Megan Kelly exposes anti-Semitic terror in Boulder, linking Mohamed Salomon's attack to media bias and open border failures that endanger communities. The discussion critiques sanctuary city protections while contrasting Republican pragmatism with Democratic red tape, citing Jamie Dimon's warnings on wage stagnation and ineffective green initiatives. As polling reveals a leadership gap favoring Republicans, the episode highlights declining ratings for MSNBC and CNN due to poor coverage of Biden's health and controversial figures like Elon Musk. Finally, the show analyzes a Broadway civil war where Patty Lapone faced backlash for microaggressions yet escaped consequences for past inflammatory remarks about the Trump administration, underscoring shifting industry standards. [Automatically generated summary]
Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, live on SiriusXM Channel 111 every weekday at noon east.
Hey, everyone, I'm Megan Kelly.
Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show and happy Monday.
Gosh, there's a lot.
There's a lot to go over.
Is it every Monday?
I don't know.
It's this Monday, there's a lot to go over, including this horrific story.
It just keeps happening.
This one out of Colorado.
Elderly women and men, one a Holocaust survivor, set on fire in an attempt to burn them to death in a vile anti-Semitic terror attack.
Have you checked in on your Jewish friends?
I can't imagine what it was like for them to go to synagogue this past weekend.
I mean, this keeps happening and it doesn't change the national conversation and it's not dominating news coverage the way a mass shooting would, the way a single attack by a white person on a single black person would.
It's just kind of like, ah, anyway.
Zero calls, in fact, for a national conversation to take place in legacy media.
They don't see the pattern.
And let's face it, their sympathies for some weird reason are entirely with the Hamas defenders.
It's not even the top story right now on the New York Times website.
I'm sorry, was there another terror attack someplace that I missed?
Maybe I missed it.
Was it the horrific gang violence with these six illegals who killed a black woman?
Is the New York Times leading up?
No, they don't give a shit about that either because it's not white people who did it.
But we'll get to it.
In fact, in response to what happened in Colorado, where they were openly trying to rally support for the hostages that are still in the custody of Hamas, and the perpetrator was out there yelling, end Zionists and death to these Jews.
We're supposed to wait to call it terror.
Like he's out there free, free Palestine and Zionists and threatening the children openly.
But, you know, it may have just been some sort of civil disobedience.
Maybe he didn't like his taxes.
I don't remember him calling for that.
I don't see anything about taxes or anything other than the evil Zionists in what he was saying.
So to me, it seems pretty clear.
And thank God to the Trump administration, it seems clear too.
We've had absolute moral clarity from Kash Patel and Dan Bongino, no matter how cowardly the locals seem to be.
And by the way, Jared Polis, while he didn't call it a terrorist attack, called it an act of terror, which at least is closer.
I'm not sure what's wrong with the local cops.
To top it all off, the suspect in this case, of course, Cherry on top of the Sunday is here illegally.
Of course he is.
And he came here.
Wait for it during the Biden administration.
Now you're starting to sense why the media is not in love with the story.
It's got everything.
The attack happened yesterday around 3.30 p.m. in Boulder.
Since November of 2023, this group of mostly elderly residents, they've been holding a weekly gathering to show solidarity with the Israeli hostages.
And by the way, American hostages too, being held captive by Hamas in Gaza.
One witness telling MSNBC the suspect might have been posing as a gardener doing yard work before he began his attack.
I saw him holding them and looking like he was about to throw it at people and they looked exactly like what I would think would be a Molotov cocktail.
There's also a big tank behind him with like a chemical sprayer and he had initially an orange vest on.
So I had the same impression that somebody else had mentioned earlier that he was posing as someone who was like a gardener or something, and he was lighting people on fire while spraying gasoline on them.
Cause that's what it, I mean, gasoline is what it smelled like.
I thought it initially was alcohol.
But I assume it was gasoline, which again spinged the pants off of some of these other women and the shirt off of one of the women that I can't really, frankly, I can't imagine.
You can hear him overcome with emotion.
According to the NBC affiliate in Denver, eight people ages 52 to 88 were injured at least one seriously in the attack.
88.
88.
By my calculation, that means the person was born in the what, like 1936 around there.
Think about that.
Think of what that person has lived through.
I mean, I told you that this, this, at least one, I don't know how many 88-year-olds there were, but at least one of them is a woman and a Holocaust refugee who fled from Europe to escape the Nazis.
Think of what that woman has seen in the course of her life.
And now at nearly 90, she's burned in America by a Jew hater, by an anti-Zionist.
What are we coming to?
How does that happen?
On the streets of Boulder, of course, one of our most liberal cities.
I mean, the guy, not for nothing, is like setting people on fire in front of a pride flag.
In this image here, you see one of the victims.
Good Samaritans are surrounding her, trying to pour water on her.
Oh, her body next to it is what looks like an Israeli flag.
In front of her, you see a flyer with the face of a hostage and a U.S. flag lying on the ground.
She was out there to remind people that there are hostages who are suffering.
And she was made to suffer herself.
The eyewitness also describing the injuries that the victims suffered.
This is hard to listen to, but we must in order to understand exactly what this man did.
One man probably, if I had to guess, was probably in his like 50s or 60s, just kind of in shock and figuring out what he could do to make himself more comfortable.
I mean, his leg from ankle or foot all the way up to his buttock was melted, his skin was melted basically off or shaved off his leg.
Sorry.
Sorry, because I've talked about this a bunch in the last couple of hours and I'm not getting soaked up again as I did when I was there.
So there were some deep cuts in a bunch of these people's legs, probably an inch, inch in diameter with blood coming out of them.
This other woman had burns all over her hands, ankles, feet, elbows.
They looked stunned, confused.
This is just so wrong.
The suspect was caught on camera.
The video was widely shared on social media.
You almost couldn't believe your eyes in watching it.
It was, I mean, I sent it to my team, like, is this it?
This is, this happened?
This guy?
He's still out there, still threatening, still holding what appear to be bottles that are about to become Molotov cocktails, which is basically like a bottle of alcohol or gasoline with some sort of a starter inside of it, like a rag that will catch on fire and then they light it.
I mean, honestly, we just saw this in the Diddy case.
There were testimony.
There was testimony about how this rapper, Kid Cuddy, his Porsche was firebombed by a Molotov cocktail.
And the fire chief was on stand explaining exactly how it's done and how that one didn't go off to the extent it could have because they used a silk rag instead of, you know, sort of your bargain basement rag.
And the silk, I guess, was less flammable, but it's disturbingly easy for anyone to make one.
And apparently this guy made many because when you're going to see him on this, this tape we're about to play for you, he's already unleashed the carnage.
This is after he's hurt the people.
And what you see here, he's threatening more.
He's got more bottles that he could potentially throw.
And people seem to be coming, maybe they're just new passersby, seem to be coming to grips with the fact that this is a very dangerous man and he means business and he should not be approached.
He cannot be subdued and get anywhere within the reach of those bottles and you could be the next victim.
He's shouting, it's hard to hear at points, but he is shouting, how many people have you killed?
And Zionists, Palestine is free and they are killers.
Watch.
FBI Investigates Juvenile Suspect00:15:10
He's shirtless.
Not here.
Has to end service.
Not here, folks.
He was wearing an orange suit or something on the head.
He's making multiple promises.
If you are fighting...
That's what he's got right here.
Here's what we know now about the suspect.
His name is Mohamed Salomon.
He's 45.
He came to the U.S. from Egypt in 2022 on a non-immigrant visa.
He was supposed to leave the U.S. six months later, but he never did.
According to Fox's Bill Melusion, about one month after he overstayed his visa, the Biden administration gave him a work authorization to remain in the country until March 2025.
March came and went of this year, and he remained once again illegally in this country.
Stephen Miller, President Trump's deputy chief of staff, said it best on X, writing, quote, no more hostile migration.
Suicidal migration must be fully reversed.
FBI Director Kash Patel wasted no time calling it a terror attack on X because he has eyes and ears.
And a few minutes later, FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino followed up, also calling it terror.
Colorado's Democratic governor, again, as I mentioned, called it an act of terror.
It's not a particularly controversial thing to say, but Boulder's police chief, nearly three hours after the attack and after that video emerged on social media, still wasn't sure whether we could call it terror and really wasn't sure what the motive was.
So I've been in contact with our local FBI multiple times.
We are in contact with them here.
We are not calling it a terror attack at this point.
Again, it's way too early to speculate motive.
You know, I know there's a lot out there on social media, but I ask people just to give us a little bit of patience while we work through a really complex scene.
And of course, that was all some in the national media needed in order to try to downplay this event.
Listen to this person on CNN.
Her name is Juliet Kayam.
She's CNN's law enforcement analyst.
They're using that term very loosely.
She worked for the Department of Homeland Security during the Obama administration.
That makes the FBI look so juvenile.
Like, why are you getting ahead of the police chief who says, I don't know what this is?
It sounds maybe it is what we all think it is, but maybe it's not.
And he has no incentive to get it wrong.
So we're going to take a step back, not be responsive to tweets by two heads of the FBI who don't have a long history in local law enforcement.
And we will wait.
You're an idiot.
And hope it isn't what we all worry it is.
And if it is, then there'll be an investigation.
But that was, that's like nothing I'd ever seen before.
And until we know that the victims were members of that organ, of the Jewish event, we don't have the nexus.
And I will believe the Denver Police Chief that they do not have that nexus now.
And if they do, I will be the first one out here saying that that is a hate crime.
But until we do, we all need to not follow the FBI's tweets.
You're an idiot.
You're a partisan hack idiot.
It's juvenile to state what everyone can easily see and hear for themselves.
Okay.
It was death to Zionists shouting, they are killers.
How many children have you killed?
On and on.
Death to Zionists.
It seems pretty on the nose.
And let's see, did he target a meeting of the NAACP so that we're kind of confused on the motive?
No, he targeted a march that has been going on weekly now for years that is in support of the Israeli and American hostages being held by Hamas.
Seems kind of on the nose.
I wouldn't call it juvenile to respond with, this was a terror attack.
Joining me now, the EJs, Emily Jashinsky, who is the Washington correspondent for Unheard, and Eliana Johnson, who's the editor-in-chief of the Washington Free Beacon.
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Ladies, welcome back.
This is just infuriating.
And the, you know, her, she's so pompous in delivering it, Eliana.
Like, I've never seen anything so juvenile.
And these two are idiots.
So don't follow their lead.
We should just trust the local guy in Boulder like he's got something better up his sleeve.
Like we're unable to understand what death to Zionists mean from way over here in New York and Connecticut and D.C., where Dan and Cash are.
Well, it's amazing.
I mean, just start with what is a terror attack.
It is the targeting of civilians to achieve political aims or to push a government in a particular political direction.
And all of us, like with Joe Biden's decline, could see very quickly after this event transpired on the internet videos of this man shouting his political motives, which were death to Zionists, free Palestine.
So it was very clear, as you were saying, that this was an act of terror, as the FBI described it.
And I'm not sure where the rule came from that you need to trust the local authorities over the over the national authorities.
I don't know.
It's a very similar attention.
It's not convenient, though.
It kicks in when the victims are Jewish.
And no, I think that's the end of my list.
That's when it kicks in.
I mean, but I will say the press last night was pretty quick to pick up on the guys out there chanting death to Zionists and, you know, kill all the Jews, basically.
And the media in reports in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere is saying the motive has yet to be determined.
Like, yeah, we may never know why the guy did this.
You may never know.
Same, by the way, a couple of weeks ago when that young couple was gunned down outside of the Jewish professionals event and shouted free Palestine.
And we got the same.
You know, police are still trying to discover, you know, what the guy's motive was.
It's total mystery.
And we got the same after they firebombed the governor's mansion, Emily, in Pennsylvania, a Jewish governor.
And once again, the guy was shouting anti-Semitic things and saying, he was saying clearly he was firebombing the governor's mansion because he was upset about Josh Shapiro's stance on Israel.
Like only when it comes to Israel and Jews is the media really confused.
Like we got to slow roll this, not sure what the motivation actually was.
It's plain as the nose on your face.
Why do we need months of investigation when the person is saying, please believe me, I'm upset about these quote Zionists?
It's happened in cases of radical Islamists as well.
You suddenly get a pause from the media and there has to be a steep period of reflection before we know what happens.
And in this case, I mean, the video circulated immediately, immediately.
And I checked the timestamp of that CNN video that just rolled with the analyst.
It was like 6 p.m. East Coast time.
Give me a break.
The video had been everywhere.
That was somebody who was blinded by their deep hatred of Kash Patel and Dan Bongino, who's looking at any excuse to call them juvenile, basically.
And to be honest, I have a big question for the police chief, which is why for the local law enforcement, which is why in the hell is that man walking around without a shirt on, not being, first of all, you're not protecting people who are marching for the hostages.
It's a politically charged environment.
They do it every week.
Secondly, why is that guy not being arrested?
Why is there so much subdued?
Yeah, there's, I mean, I would say, you know, if there were able-bodied men in the crowd, why aren't they tackling him to the ground?
But why is he walking around for such a long period of time?
Why are people in a politically charged atmosphere not being protected?
And then why for the federal government is a guy who is overstaying his visa being allowed to walk the streets like this?
And obviously, you know, you have to, there's so many people that came into the country under the Biden administration.
It takes time to track people down and to find people.
But this is just, I mean, if you're a taxpayer in Boulder, my God, how infuriating.
Yeah.
I mean, look what they're making the federal government go through to deport actual alleged killers and drug dealers and wife beaters and traffickers.
This guy who just overstayed the visa and hates Jews, like he's going to be down the list.
We've got more terrible fish to fry before we get to this guy.
But under Joe Biden, they were all welcome.
That's fine.
It's an open door policy.
Welcome.
Or is AutoPen, one of them really wanted all these terrible, terrible people in our country.
And now they are.
Here is former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe reacting to the news the other day or yesterday.
Watch.
This is the sort of thing that the FBI really can help out a local police department with, providing manpower, technology, and resources to do that sort of work.
That's what the FBI does.
We don't step in and take over and draw conclusions five minutes after the attack about what happened.
We reach out to the local authorities.
We provide people and we offer assistance in any way that we can.
The Bureau is there to help the first responders.
Thank you so much to both of you.
One thing we know for sure, you know, certainly thinking about these victims and their families, a truly horrific thing that has happened to them has to be awaiting.
So no correction by the anchor.
She doesn't care.
She's totally fine with what the panelists said.
He was on with that Juliet Kayam.
The FBI has no role in designating something a terror attack, Eliana.
That really they're just there in a supportive role and should let the locals label something terror that's terror.
Well, to take a step back, you mentioned these two other attacks, Megan, starting in April with the firebombing of Governor Josh Shapiro's mansion in Pennsylvania by an assailant who said that he did this to free Palestine.
And then a couple weeks ago, the young couple gunned down in the middle of Washington, D.C.
And then yesterday, this incident in Boulder, Colorado.
We do appear to have an epidemic of political violence linked to this particular cause.
And that would seem, given that it's happening, playing out across the country and people are getting killed, maimed, hurt, this would seem to be a topic of particular interest for federal authorities.
This is a real issue now.
Across the state lines.
Yeah.
Not only that, but it's like you look back at, you know, Emily raises the issue of radical Islam.
Well, when we saw ISIS-inspired attacks popping up across America in various states, that wasn't just a local issue for the folks down in Orlando to deal with, for example.
Of course, the FBI was involved.
They needed, I mean, Joe Biden's FBI that both of these two defended and one of whom was part of it wanted to investigate fucking parents at school board meetings, Emily, for going over their time when they had the microphones to object to some of the COVID lockdowns.
That is not an exaggeration that it was literally one of the incidents that was cited by the FBI to justify its interference in these school board meetings.
So it's only now that we see a guy burning 88-year-olds saying exactly why he did it that they're saying, you know, a bit of caution.
Let's just let the locals take the lead.
Well, and also, I mean, Andy McCabe, give me a break.
The FBI was surveilling parishes that were doing Latin mass like within the last five years.
And he's defended the FBI the entire time.
And also, the FBI is not being asked to convict anybody of being a terrorist, just to say that we are investigating terrorism when you immediately have a video of somebody explicitly saying this is political.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with saying we are investigating terrorism.
This looks like terrorism.
So to actually take issue with Kash Patel and Dan Bongino for like going and saying that they're investigating somebody is plain as day.
The guy came out there and said that.
Do they have any indications that he was being forced to say that or that he said that for some reason other than that?
It's his sincerely held belief because he was shouting it shirtless in the streets of Boulder while he was committing violence.
I mean, it's just so stupid.
It's such a silly, silly thing to say on TV.
It's just they'll, the left-wing press will run.
They'll use that word terror.
Six Charged in Murder Plot00:06:49
if it's a white on black crime.
They will.
They'll be quick to inflame all of the rhetoric around the crime and have absolutely no compunction about doing it.
But when we know it's staring us in the face, they won't say it.
They won't do it.
They won't call it a hate crime unless those are the stats.
Right now, I mean, I don't know why this isn't the lead on virtually every paper in the country.
This is a reading here from the New York Post, published this morning.
The headline, six migrants charged in South Carolina moms murder detailed their crime in eerie text messages just the beginning.
Six illegal immigrants, the headline says migrants, we're talking about illegals, six of them, ages 13 through 21 have been charged in connection with the South Carolina mothers, quote, random murder earlier this month, and they allegedly texted each other about the crime afterward.
The Lancaster County Sheriff's Office down there located the victim, Larisha Sherelle Thompson, 40 years old, deceased with a gunshot wound behind the wheel of her vehicle in Lancaster, which is about an hour south of Charlotte, North Carolina.
It happened on May 12th that they announced the arrest of, I'm not even going to try to say these names, but there was a 21-year-old, an 18-year-old, a 17-year-old, and three juveniles ages 13, 14, and 15 in connection with her death.
Here are three of them.
They're illegals.
They are here unlawfully committing crimes against American mothers, including this 40-year-old.
They said the sixth district deputy solicitor, Melissa McGinnis, again, quoting here from the Post, New York Post, said all six suspects charged admitted to robbing a car during a May 14th hearing, as first reported by the Rock Hill Herald.
In text messages allegedly exchanged between them after the murder, they used phrases, mission fail.
And this is just the beginning.
The text messages have been cited in open court and cite a complete lack of remorse by the defendants, said the Attorney General Charlie Condon.
The evidence indicates a premeditated plan.
After the murder was accomplished, there was no remorse whatsoever or any regret expressed by any of them for murdering this innocent lady.
So they killed her because I don't know if they wanted her car or they wanted what was in her car.
And then they realized that the car was locked and seemed to be like, oh, shit, our plan went awry.
Her car is locked.
She's dead.
And now we can't get what we want.
The depravity is shocking.
I mean, it's shocking that six, not one, not two, not six individuals will partake in this crime.
And not one of them seems even remotely remorseful.
And I'm telling you, Emily, if those were six white American boys, same decedent, this story would be everywhere.
Yeah, that's right.
And the other part of this that's just makes me crazy is when the pro-immigrant groups, libertarian and left-wing, will always regurgitate.
And this is disputed, but they will always regurgitate their research that migrants to the country commit crimes at lower levels than the domestic population.
I don't even want to get into whether or not that thing is, whether or not that point is true.
The only response to that is like, let's take you at your word for it, immigration advocates, open borders advocates, say that is true.
You are bringing in desperate people who are destitute, do not have a lot of money, and are trying to find new ways to have money to buy all kinds of different things they need to survive, whether it's food or whether it's drugs, by the way.
And of course, every single act committed against an American citizen by somebody who is not supposed to be here is too damn many.
So it doesn't even take you at your word for it.
Why would we, we have enough problems.
Why do we need to deal with more problems caused by people who do not need to be here, who are desperate and are looking for different ways to survive because they don't have any money?
I mean, it's just, and a lot of them are in debt to cartels.
That's part of the last five years of mass immigration explosion is a lot of people come here, they pay cartels or they go into debt for cartels and then are forced to do all kinds of stuff to get that money back to pay off their debt so their relatives at home aren't killed so that something doesn't happen to them domestically.
Just such an insane, I mean, it's so maddening what that woman's family is going through.
She was on her way to a birthday party, what the community is going through.
I mean, this is a disaster.
She has two children, two kids, Eliana.
And these are six illegals from Honduras who were not only completely indifferent to the value of human life, but too fucking dumb to walk around the rest of us free and able to interact with us.
They are accused of attempting to enter her vehicle and then fleeing the scene upon realizing it was locked.
That's why they were texting, oh, mission fail.
Okay, so a young woman is dead and bleeding out in front of us.
And what a fail.
We couldn't get her car after all, because I guess this is how the illegals roll in Honduras.
I wouldn't know.
It's not a country to which I'd like to visit.
But they're running around amongst us.
And now the ringleader, we find out, is previously arrested just in 2023 for domestic violence, which is another theme we see emerging around these illegals who do not have the same standard of care when it comes to human life as your average American does.
And yet we are spending every day arguing about what kind of a hearing we need to give them before we kick their asses out of here.
Can I just point out one similarity between this case and the Solomon case?
We don't know all the facts of that case yet, but he's actually been charged with two counts of murder, even though nobody died in Denver.
And those two counts are now a mystery.
So we may learn, although we don't know, that he too had a prior law enforcement record and was let go.
We just don't know.
But that's what I'm seeing in reports that say they also, the reports also don't know what that's about.
Crime Issues on Campuses00:15:04
But Megan, I think you're hitting on why illegal immigration and these deportations have been such a potent issue for the president, because Americans read about cases like this.
And it's not, in this case, it's not one assailant, but six who are here illegally.
And the feeling is just outrage.
And When Democrats come with the fact that, well, actually on average, illegal immigrants commit less crime than the average citizen, that just doesn't resonate as a counter argument because the feeling is that any single act committed shouldn't have been because these people shouldn't have been in the country in the first place.
And it's why names like Lake and Riley become famous from coast to coast in this country and why the issue of immigration has become such a potent one for Donald Trump from 2016 through, you know, we're going on almost a decade.
Six months, it'll be a decade.
Because people are- That's exactly right.
So I have got to play for you, Chris Cuomo, who I'm sorry, he's trying to reinvent himself as like a more reasonable alternative to what he used to be.
He's the same.
He's the same.
He's just trying to build an audience now with some occasional false moments of understanding the right wing.
But this guy, I stood out there for President Trump and endorsed him the night before the election in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
And I said, because Trump was getting hit, because he said he would be a protector of women.
And the Chris Cuomos of the world, his side of the aisle, jumped all over Trump, saying he was being somehow sexist in saying that and bringing up his past history with women when it comes to affairs and alleged inappropriate exchanges sexually.
And I stood up there and said what I believed, which was that he really would be a protector of women.
And I mentioned Jocelyn Nungari, the little girl down in Texas, 12 years old, who was sexually assaulted and murdered by illegals.
And I mentioned Lake and Riley.
And I said, among many other examples, that these are reasons I believe President Trump will protect young women.
He won't allow the opening of the border and mass influx of dangerous illegals who will kill and rape the most vulnerable among us, our girls, our young, promising nursing students who only want to give back to communities like Lake and you know what Chris Cuomo did that night?
Not only did he not take the remarks, which went live on all the cable channels when I spoke at the Trump rally, he insisted News Nation not take the remarks.
And then he mocked the remarks.
He mocked them.
He mocked me.
Oh, I need President Trump to protect me.
As though it was something about me, as opposed to a 12-year-old little girl who is dead in Texas, or a girl who was 22 years old in Georgia, who was killed by an illegal who we already nabbed in New York and then released and then put on a federally taxpayer-funded plane down to Georgia where he could kill Lake and Riley.
I'm sick of this guy's bullshit.
So Chris Cuomo goes on the air Thursday on his podcast, which literally nobody's listening to other than my producers, and says this about Lake and Riley and illegal immigration.
Change how I feel about the parties.
They are the problem.
They are the root of this binary battle to the bottom.
The division is almost exclusively manufactured.
We are fighting over culture issues and controversies that are completely made up.
We divide this country over a single homicide of somebody.
And it's absolutely wrong.
What happened to Lake and Riley is horrible.
It's one too many.
Any way you want to look at it.
But it is also an artificial issue.
We have crime issues in this country.
Our homicide problem is not from illegal immigrants.
Okay.
Yeah, but there shouldn't be any.
There shouldn't be any of a lot of things that we haven't made a top priority.
The division is manufactured.
Oh, go ahead, Emily.
He can screw off because it's absolutely not fake.
If you look at the numbers of people who cross into this country with criminal backgrounds, that are not just people who have crossed the crime of crossing the country illegally and returning.
If you look at people with histories of violent crime who have gotten into this country, there is plenty to sustain significant concern for that broader narrative that there are significant numbers of criminals who have entered our border.
And if you talked, by the way, people who work in law enforcement, it's sort of obvious, right, that the open borders have been exploited by people who wish to do terror, people who wish to do great harm to the American people.
So there's an argument, right, that there are times that bad actors in the media will take an anecdote and blow it up into a national story.
One example is when you poll people in the past, when people have been polled and said how many unarmed black men are killed by police every year, because of the media coverage, people will wildly overestimate the actual number.
And so it's true that like media is very, very powerful.
But this is, by the way, on average, it's under 12, according to the Washington Post running tally of it.
It's 11, 12, maybe 15 at worst.
And they include unarmed people who are running down a police officer in a car, people who have a gun in the glove compartment.
You're still considered unarmed by the Washington Post numbers.
But in any event, it's a minuscule number of unarmed black men that are being shot by cops.
Keep going.
Right.
And no, the argument he's making is that people are blowing up isolated anecdotes into broader narratives.
And in this case, to say that these are isolated anecdotes is absolutely insane.
It's where you're actually going to get that number spiraling out of control because it falsely gives people a sense of security that they should not have, whether it's terrorism or robbery.
The thing that's driving me nuts about it, I'll stay with you on this, Emily.
The thing that's driving me fucking nuts about this point is there is no policy that allows cops to shoot unarmed black men.
This is not something that's being encouraged or blessed in any city in America.
But there is a policy in multiple cities and states across America.
It's called Sanctuary to allow illegals who commit additional crimes not to be turned over to the feds for deportation once they're in the crosshairs.
And maybe that's what's happening, Eliana, to this guy, Solomon, whatever his name is out in Colorado.
Maybe that's why the two murders just popped up because maybe he was arrested for something else and they didn't turn him over to the feds because they found he was an illegal and didn't want to see him deported by the big, bad, evil Trump administration.
But this is what happened to Lake and Riley, what happened to Jocelyn Ngari, what happened out in Colorado, what happened to this poor woman here happened because of a policy that Joe Biden put in place and the Democrats universally wanted Emily, which is to open the borders irrespective of not knowing Who the hell was coming in?
And defended repeatedly.
And I think it gets even worse when you consider that Democrats, part of them, were so, some of them were just so cowardly and so reflexively anti-Trump that even policies that looked like Obama era, you know, when he was called by the left the deporter in chief, even policies that looked like that, they had to be reflexively, aggressively against and to say not only were these, you know, by their phrases cruel, but they were also necessarily rooted in bigotry.
That is the reason that Joe Biden came into office, thought he was reading the mood of the electorate because it had been artificially, I guess, artificially been represented by the media, which was completely out to lunch.
Completely also in the same camp as many of those Democrats who were way too afraid to say anything that might make it look like they were agreeing with or empowering, enabling Donald Trump.
And it was that cowardice and stupidity and incompetence from the media and Democrats.
Democrats suddenly signed onto the Lake and Riley Act after Donald Trump won the election.
I mean, it's just galling.
They put themselves in this situation.
They put the American people in this situation because they were too afraid.
The media too, by the way, to repeatedly cover this story with the level of importance that it deserved.
Here's Eliana to your point that you just made.
I was on Bill Maher about three weeks before I did that thing with Trump.
I was on Bill Maher and we had a debate about illegal immigration.
And he raised the point you just raised about, you know, well, you'll see.
Watch.
Here it is.
Here's part of it.
Look, you want to know why I'm going to vote for him, notwithstanding what you said.
And I'll give you a couple of good reasons off the top of my head.
Number one, what's happened with illegal immigration?
I'm voting for him because I don't want any more Lake and Rileys.
I don't want any more Jocelyn Nungaros, the 12-year-old girl who was killed in Houston by two Venezuelan illegal immigrants who took her to a bridge and murdered her and threw her over the bridge.
And Americans have ever done that.
That's not the point.
We have to take the American.
We don't have to take it from Venezuelan illegals.
That's it.
100%.
But can I just say I think you guys are being a little unfair to Joe Biden, blaming this on him?
Not sure.
He actually made the decision after reading the Tappert Thompson book.
And, you know, so maybe we should, maybe, maybe we should say Ron Clain.
But anyway.
Yeah, exactly.
Dr. Klan.
It might be Dr. Jill.
We should really hold on the hook.
Yeah.
For these, for these open door immigration policies.
But you know what?
They, Bill Maher and Chris Cuomo and all of them, like keep on that argument, guys.
Keep, keep it up because it is a loser.
The American people aren't buying it and they're outraged by all of this stuff.
And by the way, I mean, Boulder is a sanctuary city, so we don't know the full story of Muhammad Sullivan, when he got there, why he was there, but they are reaping what they're sowing with this.
Yeah, exactly right.
Let me read you, Eliana, what just came in.
Trump just sent out a truth social about Boulder.
Yesterday's horrific attack in Boulder, Colorado will not be tolerated in the United States of America.
He came in through Biden's ridiculous open border policy, which has hurt our country so badly.
He must go out under Trump policy.
Acts of terrorism will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
This is yet another example of why we must keep our borders secure and deport illegal anti-American radicals from our homeland.
My heart goes out to the victims of this terrible tragedy and the great people of Boulder, Colorado.
It's interesting.
So Trump is coming in and going out on the illegal immigration aspect of this.
And that's obviously one of the main things.
Trump has also been amazing on trying to crack down on anti-Semitism where it exists on college campuses, which we haven't even talked to.
But I mean, there hasn't been Joe Biden did nothing.
He did nothing to try to stop the harassment of Jews on college campuses.
President Trump, who for some reason, American Jews still don't vote for him.
They still vote Democrat, even though he's done more than any sitting president for the Jewish people.
But he's out there.
He's been battling on that front.
He's been battling the illegal immigration front.
And you tell me, Eliana, what's going to happen now with these numbers?
Because Trump was winning on illegal immigration, both yes, on November 4th, but for virtually every day thereafter, up until very recently, where the numbers started to wobble a little, only a little.
But these kinds of cases are a stark reminder of the stakes, the stakes that this debate is about.
The open border policies, yes, but also the deportations.
Right.
And let me say dreaded words, which are, let me just make one point before I get to that, which is that there's a connection between what's happened on college campuses over the past, you know, since October 7th, 2023, and these events in our cities, which is that for a year and a half, we've seen lawlessness and chaos on our college campuses targeted at Jewish students, including acts of violence, the storming of buildings, the breaking of windows,
the breaking of laws without much consequence.
We've had police presence on campuses required, students arrested, and then they're brought into court and they're let off.
Virtually none of them have been sanctioned in any meaningful way.
And I think that sent a message to these political activists, in this case, students, but also some adult outside activists that they can target Jews and pro-Israel activists with impunity.
And that message has clearly been received by outsiders who are now taking that sort of behavior and targeting people.
In the case of the DC couple, these people were just out of college, 26 and 30 years old, and now older people.
But we see a direct line of political violence from our college campuses, more petty type violence, but extremely disruptive, where graduation ceremonies and in Columbia's case, the end of the school year was canceled to violence in American cities targeting political figures and civilians.
And that's because the message has been sent that you will pay no consequences.
And so I think it's incumbent now on the federal government to send the message that they're going to enforce laws and the perpetrators will pay consequences.
The Sanctuary City thing is huge.
Trump has been trying to press past it, Emily.
He'll send Tom Homan into any city.
And Tom Homan has been saying, you want to be a so-called sanctuary for illegals?
That's just, it's going to make it harder for us, but it's not going to stop us.
You know, it's going to make it more painful for your entire community when we get there because you're not going to cooperate.
It could get ugly.
You know, you're not going to like what you're going to see.
Well, they went to Martha's Vineyard, Martha's Vineyard, where Ron DeSantis sent a busload of illegal immigrants and they said, oh, fine, fine, fine.
And they shipped them out of there.
Inhumane Treatment of Immigrants00:02:57
And under, what, 48 hours?
It was like 30 hours, something like that, that they got rid of them.
And then you had these woke leftist women coming out saying, we missed them.
We're going to go visit them at the detention facility to which they had them shipped.
Oh, I'm sure you're really sad.
Well, now they're doing the same song and dance as the residents there are really sad.
They're super sad and angry that ICE had the nerve to come into their community and arrest 40 illegals.
Listen to this, SAC 25.
I think it could be any of us next.
Martha's Vineyard resident Jane Catch held a sign yesterday at the Vineyard Haven terminal warning visitors.
The island has a history of supporting people who are different, visiting immigrants.
Everyone in this country is entitled to due process, whether they have paperwork or they don't.
So they have a history of supporting the immigrants for like a good 24, 25 hours, Emily, until they become kind of annoying and start marring the coastline and then they have to go.
Well, the thing is, Megan, they didn't have room.
They did not have enough room.
There's much more room in New York City, here in Washington, D.C., you know, much less crowded places than Martha's Vineyard.
You know what?
Listen, is she right about due process?
Of course.
But in these cases, time after time, we see there's so much due process involved.
Not all of them.
There are some cases where I've had an issue with the way that the Trump administration has handled them.
But in many of these cases, the migrants have been given an abundance of process over all of this.
And then in the case of like Lake and Raleigh, for example, you have somebody who ends up reoffending.
And sanctuary cities, sanctuary jurisdictions are the least humane places in the country when it comes to immigration enforcement, because what you have is this desperate and tragic sort of subsection of society, the shadow society, where people get, they're incredibly desperate.
They are afraid, for example, to report cases of domestic abuse, which is something we've seen come up in these high-profile cases.
And they live in fear.
They live with uncertainty and precarity in some cases for years and years, in some cases for decades, which if we're just sticking on this from the perspective of the migrant communities is completely inhumane, even though the people who say that they're the most humane in the world, like I think her name was Jane in that clip, that's what they want to subject people to.
But secondly, for the taxpaying citizens that sustain the police forces, the law enforcement that then has to deal with this, that have to deal with the taxpaying citizens who have to deal with the housing increase, housing price increases, with all of the downstream, with paying for the social safety net, with paying for the money that goes to the NGOs.
I mean, it's inhumane across the board.
And we've been told for years to say that it's actually inhumane to oppose those policies.
It's insane.
It's insane.
And I think the lie has finally become apparent.
Democracy Chases Elon Musk00:15:26
Yeah, you're exactly right.
I think we, do we have time for SAT 26?
Let's play it.
This is from 2022, Martha's Vineyard.
The difficult challenges are we have to, at some point in time, they have to move somewhere else.
We cannot, we don't have the services to take care of 50 immigrants and 50 who certainly don't have housing.
We're in a housing crisis as we are on this island.
And so we don't, we can't house everyone here that lives here and works here.
We don't have housing for 50 more people.
But they need to stay.
But just not here, but they definitely need to stay.
That's the bottom line, Memily.
Oh, yeah, no, there's just not enough room.
There's not enough room.
Send them to Brooklyn where there's plenty of room.
Midtown, Manhattan, plenty of room.
We'll write them.
We will write them lovely messages.
We might even send a care package, but probably not because we're going to be a little busy out in the water.
Stand by.
The EJs are with us for the full show.
We love it when they're here.
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That's Cars with a K. Before we leave this topic, I just want to hit a couple of other things.
Jamie Dimon, the head of JP Morgan, was out there over the past couple of days.
It was Friday actually at the Reagan Library talking like a Republican.
Listen here.
We have to acknowledge the grievances that have put us in this position to start with, and they're real, okay?
Immigration, what the hell were we doing?
You know, the 20, the bottom 20% of our population, you know, their wages didn't go up for 20 years.
They're dying seven years younger.
You know, when administrations, you know, the Biden administration is giving all this money to EVs and cars and wasting a lot of money on green stuff, which isn't going to work and all that.
Do you think people in rural cities, do you think people in inner cities thought they were getting anything?
Do you think that those people think that the American government is fair and competent and that this was in their best interest?
Their schools don't work.
They're not getting the skills they need.
And you heard that just now.
So we've got to acknowledge these.
And I also call it blue tape because, you know, Republicans, you generally don't like red tape.
You understand the devastation of it.
But, you know, most Democrats, they love it.
They want more of it.
And they want to make it so confusing you can't even meet the rules.
So you get punished and fined afterwards.
Whoa, Eliana.
He sounds like, who's that guy?
Oh, Donald Trump.
That's who he sounds like.
Come in.
The water's warm, Jamie.
Right?
You know, it's not, it's not the first time, though, at the you recall, you may have covered, you probably covered it on your show, Megan, when he talked about coming back to the office from COVID and said, yes, seven freaking days a week.
Everybody needs to come back.
But frankly, I have to say, what he sounded like in that clip was simply speaking common sense.
And that's why I actually think Trump's message resonated with so many people.
And the Democrats' message of, I mean, they didn't really have a message on immigration at all, is why they lost the election.
And so many of their messages simply were out of touch with regular people.
I wouldn't say that what Jamie Dimon just said was some, you know, particularly Republican message that we need to have a sensible immigration policy and that helped the bottom 20%.
Yeah, he mentioned electric vehicles.
The Biden administration used billions of dollars, poured it into EVs, and then built five charging stations.
So nobody saw anything come of that money.
But I think, look, in their defense, they tried to solve that by ruining Tesla.
So you can't be so hard on them.
They came up with a solution to their own problem.
They would just destroy their least favorite EV company.
Totally.
Like people have voted with their feet on gas-powered cars for now and seem to be fairly happy with that.
And using the federal government to try and push them in a different direction, fecklessly, because they spent the money on nothing with the Green New Deal wasn't particularly effective.
So he's talking like basically a common sense business guy.
And that's actually the reason Republicans won, is what he said was sensible.
He's also keeping DEI and ESG programs at JPMorgan quietly in the background, which is also fairly amusing because I don't think he understands exactly how the trickle-down effect of that goes to making some of these problems a lot worse.
Right.
His bank has been part of the problem.
There is no question.
I know plenty of people at all these big banks and they talk to me.
They won't say it in front of a microphone, but they all talk to me and tell me exactly what's happening.
And JP Morgan is part of the problem when it comes to DEI and breaking the law, breaking the law.
It's illegal to hire or fire somebody based on the color of their skin.
It can't be a factor.
It can't be the factor.
And if you think your company is doing that, you should report them because it's illegal.
You should sue them.
Here is why all the issues we've been discussing and some outlined by Jamie Dimon there.
I think this latest poll by CNN, which we highlighted on AM update today, shows the following.
Among all Americans, the party that has strong leaders, only 16% of Americans say the Democrats have strong leaders.
16, 40% of Americans say the GOP has strong leaders.
The party that gets things done, only 19% say it's the Democrats.
Double that say it's the GOP.
Among Democrats only, just polling Democrats now, how many of you would describe your own party as having strong leaders?
32%.
To Republicans, how many of you would describe your party as having a strong leader?
82%.
Think of that.
82%.
There is a 50 percentage point difference between the two parties on strong leaders.
That means the Democrats have no one.
They have no one.
Party that gets things done.
Let's see.
Among Democrats, saying, does your party get things done?
Only 41% said, yes, my party gets things done.
Republicans, almost 80%, 77% say our party gets shit done.
We're good.
And independents seem unhappy with everybody, not surprisingly.
So this doesn't spell good news for Team Blue, Emily.
And no one is surprised to see this because they've been in complete disarray and just keep recirculating clips of Jasmine Crockett.
Yeah, that should do it.
Well, the one thing that Joe Biden and Donald Trump and the Biden allies and the Trump allies agree on is actually that Joe Biden was able to do a lot in a short span of time.
He had some signature legislative accomplishments.
That makes this even more of a disaster for Democrats when you think about the fact that they just passed several massive pieces of legislation, which I would argue contributed significantly to inflation.
But nevertheless, they are still very proud of that record.
So they passed these big bills.
This is massive spending, an industrial policy, basically.
And yet everyone's looking around and saying the Republicans are the ones that get things done.
I mean, that is an incredible disaster for Democrats because even if I disagree with them, they definitely did shit during the Biden administration.
Just a whole lot of it was fairly destructive.
So I can't, like, I mean, I don't understand how you, how you come out of those four years with these numbers.
That's horrible.
To the point Eliana was making later, you know, I maybe they're being too hard on Joe Biden because, you know, like, I'm not sure.
His auto pens seem to have been very strong.
His wife seems extremely strong, very unlikable, but very strong.
And I would say Joe Biden himself would take issue with him not being counted as a strong leader.
He was asked some questions at a Memorial Day event in Delaware.
First, there was someone who asked a question of him that he didn't like, but the woman he's about to respond to is not the reporter who asked the question he didn't like.
And yet he decided to berate some female reporter on Friday.
Watch.
I feel like everybody expects.
I do it every damn year.
Never forget what I came from.
That's why.
I don't, was he going to kiss her or was he yelling at her?
For the listening audience, he kind of bends down to get to the level of this female and like leans over right to her, like where I am with the microphone, like right to her to make his point.
And then in the second soundbite, ladies, he gets asked a generic question about his health and he threatens to beat up some people.
Watch.
There's also been a lot of discussion recently about your mental and physical capabilities while you were in office.
You can see that I'm mentally incompetent and I can't walk and I've been beat the hell out of both of them.
What?
I think he means Taffer and Thompson.
Not sure.
That was his effort to prove to us, Eliana, that he's all there.
Thoughts?
I mean, it's amazing that the response of Team Biden to the allegations in the book, but also to his failures on the public stage over the past four years are to continue putting him out there.
I mean, they went on, they put Biden on the view to pre-but the book where Dr. Jill had to finish his sentences and then he's out here.
I don't know exactly where he was.
And he said this, like this 82-year-old frail guy who was just diagnosed with stage four cancer is going to beat up two younger men.
I mean, it's like pathetic.
Granted, they are reporters.
They're friends.
He did say in this interview that he feels good and quote, all the folks are very optimistic.
The expectation is we're going to be able to beat this regarding his cancer diagnosis.
So that's good.
I mean, nobody wants to see him suffer with prostate cancer or certainly die before it's his time.
So good.
Glad to hear that.
Not sure what else is happening there, though.
The man, he would have been our president now if we had listened to the Democrats.
Like if Trump didn't take him down in that debate, and by taking him down, I mean just being quiet and letting him speak, he could be our president now.
I mean, it's truly terrifying.
Now, I touched on facetiously the Biden administration trying to ruin Elon.
And certainly the Democrats have been trying to ruin Elon since he signed up for Team Trump and joined the Trump administration as head of Doge.
And that's officially done now.
Doge is not done, but Elon's, you know, full-time work as a special government employee is now over on schedule.
You only get 130 days.
It can be renewed, by the way.
That's what they kept doing with Anita Dunn.
That's a way of getting around having to give your financial statements because when you work for the feds, you have to give all your financials.
But you can just keep renewing one of these special government employee things and you never have to renew them, Anita.
Anywho, he left and is going back to his many, many companies.
And here is how the folks over on MSNBC described his departure, SOT 29.
He was, he didn't just leave.
He's not just slipping out of Washington.
He was chased out of Washington by democracy, by people saying no, by people protesting so much around his cars and dealerships that he lost billions and billions of dollars by people raising their voices, by people filing lawsuits.
Adnan Girardias, who's also an NYU professor and MSNBC contributor, chased out of Washington by democracy, Emily.
Oh, that is so funny.
Actually, Elon Musk was a huge part of the Democratic get out the vote effort in November.
So I mean, that would have been a fun conversation to have on MSNBC as well.
But it's just funny.
I mean, like, there's actually some really interesting things that you can talk about when it comes to Elon Musk, but part of the like the Biden or I'm sorry, the Trump era, Trump 2.0 era attacks on the administration itself had just been to flatten Elon Musk into a caricature.
And I mean, they are celebrating now.
They say democracy when they just mean themselves.
Like anytime they're talking about elites, they say democracy.
Like it was chased out by democracy.
It was the people.
Yeah.
So that there is a great example of that that my team queued up, Eliana, of Nicole Wallace, not content to have a failing show on MSNBC, has now launched what's sure to be a failing podcast.
And her first big get was Rachel Maddow.
Okay, her nightly pal for the past 10 years or what have you over at that network.
And would you take a listen to these two navel gazers talking about their role in society?
Listen to this.
It's SOP 10.
A friend sent me a meme the other day.
It was like a Paddington meme, and it was the caption was, born to Dilly Dally, forced to fight fascists.
Really?
You had me at Dilly there.
The election was coming to an end, and the stories that we covered became so real.
And in my scary moments, like you were my lifeline and the person that I've always called.
And I feel now like we're doing the actual work and I feel a little less scared.
Cable News Ratings Collapse00:15:02
It's just kind of a reminder that like we've been talking about and worrying about the edge of the cliff for so long.
And so now we have experienced what the edge of the cliff is like and what it's like to be in midair.
And we are now in the canyon on the other side of the cliff and we are seeing what life is like there.
In the middle of a fascist takeover, what happens is there's a fascist takeover and you have to keep still doing the work.
Then you are a person who's fighting an existing fascist authoritarian government and not just warning about it.
Got it.
Born to Dilly Dally, but forced to fight fascists.
That's what they're up to.
It's too faithful.
I mean, that's probably the best guess she may get.
I mean, Rachel is the highest rated anchor on that network.
And I have a feeling it's downhill from here, but they sound, they seem to be in pretty good spirits for fighting a fascist takeover.
Maybe she can get Steve Schmidt and they can, since the show is called The Best People, they can talk about how they orchestrated a misogynistic takedown of Sarah Palin behind the scenes of the McCain campaign.
Since they're, this is a show about good people, virtuous people, I think that would be a great point.
Yeah, oh, I like that.
Or like the best people, maybe she'll book Doug Emhoff, you know, who her colleague at MSNBC interviewed and didn't see fit to raise the allegation made by a woman who had dated him from for a long time that he beat her.
You know, he denied it, but would have been something some might have considered newsworthy.
Is he one of the best people?
I don't know.
Maybe Kilmars.
Can we talk to them too?
I want to know how to get paid.
Like, I want to get paid like Rachel Maddow for fighting a fascist takeover one night a week.
Yeah.
It's a good time.
It's a good podcast appearance.
And then you can go out and you can rip your network to shreds talking about how that gig terrible they are when they cancel racist people like Joy Reed.
You can just lament how bad your network is while you're cashing their checks, not actually doing anything to it.
By the way, note to you guys, MSNBC's new primetime lineup, because Rachel, you know, she, she couldn't do that five day a week thing.
She couldn't fight the fascism five days a week.
It's a one day a week kind of job.
You know, it's just like, it's so exhausting.
Just that one hour took so much out of her.
So she, she couldn't, I'm sorry.
She just couldn't.
You know, it's just like, just like the guys at Normandy, some of them couldn't keep going past the actual beachhead.
They couldn't go up the hill.
That's her.
So now the lineup has been adjusted.
And Jen Saki is in there and failing, failing miserably.
Their new primetime lineup debuted May 5th.
And according to Media, it is, quote, failing to connect.
I agree with that term.
Overall for May, MSNBC dropped 41% in the demo, 34% in the total day numbers compared to May of last year.
In total viewers, the network was down, hold on, down 41% in the primetime demo.
Oh, 34% in the daytime demo.
In total viewers, the network was down 33% across all day and down a quarter, 24% in primetime.
MSNBC's total daytime demo viewership sank to 49,000 on average.
People, that's slashies.
Under 50,000 is slashies.
Trust me, I was in cable news for 17 years.
What you get is slashies when you read the ratings when you're under 50,000.
They don't even give you the number on the Nielsen numbers.
You just see slashies, which you know means you're a loser.
You could turn those two little lines in different directions and come up with loser.
So they're down to an average across the daytime of 49,000 and just 73,000 in the primetime.
They're not even breaking 100,000 in the key demo in primetime.
Let me just give you an example.
When Hemmer and I launched America's Newsroom in 2007, we were getting about 1.3 million in the overall and about 300 plus thousand in the key demo.
This is back 20 years ago, right?
20 years ago, we were getting about 300,000 in the key demo at 9 a.m.
And now here they are in prime time, not even breaking 100,000 in the prime time, my friends.
Her show is not even breaking a million in total viewers at 9 p.m.
I was at 9 p.m.
Trust me, it's a great place to go for ratings.
She can't even break a million.
That's unbelievable.
973,000 total viewers she's averaging since launch, which is almost, which is 46% less than the average that the people had been watching to see Maddow.
So Maddow does, she's beloved by those leftists and Saki is not.
Saki's number is actually even down 20% from that absolute moron, Alex Wagner, who as far as I can tell was literally only put there because she has a pleasant face.
20% down from Alex Wagner's average during the same period in 2024.
CNN Primetime, for what it's worth, moving to networks now, CNN Primetime dropped 18% in total viewers, 21% in the total demo year over year.
The CNN prime time average, prime time average.
Okay, now when I was there, we were like 4 million, 5 million, whatever, definitely 3 million.
They're pulling those numbers now under Trump.
CNN's primetime average, 426,000 viewers.
Holy shit.
That's terrible.
People are definitely going to get fired.
They're going to get salaries slashed.
You cannot continue to exist with these numbers.
Eliana, thoughts on whether it should.
Well, it's interesting.
You know, I was at Fox for a few years starting in 2008, and I remember the talk, that was the beginning of the Obama administration, being that it's really great to be in the opposition.
Now, fast forward to 2024, Fox's ratings are up anyway, though they're not in the opposition.
And what should be a boon for MSNBC and CNN being the opposition and CNN, of course, experienced this in 2016, their ratings are in the toilet.
And Jen Saki, by the way, was their big recruit out of the Biden White House.
She was supposed to be the primetime star and they got rid of Alex Wagner.
And it does look like their programming experiment has been a complete and utter failure in this regard.
And I think it's a combination of the cable news business collapsing because people just aren't watching television cable news anymore and just bad on interesting programming.
And it's hard to get beyond that.
Let me tell you, let me stay on CNN for one second, Emily, because CNN, Jake Tapper's been on this book tour.
He's everywhere.
I mean, he's gotten on every left-wing show that there is to get on because they're all interested in whitewashing their own complicity by pretending, I learned about it in this Jake Tapper book.
Ever since I learned about it in the book, I was totally on the Biden mental acuity story because I was shocked, shocked to read about it.
And then I realized I needed a report on it.
That's them.
Okay.
Tapper's show has been getting a ton of publicity and it has hit its lowest ratings in 10 years.
Its lowest rating since 2015, reports Fox's Brian Flood.
Despite all the buzz around his book and his intense publicity tour, his lowest rated month in a decade in May, he averaged 525,000 total viewers, which is, I guess, slightly above average for CNN.
And he shed 25% of his audience from the same period last year.
Fox News in their same period in this time slot is getting 3.3 million and he's getting 500,000.
MSNBC was getting 1 million.
And in the key demo, he's averaging under 100,000.
Again, only 95,000, which tells me no one's buying this.
He's not getting some surge of like this reporter's in on things.
He's in the know.
You know, with all due respect to Jake, like people are not buying it.
That's exactly right.
No, and I think that's a really important point.
Actually, these are beyond embarrassing numbers.
These are like stop showing up at cocktail party in Georgetown in the numbers.
But they're actually, but nobody will, right?
Because the only people that are still on that circuit are the people who have no humility.
And I think that's actually why Tapper, in order to sell this book, has come out with this total faux humility.
And he keeps using that word.
Yeah, because it's, I think, Glenn Greenwald said this on Tucker Show.
He was like, it's clearly coming from the crisis PR firm that just planted it in his brain to use the word humility.
And the reason is that is why CNN and MSNBC are currently getting their butts kicked by like progressive YouTubers and progressive ex-users, whatever it is, that are just bringing in podcasters that are bringing in still behind the right on some of this stuff, but bringing in more and more viewers.
It's because they, so many people realize that actually Rachel Maddow's coverage of Trump 1.0 and the law fair was bad.
Like it has aged really, really poorly.
MSNBC, CNN, their coverage of COVID has aged really, really poorly.
And it's just these sort of hardened inner cultural progressive circle.
It's just those people left, the people who are still like masking up, who are watching CNN and MSNBC and thinking like this is, yes, oh, it's so wonderful when Rachel Maddow and Nicole Wallace talk about fighting fascism, whatever it is.
People realize that even these networks that they were suddenly subscribing to and watching nightly like a Stephen Colbert over and over again during Trump 1.0, the coverage was bad.
And so they have no humility about it.
And now they're realizing, and of Biden, another good example.
And now they're realizing it and they're trying to pretend that they have some authenticity and humility, but they actually have none.
And that's really unappealing to viewers who like, you know, left or right, you just want to feel like you're getting decent information.
You don't feel like you're being lied to.
So do you feel like that with these guys?
You don't feel like you're being made dumber as a result of watching the show.
I would submit to you, Eliana, that the reason MSNBC is struggling so mightily is many, many instances just like this.
Watch.
He might misplace a word here and there, but you talk to him for hours at a time.
Is he slower?
Does he move slower?
Yeah, he's moved slower.
Is he stiffer?
Yeah, he's moved stiffer.
He's have trouble walking sometimes.
Yeah, so did FDR.
I've said it for years now.
He's cogent.
But I undersold him when I said he was cogent.
He's far beyond cogent.
In fact, I think he's better than he's ever been.
Start your tape right now because I'm about to tell you the truth.
And ask you if you can't handle the truth.
This version of Biden, intellectually, analytically, is the best Biden ever.
We got it to present.
That's enough.
That's the reason, Eliana.
Those examples Emily just gave and that, like, you don't survive that.
You just, you just don't.
I don't know.
I don't know, Megan.
I think you're assuming that these people are capable of embarrassment and that their audiences expect honesty.
Well, then why are their numbers down?
Even people judges saying they got COVID wrong.
New York Times.
Everyone's saying they got everything wrong, but I don't actually, I think there's not a lot of good news for Democrats.
No, but that's.
So I disagree.
I disagree.
I have been in the so-called opposition many years on Fox.
I was there for all of Obama.
I was a news anchor at Fox News for the entirety of Barack Obama's term.
Those were some lean years editorially.
He was beloved by much of the country.
He had very high approval ratings.
Republicans didn't absolutely love him.
And he did very controversial things that drew eyeballs at times like Obamacare.
But he was kind of boring a lot of the time.
And yet Fox News continued to stay number one because there's always something to talk about if they trust you and you know how to do good television.
And MSNBC has neither of those two things going for it.
Go ahead.
Yeah, I think, I think there's a lot to that.
At the same time, I just, I don't see any kind of course correction coming here.
I mean, this goes back to, look, Scarborough is like the only thing that network has going for it.
Where do they turn now?
And they've been wrong.
This is not just MSNBC.
This is the New York Times, the mainstream media writ large, and it's why alternative outlets are thriving.
They've been wrong on COVID.
They were wrong on the big Russia Gate story.
And they didn't cover at all Biden's decline.
And so they were wrong on the three biggest stories of the past five years, six years.
And it is pretty hard to survive when you're supposed to be in the business of giving people news.
Yeah, like facts, actual facts.
They were also wrong.
And by the way, like the responses, people are the people who most got things wrong are promoted.
There's no penalty.
No, no, no, no.
Rachel Maddox, you get $30 million a year for lying to her audience.
They were also wrong about Elon Musk doing a Nazi salute.
All of them in the left-wing press went with that.
MS, like all of them, every single print publication, we pulled it.
And that got so much attention when he made that gesture at the Trump rally, which was his hand on his heart and then motioning outward.
And they all said Nazi salute, Nazi salute.
And then what happened on Saturday was this.
Corey Booker Nazi Salute Scandal00:09:34
Corey Booker, beloved senator from New Jersey, went to the Dem convention there and gave his own Nazi salute.
Look at this.
It's exactly what Elon Musk did.
He puts his hand on his heart and gestures out to the crowd.
And no sane person thinks that Corey Booker actually did a Nazi salute.
We recognize it wasn't a Nazi salute.
And neither was Elon Musk's.
Neither one did a Nazi salute.
But one suffered non-stop coverage in the press about their Nazi salute and one did not.
I'll give you guys a guess, which one didn't get any of that nonsense rained down upon him.
I'm trying to find this in my thing.
Okay, here it is.
Now, we checked as of noon yesterday.
There was no coverage of Corey Booker's, quote, Nazi salute in the New York Times, in CNN, Washington Post, MSNBC, NPR, USA Today, Reuters, Axios Associated Press, Newsweek, or The Daily Beast.
Those last two only referenced it to point out that MAGA melts down over Corey Booker's quote Nazi salute.
That's the Daily Beast.
And Newsweek, MAGA accuses Democratic Senator Corey Booker of doing Nazi salute.
But let me just give you a contrast.
Those same publications I'm going to run through after Musk did literally the exact same gesture.
New York Times.
It looked a lot like the salute used in Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, CNN.
Let's see.
Aaron Burnett, our viewers are smart.
They can take a look at that, but it certainly was.
It's not something you typically see in an American political rally.
Let's put it that way.
Washington Post, Musk sparked controversy with a hand gesture resembling a Nazi salute.
MSNBC, Musk condemned for gesturing, for a gesture resembling a Nazi salute.
NPR.
To many observers, Musk's arm movement appeared to be a Nazi salute.
USA Today.
Elon Musk's odd-looking salute sure looked like a sig heil to me.
Reuters, Musk's hand gesture while he spoke during a celebration of Trump drew online comparisons to a Nazi salute.
Axios.
Musk and Tesca, Tesla, remain untouchable after Nazi salute accusations.
Associated Press.
Musk's straight-arm gesture embraced by right-wing extremists, regardless of what he meant.
By the way, AP's most recent article on Corey Booker, it's all about how he expanded upon his historic Senate floor speech for his new book, Stand.
Nothing about the salute.
Stand and salute.
They forgot that part.
Newsweek, I told you about Daily Beef.
Democrats, no tweets about Corey Booker from AOC, who immediately attacked Elon Musk back in January, which I think we have, right?
We have her.
Let's listen to what AOC said about the exact same gesture from Elon.
I don't care what Elon Musk is doing behind a presidential seal.
In this country, we hate Nazis.
Kind of like a foundational defining thing that we beat the Confederates and we beat the Nazis.
And I don't know what side people may be on today, but I still am not rocking with anyone sympathetic to Nazis.
And I will do that until I am six feet in the ground.
Like kind of foundational to me as a human being.
And so if you're cool and want to defend the sig hails and the Nazi salutes, all the, all the, you know, whatever you want to do, that's on you.
I'm on the opposite side of that.
I'm not with the Nazis.
How about that?
Okay, me neither.
Let's do this, AOC.
I got a live one for you.
His name is Corey Booker, and he is ready to take it like a man.
Well, oh, wait.
Oh, wait.
I'm sorry.
AOC has done it too.
Here she is.
It's kind of a conflict of interest, ladies.
I don't know who would like to take this one.
Well, can I just say, I wish these people brought the same passion and the same ferocity to bear on the lunatic in Denver who's actually firebombing Jews, trying to hold a vigil for hostages and the lunatic who gunned down two young people outside a pro-Israel event.
But there, you know, they know exactly what was going through Elon's head when he held his arm up.
But these other people, they can't figure out the motive.
Like, we can't get ahead of it.
So I wish they could say, but the other people.
That's a very good point.
They're all doing Nazi salutes.
We'll show the video.
We've got Elizabeth Warren.
We've got Kamala Harris.
We've got, like I said, AOC and others.
So I guess I'm not sure how it works.
Like they Elon's a Nazi, but Kamala's not a Nazi and Corey's not a Nazi.
I'm sure you and I are Nazis.
Like I'm not sure what the logic is here, Emily, but can you believe not one of these news agencies has tried to pull this trick with Corey Booker, not to mention Liz Warren, AOC, et cetera.
The thing that's interesting about the Booker video, and it's just so, it sounds so silly to even be talking in granular detail about these videos, but they were such like that one is basically apples to apples with the Musk salute.
And at the time, I disagreed with some of my friends on this.
I mean, for me, it was just like the volume of coverage was, I'm glad we just like looked back on some of it because it was such a frenzied news cycle predicated on this idea that Elon Musk had just definitively shown his true colors as a Nazi on stage.
And now the fascism was naked and open and the bigotry was just in full public view.
How could you possibly think anything other than that Elon Musk was paying homage to the Nazis?
And the volume of the coverage, I just thought was completely ridiculous.
Like, again, I had people, friends who disagreed with me on whether or not it was a Nazi slit.
I thought it was like obviously him just being weird.
And I took a lot of flack for it at the time.
But you can look at so many different people doing these gestures over time.
And even if you think that maybe Elon Musk was, like, just take that argument, say maybe he was giving some secret sign to white supremacists and neo-Nazis.
Really?
You think that on stage, Elon Musk was actually giving, like, it doesn't make sense.
Like, the argument just never made sense to just.
Like the thing about Pete Henseth allegedly drinking scotch while giving one of his first speech, you know, after he said he wouldn't let alcohol touch his, but you know what?
Right over here in front of everybody.
Bottoms up.
Keep going.
Right.
Right.
No, no, I just think that's a good, like, look at this.
Look at this.
Somebody on Twitter put this together.
Look at them side by side.
That is apples to apples.
Like it's, you know, again, even if you think that Elon Musk is a neo-Nazi, the idea that he's going out on stage and openly doing a SIG heil with the president of the United States who has Jewish grandchildren, it just doesn't make any sense to me to me.
So like this massive explosion of coverage where we had a frenzied multi-day news cycle over Elon Musk openly paying homage to the Nazis is just so such a waste of time.
And the Media Research Center did one of those analyses, Eliana, about what kind of coverage Elon got and what kind of coverage Pete got.
And it was both universally negative.
I think it was, it was actually 100% negative in the case of Pete and maybe 99 and Elon.
My team will correct me, but they were both above 97%.
I mean, it was insanely negative for both.
That's why Elon has to be a Nazi, but Corey Booker has written a new book called Stand.
Wow.
It's parleying off of his historic filibuster where he never stood and stood up for the rest of us.
Yeah, historic.
You think 10 years from now or five years from now, two years from now, six months from now, we're all going to remember.
We're all going to remember the big history making, history making speech that he then used to fundraise off of and write a book off of.
And I can't wait to know how much this publisher gave him an advance for to write the book.
It was all for history.
Yeah, that's right.
He's historic and that's all you need to know.
And by the way, Elon Musk be destroyed.
Kia Tesla.
Bomb a Tesla, but don't buy a Tesla.
That's the left today.
But if they just study the syntax of young men, they could find a way back.
This is really actually the conversation that they're having right now on the left.
More with the EJs, straight ahead.
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Because I haven't tortured you enough with clips from Nicole Wallace and Rachel Maddow, I decided I saw it, and so you had to as well.
The following clip from Sex and the City, their latest sequel.
I don't know.
Oh, I know what this is.
Oh, no.
I'm sorry, Jashinsky, but it's happening.
It's happening.
For the listening audience, we are about to see Miranda, the character played by Cynthia Nixon, who is so annoying, in bed with a virgin nun played by Rosie O'Donnell.
I just threw up a little in my mouth.
Go ahead, Roller.
You are amazing.
Oh, I have never experienced anything like that.
Ew, this is a nice way to wake up.
Oh, you are really, really something.
Oh my God, yes.
It felt so, I don't know, electric and yet still so natural.
I never dreamed of my first time.
It could be both those things.
First time.
Oh, my God.
I'm so grossed out, Emily.
I don't even.
You have to talk.
I can't.
You're grossed out, but you're not sorry.
Why should I be the only one who suffers?
You all have to suffer.
We're in it together.
Guys, I saw it trending and I was like, oh, I can't click on this.
I can't.
And you know what, actually, though, I think by watching it, it's just such an example of how bad the writing is on that show.
Like, the writing on some of these shows is like they put it into like progressive chat GPT and come up with just like the worst, the worst dialogue.
It's so bad.
This would actually be, if Cynthia Nixon is reading AI-generated words, that really betrays her progressive principles, I have to say, as a, you know, an advocate for the downside.
You know what else?
You know what else betrays them?
Not disclosing when you're in bed with somebody that you have herpes.
It's important to disclose before you have sexual interludes that you have the herpes virus.
I'm sorry, exhibit A. Here is Rosie O'Donnell bitching and moaning about her favorite person, Donald Trump.
I think this is before she moved.
I don't, I can't keep track of where she's living in the world to avoid him.
Watch.
Well, hey, everybody, it's Friday all day, as my Nana would say.
And look what I have on my lip.
Everybody's been saying, you have herpes, you have herpes all this time.
And I never had a cold sore in my life.
And now I have a cold sore.
And it makes me think that perhaps this weird pimple that had a tiny little head was a cold sore, too.
And so I talked to my doctor today and I did a video telehealth.
And they said that it's not a cold sore, it's some reaction to the sun.
So I don't know.
I will let you know tomorrow if I do, in fact, have herpes as some of the taunting from the MAGA people in the last couple of weeks.
Hasn't it been fun, ladies and gentlemen, to be standing in direct opposition to everything he is and represents?
And always have been and always will be.
It's herpes.
It's herpes.
She came out later and told the world she has Donald Trump inflicted herpes from stress.
And I wonder, Eliana, whether really there was a legal obligation there for her to disclose that to the character of Miranda.
I have to say she seems to be in a lot worse condition than Rachel Maddow and Nicole Wallace in terms of fighting fascism or whatever.
But I don't even have a response to that.
No, you can't.
It's a stomach turn.
I can't see that.
It's too upset.
Donald Trump would never inflict herpes on Rosie O'Donnell.
I think he's made that very clear.
Since Eliana refuses to play, Emily, I've got another sound.
I didn't even know Sex in the City was back on the air.
I saw it with the picture.
It's happening back.
You have to react live to the herpes.
I'm sorry.
And I was like, oh, you know what?
The culture stuff, that's Emily's ballywick anyway.
There we go.
Here's another beauty.
This is Rosie in another scene singing to Miranda.
Enjoy.
Because I knew you.
Because I knew you.
I have been changed for good.
That's from Wicked.
Take care of Team.
Go ahead.
Some comedy, finally.
Finally, Rosie O'Donnell is back with comedy.
You know, Megan, I haven't been watching this season, and I think that's probably being validated right now as everyone watches these clips.
But it just, the writing on all of this stuff, it's so, because it's actually, this is going to be a weird connection, but it's actually similar to the Nicole Wallace's and the Rachel Maddows.
It's just that people have isolated themselves from criticism because of mental health.
Like some of these people in like super, super elite positions for mental health reasons, for ideology reasons, they're convinced everybody who disagrees with them is a bigot.
So they don't get feedback really anymore from anyone other than people who like mostly agree with them and see the world the same way.
And it's really hurt stuff like sex in the city, just in the same way that it's actually hurt news.
It's like they've, they've just, and we've seen it a little bit start to change.
Like when you hear Jamie Dimon start to, you know, flirt with maybe mass immigration and open borders could have some downstream consequences that are okay to talk about.
But mostly these people aren't taking criticism from people because they think everyone else is a bigot idiot.
But I mean, like, what do you do when those, like, literally, those are two of the biggest brand ambassadors for Team Blue?
They are.
I'm not just saying that.
They are.
I'm sorry if you're a Democrat, but you're stuck with them.
I mean, the one ran for governor of New York and continues to get out there and rail on the transit.
She's got like 40 kids, all of whom are trans and nine non-binary.
I mean, I think that might be true for both of them.
I don't know.
Rosio, she's unclear to me, but Cynthia Nixon for sure.
And Rosie is so outspoken.
Imagine the horror in being a Democrat, like maybe a normal Democrat, like an old, you know, blue dog Democrat, Eliana, and having one of the people most associated with your brand out there pointing to some huge growth right underneath her nose, saying it might be a pimple or it's a herpie, and then delivering an update.
It's a herpie.
I have herpes.
Look at my herpie virus.
It was caused by Donald Trump.
And then asking us to picture her in bed with a vibrator and Cynthia Nixon.
And then they're like, why can't we get young men on Team Blue?
What is it?
What is it about us that drives them away?
Megan, don't interfere.
Just let the immigration message continue as it is.
Let Rosie continue.
Don't do anything to mess this up.
It's perfect.
I think she's saying we need to stop calling attention to it, just to let the consumer enjoy.
All right, now listen.
I have one other topic that I have got to get into with you guys.
Can you stay just five extra minutes?
Because we have to say goodbye to SiriXM, but this topic is so good.
I want to tell the SiriXMers what we're about to do.
You do have to tune into the last few minutes of the pod and or youtube.com.
I'm not doing this intentionally.
We've had to go over a few days in the past couple of weeks.
I generally try to squeeze it into the time block on Siri, but there's just so much news.
All right, the topic is Patty Lupone, who most people, they don't even know who she is, but she is the toasts of Broadway.
And just ask her.
This woman is seriously drunk on her own power and took some shots at some other Broadway actors who happen to be, to include women of color.
And all of Broadway is now bringing the hammer down on this woman.
I don't know.
I don't think I have time to squeeze it in, but okay, I'll give a little bit more background while I have, right?
I have one more minute.
So Patty LuPone, we've been showing the audience clips of her.
I don't know why.
Sometimes, you know, I really just like, is it sadism or masochism?
A little of both, right?
I do it to myself, but I'm bringing you down with me.
But it's important to keep an eye on these so-called cultural icons.
She's the one we've been showing you who yelled at everybody on Broadway, pop your effing mask, because the person had it on, but had it under their nose in the audience.
And then, you know, chaos ensued as the audience member shouted back, I pay your salary.
And she's the one who attacked yours truly as a non-journalist in her interview with George Clooney.
Well, now she is in a shit ton of trouble of her own making and all of Broadway has turned on her.
Broadway Star Faces Harassment Charges00:15:35
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Put your mask over your nose.
That's why you're in the theater.
That is the rule.
If you don't want to follow the rule, get the fuck out.
What do you think you are if you do not respect the people that are sitting around you?
Salary.
You pay my salary.
Chris Hopper pays my salary.
Who do you think you are?
Do we have any payments?
Just put your mask over your nose.
She's such a charmer, that Patty Lapone.
So that's an old clip.
More recently, there was this one when she went on the view.
This is very recent.
Take a listen to her message there.
I don't know what the difference between our Christian right and the Taliban is.
I have no idea what the difference is.
You're not the only person who has said that.
I just don't know what the difference is.
What's happening in this country right now, in the name of religion, is so dangerous.
Okay, I love the whoopee response.
You're not the only one who feels that way.
You know, I only know other people feel that way.
You know, there's no difference, Taliban and Christian right.
So, Patty Lapone, and then as I mentioned, she was ripping on me too.
So I don't like her.
I don't like her for all of these reasons.
But this is so delicious.
Okay, let's just dig in because you're going to like this.
It's so fun.
It's so rare that these people get hoisted on their own petards, but she's on her petard, ladies.
Okay, here's where things started to go wrong for her.
Okay.
Last year, I don't know where we're getting.
Wait, tell me the sources that I'm reading from so I don't completely copy this off of somebody without credit.
Megan, you can just say other people have said that.
You're not the only one who said that.
Other people also agree.
That last year, Patty Lapone's show, The Roommate, shared a wall with a different show, the Alicia Keys musical, which is called Hell's Kitchen.
Okay, so their two shows shared a wall.
And the actress who stars in the Alicia Keys musical is Keisha Lewis.
And Patty Lapone didn't like sharing a wall with Keisha Lewis's show, Hell's Kitchen, because the sound from the Alicia Keys musical would bleed through.
And Patty Lapone, who really does fancy herself the queen of Broadway, was unhappy that she had to listen to any of the musical notes.
So she spoke with the head of the other theater and asked him if he could fix the noise problem.
After those efforts, which came this past November, Keisha Lewis posted a video on Instagram.
Do we have this thought?
Let's just play it.
Here's what she posted.
These actions, in my opinion, are bullying.
They're offensive.
They are racially microaggressive.
They're rooted in privilege.
And these actions also lack a sense of community and leadership for someone as yourself who has been in the business as long as you have.
I want to explain what a microaggression is.
These are subtle, unintentional comments or actions that convey stereotypes, biases, or negative assumptions about someone based on their race.
Examples include calling a black show loud in a way that dismisses it.
Referring to a predominantly black Broadway show as loud can unintentionally reinforce harmful stereotypes.
And it also feels dismissive of the artistry and the voices that are being celebrated on stage.
Ms. Lapone, I respectfully submit to you that you owe us an apology, not flowers.
Don't!
And flowers.
Shots fired.
This is so perfect, right?
It's like a woke and then woke her.
And it's like, you're a racist.
It is a microaggression to say a black show is loud, even though it's Alicia Keys and it's a musical.
I'm sure the piano and the singing is loud.
It goes on the whole time.
But so it does in most musicals.
In any event, shots fired.
Okay.
So then Patty Lapone sits down for an interview with the New Yorker.
And she doesn't give two shits that anybody's attacking her because she's like, I fucking hang out with George Clooney and The View.
You bitches can go F.
Okay.
So she says to the New Yorker, I know you got to go soon, Eliana, so you can peace out when you got to go, but this is too delicious soon.
So you stay as long as you can.
She says when the New Yorker writer brought up the incident, oh my God, said Lupone.
Here's the problem.
She calls herself a veteran.
Let's find out how many Broadway shows Keisha Lewis has done because she doesn't know what the fuck she's talking about.
Okay.
She then Googled, meaning Patty Lapone Googled Keisha Lewis.
Quote, she's done seven.
I've done 31.
Don't call yourself a vet, bitch.
Tours of dude.
She's an angry, angry lady.
Okay, so she's like asserting her power like, I'm the queen of Broadway, Keisha.
Suck it.
Okay, so then this New Yorker writer, who is the New Yorker, that's the person by the way, who we got the information from and the New York Post.
We got to figure out who's the writer because this person is subversive.
Michael Shulman, I think I'm your fan.
I'll have to research you more, but I love this piece.
So this guy is one subversive SOB.
So he then writes, I mentioned that Audra McDonald, the Tony decorated Broadway star, had given the video by Keisha Lewis supportive emojis.
I love this guy's all shitster.
He's like, oh, well, another, another Broadway queen who's very well rewarded and Tony decorated.
She liked the video.
Audra McDonald did.
And Patty Lapone said, exactly.
And I thought, you should know better.
That's typical of Audra.
She's not a friend.
Hard D. She's not a friend.
It's fun playing her.
The two singers had some long ago rift, Lupone said, but she didn't want to elaborate.
When I asked what she thought of Audra McDonald, the thumbs up lady, current production of Gypsy, she stared at me in silence for 15 seconds.
Then she turned to the window and sighed.
What a beautiful day.
I couldn't love this anymore.
The drama for these like just highfalutin Broadway bees.
Okay, so here, here it comes.
Here it comes.
Open letter signed by more than 600 members of the Broadway community condemning Patty Lapone's comments about Keisha Lewis and Audrey McDonald.
Now you've effed yourself over with not one but two beautiful black Broadway broads and you're in serious trouble, Patty Lapone.
600 people.
The letter was addressed openly to the theater community as well as Tony producers, the Broadway League and the American Theater Win.
Okay, here we go.
Okay.
Goodbye, Eliana.
We'll miss you.
Emily, you get the joy of staying through to the end of this.
I was going to say, she did that on purpose.
She's like, peace out.
This is too...
Anyway, but you're the lucky one who gets to hear the end.
From the letter.
This language is not only degrading and misogynistic, it is a blatant act of racialized disrespect.
It constitutes bullying.
It constitutes harassment, the letter reads.
It is emblematic of the microaggressions and abuse that people in this industry have endured for far too long, too often without consequence.
Yes, because when you think of Broadway, you think about its microaggressions against black and minority people.
Isn't that really what Broadway, that's the experience you get over there.
The audience has heard me say, went to see Macbeth on Broadway a couple years ago with Doug.
Daniel Craig was starring in it.
We saw a guy in a wheelchair who came out to introduce the play.
It was a majority, minority cast, even though it was 1500s Scotland.
You were like almost no white people.
The king's son was played by a woman who had a blue mohawk.
But Broadway hates minorities, really, is what they're saying.
It's the abuse and microaggressions that people in this industry have endured for far too long, too often without consequence.
Quote, to publicly attack a woman who has contributed to this art form with such excellence, leadership, and grace.
And they don't mean Patty Lapone.
They mean the woman starring in Hell's Kitchen, Keisha Lewis, I think, or maybe Audrey McDonald.
Unclear.
Either one will work.
But to attack her and to discredit the legacy, yeah, of Audrey McDonald.
So they meant Keisha Lewis first and discrediting Audre's legacy.
The most nominated and awarded performer in Tony Award history, not you, Patty, is not simply a personal offense.
It is a public affront to the values of collaboration, equity, and mutual respect that our theater community claims to uphold.
We call on the American Theater Wing and the Broadway League to take immediate action, not only in response to Patty Lapone's comments, but in establishing a broader standard of accountability moving forward.
So they want to have to deal with these racists and misogynists running rampant on stage on Broadway, Emily.
I mean, who knew individuals, including Patty Lapone, who use their platform to publicly demean, harass, or disparage fellow artists, particularly with racial, she said loud.
It's racial, gendered.
She said, bitch, or doesn't know what the fuck she's talking about.
Yeah, both of those things.
Gendered or otherwise violent language should not be welcomed at industry events.
You're out of the cool crowd, Patty Lapone.
You won't be invited to the next LGBTQ Pride event, including the Tony Awards, the fundraisers, and the public programs.
First, we lost the Kennedy Center and now this Patty.
Does it actually say that in the letter?
It doesn't say that.
Not the Kennedy, not the Kennedy.
No, no, but before that, it really, no, it really says Tony Awards, fundraising raisers and public programs.
They want to shut up.
You're going to kick Patty Lapone out of the Tony Award?
Yes, yes.
It's civil war.
It's civil war.
I love it.
There's literally no one to root for and everyone to loathe.
It's so wonderful.
You don't get these stories every day.
As of Saturday, the letter had almost 700 signatures.
They're probably over 700.
I don't even think they're more than that on Broadway.
Probably have a thousand people working at Broadway.
And then Saturday came.
By the way, speaking of the Kennedy Center in that interview with a New Yorker, The writer pointed out that she told me more than once, quote, the Trumpified Kennedy Center should get blown up.
She wants it blown up, the Trumpified Kennedy Center.
So now, by the way, she got no blowback for that.
No nasty letter, no open letter about her violent language.
No one gave two shits.
But they're very upset loud.
People read it.
But the lady's very upset that she referred to a musical by Alicia Keys is loud because they share a wall that she can hear.
Okay.
So here, of course, was the forced apology, which is such a fun part of the act.
Okay.
Here's the apology.
For as long as I have worked in the fucking theater.
No, she doesn't.
It just sounded like her.
In the theater.
I've spoken my mind and never apologized.
That is changing today.
I am deeply sorry for the words I used during the New Yorker interview, particularly about Keisha Lewis, which were demeaning and disrespectful.
Again, this is what she said about her.
She calls herself a veteran.
Let's find out how many Broadway shows.
She's done.
She doesn't know what the fuck she's talking about.
She's on seven.
I've done 31.
Don't call yourself a vet, bitch.
They were demeaning and disrespectful.
I am devastated that my behavior has offended others and has run counter to what we hold dear in the community.
I hope to have the chance to speak to Audre and Keisha personally to offer my sincere apologies.
I made a mistake.
I take full responsibility for it and I am committed to making this right.
Our entire theater community deserves better.
Patty Lapone Sideshow Drama00:06:04
That's it.
That's story time with MK, courtesy of this guy who wrote a banger of a New Yorker piece, the New York Post, and Patty Lapone in her own very weird Broadway community's overreactions to everything.
Your thoughts on the whole thing.
Well, I have so many, Megan, but first of all, I feel like I just watched a one woman show, which was you as Patty Lapone channeling Patty Lapone going back and forth in this bitter civil war on Broadway.
Now, it's just Patty Lapone has been a known sort of bully, or the accusations of her being a bully have circulated around Broadway for years.
It's sort of baked into the lore and the myth of Patty Lapone is that she's like this old school Broadway diva.
And so the fact that it's now being treated as like a social justice issue to take down Patty Lapone is really something.
Now, suddenly 2025, everyone must take down Patty Lapone because she accused the Alicia Keys musical of being too loud at one point.
I mean, it just also, this is, I'm just going to keep pulling on the same thread and make this connection between the awful Rosie O'Donnell herpes video, the Sex in the City video, and the Rachel Maddow, Nicole Wallace podcast that we talked about on the show today, Megan.
It's like these people don't have anyone to tell them, stop, because they have exercised, they've purged good faith critics who are still touching grass from their community.
So they don't have anyone to tell them how insane and ridiculous they sound.
And it is making their work suffer.
It is turning them into not just like crazy, eccentric, interesting artists, but just like fully sick, mentally ill people.
Like they're still lecturing people about microaggressions in the year of our Lord 2025.
It just, I think you couldn't write it because you would think at this point they would have had some like humility and self-reflection, but no, because they've purged everyone who might be a good faith critic.
And it's not good for them.
It's not good for the country.
But at this point, we can kind of just let them have their sideshow, like their little sideshow project.
Self-destructing.
I mean, they're all killing each other.
So it's fine.
I don't care.
We win either way.
I don't care who wins this fight.
But not for nothing.
How insane was that video by the star of the Alicia Keys musical attacking what Patty LuPone said, which was your show's loud and we can hear it through the wall?
I mean, that was loony tunes.
The microaggressions.
Can we just watch that?
Just can I just say it one more time?
I just need to see some of that one more time.
This is Keisha Lewis on Instagram warning Patty Lapone about her terrible language.
Miss Lapone, these actions, in my opinion, are bullying.
They're offensive.
They are racially microaggressive.
They're rude.
They're rooted in privilege.
And these actions also lack a sense of community and leadership for someone as yourself who has been in the business as long as you have.
I want to explain what a microaggression is.
These are subtle, unintentional comments or actions that convey stereotypes, biases, or negative assumptions about someone based on their race.
Examples include calling a black show loud in a way that dismisses it.
Referring to a predominantly black Broadway show as loud can unintentionally reinforce harmful stereotypes.
And it also feels expressive of the artistry and the voices that are being celebrated on stage.
Ms. Lapone, I respectfully submit to you that you owe us an apology.
Not a lot.
Okay, she.
I mean, isn't it a microaggression to tell someone to pull up their mask when they might have had a medical reason for not wearing a mask?
That sounds like a microaggression, singling them out in the audience.
Good point.
Here's the thing that I like my own analysis of this.
Live by the sword, die by the sword.
You want to make your career on Broadway and lecture everybody about the masks and you have to follow rules.
Well, you know what the rules on Broadway are.
You are below all people of color, way below.
And you are way, way, way below anybody who's LGBTQ.
I mean, they're at the top of the food chain on Broadway.
And then come people of color.
And then you're in there, Patty, because you're a woman.
So you're still, you got something and you're old.
So you got those things going for you.
There are no white men left on Broadway who are straight.
So they don't, they're irrelevant.
But she's living by the sword and she's going to die by the sword.
So she, you want to act in this environment?
I'm sorry.
It's just a cold, hard reality.
You're going to have to be a member, a citizen of Woketopia.
And you are going to have to play by those rules.
You are going to have to listen to your lectures from Keisha Lewis.
And you are going to have to genuflect as she says the words microaggressions and understand that you cannot show, call a show loud that is predominantly with a black cast.
That's racist in the world that you've chosen to live and operate in and from which you regularly judge others.
So you are the one who can F off Patty.
I think I'm on the side of your insane antagonists because while they're wrong and they're nutcases, these are the weird rules of your universe and you've been just fine with them up until now.
These people are too talented to be this dumb, by the way.
Like it's just such a stupid position at this point, especially it's also kind of how I feel about Rachel Maddow.
Like she's genuinely a talented person who's just gone like brain dead over the course of the last 10 years.
And to see people not be able to even like do their work well because they have this awful like mind virus is very sad.
It is.
It really is.
Operation Mincemeat Movie Review00:03:23
It sucks.
It sucks to watch, especially Broadway is one American tradition.
It's like a very proud American tradition.
And I don't want it to physically civil war.
And granted, I've been to a total of one Broadway show and it was hairspray in 2007.
So I don't really have a stake in this.
But they are talented people and it sucks to watch this stuff happen.
But that's what you get when you completely surrender to these like lazy, reflexive arguments is you ultimately, they're so circular and incoherent that they will ultimately take you down with them.
I will end it on a happy note.
Not long ago, the whole fam, all five of us, went to Broadway.
We keep trying.
You know, we live close, so we go and we can.
And we saw, I don't remember seeing a show I enjoyed more.
I did love Back to the Future, but this show was spectacular.
And my advice to everybody is run, don't walk to go see it.
It is called Operation Mincemeat.
And it is great.
I mean, truly great.
It's a musical.
It's based on the actual World War II Operation Mincemeat, where this is, there's been a film made about it.
I think they recently redid it.
I feel like Colin Firth was in it.
I didn't see the remake, but I saw the 1948 version.
And that's because I'm married to Doug Brunt, who lives for this crap.
And it's about a group of MI6 spies trying to come up with a way to fool Hitler and the Nazis into believing that the Allied forces were going to not invade Sicily, that they were going to invade Italy, but to try to lead Hitler to believe it wouldn't be Sicily that they would invade, that they would go to a different island.
And they had to come up with a subterfuge, a plan that would fool him and in a way that he would not know he had been fooled into believing that the attack plans were focused on a different place.
And it's all based on a true story.
Ian Fleming is represented in there because he worked for MI6, the guy who's the author of all the James Bond stories books.
And his character is represented, but there's only five actors.
I think it's two guys and three gals, or maybe it's the verse, three guys and two, two gals, I can't remember.
But all five play all the roles in the whole show.
There are only these five actors.
So they do the gender bending thing, but not in a, not in a trans way, in like an old school theater way where like anybody can play anybody because you just want to get a great show on.
And there is a man who sings in this particular scene.
He's playing like a widow, a widow to a man who died.
He sings a number called Dear Bill.
Honestly, I like couldn't move after this number.
I couldn't.
It was stunningly spectacular.
It was stupendous.
It was so gorgeous.
It was emotional.
It was compelling.
It was like you just wanted to stand up and cheer for this guy who at first I was like, oh, he's kind of awkward.
How did he get cast in a Broadway show?
I wound up in love with him.
I mean, it's just like anything this guy is in, I would go to.
Forgive me because I don't have his name in front of me.
It's been like six weeks since we went.
But go see Operation Mince Meat.
No, I'm not getting paid to say this.
More than likely, the entire cast can't stand me.
Emotional Widow Performance00:01:23
I don't care.
I loved it.
And I really think everybody should go see it.
So we end on a positive note.
There wasn't even a hint of wokeness, not even a hint, not a comment, nothing, not like an offhand political jab at Trump or modern day culture, et cetera.
It was all business about World War II and this operation, and just the frailty of humanity and the funny piccadillos of people trying to make it in life.
Just a lot, a lot to love.
So, anyway, Emily Jasinski, you're a lot to love too.
It's a pleasure to have you here whenever you come.
Megan, thank you so much for having me.
It was a blast today, especially.
Awesome.
All right, we'll do it again soon.
And we're back tomorrow with Link Lauren and Stephen A. Smith.
We'll talk to him about how it went when Jake Tapper swung by the Stephen A podcast.
It was a little contentious.
We'll talk about it.
Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show: No BS, No Agenda, and No Fear.