The Megyn Kelly Show - 20240401_medias-faulty-fact-checking-and-trumps-path-to-202
Aired: 2024-04-01
Duration: 01:37:08


=== Joseph's Poetry and Feelings (02:46) ===

[00:00:01]  FIKEN presents a super-enkelt regnskapsprogram for to send your voucher from your company.
[00:00:07]  That was simple.
[00:00:09]  FIKEN, a super-enkelt regnskapsprogram.
[00:00:15]  Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM channel 111 every weekday at Nune East.
[00:00:28]  Kelly, welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.
[00:00:30]  I hope you and your family had a happy Easter if you celebrated a lovely weekend with your families.
[00:00:36]  I did have a really nice time with the fam and did go to church.
[00:00:40]  And it was absolutely lovely.
[00:00:43]  Okay, we have a great show lined up for you today.
[00:00:45]  Later, we're going to be joined by a pollster for the latest on 2024.
[00:00:49]  There have been a bunch of polls since the State of the Union suggesting that Joe Biden is having a bit of a comeback, that his numbers are getting a little bit better, especially in the swing states.
[00:00:58]  So, we're going to take a hard look at that and find out whether it's true.
[00:01:01]  And if so, why?
[00:01:03]  And then later, our favorite poet, Joseph Massey, is back with us.
[00:01:08]  You remember Joseph?
[00:01:09]  They tried to cancel him.
[00:01:11]  The poetry world is evil.
[00:01:13]  You may not know this.
[00:01:15]  You know how everything is woke?
[00:01:16]  Restaurants are woke.
[00:01:18]  Starbucks is woke.
[00:01:19]  Poetry is woke.
[00:01:21]  And Joseph Massey was a beautiful poet doing beautiful work who got targeted and then completely annihilated by these evil people.
[00:01:30]  And slowly but surely, you, people like you, and you, actually, you have been rehabilitating Joseph's career and making it possible for him to do even something as unique as poetry in an independent lane without the support of these evil, woke jerks who tried to ruin him over an allegation that was made by an ex-girlfriend with whom his relationship ended badly.
[00:01:56]  Anyway, I love when he's on.
[00:01:58]  We'll look at some of his poetry and just some of just the way Joseph makes me feel.
[00:02:02]  That's what I love about reading his work and looking at his photography.
[00:02:05]  Just the way you feel.
[00:02:06]  You feel like a different version of yourself, a better version of yourself, more contemplative, more thoughtful, more hopeful, which is kind of interesting because Joseph, you know, I think he would describe himself as somebody who struggles with depression.
[00:02:18]  Anyway, we'll get to him.
[00:02:20]  But we begin with somebody who is very sparky.
[00:02:25]  He's not usually writing about the darkness or the light.
[00:02:29]  He's usually bringing it, bringing his A-game from his studios now in Nashville, Tennessee, Florida, formerly of LA.
[00:02:36]  And that is Ben Shapiro.
[00:02:37]  You may have heard of him.
[00:02:38]  He's my pal and he runs the Daily Wire, or at least founded the Daily Wire.
[00:02:42]  And there's a lot to go over with him.
[00:02:44]  President Biden embroiled in an Easter controversy.

=== Welker Fact Check Attack (10:36) ===

[00:02:47]  There's so much.
[00:02:47]  Let's just get to it.
[00:02:50]  Ben Shapiro is with us today.
[00:02:51]  Ben, great to see you.
[00:02:52]  How are you doing?
[00:02:53]  Hey, doing pretty well.
[00:02:54]  Hope you had a great Easter.
[00:02:55]  I did.
[00:02:55]  Thank you very much.
[00:02:57]  Okay, I want to get to this series that you are doing, The Divided States of Biden, because I know the second episode takes a hard look at fentanyl, which is something I really want to discuss.
[00:03:06]  But I want to start with something that happened on another podcast this morning.
[00:03:10]  I don't know if you ever listened to The Daily, right?
[00:03:12]  The New York Times is the daily, but I always listen to it because it's just interesting.
[00:03:17]  I listen to Morning Wire.
[00:03:18]  I like it, you know, from all different sources.
[00:03:20]  And today's The Daily is amazing.
[00:03:23]  It's amazing.
[00:03:24]  They have on my old pal, Jim Rutenberg, who I really like.
[00:03:28]  I have to say, he's definitely more leftist and definitely thinks journalists should be covering Trump in a way you and I don't think is appropriate, but he's a good guy.
[00:03:37]  So he goes over there on the daily and he speaks with a reporter about what happened, Michael Barbaro, between NBC and Rhonda McDaniel.
[00:03:47]  And they're trying to do a sincere look at why it imploded and became such a huge controversy.
[00:03:56]  And their musings on the position that modern day media is in, I found so entertaining.
[00:04:06]  And I think you will too.
[00:04:07]  So I'm going to kick it off with a rather lengthy clip of that show and get your reaction.
[00:04:11]  Take a listen.
[00:04:12]  How do we capture him, cover him for all of his lies, all the challenges he poses to democratic norms, yet not alienate some 74, 75 million American voters.
[00:04:26]  You've got tens of millions of Trump supporters seeing what's really basic fact checking.
[00:04:30]  These look like attacks to Trump supporters.
[00:04:33]  Trump in turn is calling the press, the reporters are enemies of the people.
[00:04:37]  So it's a terrible dynamic.
[00:04:39]  And when January 6th happens, it's so obviously out of control.
[00:04:44]  And what the traditional press that follows traditional journalistic rules has to do is make it clear that the claims that Trump is making about a stolen election are just so abjectly false that they don't warrant a single minute of real consideration once the reporting has been done to show how false they are.
[00:05:03]  And I think that American journalism really emerged from that feeling strongly about its own values and its own place in society.
[00:05:12]  But then, you know, there's still tens of millions of Trump voters and they don't feel so good about the coverage.
[00:05:20]  And they don't agree that January 6th was an insurrection.
[00:05:23]  How is NBC?
[00:05:24]  How is CNN?
[00:05:25]  How are any of these TV networks?
[00:05:28]  If they have decided that this is their mission, how are they supposed to speak to people who believe something fundamentally untrue as a core part of their political identity?
[00:05:41]  Nobody wants to be seen as wearing a jersey in our business.
[00:05:44]  No one wants to be wearing a jersey in our business.
[00:05:47]  But maybe what they really have to accept is that we're just sticking to the true facts.
[00:05:53]  And that may look like we're wearing a jersey, but we're not.
[00:05:56]  And that may at times look like it's lining up more with the Democrats, but we're not.
[00:06:00]  We're going to tell you the truth, even if it means that we're going to lose a big part of the country.
[00:06:09]  We're going to tell you the truth.
[00:06:11]  That's our mission at the New York Times and NBC, even if it means we're going to lose a big part of the deluded country, Ben, that just won't accept what we tell them is, quote, truth.
[00:06:25]  What do you make of it?
[00:06:26]  I mean, it's just so self-righteous.
[00:06:28]  And this is the game that the media have been trying to play for decades at this point is that they are overtly on the left, but they just identify the truth with their political perspective.
[00:06:36]  And this means that if they're just repeating left-wing talking points, then we're all supposed to take that as gospel truth, as real statement of fact.
[00:06:44]  The reality is that there used to be a time when members of the media tried to remove their bias, I think a little bit from their coverage.
[00:06:50]  I think that time ended probably during the Obama administration when the media basically decided they were an adjunct to the Obama White House.
[00:06:56]  And now that's become so obviously clear, especially at places like MSNBC, where you have this revolving door where Jen Saki, while she is the White House press secretary, is negotiating for a contract to host a TV show on MSNBC and just moves right from one to the other.
[00:07:10]  You see this sort of stuff at MSNBC all the time.
[00:07:12]  Again, it would be better if MSNBC just said, listen, we're a left-wing network.
[00:07:15]  And because we're a left-wing network, we don't feel like employing Rhonda McDaniel.
[00:07:18]  That'd be perfectly within their purview.
[00:07:20]  The issue for MSNBC and Ron McDaniel is that they keep suggesting that they're actually a news network.
[00:07:26]  NBC News keeps suggesting they're a news network.
[00:07:28]  Well, if you're a news network, then the proper answer to the Rhonda McDaniel supposed conundrum is you hire her, you have her on, and then you have somebody on who rebuts what she's saying if you think what she's saying is false.
[00:07:38]  But they don't even want to expose that to the light of day because the idea, I guess, is that if she makes the argument, and then you're about the argument, that her argument is so fully untrue that it can't even have a hearing.
[00:07:49]  Well, that's weird because Rhonna McDaniel, from what I've seen, actually does not suggest that the election was stolen in the way that Donald Trump does.
[00:07:56]  I believe that her position on the election is that the election was rigged by changing all the rules, that the election was rigged by not allowing Hunter Biden's laptop to be covered by the media and all the rest of this.
[00:08:06]  But I'm not aware that Ronald McDaniel has actually taken right now, as of now, the position that there were actual voter fraud questions so significant that Donald Trump won the election except for voter fraud.
[00:08:16]  She may have taken that position in the past.
[00:08:18]  That's not something that she's taken right now.
[00:08:19]  So it's sort of like a message.
[00:08:20]  I think her position is unfair, but not stolen.
[00:08:23]  Keep going.
[00:08:24]  Right, exactly.
[00:08:25]  So because of that, they have to come up with some excuse why she is a difference in kind, and they can't.
[00:08:29]  And so what they're coming back to is this idea that they are the sole repositories of fact.
[00:08:34]  And you can hear it even in that clip where they're moving from, we covered January 6th, we covered the election denialism.
[00:08:39]  And then anybody who says it's not an insurrection is somehow in the land of fiction.
[00:08:43]  Well, wait a second.
[00:08:44]  I don't actually believe that January 6th was an insurrection because an insurrection typically involves, say, the military involving itself in a coup at the behest of one of the members of the government.
[00:08:53]  It doesn't involve a bunch of people who are either committing criminal trespass or rioting in the Capitol building, immediately thrown out within two hours, and then the country goes on.
[00:09:02]  That's just called a riot.
[00:09:03]  Does that mean that I am now purveying something that's not a fact?
[00:09:06]  It seems to me that my characterization of that, which is similar, I think, to yours and to a lot of people's, is much more accurate than simply labeling something an insurrection the way the media does.
[00:09:15]  That's a political analysis point, but you can see the conflation of the label insurrection with fact.
[00:09:20]  That kind of speaks to the whole thing.
[00:09:22]  Yeah.
[00:09:22]  And, you know, that Trump hasn't been charged with insurrection.
[00:09:25]  That's not one of their favorite claims on the January 6th defendants, but they say it like it's fact.
[00:09:31]  And if you, if you disagree, it was an insurrection, how are we going to reach these people?
[00:09:35]  I mean, we want viewers.
[00:09:36]  That's what they were lamenting in the larger piece that, like, maybe MSNBC doesn't need more right-leaning or independent viewers.
[00:09:42]  But big NBC, they want them.
[00:09:44]  So, how are you supposed to speak to these people?
[00:09:46]  I mean, like, what are you supposed to do?
[00:09:48]  And especially when they see fact-checking of Trump as an attack, fact-checking him looks like an attack.
[00:09:57]  Ironically, as they're having this conversation, Kristen Welker, the anchor of Meet the Press, is over there doing a little of this so-called quote fact-checking.
[00:10:08]  Now, this soundbite I'm about to play is making the rounds in the mainstream media today because the left is outraged about the way she describes Trump's attacks on the daughter of Judge Merchant, who's overseeing the Stormy Daniels hush money case, who's a political operative.
[00:10:25]  She's a progressive.
[00:10:25]  She's connected with this far-left organization that got Adam Schiff and others elected.
[00:10:31]  And her personal Twitter account has definitely taken shots at Trump, though her team is now claiming she deactivated that and that's now somebody else.
[00:10:38]  But you can see why Trump might have looked at the account and said, it's her.
[00:10:41]  It's got a picture of him behind bars.
[00:10:42]  Anyway, that's the background of the clip you're about to hear.
[00:10:45]  Kristen Welker kind of brushes past it and the left wanted her to make a big, bigger deal out of it.
[00:10:50]  I want you to forget that piece of it for right now.
[00:10:52]  Take a listen at the very beginning to Kristen Welker's so-called fact check that I guess we lunatics see as an attack or won't just fucking accept because Kristen Welker says it's so.
[00:11:04]  Take a listen.
[00:11:06]  Meanwhile, this week, the former president stepped up his attacks on the judge and his family in the New York hush money case after that judge imposed a partial gag order on Mr. Trump less than three weeks from the April 15th start date in that trial.
[00:11:22]  And now Trump is asserting that none of the trials should, quote, take place during my campaign, falsely calling the criminal proceedings election interference.
[00:11:32]  It is yet another reminder that we are covering this election against the backdrop of a deeply divided nation.
[00:11:40]  Got it?
[00:11:41]  Why is that election interference is false?
[00:11:44]  Right.
[00:11:45]  I mean, it is 100% election interference.
[00:11:49]  When Donald Trump says the hush money allegations were brought about about the 2016 election, and I checked the calendar and it is currently 2024.
[00:11:58]  I mean, that's a... a real hot take there from Christian Welker, but you're exactly right.
[00:12:03]  I mean, the basic way that the media now report these things is that our opinions are the facts.
[00:12:07]  And if you don't like our facts, that's because you actually are a fact rejector.
[00:12:12]  And that's a really stupid way to cover this sort of stuff.
[00:12:14]  Again, it really is not that difficult, actually, to cover President Trump in all of his varieties.
[00:12:18]  He says things that are not true a lot.
[00:12:20]  And I'm talking to somebody who co-hosted an event for him a couple of weeks ago.
[00:12:23]  He obviously says things that I disagree with a lot.
[00:12:26]  But I think the other half of this is that the same media that will declare that it's an absolute 100% fact that the hush money trial is not election interference against Trump in a state where the prosecutors have vowed to go against Trump for years.
[00:12:38]  The same people who will say that will not cover a single lie that Joe Biden ever tells.
[00:12:42]  They put Daniel Dale, the fact checker at CNN, in witness protection for several years there when Joe Biden was first president because he had to disappear from the scene.
[00:12:50]  Then Donald Trump gets nominated and suddenly Daniel Dale's back on your TV every night doing his long litany of misstatements or lies from President Trump.
[00:12:57]  And we can see the double standard be one thing if you were saying we're going to call out all the lies.
[00:13:01]  If you did that, then I'd be like, okay, I get it.
[00:13:03]  Maybe you're mischaracterizing something here or there, but at least you're attempting.
[00:13:07]  They're not even attempting anything.
[00:13:08]  Joe Biden, according to these folks, is an absolute truth teller who requires no fact check.
[00:13:12]  When he does say something wrong, it's just a mistake.
[00:13:15]  When Donald Trump says something wrong, it's because he's a malicious, he's a malicious coup d'état destroyer of democracy.

=== Fentanyl Lacing Debate (16:12) ===

[00:13:23]  It's amazing to listen to her.
[00:13:25]  I mean, it wouldn't take much for someone to say, hold on, that's opinion.
[00:13:29]  That's not fact.
[00:13:31]  You don't say, which is not true, which is false, that it's election interference.
[00:13:34]  That is a very hotly debated topic amongst the electorate right now.
[00:13:39]  And virtually every Republican and most independents would say it is election interference, especially that bullshit claim she's talking about, the Stormy Daniels hush money one.
[00:13:49]  So for her to just slide it in there, like it's just not, okay.
[00:13:53]  And then at the same time, have this discussion over on the New York Times about how I don't know why these morons don't just accept fact checking for the truth offering that it is.
[00:14:03]  You know, we're just going to have to, I guess, try to find a way of speaking to these people or not.
[00:14:08]  That's the real big debate underscores so much that's wrong with media today.
[00:14:13]  Okay, much more news to get to, but I do want to switch to the piece that you're doing now, the divided states of Biden.
[00:14:19]  It's a new docuseries over at the dailywire.com.
[00:14:22]  Episode two focuses on fentanyl.
[00:14:25]  This, I don't know a person who hasn't been affected by this.
[00:14:28]  I don't know a person who has not.
[00:14:30]  It's either your friend's college kid or your friend's friend's college kid or something you just read in yesterday's paper that you found deeply alarming and had to warn your kids about, but it's come up in most everybody's life.
[00:14:41]  Fentanyl, it's everywhere.
[00:14:43]  It's the new opioid crisis, except it's proving to be even more deadly and yet not necessarily getting the five alarm fire universally among Americans around it that say opioids did once we realized what they were doing to us.
[00:15:01]  So you've taken a deep dive on fentanyl.
[00:15:04]  Can you just like highlight the problem for us?
[00:15:07]  Like what when you did, because I know you visited various towns and you actually got your arms around the problem.
[00:15:12]  So just highlight the problem.
[00:15:14]  Okay.
[00:15:14]  So the problem of fentanyl poisoning, and I'm calling it poisoning here for a reason, and that is a huge number of people who die of fentanyl overdose are not overdosing in the way that you would think of an opioid overdose where somebody is doing heroin and they actually inject too much heroin and then they die.
[00:15:26]  A lot of people who are dying of fentanyl poisoning don't even realize they're ingesting fentanyl.
[00:15:31]  They think that they're taking avicodin, or they think that they are taking a Xanax or they think they're taking an Adderall.
[00:15:35]  And it turns out that it's laced with a grain of fentanyl.
[00:15:37]  Fentanyl is incredibly cheap.
[00:15:39]  It's incredibly easy to produce.
[00:15:40]  A huge amount of it is moving across our southern border, thanks to the Mexican drug cartels, which are getting the precursor materials from the Chinese government, which is shipping it over to Mexico.
[00:15:49]  It is then being created in a lab in Mexico by Chinese nationals who are then putting it into Chinese-made pill presses.
[00:15:56]  They are then distributing that to the drug cartels who are taking it across the border and selling it in mass quantities.
[00:16:01]  And it's killing over 100,000 Americans a year.
[00:16:03]  It's now the number one cause of death for Americans between the ages of about 18 and 40, more so than gun wound, more so than car accident.
[00:16:11]  That's how prevalent it is.
[00:16:13]  And again, it's pretty much everywhere.
[00:16:15]  It's very difficult to get your arms around it, specifically because there are so many different versions of fentanyl that are now coming across the border.
[00:16:22]  The easiest thing that needs to be done, obviously, is to close the border.
[00:16:24]  And that's the exact same thing that the Biden administration won't do.
[00:16:27]  So these two issues are deeply intertwined.
[00:16:29]  With an open border, it is literally impossible to stop the fentanyl epidemic from entering the country.
[00:16:34]  And there's a lot of focus in the United States on caring for people who actually become addicted to fentanyl.
[00:16:38]  But the reality is once you're addicted to fentanyl, it's almost impossible to get off of fentanyl.
[00:16:42]  The amount of number of people who are fentanyl addicts who end up getting off of fentanyl, the last stats I saw were below 2%, which means there's only one way to stop this, which is to stop it right at the source.
[00:16:52]  And that means you actually have to shut the border.
[00:16:55]  Joe Biden's border policy is dramatically designed to do everything but stop it at the border.
[00:17:01]  He's leaving the border wide open.
[00:17:02]  I mean, we're talking about like 25 mile stretch.
[00:17:04]  I've driven them.
[00:17:04]  25 mile stretches, the most heavily trafficked parts of the Arizona border by drug traffickers, completely wide open, totally in the control of the Mexican drug cartels.
[00:17:13]  So why?
[00:17:14]  Why are they lacing drugs like Adderall and Vicodin with fentanyl?
[00:17:22]  I mean, the answer for that usually is if you can get someone to take a little bit, it's incredibly addictive.
[00:17:27]  It's 50 to 100 times more powerful than a typical opioid or heroin.
[00:17:31]  And so that means that if you can get somebody to take a little bit of fentanyl, apparently the high is amazing, but it doesn't last all that long.
[00:17:37]  And now you've got them hooked for life.
[00:17:39]  So that's an acceptable loss for drug dealers.
[00:17:41]  If you can get a teenager hooked on fentanyl, but it means another teenager dies.
[00:17:44]  Well, for these drug dealers, that's fine.
[00:17:46]  They're totally okay with that.
[00:17:47]  Some states are doing what they call drug-induced homicide prosecutions, which is something every state should take up.
[00:17:53]  They're basically saying if you're a drug dealer and you deal somebody fentanyl and the person dies of the fentanyl, we are going to charge you with murder, which is exactly what they should do, as opposed to treating it as kind of a normal drug offense.
[00:18:03]  The sort of weird, hard division that we've made in American criminal law between drug distribution and homicide, that needs to be obliterated when you're talking about a drug as deadly as fentanyl that is being put in, again, things like marijuana.
[00:18:15]  People will be smoking a joint and they'll get fentanyl.
[00:18:17]  And if they have the fentanyl in the marijuana, they can die from that.
[00:18:21]  You offer the following stat in the piece.
[00:18:24]  In 2022, fentanyl overdose deaths doubled from 2019.
[00:18:30]  I mean, this is becoming more deadly by the minute.
[00:18:34]  And kids who are little right now are aging up into the age where they may make a stupid decision on a college campus or, you know, via you can get these drugs over the internet so easy via Snapchat.
[00:18:44]  You order a drug, it shows up at your house and you're dead.
[00:18:47]  Your kid is dead over these dumbass decisions that kids used to make.
[00:18:51]  And they weren't smart, but they weren't deadly.
[00:18:54]  And it's happening more and more.
[00:18:55]  It's happening across income strata.
[00:18:58]  I mean, the poor, the rich, all of them are dying from this thing.
[00:19:03]  What, like, are there certain areas that are more problematic than others?
[00:19:07]  Because I know you went to, for example, Camden, New Jersey, which jumped out at me because that's one of those community policing towns that just five years ago, they wanted credit for being super safe thanks to their community policing as opposed to just crackdown policing.
[00:19:22]  Yeah, I mean, what they actually did in Camden is they lied about it.
[00:19:24]  They actually went to the county policing.
[00:19:26]  They said we got rid of our city police, then they just ingested it into the county police.
[00:19:29]  And then now they're actually starting to try to use a little bit of broken windows theory, I think, to try and gain control of the city, but the city's completely out of control.
[00:19:36]  I mean, Camden.
[00:19:37]  It's a crime center.
[00:19:38]  Yeah.
[00:19:40]  And they come back.
[00:19:41]  That's right.
[00:19:42]  And so what you see there in Camden is total open-air drug use.
[00:19:46]  You see that in Kensington, obviously.
[00:19:47]  There have been a lot of films, a lot of filming done in Kensington, which is an area of Philadelphia.
[00:19:52]  You make a turn off what looks like a normal street in Kensington onto Kensington Avenue, and suddenly you're going like two straight miles of people who are walking around like zombies, openly shooting up on the streets, people who in many cases have open wounds, people who are missing limbs, specifically because in order to keep the high of fentanyl, people have started mixing it with an animal tranquilizer that's known on the street as trank.
[00:20:12]  And that actually tends to rot your flesh.
[00:20:14]  And so you see like entire city blocks of people like Phil, it looks like a zombie apocalypse.
[00:20:19]  It's totally crazy.
[00:20:21]  It's totally insane.
[00:20:22]  Hold that thought because we have some of that from the docuseries.
[00:20:25]  Again, this is the divided states of Biden.
[00:20:27]  You can find it on the dailywire.com.
[00:20:29]  And here's video of Kensington, Pennsylvania, along the lines of what Ben described.
[00:20:34]  Holy crap.
[00:20:36]  I've never seen anything like this in my life.
[00:20:40]  Whole block.
[00:20:41]  There's blocks of people.
[00:20:45]  Shooting in the knee.
[00:20:51]  Holy crap.
[00:20:54]  Jesus help them.
[00:21:04]  It's just miles of drug addicts.
[00:21:08]  People who are missing limbs and toes and fingers.
[00:21:11]  You're seeing people who are bent over at the waist because the drugs have done such horrific things to their body, they're not capable of standing up straight.
[00:21:18]  It looks like something out of the walking dead.
[00:21:21]  They're shooting up right now.
[00:21:24]  She's shitting right into her foot.
[00:21:26]  And this guy's scratching it were undoubtedly massive flesh wounds from Trank.
[00:21:32]  Oh my God.
[00:21:33]  It's hard to believe that's the United States of America.
[00:21:36]  It is.
[00:21:36]  And again, all of this is, in fact, if not preventable, mitigatable.
[00:21:41]  All you have to do is close the southern border.
[00:21:43]  Joe Biden's border policy has been to basically allow the drug cartels to flood one area of the border with illegal immigrants.
[00:21:49]  Joe Biden sends the entire border patrol over to process that group of illegal immigrants, leaving the rest of the border completely unoccupied.
[00:21:55]  And at that point, the Mexican drug cartels will smuggle a few guys over with backpacks filled with fentanyl.
[00:22:00]  Again, this stuff is so powerful.
[00:22:02]  It's so easy to transport.
[00:22:03]  You're talking about tons, literally tons of fentanyl entering the United States every year.
[00:22:07]  And it takes a grain, two grains of fentanyl to kill somebody.
[00:22:11]  So what is the solution?
[00:22:13]  You mentioned cracking down in the criminal law on those who would lace a drug with fentanyl without disclosing that.
[00:22:19]  And so, I mean, that's really going after the cartels and I guess those who pimp their poison here domestically, shutting down the border so that this isn't as easy, though that's, of course, easier said than done, no matter who's president, to actually shut it down has proven very problematic for, you know, Republicans and Democrats alike.
[00:22:38]  So what do we do?
[00:22:39]  Is it awareness?
[00:22:40]  You know, is it like air?
[00:22:41]  Are pressure tactics on China?
[00:22:43]  Yes.
[00:22:43]  I mean, there is going to be more of that.
[00:22:45]  We actually, believe it or not, we actually may be back in terms of drug use to the days of just a no, because there was this long period in American history, mainly when I was growing up and really until now, where it's like, okay, well, it's just a joint.
[00:22:58]  What's the big deal?
[00:22:58]  And the answer right now is that it used to be that if you had a joint, okay, I'm not a big advocate of marijuana.
[00:23:05]  First of all, marijuana now is significantly more powerful than even when I was a kid.
[00:23:09]  But the chances that you may die from taking any street drug just because you don't know the source are so much higher than they've ever been anytime in American history that the idea of getting kids away from drugs totally is now a thing.
[00:23:21]  It's going to have to be abstinence from drugs.
[00:23:23]  And then, of course, there's the international stuff you can do.
[00:23:25]  We need to be putting significant financial and economic pressure on China, which is the source of the precursor materials.
[00:23:30]  We put pressure on them not to actually directly manufacture the fentanyl and just send it directly to the Mexican drug cartels.
[00:23:36]  And so they stopped doing that.
[00:23:36]  Instead, they basically took the ingredients and started sending all the ingredients separately to Mexico, where it's then processed in Mexico and then imported into the United States.
[00:23:45]  We need to be taking serious economic measures against China to force Xi to crack down on the fentanyl creation in China.
[00:23:54]  It really is like playing Russian roulette now.
[00:23:56]  You try a pill, you're really taking your life in your hands.
[00:23:59]  It is not the same as having a beer or, you know, the 1995 version of trying a joint.
[00:24:06]  It is, it's just not.
[00:24:07]  Your kids need to know and you need to know.
[00:24:09]  Again, it's called the Divided States of Biden.
[00:24:11]  And you can check it out at the DailyWire.com.
[00:24:13]  Or let's talk about some other news.
[00:24:15]  As we went to the weekend, Joe Biden was having this massive fundraiser.
[00:24:19]  He raised, he says, $26 million with former presidents Obama and Clinton.
[00:24:26]  I really was struck by it.
[00:24:27]  I mean, I said to the team before we did the show on Thursday, really, you can see the split screen here of these three former presidents in New York celebrating themselves, raising money, and Trump going to the wake of this fallen police officer who was shot by this repeat offender who was out with no bail and should have been behind bars.
[00:24:48]  And it got even worse as the day went on because we saw a huge hole in Biden's schedule and said, you know, he could go.
[00:24:53]  He could get out to Long Island in the day and still go to his fundraiser at night.
[00:24:57]  And we didn't know what he was doing.
[00:24:58]  And then it became clear he was doing the podcast with these three celebrity comedians, Will Arnett, Sean Hayes, and Jason Bateman.
[00:25:09]  And they sat down with these guys.
[00:25:11]  This is what Joe Biden did instead of going to the wake.
[00:25:14]  And President Trump went to the wake.
[00:25:16]  And I realize everything that the politicians do these days is political.
[00:25:19]  You know, Trump surely did not go there purely out of the goodness of his heart.
[00:25:24]  He's not a dumb politician.
[00:25:25]  He understood.
[00:25:25]  But you know what?
[00:25:26]  He still gets credit for it because he's trying to show his support for law enforcement.
[00:25:29]  He's trying to send a message that this is a priority for me.
[00:25:32]  And Joe Biden sent a very different message.
[00:25:34]  In the meantime, every day what we get, Ben, is a message that Trump is the evil one.
[00:25:38]  Trump said the not nice thing about the judge's daughter.
[00:25:40]  Trump is somehow uniquely bad and Joe Biden is somehow uniquely good or as special counsel Robert Herr put it, well-meaning, right?
[00:25:47]  That's his critic.
[00:25:48]  That's as much as his official critic will say he's well-meaning, but elderly.
[00:25:52]  And I just couldn't get over what a missed opportunity it was for the president and how as a mother, I can't help but feel I'm going to hold it against him.
[00:26:00]  Yeah, I mean, I'm not sure how many times Biden can make this mistake.
[00:26:03]  I mean, we saw this with East Palestine, Ohio as well, where Biden wouldn't go out there to the scene of the train spill, but Trump would.
[00:26:10]  Trump went there and he was distributing resources and getting people Big Macs.
[00:26:13]  Trump does have a very good political instinct for these sorts of situations.
[00:26:17]  And as you say, politicians are politicians.
[00:26:19]  He's not going to every funeral in the country, but he does understand that symbolism matters.
[00:26:24]  And when you go and you show sympathy for a fallen police officer and you say that crime needs to be brought under control, and meanwhile, Joe Biden is partying it up with celebrities.
[00:26:32]  That is not a good look.
[00:26:32]  And it's very reminiscent of 2016 when Hillary Clinton was so assured of her own victory that she was doing her DNC videos of Elizabeth Bank singing fight song.
[00:26:40]  And meanwhile, Donald Trump was running around talking to like actual normal Americans, not at Radio City Music Hall.
[00:26:47]  You know, these are bad split screens for Joe Biden.
[00:26:49]  By the way, I think it was a bad split screen for Joe Biden to just be on stage with the former two presidents who are Democrats because he is older than both of them.
[00:26:56]  Bill Clinton left office when I was 17 years old.
[00:26:59]  And Bill Clinton is still younger than Joe Biden is today.
[00:27:02]  Barack Obama looks like he is still breathing and alive on that stage.
[00:27:05]  Joe Biden looks like he's stumbling around.
[00:27:06]  He doesn't know what the hell he's doing.
[00:27:08]  It was really bad look for him.
[00:27:10]  And again, I don't know who Biden thinks he's appealing to.
[00:27:13]  My guess is that the campaign knows this, which is why they didn't actually just release a lot of tape from this sort of star-studded celebrity event.
[00:27:20]  But they need to get money from a bunch of New Yorkers.
[00:27:22]  And so they have this Stephen Colbert on stage interviewing these three guys.
[00:27:25]  That's not a good look for Biden.
[00:27:26]  Biden is bleeding support, but he's not bleeding support, by the way.
[00:27:29]  Everyone's talking about he's bleeding support from the progressive left.
[00:27:31]  That's why he's going to lose.
[00:27:32]  The reason if he loses, he is going to lose is because he is bleeding support from blue-collar white voters.
[00:27:38]  That is actually where he outperformed in 2020 vis-à-vis Trump.
[00:27:41]  Trump did better in cities in 2020 than he did in 2016.
[00:27:44]  He didn't do quite as well among suburban voters and rural voters, actually, in some areas.
[00:27:49]  Joe Biden did better than expected in those areas.
[00:27:51]  But those are precisely the areas where Joe Biden is absolutely bleeding, which is why he's trailing anywhere from three to six points in Michigan.
[00:27:57]  If Joe Biden loses Michigan, this election is over.
[00:28:01]  He is in serious, serious trouble, and it's not going to help him hanging around with glitzy celebrities, having Lizzo sing for him while Donald Trump is out there visiting with the families of slain cops.
[00:28:11]  Yeah.
[00:28:11]  And here was Trump discussing what he saw as Biden's reluctance to go on Fox and Friends on Thursday.
[00:28:18]  It's sad.
[00:28:19]  I think that politically he can't support the police.
[00:28:22]  I think he's also making a mistake.
[00:28:24]  But I think politically his base won't let him support the police.
[00:28:31]  And I support the police, I would say at the highest level of any president by far, maybe double or triple.
[00:28:37]  And they knew that.
[00:28:37]  That's why when I walked into that funeral power, it was like love.
[00:28:44]  They didn't even call the family.
[00:28:46]  They could have called.
[00:28:47]  You don't have to be a rocket scientist to know even a call would be perhaps, I'm not sure they'd take his call, right?
[00:28:54]  I'm really not sure they'd take his call.
[00:28:57]  That's right.
[00:28:58]  All he had to do was call.
[00:28:59]  I mean, they actually did let New York governor Kathy Hochle go, New York City mayor Eric Adams go.
[00:29:05]  The family said it's fine.
[00:29:06]  These are Democrats.
[00:29:07]  They didn't try to make it political.
[00:29:09]  The family didn't.
[00:29:11]  If the sitting president, Joe Biden, never mind the other two who were with him, Obama and Clinton said, we'd like to pay our respects to Officer Diller.
[00:29:18]  You don't think the family would have said, you know, yes, it would be an honor.
[00:29:23]  They're not even blaming the mayor for the policies, although they are, but they allowed him to speak.
[00:29:28]  They certainly wouldn't blame the president.
[00:29:29]  So it was just, he didn't want to be there, Ben.
[00:29:32]  He wanted to be with Jason Bateman.
[00:29:34]  That's the bottom line.
[00:29:35]  That's why I don't buy it.

=== Trolled Supporter Free Speech (14:49) ===

[00:29:36]  It's like, it's the same guy who checked his watch when the bodies came back to Dover after Afghanistan and who let the damn White House dogs bite two dozen Secret Service agents with really serious wounds and didn't give a shit, enabled his drug-addled son to go do business for him so he could line his own pockets throughout his post-vice presidency and possibly during.
[00:29:57]  Same guy who you don't, you don't get to hear those facts on NBC, the fact checker of us all.
[00:30:04]  Yeah, the big lie about Joe Biden is that he's a deeply empathetic person.
[00:30:08]  I think that's actually fallen away pretty dramatically for the American public.
[00:30:11]  If you look at his polling stats, when he first took office, he was in the mid-50s.
[00:30:14]  He was a pretty popular guy when he first took office.
[00:30:16]  And then it quickly became apparent that this is a person who really cares much more about himself than pretty much anyone else.
[00:30:23]  And that became mostly apparent during the Afghanistan pullout when he obviously cared nothing about the Afghan allies who were being left there to be murdered by the Taliban or American troops who'd been blown up.
[00:30:31]  He saw his members of his administration going around and talking about what a wonderful pullout it was and how basically no Americans died, despite the fact that 13 American service people were killed in the line of duty by terrorists because of the failure of that pullout.
[00:30:43]  This is Joe Biden.
[00:30:44]  I mean, this is the same guy who every single time he is talking with any family member of a person who died, he starts dragging out the story about Bo.
[00:30:53]  And he'll do it with like service members.
[00:30:55]  He'll be talking about a service member who was killed in the line of duty.
[00:30:58]  He'll be talking with the family and he'll talk about how his son was killed in the line of duty, which isn't even true.
[00:31:02]  This kind of idea that Joe Biden is an empathetic elderly gentleman, I don't think a huge number of Americans buy that outside of Democratic bases.
[00:31:10]  And that's a real problem for him.
[00:31:11]  Because if the race was supposed to be in 2020 between nice old man Joe Biden and crazy nutjob Donald Trump, who's mean and only cares about himself, well, that's not the race in 2024.
[00:31:21]  In 2024, it's whatever you think of Trump versus Joe Biden, a not particularly empathetic, deeply angry, somewhat addled old man who has been really bad on policy.
[00:31:31]  That is not a good race for Joe Biden.
[00:31:33]  I've said for years that when it comes to presidential races, it really is about who the race is a referendum on.
[00:31:39]  If the race is a referendum on you, you're going to lose.
[00:31:42]  In 2016, it was actually Hillary, not Trump.
[00:31:45]  In 2020, it was Trump, not Biden.
[00:31:47]  In 2024, it seems pretty clear, actually, that this is going to be a referendum on Biden, not Trump.
[00:31:53]  I really think Trump just needs to stay out of the spotlight.
[00:31:56]  You know, I'm not talking about Officer Diller's wake, but his numbers are starting to tighten a bit.
[00:32:01]  We're going to get to that in our next segment.
[00:32:03]  But don't you think, Ben, the smartest move for Trump is to just not say too much?
[00:32:08]  You know, that the people who can't stand Trump are suburban women.
[00:32:12]  They can't stand him.
[00:32:14]  And being reminded of his bombast and his natural personality and his willingness to pick fights may fire up the base, but it totally alienates the group.
[00:32:23]  He really needs to get out and vote for him.
[00:32:26]  Well, actually, what he really needs to do is get a bunch of Democrats not to vote for either, right?
[00:32:30]  And the only way to do that is to stay out of the limelight.
[00:32:33]  The turnout in this election cycle is going to be way lower than it was in 2020 because everybody voted by mail six months in advance of the election in 2020.
[00:32:41]  Usually in every presidential election, you add somewhere between two and four million new voters to the voter rolls in terms of how many people vote in a presidential.
[00:32:48]  Between 2016 and 2020, that number jumped by over 20 million.
[00:32:51]  That is not going to be duplicated this time.
[00:32:53]  You're going to get way lower voter turnout, particularly in a lot of areas where Joe Biden needs the voter turnout.
[00:32:58]  Joe Biden is counting on his voter turnout to be higher because Trump gets people to the polls on the Democratic side of the aisle.
[00:33:04]  But here's the thing.
[00:33:04]  Trump doesn't need to do anything to get people like me to vote for him.
[00:33:07]  I'm going to vote for him.
[00:33:07]  My family's going to vote for him.
[00:33:09]  And I think everybody that I know is probably going to vote for Trump.
[00:33:12]  But there's a group of people who will not vote for Joe Biden because they actually don't care all that much about Joe Biden.
[00:33:17]  They don't like him very much, who might show up to vote if, again, this turns into a referendum on Trump.
[00:33:22]  So ironically, what Trump needs to do is run Joe Biden's 2020 campaign.
[00:33:25]  He needs to go to a basement and do nothing for like seven months and he'll be president again.
[00:33:30]  Yep.
[00:33:30]  And even with the criminal trials, just he doesn't actually have to fan it.
[00:33:33]  The media will do their part and the right-wing media will cover the other side.
[00:33:37]  And Trump doesn't have to put himself in the middle of each and every one of those news stories.
[00:33:41]  And yet, and yet that doesn't sound like President Trump to be down in the basement.
[00:33:48]  Okay, I'm going to take a quick break and then I want to talk to you about talk to you about your fundraiser for Trump because I think that's very interesting.
[00:33:53]  More of Ben Shapiro right after this quick break.
[00:33:57]  What's the theme this year?
[00:33:58]  This is something close to your heart.
[00:33:59]  It is.
[00:34:00]  You know, I've been a teacher for over 30 years, so this is egocation.
[00:34:04]  Some of your favorite memories, Mr. President.
[00:34:06]  Well, my favorite memories are a little girl who's having trouble with the race.
[00:34:10]  She looked at me.
[00:34:11]  She's about three years old.
[00:34:12]  Can you help me but to put it in her?
[00:34:17]  That's my favorite.
[00:34:19]  What is so special about this egg roll?
[00:34:21]  Well, what's so special is this open in the, this is the people's house.
[00:34:25]  And we can expect over 40,000 people to be here, the largest ever.
[00:34:29]  Look, I think we're going to find out that what happened as a consequence of the crisis we had in health is going to have a lasting effect.
[00:34:38]  And we just got to get people to move again.
[00:34:41]  We're ready.
[00:34:42]  I mean, I think the country's ready to come together in a way that I've never, I mean that sincerely.
[00:34:47]  What are your favorite memories about this place?
[00:34:50]  Our kids jumping in bed with us, our grandkids when they're down here, just sneaking up and jumping in bed with us.
[00:34:56]  That's my favorite memory.
[00:34:57]  Oh, boy.
[00:34:58]  That was President Biden today on NBC ahead of the annual Easter egg roll at the White House.
[00:35:02]  Was I the only one who cringed when he was like, my favorite memory is of that little girl?
[00:35:07]  What?
[00:35:07]  Oh, God.
[00:35:08]  What?
[00:35:10]  Then it landed with a story.
[00:35:12]  Will you help me, Mr. Puediz?
[00:35:14]  Okay, whatever.
[00:35:15]  Ben Shapiro's back with me now.
[00:35:17]  They're airing the divided states of Biden over at thedailywire.com right now.
[00:35:21]  You can sign up to be entertained and learn something about our country.
[00:35:26]  So I guess that didn't persuade you, Ben Shapiro, because as I understand it, you are voting for Donald Trump.
[00:35:32]  Not only that, but you went from being, I mean, I think it's fair to say a Ron DeSantis supporter, promoter during the primary process to a full-on Trump supporter now.
[00:35:41]  That was something, I mean, those of us who listen to you know, you were saying you would do that all along.
[00:35:45]  You were saying, I'd rather have DeSantis, but I'll support Donald Trump if he wins it.
[00:35:50]  So it shouldn't come as a surprise, but it has come as a surprise to some.
[00:35:54]  Explain that.
[00:35:55]  Yeah, I'm not sure, again, as you say, why it's surprising that I voted for Donald Trump in 2020.
[00:35:59]  The Republican primaries were over effectively after Iowa.
[00:36:03]  And once President Trump had locked up the nomination, it's time to get on the bus because it's either Trump or it's Biden, and there are no other choices that are available.
[00:36:12]  And so Donald Trump was a much better president than Joe Biden.
[00:36:14]  It is that simple to me.
[00:36:16]  Again, I've been very open in my criticisms of President Trump on character, on policy, and some of the things that he says.
[00:36:22]  Bottom line is that from 2017 to 2019, he was an excellent president.
[00:36:26]  The first three years of his presidency were great.
[00:36:27]  And then the fourth year was blemished by obviously COVID and then the and then the George Floyd riots.
[00:36:32]  So if I have a choice between 2019 and 2024, when the world is on fire, when Joe Biden is not in control of our border, when Joe Biden has facilitated the worst inflationary economy of the last 40 years, when Joe Biden has led to massive conflict in the Middle East, massive conflict in the middle of the European continent.
[00:36:50]  Like, I'm not sure why that's such a difficult choice.
[00:36:54]  And when I decided to co-host the fundraiser for President Trump, obviously one of the ideas there was not just that I was giving my own money to the Trump campaign, but it was also, I think, a sign to a lot of maybe hesitant Republicans that guys, like the primaries are now over.
[00:37:07]  And whatever issues you have with Donald Trump that may have arisen from the primaries.
[00:37:11]  And again, I've said multiple times on the show that if Ron DeSantis had been in when the primaries happened in Florida, I would have voted for him.
[00:37:17]  I think he's the best governor in the country and I think he would have made the best president, but he wasn't the guy.
[00:37:21]  And so because he's not the guy, Donald Trump is the guy.
[00:37:23]  And that means that, again, there's only two guys on the ballot who really have a shot of being president of the United States.
[00:37:28]  And Donald Trump is the one that I'm supporting, obviously.
[00:37:31]  What do you make of this weird feeling and messaging by some on the online right that it's a no?
[00:37:39]  Like if you weren't in support of Trump during the primary process, you're some sort of a charlatan if you're a Johnny come lately to the Trump train in the general.
[00:37:48]  I mean, frankly, I think that's a dumb political position.
[00:37:50]  I mean, you're going to need as many supporters and voters as you can get if you want Donald Trump to become president again.
[00:37:56]  So this sort of like, if you weren't with him all the way, if you weren't, if you weren't wearing the red hat from day one when he came down the escalator in 2015, then we're angry at you.
[00:38:05]  I haven't received too much of that.
[00:38:06]  But if there is some of that, I would say that's not very politically astute.
[00:38:09]  Donald Trump doesn't treat anybody that way.
[00:38:11]  I'll tell you that.
[00:38:12]  I mean, when I had the event with Trump, I mean, we had a conversation about it and he literally said, you know, he's a Ben Shapiro.
[00:38:18]  Ben Shapiro, you're a big Ron DeSanctis supporter, big, big de Sanctis supporter, but now you're going to love us even more.
[00:38:24]  I think you're going to love us even more.
[00:38:25]  We're not going to hold that against you.
[00:38:26]  Donald Trump doesn't feel that way.
[00:38:27]  I'm not sure why you would.
[00:38:30]  Okay.
[00:38:31]  So there were no fences to mend, but in any event, the fence is secure, unlike that at our southern border.
[00:38:37]  I've got to ask you about the recent departure of Candace Owens.
[00:38:40]  I know it's a subject that you probably don't want to discuss, but I would be remiss if I didn't at least go there.
[00:38:44]  She left.
[00:38:45]  It made tons of news.
[00:38:46]  The right loves to eat its own.
[00:38:48]  So they loved this.
[00:38:50]  You know, either Ben's bad or Candace is bad, but somebody's bad and we love it.
[00:38:54]  It's like the right likes to eat the left and they love to eat their own.
[00:38:57]  They have absolutely no instinct for like self-preservation over on the right or like keeping their own coalition together.
[00:39:01]  It's kind of interesting to watch.
[00:39:03]  But I'm sure that whole thing was rather unpleasant.
[00:39:05]  It's now spun into a debate about whether the Daily Wire is pro-free speech.
[00:39:11]  The accusation is you are until it comes to Israel.
[00:39:13]  How do you respond?
[00:39:15]  I mean, what I will say is that we have a wide variety of positions on Israel right now inside the Daily Wire.
[00:39:20]  Matt Walsh obviously is number one of the hosts at the Daily Wire.
[00:39:22]  He and I wildly disagree about what America's Israel policy should be.
[00:39:25]  Matt is much more isolationist.
[00:39:27]  He basically believes the United States has no real interests in the Middle East, and thus the United States should not be providing material support to anyone, including the state of Israel.
[00:39:36]  Matt obviously is well within the sort of group of hosts that we have here at the Daily Wire.
[00:39:42]  So clearly, whatever is going on is not about Israel specifically.
[00:39:45]  That's really all I have to say about it.
[00:39:46]  As far as the free speech of it, as I've said before, the Daily Wire is a publisher, not a platform.
[00:39:51]  I would never call for anyone to be ousted from an actual platform, X, YouTube.
[00:39:56]  Even people who are, I think, absolutely horrific human beings.
[00:40:00]  I've never called for any of them to be ousted.
[00:40:01]  In fact, I've called for them to have their accounts restored if they've been banned.
[00:40:04]  That's not the same thing when it comes to publishers.
[00:40:06]  Publishers obviously have to decide what sort of things they wish to pay for the publication of.
[00:40:11]  And when it comes to, you know, hosts and publishers, you know, parting ways, obviously, there'll be a non-meeting of the minds.
[00:40:18]  That's pretty much all I can say on that.
[00:40:20]  This is why I don't go into business with anybody else, Ben.
[00:40:23]  This is why I like to just be on my own little island here.
[00:40:27]  You know what I'm saying?
[00:40:29]  Well, you've done really well on that island.
[00:40:32]  Well, it's good to have partnerships.
[00:40:33]  Like, I love, I love working with the Daily Wire, and I have never found you guys anything other than pro-free speech and the defense of it doesn't mean you have to be in business, as you point out, with people no matter what they say.
[00:40:43]  And I think Candace will do fine on her own.
[00:40:45]  It wasn't a good match.
[00:40:47]  I, for one, applaud the separation for a number of reasons.
[00:40:51]  Okay, but moving on.
[00:40:52]  That's Candace.
[00:40:54]  You mentioned Lizzo a moment ago, and I would really like to talk about her.
[00:40:59]  She had such a good time with Joe Biden, she quit music.
[00:41:03]  She had such a delightful time spending time with Joe Biden, raising money for him that she's bailed from music altogether.
[00:41:10]  I don't know if we have a soundbite from her.
[00:41:12]  Here's a bit of her performance.
[00:41:13]  Okay, this is maybe her last performance ever in SOT6.
[00:41:18]  Radio City Music Hall!
[00:41:21]  We got three presidents in the panel tonight.
[00:41:25]  That sounds like a put-poop pot to me.
[00:41:28]  So everybody, put your hands.
[00:41:36]  Well, if you didn't like that, you're not alone because apparently she got trolled after the performance and has announced online she quits.
[00:41:43]  All she wanted to do was make people happy, Ben.
[00:41:46]  And she's sick and tired of being trolled.
[00:41:48]  It feels like the world doesn't want her.
[00:41:51]  So she's out.
[00:41:52]  Do we believe this?
[00:41:54]  No, not for not for five seconds.
[00:41:56]  I mean, I assume that at some point she's going to want to make money again.
[00:41:58]  And she does have a lot of fans.
[00:42:00]  I mean, to pretend that she's not a very popular artist is really silly.
[00:42:03]  So if she feels that the trollery is too much for her, so much so that she has to quit, I would suggest that that's cutting off her nose to despite her face, obviously.
[00:42:12]  But yeah, celebrities being head cases is nothing new.
[00:42:16]  You know, but to me, it's like, okay, so this is what she stated.
[00:42:21]  All I want is to make music and make people happy and help the world be a little better about than how I found it.
[00:42:25]  But I'm starting to feel like the world doesn't want me in it.
[00:42:28]  I'm constantly up against lies being told about me for clout and views, being the butt of every joke, of the joke every single time because how I look, my character being picked apart by people who don't know me and disrespecting my name.
[00:42:39]  I didn't sign up for this shit.
[00:42:41]  I quit.
[00:42:42]  So she has been accused in multiple lawsuits by dancers and people around her of being an abusive bully.
[00:42:48]  And that'll play out in the court system as it will for anybody who gets sued.
[00:42:51]  But to me, this is like, okay, I'm starting to feel like the world doesn't want me.
[00:42:56]  Why?
[00:42:57]  Because you get trolled.
[00:42:59]  Have you ever been trolled, Ben?
[00:43:00]  I don't know if you've ever been trolled by.
[00:43:05]  I mean, Ben's experience has been amazing with constant death threats and videos of people pretending to really hurt him.
[00:43:10]  I've seen them.
[00:43:11]  And frankly, so have I. I've been trolled by the president of the United States.
[00:43:14]  It happens kind of often, actually, to this day.
[00:43:17]  You have to put on your big girl pants and take it like a man or a woman.
[00:43:21]  So I really have to tell you, I have almost no patience for this kind of bitching and moaning from this woman who probably has well over $100 million at this point.
[00:43:31]  Why?
[00:43:31]  Because the vast majority of Americans freaking love her.
[00:43:35]  But because some people don't and some people are petty, she wants us to feel sorry for her.
[00:43:39]  Well, I don't.
[00:43:41]  There's also this routine that happens all the time now, which is you step in the arena and you say something provocative and then you get blowback for saying the provocative thing.
[00:43:48]  And then you're a victim because you received blowback for saying the provocative thing.
[00:43:51]  And you and I say provocative things fairly often and people get angry at us.
[00:43:55]  And that's just the nature of the business.
[00:43:56]  I mean, Lizzo took the position when she first kind of burst onto the scene that beauty is the same in all forms and that there was nothing particularly unhealthy about being extremely overweight, for example.
[00:44:07]  And so a lot of people were like, well, that's not true.
[00:44:09]  In fact, as sort of a role model, what you try to encourage young girls to do is to be healthy.
[00:44:14]  And it turns out that being, you know, 100 pounds overweight is not particularly healthy.
[00:44:18]  And she decided that she was going to make that an issue.
[00:44:20]  People didn't agree with her.
[00:44:21]  And then she got very upset with them because people are trolly online.
[00:44:24]  Yes, people are trolly online.

=== Rapino Inclusive Sports Critique (04:52) ===

[00:44:25]  Yes, the world would be a nicer place if there weren't as much trolling online.
[00:44:29]  Is that a reason for people to have this sort of I am a victim style meltdown?
[00:44:33]  Not really.
[00:44:34]  I mean, has it ever occurred to you, Megan, that you were going to literally quit your entire industry because people were making fun of you and memeing you online?
[00:44:39]  I mean, that'd be, that'd be, I think, a strange take for you.
[00:44:42]  I mean, I would have been out long ago, long ago.
[00:44:45]  And then the other thing is like, you're at a presidential fundraiser.
[00:44:51]  What do you think is going to happen?
[00:44:54]  If you, a couple years back, I think it was Ashley Judd showed up to cheer for the Tennessee.
[00:45:01]  It was, I don't know if you call the volunteers, if the basketball team is called the Volves, but she was cheering for her team.
[00:45:06]  She's from Tennessee.
[00:45:08]  And she was like, the amount of vitriol I got online after posting a photo of myself.
[00:45:13]  Yes, that's sports.
[00:45:15]  People are divided.
[00:45:16]  You're in the middle of the game and you're rooting for one team and people are rooting for the other.
[00:45:19]  That's effectively what Lizzo did.
[00:45:22]  But because she's Lizzo, we're not supposed to criticize her.
[00:45:25]  You see, these Hollywood celebrities, they want their cake to eat it too as well, right?
[00:45:28]  Like I get to put my big toe into politics, but you don't get to criticize me for doing it.
[00:45:33]  Yeah, well, that's also the nature of online.
[00:45:35]  And this kind of ridiculous thing where people pretend that the online world doesn't exist, but then it really, really matters an awful, awful lot.
[00:45:41]  Let's be real about this.
[00:45:42]  I mean, that's what Twitter is.
[00:45:44]  Twitter is people dunking on each other all day long and being as mean to each other as humanly possible in ways they wouldn't in normal conversations.
[00:45:50]  If Lizzo wants to have a better life, what she should do is log off and go, you know, touch some grass or something.
[00:45:54]  But, you know, apparently that's not something that you want.
[00:45:56]  By the way, I advise everyone to do this.
[00:45:58]  Everyone should take X. Listen, I love Elon.
[00:46:01]  I think X is a great source of a lot of information.
[00:46:03]  Also, you should probably look at X a lot less often and your life will be significantly better for it.
[00:46:08]  And this, I think, is true for pretty much everything up to including Lizzo.
[00:46:11]  Yeah, I know.
[00:46:12]  I always get concerned when I see people who I really like having posted, you know, 200 posts over the weekend.
[00:46:17]  It's like, wait, what are you doing?
[00:46:19]  And the weekend, especially is the time you should be with your family and being outside, not being on X all day.
[00:46:24]  Okay, let's talk about Megan Rapino before you go, because she's decided that it was time to shame U.S. women soccer star Corbin Albert.
[00:46:35]  Okay, Corbin Albert made the mistake, Ben, of liking some posts that have been described as anti-LGBTQ.
[00:46:43]  They don't seem anti-LGBTQ at all to me.
[00:46:47]  They seem to be sort of promoting the idea that there might be some unfairness with men playing in women's sports.
[00:46:54]  And Megan Rapino decided to respond by saying online, for people who want to hide behind the phrase, my beliefs, I would just ask one question.
[00:47:04]  Are you making any type of space safer, more inclusive, more whole, any semblance of better Or bringing the best out in anyone, she wrote, because if you aren't, all you believe in is hate.
[00:47:18]  And kids are literally killing themselves because of this hate.
[00:47:22]  Wake the F up.
[00:47:24]  And now Corbin Albert has apologized for liking and sharing the quote offensive, insensitive, and hurtful pose.
[00:47:32]  She was immature.
[00:47:33]  She was disrespectful.
[00:47:34]  And she's really disappointed in herself.
[00:47:36]  Everyone should feel safe and respected everywhere and on all playing fields.
[00:47:41]  Oh, just vomit, just bags of vomit.
[00:47:44]  I mean, when Megan Rapino said, I love this kind of crap from people like Megan Rapino.
[00:47:48]  Everyone should feel safe and respected.
[00:47:50]  And if you disagree with me, I'll murder you.
[00:47:53]  That's legitimately the angle.
[00:47:55]  It's like, oh my gosh, all views, everyone should feel so welcomed and tolerated except for you because you said the.
[00:48:02]  Megan Rapino is the worst person.
[00:48:03]  She's just the worst person.
[00:48:04]  And how people don't find her utterly insufferable.
[00:48:08]  Again, the only reason that people pay attention to Megan Rapino is because she was a soccer star in a league, in a female sport that people watch once every four years.
[00:48:17]  And then we all have to pretend that we care about for the other three years, 364 days.
[00:48:22]  And like, come on.
[00:48:24]  Everyone's a victim, including Megan Rapino, such a victim that she gets to lord it over you and destroy your life if you like the wrong tweet that says something, for example, about biblical values.
[00:48:33]  You do that.
[00:48:34]  And then you must be brought, you must be forced to atone on bended knee in front of Megan Rapino.
[00:48:39]  People are so obnoxious.
[00:48:41]  I know.
[00:48:41]  And when did, quote, more inclusive become universally good, right?
[00:48:48]  More inclusive in women's sports of men is not a good thing.
[00:48:52]  And guess what?
[00:48:53]  Speaking about safe spaces, it genuinely isn't one if we become quote more inclusive in this way in our sports.
[00:49:00]  So to you, Megan Rapino, Ben Shapiro, thank you, sir.
[00:49:04]  The divided states of Biden, a great documentary over the Daily Wire.
[00:49:08]  You'll love the Daily Wire in general, not just for that, but for my new cartoon, which is coming out over there.
[00:49:13]  Check it out.
[00:49:13]  All the best, Ben.

=== RFK Jr Poll Snapshot (14:55) ===

[00:49:18]  We have just over seven months to go before election day, and many on the left are touting some new polling showing President Joe Biden is gaining some ground on former President Donald Trump in the critical swing states.
[00:49:32]  But should we believe the headlines and are they relevant seven months out?
[00:49:37]  We've been looking at polling long, far longer than these last seven months.
[00:49:43]  So I think they're interesting, no matter who's leading.
[00:49:45]  And that brings us to today's guest, Robert Cahaley is the founder and chief pollster for the Trafalgar Group.
[00:49:52]  Robert, great to have you.
[00:49:53]  Welcome back to the show.
[00:49:55]  Hey, Daniel, it's awesome to be here.
[00:49:58]  And you do such a great show.
[00:50:01]  And so I'm just honored to participate in it.
[00:50:04]  Oh, thank you very much.
[00:50:05]  All right.
[00:50:05]  So you're going to help us make sense of these numbers because last week, last Tuesday, we got the latest round of polling from Morning Consult and Bloomberg.
[00:50:15]  And that round of polling showed things a lot tighter than we thought they were in the swing states, or at least than it had been.
[00:50:24]  It showed that Biden was still trailing Trump overall among all voters in the seven battleground states, likely voters, that is, and that's important, but that he had tightened things.
[00:50:34]  He had tightened things in most of the states.
[00:50:37]  Wisconsin now, Biden leading Trump by one.
[00:50:41]  In February, Biden been trailing Trump by four.
[00:50:45]  Michigan and Pennsylvania now, the two men tied at 45.
[00:50:50]  In February, Trump was up two in Michigan.
[00:50:52]  Trump was up six in Pennsylvania.
[00:50:55]  Nevada now, Trump is now up by two, but he'd been up by six in February.
[00:51:01]  Arizona now, Trump ahead by five, but in February, he had been ahead by six.
[00:51:06]  North Carolina now, Trump ahead by six.
[00:51:08]  In February, he'd been up by nine.
[00:51:11]  And Georgia was a state that had good news for Trump in that polling where Trump expanded his lead from six to seven points.
[00:51:19]  So this got some Trump supporters a little worried that, you know, the Democratic machine is now kicking into gear.
[00:51:26]  And if those things keep tightening between now and November, they're feeling uncomfortable.
[00:51:31]  Should they be feeling uncomfortable?
[00:51:34]  Well, you know, the one thing about all these polls is that they are not representative of what's going to happen on election day.
[00:51:44]  They can't even begin to predict that.
[00:51:46]  What they can predict is kind of a snapshot of where the race is.
[00:51:52]  But also, you need to take with some perspective of always look at who's doing it and what their agenda is.
[00:52:02]  You know, I always fight this thing.
[00:52:05]  Well, you're Republican, so your polls lean Republican.
[00:52:10]  All right.
[00:52:10]  Well, let's just say you accept that.
[00:52:13]  So is it not also fair to say that left-leaning universities and media outlets polls will lead left?
[00:52:22]  What I had been saying earlier was I felt like that they had created a situation where Biden was doing very, very bad as kind of a kind of push him out the door.
[00:52:39]  And then as soon as Biden gave the state of the union and they realized they were stuck with him, I said, you watch all these things are going to improve.
[00:52:49]  And it's, you know, on our podcast, which is called Polling Plus, that Matt Towery and I host together.
[00:52:57]  And we talk every week about what's going on.
[00:53:00]  And this is literally something we've been predicting that they had Trump artificially high trying to move Biden out the door and that they're going to tighten it all up now.
[00:53:11]  So, you know, you just got to look at the agendas involved and the track records of the people doing the polls.
[00:53:20]  So, I mean, that does matter because especially, you know, I'll take my hat off to the polls like us that put our stuff out there within a couple weeks of the election so that we can be rated by the different services.
[00:53:37]  Now, some of these guys will talk all summer and all fall, but you just wait.
[00:53:44]  Last few weeks, they'll go dead silent because they don't want to be held accountable for what they've been saying.
[00:53:50]  And so, you know, when it comes to things like Emerson and New York Times, those guys like us stick their neck out there and put those polls in public and are judged on them.
[00:54:06]  And, you know, each year have good years or bad years.
[00:54:10]  But, you know, there's a lot of these.
[00:54:13]  This is an example of one that you probably won't hear a thing from in the last three weeks.
[00:54:18]  Oh, that's so interesting.
[00:54:19]  Okay.
[00:54:19]  I want to pay attention to that now.
[00:54:22]  You guys did a poll for us, which we appreciate.
[00:54:24]  Thank you very much.
[00:54:25]  Just to take a temperature at the national level between these two men and beyond, because you included some third-party candidates.
[00:54:32]  What'd you find?
[00:54:35]  Oh, well, what we found is that kind of what we've been seeing at other places is we had Trump at a three-point lead, and then we have Kennedy and Kennedy.
[00:54:50]  I think it was just a little over five.
[00:54:51]  Like I said, that poll is about two hours old.
[00:54:54]  So I haven't even had a lot of chance to study.
[00:54:56]  I have it in front of me.
[00:54:57]  I have it in front of me.
[00:54:58]  So what it says is showing Trump, you're right, about three points up over Biden, three and a half, three and a half, 43.1 to Biden at 39.8.
[00:55:08]  This is likely voters.
[00:55:09]  RFK at 11.4, which is just amazing that he's at 11.4.
[00:55:14]  It's like well, and I think that's just banned from even participating in the public conversation two years ago, and now he's polling third in this race.
[00:55:22]  Cornell West at 1.7, Jill Stein 0.8, and Undecided 3.1%.
[00:55:28]  Go ahead.
[00:55:29]  Well, he got a big boost of earned media when named a running mate.
[00:55:35]  And so we've seen across the board among some very credible polls of Kennedy making those kind of numbers and me over 10%.
[00:55:47]  And it literally was a little surprising to me that he did that.
[00:55:52]  But, you know, there was a significant amount of earned media that came with that.
[00:55:58]  And so I expected there'll be a bump.
[00:56:00]  I think he may settle back down a little bit, but I think there's definitely a bump based on all that earned media.
[00:56:07]  Well, this is why we're going to see an all-out assault against RFKJ over the next seven months by the Biden campaign, which I think accurately deduces he's a much bigger threat to Joe Biden than he is to Trump, and they need him to be eliminated.
[00:56:19]  They keep reminding us, well, the Kennedy family doesn't like him.
[00:56:23]  Okay.
[00:56:23]  All right.
[00:56:24]  I mean, I think the independents who are saying, I'm not voting Dem are not that persuaded by the Kennedy lore.
[00:56:31]  People, the Democrats need to come to terms with the fact that not everybody remembers the 1960s as well as Joe Biden does.
[00:56:39]  That is for sure.
[00:56:41]  You know, one of the things, and this is what I've been pointing out for about a year and a half, is the difference between 20, and now I'm hearing everybody else say the same thing.
[00:56:52]  The difference between 2016 and 2020 was Jill Stein.
[00:56:57]  Jill Stein's margin in every state was larger than Trump's margin of victory.
[00:57:03]  So third-party candidates coming.
[00:57:05]  That's amazing.
[00:57:06]  Can you say that again?
[00:57:07]  Say that again.
[00:57:08]  Jill Stein's margin, the votes that she got in those swing states, like Michigan, like Wisconsin, was larger than Trump's margin of victory.
[00:57:24]  And so without Jill Stein, there's no guarantee that that happens that way.
[00:57:30]  So, you know, what you have, when it was a two-person race, you have people who are just like, well, I don't like, there's a certain amount of people who say, well, I don't like either one, but hold their nose and vote for Biden.
[00:57:46]  And in 2020, they did that one because he had a reputation of being a little more of a moderate, can work with everybody Democrat.
[00:57:56]  And that is the way he ran his primary race.
[00:58:00]  And that's frankly why he won.
[00:58:02]  Now, he has not governed that way.
[00:58:05]  But so a lot, you know, a lot of people who really weren't crazy about one, even some disaffected Republicans just said, well, I'll just vote for Biden.
[00:58:17]  Well, now, when there's another choice, when the people who don't really like Trump or Biden don't have to hold their nose and pick one, and they can vote for anybody else, those numbers come right off Biden because they were ending up with Biden last time.
[00:58:37]  And so it doesn't really matter who it is.
[00:58:41]  Anybody that has any kind of media and name recognition is going to pull from Biden.
[00:58:48]  Add to that that he probably Kennedy was pulling a little bit from Trump in the beginning, but as soon as he named that running mate, it was almost a signal to Republicans that this is not somebody you can support.
[00:59:04]  So if you're a conservative Republican, who's not crazy about Trump and very well, Kennedy, that running mate just can miss you.
[00:59:13]  Nah, you can't do that because she is not in the, she is very much on the left.
[00:59:23]  Well, that's, I mean, just to play it out, that's if Trump dies, right?
[00:59:28]  Or if RFKJ dies, if RFKJ dies, right?
[00:59:30]  Like that's when you have to worry about her.
[00:59:32]  You have to worry about him for picking her too, for sure.
[00:59:34]  Why did he pick her?
[00:59:35]  She's pretty far left.
[00:59:36]  Why would he do that if he's more in the middle?
[00:59:38]  But I do think you're right.
[00:59:39]  I think RFKJ definitely hurts Biden more than he hurts Trump.
[00:59:43]  But he's there as a threat to Trump because if Trump goes too far off the rails in the next seven months, he is an acceptable option to some Republicans who aren't diehard conservatives.
[00:59:55]  Like if you just don't like Trump and you like him more than Biden, but he really pisses you off for whatever reason over the next seven months, you say, I just can't do it.
[01:00:03]  I just can't.
[01:00:03]  I can't vote for the guy.
[01:00:04]  There's RFKJ who said all the right things on COVID in the minds of a lot of the Trump base, who is against the military industrial complex.
[01:00:14]  This guy, there's a lot of appealing about him.
[01:00:17]  So Trump has to watch it a little because RFKJ is in the race in my let me ask you about, let me ask you about this piece by my old pal Doug Schoen, a Fox News lifelong Democratic operative, good guy, and Carly Cooperman co-authors at In the Hill.
[01:00:34]  The title is Opinion, is a Biden comeback quietly underway.
[01:00:39]  He says, unless you're deeply immersed in politics, you likely missed a major development over the last three weeks.
[01:00:44]  It's dated today, by the way.
[01:00:46]  Since his State of the Union speech, President Joe Biden has seen a marked reversal of his fortunes.
[01:00:52]  Since Biden addressed the nation in early March, polling shows he's gaining ground.
[01:00:56]  Trump now leads Biden by only one percentage point in the real clear politics polling average.
[01:01:02]  That's Trump's smallest lead since January.
[01:01:05]  And he goes through some of them.
[01:01:06]  In the Quinnipiac poll released last week, Biden led by three points, led, that is, by three points, bringing the total to 12 national polls now showing Biden leading Trump since the state of the union.
[01:01:19]  Moreover, the balance is not being seen just in national polls, but also battleground states that will determine the winner.
[01:01:25]  In Wisconsin, Biden now leads Trump, a five-point swing in Biden's favor since February.
[01:01:31]  And he starts to go through those polls from Bloomberg Morning Consult that I just went through with the audience.
[01:01:38]  It is really amazing how much air that one poll has got.
[01:01:43]  It's elevating.
[01:01:46]  Well, I mean, then the thing is, because there's not a lot of state polls going on right now.
[01:01:52]  And so, you know, they throw this out and there's just red meat.
[01:01:58]  Well, yes, but it's also interesting because Biden's kind of seemed close to dead.
[01:02:06]  And there is like a little sign of life here.
[01:02:09]  I personally am having some difficulty believing that this amazing state of the union that we did not see is the reason for this.
[01:02:19]  Your explanation is the first one I've heard that makes sense.
[01:02:24]  Oh, I think it's completely artificial.
[01:02:27]  And it was like, just like in the, let me give you an example.
[01:02:30]  In the primaries, and this was something Matt and I were saying before, you know, in December, they said, I was like, our polls and Matt's polls all show that much tighter.
[01:02:44]  And as you might know, we had the number one poll in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina of the people who polled, you know, the excellent candidates.
[01:02:55]  And what we said, we were always tighter than them.
[01:02:58]  And they had these artificial high numbers.
[01:03:00]  And they would say, why are they doing that?
[01:03:03]  But they're doing that so on election night, they can go, well, Trump may have won, but he certainly is not meeting expectations.
[01:03:12]  And sure enough, that's exactly what they did.
[01:03:15]  Except for he did exactly what we thought he would do.
[01:03:19]  I think, you know, it's kind of like in the stock market, like a pump and dump.
[01:03:23]  I mean, this is it, it's a lot of this is artificial.
[01:03:30]  So you're saying that, I mean, because like I, when I worked at Fox News, I really trusted our polling outlet.
[01:03:35]  People thought, oh, it's a Fox poll, people who were on the left.
[01:03:39]  No, no, but I always laughed at that.
[01:03:43]  Yes, to keep it very even.
[01:03:44]  So I never ever suspected them of weighting the poll unfairly.
[01:03:48]  They really wanted to get it right.
[01:03:50]  They didn't want to get it right for the Republican.
[01:03:53]  You know, it's like pushed on.
[01:03:55]  You're telling me there's a fair amount of pollsters out there who are more partisan who actually do put a little thumb on the scale.
[01:04:00]  And it could even be a thumb on the scale in favor of Trump because net net, they know it'll make Trump look bad, like he didn't hit expectations.
[01:04:08]  Or, oh, look, now Biden's closing this, you know, lead that we told you existed, but might not have.

=== Working Families Economy Gap (06:54) ===

[01:04:13]  Right.
[01:04:14]  And it's less of a thumb on the, it's just how you, you know, it's how you do it, how you weight it.
[01:04:20]  You don't have to do a lot to kind of move things where you want them if your goal is not to actually represent what you found.
[01:04:33]  And so we do see some of that.
[01:04:36]  And it's out there and there's no question it is.
[01:04:39]  And, you know, and there's some, there's some groups that I would never say that.
[01:04:47]  You know, there are groups I feel very like, I feel like Fox, if anything errors on the side of the fairs of the Democrats, and you're right, that they never are in the tank for Republicans.
[01:05:01]  Just straight up, but pretty much they're right down.
[01:05:04]  You know, I feel like that's, they do it, they do a good job.
[01:05:09]  New York Times, Siena, very good job.
[01:05:11]  Emerson College, I mean, just, I think Emerson College is just the best.
[01:05:18]  I mean, when it comes to all these universities, media polls, that's the one I put the most stock in.
[01:05:25]  They've been the most accurate over the last few years.
[01:05:28]  And I think very highly of the work.
[01:05:31]  And they don't mind sticking their neck out and putting something out there for election day.
[01:05:37]  Speaking of Fox News, they just concluded a poll of registered voters and did, it was conducted March 22 through 25 on the election.
[01:05:45]  It showed in a Biden versus Trump head-to-head, Trump is up 0.5.
[01:05:50]  He's up 14 points among independents.
[01:05:54]  In a five-way race, it showed Trump up 0.5, five points total.
[01:05:59]  And this one showed him up 3.5.
[01:06:01]  0.5 or five points.
[01:06:02]  Sorry, up five points, like five percentage points over Biden.
[01:06:07]  Trump, 43, Biden is 38.
[01:06:11]  And that's the five ways.
[01:06:12]  That's what Shannon Bray was going over Sunday.
[01:06:15]  Yeah, I remember that.
[01:06:16]  And in the head-to-head matchup, Trump with 50, Biden with 45.
[01:06:20]  But then one of the interesting things about the poll was they got into some other questions like, what was the biggest failure?
[01:06:29]  What has been biggest failure of the Biden administration?
[01:06:32]  Top response, immigration and border security.
[01:06:35]  By far, 31% said that.
[01:06:37]  Second, a distant second now is inflation and the economy at 17%.
[01:06:43]  Then the next question, what has been Biden's biggest accomplishment?
[01:06:47]  The number one answer was nothing.
[01:06:51]  He's made things worse.
[01:06:53]  38%.
[01:06:55]  That's kind of like Nikki Hagel losing none of the above.
[01:06:59]  That's not good.
[01:07:00]  That's not a good.
[01:07:01]  But I do think it's interesting now because there was a long time during Biden's presidency where the economy outranked everything.
[01:07:07]  Immigration, especially amongst Democrats, was not even two or three.
[01:07:11]  Now it is number one for both parties.
[01:07:15]  But let me ask you a question on that because what some believe, like my pal Doug Schoen, is that the people not caring as much about the economy as they did is why his poll numbers, Doug Shoan, believes, are rebounding.
[01:07:29]  Biden's first of all, they think that is a complete misnomer.
[01:07:39]  What I'll tell you, the reason I believe this is, is first, immigration touches everyone, whether it's, you know, the people coming to big cities and the rising crime, whether it's fentanyl, you know, it just touches everyone.
[01:08:03]  There's no community that feels immune from immigration.
[01:08:07]  However, you know, we've been talking about the fact that there seem to be kind of two justice systems.
[01:08:13]  Well, there's also two economies out there.
[01:08:15]  You know, if you work for the government or you work for an industry that is now kind of a Biden favorite, you know, whether it's alternative energies or any great.
[01:08:33]  But the working families are going to the grocery store and putting on the credit cards, and that has not changed.
[01:08:42]  And credit card debt is an all-time high.
[01:08:45]  Defaults that are all time high, car rates, the car repossessions all time high.
[01:08:53]  These are things that tell you where the real economy is.
[01:08:56]  You know, an average person will tell you something is wrong.
[01:09:00]  Everybody can tell you about a store or restaurant they've been to, they can't find anyone to work, or how they had to wait an extra hour for an Uber because there's not enough people driving.
[01:09:15]  There is a complete, there's so many people who are not participating in this economy.
[01:09:24]  And, you know, like I said, there's two economies: those who are in these industries that are funded, or those who are getting paid by the government or some kind of government assistance, they feel one way about things and about the government and about the economy.
[01:09:44]  But, you know, average working families feel completely differently.
[01:09:48]  And if they want to go all the way to this election thinking that everything's fine with the economy, they're going to get a shock.
[01:09:56]  And that explains a lot of working families, a significant amount of Hispanics and African Americans and young people all fall into the people who are having trouble either finding work or making ends meet.
[01:10:16]  And that's why you told me, Robert, but I believe that's why the Biden's messaging, the Biden team's messaging to young people saying climate change, student loan quote forgiveness, which is a lie, and looking at blacks and Hispanics and saying, they demonize immigrants or they demonize black people.
[01:10:40]  They're racists.
[01:10:41]  You know, come with us.
[01:10:43]  We love DEI.
[01:10:44]  That's why none of that's working because all those groups are look at my wallet.
[01:10:52]  Exactly.
[01:10:54]  And the thing is, that is, These are all the people who are affected by this economy and this crazy inflation.
[01:11:03]  You know, when you, when, when you, it, it pranks gonna break your heart.

=== Black Vote Economic Reality (08:06) ===

[01:11:08]  When you, you know, I, one of the grocery stores I go to is lots of different people from different backgrounds.
[01:11:17]  And I, I mean, just to watch people, you know, lady put out some cash and say, well, this is all I have.
[01:11:23]  Can you put the difference on this credit card?
[01:11:25]  And if it doesn't work, can you use this one?
[01:11:28]  I mean, that's sad.
[01:11:31]  And that is the real world right now.
[01:11:33]  And these people are paying like 30% interest on the stupid credit cards.
[01:11:38]  Yep, that's right.
[01:11:40]  Where do you live?
[01:11:42]  Well, I live kind of in two places.
[01:11:45]  I have a residence in South Carolina, which is where I'm from and grew up.
[01:11:50]  And we're also headquartered in Atlanta.
[01:11:54]  So I burn up I 85 between the two every week.
[01:12:00]  Okay.
[01:12:01]  My husband and I have an ongoing debate about the grocery stores.
[01:12:05]  And he's in love with the Acme, the ACME, the Acme up by his own.
[01:12:09]  Well, he loves the Acme.
[01:12:10]  Doug has a love affair with the Acme.
[01:12:12]  I haven't really found one that I absolutely love.
[01:12:15]  Like Whole Foods is okay for some things, but it's kind of, I know why Doug doesn't like it and why a lot of people don't like it.
[01:12:20]  Has a bad parking lot where we are.
[01:12:22]  Anyway, I just wondered, but I'll tell you what, the best grocery store I've ever been in in my life is Wegmans in upstate New York.
[01:12:30]  It is absolutely beautiful.
[01:12:32]  They have such a wide range of like, they've got the fancy stuff if you want to do the Whole Foods or they and they have the more economical stuff if you're on a tighter budget.
[01:12:40]  Presentation is beautiful.
[01:12:41]  The aisles are wide.
[01:12:43]  That's what I really care about.
[01:12:44]  I don't like playing games of chicken when walking down the aisle.
[01:12:48]  I want to talk about the...
[01:12:49]  You know, in the South, we have Publix and Publix is in both the places I live.
[01:12:54]  And it feels like what you're describing of Wegmans.
[01:12:59]  It's it, you know, you got a choice.
[01:13:01]  You can buy the Publix or lower brand, or you can buy the most high-end stuff, you know, five different flavors of blueberry cheese.
[01:13:11]  I mean, whatever you want.
[01:13:12]  That's how it should be.
[01:13:13]  That's how it should be.
[01:13:14]  Because while I might want some of the organic fruit from the Whole Foods, generally I don't want to be surrounded by the people who shop there.
[01:13:19]  So it's a real conundrum.
[01:13:22]  Okay.
[01:13:23]  I got to talk to you about the black.
[01:13:25]  I'm going to let you go.
[01:13:27]  Clearly, Team Trump thinks that there's some vulnerability for Biden on the Black vote.
[01:13:33]  And clearly, Joe Biden sees it too, because even though they'll say the Black vote's never going Republican, and I don't even think Republicans are thinking it's going to go Republican, it's just about eating away at the numbers that normally go down.
[01:13:46]  Joe Biden released this ad he and Kamala Harris called Price, targeting black voters just two weeks ago.
[01:13:53]  Watch this, 25.
[01:13:55]  As bad as Trump was, his economy was worse, and Black America felt it the most.
[01:14:00]  He cut health insurance while giving tax breaks to the wealthy and big business.
[01:14:04]  He stoked racial violence, attacked voting rights, and if re-elected, vowed to be a dictator and, quote, get revenge.
[01:14:11]  We can't go back.
[01:14:13]  As president, I put money in pockets, creating millions of new jobs, and cap the cost of insulin at $35 a month.
[01:14:20]  There's a lot more to do, but we can do it together.
[01:14:24]  All right.
[01:14:24]  So there's Biden trying to appeal to Black voters.
[01:14:27]  And here's Trump doing the same.
[01:14:30]  Here's his version.
[01:14:32]  Biden's letting Mexican cartels pump drugs and fentanyl into our streets.
[01:14:36]  He's bussing rapists and murderers into our communities.
[01:14:39]  And the crooks in Congress are handing out our tax dollars to illegals.
[01:14:42]  Biden promised to help us, but his policies are making things worse.
[01:14:46]  But he doesn't care because he takes our votes for granted.
[01:14:49]  President Trump will protect our daughter's sports teams and stop the sexualization of our children.
[01:14:55]  Trump would declare war on the cartels and stop the flood of drugs and crime into our communities.
[01:15:01]  President Trump delivered for us before, and he'll do it again.
[01:15:07]  To the viewing audience, that was just a picture of Trump because it's a radio ad.
[01:15:11]  So, what do you make of it?
[01:15:13]  They're both obviously admitting that the black vote, at least in part, is in play, in particular, black men.
[01:15:19]  Though the latest polling that we were just talking about shows, let's see, in a head-to-head match, Biden versus Trump.
[01:15:27]  Let's see.
[01:15:28]  Biden has 71% of the Black vote, Trump 26, which people need to understand those numbers are like amazing for a Republican to get 26% of the Black vote in this polling.
[01:15:38]  And all the other people are going to be able to do it.
[01:15:39]  It is impossible for Biden to win.
[01:15:42]  It is impossible for Biden to win if that number stays.
[01:15:45]  Oh, that bad.
[01:15:48]  Well, I mean, and you know, obviously, you know, the Hispanic vote too.
[01:15:53]  But what you're seeing, I mean, first of all, good, good for the Black community for saying you cannot take us for granted.
[01:16:03]  We've been saying this for the longest time: is that the squeaky wheel gets the oil.
[01:16:09]  And I am so, it is so deserving that the whole idea of a monolith or, you know, what Trump said to the guy, you know, if you don't vote for me, you ain't black.
[01:16:25]  I mean, that's just ridiculous.
[01:16:28]  And that is offensive.
[01:16:30]  And this whole idea that you need to earn the vote is very important.
[01:16:38]  But, you know, we've been saying for the longest time, everybody keeps talking about, well, what is he going to do about suburban women?
[01:16:44]  What is he going to do about independence?
[01:16:46]  Well, Lindbank is very clear.
[01:16:48]  If Trump does over 25% for the Black community, over 40% for the Hispanic community, none of that other stuff matters.
[01:16:58]  The Biden coalition is destroyed and he cannot win.
[01:17:03]  Wow.
[01:17:03]  Is that possible?
[01:17:04]  Is this a mirage?
[01:17:07]  Well, I mean, these are both numbers that have been creeping up.
[01:17:11]  I mean, Trump did better with these groups in 2016 than Republicans used to do, then better even than what he did in 2016 and 2020.
[01:17:23]  And, you know, he's on record to do the best again.
[01:17:30]  I mean, you've got to go back to Richard Nixon in 1960 to get anywhere that a Republican has done better than what Trump is doing with these communities.
[01:17:40]  Why did Richard Nixon do so well with Black voters?
[01:17:44]  Well, it wasn't that he did so well, is that up until 1960, Black voters tended to be Republican.
[01:17:55]  Martin Luther King was a registered Republican.
[01:17:58]  I mean, frankly, you know, when you study it, Nixon did a little less than what had been happening in the past.
[01:18:07]  And, you know, the historical things that I read say that the fact that Kennedy called Martin Luther King when he was in jail and Nixon was vice president and could have really done something to help and didn't really kind of set the tone.
[01:18:30]  And then, you know, after 60, that then there started to be, once they realized that it was kind of going the other way, then they kind of put it in high gear and, you know, initiated what, you know, it's called the Southern Strategy.
[01:18:43]  But that was, you know, through those times, it was very much more likely that African-American voters would be voting Republican.
[01:18:54]  That this was kind of a switch that stuck from the 60s on.
[01:19:00]  Man, for 60 years.
[01:19:03]  And yet, here we are with one Republican candidate appealing to them and making the hard play and pointing out the things, the ways in which he believes his policies changed their lives.

=== Massey Poet Protest Language (07:38) ===

[01:19:14]  I got to run, Robert.
[01:19:15]  It's been a pleasure.
[01:19:16]  Thank you for doing the poll for us.
[01:19:18]  And thanks for coming on.
[01:19:20]  Hope to see you again.
[01:19:22]  Thank you.
[01:19:23]  And we look forward to it.
[01:19:24]  Thank you.
[01:19:25]  All the best.
[01:19:26]  Okay, coming up, our favorite poet, Joseph Massey, who's putting out a new book.
[01:19:32]  And dare I say, it is perfect for either your mom or your dad coming up this Mother's or Father's Day.
[01:19:39]  And I'll get into why I think that.
[01:19:41]  But as I was reading it, I was thinking, this is actually a totally beautiful gift.
[01:19:44]  And it's an unusual gift.
[01:19:46]  They won't be expecting it, right?
[01:19:48]  It's not a mug.
[01:19:49]  It's not a picture frame.
[01:19:51]  It's a gift of beauty and thoughtfulness and one that communicates your love, but like your consideration too.
[01:20:01]  Clearly, you'd have to put some thought into it.
[01:20:03]  And in doing all of that, you will also support Joseph, which is a mission that's near and dear to my own heart.
[01:20:08]  So he's up next.
[01:20:09]  You're going to love him.
[01:20:11]  I'm Megan Kelly, host of the Megan Kelly Show on SiriusXM.
[01:20:15]  It's your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations with the most interesting and important political, legal, and cultural figures today.
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[01:20:53]  Subscribe now, get your first three months for free.
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[01:21:02]  That's seriousxm.com slash MK Show and get three months free.
[01:21:07]  Offer details apply.
[01:21:14]  I want to turn our attention now to some poetry with our favorite poet, Joseph Massey.
[01:21:20]  The woke poetry world tried to cancel Joseph back in 2018.
[01:21:24]  To hear his full story, you can and should listen to him on this show in episode 298.
[01:21:31]  The bottom line is poetry people are mean.
[01:21:35]  They are an angry group.
[01:21:37]  It's amazing.
[01:21:38]  They're nasty.
[01:21:40]  Certainly they were to our friend Joseph.
[01:21:42]  But he came back.
[01:21:43]  He emerged victorious from that attempted cancellation and now publishes the most wonderful poems under his own imprint.
[01:21:51]  He's self-published and he's been doing very well with this.
[01:21:55]  He's not, you know, going to buy a private jet anytime soon, but he's supporting himself and he doesn't need those Cretans.
[01:22:01]  His new book, A Career Retrospective, which I'm very happy about since we weren't really paying that much attention to Joseph before, ironically, he got canceled, is called Decades Selected Poems, and it's out right now.
[01:22:15]  Joseph, welcome back to the show.
[01:22:16]  Thank you, Megan.
[01:22:17]  It's great to be here.
[01:22:19]  Okay, so how can everybody get the book?
[01:22:22]  On Amazon, Amazon offers the best deal for self-published authors in terms of royalties.
[01:22:29]  So that's the best, the best place to get it.
[01:22:32]  Okay, get it now.
[01:22:33]  Decades selected poems.
[01:22:35]  I feel strongly this would be a good gift for a mom or a dad coming.
[01:22:38]  You know, Mother's Day is in May.
[01:22:40]  Father's Day is in June.
[01:22:41]  They have enough time to get it.
[01:22:43]  Because as I said in the tease, your poetry makes me feel something, something other than confused, which is how I feel when I read the poetry of a lot of the people who now have turned on you.
[01:22:58]  Yeah.
[01:22:59]  Yeah.
[01:22:59]  Well, my poetry seeks to find some clarity in the world and to make things less confusing and to celebrate the mystery of being awake in the world and finding a certain kind of prayerful rhythm to just one's being present.
[01:23:23]  And I find that's something that's not, people don't engage in that enough now.
[01:23:28]  There are so many distractions and so many very toxic uses of language.
[01:23:36]  A good poem can, for lack of a better way of putting it, be a kind of palate cleanser.
[01:23:42]  And not to call my book a palate cleanser, but maybe in a way it is.
[01:23:47]  But it's also, I would hope, a good companion for someone who wants to engage in language that is not being used to sell them something or to manipulate them in some kind of horribly negative way or to tribalize them more than they already are.
[01:24:07]  I really aim for, and this is a very romantic notion, but I aim for a certain kind of purity in my work.
[01:24:14]  I feel like I've complained before that when you scroll X, sometimes you inadvertently get exposed to like teenage child beatdowns or some sort of animal abuse.
[01:24:27]  And it's awful.
[01:24:28]  You don't want to be exposed to that just, you know, willy-nilly while you're just getting your morning news feed.
[01:24:32]  Your tweets, your substack, your poetry are the opposite of that.
[01:24:37]  You come across a Joseph Massey thoughtful tweet, a post now, it's called, or your poems and you think, oh, this is exactly what my brain and soul and spirit need.
[01:24:48]  Just like a moment, a beautiful photograph, because you're an amazing photographer, too, or like a pause with some words to capture something we all feel when we see this particular site out on the street, but we have no words to get there.
[01:25:02]  We don't know exactly how we feel until we read the Joseph Massey take on it.
[01:25:06]  That's what I love about, especially your connection to nature.
[01:25:10]  Oh, thanks so much.
[01:25:12]  Yeah.
[01:25:12]  Yeah.
[01:25:12]  I consider my presence on X, I consider it to be kind of like a protest against the modern world and where it's heading.
[01:25:22]  I know that I'm usually not posting things that are going to be most engaging to the algorithm, but that's kind of the point.
[01:25:34]  And it's part of the pleasure of using a platform like that is being essentially disruptive with content that is not inherently disruptive at all.
[01:25:49]  I hate seeing those videos as well, especially kids being bullied.
[01:25:53]  It makes me physically sick.
[01:25:56]  And there's more and more of that on X because that's what gets the views.
[01:26:01]  But yeah, I will continue to continue staging my one-man protest against toxicity on social media.
[01:26:13]  Well, that's one of the beauties of having been thrown into it, right?
[01:26:18]  Having been thrown to swim in the stew of toxicity is you hate it in a particularly vicious way.
[01:26:27]  And you can either channel that into bitterness and awfulness or you can channel it into beauty and light like you've done.
[01:26:33]  Again, we'll just want to keep reminding the audience.
[01:26:36]  First of all, if you want to follow Joseph on Twitter, he's at or ex now at J Massey with an E, M-A-S-S-E-Y poet at J Massey Poet.
[01:26:44]  The book is called Decades Selected Poems, Decades Selected Poems.
[01:26:48]  If you don't mind, I'm just going to read them part of one because there's so many to choose from.

=== Winter Childhood Nature Beauty (04:11) ===

[01:26:53]  I'm like, I don't even know how, like, when I was looking at them, I'm like, I said, I don't know how I'm going to choose.
[01:26:59]  But this is just from Prologue, previously unpublished long poem.
[01:27:04]  And it's got a few different sections.
[01:27:05]  And I'm, if you don't mind, Joseph, I'm going to read the part about snow.
[01:27:08]  Not at all.
[01:27:09]  Not at all.
[01:27:10]  As a former Syracuse, New York girl and Albany, I love snow.
[01:27:15]  It reads as follows.
[01:27:17]  Snow in slow streaks animates a skeletal tree, quiet enough now to hear the heavy flakes landing on a pile of leaves.
[01:27:26]  Into a vortex of dead leaves, vivid red and yellow, the day evaporates.
[01:27:32]  On the other side of an impassable patch of woods, cut through by a creek, I see a steeple and the cross caught up in fog, a patch of moss on a stone wall, like a lantern lit with a last light.
[01:27:46]  At Empire's End, I watch sparrows rip apart the bread thrown across a lawn.
[01:27:52]  Then I'll keep going.
[01:27:53]  And there's sub five, first Sunday of Advent.
[01:27:57]  Inexplicably, the scent of jasmine threads the night air, cold air, closer now to winter than the depths of fall.
[01:28:05]  Nothing's in bloom but a dumpster overflowing and a few chimneys.
[01:28:09]  It must be the wood smoke that thins into imagined jasmine.
[01:28:13]  Walking home, streetlights dim, I see as far as I can think.
[01:28:18]  And here the season begins in the dark, waiting for the word to emerge, like the amber glow in a window at the end of the road.
[01:28:30]  That just takes me right back.
[01:28:33]  No, what you wrote is beautiful.
[01:28:34]  It just takes me right back to so many moments of my childhood, Joseph.
[01:28:39]  You know, when you're a kid, you're, if you're doing it right, you're outdoors all the time.
[01:28:45]  And all these words you wrote, you take them in through your senses, your eyes and your ears and your sense of smell and the feeling on your skin.
[01:28:54]  And they're in there.
[01:28:56]  They're in there to this day, all these years later, but you lose connection.
[01:28:59]  You don't have the words to describe them.
[01:29:01]  And then you read the words and like smelling a scent 40 years later that brings back the thing immediately.
[01:29:08]  These words bring back the experience.
[01:29:11]  And it's what I absolutely love about your writing.
[01:29:15]  So what is it?
[01:29:16]  Why?
[01:29:16]  How did you get this connection to nature?
[01:29:18]  Like, are you, were you always an outdoorsy guy?
[01:29:23]  No, I did not grow up in areas that were nothing but nature, but they were always adjacent to nature.
[01:29:33]  I grew up my early childhood outside of Philadelphia, and I loved playing in the creeks and the little patches of woods that were probably, you know, the creeks were most likely polluted, but I was surrounded by refineries, oil refineries, and things like that.
[01:29:52]  But I think what always struck me from a young age was how nature is so indomitable.
[01:29:58]  And despite being as a young child in a landscape full of refineries and factories and pollution, you could see and feel it in the air.
[01:30:09]  Nature still was always bounding forward.
[01:30:12]  And there was an inherent beauty to that.
[01:30:15]  I didn't have these particular thoughts as a kid, but it stuck with me.
[01:30:19]  And I did live for 12 years on the coast of Humboldt County, California, one of the most geographically beautiful places I've ever lived in.
[01:30:29]  And that kind of those poems are throughout decades.
[01:30:35]  And most of them are from books that have been taken out of print by publishers that just ghosted me after I was canceled.
[01:30:44]  So it's good to have that work back in print.
[01:30:47]  Yeah, good for all of us.
[01:30:49]  That one image, walking home, streetlights dim, I see as far as I can think.
[01:30:57]  And here the season begins in the dark, waiting for the word to emerge like the amber glow in a window at the end of the road.

=== Jesus Fridge Art Reclaim (06:03) ===

[01:31:04]  I remember a time when I was just 12, which is my daughter's age now, in Albany, New York.
[01:31:11]  It was a frigid winter as they all are and were, especially, you know, some odd years ago back in 1983.
[01:31:19]  And it was that.
[01:31:20]  It was like independence.
[01:31:23]  The night was falling.
[01:31:24]  I was walking on my own.
[01:31:26]  The snow was coming down.
[01:31:29]  And all those feelings of like, I'm on my own.
[01:31:32]  I'm on the cusp of, you know, not exactly adulthood, but, you know, getting there and womanhood.
[01:31:41]  And somebody else could have said this is dangerous, but I'm out here and I'm connected with God and with nature.
[01:31:47]  And yes, hopefully the word will come and, you know, shepherd me through this next phase of life.
[01:31:53]  It's just, it's so, everything that you think about resonates with me.
[01:31:58]  Now, I do want to ask you how you are doing because you've moved into a new apartment.
[01:32:04]  You've got Jarvis, your cat.
[01:32:07]  And hard up, when I met you, you were basically in the basement.
[01:32:11]  I think that's where your Substack name came from.
[01:32:13]  Not basically.
[01:32:13]  I was in the basement.
[01:32:15]  You were.
[01:32:15]  And now you're moving up.
[01:32:17]  You were not a rich man, but you literally moved up in the world.
[01:32:21]  Did you not?
[01:32:21]  It seems like things are going a bit better now.
[01:32:25]  They're going much, much better.
[01:32:27]  Certainly thanks to being on your show and my social media following growing.
[01:32:35]  I've been able to sell books and substack subscriptions that have helped me move from the basement to a second floor apartment with, you know, livable conditions.
[01:32:49]  I was not living in a very nice place.
[01:32:52]  I mean, it was, well, I'll just leave it there.
[01:32:56]  And so life has gotten so much better.
[01:32:58]  And I hope anyone out there who's being canceled or has been canceled, you can come back.
[01:33:04]  It takes a lot of work, especially if you're an artist, but you can do it yourself and you can reclaim the audience you lost.
[01:33:14]  All the tools are there for us, for artists, if they want to break free from any kind of mainstream structure of how people generally become successful in the literary world.
[01:33:26]  It's obsolete now.
[01:33:29]  Yeah, you can if people support you, if you get the word out.
[01:33:34]  And that's why I really urge the audience to support Joseph.
[01:33:37]  Please, please, please.
[01:33:38]  The book is Decades Selected Poems, a Career Retrospective, and it's by Joseph Massey.
[01:33:45]  You can get it on Amazon.
[01:33:46]  Get it now.
[01:33:47]  And wouldn't it be a thing if we drove it right to the top of Amazon's list?
[01:33:50]  And dare I even pause it, maybe even the New York Times, where all your snooty, bitchy poetry friends would eat their hats to see you rise again to the top.
[01:34:01]  Before we go, I've got to ask you about some of those terrible people.
[01:34:05]  I saw you posted something about one of their poems lately, which is a lovely little diddy called The Jesus Fridge, which is, I guess, pushed by the Academy of American Poets talking about some fridge, as far as I can tell, that didn't work.
[01:34:20]  And then the light came back on like Jesus and writes as follows, the collision of the mundane and mechanical with the long-haired and the sanctimonious.
[01:34:32]  This is a George Floyd moment for both Israelis and Palestinians.
[01:34:36]  What?
[01:34:37]  Wait.
[01:34:39]  I've got questions about the real poetry world.
[01:34:42]  So maybe the Academy of American Poets and you needed a divide, Joseph.
[01:34:46]  It doesn't seem like that was ever destined to work out.
[01:34:49]  I'm glad they completely deleted all of my work that they published over the years, and I'm so glad they did, because they've turned into nothing but a political arm for the just the totally toxic woke stuff that's taken over the art world.
[01:35:06]  And it's totally exemplified in The Jesus Fridge, which is one of the worst poems I've ever read.
[01:35:12]  And it's written by a professor who I think teaches creative writing and is an editor of a once esteemed press, I think Pitt Press.
[01:35:23]  Yeah.
[01:35:23]  And it's just, and the poem was published on Good Friday by this organization that just received $5.7 million from the Mellon Foundation to publish crap like that that is more about the political agenda.
[01:35:39]  And I think absolutely about offending Christians.
[01:35:43]  These are very nasty people who no longer care about the art, but care about the political jab that they can make with poetry.
[01:35:55]  And that's a pretty perverse thing.
[01:35:58]  Yeah, this guy goes on to say, a George Floyd moment for both Americans who sympathize with Israel and those who sympathize with Palestinians.
[01:36:06]  It's a holy fuck moment for anyone who cares about human life.
[01:36:10]  Upstairs, the bathtub is filling with blood.
[01:36:12]  Goes on.
[01:36:12]  I mean, this is fine.
[01:36:14]  They have no problem with Jeffrey McDaniel.
[01:36:16]  But you, they've got a problem with because your relationship with your ex ended badly and she decided to go just full bore against you publicly.
[01:36:24]  And there's no amount of penance.
[01:36:26]  That was 18.
[01:36:27]  So you can never go back.
[01:36:29]  You remain scrubbed and canceled.
[01:36:31]  There's no redemption in the haughty world of poetry, which is where all of us come in because we are collectively giving them our long and elegant middle fingers because we're on Team Joseph Massey.
[01:36:44]  Okay.
[01:36:45]  Don't forget.
[01:36:46]  It's called Decades Selected Poems available now.
[01:36:49]  I'm going to be going there and buying a bunch myself.
[01:36:52]  And you should subscribe to his sub stack at poetrydispatches.com and support his work there.
[01:36:58]  All the best to you, my friend.
[01:36:59]  Thanks.
[01:37:00]  We'll see you all tomorrow.
[01:37:03]  Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show.
[01:37:05]  No BS, no agenda, and no