so happy because he is an incredible voice.
	And to me, it was all about respect and honoring a beautiful piece of art that Tracy Chapman wrote and sang all those years ago.
	And it celebrates Tracy, doesn't it?
	And then you see them on stage.
	And I thought they did a brilliant job in the camera angles.
	And that's why I kept watching it over again because you could see Tracy.
	And I think the one that you just showed, you saw Tracy close to you.
	And then you could also see Luke.
	And he kept looking back over at her and smiling and deferring to her as he should.
	It's her song.
	You could tell it was an honor for him.
	And if people know the whole story behind Luke and why that song meant something to him, he talked about it somewhere.
	And it was about, you know, when he was a kid, little kid, and his dad, you know, put that cassette tape in the car and played it for him when he was a little boy.
	And so the love, it's all about love of the song, right?
	And music, which I think usually brings us together.
	Finally, to me, it was such a, and I tweeted about this.
	I thought it was also a beautiful moment for many reasons, for all those reasons, the story behind it.
	But just what you see when you see those two people on stage so different, right?
	From very different eras.
	That is diversity.
	That is America.
	That is a definition of it.
	And to me, I mean, you can, we can be a prisoner of the moment at times, but I thought back to some other amazing Grammy performances, probably more from the 80s and like Michael Jackson era.
	But I haven't seen anything like that, really, since then.
	And then you saw the audience shots, right, Megan?
	I don't know if you saw that in the clips back, but you had all the different artists, like country pop, rappers, everybody standing up, singing and cheering them on.
	It was beautiful.
	And I think that the left has been a little bit silenced with this one because of such the positive reaction afterwards.
	These people are just bored.
	They just have no life and like to store the pot.
	But Tracy and Luke shut them up.
	Yeah, she came out.
	Well, hopefully we'll lay the clip in later so the viewing audience can see, but she came out.
	And when the audience realized she was there and she was playing the song, they went nuts.
	And you see the big smile come over her face.
	She was obviously extremely flattered.
	It was all about her music.
	She just played and they ate up every second of it.
	It really was such a feel-good moment.
	It's amazing how music can do that, right?
	Like I was saying to my friends at SiriusXM, I've never been a big concert person, but I've been going to more thanks to my pals at, you know, Sirius.
	Like they have access to a lot of musicians, a lot of concerts.
	And I've been saying yes, more.
	And it's transformative stage.
	They offered to me and to Doug to go to the Green Day concert like a month ago at this very small venue in New York.
	And Green Day was just in the news for ripping on MAGA.
	And shock, this punk band from the Bay Area is not pro-Republican or MAGA.
	Who cares?
	I couldn't care less what their politics are.
	They didn't bring any of that up at the show.
	They were so talented.
	It was so fun to watch them.
	It really does just standing up and singing and swaying with the music with your fellow man.
	It puts you in a great mood.
	It's almost church-like.
	Dare I say, it's almost church-like.
	I agree with you.
	Every time I've heard that fast car song from day one and whatever year that was, was that 88?
	88 earlier.
	Yeah, 88.
	I smile because of the words and the meaning and this truth, beautiful storytelling with that.
	You know, I, by the way, I went back and I forgot when I played it the other day, I forgot that I had downloaded all the Tracy Chapman essentials, I think on iTunes or whatever, years ago.
	And I went, I've been listening to it for the past couple of days because of Tracy.
	I kind of liken music to sports, to be honest with you, because how many people were at that Green Day concert?
	You know, tens of thousands of people, just like at a football game on Sunday.
	Right.
	Thanks to Sirius, but their average concert fills an entire huge stadium.
	This one was.
	Yeah.
	Well, see, that's even better ones, the small venues.
	But in that venue, whether it's, you know, 50 people or 50,000 people, for those couple of hours, what happens?
	Nine times out of 10, everything is cast aside.
	And your race, your religion, your gender, your socioeconomic status, your politics, none of it matters.
	You're just, you know, enjoying Green Day.
	You're just rooting for the New York Giants or rooting hard because the New York Giants never win, right?
	But like it brings everybody together.
	And I love it.
	Music and sports really does.
	And for a couple hours, we can all kind of forget about the crap, you know?
	Yeah.
	Don't you think that's why, and I want to do another music story in a second, but don't you think that's why one of the reasons why the NFL is doing so well this year is they've checked a lot of that.
	We don't have to see all the kneeling.
	They've gotten less political.
	Yeah, finally.
	I mean, they've checked it, but I think it's also the athletes and the coaches and some of the messages that we don't even hear about.
	You know, it's like, let's just focus on the game.
	Why divide?
	The NFL has done a really good job of it.
	I think early on in Kaepernick and all those things from a few years back, it was tougher.
	The conversations about people, hey, if you have an issue, just don't kneel on the field.
	Just stay in the tunnel.
	You don't have to come out just so it isn't as much in your face, unlike what has happened, you know, in the NBA and it's all over the courts, you know.
	You still see on the back of some of the players' helmets and racism.
	And that's fine.
	It just doesn't shove down your throat.
	Everybody has that right to feel that way.
	But overall, they have done a great job.
	And again, people come for music, for sports, to be entertained and for an escape.
Taylor Swift Overload At The Event 00:03:20
	There's enough opportunities elsewhere to be bombarded with the other stuff.
	I'd be remiss as we discuss music and sports if I didn't bring up the Taylor Swift Travis Kelsey thing.
	It's just of course.
	It's ubiquitous.
	She was at the Grammys, I should say.
	I mean, it's like Taylor overload.
	And she's getting some feedback because apparently it was Celine Dion who introduced her.
	And Celine Dion is suffering some major health issues with this stiff person syndrome.
	Yeah.
	She's, you know, losing her mobility.
	And she gave Taylor Swift a very nice intro.
	And maybe it's nitpicking, maybe it's real, but Taylor came out there and wasn't exactly generous about Celine and made the speech all about herself, which is not what everybody else did.
	Like others got up there and like Miley Cyrus didn't make it all about herself and Taylor used like me, Some people saying she's falling for the, you know, everyone loves me, me most of all thing that can happen to these superstars.
	I don't know whether it's true.
	We have the moment here.
	I'll show you.
	You were known when me.
	She didn't even look at her for the listening audience.
	She was announcing that Taylor won album of the year.
	She didn't even look at her.
	I mean, she's like, she's a goddess in the music world, Celine Dion.
	I know.
	I, I, it was noticeable for sure.
	Here's my gut because everything we've seen from Taylor has been, you know, with kindness and the way she is with her fans and how genuine she is.
	And she was really caught up in that moment.
	And she was focusing on her team, though, right?
	And even in her speech, she did mention them and called them by name.
	And kind of, I feel like she was just, you know, all over the place, and which we kind of love her for, right?
	She makes fun of herself for being like, but just herself.
	She took it and wasn't, I did see a picture backstage of her with Celine and they had the trophy and they were posing.
	So maybe she realized it after, maybe someone quickly told her, because I'm sure X lit up immediately, you know?
	Yeah.
	That's good.
	I can't imagine.
	I can't imagine it was intentional, you know, but it stinks because it was noticeable.
	And just bad timing with Celine, if this were five or six years ago, because Taylor's been winning for years and years when Celine wasn't suffering from this health issues, because I do think it takes courage for Celine to get up there.
	And she's been through so much, including the loss of her husband years ago.
	So it just stinks that the timing of that when she should have been celebrated and she is an icon.
	And I think if Taylor could do it again, she'd probably start first and foremost by talking about Celine, the legend.
	She helped pave the way.
	The legend.
	Yes, exactly right.
	So I'm sure she'd love to have a do-over on that.
	Yeah.
	In the music lane, that Toby Keith died.
	So sad.
	Was it cancer?
Country Music Legends Remembered 00:06:23
	Stomach cancer?
	Yes, it was stomach cancer.
	He was diagnosed in 2021.
	And I mean, a legend in country music and music and period.
	And I, my, my producer, Kelly McGuire, is awesome.
	She's from South Carolina.
	She's a fan and she had been familiar with many of his interviews, including this one, which was given after he was sick.
	And he talked a bit about, among other things, his friendship, which ran deep and led to a song based on Clint Eastwood.
	They were tight.
	And he talked in the interview about how he'd been with Clint, who was 88.
	Well, just listen, take a listen to SAP 14.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	And I go, what keeps you going?
	He goes, I get up every day.
	I don't lay around.
	I get outside and I go outside and I don't let that old man in.
	I was like, wow.
	Okay.
	So I thought, you know what?
	I love that old man.
	I'm going to go home, write him a song, send it to him.
	Look out your window and smile.
	Don't let the old million.
	Eastwood loved Toby's song so much.
	He used it at the end of his movie, The Mule.
	Don't let the old man.
	Gone too soon.
	At 62 years old, he'd been married to his wife, Tricia, for 39 years, three children, four grandchildren, had done 11 USO tours performing for our troops overseas.
	And, you know, Sage, it does remind me on the back of watching that woke kindergarten woman, like, I believe the United States does not have the right to exist.
	Then you have real American heroes who have all the money in the world, don't have to play another gig ever, but they take their time to go entertain the troops.
	They stay married to their wife of 39 years.
	They raise their family.
	They nurture their grandkids.
	They write patriotic songs.
	They honor the 88-year-old American icon, Clint Eastwood, with a song like that.
	He talked in the interview about how would you act if you didn't know what year you were born, right?
	Like, how would you, what would your spirit do to you in your life?
	It's just a reminder of human goodness and what the country really stands for.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	I, that's why I've learned over the last probably eight or 10 years to pay attention to and fall in love with country music because it's almost always rooted in that and patriotism and really kindness for the most part.
	You know, I think of the respect that's within the country music community and, you know, Luke Combs and some of the, I know Chase Rice a little bit and some of the, the way that they look up at those trailblazers is really incredible.
	So seeing the outpouring of love for Toby today, I feel terrible.
	I don't think I realized that he had cancer.
	And again, yes, it's cliche.
	You know, you never know what tomorrow brings and to live your life to the fullest and to lead with kindness.
	And, but it's so true.
	And that's what, that's what Toby did.
	When you mention, you know, how it used to be, it's funny.
	I was, I was on the treadmill today and I was just watching documentaries and I watched the, for some reason, I chose the challenger one and, you know, with the teacher, Kristen McAuliffe, who was on that shuttle.
	And, you know, the documentary on Netflix is really well done.
	And the music, Megan, it brought me back.
	I got like choked up watching the beginning of this talk.
	Obviously, I was in eighth grade when the challenger blew up and the emotions with that.
	And then you think to 9-11 as well, and you think back to all these times and the tragedies and how everybody comes together right after that.
	You know, I remember that as a kid.
	I remember, of course, 9-11 as an adult and a young mother.
	And those music stars kind of help us through it, you know?
	Yeah.
	So I just feel like what has happened with country music is hopefully what we can get back to is that cheesy, you know, but what those men and women stand for.
	I don't know a country music star who makes it with songs about how much they hate America.
	Like that, that's not a thing in country music.
	Thank God.
	It's one area of the music industry that hasn't been corrupted by any of that.
	Yeah.
	And every, when you look back through the years and through tough times and fun times, but the music, and it quite often goes back to those country stars.
	And thank you to Toby Keith.
	And I'm so sorry for their loss.
	But again, bringing people together.
	That's what he did.
	By the way, Clint Eastwood, when we were stationed out in California in the 70s, my dad was stationed there in the Army, and I was at an ice skating rink out in the Monterey area.
	And I fell and I was crying.
	And we turn around and this kind gentleman came and picked me up and brought me to my mother.
	It was Clint Eastwood.
	Oh, and an ice skating rink.
	Yeah, at a random ice skating rink.
	Whereupon every woman intentionally fell at the ice skating rink every Friday thereafter.
	Ah, I'm down.
	My mother, my, my, I always this big, my mother's like, oh, you want my daughter?
	You can keep her.
	You come with me, you know?
	Random Clint East.
	So, can I tell you the fact that you were pulling up like old documentaries about the challenger reminded me of this.
	Recently, I pulled up for some reason, you know how YouTube will suggest things to you based on what you've been watching.
	And I don't know what I watched that led to this, but it was an old Phil Donahue show in which he interviewed the cast of Steel Magnolias.
	And it was all the women.
	It was Olympia Dukakis.
	It was Shirley McClain.
	It was Sally Field.
	It was Julia Roberts.
	And, oh, God, why am I forgetting her name?
	The one who played Weezer, like the best.
	You know, Shirley McClain.
	Yeah, Shirley McClain.
	Yeah, yeah, thank you.
	Anyway, they were all so interesting.
	And the one, they were all super friendly and warm and great with the audience.
	You know who wasn't?
	Interestingly, Julia Roberts.
	Go back and watch it.
	Really?
	She was pretty cold.
	She was pretty ungenerous.
	And I thought, you know, you never know.
	Maybe, well, you know, people get shy.
	There's some of these people who become very famous are shy.
	They don't do well on camera in these interviews.
Involuntary Manslaughter Charges Discussed 00:01:20
	And I don't get over.
	As much of her publicly, I don't know, but I highly recommend going back and watching The Hour because it and Dolly Parton, who stole the whole thing.
	She was so warm, self-deprecating, funny.
	There's a reason America loves this woman.
	Just thinking about our female icons and also good art from Tracy Chapman's song.
	Oh, by the way, remember the armadillo cake, Megan, and chopping off the tail.
	And that, that's just a great, that's such a great movie.
	I'm going to go watch it.
	And also, I love the Dolly Parton when she's all buffant.
	Like, it takes some effort to look like this.
	I can see it.
	I love it.
	Love that movie.
	Love you, Sage.
	Please come back soon.
	Thank you for having me.
	So good to see you, Megan.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	Likewise.
	All right, quickly, as we go to break, just want to tell you verdict in the Crumbly trial: Jennifer Crumbly found guilty on all four counts of involuntary manslaughter.
	This is, wow, this is actually really, really interesting.
	Her son, of course, pleaded guilty to murder and terrorism, serving a life sentence for this mass shooting.
	So the mother of the mass shooter found guilty on involuntary manslaughter.
	More on that this week.
	Thanks for listening.
	Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly Show.
	No BS, no agenda, and no

Chapters

00:00:00 Supreme Court Rules Against Trump
00:14:13 Lawfare And Election Interference
00:19:46 Biden Approval Numbers Drop
00:34:37 RFKJ As A VP Candidate
00:47:33 Pressure To Get Kids Into Harvard
01:00:36 Subscribe For Three Months Free
01:03:01 Woke Kindergarten Programs Explained
01:13:16 Teachers Forced To Teach Controversial Topics
01:17:11 Grammys Performance Driven Show
01:26:18 Taylor Swift Overload At The Event
01:29:39 Country Music Legends Remembered
01:36:03 Involuntary Manslaughter Charges Discussed