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March 26, 2024 - The Megyn Kelly Show
01:38:12
20240326_msnbcs-hypocritical-ronna-meltdown-and-preachy-fem
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MSNBC's Internal Pile-On 00:08:47
Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at noon east.
Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.
Oh, do we have a show for you today.
In the news this morning, NBC takes one of its new conservative hires and tries to ruin her with an internal pile-on from sanctimonious anchors trying to act like they are deeply offended by her, all while hoping no one digs too deeply into their own terrible pasts.
Trigger!
Ronna McDaniel, the former head of the RNC and a newly minted NBC News contributor, is probably going to get fired today, less than one week after she was hired by the network.
Why?
Because the children over at Dem SNBC are very, very mad.
And I mean, really mad.
I want to associate myself with all my colleagues both at MSNBC and at NBC News who have voiced loud and principled objections to our company putting on the payroll someone who hasn't just attacked us as journalists, but someone who is part of an ongoing project to get rid of our system of government.
In this instance, NBC News, either wittingly or unwittingly, is teaching election deniers that what they can do stretches well beyond appearing on our air in interviews to peddle lies about the sanctity and integrity of our elections.
We weren't asked our opinion of the hiring, but if we were, we would have strongly objected to it.
My colleague Chuck Todd went full William McAvoy.
Is she speaking for herself or is she speaking on behalf of who's paying her?
When NBC made the decision to give her NBC News' credibility, you gotta ask yourself, what does she bring NBC News?
It's not about that.
We welcome Republican voice.
I wish more Republicans.
I want Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney to get right here and come talk to me.
The reality is, this isn't a difference of opinion.
She literally backed an illegal scheme to steal an election in the state of Michigan.
And our democracy is in danger because of the lies that people like Ronna McDaniel have pushed on this country.
She also said election deniers is not just they can do that on our airwaves, but that they can do that as one of us, as badge-carrying employees of NBC News, as paid contributors to our sacred airwaves.
Take a minute.
Acknowledge that maybe it wasn't the right call.
It is a sign of strength, not weakness, to acknowledge when you are wrong.
It is a sign of strength.
And our country needs us to be strong right now.
Oh my God.
Okay, so just to be clear, Ronna McDaniel has not done one thing in the past week to bring this on.
No new information has been imparted to the NBC brass other than its anchors professed horror, horror, at the notion of working with an election denier.
A little bit more here from Nicole Wallace.
NBC News, either wittingly or unwittingly, is teaching election deniers that what they can do stretches well beyond appearing on our air in interviews to peddle lies about the sanctity and integrity of our elections.
We've also said to election deniers, it's not just they can do that on our airwaves, but that they can do that as one of us, as badge-carrying employees of NBC News, as paid contributors to our sacred airwaves.
Our sacred airwaves.
They must be protected, you see, from liars.
After all, over at MSNBC, they are in the business of honesty.
Now we know that the vaccines work well enough that the virus stops with every vaccinated person.
Literally, the only people dying are the unvaccinated.
And for those of you spreading misinformation, shame on you.
Shame on you.
Think about it.
I don't know how some of you sleep at that.
Republican voters don't vote that way.
They don't vote based on economics.
They're voting on race.
Russian, Russian, Russian, Russia.
Russian, Russian, Russian, Russian, Moscow.
Russian, Russian, Russia.
Putin.
Russian.
He is actually being prosecuted at the state level and at the federal level for fomenting an actual insurrection that caused a lot of blood, that actually caused the deaths of at least five people.
The report of special counsel Robert Mueller has finally been submitted.
This is the start of something, apparently, not the end of something.
You don't have a president, as you said, talking about exterminating Latinos.
Okay.
As MSNBC talent spun it yesterday, they could work with a Republican, sure, but not with someone who challenged the results of an election, thereby subverting our democracy.
Hard no.
The public's trust in the integrity of the U.S. Supreme Court is in rapid decline.
It just so happens to be a recurring theme in our guest, Stacey Abrams' new novel.
I just first have to congratulate you on writing this just exquisitely crafted novel.
Stacey, it's great to have you back on the show and can't wait to talk about the novel.
I just want to do a little bit of politics first.
Brian Kemp and Brad Rafsenberger to undermine access to elections for average Georgians continues to reverberate.
Abrams has a brand new thriller out tomorrow called Rogue Justice, which follows a Supreme Court law clerk, and she unpacks a riveting legal mystery.
We're going to talk about that in just a moment.
I am excited and cannot wait to make that a summer read for myself.
On Wednesday, I asked former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton about this fact and how Biden should handle it.
Do you think, you're a private citizen, that if he is convicted, he should go to prison?
You know, I'm not going to substitute my judgment for the judicial system.
You know, as you say, there are four cases, and I think 91 count.
What happened to our secret airwaves?
I thought we couldn't have the election deniers on MSNBC, but maybe it just depends which election one is denying.
Well, look, MSNBC really wants you to know that this has nothing to do with being on the left or the right to those who are saying, hey, you had no problem hiring Jensaki, who lied for a living for years as an Obama and then a Biden spokesperson.
What gives?
Well, Jensaki herself weighed in on that.
See, that was totally different, she explained, because honesty.
Some, mainly in the right-wing ecosystem, have made the comparison to others who have come from government or politics into the media, including me.
And that is a comparison I felt like I had to address.
I got into public service for the same reason that many people do, to serve the American people.
And there are many others who have followed a similar path who I have a great deal of respect for.
But here's the thing.
That kind of experience only matters and only has value to viewers, all of you, if it is paired with honesty and with good faith.
Our democracy is in danger because of the lies that people like Ronna McDaniel have pushed on this country.
Is it just me or she?
Does she remind you of Dora the Explorer?
To dance the candy cat dance, we need to scratch our kitty pawns, stomp our feet, and wag our kitty tails.
We got the maymade free.
Yay!
Just saying.
Okay.
Anywho, Jen Saki did not lie, I guess.
Okay, she did not lie.
That's the difference when she was working for Joe Biden.
So she is totally different from an RNC spokesperson or chair, except for that lie about how the vast majority of illegal immigrants do not intend to stay here, as she told us.
Or that one about how no one anticipated that the Taliban would take over Afghanistan as quickly as they did, despite the fact that her boss was caught on tape admitting he knew.
Or that time she tried to dismiss the Hunter Biden laptop as Russian disinformation, or when she blamed rising gas prices on the war in Ukraine, not her boss's inflationary policies, which had been driving them up long before that war.
Remember when she accused Ron DeSantis of not encouraging seniors to get vaccinated in Florida?
Or that time she said only a tiny number of people who got the vaccine ever got COVID again?
I could go on, but honesty.
Look, none of that matters, okay?
Masterclass in Histrionics 00:15:11
Because according to MSNBC, what's happening here is very dangerous, all right?
And so these are dangerous times and we have to respond accordingly.
What's happening here, according to Rachel Maddow, is a long con, you see, all right?
It's a long con of a national party, the Republican Party, getting behind a Hitler-esque figure and his claims of a fraudulent election.
Because what they're trying to do is lower your defenses against his inevitable claim that he, once returned to office, should be allowed to stay there indefinitely.
She laid it all out last night, explaining why Rona McDaniel is just that dangerous.
And in a time like this, it's hard, right?
I mean, this is a challenging and worrying time.
Republican officials have to figure out whether they're going to stand up for the American system of government or not.
Republican politicians, you know, Congress has to decide if it's going to assert its own relevance.
They're going to assert their own independence, their own role in the government and stand up for our system of government or not.
Judges and prosecutors have to decide if they're going to be braver than they ever thought they'd have to be in this job.
They have to decide whether they're going to stand up to the threats and the violence.
I watched 27 minutes of Rachel Maddow last night.
I did it for you.
I've never done that before.
I could not believe the dramatics, the dramatic pauses.
Looking up at the ceiling.
The faux wrestling with tears over the state of America.
You know who she reminded me of?
I never could have imagined what my story would entail.
To think about what the American dream can do across to just one generation in just one lifetime.
It's truly breathtaking.
But right now, the American dream has turned into a nightmare.
I can't.
I need help.
I need smart women to remind us all.
We're out there.
We're plentiful.
We're everywhere.
We are not defined by the Nicole Wallace's or the Jen Sakis, frankly, the Katie Brits or the Rachel Maddows with their overly dramatic presentations and their faux tears.
And they're everywhere.
Strong, smart women are everywhere, including my first and only two guests today, the EJs, are with me.
Emily Jashinsky, culture editor at the Federalist and host of the Federalist Radio Hour, and Eliana Johnson, who is editor-in-chief at the Washington Free Beacon and co-host of the Ink Stained Wretches podcast.
Ladies, so good to have you.
Thank you for being.
Thank you for being here.
Hi, Maggie.
Thank you for that.
How did I go wrong?
I don't think you went wrong anywhere.
I think actually that was a masterclass in building up to it, up to the Rachel Maddow point, because that's actually what this is all about, this like histrionics over the single thing, the election denialism that they have decided disqualifies any voice from being on their airwaves, which then to the point that you built up to, when you look at all of the different things that they have lied about that they don't consider to be beyond the pale.
I mean, Nicole Wallace was talking on behalf of the George W. Bush administration during the Iraq war.
A lot of people would consider that to be pretty beyond the pale in this country, especially with the benefit of hindsight and retrospect in that case.
But I mean, she was the mouthpiece of the Bush administration during the Iraq war.
So for her then to say Ronna McDaniel, who is a pretty standard Republican, who did not go as far as Donald Trump, she went further than I would have gone on some of the election stuff, but she did not go as far as Donald Trump on the election stuff.
She's a representative of the Republican base of a wide swath of Republican voters.
The point of having people like that on your air, if you're serious about doing journalism, is so that you get the contrast.
And when Joy Reed, this was such a tell in the clips that you played, Joy Reid said, I want more Republicans.
I want to talk to Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney all the time.
That is the tell.
They don't want any real contrast.
What they want is a way to rule contrast out so that they just look like the people who are right.
And that's what I think is, you know, so, it is the opposite of what people in this country want right now.
They want desperately to hear both sides.
And that's just, it's bad business and it's bad journalism.
And it's been on full display for the last couple of days.
Eliana, the sanctimony in these clips that we've been playing yesterday and today.
NBC News's credibility has been given to Ronna McDaniel.
We've shared our NBC name with her as one of us on our sacred airwaves.
She's become a badge carrying member of NBC.
I mean, they have no clue how absurd they sound.
You know, my views on this are maybe a little bit different.
I totally agree with all of that.
I mean, these people take themselves so unbelievably seriously.
It is nauseating.
However, I'm watching for a couple of things.
When I saw Chuck Todd, who led the charge on this, go after his own bosses on Meet the Press on Sunday, I was sort of gobsmacked.
I thought, you know, who rips into their own bosses on national television?
You know, it's sort of one thing to raise questions privately.
It's another thing to rip into them on the marquee show of the network and it raised questions that I think we've seen in other areas of journalism, which is who runs these places?
Is it the employees or the management?
And so in that regard, I'm curious to see what happens here.
Is MSNBC going to let their employees, all these folks throwing temper tantrums on the airwaves and telling their bosses how it is and how it should be?
Are they in charge?
Is the talent in charge or is management in charge?
And we've seen this play out a lot of other places.
So that's one thing I'm watching.
And the second thing is, you know, I don't have any big beef with Ronna McDaniel, but it has frustrated me, whether it's CNN or ABC, which signed Brian's Priebus and now NBC, which signed Ronna Romney.
I got to say, like, I don't think these are the best spokesmen or spokeswomen for the conservative cause.
And so I have no, no issue with her, but part of me is frustrated that like they can't find anyone better to pay $300,000 for, you know, to represent the cause.
I sort of think that these people are chosen for a reason, which is because like they're the Alan Combs of the right.
Yeah, interesting.
Like with all due respect, God rest him, Alan Combs, but he was not the strongest partner, Deshaun Hannity, who was very effective in his messaging and very talented.
I loved Alan though.
But I want to say a couple of things.
So I was at NBC, as you know, for a year plus, and I went on the airwaves one day and I did not criticize my boss, but I did put the lie to a memo he had put out claiming NBC did not have the reporting on Harvey Weinstein.
And that's why they spiked Ronan Farrow's devastating report on Harvey.
Remember, they had it in hand and the reporting in the news was that they spiked it because Harvey had threatened them over Matt Lauer.
Okay.
Yeah.
Saying, I'm going to out Matt Lauer if you out me.
And NBC News defended itself saying, we didn't have it.
We never had anybody go on the record with the claims against Harvey.
And I had my hands on a script showing that they did.
They did have it on the record from, I think it was multiple, at least two women, but I had this script and I put the lie to Andy Lack's claims otherwise.
And just, you know, totally coincidentally, three weeks later, I lost my show, allegedly because of a comment about Halloween costumes.
But that's how it went for me.
Chuck Todd reportedly has, well, he's already not reportedly, he's already been dismissed from Meet the Press.
That was a demotion.
That's obvious.
They didn't want him doing Meet the Press anymore.
And there are some reports that he's in a contract negotiation or about to leave NBC, that his career there is ending, which may have gave, may have given him the temerity to stand out and do what he did, which was directly critical of a decision to hire Ronna McDaniel.
I don't know whether that's his situation or not.
But look, for a long time over there at NBC, the executives have come and they've gone.
I don't even know who these two people are who are running NBC now.
I don't know these people who brought Ronna in.
And I will tell you one other thing about Chuck Todd.
He told me early on in my time at NBC.
He was wrong in my case, but that he said, you'll outlast most of the executives here because the executives come and they go and they do let the inmates run the asylum over there.
And it's extraordinary to see them cloak themselves in this highbrow intellectualism, Emily, you know, that we are the gatekeepers for this vaunted brand.
And this scumbag can't have anything to do with us without any self-reflection on the sins of that network and its talent.
I mean, we've seen so little reflection to that point on how badly, I mean, NBC News botched the Russia collusion thing from the beginning so egregiously.
They currently employ Ken Delanian, who left the Los Angeles Times because I think it was WikiLeaks, showed emails with him going back and forth with the CIA, actually running his stories by his sources at the CIA.
And they let Ken Delaneyan basically take the lead on their Russian collusion coverage.
And we have seen basically no reflection from them on that.
We've seen no reflection from them on their coverage of trans so-called health care, which honestly, if we're drawing lines in the sand and they want to have a line in the sand as election denialism, how about how egregiously they have botched the stories about transgenderism and how they have been complicit and actually more than complicit, aggressive in leading so many young women and young people down that devastating path.
I mean, as long as we're drawing red lines in the sand, how about that?
And it's actually kind of telling.
We have a story up on the Federals today that I thought put it really well.
Why does Rhana McDaniel want to be a part of this?
I mean, seriously, she had a response to Trump the other day.
I can ask you $300,000.
I don't know if I agree with it, but I understand it because people on the right continue to believe, some people, that if they can get their voice, their message, their positions in front of, you know, groups of voters who are not already on the right, then they'll understand us better.
Maybe they'll vote differently, right?
It's like this, if they could just, if they could just, just, you know, it's like the way, frankly, you are when you have somebody addicted to drugs in your family.
If I could just get them, if I could just get, if we could just, and the just game, it doesn't work, but I think that's what was in her head.
But keep going.
No, I agree with that.
And in her exchange with Kristen Welker this weekend that really set Chuck Todd off, Kristen Welker asked why she didn't, you know, denounce Donald Trump's claims about the 2020 election before.
And Rhonda McDaniel's answer was really telling.
It was essentially that, well, you know, you have to take one for the team when you work at the RNC.
And, you know, that's just kind of how it is.
And that's true.
But that's actually like so like bad to admit.
It's absolutely true.
But now you're auditioning for a $300,000 a year corporate media gig and you're like, well, I just took one for the team.
That's the way that Washington works.
And that's actually where there are big audiences for shows like this one because people are so sick of it.
So to Eliana's point, NBC actually, if they were outside of their bubble, they dismiss everybody to the right of Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney as basically like in a kooky MAGA bubble, not just normal people who are upset about lies on Russia and COVID and all of that stuff.
So they don't understand that there's this huge appetite in the country for real contrast and for people who disagree with each other.
So they should have actually gone further than Ronna McDaniel if they really wanted to do the work of showing that contrast and of bringing new voices in and challenging their own preconceptions, which have led them down dangerous paths.
For example, we can keep talking about Russia.
We can keep talking about the border.
There's so many different times that they have screwed this up.
So, I mean, they should have hired someone who is actually even more pro-Trump than Ronna McDaniel and who wasn't just going to squish out when Kristen Welker is like, hey, and she's like, well, I was taking one for the team the last eight years.
I mean, it's just like how often this kind of thing has failed, right?
I've been thinking of Kevin Williamson down at the Atlantic when he tried to go there from National Review and think about even Tom Cotton over at the New York Times that op-ed and James Bennett, the editor who ran it, Barry Weiss leaving like Khaleesi from the New York Times because she's center left, but she was too right for them.
We could keep going.
God, there's just so many who have been MK Ham pushed out of CNN.
MK Ham, like she's not some fire breathing MAGA acolyte, right?
Even Jeffrey Lord, who was a Trump supporter, he was true MAGA when Trump was running the first time.
He was too crazy for CNN, right?
It's like they've tried it.
They've tried to have some people who are, you know, on the right at these networks.
They can't stand them.
They can't stand them.
They keep trying only to be horrified when they find out they actually are conservatives and they don't share the views of the lefties.
And they're not Adam Kinzinger, whatever his name, and they're not a Liz Cheney, who is a conservative, Eliana.
I mean, I'll give her that.
She hates Trump.
But like, that's the only way you can get on there, right?
Like you could be a conservative who hates Donald Trump, you know, but eventually they start migrating.
I bet you it's a matter of time before Liz Cheney declares herself an independent, like Scarborough.
Nicole Wallace is a Democrat now.
She used to pretend to be a Republican, or maybe she actually was.
I don't know, whatever she is now.
She's hard left.
Anyway, they're not interested in getting a true conservative who's going to espouse conservative ideas and actually potentially defend Donald Trump on their airwaves.
Media Criticism Beyond the Pale 00:02:22
Yeah, I think it's the defending Donald Trump part.
And it's not Trump proper, but saying like, look, we have two choices in this election.
We have Trump and we have Biden and I'm going to choose Trump.
That is not, I don't think that's an acceptable view that you can take on the air at these networks.
And they very much want to put that view beyond the pale.
One of the other things, by the way, that they have labeled beyond the pale and that they criticized Ronna McDaniel for was her criticism, her criticisms of the media, which they put in the endangering democracy category.
And that I found more, far more objectionable than their criticism of her for denying the 2020 election, which was ridiculous.
And she did not acquit herself well in that regard in her interview with Kristen Walker.
However, when they say that, oh, she vilified the media and how could we have her on air?
They have a lot to account for.
And their unwillingness to have anybody on their airwaves who has any criticism of them for the things that they got wrong, I think explains entirely why so many people have written off the mainstream media and are tuning in to the Megan Kelly podcast and alternative forms of media.
Barry Weiss's Substack, who are reading the Free Beacon, who are reading the Federalists.
It is why media is balkanized because they do not allow dissenting voices on their airwaves.
And this is not just MSNBC, which came out of the gate early and said, we're not booking her at all that we're talking about.
This is the mainstream outlets, the New York Times, NBC News, you know, the big players.
Find me a Republican, Eliana, right?
Who hasn't criticized the media?
Like, if that's a deal breaker for MSNBC, they'll never get a Republican on their airwaves.
That's most of us, I'm not a Republican, but I'm definitely more conservative in my thinking.
Most of us wake up thinking about the latest way we hate the media, the latest sin the media is criticized, committed.
How like you, how, how often do you see those posts on X?
As much as you hate the media, it's not enough.
And you get another example.
Like, I think everyone who's center or right of center hates the media.
And yet you can't get hired, I guess, as an NBC contributor if you've said negative things about them.
Apples to Apples Illegitimacy 00:03:42
Yeah, that view is beyond the pale, not allowed.
And they have to put it in the you're endangering democracy bucket because they have to cast themselves.
It's Jim Costa syndrome.
You know, we are the heroes and the heroes in our own stories.
You saw a lot of that, which by the way, I mean, this is not, doesn't follow logically from anything I was saying, but it wasn't that long ago that Joy Reed's blog was hacked with, you know, quote unquote, hacked with homophobic slurs and that the investigator, whatever, she's still looking for the real killer with OJ, the real hacker of the blog.
Truth.
And it's truth.
Stop it, Eliana.
Truth.
And Al, you know, Joe Scarborough.
And Mika Brzezinski on their show, says we weren't consulted about this, as if, you know, the executives over there are supposed to consult them about every move they make in managing the company, and they sit there with Al Sharpton every day, who not so long ago was ginning up race riots in Crown Heights.
I mean, there is, of course.
There is, of course, a grotesque double standard here that you could point out while having criticisms of both sides of this equation, but the double standard is appalling.
Yeah, and and Emily the the, the notion that like, we're not putting election deniers on our heirs, are we all right?
We're not.
That's not us, we won't do it.
And meanwhile, you know I showed you just the clips of them the number of times we just found in a quick search of them having on Stacey Abrams and Hillary Clinton, the OGS on election denialism.
But it's not just that.
Like the Democrats have been, we have a little reminder, a little sat montage of the Democrats denying election results that didn't go their way.
So spare me the false indignation.
Here's a bit.
One thing that Trump is fearful of when it comes to his being president is that finally, we will see how illegitimate his victory actually was.
I have an objection.
I object to the 15 votes from the state of North Carolina.
I object because people are horrified.
He's an illegitimate president.
John Lewis is completely right, there is a cloud of illegitimacy around the election of Donald Trump.
There absolutely is a cloud of illegitimacy, so that legitimacy is in question.
Yes, so that was a very tainted election and in that sense, it's illegitimate folks.
They stole the last presidential election and Al Gore won that election.
I think he won it anyway.
Actually, I think I carried Florida.
Al Gore won the election nationwide and also in Florida, but the Supreme Court ruled the other way.
Al Gore got more votes, but not enough to stay out of the Supreme Court where President Bush was elected five to four, Bush versus Gore.
A court took away a presidency.
Emily, I'm sorry, it just brings it home like they're so full of it.
Half those clips that was put together by the RNC are of those Democrats on MSNBC denying the election results.
It's basically an apples to apples and that's what's valuable about it.
We have such a good apples to apples with 2016.
Jamie Raskin, I believe, objected to the certification of the electors back in 2016, which is basically an apples to apples with what happened in 2020 and Jamie Raskins, but he has been all over MSNBC for years, as has Stacey Abrams, who, by the way, I once for a piece read all of Stacey Abrams' romance novels, which were written under the non-deplume Selena Montgomery.
Talentless Diva at News Desk 00:13:52
They are horrible.
Don't read them, but they are so, let's say, sexually charged.
She likes to describe what?
Over and over again, the corded thighs come up in the work of Selena Montgomery.
But anyway, she's, yes, courted.
And she's like just outright, like a radical fringe person who has been treated as mainstream by the same polices that now want to treat Ronna McDaniel as a radical fringe person.
It is just outrageous.
It's outrageous.
Their hypocrisy, they're, again, sanctimony, self-aggrandizement.
It's been obvious for a long time, but it's rare that it hits you on every hour of MSNBC from every anchor at NBC as well, so acutely, right?
And now she's definitely going to get fired.
Does anyone disagree that she's about to get fired?
It's a good question.
I don't know.
She's getting fired.
Yeah.
I mean, it's bad.
Like, it's such, I do trust you because I, I mean, and also it's such bad business is what I was going to say.
And I really do trust them to be very bad at business.
You know, what though she's the luckiest woman in the world.
They're going to have to pay out this contract and she's going to get to sit at home instead of going on, you know, whatever at nine o'clock at night.
Like I know, I'm tempted to say yes to you, Eliana, but I don't think so because what I'm, this is, you know, I started the show with trigger, right?
Because I, I know these people and how disgusting and dirty they are.
And I, what I see them trying to do right now, all these anchors, all these people are millionaires, you know, right?
Okay.
They're trying to ruin her.
It's not just a matter of disassociating, you know, from her professionally at NBC.
They're trying to ruin her.
What is Ronna McDaniel going to do now?
Like, what job is she going to take now?
She's been forced out of the RNC because I guess she wasn't, well, all sorts of reasons, right?
But she's not a beloved figure on the right.
She's the one Vivek Ramaswamy stood up and attacked at that debate that we were at.
Well, the one before us, which was hosted by NBC, but he's always been ripping on her.
And then she's probably going to do like a corporate board or I don't, you know, what do these people do when they leave these positions?
No more.
No way.
They're toxifying her to the point where she will be unemployable.
Trigger.
It's what they do.
It's what they're great at.
They have absolutely no caring, no compunction, no, just no empathy for the one that they are ruining.
And what did she do?
Yes, she did flirt with election denialism.
As you point out, nowhere near as bad as Trump's core circle.
And nowhere near as bad as Hillary Clinton, who they would put on every day of the week and give a show to if she would only agree to it.
Right.
So it's, to me, it's just, there's a level of cruelty happening here.
And I'm sure Ronna McDaniel's going through it, Eliana.
Yeah, it's a good point.
And the it's the power of the talent is quite interesting if they do drop her to see over the ostensible managers of the network.
I don't want to speak too soon, but I trust your judgment on what will actually happen.
It's quite interesting to see who's actually in charge of these networks.
God help them.
I feel for the underlings over there who are just trying to do news.
You're at the wrong place.
First of all, that should be apparent by now.
Good luck.
Okay, there's so much more to get to.
We haven't even like I was on vacation when the thing, all the news broke about Don Lamon last week and his insane demands of Elon Musk.
He wanted to be the one who missed a good one in space and his demands to control the editorial on X.
I mean, it's so there's standby.
Okay, there's a lot more to get to.
Don't go anywhere.
So ladies, I wasn't here when the news about Don Lamond and his insane contract demands to Elon Musk broke.
But what appears to be happening here is that X and Elon are fighting back against the narrative that they pulled his X deal simply because Elon didn't like that interview.
It sounds like that was just the final straw that, you know, Elon was starting to realize what he had hired, what kind of a diva he was dealing with, talentless diva, and sat down across from him and thought, oh my God, what have I gotten myself into?
Like all the things I've been getting told by my staff are true.
And they include, according to the New York Post and the Daily Mail, it's interesting because Don Lamon, through his agent, is denying this, but both publications say they have the demand document from Jay Charez, his agent.
So it's in writing.
It would be extraordinary for the Post or the Mail to say that if it weren't true, you're just begging to get sued, and no lawsuit's been filed.
But it went through how he wanted to have the first podcast in space, how he wanted to have editorial control over news decisions or changes that would be made on X with respect to policy or shows.
Like he was going to be in charge of news in some way.
Okay.
Yeah, no.
That in addition to, I think it was $8 million a year, he wanted a $5 million signing bonus.
This guy?
Are you going to be kidding me?
He's fired.
His career's in tatters.
He's in no position to be making these demands.
And he wanted to go out to Vegas for some, you know, ad conference or something that X suggested he go to to promote X and demanded reportedly that he be able to bring his fiancé.
I don't know if they're married, that he, that they pay for their massages, their day drinking, and that he get one of those Tesla SUVs that Kim Kardashian drives so he could tool around Las Vegas.
I'm dying.
I'm dying.
Is there any doubt in your mind why all of that leading up to him sitting across from Elon and being Elon being questioned about how Twitter's racist, it causes mass shootings, and you're on drugs and are no person to be running a company of this size led to the man having his deal pulled.
Go ahead, Eliana.
That wasn't even the worst part.
As far as I'm concerned, if Don Lemon was amazing, I mean, give him the moon and the stars and the truck and take him to space and all that.
But, you know, Elon is not a media guy.
He doesn't come from media.
He can be sort of clumsy about these things.
But what must he have thought when he sat across from Don Lemon and Don Lemon challenged his contention that CNN is liberal?
He said, why do you think that?
Then Don Lemon challenged him.
Perceived as liberal.
Yeah, perceived as liberal.
Then Don Lemon challenged his contention that Don Lemon is liberal.
And Elon must have really thought, okay, we made a mistake here.
And not only that, like, I take this guy to space on my rocket.
Take him there and leave him there.
That's why I would take him to space.
The guy was gaslighting him.
Then you cut that little extension cord.
Bye-bye.
Yeah, the guy was gaslighting him.
In the whole interview, it was absurd and sort of fascinating to watch because Lemon comes across as totally untethered from reality and unwilling to concede things that any person with common sense would concede and would be able to discuss.
He comes across like a total, total jerk.
And so to me, it's like the demands and the contract were totally beside the point and just underscore the fact that he is a totally out of touch creep.
Yes.
And, you know, if you make a deal with Don Lemon, it appears that there's a very good chance he will sue you, no matter how it lands, because he got pushed out of CNN over his misogyny and repeated stupid statements.
And sure enough, got a lawyer and got paid out.
And before any of that happened, he reminded everybody on the air, I'm gay and I'm black, black and gay, black and gay, black and gay.
Just in case you forgot, I'm black and I'm a gay man.
And not past my prime, like Nikki Haley.
But not right, not past my prime.
Very much in my breeches.
Then he, then, amazingly, Elon Musk decides to try to look like he's, you know, fair to both sides.
And he is fair to both sides.
So that doesn't mean you have to pay somebody millions of dollars to host a show on X and gives him like a lifeline, a resurrection.
And instead of just being grateful, he does all the things that we just discussed.
And when Elon says, you know what, I actually don't want to be in business together, but you can still air your show on X.
He goes, he talks to Kara Swisher.
Don't get me started.
And what does he blame it on?
I'm black and I'm gay.
Listen, Sat 20.
Do you think he was uncomfortable sitting in front of a gay black guy?
Probably more gay than black, I would think.
I hate to say that, but I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I mean, I don't think he likes control beyond himself.
And so it doesn't matter who's exerting it.
I don't think he much likes Joe Biden either, like a white guy, right?
So I think he doesn't like anybody in a position of control of him.
So she sees this on the gay thing because she's gay, right?
So it's got to be the gay thing.
But of course, I mean, to the bitter end.
She says, no, that's not true at all.
Right.
But it's like to the bitter end.
He's like, gay, gay and black.
Once again, Emily, it's come back to haunt for me.
It's the only reason anybody could possibly have a problem with Don Lemon.
It's not about how bad he is at his job.
And by the way, he's spectacularly bad at his job.
He's terrible at it.
And that's why he was let go from CNN.
He's just not good.
It's amazing how he's been able to like climb the corporate media ladder, but this is the perfect continuation of the first segment where we were talking about Ronald McDaniel and NBC.
It's because this elite media is in such a bubble.
They no longer recognize what is sellable.
And CNN had this like moment of lucidity after Don Lemon said something that was so stupid, but also transgressed these like identity politics lines.
So then they were like, okay, so we can't have this.
You know, not only is he dumb, but now he looks sexist.
So we're canceling out, you know, their mathematical equation.
It cancels out the gay in the blackness if you're also sexist, but in a really egregious way, they're always doing these like calculations in their head.
It's an inscrutable type of mathematics that none of us can know, but that's what they're always constantly calculating.
And so he goes to X. Elon Musk realizes with being face to face to Don Lemon, this guy's an idiot.
It's like, oh my gosh, I can't.
It's not even good.
Like Elon Musk, say what you will, one thing he understood about X is that the censorship was really bad for it, that like nobody wants that on the platform.
And nobody wants that in their media.
There's a niche slice of the population and they're the people that watch Rachel Maddow and Stephen Colbert, but it's a tiny percentage of the population that desperately wants to be protected from other viewpoints.
And that is bad for business, but that is like the demo that Don Lemon thrives with.
So that's what he's used to going for, but it's no longer interesting to the public.
And credit to Elon Musk.
He actually recognizes that.
He's a small petty man and he turns on his employers.
That's obvious.
I want to remind you in the audience of what happened when he signed up with X, when Elon offered him this initial deal.
One of the things that happened was Tucker Carlson, in an extraordinarily kind gesture, tweeted out, welcome to X, you know, good luck, something like that.
And I did a bit on this show saying, no, no, no, no, there'll be no quarter.
This guy is not just somebody who was at CNN.
That's one thing.
That's an entirely different thing than what Don Lemon's sins are.
He hate, hates, hates, hates half the country.
He loathes Republicans.
He said too many offensive things for me to count or list off the top of my head here.
And he's shown his cards.
So no, I would not welcome him to Twitter.
And I said, I'm not rooting for him.
And guess what he did?
As soon as he got in trouble with Elon, he took a shot at Tucker Carlson.
He took a shot at him.
He was like, Elon wanted an easy interview.
He should have sat down with Tucker.
Mentioned me as well, because I'm, as you know, known for my softball interviews of people in positions of power.
But in any event, he, so that's how he repays Tucker's kind gesture of being like, you know what?
We're cool.
Let's move forward.
His first response is, fuck off.
You're a softball interviewer.
Softball Interviews and Role Models 00:04:28
I'm the man.
Which tells us what, Eliana?
I mean, it's classless and exactly what I would expect of him.
Look, I don't think he was fired really because he did a tough interview with Elon Musk, but it was bizarre to say, what drugs do you do?
And did a doctor prescribe them and what's going on with that?
And then the biggest turnoff was the denial of basic things like that CNN is perceived as being liberal, that he's perceived as being liberal that I think called into question like how reality-based this person is.
Okay, now I have a couple minutes left in this block and I'm going to move on from Don because we've had enough of him.
I mean, everyone has.
And that brings me to Fannie Willis, who you may or may not be aware is our new feminist hero.
I was talking about this with Glenn Beck on his show earlier, but you may not know that she's your new role model and that whether you are aware or not, you want to be just like her.
Listen to SOT 19.
When I tell you the outpouring of women, and I'll tell you this, especially African-American women who will just say, we are so proud.
You are such a good representative of us.
But I would be lying to say it's only African-American women.
I have had Caucasian women, Asian women, Indian women.
I told Jeff one day, I didn't think I was the face of the feminist movement, but somehow I became it.
And I think that women feel like women are treated differently when they're professionals and they're proud to see someone that is strong and trying to do the right job.
Certainly flawed, like every human being is flawed.
My father has a saying: only one perfect man walked the face of the earth and they crucified him.
I am not a perfect human being, but what I am is a hardworking human being and a human being that loves the community I serve and who understands this seat does not belong to me.
It belongs to the people.
And as long as I'm here, I'm going to try to do the job in a way that's honorable.
I mean, do you guys ever watch the BBC's Pride and Prejudice?
You know, the one with Colin Firth.
Yep.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's like, she reminds me of like, you know, like, um, I try to remember whether it's that one or it's sense and sensibility, but it's basically the character who's like, I only know that my friends all say that I'm the brilliant one.
I don't, I, I would never say, right?
I would never say it about myself.
I just know that everyone around me really looks up to me a lot.
Who talks like that, Emily?
Donald Trump.
It's him being like many people are saying that I'm the most handsome, successful businessman who has ever lived.
Like that's exactly.
And that's it's so funny with all these cases.
It's like Trump versus a wannabe Trump who like has no, would never want to affiliate with Trump, but just like mirrors his worst characteristics in the most glaring way.
I don't know.
I, by the way, if you've never seen it, you have to see the one with Colin Firth because the woman who plays Elizabeth Bennett's mother is the greatest character ever.
Such spasms down my neck and pains down my side, but you know me.
I never complain.
It had a tinge of that to it.
So, Eliana, are you feeling like Fannie Willis is a feminist icon?
And do you have any thoughts on the fact that one of the four DAs, or three technically, because Jack Smith has two going after Trump criminally is owning the fact that she's really leaning into how people are looking up to her because she's so fearless and won't stand down.
You know, it depends what we mean by feminist, right?
True.
But if what it means to be a feminist icon is sleeping with your subordinates and hiring them and putting them on the dole, you go, girl.
And then invoking Jesus.
Yeah.
My sister in Christ, you are lying.
Exactly.
You are lying, girl.
Not to mention my own thought is like lying to the court under oath and putting yourself at risk at getting disbarred.
Three cheers.
Three cheers.
I'm sure my daughter will have a poster up of her in her bedroom one day.
This is a woman who's like, she was broke when she took the office.
She admitted taking campaign funds to use for personal use, which is illegal.
Lying Under Oath Risks Disbarment 00:15:28
Then she starts an affair with a married man.
Let's not forget their affair began in 2019, according to the testimony.
He was still very much married at the time.
He was still married in 2022 when they admit that it happened.
And he's not yet officially divorced to this day.
Took all his money, went all over the world, Aruba, Belize, all the cruises, then took the stand and lied about it so she could keep her job and continue prosecuting Trump in a BS prosecution from the start.
So, no, it's a no.
You're not a feminist icon.
You're not an icon of any kind.
And you're likely to be out of a job and possibly a bar license soon.
Okay, so Eliana, the Free Beacon has a post.
I think it went up yesterday about Joe Biden's origin story being almost completely or completely false as he relayed to special counsel her, H-U-R, in connection with the investigation into whether he had classified documents.
And if you read that transcript, he went off on several tangents.
National Review has done a great job covering this, so it's Free Beacon about how crazy he sounds.
I mean, just.
you know, he sounds like your grandpa who like keeps going on his stream of consciousness about weird stories from his past.
And you just kind of nod politely.
And, you know, you could, you could basically just throw out like, tell us about high school, put a, put a log on that file fire.
You could take a nap for 30 minutes.
The grandpa wouldn't even know that you weren't there.
That's the point Joe Biden's at.
Anywho, tell us what you guys found about the story he was telling Robert Hurr about when he was allegedly a young whipper snapper lawyer involved in a case against a young man who'd been disfigured.
Well, this is a story Biden has told many times over the course of his political career, but the difference when he was telling it to Robert Hurr in his interview with her was that he was legally required to tell the truth.
And this is a story about how Biden got into politics when he said that when he graduated law school, he went to work for a firm that was defending a construction company against a claim from a worker who had been severely injured in an accident.
And Biden said the worker had lost a leg and lost his penis and some horrible accident.
And Biden's amazing legal work had resulted in no settlement for this worker.
And he told her that he was so disturbed that he had helped defend this construction company that he, when the case finished, walked right across the street and into the public defender's office and, you know, would never do this kind of work representing a big business again.
However, our reporters, Andrew Kerr and Joe Simonson, dug into the records, went back to the firm Biden claimed to work for and found there was a similar case, but Biden was in law school when this case was litigated.
And in fact, the plaintiff that sued the construction company won that case.
He received a settlement.
Biden was not working at the firm at the time.
And the National Archives, which holds records of all the cases that were litigated in the court system, could find no other case with a similar fact pattern.
So this appears to be total BS.
It's unbelievable because if you look at what he told her, H-U-R, it just bothers me so much.
He apparently was talking about this story and the shame that he felt about having defeated this man, who, as it turns out, actually won his case.
He was not defeated by Joe Biden or Joe Biden's law firm and somehow said, it's the only time I ever lied.
I guess a reference to whatever he said in his fake story to behalf.
He was invited.
No, it was too close.
He was invited to a celebratory lunch with the boss, he claimed, but he was so unsettled.
Yeah, he said he couldn't.
He didn't want to go to the lunch because he was so upset that he had defended this company.
And instead of going to this lunch, he walked across the street to the public defender's office and he says, that's the only time I ever lied, which is in itself, of course, a lie.
Who would say that?
Honestly, he could get a job at MSNBC.
You know, it's all about honesty over there.
So I know, Emily, you're going to be shocked to hear that Joe Biden lied about his past, even when he was speaking to an independent counsel, a special counsel who was there to investigate him.
But it does appear, according to the Free Beacon, that pretty much every word of this is made up.
And further evidenced by the fact that when the Beacon reached out to the White House, the spokespeople did not respond at all to requests for comment because indeed, what could one say to justify this?
It appears to have happened before Joe Biden was even in law school.
And what Andrew and Joe did, it's such a great report and like just all around good stuff from the Beacon per usual, but they actually went to the National Archives and they did what reporters do.
They dug for the information.
They tried to validate it.
And basically every source that they asked, not just the National Archives, but people in Delaware, legal communities in Delaware that would have knowledge of this, they're not coming up with anything that would show Joe Biden's story is accurate.
In fact, it seems very clear that it matches, as Eliana said, this case that happened when he was at law school.
And so it's just basic, it's basic digging.
And this is why Joe Biden was never a competitive presidential candidate.
I mean, he dropped out of the race over fabulism back in the 1980s.
It's why he was never competitive at the highest echelons of American politics until Obama plucked him, hoping that he could sort of be helpful in his vice presidential ticket.
And then Joe Biden comes along.
Everyone is so radical in the Democratic primary that it's like, okay, I guess we got to go with this guy, the guy that had to drop out decades ago because he was such a fabulous, who continues to be a fabulous, telling tales about corn pop and whomever else.
So it's not an entirely surprising story, but I think from the level of reporting here, the various layers of verification that the Beacon sought from the National Archives of Delaware, this is a lie.
And then he's lying about the lie.
But then again, it's not surprising.
It's very much for, it's very much in line with the Joe Biden that America has known for decades.
It's very on brand.
Now, speaking of presidential politics, you've got James Carville weighing in talking about the Democrats problem right now in getting their voters fired up and going into this next seven months of election.
In Maureen Dowd profile of Carville in the New York Times on Sunday, they talk about how he's busy as ever raising money for Democrats, doing a podcast with Al Hunt and starring in a documentary directed by Unso I'm okay.
He says the following.
It's actually quite interesting.
First of all, he said this, which I kind of love, regarding how bad Joe Biden's polls are.
When I look at these polling numbers, it's like walking in on your grandma naked.
You can't get the image out of your mind.
It's pretty good.
Pretty good.
But here's more on why specifically Joe Biden is bleeding black male voters.
A suspicion of mine quoting here is that there are too many preachy females dominating the culture of his party.
Don't drink beer.
Don't watch football.
Don't eat hamburgers.
This is not good for you.
The message is too feminine.
Everything you're doing is destroying the planet.
You've got to eat your peas.
That's him describing, I think, the preachy ladies over on the left.
If you listen to Democrat elites, still quoting from Carville, NPR is my go-to place for that, he says.
The whole talk is about how women, women of color, are going to decide this election.
I'm like, well, 48% of the people that vote are males.
Do you mind if they have some consideration?
This all makes perfect sense to me.
Some on the left think this is somehow sexist or clueless.
I think he's raising a very good point because I feel like all three of us have been lectured by those preachy ladies at one point or another.
And he's not wrong, Emily, about their how ubiquitous they are and how dominant they are in the messaging on the left.
Yeah.
And he's reacting to these polls that are fascinating showing really big losses on Joe Biden's behalf among black voters, Hispanic voters that are especially acute with male voters.
And we actually don't just see the loss from Joe Biden.
What we see is some of those voters actually going to Donald Trump.
Like this is unprecedented for a Republican in modern history.
And Democrats haven't really known what to do with it.
That's why I thought Carville's theory was really interesting.
I hadn't heard that before, but it makes perfect sense from the sort of climate agenda to the way, for example, that they treated Brett Kavanaugh over and over again.
You find examples of this.
It is tonal.
I think that's true.
I think it's tonal and policy.
But this is, again, interesting because basically no other professional Democrats are thinking about these things.
And what they've done instead is blame shifts among Hispanic voters on disinformation.
That's not going to be helpful for the Democratic Party.
In fact, I don't think it's helpful for the country to have a Democratic Party that is so wildly out of touch with its own potential voter base that instead of saying maybe Hispanic voters who have been called Latinx by presidential candidates in presidential debates have a problem with that.
Maybe they have a problem with the way we talk about faith.
Maybe men in particular are reacting poorly to the way that the media covered Brett Kavanaugh or the way the media lectures constantly every time Donald Trump says something that most people find funny, but they treat as a threat to democracy.
Maybe instead of all of that, instead of just saying this is all disinformation, maybe they actually have some like honest retrospection.
And I feel like Carville has been just the lone voice, like crying out in the wilderness on some of this stuff, like political correctness going back years now.
And nobody's listening to him because honestly, he's a straight white male.
Like nobody cares about what he has to say.
Even when it starts showing up in polling and in elections, because that voice has been so thoroughly disenfranchised in the halls of the DNC, et cetera, et cetera, that while Carville himself might have a big platform that he built in the decades prior to now, he's lost a huge point of credibility or a huge chunk of his credibility with the people who are running the Democratic Party now, that are running the media now.
So even when this is showing up in polling, they're still not listening.
They're still just blaming disinformation.
You know, Eliana, there's when he's talking, you know, there, I'm picturing AOC lecturing us about our hamburgers, how we can't have them anymore, and we can't have heat in our homes.
We can't have SUVs and we can't, you know, now the left wants us.
We have to get rid of our gas stoves.
It's a no.
And so like they are very punitive.
They want to control the way we live, of course, from their own private jets and mansions, which are, you know, they're gas guzzling and energy guzzling by the minute.
And he's feeling it.
But I think this one goes beyond just the squad or leftist politicians.
You know, if you spend a day on social media, whether it's TikTok or Instagram or X, you're going to see dozens of this kind of person, these women, lecturing you about how you suck if you don't share their politics and you need to change your life if you want to be a good person like they are and live more like these far leftists.
Well, what's even more interesting is that he referred to masculine and feminine messaging.
And he's talking to members of a party where in which the elite echelons deny that there's any differences between the genders.
So you can tell that he may actually be yelling into the void.
But it's quite interesting when he's talking about particular messages that resonate with men and particular messages that resonate with women, trying to convince people who deny that such a thing is possible, but telling them that they really need to recalibrate their message if they're going to keep men of any race in the party.
I feel like he's got his finger right on the pulse.
This is exactly because there's a reason that all these men are flocking to Trump and it's not just white men.
You know, for the first time, you have black men going to the, the Democratic Party is losing black men.
I mean, this has just never happened before.
And there's a reason.
And I do think it's like I should play that Fannie Willis soundbite again.
Like, I'm the face of feminism.
No, you know, of the feminist movement.
If so, yes, then it's a hard no.
No man other than Nathan Wade wants a part of that.
Not anymore.
What man wants to be with that?
And it's interesting because what we've seen also is polls among younger voters, especially like Gen Z, showing men and women polarizing on some like super hot button cultural issues, young men identifying as Republican in ways that go beyond where millennials in Gen X were.
Again, and this is all in the context of the media saying Donald Trump is going to destroy and some Republicans saying Donald Trump is going to destroy the Republican Party with young voters, with black voters, with Hispanic voters.
And what we're seeing actually is this polarization by sex.
I think some of what you see with Black and Hispanic voters is also that feeling of class sort of being patronized by elites that has resonated with voters that are middle class and lower income brackets across the board in recent years, whether they're white, black, or Hispanic.
But when you see younger voters, to your point, Megan, about how this is now a total stereotype on TikTok, an archetype on TikTok, on social media of young white women lecturing you about how they are polyamorous and clinging to their crystals, whatever else.
That is being associated with the Democratic Party.
And it's pushing young men away.
It's true.
Although my sister-in-law is big into the crystals, though she is not a leftist.
Okay, speaking of the presidential candidates, now we've got to get to RFKJ.
He's announcing his running mate today in Oakland, California.
And it's going to happen just as our show goes, you know, to tape at 2 p.m.
But we expect it to be one of his big donors.
RFKJ Running Mate Announcement 00:13:11
Hold on a second.
What's her name again?
I don't even know this person.
Nicole Shanahan.
Shanahan.
Nicole Shanahan.
Okay.
So it's going to be Nicole Shanahan.
Like, do we care?
Because, yeah, I love RFKJ, but he's not going to win.
So do we care about it?
I was kind of rooting for Mike Rowe.
I loved him.
But what seems like kind of a letdown.
It means he didn't get Aaron Rodgers, I think.
Right?
Definitely means he didn't get Aaron Rodgers.
Correct.
So I don't know.
Is this just because she's a big donor or what?
I think the Jake Tapper Pamela Brown report about how Aaron Rodgers was allegedly once a Sandy Hook truther at the Kentucky Derby in 2012 just destroyed his vice presidential chances.
I'm going to go ahead and say that wasn't it.
RFKJ, though, I have to say, he's been responsive in a way that I don't love to negative criticism.
You know, like he was supposed to sit with Moms for Liberty or he was supposed to go to the Moms for Liberty conference.
And I think had agreed to do it, according to Tiffany Justice, who runs it.
And he bailed at the last minute because he got so much pushback.
And then he came out publicly and said that he hadn't agreed.
Oh, no, I had never agreed.
And she was all over X saying, not true.
Sorry, but that's a lie.
He had agreed and he bailed to pressure.
So maybe you're right.
Maybe it was a CNN report.
Like that actually might have turned him on it.
I don't know.
Do we care about him at all?
Are we moving on from RFKJ?
I mean, I realize he has no chance to actually win, but he certainly has a chance to be a spoiler in some ways, Eliana.
So maybe we should be paying closer attention.
Definitely has a chance to be a spoiler.
And she's pretty cute.
I don't know.
She's attractive.
She apparently, the Wall Street Journal reported, had an affair with Elon Musk.
She's very wealthy.
She's the ex-wife of the founder of Google, Sergey Brin.
Everyone is.
Everyone is.
So I'm not super familiar with her, but it's less interesting than some of the alternatives.
But, you know, I think we got to pay attention to RFK Jr.
Well, he's only on the ballot in I think four states, but it helps him get on the ballot in more states if he has a vice presidential candidate with him.
But, you know, these third party candidates, like I know we've spent some time talking about Cornell West and so on, but like nothing seems to be really materializing.
Like RFKJ's numbers, they're kind of dwindling.
He's only on the ballot in a few states, Emily.
I don't know what's happening with Cornell West now or, well, go ahead.
Yeah.
Jill Stein didn't have huge numbers either in 2016, but her tiny margin would have made the difference.
If those voters had gone to Hillary, it would have made the difference.
So I think we got to pay attention to these guys, even if they're, even if they're only pulling tens of thousands of voters, this is going to be a close election because the country is so polarized that if they're getting any interest at all, like it could, it could have a real impact.
There's still no labels, which, you know, we thought Joe Manchin was going to be the candidate for, but they're still out there and looking for candidates.
And, you know, I think anything could happen.
You got the Libertarians.
I don't know.
You raise a good point.
And I will say on that front, there's a report out today in Rolling Stone that they're going scorched earth, the Democrats are, on preparing for November and expecting that it's going to be a razorblade type, tight election and that even more so.
I mean, I remember back in the day of Fox News when I first joined in 2004, Ben Ginsburg roaming around the halls of Fox News, Bush v. Gore, my old partner at Jones Day, Mike Carville, argued that case before the Florida Supreme Court.
It was crazy.
So lawyers used to be all over these campaigns.
And ever since the hanging Chads, they gear up every November for that kind of thing.
But it sounds like the Democrats are going into a different gear with a quote superstructure this year to get ready this per Rolling Stone.
Over the past year, Team Biden has been conducting war games, crafting complex legal strategies and devoting extensive resources to prepare for, as one former senior Biden administration official puts it, all hell breaks loose scenarios.
The preparations include planning for a contingency in which Biden's margin of victory is so razor thin that Trump and the GOP launch a tidal wave of legal challenges and political maneuvers to rerun the 2020 election strategy, declare victory anyway, and try to will it into existence.
One Trump advisor said that they had privately told the ex-president to anticipate an electoral knife fight to the death on and likely in the wake of election date.
They expect this to make Florida in 2000 look like child's play.
Well, that sounds fun.
That sounds great, Emily.
I'm looking forward to that.
No, that's what scares me the most.
I think we're hurdling into, especially because when you look at how Democrats laid the groundwork, we talked about this earlier in the show for 2016.
You played a clip of Jerry Nagler calling that election, quote, tainted.
And then what you had in 2020 on the right, I think we're hurdling towards a fall that could actually, and God forbid, but I actually do think it could be potentially violent, a fall and a winter.
And I don't think anybody is actually really prepared for how that could go because also the Donald Trump court cases that are sprinkled throughout the next 18 months at really inopportune times that could go really bad direction for him that his voters might react to.
So all of this, I think, is a terrifying kind of cauldron.
Also, if you look at how Jill Stein was treated, to Eliana's point, back in 2016, just in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, people freaked out so much about that tiny margin of Jill Stein voters.
So when you have a third party candidate who's, I think nationally RCP has them around like 9.9%.
And then when you throw Stein and Cornell West in the mix, they're somewhere around 15%, maybe a little bit lower than 15% total among third party candidates.
So even that, even if it holds constant, the fury that is unleashed against voters, not just the party apparatus, but other Americans, voters who you blame for destroying the election and bringing you more Trump and the end of our democracy.
I just think the stakes, the way that we're talking about it, it's just so heightened.
The electoral challenges are powder kegs.
So I'm genuinely praying for peace in the fall and the winter, just based on what we've seen the last 10 years.
I'm pretty frightened on that point.
Same.
And I think the only way we avoid deadly riots is one party wins in a landslide.
That it has to be a landslide.
It has to be something that no one can dispute.
And even then, if that party is Joe Biden, and this is such a stretch, it's not going to be Joe Biden.
I mean, it's just, how is it possibly going to be Joe Biden in a landslide?
The right is not going to accept it given the law fair that's been unleashed.
You know, if Trump wins in a landslide, it's going to have to be accepted.
It's going to, because Trump's, he's not, he's not somebody who's cheating in elections.
That's not even something that the left is really throwing out at him anymore.
They said at about 16, nothing materialized.
They never proved anything.
They just lament.
They said Russia, Russia, Russia.
It went nowhere.
It was a fake news, you know, three years on that.
So what are they, how are they going to say Republicans stole the election if he wins in a landslide, right?
Do you have a thought on that?
Yeah, another thing is just remembering how they reacted to Brian Kent's law in Georgia, the voting law, and called it Jim Eagle.
I mean, the president of the United States compared it to Jim Crow 2.0, like actually compared it to overt racism.
Stacey Abrams did the exact same thing.
The so-called mainstream media blasted that from the rooftops and that foments racial divide, the racial divide in ways that are really dangerous and feel like a powder keg too.
So I could easily see them playing that card in a way that's not predicated on reality, but is used as a political tool.
I don't know.
I've been thinking a lot about it lately because now we have the first Trump trial date, April 15th, for the Stormy Daniels hush money payment in New York.
That case is going to go forward.
And I think it's obvious he's going to be convicted.
Maybe I'll be proven wrong, but I think he's going to be a convicted felon for sure by election day.
I realize this is all being baked in.
We've talked about it a million times, Eliana, but the law fair now is getting a lot more serious.
You know, he doesn't really face jail time on this New York one, but he does on the others.
And honestly, I've asked myself this question many times.
What if Trump loses?
If he loses in November, do they still try to put him in jail?
I don't think, I think they do because I think they won't admit that this is all about an election.
And I do believe if Donald Trump doesn't win this election, which I think he's likely to, but who knows, he's going to jail because he will be convicted in one or both of those Jack Smith cases and potentially Georgia.
And there won't be a Republican president to pardon him in the federal cases.
There won't be somebody down in Georgia willing to do it potentially, or potentially who even can.
And I'm not sure if the Georgia governor would be able to help, but the stakes are just so high.
The stakes are incredibly high, Eliana, and they've made it to where Trump must stay in and must win.
Yeah, look, the stakes, as you said, are extremely high for Trump personally.
And he has got to be thinking about this when it comes to his choice of vice presidential nominee.
He is, I would have to imagine that he's going to be making a data-driven choice about who can really help them win this because he has to know that if he loses, he is going to jail.
I agree with you on that, Megan.
And so he's got to be thinking about people who could really add to the ticket and help his chances of winning.
I do think he's going to be taking this dead seriously and not playing around with joke nominees.
That's my guess.
I don't have any particular insight into the process, but that is my guess for the reasons that you have laid out.
That's kind of the next turning point politically for him.
And you're right.
He doesn't face he doesn't face jail for the Stormy Daniels stuff, but he is staring down the barrel of the Jack Smith trials where the jury is not favorable to him.
And the other Jack Smith case, the documents case, which is the most, I think is the most serious case against him, but in Florida where the jury is more likely to be favorable to him.
Oh, it's dark.
You know, we talk about it.
I always talk about the news in a light way because it's the way you should take in your news.
It's just, you know, there's no other way to do it.
You can't, you get too dark a heart if you let everything stab you deeply and wound you.
But this one is dark.
And just as the trials approach and as I see, you know, there was a Fannie Willis clip.
I played the funny one of her.
But she would, did you see her with the train is coming?
Like the open threats, right?
Letitia James, like, and yes, I look at 42 Wall Street every day.
And then there was Fanny.
We'll play it, but this is her talking about the train.
It's just the way she's talking about a man's freedom.
You know, the Republican nominee, that's, he's the presumptive.
He's going to be.
We all know it.
The former president broken a norm never broken in our 240 year history.
Listen to her talk about it.
I don't feel like my reputation needs to be reclaimed.
Let's say it for the record.
I'm not embarrassed by anything I've done.
You know, I guess my greatest crime is I had a relationship with a man, but that's not something that I find embarrassing in any way.
And I know that I have not done anything that's illegal.
No, my team's been continuing to work.
And I think the media and especially organizations like you are on have been paying attention.
All while that was going on, we were writing responsive briefs.
We were still doing the case in the way that it needed to be done.
I don't feel like we've been slowed down at all.
I do think that there are efforts to slow down this train, but the train is coming.
That clip from CNN, the train is coming.
It's coming.
Yeah.
Right on.
It's just dark.
It's extremely dark.
It's what is leading a lot of Trump milquetoast supporters to say, I will pull the lever for him.
I will make sure that this is not that before and after moment for the country where somebody's kept out of office because of lawfare, something we've never done before.
Ladies, I've got to tell you that this just in scoop from Puck News, Dylan Byers, NBC News plans to drop ex-RNC chair Ronna McDaniel as a paid contributor.
You're right.
Following the on-air revolt.
I mean, not a shock, right?
It's just, of course, they have no courage.
They have no spines over there.
And once again, nothing has changed in the weeks she's been on the air.
She didn't go on the air and say something controversial.
Outrage Against Journalism Spines 00:09:38
Everything that has been used against her was out there.
And I guess just they didn't ask Chuck Todd to weigh in prior to hiring her, right?
Chuck Todd took Ronna McDaniel's scalp along with his brethren over at MSNBC, which would never put an election denier on its air, not named Stacey Abrams or Hillary Rodham Clinton or Hakeem Jeffries or Adam Schiff or principles.
All right, stand by, quick break, and we shall be right back.
Don't go away.
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Okay, ladies, so let's get into what happened on 60 Minutes on Sunday night because they decided to take a deep dive into the dangers of social media and in particular to any pushback against the beloved fact checkers.
Who are these people?
I don't know.
They're in these like think tanks out in Silicon Valley and they've decided to tell us what's right and what's wrong.
And we are supposed to listen to them.
And if we or Elon Musk do not listen to them, we're all doing the wrong thing because somebody died and made them ultimate arbiters of truth.
So here's just to set it up, Leslie Stahl talking about how awful social media is on Sunday, 12th, side 12th.
Confronted with criticism and because of cost cutting, platforms began downsizing their fact-checking teams.
So today, social media is teeming with misinformation.
After Elon Musk took over in 2022, most of its fact-checkers were fired.
Now the site is rife with trash talk and lies.
Little would you know that this said-to-be footage from Gaza is really from a video game.
Eventually, X users added a warning label.
Now the site post Elon is rife with trash talk.
Why does she care about trash talk, first of all?
and lies, unlike before Elon, when you could go out there and say COVID started in a wet market because of animals and the vaccine will prevent the spread of COVID.
You could say those things pre-Elon when we weren't allowing the lies on Twitter.
It's weird how she doesn't actually go into that.
What lies exactly?
Like what, let's get into, I just the whole notion that there's a group of fact checkers at Twitter or anyplace else who get to tell us what's right and what's wrong.
I love what Elon did with the community note.
The community notes are now my like my favorite part of Twitter.
If somebody goes too far afield, they get a community note, people weigh in, it's super fun.
You can see how wrong somebody is, but there's not some elite group of like four people, all of whom went to some elitist university and hate the right half of the country, Emily, telling us what's right and wrong anymore.
Yes, but that's what's very scary because Leslie Stahl has lost her power as a gatekeeper.
And so what they have is this pretense.
For some people, it's legitimate.
They really actually believe that the information they disagree with is A, categorically wrong, and then B, dangerous.
For others, it's a political weapon.
I think people like Leslie Stahl are true believers.
Like they've actually never heard the alternate arguments.
And so they're just completely in the dark.
I say that as my light went out.
It's kind of a pun if you're watching this.
But Leslie Stahl, she's lost her power as the gatekeeper of information.
And which by the way, it's just stupid because what people post on social media, they used to talk about at bars.
Like this is also what's much worse about social media than the disinformation is that it has us all addicted to screens and phones in ways we used to be talking at bars and on the sidelines of our kids' soccer games or whatever else, sharing plenty of disinformation.
Like I know it was a long time ago, but there are all kinds of people saying completely false things in person, still are.
And now we're getting to a place where the Leslie Stahls of the world are going to want to prevent that from happening too.
By the way, that same edition of 60 Minutes, they interviewed Amlo, the president of Mexico, who constantly spews disinformation.
So should CBS, should 60 Minutes be censored for interviewing Amlo because he's an agent of disinformation?
I mean, they would never apply the same standards to themselves when it's COVID or Russia collusion, any of those things.
They just want to use it as a blunt weapon against the people they disagree with.
Eliana, take a listen to university professor.
She's from the University of Washington, Kate Starbird, being questioned by Leslie Stahl about how chilling it is for them to be questioned about their work.
Like they do not want to be chilled in their fact checking of us, and she's really had enough of it.
Watch.
Are researchers being chilled?
Absolutely.
This campaign against you is meant to discredit you.
So we won't believe you.
Absolutely.
It's interesting that the people that pushed voter fraud lies are some of the same people that are trying to discredit researchers that are trying to understand the problem.
Did your research find that there was more misinformation spread by conservatives?
Absolutely.
I think not just our research, research across the board looking at the 2020 election found that there was more misinformation spread by people that were supporters of Donald Trump or conservatives.
And the events of January 6th kind of underscore this.
It's amazing.
Like, you know, part of me appreciates 60 minutes just leaning right into its bias over the past few months.
Like, just show it.
Let it fly.
We all know it's there, but like, normally they try to hide it a bit, Eliana.
No, it's, how about the conservatives?
They're the worst, aren't they?
Yes, they're even worse than you think, says the lady at a central casting from the James Carville quote.
She's the one that he's talking about, Eliana.
The New York Times had a story about a week ago that was exactly the same as this.
The headline was something along the lines of how Donald Trump and his allies are winning the war against disinformation.
And nowhere along the line in that piece or in this piece, is there any nod to how the fact checkers and the arbiters of misinformation or whatever these people are have completely discredited themselves by trying to stamp out things that are true.
Whether it's the New York Post story on Hunter Biden's laptop or the notion that COVID began from a lab leak or any number of other things, these people have utterly discredited themselves.
And when she talks about people are trying to silence us, it is a taste of their own medicine.
And the other thing that's galling is none of these people entertain the idea that perhaps misinformation should be allowed.
Perhaps people should be able to say things that are wrong.
And perhaps the American people should be allowed to decide between things that are wrong and things that are right and come to their own conclusions.
Perhaps this is the way we've existed for a long time without professors of disinformation, you know, at University of Washington helping us along.
It's just so ridiculous.
Do you want that woman deciding what you can and cannot see?
No, no, no.
The track record is not good.
It's funny because actually Barbara Quaid and another host on NPR, Barbara McQuaid is like on MSNBC, but she was talking about her new book on NPR last week to James Carville's point about how NPR has these like lecturing women on it constantly talking about how the First Amendment is not absolute.
And by the way, these are two people who work in media, one of whom is an actual journalist talking about how the First Amendment is not absolute.
You've never had the right to spread disinformation.
Real information is dangerous.
And people like Matt Taibi, Michael Schellenberger, Barry Weiser are just all cranks when they talk.
Planet Fitness Locker Room Allegations 00:10:40
They're just all Trump-addled MAGA cranks when they talk about even the New York Times being censored by the government at one point during the 2020 election.
I mean, it's outrageous.
It's an outrage to the industry.
It's an outrage to journalism.
Speaking of Michael Schellenberger, he's done a great job of exposing this WPATH story and what's happened with these so-called experts on the trans, the transing of American children.
They purport to be these experts, but then they were caught on camera admitting they don't know anything.
They can't get informed consent from children.
And that brings me into the trans lane for this Planet Fitness story that Libs of TikTok has been covering, I believe, broke, and this craziness amongst this very popular national gym chain.
And this happened in Alaska, which is not exactly like Vermont, you know, or the upper west side of New York.
Alaska?
I'm shocked.
But a woman named Patricia Silva took a photo of a trans person in there as a guy pretending to be a gal shaving his face.
That was our first clue.
In the ladies' locker room, where Patricia said a young girl who looked to be about 12 was present.
She shared the Facebook, the photo on Facebook and made a video.
We have just a little bit from what she posted in STOT 25.
I came in Monday.
There's a man in the women's locker room shaving.
A little girl sitting in the corner.
She could have been 12 years old.
I don't know how old she was in a towel.
Kind of freaked out that there's a man shaving in her locker room.
Well, I was offended.
I took a picture of him and I asked him, why are you there?
You're a man with a penis.
Why are you in the women's locker room?
And he justified by saying, I'm queer, LGB.
And I said, you shouldn't be in the women's locker room.
Planet Fitness is defending the man in the women's locker room, the man with the penis, rather than the child sitting in the corner with a towel wrapped around her.
That is so disturbing, Emily.
And now Planet Fitness, we'll get to it, but they're denying. that it even happened.
The libs of TikTok called them to see, you know, what the story was.
And the employee said, nope, it's not.
It's not Planet Fitness.
It wasn't.
And that's a lie.
It was.
So what do you make of it?
I mean, it's just, this is how most people with common sense would react to exactly that situation.
And what I find very interesting about this particular story is that it's such a clear glimpse at what the stakes are and what the reality is, which is that, again, in Alaska, you know, this is not Williamsburg.
This is Alaska.
In Alaska, you have a potentially 12-year-old girl in a towel in a locker room at a Planet Fitness, which by the way, is a perfectly safe space for her.
It should be a perfectly physically, psychologically safe space for a teenage girl who's trying to get healthy, but instead has to be nervous because there's a grown man shaving, potentially also in a towel.
And that's, again, with this case study, the fact that the reality of it is so clear.
One, that woman is like the voice of the people.
Like that is how average people are going to react to situations like this.
It is going to be increasingly affiliated with the Democratic Party.
Voters are going to have that right in their mind to return to James Carville's point.
But also, it just, the reality is so much worse than the defenders of these policies, including it seems like Planet Fitness are willing to admit it's not just an occasional, you know, very kind and decent and gentle person, you know, nervously walking in, going in a stall, doing their business.
It's, you know, men and women mingling together where potentially there are women who have survived domestic abuse.
There are teenagers.
Women are in really vulnerable positions and actual men with varying motivations and whatever they may be, varying motivations are in very, very close proximity to them in this very vulnerable position where there are no security cameras, security.
This is the reality.
So good for this woman.
I have to say you're right about all the vulnerable women.
We have a picture of the guy, thanks to the one that Patricia Silva took.
Look at him.
Look at him.
It's an obvious man.
He's not even trying to look like a woman.
But I was going to say, irrespective of vulnerability, I don't want this.
I don't want to see him when I'm in there taking off my clothes so I can go work out.
I don't want him to see me.
And I have no vulnerabilities.
I really don't.
So F this guy and F Planet Fitness, which has revoked Patricia Silva's membership because she took a photo.
She wasn't allowed.
So her documentation of this abomination is the problem, not their policy allowing it in the first place, Eliana.
Who among us wants to walk in to work out and change our clothes or have our daughters do that at the age of 12 and have to look at some man shaving his whiskers?
Well, if it were me, I would be canceling my membership.
And I have a feeling that to the extent Planet Fitness doesn't reverse course here and do a 180 really quick, it will go the way of Bud Light pretty quickly.
We're seeing there's a real market revolt against these kind of policies.
Wait, wait, can I just tell you that their stock has reportedly dropped 400 million in five days from when this story broke.
Which I think also means investors are aware of what Eliana is saying.
Like they don't have faith in Planet Fitness to reverse course and they see a potential Bud Light situation on the horizon.
And let's make them Bud Light.
Good.
I hope we do.
Go ahead, Eliana.
I just think the average gym goer doesn't like this kind of thing.
The market will respond and will solve for it to the extent the company doesn't.
Five days is already too long.
Like it needs to be immediate.
They better fall on their sword and they better do it immediately.
Get this guy out of there.
There's a men's room for a reason.
Okay, last but not least, I want to get to this super quick.
Did you see the news about Diddy?
Puff Daddy, Sean Combs, Department of Homeland Security executing law enforcement actions, a raid on his homes in Miami, Florida, and Los Angeles, California, per NBC reporting.
He is a subject of the investigation.
Three women and a man have been interviewed by federal officials in Manhattan in relation to allegations of sex trafficking, sexual assault, and the solicitation and distribution of illegal narcotics and firearms, said the source.
Other interviews are scheduled.
They've seized phones from his homes before he was scheduled to depart on a trip to the Bahamas.
He was questioned while at the airport by law enforcement.
Two of his sons were seen in cuffs outside of the LA home.
It is understood they were not under arrest, but were being detained outside as agents searched the property.
We do not think he is under arrest yet, but it's almost certainly coming.
This comes on the heels of a lot of reporting about multiple deeply disturbing allegations against this guy.
The Daily Mail, Maureen Callahan, our friend, has been all over it.
And my own personal opinion is this guy's a scumbag and it's finally caught up with him.
And I will not shed one tear if and when the cops show up to arrest him.
Emily, what do you think?
Yeah, I think we could be on the cusp of seeing Weinstein style allegations because Diddy is not just an artistic presence.
He's a huge, like a towering business presence in the music industry and has been for a really long time.
And so waiting to see what the scope of the allegations are, I agree with you, Megan.
I think these are scumbag.
The evidence that he is absolutely a scumbag is already pretty overwhelming.
But I think this could be the tip of the iceberg in terms of the Diddy story that we could be learning a lot that's endemic in the industry in a sort of way that harkens back to the early days of Me Too.
And unlike, I don't know, certain other figures in the music business or celebrities who speak out, you mentioned Aaron Rodgers shortly ago.
Eliana, this isn't about politics with this guy.
This guy, he's had multiple allegations against him.
He's not political.
My instincts tell me as somebody who's covered legal cases for a long time, they're investigating him because they have very good reason to.
The feds don't show up at multiple properties after you've been accused by multiple women of rape, abuse, physical torture for no reason.
My understanding as well from reading this, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that these allegations come from both men and women, that the allegations of sexual abuse and sex trafficking were coming from both genders and were vivid and horrifying based on my reading of the stories this morning.
So good riddance if he if he is arrested, though I will say I've not been following this extremely closely.
Just prepping for the show, Megan.
Yeah, no, it's well, we cover the landscape, as you know, but you always do a great job prepared or caught on the fly.
We'll see.
I don't want to condemn him.
I don't want to convict him before we have even an arrest in the case, but I've seen enough from the earlier reporting and accusations against him to believe this is not a good man.
He denies the charges.
I should say that as the earlier allegations had come out, he said, Enough is enough.
The last couple of weeks I've sat silently watched people try to assassinate my reputation.
These are sickening allegations.
And denied doing any of the awful things alleged.
Ladies, thank you to be continued.
Thank you very much.
Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show.
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